This is the transcript from the first episode of Love Isn’t Enough, the new podcast from Joree Rose, LMFT and Dr. John Schinnerer. This podcast seeks to teach couples the skills, tools and awarenesses we need to feel safe and secure in relationship with the ultimate goal of being happier and more fulfilled.
If you’d like to listen to the podcast, here is the link to it on Apple Podcasts: Why Love Isn’t Enough – Episode 1
Welcome to Love Isn’t Enough
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Hello and welcome to the very first episode of Love Isn’t Enough. I am Joree Rose, here with my partner in life and love.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Dr. John Schinnerer.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And we are so thrilled to be doing this joint podcast together because we realized in both our personal and professional lives, love isn’t,
Dr. John Schinnerer: isn’t enough
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: that we both want to say it at the same time.
Dr. John Schinnerer: But yeah, love isn’t enough. We’ve realized that. in our own work, that it was important to do the relational work, but where we were getting stuck more so was in our own individual work. And it was things that went back that preceded our relationship. So it was things that came up. Originally from childhood or from a past relationship.
So oftentimes when we were getting triggered in a disagreement, it really had very little to do with her and I, and had more to do with our past.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: So we’re here to share so many stories, so many tools, so many resources on how you can be better in relationship. And in this journey, throughout this podcast, John and I are going to be super vulnerable sometimes maybe even embarrassingly so.
And yet we have found the more vulnerable we are, the better connection we have with those who we’re teaching.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And we like to think of it as using our experience to teach you.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And it helps people feel seen and not as alone, and not as misunderstood because relationships are fucking hard. Yeah.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And it, I think it normalizes what other people are going through.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yeah. So hopefully
Dr. John Schinnerer: you hear some of yourself in our stories and our struggles.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: That’s our hope.
Our Journey Begins: Present to Past
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: So in this first episode, we want to share with you our journey of how we got to where we are. And we’re going to kind of start from present moment going backwards. So John, you want to paint the scene?
Dr. John Schinnerer: Let’s start with the end goal and then we’ll go backwards and reveal how we got there.
The Vegas Wedding Story
Dr. John Schinnerer: So two years ago we never would have dreamt. That Elvis would be serenading us with can’t help falling in love with you at a. Chapel in Las Vegas in 108 degree heat with our three daughters and our three daughters were absolutely thrilled and beaming at us with love and pride.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yeah. I never saw myself walking down a little fake aisle at the little Vegas wedding chapel.
That was never an Elvis
Dr. John Schinnerer: impersonator.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: That was never within the realm of my expectation, especially in this relationship.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Yeah. And it ‘s a great story. And, and it was a, it’s a mock wedding. It was a.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Your wedding was a mock.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Well, it was non legally binding.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: So I don’t
Dr. John Schinnerer: know what to call Joree now. She’s somewhere between fiance and wife.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: I’m your fake wife.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Yeah.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Well, we’ve earned the title of husband and wife, though we have not yet legally confirmed that. So I imagine you’re wondering how to get to that little Vegas chapel in a non legally binding wedding ceremony. Funny story. In fact,
Dr. John Schinnerer: well, and part of the, the Joree in that was the positive emotions that our daughters felt at our union, at our relationship and the trust that they have in us.
The family unit that we’ve created with the five of us.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yeah. So I’ll give a little context and then we’ll go back to the beginning. How’s that? Because we’ve, we’ve learned so much in this journey of our relationship of almost nine years, but really in our entire life has been a masterclass in relationships.
And we both have a passion for understanding relationship, emotion,
Dr. John Schinnerer: human nature.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yeah, and growth really at the root of it, how to grow and become the most aligned. version of ourself. So, okay.
Breakup and Healing
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: So prior to two years ago, we were in the midst of about six months of a breakup off and on it. We had been together for seven years prior to that point, most of which was really great.
And well, you’re going to hear a lot about our relationship and story, but. For the first seven years, I would say it was probably 80 to 85 percent really good.
Dr. John Schinnerer: It was fantastic.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Which was still an amazing percentage of the time. And that 15 percent really wasn’t about each other. Some of it was, but really, as John had said in the beginning, these accumulation of these small paper cuts, but also open wounds from previous points in our lives were getting activated.
So six months of off and on very painful led to a breakup. Fucking devastating breakup. John broke up with me. I, I was.
Dr. John Schinnerer: But who’s counting?
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Oh, I am for sure. Absolutely. I mean, hardest thing I’d ever been through, harder than my divorce. It was the most painful confronting experience that we both actually needed because I think ultimately it woke us
Dr. John Schinnerer: up.
And that’s what I was looking for. I was hoping for was a radical wake up call.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And it was a risk. I mean, you took a huge risk.
Dr. John Schinnerer: I needed a way to get us deeper
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: than
Dr. John Schinnerer: where we were at.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And ultimately we got there and how we got there. That’s a story for another episode, but what was powerful was the depth of our healing when we got back together and the conscious choices we made.
To one of the things I always say to my clients, not try harder, but try different. We, we knew it had to be a different route of healing and we delved in.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Well, and, and the places where we got stuck were places, at least let me speak for me. The places I was getting stuck in our relationship was places I had always gotten stuck throughout my history.
And it was frustrating as hell because I thought I’m a psychologist. Like I should be able to get past this stuff.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Oh my God. You would think that too? Yeah. I used to say that out loud to him. You teach this shit.
Dr. John Schinnerer: You should be able
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: to do that. You’re the
Dr. John Schinnerer: anger management expert. You’re not supposed to get angry.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Which I knew was really triggering to hear. So I’m sorry about that again. But when you do this professionally, it’s hard when we can’t do it for ourselves.
Dr. John Schinnerer: One. And it’s hard. Like it’s hard for us to be human in that level. Like it’s, it’s not hard. It’s it’s frustrating. It’s vexing at some point because, and then we would, we joke about that, that fucking humanity, because like, that’s the part of me that frustrates me the most is where my emotions are in a spot where I’m not really doing a great job managing them and they’re more in control of me than I am of them.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: So.
Therapy and Self-Discovery
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: During the six months of on and off before our breakup, I had requested to go to therapy and
Dr. John Schinnerer: Oh shit, you’re going to tell this story? I’m going
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: to tell the story and Just
Dr. John Schinnerer: tell the lampshade part
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Okay, I’ll get to all of it baby, not just the part where I am, you know, embarrassed So I had requested that we go to therapy because we were getting stuck and it felt like this gridlock within our relationship And John put out some very specific criteria for a therapist and I found the guy and one of the challenges is we had to drive an hour to get there.
This is a benefit of us having virtual clients, our clients don’t have to go back home in the same car after a hard therapy session,
Dr. John Schinnerer: which always sucks
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: painful especially when it was an hour away. Anyhow, so we’re in the lobby of our first therapy appointment, and I’m someone who likes things particularly organized.
I’m
Dr. John Schinnerer: curious how you’re going to describe that.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Was that accurate?
Dr. John Schinnerer: Yeah.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: I like things organized, I like things in order, I feel better in my environment when You know, picture frames are straight on the wall. I might have been known to in other people’s houses if the pictures are crooked, I might straighten them out on the walk to the bathroom.
You know, I mean, like, who doesn’t want that?
Dr. John Schinnerer: Which is funny because early in our relationship, I used to purposely go around the house and like, screw up the picture frames. Like make them a little bit,
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: take my pillows. I have like 7, 000 pillows on my bed and he would purposely turn them like 45 degrees just to fuck with me.
Dr. John Schinnerer: I thought it was helping.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: I think it was actually hurting your case, not mine. So we’re in the lobby of the therapist’s office, sitting on a couch, very uncomfortable. The tension was already pretty high. And I see across the room for me, a lampshade in which the seam of the shade was facing the front of the room.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And we can’t have that. Can we?
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Well, most women can’t. As I told this story to many women, they’re like, I would have done the exact same thing. I don’t think a man would have thought about this. So I did what I now know most women would have done in my position. I got up and I turned the lampshade. So the seam was in the back, very obvious to me what needed to be done.
Like I was helping out the other people who are going to be sitting there.
Dr. John Schinnerer: So they wouldn’t have the same discomfort.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Exactly. I’m trying to ease the discomfort of those around me, including myself. So as soon as I sit back down from doing that, I’m like, Oh shit. John’s going to use this against me in our therapy session.
Dr. John Schinnerer: When, and part of the problem was at that time, I think I was in a slightly depressed mood. And so I was seeing everything through a negative lens and that became problematic.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yeah. And I was having a hard
Dr. John Schinnerer: time snapping out of it.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And that was a big piece of it was you couldn’t see the good.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Yeah.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And that negative lens.
Shaden all the good that was there. Yeah.
Dr. John Schinnerer: As evidenced by how I started off the therapy session, which is really embarrassing.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: So the therapist, so this therapist says, What brought you guys together in the first place? What made you fall in love with one another?
Dr. John Schinnerer: And I started out with all the negatives.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Which was
Dr. John Schinnerer: not his question at all.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Including how I just fixed the lampshade. And, you know, there might have been some labels like OCD in there, perfectionist, which I’m not. I’m just particular on the things that I like. However, That was a pretty low point for us. And that two hour therapy session proved to be really painful and seemingly unaffected to get you to see why you loved me or even liked me needless to say that car ride home was painful and followed up the next day with the first breakup over the phone, which was devastating because we were engaged at that point.
And let me paint the picture too. I mean, this was. 2022. So this was coming out of COVID. During COVID, you had experienced major back pain and surgery. We experienced obviously COVID, but both as therapists, our client load almost doubled. So the anxiety we were dealing with, we’re getting. Every single day.
It was hard to find an escape from
Dr. John Schinnerer: it was like a fire hose of negative emotion.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: It was a lot. So, not that I understand completely why he broke up with me, I get it.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Why I think part of it was we both needed to make changes. And I think we were having a hard time at times seeing the changes that we needed to make, or if we were aware of the changes actually figuring out how to make those changes and make them stick.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Right. And we both were in a pattern of, I think, being defensive when one of us would make a request for something. I’ll speak for myself. I think I was self righteous in, well, my ways, but clearly the better way. I mean, the lampshade is going to at least be straight. So clearly that was a good way to handle things.
So that, that was our entree into this time period of challenge. Well, off and on, off and on, not seeming to make any movement finally led to the, what we, I really thought was the final breakup in January of 2023, which luckily didn’t last very long. I mean, I think within three weeks you would kind of woken up and realize, shit, I made a really big mistake and it took me probably another three or four weeks to trust.
That I wasn’t going to be heard again, but I knew if we were going to get back together, we had to do something different than what we had been doing because I knew that our love wasn’t enough to carry us through.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Yeah. Cause our love had never been in question.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Never
Dr. John Schinnerer: in question. We’ve always loved each other deeply.
And we just got to a point where we are on each other and kind of
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: the fun way, but
Dr. John Schinnerer: you know, that bucket of negative emotions had just grown filled up with, with nothing major. It was all kind of minor stuff, just an accumulation of minor stuff.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Right. Which again, as we began to realize, was mostly about our open wounds from the past, from our childhood, from our previous marriages.
And John was, took the initiative to find a couples therapist. And so I had come highly recommended and.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Let me just give a shout out to these people. So a friend of mine, Dr. Jim Bramson, who’s a psychologist said, look, if you’re serious about this, go see Charlie and Linda Bloom and Santa Cruz. And he named a bunch of people that had gotten seen them.
He’s like, they’re married. They’ve been doing this for 40, 50 years. They’ve written seven books. Like they’re awesome. I trust him completely. Go see them. And I was like, great. And so I told you that I had made an appointment. With them for a two day, 12 hour intensive therapy session, that’s six hours a day.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: So for me to hear that his willingness to go through 12 hours over the course of two days gave me the confidence to say he’s in, if he’s willing to sit in that and face himself and face the fire, so to speak. That was almost enough for me to say, he’s showing me his commitment that we knew this breakup was not something we.
And so I
Dr. John Schinnerer: remember, you know, sitting with Charlie and Linda who were awesome. I think I said that already, but how much of what we worked on, how much of what you worked on with them? Do you think was stuff from your past versus stuff from our current relationship? Just out of curiosity.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: I would say 80 percent probably was my past.
Would you agree?
Dr. John Schinnerer: Yeah, it was. the vast majority.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And I feel like my past was the bigger focus over the two days in Europe. Yeah, that was
Dr. John Schinnerer: great.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: No, I’m like, I think we’ll come back for another, at least six hours. This felt oddly disproportionate for the focus of the attention.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And I wasn’t saying the
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: That’s why we’re able to sit there for so long. Let’s just sit back and watch the Joree show of. Tell me more George healing, her childhood traumas and early relational traumas, but yeah. That that was huge and it worked.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Yeah, it was really effective. It was very helpful. It wasn’t, it wasn’t easy. It was painful at times it was confronting.
And it led to other conversations outside of, of that environment. And it was really, really helpful. And, and part of, part of what I think we’ve done well through that and through other things is that pattern that you started, which was going back and revisiting disagreements with. And I think it’s really important for us to be able to look at, you know, why did I get triggered at this sentence or this question?
Like what was going on internally for you there? Was that really about us? Was that about your past? Like, and, and some of the responses I know I’ve had in the past were. Like kind of baffled me, like the emotional responses. I was like, can
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: you give an example? Like,
Dr. John Schinnerer: like, why did I get so angry when Joree took Kami to Ecuador for a week?
And
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: was
Dr. John Schinnerer: off the grid in, in the Amazon, which I mean, number one made me feel very vulnerable. Like it was, it was scary to me to allow you guys to go to, well, allow yeah, like I just struggled with safety there and it was really hard for me, but then It was beyond that because I was like, well, why was I angry?
Like, it doesn’t make any sense. And so ultimately after several conversations, I went back to my childhood and realized that my parents would leave when I was really young, like four or five, six, and they would leave me and my older sister at home for. And I was in a relationship for one, two, three, four weeks with a babysitter who was like 21, who we knew, but there was a couple incidents where traumatic things happen during those, those time periods, which made me really dysregulated when someone that I love goes away by themselves.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And he wasn’t consciously aware of that. So he couldn’t name that to me, but what I experienced was stonewalling and shut down and disengaging.
Blending Families and Moving Forward
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: We’ll go through all these stories eventually throughout more episodes, but to really come back to this journey of healing and, you know, we’ve, we’ve done couples work for our clients over the past couple of years, but nothing super formally.
But, you know, really recognizing that we’re a great team. We work really well together. We are very aligned in our therapeutic approach, even though we kind of take different doors to get into the same room. But after getting back together from our breakup and going to see Charlie and Linda, we really formalized how we want to work with couples, which is, I think, a really, really unique model.
Mm
Dr. John Schinnerer: hmm. It’s fantastic. I’m thrilled with it. And, and basically it’s the idea that, because what we were seeing is we could teach the best relational tools from the Gottmans or Sue Johnson or whoever. Terry
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Real, Esther Perel.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Right. And these were great tools, scientifically validated. And yet a lot of the couples we were working with weren’t able to access the tools when they needed them most, or just weren’t able to access the tools.
And we started looking at why is that? And that happened to us a little bit. Yeah. And, and so we realized that it’s critical to do the individual work simultaneous with the relational work. If you really want to make headway to move towards. Living as a happy thriving couple because I would say 60 to 80% of the time the stuff we’re getting really triggered about in relationship is not about us.
It’s about the past.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Right.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Pre us.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Right.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And I think that’s true of all couples out there. And they do it without any realization that it’s happening
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: or even if it’s up in the past. I see in a lot of my clients, the, the wounds they still carry from like. When they were dating or the wedding or the first child being born.
And now it’s 20 years later. So even if it’s the past, it might still be the past of that person, but
Dr. John Schinnerer: a grudge or
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: the resentment builds over time. So in this model, John and I. Are really making effective work with our clients really based on our own experience where we had to do our own individual work Simultaneous to the couple’s work
Dr. John Schinnerer: and you know in that way So Joree and I have been doing this year long monthly masterclass series on relationships and the first lesson that we started out with is Self awareness and you guys have heard me say this before but
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: this one first episode.
They haven’t heard you say it Well,
Dr. John Schinnerer: I’m assuming there’s some And you’ve probably heard, maybe heard me say this before,
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: but you can hear him talk a lot about the power of self awareness. There is a plug for John’s individual podcasts.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Thank you.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Okay, go ahead.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And so Tasha Eurich has research that shows that 95 percent of people will report being highly self aware.
And in fact, research shows it’s about 12 to 15%, which is a huge problem. If the majority of us, the vast majority are going around thinking, I know everything about myself. I know everything I need to know. And we don’t, that’s a big problem. And that happens a lot in relationship. And even if it’s, I know, 95 percent of myself.
And I’m unaware of 5%. We’re trying to reduce those little areas where we get stuck. And those little areas that we get stuck are usually in that 5%. And, and so it’s critically important to begin, I would argue with self awareness. So, you know, how you feel and can differentiate how you feel. So, you know, what your thoughts are.
So, you know, what your values are. So, you know, what some ground rules of conflict are. So, you know how to communicate well, like those are all kind of, to me, part of self awareness.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Well, and that’s really tricky because. I would have said I’m highly self aware, but I think I was more than mostly I was mostly self aware.
Dr. John Schinnerer: I was too. I wasn’t completely.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: You were aware about the things you were aware about, I was aware about the things I was aware about, but I think in general, you and I were, are more aware than most having been meditators
Dr. John Schinnerer: and
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: of mindfulness and. The learnings we’ve done in our own educational journey. And yet sometimes we’re most blind to our darkest spot.
Yeah.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Well, or we get in, I mean, like I, where I would get stuck in shame when we would get in those disagreements. Like that was a pattern. I’ve had pretty much my whole life. It goes back to childhood and I had never had any success with changing it. Although I was aware of it.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yeah.
Dr. John Schinnerer: But even, I mean, I was aware of the dynamic.
I wasn’t aware that shame was at the heart of it until probably two or three years ago.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yeah. That was part of our breakup. That was even more recent.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And that was a big awareness.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And so, you know, since getting back together, it wasn’t just all Joree’s and happy of, okay, we’re back together. We had then multiple wounds to have to heal and recover from.
I mean, one, one big wound was especially my two daughters were incredibly hurt.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And angry
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: and mad at you. They, you know, didn’t know that they could trust you again and didn’t value me and going back to you at that point. They saw all
Dr. John Schinnerer: your pain during the breakup.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Oh, it was, I couldn’t hide it. I mean, and my girls and I are close to begin with, but I, I couldn’t hide it.
And they were very, very protective. And that makes
Dr. John Schinnerer: sense too, that. They’re protective and angry about the amount of hurt that you endured as a result of the breakup. Like, I totally, I understood that. I got it. Yeah.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And he understood that so much that When we did get back together and we’re committed to, you know, you don’t have to support us right now, but hopefully when you see us happy, you’re so you will support what went wrong.
Dr. John Schinnerer: I also gave them permission to be angry with me,
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: which was huge.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And to let me to like unload,
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: which they did, which was, I think the biggest gift you could have given them.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And I just tried to listen non judgmentally, non defensively.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yeah. Did you judge what they said?
Dr. John Schinnerer: Probably, maybe some of it, but I mean, it was, it was just, you know, I can see why you’re upset about that.
I see why you’re angry. I see why you’re hurt. Thank you for sharing it with me.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And we’ll probably do a whole other episode on the benefit of accessing healthy anger and how to respond really appropriately and non
Dr. John Schinnerer: defensive listening defensively. Yeah.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: We’ll, we’ll, we’ll get to all these things, but that was a really big piece because.
We had previously to the breakup really prided ourselves on how we blended our three daughters. And so when we first started dating, our youngest were 10 and my oldest was 12. And we were very, very, very conscious from day one that our top value was our children. And we were both the primary parent for our girls.
And we knew if we put our relationship first when we were all together, that the girls would end up resenting us. We’d
Dr. John Schinnerer: lose them.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And so it looked like when we were all together, our goal was to make it additive. If we all five were together, they were the focus of our attention. We would make sure we were doing things where all of us were included.
And that was successful. I mean that in and of itself for blending families is not something we see a lot of other people doing.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Well, one of the things I don’t see in blending families very often is putting the kids first. If you’re talking about two people from divorces that have kids. And I think all too often I see parents putting themselves first and the kids second, which almost always creates issues.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yeah. Yeah, it’s
Dr. John Schinnerer: hard to keep the kids first. I mean, we sacrificed a lot of our own needs along the way for, for nine years and it got less and less. So like we got more and more of our needs filled and now we’re finally gratefully at the point where we’ve just moved in together after nine years and having a ball.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yeah, it’s so much fun. And it’s a blast because We’ve done all the, we’ve done all the work. There’s no sore spots. There’s no wounds that are still open and raw.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Yeah. And I think stuff’s going to, we’ve talked about this too. So I’m pretty safe saying this, that, you know, there will be things that come up.
There will be irritations and mistakes and miscommunications. And I’m really confident that. We have the communication tools and the non defensive listening and the emotional management skills to make them at least manageable, if not that big of a deal.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Right. I know for me, I used to a little bit walk on eggshells because I never wanted to upset you.
And I didn’t want to trigger you. And I don’t have that fear anymore. I don’t have the fear of you being triggered because I also have the confidence that I can handle that. I also have the confidence that you won’t get as triggered as you would have, because you understand what your wounds were when you used to get triggered.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Well, and I think the other thing you understand is if I get angry, that doesn’t mean I’m leaving you.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Oh, that was huge for me to learn.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Like I can get angry and still want to be in this relationship.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Well, and the way that I really learned that. Was when you gave me really good permission to get angry at you and anger was never something I was comfortable with or ever felt safe expressing and John had given me some good reason, but also good opportunity to express it.
Once he really mastered the non defensive listening part that took time, but like he said with my girls that, you know, he, if I got really angry, he would say, thank you for sharing your anger with me. And that permission gave me the confidence to say, wow, I just got like really pissed. And of course, I still want to be in relationship with him doesn’t
Dr. John Schinnerer: change.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: I’m going anywhere that I want him to go anywhere. So that made me realize if I could get really angry and not want to end this relationship, then that must mean John could get really angry with me and isn’t going to leave.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And I think there’s something really freeing to being able to express your anger at your loved one, which is inevitable.
Yeah. We’re going to get angry and hurt and pissed off at each other. And to have the freedom to express that. So you can kind of finally get rid of it and let it go and feel heard is, I can’t overstate the importance.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: It creates safety. It allows us to get really vulnerable when we’re not afraid to express ourselves.
And I think. That’s a hallmark that is a skill to really learn how to master. And I don’t want to say master, meaning it’s always gonna be a hundred percent, but feel comfortable with practicing and, and working on. And so John giving my daughter’s permission for their anger over time, me having more permission.
What would you say if you, if one of the things that helped me and my girls heal, what was one of the things that I allowed for you to heal? What did I do?
Dr. John Schinnerer: I, I think. It was the full acceptance of my emotions was a big one for me. And, and it’s interesting. We’ve also talked about this offline that I think it took me a while to trust that.
It took me years to trust that because I’d never experienced that. And so I don’t think I believed it at first. I think I wanted to believe it and found it hard to believe. And so I think that acceptance and I think that’s one of the amazing things about where we’re at now is I think there’s a complete acceptance of one another, the emotions that we feel, the weird or strange thoughts that we have at times, like our own quirks and idiosyncrasies and
Oh, so what was I going with that?
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: What did I do for you? That helped you one of the biggest things, but I, I tried to tell you from pretty early on day one that I accepted all of you. Oh,
Dr. John Schinnerer: so where I was going to go. So, yeah. And so the acceptance piece has been big because I think it allowed me. At some of those deeper levels where I really struggled to accept myself and then go in deeper internally and look at, Oh my gosh, this is actually shame.
That’s driving this. Like if you had asked me five years ago, do you have any shame in you? I would have said, no, I don’t have any shame.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yeah.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And you know, where shame is the belief that we are unworthy of love connection and belonging. And that’s what was kind of fueling that shutdown when we’d get in disagreement.
Where I was just like, ah, shit, I’m no good at this relationship thing and she’d be better off without me. And those are not helpful or constructive thoughts on any level, nor are they true.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: But that’s interesting though, because I feel like I always did that for you try to hold that space of accepting all your emotions.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Oh, you’ve been amazing.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: But was there something different after our breakup and getting back together? Because I would say that was your work. I’ve been doing. it’s about accepting yourself and accepting your emotions. And it’s about, it’s about accepting your own emotions. To believe that I could then accept your.
I
Dr. John Schinnerer: think most of the work I had to do as my work. Because I think the breakup gave me motivation. To go back in and look at, like the shame one is one of the biggest ones. Cause that led to the stonewalling. It led to the shutdown. down and it’s one that I’ve had going back for decades.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And that’s where we would get stuck in that anxious avoidant trap.
That was
Dr. John Schinnerer: hard. And so I think that was, That was the biggest one for me, but it gave me renewed motivation. Like that’s why I studied like internal family systems and did that work myself was to heal that part of me that was so wounded.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: I think for you, I really got out of my own way and I finally heard where I was hurting you.
I think that was what was different afterwards. I think I stopped being defensive in justifying myself. And I think that was one of our really big loopholes we got stuck in is if you were hurt, I would justify my actions versus understand why or how my actions hurt you, would
Dr. John Schinnerer: you agree? Yes. And the other thing I would say you did was became more flexible in your thinking and thus more open to my influence.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: So this is one you’ve said in a while, and we just recently we’re having a conversation in which I had a pretty big awareness around that. So I, you know, John loves the phrase cognitive flexibility. So, you know, having the ability to be open minded, open to others, not
Dr. John Schinnerer: be
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: so rigid in your thinking,
Dr. John Schinnerer: to not believe you’re right.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And I think in my own reflection upon myself, I think I’ve always been pretty open minded,
Dr. John Schinnerer: however,
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: what I recently, and this is like, what, you know, two years later really is what I really recognize is it wasn’t so much that I didn’t trust you or what you were trying to influence of having me think in a different way or look at things through a different lens, what I realized, what for me felt like I was trying to be controlling of the situation.
Or my environment or the lampshade, what that really was wasn’t control. Cause I never resonated with being, being a controlling person. Like that just didn’t, it felt judgmental and it just didn’t. Feel like I could see it because I’m very structured in many ways, but I wouldn’t say I was controlling, even though I could see other people’s experience of that, but my recent awareness was, oh, it wasn’t that I was trying to control things.
It was that I had a challenge of trusting. I had a challenge of trusting. Someone else can be my partner in full definition of partnership where I could lean in and surrender to, and feel safe and feel safe that the chores were going to get done or, you know, that things would get taken care of. So I was able to become more cognitively flexible while you simultaneously stepped up in our partnership, which I had a great room for you to do.
So it was like this if and then all these things had to happen of both of us. Letting go of our own attachment to, this is how I do things.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Yeah. And I think early on in the relationship, you were over functioning.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Well, I think I’ve been over functioning the majority of my whole life. And
Dr. John Schinnerer: so what does that look like?
It looks like, you know, make click making the dinner, which was. Often typically, usually amazing. And then cleaning up after. And then I was trying to find ways in like, well, that doesn’t feel just to me. Let me, let me do the cleanup.
Struggles with Trust and Worthiness
Dr. John Schinnerer: If you’re doing the cooking. And, and that took some work, like it, like, I felt like I had to shoehorn my way into the cleanup.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: I didn’t feel worthy of you helping me. I felt like this, this is my house. I made this food. These are my dishes. I, this is just what I have to do.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And to me, it just felt fair to clean up.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And I appreciate that. And then I was also a little, you know, particular on how I wanted things clean, which might have undermined your help, which I’ve gotten much better
Dr. John Schinnerer: at.
That’s part of, right. Part of shoehorning myself in. How far do I need to go? What are your expectations for what’s clean versus mine?
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Right. And so it was really interesting though, but I think that was been the power of all the self reflection is that what’s another lens I can look at this through. Am I controlling, or am I afraid to trust a partner to help me?
Yeah. No, I think that’s much better frame. Or, or am I feeling a lack of worthiness that I am deserved, deserving of help. I think that was part of it. And so I
Dr. John Schinnerer: think also your resistance to help way preceded our relationship.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Oh, a thousand percent. I’ve been over functioning my whole life. I mean, I literally, I think back to being six years old, over functioning.
Dr. John Schinnerer: One, I think that was the same thing I did in high school, right? I was. I was hyper functioning or over functioning to be successful, to get the attention and love of my parents, to prove my worth.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Well, and for me, it was rooted in trauma of my family of origin and a variety of different capacities, which I’m sure will come out.
And as we talked about in our episodes as well, but that was really, really big.
Rebuilding Trust After a Breakup
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And so it was a simultaneous. I don’t know how to trust. Well, and then after our breakup, I’m like, well, fuck, he just broke that trust. I shouldn’t trust. So ironically, it took that huge breach of trust. To be able to rebuild it.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Well, or change the fundamental structure of it.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Right.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Because I, I think both of us trust each other now a hundred percent plus.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: A hundred, a hundred and ten percent.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And, and that’s. I
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: trust you implicitly. Like,
Dr. John Schinnerer: I trust you too. And I don’t think we were quite there before the breakup.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Well, and. As
Dr. John Schinnerer: you said, 85 to 90 percent we were there.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Well, and for, for you listening, it’s an interesting thing. Cause as I hear the word trust. The first thing that comes to my mind in a relationship is fidelity. And yet what we’re talking is so much more than do I trust you to be faithful?
Dr. John Schinnerer: When, and we’d also, we early on, we’d given each other passwords to our phone.
So we were trusting, we just weren’t completely, we just weren’t a hundred percent. And I think the trusting part, like I remember thinking early on, like. Wow. I love her so much and I’ve told her so much about me. She has the ability to either hold my heart gently or to destroy it. Like that’s, that’s if you’re really in love, I think that’s how it should be.
And yet it’s simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying to me. Right. Cause I, that’s complete trust is here’s my heart, please treat it gently. And there’s no guarantee that’s going to happen. And even with the best of intentions, you’re still going to step on it. Occasionally we’re going to step on each other’s.
That’s just miscommunication or misunderstanding.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: It’s really amazing to me. We were able to rebuild to the level that we are in a relatively short amount of time. And we could go on and on and on, and we will in other episodes. There were a variety of tools we utilized, and that’s all to say. It works.
Yeah.
The Importance of Self-Awareness
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And you know, when I, people always ask us and have asked us independently in our client base, but as well as the couple’s work we do, how do I know if I should stay with someone? How do I know this is the right person? Especially when, and this is, I haven’t experienced with a lot of clients when they haven’t had the experience of trusting themselves.
Mm-hmm . To know what love looks like or feels like. So they don’t know how to trust. Is this a good relationship? Again, that
Dr. John Schinnerer: goes back to self awareness. I would argue that you’ve got to have that emotional awareness. And even that, even when you have it, it can be a little bit tricky.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Oh, a hundred percent.
And it’s going to be also relationship dependent, right? I mean, we, we know that attachment styles aren’t fixed from birth, that they’re going to be relationship and situation dependent. So there’s, there’s so many external factors. It’s really a miracle to me. Anybody works in relationships to be honest.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Two of the big factors are. The level of motivation that you have to stay in the relationship, the level that your partner has as well, level of motivation, but then also, are you willing to do the work? Are you willing to go deep? Are you willing to be uncomfortable? Do you have a growth mindset around relationship skills?
Because I think if you do, there’s a lot you can overcome.
Growth Mindset in Relationships
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Well, and, and that growth mindset is the number one answer we generally give people, but specifically in relationship skills, because. I know like, you know, you were a growth mindset from day one, but you were blinded to the relationship skill part on some areas.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And I think, I guess I would add now that you need a growth mindset in terms of personal development and relational development. Correct. Because I think Where I needed to do the work. That last bit of work was personal.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yeah.
Dr. John Schinnerer: It was just my shit.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And the ironic thing is I could have told you that, but you wouldn’t have been able to hear me.
You needed to take control of the breakup to take control of your own process because it wouldn’t you. Because trust for you and trust with women was a challenge. It would have been received as criticism or judgment or put down her shame.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Well, and it’s ironic because, you know, I was frustrated with you before we broke up about not listening to me.
And yet I couldn’t listen to you either because I was in a depressed mood.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: I’m smiling as you say that because I couldn’t point that out to you. I
Dr. John Schinnerer: know.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: So thank you for your self awareness on that. And yet, hopefully, you know, as you’re listening to this, there’s maybe little bits of things that are resonating with you to understand how these small or big nuances create chasm.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And I think as we’re talking also realize that I don’t think these are gender bound issues, like my issues could be. The wives or the females in some relationships, juries might be the males or the husbands, assuming heterosexuality or, I mean, you can also look at it as the masculine and the feminine in the relationship.
If it’s a gay relationship who has more masculinity, who has more femininity. And it’s not attached to that.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: No,
Dr. John Schinnerer: they’re just human issues. No.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yes. Yeah. Not attached to it. Yes. Yes. Yes. I was getting stuck on a different train of thought that I wanted to go to, but I, for the sake of time, I want to start getting back to how we walked down that aisle with Elvis.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Ah, that was amazing.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: So we get back together. Our girls begin to rebuild trust. John’s daughter always trusted me.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Yes. She loves you.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: She, well, they all, everyone loves each other. Again, love wasn’t what was in question. She just had the maturity to recognize. You were going through something. And that had nothing to do with my relationship with her.
And that was an immense amount of maturity on her part. And we began to rebuild, not just together, the two of us, but as a family of five. And we were committed to this family of five also growing. So I think having the transparency of what we were going through and being, we always been open with our girls, but being really open in, this is what relationship looks like.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Yeah. This is what love. This is what is enough for love.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yeah. And I mean, share what, what your daughter has shared about what we’ve role modeled and,
Dr. John Schinnerer: oh, yeah, we’ve gotten some amazing compliments from the girls. But one of the things my daughter said, and she comes from a family with a very contentious divorce.
And she said, you know, you and Joree have shown me that love is possible. You’ve, you’ve shown, you’ve given me hope. That love is possible.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yeah.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And I was like, wow, that’s, that’s a really nice compliment. And
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: at 18, she’s also had some amazing people in her life as, you know, young partners that she’s had to even show her, her worth in that.
So it’s, it’s been an incredible role modeling experience. And
Dr. John Schinnerer: now she goes out with men who treat her very well, who opened the door for her, who pay for things, who treat her like the young goddess that she is.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yeah. She knows her worth. We’ve taught them their worth. And I love that. Absolutely.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And I think all three of the girls do that.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: They do,
Dr. John Schinnerer: which I’m really grateful for.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Well, we, we’ve actively worked on and I have highlighted the importance of what. Different values and relationship look like. So at 18 and 20 years old, these three young women know what to look for and what to avoid. And they know what they’re worth and they know what they’re worth.
So we’ve been rebuilding. We’ve been waiting until the girls all left the house for college for us to move in together. But over the summer, we were celebrating John’s birthday on a little birthday getaway, him and I, and. After having a bottle of champagne while sitting by the water and listening to the Beatles, I had this great idea that the next time we’re in Vegas, That we should go see the Beatles Cirque du Soleil
Dr. John Schinnerer: show love.
Yeah, and we had tickets to go see Billy Joel and Sting in November. So we thought, oh, we’ll just wrap those two together.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: So getting excited of this thought, because I love this Cirque du Soleil Beatles show. I go look online only to discover that the show was ending in a week and a half. Permanently. Mm hmm.
And it might have been the champagne, but I got this big up, bag up my ass.
Dr. John Schinnerer: A bug.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: A big bug.
Dr. John Schinnerer: A bug. Okay. That’s different.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: A big bug up my ass. That, thank God. Yeah, I know. Firework. We’re just having inside jokes now. All of that’s going to sound a little scary, but firework was up my ass, but we know what we’re talking about.
It was a bug. It was a bug. Yeah. But that was a squirrel on John’s part where he just completely derailed. All right. You come back. Roll you back in. Okay. So I get this big bug. At my ass that we need to see love before it ends in a week and a half
Dr. John Schinnerer: and our daughters are all over ones in Wisconsin ones in Danville, and my daughter was coming back from Europe, and was having a hell of a time getting home had to sleep over in Montreal.
She and her travel partner were both sick. One was throwing up in the hotel room, but it was
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: time I could get tickets was in two days from this moment. I guess at that point, three days, it was a Monday, I got tickets for Thursday night. So John supports my crazy idea because this was not going to be cheap.
And it was gonna mean all five of us had to drop everything
Dr. John Schinnerer: and fly to Las Vegas
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: and make their way to Las Vegas. So I find tickets, all five of us, and I send out a group text. And it’s all about love is what I’m talking about in this text. And for my daughter in Wisconsin, I call her and I’m like, whatever you have to do, get yourself to Vegas by Thursday morning.
We have to be at a show Thursday night. She’s like, but mom, I’ve got to work. I can’t take, I’m like. Ari, it’s all for love. It’s all about love. We are more important. The five of us are more important and they all thought I was fucking insane. And
Dr. John Schinnerer: part of it was that we were saying, you know, that they’re getting to an age where they’re all in college now and we don’t have that many more opportunities to do family experiences with the five of us.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Right. At some point there’ll be new partners mixed in and it’s felt like
Dr. John Schinnerer: time limited.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Just got this family unit back together and we want to just do
Dr. John Schinnerer: something big
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: the hell out of it. So my daughter’s like, Mom, I can’t, I have to work. I’m like, Ari, whatever you got to do to make it happen. So she starts to figure that out.
Meanwhile, the other two, one, like John said, his daughter was on her way home
Dr. John Schinnerer: from Europe. I called Molly and I told Molly, I was like, Oh, guess what? We’re going to go to Vegas in two days. And she started crying. Like, that’s the start we were off to. She’s like, I can’t do it. I’m too exhausted. I need time to wash my clothes.
Yeah. I’ve got work. Like there was a bunch of reasons when she couldn’t do it.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Suck it up and deal. Like, really? Come on. Like we’re taking you to Vegas. Well, and then, you know, my youngest daughter was at home and she saw a whole slew of texts come through one, including the airline flight,
Dr. John Schinnerer: only check the last text
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: one, including the show tickets.
One, including a picture night of John and I drinking our champagne by the water. And the final text, I said, it’s all for love. Well, she didn’t scroll up. No, all she saw was the love. And she’s like, Oh God, there’s mom and John, you know, whatever they’re doing, it’s all for love. Okay. Right. And kind of mocking us a little bit.
Well, we make it happen, but my daughter in Wisconsin has to figure out how she’s going to get off of work. So she decides to tell her boss, my mom might be getting married in Vegas. So I have to go in case she decides when we’re there to get married. And
Dr. John Schinnerer: so that got her off. And then she told us, well, if we’re going to Vegas, you guys should get married in Vegas.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Not getting married in Vegas. That’s. Like we’re way too spiritual in our where we’re at in our lives. Like that’s not going to be what our wedding looks
Dr. John Schinnerer: like. We’re not getting married in Vegas.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: So the next day, I
Dr. John Schinnerer: don’t want to insult Vegas.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: It just didn’t match. Our needs,
Dr. John Schinnerer: what we’re looking for in a place to get married.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Doesn’t fit the most spiritual of places. And,
Dr. John Schinnerer: but I also, I hate to miss an opportunity to mess with children.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: So my, but, but, but first my daughter, the next day, she sends us a Google doc that she put together lobbying for why we had to get married in Vegas and. What was amazing. And I’m someone who’s totally into the woo woo.
I’m into the signs. I think signs are just like the universe’s, you know, way of telling me I’m on the right path. Well, the three girls, one summer, when we first started dating after a year and a half on vacation, they started planning our wedding.
Dr. John Schinnerer: So they liked us together. Even then
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: they liked us together, even then, and they created a document.
What our wedding would look like and the dresses and, and the whole shebang. Well, my daughter found that original document and the date was June 27th, 2017. That’s when they created it. And we were arriving in Vegas on June 27th, 2024.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Well, it wasn’t the same day. You said 17th and 27th.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: I’m sorry. It was June 7th, 27th, but one was 2017.
One was 2020. Yeah. So we were arriving on the same date. And Ari was like, mom, it’s a sign. Like you, you got to do this. It’s a sign. She went through and put all these photos of us over the past eight and a half years. And then of course there was this one part, you know, the little dig of after all you guys have put us through from our breakup, the least you could do for us
Dr. John Schinnerer: is get married.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: We’re like, we’re not getting married.
A Non-Legally Binding Wedding Ceremony
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: However, I called John the next morning and said, I looked into the little Vegas wedding chapel and we could do. A non legally binding ceremony with Elvis,
Dr. John Schinnerer: like a commitment ceremony, family commitment ceremony. And I was like, great, that’s great.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: So we book it and we didn’t tell the kids yet.
Dr. John Schinnerer: They wouldn’t have believed us anyway.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: So we get to Vegas and we go see love and it was. It’s
Dr. John Schinnerer: an epic night,
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: epic on a variety of levels, a
Dr. John Schinnerer: lot of laughter,
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: very family bonding. That was the whole Katy Perry moment. John said a moment ago, there was a bag flying in the middle of the street and, and he was like the fireworks song.
So we then tell the girls, okay, tomorrow we have an appointment at four 30 with Elvis
Dr. John Schinnerer: dress up.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: So by two o’clock, we got to go back to our rooms. We’re at the pool and we got to go get ready for our wedding.
Dr. John Schinnerer: So we get to the taxi stand and it’s 108 degrees out. It is hot.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: It’s hot.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And we tell the taxi cab driver, we’re going to the little chapel of Vegas.
And the girls were like,
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: They thought we were just fucking with them,
Dr. John Schinnerer: which we do frequently. But then we get in the cab and we, we get to the chapel and we start filling out the paperwork, which is kind of like, you know, a mad libs of wedding vows in a way. You know, what religion are you, is this legally binding, you know, different stuff.
And, and then my daughter was like, Wait, wait, like she was super confused, which was great. It
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: was awesome. I like
Dr. John Schinnerer: it when she’s really confused. I’m doing a good job for you and
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: I couldn’t put on and we’re taking all these photos and they’re still totally confused. And now it’s time to go in
Dr. John Schinnerer: for late.
So we, we Our ceremony was truncated a little bit, 10 or 15
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: minutes for the abridged version, but we did get to choose the songs that Elvis serenaded us. Yes.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And so walking in when Joree was walking in, we had can’t help falling in love with you, which is great romantic Elvis song. But then on the way out, We had an even better song, which is a little less action, a little more conversation, a little less action.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Oh, it was perfect. So we’re about to go in and the girls are still looking super confused, which ironically, and hilariously, we were all wearing black. That’s just what we all happened to be dressed in. And before we walked and I turned to everyone, I said, okay, you guys, here’s the deal. This is a non legally binding ceremony.
However, when it comes time for the vows, this is a family commitment. So all five of us are going to hold hands and say what we are committing to this family unit. And it was the most Joreeous filled 10 minutes of my life. My girls walked me down. John’s daughter stood as his quote best man. The ceremony was actually incredibly touching.
And then came time for the vows where we stood in a circle,
Dr. John Schinnerer: held hands,
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: and everyone shared what they were committed to. And it was beautiful. And I remember one of the things I think it was my daughter, Cammie, who said, you know, that she was really hoping and honoring you would have a lifetime of laughter and memories together.
You know, and one of them was about how I’m going to be a sister to you guys. I mean, really beautiful vows around how we, as the, as the parents were there to protect and to guide and. Then we all danced. Yeah, a little,
Dr. John Schinnerer: a little more conversation. But it was, I,
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: I hope that you guys go look on our social media at our Instagram.
Love isn’t enough 33. Cause I’ll post these wedding photos, which I haven’t yet shared publicly. They’re
Dr. John Schinnerer: fantastic.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: That is exuded in these photos. I don’t know how it’s going to be recreated when we actually get married. Honestly, I haven’t seen anything like
Dr. John Schinnerer: it at any sort of wedding with just the happiness.
And Joree. And to think that just
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: within, you know, less than a year and a half earlier, it felt so broken and it felt hopeless. And ironically, I had gone back and looked at my journals when we got back together and I had written like, I always in my heart knew we’d be back together, but I just, I didn’t see the path.
Cause I, I thought we had tried everything at that point and it was like, okay, but love isn’t enough. What do we do? Right. Right. And. The year and a half that followed is what you do when love isn’t enough. And it was now accumulated in this amazing 48 hours in Vegas, which after our wedding ceremony or our non wedding ceremony, we went out and celebrated and we had an amazing dinner that night in which each girl of ours was.
I’m really like amazed of how do you do this? Not only how did you heal your relationship to the point that you are so in love and it was so obvious to them, but how did we blend families in a way where. Everyone felt seen and heard and validated.
Dr. John Schinnerer: They love each other easily and frequently. And they call each other sisters.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: They do.
Dr. John Schinnerer: And yeah, they see us as
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yeah. I mean, your daughter, we just brought to college says, these are my parents. I’m
Dr. John Schinnerer: not sure how to say that without putting anyone else down. Somebody was trying to be respectful there.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Of course, they view us as a joint unit in which they have seen healing at every level.
I can’t think of any better gift to give young adults than to see. The real work it takes to be in healthy relationship. To show
Dr. John Schinnerer: them that love is possible for them.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: That it’s possible and that it’s so much more than the butterflies in romance you have in the first few weeks or months of a relationship.
That’s not love. That’s limerence. And
Dr. John Schinnerer: they’re different. And that limerence fades.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And it’s supposed to fade. It’s not supposed to last. Yeah. It’s
Dr. John Schinnerer: unsustainable. It’s too intense, a positive emotion limerence is like the lust and obsessiveness and rose colored lenses really intense feeling that we get when we first are going out with somebody and all we can think about is them.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yeah. It’s a healthy part of, you know, wanting to help maintain positive emotion and intention and connection. And,
Dr. John Schinnerer: but I think just to know that that generally fades and calms down. And that’s normal is, is a good piece of information. Oh, it’s huge.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: It’s huge.
Reflecting on the Journey
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: So we hope that our story is inspiring and that we have been through, you know, aside from our marriages to our high school, sweethearts that we were both married and divorced from our high school, sweetheart have had an incredibly different experience in divorce.
Often a very different experience in raising kids and yet this beautiful, yet often really difficult relationship of our own to then have come through this other side, despite what we always knew intellectually from our education or what we were trained in to work with our clients from the inside out, the real nitty gritty of actually how to get unstuck.
And then what does it look like to maintain it? And, you know, our hopes in this podcast is that we continue to share all the tools that we continue to practice all the tools that we teach our clients you know, inspiring conversation with other relationship experts and other couples who are in our minds really upholding.
What we see is these top values where love isn’t enough, and yet they’re having thriving, connecting, satisfying, fulfilling partnership.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Because we want you to have that too. That’s the ultimate goal.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Everyone deserves this. It’s not easy to get there. You do need two willing participants to do the work.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Yeah, you can’t pull one along by his short hairs.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: No, that’s how I
Dr. John Schinnerer: said his
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: that’s yes, that’s generally the way it goes. When we Eventually with our couples therapist did a trip to Africa and we were the youngest people in that triple. I was definitely the youngest since I’m 10 years younger than John, but I would, yeah, I’m sorry.
I would say John was the youngest person by 20 years. And then I was, you know, 10 years behind him, but there was a couple in their second marriage mid seventies. And I remember asking them one night at dinner, what has made your relationship work this second time around? And they had said that they had made a commitment.
It was actually in their wedding vows that they were always going to be willing to be willing. And I love that to have the hard conversation to work on things, to look at yourself, to grow, to whatever that meant. So this is our invitation to you. If you are feeling that your love, isn’t enough to feel fulfilled, satisfied.
Sexually satisfied. We’ll, we’ll have a lot of fun talking about sex on the podcast too, because that’s
Dr. John Schinnerer: a big, big part of a good relationship.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Well, and it’s so much more than just sex of how to get there. Right. It’s all the it’s emotional safety. It’s vulnerability. It’s connection on every which level. I don’t know anyone, correct me if I’m wrong.
I don’t know anyone who’s ever said, you know, I really want an unfulfilling relationship. Have you?
Dr. John Schinnerer: No, never.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: I don’t think anyone wants that. They might settle for it thinking it’s not possible,
Dr. John Schinnerer: settled for often,
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: but we’re here to tell you and guide you and show you how to get that fulfilling relationship that you want.
You deserve. It’s possible. It’s not always easy, but it definitely is possible. So any final thoughts?
Dr. John Schinnerer: No, I, I think we’ve, that was a good round of story sharing and we wanted to start off with the end in mind and just telling you with where we’re at now and a lot of the good things that we’re experiencing now and a little bit of the struggles that we went through to get there in order to inspire you, to show you that it’s possible and ultimately to motivate you to work on yourself and your relationship.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And I think one of the strengths that we bring to our work is our vulnerability. In telling it like it is, you know, I, I feel that it’s really easy to share solid relationship tools. And we know that there’s a lot of research back relationship tools that we can, we teach our clients.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Yeah. And you can read them in a lot of books
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: and we’ll still talk about those tools.
But my hope is that this podcast is a platform for our own vulnerability as a couple. In a thriving relationship to give the nitty gritty of what it actually takes to get there when you can’t access those tools, because the tools are great. Being able to access them, implement them, maintain them, continue to give positive feedback about them.
And I don’t like to say it’s work, because work has a negative connotation. It’s attention. It’s intention. It’s what else. Time.
Dr. John Schinnerer: It’s also love.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: It’s love.
Dr. John Schinnerer: It’s passion, right? And the motivation is a big part of it. I would argue because it’s, I think doing the work is sometimes scary. And especially for men, right?
It forces us to go up against things. That we don’t know, and we can’t change sometimes. And that’s, that’s not what we like to deal with. And, and so I think it does take a heavy dose of courage. And curiosity, open mindedness and nonjudgmental. Among other things.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Among other things. So it’s our hope that this inspired you to hear a little bit of our story and to continue to tune in to hear more of not just our story, but ways that you can begin to practice these tools and hopefully some new and novel ways, not just the standard.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Yeah. And, and we’ll be coming out with new episodes every Tuesday morning
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: and have inspiring.
And you know, if, if this is inspiring to you, we really want to hear from you, you know, give us feedback on social media. Love isn’t enough. 33 is our, is our Instagram. And there is a lot of opportunity to continue to share. So we’re really excited for this episode to be finally released out into the world.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Yeah. Send us your relationship questions also.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: Yeah, that would be a lot of fun to be able to do some real. You
Dr. John Schinnerer: can send those to Joree at love. Isn’t enough. net.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: That’d be great. Thank you so much, love for your love and for your willingness to grow and give me the relationship I’ve dreamt of.
Dr. John Schinnerer: Yeah. My pleasure.
It’s been beyond anything I thought it could be.
Joree Rose, Couples Counselor: And it continues to grow. So, well, thanks so much you guys for tuning in.
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