Minisode: Secrets in German with Jenny Mollen + Jason Biggs

You're listening to a new segment of Dear Chelsea.

Call it Couple's Counseling with Chelsea, where we do couples counseling on all sorts of variations of friends, lovers, families. I'm here with my friends Jenny Mullen and Jason Biggs, and we are going to do some couples counseling. Welcome to my office. Okay, Jason, I want to talk to you about your packing and your neurosis. So you guys travel a lot. You travel a lot with the kids.

Yeah, is great.

The kids speak German because Jenny speaks German. That's also great. Jason, are you speaking German yet?

Nine?

Okay, So in.

Little he understands a lot.

It's creepy you would understand a lot. You guys have been there a lot.

Yeah, he understands way too much. It's no longer the secret thing I had with the boys. Now he understands when we're talking about him, which.

But also the context is still kid conversations. I mean, obviously they are fluent and so it has gotten more advanced over the years. They can understand pretty much everything.

But sometimes I'll say to Sid, like stop asking him like I need to go take him aside and bring it up so that it's his idea, Like stop asking him right.

Now, you know.

I'll say that in front to Sid and Jason will understand.

What are you triangulating your whole family aied front?

You, Chelsea, you just touched on one of the most important issues in our relationships.

Sometimes I Sid wants something back from Jason. I'm like, you can't keep bringing it up right now. I need to talk to Daddy. Will decide if you can have fortnite first, and then we can present it in a different way, Like if you're going to keep asking him right now, you're not going to get a different answer. Yeah, right, And so I will kind of say that to Sid to kind of nudge him, like, shut the fuck up right now. You're digging a hole.

Right, Okay, But that means you're all you're playing both sides. You're playing a little You want to be friends with Sid and you want to be the one trusts sometimes and then and then you're making him into the bad guy. And I would expect nothing less.

From you, thank you, Oh my god.

And yeah, I would watch your back Jason, if you aren't already watching your back watching.

Believe me, this comes up in real couple therapy.

I don't know why you're intimating that this is.

Not really Sorry, Sorry are other couples?

Thank you? It's all I have to say is last night, Jason.

I'm sorry I'm cutting you off, but I just you have to hear this because you don't know this.

I mean you might have heard this last night. Well I probably was covered underneath a bunch of pillows, okay.

You. Jason came in because he's like mother hen like again, neurotic, fixing everything. And he comes in to turn on the air purifier in our room and Sid.

Because I lower it during the day to a low level and then at night before they go to bed, I knock it up one as white noise slash purifications.

Sid was about to go to sleep and he was literally just like almost out and Jason comes in in.

His not frantic, he was very quiet.

No, he was frustrated, okay, And Jason's like, well, I'm just turning up the air so that it drowns out all the sound. And it turns to me.

He goes, Mom, are re.

Okay with this? I did hear? I did hear?

Did you say that in English or in German English.

Have I died? So?

Jason, back to your packing, what do you think is wrong with you? Do you have to pack?

What?

Two weeks in advance, because otherwise you'll flip your lid if you're not ready to go?

Not that far.

I've I've shortened the window to be sure, but it's I need to be prepared, certainly minimum the day before. I mean everything needs to because also it's not just myself that I'm packing, it's the boys, and it's basically repacking Jenny when she's and by the way, she's not even packing now at this point. She's kind of given it up and now given up. The nanny packs like smoking given off, but still she if the nanny hasn't packed her.

Given up, I also have given up packing.

I'm sure it's control issue, it's OCD, it's all it's all the things that track for me and my personality. But it's like I can't. First of all, I need to take advantage of the space, and I need to so needs to be.

Space military role.

And it's very true that you can fit a lot more.

In your way more way way unless it's.

A sweater, don't roll your sweaters. That actually takes up more.

Exactly you fold your sweaters. That's exactly right.

Sweatshirts otherwise known as suda there as an Espanol.

Now, so that's controlling or OCD, right, is.

That it's a touch of all of that. I think it's control issue. I think it's o CD. I don't know what else that would fall under. But it's also like there is that mother hen it's not just about me. There is a sort of need to make sure the family is so everything needs to go like whatever I can control in terms of travel, because so much can go wrong and does go wrong and is out of your control that whatever is possibly in my control, I want to make sure it goes smoothly.

And so that means and so that.

Means, yeah, we'd like to say one more time that Jason is not Jewish.

So that means I'm not walking around with a checklist, but I am. In my mind, I've got a checklist, like are the boys medicines's kids tiling?

All kids? This kids too medicated? You know? Are they drug yes? Traveling? You know?

Do we charge everything downloaded iPhone's charge? Are the movies downloaded on their iPads are because this is also also I'll say this, I'll say that not only and Jenny might have a counterpoint to this, which I'm curious to hear. But I think it's not just that I feel I need to do it because of my own personal impulses and my own personal deficiencies mentally, but I also feel like it's a reaction to the fact that I'm getting

Two of us. I've actually like he's enabled me to be we don't know that.

We don't know that. You like he's your assistant, Well, never know that because there aren't you.

Yes, because because during the pandemic, he's like, I've never seen you use a broom, I've never seen you do these I've never seen you loaded dishrush shore. And I said to him, when I lived alone, who do you think did all this stuff? But now when I when I we paired up, it's like he's enabled me to like not like put.

A paper on the rack. My belief that there was never mother.

Hands, you were always looking for someone to offload your packing, Isn't that true? You were always looking for some sort of dynamic, whether it was Jason or nanny or maybe even your own children. Like if someone else could do it for you.

A hundred could delegate things.

I mean, when I first got said from the store, from the store and I had I had a nanny, I realized, whoa, this is ideal. This is what I've always knew, of course, but I think before, before I was with you, I mean, I did all these things. I mean sometimes, yes, like instead of washing the dishes and just throw them away exactly exactly most of the time I had to.

And you had roommates that took the trash out, like you know, I.

Lived alone, Jason, I lived alone.

She did take the trash out the other night, first time I've ever seen her do it.

Trash downs, no, of course not no. We have a trash shoot in the hallway right across. But hold on, but here's the best there. It couldn't be an easier task given our building and the trash shooting across the hall like it is so so easy.

You're really getting on me now, and I come back in the apartment.

We're here for.

The one thing that I did something great, and you're gonna talk about it.

Well, I think this is funny.

Hold on, you did not do something great?

Yeah, exactly.

The throwing trash out into a shoot is like what I would say to someone if they But she's gonna, did you do anything today? I like, you, bet?

I did?

You fucking bet I did.

But that's her.

She's like, what do you mean I took out the trash today? Don't even get on me about this, this, this, and this. It's like, uh, okay anyway. But she didn't even complete the task because I came back in. I like, had some trash and I go, I opened the trash can and I throw it in the trash and I realized, I go.

There's a fucking bag in the trash.

I go, Jenny, You know when you take the trash out, there is another step in the process. You have to put a new bag in the cant Oh okay, she was a lost gone into space something else.

You was thinking, right, what about the cooking at your house? Who's in charge of that?

You do a lot of cooking, Yeah, because you do your dictator lunch.

Yes, And what about you cook too, though, Jason, don't you who's who's holding the fort down?

On that.

I usually do the cooking for the kids, and then Jason will do like a weekend pasta and.

Roast a chicken.

Right, because you can only eat like two things, right because of your situation?

Or have you been able to eat more nuts?

I mean I don't. Yeah, I eat more things. I guess you love you really just love I love a fucking nuts.

I've never seen anyone eat nuts.

You actually turn into a squirrel when I squirrel out Sophie my friend also you you guys know she fucking loves nuts too.

What kind of you guys have made me so turned off by nuts that I can't even eat them anymore.

But it's not even like good nuts, like a roasted peanuts. It's like a tiger nut with me.

And then Jenny eats it and she can somehow take like fourteen bites have one.

Peanut, and then and then because this is yeah, and then yeah, and then because this is healthy, she'll leave like a half a bite and then put that aside and be like, Okay, that's I didn't eat the whole thing.

So and then who cleans up after you? Guys?

Oh my god, are you kidding me to? This is fucking this bad.

I knew the answer to before I asked him.

This is truly for me.

I can't wait for Jason to listen to this back and be like, WHOA.

I really really was hard on her.

So I think he's just exposing you, you know what, for what we all know to be true. I mean, some people are very good at a certain group of things.

I'm with you. I can't do anything.

My dog Pete in the house the other day and I waited for someone to arrive because.

I didn't know what what. I was like, these are wood floors.

I don't know what to use is it's just regular And I was like, you know what, it's better just back away.

Someone's I will make this worse. Yeah, ROLLI.

He's like, you know, you can just use paper towel, and I'm like, I don't think that's right.

So you're doing all the cleaning.

And then when you guys argue, do you have is it okay for you to argue in front of the kids or do you try to keep it away from the kids.

I feel like you guys probably just argue in front of the kids.

We bicker in front of the kids. I don't know, do we argue in front of the kids. Some sid would be like, oh, my parents are always fighting. You know. It's like, but he has an idea. He's so fucking like privileged and like, you know, I said him one night, I was like, yeah, I'm putting in your room and you're going to sleep by yourself, and he screams into the hallway. You would do that to an innocent child,

Here they go again.

It's right, you have no idea, but it lands.

I guess it's a good sign because we don't. I mean, the house I grew up in was constant fighting, operatic, loud, always screaming and stuff.

So that was the one. And Jenny grew up in a house where they just didn't they ran.

Right, which is also not new people always new people, Yeah, exactly, they flee and start a new thing, like there wasn't fighting because they wasn't around long enough to fight, which is also not healthy. We grew up in the opposite end. The healthy thing is like, yeah, couples that love each other get into disagreements, there is bickering, there are fights. Sometimes we do our best. We do maybe and maybe I can do better. Maybe we can do better. I

This feels like abandonment. I can't. I need to fix this. Stay in a fight.

I'll stay in a fight, ironically in the hopes of ending the fight, whereas Jenny will just leave the fight in the hopes of ending the fight.

But that actually triggers me more.

It's it's that's part of our many dances that we do where we do trigger each other, but we do our best to not do it in front of the kids. Jenny, for a long time, even the bickering, because again she did not grow up with bickering or any any type of fighting, was like we you know, we'd be in couples therapy and she'd be like and he just we were fighting, screaming in front and I was like, well, Jenny,

Yeah.

I think you're right. I think that's right.

Like, who doesn't have disagreement, it's scarier if there isn't anything, well then yeah, then it's like you're describing your childhood right, your family dynamic. But the good thing is that Jason has been to so much therapy so that he's a willing participant in actually resolution and conflict, like dealing with conflict, not conflict avoidant, because conflict avoiding doesn't get anybody anywhere.