The amazing Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife shares her beautiful love and relationship insights. Check out all the amazing things she has to offer HERE
Welcome to Lovin My Daughter-in-law Podcast. I’m relationship expert and master certified coach LeAnn Austin. I’ll help you create more connection, love and fun with others, yourself and your daughter-in-law.
Hey y’all, welcome to Lovin My Daughter-in-law, episode #148: Honesty and Love with Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife
I love observing and connecting with other humans, especially noting how they feel and implement love into their lives and their relationships.
We have the amazing Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife sharing some beautiful love and relationship insights with us today. All right Jennifer, tell us a little bit about you.
Well, I am a therapist and a coach and I did my dissertation on LDS women and sexuality. And so I’ve done a lot of work in the LDS community on relationships to ourselves, to a partner, to our sexuality. And so that’s the work I do through teaching, coaching, and podcasting. Yeah. I love it.
Awesome. Well, five questions for us to go over today and first, tell us how do you incorporate love into your business and life and how does that impact your relationships?
Well, so much of what I do is about helping people learn to love and overcoming their blind spots. That is, you know, in marriage, so much of the ways that we struggle and feel pain is because of our limited ability to really care about another soul, to receive care. And so I’m talking and teaching about it really all the time.
The thing that’s such a gift in that is that. I hate the idea of hypocrisy in myself and anyone else. And so it’s always pushing me to do things I don’t want to do. You know, like be more loving, apologize, acknowledge where I’m wrong, all those kinds of things that are hard for all of us. You know, but it does, it’s a gift because it pushes me to look at myself in my own life all the time.
Yeah. And what do you think, I mean, what keeps us from that love as you’re teaching and doing all of that? What do you think about that? Meaning maybe ask the question again, what keeps us from loving or being willing to be loved or yes. Yeah, both of those. Like, how, what do you think about?
Well, what I think is that it’s really something we learn more than is natural to us. I mean, I think it’s very natural for us to attach and to very much want to be in connection with others. But the quality of that attachment has everything to do with our ability to hold on to our value and to the value of another person. And I think that’s it’s something that’s kind of an act of faith is to believe in the reality of love and to align our behavior with it.
That takes courage because our lesser selves, our limbic brains want control. And a lot of times we will prioritize control over love. And we may not even realize we’re doing it. We may in the name of love be very controlling or very walled off and sort of not really willing to let someone in. But it’s more based in our fear and our ego. Sort of taking control of things rather than really daring to do what’s right by another person see ourselves more honestly.
It’s a developmental process and a lot of times people want to do well, but they can’t understand. They don’t yet understand how they’re getting in their own way. And so it’s really helping people see themselves more clearly is really the work I do.
I love that you’re willing to do that and to put yourself out there too, you know, be vulnerable with that. Yeah. The other thing I would just say about that, that was sort of my initial thought about what I would say is that sometimes if I’m standing in front of a large group, I can suddenly be a little panicked. Like, how did I get here? All these people have come to listen to me. What am I doing here? You know, I mean, just kind of this, like, who am I to be standing in front of everyone?
And I think the thing that usually really helps me is to just care about the group, not think about whether or not I’m going to succeed or fail or whether or not, you know. Of course, I care about doing a good job and being prepared, but then I have to let go of it and just care about the group. And if I can care about people, then it just something good and almost magical happens. And so, yeah, that helps me a lot.
I love that. So just to turn the focus off of you to that. I’m here to help them. Yeah. Oh no. What’s going on with me? Exactly, awesome. All right. Well, tell us what is something you love about you and why?
Well, something that I appreciate about myself and I appreciate it more kind of looking backwards, than maybe I appreciated at the time. Is just my basic willingness to be honest with myself.
And I don’t say it like I can’t lie to myself because I certainly can, and that I don’t have blind spots because I do, but I think that this trusting in what is true and what is honest has been a very helpful anchor in my life, even when it scared me to be honest with myself or scared me to acknowledge something either about myself or my relationships or my faith even that has didn’t feel right and that’s helped me find a kind of clear internal compass. It’s helped me to I guess create a stronger internal compass that I think’s been very important in my life
I love that. Just that honesty and listening. It sounds like to your intuition, your spirit, whatever you choose to call it. Yeah, exactly. And I think there’s, you know, we have as just all of us as humans, myself included, we can lie to ourselves when we’re uncomfortable, when we want things to be a certain way, when we go blind to things either in ourselves or in a spouse or, you know, in reality and, you know, in the world around us.
That’s just very damaging ultimately to our sense of anxiety and our sense of self. So lying to ourselves is very intuitive, but I think the more we can tolerate admitting to ourselves what we’re afraid to admit, the more our lives get better and less anxious. Yeah, I love that you love that quality about you as well. That’s beautiful. Yeah. Awesome.
All right. So I love talking about connection with ourselves and with others. And I think the daughter-in-law relationship is packed full of endless examples to learn from. So any thoughts about you being a daughter-in-law or your future daughter-in-laws?
Well, I would say I feel a little tiny bit sorry for my future daughter-in-law. I’m going to do a very, very good job because I think the mother-in-law dynamic can be just challenging in terms of anticipating judgment. But here I’m a relationship and sexuality therapist. I worry about like, oh my gosh, like it’s going to be a super charged dynamic, you know, or it could be.
So I will do everything I can to basically prioritize my daughter-in-law over my son. I don’t mean like against my son, but just like, because I do think that that’s what my mother-in-law did for me. I think, you know, I married into a family that intimidated me a little bit because they’re just very educated and brilliant people.
But my mother-in-law was just very, she first of all, she never, ever, she prioritized the marriage relationship as primary. So her own marriage, but also the marriages of her kids. And she never, ever, ever would let herself get inserted between that.
I remember my husband, when we first were married, was talking to his mom on the phone and I was cutting something on a ceramic tile counter without a cutting board. And John had said something to me about that before, like, you’re going to ruin the knives or you’re going to scrape the counter, whatever you’re like, you shouldn’t do it, you know, and I had my own rationale for why that was like an acceptable thing to do.
But in any case, John was on the phone with his mom while I was doing it. And so he said, Hey mom, do you, is it okay to cut on a ceramic countertop? You know, and she was so smart. She was like, Hey, I’m sure that you and Jennifer can figure out the answer to that. I love it. That was the last place she wanted to go. And I loved her for it.
And, you know, if there was ever, you know, something, I don’t know, I always felt like she was on my side. If there was ever like some division between me and my husband, I always knew she truly wanted me to be well and would look after me in any situation like that. And that just really built trust and I mean, I’m very grateful to her both for the son she raised, but also how she has been a mother-in-law to me. I love that. That’s beautiful.
And as you’re thinking about your future daughter-in-law, you mentioned that. Are you concerned about, you know, a lot of stuff about sex and everything. I mean, that kind of like, Hey, I want to share this information with that. You know what I mean? No, I will not. Definitely not.
I mean, if she came to me and said, can you help me with something? I would more than of course I would, but I think my gut is to just say like, and my mom was very good at this too. Like I trust you guys to figure out what’s best for you, and I’m not gonna make it my issue, my problem, my whatever. I know the two of you can sort this out, and if you want any input from me, I’m here, but like, I’m never gonna cross over that boundary and start suggesting anything, that’s for sure. Right, right. Ah, I love that.
All right. Well, anything else you’d like to share and where can our audience go to find out more about you? Yeah, well, let me see, anything else I’d like to share? Well, I would just say, as cliche as this sounds, what I’m about to say is that love is the answer. Like, I really, the more that I live, the more I see the quality of our relationships is really the primary anchor that we have, even though we have only limited control over that.
We get to control who we are. That’s all we get control over. But controlling that is a big deal because the more we become trustworthy to others and to ourselves. The more that we do what’s right by others and for ourselves, the more solid and stable our lives get. And in a world of so much uncertainty, that’s a really, really important thing. So it’s a very worthy endeavor to be better. Anchored into what’s true and better able to love ourselves and others. So that would be my last thought.
And then, where people can find me is at my website, which is my last name: @finlaysonfife.com and you can find free resources there and resources for purchase. I have a podcast called Conversations with Dr. Jennifer, which is lots of conversations about sexuality, relationships, faith, you know, almost everything you can find. That’s a free resource. I have a podcast where I work with couples on issues around sexuality and emotional intimacy called Room for Two. And then I have online courses there as well.
I love that so much. And I’ll put all of this in the show notes, but it’s amazing how much you have to offer and help other people. So thank you. Thank you. And just in reflection, you talking about love, like love is the answer. My favorite quote is you either love someone or you don’t understand them. Yeah. I’m like, wait a minute, what am I not understanding what’s going on? So I love that love is such a focus for you. Thank you.
All right. So our last question, what is your favorite quote about love and how have you used it for yourself and in your relationships? Well this is at least one that I really love, which is a Rainer Rilke quote in his book, Letters to a Young Poet, and it’s: “To love is not about merging. It’s a noble calling for the individual to ripen, to differentiate, to become a world in oneself in response to another. It is a great, immodest call that singles out a person and summons them beyond all boundaries. Only in this sense may we use the love that has been given us. This is humanity’s task, for which we are all still barely ready.”
So I mean, I think for me it captures, it’s the quote that’s at the beginning of my relationship course because I think it captures so much what marriage and love relationships are asking us to do. It’s not about merging, you know, a lot of times we think we’re supposed to become one as in just melt into other people.
It’s about really becoming true to the best in ourselves, right, to really live into our own creation and to develop our gifts, develop our integrity, our honesty to become a self in the world. But that also is fundamental to being able to love another self. To really care about other people, not just as reflections of ourselves or how are you going to make me feel good. Or I want you to make me feel like I’m worthy or lovable that we take that more onto ourselves because then we’re really freed to care genuinely about another person.
Or as you say, like to really understand them, to understand where am I blind to who this person is, where they come from, what their experiences are, what has led them to think as they think or do as they do. And so this ability to be, you know, intimacy, what I talk about a lot in my courses is the ability to be true to ourselves and true to another person, to really be honest and knowable, but also to be able to really know another person’s soul, even if it’s different than ours is it will be, or even if it’s some ways invalidates our own view. This is really what love asks of us.
And so it’s challenging. And it causes us like sometimes we think of love as I should just be a doormat for someone else and that isn’t love because that makes us weaker and it makes the person walking on us weaker. It’s about how do I be true to me and true to you. And that’s an immodest request because it requires a lot, but it’s still really the proof of how powerful love is and that goodness is real.
Yes. A hundred percent to love is not about merging, hmmm something to think about. That is so beautiful. Yeah. Well, thank you, thank you, Jennifer. That was so great. It is such an honor to have you here and share your love and relationship insights. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me.
Here’s to connection and love. Have a good one y’all.
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