In honor of Valentine’s Day–and all of its baggage–Katey and her special co-host Matt (Katey’s husband of nearly five years) discuss what it means to be married. We 
talk about our failures in past relationships and how they inform our partnership today. We discuss how parenting has changed our relationship and how Matt’s background in psychology has helped us work through some of our toughest moments.
If any relationship–romantic, professional, familial, and friendly–is going to be healthy and sustainable, we all need to do the deep work of self-discovery. Some of the psychological concepts that have helped us most include understanding transference and triggers. We’ll include some helpful resources to help you understand your own emotional make-up and how it can help rather than hinder your relationships.
Katey also mentions purity culture, which we discussed at length in Episode 7 “Dating Rules.”
What We’re Reading and Listening To
Katey raves about adrienne maree brown‘s Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. Pulling from Octavia Butler’s science fiction writing, brown explores innovative, creative approaches to social change–approaches that are sustainable, life-giving, and grassroots. Rather than relying on patriarchal models of organizing that emphasize charismatic leadership, brown suggests that we turn to the natural world for inspiration, watching how species like mushrooms collaborate and join efforts to withstand the most toxic, turbulent forces. 
Matt recently listened to an episode of This American Life called “Things You Can’t Say,” a fascinating exploration of political correctness and how it can constrain our language in challenging ways. This episode features stories about when people have said the wrong things and have had to deal with the fall-out.
Kindreds of the Moment
WAKE International “gets technology and communications tools, training and support to gender and social justice leaders and their organizations so they can accelerate their impact.” Katey recently attended their first US-based Tech2Empower training in San Francisco where she connected with 45 other change-makers from across the country as they learned from tech experts based at Slack, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, Mozilla and Google. Learn more about WAKE’s mission and about their future training opportunities on their website wakeinternational.org.
Resources
- What is transference?
- What are triggers?
- One of our favorite relationship books: Couple Skills: Making Your Relationship Work
- Interesting take on the concept of being your “real” self in relationships
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