It’s our 10th episode, and my guest is Dr. Ryan Coil, who happens to be my husband! I talk about our almost-divorce in my book No One Dies from Divorce, and now Ryan is here to give his side of the story! Join us as we tell stories about our marriage, our almost divorce, and the stories we tell ourselves about our spouse.
Ryan is a medical doctor and a hospitalist in SLC. When we met, Ryan was in the financial world and making a lot of money, working a big hedge fund, travelling, and studying to take the CFA, going to cool events, etc. A year into our marriage, Ryan decided he wanted to do something else with his life because he didn’t relate to the way people manipulated and took advantage of people. 11 years later! He finished. Now he’s the heartthrob of the little old ladies at the hospital.
In 2012, Ryan was in his first year of medical school, I was working crazy hours at a big law firm, and we had just had our 2nd child. We weren’t giving time and attention to the relationship and weren’t doing any personal self-care. Ryan remembers feeling lonely and isolated and disconnected. Lost sight of the positives of a relationship. Jill thought if she ignored it, the problems would go away. This was about 2 years before Ryan finally said he was done. He moved out the next day. They were separated for a couple of months. Ryan lived in an unfinished apartment at his mom’s. Was still in med school, stayed out late, binged a lot of TV and was very lonely. Had some good conversations with his mom about how the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. It’s usually necessary to look within to fix your relationship.
We both decided we were going to put the work into ourselves. Needed to develop our personal lives and have our own friends and have me time. We took self-improvement courses and did therapy. We each do our own laundry and we each are allowed to keep our side of the bedroom as clean or messy as we want.
When we were in couples’ therapy, we were assigned to read “Rising Strong” by Brene Brown. I’m a pro at making up stories in my head about what others are thinking. This makes it feel like there are actually 3 people in our marital arguments: Jill as Jill, Ryan as Ryan, and Jill as what she THINKS Ryan is arguing about. This makes effective arguing and communication difficult.
Ryan was the one who encouraged me to open my own law firm. He was there for every moment of those early scary times. I was pregnant with our third child, and Ryan was finishing medical school and trying to find his residency. He got his residency at University of Utah and Jill built CoilLaw in Sandy.
Listen to the full episode as Ryan answers the questions submitted by our Instagram followers!