Colette Fehr stood as a bridesmaid in the same church where she had married seven years earlier. The reception would be held at the same venue too. It was two months after her divorce became final, and she was 31 years old with a one-year-old and a three-year-old at home. When her friend offered her an out from the wedding party, Colette declined. This would be one of ten weddings she attended that year, a brutal collision of endings and beginnings that would ultimately shape her life’s work.
What Fehr learned through that painful season runs counter to what many of us believe about successful relationships. The lesson wasn’t about finding someone you never disagree with. It was about learning that the absence of conflict doesn’t create intimacy—it destroys it.
If you’ve ever wondered whether constant arguing means your relationship is doomed, or if you’ve convinced yourself that a peaceful marriage means never discussing difficult topics, this conversation explores a different truth. The question isn’t whether conflict exists in your marriage. It’s whether you know how to navigate it constructively, or whether avoiding it altogether is quietly eroding the connection you’re trying to protect.
The Myth We Inherit From Childhood
Fehr grew up believing in a specific formula for marital success. Her early childhood in New York felt genuinely idyllic—an only child whose parents, a doctor and a lawyer, traveled with her, read to her, and created what seemed like a perfect family. Then, when she was about 11 years old, everything shifted. Her father had an affair. Her parents had a baby in what she later learned was “a last ditch effort to save the marriage.”
“I’m half Italian, half Irish. I already said I’m a New Yorker. The conflict was really loud and destructive,” Fehr said. “I remember consciously, literally saying to myself, when I grow up, I’m gonna have a perfect marriage. I’m gonna marry someone that I never argue with. It’s gonna be so peaceful.”
That childhood vow became a blueprint she followed without fully understanding its flaws. At 18, on her first day at Tulane University in New Orleans, she met her future husband. They married when she was 24—unusually young for her cohort of New York friends who typically married in their early 30s. She had found exactly what she thought she wanted: someone who came from a “very genteel and polite” family where “nobody ever seemed upset.”
“I really thought that was the answer,” Fehr said. “I didn’t understand that we have to be able to address conflict, but we have to do it constructively.”
What Actually Destroys Relationships
Now a therapist specializing in relationships, Fehr has spent years understanding what went wrong—not just in her own marriage, but in the patterns she sees across hundreds of couples. The research and her clinical experience point to the same conclusion: it’s not conflict that destroys relationships. It’s how we handle it.
“Conflict isn’t dangerous. The absence of conflict is actually quite dangerous,” Fehr explained. “We need to be able to have constructive conflict for a couple reasons. One is that’s how we build emotional intimacy, when we feel like our partner gets us and understands us. But also our feelings and our needs are part of who we are. We’re not going to feel whole or connected to ourselves if we’re disavowing parts of ourselves. And when we do that, there are all these bad outcomes from it.”
Those outcomes extend beyond emotional disconnection. Fehr pointed to research showing that conflict avoidance correlates with health problems, including higher rates of cancer and heart disease. When people chronically suppress their authentic feelings and needs, the consequences manifest not just in failed relationships but in their bodies.
The destruction happens gradually. Partners who avoid conflict often believe they’re protecting the relationship, maintaining peace, choosing their battles wisely. But what they’re actually doing is creating distance. Without the ability to address difficult topics, resentment builds. Without expressing genuine needs, partners become strangers living parallel lives. The marriage might look peaceful from the outside, but emotional intimacy has quietly suffocated.
“As a therapist now, what I see destroy a relationship—one is adultery, because it really crushes and destroys trust. But I would say the things that I also see kill relationships are contempt and criticism, and often long-standing resentment, lack of emotional intimacy, lack of sexual intimacy,” Fehr said.
The Pattern of People Pleasing
Fehr’s path to becoming a therapist wasn’t surprising in retrospect. She described being the “unofficial therapist” in her family during her parents’ tumultuous divorce, a phenomenon she now recognizes as parentification—when children of divorce take on emotional caretaking roles they’re not developmentally equipped to handle.
That early experience created what trauma therapists call a “fawn response”—one of the lesser-known trauma reactions alongside fight, flight, and freeze. People who develop this pattern learn to manage anxiety and conflict by becoming whatever they think others need them to be.
“A lot of us, we don’t realize these are trauma responses that we developed for very good reason at the time, but they might not be serving us now,” Fehr said. “I developed them as survival responses. I was a kid, I was scared. And that skill, that ability to figure out what everyone around me was thinking and feeling and what they needed and wanted, even if they didn’t say it, became more important than what was going on in me.”
The cost of this pattern compounds over time. Self-abandonment becomes so automatic that people lose touch with their own feelings and needs. They might not even know what they want anymore because they’ve spent so long managing everyone else’s emotions. In marriage, this creates a particularly toxic dynamic: one partner chronically accommodates while resentment silently grows, and the other partner has no idea anything is wrong until the relationship suddenly collapses.
“I like to tell people, in particular women, who often come in as people pleasers, you’ve got to ask yourself, ‘Why is what I want of lesser value than what others want?'” Fehr said. “And when we’ve been doing it our whole lives, it doesn’t feel like self abandonment. It feels second nature.”
Learning to Communicate After Years of Avoidance
By the time Fehr and her first husband sought marriage counseling, patterns had been entrenched for years. She described their counselor as “horrible,” someone who recommended they communicate through notes—precisely the opposite of what couples on the brink need.
“The problem was we didn’t talk, like actually literally wouldn’t talk. And this therapist was like, why don’t you try writing notes to each other?” Fehr recalled. “I almost threw my pencil at him. Like, the whole reason we’re here is we’re not talking. We’re not gonna start talking by sending notes.”
The experience taught her important lessons about seeking help. Not all therapists are trained in couples therapy—it requires specialized skills different from individual therapy. Fehr now recommends people specifically look for marriage and family therapists or those certified in couples therapy modalities.
She also introduced the concept of discernment counseling, a brief intervention designed specifically for couples where one person is leaning toward divorce. Rather than trying to save the marriage, discernment counseling helps couples gain clarity about whether to continue, separate, or try therapy with both partners fully committed.
“We can go through this process together and either figure out what’s going on in our marriage and what we want to do about it, or we end up going our separate ways. But at least we tried,” Fehr said, describing the approach she wished she’d had access to.
The path forward, whether in a marriage or after divorce, requires developing new communication skills—learning to identify feelings and needs, express them clearly, and stay grounded even when conversations become difficult. It means unlearning those survival responses that protected us as children but isolate us as adults.
The Social Cost and the Path Forward
When Fehr told her parents about her decision to divorce, they were supportive, though her mother expressed realistic concerns. At 31 with two babies and no established career, leaving her marriage carried significant practical risks. But the social cost proved equally devastating.
“Everybody kind of thought I was the one who chose the divorce. So everyone thought I was the bad guy,” Fehr said. “This is another place where I think women are really vilified, right. To be a woman and to leave your husband when you have a one year old and a three year old. Society doesn’t like that.”
She had private reasons for leaving, painful circumstances she chose not to share out of respect for her ex-husband’s career. But that discretion meant friends made assumptions. She lost most of her social circle. One friend sobbed to her about the divorce—not because of concern for Fehr or her children, but because it would “mess up the rental in Hilton Head.”
Twenty-nine years later, living in Orlando with her second husband, Fehr has built her life’s work around helping others navigate what she learned the hard way. Her book, “The Cost of Quiet: How to Have the Hard Conversations that Create Secure, Lasting Love,” offers what she describes as “emotional Mad Libs”—scripts and frameworks for expressing feelings and needs regardless of how a partner responds.
“My mission in life is to help people with that,” Fehr said. “We as mature adults, we can come from that wise self in communication and ground ourselves and still get our point across.”
The work isn’t about never experiencing conflict. It’s about understanding that healthy conflict builds emotional intimacy rather than destroying it. It’s recognizing that self-abandonment and people-pleasing, while they might temporarily reduce tension, ultimately create the very disconnection we fear. It’s learning that difficult conversations—approached with skill and groundedness—are how we stay known to each other, how we grow together rather than apart.
For anyone who grew up watching destructive conflict and vowed to avoid it at all costs, or for those who find themselves in relationships where everything seems fine on the surface but emotional intimacy has vanished, the lesson Fehr learned through her own painful journey offers a different path. The answer isn’t avoiding conflict. It’s learning to engage in it constructively, to speak your truth, to stay connected even through difficulty.
Because the real cost isn’t in having hard conversations. It’s in remaining quiet while the connection you’re trying to protect slowly dies from neglect.
This article was inspired by an interview with Colette Fehr and Amy Stone on The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast. https://imperfect-adulting.captivate.fm/listen https://www.youtube.com/@imperfectadulting To hear more compelling conversations like this one and receive special offers from our guests directly to your inbox, join our email community today.
Relationships: Interview Transcript Colette Jane Fehr with Amy Stone | The Art of Imperfect Adulting | January 2026
Amy Stone [00:00:06]:
Welcome to the Art of Imperfect Adult and Colette Fehr. Are you ready for a fun chat today?
Colette Fehr [00:00:10]:
I can’t wait. Yay.
Amy Stone [00:00:12]:
I’m so excited. Share with us what part of the world you call home.
Colette Fehr [00:00:16]:
So I am in Orlando, Florida. But the funny thing is I’ve been here for 29 years, and I almost still don’t think of this as home. I’m a New Yorker, like so many Floridians, so when I think home, I still think New York, even though I really love living in Florida, too.
Amy Stone [00:00:34]:
That’s so fun. All right, though, here’s a fun question. Even though you think of New York as home, what’s something that you love or enjoy about your. Where you actually live? Orlando.
Colette Fehr [00:00:43]:
The eternal sunshine. Wearing flip flops in January. Right. I mean, you just can’t beat it. It’s such an easy, nice life. And I love that there are so many people from all over the world here that call this home. It’s like a true melting pot in the best way.
Amy Stone [00:01:02]:
What a fantastic answer. All right, today we’re going to talk about marriage and divorce. Are you ready?
Colette Fehr [00:01:08]:
I am ready. This is all I talk about all day, every day, and I love this topic. So let’s do it.
Amy Stone [00:01:14]:
Very cool. To kick this off. How many times have you been married and. Or divorced?
Colette Fehr [00:01:21]:
Well, don’t. We’re not at the end of the road here, so we’ll see what the final is. But I’m just kidding. I’m married now for the second time. So two marriages, one divorce. All right.
Amy Stone [00:01:34]:
Those are the statistics. How old were you? If you don’t mind sharing the. When you first got married and how many years did that marriage last?
Colette Fehr [00:01:45]:
Yeah, it’s. I think it’s so interesting because like I said, I’m from New York. I. The typical trajectory for my cohort of friends is. And I think a lot of people in New York, especially now, but I’m 52, so this is going back. You know, I was in college in the early to mid-90s, is that people were getting married in their 30s, in their early 30s, but I met my first husband at 18 years old on the first day of college. I went to Tulane in New Orleans. And so we got married. We got engaged when I was 23, married at 24, which was very unusual for my group of friends. And I was divorced at 31, so the marriage lasted seven years. And fun fact is that the year I got divorced, I was in 10 weddings because all of my friends were just getting married that year, and I was Already getting divorced. And not only that, I had a one year old and a three year old, so.
Amy Stone [00:02:44]:
Wow. Oh, that is super interesting. How did that feel to be going through all those weddings as an attendee? Were you like a bridesmaid and all the.
Colette Fehr [00:02:53]:
I was a bridesmaid. I think a couple of them. I think I was a maid of honor. I was a bridesmaid in many of those weddings. And in fact, one wedding that was two months almost to the day after my divorce was final was in the same church where I got married, same reception. So my friend had actually reached out to me and said, you know, if you don’t want to be in the wedding party, I would totally understand. And I said, no, this day is about you. Let’s keep it that way. And then I hooked up with a really cute groomsman after having a few too many drinks. And that. That made the whole thing more palatable, but it was hard.
Amy Stone [00:03:33]:
That’s like a movie that could be a. That could be a Hallmark movie, you know, like about the wedding theme and hooking up from the wedding party and all of those things.
Colette Fehr [00:03:42]:
You’re right, Amy. We should like co write that and get rich immediately, right?
Amy Stone [00:03:48]:
That is the goal. That is the goal. Okay, so I want to back up for just a second and talk about, you know, talk about the marriage. Right. Because we talk about marriage is ending, but it’s not just the ending that happened. A lot of the ideas that we have and the concepts we have about marriage and you sort of touched on this with talking about your cohort of friends was on a different calendar, but we have ideas about what marriage and family are supposed to look at. Look like based on what we grow up with. Share a little bit is not your story. It’s that I’m asking you about. It’s your parents. But share a little bit about what your parents marriage looked like for you as a kid.
Colette Fehr [00:04:25]:
Yeah, no, I appreciate this question so much as a therapist and a person. And I like to bring this to the table, even though my parents don’t love it so much. The treatment. Yeah, they don’t. They’re like, don’t talk about us and our messy stuff. But it’s important because it does inform what we look for, both consciously and unconsciously. And we really only operate about 5% out of the conscious anyway. So these things are important. What’s modeled in our family. And I have wonderful parents. I’m close to both of them. My dad’s a doctor, my mom’s a lawyer. Both very smart, very Outspoken. And my early childhood was really genuinely pretty idyllic. Now, I don’t know what was going on in their marriage that I wasn’t aware of during those years, but I didn’t have any siblings. We traveled together. My parents read to me. We did arts and crafts. I ran around the neighborhood with a pack of kids like most Gen Xers. It was wonderful. And then when I was about 11 years old, I now know my father had an affair and there were a host of other issues going on in the marriage. My parents had a baby. I later learned, my brother, that this was kind of a last ditch effort to save the marriage. That did not work. And they began to argue. And this is why I mentioned how they’re both very outspoken. You know, I’m half Italian, half Irish. I already said I’m a New Yorker. The conflict was really loud and destructive. Their memory of it is that it was a very brief blip. My memory of it was that it was groundbreaking, traumatic, earth shattering. It felt like it was my entire middle school life that I lay in bed listening to my parents argue with a stomachache. And what’s interesting is that I remember consciously, literally saying to myself, when I grow up, I’m gonna have a perfect marriage. I’m gonna marry someone that I never argue with. It’s gonna be so peaceful. And I picked. I mean, it’s no surprise then really, that I picked someone who really never addressed any conflict at all. Came from a family that was very genteel and polite. Nobody ever seemed upset. And I really thought that was the answer. I didn’t understand that we have to be able to address conflict, but we have to do it constructively.
Amy Stone [00:06:51]:
So this is. There’s a lot in there. You’ve clearly had this conversation before, but you’re not the first person that I’ve met or I’ve run across who draws the conclusion as a child that a successful marriage is one, or a successful friendship or a successful business partnership is defined by the fact that there’s no conflict.
Colette Fehr [00:07:12]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:07:15]:
Right. You want to get along. And therefore just skips over all of the lessons that are needed to handle conflict. Because I have yet to find a partnership that doesn’t involve at least some negotiation.
Colette Fehr [00:07:29]:
Absolutely. Conflict is inevitable. And actually it’s the greatest source of emotional intimacy and connection we have. If we know how to lean into it constructively, if we know how to communicate and we’re willing to share our inner world. Now, I had to learn all of this by having a failed marriage. I mean, because the problem is when you avoid conflict, it creates distance, it leads to resentment, it creates disconnection. Not to mention that it actually also compromises our health to suppress our emotions. But really, what I’ve learned as a therapist is the number one factor that destroys relationships is emotional disconnection. Not arguing, not having differences, not even infidelity. It’s disconnection. So you’re right. Most people. I hear it on my couch every day, too. People like me saying, oh, my God, all I wanted was to. To not argue. And of course, because of some factors with attachment science, you know, it’s a real tricky thing. It’s natural that we’re scared of conflict, but we have to learn how to address it constructively.
Amy Stone [00:08:37]:
So off topic from your marriage and the divorce. How much of your decision to pursue therapy, being a therapist as a career, do you think was influenced by your middle school years, listening to your parents fight?
Colette Fehr [00:08:52]:
I think it was half that. Half my own divorce. Okay, yeah, Those two together. But you know what, actually, Amy, really, when I think about it, I think the seeds for becoming a therapist were there early because what would end up happening, And I’m sure you hear this from so many people, too. I was an only child during these years then. My brother was a baby. And only children are often adultified, as we say in therapy, or parentified. And children of divorce are almost always adultified and parentified, especially in previous generations.
Amy Stone [00:09:28]:
Right.
Colette Fehr [00:09:28]:
When we didn’t have all this attention on how to divorce. Well, that, thank God, we have now. So I think I was sort of my dad’s unofficial therapist. He has since apologized to me profusely because he would. Inappropriately. It’s. It’s kind of astonishing to me because I have the best dad, but he would tell me the details of his life, ask me for advice. I mean, I was 12, 13 years old then. My mom was very upset and hurt and wounded. And so I would kind of manage and moderate all of her emotions and try to regulate mom so that she wasn’t so distressed. Or I would triangulate between them and say, well, I think where Mom’s coming from. And this is literally what I am doing now for a living as a couple therapist.
Amy Stone [00:10:18]:
That is. Yeah. No, that is really interesting. And I do think that it’s fair to shed a spotlight on the fact that in the 80s, which is, I think, when this was happening.
Colette Fehr [00:10:27]:
Happening, yes.
Amy Stone [00:10:28]:
There were not online chat groups, and there was no Facebook or Reddit. It was harder to do that. It was harder to find people. There was an enormous stigma still about getting divorced for people that age. My parents, I also. My parents divorced when I was very young and it was. It, you know, I was. Today everybody is familiar with it, but I remember it being unusual. You know, like, it was like there weren’t. Everybody wasn’t. Didn’t have parents.
Colette Fehr [00:10:55]:
Oh, my gosh. And Amy, I grew up in a part of New York. You know, New York is the ultimate melting pot. But New York is also very, like, cultural by neighborhood. So where I grew up was a town outside of New York City that was all Irish Catholic. I went to all girls Catholic school. I did not know one person who got a divorce. I did not have one friend. Not one. Yeah, so talk about something. And my parents, in our family, there was no divorce ever. So the irony is that my parents. Parents did not believe in divorce, did not want a divorce. And this whole thing went on, started when I was 11, and they didn’t get divorced until I was in college.
Amy Stone [00:11:35]:
Oh, my goodness.
Colette Fehr [00:11:37]:
Yes. Because they had this belief of, you don’t get divorced. And I remember when they finally announced it to me, I said, oh, my God, thank God. I’ve been telling you to get a flipping divorce for eight years. Right? Like, you guys are not good together. And now my parents are great friends. They get along great. I know it’s been a long time, but not everyone has that. So there was no support group for my parents. No one was talking about the psychological impact, really, on kids or sending kids to therapy or, you know, don’t discuss your issues in front of the children. We had Kramer vs Kramer, which was like a big movie in the 70s, and War of the Roses.
Amy Stone [00:12:19]:
Oh, that is a great movie.
Colette Fehr [00:12:21]:
Yes. And my parents were a little like that at certain times, so they stayed.
Amy Stone [00:12:26]:
So they were living in the same house until you. Until you had moved out, you went.
Colette Fehr [00:12:30]:
To New Orleans, separated on and off. My dad at one point lived two doors down from the house. I mean, it was all kinds of messy and dysfunctional. However, I will say this one thing, and this goes a long way. Not that they didn’t make mistakes, but I always felt loved. Both of them, I knew were there for me. I knew they had my back. At times they were too distracted to be there for me the way they should have. However, I always felt loved and connected. And I think that goes a long, long way. And because of this, I did my thesis in grad school on, like, the damage to kids out of divorce. And really the research shows, and you probably already know this, that if you divorce well and you’re you co parent well, your kids are going to turn out just as well as if you stayed married. It’s negative, destructive conflict in marriage or in divorce that harms children.
Amy Stone [00:13:26]:
So I one time. So my parents divorced when I was young and probably like, and there were complications and things like that. And I grew up with that same story that you’re talking about, which is that like, divorce is horrible. The kids suffer all these things. And when I got to be an adult, I was like, that is not really kind of what happened in my family. Like, the divorce was the start of like safe spaces and healing for my family. And I said that about 10 years ago. I mentioned that in like a group on Facebook, which is a terrible place to actually put anything about anything. And I, like, people were just like, no, all divorces are destructive and bad for kids. And I was like, you know, I just don’t know if that’s always. I mean, it can be, for sure, absolutely. But there are so many times where it’s the conflict that is or the unhealthiness or whatever. I mean, your story you touch on sounds like there was not like one of those big catastrophes that is so horrible, like substance use, you know, mental health disorders, those things. Those are really big problems in families that rip things apart. And it doesn’t sound like you had that.
Colette Fehr [00:14:36]:
No, for sure. I mean, there was infidelity, though.
Amy Stone [00:14:39]:
Infidelity, which is a big one.
Colette Fehr [00:14:41]:
It’s very inflammatory. Emotions were very high. But you know, even my own divorce experience, experience, I think there are ways certainly that I suffered in the short term.
Amy Stone [00:14:52]:
Yes.
Colette Fehr [00:14:52]:
But had my parents stayed married, those ways would have been there. And I personally believe, just zooming out a little, that this idea that’s still there even though we’ve come a long way from the 80s, but that divorce hurts children and divorce is so bad. I think it’s part of the patriarchy and keeping women in something that increasingly in many cases, doesn’t serve women well. I mean, when you look at divorce, more than 70% are initiated by women. Divorce rates are steady, except for the gray divorce segment at that empty nest phase, which is growing because marriage is now not just an economic proposition. We really do want emotional intimacy. We want friendship, we want equality, we want partnership. You know, we no longer interested in being domestic indentured servants.
Amy Stone [00:15:45]:
So, no, we are not.
Colette Fehr [00:15:47]:
No. And not that we ever were. But women used to not get divorced because they didn’t have a choice. And sadly, there are still many women there. The finances are not such that they feel they can leave, but this narrative of you can’t leave because of the kids. Now, I’m not saying if that’s not your individual truth that you’re not, you don’t want to see your kids 50% of the time. And what’s happening in the marriage doesn’t feel so bad to you that everybody’s got to make their own cost benefit analysis. But I just think there are still these prevailing narratives that are designed to keep women small and complacent and in order that don’t serve us.
Amy Stone [00:16:29]:
I, I tend to agree, and that is my opinion. All right, so I love everything you said there today. You have a lot more experience with life than you did on your wedding day. Thinking back about that original decision you made to get married at a young age, were you, do you think you were at any way aware of the experience of your childhood and how that was impacting that decision?
Colette Fehr [00:16:55]:
I was aware of it, but it was, and I thought I was choosing wisely because of it, but it was actually impacting me in some unconscious ways that really were sabotaging me. Meaning, you know, I, I sought out somebody who we try to heal our old wounds in these new relationships, but I sought somebody we end up all of us. And I did the same thing seeking somebody who’s also familiar, but it feels like a better version. So there were elements of my first husband and his family dynamic that were familiar elements with like infidelity. But then it seemed like the antidote that they were so conflict avoidant and nobody was ever upset. I thought that was better. And actually I picked someone who really, and he’ll even admit this today, he’s done a lot of work. My ex husband and his remarried, so I’m not trying to slam him in any way, but he was very emotionally disconnected. So I really sought out something that I thought was the answer as a result of what I experienced as a child, but was actually a new problem that, you know, that was bigger in a way and harder.
Amy Stone [00:18:13]:
So you use the word unconscious and I’m going to say, so this sounds to me like you had a plan, you did some thinking, but as you learned more and went through it, it turned out it wasn’t a good plan. It wasn’t the right plan. So. But there’s no way to know that. So the question is, was it unconscious or was some of it? Because you just can’t actually know what something’s going to be like until you get into it.
Colette Fehr [00:18:32]:
I love that question. I think it was both. I really think it was both. I think that knowing what I know now, now I’ve been doing this work for 14 years. I work with a tremendous volume of couples. I also do discernment counseling, which is should I stay or should I go?
Amy Stone [00:18:47]:
Oh, I didn’t know that word. Discernment counsel.
Colette Fehr [00:18:50]:
It’s own model of counseling because, you know, couple good couples therapy is about let’s repair and rebuild the bond, and somebody’s really leaning out. You have to address that question first because both people have to be ready to roll up their sleeves and work. You can’t get into couples therapy. So discernment counseling is only one to five sessions focused on are we going to work on it or are we going to call the ball? So I think with what I see now, you know, there are things that I would have been aware of are going to be a huge problem that I just didn’t understand. Like, for example, looking at the way when we’d argue the, the behavioral patterns, the way when I expressed emotions, the way I was or wasn’t responded to, you know, those were all signs of emotional disconnection and emotional unavailability within that person who also grew up in a family where they had their own issues and he learned his own coping mechanisms. Now, we could have worked on those things together, but it didn’t go that way. And I love that you asked this question, Amy, because it really is, I think, the smug married people, as Bridget Jones once said, people who are happy think they’re, they’re so proud of themselves. A lot of it is luck. You do not know what’s coming in that gift bag. You think you do, but much of the time, especially for those of us who get married the first time younger in life, you don’t know what you don’t know until years and life have exposed certain realities. Sure.
Amy Stone [00:20:33]:
Because part of the courtship process, to learn use like a super old set of words, is that we show each other what we think they want to see and what we think are the best parts of us. And that’s, that’s, that’s not, that’s not, you know, it could be manipulative, sure. But it’s also just what we do. It’s like you don’t walk in for the job interview and say, hey, let me list for you all the reasons I’m bad for this job.
Colette Fehr [00:21:01]:
Yes, exactly. Chris Rock, a million years ago in the early 90s, said, you don’t date someone, you date their representative, like in that first year. And it is so true. And it’s not there. Like you said, there are some people who maybe are manipulative, but most of us, it’s just the reality. It’s exciting. You’re getting to know people. You’re not bringing your most unflattering parts forward. And also, in fairness, life hasn’t pushed on you yet and the relationship in those ways. But then you get a house with someone, you live with them, you manage stressful careers, you have children, you have all the unexpected, unexpected crises life throws that you have the day in and day out of that intimate level of living with somebody. Everybody’s difficult at that level in their own way.
Amy Stone [00:21:52]:
Oh, my gosh. I tell people this all the time. Just not. I am not a therapist. You are a therapist, but I tell people all the time it’s hard to live with people. It is just hard to live with people.
Colette Fehr [00:22:02]:
Anyone, Anyone.
Amy Stone [00:22:04]:
Anyone. You know, anyone. All right, so I just said that I’m not a therapist. You are this profession. You became a therapist after the divorce.
Colette Fehr [00:22:14]:
Yes, and actually my divorce. And to your point, probably my whole childhood is what led me to become a couples therapist. But very specifically because, and I think this is so important for listeners to know, we went to a marriage counselor who had come highly recommended. My first husband and I. This person was terrible. And I would not say that lightly. Terrible to the point of. Some things were even unethical. And I was young. I didn’t know anything about psychology or counseling. Today, I would report this person to the board for some of the things that they did. So it’s just so important to. If you’re going to go to couples therapy or therapy, it’ll find somebody who is experienced and trained specifically in couples therapy. It’s really important.
Amy Stone [00:23:00]:
And you have to ask.
Colette Fehr [00:23:02]:
You have to ask.
Amy Stone [00:23:03]:
You have to ask.
Colette Fehr [00:23:04]:
I went through that. Yes, I went through that.
Amy Stone [00:23:06]:
Not in couples. There. Well, couples therapy. So my parents were divorced when I was young, so my plan was that we were going to do premarital therapy and then we’d never have any problems. And, you know, like, it was a plan. So I was. I’m a step parent. My husband has children, and we were working with a therapist who had no experience with that construct, which eventually came out in that, you know, he was doing his best, but he wasn’t offering me things. Didn’t have any experience and didn’t come up until, like, I asked. And he. He was like, I’ve never considered that. And I was like, oh, this is like shopping for groceries in Home Depot.
Colette Fehr [00:23:48]:
You know exactly what A great metaphor. Yeah. And you know, it’s a problem in the field that more people need to be aware of that you are, if you’re a license since therapists, you’re allowed to work with couples, but you really shouldn’t because individual therapy and couples therapy are a completely different process. So, you know, your therapist doesn’t necessarily have to have lived every life experience or worked with a couple just like you. But you do want someone who’s trained in couples therapy and blended family issues. I’m a stepmom too. If you, if somebody hasn’t worked with that, it’s going to be very hard to know how to help you effectively. So I saw that there was a problem that we need more good couples counselors. It’s not an easy job. And I went to grad school. I mean, I had those little babies. I told you I hadn’t worked for a few years. I barely. I was so young. I barely had a career trajectory. But what I had was in sales and marketing. And I got a job immediately out of the divorce back in that field and thought, this isn’t for me. It’s not rewarding to me personally. I want to do something to help people, and that’s why I did this.
Amy Stone [00:25:02]:
That is, that is a testament to your fortitude and your. I don’t even know what the right word is. But to go back to school with young children is not easy to retool. It’s a long path in graduate school to get licensed and approved for therapy. I mean, it’s a really hard academic path. And I do think it’s a really tough job. It’s like, you know, being involved with people. So kudos to that. Okay, so. So when. So when you guys. I think you answered this question already. So when you guys, when your first marriage, when you realized that it wasn’t going the way you thought it would, did you reach out to. You reached out to a therapist at the time? You guys did some couples therapy.
Colette Fehr [00:25:43]:
We didn’t do it early enough. We did it at the brink of divorce when everything was already a disaster. And I didn’t realize for all the issues that were there, I really thought they were all my husband, as many of us do. And I didn’t realize the conflict avoidant piece and how much it had disconnected us. And I didn’t realize that I had lost my voice. Yeah, I wanted to communicate. I thought I was communicating, but it was indirect hinting, hoping my need kids would be magically mind read, getting passive aggressive, doing what I call Victim volcano syndrome, where I would take it and take it and take it and then eventually blow. And, you know, I was very much a product of what’s still there, which is, I call it Good Girl. Itis that we’re still praised for being small and selfless and seen as noble when we put our needs last. So I was trying to be that. But all the while I was avoiding sharing my own feelings and needs, clearly. And resentment was building up. So when we got to the point of counseling, I felt like I kind of hated him. And it was, it was really. I’ll never know for sure if it was too late or not, but it felt too late and the whole thing blew up in spectacular fashion. So that’s part of my mission is I don’t want to force everyone to stay together. That’s not the right thing path. But I want to help the people that really do. A lot of people, if it could be better, they want it. I want to help those people make it better 100%.
Amy Stone [00:27:24]:
All right, so some of the things that you’ve described in this conversation and also I think in the pitch are, you know, being a people pleaser, being conflict avoidant, that kind of thing. You. I’m not a therapist. You are. You can correct me as the professional if what I say is off base. One of the things I was thinking about when I was thinking about, did you have a therapist? Is that sometimes that whole people pleasing thing is directly related to the word. I think the word we sometimes use is trauma, but maybe it’s the wrong word. But the things that come up in our childhood and did anybody ever, did you realize, did anybody ever talk to you about the fact that some of the ways you were showing up actually could be trauma responses from what you would experience?
Colette Fehr [00:28:09]:
No, absolutely not. I never heard that or thought of that or. No, no, no, no.
Amy Stone [00:28:15]:
So do you think that now, but now you draw a conclusion? It’s like, yes, what I saw when I was a kid showed up again when I was an adult.
Colette Fehr [00:28:22]:
Yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s such a great point. I’m just thinking in real time. I think it’s a couple of these threads coming together. I think it’s the societal piece.
Amy Stone [00:28:32]:
Sure. Because we do and we do still praise girls for being quiet and good. That hasn’t stopped. I would love to, I would love to say that the 20 year old girls are not getting that message, but they are.
Colette Fehr [00:28:44]:
And you know what? The Women in our 50s, if you are pushing back, I mean, we have A term. Now, we didn’t used to have a Karen that if you actually make a legitimate complaint, then you’re going to be called a Karen. If you’re a woman who, you know, politics aside, Hillary Clinton was constantly called A and A. Right. Because she’s like a strong, smart woman who was being assertive.
Amy Stone [00:29:10]:
Even Taylor Swift, she gets, she gets dragged across the coals for being great. Just for being great. You’re the best in the world. Must be something wrong with you.
Colette Fehr [00:29:19]:
So women are damned if they Right. And Taylor Swift, by most accounts, I’m not even like a Swifty or anything. I don’t know half her songs. But by most accounts, she really goes out of her way to, like, give back to her employees and society and fans. She’s crazy talented, but she’s a woman who’s put herself out there, she’s successful, so that’s part of it. And then also, and I think this is important too, I mentioned it. It’s the natural fear of conflict that we all have in relationships. Men too, because if we don’t feel really adept with it and we don’t know how to communicate constructively, then it feels like a threat to the bond to bring up something that, oh, I’ll just get over it. But then third is the trauma piece where, you know, in therapy circles we call it fawning.
Amy Stone [00:30:08]:
Yep.
Colette Fehr [00:30:08]:
Where, you know, it’s just anything to not rock the boat because I feel so scared and terrified. And it can bring up younger parts of self in the moment that for an adult, you can’t really be abandoned because you won’t die. But a child, if a child is abandoned, a child will die. So if bringing something up feels like it’s going to push somebody away or make them judge you, where you lose the relationship, that can bring up a younger self inside that just wants to fawn. People, please appease. Oh, I said that. Or, or I floated that idea indirectly. And you, you raised your voice and left the room. I’m never going to bring that up again. That doesn’t go well. And then the, the sad part is, over time we get the short term comfort, but over time we lose ourselves.
Amy Stone [00:30:58]:
It’s self abandon, self abandonment. All right, so. And to draw, just to make sure that everybody in the audience is on the same page. The fawn reference that you made is part of that list of stress responses, which is fight, flight, freeze. And then people don’t mention it all the time. But the other one is fawning, which is like a little baby deer, you know, Trying to be cute and non threatening so that you don’t raise conflict. All right, so very good.
Colette Fehr [00:31:25]:
I could tell it’s a survival strategy. Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:31:28]:
And I like to, when I talk to my friends, because I’m not a therapist, but when I talk to my friends and people I’m having conversations with, I do always say, I’m like, you know, don’t sell yourself short here. When you, when you find out that you did this because you developed these coping mechanisms because they were needed at some point or another and now you’re in a spot to like grow up and you know, put on your big girl panties and learn some new skills.
Colette Fehr [00:31:51]:
Yes. And this is the whole process that I teach in my book that is how to not let those survival responses run the show anymore because it’s so natural. But we, we as mature adults, we can come from that wise self in communication and ground ourselves and still get our point across.
Amy Stone [00:32:12]:
So that is a perfect thing. We’re going to talk about your book in a second. I have one final question and I could talk to you all day, but I said, who did you tell first when you decided that you want to divorce your first husband? Who did you tell and how was the idea received by your parents who had this Catholic family and all of the things.
Colette Fehr [00:32:30]:
So the first person I told was this horrible marriage counselor. Right. And then after that it was my parents. I did go right to my parents and you know, they, at that point, I have to say they were very supportive. My mom was worried for me and it turned out in ways that I should have been more tuned into myself. She was, was like, you don’t really have a career, you have young babies. I, my parents lived in New York. I was here by myself. I got kind of a storyline floated in our friend group that wasn’t totally fair to me in my opinion. And everybody kind of thought I was the one who chose the divorce. So everyone thought I was the bad guy. This is another place where I think women are really vilified, right. To be a woman and to leave your husband when you have a one year old and a three year old. Society doesn’t like that. Yeah, very good reasons that were very painful and private that I chose not to share out of respect for my ex husband’s career. But of course nobody knew that or cared about it. So I really lost most of my friends too. So it was received well by my parents, but definitely not by our social circle. I had one friend, laughingly, it’s such a Real Housewives moment. This is 20 years ago, but sobbing to me when I told her about my divorce because I was gonna mess up the rental in Hilton Head.
Amy Stone [00:34:00]:
Oh, well, that doesn’t actually surprise me. I’m old enough to have seen my fair share of those stories. And there is a very real social cost of decoupling from a relationship. It’s the friend group, it’s the schools, it’s the after school activity. I’ve talked to hundreds of women who are very happy to be divorced. I don’t know that I’ve ever talked to anybody who enjoyed the process of detangling in the relationship. It is a rough process, unfortunately. All right, so we have mentioned that you’re a therapist for everybody who’s listening. You have a couple of podcasts. One is called the Insights from the Real Talk for Women in Midlife. And there’s another one, and you’re on the radio in Orlando. Very, very cool. And notably for right now, very timely. You’ve written a book that is coming out the week that this show releases. The book is called the Cost of Quiet how to have the Hard Conversations that Create Secure, Lasting Love. All right, is there anything that I missed in that wrap up of the things that you’ve got going on?
Colette Fehr [00:35:05]:
No. I mean, except that I also did a TEDx talk called Secret of a Couples Therapist. So. And that’s on. I think listeners would get a lot out of that and there’s a lot of what we talked about today. And then I go into some more depth on some of these issues. And thanks so much for mentioning my book. It’s just coming out now, and I really, it was inspired to give women, and women in particular, it’s for everyone, but I wrote it for women. And I say that in the book because I’m a woman. In my experience, I give a very actionable solution, including, like scripts that’s kind of like emotional Mad Libs. So you put your own stuff. It’s your own truth. But I really help you learn how to communicate for your feelings and needs, regardless of how your partner responds. And that’s my mission in life, is to help people with that.
Amy Stone [00:35:59]:
I love that. I absolutely love it. All right, I’ll put the all of the links to the podcast, the book, and the TEDx talk are in the show notes on all the audio platforms and on YouTube for everybody in the audience. The easiest way, in my opinion, as the host, to get all of these links is to be subscribed to the Imperfect Adulting email newsletter, which I call the Village. And then the Links are in there, and you just click on them, and it’s like magic. You don’t have to hunt them up. So that’s my opinion. Everybody’s invited. Colette, are you ready for my final three random questions?
Colette Fehr [00:36:32]:
I am, and I can’t wait.
Amy Stone [00:36:34]:
I love that you’re so excited about this. Some people get nervous, and they’re just ridiculous questions. All right, so question number one. If I came into your house and opened your refrigerator today, which would be absolutely a very strange thing to do, but let’s go with it. I think it makes a funny question. What would I find in your fridge today?
Colette Fehr [00:36:50]:
You would find a bunch of stuff that my husband bought at the grocery store and cooked. I’m an empty fridge girl. I’m gonna grab something on the go. But my husband is so good. He does all the grocery shopping and all the cooking. So you find, like, macaroni that’s, like, not real pasta. It’s like, some healthy, grainy stuff. You know, a bottle of champagne that hasn’t been opened yet and probably some cheese and butter and whatever my husband’s eating. I’m on the go.
Amy Stone [00:37:21]:
You’re on the go. All right. I love that. Okay, if you were number two, if you were going to redecorate a room in your house, what room would you choose, and what furniture store do you think would be your first stop for buying new furniture?
Colette Fehr [00:37:34]:
Oh, my gosh, I would love to do that. So I have a tiny house. I would redecorate the front room, which is my home office, and it’s open. I actually like how it looks, but I would love to, like, freshen it up. I don’t know the store because I know nothing about designing, but I would want a very clean, like, very South Florida vibe. Just, like, wood and plants and, like, everything white and light and maybe something really blue, like the ocean for artwork on the wall. Just really clean aesthetic.
Amy Stone [00:38:08]:
That coastal chic. That makes so much sense.
Colette Fehr [00:38:12]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:38:12]:
That’s what I would want.
Colette Fehr [00:38:14]:
That is.
Amy Stone [00:38:14]:
That is a vibe that looks. We all have it. One of the reasons is because everything gets so bleached in Florida, so it’s like you’re better off just starting with white furniture.
Colette Fehr [00:38:22]:
And I love it. Mine is gray and yellow, and it’s nice, but I would rather the coastal chic vibe.
Amy Stone [00:38:28]:
Very cool. All right, you are an author and a podcaster and a broadcaster yourself. Do you want to share with us either a podcast or a book that isn’t your book? Because we already talked about your book that you enjoy that you think somebody in the audience might also like.
Colette Fehr [00:38:44]:
All right, I’m gonna go with what came right to my mind, an oldie but goodie. One of my favorites and one of the only books I’ve ever reread multiple times is Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffries. She’s no longer with us. For anybody that’s ever wanted to go for something and felt fear, which is natural. Anybody who’s dealt with anxiety but is like a super smart, powerful person at the same time, this is your book.
Amy Stone [00:39:14]:
Love that. I’d heard that phrase so many times, I don’t think I knew that there was a book to go with it. That is fantastic. That’s it. Colette Fehr, thank you so much for being a wonderful guest today on the show.
Colette Fehr [00:39:24]:
Thanks so much for having me. And thanks to you all for listening.