The title sounds like a Google search gone wrong, but Rachel Whitehawk from Whitehawk Ranch came by Ascend Health Show to discuss why we pick the wrong partners. Maybe instead of exhaustive couples therapy to keep a relationship afloat, we should begin by choosing the right person. We discuss the common issue of a sick Spoonie at Ascend suddenly regaining their physical and mental health. Even good stress challenges relationships, so reframing problems into adventures allows the refining work of healing to continue. Transcript below.

[Music] Hello and welcome to the Ascend Health Show. I’m your host Nick Angelis. I’m a nurse anesthetist and the owner of Ascend Health Center. I’m here with Rachel Whitehawk from White Hawk Ranch.

Good to see you again.

Yeah, it’s good to see you, too. This has been a day where I’m proud of myself today because I showered this morning, but earlier we had Mrs. America, no, Mrs. Ohio on the show, which I didn’t realize she was Mrs. Ohio. I guess that’s why it took uh like a year for us to figure out a time that worked. Sure. And of course, you’re always dressed and ready to impress.

Well, it’s just being me.

And that’s part of what we’re going to talk about today. We’re not sure if our title is going to be fix your picker, but part of it is that sometimes we get in relationships and we pick the wrong person. So, absolutely because we’ve had I don’t know, this is I think our the 60 Ascend Health Show and at least three or four of them have been about relationships, but maybe don’t watch those yet. Watch this one if we tell you how to pick a relationship and we can go from there. That’s right. But before we start with that, I did want to mention one topic because usually we kind of go off on tangents for 27 minutes and then that’s all of our time, which is I’m seeing this more and more often where there’s a couple and it’s usually a very supportive husband or wife. They’ll bring their partner to Ascend Health Center. Um, and then the person who’s really suffering gets better and then the relationship has all sorts of problems because it’s almost built on I’m the helper who does everything and I’m the receiver who receives everything. And honestly, I was in one of those relationships myself that didn’t end well. So what I mean and I usually try hard to say, okay, your identity might change because these are powerful treatments, whether it’s transcranial magnetic stimulation or ketamine. This isn’t like a month and then we see if your pill helped a little bit–it is sometimes an instantaneous change in how you’ve suffered for so many years. So, what’s a good way to work with couples like that where there has been this imbalance of basically health where one person is always receiving, one person is always giving?

Well, it it kind of goes back to the original idea which is we often choose people at a time in our life when we’re not really ready and we choose maybe people who aren’t the best partner for us. But that doesn’t mean that these relationships once one person gets healthier can’t continue to grow and get better. It it requires a lot of work on both ends, right? And I I spend a lot of time in my practice and what I do to try to teach people how to choose better at the outset to mitigate, you know, the problems that happen on the other end of it because all relationships are difficult. All romantic and marital relationships are challenging. It’s it’s hard work. It’s I I’ve often said it is the most important decision that you make even more so than a career or a job because it it affects that interpersonal relationship affects every aspect of your life. So you have a partner who is getting better, whose behavior is changing, whose personality in some cases changes, you know, very very rapidly. To your point, I think the most important thing for people to understand when they come together for any sort of counseling is to realize that both parties have more work Yeah. ahead of them. And I think that the the number one goal is to be more selfless. I know we live in a culture where selfishness is really where um everything lies. You know, the media, the culture tells us to behave in a certain way to receive something ourselves.

I think the phrase is uh two ticks and no dog.

There you go. There you go. But we do have to think about um changing our perspective and changing what the priority of the relationship is. You know, I I tell people that if you’re if you’re going into a relationship because you need something to fulfill you, it’s probably not the best time to seek a relationship. I think when you are restructuring your life based on a medical treatment and something changes, it is even more important that you sit down and decide what relationships are for, what are they about. Um, it requires both parties to to make an enormous commitment to changing your perception of not only your relationship but what that relationship is supposed to be, what that you know what is a marriage, let’s use a marriage as an example, right? What is marriage really about? what is the the goal and what is the role of marriage in society that has also changed tremendously you know and not to be um an old fashioned person but I think there are traditional marital responsibilities and roles and part of our culture that worked far better than some of the things that we’re seeing now some of the trends we’re seeing in relationships well it’s kind of like we often say actually I don’t often say I should say every show but I usually forget as a disclaimer blah blah blah. This isn’t personal advice. Go talk to your doctor. It’s sort of like that.

So, for example, in my current relationship, uh I thought I was an okay handyman. My wife is much much better. I don’t even touch her tools. Actually, I don’t even touch her laundry anymore cuz I messed that up, too. So, we can have some traditional roles while using knowing our personalities, our gifts, our strengths, our weaknesses, and then negotiating between ourselves that yeah, you can be the man of the house, so to speak. You don’t have to touch the tools to do so.

Right. And I think broader than just the the the those kinds of roles, I I’m talking about maybe something even more broadly um descriptive. And that would be that, you know, marriage is a is an opportunity for two people to come together. Not to see if it works out and we’ll get divorced if it doesn’t, but we stay together focused on on a on a shared goal, a shared lifestyle, a shar a shared perspective on things so that when things do become turbulent, if you’ve chosen the right person, and no one’s perfect aside from you. No one’s perfect. Um, and you know, you’re alone out there. But scripted in the show since I invite every guest around the seven minute mark that needs to be said just so everyone knows. Did my part. But you know, no one’s perfect. But there are people we we are better suited to than others. And I find that a lot of people in their 20s and 30s choose people with whom they should not be period. And I prefer that people come for counseling before they get married because sometimes you can you can rule out some of this and and maybe even get some of this counseling before you even get into a relationship. I tell people until you are comfortable with you and you know who you are, not that you have everything figured out in life, but that you really know who you are, you know what your values are, you know what your your um goals are, at least your, you know, 3 to 5 year goals, you have things really organized in your life, you’re really okay. You’re humming along and you can handle your life on your own. When you get to that point, that’s the time in which you begin to look for someone else. I find, and I’m sure you do too, people are getting together with other people um in a variety of periods of time in their life when that’s the last thing that they need. And they’re choosing people with whom they shouldn’t be with. You know, I talk about in the work that we do. I talk about the anatomy of a bad relationship. And I think it’s it’s very simple. In the beginning, we’re too accepting. We accept all kinds of things. Well, I know he’s an axe murderer, but he’s so nice. I mean, he’s such a great guy. Then we become in the middle of the relationship, we become too critical. That axe murdering stuff that we let go in the beginning is now something that we absolutely can’t focus on anything else but and we constantly criticize and we’re negative about it.

Yeah. There I mean there’s blood on the carpet. There’s all these phone calls.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. And then at the end we become completely inflexible. So we’re too accepting, we’re too critical and then we’re too inflexible when that really is in the wrong order. You know, there should be no criticism, but I always tell people in the beginning, you need restraint. In the middle, you need resol, you need respect, and then in the at the end of that relationship or as a relationship matures, you need the resolve to keep it together and to work together no matter what. But if you choose the right person and you’re in the right state of mind, you have a far better chance of success. That makes sense because you could even make it almost a logical decision like yeah they sure are pretty but they’re going to be such a challenge that is it really worth it? Is it worth it? Right? Weighing the options right and I find a lot of people don’t do that especially you know in the last 10 years a lot of people and I think we’re designed this way unfortunately it’s not the better part of our human being or human conscience. We tend to make decisions based you and I have talked about this based on how we feel. Mh. So we make decisions based in the moment based on how we feel and that is not the best way to make a decision when it comes to commitment to a relationship and it’s not even the best result. So let’s say for example you know a medicine is working well or a treatment at a send a lot of times if the patient says oh I’m feeling better I’m a little happier we actually don’t see the long lasting results as we do if they say I’m a bit more resilient I had a bad day yesterday and I thought well maybe tomorrow will be better. So that resilience, that ability to keep going whether or not you’re happy or not long term is a much better predictor of success of a treatment. Absolutely. And that’s why I’m so passionate about what we do at the ranch because we really do help you set up your life, your mindset, your perspective, your worth, and your, you know, I think a lot of women go out into relationships um seeking worth and seeking their value. That is a dead end. I don’t care how great the guy is. That’s not his job, right? So we I encourage people whether it’s my program or another to sit down and really figure out who you are, what you value, learn to love yourself in a way that allows you to see people differently because you will inevitably choose a different person when your mindset and your perspective are healthier, right? And that’s vital to to survival and we’re seeing incredible mistakes and incredible heartache. You know, then we have children. We go into relationships that are dysfunctional. We try to fix them and then we have children thinking that that will fix it and then we have generation now several generations of kids who are just really suffering right because generations too that are increasingly impoverished because of the high cost of you know single motherhood or divorce or whatever it is.

Absolutely. Well said. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s interesting too what you said about turbulence. the thought that came to me cuz that’s how my brain works is if you’re on a plane and it’s turbulent and you look at your partner like what’s wrong with you and a lot of times life turbulence has nothing to do with your partner they’re just the one closest to you so they um they get the brunt of it like often at Ascend I tell the employees like make sure that your best self is for your loved ones not for this place even though we take care of people and we do put a lot into our jobs, it’s still much more important that the people you treat the best in life are the ones that matter the most, the ones that you are, not the your co-workers.

Absolutely. And sometimes we don’t do that. We save the best for the professional world, you know. And I think it’s not um it’s important to consider that we don’t really teach people how to have relationships. We don’t really teach people how to be in relationships. You know, we think that everything is emotionally based and if you have good energy and you’re romantically attracted to someone, it’s just all going to work out. Nothing could be further from the truth. It there are certain roles and not not not, you know, physical roles necessarily, but there are certain expectations and there’s a way to have a healthy relationship. There’s a way to date. The dating process has changed dramatically in the last 10 years. I mean, we it you know, I think two mistakes are made in the very beginning. We ignore those red flags. We’re too accepting. We get the red flags. The bells go off, but we just, you know, aren’t listening to the bells, right? The second problem we have is that we are too ready to rush the relationship into an area that it isn’t ready to go into. We we overly, you know, with with texting. And I I have a a client who is just probably if texting was an Olympic sport, she’s gold. I cannot tell you how prolifer how much proliferation goes on here with the texting. It’s unbelievable. But you know, you she meets an individual, they begin to connect and then it’s texting 24 hours a day literally. I mean, it is just maybe not 24, maybe 22 hours out of the day. It artificially creates an artificial situation in a relationship. You can’t sustain that kind of attention to each other. And if it doesn’t continue automatically, you know, the doubt comes in, red flags come in and you start to pay attention to things that you shouldn’t be and it gets very twisted. So even the way we begin a relationship needs to be taught and and and we need to educate people on how to pace that relationship because it takes time to get to know someone. It takes time to comfortably develop a relationship and we seem to just be rushing through that with our culture. Well, they say that’s how you develop friendships, too. That’s why a lot of times as adults people struggle because you need to spend a lot of time with somebody and you don’t have to be there. So that’s why it’s a little bit harder to make work friends cuz you don’t want to be there. You’re just there because you’re going to get paid. But school is actually really good for that because it’s a lot of time with people and it’s not through text because again the English language isn’t one that’s great at context. Being Greek, I often mention that the Greek language is uh so I for one am very good at misinterpreting texts and at sending texts that are very easy to misinterpret. Absolutely. And we all do and we’re not we’re not designed to communicate that way. That’s not ideal, especially when you’re beginning a relationship. You know, I I tell and I deal with people at all ages and all stages of life. Um I have people who are older and who’ve been either widowed or divorced and have not, you know, been with the technological stuff, dating apps and that kind of thing. But there’s a whole uh process I think that has to be um brought to mind if you want to do it appropriately. I mean being emotionally ready and physically ready and all of those things are great, but you’ve got to be able to know how to navigate a new relationship or it just gets uncomfortable. Well, what happens though when you do have that urge to fix someone? So like one stereotype is the nurse marries a gruff policeman. She’s like, “Oh, I’ll soften him.” He’s like, “Oh, this is a real nice person to marry and have.” And sometimes it works out great and other times it’s like well these people are really really different because we also don’t want to say hey make sure to marry somebody without any problems because otherwise it’s going to be challenging. So it’ll be challenging regardless. Absolutely. Um which I I do try to tell those patients in that example I gave you like hey you’re about to start a new and exciting challenge but we all pay money to go white water rafting or traveling around the world like the human nature is to find challenges. So, some of this is reframing it that now you and your partner will learn to love each other even more because you’re going to go through some turbulent times because someone’s getting better, right? Like, yes, long term you will it’ll be very impactful for the rel relationship, but actually short term it’ll be harder because some of these comfortable manners and comfortable ways of interacting with each other will no longer serve you well. And we live in such a disposable society and such a disposable environment. If it doesn’t work out, we’re just going to split. So there there has to be you know barring abuse and these other things there has to be a an understanding with couples that part of this all of this is what your perception of it is and you can change it. You know there’s a lot of research on arranged marriages and the statistics play out that arranged marriages are happier marriages. Why is that? It’s very simple. The paradigm shift the priority that this couple has the the boundaries that this couple has created for themselves. These are two people who were not brought together necessarily of their own valition but stay together and are are reported to be happier. They self-reported to be happier. I think that says a lot about what we can choose to place our emphasis on. So is still like the two people on the plane. They’ll be like there’s a lot of turbulence. We don’t even know each other. But if you can get in that mindset of we’re on the same team through this, then you can do a lot more than okay, how do I make sure that I get what I want? That’s right. Because even a lot of mental health is built on that concept of how do I get what I want? That’s right. And sometimes I think it was Jim Carrey who said that he wishes everyone could be famous and have everything they want to see how pointless it all is. Exactly. I say that all the time. All the time. All the money, all the beauty, all the fame in the world means absolutely nothing if this doesn’t work. And there’s a way to train each of us to train this to work far better than it currently does. And it is, you know, relationships, healthy relationships are simply a a an offshoot of healthy personal mind and health and our mental health. You know, we get healthier mentally and physically and all these things. We’re then ready to choose a partner who is not perfect um but who is prepared and ready to go through the journey with us and we do that as a team. Well, some of it too is you pick someone whose imperfections don’t annoy you. That you know, she’s so organized. This is great. She’s not going to like how disorganized you are. So, you have to also know like are there flaws, something that I can live with or not? And decide that logically cuz of course your emotions like, oh yeah, I’ll be fine with this for 30 years. This is great. Yeah. You don’t think about it. And I think the other mistake that we make is that we think those kinds of things will get better. You know, he’s an axe murderer, but you know what? I bet I can talk him into doing it just like once a month. Yeah. And maybe he’ll just be a knife murderer instead of an axe, right? Maybe he’ll just Maybe he’ll just think about it. Yeah. And we think that we can fix. And I think women maybe do that more than men. I think men kind of hope stuff just goes away sometimes, you know. Maybe if we get married, it’ll just go away. But I think women really do set out with the idea that, you know, I can I can help him. I can save him. Um I see a lot of that in in our work at the ranch. I see a lot of women who’ve chosen men who really aren’t prepared or ready to be in a relationship and they are dragging him kicking and screaming through life when he’s not really ready to make those kinds of mature adult maybe choices. Um, and there’s this effort to fix him, you know, and again, I think that comes from not being fixed ourselves. We need to realize that our responsibility is not to fix someone, but to serve someone. Marriage is about serving each other. If we spent more time in selfless commitment to someone, um, our marriages last longer and they’re healthier and they’re happier. Well, maybe part of it too is realizing that that imbalance should change. That there are often times where one partner needs to be served more than the other or one is weaker. But in a healthy relationship, there’s grace given where those can switch sides. That’s right. So, and that is something with the example we said where all of a sudden this person who, you know, was a spoony, meaning that they only had so much energy every day, they can do things. And so, uh, it does take time to change the dynamic, but it does mean that for the other person in the relationship, they’d be like, “No, you can handle that, honey. You’re able to now.” That’s right. I’ll give this up and now it’s yours. And and it’s it is difficult in those cases not to have bitterness or resentment as roles change. Exactly. But I think also being honest with yourself like in my relationship, we immediately say something bothers us. Absolutely. So it doesn’t cuz I I’m a person who can it’s part of being a nurse and necess I think I can withstand really stressful situations for long times without like you ask me like hey isn’t this your fourth show today? Are you tired? Like no I’m still great. No big deal. But that also predisposes me to you know walling stuff up and not even realizing letting things build up. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. If you take pride out of being able to handle things and it’s like oh let’s see how many things I can handle before I Right. Right. It’s overload. Absolutely. You have to be able to communicate and again it goes back to being aware as you say being self-aware being able to look at situations and say okay this is this is something I need to address or something I need to bring up and we need to just talk about it. It it I cannot emphasize enough that both people have to be able to do that. I’ve met many people over the years. One spouse has the skills the other spouse doesn’t. In most cases, both spouses need to work on those skills, but it is not uncommon to find one person doing all the heavy lifting emotionally and kind of carrying everybody through. Um, and that’s that’s just heartbreaking because it, as you know, a happy marriage is freedom, right? It’s the most amazing uh wonderful thing in the world. And when it is not that, it is just a nightmare for people. It’s a nightmare for children. It’s a nightmare, you know, and there way, you know, I’m not we don’t have to go out and throw the baby out with the bath water. I think that’s our first thing to do is just file for divorce and we’re done. I mean, look at the divorce rates, right? And that isn’t to say that there aren’t times when that’s necessary. But by the time we’re ready for divorce and by the time we’re headed for divorce, all these other components have been thrown by the wayside. And even if we chose someone in the inter in the beginning who wasn’t ideal, that doesn’t mean that both people can’t mature, grow, and become ideal. You know, I I believe that, you know, my my father was a was a pastor and a counselor, and I the transformation that he was able to assist people in achieving is amazing. I hope I’ve been able to do that in in the work I do. I think I have not to the degree my dad was because he he might have been perfect. Pretty sure. But that’s part of it too. So a lot of times having faith or a common purpose other than like how can we both be super happy and super rich and sort of that capitalist thing that I I mentioned earlier even a lot of mental health is based on that same idea of how can I maximize everything in my life and that gets really tiring after a while too. It does. Absolutely. Yeah. And it isn’t it isn’t based in reality and it isn’t it isn’t um it isn’t a joyous balanced way of living. I think when you know so much of what you do and what I do is to teach people and encourage people to be balanced. Um you know some stress is good some challenges are good you know we have to go through bad times in order to appreciate good times. It’s that even tempered emotional response that we have to learn to develop and you need that in a marriage because your spouse can drive you out of your mind right and that’s up to you. You know that’s not necessarily all of their responsibility. It’s in it’s all in how you perceive your relationship and your role in it and what your expectations are. And sometimes we we have to change those expectations. And you’re right based on different seasons in our life. One spouse goes through something, the other spouse has to carry the load for it for a time being and then it and then it goes, you know, it es and flows. But do you see that people come to you and they both say, “Man, I am carrying such a load in this relationship and really only one is or is it usually like pretty obvious which one’s doing the hard work?” I actually, you know, in my in my estimation, most of the time it’s pretty easy to see who’s who’s the most vested. Um, that might be the best way to put it because I think your behavior changes when you’ve got one foot out the door and the other spouse really wants to try to work things out. But there is such deep-seated conflict because by the time people seek counseling, which is what I don’t like, they’ve already created two camps, right? Really, really divisive, resentful camps and you understand how that happens. It doesn’t take very long and you’re trying to coexist in this environment. You’re trying to raise kids. You’re trying to develop a career and it’s a nightmare. Absolute nightmare. I would love to be able to take that away from people by giving them the skills to change their perception. Well, you might want to think of it too almost cuz let’s be honest, it’s the part of the couple that’s doing most of the investing that’s watching this right now. That’s right. The other one’s he’s playing video games. Yeah, he’s he’s in the middle playing video games while you’re watching this. It’s fine. But you might want to think almost like an oil change. Like it’s not this we need to go to counseling. Like, well, you know, it’s been 5,000 miles. Let’s just make sure everything’s still working. Maybe it’s still under warranty. Who Who’s that? Right. Right. And there’s a lot that can be done in a few sessions with someone who’s really aware of what needs to happen. And and as I said, it doesn’t have to be me. It doesn’t have to be you. It can be it can be there a lot of resources out there. People do not need to be miserable in in relationships. um you know, addiction, mental health issues, there’s there’s so much of that in in relationships that it’s almost um it’s difficult to discern aside from addiction, but the mental health concerns are difficult to discern. But these are not insurmountable things. As you and I have said so many times, with with hard work and a change in perception and some consistency, you can make a dramatic difference in your marriage. So the next step for those invested people watching this is the consistency then to just keep doing what they’re doing and then Well, I think it’s to seek help. I I do. I think a lot of people need a an objective uh kind of referee to kind of get things back or mediator to kind of get things back on track and say, “Hey, you know, be really helpful if you considered this.” And and then you take it peace meal. Very simple changes on a very consistent basis. If you try to do, it’s like taking it’s like deciding January 1st you’re going to start a new diet and you completely change everything and take your everything out of the cupboards and all of that. The likelihood of success is pretty low, right? Cuz in February like I wonder what I did with those frozen pizzas still. Yeah. And not even February, like January 7th, you’re like, “Forget this. I’m done.” Because it’s overwhelming. So we’ve added in an already overwhelming stressful environment. We’ve added too much responsibility, too much change. And the objective voice is important too because in many cases the first step will be the one person going to therapy rather than being group therapy. You really don’t want to pick a therapist who’s just going to be like, “Yeah, you’re doing real great. You’re working so hard.” Like, it helps to know what to improve rather than just paying to vent. Right. Right. And there’s a lot there’s a lot that that individuals can do. I know some people will be in counseling. I I’ve had uh people come to me over the years who the other spouse is initially not interested, but we work on the things that need to happen in in this spouse’s life. And in many cases, the other spouse is like, “Well, you know what? She’s not criticizing me. She you’re not coming home and telling me it’s all my fault anymore. Maybe I should go talk to her.” Right? And that’s and that’s miraculous when that happens. And it’s wonderful. And it’s possible. You know, if we can make anybody aware of anything today, it’s that it’s possible. People suffer such incredible anguish by being in those kinds of relationships. They are they are miserable. They stay for the children. they they their physical health begins to deteriorate. It all goes together and it is that that that marital relationship or that partnership is the most important decision you make, right? No, that makes sense cuz at Ascend we’re often like, okay, you need an emotional connection with someone or you need one of these highowered therapies, but you might not need both. So again at Ascend we’re in Feron we do some tele health too psychiatry counseling spado ketamine TMS a lot of things that can very quickly turn someone’s life around which again leads sometimes to these problems that we’re talking about. That’s right. And then if someone’s interested in White Hawk Ranch what’s the best way to contact you? Best way to contact us is to is to call 3308192032.

And you have the horses which we have many too. Absolutely. If you want to if you want to be with the horses, you can do that, but you don’t have to. Horse horse interaction is optional. Yes, horse horse optional interaction. Well, thanks for joining us all today and thanks for coming on the show. Thank you as always. Thank you.