How to Succeed at Relationships Part I with Evan Powell

[Intro] Hello, welcome to my podcast Empowered to Thrive. I'm so glad you joined me today. I'm your host Corinne Powell. I'm an intuitive mentor and I help people pleasers to find happiness embrace courage and experience peace of mind.

But say you're not a people pleaser and you're desperate for change and not sure how to make it happen? Then I'm here to help in In this place, you're gonna find motivation to live a life full of joy and resilience We'll talk all things inner wellness and because I'm a mom We'll throw in some knock-knock jokes. Just kidding. We'll talk mom hacks and parenting sometimes.

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Corinne Powell: It's great to be with you and I am really excited that my husband Evan is on the show with me today. So you're gonna get to hear us just have conversation about our life together, what it's been like to do life together and how it's been for us as we came both to the relationship with our own baggage unresolved trauma and the normal challenges that you have when you start to immerse yourself and do life together with any other person.

It's always gonna have a set of challenges but the best part is what you do with what is handed to you? So we're all handed difficulties and challenges in life and we're given an opportunity to make them whatever we will. And so for Evan and I are nine years of marriage and the time before that that we knew each other and we were dating it wasn't all easy but we are here still together because we've been working through deeper issues within ourselves, separate from each other and together and I feel like that is the only reason we're still together.

And if you followed me for any length of time, you've heard me share how we had our set of challenges and it has created a lot of difficulties in our life together and our life as a family. But with that we've been working through it and so I wanted to basically give you a window in and send hope to you that if you find yourself in the middle of a difficult relationship, and the relationship can be of any kind, that there's hope, that it can get better. 

It doesn't always have to be perfect which what is perfect anyways? It doesn't always have to be easy in order for it to be beautiful. In fact, I think something is more beautiful when through the mess you work together you actually rebuild within yourself and you come out differently than you were because of that process.

So I'm gonna let you just enjoy our back and forth conversation and here we go, oh I want to say too that as I as I thought about having a conversation with Evan I realized that even though he and I don't always see eye to eye. He actually thinks very different than me but I am able to bring myself my full self to the table I'm able to have conversation with him and not agree and he is one of the first people that I can remember being someone I could relate that way with that. 

I didn't need to agree with him in order to have conversation and discussion that I didn't need to be changed that my thinking didn't need to be changed in order to have a conversation with him and that is the beauty of of a relationship that you can come to the table with differences with different ways of thinking different opinions and yet still do life together. You don't have to agree with everybody in order to be friends, in order to do life together. In fact, I think it creates a lot more beauty and it's more interesting when you do think differently, when you have different viewpoints and different opinions and then you can discuss those. 

So Evan, how has it been living life with me? 

Evan Powell: I think like, I was listening to your intro and as with any relationship that brings with it every you know difficulties and challenges. I think every relationship brings with extraordinary gifts and I think the gift of being married to you has been extraordinary for me I like I like I love being married to you and I feel like you helped me be the person that was made to be, you challenge me, you push me. You enjoy the the the moments. 

It's been a it's been a great journey, it's been a great relationship so far and it's been also like you mentioned there's lots of difficulties in it too as we've grown together. We've changed together. I don't think we're the same people we were almost ten years ago, which is great. 

And you know, obviously when a person changes that's also, it creates tension in you there's always tension when there's change, right? But you know, like I have a lot of value for marriage, but I think I value the people in marriage even more than I value the actual relationship because you can you know, you could stay together a long time with somebody and it'd be miserable. And so I think as you and I have both grown in becoming more fully who we were made to be I think it's been good and bad but if you want to use those extreme terms difficult and really, you know, there's been major highs and major lows, I guess. That answers question? 

Corinne Powell: Yeah. Okay, so you said I challenge you and push you. So what do you mean by that? 

Evan Powell: I feel like you have very high expectations of me. You expect me to be the best that I can be you expect me to be fully connected. fully alive. There's times when the expectation has been what it feels like to be someone who I can't be to like…

Corinne Powell: Unreasonable?

Evan Powell:  Yes. Some are reasonable expectations.

Like I don't know what you're thinking. I remind you of that often. I can't really know what you need. I'm always… right? Minding you that I can't save you from yourself sabotaging things, you know? But in the good places, I think you've called me to be whole, to address the brokenness in my own life, to address where I'm not really loving fully and I'm like holding back and I'm in my you know, I'm compartmentalizing or I'm like not able to even be present in a lot of situations. I think if I didn't have you there reminding me and calling me to more then it'd be easy to just stay in those places. 

“Yeah. I think I would just check out for a while here and I'm out” and you know people get used to those habits, right? I have a lot of habits I get used to and you're like, “Wait a minute. Is that really the best you can be?” 

Corinne Powell: Yeah, and I think as Evans talking what I'm hearing him say is he's basically putting words to how I think even towards myself. So as I go through my life, I guess you would say I'm pushing myself towards more. I'm challenging myself because I see the potential for being whole, for living fully alive and I know that's what I want. 

What he's saying, I realize it's a reflection of how I even think towards myself, but at least present-day for myself, we'll take it home because I don't think I relate as well to you Evan sometimes when I'm asking things of you.

I think I can be harsh, I can be overbearing critical, still working out of my condition patterns. But towards myself I've grown to be more compassionate so as I expect more of myself or as I challenge myself or if you want to use the word push myself it's with a lot of compassion. It wasn't always that way and as I've learned and grown in being more compassionate towards myself. I'm trying to translate that into my other relationships especially the one with you because that's my most challenging. 

I'm sure growing up my most challenging relationships was at home as well but now my life is with you and my most challenging relationships are still within my home and so I think I want to bring up to to each of you listening that it's been a messy process.

So the more I've become aware of myself the more conscious I've become to the way that I cope with difficult traumatic situations. To see the way that I was conditioned to live and to think and to feel. The more I've become aware of that the more I've recognized how I relate with Evan so it I get triggered very frequently because of some of our own past history and so sometimes that means I shut down or I start storming around the house angrily, doing things hurried and angry and frustrated and I mean Evan can speak into this too, but there are ways that I have expected things of him in our relationship and ways that I've related to him that have been very abrasive and messy and I've got to say that Evan is someone who is super gentle in his nature and has allowed me to be myself even when I'm messy and he has embraced me through that process and now what I love about it is he calls me to something more to something higher. 

Like today, he's…or even yesterday. I interrupted him when he was having a conversation with our son, and I didn't even realize I was interrupting him. We brought that up. Well now I can see that and say oh like that's something I don't want to do. So become more aware of myself “What am I doing here?”, because the more aware we are the more mindful we are, then we'll recognize how we come across to other people and how we are actually being in that situation and then today there was something that came up and he was able to relay back to me how I was interacting with him. 

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Corinne Powell: Because I that is what I want to know. Evan, how do you experience me? Because I might think he's experiencing me one way but he might be experiencing me another way and what matters in our relationship is me knowing how does he experience me and how and him knowing how I experience him, because the more aware we are of how other people are feeling in the relationship we have together. 

That's helpful to know that's insightful to know. Not to become what they need us to be, we always need to work towards becoming our authentic self who we innately are as children, who we innately were before someone told us we should be a different thing or we shouldn't be this or we should do this or we shouldn't do that before other people's values and mindsets were put on us. Who were we innately? Who are you innately? But not to become somebody I'm not authentically, but to be able to actually do better if I could use those words in this relationship with Evan or in any relationship. 

So when Evan shared with me today, basically how he was experiencing me. It helped me to know that “oh Yeah, that's what I wow. I see that now, okay,” so it takes a bit of humility to recognize to let somebody speak and to hear them and this is where okay, let's let me let's bring it back to Evan and I just talking about how we've learned to do conversation together and we're not sitting here. You guys know me well enough. 

I don't sit here to be an expert on anything I tell you my experience. I tell you how it's been for me so you can take whatever you want from what I've learned and my experiences and apply them as you want to your own life. 

So Ev, how has it been for you as we've like learned to relate and converse in a powerful way? Where I'm empowering you, you're in power for empowering me? What are some of the dynamics and what are some of the ways that? What's important in having a conversation so that one party knows they're heard and the other party feels heard as well?

Evan Powell: I definitely feel like it's been a learning process in that. I don't know if I had great examples of people fighting well in my life. Having it…having a discussion working through an issue a lot of times those things happen behind closed doors where I wasn't able to watch and observe and kind of like navigate through it with somebody where I was like, “oh, yeah, like that's how I want to, that's how I want to have a discussion with my wife” or …

So I feel like yeah, there's been a bit of a learning curve for me as I've jumped into this and I haven't done it well a lot and I've learned processes but like yeah, I guess to fight or to argue with somebody who's on your side.

There's a lot different than arguing with somebody who's against you trying to chip you out trying to right take advantage or manipulate. So like I think you and I come to the table actually see that we both kind of share mostly common goals, and we both want what like the best for each other because we love each other. 

So we might disagree on perspective or process or you know infinite implementation, but we agree that we both want what's good for each other so I don't know I just like that's been important. Like a important basis to comment disagreements from I think they've been really messy at times for us in that they've been passionate. They've been loud. 

Oh, yeah they've been chaotic a lot of times. You know, I don't feel understood a lot of times I come to an argument not even expecting to be understood not expecting that me having a discussion with somebody and talking it through is actually going to make a difference.

So even like as I show up, I'm just like, okay, I'm gonna do this but It's probably not going to make a difference you know? And then I come to the end and it does make a difference sometimes We're pretty much all the time and I'm like, wow You know surprise surprise. 

Corinne Powell: Yeah so, so why do you come into the conversation with that mindset? 

Evan Powell: Oh Well, I feel like the house that I grew up in in the relationships that it kind of formed my thinking on that pretty much resulted in me having discussions and not walking away empowered or feeling understood.

So I just kind of carry that a lot of times now whereas.Yeah, we might talk something through but a lot of times I'm not expecting it to be like the arguments I had a lot of times weren't emotional and they weren't passionate and they weren't things like that they were literally just words where we exchange words and we try to come to an understanding. It was very mental, and a lot of times you understand. Actually my heart you understand like a deeper deeper place in in me and verbally we don't agree. Mm-hmm Which is I don't know me being a very I guess Logical Cerebral kind of guy is a wonder tt's always surprising. 

Corinne Powell: Sure. Yeah Right, right. There's more to just hearing it. There's more to it than just hearing someone's words. So hearing their heart, is super important like an 

Evan Powell: Understanding sometimes is not being able to say back to the person what you just heard like that was an understanding to me right as you know? Yeah, my thoughts on this were forming like okay, so I can repeat back to you what you just said so we understand each other and actually, we didn't I just really mean no I heard your words, right? 

And I can repeat them back regurgitate them to you. But yeah catching somebody's heart is a lot of times a lot deeper than that and it takes a different kind of listening I think it takes a lot more than a mental listening, Actually, I don't know all of what it takes. 

Corinne Powell: But you're right. You're at least it takes more than just logically hearing somebody. Yeah, there's more to it.

Evan Powell: I don't definitely don't feel like I do this well very very often or all the time. I definitely a minute. I'm doing it. I'm experiencing it. I think I'm just offering an open window into what life is like for me and if it's helpful take it, you know? 

Corinne Powell: Right, yeah, I think it is helpful for people in any it for in any instance, for anyone to hear how somebody else goes through life, it gives a fresh perspective maybe a new way of looking at something. 

Any of that is really helpful and I think it's key here to go through life with an open heart and an open mind and maybe I feel more importantly the open heart. Because if I feel like the way I'm doing something is the only way then I will not be so interested to hear what someone else has to say or how they do it. 

You just heard part one of a two-part conversation that Evan and I had together. So be sure to come back next Wednesday to hear the rest of the conversation. It's gonna be so good I'll look forward to seeing you then 

[Ending] Here we are we've made it to the end. What do you think about what you heard today? Is there something you heard that you know, you need to take action on? I'm one of those people who loves to not just sit and hear something but to sit in here and then go ahead and start implementing, taking action on what I hear, what was stirred up in me and I encourage you to do the same.

If you enjoyed today's episode or perhaps you heard an episode in the past that really stuck with you would you go ahead and share that with some of your friends and your family? It would mean so much to me and also, if you want to connect with me remember, you can always find me throughout the week. On Instagram I'm ⁠@corinne_changeradically.

Or you can email me anytime corinne@changeradically.com. I'd love to be in touch. And if there's any way that I can help you, please seek me out. 

Until we speak again next week I hope that you will remember in the moments that are loud and busy and in the moments that are quiet and still, that who you are is super important. You are valuable and I am so glad that you're alive.