How Love Styles Can Help You Grow Closer as a Couple (Part 2 of 2)

This is an area we had to take to the cross to say, Lord, my fearful pleaser side is not working here in this relationship.

Her avoidant dismissive side is not working. It's a bad dance. It's crushing you probably.

It was crushing. That's Mylon Yurkovich observing that our childhoods follow us into adulthood and into all of the relationships that we experience as adults. And he and his wife Kay are back with us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, along with Mark and Amy Cameron. Thank you for joining us. I'm John Fuller. John, we had a fascinating conversation last time with our esteemed panel of guests, and we're talking about how our earliest childhood experiences with parental love or the lack of parental love and all the emotions that go with that, how that can imprint on us emotional attachment issues. And last time we talked about the avoider. I think people will probably self-identify with that.

The pleaser, I tend to lean in that direction. Vassilator, controller, victim. And what we didn't mention last time was the secure connector, which is the goal. We'll talk more about that toward the end of the program.

And that would, I think our guests would say, would be more like Jesus himself is the secure connector because he could be healthy in all these areas. And as we discussed last time, these styles, except for that last one, have dysfunction attached to them. And these are the things we learn in our childhood typically because of the environment we're in with our parents, with our family, etc.

Those ramifications come right into adulthood. We talked about it being the dance and how we ended up stepping on each other's toes. And couples just went, yes, that's what it feels like.

She steps on my toes or vice versa. We're going to continue the discussion today so we can give you the tools you need to live a life that honors the Lord and honors your spouse. Yeah, there's a lot of help here. And I do hope you're able to stay with us for the entire conversation.

By the way, if you missed last time, check it out online through the app. We've got a treasure trove of resources to help your marriage. That was really an outstanding conversation last time. Mylan and Kay Yurkovich are marriage counselors, and they've been speaking and writing about love styles for decades.

They're joined by Mark and Amy Cameron, who've been working with the Yurkovichs for a number of years now and are kind of taking over the marriage ministry. And the basis for our conversation is a superb book that is so helpful. Dina and I have copies of this at home.

It's marked up. We go to it. So do we.

I confess. We pass it on to friends and to children at times. The book is called How We Love, Discover Your Love Style, Enhance Your Marriage. And you can get a copy of that from us here at the ministry.

Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family, 800-232-6459, or the link is in the show notes. Mylan Kay, welcome back. Thank you. Mark and Amy, welcome back. This is fun.

This is a full table. This is Thanksgiving, like we said last time. This is fun. Let's kick it off here. You know, people listened last time.

New people are going to be listening now. How do you sort out who am I? You do have a quiz, right?

Where's that located? Oh, the website howwelove.com. And you scroll down, and it's a free quiz. And it will give you an attachment imprint. And some people score high in a few different areas.

But don't be discouraged on that because it gives you a lot more opportunity to grow. Kay, let me come your direction. You've identified two important questions that people can ask themselves about comfort and conflict. Who wants comfort? Let me see your hands.

Yay! What are those two questions and why are they so significant? Well, we ask, do you have a memory of comfort from your childhood where a parent really could tell you were distressed, they were aware and tuned in, and however you manifested stress as a kid. And they asked you about what was going on inside so you could learn to articulate your inner self and help you through that situation, that stressful time to where you felt relief at the end. And if you, you know, as babies, we do a lot of relieving of distress, but we never really outgrow that need. And we all have stressful lives. So we need comfort in this world.

But since I didn't get comfort growing up as the avoider, I didn't think I needed comfort. And so comfort is really essential. As Mylan said last time, it's very important so that you learn to take your stress to relationships. One of the hallmarks of a secure home is that we know how to manage stress well. And for the attachment styles that we discussed, each of us struggled to manage stress.

I detached, Mylan pursued, vacillators protest. And in those ways of handling stress, we don't seek comfort. And comfort is a very, maybe many times a very undeveloped skill in marriages.

We react rather than understanding comfort. Mark, you and Amy, you talk about the conflict you had, but you talk about it in the terms of rupture and repair. So let me ask the two of you to kind of define that rupture and repair. What did that look like in your own relationship? So every relationship eventually has rupture.

But the key to resolving in rupture is learning how to repair. Can we go back and can we have a conversation? Can we invite another person to sit down with us? And instead of arguing back and forth, I like to say that people bat the perceived facts ball back and forth. I often see this in therapy. Couples just argue about the facts. And I just say, let's just split the time in two. And one of you is going to be the speaker and the other one's going to be the listener. And you're going to really try and enter into the other one's perspective to understand what is happening inside of them.

So how did, I'm looking for an example from you and Amy. I mean, you're part of this now, so it's on the table. Yeah. So with conflict, you know, a lot of the times, you know, there's a desire to be understood. But desire to be understood when you're activated and angry, it turns into a back forth.

Is anybody really listening? So instead of reactivity, we need to learn how to respond. So the comfort circle, which is in the book and on the website, it gives you a framework listener speaker. And that was very healing for our imprint because we have that deep desire to be understood. And so it gives you an opportunity to be heard out and to figure out what's under this reactive emotion.

So you can really kind of figure out what's beneath it. And that's what we had to learn to do. We had to learn how to take turns. Was there just this up and down, back and forth, never really found the middle ground?

Before there was, yes. But whatever you practice, you get good at. So as we practice doing that, that became more of our new default behavior. Amy, let me ask you this, because I think in the prep here, you alluded to it, this idea about having an argument in front of your kids. The idea that we should never do that, you know, the idea that that's just wrong at the core.

Let's take it into a private area. I don't know what the disagreement characteristics are. I'm sure yelling at each other would not be healthy. But you kind of disagree with avoiding the argument in front of the kids, do you? Well, I think kids can see what's going on.

If you're not talking to each other, you're not making eye contact. If there's not like a warm and in the vacillator home, like often kids can understand like something's going on, whether it's verbally or non-verbally, they're kind of attuned to that. But, you know, I think it's been really healing for our kids to be like, hey, you know what, can I have a do over?

Like, I shouldn't have said that. Like, can I walk that back like right now in front of them? It kind of teaches them, you know, how to resolve.

How to resolve. So I think you should model how to resolve conflict in front of your kids. And I think it's age appropriate, right? You don't want to do something with a five-year-old that you would do with a 15-year-old, obviously. And the kids are, you need age appropriate looks at what it looks like to resolve conflict in a marriage.

Well, if you don't demonstrate that, what happens is the child grows up and goes into adulthood with no skills for how to resolve conflict because in their home they didn't see it. Yeah. No, that's so true. I mean, what, Amy, you just said a little while ago, Kay and I do it all the time. We will say, can I have a do over? You know, we got off to a bad start right there.

And sometimes we'll sing a song to each other. Oh, really? Yeah. You were right and I was wrong. Do da, do da.

They kick in together, it's pretty good. You know, we've done it a few times. Yeah. And so we will actually say, I got off to a bad start right there. Could I really, I apologize.

Let me start over again. And that's even something you can do with your kids. Absolutely. Oh, yeah. They would love that. Hey, you know what? That didn't really work.

Let's have a do over there. Yeah. I think one of the biggest smiles I ever saw on Trent's face was when I apologized for something. He was probably five or six. He had the biggest smile. I said, what are you smiling about? He goes, I didn't know parents had to apologize. What a great line.

But what a great model. Yeah. I needed to.

It was just, I overreacted basically. Milo, let me ask you in the book, How We Love, you identify three critical ways that couples can comfort each other. I remember talking to you about this when Gene and I were with you two. What are those three? The three are, number one, listening. If I can look you in the eye, because you talked about this a little while ago, you know, Gene engaging you and wanting to look into your eyes. If I can look into Kay's eyes and if I can see and I can acknowledge what I see, I see a tear. Tell me about that tear.

That's comforting. And it's connection. It's very much connecting. Then the other thing is when we see that tear, I'll say, can I hold your hand or can I just touch you for a moment? Physical connection. Physical connection and touch that is non-sexual. It's very important for guys to learn how to have non-sexual intimacy with their spouse.

Very important. And then, thirdly, we will do a holding time where I will hold Kay as a comfort if there's been something very distressing. And we've even done that with respect to comforting one another for our childhood issues as well.

Nobody was with me back then, but Kay can go there back with me and I can put my head in her lap and I can receive comfort for that distressing moment in my life. So these are three key ways. The comfort circle, you've mentioned it. Who wants to take a stab at describing it?

I mean, you guys are all the experts here. So, Mark? Well, the comfort circle is providing a reparative experience for the other person. As Kay was mentioning that what she and Mylan do together when they look into each other's eyes, when they listen to each other, when they hold hands for one another, that's mimicking what the cycle of bonding should be like when we are growing up with a parent. And so if you didn't get that growing up, when you provide that for your spouse, it gives that reparative experience.

Now, here's the good news. We're sinners. Christ died, he came down, and he provided us a way back to be sanctified.

The bad news here is you may have an injured attachment style, but the good news is research shows that you can form a secure attachment style by earning it, by doing something called creating a coherent narrative. Coherent means that something makes sense. Narrative is story. If you can make sense of your story, your childhood story, and then do that reparative experience in the present, you reform, you reshape, and that's, I believe, the process of sanctification. And I think it's important for our listeners to understand we're not talking about this to blame our past on our parents. I think it seems like there's this trend to kind of roll my eyes and say it's all my parents' fault, but there's kind of what was and who I am now, so address that, because I think it's important for people to hear. Well, we have to acknowledge reality of a situation.

The good news of Jesus dying for us and being a savior is of no consequence if you don't believe that you're a sinner. So the good news of being able to reform and reshape in your attachment style, if you don't recognize these areas where we have deficits and how they have formed, then you can't go ahead and intentionally make that journey toward the process of reshaping. And so this is not about blaming parents, as you're mentioning here. It's about learning how to explain what happened to us, how we became a certain way, so that we can move forward.

Mylon, let me turn to you. We talked about triggers. Describe again, for the benefit of the listeners and the viewers, those triggers that were working with you and Kay.

I mean, as a pleaser, what was really making it hard for you? Okay, so the definition of a trigger is something in the present brings back an old historical feeling. But you don't know that. No, you don't know that. All you know is that right now, when you're triggered, that historical feeling comes slamming in to the present. It's like you said earlier. And it violently slams in, and so we get that expression you had.

And where did all that energy come from? It was uninvited, okay? I didn't ask that to come in.

It just jammed its way into the present. Now, what triggered me with Kay was her quietness, because I said yesterday on the program that silence was a precursor to a storm. Number two, she's also, in that introvertedness, she doesn't need to be in contact with people as much as extroverts do. So that silence and also the withdrawal made me nervous, because when there was silence and withdrawal in my home growing up, it was absolutely anxiety producing. So I would then overpursue, trying to make sure everything was okay. And so until she said she was okay, or until I could figure out things were okay, I was very undone.

I'd be very anxious. Now, it's interesting. I'm just projecting, but I would think that those consistent questions, Kay, were irritating to you. Like, why does he keep coming? So now he's, out of his trigger, he's triggering you.

Yes, that's exactly right. My feeling was, he's so nice, but it bugs me. Why is that bugging me? And it took me really years to answer that, because he wasn't asking for me. He was asking to alleviate his own anxiety. The right answer was, I'm great because I'm married to you, and you're amazing, and you're the best husband anyone could ever have, and woohoo! Yeah, that would have been really good.

That would have been really good. That doesn't come naturally to you. No, it doesn't come naturally. But on top of that, from the time I was very young, my mom and I didn't really bond when I was an infant, and she thought there was something wrong with me. And so the feeling I was getting from him was, something was wrong with me, which made me want to push away, and he just felt too needy. So those triggers, you don't know they're happening until you explore your childhood and go, oh, that's the same feeling. So one of the questions our listeners can ask themselves is, when I'm annoyed, what am I feeling? What do I really want to say, and who would I say that to in my history?

Or who did I have those exact same feelings with in my history? And then you realize, okay, the reaction could be quiet. For me, it wasn't a loud like, ugh!

It was like, I'm going to go in the other room. So it could be a detaching response. It could be a protest. It could be trying harder to please. But these are all responses to triggers.

But that is super important. When that happens, try to figure out why it's happening. Right. I mean, that's a common sense thing, rather than just living the emotion, and then, you know, an hour later, it happens again. Right.

It's not just the word why, Jim, it's when. Okay. When have I felt these feelings before?

Yeah. I felt them when my brother did this. I went into my room and I slammed the door. Well, I do the same thing when I'm married.

You know, my husband yells, I go in my room and slam the door. When have you done this behavior before? Yeah, interesting. We marry each other's histories. Our whole history.

Yep. Now Mark and Amy, you're nice and quiet over here. But we're gonna pull you into this. We want to know your triggers too. But speak to triggers in that vacillator relationship. What are those things that Mark would do to you, Amy, that would like, ouch, and you would react out of that? Gosh, so many things, I guess. But thankfully, like, there's so much relief, though, because, you know, you dig all this unconscious stuff up, and you like, take a good look at it. And you're like, you know what, this is from my childhood wounds. And so now you look at your conflict as like, you know, like, this is a wound from, you know, Mark's childhood when he was little, from a wound when I was little. So you really get to look at each other, where that reactivity was originally came from. But you have to develop that empathy, because it has to move from irritating to compassionate.

That's a big jump. And, well, and that's what the work does. Because, you know, attachment core pattern therapy allows you to see that reactivity. So, but yes, vacillators, you know, have reactivity and have anger. But you take the quiz, if you score high and please your vacillator, the tiebreaker is, do you get angry? And so the answer is yes for vacillators. So we'd love an example of how you and Mark get angry at each other.

Okay, so one thing that is practical is arrivals and departures. So like, you know, he's gonna come home, I have all this exciting stuff to tell him, and I have dinner on the table, I'm hungry, you know, like, it's warm, it's at the temperature, I want to eat it, like, come in, like, let's eat it right now. Like, right now.

Now is a thing that vacillators do. And then, you know, he has to, like, put his jacket down and like his day and everything. And so here comes the swing, high hopes. He's just not listening to me all deep despair.

So that swing is what happens. But taking ownership myself of, you know what, I need to give him time to come through the door. If I want to be heard out, I need to find the right opportunity.

You know, he listens to people all day as a therapist, so I need to give him the right opportunity for me to be heard for him to actually listen. So just understanding, you know, how to get your needs met without being reactive. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, disappointment is one of the triggers for the vacillator. They also get triggered when they feel misunderstood, when they feel unseen or unheard by a person, when they are made to wait, when they perceive abandonments or rejection.

But they don't like to ask for the connection. They give complaints and criticisms. And so that's often how it played out between Amy and I.

Something would happen, someone would get disappointed, the other person would be made to wait and their criticism would come. And really what the criticism was, was, hey, I'm hurting. But the other person perceived that as an attack.

And then we both went at it with each other. Yeah. No, let's, and that's, again, the goal here is healthy. So all these awarenesses we're talking about, this is awesome.

I love this. That last one that we have mentioned, but really not defined, the secure connector. Let's get into that in the last few minutes that we have here. Maybe again, Mark and Amy, you guys can help us define what it is, those characteristics of a secure connector.

Yeah. Somebody who is securely connected is emotionally intelligent. They're in touch with their own emotions to understand what's driving their behavior.

And they can make requests. So we do two things with our emotions. We talk them out productively or we act them out, or I like to say we verbalize or we dramatize.

If you dramatize and you act it out, someone's got to guess what's going on inside of you. But if you have language for emotions and feelings, you can clearly say to somebody, this is what I'm feeling here. And if you can learn to link those two things, feelings and needs, you can make requests. You're more likely to get what you want and more likely to draw empathy in from the other person. So somebody who is securely attached can do that.

They can learn to wait. They can have a conversation where they're in the listener role and they can listen for understanding even when they don't agree. Yeah, that is good.

Anybody want to add to that? Well, especially for vacillators, when they go silent or pouts or sulk or pull away, they want a mind reader to be able to know what's wrong with them. Because that communicates what? You know me. That means you know me. But I don't.

I can't possibly mind read. I know Kay as well as anybody, but I still have to ask her every day, how are you? Well, this is the wife who's saying he should know that, but he doesn't. Right. Or the husband that says, I told you one time, I told you, already told you this, why can't you just know what I need right now?

And that's not fair, because we are growing creatures and life changes from week to week. I can't possibly know that. So I'll add to the secure connector based right off of that. The secure conductor can describe to their family what they're going through. You might come home and say, I had one of the most difficult days. I'm really not in a great place. It's nothing you did.

Give me a while to calm down. That communicates to the family so that they know right away. Great way to come back to your family is when you reunite at the end of the day is give me three feelings about your day.

It gives you so much information. You know, in this space, right at the end here, I'm thinking of the marriage, you know, a lot of Christian marriages that, you know, we're doing okay. We pray together. We go to church together. We have good discussions.

We don't allow phones at the dinner table, you know, whatever, whatever is making that happen. But it's not the deep end of the pool. Right. It's like we're just playing in the shallow end of life. And we're happy there because we could put our feet on the ground.

And then you move deeper into the pool. It creates risk. It creates openness. It's feeling very much known. And I think that is where God wants us to go so that we have a full experience in this life of intimacy, intimacy with him, intimacy with our spouse, our family, et cetera.

What do you say to that couple that, yeah, we're doing good enough? I think it's about vulnerability. The first 15 years of our marriage, there was no vulnerability. We didn't even know how to be vulnerable. And then when we took this journey and really owned our own attachment wounds and begin to change, we had our first very vulnerable conversations. Even discussing childhood pain is vulnerable.

Learning to comfort each other was enormous. And what we're experiencing as we age, there's more and more loss. And if you're in the shallow end, you don't know what to do with loss. Loss needs comfort. And the older you get, the more loss there is. And so loss and being able to cry with someone or being able to really express grief is vulnerable. So I think going into the deep end gives you a richness that we just didn't know existed until we learned to live there.

Yeah, that is so good. And I think, frankly, I'm guilty of that. I can live in the light end.

I like to lighten up the load because life can be heavy. And that's— Well, and I'm not talking about not having joy. Right. You know, but it's like most people are able to experience joy, but grief or pain is where they get stuck.

They don't know what to do with it. Yeah. Well, this is a start, and I hope this has been helpful to you.

You know, this is Focus's goal. We want to kind of gently take you to the deep end of the pool and make sure your marriages are as healthy in Christ as they can be, that your parenting is as healthy as it can be. So if you're going, wow, you're describing some things here that fit my family or me, get ahold of us. We have counselors who can talk with you over the phone, that can help you.

Order the book directly from Focus on the Family. And when you do, just make a gift of any amount, whatever you can afford. If you can't afford it, we'll get it to you.

Just call us. And if you can do a monthly gift, that's great. We could do ministry together. If it's a one-time gift, good.

And I'll trust others. We'll cover it for those that can't afford it. Just get in touch with us, and we are here to help you.

Yeah. Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family. And of course, we'll have the links to the book, opportunities to donate, and to connect with our Caring Christian Counselors if we can be of any help to you. Those are all in the show notes.

You know, we also have Hope Restored. I didn't think to mention that. That's a four-day intensive where couples that are struggling deeply can come. We have four locations. Fifth location in Cave Creek is coming up. And so we can see about 3,400 couples a year in those locations. So if you're in that spot, we have an 80% post two-year save rate on marriages. So if you're feeling like this may be the last thing we can try, do it. Try it. Let's go in together, and you can call us and talk to us about that as well.

Yeah. Once again, we're so grateful to the donors and the Lord for His goodness to this ministry that we can offer this kind of help to you. Again, our number is 800, the letter A in the word family. I'll also mention that if you're going to be in Colorado anytime soon, we'd love to have you visit our ministry headquarters here in Colorado Springs. We have a lot for you and your family, and we'd love to say hi. Coming up tomorrow, why praying for your daughters is so important. But time and time again in our lives when our girls have learned to be strong in the Lord and have real strength that lasts and looks like the strength of Jesus, it's been the hard times that have prepared them better for the world that we're living in.

That is obviously coming against them on every level. Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. We'll talk with you, pray with you, and help you find out which program will work best. Call us at 1-866-875-2915.