Finding a Romantic Partner — Relationships Series #3

Okay, so last week Brett and I were doing the Groundbreakers together, and one of the things that I noticed that kept on coming up as a theme was finding love, whether it was, I want to find the right person, or it was, I found the right person, but they, they weren't, you know, into me, or some version of that. So that's what I want to talk about today, how to find love, the misconceptions in that, and what's really going on when you're in that state.

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kistler, and this is Joe Hudson.

Hey Brett, how you doing?

Doing great. And I love this topic because it's, it's shown up not just in the groundbreakers that we did last week, but also others, coaching clients, other people in life right now. I notice that there's sort of this pattern right now where a lot of people have gone through the pandemic and have had a lot of relationship changes. During or post-pandemic. And so I think that's just a question that's in the air in this time. So yeah, I'm excited to get into it. So you mentioned a couple patterns just there, and can you tell me a little bit more about those?

Sure. So here's what I see happen. I see happen is that somebody— let's do the direct one— someone's looking for love and they somehow think it's a numbers game. That like the, the common idea is like, if I meet the right person, then it's all gonna work out. And that's just not how it works at all. It's not at all about meeting the right person, which seems so strange because obviously on some level it's about meeting the right person, but it's more about like, when are you ready for the right person to show up in your life? And so we all know that person who's like, gone on 1,000 dates, met 100 people, and that nothing is quite right. And it doesn't ever work out, that spark never happens, or that spark happens and then that person that they're interested in isn't interested in them. And, and so that is not at all about finding the right person. That is about, are you ready, prepared, wanting to have an intimate relationship? And so what I've noticed with all my clients who are in this situation is that they— when they— when we really work on, are you ready for intimacy? Are you ready to be in love? Are you ready to accept love into your life? Then the person always just shows up within 3 or 4 months. Once— yeah, I can just see it. It's like, I see that transition happen in a person, and then it's just like I can start counting down, and easily within 3 or 4 months, boom, they're in a committed relationship.

Yeah. What I, what I noticed there is that the patterns that you just described are, could also be seen as ways of making sure it doesn't happen for some prescribed reason. It's like, oh, I'm looking for the right one. I wanna have the right one, of course. So there's just something wrong with everybody that I meet. That's why I don't have a partner. So I'm curious, what's a, what's like a deeper way to look at it from like what's underneath those patterns?

Yeah, I mean, the thing that's— yeah, the thing that's underneath the pattern is that usually they are scared of losing themselves one way or another. They're scared of losing themselves, and that can be a lot of things. They could be scared of losing themselves as far as not drawing boundaries and getting lost in a person, or empathetically lost in the person, or lose themselves in jealousy, or lose themselves in behavior that they don't want. Or they are scared to lose themselves the way that their parents lost themselves in a relationship. They're like, oh, this is what love is, what mom and dad did. I don't want anything to do with that subconsciously. And so I'm just staying away from any kind of commitment or any kind of intimacy that could allow that to happen. So underneath the layer of learning to love and being prepared for love is this deeper thing about this fear of losing oneself. And we can call it the fear of intimacy or the fear of commitment, but it's really the fear of losing oneself.

Yeah.

And, and that's what it's— and that's what's really going on there. And when people work on that, everything changes for them.

Yeah. So let's— I want to double-click a little bit more on what you mean by lose yourself. You mentioned a couple of different modalities there, modes, uh, yeah, not holding, being afraid of not holding boundaries, losing control, repeating your parents' relationship, getting hurt again in some repeated way that has happened in your past. Yeah. Uh, what, what else? How would you define losing yourself here?

Yeah, so I would say losing, losing yourself is when you're not being who you want to be and you don't feel like you can control that. But the interesting thing is love in itself is another way of losing yourself, more in a in a good way, like losing identity and losing— like, there's a way in which what love does is it like erodes your boundaries and it erodes, erodes your identity, which is— can be incredibly healthy. It's, you know, creates like a feeling of oneness. And, and, uh, like there's reasons why there's so much poetry that talks about like unity with God being love, and that love feeling like it's like like spiritually, um, moves you into greater things or greater, greater realms or a deeper sense of connection with yourself. And that is the good way. But then there's this way that happens in like society where we lose ourselves and it's— we're acting like monsters, or we're, you know, in huge fights where we weren't in huge fights before, or we are codependent and we don't— or jealous or anything like that. And And so that kind of losing oneself is, is I think what people are really scared of. I mean, we're also very scared of love as far as like seeing our full selves and, and losing our identity, but that's a, that's a whole different segment. I'm not talking about that for this one. This is all about, you know, just the practical losing of love, that losing yourself to, to this kind of relationship.

Yeah. And it's So fascinating how confusing and nuanced this can be, that the language even overlaps. Because you were just talking about not holding boundaries and then how boundaries get eroded and the different kinds of boundaries that you're referring to. Like, that's right, the sense of self, the sense of us being separate from other, separate from our world, is a different kind of boundary, but we use the same word as drawing a boundary to take care of oneself, which which is, yeah, seemingly paradoxically, the increase in our capacity to draw clean, loving boundaries allows us to feel safe, to dissolve in a sense of self, sense such that we feel that oneness and that love with another and the world.

Yeah, that's exactly, that's exactly it. Yeah, that there is no— I'm sure I've said this on the podcast— there is no paragon of love. There is no person that you can think of who is like a— who's a walking embodiment of love that isn't— doesn't have strong boundaries. And yet all of those people also feel like a oneness with humanity or oneness with all life. Um, so it is an interesting paradox. Yeah. Um, but the second part is a nice— is a nice thing to talk about. The, the main meat here, however, is just people, people are scared of losing themselves, and so they avoid relationships, all the while thinking or telling themselves the story that they're looking for it. And, and on some level they're looking for it, but they're also pushing it away.

Yeah. So, so that one piece there, the, the fear of losing yourself.

Yeah.

If we, if we recognize and we work on that, according to what you've been saying, the person just appears.

How's that go? Sounds kind of like magical thinking, and yet that's exactly how it happens. I, I think about a David Byrne song where he says, like, uh, he says, a junkie's arms, a dancer's knees, the laws of chance, strange as they seem, lead us exactly where we're most likely meant to be. And so I feel like it's very much like that. And if you think about it, it's like like go to your Walmart and go and check out the couples that are there. Like people have found each other, like they have found it, like people find each other all the time. And you all have a friend who's like, you know, nothing. I mean, it's like not some sort of hot catch or anything like that, right? Like, and they go just from one boyfriend to another boyfriend or from one girlfriend to another. They're always in a relationship. Which is different than somebody who's just like amazing and they're like, you know, a total catch, you know, whatever societally speaking is a total catch. And, and then they're just like 50 years old and they can't find— they can't find the one, right? So be it. And the idea is that the reason that it works this way is because there is no the one. There is no the one until you're in the relationship. There are lots of people. There's a lot of people who are your match. I mean, if the folks at ISIS can find thousands of people to be their match in their kind of weird sociopathic culture, surely there's more than one person who is the match for you. And it's really about your preparedness to see it. It's just about your preparedness. To see it and your willingness to go into that, to go into that, um, that's that intimacy and that journey with somebody, as scary as it is. Yeah, yeah.

I guess another way of seeing it is that rather than, rather than seeing it as who is a perfect match for myself as I am right now, or as I imagine myself to be, which door do I want to step into? Which doorway of transformation do I want to walk into with somebody and grow together and become potentially the person who is free in such a way that this relationship brings me freedom and like my, my journey within it.

I don't even know if there's a choice like that. What seems to happen is there's some sort of— I mean, there's— they've done these— this research on pheromones where like women smell men's like sweatshirts and they like are attracted to the same sweatshirt as the person who wore it. Like, there is all these weird things like that. So I don't know how much choice there is. I was just thinking about a definition of marriage that I really liked, which was something like— let's see if I can remember it. It was something to the effect of two people thinking that they're not good enough coming together in an attempt to try to find out that they're good enough. Wow, that's what I think is happening. It's like, and it's based on their traumas. And so we, we seem to attract people who, as we've talked about before, who, who basically will help us heal the traumas that we're here to work on. And so they're going to be people who remind us of, have some, some similarities to the people who, who were creators of that trauma and that have that interesting, like, um, have that tendency to bring us into that place that needs to be healed. And so that seems to be what happens when you find the right person. That person seems to be, be the one to— that you seem to be attracted to, the one who's ready to like play that role so that you can heal that part of yourself.

Okay, so what if, what if I'm wanting the one— if I found the person, or people who have exactly the set of triggers for me.

Yeah.

And they don't want me, then what?

Well, then apparently that's the trigger. I, I, I would say that there's, right. So there's all of the ways in which people say they want love, and they don't get love, right? So that whether that's I'm trying to find the person and I can't find them, or I found the person, but they don't want me. Or I have, once again, I found myself attracted to an emotionally or physically unavailable person, you know, like that kind of thing. In all of these cases, what people are doing is they're beckoning for love and pushing love away at the same time. So like jealousy is like, I want you, I want you, I want you, but I'm gonna abuse you and gaslight you. And so you're gonna not wanna be around me, but I want you, I want you, I want you, right? And so that's the pattern in all of these things. All of the different ways of finding a way is finding a way to push the love away from you while saying that you want it. And the mind just is like, oh, I just want it, I just want it, I just want it. And the subconscious is like, Nope, pushing you away, pushing you away, pushing away. Like, I've never heard a jealous person on their own come to me and say like, yeah, I'm actively pushing away that person that I really want. But when I look at them in the eye and I'm like, hey, why are you pushing away this person with your jealousy? They kind of get this like subconscious grin on their face and they're like, ooh, busted. And so it's like all of that is this All of the ways in which we do it are consciously saying, come here, come here, come here, to love, and then subconsciously pushing it away.

So yeah, we've talked about jealousy and the push-pull dynamic, and I agree. Anytime I've ever seen somebody with a jealous partner, one of their major refrains is, I feel like I'm being pushed away, or you're pushing me away and not seeing it. Well, what are some other ways that this push and pull dynamic shows up in different kinds of patterns.

Yeah, neediness, independence. You know, I was working with somebody the other day and they were, they were basically talking about this idea that they want, they want someone there to really be able to take care of them. And, but they're incredibly self-reliant. And I was describing to them, you know, that self-reliance makes it really hard for people to show up for you. Right? Like we all know the people that's hard, that are hard to help. They're hard to help because they never show any weakness. They're hard to help because they say, I've got it. I've got it. I've got it. They're hard to help because when you help them, they get angry at you. There's like, and they're super self-reliant folks. And I suffer this. Right. And, and so I know it well. And so the, the, the thing that happens there is that they're pushing people away with their self-reliance. And so I was talking to this person about it and she was saying self-reliance. And at the same time, she was talking about her father who abandoned her and, and a mom that was a little unstable. And we were going through the thing and I said, oh, your dad didn't abandon you. He was just being self-reliant. And you just saw it click, slow motion click. And the next day she's like, oh, he never abandoned me. Because I'm— because he was being self-reliant. I see it now. I see how he was taking care of himself in this strange world that he had found himself in. And he was, he was doing what he had to do to take care of himself. And I said, yeah, and do you also see how you felt it as an abandonment for years? That's how people feel when you're self-reliant.

Oof. Yeah.

Right. And so, so that's the— that's like, that's how the self-reliance thing works, as an example. Or the neediness thing is the same thing. It's like nobody wants a sexual relationship with their, like, someone they have to take care of, right? So on one level, it's like, oh, I want you, why aren't you here for me? On another level, I'm being needy and I'm pushing you away because we want to have relationships with peers, not Yeah, people, we have to— we don't want to caretake people by, by nature. So that's another example. But there's, there's plenty of examples of the ways that people push and pull, and usually there's multiple if someone's either only attracted to the emotionally unavailable person or the physically unavailable person, or whether they're continually searching for the, the right person. So it's all another version of it.

And again, there's more nuance there in the language too. You said nobody wants a sexual relationship with somebody they need to take care of. And that doesn't mean necessarily that if somebody's injured and they need somebody to take care of them or something, that that's, it's like take care of on a, on like the level of the relationship is like a parent to child take care of relationship rather than like a peers adult to adult relationship.

Yeah. And, and, and you can see what's interesting to me is you can see this in marriages too. What you see is like, oh, it's been 10 years and the sex is dead. And I'm like, yeah, okay, so where's the parent-child relationship? Like, who's walking on eggshells? Who's trying to make sure the other person's happy? Because that shit's happening if the sex is dead, you know. So, so that's another example of it.

Yeah. What are, what are other examples anymore? You got jealousy, neediness, independence as some patterns that people play out here. What's Any others?

Yeah, there's, there's another one, transactional. This one I was— I recently discovered. It was really an interesting thing. I, I worked with a client for a long time, and, and I noticed like all of his relationships were— there was, there was negotiation in them. And it was not just like regular negotiation. It was like, it was like constant negotiation. It was just like, and it was always prolonged. And I was trying to figure out what it was. What is it that makes you want to constantly negotiate with your business partners? And then he finds— we do this work to find a person. He finds a person and they are getting married and there's an 8-month prenup negotiation. I'm just like, "What is happening?" And And this is one where it just took me a hard time, a long time to understand it. What I noticed is that people, I think people, particularly people who were bullied, but also people who have really understood and been hurt by power struggle generally trust relationships that are transactional. I know what you want and what you're getting. You know what I want, what I'm getting. If it's not there, if it's like, oh, we just love each other and we want to be together, there's this, uh, there's like, oh, I can't trust that because everybody has a want, everybody has a desire. And, and, and so I don't trust unless we're upfront about that transaction. And so what I notice is that people who are transactional, they will use the transactional part of it to push away the intimacy because it's that, that deeper level of intimacy and love is very scary. And so the transactional part of it is a way to create distance from the intimacy, is another example of it.

That seems related to a fear of being in the unknown and in the wonder as well, of like, I need to reduce this relationship to what I can understand and encapsulate in a, in a formal model and feel safe in it.

Yeah, yeah, yes, definitely. I think love is not, is not a secure feeling. It's a kind of a weird thing to say, meaning that on one level it's very secure. You feel love and you feel this deep sense of security. On another level, it goes away. And so, and the loss of love is, is one of the most painful things that humans go through. And, and so there's this like inherent thing of willing to be hurt. If you're falling in love. If you are falling in love, you're saying, I sign up to be hurt. And there's no fucking way around it. There is no way you are gonna get married and live happily ever after or be in a, you know, loving 6-way relationship and live happily ever after, however you do it, and you're not gonna get hurt. You're gonna get hurt. You're gonna get hurt potentially daily, right? And potentially really, really, really badly. Like, that's what you're signing up for. Hey, I'm willing to be hurt. And, and that part of it is also like a fear. That's also a fear of losing oneself, right? If I get hurt like that, I'm gonna be gone for months, maybe, you know. I'm gonna be totally lost in it.

Yeah.

And so these are like— this is the, the real fear. And if we can get to the place of, oh, Every time I allow my heart to break, every time, it increases my capacity to love. Every time that I draw a boundary, it increases my capacity to love. Every time that I'm vulnerable, it increases my capacity to love myself. All of these things that are being avoided are the tools to learn how to love more deeply. And so to some degree, it's like a pattern that I see people get into for years, like maybe decades, because they're avoiding this pain. They're avoiding the tools of learning to love more deeply.

Yeah.

And, and, and it doesn't last. Like, the other thing about it is like, there is no relationship where that hot, like, ooh, I'm like so crushy on you, like, stays. That shit's gone in like 4 or 5 months. And you see people trying to find that over and over again. That's another way in which they push away love. Because that is like sugar high. And you want that real good stuff. You want the really good love. That happens with a mature relationship where you have worked through shit and you have been with each other through thick and thin. That's when that love shows up.

My experience of that is a little bit different. There's, there's like that initial 4 to 5 months. But I also notice that every time we break through a new level of intimacy, like breakthrough into a new level of intimacy, suddenly that comes back for that for a period of time. There's like, and it's almost like we're stepping more and more into the relationship. And every time we do that, there's a new kind of phase of, wow, I've never experienced this before. So it gets to feel like that crushy phase. Even in year 3, year 4, I've never been to year 20, but I imagine it can happen that, yeah, that phase is associated, that elation is associated with like reaching a new layer of depth. And I don't see there being an end to the potential depth.

I have, I haven't experienced the end, but what I notice is that the high is different.

Yeah.

That the high becomes less like, ah, ah, and more like, ah. Like, it's just a different high.

Yeah, that's a really good way to describe that.

Yeah. And so the crushy stuff, yeah, that— so my, my experience is just like yours, just, yeah, just different words to describe it. Yeah.

Okay, so we, we talked about a number of these patterns here and the ways that people have that kind of push-and-pull relationship through jealousy, neediness, independence, transactionalness. And what about other patterns? Like, what about people who just think that they're not pretty enough or aren't powerful enough, don't have enough to get a relationship.

Yeah. So again, go to the Walmart, check out the married couples who are walking around. Everything that you think you have to be, there will be an example of somebody there who's not with somebody. So what that is more of a reflection of is mostly what you think you have to be to be lovable. Which means mostly what you think you have to be to love yourself, which is, by the way, never works out. When you get the perfect body, it, it's not like, oh, I love myself now. That shit, that doesn't happen. Or if you get the billion dollars and the status and, you know, whatever it is.

So it's mostly what was imprinted upon you when you were young and you internalized and then decided you needed to be that to get love.

Yeah, it's, it's that, and it's often what you think the other person has to have. It's often what you think, what, what you think someone who's loved— because you think that's what's lovable, you think they need to have it. Oh, they need to have the money or the whatever. Maybe it's not money exactly, but it, uh, other side of the pattern. So it could be like, I need the, I need the money so that I can get somebody who has the cachet, or whatever. I need the look so that I can get someone to have the money. But there's there's like, there's like the two sides of that coin. Maybe there's a male/female side of that coin that, that society plays out. But generally that you can pretty much tell what you think the other person has to have to, which, which never fucking works out. Like, that's the other thing is that nobody was like, here's the list of things that I need in a man so that I can be happy. And then when they find the love of their life, because I deal with this all the time with a client, right? Client's like, I'm looking for love. And they're like, here's the 6 things that I need, and I'm not really going to be able to, to, to date anybody who doesn't have these 6 things. And then, and then they do the work on really allowing it in, really allowing love in, really, um, get over that, like, the fear of losing themselves, deal with the trauma in their childhood, whatever they do. And then boom, they're in the relationship. They're happy. It's amazing. And I guarantee you, they do not have all 6 of those things. Guaran-frickin'-tee you that that's not how it works.

Yeah. So along those lines, what do you do? How do you stop being in that pushing and pulling dynamic?

Yeah. Yeah. So there's 3 things like, yeah, this reminds me of something that I wish I could give this person credit. But it's confidential who was at the retreat, but one of the people in the retreat said something beautiful. He said, "My intention is to no longer look for love, but to be love." That was a beautiful moment. That was a beautiful moment. And so that sums it up better than I possibly could. It's learning to receive love. It's learning to love yourself. It's learning to be loving, I think. But most importantly, it is untying what was wired with love. So oftentimes I had— let's say, I, I— this is not true for— well, it's kind of true for me, but, um, having somebody who guilt trips you as your imprint of love. And then you constantly did stuff that you didn't want to do because you felt guilty. As that example means that you're going to be scared of being in a relationship where you're going to be guilted and lose yourself trying to please somebody who's not pleasable, and they constantly guilt you.

Right. So then you're going to see any emotion as a strategy to guilt you, right? Rather than what's going on for the person.

That's right, that's right. And so the idea is, the thing to do is to separate what's been wired together with love, separate those things, and start experiencing love without it, and start realizing that it's like, you— nobody has the right to guilt you, nobody has the right to shame you, nobody has— you have every right to draw your boundary. So when you do that work, when you do the work of separating the love and, and, and learning the tools that you can rely eye on to not fall into those patterns and you have that confidence, then the love shows up. And, and a lot of that can be done through learning to love yourself and being loving. And, and, and any way that you can take this risk— I, I'll give you an example. I'm working with a client right now who's in a, who's in a marriage, and, and And they weren't working on the marriage for a while. Now they're working on the marriage. And we were just talking about some of the things that are really important. We were talking about how critical it is to speak your truth, whether it's comfortable or not, and how critical it is to listen impartially, be in view, and let the person really share their experience. And one of the things we were talking about is like how important it is to be in an to be open-hearted with the person. And he's like, intellectually, I know this. Intellectually, I know that this is the case. However, my body feels like I am being conned if I'm open to somebody who's been mean to me. I am getting taken advantage of. I am weak. And that, that's what, like, that's what he was taught at a young age, that being loving and open towards somebody is being taken advantage of. It's like you're, you're gonna get taken advantage of. That's a weakness. You can't, you can't show that. And so learning that, and you know, and this, this person happens to like have gone to the Gandhi ashram and everything. So I was like, so Gandhi, Gandhi's weak? And he's like, I fucking know that, Joe. He's like, I know it's not true, but my body believes it. You know, and yeah, and so that's another example of like being really loving. It's like even in a marriage, you're learning how to drop the defense, be undefended, and lean into love and be open. And to know that that openness doesn't mean that you're— doesn't mean that you don't draw the boundary, doesn't mean you don't care for yourself, but it is an acknowledgment that you're willing to be hurt. If you're not willing to be hurt, you're not in a relationship.

One of the things that strikes me about what you were just saying is that like, I, he's like, I came, I intellectually know this, but my body knows, but it still sounds like it was actually just not the feeling, but the meaning made of the feeling that was happening.

Oh, that's fascinating.

This feeling means that I'm being betrayed. This feeling means that it, but if you go straight to the feeling, that's, is that really what's happening? Or is that just like the body's or you just got a response that you've interpreted as that?

I think it's both, is my experience, is that usually when you have a very particular feeling that happens, oftentimes it's tied to the next feeling. So it's like—

You step onto the pattern cycle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so you feel the emotional ABC, you know, steps. And you're right, then there's this interpretation. What is it that's actually going on here? And I think about that moment in the retreat that we had, which, um, one of the people who was really interested in learning to receive love and learning to, um, be open and, and stop tying love together with the rejection of Dad was in a cuddle puddle. And if you remember her description of it, like, so she's being cuddled by all these people after this big thing, and she's like, so she has this big emotional experience and she was being loved up and and everybody was like cuddling her. And she was like, it was so painful. It was so painful. I felt like it was like burning. And then I could feel a little bit of joy and then it was burning. And then I could feel like literally, that's her reprogramming that experience of love. I think that the important piece that we haven't mentioned is that this doesn't stop when you find the person. Like, I defined marriage earlier this way, is that we're like, we found somebody who has like matching traumas so that we can learn that we're, we're good enough. Like, once you get into the relationship, it's the same commitment. It's the same commitment of learning how to drop the armoring, learning how to be open and loving in the in the face of it and learning how to deepen into that love. The work never ends. And when somebody asks me, hey, do you think this is the right person? My answer is always the same. Are you both willing to do the work? If you're both willing to do the work, if you're both willing to look at yourselves, not work on each other, work on yourselves and find out how you can love yourself better and each other better. Yeah, it's going to work. It might be bumpy as fuck. I mean, how much can you be with that burning sensation? If you take Tara and my relationship, it got really bumpy in the first couple of years, like crazy. So yeah, I mean, it could get bumpy, but you'll make it if that's the commitment, if that's really the commitment.

Lovely. I think that's a great place to end this.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel really good about this one. Thanks, Brett, for a wonderful conversation. And for everybody out there listening, you can feel free to follow us in any way that you want to. You can come to a course or you can follow us on Twitter, anything that inspires you, and feel free to share this with anybody that you want. All right. Talk to you soon.

Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Joe.

Thank you.