In this Q&A, Jess and Brandon weigh in on listener queries related to “work spouses”, dealing with a partner who refuses to go to therapy and “love tattoos”:

“My husband has a coworker who introduced herself to me as his work wife. I didn’t even know how to respond. When I talked to him about it, he said she was just kidding around. I think it’s inappropriate. He says it’s no big deal. Who is right?”

“What do you do if your partner refuses; to go to therapy – but the relationship is on the rocks? Asking for a friend.”

“I just turned 18, and I’ve been dating a guy – who is a few years older than me. He comes from money, so hw’s shown me a lot of things I’ve never seen before. It has only been a few months, and he wants me to get a matching tattoo. What should I do?”

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Rough Transcript:

This is a computer-generated rough transcript, so please excuse any typos. This podcast is an informational conversation and is not a substitute for medical, health, or other professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the services of an appropriate professional should you have individual questions or concerns.

Episode 339

Candid Conversations: Managing the ‘Work Spouse’ and Therapy Avoidance

[00:00:00] You’re listening to the sex with Dr. Jess podcast, sex and relationship advice you can use tonight.

[00:00:15] Brandon Ware: Welcome to the sex with Dr. Jess podcast. I’m your cohost, Brandon Ware here with my lovely other half, Dr. Jess. Hey, how are you doing?

[00:00:22] Jess O’Reilly: I’m good. I can see that you’re putting on a brave face. I am putting on a brave face.

[00:00:26] Jess O’Reilly: You know how I know you’re having a date.

[00:00:29] Brandon Ware: How? What’s my tell? What’s my tell? Is it Terry’s?

[00:00:33] Jess O’Reilly: It’s your, it’s your left peck. It’s my left peck. It’s your left peck. It’s that I saw the app from your ring on your phone and your stress was way up at the top.

[00:00:42] Brandon Ware: So I have an Aura ring and it monitors all your vitals and they just released a stress feature.

[00:00:48] Brandon Ware: I’m stressed out today.

[00:00:49] Jess O’Reilly: Yeah, left peck going hard.

[00:00:51] Brandon Ware: I feel like some people need to talk it out with somebody other than me.

[00:00:55] Jess O’Reilly: So I think so many of us run into this. I’m not going to obviously speak specifically about your situation. I know what’s going on, but I think that sometimes you have people in your lives.

[00:01:05] Jess O’Reilly: Whether they be friends, or clients, or co workers, or just people in your family, who, they have their own anxiety, and they try and attenuate that anxiety through you. And I don’t mean they’re dumping their problems on you, but they may be actually, in your case, they are actually saying, here are my problems, fix them, even though you can’t.

[00:01:25] Jess O’Reilly: But, They expect you to kind of jump and dance and twist and twirl around their anxiety as though their urgency is your emergency.

[00:01:36] Brandon Ware: Ooh, that’s a good one. I have heard that before, but their urgency is my emergency. Yes.

[00:01:40] Jess O’Reilly: I think it’s Luna who I first heard say that.

[00:01:42] Brandon Ware: Was that Luna? Luna Matadas?

[00:01:43] Jess O’Reilly: It rhymes, you know.

[00:01:44] Brandon Ware: It rhymes. I love that. She’s a rhymer. She’s a plumber. Uh, I, I would agree with that wholeheartedly, and I think once you start paying attention to that, it’s easier for me to realize that, Hey, listen, this isn’t my problem. This is your problem. And I want to support you. I’m going to be compassionate in [00:02:00] understanding maybe the situation that you’re going through, but also taking a step back and saying, you know what, though, at the end of the day, this isn’t my problem.

[00:02:05] Brandon Ware: This is your problem.

[00:02:06] Jess O’Reilly: Well, that’s the hard thing when you’re a natural people pleaser. So I learned something about myself this week, which is that a lot of my behavior. That involves not setting any boundaries for myself or pretending to set them and letting them all be violated has to do with anxiety and impulsivity where I feel like, Oh, this person’s upset.

[00:02:23] Jess O’Reilly: I better fix it for them.

[00:02:25] Brandon Ware: Agreed. And do you also find that that impulsivity, the immediate need to respond? It’s not, not only are you just impulsive in nature, but it’s like in your immediate need to respond to that inquiry.

[00:02:36] Jess O’Reilly: Yeah. It’s like life is like an inbox and email inbox. And I just want to clear it and clear it and clear it as fast as I can.

[00:02:41] Jess O’Reilly: And one, one thing that I’ve learned.

[00:02:43] Brandon Ware: Hold up. Hold up, hold up. You want to clear that inbox? How many unread messages do you have in your email inbox? I’m doing my best. No, no, no. I want to know. Is it, is it over a hundred? Okay, yes, but… Is it, is it over a thousand? Okay, yes. Is it over two thousand?

[00:02:58] Jess O’Reilly: It is not over two thousand five hundred thirty nine.

[00:03:02] Jess O’Reilly: Phew. No, but can I just tell you why that is? Because you don’t actually see my email. You just see the icon. Rain your logic down. Oh my gosh, we have no focus here. It’s because an old inbox got imported in. It’s not like there’s 2000 messages I need to get to. There are probably like five messages I need to get to.

[00:03:21] Jess O’Reilly: I swear. I don’t, I don’t let my inbox pile up. I like to clean it out.

[00:03:25] Brandon Ware: I’m just playing with you. I know that you do. And I know that that was reason. Did you? I didn’t know that was the exact reason, but I figured that there must have been a reason. Even for me, I have 50, well actually I have 27 unread emails.

[00:03:36] Brandon Ware: And I definitely want to get through them all. And when I feel like if I get through them, I’ve accomplished something. But that’s not the case because that email inbox just continues to grow every day. But I will say that I love me a snooze button. Do you use the snooze button?

[00:03:49] Jess O’Reilly: No.

[00:03:50] Brandon Ware: Ooh, you gotta learn to use the snooze.

[00:03:52] Jess O’Reilly: Where you snooze people’s emails?

[00:03:53] Brandon Ware: You just snooze it. It’s just, it’s a reminder setting. I mean, I use a CRM, a database management system, to help me, you know, stay organized, but at the [00:04:00] same time, that snooze button? Love it.

[00:04:02] Jess O’Reilly: So what does it do? Like, the email comes back after a certain amount of time?

[00:04:05] Brandon Ware: Yeah, it’ll just show back up.

[00:04:07] Brandon Ware: Uh, in your email inbox. Yeah, it’s great. So you can set the snooze reminder. Is that through Gmail. Later in the day, a week later, a month later. It’s amazing. I love it.

[00:04:14] Jess O’Reilly: March 2026? Yeah. That’s when I want to get to your email.

[00:04:16] Brandon Ware: I’ll snooze you to, to never.

[00:04:18] Jess O’Reilly: Okay. Okay, we totally got off track. Cause I, I had asked you about the stress because I wanted to ask you about stress management.

[00:04:25] Jess O’Reil...