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Maggie Reyes:
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. I am so excited to have the conversation I’m about to have with the most amazing woman. Her name is Kristen King. We have been sort of friends online in the digital world for a while, for a couple of years.
And then we got to meet in person this year, and that was amazing. So, we’re real life friends now. And I am so delighted to have her come and talk about a topic that comes up in so many of my Coaching sessions, and so many conversations around what happens when I want to be detached, but I still care very deeply about my partner, about my marriage, about whatever it is that I’m working on.
And really, the difference between indifference and detachment is something that I Coach on quite a bit. And I thought Kristen has such a great take on detachment that I just wanted to talk to her and have everyone just hear her wisdom. And I just think we’re going to have a great time. So, first of all, welcome, Kristen.
Kristen King:
Thank you. I’m so excited to be on your podcast.
Maggie Reyes:
I’m so excited to have you. So, before we dive in, just tell people what you do. Just tell us a little bit about who you are.
Kristen King:
Okay. So, I am a Life Coach. I work primarily with women who are tired of being so damn perfect all the time and want to give fewer fluffs about the things that other people have placed upon them and have a lot more fun in their lives, and let go of the need to control things and actually find real power in their lives.
So, we have a lot of fun. And I live in Colorado, and I’ve got an amazing husband and two awesome kids who are 10 year old twins.
Maggie Reyes:
I love it so much. So, Kristen, several months ago, had pitched me to be on the podcast. And I have a rule that I tell everyone, which is my current criteria for guests is usually someone who’s been a client of mine or a teacher that I personally learned from.
And so I was like, Kristen, I think you’re amazing, and this is my current criteria. And then we left it at that. And then several months later, she shared this take that she has, and we’re going to share with you, on detachment. And I’m like, “Kristen, come on the podcast. Let’s talk about this now.”
And I just want to share that because I think it’s so fun when you have a desire. She put the desire in the world to come and talk to all of you and talk to me and spend some time together. And then she was like, “Okay, got it. No problem.” She was totally detached from the outcome. It’s the perfect example of what we talked about today.
And then that desire that she was totally detached from just came to her spontaneously by her being herself in the world, which I think is super fun. What do you think about that, Kristen?
Kristen King:
Yeah. Well, I think that’s a great way to describe it. And I want to also add, I was very committed that I’m going to be on your podcast one day. So, when you were like, “No, these are the criteria.” I was like, oh, okay, well, after I have Maggie’s criteria, obviously, then I’m going to be on the podcast.
So, it didn’t bother me that it was a no, because I was just like, well, I’m just committed that one day, this is going to happen. So, it doesn’t matter when or how or for what. It’s just going to happen. It’s already done. It’s no problem. So, it was very easy to just be like, “Okay, still love you. Bye.”
Maggie Reyes:
Isn’t that so fun. I think that’s so fun to just see that in practice. And first of all, for everyone listening, I just want you all to know you, you listen to the podcast and you get excited, and I get excited that you’re listening to the podcast.
So, it’s a phenomenal to me to experience as just a human on earth. Someone had the dream to be on my show. This was a dream someone had. It’s my dream to have a show that is so that has impacted people in such a way that someone would aspire to be on it.
So, I just went everyone to witness it. It’s like, this is a dream come true. You on the show, just amazing. And so then Kristen came on and I’m like, “Okay, you want to be on the podcast. What do you love about it? What’s your favorite episode?”
And I love that one of her favorite episodes is from the back catalog. We have over a hundred episodes now. And her favorite episode is actually episode 16, and it’s called teams versus alliance. And I’m going to tell everybody what it is, and then I’m going to know a little bit about why that impacted you.
So, you can listen in depth. I go into a lot of detail in that episode, but the gist of that episode is there’s some interesting research about gray divorce. So, people in the fifties and sixties age range in the United States are getting divorced at a higher number than ever before.
And I sort of… As a person who’s interested in marriage, I’m interested in marriage and divorce and what happens, and what are the causes. And I started reading about this and I was like, there’s no clear cut why this is happening. What’s going on? What is the hypothesis? What’s occurring?
And as I just sat with it one day, I really thought about the difference between being a team and being in alliance. So, in an alliance, it’s like the us and the UK. When our interests align, we’re best buddies, we give each other military and money and smiles and hugs and kisses.
And when our interests don’t align, I don’t even know you. I don’t know what you’re talking about. We got independence a long time ago. We’re moving on. And that’s an alliance. It’s really like the mortgage gets paid, the kids go to school, everything is fine, we make it through, but we’re not really a team.
And the moment our interest no longer align, I’m out. Now a team, I think about sports teams, and I think about everybody working towards the same thing, everybody being on the same team. If I lose, you lose. If I win, you win.
We’re one unit together, going in the same direction, deciding things together that we both want out of life and out of our family, and out of all, the different aspects of life. And teens are happier than everybody listening. Why would I want to be a team instead of an alliance.
Teams, it feels better in your body when you’re a team, it creates connection, and it takes you to thriving. So, if we think about relationships on a spectrum of being… My spectrum, the way I like to do it is motels versus five star hotels, between a motel, the three star with a warm breakfast, and then the St. Regis in Tahiti, right?
If we think about relationships on a spectrum, it feels much more delicious when you’re part of a team, and it feels very adversarial often when you’re in an alliance. So, it’s really useful to locate yourself. So, everyone listening right now, think about the last week that just passed and just think about, am I a team with my partner?
Do I feel like we’re moving together towards the same things, or is it more like an alliance? And how can I move more in the direction of being a team? And so in that episode, I give a lot of information about things to think about.
So, that’s the gist of what I was teaching. And then I talk about that also in The Marriage Mindset Makeover. We’ll always link to that in the show notes. If anybody wants to check that out. That’s my very simple self-study program that will help you just think differently about your relationship if you’re struggling right now.
So, tell me what appealed to you about that idea, because I thought it was really fascinating that you used the words, it was a conceptual shift, and I just love thinking about that. So, tell us how that impacted you.
Kristen King:
Yeah, well, so my husband and I have been married for… I forget what year it is. I think this is our 18th anniversary coming up. I wrote it in my bio, so you probably know better than I do. And the first seven-ish years of our marriage were very rough, and we were very much in the alliance space where we had said, “This is the thing that we both want to do,” but we were each doing it. We weren’t doing it together.
And the alliance broke and came back together and broke and came back together and broke and came back together for a really long time, and it felt competitive, it felt very score keepey, it felt very controlley.
Our emotions were very high anytime there was some conflict, because it always felt like there had to be a winner or a loser. And this was not something that we had intended to create, but that was the thing that we were creating.
And I don’t know what it was back then, but there was a moment, a light bulb moment where I was like, my God, I can spend my entire life being right, or I can actually be happy. I don’t want to do this anymore.
And I had to relearn what it looked like to actually be parts of a hole instead of an, every man for themself kind of thing, and it really just totally reshaped my brain around what marriage actually looked like and the difference between interdependency versus codependency.
I didn’t have to manipulate or coerce or menace to get the things that I wanted. I didn’t have to teach him a lesson when he wronged me in some way. We could just come together and co-create our experience. And it was just a totally different way of being married and being together.
And I think that we’ve come back around to that a number of times throughout our marriage. We got married pretty young, and so we’ve had a bit of time to practice more than other early forties folks have, I think, but this is the thing that always comes back to when things start to feel rocky. It’s like, oops, we slid back into the old concept, and let’s get back into the team. Let’s get back into being parts of a whole.
Maggie Reyes:
And I think sometimes we intuitively take ourselves to those spaces. And then when we hear something like that, it’s like, oh, team, alliance. Now, I have a box to put that in. I know exactly what’s happening. When I see sort of the breakdown in front of me, like, oh, now I have a label for it. Now, I can be like, oh yep, team, forgot.
Kristen King:
Yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
We’re going back to that. So, good. I love that. So, we will definitely link to that episode in the show notes. I love that. So, let’s talk about detachment, and let’s talk about indifference, and let’s talk about just so many things that come up where we really want something and we really want it the way we want it.
We don’t want it another way. We want it the way we want it. And to me, that gets us in so much trouble, including me. And I’ll tell you, there was a Christmas a few Christmases ago. It was pre COVID times, when everybody was still getting together. It was pre Covid. And we were taking some games to my family’s house. And I was getting ready, so I told my husband, “Oh, pack the games.”
And so he picked the games, and we have multiple ones, and he picked two or three of them. And then I looked at what he picked. I’m like, “Oh, that’s what you picked?” And then my husband who’s like the sweetest cinnamon roll, too good for this earth, he looked at me and he said, “Isn’t this what you Coach people on every day?”
I’m like, “Oh, it kind of is. Okay. Yeah. I asked you to pick the games and those were the games you picked, and yeah. Okay. Well, noted. Well played.” Right? And so I share that story to say, even me having a high level of self-awareness about it, even having a high degree of intentionality around things, I’ll still have that minute. I’ll be like, oh, but that’s not what I would’ve picked. That’s not what I would’ve done.
And it could be as simple as something like that with the games. I think about this all the time, how that could be something that could derail someone. The whole evening could be about that, three hours about what you picked and what you didn’t pick, and why’d you pick it, and all the things.
And one thing I share a lot on the podcast is, one of the reasons I think I thrive in my own relationship is we just laugh about stuff other people argue over. If I ever teach you one thing on this podcast, can you laugh about this instead of arguing about it?
So, we looked at the thing, and he was very… It wasn’t argumentative at all. He was chuckling. He was like, “Isn’t this something you Coach on.” I’m like, “Yeah, I kind of is. I should listen to myself.” Right? And that was it. We were done.
We had a great time the rest of the night. So, I just want everyone to know, as we talk about detachment and a difference, and non-attachment we are not exempt from this at all, we just like to talk about it so we can remember.
Kristen King:
Oh, yeah. Okay.
Maggie Reyes:
So, let’s talk about the definition. Let’s just start really basic with, how would you define, because I know you did have that in your notes too, how would you define the difference between indifference and non-attachment?
Kristen King:
Yeah. So, with indifference, you just don’t care. You just don’t give a crap. So, it can happen or not. You may not even notice. You may not show up. You can’t be bothered. You might blow it off. You just don’t care at all. You are completely indifferent.
It’s if it doesn’t even exist as far as you’re concerned. Whatever, not my problem. And some stuff is appropriate for that, and it’s different from being non-attached. With non-attachment, you might actually really care quite a lot, but whatever happens is okay because you’re willing to accept any outcome.
And then there’s this space in between where you are attached, and it’s kind of like the polar opposite of indifference, where not only do you care very deeply, but there is one acceptable outcome. You get the right game or it’s trash, right? There’s one acceptable outcome, and all other outcomes are completely unacceptable, and you are human garbage for even proposing them, right?
So, when we’re super, super attached, it’s very much my way or the highway. And my example that I used for that is how my husband and I almost got divorced over him folding the towels. I said, “Would you please fold the towels?”
And he said, something like, “Of course, love of my life, most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, I delight in folding the towels for you.” And I go and I opened the bathroom closet and I’m like, “What did you do to that towels?”
Because I really wanted them folded a very specific way. And he did it wrong and it ruined everything, and I made sure he knew it because I was very attached to the towels. So, that’s what attachment looks like.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that example so much, because how many of us will have issues? We had something the other day about the zip locks, literally, “No, this zip lock. No, this other zip block.” We had a whole five minute shtick on the zip locks.
And it’s like, I know everyone listening has that thing, whether it’s the towels, the games, the zip locks. And we’re giving you these examples to say, if you have stuff like that come up, so do we. It’s fine. It’s how we handle it that matters, number one.
And thinking about this idea that there’s one right way is something that I always like to call out as this is part of our colonialized, white supremacy, patriarchal culture, that in the United States we grew up in. And I know that the podcast is listened to all over the world, and you may be listening to this someplace in the world where that isn’t what you grew up in, but in much of our Western industrialized culture, we have this idea that there’s one way, it’s the right way, and everything else is the wrong way.
I go into a lot of detail on the episode on self trust, so we’ll link to that in the show notes if you want to hear me talk about that. But what we want to notice in ourselves is that it becomes internalized, and then we believe there’s only one right way, and of course it’s our way.
And what we always want to remember is there’s an infinite way to full towels. If you’ve ever been on a cruise and you’ve seen a towel in the form of an elephant… Who knew you could make a towel that looked like a teddy bear? We didn’t know. There’s an infinite amount of ways the towels can be folded.
And we just want to remember there’s an infinite amount of ways to do so many different things. And when we’re able to loosen the grip on that it has to be one particular way, that helps us create the healthy kind of detachment, the loving kind of detachment, when we can take a step back and just notice, oh, this way could also work.
Kristen King:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that also shifts us into commitment, because if I am attached that the towels need to be a certain way, that’s one thing, but really what matters is, do I just have a towel that’s reasonably clean when I need it.
And so just being committed that we’re going to figure stuff out, so the details are less important, creates so much space for non-attachment where we can get really curious, and we can experiment and we can explore. And maybe, there’s an even better way to fold towels than I know.
I mean, I’m skeptical, but I’m willing to be shown a better way to fold towels because I’ve learned to develop a sense of curiosity about it, and also a sense of humor about it. And at the end of the day, if we’re just pulling clean towels out of the laundry basket, no one’s going to die here.
This is not… No one’s ever died from the silverware not being lined up or the milk getting put on the wrong side of the refrigerator or any of the stuff that I used to think was really important, because I was so attached to it.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. I love that so much. And I love the idea of asking yourself this question, which is what are you committed to. When we’re able to zoom out and say, “Well, I’m committed to a loving, thriving, delicious connection with my partner,” if that’s what I’m committed to, then how important do I make the towels?
How committed am I that that is the hill that I want to die on today? Right? And I think that’s a really good focusing way to think about. Wait, what am I committed to more? Is it the towels or is it our connection?
And if it is the towels, because there may come a day when we have something that’s the towels, the games, whatever it may be, where we really do feel more committed to that than to the connection with our partner. We just want to check in on why, and we just want to see what’s there to be seen.
Kristen King:
Yeah. And I’ll tell you Maggie, there’s some of those areas that have been harder for me to release and to honor the commitment that I have to the partnership with my husband over the alliance that I get to win, by the way.
What I have shifted to is just like, if it’s really that important to me, I just take that on and I don’t ask anyone else to be responsible for it, because then I can get it done my way. So, everyone in the family folds laundry. I’m the only one who folds my laundry.
They set the towels aside because they just fit better in the closet when I put them away the way I do it, and I just do it. And if they don’t get folded, because I’m not around, then they just don’t get folded. It’s fine. But it’s allowed me to really say, okay, this is a hill I’m not willing to die on, but I’m willing to walk up this hill so you don’t have to.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that so much. It’s so good. We get to choose what are the things we do want to take on, and what are the things we completely want to let go of? And when we let go of something, what that means is we’re letting somebody else do it the way they would do it.
And sometimes that requires us pausing, thinking, questioning things, coming to peace around things. And that’s why we have Coaching programs. That’s why we have podcast episodes like this one. That’s why we talk about it from different angles, because we live in a society that tells us we should hold onto that, right?
And it’s kind of a little bit of a mind bending activity. When you’re a woman, you’re a leader. You have all these other places in your life where you have to “compromise” or you have to always look for a buy-in.” And then you’re like, no, but I’m going to stand up for myself when it comes to the towels.
It’s like, wait, is this the thing that really matters the most? How does it matter? And it may be that in your specific situation, for somebody listening to us, it is the most important thing for them to take a stand and say, “You know what? I really want the towels this way.” Right?
So, I want to honor that, but I also want to show everyone and to start thinking about sometimes that letting go then opens up so much more space for loving connections.
Kristen King:
Yeah, I would agree. And I think that awareness also opens up a lot of space for really clear boundaries around what’s yours and what’s mine. My husband is very… He’s a competitive cyclist, and he looks really good doing it, by the way, and he is very particular about his bicycles.
And he likes him to be lined up in a certain way and whatever. So, I just don’t touch them, because it’s very important to him, and I know that it’s important to him, and I don’t know how to do it in a way that I feel confident is going to be the way that he wants. So, if he asks for help, I help him, but I just let it be.
And just like if I don’t want the kids to use my toothpaste or something, I just don’t put it where they can get to it. It’s on me to make it really easy for people to do the things, and for me to take responsibility for getting my needs met, not for the people around me to just intuit that I might want to have them do it a certain way.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. I think that’s so important, explicitly asking for what you want. I love the word explicit and I use it all the time. It’s like, sometimes we think our partners or our family members should be mind readers and should automatically know things, and I’ve never really seen that work out for people.
I’ve never really seen that be an effective way of getting what you want. So, I’m like, listen, just be explicit, and then find out, do they even have the ability to do this thing that you want? And if they don’t have the ability, are they willing to do it? And if they’re willing, okay, maybe it won’t look exactly how you think, but that’s okay.
So, I love just thinking about being explicit about the things you want, and that helps you in this relationship between attachment and detachment. It’s like, I’m going to be super explicit, and then I’m going to be detached from the outcome.
But in that detachment, when it’s a detachment that is not indifference… And indifference, it’s like I no longer care about the towels, whatever everyone can do whatever with the towels. No, it’s like, I really still care. Oh, they’re not capable of doing it for whatever reason the way that I want.
Now, I’m going to do it because I’m taking it on, but these five other things, I’m giving them up so that I have the space to do this. Because another thing that most of my clients do, you tell me what you think, Kristen, is, they’ll take on the towels, but then they’ll also take the forks and knives spoons, this, that, the other.
And it’s so much of our Coaching time is just, what do you need to let go of? What do you need to stop doing to have the space to do the things you care about the most, which again, is like, what are you committed to? If you’re committed to, this is really important to me, okay, how do you make space for that? You got to let go of something else.
Kristen King:
Yeah, the prioritization is really, really important. And this may be the case for some folks as it was for me. It may not be the case for others. For me, a lot of what drove so much of my attachment was unchecked anxiety. I was just very anxious, and I had a really high need to create predictable circumstances around me and to control things so they would be predictable.
And then if, I don’t know, human beings came in having other needs, and how dare they, it was really difficult for me to navigate that. And once I started to realize that was at the root of it, I started to see, which are the things that have the biggest impact on my sense of comfort and safety and security, and which are the things that are just a habit that I’m just doing anxiously to distract myself from how anxious I am.
And so I know this is kind of a weird one, but the towels really is important to me. Having the pictures on the walls be straight is really important to me. So, I take those things on, but I don’t need the forks lined up anymore. It’s more important to me that I don’t have to unload the dishwasher than that the forks be lined up.
So, the kids do it, and now I have 10 year olds who can competently unload and reload a dishwasher, right? Because what’s important is that I have the time to fold the towels and to take care of myself and have amazing sex with my husband and play with my dogs. And the silverware doesn’t actually matter, but the towels still do, and so I just hung onto that one, and there’s different levels.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. I love that so much, because I think it’s so much permission. Not that anybody needs permission, but I think it’s sort of… When I listen to a podcast and somebody says, “Yeah, this thing that may seem superfluous to you, it means so much to me,” it’s okay. I can keep that.
I just feel so much like permission giving around that, so I love having this conversation. And one of the things I know that you say when you teach detachment, and that I say all the time, is when I’m teaching soul centered communication, I talk about how making yes or no okay is part of creating psychological safety.
So, when we’re making a request, when we’re being explicit about what we want, one of the things we need to do is check ourselves. We’re being explicit, we’re being detailed, and then would a no be okay, or would we freak the freak out if we got to know?
So, we want to pause, we want to check with ourselves, and going to say, okay, what would I need to believe about myself or about my partner, about the situation to not freak out if the answer’s a no?
We need to do that work ahead of time, because that idea of being making yes or no okay is part of creating the healthy kind of detachment that says, “I’m here to love you. I want to receive the love from you, and I’m not going to hang our love story on the state of the forks.”
Kristen King:
It really moves into that unconditionality, right? Because the health of our marriage should not be predicated on how well you follow my orders. That’s not how this works. And one of the ways that… Just in the last probably year or so, I’ve started to phrase my request to my husband is, “I would really like this. Are you willing to do that?”
Maggie Reyes:
Okay, everybody, write this down. “I would really like this. Are you willing to do that?” is such a great, very simple way to show our partners this matters to me, because sometimes also our partners, if we make everything urgent and we act as if everything matters to me the same, our partners don’t know.
They can’t do every single thing. And that’s something that my husband and I, the way we talk about it is a must have versus a nice to have. It’s like, this would be nice to have. If we can, are you willing? This means so much to me. Can we make sure that we absolutely positively do this?
So, everyone, I don’t know if everyone listening to the podcast is aware, but I am obsessed with Bridgerton. I will be talking about it on other podcasts, if I haven’t already at the time you hear this. And when the second season came out, months before it came out, we had that on the calendar.
I was like, that’s what this weekend is going to be about. My husband knew we were going to watch it together. That, to me, was a really important thing. That may seem like something really simple, but I had read the books 20 years ago when they first came out.
That it was really meaningful to me, as a book reader, to then see these stories that I loved be put on TV and with a huge budget and with all the loving care that those stories are made with. And so, that’s something that was not just to like, “Oh, if we have time, we’ll watch it.”
No, no. And being that explicit of, “I’d really like this, are you willing?” I think it’s so beautifully said and so good for all of us to just remember that phrasing.
Kristen King:
And I think the other part of it is sometimes the answer is no, and I just say, “Okay, then I’m going to go ahead and take care of it.”
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah.
Kristen King:
Or, sometimes he’ll say no, because we already agreed X, Y, Z and I had forgotten. So, I say, “Oh, well, how can we make both of those things work?” Right? Because we shifted into a mindset of everybody wins. How do we make sure everybody gets what they need?
And how do we both take that on without withholding affection, for example, if there’s a no? Right? And that’s where it really is that team approach where we really are making sure that everybody wins and everybody gets the thing that they want.
And it may not all be at the exact same time, but it’s all available. If he wants to go see a movie and it’s going to be late, I’m like, “Okay, then I’m going to need to sleep a little bit later. So, how can we make that work so we can go see the movie at the time that you want?” And we just navigate and negotiate and we make a plan that works for everybody.
Maggie Reyes:
And I think that, How can we make that work?” is another beautiful open ended question, because a lot of times we’ll look at what we’ve already decided in the past, and we’ll say, “Well, that doesn’t work,” because we’re committed to all of these other things that may no longer be relevant anymore.
And that’s a place where, when you think about a relationship where you’re married to somebody for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, what I always want to tell people is we make decisions the day we get married that 10 years later just don’t apply, but we never question them, right? Jobs change, careers change, the world changes, all kinds of things that happen.
So, I always want to give this invitation to just question, is this still working? And another thing that has been coming up in The Marriage MBA the last couple of Coaching sessions is just the idea of saying, “Well, that no longer works for me. This is how we did it for 10 years.”
And maybe your partner’s super happy with how it’s going, and you’re not. It’s like, how do you start that conversation? “Hey, this thing, it no longer works for me. How can we come together to find a way to move forward that works for both of us?”
Kristen King:
And I think that ties in so nicely with the idea of boundaries and explicit communication too, because if it no longer works for me to be the only person who does the dishes, for example, I’m no longer available to do the dishes on Tuesdays, can you take that on? How are we going to get this handled?
Then in order for that to carry through, I need to trust my partner that he’s going to carry through with what he agreed to do, and I also need to not interfere and get in there and control and manipulate. Because if he hasn’t done the dishes by the time I think he should have, or he didn’t do it the way I thought he should, it does not work for me to go in there and take the scrub brush out of his hand and be like, “Fine, I’ll just do it.” Right? You have to really be explicit, be clear.
And then if something doesn’t work for you, don’t keep doing it, and then punishing your partner for you choosing to keep doing a thing that you already said didn’t work, right? So, there’s a lot of self-accountability.
And when we stay connected to that commitment of what the relationship is going to look like, and we’re open to being curious and exploring different ways that it could be done right and stuff like that, it creates a lot more space for that, and there’s so much more humor and connection and partnership, and so much less resentment and manipulation and frustration.
Maggie Reyes:
None of those things work, so we don’t like doing them. I know. None of those things are going to lead you to the land of sexy besties. So, I always talk about being sexy besties. If you want to have a relationship that thrives, you want to have some kind of sexual connection that’s meaningful to you, whatever that looks like, and for everybody, that’s different.
And then where is the friendship? Where is the humor? And the friendship, if you think about it, has that combination of depth and fun that you have a mix of both, that you can handle tragedies when they happen or challenges when they happen, and you can have fun and laugh about things.
So, if it doesn’t take you towards sexy besties, you’re off track. Okay? Is there anything you want to add about commitment and detachment before, or non-attachment, before we go to a question from The Questions for Couple’s Journal?
Kristen King:
Yes, I have one thing I want to add. I think that what I often see with my clients, and also with my friends, and have seen with myself, is that when there is a high level of attachment in the relationship, there’s also a high level of indifference. And that’s the difference between the alliance and the team, right?
Because when we are really connected and committed and non-attached, there’s space for deep caring and vulnerability and connection and authenticity and fun and being sexy besties. But when we’re very attached, if we don’t get the thing that we want, then the response is often either rage or indifference.
We just withhold emotion and affection and vulnerability. And that’s where the alliance breaks apart because it was really predicated on that conditionality. And that’s a really, I think, a good clue or signal for folks that there might be opportunity to explore what non-attachment would look like when they find themselves feeling really numb or disconnected or indifferent toward a partner, because that’s often a signal that there’s a lot of attachment happening.
And that was big… That kind of the light bulb for me, when I realized that was going on, and it has helped so many people start to make that shift, including in our house.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that so much, because what it comes up for me is the all or nothing thinking of it. So, all or nothing thinking is just a cognitive distortion. It’s like a bug in our programming that goes to black and white, yes or no, all or nothing.
And it’s like, “Oh, either they’re doing things exactly how I want them, the way that I want them, the way I want them done when I want them done, or nothing, as opposed to sometimes we’re all going to disappoint each other, sometimes we’re going to do it perfect.
And sometimes we’re going to do it crappy. And all of that is part of life, and the love and affection, and the relationship stands apart from any one thing that goes wrong or any one thing that is unexpected or anyone blip in the day. And so I love seeing that through the lens of all or nothing thinking, because that is probably…
If I had to pick one thing I Coach on the most, with over a hundred episodes of this podcast, we’ve talked about all the different aspects of relationships, but if we’re able to notice when we’re in all or nothing thinking, when I’ve made a verdict about who you are as a human because of how the towels are folded, or what our relationship can be based on where the milk is in the refrigerator, if we can start and say, “Oh wait, did I go to all or nothing? Wait, there’s something in between,” that’s space in between is usually love.
And when we can access it, then we can go to a completely new place. It’s like opening the door to a new dimension. If it was like a sci-fi, where it’s just like and now the new dimension is here, and here, we can be sexy besties no matter where the milk is.
Kristen King:
That’s exactly it. And really, because I lived in all enough and thinking for so long, and I still find myself there sometimes. And that the way out of it for me is to ask what’s the third option.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah.
Kristen King:
It’s not either he folds the towels right because he loves me, or he folds the towels wrong because he hates me. What’s the third option? The third option is we fold towels differently, and he still loves me to pieces, right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. I love that so much. I love yoga, and I love sort of thinking through things with a sort of yogi lens. And my favorite question around that is, what is the middle way? We have this and that? Okay, fine. What is the middle way? And that just always opens up something for me. I love that.
Okay. So, we’re going to ask a question from The Questions for Couple’s Journal, and it’s, what is a simple thing that can help you feel happier today regardless of what the future holds? And I sort of picked this question at random, but it really is a question that also illustrates non-attachment.
How can I do something that will help me feel better and not be attached to what happens tomorrow? I can still feel better in this moment. So, that was kind of a coincidence, but also the divine order of the universe. So, what is the simple thing that can help you feel happier today, regardless of what the future holds?
Kristen King:
I think my answer to this question would’ve been different six months ago than it is today, Maggie, but the first thing that came to my mind was that I would feel happier today, if as soon as we hung up from recording, I sent my husband a flirty text. And I don’t even need him to reply. I don’t need the perfect set of emojis. It will make me feel happy to send him a flirty text.
Maggie Reyes:
So, here’s the beauty of the illustration of non-attachment. When Kristen said, I don’t need him to reply, we send the text because it’s who we want to be in the world. It’s how we want to show up. And the reply doesn’t matter.
It matters and it doesn’t like. It’s delightful and nice to receive one, but it’s not essential for us to experience who we want to be in the world. That’s such a beautiful sort of bow to wrap this episode with.
That’s exactly what committed detachment looks like in practice. We send the text, we bake the cookie, we do the thing that we know is likely to put a smile on that person’s face. And whether it does, or it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter. It’s who we want to be in the world.
Kristen King:
Yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that. Okay. How can people find you Kristen King?
Kristen King:
So, the place I’m most active is on Facebook, but I am on both Facebook and Instagram as Kristen, K-R-I-S-T-E-N, Skove, S-K-O-V-E, King. And you can also find me on my website, which is Kristenking.com.
Maggie Reyes:
I love it so much. We will link to your Instagram on the show notes, and to your website as well. Thank you for having the dream of coming on the show. And now, that dream has come true.
Kristen King:
Thanks so much for having me.
Maggie Reyes:
You’re welcome.
Kristen King:
Bye, everyone.