It's often easier to focus on what annoys us about our partner than what we appreciate. This could be due to our tendency to notice annoyances more readily or unresolved anger. We're wired to notice obstacles rather than smooth sailing, which can skew our perspective. However, addressing annoyances promptly is vital. If left unprocessed, they accumulate and strain the relationship, leading to a decline in kindness and support. By promptly addressing issues and cultivating empathy, we can maintain a healthier relationship dynamic. Is it easy or difficult to come up with a list of things that you like about your partner versus things that annoy you?

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About the Host:

Meet Crystal, your relationship and social health coach. Crystal is the founder of Sparked Forever Relationship & Singles coaching. She started her journey supporting the neurodiverse community in navigating this, sometimes frustrating, neurotypical social world. Lessons and inspiration from her earlier work drives Crystal’s passion for bringing couples and singles together through acceptance, understanding and big picture thinking to grow vibrant relationships. Crystal understands that the foundation for our social health and well-being starts with making connections to others. When Crystal is not working with couples, she loves to be out on adventures with her partner and bonus kids or spending time connecting with friends over good food and fun music.

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Welcome to our lovespace Today, I'm so excited to have you join in. If I fit sound a bit raspy or have to take a tea break, I apologize a little under the weather today, or I've actually lost my voice a little bit from doing too many like, than I was at Disney World with my family last week. So I'm still recovering from that. Always a fun adventure to go traveling with those three, just warms my heart. I feel like if I sound overexcited, on today's episode, that's also probably why because I'm just so filled up with people energy. But what a great place to go, though, to people watch whenever you go to like a big amusement park like that, you know, to see family dynamics, and you know, different family dynamics and the families who are just really, you know, running on pure joy and the families who have like we are at the end of our day, and everyone needs some, some space and some alone time. So, you know, my little brain gets little tweaks like that, right? I'm a social health person. And, you know, I was brought up as a behavior analyst in my early career. So watching behaviors is always super, you know, intriguing to me. And I have to spy on people like I don't know, if you're one of those people who eavesdrops on people at Starbucks, I'm often guilty of that, like it just That's why I used to work at Starbucks all the time, before I had an office when my job was a bit more on the road. And it's actually really hard lots of times to get paperwork done, because I'd be like, someone would be having a really interesting conversation about some sort of social relationship. And I just couldn't not as you know, you learn a lot from that just could not stop listening. But anywho so that really fired watching all these app families and couples and things over the weekend, really, just over the last week really tweaked my brain and fired me up for this episode today. And really thinking about, you know, the loves of our life and our partners, and you know, and what we love about them? And can you name three things right off the bat, that you love about your partner? Can you name tag things, without without pausing to match 10 things that you love about your partner? Can you name 10 things that annoy you? Or bother you or argue about your partner? Now, best case scenario is that you're able to name those five to 10 things that you love, and that you have to take a moment to go hmm, what are the things that really annoy me or bother me? Oh, Mmm hmm. And then maybe we come up with two or three, that's best case scenario, because that's a really nice balance of things. And we'll dive into why that is a balance. But for a lot of us, sometimes this can be a little bit reversed. Okay, right. We don't really want to be reversed on that. So you know, where we can come up easily with our list of annoyances mas blahs, they did this last week. That kind of thing. And one of the reasons for this, so we're gonna go to through the two main reasons why our lists are sometimes off. And actually, we're going to dive into the second idea that I give you today in a little bit more depth in a few few episodes here. So hopefully, this piques your interest. So one of the reasons is that just signals in the environment that bother us or does tweak us are, they're more likely to stand out for us. And that's just like, you know, a behavioral survival mechanism, right? When everything is going well, we don't really notice it. When things are going not well, it's much easier to notice. So just a few everyday examples of that. To kind of bring it out for you is if you're driving home, and you hit old green lights, how often do you come home and you go, Ah, what a smooth drive home. I had all green lights, or I had mostly green lights. Fantastic. I listened to a podcast, I listened to crystal on the podcast, she and she had so many interesting things to say I just couldn't get an app. Right? How often do you have that conversation with your partner when you get home versus oh my gosh, do you know I thought that drive could take me 20 minutes took me 30 minutes. And I swear I got every light, every red light on the way. No, everyone was driving like as Bloody Sunday. Oh my gosh, I just want to bang my head again. Never do I want to drive to work ever again. All right, I think most of us have that that ladder conversation. And that's because it's really easy for our brains to pick up on when things have not gone to plan. So if your plan was to drive from point A to point B and it was supposed to take 20 minutes and it took 19 You probably take no notice of that. That was the plan. Check. We probably feel neutral and okay above that. But if we were driving and we were trying to get to point A from point A to point B and it took us 30 minutes then that really stands out that it did not go to plan C Same thing, if you are in a family that happens to have children, you may notice that when they are behaving well, when they are following the group plan when they're being thoughtful and kind to each other, when the siblings are not arguing all of that jazz that you don't notice, right? How often are you just walking around the house, like, oh, my gosh, I just heard you guys share what a great sharing job like maybe if you have really low kids, and you know, if it's your job to do what I do, then maybe I have, but for the most part, when we get into our everyday life, if things are going to plan, if the kids are not arguing, if they're not annoying each other, then we are just moving on with our life, versus if they are fighting and screaming, and we actually have to stop in our plan and stop them. These are the things that we notice. And this is why, you know, gratitude journals tend to be you know, I think really popular slash being pushed a lot now is it's, it tends to take our, you know, like I said, it's easy behaviorally, for us to realize the signals in the environment that are not helpful to us, because it stopped, they stopped us up. Right. And that's why gratitude journals, I think, you know, really popular right now, because they make us pause and try to think about the things that are flowing and moving well, and not that are stopping us up. So those gratitude journals are really trying to re focus us on that piece. And that really helps us if we think about it with my big picture ideas, is that is really a gratitude journal is really just putting you in a more kindful mindset, getting you to stop in the moment during your day to be like, Hey, I could put this in my gratitude journal later today. Okay. Or, and yeah, and to be more so that the mindful part the being in the moment, and then to also be kind about your lens, like, ah, if I had a really bad day, surely I can think of one thing or two things or three things that went well. Well, my coffee order today with correct, great, I'll write that down. You know, the hot water in the shower felt lovely this morning, right? So sometimes we really have to pull out those tiny things in life. And that is really adjusting our lens to have that kind of mindset that I talked about in my kick model. So that's the K and cake is kindful right? And that really takes us to that kind of similarly to that glass, you know, being half full rather than half empty kind of mindset, those are all the same, right? So that that positive line of thinking I know people get caught up like oh, there's toxic positivity and blah blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, it's really like what Which one do you have and if you you know, it's true that a lot of times the mindset is half the battle so I'll give you a like a funny example half the mindset being our mindset been you have the battles like what if you and this goes couldn't it goes back to listing also our annoyances versus our, our loves for someone or the things we love about them? As What if when you find dirty girl socks all around the house, random hiding and couch cushions, wherever I don't know if there's a problem in your house. If it was a funny inside joke in your house, that mystery dirty socks just keep turning up everywhere. Rather than a girly growl. I roll oh my gosh, another dirty sock bla, right. Same scenario walking around the house finding dirty socks, if I find it and I laugh to myself and go oh my gosh, another sock, can you believe it, there must be like a weird sock fairy. And we can make jokes about the weird sock fairy to everyone in the house. And everyone can have a laugh about it. Cool. But if you know if it's just an IRA and a girl, and we don't like to talk about what we do talk about so with an immune voice to everyone in the household, then you know, that changes the the whole experience of the situation. And that the only change in that situation is the lens we view the dirty sock with.

That's the only change is how we view the dirty sock. And then because of how we view that, that gives us the next step to our reaction and the word our communication, right our words, the messages we send out. So are seeing the cake model, or our words that come out or affection. Right? If I view that in an affectionate way, and we laugh about it, people don't feel called out people don't feel that they're just continuously failing up putting their socks away. You know, and in a narrow, spicy household where sometimes some of these executive functioning things can be quite difficult and especially if you're so if you're in a household where you have multiple people who are neuro spicy, maybe different kinds of neuro spicy, right? We all have different viewpoints and different ways our brains are working so to think about how different breeds are processing that and why and different reasons we might find dirty socks, or not shaming people because we found dirty socks, you know, that can make a big a big difference and make in whether we add that to our list of annoyances girls, or even sometimes to our list of, Oh, I love them, they're always doing silly funny thing, like leaving dirty blocks around the house or it just becomes a neutral and like a non a non issue and non thing we think about it. And that also goes kind of with you know, having that glass half full mindset, right? Versus that glass half empty is this is this just like a bit of a haha? Or is this an annoyance? Right? Okay. Anyhow, I digress a little bit. So one of the reasons our perspective and our relationship might be a little off is the lens that we're viewing it with, and that because things stand out, right, so we know that things that stop us up, stand us out more stand out more to us. So that could be one of the things that's happening. Okay, so then that's easy, we can just do a reframe, right, if that's like, I'm just noticing too many negative things in my day. Well, then a gratitude journal, I'm making a list of all the love qualities about my partner, all of those kinds of things, that's a much easier fix, we can do a few fun activities for that, you know, and if you want to come and hang out with me one to one and book some sessions with you and your partner and go through some of those activities in those reframing things. They're super fun, they're super great. And you know, you can find me on Instagram at sparked forever or on Tik Tok at sparked, I think sparked underscore forever. And you know, DMV, and we can get that all set up for you also, through my website, Spark forever.com If you want to do some of those activities, now our second reason that we might have a longer list of blogs and annoyances, and Yaks then not within our positive loved ones is that we might have some unprocessed anger theory annoyances, so on protest, that's right unprocessed, anger theory and noise. Okay, so when we can list all those things that we love about someone, or it comes really easily really fast. For a lot of us that's at the beginning of the relationship. That's maybe when we have this new relationship energy. And that's because at that point in time, we're really still admiring the person. And it's really easy to admire them at that point. And when we admire someone, when we're in a state of admiration, we're really regarding them as being and this is gonna sound funny, but this is true, regarding them as being like impressive, or worthy of respect. Now, I would think my stance would, when I put it that way, I really think to myself like well, what didn't I wouldn't I always want to have want to feel impressed, or have respect for my partner. I think I would always want that. Right, that seems. Okay. Now, some of you right away, I know the LEAP you're jumping to, especially if you've been in a relationship for a while or have been in a long term relationship or for long term relationships. I know you're already jumping ahead. Ah, well, that diminishes with time. But what if I told you, that is not actually time. But it's not actually finding out that the person that you love is not perfect? Because I think I think at this point in time, with all of the social media, all the things out there. I think at this point in time, we should all know that. Nobody is perfect. I think we've all heard that. I think Oprah taught us that, you know, 25 years ago that no one is perfect. You're not perfect. I'm not perfect. The love of my life is not perfect, even though I love him so ever much. He's not perfect. And actually that makes it better that he has all his little imperfections because that's what makes him and him just like my cat. Right? My cats aren't perfect. Maybe you think your cats are perfect or your pets are perfect, but I definitely don't think my pets are perfect. And that's some of the most endearing things about them is their funny little quirks, right? That's what makes them them and not like a weird little robot cat although I'm sure we're programming some robot cats to also be delightfully quirky, too, but anywho so we all know this. We all know that no one's perfect. So I don't think we ever date people go like, Oh my gosh, I thought they were perfect. And now they're not or if you are, you know, get that out of your brain right now. That's, that's silly. Nobody's perfect. Okay. So the part that really derails us then is when something happens that disappoints us when we get some of those little or let downs or miscommunications that happen. And we take them. Now this is key, we take them, and we push them down. Okay? And or we just move along and leave it even when they seem small tab, then all these little instances, what happens of things that we haven't actually said, Oh, that gives me a dark good feeling or, ah, we've had even like I find even labeling like we've had a miscommunication. It should like when we're Disneyworld. Okay, so we got me and my boyfriend got into me, my partner, we got into a hilarious argument about books about whether he should sit down in the bath or not this bathroom shelf doesn't that take you back to back and forth to reserve and is the end of the day, you know, we were doing big days out there. Like I brought my Fitbit, we were walking like 26,000 steps, like I think we were doing about 810 kilometers a day of non stop walking dragon dragon, the bonus kids everywhere around the park, when they're having a good time. But you know, we're really going 1213 hour days of walking. Okay, so we're on the bus. And he's standing up because all these buses by the end of the night when the park is closed, they'll give all of you standing up. And I have this belief in my heart, the true belief that there's two seats at the end of the row beside us and two seats, kind of where he's standing in front of, and if this true belief in my heart that no one who is coming on the bus will ever possibly figure out that these seats exist. And that this will cause other these other people that you know are getting on the bus that I don't even know that they will have to stand needlessly, even though there's these four seats back here. So I tell him, I'm like, You need to sit down. This is what made most sense in my brain. And that's fine. I still think it makes most sense. My bet is that you need to sit down so that the people can see that their seats. And then when they come back, you can step back up. This is what I thought he should do. And he says, No, I got it. And I was like, No, I don't think you ever said So anyway, so it went back and forth like that. And then you know, he just decides I'm just gonna look at my phone. He was doing some work things. He's like I am, I told you it was fine. We're done with this conversation. And now I'm gonna go back to my work texts that I need to send before we get back to the hotel. Wow, you know, this is so hard for my brain to just do. So now. I think he maybe hasn't heard all of my idea or understood all of my message that I've tried to send out communication, right? These are just sending and receiving messages. I'm going to read Nanga reword my message. And another way, I'd be like, No, but you don't understand, no, but you don't understand any hope. Then I was eventually prompted enough. Eventually he was like we are done. Don't have the need that we are done prompt a few times. And this is a good understanding we have between us. But when we got back to the room, after we were out of this situation, even though that seems like such a small, whatever conversation to have, right? I'm sure lots of couples have that conversation all the time. And don't even think about it. So when we got back to the room, he said to me, you know, I told you that I had it covered. And you could just not believe that. And that, you know, annoyed me that it made me feel irked. And that's great feedback for me to have, because then I can say, oh, okay, well, this is what I was trying to do, I can now understand what you were trying to do. And I would now like to apologize for trying to tell you the same thing 10 times in a row in seven different ways.

And we have now worked that out and processed it. Because we didn't wait a day. We didn't wait a week and go back. We didn't like you know, we didn't do it in the bus because that was very inconvenient. Now there's people and now there's blood, we probably need five to 10 minutes to be like to process it in our own minds and what we would like, you know what our thoughts are, that were not in the moment they were. But then it's like, once we were in that news, that second environment got into the hotel room. It was a quick little one to two minute chat of Ah, I see my miscommunication. I see how it affected you. You see the miscommunication? Blah, blah, blah. Okay, cool. And now we're back to neutral. Now there's not that thought in the back of your head, like, oh, this person always does this. This person always nags me 10 times in a row about their idea, right? That would be his feedback about me. If we let these little things build up, so So that's a little a little story there but You know, all of this unprocessed, these tiny annoyances, these little letdowns these little miscommunications these like, Oh, I thought you're supposed to come home at this time for date night, and now I've been sitting around. And there's actually just a miscommunication on time. And it could just be like a, an explanation on that, and a clear and a sincere kindful I'm sorry, and communication the moment. And we process that. So when we don't process, these little annoyances they build up. And I'm sure you know this, now that we sit and think about it, but sometimes we just need this reminder about it is that they build up and eventually, there will be a tipping point where we now view our partner no longer with a kindful lens, we now view them with an annoyed lens. And the corporate there is not time is not how long you've been with the person, the corporate there, the problem causer there is not processing the small instances, the everyday annoyances that can build up. Now if you're not processing, the big annoyances, that's where relationships maybe fall apart in the short term, right, like we only lasted six months, a year, two years. But well, we have relationships that last, you know, 15 years and all sudden, we come to a whole bunch of impasses a whole bunch of stop ups. This is what's going on is that now our bowl of annoyances and frustrations and small angers has overflowed. And now everything starts at that point. Everything starts at that I'm already angry or annoyed with you point. If we are now in a general state of annoyance, because of all these little things, it dampens our energy, it dampens our energy to give our partner that smile, to give our partner that Hello, that greeting when they walk in the room or come home from work that good by kids when they leave in the morning. To text back right away to do the small things for them, like pour them a cup of coffee, or let them know when their phone is ringing. Or I don't know whatever small thing it is that you do. So as you know, from my from the episode Love action, I think that's what's called Love action. It's just a few episodes ago, I want to say nine or 10 Go check it out if you don't know. But from that episode we learned or we thought about how love is really like a verb. It's an action show like communicating or love is really a build up kind of like this ball that built up with a Dwayne says and now it's overflowed. Our love builds up and overflows but it's good when it overflows, right? That we want it to overflow, we want to be like a little waterfall rather than a cup that spill to make made a mess. I love that tip. But we want our love to just be a flow of beautiful actions, cascading and making rainbows and all those kinds of things. Right? Okay, so love is made up of all these little actions. And if I if we, if our little action stop, because we have this overall lens of annoyance or bothered or irksome, then we've really stopped the love. And that's the problem. It's not the miscommunications and the mistakes that stopped the love. It's not processing that kills it. Let me say that, again. It's not the miscommunications and the mistakes that stop the love. It's not processing them immediately. That kills it. So big right, that really sit there if you really think about it. And that and that's the thing. This is, you know, if this is what if you can stop and pause and see that this is what's going on. Right that this is a really, really big idea. And that's why I'm gonna we're gonna dive into a couple episodes on it, I think. Because it's a really big idea that lots of us don't notice, until we're on that until our bowl till our bowl of or Tiller cup of bothers has spilled over and made a mess on the table. And now we're just really, you know, teed off at it, right? So it's a big, big idea. We'll jump into a little bit more on the processing of thing so that we can keep that kind of wholeness lens for a partner, or that we could get our confidence lens back if you have lost or if you're sitting there listening and you're like, oh my gosh, this is what's happening. My like cup of annoyance, or I can tell that my partner's cup of annoyance has spilled everywhere. It spilled everywhere. And we don't have enough paper towels to clean it. Get up to two. I've got some paper towels for you. I have got a Costco sized pack of paper towel, who's gonna mop up that spill? We're gonna write that cup back up. And we're actually we're going to dry it out. We're going to wash it out, we could try it out, but put it in the cupboard. I don't know if this metaphor is working, but we're gonna put that cover on the cover. And where all the Are we ever gonna take it out once the wall? Oh, no, because if we're processing all of our oopss and our miscommunications and our Bloods and our things like that, I don't know if we're even going to need that cup. To put any bothers or annoyances in. Whoa, dude, that sounds pretty good. So, again, you know, if you were there, if your cup is built, that's what I'm here for. That's why you can book me for your one to one sessions. That's why you can you know, DM me on Instagram or on Tik Tok, get in touch with me, you can also contact me through my website, because that's what I am here for. Right? I'm here to help you with that. So and just so let's take a step with on that note, let's take a step back right now. Let's take a step back and think about what is your list? Is your list of labs right now that you can name quickly? Is that longer than your list of annoyances and bluff? And if we have, you know, a list of 10 loves and eight annoyances what might be still a little out of whack. So we can probably still work on that a little bit. And then, you know, think about that positive thing is are my lists out of whack? Are my lists a little imbalanced? Just because I am only seeing the annoyances of the bothers and the miscommunications. Right, and I could just do some reframing. I'm at that point, that beginning point where I could just do some reframing and start to pick up on the more positive things and the love things. And we can move forward or have my cups built as my lens dealt so. So focused, so overshadowed by the negative, that it's not possible for me to just reframe at this point in time. So I want you to pause and take a moment and think about that. And think about whether we are not processing our relationship oopss in the moment, or are we just not pausing to see the positives? Those are the two f we can all take a moment for processing or we can all take a moment to pause and see the positives. They will all be more sparked