Dr. Diane Mueller: Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode on the Libido Lounge. I’m your host Dr. Diane Mueller and as you just heard in the introduction, I have a great guest with me today, Dr. Corey Allen who is a marriage therapist and we’re going to talk about marriage. We’re going to talk about sex. We’re going to talk about communication. We’re going to talk about what a lot of couples do wrong when approaching marriage therapy and so many more things. So, welcome Dr. Corey. It is so great to have you with me today.

Dr. Corey Allen: Oh, thank you so much. This will be a fun conversation. I’m looking forward to it.

Dr. Diane Mueller: Yeah, it sure will. And tell us a little bit about how you got into the work as far as any different niches you could have chosen in the world and you know working with couples I think can be a hard thing because we’re dealing with three different problems you could say at any given time any challenges for the one partner the other partner in that that group space so I think it is a really interesting niche that way because of the complexity of that so why did you decide to specialize in this what have you seen in your own life or lives of others. That really was the inspiration here.

Emotional Disconnection in Marriage and the Purpose of Relationships

Dr. Corey Allen: So coming into the field, I started in the world of teenagers and helping there because I was coming from youth ministry. So it just made sense. And then the more and more I got into it, the more and more you realize the issues that kids have aren’t necessarily just only theirs. It’s also a system and it’s coming from mom and dad in some way, shape or form if you think systemically. And so then I just started realizing that if I really want to have impact and go deep with people, let’s do it on a couple level. And then you start discovering there’s just not a whole lot out there that really do couples therapy well that really focus on that well. They do a lot of individual within the couple. And I predominantly just see couples and that’s the thing I love just because while it’s complex, it also is a big language and when you start to understand the language that they’ve got going on, you can really gain a lot of ground quickly with people.

Dr. Diane Mueller: You actually set me up really well for my next question, which is just personal curiosity as well as what I think the audience is going to be interested in as well, which is what do you see because there’s obviously other people that do this work, but what do you see as the number one, two, or three things, the top things that people in say a marriage therapy role do wrong? You know what are problems that could come up because of the way that marriage therapy sometimes and practitioners are addressing the core issues.

Marriage Communication Problems: It’s Not About the “How”

Dr. Corey Allen: Okay, this now we’re going to start getting in trouble, Diane. All right, let’s have some fun. Well, you’ve always been a troublemaker, Cory. Well, then we’re going to get along just fine. So a couple of things that just immediately popped to mind is I think when you’re dealing with a couple issue and the concept or the approach is aimed at how do we just help you communicate better, it’s just in my opinion a waste of time. Because I’ve been doing this for 25 years in private practice and I’ve yet to ever teach a couple how to communicate because if they can tick each other off, they communicate just fine. And most of the time we don’t think of it that way. We don’t think of it as oh what I really need to deal with is what’s actually being communicated not how they are doing it. And so that’s one because I hear this a lot and we just don’t understand each other. And the other thing that’s almost a little bit more on the theory side of things in the way I approach it but yeah I think a lot of times there’s this element too that makes it even systemically and in just how you view marriage I think a lot of times people come at it with idealized what marriage is supposed to be and that it shouldn’t be this hard and we should be each other’s best friend and soulmate and lover and all of the complexities that we put on somebody that no one could possibly ever fulfill.

Dr. Diane Mueller: So, in talking about like the what versus how the first thing you said here, I think that’s really interesting, right? It’s not how we’re communicating. What you’re saying is like it’s what we’re communicating.

Taking Things Personally in Relationships and Overreacting to Overreactions

Dr. Corey Allen: Yeah, it’s an element of a lot of times there’s this major sophistication going on in marital communication, right? Because you say something and I can try to dress it up, but I’m also saying something else under it. And because I got history with each other, we have maps with each other. A lot of our issues that I can watch for people is we overreact to our spouse’s overreaction. And so then we’re not dealing with what happened. We’re dealing with the reactions. And that’s where trips most couples up because you’re not actually dealing with what’s really present and actually needs to be addressed.

Dr. Diane Mueller: What I’m thinking about as you’re speaking is our reticular activating system… So I think what you’re saying is kind of brilliant because it sounds to me like what you’re saying is like part of it is like let’s stop focusing on the we space for a second and take a step back and say how do we help the individual to actually hear what’s going on in some ways without hearing it in relationship to all these past things.

Dr. Corey Allen: It is, but I think there’s another layer on top of it because when you most of what gets exposed in our relationship dynamics, particularly when it starts to get intense is our fears, our insecurities, our hurts, our capital T traumas, our lowercase T traumas, all of them. They are going to be exposed. And what happens a lot of times is I get caught up in the scenario of how dare you expose this? Don’t ever do that to me again. Rather than how about I take the courage of dealing with what’s being exposed in me rather than attacking what’s exposing it.

How to Feel Close to Your Spouse Again: The Mirror of Marriage

Dr. Corey Allen: I have a belief that marriage is really designed just to help expose us so that we have to grow ourselves up and become better people. It’s not about I learn how to meet the needs of my spouse. It’s more about how do I handle being better and being present and being engaged while still maintaining a connection with somebody I care about. The things that drive us to each other are the things that will drive us crazy with each other. And that’s the reality of relationships.

Dr. Diane Mueller: I’m curious then, can you tell like when a couple calls you or an individual calls you and they’re like, “Okay, we’re having this problem. We want to get it figured out.” Can you tell in the language they’re using early on who’s going to be successful and who’s not?

Dr. Corey Allen: I don’t know if I can. I challenge each person equally in the dynamic. I don’t work to save marriages or end marriages. I am very pro-marriage. I love the relationship of it and who we can become because we go places we can’t go on our own when we’re in a good relationship like that. But I just tell them I try to help two people be better people which means I’ll try to go deal with what’s being exposed in each person within the dynamic.

Growing Apart in Marriage, Infidelity, Shame and Guilt

Dr. Diane Mueller: I’m going to ask what’s probably going to be a controversial and slightly triggering question for some people which is about what in the scenario where we have infidelity right what about like cheating…

Dr. Corey Allen: Absolutely. Then here’s where wording matters, right? Because then it’s not about what role did you guys play in this. It’s more as we’re unpacking the history of what all happened… Most of the time when you hear the betrayed spouse go, I can’t believe you did that to me. That’s my open right there. It’s like, what did they do to you? You weren’t involved, right? We need to talk about what they did to themselves here… You have to talk about what’s the damage that’s been caused… Both of those need to be addressed equally.

Dr. Diane Mueller: Are there like highlevel ways that you can teach us around working with things like shame and guilt and what you’ve seen to be effective…

Dr. Corey Allen: Guilt is one of those things that we feel when I’ve gone against something that’s against something I believe in… Shame to me is in the framework of not my decisions are bad, I am bad… I have a problem with that because that can become this real vicious vortex.

Go First: Creating Space and Rebuilding Connection

Dr. Corey Allen: Most most all the time when I’m working with a couple, I will ask them at some point, do you think that the source of your problems are because you guys are too close to each other or too far apart from each other? And almost without fail, everybody says we’re too far apart. And what I will propose is nope. You’re too close to each other. You are too smothering of each other. There’s not room for each of you to be who you are… I need somebody that’s got some edge and difference to them. And so it’s how do I have room for her to be her and me to be me? That’s a great marriage.

Dr. Diane Mueller: I want to make sure that people know about your free marriage course. I want to make sure that we let them know about your sex marriage radio podcast and also anything else…

Dr. Corey Allen: So I’m the host, co-host with my wife of Sexy Marriage Radio, which is a podcast that’s been going for 14 and a half years now… smr.fm is my online home… You can get that at smr.fm/gofirst… And if you want to work with me, smr.fm, there’s a tab that takes you to my website for counseling.

Dr. Diane Mueller: And we will of course have all of that in the show notes, everybody. So you’ll have clickable links down below to get Corey’s resources, learn how to work with him, start listening to his podcast, and check out his book that will be out very soon. So I want to thank everybody for listening. Please do make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don’t miss future episodes from us. And thank you so much, Corey, for being with me today.

Dr. Corey Allen: You’re welcome. This has been great. It’s been amazing.

Dr. Diane Mueller: All right, everybody. Dr. Diane signing off. I’ll see you all next time. Thank you for listening to the Libido Lounge. Please don’t keep me a secret. Please share this with your friends. You can find me on YouTube, on Instagram, and check out our Modern Libido Club for so much more!