Episode 23: Why Does Your Partner Trigger You? with Jonathan Van Veeghem
Episode 23: Why Does Your Partner Trigger You? with Jonathan Van Veeghem
Why does your partner trigger you? Chances are the argument you keep having is not really about the dishes, the tone of voice, or the unanswered text. It is about what that moment seems to say about you.
In Episode 23 of The Truth About Healing Podcast, Dana Carretta-Stein sits down with marriage therapist Jonathan Van Veeghem, creator of the Chosen and Cherished Method and author of Choosing Us: Stories and Strategies to Strengthen Your Marriage From Inside the Therapy Room. After more than 10,000 hours working with couples, Jonathan believes people rarely leave relationships because they stop caring. They leave because they stop feeling chosen.
Together they unpack identity-level wounds, why a single comment from a partner can land so hard, and how to reflect back the message your partner most craves to hear about themselves. Jonathan also shares his own story, from a traumatic childhood to a marriage crisis that sent him back to school to become a therapist.
Dana adds the EMDR lens, explaining why behaviors that once kept us safe can become patterns that hurt the people we love, and how working in the present can help heal the past.
And it raises an important question:
When your partner triggers you, what are you afraid it means about you?
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Episode Highlights
In this episode, Dana and Jonathan talk about:
Why people leave relationships when they stop feeling chosen, not when they stop caring
What identity-level wounds are, and how one comment like “I don’t think you’re funny enough” can echo a lifelong fear of being leaveable
How protective behaviors, like getting big and loud to push a threat away, can keep us safe as kids and strain a marriage as adults
Why conflict is normal, and why name-calling and attacking identity is where fighting goes too far
How to neutralize fights by reflecting back the message your partner craves to hear about themselves
Giving your partner an off-ramp for disappointment around intimacy, and moving from either/or to both
Why curiosity keeps likability alive, and why knowing the little things about your partner matters
The first step Jonathan gives couples: write down the word “pain” and put it down so you can pick up joy
Memorable Quote
“People are more than their worst behavior.” - Jonathan Van Veeghem
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Further Learning & Resources
Discover journals, workbooks, consultation resources, and recommended tools designed to support both personal healing and professional growth.
EMDR Therapy Progress Journal
The EMDR Therapy Progress Journal helps clients track healing progress, identify
patterns, document insights, and stay connected to their therapeutic journey between sessions.
Perfect for:
EMDR clients
Trauma recovery work
Reflection between sessions
Tracking healing milestones
EMDR Coach Treatment Planning Workbook
Designed specifically for EMDR therapists, this workbook helps simplify case
conceptualization, target sequencing, and treatment planning.
Ideal for:
EMDR-trained clinicians
EMDR consultation groups
Organizing complex cases
Strengthening treatment planning skills
Meet Jonathan Van Veeghem
Jonathan Van Veeghem is a marriage therapist, creator of the Chosen and Cherished Method, and author of Choosing Us. After more than 10,000 hours working with couples, his relationship education has reached millions of people online, generating more than 100 million views.
Born in Canada and currently living in Central America, Jonathan went back to school for marriage and family therapy about 12 years ago, in large part because he wanted to save his own marriage. That personal experience shapes his work: he helps couples uncover the identity-level message each partner craves to hear, so they can repair conflict and feel chosen again.
Choosing Us was released on November 3 and follows three fictional couples through five therapy sessions each, so readers can see what the Chosen and Cherished process looks like in the therapy room.
Explore his work:
Book: Choosing Us at jonathanvanveeghem.com/book (also available on Amazon)
Follow Jonathan Van Veeghem on Instagram and Facebook
Read his longer writing on Substack
More Episodes From The Truth About Healing Podcast
If this conversation resonated, these recent episodes go deeper:
Meet Our Host Dana Carretta-Stein, LMHC
Dana Carretta-Stein is an LMHC, EMDRIA Approved Consultant, founder of The EMDR Coach, and founder of Peaceful Living Mental Health Counseling (PLMHC).
Her work focuses on trauma-informed therapy, nervous system healing, EMDR therapy, attachment patterns, and helping people understand the deeper roots behind emotional and behavioral patterns.
Dana blends neuroscience, trauma-informed education, and direct honesty in a way that helps listeners feel both validated and challenged to think differently about healing.
Her core belief: Symptoms make sense when you understand the nervous system underneath them.
Trauma-Informed Therapy Through PLMHC
Peaceful Living Mental Health Counseling provides trauma-informed therapy for children, teens, and adults.
Services include support for:
Overthinking
Burnout
Trauma
Emotional overwhelm
Nervous system dysregulation
PLMHC offers in-person therapy in Scarsdale and virtual therapy throughout New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Florida.
If you’ve been searching for trauma-informed therapy in Westchester or EMDR therapy in Scarsdale, support is available.
Full Episode Transcript: Why Does Your Partner Trigger You? with Jonathan Van Veeghem
Welcome to another episode of The Truth About Healing, the podcast that's here to challenge everything you think you knew about therapy. I'm Dana Carretta Stein, EMDR and neuro-informed therapist, and I'm on a mission to help 10 million people change their patterns, relationships, and future generations by teaching them how to gain control of their nervous system.
Let's go with it. Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of The Truth About Healing podcast. I am your host, Dana Carretta Stein, and I am here today with Jonathan Van Vigen. I'm really excited for today's conversation 'cause for anyone who struggles with relational difficulties, uh, conflict in your relationship, or finding a relationship that really is worthwhile, um, I think that you're gonna love this conversation.
So a little bit about Jonathan. Jonathan is a marriage therapist, creator of the Chosen and Cherished method, and author of Choosing Us: Stories and Strategies to Strengthen Your Marriage From Inside the Therapy Room. After more than 10,000 hours working with couples, Jonathan believes that people don't necessarily leave relationships because they stop caring about each other. They leave because they stop feeling chosen. His relationship education has reached millions of people online, generating more than 100 million views.
Jonathan, welcome to The Truth About Healing. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm really excited to talk to you today. So tell us just a little bit about, like, who you are and your background, and we'll go from there.
Jonathan Van Veeghem's Background: Why He Became a Marriage Therapist
Yeah, I, um, was born in Canada and currently live in Central America. About 12 years ago, out of self-preservation, decided to pursue a degree in marriage and family therapy, and mostly because I wanted to stay married and didn't wanna lose the best woman that had ever decided to say that I should be in her life. Yeah, I love that. That took off my journey, so. That's what made you get into it, to kind of work on your own marriage is what got you into, you know, the field of counseling. 100%.
Well, and I write about it 'cause the, the fir- I tell this story quite a bit, but in the first year of marriage, my wife turned to me and said, "I don't think you're funny enough." And I have this, what I call them identity level wounds. So for me, my identity level wound has always been I'm leaveable. And I thought, "Well, if she doesn't think I'm funny enough, then I must be leaveable." But we survived that crisis. And then about six years later when we had our firstborn, she said it again, and that's what really tipped me off that I need to figure her out, figure this whole marriage thing out, and that's when I went back to school, so. Yeah, that was, like, the trigger for you, right? That it picked on something that was there. 100%.
And you said you're in Central America now? Currently in Central America, although we will be moving Stateside soon, so hopefully in the new year. It is very different, very remote. We're in the process of, you know, packing up our stuff and finalizing our lives here, so.
Okay. So tell me about, you know, like, what you uncovered, like, in the beginning parts of your education. You know, you said you were really trying to explore what was coming up for you in your marriage and wanting to make sure that you kept your marriage, and what you kind of realized along the journey.
Why People Leave Relationships: The Identity-Level Message We All Crave
Well, I think probably the biggest thing is I, over the years, and I... They threw me to the wolves when I did my clinical work. So as a therapist, you do your book learning, and then they throw you in the therapy room. Sink or swim. And sink or swim. And from the get-go, I was just given all the couples because when you do a marriage and family therapy degree, you have to see couples. And that's where I kind of fell in love with working with couples. I would get too bored just working with an individual, and I like the drama of what I needed to do. I was being called to show up and help this couple move through a crisis in their relationship.
And I learned pretty quickly that in therapy, we can talk about our pain as much as we want. We can talk about what hurts, our resentments, but there's a cork in the bottle. There's something that even if you talk about and you pull the pain out, there's still something blocking two people from repairing whatever relationship crisis that they're currently in. And what I realized was what that cork in the bottle is this identity level message that we all crave to hear about ourselves.
And then I kind of realized that people kind of get married only for one of two reasons, either to procreate or to be reflected back what they deeply crave to know about themselves. And if they are with the right person who does a good job of that and affirms who they are in their own mind, they'll stay in that marriage. If they don't feel that, as in I'm not chosen, I'm not cherished, then they will leave, and they will leave that relationship to build another one with someone who will reflect that message that they crave to hear. Interesting. They're trying to maybe find a corrective emotional experience, I think is the therapy term that we use. Yeah, or seeking something, seeking a repair. Totally.
Which is why you'll see people that, say, commit infidelity inside of a marriage, if it can't be forgiven, they'll still leave that marriage 'cause that forgiveness is how you make someone a whole person in your mind again. And even that person that caused that incredible betrayal, if they can't be seen by their partner as a whole, good person again, they'll leave that relationship to go find a new relationship that will let them have that freedom to be a good person in their partner's eyes, so.
People Are More Than Their Worst Behavior
Right. Yeah, it's about getting curious about, like, you know, it's not... Like I say to my kids all the time, like, "I love you. I don't love your behavior." Yes, exactly. Right? So it's that, like, you know, infidelity is, you know, a behavior, but it's what's underneath it, what was driving it, and that curiosity. And that curiosity takes you half the way, but then what happens next? How do we actually take that from insight to action?
Well, that's the thing is that people aren't their behavior. I say that people are more than their worst behavior. You know, we see that man in the streets in any of our big cities with a needle out of his arm. Is he a drug addict, or is he a brother, a friend, a son? So we need to make that distinction, separate the person from the behavior, right?
Yeah, and, like, from the EMDR therapy lens is, like, you know, certain behaviors, like, they serve a function. So it's really getting underneath of, you know, what about that behavior that might be, you know, maladaptive now, when was that actually quite adaptive? And then it just became this repeating pattern 'cause, you know, we just keep doing something 'cause it becomes, like, an automatic response. And then realizing that we don't have to do that anymore, that that's a different situation now. The danger's over, that we don't need that coping mechanism anymore.
Jonathan's Story: Childhood Trauma, Getting Big and Loud, and a Marriage Crisis
Absolutely, which perfectly describes my marital crisis that I was having with my wife, so. Yeah. So do you mind telling us a little bit about that? I always think lived experience is so helpful for anyone listening. Yeah, 100%. I'm a deeply broken man in the sense that I had an extremely traumatic childhood, and it included a kidnapping from my father, and he starved me for three days, and this is all the time when I was eight, nine years old. So all this stuff is playing off in the background. Oof. That's big. That's heavy. Although I feel like I traumatically blocked it out of my brain, and I could probably use some EMDR therapy myself to kinda move past that.
Well, that's helpful, right? Like, where there are times where blocking it out is a very helpful adaptive response so you can keep going. Yeah. Well, and so what I learned was, you know, getting into teenagehood, I would get big and loud and yell to push the threat away. So whether that was my dad, whether that was my sister, anyone that could hurt me emotionally, I got bigger than them. And fortunately, I'm 6'2", so that added to it as well. You got the height on your side. Yeah, exactly.
And that works really well. You know, I remember being in Thailand with my wife and kids, and a taxi driver was gonna rip us off and not take us to the airport, and I got really big, really loud, and then sure enough, we got taken to the airport properly. So it worked really well in certain circumstances. But with a 5'4" ballerina who's my wife, that doesn't work very well. It's not needed there. And so hence I wasn't funny. How could I be funny if I was yelling all the time, right?
Right. Yeah, so for you, kind of getting bigger so to speak served that adaptive function because it kept you safe. Yeah. 100%. But then it was gonna destroy my marriage, so. Right. I always go back to the word discernment. Of, like, really being able to discern, like, when we need that response of that, you know, big behavior so to speak, and when we don't need it elsewhere.
So what was that tipping point in your marriage where you were like, "Okay, this is a problem that, like, we're not gonna stay on a good trajectory if we stay this way, and I need to do something"? Yeah, I guess, you know, thinking back, my father was the root cause of all of my trauma. And I learned pretty quickly that I wanted the opposite life that he had. So he divorced twice, multiple bankruptcies, he was, you know, arrested, you know, all this crazy stuff.
And so for me, I remember putting my daughter down to sleep. She was one year old, and that was the night that my wife said to me, "I don't think you're funny enough," again for the second time, and I said, "I've gotta do something about this because I absolutely don't wanna lose my wife." I just envisioned not sleeping in the same house every single night with my daughter. And that was a vision that terrified me, so.
Yeah. That'll do it, right? I know for me, my own personal experience too, where, like, when my husband and I, we can get into some really deep places from our own childhood stuff too can play out, and the idea of not seeing my kids every single day is like, oh my God, I cannot even imagine it. And so we choose to keep working through stuff, not just for them, but for us too, because we also want them to have a model of what a good, healthy relationship looks like.
Fighting Fair: Conflict Is Communication Trying to Happen
100%, and I think that's what drives my work as a couples therapist is I'm always thinking about children. I'm always thinking about, you know, how do we repair this relationship. And I don't think couples need to not fight. I mean, my wife and I still will have a fight every three months. For us now, big is, like, a 45-minute fight every three months, so. And fighting is normal in any relationship. Fighting is normal.
Yeah, that was something my husband struggled a lot with 'cause his parents fought a lot, and there was just a lot of yelling. So for him, any fight was a bad fight. Instead of it being, you know, what we learned in our couples therapy is, you know, conflict is communication trying to happen. And how do you fight fair? And, you know, an argument doesn't have to be yelling and screaming. It's, "Okay, we're not agreeing right now, so how do we talk through it?"
100%. Yeah. And I think that for me fighting, everything is okay. Big voices, I mean, probably because I'm used to that, but my wife would not agree with me. She doesn't like big voices, so we tone that down. But it's the name-calling. It's anything that you're getting into that zone where you're attacking the person's identity, that's where you're walking close to the cliff's edge, so. Yeah, you start labeling and you kind of hit below the belt, so to speak.
Yeah, and I think that's what happens in a lot of couples is they start doing the you, you, you thing instead of like, "This is how I'm experiencing this conflict." And "this is what's coming up for me." Like, my husband knows and it's still very, very difficult for him at times because we're just so different, and so we're both learning. Like, I made a career out of noticing body language, tone, all these little things, right? So I can read his response before he even realizes what his body is doing.
So he'll say things like, you know, like, "Oh, I'm not upset." And I'm like, "Then what's with the eye roll and the sigh?" He's like, "I didn't sigh." I'm like, "Yes, you did." Like, what? And I'm like, "Just tell me how you really feel." And he's like, "Stop therapizing me." And that's the dynamic that we go into. But for me too it's the how do I, you know, what's the narrative that I go down when I see that sigh and I see that eye roll of I'm not lovable. Oh, he's gonna leave me or rejecting me, the stuff that comes up in my play and that's, you know, what we learn is how to say like, "Okay, I saw that eye roll and this is the story I'm telling myself now." "Is that accurate?" "Or let's talk through that."
How to Neutralize Fights: Reflect Back the Message Your Partner Craves to Hear
And I think what a lot of people don't realize, and this is what I try to tell the world, is that you can literally neutralize virtually every fight you have with your spouse if you can reflect back to them that identity level message that they crave to hear. Because most of our conflict is rooted in that fear, shame, guilt, or embarrassment about how we behaved. I was bad. What we need to do is to create that safety for our partner and say, "You are..." So for my wife, for example, she needs to know that she's good enough.
So she struggles to say sorry, to take accountability for minor, minor stuff, and I guess it was probably going back about eight months that I finally had my own realization that I said to her in the middle of a fight, "Sweetheart, you're gonna be unconditionally forgiven for everything." I mean, cheating, I would still even forgive her. I don't know that I would stay with her, but I made that realization that that's what she needed to hear. And what you'll notice when people feel that tremendous, profound sense of safety in the thing that they wanna know about themselves, that neutralizes. You don't have to be perfect, right?
Right. Like, anything that, again, that I know, like, 'cause I share that with your wife as well, like this, like, not good enough kind of thing, of like, oh, I don't have to be perfect. I can make mistakes, and you can see this part of me that I've probably tried to exile for so long, and now it's showing up, and you accept it. That's huge.
Jonathan's Approach to Couples Therapy: What Do You Want to Know About Yourself?
Yeah. So tell me about, like, your work with couples. Like, do you have a specific, like, you know, therapeutic orientation that you take? Like, how would you describe it? Yeah, I would say that in my career, I began as a solution-focused brief therapist, and I kind of eschewed attachment theory, mostly because as a therapist, you kinda have to make an assessment of a person when you're working in the attachment theory realm. Is this person secure? Are they anxious? Are they avoidant? And I really struggled with that because we're essentially making an assessment. Assessment is judgment. And when we're trying to make a judgment, we're handicapped in the sense that we only get half the story. We only learn about the pain, you know, when we're sitting with our clients.
And it was really not until I wrapped my head around the fact that I can sit with a client and find out what they really crave to know about themselves, that I could skirt around that so I didn't have to focus on me being the one that would make a judgment of the client, what their personality's like or how they're attached. I could literally just ask people what they want, and I think that ultimately is a very simple, very oversimplified question to ask: What do you want to know about yourself? But when you spend enough time with people, they'll start revealing those childhood wounds, the things that, you know, that we learned as kids growing up. Maybe it was through past relationships that we got hurt.
But it's a really vulnerable place. Like, for men, you know, if you sit with 10 men, nine of them will tell you that they wanna feel like they're a successful, good man. Which is why a lot of men struggle, because when they hear their wives come with feedback, criticism, complaints, whatever it is, they internalize that as, "You must therefore not see me as a good man." So most of the coaching I do with the women is, "Tell him he's a good man, and then go into the behavior." Yes. But if you haven't made him safe to remind him that he's a good man, and that you're not talking about who he is, he is gonna shut down. He is gonna get defensive.
'Cause that's what, you know, human beings all do, is, like, as soon as they hear something, story follows state, right? So if it brings up this, like, state of anxiety hearing you say something, then that narrative is gonna come up, that story of like, you know, "I'm not lovable. I'm not good enough. I'm not a good boy," so to speak. So my approach now is to really help people uncover, you know, be vulnerable with each other. And I tell them all the time, "You guys are the only two in the room. I'm here witnessing, but I can't tell people what we talk about. I don't know you. I'm not going to your funeral. You know, I'm not going to your sister's wedding or anything like that." "So it's just the two of you. Learn to strip away those layers of pain, you know, shame, guilt, embarrassment of asking for what you want." And so for my wife, that's, you know, to remind her that she's good enough. For me, it's to remind me that I'm stayable is essentially what I wanna hear, right? So.
Yeah. And the question you just said, too, of like, you know, what do you want, I often find that most people when asked that question, they almost freeze because they don't know. Right? Because a lot of times they actually haven't had space or time to even consider that. Because they've lived in survival mode for so long. So it was like, "Oh, I haven't had time to really think about what I want because right now I'm trying to survive. I'm focusing on, like, what I need to do to live and to get through."
Well, and the other thing too is they'll rattle off a list of the things they want their partner to do. The only problem with that is that the minute someone stops doing what we want them to do because they're tired, they're thoughtless, or they're lazy, then we slip back into this, "Oh, I'm not getting what I want." Or just distracted, right? Otherwise distracted. Like living life, like having small kids, right? That's a big one, right? Life just happens. So I kinda see it as it's not so much what your partner does for you or what they don't do for you. Those are just delivery mechanisms for what we ultimately crave to know about ourselves or to hear about ourselves.
The Cup Analogy: Needs, Wants, and What Your Partner Can Provide
Yeah, yeah. My husband and I always use, like, the cup analogy, right? So it's like, you know, you each have a cup, and you know, what's in it, and then what you put into it, when you guys are each stressed, like, whatever's in the cup can spill onto the other person. So that, like, you know, what your needs are, what your wants are is, you know, your significant other can provide that. But if your cup has a hole in it, your partner can give, give, give, give, give, but how do you sustain when they're not able to give because of life circumstances?
Intimacy and Disappointment: Giving Your Partner an Off-Ramp
Like my husband and I all the time, right? Like sex is the thing that always comes up. Like, for him, like physical touch is his love language, all those terms, and we have two small kids. And I'm f***ing exhausted most of the time 'cause we're running around from, you know, Friday's football and then ballet and another football game on Sunday, and we're just all over the place. And so it's, "Okay, if we're not able to have that physical intimacy, how do you hold onto the fact that you're still lovable, that you still matter to me even if that's not happening?"
Well, I think what needs to happen in those, particularly around the intimacy, is we need to give them an off-ramp for their disappointment, and I think this is what a lot of people don't do. And so it's, "I'd love to be intimate. I can't right now," but then the magical phrase they need to add, tack on to the end of that is, "But how can I make it up to you?" And that's the thing that people don't, that they end at, "I can't," but that doesn't mean that you can't tomorrow or that you won't want to tomorrow or next week or, you know, "How can I make it up to you and make it even more special?"
Right? So see, that's where, like, I might challenge you a little bit there. We might disagree of like... 'Cause even for me hearing that, "How can I make it up to you," I imagine anyone else feeling like pressure like, "Oh, I have to do something because I, like my feelings caused a problem." So like I, for what I've noticed, and this just works for us, is not that I have to do something about it, but just acknowledging his disappointment. Like he's not wrong for wanting sex. And I'm not wrong for not being able to provide it. So it's like, "Yes, I can't, and I completely understand that you're disappointed, and that's okay."
Yeah. Yeah, and it... But I think the pressure could come from that statement is thinking that I need to promise something and that I've now gotta fulfill that, right? 'Cause in my head, I'm like, "What if I forget?" So I was just talking about the pressure around intimacy and delivering it at some point in the future. And it's an ongoing conversation between two people. It's me saying, "I can't do this right now. I wanna make it up to you when the time is right." "When I feel good." Like, it's important to me too. That's important information, right? I wouldn't necessarily say that someone needs to promise something tomorrow and then 100% deliver on that, so.
Yeah, 'cause I think that's important of like, "I know this is something that's important for you, and yeah, it's not gonna happen right now, but can you trust that it will happen?" We will get there. So this almost like delayed gratification, so to speak. Exactly.
Emotional Connection vs Physical Connection: Moving From Either/Or to Both
And the other risk about intimacy too, and talking about, you know, when and how and whatnot, is we run the risk of running into a debate between I want emotional connection and I want physical connection. Yes. That's like men are from Mars, women are from Venus, right? That's where this always ends up, always going down that rabbit hole. And what I think couples need to say is, "How can we both get what we want?" So it's not if emotional connection then physical connection, or if physical connection then emotional. We need to both get what we want.
Absolutely, yeah, 'cause that's, you know, it's typical, like we, you know, women will always say that, "I need to feel emotionally connected in order to be available for physical intimacy," and men will say, "Physical intimacy is what makes me feel emotionally connected." That's like literally the conversation my husband and I also have all the time. And it's, yeah, how do we both get it, right? And that's the work is how do we figure out each other of like, okay, how do we, both parties need to work on that stuff.
I think what couples need to do is move away from either/or syndrome towards and both. And so it's not either this or that. We need to look at, how do we both get what we want? How do we get emotional connection and physical connection? It sounds very much like Imago therapies, like what I'm hearing, like Harville Hendrix, like, Getting the Love You Want, like, great book. But very much like, you know, that mirror, reflect, empathize, all of that. Yeah. And I think empathy is so important in any relationship to really both take up space. You know, you wanna feel seen. And I think that's really powerful, for sure.
And I also think it's simple, too, because if you really get below the surface and understand what your partner craves to hear about themselves, it's something that you could figuratively tattoo to your forearm. So I never stop thinking about how my wife wants to know that she's good enough. So when we run into trouble, I behave in that way to remind her that she's good enough, the things I say to her, the things I do for her. And vice versa. So it becomes this very simple mission statement that we can all adopt with respect to our partner that makes relationships far easier. Everything is better when it's simple, so.
Yeah. And that's where it's like, you know, from an EMDR lens, it's like working through the past that impacts our present. But this is another example of how, you know, working in the present can help heal the past. So things like, you know, providing a lot of those, being aware of, like, the things that your wife needs to hear and stuff, that can be very reparative and disprove almost all of those narratives that she had that were rooted in childhood.
When Reassurance Isn't Enough: Likability and Curiosity in Long-Term Relationships
Yeah. What I would be curious about to see, and I don't know the answer to this, is, you know, is there a point, a tipping point of, you know, if we're doing that thing and we're providing those, like, reassurances, and it's not making any long-term improvement, is there, you know, an underlying PTSD that needs to be treated and so forth? With respect to couples, I would say that comes down to another big thesis that I have about relationships is likability.
And you mentioned curiosity earlier, and I think what happens is with those kids and when the shine wears off the penny, and those early days are kinda behind us, and we get into the monotony of co-parenting and paying bills together and life together, we start to lose that curiosity, and that curiosity is the glue that connects us to the likability. What do we like about our partner? And so when there is trauma, pain, resentments that can't be overwhelmed by the positive, good, joyful things we bring into a relationship, that tells you something. It tells you that no matter what you do for me, it's not getting through. And to me, that would mean that there's some decay in the likability factor.
In, like, their belief about being likable? A belief about being likable, but then actually liking your spouse, right? Interesting. You know, do you wanna be intimate with someone that you don't like? This is where duty sex comes from, right? Yeah. And you know, if you don't like the man or if you don't like the woman, you won't wanna be not just physically intimate, you won't wanna be affectionate, you won't be curious, you won't ask questions.
I kinda use this example quite a lot, but as men, we should know the name of the person who cuts our wife's hair. Like, we should know our wife to that level of detail, you know? "How is Mike doing? I love that he gave you a bang trim instead of a bob this time," right? That's taking a deep curiosity. That's sending a message that I, in fact, like who you are. But a woman who doesn't like her husband, as the man, will really struggle to develop, you know, a connection that can override resentments, so.
Interesting. I'm, like, processing all that. So, like, tell me if this is an overgeneralized statement. So like, if you don't remember those things, does that mean you don't like your partner? I would say that if you don't remember those, well, probably you haven't even asked the question. Like, you know, I know why my wife wears skirts or, you know, if I go to H&M and I'm gonna buy her a shirt, I know the exact kinda shirt to buy her. If it's too heavy, we live in Central America, she won't wear it. And it's taking an interest in your partner, who they are, to the point where you know everything about them as much as you can, 'cause we can never fully know someone. That would convey the sense that, "I'm so curious about you that I have to continue learning about you, therefore, I must like you." Because if you didn't like someone, you don't ask them questions. That's where indifference comes from.
Right. My husband and I, since we've been together for 13 years, something we always do on our date nights every week are like, "Tell me something about you that I don't already know." And it's like a fun little game we always do. But it's so funny, when you said the hairdresser thing, my husband would probably be like, "I don't f***ing know 'cause she's got like three different people that do her hair. Like, and so there's one that does the color, one does the cut, the one that does this, the one that..." And I'd be like, "Fair. That's fine. I get that." 'Cause he's married to the chaotic one. Totally. And it doesn't necessarily have to be hairdresser. I mean, my wife drinks Arbonne fizz drinks in the morning, and I know that she likes the orange versus the raspberry. It's about taking an interest in your partner.
It's like the little things that matter. Like eccentricities, like the idiosyncrasies. All that fun little stuff about someone, right? Yeah, for sure. Like my husband will do like two Splendas, but if they don't have Splenda, then it's three regular sugars, like the ratio that he does. Yeah. Those little things. For sure. And that's different than walking on eggshells saying, "I have to do these things, otherwise you're gonna freak out." Right. You wouldn't wanna put two scoops of sugar instead of three, and then he's gonna blow up and throw the cup across the room, right? I'm not saying that. I'm saying you take an interest 'cause when you go to make him coffee, you wanna know how he likes it. You go to that extent.
And we do this all the time with our children, and you can see that image of the mother standing on the courthouse whose son just committed an armed robbery and is going away for 25 years, and she loves him, and she's so sad that her son's now gonna be locked up. How does a mother like her son so much no matter what type of heinous thing that he's done? So we do this naturally with our kids. We just don't give that same grace to our partners. Right, yeah. It's to kind of see what's coming up for them that would drive that, so you could stay present with them in some of their most maybe unlikable moments. In the unlikable moments. Yeah, for sure. That's really big.
Put Down the Pain: Jonathan's First Step for Couples
Yeah. So I know one thing you're big on is this, you know, the insight, understanding helps, but it's not the whole thing, right? But then what to do with it next. So like for me, like my thing is like EMDR. EMDR is what you do to get to underneath. For you, 'cause EMDR is one way, it's not the only way. What's your like, this is what to do next? Like what do you have, like couples do?
Well, I think the very first thing I do is I have them take out a piece of paper and a pen and just write down the word pain. And because I think a lot of couples when they're trying to build this or create this marriage that they want, they're holding too much pain in their hand. And so they need to put it down. They need to figuratively let go of something in order to pick up the joy. Pain is, to me it's a synonym for shame, guilt, or embarrassment. I mean, think of couples that have certain sexual preferences in the bedroom, or, you know, they like to do X, Y, Z, you know, mountain biking and stuff like that, but they feel guilty or they feel ashamed to ask for what they want.
We need them to be able to let go of that before they can have an open conversation about what they want, to be vulnerable, to not be judged by their partner, right? So that's the very first thing I do, is to have them put down the pain. Take that piece of paper, put it in the sock drawer so you can stare at your hands and say, "What do I wanna fill my relationship with?" So.
Yeah. That's, like you're doing EMDR and you don't even realize it. 'Cause like that's the container exercise. I'm not trained in EMDR, by the way, which is... But it's so interesting. Yeah. I say all the time is like, you know, all these different therapies that are out there, right? EMDR, EFT, you know, Gottman, like, all of it, CBT, DBT, they all are like evidence-based and have really great efficacy. If you really zoom out enough, it's just different vocabulary, but they're all doing the same thing. So, like that, what you're doing is like, you know, having their pain and putting that, that's containment. That's a container exercise, which is a phase two exercise in EMDR. Where you're just like, "Okay, let's park this here so we have space to kind of be vulnerable and do the work." So you're doing it without even realizing it. I'll go get recertified. Yeah. Sometimes it's just different language. It's what we call things, but, you know, the function that it serves is the same.
Choosing Us: Jonathan Van Veeghem's Book
Yeah. So tell us a little bit about your book. Well, it was really interesting. About two years ago, I started posting every day on Instagram, and, you know, just, I like to write. It's the one thing I do, and I'm 50 years old, and I mean, I was 48 back then. I'm like, "I don't have that amazing body. I'm not 25, so people aren't gonna come to my stuff because of the way I look." So I started writing. Which is like how social media definitely is wired. Yeah. So I needed to share my experience and my thoughts and my views, and so I started typing them out in captions on Instagram.
And it was about a year later that a publisher reached out, asked if I wanted to write a book and if I'd ever thought about it. And two days later, they gave me a contract and we signed it, and that's where the idea was born. So I didn't even have a book proposal at the time. I just needed to come up with 65,000 words about a year later, so it was a bit of pressure. But as I did, at that same time, I started evolving the Chosen Cherished method into how do you remind a woman that she's chosen? How do you remind a man that he's cherished? And that kind of, you know, expanded out over the course of the year.
And the idea was I didn't wanna write a self-help book. I wanted it to be interesting. The vision I had in my mind is I thought women... And my wife breastfed, for example, and she would always read. And what do women do when they breastfeed? They usually either read their Kindle or they scroll their phone or whatever. But I wanted it to be captivating, and so I picked three couples that I had made up in my head: one struggling with infidelity, one struggling with high conflict, another couple that's struggling with emotional decay. And I basically took them through five therapy sessions each and worked through my entire process. So you get to see the process. And broke the fourth wall, so I'm speaking to the reader at the same time and sprinkled in a ton of my own personal stories and own traumas, and yeah, a baby was born.
I love that, though, because that's what I think a lot of books miss are like, okay, so here's, like, the method, so to speak, but what does it actually look like? And most people are visual. Not everybody, but most people are visual of like, okay, this is the theory, but what does it look like in session? Like, how do I actually see it go week by week and so forth. So I love that way to present it. Well, and I had this vision that there can't be any sidebars in it. There's no quotes in it. There's no references. This is a story. It's meant to just be readable. I wanted it to be something that people could get through because I pick up self-help books, and I can't get past the first two pages before I fall asleep, so.
Yeah. I have like 40,000 books that I've gotten through the first two chapters, and then it's like, all right, we're done here. Like I get it. I've already figured out the point. We're good. Well, I kinda say the same thing about, I don't know if she'll love me or hate me for this, but Mel Robbins' book, The Let Them Theory. I've asked so many people this, and they'll tell you they've never read the book, but when I describe to them what the title is, and I say it's The Let Them Theory, they can instantly recognize that it's basically just let people be people, and you do your thing, and they do their thing. It's radical acceptance. Right. And so books need to be easy and easily understood and simple, so that's why I aimed for it.
Exactly. That's definitely the thing I love doing is 'cause EMDR can sound so complex. And so I love just kind of cutting out all like the jargon and stuff and simplifying it because it doesn't have to be so complicated. Life is complicated enough. How do we just, you know, say sometimes when people are talking too long, like, "You're circling the airport. Land the plane." Like how do we just cut it down into one or two key sentences to understand it? Yeah, yeah.
Where to Find Jonathan Van Veeghem and Choosing Us
So tell everyone where they can find your book. Is it out yet? It's November 3rd is when it's published. Okay, so soon. That's when it gets released. Yeah, it's very soon. You can find it on Amazon. It's called Choosing Us, and if people do want, they can also come to my website. It's jonathanvanveeghem.com/book, and they can grab it there as well, so.
Love it. And where can everybody find you, like if they wanna, you know, learn more about you or connect with you, work with you, where can they find you? For sure these days, Instagram is a staple, Facebook is a staple. Jonathan Van Veeghem. But recently I've started writing on Substack quite a bit, so expanding the horizons. Very popular, isn't it? Yeah. You're not limited to the 2,200 characters of the caption limit on Instagram, so I tend to write a lot of manifestos. That gets me every time. Every time I paste a caption and it doesn't fit, I'm like, "No." I'm like, "Why?" I try to cut and paste it, so I'm pasting it from my notes, and it won't let me paste. Same. And then I gotta go back and trim it down. Oh, it's too long. Yeah.
Jonathan's Truth: The Relationship Bubble
Okay, so they can find you Instagram, Facebook, and Substack, yep. And one thing we like to kinda do when we close out our show is to ask our guests, what's one truth that you really stick to, even if it's not super popular, but something that you believe to be true and hold yourself to?
Yeah, it's really funny. I was just talking about it with my wife last night about the relationship bubble that we have. And so I talk about, and as a couples therapist, I just see this so much that I have three women in my orbit. That's my wife and my two daughters. And so I'm friendly with other women. They'll get an ass-out hug from me, but I'm not friends with other women. And so it's not very modern marriage these days, but time and again, from at least what I see with women in the world, they don't wanna know that some other woman could be in their husbands', in their fiancés', in their partner's orbit, and so that's just something that she and I have cultivated this strong relationship bubble that I call it, so.
Okay, and that's something that's true for you. It works for you, and you stick to it. On a very personal level. And it might not be super popular, but yeah. I can give you the therapist example, but if you want something that's personal to me that touches a nerve, that's something that's important to us, so. Yeah, 'cause I imagine some listeners might have an emotional reaction hearing that, and that's okay, right? It's your truth. It doesn't have to be everybody else's. 100%.
Closing the Episode
Jonathan, thank you so much for being here with us today, for sharing all of your expertise with us. I'm excited to read your book. Anything else you want anyone to know before we wrap up? No, just a huge thanks. It was wonderful speaking with you. I love the overlap between EMDR and what I do, so it was great to learn about that. Yeah, you're doing a lot of it where you don't even realize it. Well, awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. Jonathan Van Veeghem, everyone, and I am your host, Dana Carretta Stein, and I'm here to always remind you that we repeat what we don't repair. See you on the next one.
Thank you for listening to another episode of The Truth About Healing podcast. If you know someone who's still stuck, share this episode with them, 'cause as you know, the truth can set them free. And if you're ready to get started to see what you need to repair, contact us at peacefullivingmentalhealthcounseling.com and we will get you started. Until next time, I'm Dana Carretta Stein reminding you, we repeat what we don't repair.
Podcast Disclaimer
This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health or medical advice. Listening does not create a therapist-client relationship. If you need support, contact a licensed professional or your local emergency services.
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Transcript lightly edited for readability while preserving the meaning and conversational tone of the original recording
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