Season 1: Episode 9 - The Cost of Love and Therapy (Part 2) with Mary Ellen Mahoney

Why do couples come to therapy? Why do we lose sexual interest in those we love? What techniques can grow intimacy within our relationships? How do we know when it’s time to move on?

Registered Psychotherapist, Mary Ellen Mahoney returns to the podcast to share what ingredients make for happy relationships and how therapy can give us the recipe. And she delves deep into the value of daring to be candid and how we can create more conscious relationships.

Episode Summary

This is the ninth episode of The Cost of Love with Haley McGee. Welcome.

Haley McGee is a love idiot. She’s also an actor and the author of the forthcoming book, The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale. On The Cost of Love Podcast she’s talking to a wide range of experts to try to figure out if the cost of love is worth it.

Each episode features a conversation between Haley and someone in the know, and they dig into that strange juicy place where love and money collide.

This episode is all about the cost of love and therapy with Haley's therapist, Mary Ellen Mahoney, a psychotherapist specialising in the mental health, ongoing creativity and life changes of performing artists and their families.

The interview is split into two episodes, this is the second part -- focussing on therapy when you're in a couple. If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, we recommend you do that first.

We covered ‘Everyone’s a Love Idiot’ in the last episode. So, here we get straight into the good stuff, with ‘Brains Over Braun’, where we apply Mary Ellen's expertise to the concept of the cost of love. We cover:

• Why people resist therapy

• Why crisis is often the catalyst for investment in the self

• If it's possible to "find" money for what you want

• The fear we experience at the prospect of dismantling the self or the constructions of who and how we are

• The difference between Psychodynamic Therapy, CBT, and Dialectical Behavioural Therapy

• The million $ question -- how long does therapy take!?

• The difference between doing therapy for crisis management versus a quest to live a more authentic life

• What limbic resonance is and the role it plays in happy romantic relationships and good therapeutic relationships

• The two most important questions to ask yourself in life, and the danger of over-inflating the importance of coupling

• The kinds of issues that might bring couples to therapy, and the one's Mary Ellen wishes they'd come for

• How 'the mirroring exercise' can improve communication between a couple by enabling us to avoid; Fight, Flight, Submit, Play Dead, Cry for Help

• Whether the tendency to problem solve in a couple is helpful or not

• The value of checking-in and how couples can become more conscious of each other

• Why couples' fights are often the same fight, over and over

• Why we might lose sexual interest in our partners, and why sex 12 hours a day 20 years-in is not the only indicator of a happy relationship

• The decision to have children and its effect on couples

• Finding love later in life -- what could happen if we lived in a world where it was okay for relationships to end, or if we allowed ourselves to feel the fear of being alone

In part 3, 'Free Hugs' Haley and Mary Ellen answer two listener questions; (1) What to do when you might feel resentful of the ratio of your spending to your partner's? (2) When and how it's appropriate to blend your finances in your relationship and if it's important to maintain a degree of separateness?

Haley wraps up with a note about the trepidation she felt, as well as the titillation, of interviewing such an important and deeply transformational figure in her life.

We're played out by 'Shout To The Top' by Style Council once again, the song Mary Ellen listened to on repeat when going through her biggest heartbreak. Click the link to listen to the whole song.

About Mary Ellen Mahoney

Mary Ellen Mahoney, RP, is a Registered Psychotherapist in private practice in Toronto.

An award-winning former professional stage actor, she is the founder of "The Actor's Sanity Studio", a centre devoted to supporting the mental health, ongoing creativity and life changes of performing artists and their families.

Her clinical experience with individuals and couples from all walks of life, particularly with regard to their intimate relationships, has led to the writing of her first book: Bring Me a Higher Love: Emotional Intelligence for Dating, Mating and Marriage.

Books & Some of the Other Things Mentioned

• Definitions and key figures:

• Psychotherapy

• Psychodynamic Therapy

• CBT - Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

• Dialectical Behavioural Therapy

• The Limbic System

• Books and articles:

• Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You, by Alice Munro

• Take In The Good , by Rick Hanson

• A General Theory of Love, by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon

• The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale, by Haley McGee (available to buy now!)

Support the Podcast

Use our the link Paperchase link when you buy your stationary supplies and we get a small percentage of your order.

Use our Ko-Fi link to donate £3 (or more!) to support the work we do putting this podcast together.

Stay in Touch

Follow The Cost of Love on Instagram @thecostof_love, Twitter @thecostof_love and Facebook

Follow Haley McGee on Instagram @yeshaleymcgee, Twitter @yeshaleymcgee and Facebook

Submit a Question about Love & Money

Email costoflovequestion@haleymcgee.ca and give us some context while you're at it! We'll try to answer it on a future episode.

Credits

Writer and Host - Haley McGee

Producer and Editor - Maddie Haynes

Editor - Eva Lunny

Assistant Producer - Eliza Cass

Music and Audio Production - Robert Moutrey