Losing or Choosing: A Little Ditty 'Bout Jack and Diane || Room for Two Teaser

Conversations with Dr. Jennifer

Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife

Self-improvement, Education, Mental Health, Sexuality, Health & Fitness

4.4 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 27 July 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Want to hear the FULL episode? Subscribe to Room for Two! _____ After twenty years in a difficult marriage, Jack asked Diane for a divorce. Diane felt conflicted in response. Part of her was devastated. She had committed to Jack and took that commitment seriously. Never a quitter, she had been determined to stay the course in their marriage, despite the difficulty. But part of her also felt relief at the idea. Their marriage had been an exhausting one, and the thought of stepping away from a decades-long struggle was liberating. After the initial disorganization of the request, Diane settled herself and realized that, even if the marriage ended, her life would go on. She would be okay. But, as empowering as this realization was, it was in facing the real possibility of losing the marriage that she recognized just how much she actually wanted to CHOOSE the marriage. To choose Jack. As difficult as their relationship had been, Diane was waking up to just how much she wanted to work out a life WITH Jack. With renewed commitment, Jack and Diane have been making progress in recent months. Jack has been more open and honest, and Diane has been working to untangle her thoughts from Jack's and to clarify her own desires. Both Jack and Diane want a better sexual relationship, but Diane worries that their differing definitions of "better" might be a dealbreaker for Jack. In this episode of Room for Two, Dr. Finlayson-Fife helps Jack and Diane explore and better understand their sexual dynamic. They discuss Diane’s initial excitement about sex, how their honeymoon’s brief difficulties fractured her perception of her sexual self, and how her initial self criticism has continued to impact their sexual dynamic. Dr. Finlayson-Fife helps Diane see that despite her recent growth, her continued focus on pleasing Jack is standing in the way of her actually loving him. Dr. Finlayson-Fife teaches that the key to moving forward is for Diane to decide who she wants to be in her life and marriage, independent of the expectations of others.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast is an excerpt from Room for Two.
0:06.0	To access the rest of this episode and more coaching sessions like this one,
0:10.0	visit the link to the website in the show notes below.
0:15.0	The couples in the series are not ongoing clients of Dr Finlason Fife.
0:19.5	To ensure their anonymity, their names and identifying features have been changed, but their stories
0:26.1	and their voices are real.
0:28.6	Welcome to Room for Two couples coaching with Dr. Jennifer Finlice and Fife.
0:39.3	Jack and Diane, welcome to room for two.
0:42.4	Thanks. Thanks.
0:43.0	Hello.
0:44.0	It's good to be here.
0:46.0	So tell me a little bit about who you are and how I can be helpful.
0:51.0	I'll start. So we've been married for 20 years, a pretty difficult marriage for most of the time and then we just kind of recently turned a corner where we feel like we're in a much more collaborative place, which gives us room to start
1:05.6	addressing some of the issues that have just been really difficult for a long time. And so that's what we're looking for your help with.
1:13.0	Okay. And tell me a little bit about that, Jack, like when you're saying we've turned a corner and we're in a more collaborative place,
1:21.0	explain what you mean by that what's changed.
1:24.0	So we just kind of turn a corner in that communication has always been really hard for us
1:31.0	and we were never really able to talk to each other like adults.
1:35.2	Things kind of went off the tracks really quickly, but over the last couple of months
1:39.7	we've been learning how to do that we've had some really good conversations and we feel like
1:43.3	we can discuss things that have always not really been on the table for discussion.
1:49.2	And how do you make sense of that change?
	...

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