Episode 21. Mindfulness in Marriage: The Secret to Navigating Emotional Responses
In this podcast episode, we were thrilled to have as our guest, Dr. Chelom Leavitt, an expert in mindfulness, sexuality, and relationships. We dive into the benefits of mindfulness in relationships, shedding light on how it can enhance connection and improve intimacy. Dr. Leavitt emphasizes the significance of slowing down our thought process to increase awareness and maintain a non-judgmental attitude, which can have a positive impact on relationship satisfaction and sexual functioning. We share personal anecdotes and practical tips for integrating mindfulness into daily life, making the concept relatable and actionable. Dr. Leavitt’s insights offer hope to individuals seeking to improve their relationships, even if their partner may not be ready for change yet. The episode provides valuable takeaways for couples looking to enhance their relationship satisfaction and communication, making it a must-listen for anyone seeking to cultivate a more mindful and fulfilling partnership.
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Welcome back to Marriage IQ, everyone. Today we have a fantastic interview with Doctor Chelom Leavitt, who's a researcher and educator about mindfulness, sexuality, and relationships. We had such a great conversation that we decided to split it into two episodes to give you the full experience. In this first part, we'll dive into the basics of mindfulness. There's so much valuable insight here, and I can't wait for you to hear it.00:00:25
So without further ado, let's jump into part one with our conversation with Chelom.00:00:33
Welcome to Marriage IQ, the podcast for the intelligent spouse. I'm Dr. Heidi Hastings. And I'm Dr. Heidi Hastings. We are two doctors, two researchers, two spouses, two lovers, and two incredibly different human beings coming together for one purpose, to transform the stinky parts of your marriage into scintillating ones, using intelligence mixed with a little fun.00:01:06
Today, we're really excited to introduce you to a very special guest, Doctor Chelom Leavitt. Chelom E. Leavitt is an associate professor in the School of Family Life, and she received her PhD at Penn State. Her extensive research focuses on committed sexual relationships, gender, mindfulness, and religion. She's published in the top journals in Sexuality and regularly blogs for psychology today.00:01:37
Her research focuses on how mindfulness benefits couples within sexual relationships. She also teaches sexual mindfulness courses for couples on a more personal level. Five years ago, I was taking a course on family sexuality during my master's degree, and I was highly disturbed because of the 600 page textbook. There were only three pages that talked about marital sex, and the content of that course in no way reflected my personal values and morals. And so I was really struggling to know truth about sexuality in committed couples and to even understand my own sexuality better.00:02:21
So towards the end of that course, Chelom, you may remember this, we both attended the annual conference for the National Council on Family Relations, where you were presenting your research on sexual mindfulness. Your research answered questions to so much of what I was looking for. So Chelom at that time began mentoring me with your research, a lot of resources you had, and you allowed me to train with you as a facilitator for your sexual mindfulness project. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. I would have our listeners know that I consider Chelom to be one of the most humble, generous, intelligent, and gracious women that I know.00:03:04
She's become a role model and a mentor and a friend. I remember meeting Chelom for the first time. Very unassuming. I think you had your daughter there. We went for ice cream.00:03:19
Just very comfortable conversation. I was just really impressed with your authenticity and genuineness. Yeah. Gosh, that's really nice of you guys. So welcome to marriage IQ.00:03:35
Thanks. You've made my day. I would invite you to throw in other information about yourself as we go, but at this point, is there anything else you want our listeners to know about you?00:03:50
No. You know, just like you, Heidi, as we've talked, I know you're kind of on this journey of not only personal development, but really kind of providing a voice for women and for women who have faith and for certain values. And I, too, have felt like I have been on that journey, and it's just been such a pleasure to meet other people who are like minded. And we can talk about this openly and unashamedly and talk about the research part of it so that this is good information. Yeah.00:04:30
We love taking shame out of all parts of our life, but this is an especially important part because I think, and our podcast isn't necessarily for people of faith, but I I think a lot of our listeners are faith based, and that's an area that sometimes is hard to talk about sexuality. So I love that you have put it in a research format that makes it easy to say, hey, this is what the research is showing. So before we start talking about sexual mindfulness, which is really your specialty, could we talk for just a few minutes about mindfulness in general? It is a big buzzword that we hear a lot, but a lot of people just have little understanding of what that is and how it impacts relationships. Yeah.00:05:19
Mindfulness is a buzzword, isn't it? And for good and for bad, because in some ways, it's been a little distorted from maybe its original purpose. But really, in essence, the pure objective of mindfulness is to help us slow down our thought process so that we can be more aware of. And what we know is that our body has a lot to do with how our mind functions. And as we go through this more intentional process of becoming aware and non judgmental instead, maybe we know that has a big impact on our body.00:06:00
Right. So there's this mind body connection that I think we've lost in our culture, and I think so many people are longing for that. That's why it has become a little bit of a trendy thing now. I think that, are there ways that we can use mindfulness to become even more self absorbed? Sure.00:06:24
But I think when we're talking about it, what we're really saying is slow down, become more aware. Be observant of the details of your life. Your breath is a perfect place to start. You don't need any fancy clothes to start being mindful. You don't have to go to the gym.00:06:45
You can just start right where you are right now and slow your breath down. Pay attention. What does it feel like to breathe in, to breathe out, to kind of expand your body, and then to let go of stress, of cares, of things that are bogging you down? That's the simple process of mindfulness, is just connecting with our breath. And generally why people say connect with your breath is because your breath is always there.00:07:19
The moment you're alive, you're breathing. It's this 4 seconds in, 4 seconds out that's always with me, and I can have an anchor to my body. So you are one of the leading experts in how mindfulness works within couple relationships. There's lots of amazing people in this area. What are some of the things that you're seeing in Research in your own or in those that you're working with in this area about ways that mindfulness impacts relationships?00:07:56
We did have a special issue in the journal of personal and social relationships, and what was interesting is we had a number of researchers from different areas contribute research on how mindfulness affects romantic relationships, but also relationships in your work setting or in friendships, and certainly within the family, parents, and children. So there are lots of ways that we know mindfulness can help us improve these relationships by slowing down our own reaction and being more curious instead of automatically reactionary. Right. Like early in my marriage and even now, my husband can sometimes push a button and I, like, have this automatic response. Well, what mindfulness can help us do is to kind of give a little more space before I react so that I can think through.00:09:04
Is that really what I want to say, or is that the tone I want to have? Instead, we can be more intentional about how we respond to others. That's wonderful. Any specific ways that you're seeing in research? It packs marital relationships so many, and I could point to, you know, John Kimmies at Kimis, I think is how you say his last name.00:09:36
He's at Florida State University, and he's doing a number of great studies on how mindfulness is impacting romantic relationships, committed relationships. Right. So we know that in my research and others, it shows that it increases connection. We feel more connected with this person, probably because we are being less judgmental, less reactive. We're maybe evaluating their intentions a little differently.00:10:09
I can be a little softer in how I assume that my partner is responding to me. And so we see all sorts of things more connectedness like I said, but better relationship satisfaction. Just feeling better about the relationship in general. And then in my research in specific, we see better sexual functioning, but also better sexual satisfaction. That's really wonderful.00:10:40
I remember being pretty upset with Scott once, and shortly after learning a little more about mindfulness from you, decided to, instead of react, take a walk around the block. And it took, what, five minutes, maybe five or ten minutes to just think about things that I could see, things that I could hear, things that I could smell. There wasn't too much taste going on on a walk, but just being aware of things going on in my mouth and then feelings of the breeze on my skin, my feet touching the pavement. What were my shoes feeling like? Did I have any pain in parts of my feet?00:11:24
By the time I'd gotten around the block, my distress had completely dissipated, and I was ready to approach something with more curiosity. Do you find there are other tools when you're feeling distress and feeling reactionary, I suppose might be a better word. Yeah. You know, what you described is beautiful. That's really what we want to see in mindfulness, is just give myself a little time and space and the right frame of mind to settle down, right.00:12:01
To let my body kind of de stress and maybe process these. This sudden increase in emotion in a more positive way. Right. Here, again, is the mind body connection we know also, maybe getting a drink of water will help calm our emotions a little bit. The thing that you described that I think is so interesting is you described impermanence, right?00:12:31
That what you were feeling, you're not always going to feel it at that heightened level. If you give yourself a little space, you're going to come back down to your normal level of emotion and evaluate the situation differently. So that's really what we're aiming for, is to have a little more positive, intentional influence with how our body responds to certain, you know, experiences. Really. Emotions are nothing more than different chemicals increasing and decreasing in our body.00:13:08
And so if we can kind of create a more hospitable environment, we're going to react differently. That reminds me of a study. I don't know who did it. Was it with Gottman? They studied these couples who were angry at each other, and part of the experiment was they came in and said, we have a technical difficulty.00:13:33
We'll come back to this. Just wait a minute. It was 20 minutes long. I think that's the magic bullet. The magic number is 20.00:13:41
It is. So 20 minutes later, they said, okay, there wasn't a problem. This is part of the experiment. And you probably know what I'm talking about. Remember who it was, who did it?00:13:53
But part of the experiment. That was the experiment. Yeah. And after 20 minutes, they're like, wait, what were we arguing about? And what's interesting is that 20 minutes is especially important for a particular kind of gridlock that couples find themselves in, where one of the partners starts stonewalling.00:14:18
Right. Where they kind of shut down, or they're not going to engage. Right. They're avoiding in some way. And usually it's men who do that.00:14:27
We know it's about 80% men who will just shut down emotionally. I'm just not going to engage. Maybe they use anger to shut their partner down, too. Or maybe they just completely turn off, maybe turn their back or even walk out. But if we separate.00:14:46
Right. For 20 minutes with the right intention. Right. Calm ourselves down, know that we're going to come back. Yeah.00:14:55
We're not running away. Then those couples can reengage and hopefully make a little progress. There was another that reminds me of a study, and this was done by Carson back in, I want to say, 2002 or 2004, and he looked at couples who needed to talk about some issue of conflict, and so they came in ready to talk about it. And they also reported on their own mindfulness. In fact, I think they were actually in a mindfulness intervention.00:15:30
So they began this conflict discussion before, and then they went through this intervention, and then they had this discussion afterward. Couples who were more mindful could engage in the conversation that they had differences on for a longer period of time, which we know gives them more opportunity to find some resolution, to find some middle ground. So we can actually feel less stress and be able to find solutions to our problems if we're more mindful. Right. We're not reactionary.00:16:11
That's really awesome. I really like that. So you and JB eyring conducted a study on forgiveness and gratitude and mindfulness. Can you tell us a little bit about how mindfulness works with those two aspects? Yeah.00:16:28
Well, so we were trying to figure out, in what ways does mindfulness help us have a better relationship or help us have better sexual connection? And these were two mechanisms that we kind of tested to see what is it that mindfulness is working through? Right. Is it just that we communicate better? Is it that we are more forgiving, we're more grateful?00:16:58
And in this particular study, that's what we found, is that those were two mechanisms through which mindfulness was contributing to people's relationships. We can settle down and be more forgiving. We take our partner's perspective more often. Right. We appreciate the efforts they do make.00:17:20
We're not blinded to everything about them that's good and only see the bad. And so I think there's a number of mechanisms through which mindfulness is helping couples create better, stronger relationships. That's really an amazing idea. There may be people who say, I would be willing to try this. I don't think my spouse would be willing to try this.00:17:45
Can it make a difference if just one spouse is mindful and the other one isn't really practicing that? Such a good question, because you know what? There's going to be times in all of our relationships where one person is ready to make progress and the other person just isn't. And the really nice thing is someone has answered that question, and it's a resounding yes. And in fact, and this was Jonathan Kimmies in Florida state.00:18:15
He's the one who looked at his study, I think is called mindful mates. And they took one partner and put them in this intervention where they learned how to be more mindful. The other partner knew nothing about what they were doing. I don't know how long the intervention lasted, but at the end they had both partners fill out a survey, and the partner who was not involved in the mindfulness reported that their relationship was better than it had been. They felt more connection to their partner.00:18:48
And that was just because one partner was slowing down, being more intentional, more mindful about how they approached the relationship. So one partner can change the environment of that relationship. And I think that's powerful. Right? We don't have to be slowed down because our partner just isn't ready.00:19:12
I love this. That offers so much hope. This is awesome for our listeners, our intelligent spouses out there. That's right. You can work this system, and now we have evidence that it works.00:19:31
And that was such a great study you just quoted. I love that. Yeah, I love that, too. I need to get this study. I need to have it, because the basis of marriage IQ is everything starts with me.00:19:48
The I is my own personal identity to know that, my own personal intentionality, me being self aware and seeking insight and me making changes for intimacy to happen. And so this study that you're talking about is really key to all four of those happening. Four eyes. It all begins with I, me, myself, and I. So, yeah, this study really, really shows that that can kind of have this wearing off effect, right?00:20:19
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it probably will take some time depending on what the environment of our relationship is, but it's common sense, too, to recognize that if I change, eventually my partner's going to notice the changes I've made. And, you know, I'm writing an article right now on narcissism and mindfulness. I think we sometimes throw narcissists away as if there's nothing good about them.00:20:51
And it's true that they are really hard on relationships. True.00:20:57
The divorce rate amongst narcissists where one partner is a narcissist, 80%. Wow. So that's a rough environment to create a relationship. But we know that not only can the partner make some difference, but again, if it's an unhealthy relationship, you likely need to get out. But we know that narcissists even can be affected by particular types of mindfulness.00:21:28
Now, narcissists aren't going to be so benefited by the type of mindfulness that gets them to be more aware of themselves. They've got too much of that. What they need to focus on is the kind of mindfulness that helps them take another person's perspective. Empathy, compassion for others. That sort of thing we see in studies will help even narcissists, who really are deeply entrenched in this I I I in an unhealthy way.00:22:04
So there's some hope that we're seeing even in working with narcissists. I love that. Wow. That is very hopeful, too. Very fascinating.00:22:14
So what are some daily habits and practices? I talked about walking around the block. You talked a little bit about breathing. What are any other kinds of general mindfulness practices? How can people start integrating this into their life more?00:22:29
And where might they find more information about it? Yeah, great questions. I often just google on YouTube or some other platform, five minute meditation. And if you can work up to ten minutes of meditating each day, studies have shown that people notice a difference, really, that first week, but it continues to grow the longer you do it. And so you will notice a grounding where I just have a little more space to respond.00:23:05
I don't judge myself so harshly. I'm not beating up on, oh, I just did that wrong. I am so ashamed, or I feel so low about myself. We notice people having better self esteems, really, within the first little while. So I look at myself differently.00:23:25
Once I look at myself differently, I'm going to see others differently. I'm going to see value where I didn't see value or potential. And so I would say, start with that meditating. Try to work up to ten minutes a day and then start integrating it into outside of that ten minutes right. Slow my conversations down with my children, with my spouse, with my coworkers.00:23:51
How can I really just be present when I'm talking to someone? Focus on them. Don't be distracted by the thing I have to do in an hour and the argument I had with my child when I was taking him to school. Instead, just stay present throughout your day. And your ability to do that, it's like strengthening a muscle.00:24:13
Your ability to do that will increase the more you start practicing. So you had mentioned meditation, and we both were introduced probably, what, six, seven, eight years ago, somewhere in that range. And I made it a. A conscious effort because I began thinking, this is kind of silly, and it comes to mind, like some tibetan monk on a mountains. A lot of people, when you talk about meditation, that's the first thing that comes to mind.00:24:50
We need to somehow tear down these preconceived ideas and notions about what meditation is, because, as you're saying, your research is showing, too, this is fundamental in helping us to become more mindful. Yeah. So what I did is I just. Every day, I put it as a goal to do my morning meditation. And it's strange when you have.00:25:18
I get this. This app, it's called strides, and you can put all your goals on it, and you check it off every day, and then it allows you to see how well you are doing as far as percentage wise, you know, how many goals you're accomplishing every day, every week, and that's one of them. So I meditate. I think a good way to start meditating for a lot of folks, introduction, it's like they've never done it before. Like you said, the YouTube thing, there's also this calm app, which we have no connection with any of these people that we recommend.00:25:55
But there's an introduction to mindfulness by Jeff Warren on calm. It's ten minutes a day. It's for 30 days. It's one perspective, a perspective that we both happen to, like, really kind of gets that ball rolling. I tell my patients about it.00:26:14
Almost every patient. I try to talk about, at least at some point, the importance of meditation and mindfulness, because what you said before, the mind body connection, the interaction is absolutely fundamentally correct. And there's so much disease that we see because of a malfunctioning mind body connection. And so, anyway, I think that learning how to meditate, for me, has been fundamentally life changing. And I agree with everything that you said.00:26:57
I want. I feel like I'm just scratching the surface, though, and trying to move forward. It's hard for us to really talk about mindfulness in a yemenite, a short segment. But hopefully it piques your curiosity and your listeners will, you know, go do a little research themselves, try it out. One that I have really loved.00:27:19
If I'm in a busy city or I'm taking an uber somewhere and travel oftentimes creates a little anxiety for me, and I travel quite a bit. And it's called the bumblebee meditation. And this. Yeah. And you can just plug your ears.00:27:38
You can kind of put your hand just on your face and touch your ears and hum. And that's all it is. It's just humming. And it helps you block out all the noise around you. And if you're in a distracting environment, that's really helpful.00:27:57
And you can just center yourself on your breath again and maybe even try a loving kindness meditation where you remind yourself of your value and how you're connected to people you love and even nature. And so there's so many ways, wherever we are, if we're walking, we can be meditating. If we're driving in the car, we're not going to close our eyes, but we can center ourselves and have this positive influence on our body and really our mind. Right. Both of them.00:28:36
Right. But as you were talking, it made me wonder if there are studies on meditation and OCD and calming that down as well. Have you seen anything on that? I'm trying to think if I have. I have seen OCD, scrupulosity, any of those, wherever it has seen it with depression and anxiety, there's lots of studies out there that it has really positive associations with reducing that.00:29:08
I don't know that I've seen anything. That's not to say there isn't on OCD or scrupulosity, but it would make sense that it would maybe help those sorts of conditions as well. That wraps up the first part of our interview with Doctor Chelom Leavitt. I hope you enjoyed our discussion with her. Stay tuned for the next episode where we'll continue our conversation and cover how mindfulness can benefit a couple's sexual experience.00:29:36
It's going to be just as insightful as today's episode.00:29:43
And remember, the intelligent spouse knows that to change from a stinky to a scintillating marriage first requires a change in themselves. Thank you all for tuning into marriage IQ. We hope today's episode has sparked some wonderful thoughts and brought you valuable insights. Remember, the conversation doesn't end here. If you are interested in more information on this topic or to learn more about what we do check out our website, Dr.00:30:12
Heidi Hastings, PhD, and if you get the chance, we'd love, love to have you leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. It really helps us get the word out about Marriage IQ, and we appreciate your support. Thanks again for listening. Keep exploring and we'll catch you next time on another exciting episode of marriage IQ.
