#215: Resentment, Real Repair, Conflict Avoidance & Navigating Dating With Kids — ft. James ‘Fish’ Gill

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If you’re in a relationship with… well, any human being, you already know this:

Conflict is inevitable.

It doesn’t matter how aligned, in love, or “on the same page” you are — sooner or later, you will bump up against each other’s edges. Needs will go unmet, feelings will get hurt, and misunderstandings will happen.

In this episode of On Attachment, I’m joined again by my dear friend and colleague, relationship coach and author James “Fish” Gill, to talk about:

• Why resentment lingers even after a “resolution”

• How to move from conflict avoidance to real repair

• How to express your needs in a way your partner can actually hear

• The very real complexity of navigating dating when you both have kids

Fish’s work is all about conscious communication and finding our way back to connection — particularly in those tender, messy, “we’re not at our best right now” moments that relationships inevitably bring.

Let’s dig into some of the big themes from our conversation.

Why Resentment Lingers After Things Are “Resolved”

One listener asked:

“Any tips on releasing resentment after a conflict is resolved, but the pain of the damage done is still there? I find it hard to feel better and often wait for my partner to make me feel better, but sometimes all they can do is apologise, validate and try to do better in the future. I get stuck struggling to let it go.”

If you’ve ever been in this place, you’re not alone.

Fish described something so important here:

Pain that doesn’t get deeply recognised stays alive.

On the surface, it might look like you’ve “resolved” something:

• You talked it through

• They apologised

• You agreed on what you’ll both try to do differently

And yet… your body is still holding onto hurt.
The resentment is still humming in the background.

Why that happens

Often, what’s really going on is:

• Parts of your pain never got fully named

• Some corners of your experience didn’t get touched

• You didn’t feel seen to the depth that you were quietly longing for

You might even have had a conversation that addressed one piece of the issue, but not the main thing that was bothering you — maybe because you didn’t want to rock the boat further or feared being “too much.”

Your nervous system knows that. And it will keep knocking until what needs to be seen is actually seen.

Two powerful ways to meet lingering pain

Fish talked about two key forms of “attunement” that help pain soften:

1. Attunement from others
This is when your partner (or friend, or family member) responds in a way that sounds like:

• “It makes so much sense that you feel hurt.”

• “Of course you felt uncared for — I really get that.”

• “You have every right to feel sad and disappointed.”

It’s not fixing or defending. It’s permission for your inner experience to exist.

2. Self-attunement (which most of us skip entirely)
This is your ability to turn towards yourself with the same compassion:

• “Of course I feel hurt — that really mattered to me.”

• “Of course I still feel anxious; this situation touched something very vulnerable.”

• “Of course I’m longing for more care and reassurance here.”

Self-attunement is essentially becoming the loving presence you most want in that moment.

And importantly:

You don’t have control over whether someone else attunes to you…
But you always have access to self-attunement.

Letting pain exist without rushing to “get over it”

One of my favourite things Fish shared was the idea of letting pain exist over time rather than treating it as a problem to eliminate.

That might look like:

• Lighting a candle for a grief or fear that’s still alive

• Keeping a small symbol in your space that acknowledges “this is still tender for us, and that’s okay”

• Speaking openly about an old wound that sometimes gets reactivated — without making it wrong that it still hurts

The goal isn’t: “How do I make this pain go away?”
The goal is: “How can I bring love to this pain when it’s here?”

From Explosive Conflict to No Conflict (And Why That’s Also a Problem)

Another listener shared that she and her partner used to have really unhealthy conflict — lots of shouting, him storming out, fights lasting for days. They broke up, then got back together.

Now, she says, it feels like they never have conflict.

They skirt around anything that feels like it could turn into an argument, stop midway when things feel heated, and never actually reach real repair. Underneath, there’s this simmering tension and growing resentment.

Fish named this so beautifully:

Avoidance is often an unskillful commitment to peace.

In other words, both people want harmony. They don’t want to go back to that chaotic, painful version of conflict. So they unconsciously decide:

“Let’s just not go there.”

Understandable…
But unsustainable.

The problem with never going there

When you keep avoiding the hard conversations:

• Needs go unspoken

• Unspoken needs go unmet

• Unmet needs turn into resentment

You might tell yourself, “It’s not worth bringing that up,” or, “I don’t want to ruin the night.”

But over time, those tiny avoidances accumulate into emotional distance, mistrust and disconnection.

How to re-open the door to conflict (in a safer way)

If this is you, you might say something like:

“I know in the past our arguments felt really scary and out of control. I can feel that we’re now avoiding anything that might lead to conflict, and I get why. But I’m also noticing that things are going unsaid, and that’s starting to build resentment in me. I’d really love for us to learn some new skills so that our conflicts don’t have to be destructive, and can actually bring us closer. Would you be open to working on that with me?”

Key pieces here:

• You’re naming the pattern, not attacking their character

• You’re acknowledging their fear of conflict as reasonable

• You’re inviting them into a shared project (“something we work on together”), rather than positioning yourself as the “evolved one” trying to fix them

Making Your Pain Digestible (Instead of Triggering Defensiveness)

One of the most practical parts of the conversation was about how we share our pain.

Fish gave a really relatable example of a woman who was frustrated with her husband coming home from work “in a mood.”

Her go-to way of expressing that was:

“I hate when you come home like this, it’s so unfair on me and the kids. You need to do something about it.”

You can probably feel how that would land:

• It frames him as the problem

• It labels his state as “bad” and “unfair”

• It gives him almost nowhere to go but defensive

Not because she’s wrong to be upset — her pain is real.
But because the way it’s delivered makes it much harder to receive.

How to express the same thing more skillfully

When Fish worked with her, they slowed things down:

1. First, she tuned into what she actually felt:

   • Unloved

   • Braced for disconnection

   • Anxious about his mood impacting the family

2. Then, she got curious about his internal world:

   • Overwhelmed from work

   • Longing for quiet and decompression

   • Wanting space before engaging with family life

From there, her message shifted into something like:

“When you come in the door after work, I notice I often start to feel anxious and a bit unloved, like I’m bracing for disconnection. And I imagine that when you come home, you’re exhausted and really craving quiet time and space after a stressful day. I’d love for us to talk about how we can take care of both of those needs.”

Same situation.
Completely different impact.

This is the crux of conscious communication:

We honour our experience and we honour theirs.

We stop speaking about them (“you’re moody”)
and start speaking from ourselves (“I feel anxious and disconnected”)
while still caring about what’s alive in them.

Dating with Kids: Conflict, Jealousy & Different Parenting Styles

One of the more complex questions came from a listener in a long-distance situationship of three years. Both she and her partner have kids from previous relationships.

He has ended things a number of times, often citing:

• Different parenting styles

• Feeling like his opinion around her kids “doesn’t matter”

• Feeling like she “doesn’t listen”

She, on the other hand, suspects that underneath his stated reasons is jealousy and discomfort with having to share her attention with her children.

Such a common, deeply human dynamic.

Step 1: Externalise the “enemy”

Fish invited us to zoom way out and acknowledge just how hard this setup is:

• Long-distance

• Kids from previous relationships

• Different parenting histories and values

• Very real limitations on time, energy and capacity

Instead of making each other the problem, we can name the external pressures:

• Distance is hard

• Blended family logistics are hard

• Competing priorities are hard

When couples do this, something softens. Instead of “you vs. me,” it becomes:

“It’s us vs. this really tricky situation.”

That alone can reduce blame and shame significantly.

Step 2: Translate accusations into pain + longing

When her partner says:

• “My opinion doesn’t matter.”

• “You never listen to me about your kids.”

That’s not an objective truth.
It’s a clumsy expression of:

• “I feel unimportant.”

• “I feel excluded from big parts of your life.”

• “I don’t know where I fit or what my role is.”

None of that means she’s doing anything malicious.

But his pain is still real.

At the same time, her reality matters too. She’s likely longing for:

• The freedom to parent in a way she believes is right

• Protecting and prioritising her children’s safety and wellbeing

• Reassuring her kids (and herself) that they still come first

Both are valid.
Both are understandable.
Both need to be seen.

What this can sound like in practice

She might say:

“When you tell me I don’t listen to you about the kids, I imagine you’re feeling really sidelined and unimportant, like you don’t get to have a say in things that affect you. That makes sense to me, and I don’t want you to feel that way. At the same time, I’m also trying really hard to protect and prioritise my children and make sure they feel safe and secure. I’d love to explore how we can honour your voice more, without me feeling like I’m compromising what feels right for them.”

Again, the magic is in holding two truths at once:

• Your kids are a priority

• Your partner’s experience also matters

And you don’t resolve this once and never touch it again.
It’s an ongoing, evolving conversation.

Hearing “You Never Listen to Me” Without Collapsing or Attacking

At some point, you will probably hear some version of:

“You never listen to me.”
“You don’t care about my feelings.”
“You always shut me down.”

These statements almost always land like an arrow straight into our shame.

The reflex is usually to:

• Defend (“That’s not true, look at all the times I’ve listened!”)

• Counter-attack (“What about when you…”)

• Or fawn and persuade (“I promise I care, here’s why you’re wrong about me…”)

But when we do that, we end up fighting over who’s right about our character, instead of actually tending to the pain that’s present.

Fish invited a different approach:

Translate the accusation into the feeling underneath.

“You never listen to me” becomes:

“I often feel unheard.”

And then you get curious:

“It sounds like you’ve been feeling really unheard by me lately. That must feel lonely and frustrating. Can you tell me more about where that shows up for you?”

You’re not admitting you’re a horrible person.
You’re not saying your intentions don’t matter.

You’re simply saying:

“Your experience is real to you. I care about that.”

From there, you can also share your experience and intentions.
But not as a way to erase theirs — as part of a fuller picture.

Conflict as a Doorway, Not a Death Sentence

If there’s one thread through this entire conversation, it’s this:

Conflict isn’t a sign your relationship is failing.
It’s the doorway to deeper understanding — if you know how to walk through it.

When we:

• See pain as something to be loved, not eliminated

• Allow multiple truths to exist at once

• Learn to express our needs in digestible, compassionate ways

• Stop looking for a villain and start looking for the unmet needs underneath

…our relationships don’t become conflict-free.
But they do become far more resilient, tender and deeply connected.

Fish’s work — and his book How to Fall in Love with Humanity — is such a powerful resource if you want to build these skills in a really grounded, practical, heart-centred way.

If this episode resonated with you, notice where your edges are:

• Is it hard to let go of resentment?

• Do you avoid conflict altogether?

• Do you struggle to hear your partner’s pain without collapsing into shame?

• Are you juggling kids, distance, or complex logistics and blaming yourself (or them) for how hard it feels?

Wherever you’re starting from, you’re not alone — and nothing about where you are right now makes you “bad” or “broken.”

It just means there’s more to see, more to name, and more love to bring to the places that hurt.

And that’s work worth doing.

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FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:

• FREE TRAINING: How to Heal Anxious Attachment and (Finally) Feel Secure in Life & Love

• Download the FREE Anxious Attachment Starter Kit here
  

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Episode Transcript

Stephanie Rigg [00:00:04]:

You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host, relationship coach Stephanie Rigg and I'm really glad you're here.

Stephanie Rigg [00:00:29]:

Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, I'm joined by James ‘Fish’ Gill, and we are talking all things conflict, repair and communication in relationships. For those of you who don't know Fish, he has been a guest on the podcast before, but he is a relationship coach, facilitator, teacher, and now author. And his work is really all about.

Stephanie Rigg [00:00:53]:

How we can find our way back.

Stephanie Rigg [00:00:54]:

To connection through conscious communication. And in this episode, we're actually giving advice and guidance in response to questions that were submitted by listeners about ongoing conflict and communication struggles that they're having in their relationship. So I have no doubt that you'll get a lot from today's episode, particularly given the fact that conflict is absolutely inevitable if you plan to be in any kind of relationship with anyone in your life. And so becoming more masterful at how we communicate, engage in conflict, and ultimately repair when things go awry is an absolutely critical life skill. Just before we get into today's episode Episode, a quick note to let you know that my Black Friday sale, which is the biggest sale that I run all year, is now live. Now I know that it's easy to feel bombarded by all of the Black Friday stuff. I am as guilty as anyone at getting swept up in the madness and adding so many things to my cart that I definitely do not need. But if you've been listening for a while and you're curious about going deeper into my work, it's a really, really wonderful time to do that.

Stephanie Rigg [00:01:54]:

I have two bundles this year. I have a Secure Relationship Bundle and a Breakup Bundle and they are an opportunity to get two of my best selling courses. Healing Anxious Attachment is in both bundles and then either Secure Together My Relationship course or Higher Love, which is my breakup course. And you get all of that at a massive 65% discount for the bundle. So if you're feeling called to invest in something a little more meaningful this Black Friday, something with greater return on investment rather than just accumulating more stuff that you will probably not even remember you bought by the time it arrives.

Stephanie Rigg [00:02:26]:

Definitely check out my Black Friday Sale. I would absolutely love to support you in deepening your relationship with yourself and the people in your life.

Stephanie Rigg [00:02:34]:

Okay, now for my conversation with James Fish Gill. I hope you love it.

Stephanie Rigg [00:02:38]:

Fish, welcome to the podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so, so great to be here with you.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:02:44]:

So good to be with you, Steph, as always.

Stephanie Rigg [00:02:46]:

So for anyone who hasn't listened, Fish was on the podcast. It must be almost 18 months ago because I was heavily pregnant the last time you were here and I've now got a 16 month old. So it's been a while. But it's great to have you back and for anyone who doesn't know you and what you do in the world, maybe you could give a quick introduction and then we're going to dive straight into some questions that some people have sent through to me on Instagram, all about conflict and repair and how to navigate that so that we can take it out of the abstract and really dig into some people's real life problems.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:03:20]:

Great. Well, I have the great privilege of being invited into people's lives in the most tender relationship upsets. And you know what we discover actually if we get curious about relationship is that we see that upset in relationship is natural and conflict is actually just the uprising of unmet needs. So all relationship experiences conflict, although out there in the world do we think that conflict means the relationship's not going well? But actually conflict is just a characteristic of trying to relate and noticing unmet needs arising. So yeah, I have the great privilege of being invited into these incredibly tender moments in relationships of all kinds for people all over the world, individuals and couples, and bringing skills so that each of those conflict moments can actually illuminate unmet needs so that those unme needs can be skillfully communicated and can be wrapped in love. And when our most painful moments can be wrapped in love, then healing takes place and the relationship goes deeper. We don't often think of conflict as a positive, but actually conflict is the only way that our relationship goes deeper.

Stephanie Rigg [00:04:50]:

Yes. Which is very much, as you say, the opposite to what most people assume and experience. It's not even just a story. Oftentimes conflict, as you well know, goes in a way that does deepen the divide between us because we don't do it very skillfully and the way that we most of us by default, habitually do. Conflict is very much prone to making things worse rather than better. It does not deepen the connection between us. It deepens the rift. And so I think maybe we go straight into these.

Stephanie Rigg [00:05:26]:

And I'm sure as we go you can illuminate for people what your framework looks like and the four truths. I know you Spoke to the last time you were on the podcast, but maybe we can kind of chat through all of that in real time rather than in theory.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:05:41]:

That sounds really great. Yeah. As we go, I will be speaking to what would naturally, habitually lead us deeper into conflict and then what the alternative that leads us towards repair.

Stephanie Rigg [00:05:54]:

Yeah, perfect.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:05:56]:

Let's jump in.

Stephanie Rigg [00:05:57]:

All right. The first question I received was, any tips on releasing resentment after a conflict is resolved? But the pain of the damage done is still there. I find it really hard to help myself feel better and tend to wait for my partner or my friend, whoever it may be, to make me feel better. But sometimes all they can do is apologise, validate and try to do better in the future. But I get stuck struggling to let it go. So, relatable, what's your take?

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:06:25]:

Yeah, super relatable. The first thing I want to say to this person who's been generous enough to let us into this is any pain that doesn't get deeply recognised stays alive. So, you know, when this notion of, like, why am I still in pain? When we've resolved things might actually point to the fact that while we've. While we've strived to resolve things, while we've had some really good conversations about it, while we've reached some agreements, while there's been some apology, while we've been able to name some of the impact, there might still be some pain that didn't quite get recognised, or didn't get recognised to the depths that I wanted to. Because pain has this habit when it doesn't get loved. It sits there in our system, demanding to be seen.

Stephanie Rigg [00:07:29]:

Yeah.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:07:30]:

So, one. You know, the first thing I want to say is that the conversations you have had with your partner or with your friend or whoever it is that sought to bring awareness of the pain that you're in and sought to find a way forward, may not quite have touched all the corners. So I would invite this person to consider what are the feelings that are still alive in me that didn't quite get recognised to the. To the depth that I ache for? This is very common, by the way. There's always kind of corners that. That. That the conversations haven't quite reached into. And so they sit there, persistent, like thorns in our side.

Stephanie Rigg [00:08:20]:

Yeah. It reminds me of someone in one of my programmes recently who was struggling with ongoing breaches of trust in their relationship and they shared that this thing they'd been struggling with, which they'd sought some input around, like, we resolved that and I decided not to raise the Thing that I had been aware of that was really bothering me. So we resolved that and we moved on, but I'm still really bothered by it. And I had to sort of gently reflect that you might have had a conversation about one piece of that, but to say that you held back the main thing that was really worrying you and resolved it. Those. Those things are kind of incongruent as far as I'm concerned, because you can't resolve the thing that you're still really holding and holding back. So maybe there's elements. It's sort of the same thing, like when the pain's not really been fully seen and attuned to and understood and you've not.

Stephanie Rigg [00:09:24]:

You've not really deeply expressed all of it, such that it feels like, okay, this has been truly, deeply, comprehensively resolved. And it makes sense that your system's kind of jumping up and down and going, but wait, it doesn't feel like enough. It hasn't cut the itch, right? Yeah. Yeah.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:09:43]:

Because when pain gets seen, it tends to shift. And when pain doesn't get seen, it stays stuck. Exactly. And we can even. Steph. We can even have the thought of, like, we can even think that, you know, because. Because me and my partner had a conversation about it and reached what felt like resolution in that moment, then I shouldn't. I shouldn't then days or weeks later still have this pain come up.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:10:09]:

But actually, that's not how healing. Healing doesn't happen just by one and done.

Stephanie Rigg [00:10:15]:

Yeah.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:10:16]:

It doesn't even necessarily happen by, like 10 and done. Like, you know, there's some pain in my relationship with my beautiful woman that we've been talking about for a year, and it's really just our ability to recognise that that pain can come sometimes, come up in different forms, and each time it does, it's inviting us to bring love to it. So if we think that resolution looks like one conversation and then I shouldn't feel this way, then we'll be pushing away that pain. And when pain gets pushed away, it tends to push back. So it's a good reminder that pain that's alive now is pain that still wants love. It still wants love. Now, there's a couple of ways that we can bring us that love. One is by attunement from others, which sounds like this person got some attunement, some recognition by them of the feelings that are alive in us that might have sounded like God.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:11:28]:

It makes so much sense to me that you feel hurt. You have every right to feel so sad. I Understand that you might have felt really uncared for and of course you did. That's kind of the language of others attuning to us. It's really. Attunement is just permission for our experience to exist and to be met with their loving awareness. So it's natural for us to seek attunement from them. The problem is we don't get to make them attuned to us.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:12:00]:

Like it's. That's not within our realm of control. I can't make someone attuned to me, but I can invite them. And one of the practises that I work on with my clients is how do we express our pain to others so that it's digestible for them. So if I come to you, if you and I are in conflict, Steph, and I come to you and say, I can't believe you were such a fucking selfish cow yesterday. I've just. I've just made my pain undigestible to you.

Stephanie Rigg [00:12:34]:

Yeah.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:12:35]:

Because what's it evoked in you? What. What do you feel like when I approach you with that.

Stephanie Rigg [00:12:40]:

Defensive Immediately. Right. You want to say I wasn't a fucking selfish cow to you? Are you serious? You're the one who. Yeah, I didn't even minimise, deflect, defend.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:12:51]:

Exactly. So I've evoked that in you. I've evoked that in you. That's not your behaviour, your reaction is not my fault. But I have actually created the conditions that make my pain, my expression of pain, undigestible to you. So it's on me if I want to be conscious in my communication, it's on me to make my pain digestible. So if I instead come to you and try and make my pain digestible, I might say something like, steph, yesterday, when you did that thing, I imagine you are actually trying to, you know, get your own needs met, or you're actually trying to alert me of some upset that you had and it left me feeling unconsidered. And I imagine you wouldn't have wanted that for me and can we tend to it together? So I've made it infinitely more digestible.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:13:43]:

I've invited you in to tend to some pain that's alive in me that you would never have wanted for me. So then there's another option, which is that we can always offer ourselves self attunement.

Stephanie Rigg [00:13:58]:

Yes, it feels like the self attunement piece should. In my mind, it kind of always has to be there. And ideally we get attunement from them, but even if we don't, we always want to try and find it for ourselves because, like, that's always within our control, right?

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:14:17]:

Yes, yes. Self attunement is critical because I only have my loving awareness to spend. So if I have my loving awareness to spend and I've got pain that wants loving awareness, why can't I bring me the loving awareness that I ache for? That doesn't dismiss the fact that it's beautiful to have other people really get in our world and really love on and recognise and be accountable for the pain that their actions caused us. That's beautiful. But we don't have agency over. We don't get to spend their awareness, we get to spend out. So self attunement. And by the way, self attunement is very rare.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:14:56]:

It's rare to find someone who's very skillful at self attunement, but when you find them, they have a steadiness in themselves that's kind of unfuck with the ball. Self attunement looks like recognising the pain that's alive in us and bringing love to it. Like fish, of course, you still feel so sad and uncared for about what happened the other day. Of course you do. And I'm right here acknowledging the validity of what I feel. So recognising my pain and also recognising my longing. Look. Look at the extent to which you are hoping to feel cared for.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:15:39]:

Of course, of course your tender heart would long for that because it feels so nurturing and safe when other people can acknowledge you. So self attunement is this kind, compassionate conversation with self that acknowledges our pain and our longing. Very powerful. It's been a practise that I've been immersed in for the last few years and it's really helped me deal with pain that others don't have the capacity to acknowledge.

Stephanie Rigg [00:16:11]:

Yes. And I love what you said around. It kind of confers upon you this steady presence and I think that that arises from someone. Like when you have that depth of self attunement, self compassion, then I think you naturally have more grace and compassion for others and I think that that allows you to naturally be less reactive, less judgmental, less all of those things. There's just a little bit more space within someone who's developed that skill set, Right?

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:16:44]:

Yeah, exactly. A little bit of space, a little bit less reactivity, a little bit more responsiveness.

Stephanie Rigg [00:16:49]:

Yes.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:16:50]:

I've got an upset in my life right now where I'm attuning to the pain that someone's actions are bringing me. So I'm leaving myself feeling, like, recognised and nourished in my upset. And that's helpful because I want to have my pain recognised and they are not currently in the space to be able to recognise my pain. What they're doing is an expression of their own pain. They're too busy caught up in how real their pain is to recognise that their actions are causing me pain. So I still get my pain loved, even if they don't have the capacity to. Currently. What that does is that it stops me from hating on them, from feeling like a victim and feeling like the victim of their lack of attunement, when in reality they currently don't have the capacity to get over here in my world because they're caught up in their very real suffering.

Stephanie Rigg [00:17:54]:

Yeah.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:17:55]:

So I'm kind of just aligning with reality there instead of fighting them, telling them they should be a certain way.

Stephanie Rigg [00:18:02]:

Yes.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:18:03]:

And the third thing I wanted just to say to kind of close this little question, is that I think it's really powerful if we can give pain the permission to exist ongoingly, to not need to be rid of some feeling.

Stephanie Rigg [00:18:21]:

Yes.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:18:21]:

And we can ritualize it. Like, there's been times in my life that I've either towards myself or towards someone else, I've said things like, why don't we just light a candle for this fear while it's here? Why don't we just create. Why don't we choose a symbol to put in the lounge room to just represent the fact that pain is still alive? We don't need it to be gone. We're actually going to honour it that it's here. And I. I know that this is not. Is this being video recorded?

Stephanie Rigg [00:18:57]:

It is.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:18:58]:

Okay, well, for those of you who are watching your pain candle video recording. No, I've got.

Stephanie Rigg [00:19:03]:

Here's one I prepared earlier.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:19:05]:

You might have seen that. Have you seen these cards from my door? So for those of you who are listening but not watching, I'm holding up a. A Happy Father's Day card from my daughter when she was 12. And it's got a little yellow vehicle on it. That yellow vehicle came to symbolise the pain of her mom and me divorcing because it was the yellow car that I bought after the divorce. And then I'm holding up a series of other cards that involve my daughter still referencing that symbol of pain. There's another yellow car and then a yellow horse and cart. This is the years are passing by the way months and years are Passing a yellow fish on a happy Father's Day card.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:19:50]:

A yellow sled on a Christmas card. A yellow star the next Christmas notice. What's happening to that image is it's transforming, it's changing shape and size, but it's still there. Payne's still there. A yellow balloon for happy birthday. Tiny little yellow bird. And then at the end, when I turned 50, I got a card from my daughter and there's no yellow on it. And we specifically had a conversation about how much healing had taken place.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:20:24]:

By the way, all that's happening there is she and I are allowing the pain that existed to exist. I'm not trying to tell her, come on, it's been 10 years since your mom and I divorced. You should be over it by now. I'm actually saying, saying, of course it's still alive. So we got to the point where there was no yellow on the card. This, this birthday, there's more yellow again. And what she's really acknowledging there is the conversations she and I are having about the divorce now that now that my daughter's 25 instead of 12, it's still bringing up pain of the divorce, but we're giving it permission to exist because it's here.

Stephanie Rigg [00:21:08]:

Yes.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:21:08]:

So let's bring love to it.

Stephanie Rigg [00:21:11]:

Yeah. And I think that for the vast majority of us, there is that, you know, how do we make the pain go away? It's just. Well, of course, why wouldn't we want the pain to go away? The pain is bad. That's very deeply woven into most of us. That pain is unwelcome. Anxiety is unwelcome, fear is unwelcome. All of the so called bad or negative emotions, you know, we should be urgently trying to get rid of them because they're uncomfortable. Paradigm shifting to actually, you know, turn towards rather than turn our back on whatever the emotion might be.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:21:49]:

Yeah. And that's a. That's a good way to understand the work that I do is I just, I help people create the conditions for pain. To receive love.

Stephanie Rigg [00:21:59]:

Yes.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:21:59]:

And to want pain to go away is not to love it. Whereas giving this pain that's alive between us right now, permission to be seen and loved and acknowledged. And we can light a candle or we can have a seed pod from the local tree that represents the upset between us, or we can draw pictures on birthday cards that acknowledge that there's pain between us and can we just continue to bring love to it? Some of that pain may always be there. I mean, we've got scars on our body that we'll never completely heal. We've got scars in our heart that will never completely heal. But can we meet them with love, like, all day, every day?

Stephanie Rigg [00:22:39]:

Yes. And I suspect, going back to this person's question, that what often stops us from being able to relate to pain in that way, in the context of conflict in our relationships, is that so often we take the existence of someone's pain as, you've done something wrong, therefore you are bad. And so their pain elicits out offensiveness. And in so doing, you know, the pain becomes a problem that needs solving. Or, you know, I need your pain to go away because it makes me feel bad. Or you want your pain to go away because you feel like there's no one, you know, giving it any love or attention. And so pain becomes a problem when really it's just the way that we're relating to it.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:23:23]:

Yeah, that's right. My daughter will always be able to contact the fear and sorrow and panic of her parents divorcing, no matter how old she gets. And I've got two options. One is I push that away and tell her that's her shit. And the second is that I say, yes, my darling, let's revisit it. Let's. Let's. Let's explore corners we haven't spoken to.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:23:53]:

Let's just hold it together. I'm here with you, of course, that pain is still alive.

Stephanie Rigg [00:24:02]:

Okay, let's go on to the next one, because God knows we're at question one, and we'll just go on forever. Yeah.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:24:07]:

Yeah, we will.

Stephanie Rigg [00:24:08]:

My partner and I used to have really unhealthy conflict. Lots of arguments, shouting, him leaving the house, conflict lasting for days. And we actually split up because of it. We've since gotten back together, but it now feels like we never actually have conflict. We seem to skirt around conversations when it feels like conflict is coming. Or we might have half an argument, stop when it starts getting more like an argument, and then never actually resolve or repair. It feels like a lot is going unsaid and there's a lot of tension inside both of us. Or maybe it's just me and I'm projecting.

Stephanie Rigg [00:24:37]:

I also feel like it's starting to cause some resentment because things aren't being dealt with or resolved at all. So from one extreme to the other.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:24:46]:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So beautiful insight in this question that resentment is here. Resentment is growing. We're not trying to grow resentment. We're actually. Can you feel the deeper longing behind not having difficult conversations? They've Moving more towards an Avoidant tendency of like, let's not have those conversations.

Stephanie Rigg [00:25:18]:

Because we don't look what happened last time. Why would we want more of that?

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:25:21]:

Yeah, let's try and be less argumentative. It's actually they're longing for greater peace. It's just that avoiding the situation is an unskillful commitment to peace because avoiding it never transforms what needs to be. It never resolves anything.

Stephanie Rigg [00:25:39]:

Yeah. Which I think is such an important thing for my listeners to understand because so many people come from the let's urgently resolve everything and talk about it a million times, often in the face of resistance from a partner who adopts that. More like, must we go back there again? Nothing good is going to come of this. It's so easy to interpret that as you just don't care about my feelings or my pain. And so framing it as an unskillful commitment to peace, I think is much more honest and a much more generous interpretation of someone's behaviour rather than if you cared, you'd want to talk about this, which is obviously a very understandable but self centred view of the situation.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:26:25]:

Yeah, we will avoid. We will naturally avoid that which we don't feel confident to resolve. And for those of us, and there's many of us out of 8.2 billion people on the planet, for those of us who never felt confident in moving towards relationship upsets because talking about painful situations always goes shit shaped. One of us leaves feeling made wrong or maybe we both end up feeling made wrong. It increases the distance between us. It upsets our otherwise joyful night in. So the alternative becomes, well, if we can't do it skillfully, let's hope that it just resolves itself and let's try and have a beautiful night just watching this movie and not have to talk about the upset yesterday. Because is it, do we really need to? Or can't we just enjoy this moment without having to dig into something and ultimately get all upset again? So unskillful commitment to peace.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:27:42]:

But here's the thing. Needs that go unspoken will go unmet.

Stephanie Rigg [00:27:48]:

Yeah.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:27:49]:

And that's different to the kind of romanticised Disney version of relationship where if you love me, you'll just magically know my needs and you'll meet them without me ever having to ask for them. If you really love me in reality, if I can't speak my needs, you don't have a chance of meeting them and I'm going to resent you for that while not having had the courage to know how to speak them. So unspoken needs go Unmet. And that is the recipe for resentment.

Stephanie Rigg [00:28:25]:

Can I just interject there? Because, sure, a lot of. Again, my more anxiously inclined listeners will protest and sort of say, but I've, I've declared my needs so many times, I always tell them about what my needs are. And maybe you can speak to better and worse ways of voicing a need, because I think often we can. You know, our expression of a need can come from a very guarded place, and it's almost like a demand. And again, naturally, that can evoke defensiveness or distance from someone who feels like I'm being, you know, backed into a corner here. I feel like I'm losing my agency or my selfhood or whatever it might be. So maybe you can just briefly detour into what is a. What does it sound like to express the need in a way that is likely to create the conditions for someone to step forward towards meeting that need.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:29:29]:

Beautiful. I love how you call it a brief detour. Knowing. Knowing that it's. Actually, I know that's a year's worth of work, but let's, let's, let's see if we can kind of just lay some of the groundwork here for how to skillfully express an unmet need. And I'll give the example of one of the women that was on an online masterclass I ran recently. She decided to work with me. And I said, okay, so what's the unmet need? What's happening that's upsetting you in your life? And she said, it's my husband.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:30:04]:

Whenever he gets home from work, he's just in this mood. And it's actually just fucking unfair that he walks in the door in this mood and expects me to just deal with it. And I say, I said to her, how have you been expressing that? I said, have you been talking to him about it? She was like, yeah. And I said, how did he respond? And she was like, he gets all defensive. And I say, okay, let's look at how you're expressing me.

Stephanie Rigg [00:30:33]:

I could have just sounding eerily familiar.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:30:36]:

I think this woman was many women.

Stephanie Rigg [00:30:38]:

Yes.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:30:44]:

So I said, how. How do you naturally go about expressing that to him? And she said, well, I just said something basic like, I hate when you come in the door with this mood. And like, it's not fair on me and it's not fair on our child, and I want you to do something about it. And I said to her, well, that's, that's a very natural way that you'll go about expressing you're feeling, I imagine, to you, it feels like you're being very explicit about your experience and you must be confused by his defensiveness. And she said, yeah, I think I'm doing everything right. He's just not willing, so the problem is over there with him. And I said, okay, let's look at how that communication might be received by him. What does that leave him being in your story? And it took her a while to get to, but she realised that she was framing him as the problem.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:31:43]:

And she actually, when she got really honest, she said, actually I say to him, you're in one of those moods again. So when we worked together for a little while, we focused on a couple of things. The first was instead of speaking her analysis of him, you're in a mood. We started to get more skillful in expressing how she felt. When he walked in the door after work, what feelings came up in her? And she kind of resisted for a while in this. She was like, oh, what do you mean? He was just being moody. But I said, what?

Stephanie Rigg [00:32:24]:

He's in a mood?

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:32:26]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so eventually she said, I actually feel unloved. He walks in the door with a certain energy and I immediately feel unloved and braced, like fearful, fearful of disconnection. So I said, okay, beautiful, let's hold that in one hand. Feel, feel how you're actually now touching your emotional truth. Instead of projecting your emotions onto him as if he's the emotion causer, you're owning them. Those feelings are real and true in you and they're happening in you. They're your subjective experience of him.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:33:11]:

They're not the truth about him. He's not dangerous and neglectful. It's that you're feeling these things. So that's holding in one hand and then in the other hand I said, get curious about the experience he's having because reality comprises of your experience and his experience. And we tend to speak from our one sided, self centred view and then dismiss theirs and then hate them for defending their experience. So I said, what do you think your husband is coming home experiencing? What is this energy he enters the room with? And she's like, I'm not really sure, I haven't really thought about it. So we dug into it and she started to realise that he's probably, probably coming home feeling overwhelmed and feeling irritable and longing for a bit of quiet time and a bit of space, a bit of time free of demand. And as she started to feel into that, can you feel how much he would start to feel recognised by her if she was actually able to name the experience that he was having behind what she labelled as his moodiness.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:34:29]:

So where she got to in the end was she was able to express her pain and also honour his what he was longing for as. As coexistence. So she said something like, sometimes when you come in the door I notice I start to feel fearful of disconnection and I feel a bit lonely and unloved and I imagine as you come in the door you're wanting to get out of the overwhelm and the stress of work and just you're longing for some quiet time to yourself before you jump into family mode. So suddenly can you feel how much more digestible that is? It's gone from you're moody to your needs for space are leaving me feeling disconnected. So that's how we start to express our unmet needs skillfully by recognising the two sidedness of every moment. Because every moment is two sided and we normally only have access to one side. We normally express our experience or our need and we have no regard actually for the very real experience that is happening over there in them that's giving them the behaviour that they're behaving with.

Stephanie Rigg [00:35:48]:

Yes. Beautiful. I think you did very well as a quick detour in this conversation. So maybe we can then come back to the question of this person and going from heaps of conflict to no conflict and how they might approach a conversation, naming their concerns and the fears that they're having around. You know, I understand that maybe that we've both probably been tiptoeing a little or pulling back from conflict because of everything that we've experienced in the past. And I'm noticing for me that that is leaving me feeling like certain things are being unaddressed and I'm worried, afraid of the disconnection that that might be causing between us. So on I'll pass it over to you because you do this so much better than I do.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:36:43]:

Well, I think what you're expressing that Steph is really skillful. We're actually saying what I want for this relationship is for us to be able to talk to the various upsets that we will definitely experience with each other. I want us to learn how to do it skillfully so you and I both feel completely recognised. So you and I both feel like our experiences get sane so we both feel cherished so our needs go cared for rather than uncared for.

Stephanie Rigg [00:37:18]:

Yeah. And I think for this person really key in my mind would be framing that as a joint endeavour and like we were here, like we were there, now we're here. We both want like obviously we're back in this together, we're trying again. Neither of us want it to go the way it went last time and that's going to require us to develop some new skills because just turning our backs on it and pretending that we're never going to have conflict again, probably not. Not going to work out well for us. And I'm noticing within myself that that's starting to create some worries and anxiety and fear around how we're going to tackle that when it inevitably arises. But I think that like that spirit of collaboration and this is, you know, our mounted to climb together. So let's try and do it in a way that feels good for us both.

Stephanie Rigg [00:38:16]:

I think that's really key.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:38:18]:

Yeah. Do you, are you committed to or are you interested in working with me to develop the skills where our conflicts actually become the moments where you and I both can get our needs fully met? You know, we used to have this method of just hurling our shit at each other like a who's right, who's wrong, who's the victim, who's the villain? And that used to go shit shaped and we hated it. Now we've settled into this kind of like, let's not say anything because we don't want to upset the apple cart. That's also probably not working for us. Are you interested in developing the skills with me? The thing about that conversation is it acknowledges that it's a skill set and it's a skill set that quite frankly, most of the world never received. Like really? I mean, I've been in this work for like 16 years now and I've never met a person on the planet who is masterful in resolving conflict. We're all trained in the method of someone's right, someone's wrong, someone's valid, someone's invalid. Me versus you, that's what our adversarial political system trains us in that and our adversarial legal system trains us in that.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:39:40]:

So it's just a skill shortage. And can you and I, do you and I feel ready and willing to invest in building those skills so that our conflicts become moments where our unmet needs become illuminated and you and I get more of our needs met.

Stephanie Rigg [00:39:58]:

Yes, yes. And I think that validating someone's possible resistance to that and really recognising that not trusting conflict makes a lot of sense, particularly for this person's question against the backdrop of like, you've got a lot of evidence that Conflict between us is, is never good and in fact is very bad. Because I think it's, it's really easy doing any of this work when you build up the courage to share something like that and to kind of make that invitation extend the olive branch. If someone meets that with like resistance or shutdown, it's so easy to then quickly flip into like, well, fuck you. Like, yeah, now you don't care. I've tried the conscious way but it's all quickly unravelled. So now I'm going to turn on you and go back to judging you or labelling you or whatever, saying you don't care. But in those moments, if we can reach for like, what about this might feel really genuinely scary to them and can I give them again a really generous interpretation of why that might be? That isn't you don't care about me.

Stephanie Rigg [00:41:09]:

It's actually maybe you care so much about me in this relationship and you're struggling to trust that that's even possible for us.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:41:16]:

Yeah, exactly. What you're touching on, Steph, is underneath someone's unwillingness, there's actually very real pain for them that makes them unwilling or unready. And underneath their unwillingness is a deeper longing that says, I want things to be relatively okay and having difficult conversations, things are going to go shit shape. So I'd rather, I'd rather actually just try not to. It's actually a commitment. It's a commitment to us not being really upset with each other all the time.

Stephanie Rigg [00:41:58]:

Yeah. It's almost like if we can avoid the extreme, I can tolerate this stuff being swept under the rug and it not feeling totally clean between us, but at least it's not so bad.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:42:10]:

Yeah, and we are, we are. Like there's a section of book of my book when I talk about this. We are as a culture really conflict tolerant now. Like as in we put up with rupture and disconnection and alienation. It's seen as normal because we kind of like, okay, I'll hang out in this tolerable space of like, things not feeling great because I don't want things to be really shit. But when you become skilled, like when you dive into the skills, you actually realise that every single moment of upset becomes a moment of very, very profound understanding where you'll be grateful. Like me and my partner. I'm lucky to be in partnership with a woman who is as committed to resolution as I am.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:43:03]:

Every single upset we go through and we've been through some really fucking upsetting, like really, really, really really painful situations that neither of us maybe thought that we could survive. But every time we go through it, our love deepens and our trust deepens and our sense of deeply respecting and honouring who we each really are deepens. But most of us have never tasted that. And that's why in my work, I feel like I'm. I feel like I'm offering something that people don't even know what the offering is because no one's ever experienced it. So I say, I say transform conflict and people hear like legal resolution. It's like in another realm altogether. It's actually deep mutual open heartedness is what I'm offering.

Stephanie Rigg [00:44:02]:

Beautiful. Okay, the next question. My partner and I have been together in a situationship long distance for three years. It's been very on and off with him ending things unexpectedly and irrationally with no real reason. But in between those moments, he is like my soulmate. And we have the best time together. The last 11 months has been the longest we've been together without him leaving. And the biggest difference this time is that we haven't reintroduced our kids.

Stephanie Rigg [00:44:29]:

We both have kids from previous relationships. The breakups have quite often been centred around the children and in his opinion, us having different parenting styles. But to me it feels more like a jealousy of him having to share my attention. It's very hard as I don't always believe what he tells me is the problem is the true problem. But there's a lot of conflict around my children, how his opinion doesn't seem to matter and how I don't listen.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:44:55]:

Got it. Beautiful. So first thing here it's really worth. When we are in painful situations in relationships, it's really worth considering asking ourselves the question, what are the external pressures here that make you and me a bit unwinnable? Like what's, what's the shit that's got nothing to do with you or me that is exerting pressure on us that are forming little cracks between us. So the first thing to be honoured here that like, if I was sitting with this couple, where I would start is look at the hardship you're up against. Look at the fact that like, how enormously stressful it must have been for you guys, that for three years, three years you've had to do long, long distance. My woman is 18,250 kilometres away from me right now. And it's extraordinarily painful.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:46:12]:

When we're together, when we're skin on skin, when we're in the same house or the same neighbourhood, we have a sense of Ease and safety between us. And with that distance, it just becomes unmanageable. I mean, we manage a bit, we manage it, but it's like this external villain, this external enemy of distance. There's also the external enemy of, like, the fact that we're trying to have, we're trying to do togetherness, while we've also got independent families and kids raised in very different situations that are also requiring our attention. That makes connection between you and me a little more unwinnable. There's also the difficulties of how we might communicate long distance. Like, you like it more like this and I like it more like this. So the communication becomes the external enemy.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:47:12]:

All I'm doing here is seeking to externalise the enemy. So we don't internalise, like, we don't make it the problem between me and you. It's actually, look at the suffering inherent in the circumstance. There's a kindness to that. I'll often sit with a client couple to begin with and I'll say, look at the pressures of being parents. Look at the enormous drains on each of you of your work scenario. Look at the external pressures from your family. Look at the ways in which you feel unsupported in your parenting.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:47:49]:

Look at the stresses of the global situation right now on your psyches. And I'll list all the pressures around the outside. And as I do that, I'll notice them, like, move closer towards each other. They'll interlace fingers, they'll kind of lean on each other. They'll start to feel like it's us versus the world instead of us versus each other.

Stephanie Rigg [00:48:12]:

Yes. Validation of, like, it's hard. Feels hard. Because it is hard.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:48:16]:

It's hard being you.

Stephanie Rigg [00:48:18]:

Yeah.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:48:18]:

And it's extraordinarily hard doing what you're doing. And there's an inherent difficulty that I want to acknowledge that you guys must be suffering with. So I think that's a really handy place. And, you know, I say this to my partner all the time. I say to her, look at what we're up against, the distance between us, the fact that I've got commitment to my daughter over here and you've got family over there. Look at the extraordinary limitations around your chronic health issues that most people don't have to deal with. Look at how unwinnable our situation is. Go us.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:48:57]:

You feel the. Like, make the enemy be out there instead of between us. This kind of fortifies us a bit.

Stephanie Rigg [00:49:06]:

Yes.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:49:08]:

So that's the first thing when it comes to the conflict around kids, I love at the very end of this question, she says. She says how his opinion doesn't seem to matter and how I don't listen. Now that's him speaking unskillfully. My opinion doesn't matter to you and you don't listen. Can you feel how difficult that is for her to receive? She wants to push that away. It's not digestible. Because she probably says, your opinion does matter to me and I do listen.

Stephanie Rigg [00:49:52]:

Yes. I think that. That, you know, there was a bit earlier in the question which was I have a feeling that the problem as he's saying it is not the real problem. Because he's saying it makes sense that we try and reach for something else and that we counterattack with like, you're not really. That we have that coming in our direction. It's like we want to push it away.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:50:12]:

Yeah, we typically, yes, human beings, we tend to identify the problem and we'll either say the problem is you in some way. Your perspective, your behaviour, your attitude, your feeling or me. But the problem is never you or me. The problem is inherent to the unmet needs that are arising for both of us. So if we translate. Let's translate his accusations. My opinion doesn't matter to you and you never listen to me about the kids. Right.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:50:46]:

What's the pain he's actually expressing? I feel what.

Stephanie Rigg [00:50:51]:

I feel. Maybe disrespected or I feel unimportant. I feel unheard. I feel almost like I don't know what my place is with respect to you and your family. Yeah, yeah. What else?

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:51:12]:

Yeah. I feel unconsidered in my needs around how you parent your children. I feel uninvited. I feel as if I don't get to have a say in situations that impact me. So now he would be starting to speak his subjective and yet very real experience of her parenting. So let's hold that in one hand. There's the pain and it's unintended pain because she never woke up one day thinking, how do I create the feeling of disrespected or unconsolted or unvalued in my partner? Like never. And yet here it is alive in him.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:51:58]:

The beautiful thing about understanding conflict deeply is that we understand that there's always some unintended pain for them, of the actions that we take based on our beautiful intentions. There's always some unintended pain. It's always there 100% of the time. So there's his unintended. There's the unintended pain that her actions create for him. In the other hand, we're going to hold what she's longing for in her parenting of her children, which I imagine is something like she's wanting to parent her children in a way that feels authentic to her, in a way that she acknowledges that she's the authority in their life, not him.

Stephanie Rigg [00:52:42]:

Protects and prioritises their best interests in.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:52:45]:

A way that protects and prioritises their best interest. To leave them feeling like they matter deeply. Even as she pursues her relationship with him, to know that they're the centre of her world, that she's not choosing him over them, that they coexist. Maybe she even wants to transmit the feeling that she will always choose them first in terms of giving them a sense of security and safety. So then we're holding her. Can you feel how beautiful all of her longings are? And this work says her longings are true and there's unintended pain that comes alive in him. And they're both true. They both need to be loved.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:53:29]:

So then where she can get to, at least as she develops skills such as what we're talking about, she can say, some of the ways that I go about trying to protect and prioritise my children, I see, can naturally leave you feeling undervalued, dismissed in your own needs, maybe excluded and unheard. So now we're holding reality. Beautiful, tender longings, unintended pain. Now we can start to look at. I wonder what ways I could go about prioritising and care of my children that would leave you feeling more valued, less cast out, more consulted. You know, that topic could be alive on the table for five years.

Stephanie Rigg [00:54:27]:

It's. It's actually a really very, like a very common one that I'm hearing from students in my courses and stuff a lot that, that juggle of coming into a relationship with someone who has kids from a previous relationship. And just like that whole competing priority thing and not knowing where your place is and not knowing what you're allowed to have by way of needs with respect to someone who, you know, by virtue of the circumstances, their. Their attention is divided and you may not be the priority. And that's just. That's not wrong, because it's. It's kind of right and as it should be, that someone's children might be their first priority. So I think that everything you've just kind of articulated there will probably resonate, albeit from the other side, but give people a bit of a steer on how to juggle that, because it is again, really easy to just project and assume that someone doesn't care.

Stephanie Rigg [00:55:28]:

I Think so many of these things come back to, like, you just don't care when really, like, there's a lot of caring there, but it's. It's a challenging thing. I'm sure something you can speak to because you've done a lot of this is navigating relationships and having kids. It's like figuring out what that juggle looks like in a way that there's space for everyone and that's not easy.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:55:50]:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, here's an example of where I know in my own life, with my woman who doesn't have children yet and me who has adult children, there is. There is the potential for that pain of. For my woman, not saying she does feel this, but she has every right to feel unprioritized sometimes. For as long as we grow a life together, it's quite likely that that pain will come and go. We're never going to get rid of it. We're never going to get rid of the opportunity for that pain to come up for her. So I've got two options in that relationship.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:56:37]:

I can either tell her she shouldn't feel that way when she does, and that's going to actually leave her feeling very alone and unseen. And eventually, just like she won't feel safe in the relationship if I'm not prepared to acknowledge when there's pain for her, or in this approach, I get to recognise it every single time it comes up for her. I get to be on the front foot with it and say, is this a moment where you're feeling unprioritized again? It would make sense to me if that's coming up for you and I'm right here with you in it. Of course you're having these feelings. This is inherently really tricky for us. Here I am pouring attention into my kids and of course you're naturally feeling like you don't get the awareness that you're craving right now and that you have every right to want that must leave you feeling frustrated or alone or resentful. And I'm right here with you in the feelings that are here for you between us.

Stephanie Rigg [00:57:45]:

Yeah. And as you're speaking fish, I think it's just so much of that. Your ability to do that, quite apart from your incredible skill, I think has got to come from your inner environment not being really heavy, heavily laden with shame. I think when we've got a lot of shame that we're carrying around, we're much more naturally quick to push away anything that might touch into that.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:58:11]:

Yes.

Stephanie Rigg [00:58:12]:

And then we go, oh, you're making me bad. I already made myself bad. And so I have to flip it back on you and say that your pain's invalid. Right? Yeah, there's lots of. There's lots of pieces to that work and that ability to receive someone's pain, that is an unintended consequence of something that we may have done or not done without collapsing into our own shame around it.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:58:38]:

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, if. If my beautiful woman ever listens to this podcast, she'll probably hear this discussion and she'll remember times where I've been really unskillful with that. You know, I can remember a time where, like, I was acutely aware of my daughter's needs and acutely aware of my partner's needs, and I was so. Kind of felt so stuck between them that I did. I didn't communicate with anyone. I just did what I thought was the right thing and left them both really upset. And then what happened in me was I just naturally stepped into a place of like, oh, God, what a bad person I am.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [00:59:11]:

I'm not only am I being a bad dad, but I'm also being a bad partner. So collapsing into shame and that place, if we go there, we become very unpresent to the people who need our presence. So there have been times where I've just thought, oh, God, you know, I've got to. I've got to get it right, I've got to fix it, I can't win it. But actually, what's been required to mend, to start to repair even that moment, was just to expand my awareness, to say, of course my partner was feeling disappointed, and of course my daughter was feeling upset, and of course I felt overwhelmed and ashamed. Of course. Can we bring love to all of that? Because this is me just trying to do my best to be just a very present father and just an incredibly present and reliable partner. And there's an unwinnability in that.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:00:03]:

And of course I'm going to get it wrong sometimes. And of course there's going to be hurt around me.

Stephanie Rigg [01:00:10]:

Yeah, yeah. And as you say, I think having that. Externalising the hard parts and going like, well, yeah, this is a hard situation and so it makes sense. Rather than I'm not doing it right or it's my fault or it's someone else's fault or it's stepping outside of that altogether.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:00:30]:

Yeah, exactly. So if we do come back to this woman's question and I'm gonna. It's as if I'm coaching Her. Because it's her question. Then I would say to her, your man is gonna need his upset recognised. So questions like, my love, how was it for you yesterday when I did this thing with the kids, or I drew a boundary with my children that was different from yours? How was that for you? How is it for you when I take the parenting into my own hands? Does it leave you feeling unrecognised, unvalued? And how would you love to feel what you really long for in how we navigate the parenting of our kids together? Those are just inviting questions for him to explore more of his experience and if we can meet him with loving awareness for the experiences that are evoked in him with our parenting. And then that's going to be the start of some really fruitful conversations.

Stephanie Rigg [01:01:49]:

Yeah. And even as you say that, it's like if. If at the heart of his gripe with the situation is feeling, you know, I feel like I'm not respected. Even the having of the conversation, you know, quite apart from any solution to whatever circumstances exist or like, just the fact of the conversation in that kind of way go so far in, like, feeling respected, feeling cared for, feeling like I matter, feeling like you want to understand me. It's like the conversation itself solves so much of that and goes so far in, like, bringing us back to each other.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:02:27]:

That's right.

Stephanie Rigg [01:02:27]:

Quite apart from any solution that exists outside of the conversation or, you know, down the track.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:02:32]:

That's right. We're just. We're actually. This work is about demonstrating that we care for the pain and longing that's alive right here, right now. Like, we can wrap it in love. I'll give the quick example of, you know, someone that I care about a couple of years ago said to me, you never fucking listened to me. Now that's immediately undigestible to me. I want to say, I want to recount the 10,000 times that I've specifically made space to listen to them, even when I haven't felt it's been reciprocated.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:03:09]:

So I immediately just want to get on the offensive and say, how dare you? But this work says, translate what's being said into the experience it's being said from. So you never fucking listen to me becomes I often don't feel heard. Now I can move towards them and say, ouch. Talk to me about how upsetting it is for you that you so often feel unheard. Does that leave you feeling angry? Do you feel sad? Do you feel alone? Do you feel as if I don't care for you. Talk to me more about this upset that's alive for you. All I'm doing in that moment, option one, is to defend against it and to dismiss their pain. That will amplify the conflict because they'll have to dig in to have their pain heard, and I'll have to dig in to not be made the villain.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:04:09]:

But in this plan B, I'm saying I'm gonna meet your pain with love, because it's here you get full permission to feel unheard. Even as I have been striving to leave you feeling heard, you can still feel unheard. And I'm here. And I'm here to love. I'm here to bring love, bring compassion to those feelings, because how painful it must be for you to consistently feel unrecognised, unheard, unreceived.

Stephanie Rigg [01:04:43]:

I'm smiling because, you know, I've done a lot of this work with you, Fish, and still when you say, like, you know, fucking listen to me. If I'm imagining someone saying that to me, I don't think, you know, it's like the. My. I think my way of responding to that, it's not like an overt counter attack, but it's like a fawn of, like, what do you mean? I don't think that's fair. And then go straight into, like, the persuade, and that's. That. That's always. I think my modus operandi is like, gently walk someone over to convince them as to why they are wrong.

Stephanie Rigg [01:05:21]:

Yeah.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:05:23]:

That they've taken. Good.

Stephanie Rigg [01:05:24]:

They rude me.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:05:26]:

Yeah. The problem is you've misconstrued my actions and I'm here to correct you on it. Yeah, yeah, that's. That's. That's natural. Well, I want to say, Steph, I mean, to be honest, my initial reaction is I want to pull someone's head off and shove it down their throat. Like, I. I still want to.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:05:44]:

I still want to injure the person who seems like they want to injure me. Yeah, that's natural.

Stephanie Rigg [01:05:50]:

That's my instinct. Sometimes if I don't care about preserving the relationship, I want to annihilate them.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:05:55]:

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Stephanie Rigg [01:05:56]:

If I about. I want to persuade them. But either way, the. The instinct is like, you are wrong in your opinion of me. And I have to make sure that we correct the record there.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:06:07]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Stephanie Rigg [01:06:08]:

It's really, really hard to linger in that space of like, oh, I'm just going to actually hold that and be courageous enough to look underneath whatever you're hurling at me and still step towards you lovingly without trying to change it.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:06:21]:

It's really hard to do because in this work we realise they're talking about some experience that's alive in them, just like we want to defend some experience that's alive in us. Neither of us are talking about the objective truth. We're just fighting to be understood. They're fighting for their pain to be understood. We're fighting for our good intentions to be recognised. That naturally escalates. So to get out of that escalation, we actually have to be willing to go over onto their side holding our goodness in one hand. Go over onto their side and saying, this person legitimately has the experience of feeling unheard by me right now.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:07:03]:

Can I bring my loving awareness to that? Can I stand by them, hold their hand and say, that must feel so painful for you right now between us. So, yes. It's not at all what the mind. The mind wants to just retaliate.

Stephanie Rigg [01:07:21]:

Yeah. And particularly when it's. Feels like an admission of defeat in some way. Like if I. That whole thing of if I apologise first, then we're resorting to this, like, oh, I must have been the one in the wrong. Right. It's also deeply ingrained in that find the bad guy game that we are also well trained to play.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:07:42]:

Yeah. Really? Yeah. And that the narrative we are replacing it with instead of I must be the baddie because you feel, apparently I never listened to you. So that makes me a horrible person. That's the first narrative. The second one is. And this is what I had to kind of practise in this moment. I had to recognise that all the ways in which I'd been striving to leave this person feeling honoured and heard had in fact had them feel unheard.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:08:15]:

That's the reality. Just like the flowers I sent you hoping to leave you feeling celebrated, left you reminded of the loss of your grandmother because they were the same flowers. It's like unintended pain everywhere. So we're just framing their pain as unintended but wholly real.

Stephanie Rigg [01:08:41]:

Okay. We had more questions, but I think that we'll go on for a million years if we keep going. So we might leave it there.

Stephanie Rigg [01:08:47]:

Fish.

Stephanie Rigg [01:08:47]:

Thank you so much. This has been so valuable as I knew it would be. It occurred to me when you mentioned the book that since you last came on, you've written and released a book. And I didn't mention that at the start. It is a brilliant book. I read it the day it came out. There it is. Beautiful.

Stephanie Rigg [01:09:07]:

How to Fall in Love with humanity. If anyone is listening, please buy the book and read the book. It really is magnificent. It's so beautifully written and it's very practical as well. So it blends that so, so wonderfully. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:09:27]:

Thank you, Steph.

Stephanie Rigg [01:09:28]:

Everything that we've been talking about today around conflict and compassion and repair, which I think is medicine, we all need. I don't know that there's going to be anyone listening who can't relate in one form or another to what we've been talking about. Fish's book and his body of work more broadly is just the best of the best. So go check it out.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:09:51]:

Thanks. That's very generous of you, Steph.

Stephanie Rigg [01:09:54]:

No, I mean every word of it. Thank you so much for joining me, Fish.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:09:59]:

You're so welcome. It's an honour.

Stephanie Rigg [01:10:01]:

Take care.

James ‘Fish’ Gill [01:10:01]:

See you next time.

Stephanie Rigg [01:10:02]:

Bye bye.

Stephanie Rigg [01:10:07]:

Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to go deeper on all things attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or stephanierigg.com and if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a five star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here and I hope to see you again soon.

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Keywords from Podcast Episode

conflict in relationships, relationship repair, conscious communication, attachment styles, resentment after conflict, self attunement, validation, apology in relationships, unmet needs, defensiveness, emotional pain, rupture and repair, expressing needs, long distance relationships, co-parenting challenges, blended families, relationship boundaries, shame in relationships, defensiveness in conflict, attentive listening, conflict avoidance, skillful communication, reactivity, self compassion, emotional triggers, relationship insecurity, relationship coaching, unspoken needs, relationship resentment, practical relationship tools, repair after arguments

#214: Parenting Q&A: Fears About Having Kids, Staying Connected After a Baby, Anxious-Avoidant Dynamics & More

LISTEN: APPLE|SPOTIFY

Becoming a parent is one of the biggest relational transitions most of us will ever face. And while the world loves to tell us how overwhelming, chaotic, and identity-shattering it should be, the truth is that everyone’s experience is deeply personal—and deeply shaped by their attachment patterns.

For couples with an anxious–avoidant dynamic, this transition can bring up old fears, amplify long-standing patterns, and stir uncertainty about what life will look like on the other side.

Recently, on the podcast, Joel and I shared our own journey into parenthood—how we felt before having a baby, what surprised us, what challenged us, and how we’ve stayed connected along the way. Afterward, I received countless messages from people saying: “Please talk more about this.”

So, let’s.

The Fears We Carry Into Parenthood

Before our son was born, we were in a very real, very ongoing conversation about whether we even wanted kids.

I’ve always known I wanted to be a mother. Joel, on the other hand—who leans more fearful-avoidant—felt the weight of the decision in a way that often left him overwhelmed and frozen. For him, becoming a parent wasn’t simply exciting. It was terrifying.

Not because he didn’t want a family, but because:

• The decision felt irreversible

• He feared he wouldn’t have the emotional capacity

• He doubted his ability to show up for someone else

• And, as many avoidantly-leaning people do, he felt he needed absolute certainty before taking the leap

This is such a common fear for those with avoidant or fearful-avoidant attachment patterns. Parenthood represents ultimate responsibility, closeness, and dependence—all things that can activate an avoidant nervous system.

And then… we found out I was pregnant.

We weren’t trying. The topic wasn’t resolved. And yet the moment the decision was no longer theoretical, something remarkable happened:

Joel felt clear. Grounded. Purposeful. Ready.

And the anxiety I had been carrying—about his uncertainty overshadowing my joy—finally settled.

What Surprised Us Most

You hear so many stories about early parenthood:

“Say goodbye to your freedom.”
“You’ll never sleep again.”
“Just you wait…”
“It’s going to be chaos.”

We expected some version of that initiation. But what we actually found was… peace.

That doesn’t mean it was easy every day. But it was simple. Intentional. Surprisingly joyful.

What surprised us most?

The capacity for love

Joel often says the biggest revelation for him was discovering how much love he had to give—far more than he ever believed possible.

The calm

We both expected to feel thrown, frazzled, or depleted. Instead, we found ourselves calmer than before we had a child. More grounded. More aligned.

The validation

Before our son arrived, we talked endlessly about the kind of home we wanted to create: peaceful, regulated, supportive. It was deeply affirming to realise we could actually live that intention.

How Attachment Shapes the Transition

For anxious partners, parenthood can bring up fears around:

• abandonment

• disconnection

• losing closeness

• or not getting the reassurance they need

For avoidant partners, it can activate fears around:

• losing independence

• being overwhelmed

• doing it “wrong”

• or being trapped in a role they can't undo

Neither of these responses is wrong. Both make sense.

What matters is how you meet them—as individuals, and as a team.

And for us, what helped was remembering:

We’re on the same side.

What Helped Us Stay Connected (Even When Stretched Thin)

Parenthood doesn’t require perfection. But it does require presence.

Some things that helped us:

Seeing everything as shared responsibility

There’s no “your turn” vs. “my turn” mentality. If one of us is taxed, the other steps in. No scorekeeping.

Naming resentment early

Resentment rarely starts big.
But if you don’t name it, it will snowball.

Supporting each other as individuals

Time to move your body.
Time to breathe.
Time to recalibrate.
This isn’t indulgent—it’s essential.

Choosing simplicity

We intentionally didn’t overschedule, overstimulate, or overwhelm ourselves. Most days, we walk around town, spend time at home, cook, and keep our lives uncluttered.

This slower pace has been a lifeline for our collective nervous system.

What We’ve Learned About Ourselves—And Each Other

One of the most beautiful parts of this transition has been seeing each other in a new light.

I learned…

That watching your partner fall in love with your child unlocks a depth of connection nothing else quite touches.
Seeing Joel as a father has been healing, heart-expanding, and honestly, awe-inspiring.

Joel learned…

That parenthood pulled him out of himself in a way that years of inner work never quite could.

That he can love bigger, show up more fully, and lead with more openness than he ever imagined.

He often describes it as “getting over himself”—in the best possible way.

Advice for Couples About to Become Parents

If you’re on the brink of parenthood—or in the thick of it—here’s what we would share:

Zoom out

Perspective dissolves so much unnecessary conflict.
You are building a life together.
Not competing in a series of micro-moments.

Don’t make mountains out of molehills

There will be things that annoy you.
Let most of them go.

Catch resentment early

It doesn’t mean something is wrong with the relationship.
It usually means something needs recalibrating.

Remember you’re co-parents and partners

The relationship doesn’t disappear the moment the baby arrives.
But it does need intentional tending.

Take responsibility for your side

Not blame.
Not shame.
Just honest ownership.

This is what keeps the dynamic safe, open, and repairable.

Coming Home to Each Other in a New Season

Parenthood has stretched us, softened us, and reshaped our relationship in ways we couldn't have predicted. It has been overwhelmingly positive—full of meaning, laughter, simplicity, love, and more growth than either of us expected.

We’re not perfect. We still get triggered. We still argue. We still have moments where our attachment patterns flare up.

But we also know how to repair, reconnect, and remember:

We are on the same team.

And that changes everything.

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FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:

• FREE TRAINING: How to Heal Anxious Attachment and (Finally) Feel Secure in Life & Love

• Download the FREE Anxious Attachment Starter Kit here
  

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Episode Transcript

Stephanie Rigg [00:00:04]:

You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host, relationship coach, Stephanie Rigg, and I'm really glad you're here. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. Today's episode is a very special one. I'm joined by my lovely partner, Joel. He just waved. For anyone who's listening, he just waved.

Stephanie Rigg [00:00:39]:

And we're talking all about how we've navigated the transition to parenthood, which sort of feels a little belated in some respects because our baby is, at the time of recording, 16 months. But also it feels like maybe we've earned the right to talk about this 16 months in, because had we recorded this a month or two in, maybe it would have been a little premature and we're a little more seasoned now, I think. So no doubt we'll continue to grow and evolve, but nevertheless, we're going to talk about how we each felt about becoming parents beforehand, how that's changed, how our respective attachment patterns have played into that along the way, and how we approach parenting now so that we can feel aligned and well supported and in ways that, I suppose help rather than harm our relationship. Because obviously parenting can be really stressful and for a lot of people, I know that that can put a lot of strain on the relationship. So we're going to be talking about all of that in today's episode and I've compiled a list of questions that were submitted by folks on Instagram that we'll be speaking to. Before we get into today's discussion, a little reminder announcement that I. I'm going to be running a Black Friday sale and as part of that, I'm going to be offering a really big discount on my Secure Together Couples course, which actually I taught alongside Joel. It's a really great programme for anyone who's navigating an anxious, avoidant dynamic, whether you are in a couple and wanting to do the course together, which is amazing, or even if you're just an individual and you're wanting to understand your side of the equation more and what you might do to create a positive ripple effect in your relationship or wanting to understand what your partner' experience is, because obviously that is a huge part of actually being able to shift these dynamics is stepping out of our own experience and getting curious about the other person's.

Stephanie Rigg [00:02:32]:

So if you're interested in my Secure Together course, it is absolutely Worth joining the waitlist for my Black Friday sale because I will be offering it at a very heavily discounted price, the lowest price that it's ever been offered at. And that's a really great opportunity. So jump on the waitlist via the link in the show notes if you're interested in that. Okay, so the first question is, how did each of us feel about becoming parents? The idea of having kids before we had a kid. And I should probably just frame for anyone who is new to the podcast, new to me, new to Joel, that our attachment patterns have historically been more anxious. Joel has historically been more fearful. Avoidance. That's kind of the combination that we're working with here.

Stephanie Rigg [00:03:14]:

So maybe, Joel, if you wanted to share your journey to becoming a dad and all of the feelings that you had around that.

Joel [00:03:22]:

Yeah, so historically fearful, avoidant. I don't want to kind of pigeonhole myself here, but, yeah, kind of experienced both the avoidance and earlier in my life, a bit of the anxiety. And both those flavours do come up. The avoidance is probably my most dominant trait. And so there was a lot of fear around the decision to have kids. And that was for many reasons. I thought I didn't have the capacity. I didn't think that I had the ability to perhaps caretake or parent someone else, mainly because I was fearful that I couldn't even really be there for myself.

Joel [00:04:00]:

And so there was a lot of apprehension when the topic of kids came up. It just. It felt so finite to me. So, yeah, there was a lot of fear, a lot of indecisiveness, which I'm so glad that that got lifted once I found out we were pregnant. Steph was pregnant.

Stephanie Rigg [00:04:21]:

Yeah. And in the interest of full transparency, we weren't trying to fall pregnant when I fell pregnant. And this whole thing of are we going to have kids or not? Was not resolved, really. It was still an ongoing conversation in our relationship. And it was a big one, for obvious reasons, because to answer the question of how I felt, I was very clear that I wanted to have kids. And that's always been something that I've known that I wanted. And so as our relationship was progressing and we'd been together for a couple of years, that became increasingly important to me to be having those conversations. And while Joel wasn't a definite no, he also wasn't a definite yes.

Stephanie Rigg [00:05:02]:

And for all of the reasons that you've just spoken to, like, it was almost the bigness of the decision for you felt like such an overwhelm inducing thing because it was like walking Through a door that you can't walk back out of.

Joel [00:05:16]:

Right.

Stephanie Rigg [00:05:17]:

It was very much an irreversible decision. And I think that, as you say, people with more avoided patterns who maybe also struggle with like the indecisiveness around that. And like, I have to be certain before I can make that decision, which is kind of understandable given the gravity of the decision. That just felt crippling. And those conversations were really hard and we were having them often.

Joel [00:05:39]:

Yes.

Stephanie Rigg [00:05:40]:

But as you say, the universe sort of took that one out of our hands and yeah, thank goodness.

Joel [00:05:46]:

I think it not only took it out of our hands is that it really did relieve so much weight that I was carrying around and I didn't realise the weight of that indecision until the decision was made for me. And to be honest, we really had to make a decision then of, of where our relationship goes. Do we, do we go forward with this? And I was just so, so convinced that yes, absolutely. I just had this overwhelming sense of pride and purpose and all the things I know sounds like a trope, but I was, yeah, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of. Yeah, I guess it was just this mission. It's like, okay, this is it. Decision's been made for me. And I wasn't going to lean into the fear, I was going to lean into the hope.

Stephanie Rigg [00:06:40]:

Yeah. Which was such a relief for me, to be honest. I'm remembering that because I remember when I did a pregnancy test. Oh yeah. Part of my. I would love to say that, like I was completely delighted and overjoyed, but a lot of it was like a fear around your response and worrying that you weren't going to be excited. And I think that initially constrained my own excitement because I didn't know how you were going to feel and what that was going to mean and look like. So it was such a relief for me when you responded the way you did and you were so suddenly clear about it.

Stephanie Rigg [00:07:18]:

It was like all of that anxiety and worry and kind of worst case scenario thinking that you had been swirling around in that just fell away. And I was like, that's no longer relevant because this is what we're doing. And so that was a beautiful turning point, I think, in that journey for us.

Joel [00:07:37]:

Absolutely.

Stephanie Rigg [00:07:38]:

So, next question. What parts of becoming parents were what we expected and what parts have really surprised us?

Joel [00:07:46]:

I say this a lot, is that what surprised me the most is my capacity to love. And I think I become so overwhelmed and just so obsessed with my own self and rumination and what's going on Inside, I. The biggest fear was like, oh, well, then if I'm so kind of focused on myself, like, how can I focus on someone else? How. If I can't parent myself, then how can I parent someone else? But I think I just proved to myself that I can. And the biggest surprise was just the capacity to love something, someone. And it's just been surprising how much I love this period of my life. I don't need any more people to tell me to make this time precious. I'm like, I know, I know.

Joel [00:08:34]:

I've got maybe a good 10 years of being Ollie's hero. And so I just, I really wanted to make the best of this time and I think I have. But, yeah, the capacity to love has surprised me the most.

Stephanie Rigg [00:08:47]:

Let's take a little crying break. Yeah, I mean, I, I think that we did a lot of talking before when I was pregnant and kind of planning, not so much in the logistical sense. I think we were very like, oh, we'll just figure it out as we go. Well, people would ask like, what are you planning to do for this and how are you going to do that? We're like, no real point in planning it down to minute details ahead of time because I'm sure it'll just. We'll figure it out as it unfolds. But we did a lot of talking about values and intentions and how we want to act. I remember doing our New Year planning at the beginning of last year when I was seven months pregnant or something around what we wanted for the year. And obviously that was a big one and we were so aligned on wanting our home to be a peaceful place and that it was regulated and almost like the nervous system of our family overall, to be, yeah, really solid and well supported and grounded.

Stephanie Rigg [00:09:49]:

And I am, I don't know, I think you get so much messaging that, like, having a baby, your whole life gets flipped upside down and it's going to be a shit show and it's going to be so stressful and you're going to be sleep deprived and it's going to be. You're going to lose yourself and you won't shower for two weeks and all of this chaos, there's so much fear mongering around that and I think we, we didn't want that. And yet there was probably still a part of us that felt like maybe that was some inevitable initiation we had to go through. And I think what was surprising and validating was that that wasn't our experience.

Joel [00:10:25]:

No.

Stephanie Rigg [00:10:25]:

And hasn't been. Now, 16 months later, it's been lovely. That doesn't mean it's been easy every single day, but it's been joyful pretty much every single day. And I think we've done a really good job at being a solid team throughout that and being able to very deliberately structure our lives and our days so that we get to enjoy Ollie and enjoy each other and enjoy family time. And I think that's been a really beautiful. Not surprised, but a beautiful validation of everything that we had planned for and hoped for.

Joel [00:11:04]:

Simple, not easy.

Stephanie Rigg [00:11:05]:

Yeah.

Joel [00:11:06]:

And I think, going back to Steph's point is that there's so. So much of the narrative around children. Like, every conversation starts with how you sleeping. It's like, oh, you must be going through the wars right now. And I was just waiting.

Stephanie Rigg [00:11:24]:

Oh, just you wait until they start doing this. It's just waiting now. It's going to be that soon.

Joel [00:11:29]:

I was waiting for the penny to drop. I'm like, oh, maybe we've just had it really easy, but we do.

Stephanie Rigg [00:11:35]:

It's.

Joel [00:11:36]:

Yeah. As I said, it's. It's not that it's been easy to hold time, but we've been intentional about how simple our lives are.

Stephanie Rigg [00:11:44]:

Yeah.

Joel [00:11:45]:

Through design. And I think a part of that simplicity is kind of ignoring a lot of people, kind of ignoring a lot of people's projections and stories that they have, and just having the faith in our relationship and trust in our values that we know what we're doing. We can figure this out and we will figure it out.

Stephanie Rigg [00:12:07]:

Yeah. And I think that tuning all of that noise out becomes a lot easier when you have that trust and conviction in why you're doing it the way you're doing it. Because I think the more porous you are and the less sturdy you are in your own values, then you're obviously more susceptible to taking in all of that and feeling pulled in a million different directions.

Joel [00:12:27]:

Yeah.

Stephanie Rigg [00:12:27]:

In terms of how you approach it. But, yeah, simplicity has been a huge one for us. Like, we don't schedule stuff, we don't go and do a million activities, we don't get in the car. Like, I. Most days, I don't get in the car. We walk around town with our baby, we hang out at home. Like, it's really simple.

Joel [00:12:44]:

Yeah.

Stephanie Rigg [00:12:45]:

Very deliberately so. And I think that has resourced our collective nervous system in a big way and allowed us to not feel stressed and flustered all the time. How do we approach the challenges of parenting, both as individuals and as a team? And what practises or conversations have helped Us feel like we're on the same side even when stretched thin.

Joel [00:13:03]:

I don't know we have any, like, dedicated practise. I guess we can just kind of try to fill in for each other and one's getting more stress or impacted.

Stephanie Rigg [00:13:15]:

Yeah.

Joel [00:13:15]:

And that is, I guess our benefits is that we have negotiated between ourselves, like being able to share the workload.

Stephanie Rigg [00:13:27]:

Yeah.

Joel [00:13:27]:

Which I know that not everyone has the, the option to, but I think just like, even outside of that, if, if, if you're in that, if you're in the home and you're noticing one is being impacted more than the other, then just like take, take, take the load. If you have the capacity.

Stephanie Rigg [00:13:43]:

I think, I think is basically like being present and attuned to what's going on. It's not like one of us is just checked out. And I think that comes from seeing it all as a joint responsibility.

Joel [00:13:57]:

Yeah.

Stephanie Rigg [00:13:57]:

It's not like if Joel's got Ollie and I'm doing something else and Ollie's melting down or Joel seems stressed, I'm not just gonna be rigid around that. I'll come and help and try and alleviate some of that stress and vice versa. Or just doing little things like tidying up the house. Because we both know that we do better in that environment when things feel more orderly. Just picking up the slack and not keeping score, I think is really important. And I think almost like the answer's in a question, that remembering that we're on the same side is the main thing that helps. And seeing it as like a collective effort and a collective benefit rather than treating ourselves as individuals.

Joel [00:14:40]:

Yeah.

Stephanie Rigg [00:14:41]:

I think the other piece though is like, we do really prioritise finding a balance that allows us to both be resourced as individuals, so both having time to exercise as much as we need to, at least a few times a week, if one of us wants to get some space and go for a walk that's always available. And being in constant conversation around if there are tweaks that need to happen so that things feel better, more sustainable, more resource. That's always a conversation that we're open to having. And again, it's because we know that that's in service of the family, our relationship, and us as individuals. It just feels like a no brainer.

Joel [00:15:23]:

Yeah.

Stephanie Rigg [00:15:24]:

Okay. What have we each learned about ourselves and each other through this transition?

Joel [00:15:28]:

Well, and I can speak to any father out there who's been through childbirth and seen their partner, their wife, significant other, go through her experience and you're like, yeah, wow. I mean, yeah, the strength of someone to go through that is just absolutely incredible. So, I mean, it was amazing to be able to support you through that. So you have a. I think you should have a newfound respect for your partner. I guess just like, I wasn't surprised, but I was like, oh, wow, we're. I'm especially in like the first couple of months, I'm like, wow, we are relaxed. Like, wow, we are relaxed about all this.

Joel [00:16:06]:

And it is that it has been. It's not, it's. I'm trying to say this without sounding like I'm gloating, but people have pulled us up and said, this is. You have a calming presence as parents. And I really took that on and felt like, okay, we've done at least something right in our relationship so we can at least not always have that presence, but at least be able to tap into a calming presence. And I remember the first, even three, four weeks when we got home, I was like, it felt like surreal to me. I'm like, I'm calmer now than I was when I didn't have a child. And I'm like, I'm just waiting for that moment that I'm stressed.

Joel [00:16:53]:

But it didn't really seem to come. But yeah, I think our relationship, we've had our issues just like anyone else. But I feel, and have felt much more connected with Steph since Ollie came along than I ever had before.

Stephanie Rigg [00:17:10]:

Yeah. I think it just unites you in this impossible amount of love and it's just like your partner understands that in a way that no one else does. And so that's a really beautiful connective thing, but it's also just so beautiful to see. For me to see you as a dad is such a, like, deeply heartwarming thing. And just the idea that you ever had doubts about yourself in that role. And I know we've talked about this, but it's like it would have been such a travesty if you had missed out on that experience because it's not only are you an amazing dad, but it's brought you so much meaning and purpose and leadership.

Joel [00:18:00]:

Yeah.

Stephanie Rigg [00:18:00]:

It's like almost kind of gotten you out of yourself a bit.

Joel [00:18:05]:

Oh. Oh, yes. And I think the advice that I can give not just to avoidance, but to anyone, just, look, I get it. We, a lot of times we're wrapped up in doing the work or a little bit self obsessed with all those different practises, but sometimes we just really need to get out of our way. We need to get over ourselves. And, and for me, this Experience has been a little bit of that, getting. Getting over myself. Like, it has completely changed my trajectory.

Joel [00:18:36]:

Like, in the last year, I've also taken up coaching, following in Steph's footsteps, and that's come through. I don't know. The first six months really felt like a very reflective time for me. And I'm like, I want to be the mentor and the coach that I feel like I was missing. I essentially, I just looked at Ollie and I wanted to father myself even more, if that makes sense.

Stephanie Rigg [00:19:01]:

Yeah. I think that there is so much healing of our own young parts in the way that we get to show up as parents.

Joel [00:19:11]:

Yeah.

Stephanie Rigg [00:19:12]:

And I think that that's a really beautiful thing. Okay, and last question is. I think we've already touched on this, really. But what would you say to couples who are about to become parents or who are in the thick of it? Maybe you're even considering becoming parents. I think you sort of already did that just then about how to protect and nurture their relationship through the changes.

Joel [00:19:33]:

Just have some perspective.

Stephanie Rigg [00:19:35]:

Yeah.

Joel [00:19:35]:

Like, really awesome. Zoom out if it takes you. Like, if you need a physical prompt, go climb a mountain together and have some space. Like, just go onto the top of a hill, look over horizon, get some perspective and just look at each other and just like, we're in this together. Like, we will be frustrated with each other. We will kind of lose ourselves in a moment. But I think just be really receptive, be very intentional in your space and just remember that you're there to co parent each other as much as you're parenting this child.

Stephanie Rigg [00:20:12]:

Yeah. I think that when you're in that, like, locked in that insecure dynamic. And just to be very clear, I feel like the way we're talking about it sounds very rosy. Like we don't do this perfectly all the time. Even now. Like, we had an argument on the way here this morning. Like, we are not perfect at this at all. But I think, like, when you get going to those insecure dynamics, like, you get so zoomed in and you can get so petty, and that is just the opposite of what you need when you're doing parenting.

Stephanie Rigg [00:20:40]:

And there's a lot of times where you just have to get over yourself and get your time and get on with it. So I think the more that you can kind of channel that energy of, like, this person is on my team. I love this person. We're in this together. Let's make it easier for ourselves and each other rather than being in that energy of point scoring or resentment or blame I think that there's a lot of wisdom in like maybe not making mountains out of molehills with all of the little things that will come up on a day to day basis. And I think speaking of resentment, get ahead of that really quickly. Like if ever we notice that coming up. And like it comes up because that's the thing that happens in relationships.

Stephanie Rigg [00:21:23]:

It's really important to name it and figure out where it's coming from because it usually is pointing to some imbalance or something that needs recalibration. Some story that one or the other of us is harbouring about unfairness or. And like don't let that snowball because it will. And then it, it bleeds into everything and it will get bigger. So I think that getting ahead of any resentment and being as open as you can be. And of course it's easy to be defensive when you are also having a hard time if your partner is being vulnerable about that. But I think being able to have open and honest conversations about sharing the load and what's feeling good and maybe what needs a bit of shifting, I think that's really, really important.

Joel [00:22:06]:

Yeah. Take responsibility as well.

Stephanie Rigg [00:22:10]:

Yeah, yeah. Own your side of the street because it's never as one sided as it can feel in those moments when it's so easy to make the other person the problem. Okay, I think we're going to leave it there because it's getting long. I really hope that that's been helpful. As I said, we are not perfect at this, but we have certainly learned a lot about ourselves and each other in our relationship. And parenting has been an overwhelmingly positive transition for us in the past year and a half or so. And so to anyone else who's in the thick of it or on the brink of it, I'm sending you lots of love and I hope that this has been helpful than Guys, thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to go deeper on all things attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com and if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a five star rating.

Stephanie Rigg [00:23:07]:

It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here and I hope to see you again soon. To this holiday season, there's no better place to get cosy holiday gifts for all your people than Aerie. From soft sweaters to everyday intimates and activewear, Aerie has the comfiest pieces made for the real you. And don't forget to treat yourself too while you're at it. You've earned it. Find your nearest Aerie store or shop online at aerie.com give love real.

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Keywords from Podcast Episode

parenthood transition, attachment styles, relationship coaching, anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, fearful avoidant, parenting challenges, becoming parents, parenting expectations, relationship strain, Secure Together course, Black Friday sale, couples course, nervous system regulation, family values, intentional parenting, managing overwhelm, resilience in parenting, simplicity in family life, teamwork in parenting, balancing responsibilities, stress management, self-reflection, healing childhood wounds, partner support, open communication, resentment in relationships, sharing the workload, collective effort, emotional capacity, personal growth through parenting