In our fifth episode of The Hairy Chin Podcast, licensed mental health counselor and trauma therapist, Giulia Preziuso, joins me to talk about how current statistics state 70% of divorces are initiated by women. Giulia breaks down the underlying reasons behind this percentage, such as emotional disengagement and gender conditioning. She shares valuable insights from her work as a Gottman Certified Couples Counselor, explaining how early emotional trauma and societal conditioning impact emotional intelligence in relationships. We dive into the power of empathy, the importance of conflict resolution, and how couples can build a healthier relationship by learning key skills. Finally, Giulia offers tips on managing emotional disconnection, ways to communicate effectively with your partner and assessing your relationship with a Gottman Assessment. 

IN THIS EPISODE:

• [02:10] Emotional disengagement and a lack of emotional intelligence as primary reasons women initiate 70% of divorces.
• [04:49] Managing conflict by using soft versus harsh startups reduce emotional flooding.
• [06:17] How the Gottman Institute's relationship assessment predicts divorce with 91% accuracy, guiding couples toward therapy or uncoupling.
• [10:09] Resentment builds over time when couples don’t practice empathy and accountability.
• [11:09] Giulia discusses the Seven Year Itch and how couples can lose communication skills over time, contributing to emotional disconnection.
• [12:27] Male gender conditioning and how it suppresses empathy, creating barriers to emotional intelligence.
• [13:13] The concept of negative sentiment override and how it can destabilize relationships.
• [13:56] The power of small acts, like 30-second kisses, to help couples reconnect and create psychological safety.
• [18:16] Clarifying the terms gaslighting and narcissism and their role in relationships.
• [24:10] Understanding the Gottman metaphor of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: stonewalling, criticism, defensiveness, and contempt.
• [28:58] The importance of gratitude and creating a culture of appreciation in relationships.
• [32:20] Couples in emotionally intelligent, happy relationships live longer and experience better physical and mental health.
• [37:00] The phrase “happy wife, happy life”—is it true? Giulia discusses gender conditioning, intimacy, and happiness in relationships.
• [37:55] Relationships are built on transactions and negotiations, not unconditional love.
• [42:50] Perpetual problems: 70% of issues in relationships are recurring. Learning to manage, rather than solve them, is key to long-term success.

PLUCK THIS! SEGMENT

• Giulia Preziuso offers Self-Care Sundays every Sunday at 12pm EST on IG at @mydefiningmoment
• Giulia Preziuso, a Gottman Certified Couples Counselor, administers Gottman Assessments for couples. Schedule yours at https://definingmomentsllc.com/couples-therapy

TOP TAKEAWAYS:

• 70% of divorces are initiated by women, often due to emotional disengagement and lack of empathy from their partners.
• Effective communication in relationships requires empathy, accountability, and remorse.
• Gender conditioning from childhood shapes emotional intelligence in adulthood, with men often struggling to express empathy.
• 70% of problems in relationships are perpetual - managing, rather than solving, these problems is key to long-term success.
• Effective communication involves using 'I' statements instead of 'you' statements and avoiding blame and judgment.
• Happy, emotionally intelligent couples live longer and experience better mental and physical health.
• Seeking therapy can be a proactive measure to improve and strengthen a relationship.

RESOURCES:

• Giulia Preziuso (@mydefiningmoment) on Instagram
• Defining Moments LLC, Giulia Preziuso, LMHC
• "It's Your Mother's Fault, Now What?" by Giulia Preziuso
• The Gottman Institute
• Rutgers University Study
• Graph: Time Spent With Relationships By Age (USA)
• ASA Research: Women More Likely Than Men to Initiate Divorces

ABOUT THE HOST: Spencer Moore is a creative professional, creative wellness advocate, and host of The Hairy Chin Podcast. Originally from Raleigh, NC, Spencer has resided in Barcelona, Spain since 2016. Her warmth, humor and authenticity bring light to tough conversations about female wellness. Drawing from personal battles with chronic illness and early-stage breast cancer, she is committed to breaking taboos and empowering women in their health journeys. Spencer shares insights across various platforms, including her Podcast, YouTube channel, Instagram, Blog and website, all aimed at inspiring independent thinking and creative wellness.

Website: www.spencerita.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/spencerita_

Blog: www.spencerita.com/blog

Spencer Moore

Welcome to the Hairy Chin Podcast. I'm Spencer Moore, your host, here to explore the good, the bad, the hairy and the fabulous of female health. Join us for eye-opening conversations, myth-busting insights, and relatable stories that celebrate the realities of womanhood. And don't miss our Pluck This! segment for tangible takeaways from each episode. Life takes a village, let's do this together.

Spencer Moore

Hi, Giulia.

Giulia Preziuso

Hey, Spencer. Thanks for having me today.

Spencer Moore

Thank you so much for joining us onThe Hairy Chin Podcast. It's an honor to have you here. Giulia is a licensed mental health counselor and trauma therapist. You can find her in her private practice as well as on Instagram, giving amazing advice through memes, which I love so much.

Giulia Preziuso

Thank you.

Spencer Moore

I love that content. Giulia is also a Gottman Certified Couples Counselor, which we'll get into later about the Gottman Institute and what that all means. And you're also an author. She wrote a book called “It's Your Mother's Fault, Now What?”

Giulia Preziuso

Yes, correct. Thanks so much for having me.

Spencer Moore

And I really want to dig deep into what is going on with women. Why are women wanting to leave these marriages? It's 70%, it’s a big number!

Giulia Preziuso

It's based on emotional intelligence that's going to be the main factor of what causes women to go. It’s a lack of emotional intelligence in the relationship and with their partners. So emotional disengagement is going to be the leading cause that compels women to seek out divorce. And how do we get to a place of emotional disengagement? It goes back to gender conditioning and the differences between males and females beginning in early childhood. So you can probably remember being about six years old and being handed Barbie dolls and told to build your little Barbie family, and you're immediately put into this role of relationship. Whereas boys don't have the same privileges because it comes with a significant amount of stigma and the societal nonsense that really takes the emotions out of them. While we're being reinforced with relational skills, they're being encouraged not to have any.

In fact, there was a study that was done out of Rutgers University with good intentioned mothers who ignored their son's negative emotions 100% of the time, which says that males are not allowed to have negative emotions because then they're judged and threatened that they're going to be just like a girl. And that could be the worst thing for a boy.

So in relationship, men tend to be fixers. If you come home from a bad day and you just want to vent about your bad day, men immediately want to solve the problem that you're not asking for help on. And for a woman, this can become quite lonely, because what women are seeking is empathy and validation and recognition for the experience, and not necessarily the solution to the problem that they already know how to solve. So that is going to be your leading cause of emotional disengagement. And the reason why women are initiating divorce, right?

Spencer Moore

Becomes lonely. Yeah, I'm very lonely. And so I can imagine that as a therapist, you see examples of this type of emotional disengagement. And I'm wondering if you could break down what that looks like in a relationship. Are there cues, or are there ways that you can tell that somebody is really disengaging?

Giulia Preziuso

So what we're looking for is things like emotional flooding when couples are in a place of conflict more often than not, the way that they're managing conflict is causing more conflict in the relationship. So we refer to it as a harsh start up. And a harsh start up would be something like, you never do this for me, you always do that. Never and always. So when you start the conflict with you, you're going to create a defensive environment.

So, in the harsh start up, we have you statements, we have blaming, we have judgment that's going on and we don't have curiosity. So immediately when we're working with couples, we're trying to teach them conflict resolution skills so that it can be a softer start up.

You're allowed to describe your unhappiness or what it is that's bothering you, but it's the way that you go about it that's going to determine whether or not the relationship is going to succeed.

Spencer Moore

Right. And so these are really skill sets that couples can learn together to help communicate on the same level, where it's not blaming and shaming and these types of behaviors, but it's more kind of finding a way to reach a goal together, which would be better communication.

Giulia Preziuso

Well, thanks to the Gottman Institute, John and Julie Gottman have created an assessment which breaks down a relationship in 40 different categories and has a 91% accuracy for predicting divorce. So, as a clinician who is trained under the Gottman Institute, I will give the assessment to the client, and when I get the results, I immediately know whether or not couples counseling is going to be viable. And there are some markers that we're looking for in the assessment immediately to determine if we should even be doing couples counseling, or if we should be gently uncoupling them, best that we can, given that they're participating in that process, too.

Spencer Moore

Right. And so tell me a little bit about the Gottman Institute. It was started by the Doctors Gottman. But let's talk a little bit about that.

Giulia Preziuso

While John and Julie Gottman are an amazing couple, they're married and they started the Gottman Institute, I believe it's about 40 years now, if not longer. And they created the Love Laboratory, where couples would come in and they would observe them as well as put leads on them so that they can monitor physiological changes during the discussion.

Spencer Moore

And you see that this 91% can show the viability of a relationship, this Gottman assessment. Now, what happens when you find out that a couple is in that 9% that's not viable? How do you deal with that as a counselor?

Giulia Preziuso

There's certain elements in the assessment. There's a section called the SEL90. And this assessment breaks them down individually with mental health. So if there's underlying issues of unresolved trauma, if there's depression it's also assessing for domestic violence not just a physical level of domestic violence, but also an emotional level of domestic violence.

As a clinician, my job is to provide the psychoeducation around what you're doing that is creating an abusive environment and why an abusive environment cannot be salvaged. So instead, I would be working with them individually to learn more about them on an individual level and then to assess the degree of the emotional discord. Or is it that a level of abuse and if it is at a level of abuse and couples counseling is contraindicated for those people?

And I will say the couples that seek me out, I feel from what I've seen, many of them are looking for permission to go. Yeah. And they don't know that what they're in, that the environment is sick, that they are sick in the environment and that they are causing each other to become sicker. So I'll come in very gently to be able to say that sometimes the greatest act of love is for me to say goodbye to you.

Spencer Moore

Oh, I think that's a really nice, a nice way to put it, because I think that when you're in a relationship that's not working, it's, it's quite overwhelming. You lose all of that outside perspective of realizing that there are other, other ways to move forward in your life and that it is okay to, to let go. I think especially in marriage, you make these commitments, and breaking that commitment can be a really heavy, heavy burden.

Giulia Preziuso

Sure.

Spencer Moore

So I think it's very nice to be able to really have somebody that's neutral, that can see the whole picture from the outside and help you make the best decision for, for your life and for the partner's life.

Giulia Preziuso

Correct. And I've helped couples overcome betrayal, infidelity and some really major things. But what happens within a relationship after 5, 10, 20, 30 years is that there's a significant amount of resentment, and bitterness that is building up because the communication is not effective. Going back to the emotional intelligence piece, it requires the ability to have empathy for your partner that must have felt so and then fill in the blank. It requires an ability to have accountability. I'm sorry for my role in that. I'm responsible for what happened. It requires the ability to show remorse. And so when we have couples that struggle with remorse, with accountability and with empathy, it's like being in a relationship with a stuffed animal.

Spencer Moore

Yeah, it's a good way to put it. What do you what do you think about this “Seven Year Itch” in relationships and marriages? When you get to seven years then things shift? Can you tell me about that?

Giulia Preziuso

I mean, it is true. I do see people coming in at the “Seven Year Itch because” they're on the brink of what are we going to do? And not having built the communication skills or the conflict resolution skills necessary for a viable long term relationship, then we have the added stressors of starting a family and what happens to the relationship when children are now brought into the picture? And how many times, especially husbands, feel deprioritized in their marriages. And now there's an added level of resentment that's appropriate because they feel deprioritized. However, oftentimes they don't get the empathy from their spouse, from their wife, from their spouses. To be able to say, I can imagine you might be feeling a little left out right now. Being able to put yourself in your partner's shoes is an important element of ensuring that a relationship can stand the test of time.

Spencer Moore

Right? And do you consider that this type of empathy is that really becoming emotionally intelligent? Is time developing a sense of empathy for other people?

Giulia Preziuso

It is. And what I see, because particularly with males, when we're talking about, again, male gender conditioning and how empathy is essentially beaten out of them from a very early age. So they have empathy on a cognitive level where they can cognitively understand, but emotionally there's a disconnect. So there's limitations from my experience, what I've seen working with men to emotionally connect to empathy, they can do it cognitively, but emotionally they struggle. So in couples counseling, I'm often giving the husband the script of how to reply with empathic statements. And that might feel a little disingenuous initially. But when you have no foundation for empathic statements because empathy wasn't extended to you, it's very difficult for you to extend it to someone else. And so then we get into this state of negative sentiment override, which means when I look at you, I think the worst first. And it's really hard in that case, for me to help them to take away the negative sentiment override, to balance it out and not think the worst first when they see their partners. And this is a lot of meta communication. It's everything. That said, before you open your mouth, how do you greet your partner when they come home from work? I mean, the Gottmans recommend 30 second kisses, holding your partner and kissing for 30. That's an eternity!

Spencer Moore

I’ve heard of 6 second kisses. I've heard of that to kind of connect. But 30 seconds is very long!

Giulia Preziuso

So let's start at six, even six is an eternity. But the whole intention is really turning towards your partner for that moment. And I always encourage my couples to take a full breath with each other. When you embrace inhaling, exhaling and holding each other, trying to co regulate your nervous system so that there's emotional and psychological safety that's being reinforced. When we come back together.

Spencer Moore

Do you do you find, because I think about, you know, you coming home from work and then taking your this moment to have a deep breath and a hug with your partner? I mean, some people come home to animals jumping on them, to children jumping on them to, you know, all of these things. Do you find that couples aren't prioritizing being couples?

Giulia Preziuso

Yeah.

And that a lot of this is is really the fact that it's just we're so busy in our lives and there's just so much going on that there's just a lack of prioritization, there's a lack of prioritization due to the obscene amount of distraction. And without interaction, we have no direction. And instead we need to remember that it needs to be our spouse first and then the kids, because those kids will go off someday and it will be you and your spouse.

So prioritizing the relationship is very important. Modeling for your children as well is very important to the health of your relationship long term, right?

Spencer Moore

You had mentioned that you have kind of descriptive, empathic statements for some of the men and women, I would imagine both that come in. Can you give us some examples of some of these statements that you might, share with your clients?

Giulia Preziuso

That's what I'm trying to teach is relational recovery skills, because oftentimes the couples don't have relational recovery skills. They didn't watch parents who showed accountability for difficulties and conflict, and they didn't see parents that showed remorse either. Right?

Spencer Moore

Right. Now, you talk about gaslighting. Can you explain? You said that it's an often misunderstood term and it really is a trending word. It's been trending for a few years now. And, you know, I think gaslighting is trending now. I think narcissists is trending. You know, they have this person, oh, they're a narcissist. So I would love if you can kind of talk about those two terms and kind of how maybe they are misinterpreted or misunderstood.

Giulia Preziuso

Sure. So gaslighting is whenever I, if you come to me with a grievance and you say, I feel really disappointed that you didn't take out the garbage last night, and then instead of taking accountability, I began to defend, deny, deflect, avoid, or otherwise scramble the current moment by saying, well, you said you were going to take out the garbage. What about last night when you said that you were going to do the dishes and you didn't do the dishes? So now we lose the plot? I feel disappointed about the garbage last night. So defend, deny, deflect, avoid, or otherwise shift from the accountability in the present moment. That's gaslighting. And nobody's waking up in the morning doing that intentionally. It's a natural reaction. It's a defense mechanism that's built in in almost every human.

Now the switching over to narcissism for a moment, it's like the narcissist in our society today has been some glorified villain. And really, the narcissist is not so much a bad guy as they are a blind guy or girl because narcissism, finally, women, it's equal, it's 50/50 when it comes to narcissism. Women are as narcissistic as men, and narcissism is a emotional developmental delay. So chronologically you might be dealing with a 28, 32, 45, 54 year old, male or female. But emotionally, they're stunted between 18 months old and eight years old, at best.

Spencer Moore

Wow, that's quite delayed, right?

Giulia Preziuso

Right. So they're doing an interpretation of the environment, they're assessing and scanning their environment without checking for understanding because again, that wasn't modeled. Empathy needs to be modeled in childhood. In order for a child to have empathy and curiosity for their partner. So your partner comes home and they look visibly upset, and then your response is, here we go again, versus, you seem bothered. Do you need some space to talk about it? It's an attack versus curiosity and a compassionate environment where there is emotional and psychological safety for you. Instead, we see the expressed emotion. We see the facial expressions, we hear the huffing and puffing, and then we have our own reaction to it versus approaching our partners with a level of curiosity and seeking to understand again, turning towards versus turning away by saying, here you go again, always in a bad mood, nothing's ever good enough. That sort of thing. Right?

Spencer Moore

Of course. Right.

Giulia Preziuso

Going back to narcissism for a moment too, is to understand that narcissism is a post traumatic response to childhood. It's a post traumatic response. So every one of us will go through a narcissistic phase during development, where it's our parents responsibility to help to teach us that the world does not revolve around us, and how we make others feel is important. Again, this requires parents who are emotionally intelligent and emotionally attuned to their children and emotional attunement is something that I see lacking in parents today, in marriages today, in individuals today. Because attunement would mean, for example, if you grew up in a household where there was contempt or argumentative states and as a child you're going to freeze, you don't know what happened, you don't know why they're acting that way, you just know that those people are responsible for your safety. So immediately it begins to generate fear inside of you, of abandonment, of death for a child and the parent is responsible for attuning themselves to the child after whatever conflict to be able to say, I'm really sorry, you must have felt so scared when Mommy was yelling at Daddy or when Dad was yelling at Dad. You must have felt so worried. That is how you give your children the emotional language to determine what it is that they're already feeling inside. They don't have vocabulary for that. So when we skip over emotional to admit we're really doing a disservice to individuals because they're trying to be in relationship without being able to consider how my behavior must have made you feel.

Spencer Moore

Right. And so that really goes back to the emotional intelligence and the empathy of trying to put yourself in somebody else's shoes.

Giulia Preziuso

Absolutely.

Spencer Moore

Right. It’s so interesting. So we're talking about the Gottman Institute and the Doctor's Gottman, and they have developed this metaphor that is called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Now, it's a biblical metaphor that comes from the New Testament. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were depicting the end of times in the New Testament. What the Doctor's Gottman have done is they use this metaphor to describe communication styles that, according to their research, can predict the end of a relationship. So let's talk about the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse.

Giulia Preziuso

In the Four Horsemen, we're looking for contempt, we're looking for criticism, we're looking for stonewalling, and we're looking for defensiveness. When we see those four elements present within the way that couples communicate or manage conflict, we know that they're headed in a bad direction. Because participation with the Four Horsemen, particularly contempt and criticism and stonewalling, is a form of emotional abuse. Let's take stonewalling, for example. Stonewalling is a form of emotional abuse. Stonewalling is when your partner completely shuts down, doesn't speak to you for the rest of the day, or the rest of the week, won't make eye contact with you. That's a really erosive form of abuse for a person. So we see that when we're involved in stonewalling behavior, then there is no room for remedy. If your partner shuts down because they're overwhelmed by the circumstances or because they don't know how to communicate, that's another area where you're going to create more conflict in the relationship, and a lack of communication is stonewalling.

Additionally, criticism, criticism of your partner is going to, again, create conflict in the relationship. You know, I have a husband who says, you know, we were going out to dinner, I planned everything, and I come downstairs and she says, you're wearing that? Immediately he feels judged, he feels criticized. And now he doesn't want to go.

Spencer Moore

He feels hurt.

Giulia Preziuso

He feels hurt. And that's the part, too. It's like men have feelings, too. And we also need to be emotionally intelligent enough to be able to see how our behavior is impacting them. Because oftentimes, from what I see, there is expectations that are built in that haven't been communicated. I expect you to do A, B, and C but I'm not going to tell you, you should just know. And that's oftentimes with men too.

I had a case once where the female, you know, females have been given permission to rearrange the house whenever you feel like it. You might want to move the couch around, change the furniture around without consenting with your spouse or your significant other. And there was a case where she would, every weekend, move something. She'd move his dresser. She moved the couch. She'd moved the coffee table. And instead of communicating how uncomfortable that made him feel, he left the relationship all together.

Spencer Moore

Wow, wow. So there was just a complete fear of just even having the conversation. He just left.

Giulia Preziuso

Right, because consent is important both ways, all the time, in all things. Are you okay? How would you feel about this picture? Oftentimes when men and women move in together and this is in all different relationships to not just between men and women, but, you know, men are given the basement for their man cave.

Spencer Moore

The man cave, yeah.

Giulia Preziuso

The man cave, that's where they can hang their pictures of sports memorabilia. They don't have a say in what goes on the wall in the living room and feel very much not considered in their relationship, and it's in consideration that's going to create bitterness and contempt and resentment. Right, because they feel taken advantage of. And then we have, you know, the lack of a culture of gratitude and appreciation is what we teach. And in the Gottman Method, nobody owes you anything, but you expect your partner to do X, Y, and Z because they're your partner. However, even in the basics of washing the dishes or taking out the trash, or getting the children ready or walking the dog, there's room for gratitude and appreciation. I'm so thankful that you're here to help. Thank you for taking out the trash last night. And sometimes I'll hear couples say, well, why should I? Why should I thank them for doing what they're supposed to do? Because, again, nobody owes you anything. So we're creating a culture of gratitude and appreciation whereby I'm noticing the little things because the little things are what help keep the connection stable on a day to day basis.

Spencer Moore

Right. One thing that I've thought about that I think is interesting is that, you know, and entering into a relationship when you're younger or just even a new relationship. I think that there's a lot of times that you want to present your best self, or you want to kind of find harmony in this, you know, really just deep in love moment of just that, that that's kind of flooding in of all these feelings. And so maybe you don't set boundaries at that time, at the beginning that might be really important to you, or maybe you don't know your boundaries even at that time. And then as relationships progress, these things that really might bother you or trigger you, it's like you said, this resentment, it just builds and builds over time. And so maybe at the beginning, you know, you take out the trash because it's what you do. But then all of a sudden now you're the only person taking out the trash, always, because you always did it before. And so I think that these conversations of saying, look, maybe this has been the way it's been for even 15 years of marriage, but now I want to talk about a change.

Giulia Preziuso

Right, I want to acknowledge you. I want you to feel seen. I want you to feel valued. Right. It's very right. Again, like you said, you're just expected to take out the garbage and, like, why should I give him a cookie for taking out the garbage? It's like, why?

Spencer Moore

Yeah, yeah, it's our garbage.

Giulia Preziuso

It's our garbage. It's our laundry, it's ours. And so in the spirit of it's ours and when we do something for our relationship, we should show gratitude and appreciation for that. Because again, nobody owes you anything. No, no.

Spencer Moore

You know, I, I there are these graphs that I thought are really interesting and I'll add the link in my show notes. But there's some studies that have shown graphs over time of who you spend your most time with. So as a child, when you're young, it's your family, you're being raised by your caretakers, and then it's more social. And then as you get older, it's really with your spouse, it's with your life partner. If you don't, you know, whoever you spend the most time with, you know, in a marriage, for example, they, you spend like 70% of your time with that person.

It is a really large number, a percentage of time. And it takes me back to this, really common phrase that says that you are the culmination of the five people you spend the most time with, and your partner is one of those people. And so I really believe that choosing your partner is one of the most important choices that you make in your life and putting effort into that. So I think it goes back to really understanding the priorities of your partner needs to be your number one priority, because everything else comes from that relationship.

Giulia Preziuso

And also I don't know that couples understand the impact on their physical and emotional health. Couples that are in happy relationships, sustainable relationships, they live ten years longer. There's benefits on their immune system. They report less likely to have anxiety and depression or suicidal tendencies. Longevity is a byproduct of a good relationship, right? People are not seeing that and they're sitting in the negative sentiment override, which is wreaking havoc on their internal system, their immune system, their adrenal systems, and their mental health is suffering because there's no communication. And we're stuck, like most couples describe, like we're like two ships passing in the night, you know, especially when they're raising children. And that's another element to be mindful of too, is that you're going to see many different versions of your partner throughout your lifetime. Can you build the psychological defenses and the distress tolerance and the frustration tolerance to be able to be deprioritized when a newborn is brought home? I mean, we have courses that we teach on bringing Baby Home by the Gottman Institute as well, and how to adjust to bringing the baby home and what that might feel like for your partners, and being able to have the space to communicate that. Again, it's not blaming. There's a difference between blaming and complaining.

Spencer Moore

Right. And in fact, I just saw, Instagram reel on the Gottman, Instagram page and it was talking about men saying that when they had a child with their with their partner, that nobody told them how much they would miss their partner because the attention would be on the baby, and that they really kind of mourned that their, their marriage, that they had had prior to the child, because the child changed everything. And she was talking about reprioritizing and really finding time to connect as a couple, to share these moments in life that are outside of, you know, the new baby.

Giulia Preziuso

Correct. And also not catastrophizing it. It's not forever. It's for right now, particularly mothers with their first child. The first born is always parented differently than the second or the third. And again, it's having the psychological flexibility to accept your partner and all the phases and versions of them that you're going to meet. If you're trying to spend 50 years together or 60 years together, right? Can you make space for that without catastrophizing? And you used to be so fun versus we need more fun, I've hired a babysitter Friday night. It's going to be you and me. So being able to have solution focused approaches to what's causing the disconnect, which is raising another human right. And then being able to have the space, this is why, you know, I have couples that do such an amazing job with communication that I am like, wow, you guys are you got it. But then as I continue to work with them a little more, I think some of that should be saved for your therapist. Your partner doesn't necessarily have the space for all of the emotional pain that you're in because we brought home a newborn. And so it's also diversifying your support system, because in our culture today, we expect our spouses to be, you know, the best cook, our best friend, our life partner, our workout buddy, our writer.

Spencer Moore

I mean, there's still an intimacy. And I think that intimacy can get completely lost in the shuffle because that's one of the foundational aspects of a marriage or a partnership like that.

Giulia Preziuso

Correct, yeah. And we know that intimacy does not mean sex. For many men, intimacy equals sex. For women, intimacy equals validation. Empathy, acknowledgment, it's soft skills. And for men, they feel desired through the act of sex. Women feel desire when you connect with them on an emotional level. How did that make you feel? That must have felt so hard, that sort of thing. And where men, they're having a hard time with that part. Right?

Spencer Moore

Right. I wanted to ask you about the, you know, we're talking about women leading in divorce 70% of the time. And so this kind of, cliche term “happy wife, happy life.” You know, what pressure does that put on men and are men? Just like what you said about the man just leaving the relationship because the wife was rearranging the furniture too often, you know, is it just if the wife is happy and you're miserable, then it just ends or the wife leaves. What do you think about that?

Giulia Preziuso

I hear it all the time too, “happy wife, happy life” and also happiness. What is a man's role in creating happiness for the spouse? So we have to look again at gender conditioning. A man's role is to provide, to protect, there's no emotional intimacy. There's no emotional connection in the rules that they were trained on. So men are going out and they're providing and they're coming home, and they manage the house, and they're doing the repairs. And they feel that if I'm bringing home money, I'm providing, if I'm fixing the leaky faucet, I am providing. And as a result of that, there should be an exchange of services. And then we start thinking, well, I don't want my relationship to feel transactional. Well, I have to tell you, relationships are a series of negotiations and contracts. I do this and you do that. It's not a foundation for unconditional love. I cannot love you unconditionally. Unconditional love comes from two places, whatever higher power you might subscribe to, to you and a parent to a child. Those are the only two places where we're going to see unconditional love. Otherwise, we have to take this in a more corporate approach to our relationship and develop the contracts and negotiations necessary for a sustainable relationship instead of feeling like it's too transactional.

Spencer Moore

Right, yeah. I think that's one of the things that I, I learned from you years ago, of unconditional love. And I think that, you know, if you have any feeling of, of any void or if you have any feeling of, of a well needing to be filled, I think that it's very easy to go to relationships, to look for them to fill that well for you. And it's really important to see that that's not the point of the relationship. People are not, you know, relationships are not meant to fix the other person. They're meant to coexist and be together and go through life together. I think that's very important.

Giulia Preziuso

And what I'm also seeing is the parentalification of one partner or the other. Right? So the husband is the father who takes care of the wife and makes sure that the bills are paid and this is done and she has food and it's not hot. And similarly, the wife takes on a maternal role where she's calling to make his doctor's appointments. And did you go pick up your medication at the pharmacy? Are you hungry? And again, we have to learn how to maintain the tension in a relationship so that we're continuing to pursue each other. And maintaining the tension long term requires skills, right?

Spencer Moore

Right. And these are types of skills that couples can get in couples therapy that can help them communicate better and coexist better.

Giulia Preziuso

My favorite couples are the ones that come to me and the relationship is great. We have a wonderful relationship, we just want to make sure that there's nothing else that we could be doing. And that's why they don't get to the Seven Year Itch, because they're being proactive in the process of ensuring that they know what the communication skills are that are required in order to have a long term, sustainable and happy, more often than not, relationship. So skills are important.

Spencer Moore

Do you find a lot of couples come to you for preventative measures, is that a common thing?

Giulia Preziuso

It's a small percentage, but it's enough to make me happy. Yeah.

Spencer Moore

No, I think it's great. I was I was kind of just curious because I think, wow, that's that's very emotionally intelligent to say, like, we're on a good track, let's stay on course and let's make sure we have the skills because, you know, for me, life throws things that you all the time, and then whatever comes at you is something that you have to approach together with your partner in a new way to figure out how to navigate, because it's not the status quo. Life is changing all the time. So your skill sets have to change the percentage of you know, what you put in and what's given shifts every day. So I think that to see that you can prepare a bit is really nice. I think that's very strong.

Giulia Preziuso

And going back to the percentages and equality, it's important to understand that equality is not 50/50.

Spencer Moore

Right.

Giulia Preziuso

It's not going to be 50/50. And sometimes there's going to be an imbalance. And it's not going to be you know our most valuable resources that we have our time, energy and money. And those are three equally valuable resources. So I may put more time here, you may put more money there, it's not going to be 50/50. 50/50 is going to break your heart, it's not going to look that way. So it's the understanding of what would happen if it's 60/40. What happens if it's 70/30. If you have a spouse who is working 80 hours a week, they're not going to have the same amount of time to invest into the relationship. That doesn't make them a bad person. That's one of our stressors, that's one of our variables that we have to manage. So it's important to understand that 70% of problems in every relationship are perpetual problems. That means it's the same thing over and over again. And when you come to counseling, I am not here to solve your perpetual problems. I am here to help you identify the perpetual problems so we can create a management system around it, and not that we're going to solve it.

So pick your person, because this is also why we're initiating divorce. We think that the grass is greener on the other side. And it's not, it's going to be greener where it's watered and where it's tended to, and where there's an understanding that we have this perpetual problem of you never putting the toothpaste cap back on the toothpaste. So the way that we mitigate that is by buying the toothpaste that has the cap attached. Right? So there's ways to solve the perpetual problem versus coming home with the same Colgate.

Spencer Moore

Right. Yeah. It's very smart. Right.

Giulia Preziuso

How do we solve how we manage versus how do we solve? And how do we understand that? Again, pick whatever person you want and identify 70% of the perpetual problems that you will have to learn how to coexist in, because there is no solution for them. That's relationships.

Spencer Moore

Yeah, yeah. It's great. It's great. So, the closing segment of our podcast is called Pluck This! and this is where we have tangible takeaways for the audience members that they can leave listening to this podcast, and they can go out and make changes if they want to, and do something. So I'm really excited to share your tangible takeaways from our episode. One of them that I love so much and I have been a part of is your Self-Care Sundays on Instagram. I love these sessions that you have on Sundays at noon, Eastern Standard Time. And these are sessions that you give to your audience. And, you have live sessions on, on Instagram. They're a really beautiful way to connect to the community and to your information, and advice to, to your audience there.

Giulia Preziuso

I want to provide an environment where people can come and ask questions with someone who can give them a perspective. I never promise to have the truth or their truth, or any sort of truth. I'm here to offer a perspective which usually helps to soften whatever pain that they're in. Because most people have a very rigid way of looking at their problems, it's very black or white. So my objective in offering Self Care Sundays is, how can I create more gray in your life so that you can settle down a bit and be able to zoom out and see this relationship, or whatever your issue is, from a different lens that might help you to feel a little bit better today. That's the beauty of Self-Care Sunday.

Spencer Moore

Yeah, and I think it's a beautiful space. And I also think that maybe it can soften people up to the idea of speaking with a therapist. I know that, you know, culturally, sometimes there can be stigmas around men going to therapy or just in general. And so I think it's quite nice to get an idea of who you are and, and kind of understand what the vibe is.

Giulia Preziuso

And the stigma, the stigma continues, which is why couples are waiting seven years. Because if couples were to come into counseling before marriage or six months after marriage, then there's this fear that's generated inside of them is, oh, no, we have problems. Oh, no, we're not supposed to be together. It's immediate catastrophizing of what it must mean if we need to have a coach, a relationship coach in our lives. So sometimes I reframe the therapist to let me help you coach the relationship differently because you don't have the skills. And if you want to be good players on this team together, then you're going to need a coach from time to time to teach you the things that you never learned. And that's not your fault. And so I think if we can continue to look at it as an opportunity for learning and improving and growing as individuals, that's the best thing I can do for you in a relationship is to continue to work on myself. And the best thing you can do for you, for me in a relationship is to continue to work on yourself. And so that's the objective of coming to a counselor. Oftentimes, couples don't want to come to counseling because they don't want somebody else, they feel like they're going to be ganged up upon, or you're just going to air all of our dirty laundry, and then the therapist is going to take sides. And I just need to remind you, I'm not Judge Judy - I'm not here to tell you who's guilty and who's not guilty. I want you both to be able to see how you are contributing to the dynamics that are creating conflict in the relationship, because too many couples become me versus you, and not me and you versus whatever issue is in front of us. So we start to turn on each other instead of turning towards each other and working on whatever stressors in front of us. So that's the objective in counseling is to help you promote an environment where it's me and you and whatever this thing is that keeps tripping us up, right.

Spencer Moore

I think I think that's wonderful. I'm such a proponent of therapy and of counseling. I think it's such a beautiful way to really help navigate life, because it's like you say, you're a coach, you're you're a guide to help and it's beautiful when you have that support. It really is. Right.

Giulia Preziuso

Yes. Yes. Correct.

Spencer Moore

And I will have all of this linked in the show notes. So there'll be clickable links for the audience. Do you want to describe just for a minute about this assessment and what it entails? Is it multiple choice? Is it an essay? What is the assessment?

Giulia Preziuso

The assessment is multiple choice. And it breaks down the relationship in 40 different categories. And there's also a section in the assessment where you can add additional information for the clinicians eyes only. We are not going to print it out and give it to your partner so that they can see what you said about them. What we're going to do is use that as a diagnostic tool. It would be like me handing you an MRI and telling you to figure it out. You're not going to get the MRI, I'm going to review it, and then I'm going to come back and describe the strengths in the relationships and the areas of opportunities in order to make it a more fulfilling relationship for both parties. However, if there are markers, there's two specific markers that we're looking for, and that is the satisfaction of the relationship - is anybody having one foot out the door already and is there commitment to the relationship? If those two markers come up red for a couple, couples counseling is not going to be the best bet for them, right? Right.

Spencer Moore

Okay. And we've talked a lot in this session about emotional maturity and emotional intelligence. And you have written a beautiful book called “It's Your Mother's Fault, Now What?” and so if people want to kind of go back to the beginning and think about maybe how they didn't have their emotional intelligence, that was really deep seeded for them as children, like you had mentioned then that's a great book for them to start with.

Giulia Preziuso

It is because there's a section in the book called Trauma and Relational Drama to understand how unprocessed childhood trauma is going to create trauma and trauma in your relationships as an adult. So it really helps to piece it all together, because oftentimes people don't remember their childhoods or don't think they were that bad, because they're always equating trauma with having a frying pan hit them in the head, versus understanding that trauma is also your reaction to an event that can be a very benign event. Let's use a fire alarm goes off in a school. The sixth grader gets out, no problem. The eighth grader is traumatized because of the fire alarm. It’s the same fire alarm, but it's their response to the fire alarm. And what happens within their nervous systems that creates a traumatic response we’re too busy judging trauma to determine if it's bad enough to qualify and I'm saying that's none of your business.

Spencer Moore

Yeah, I think that's great. I think that's so great. Well, we've had we've gone through a lot in this session. It's been so nice this episode, I love everything that you've shared. You're such an expert on this and I'm so happy to have been able to kind of pick at your mind. Do you have any final words for our listeners, any kind of last pieces of advice that you would give to two couples?

Giulia Preziuso

I would like you to pay attention to the way that you're initiating conflict. And there's a difference between a harsh start up and a soft start up. And so instead of using you statements, I want you to consider what it would be like to say I statement, I feel disappointment, I feel let down, I felt dismissed versus you always do this to me. Additionally, I want you to know there's a difference between blaming and complaining and also judging. Instead of judging can you describe without the emotion what you're experiencing? Those are the types of things that can create a softer start up, which would create an environment for a more amicable conversation about difficult things so that you're not attacking each other and then bringing in the three decades of resentment that you've built up for each other.

Spencer Moore

I think it's amazing advice, you always have amazing advice. I've loved feeling your advice for years, and I will continue. And I'm just so appreciative of your time today. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah. And like I said, you can find Giulia on Instagram, you can find her on her website, schedule a Gottman Assessment with her, you can find her book, “It's Your Mother’s Fault, Now What?” and all of these will be linked in the show notes.

Giulia Preziuso

Thank you. Yeah. You're welcome.

Spencer Moore

So wonderful.

Spencer Moore

Thanks for joining us on The Hairy Chin Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please head over to www.spencerita.com to join our creative community. I'm Spencer Moore reminding you that knowledge isn't just powerful, it's empowering. When you know better, you do better. So stay strong, keep going, and I'll see you next time.