Ep 151. How to Have Better Relationships

I’m Kym Showers and this is Reinvented After 40, episode number 151, How to Have Better Relationships.

Welcome to the Reinvented After 40 podcast. I am your host, Kym Showers, and I’m a certified life coach for women in the second half of life. Each week I’ll bring you direct advice and inspiring, practical wisdom to help you live your very best life and create a future you’re absolutely obsessed with. It’s going to be fun, let’s get started.

Hey my friends, how are you today? I am recording this on Thursday, July 25th, 2024. This comes out on August 1st, you guys, that’s insane. How are we already in August? Happy August, my friend. This is the week of my 40th wedding anniversary to my husband, Jeffrey Allen Showers.

So, this is very appropriate, I wasn’t even thinking about the title of this. But I have been talking so much about relationships on my Instagram last week and how I’ve created such easy relationships in my life.

So, I just want to pass on this information to you and especially in my marriage, my marriage feels super easy to me. I have so uncomplicated my life by creating a very healthy, happy relationship with myself, a better relationship with myself. And the healthier I’ve gotten, the healthier my relationships have gotten. So, this week we celebrate 40 years being married, which is a huge celebration, a huge accomplishment, not like we’re having a big party, we are not. We’re having a big party in our hearts, in our souls, in our minds. We’re high fiving each other every single day.

But wow, it’s hard to believe we’re even here, that how quick 40 years has gone by really, truly feels almost impossible, but here we are, and it feels so right. It feels so easy. It feels safe. It feels fun. It feels happy. It feels light-hearted. And it’s everything I didn’t even know was possible for me when we got married. I didn’t have an example of this kind of relationship. And I can honestly tell you, I have changed so much. Obviously we’re two totally different people than the two little babies, the two little baby people that we married.

Jeff was only 21 years old when I married him. I was 23. I am a year and a half older than him. Obviously back then, it felt a little bit odd, a little bit big of a deal but now, of course, it doesn’t matter at all. And actually, I’m glad to be married to a younger fella because I feel so young. But we have definitely reinvented our relationship over and over and over again in the last 40 years. We actually dated four years before we got married. So, we have been together for 44 years. Wow, crazy.

Oh, wait, let me tell you, August 4th, 2024, August 4th, 2024 which is this weekend is our anniversary. So we’re going to celebrate this weekend which I’m so excited about. We’ll probably just go have a fun dinner. We’ll go hiking. We’ll do our normal stuff because every day feels so much like a celebration where we live and our lifestyle. It feels very much like a party all of the time, a working party, which I think is the best. This is what we both choose. But we got married August 4th, 1984 in Bakersfield, California.

And we have grown, grown, grown, grown, grown and created so much in our lives together. And I’m so super inspired by us. I’m super proud of us. I am very grateful that we’re still together and truly happy and truly thriving, and it’s just the best. I highly recommend it. You can start right now, but let me tell you what makes for a better relationship. A better you, a healthier you, a happier you makes for a better relationship, a happier relationship, a healthier relationship with the people you love the most, not only with them but truly with everyone.

So that’s step number one is just to work on yourself. You don’t even have to leave your spouse. You don’t have to leave your partner. You don’t have to leave your friends. I mean, none of that has to happen unless you choose to do that. That’s totally fine. But the work on yourself is going to change all of your relationships and it’s going to lighten everything up. It’s going to feel so much easier, so much less complicated, so much better. And you’re going to be so in your own energy that you’re going to be vibing on a different level.

And instead of people pleasing, instead of feeling responsible for your partner, for your spouse, instead of feeling responsible for your grown children and their feelings and their situations, which you are not and never have been. You’re only responsible for you and that’s a work worth doing and that’s where you start when you want to have better relationships. You realize you alone, no one else is responsible for you. Nothing anyone does or says in your life can hurt you unless you allow it.

I mean, you have to agree with what they’re saying for it to hurt you, or whatever they’re doing, you’re allowing that in your life. So, I promise you, my friend, when you start working on yourself and you make new agreements with yourself, tell yourself the truth. Stop taking things personally. Stop making assumptions. Always show up as your best self. Always do your best. Make those new agreements with you and practice those like it’s your job, every single day you will have better relationships.

So, you’re not thinking anymore about anyone else. You get your brain back to you. Look at what you’re thinking. Think about what you’re thinking. Look at how you’re feeling. Feel the feelings you’re feeling. Look at how you’re showing up to your life. Watch it like it’s a movie, watch yourself. Get out of everyone else’s business. Get out of your husband’s business. Stop making him wrong. Stop letting him be the problem. Stop making your kids wrong. Stop making your kids’ lives a problem. They’re not your problem to solve.

None of these people outside of us, are not problems for us to solve. We’re not here to make their lives better. We’re here to solve our own problems and to make our lives better. And when we learn how to do that, which I’ve learned how to do, it has been an incredible 360 degree move for me and it’s been in these last seven years the most since I’ve learned this work. Everything in my life, all of my relationships, have gotten so much better. I mean, it’s really like a miracle. I don’t think about it anymore.

I don’t think about people the same way anymore because I have learned how to just be responsible for me. And when you’re not trying to get someone to change, when you’re not trying to get someone to feel better, when you’re not trying to get someone not to think negatively about you or when you stop trying to get people to like you or to include you.

When you stop operating out of fear because that’s what all of that is, is operating out of fear. You’re motivated out of scarcity and you’re afraid that something’s going to go wrong and you’re going to be the cause of it or you could have stopped it or you’re responsible for it.

And I just decided, my husband gets to live the life he wants to live. My kids get to live the life they want to live. And I stopped making them a problem. They are not a problem. And I also stopped trying to be the wife that Jeff needs me to be. I’ve stopped trying to be the mom to my grown kids that they need me to be. I’ve stopped trying to be the friend that my friends need me to be.

And the whole reason I was doing all of that is because I didn’t have the love and trust and confidence that I needed so that I could just show up as the wife that I needed me to be. And as the mom, I needed me to be. And as the friend I needed me to be. And be so proud of her and be so proud of me and love who I’m being and feel so safe in the position that I’ve decided, being the person I’ve decided to be. So that solved for the gaps in my own life.

So, I was needing Jeff to fill in the gaps in my own life. I was needing him to show up for me in a certain way so that I could feel better about myself, so I could feel loved, so I could feel worthy, so I could feel encouraged, so I could feel confident. And he was really bad at it. Men are bad at that. They’re incapable of giving us what we need. That is our job. That is my job. When I heard, I don’t know if it was my coach, it might have been one of my coaches said that, “That is your job to give yourself what you need.”

It was like a little light bulb just came on in my head and in my heart and in my soul. And I was like, “Oh, I didn’t know that I was capable of giving myself what I need.” I’ve always been taught that it’s outside of me. We were trained that it’s outside of us, we put ourselves last and then putting ourselves last is going to fill us up, when in fact that is not true at all. That does not fill us up.

And one of my clients said she went to a funeral lately and it was some kind of religious funeral, and it was of an elderly woman. And the big thing that was talked about over and over and over again, is how this woman always put herself last and served others first. And she goes, ”It just felt so wrong to me. They were praising that and getting us to think that is our big crown of achievement in life is to put everyone else first and put ourselves last.” And that’s the way I was taught. That’s what I have been taught my entire life, it just never felt right to me. It didn’t serve me at the end.

When I turned 50, I was like, “Okay, I did what everyone told me to do and I am just disappointed.” Literally, I was just tired and worn out and disappointed and felt unloved and unworthy and unincluded. So, I was like, “What if I try it a different way? What if I just decide to put myself first instead?” And what if me doing that, a woman who puts herself first and gives herself what she needs, and she walks around this world and relates to people in a way that is motivated by self-love, self-trust, self-worth, self-confidence and that vibe, that energy is what everybody picks up on.

And I get to just elevate any room that I walk into with that kind of energy. That’s what I found makes all of my relationships so much easier because when you’re a woman who put herself last, I guarantee you, you have a good amount of resentment in you. And you probably have a really good way of manipulating people to get what you want out of them. And when I tell you to put yourself first, build a really good, strong, healthy, trustworthy relationship with yourself, you tell yourself the truth.

You don’t blame anybody else, so you don’t even blame yourself, you just look at the truth. And you go. “Okay, who do I want to be? How can I shift? How can I pivot? How can I show up in a different way so that I love who I’m being and I’m not giving my negative energy or my negative way of being, I’m not giving my power away and blaming it on someone outside of me. I’m not ever blaming my husband for it. I’m not ever blaming my grown kids or my sister or my friends for the way that I’m behaving, the way that my life is going.”

I’m not being a negative person and then blaming it on other people who are negative. I don’t have to be a negative person ever again. I can be a very optimistic, positive, love filled woman every single day for the rest of my life if that’s what I decide to practice, if that’s what I decide to choose. And then I up-level all of my relationships because I’m not trying to get anyone to change. I’m the one changing. Everybody else gets to do whatever they want to do.

And along with this, I set healthy boundaries for myself, it kind of goes hand in hand without really even trying. But listen, that isn’t a cakewalk, I totally get it. So, you have to learn to be brave enough to say the clear words to the people, to the person. You stop gossiping about other people. You get out of groups of friends, you get out of family group think, friend group think, whatever group think you’re in, you get out of that. You realize that you are motivated by fear of losing people. I want you to realize that.

And I want you to realize that you’re only going to ‘lose the people’ that are not on the trajectory that you want to be in, on this new, this future self that you are creating for your own sake. You’re creating this future self so that you can relate to people in a much healthier, better, happier way. That’s what everybody wants, but it always starts with us. We think it starts outside of us. We’re just like, “Well, if only he would show up better, if only he would do what he says he’s going to do. If only he was more optimistic and positive.”

Well, if I’m thinking that, I’m going to turn all of those things back to me. If only I was more optimistic and positive. If only I would show up in a way that I’m proud of. If only I would do the things that I said I was going to do. That’s my work. So, I stopped thinking about him and what he’s doing wrong. And I’m starting to think about me and what I don’t like about the way I’m living and what I am kind of complicit in. So that starts changing everything.

And then, of course, the people in our life have decisions to make. If they don’t like this newer version of ourselves, they get to go their merry way and that’s fine and good and right. And I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s better. It’s a better relationship, if it’s not a good fit moving forward, if they are not a part of where we’re headed, we don’t want to drag them along.

So, Jeff always says he has hung on for dear life because he really doesn’t like change and I have let that be okay, but I love change and I’ve also let that be okay. And so, we both love each other enough and respect each other and respect our relationship and really want the relationship enough to let each other be who we both want to be. He lets me be who I want to be. I let him be who he wants to be. And when we’re together, it’s a really good time.

So, I have and I just coached a client on this, this week, but she wants to have separate bedrooms, but she’s so afraid of hurting her partner’s feelings with the request. And I said, “What’s the problem with hurting his feelings?” And she goes, “Well, I guess it’s not a problem, but I just have a hard time saying those words to him and he’s going to make it mean that I don’t love him and I don’t care about him.” And I go, “Well, is that true? Do you love him and care about him?” And she goes. “Yeah, I do.”

And I said, “Well, then that’s not true and you can just let him know that, I love you and care about you.” And here’s the thing for me, when I make my request of Jeff, I’m like, “Yeah, I’m not doing that or yeah, you’re going to have to drive a separate car.” So, I don’t do anything traditionally that traditional married couples talk about doing. I think there’s a lot more people like Jeff and I.

I think there’s a lot more women like me who secretly are doing what I’m doing, but just are afraid to be judged and criticized for it so don’t say it out loud. I think there’s a lot of married couples who sleep in separate bedrooms just to get their sleep and that’s what we do. But it was my idea from the very beginning and I just had to say no. When we moved over here to the beach, I was like, “I’m taking the primary suite, that’s going to be my bedroom and you can have the extra two bedrooms and the other bathroom.” And he was like, “Fine.”

He’s so used to me now, getting what I want and he really doesn’t care. And so that’s all worked out perfectly. And I’m just saying, I could not be happily married, I know I wouldn’t even be married if I couldn’t have my own space. I need my own space. And I love him enough, I don’t have to leave him to get my own space.

And so that’s what I told her. I go, “Let him know, oh, no, it’s because I love and care about you and I care about the longevity of our relationship but now this is going to be a new season where I need my own space. I need my sleeping space. You wake me up and I don’t want to be woken up and I want to have a space that I can just go to. I want my own closet. I want my own bathroom. I want my own bedroom.” And that’s for the health and vitality of the marriage, of the partnership, of the relationship. That’s how you create a better relationship.

You get what you want, you make your requests, you have your boundaries, and you get what you want. And even with Jeff and I, I mostly drive by myself even when we go out of town because I really enjoy it so much better. I just like to be by myself. And I know if I’m going to be with him, we went to Bakersfield last weekend, we don’t always share a hotel room. But if they have suites that have one bedroom and then they have a pull out bed. Jeff would rather sleep in a pull out bed than get his own room because that’s going to save him money and I’m just totally fine.

So, I got my own bedroom and then he slept in the pull out bed and that’s just what works for us. But I’m the queen. I will always be the queen. I’m going to live at this level. And he gets to be fine with it or he has a decision to make. He doesn’t have to be married to me and, you guys, I know that sounds harsh and drastic, but that’s the truth. And that’s why so many people get divorced over things like this, because women are afraid to ask for what they want in the marriage, in the relationship, and I am just not.

I’m like, “No, that’s not that much fun for me anymore. I don’t think I want to do that anymore. I think I’m going to do it a different way, and I love you, but I’m going to do this my own way from here on out.” So, you have to be practiced at knowing what you want and then letting your people know what you want. That’s healthy self-love, healthy self-worth, a healthy self-concept. I’m supposed to want what I want. I’m supposed to create what I want.

I’m supposed to live the life that I want, married or unmarried, and that goes across the board with your grown kids. You just have to be honest, you can’t just go along with whatever they tell you. If they’re making all these requests and you’re so afraid to say no because you’re going to hurt their feelings or you’re going to think that they think that you don’t love them or they’re not a priority for you. All of those reasons are not a good reason to say yes.

If you don’t want to do it, you’re going to be filled with resentment, and that’s not good long term. And that energy is going to show up in your relationship. So, you have to be clear and honest with yourself from the beginning with your grown kids, and be clear and honest with them and let their feelings be hurt. It’s totally fine. And if there’s a little space between you and them for a while, totally fine.

You can even let them know, “Listen, I’m working on me. I’ve got to make some changes in my own life. This isn’t about you at all.” Because, listen, it’s never about them, it’s always about me, and that’s what I know. So, it’s never about your kids or your friends or your husband or your partner or your parents or your boss. It’s always about you and what you’re thinking and feeling about yourself and how you’re showing up in the relationship.

And once you clean all of that up, once you up-level, the way that you hold yourself accountable and with the things that you require of yourself, you are going to bring a different energy. You’re going to attract a different energy from other people, even the people you love the most, it’s going to change the way that they show up when they’re with you because you are going to be at a different vibration and this is just how it works.

I have been the witness of my own evolvement for the last seven years and the way that I keep up-leveling my energy. A lot of people have fallen away from my life and I am totally fine with that. I can watch it and see it and it’s supposed to be that way because I don’t ever want to feel stuck because I’m afraid of losing people. I am way more concerned about losing myself. I will not lose myself just because I’m afraid of losing someone else outside of me, I will just never do that.

And that’s the way I lived my first 50 years. I was just bending over backwards and just being a chameleon to show up as the wife Jeff wanted, the mom my kids wanted, the friend my friends wanted, whatever everyone wanted, I could be her for them. And I did it at my own expense.

And my relationships felt very hard and exhausting and brought me a lot of anxiety because I was so afraid of losing people. And now I’m not afraid at all of losing anyone because anyone that’s supposed to be in my life, I cannot lose them.

So, I hope that this is helpful for you. I hope that this gives you some new ideas, some new insights into your own self, your own wellbeing, the way that you relate to yourself, how powerful it is to make the changes you need to make with you. It has everything to do with what you’re thinking, how you’re feeling, how you are showing up every single day in all of your relationships. And once you start changing, it’s going to start changing all of your relationships and in the end they get better, easier, lighter.

You’re not even thinking about them anymore. They are not consuming your thoughts. You’re not worrying. You have no anxiety about them. You’re not thinking that they’re in trouble or they should be changing, or they have a bunch of problems that you need to fix. I don’t think anybody in my life has any problems that I need to fix. I’m not worried about them. I don’t even think about them until we’re together.

If we make plans together, my kids and grandbabies are coming over for dinner tonight. So now I’m thinking about them because they’re on my schedule today. I love them. I can’t wait to be with them, but I don’t have any anxiety about anything going on in their life. I really don’t even know what’s going on in their life. I am not the person they come to, which I love. So, my kids have found other people to go and talk to unless they want coaching, I’ll coach them.

But I don’t need to manage my mind around the things my kids are worried about because that mom brain is a challenge. So, I just stay in my own lane. I’m living my own great life. I have this amazing relationship with myself, with my husband, with my kids, with my sister and the people that mean the most to me, but I don’t worry about them. I’m not thinking about them. But I love them and it’s just such a better way of being. And I want to pass any of those ideas on to you that sound interesting, that you’re curious about.

If you want to work with me, I want you to consider joining my next small group, which starts Tuesday, September 10th at noon. And that will go until the end of the year. I think it goes into January. We will meet for 20 sessions together. And oh, my gosh, if you want to work on your relationship with yourself, this is the group to be in. It will be Tuesdays starting September 10th at noon California time. My groups are small, intimate, powerful. You will be up-leveled the minute you join it.

You just go to my website. It’s $2500 to join this group. You will get every single thing that you came for and more, I promise. If you’ve never worked with me before, you don’t even know how powerful these small groups are. So be elevated just by investing in yourself and calling me your life coach. I will know all about you and that will help you change your life 100%. I love you, my friend. Have an extraordinary week and I will talk to you next Thursday.

If you love this podcast, I invite you to come work with me. Go to kymshowerslifecoach.com, sign up for my next group and retreat, and let’s create your dream life together.