How Joe and Tara Became Joe and Tara (Modern Relationships Podcast)

Welcome back to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore living the life you want with enjoyment and ease. We have a really special treat for you today. We're sharing a podcast that Tara and Joe recorded with our friend Eric Torenberg at the Modern Relationships Podcast. This episode is about Joe and Tara's relationship, which includes how they met and chose one another, the lessons they've learned along the way, and how they've used marriage for their spiritual growth. We know that a lot of you have asked about Joe and Tara's relationship over the years, and it's really one of one of my favorite relationships of anybody I've ever met in my life. It's fascinating, and it's been a dream to learn from them and to witness their relationship together. So this is a lovely conversation that dives deep into that, and I really hope you enjoy it.

We could weaponize any good spiritual tool for communication. We could make nonviolent communication super violent. Every one of our friends told us we should get divorced. Every one of our friends told us that it was horrible and that we should, and we were like just reenacting our parents' trauma on each other.

There's something else to it too, which is there was always, I can't speak for Joe, but for me, like a knowing, like, yeah, this is shitty. All of this is shitty and I am supposed to be here. So if that's the truth, then what do, what do I need to learn here? What, what tools, what help do we need to get?

There's this great story that one of our therapists told us that A guy was realizing he was blaming his wife for way too much stuff at some point because he went to the bathroom and missed the toilet and he noticed his first thought was, goddammit, she moved the toilet.

If someone's triggering you, great. There's freedom there. Whether you stay in the relationship or not, that is a source of freedom.

So much of our behavior is just pushing love away because we are so scared of the annihilation that it will cause. And it does, it causes annihilation. You know, it's like a deep tissue massage in that way. If you resist, you're fucked. It's going to hurt.

Today on Modern Relationships, I'm talking to Joe Hudson and Tara Howley. The extraordinary couple behind Art of Accomplishment, whose coaching has helped CEOs like Sam Altman. Today, we'll dive into their remarkable journey from a relationship that friends once deemed doomed to a powerful, multidimensional partnership. Also, I want to take a moment and personally recommend Joe's excellent podcast, which we'll link in the show notes. Let's dive in. Tara, Joe, welcome to Modern Relationships. Thanks so much for coming on.

Yay!

Thanks for having us.

So on this show, we talk about how to find a great partner and how to make a great partnership. And so maybe we could start with how did you guys find each other? How did you guys choose each other?

Tara hates telling this story. She hates it. You just asked like the worst question for her. I love telling this story. So I am so excited.

Tara, please.

I don't hate it. I love it. And it actually feels quite sacred to me. And in the telling, I feel like it— first of all, it is a very long synchronistic story. It went on and on and on and on. And it felt very synchronistic. And in the telling of it, I feel like I'm always losing or missing the magic that was that time. So I really hate to— and it also feels really like mine and Joe's. So telling it, I'm like, go make your own story.

OK, so Joe, maybe you do the honors.

No way.

This is the best. We can learn from it.

I'm sure if Tara tells me to, you know, I will, but I, what do you want?

You're, you're welcome to, you just, you're just gonna watch me kind of sweat it out.

Uh, I love it when we tell it together, so I'll, I'll tell some of it and then hopefully Tara will chime in.

Also, do you have like an hour, Eric? Cuz it's a long story.

It's exactly what we have.

That's it. The whole thing's just gonna be us telling our meeting up story. Um, so the first thing that happened through a long set of extraordinary coincidences, much like the ones that we're about to tell you, hopefully we are both going to tell you. I was, I ended up in the desert recording an album and I met these folks. Is still godfather to my, one of our daughters and one of the folks. And so they came to watch us play music in San Francisco. And they decided a good thing to do was to stand on this corner of Haight-Ashbury with a newspaper and then ask every good-looking woman who walked by, hey, do you know where Haight-Ashbury is? And they met Tara. And the next day, uh, we are out, we are driving to Mill Valley to go to my girlfriend who wasn't Tara at the time's house. Who lived in a treehouse in Mill Valley. And, uh, and we're on some really weird obscure back street and Tara drives up in a Miata with a long flowing scarf. And they're like, hey, that's the woman we met yesterday. And then we saw each other and Tara thought when she saw me, let's get going.

Who's the boring guy with the bowl cut and the clothes that all match and are uni-colored?

Yeah. And I thought, who's the woman who needs so much attention? And then what happened then? The next one was hiking. Next one was hiking. Hint.

I see you inviting me with those inviting eyebrows. I was hiking with my best friend on Mount Tam. We were on magic mushrooms. And we bumped in, we're coming down, I called it the Fern Trail. I don't know what the, I've always called it the Fern Trail. I don't know what its real name is. And right, the two paths converged and two people were coming upon us and we met Joe and his girlfriend and his girlfriend hitchhiked into Muir Beach to work and Joe and Tirza and I hitchhiked back up to our cars.

Yeah. And we, and we found out that I was in a band and they were in a circus and they needed a band to tour with them. And so we decided that we were going to meet at some other point. And then, and then—

Tirza just started calling Joe and inviting him to every perform— we did all sorts of like random, fun, crazy, nonsensical, whimsical, delightful—

nonsensical being a very key word for that—

performance art around San Francisco. And Joe just should call— she called, you know, we called and invited invited everybody and she called us. So Joe was just at all of them. So we kept bumping into each other.

And then there was a meeting to discuss how we would maybe work together, perform together. And at that meeting, we found out that we had a mutual friend who'd been trying to set us up for 6 months. And so unfortunately we played with her, played a prank on her. We both called her and told her that we had had a dream where we had looked through a keyhole and saw her with this other person.

And, uh, she was not happy.

She was not happy. She had called like 20 of her friends and said, you've got to listen to these two messages. So she was, it wasn't the nicest thing that we did. But yeah, there was really still no interest at all, I think at all. But the, we kept on getting thrown into each other again. And I think, I think You had interest in me when you actually heard the finished album at Burning Man. Like that was the first time you were piqued a little bit.

Not romantic interest, but like, oh, he's worth attention. Oh, he's got, he's got a purple soul. He might not have purple hair, but he's got a purple soul.

And I think it was at Burning Man where I first, I did, we didn't actually run into each other, but I had heard through Tirzah that she was making roads on a bulldozer. And I was, I was like, whatever. If a woman can use power tools and drive a bulldozer, I'm in. And so I'd broken up with my girlfriend, uh, and at some point or another, we— I think I called you up and like just awkwardly as hell said, I'm not into monogamy, I just finished that thing, I, um, I don't— I'm not interested, but clearly we're supposed to know each other, can we, can we hang out? I would love to, I'd love to spend time with you. Awkward. I mean, just horribly awkward.

Clearly we're supposed to know each other seems like a good line to me.

That was the good line. That was the, the The rest was all awkward. Awkward. It was sweet. That line was sweet. Okay, so then from there, I was breaking up with my Burning Man love of 3 days, and I invited Susie, who had been trying to set Joe and I up, over to my house just to come and hang out with me in Mill Valley. And she came over, but she didn't come alone. She came with Joe. And we had another awkward night. No interest.

Very awkward. Yeah, it was, I think, yeah, we all thought we were all kind of socially paranoid with each other and with the whole thing was just bad. And, but we had already agreed to go on a hike the next day.

And I had multiple friends from the circus spending the night at my house and I was like, I'm just gonna go with the preppy guy and have a hike. I'll be back in an hour. This won't take long. I just said, He said, he said there, there's a kismet or something here. So I wanna listen to that, but I'll be back in an hour. This will be fast.

Yeah. And I was not looking forward to it. And then we got together. We were both late.

We didn't meet where we were both late, which you've never been late again. So that was sort of a false, that was a false flag.

Yeah.

We were both late and we didn't meet where we were supposed to. We met on another street. I was like, hey, hey, hey. And we decided to go on a hike and we were gone all afternoon. And about 40, 50 feet into the hike, it was like, whoa, this is the guy I'm going to marry.

What? Yep. I knew it too. We were literally talking about like what kind of house we want to live in, which we still don't live in.

You said you wanted small and we got that. Oh yeah.

Okay, good. Wait, so tell me.

How did you know?

I just remember we were in Bolinas hiking up, you know, the Bass Lake Trail and we were on the up, the first part of the uphill and whatever discussion we were having, it was just, I just knew. I was like, oh, this is, I'm, I just knew it was not logical. It made zero logical sense. But it was just, it was just a knowing. It defies, it defies common thinking to this day.

And so is your advice to like, what is the lesson that people could take from it? Is it that one day you too will have a mutual knowing when talking to someone? Or is your thing like when you're giving advice to people about how to find their partner? How do you extrapolate from?

My first advice would be do all the work you can on yourself. I had been, I had spent a summer, I was like, I'm going to be celibate this summer. So that whole summer until Burning Man, I was like, I'm just gonna work on me. And I was doing relationship work therapy with lots of different modalities and working on my dad's stuff, on my mom's stuff. And I was, and so I was really working on my relationship patterns and early patterns and working on me and saying no to things that weren't right and kind of thinking about what do I want. And I really came down to one thing I wanted. I wanted someone who wanted to learn and grow as much as I wanted to learn and grow. And like that, I, that boiled down to like, that is the thing that is most important. It doesn't, like all of the other things, like, oh, do they have like purple hair and a purple soul? And are they wild and crazy and artistic? All of that was falling aside and just boiling down to this one thing. And I think that in the conversation with Joe, I recognized, oh, here's someone with that same hunger.

Yeah, that's what I would say in looking for a person is that I, I, one of the reasons I hate telling the story in public, like in this kind of a setting, is because it sets the expectation of that kind of meeting. Um, but, but I, my experience is, I think it's, there's two things. One is, and it was, it wasn't like, oh, and we knew it and we were happily ever after and here we are laughing like this. It was like absolute fucking hell for 3 years. Like it was the, Every one of our friends told us we should get divorced. Every one of our friends told us that it was horrible and that we should, and we were like just reenacting our parents' trauma on each other. And the only thing that, that pulled us through was that we were both fully dedicated to our own transformation. And I think most of the fighting stopped when we stopped trying to transform each other and just worked on ourselves. But either way, that's what we were focused on. We were not going to, we were not going to compromise by saying, okay, well, that's just the way it is. We were both going to say, okay, what do we have to do to, to make this work? Because both of us knew very clearly that the, we didn't want to stay married. We wanted to stay happily married. And that, that was going to require work. And growing and using marriage as a growth, as growth, a tool for, a tool for awakening or a tool for self-development or a tool for getting to know yourself.

Yeah, Jerry, you, you've written that the leading indicators that a relationship should last or that one should stay in a relationship are if people see marriage as a, as a mirror, uh, if people are committed to, to, to their own self-development and if, uh, and if people don't sort of, uh, you know, indulge in too much resentment. Yeah.

So first of all, I just want to say that I just said marriage is a, is a, a mirror. So I think kind of that, there was like a backhanded compliment to myself now that you're looking at Tara.

It's very sweet.

Yeah. Um, yeah, that, that's, I, that I could, I'm not sure I can add anything to that, but that's, I'm curious if you think that's the case too, Tara.

Can you, Say this, say the statement again.

The 3 leading indicators a marriage will last or that one should stay in a marriage are if both partners see the relationship and its challenges as a reflection first and foremost of the relationship themselves, if both partners are committed to their self-development and supporting each other's growth without wanting to fix or change the other, and if both partners aren't playing any shame games.

I'd say there's something else too about, for me, and it might be the same thing that you just said, but my languaging would be different is like, Oh, this is a long run. Like, this is a— we're not running a dash, we're running a 24-mile marathon. And there might be little blips that aren't good. And so having— well, there are, but having patience for the whole picture, not just each little, you know, learning from each slice of the pie, but holding it within a bigger context. Of decades.

You guys, you know, I only know you in your, uh, enlightened capacities now. I can't imagine you guys, uh, fighting or killing each other.

Oh yeah, picture a car and a sledgehammer. What was the other? A car, pitchfork, pitchfork, cars. One person using a car as a tool— me, it might have been a cute little Miata— and one person holding a pitchfork over it. One person threatening the other with the car, vroom vroom. The other threatening That might have been like the penultimate, like, bottom, actually, the pit.

Yeah, for that, for that particular dip. There's been other dips in our, in our marriage economy. That was definitely the lowest. Yeah.

And were you guys always fighting about the same thing? Or what were the, were the fights about?

I mean, in a way, it's, do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? Are we safe? Am I safe? Am I safe? Always? Like, can we, can we attach? Am I attached? Am I attached? Are you attached? Are you attached?

Who's in charge? Who's in charge?

Who's in charge?

Those are the, those are the fights.

Yeah. But different, you know, pick a topic, insert topic, but really at the core of it, like, do you love me? Are we safe?

Or, or I think the other way. Yeah. The other way is like, uh, shame, but like wherever we had both had shame that were perfectly interlocking and feeling unseen. That was a huge part of it.

And, and how did you, at what point did it start getting easier or good? Or what was sort of the transformation of that like?

So my experience was there were some pitfalls before marriage, but then after marriage, there was a safety there, like, oh, we're in it, we're like locked into something. And so really, all of my shit could come out. And so it got really bad, literally, that fight, the pitchfork fight happened after we got married, there was like a year period after marriage that was especially chaotic. And I think it was because there was the safety of these vows we'd taken that really, um, so that was particularly bad.

And then when did it get better?

Oh, and then after we worked through that and we were in therapy, we were doing couples therapy, individual therapy, we were doing a lot of different retreats, like we worked it and really worked, um, Nonviolent Communication and all of these other, like, all everything that goes along with that, verbal abuse and escalation and how to de-escalate instead of escalate. And after that year, it got much better and we had a great period. And then we would have like every, I don't know, was it like every, did it follow like a 7-year pattern or it was probably like a 7-year pattern. We'd go through these growth. It was like the marriage. Used really hard cycles to grow is how I look at it now, looking back. So we moved to LA, you know, and years later had another hard cycle. Having kids was another hard cycle. Starting to build a business together, another hard cycle. It was like every new thing we stepped into brought on a new kind of hot period. Where we have—

so, which led to, I would say, deeper and deeper connection.

Always.

You—

some people have come on and said, hey, you know, friends are— you have some deep knowledge about your relationships. You know, when you're in a relationship, you're so sort of clouded by it. You said that a bunch of, if not all of your friends, were saying, hey, this is not the, the right marriage. How did you— what were they observing, and why were they wrong?

They were correctly observing toxic behavior, right? Both of us, like toxic communication, toxic relationship attachment.

We could weaponize, we could weaponize any good spiritual tool for communication. We were, we were amazing. We could make nonviolent communication super violent. We were great at it. I feel like you are, what I need is for you to be different.

In order to be safe, you need to leave.

Yeah, you know, for me to feel safe, I need to be in control of you.

So they were, they were correct that the, the how we were behaving towards each other was toxic. They were 100% correct.

And you knew it too, and you just couldn't change it at the time.

I mean, we changed it. It just was a slower process. I think that what our friends couldn't see was the commitment, the commitment to growth, because it's not a common example out in the world. Like most, most people don't actually use their marriage as a tool of transformation. So like, I don't, I don't, I don't fault them for it, but that's, I think that's what they couldn't see in that. I am eternally grateful that, that we could see.

You shared this in a podcast once. You said, we find ourselves attracted to certain people because they have an instinctual way of finding the person who can trigger us the best. And on the other hand, give us the opportunity for mutual healing.

Yeah.

You guys triggered each other the best.

Clearly. Eric, there's something else to it too, which is there was always I can't speak for Joe, but for me, like a knowing, like, yeah, this is shitty. All of this is shitty and I am supposed to be here. I don't know why, I don't know what, but I know, I know I'm not supposed to leave Joe. Like it was just a knowing and okay, so if that's the truth, then what do I need to learn here? What tools, what help do we need to get? Because that same knowing I had when we were hiking, it was like, I'm gonna marry him. That shows up again and again, like, nope, We're still, we're still supposed to be doing this even through really long, hard times. Like, nope, there's something here for us. For me, I'm supposed to be here.

I also have a thought that I'm, I'm not sure if it's right and I'm not sure if it's complete yet, but I would say the first major things got better, things were hard and we learned a lesson and they got better was it's never about the other person. You know, it's never. There's a tendency. There's this great story that one of our therapists told us that, you know, a guy was realizing he was blaming his wife for way too much stuff at some point because he went to the bathroom and missed the toilet. And he noticed his first thought was, God damn it, she moved the toilet. And so there was something about, okay, we're not, we're not, no longer is it about the other person. It's always about us. That doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong. It means that your behavior, your attitude, Your ability to have an open heart and love is always yours. It's never the other person's. Um, but it doesn't mean that you're the one at fault. It just means that that's, that's your, that's what, that's a garden you tend towards. The second thing, the second big one for me was, was around the kids. And for me, the learning in that one was like, it was a moment that I said, Tara's the CEO of the house and I'm going to follow along and do whatever I'm told around the kids in the house. Uh, and unless it doesn't feel right for months and after months, if it doesn't feel right, I'm going to come in and I'm going to say something. So there was something about like a trust in the other person, a delegation of roles, a, oh, this is your role. I'm going to trust you to do it. This is my role. I'm going to trust me to do it. And And I think that that was the beginning of that cycle. And that the other part of that cycle was really understanding that both of us are, we're putting in as much effort because in those moments you just feel like I'm overwhelmed and they're getting their time off, but they never are. And then the third one was there was always this kind of subtle above and below in our relationship where Whenever we would feel shame, we'd put ourselves above the other one. And, um, in the last big cycle in our marriage, that all fell away where there's just, there's, it's not even possible. I don't think for me, I don't, I can't speak for you, Tara, but I think for you, like there's just, we just can't make ourselves better than the other person as a form of protection. It just, it just is way too fucking painful to do.

I feel like I've noticed that I've done this in the past. If you notice that you're making yourself superior to someone to make yourself feel better, to be the martyr or victim or something, or as a way— so how do you stop doing it? Or what's important to keep in mind?

What's the feeling under it? What's the— what's that protecting? That making self better or superior is, for me, always a protection mechanism. There's some shame or grief or anger or something I don't want to feel, something.

Yeah.

Even in a role of like, I'm the victim. It's like, oh, what am I not feeling here? Often my own empowerment, my own choice, my own capacity, or my own grief at the ways I have been a victim traditionally.

I want to go back to the choosing period before marriage, because you guys also did some interesting things together that others may learn from? Because it's common that someone will— maybe they won't know right away that they're going to marry the person, but they'll have a connection or they'll be triggered the best and they'll be like, wow, this person, there's something here, there's something very alive. Maybe it's unstable that I should sort of explore it and improve it, or maybe it has potential. What can we learn from what happened after you guys had that initial electricity? Or what do you tell in terms of the process of evaluating.

I think, I think you're referring to Tara's requirements for us to get married, to be married. I think is what you're required. We had to go to a therapist together. We had to do a silent retreat together and we had to backpack in some harsh conditions, like travel and harsh conditions for 4 to 6 months. And if we could survive all that, then we would survive marriage.

I still love my conditions. Like if I'm proud of like anything in life, there's a lot of things I'm proud of, but that's one of it. One of the things that I would say I'm incredibly proud of, like, oh, therapy, working on ourselves individually and as a couple and having all those skills is important. So we have to do that. Meditation, sitting in silence for 10 days was a key part of my practice. If you're not, if you're gonna think that was lame and stupid, then this isn't gonna work. Which is ironic cuz later on she was like, stop meditating, go get a job. And traveling backpack, like, oh, can we really travel in hard situations and work together as a team?

Do you recommend other people have their own version of, uh, requirements, or what advice do you give for how to evaluate a prospective life partner? Or is that the wrong question?

I am trying to figure out what was the question that brought me— I came to those things because these, those were 3 things I really cared about. And it's like, I really— and like, how much do you care about it? Because if you care about these 3 things and we have nothing else in common, we're gonna be okay. Like, I love horses, you hate horses, I don't have to have horses. Like, I love dogs, you hate dogs, we don't have to have dogs.

No, no, eventually you're gonna have to have dogs, just to be clear on that one.

That one took 30 years. Even kids, like, okay, I could give or take kids, but can, can you hang with silence? Can you hang with therapy? Can you hang with traveling and tricky conditions? Like, if you can hang with those and enjoy them, then those were the things that mattered really. Like, if I had to boil down the things that mattered most to me at that point in my life, and that I, I needed to matter for a partner, that was it. So it's like, okay, we gotta do this because if it doesn't matter to you, then I don't know I don't know how we make it.

I think the thing I noticed speaking about it now that I don't think I've noticed before is each one of them was, are, are you willing to do the work on yourself? Are you willing to do the work on yourself with me? Right. So therapy is working on yourself with each other. Like we were in very harsh conditions backpacking. Oh, it's 6 o'clock at night. We have no place to stay and we have no food. What, you know, are we going to yell at each other? Are we going to handle it? And a meditation retreat is, are you willing to work on yourself for, and/or for the sake of the marriage? And so I think they were just 3 ways of saying the thing that was most important to Tara was also the thing that happened to be most important to the marriage, which was, are you willing to do the work on yourself for the marriage?

Some people have this sort of fear about having sort of a dichotomy of, hey, if they have someone safe that makes you feel safe, then they're not going to make me feel super excited. Or if someone's very embodied, they might be very sensitive, or, or kind of this idea of forced, like, trade-off to some degree. Do you think that's an unhelpful— is that a thing to accept, or kind of a sort of not the right way of looking at things, or not true in some sense?

Or— so funny, in my 54-year-old brain, it doesn't make sense. I'm trying to have my 28-year-old brain where it makes perfect sense. And, and there's just a fact, like, there are trade-offs. I mean, that's undeniable.

Like, I, it's funny. Part of what happens in marriage I'm noticing right now is what's happening in my brain and what's happening in your brain. It feels almost identical. That was the first thing. I don't fucking understand that question. And I'm like, but I know there's truth in it because I remember feeling that way. And then the second thing was, I know there's trade-offs, but there's not really fucking trade-offs. So it's like this hard— the second part, I'm assuming, but there's— it's a very hard— if I think about it, it's not how I consider it at all. I think the way that it seems like it works in our marriage is this doesn't feel right. How do, how do we want to address it together? So if there's a lack of excitement, which I don't think either of us have felt ever, um, then I would just say there's a lack of excitement. And I notice I'm like creating, there's some feeling of distance because of that. And how do we, how do we want to address that? And it wouldn't, there would never be this binary conversation of Well, I want this and you want this and therefore it's, we, we constantly work under the assumption that we can both get our needs met in the relationship. And we just have to be creative about how to do that and be willing to experiment and be willing to be wrong and non-defensive to get there. So to me, the, what used to look like, oh, I have to make a trade-off now just looks like. How do we have a conversation that allows us to see each other and be of support to each other?

Yes. And I'm trying to remember trade-offs. When we had kids, I can wrap my brain around trade-offs now. When we had kids, there was a huge trade-off that was the source of many of our early kid fights, which was a lot of my friends had stay-at-home dad partners. Nobody worked. They had, uh, independent wealth or for whatever reason they didn't have to have jobs. And so I had these models of like full-time stay-at-home dads and I really wanted Joe to like, that's what I wanted, like a full-time stay-at-home dad. But that wasn't our, our financial situation. We lived in Northern California, San Francisco, and, or we were maybe in wherever we were at that point. And Joe was like working and traveling and working to, and I was staying at home. And it was like, that was very much a, that was a trade-off that I made. It was a source of many fights though. Like, come be a stay-at-home dad. And he's like, oh, if you could tell me how I can make that work, I would quite happily be a stay-at-home dad. Or if you want to go work. And it was like, I'm not going to go work. I like being home with the kids. Um, so it was a source of many fights, but trade-off wasn't even, it was like, how do we get then? What's the thing we really want to get here? When we finally got through the fight, it was like, oh, I just wanna feel more in it with you that we're doing this together. And so we used to make our whole vacations in the beginning about like getting back online as parents and getting totally aligned of how we're parenting. And so we would take the trade-off and, well, then how do we wanna create a life together instead of it being a trade-off? What do we want? What's the thing under it we're trying to get?

I remember this time, I don't know if it relates, Tara, but I think, yeah, we, there was Tara, I would come home from these conferences and this work and I was traveling a lot doing venture capital and Tara would just, you know, you just had all this time off. Well, like I need da da da. And I'd be like, I, you get to be home with the kids and I need da da da da. And the kids got a little older and I was going to this conference that was interesting to Tara. So Tara came with me and Tara was incredibly dedicated mother. So like being away from the kids was not going to be something that was going to happen until they got older. And so she comes to the conference and then 2 days into the conference, she's like, how the fuck do you do this? This is so goddamn exhausting.

Like what?

And my whole system, like let go because I had felt so bad for going off into the world and doing this stuff on some subconscious level. I knew I needed to do it. We both knew we needed to do it, but there was this friction in the marriage. And as soon as I felt seen seen in that, like, that whole, that whole thing could collapse. And I think I remember that moment being one of the moments of recognizing, oh, so much of a fight is just not being seen, just not, not being able to look and, like, feel where the other person is at and then communicate that.

You have a course on, on how to fight well. So let's, let's say, let's say more about that. Um, so much of it is, is about not being seen. Um, what would it look like to sort of make sure that people are seeing each other, or what would it look like to eliminate some of the root causes of a lot of these fights?

Being seen is the, the most important part about seeing somebody else is dropping your own shame. If you're dropping your own shame, you're either beating yourself up for it, which makes the person feel unseen, or you're attacking them so they don't feel seen. So the most important thing is to see yourself. Clearly enough to let go of the shame. And then once you do that, then your heart can come online and then you speak from your heart. So like what's really common in our world is Tara would say to me something like, um, there's nothing in me that wants you to feel like you've done anything wrong right now, or there's no part of me that wants you to feel ashamed or bad about the situation. And so that level of communication, it like helps tremendously, but you can't do that if you're in your own shame. Because if you're in your own shame, it comes out like you, I can't believe you didn't see that I blah, blah, blah, or yeah, I fucked up. I'm going to cry now to resolve the fight. And neither of those things really work. And so what's interesting is that, like, what that ends up meaning for my existence, my existence with Tara, is that the only way I could actually make our marriage work was to learn how to love myself. And so, and then the more I learned to love myself, the, it increases my capacity to love Tara. The more I can unconditionally love myself, the more I can unconditionally love Tara. Which is not what I expected marriage to be.

So there's a second part too, which is when I'm saying I don't feel seen, most of the time I'm also not seeing. So a hack for me is, um, if I'm not feeling seen to say, okay, hold on, what am I not seeing here? What am I missing? Tell me, tell me all about your experience. And in doing so, something in my defenses drops and I actually get curious. And then Joe will share all sorts of things that, and I'm like, oh, I didn't know that. And then he's like, yeah, what do you, what don't I see? And like, but that asking, oh, especially if I have a story, I'm not being seen here. If I can reverse engineer it, like, okay, what am I not seeing? It's just a hack and it helps me drop my defenses. And then I can go to, what am I not seeing? If I'm not being seen, I'm also not seeing. And I can find my way through that way.

You guys are a big believer in sort of the, do you want to be happy or do you want to be right? Or sort of the, you know, beyond the right and wrong, there's a field, I'll meet you there, quote. And it's kind of easier said than done in some sense in terms of in the heat of the moment to not kind of moralize or to not get bothered by the perceived wrongness of someone else.

I think every single fight hack is about moving through right and wrong, or you bad, me bad.

If I'm triggered by Tara, I'm projecting. I just— that's just 100% true. So if I'm saying, goddammit, Tara, you're not listening to me, I'm not listening to her on some level. I'm not listening to her. If I say, goddammit, Tara, when I used to say— I don't, I don't, I can't remember the last time I said goddammit, Tara, but and you know, goddammit, Tara, you're not doing enough around the house. Then I, I also feel like I'm not doing enough around the house on some level. So one of the hacks is, oh, if I'm triggered, I know that like, there's no question in my mind anymore that I know that that's about me, that I know that I'm, it doesn't mean that she's not doing it. It just means that I am also doing it. So I'm going to pay attention to that first.

And explain that a little bit more. Like what if you are doing a lot around the house to use that example and she's not? How is that about you?

I'm thinking I have my context messed up, meaning, oh yeah, you're not earning the money and you're not going out every day to conferences. And so yeah, I'm doing a lot around the house. What I'm not seeing is that she hasn't had adult time in fucking 3 months because she's like with little kids. And what I'm not seeing is that she's doing the dishes. So it, you know, if I'm, if I'm triggered by that, That's, and I mean, I remember, I think this one's a more recent trick that we have that anytime I see Tara doing anything for our mutual benefit, I thank her. One, to give myself gratitude, like to feel the gratitude that I have, but also because I know I cannot see everything Tara does. And so, but, but I think principally what I'm saying is that that if there's, if I am upset, it's about me because Tara cannot be doing stuff around the house and it doesn't have to upset me. I can just say, hey, I need you to do more stuff around the house. And she could be like, I'm doing plenty of stuff around the house. And I can say, yeah, I hear that you're doing plenty of stuff around the house and I'm feeling this way. How do we want to handle that? And, but as soon as I'm defensive or as soon as my heart shuts down, or as soon as I Like I'm, I'm not being the person that I want to be, then that's me. That's mine.

Also, there's one other thing, which is then you're in like black and white thinking. There's no gray area and there's no way to solve that other than one person does more is the only— so if that's the fight, you're not doing enough around the house, there's only one, there's only one way to solve that issue. And that's not a real solve. That's like a, you know, a pitchfork solve. Whereas, you know, early fights would have around the dishes, like, you're not doing enough dishes. And would both be in these corners of like, I'm doing a million other things. What about, what, like, why are the dishes so important? And when we could step out of those corners, which were with the, you're not doing enough dishes, the only solve was Joe does more dishes. But when we could step out of our corners, there's like, oh, We're, we have a, we have 2 kids and a traveling husband. We can get paper dishes. Oh, we can ask stepparents to come in or parents to come in an hour a week and hang with the kids while someone does dishes. We could hire someone to come in and do dishes. We could get a better dishwasher. Like we weren't seeing the million of other solutions were possible when it was just, you're doing this. Even if that's true that he wasn't doing dishes.

And, or, and, or we weren't really solving the base problem, which is we're both overwhelmed. We're both exhausted. We're both overwhelmed. And maybe the solution is you take 2 days off and I'll just handle everything. And then I get 2 days off and handle everything because at least that way we both get 2 days off and we're less exhausted.

We're getting the whole system more support. The whole system, the whole family system needs more support.

And so when people say something to you like, hey, you know, I'm really into this person but they trigger me a lot, um, are you saying, hey, you know, maybe you can work those through, those triggers, and they'll trigger you less, and, and maybe this is an opportunity for— maybe this person you should be with? Or is it, hey, you know, maybe this person is— maybe there will be a more stable dynamic or something? Like, what do you, what do you say to that common dynamic that, that this person, they people who trigger each other a lot.

I could never say one size fits all with that statement. I, it would be so context dependent and like, what's the trigger? And are you excited about the triggers and working through them? Or does it make it a no in your system? Or is it way too much, like a, is it too much that you're not gonna be able to work through it? I, I wouldn't have a one size fits all answer to that, but I would say like, oh, if someone's triggering you, great. There's freedom there. Whether you stay in the relationship or not, that is a source of freedom and you can take the freedom or leave it. That's your choice. There's no, there's no right and wrong thing to do, but any trigger is a source of freedom.

Yeah. The only thing I would say on top of it, typically I'm with Tara, like there's no one size fits all, except for you get to choose freedom when you get triggered. The other thing that I would say is most likely you're not being yourself. You're not being true to yourself and you're trying to manage their reaction. So if you are in that situation, see what it's like to be yourself, be who exactly who you want to be in these moments, and then see what happens as the relationship gets stronger. Does it fall apart?

And speaking of falling apart, what advice do you have for for breakups in terms of how to make them sort of trans— you know, helpful for personal growth?

Grieve.

Grieve alone, grieve together, have a grieving ritual, bring your community in if you can, like, grieve, grieve, grieve the relationship, then grieve everything that got you into the relationship and grieve all your patterns that have been causing you misery that showed up in the relationship. Grieve it all.

The hopes and dreams that die with that relationship, the false future that dies with the relationship. Yeah, grieve the whole, the whole thing. I think that grieving process is super important because there's that phrase, same shit, different shovel, right? You end one relation, but in grieving it, you're honoring what was there and honoring what didn't work and honoring the whole thing and grieving it. And then you have a chance of a different choice on the other side of grief. Grief changes us. Truly grieving.

Yeah. Everybody I know who doesn't grieve a relationship's ending repeats it. Everybody I know who deeply grieves their relationship ending doesn't repeat the relationship. And we believe in that so much. I would say that in every time of those years that we're in that conflict, one of the things we do is we grieve the marriage as if it was going to die. Like that. We've lost it. It's all. And so we grieve and feel all the things that we don't want to feel in the end of a relationship so that we can show up as ourselves again and, and recommit. And so that's been a huge part of our process is to like fully grieve the fact that this whole thing might be gone so that we can say the things that are true to us so that we can be ourselves as we've changed and then meet each other again.

And that's not just tears, that's anger, that's fear, that's excitement, that's moving all of, you know, grief encompasses all those emotions, moving all the whole, all the emotions around it, being with them, processing them.

Some people have come on this show and said, hey, if you, if you pick the right person for you, you know, they've said we kind of underthink the pick. And if we pick the right person, then maybe it doesn't feel like constant work because you're, you've just found the right person, you're you're a perfect fit or you're the right fit. Whereas other people have said, hey, that's a little bit romantic. There's lots of people for whom you could have a great fit with and most of the work happens after you've picked the person. So, don't sort of overthink the pick as much. Obviously, there's no one-size-fits-all, but are you more in one camp or the other, or how would you even comment on or think about this?

I notice a dynamic that typically people who are like, it's just a great fit and here we are and we don't have a lot of issues, usually have a pretty— in 25 years, most of them seem to have a pretty dead marriage or one of them looks up one day and says, you know, you're Snickers and I've just decided I like Mars. So like, I see a lot of, a lot of relationships end that way that seemed like, oh, look, we have a great relationship. And just follow that. It all builds up underneath. Um, so that's the pattern I've seen. I'm open to maybe there's— that's not an exclusive pattern, but it's a pattern that I've seen.

I would say, yep, I would agree with that. And I, I think back to— there's a teacher, beloved teacher, a teacher I loved, Sibonfu Somé, who came from, um, a part of Africa where they had arranged marriages. And not that I'm encouraging arranged marriages, but she talked about how when you fall in love with your perfect partner, you start at the top of the mountain and the only place to go is down, like falling down a mountain. Whereas with an arranged marriage, with putting together with someone, you have to build and muscle strength and strengthen the marriage to get up the mountain. So it's a building, building, building. And creating structure to get to the top of the mountain. And so I think that marriage is about building and creating structures and attachments.

With about, you know, just under 10 minutes left, what have we not talked about, or what have you not shared around either, um, you know, finding the right partner or being ready for the right partner, or of course, you know, once you're making a partnership really great in terms of lessons that you've learned or things that you find yourself sharing to others or common mistakes that you, you find people make.

I think we've said this, but I'll say it again. Get support. Get your community support. Get a couple— we have a couple circle. Get your couples therapist or coach or get support. Like, none of us have really great models for long-term relationships. Most of us don't, or we only have one model, our parents. So go get other models, go get support would be my first thing.

One thing I would see is that if you have a repeating pattern in your relationships, then that's also a way you treat yourself. So if you keep on having a jealous girlfriend, or if you keep on having an abusive boyfriend, uh, then your voice in your head is abusing you, or that you have a jealous relationship with yourself. And, and I think at the, uh, the weird thing is the more, the more I see in the world, the more I can say that the essence is really about how much love you are willing to receive. Like the essence of it is we, we are all scared shitless of the amount of love that's available to us. And that so much of our behavior is just pushing love away because we are so scared of the annihilation that it will cause. And it does, it causes annihilation. I mean, on one level, how do I, this is such a hard thing to communicate, but on, you know, my ego had to had to get annihilated to be a great husband, even more so to be a great dad. You know, the, all the things that I thought I was and wasn't, you know, it's like a deep tissue massage in that way. If you resist, you're fucked, it's going to hurt. So you just got to give in. And, um, and that's a scary proposition. Tara's got something else she's thinking.

Yeah. Well, let's say it's a matter of thought. We're talking about a mat. We've been logically talking about it all and the logical decision-making, but it is a matter of the heart and listening, really learning how to listen to and follow the heart and trusting your own heart and from your heart, feeling your partner's heart. So you're coming down below level of mind.

And would you say, Tara, you're more, uh, is Joe like slightly more heady than you, or How would you—

I would say once upon a time we were equally heady. And now I'd say he can be more gut-body than me, but he translates it to head language. So I'd say at different times it's been like, oh, you're really in your head. No, you're really in your head. Like that would've been one fight at one period in our lives. But I'd say we both have been really heady. We both, um, Yeah, no, I wouldn't say he's more heady than I am. You know, 10 years ago I would have been, yeah, isn't that annoying?

I feel so seen. Thank you. I had no idea what you were going to answer to that one.

That, uh, no, I, I, you translate it to the head really quickly.

Do you have any, uh, any questions of each other?

Uh, yeah, I have one. Uh, how would you feel about having more podcasts together? I am really fucking enjoying this. I love this.

So funny. Head says no, hell no. Heart says yeah.

Tara, the heart wins.

Truth. Question: when are you coming home?

I'll be home in about 4 hours. I miss you.

Maybe one last one that comes to mind, because other people, other guests have said that, uh, every 7 years or every 10 years, they also have a big big sort of thing come up. You mentioned that there's something similar for you guys. What's that like? Why is there a rhythm to it? Or what's an example of a type of thing that people who are just nearing those timelines should be aware of or ready for?

Hormones are real, male and female. Male and female hormones are real. That changes shit. Kids, kids change hormones. That changes shit.

Right. Our, our big boom came with any kind of big life change. Like when we went from being two single people to being married was one boom. Then when we went to bringing children in, that was another kind of reassessment because we really had to change who we were, who we were was changing. Like it or not. And so the marriage had to change. And then job career shifts. That's another one. Or working together, starting a company together. That was another big one for us. One kid leaving hasn't been, but I imagine when two kids leave, that might be another.

We had both kids leave for the first time last summer and we were like, this is, this is going to get dicey. And then we were like, nope, that was just fucking awesome.

It was so delicious.

Like fell in love with each other again in that way that pre-kids. Uh, I don't know if that'll be the case when they're both out of the house for long-term.

I was just going to say life changes seem to be for us when, when, and I imagine like as aging, retirement probably will be one. So you could just know if you're going into a big life change, like you're going to ever retire.

I know, but Yeah, I, I hope you do do future episodes together. Um, you know, for people who are just listening to this for, for the first time, you guys have also— or Joe, you've done episodes with your daughter and they're incredible to, to listen to. And I hope— and you did an episode recently with, uh, Nathan Baschez on parenting and on your podcast, The Art of Accomplishment. And I hope you do more together on, on parenting, maybe on working together. I, uh, this has been a Fantastic discussion. Thank you so much for, for coming on the podcast.

What a pleasure. Good to be with you, Eric. Thank you.

So fun to be with you, Eric, and you too, Joe.

Wow.

Wow.

What a sweet and a beautiful and illuminating conversation. Thank you, Eric. Thank you, Tara and Joe, for doing this. And thank you everybody for listening. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did, and if you did, please share it with a friend. You can check out our work at artofaccomplishment.com. You can check out our work on Twitter @artofacomp or @fu_johudson or myself @erikkistler. Our YouTube channel has been blowing up lately, so head over to YouTube as well. You can see some coaching sessions there in the raw. You can find some other videos that we've been putting out. There's a fighting in relationship series. You can also find all of the video versions of these episodes. If you've been listening to the podcast on audio and you want to see the video, you can find that on YouTube. Enjoy.