How Relationships Reveal Us — Relationships Series #1

One of the main reasons I think that we find ourselves attracted to certain people and that we find ourselves married to certain people is that we, uh, have an instinctual way of finding the person who can trigger us the best.

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, here today with my co-host Joe Hudson.

Hey Brett. Hey Joe, good to see you, man.

Yeah, good morning. So we've been getting a lot of questions from people about relationships, and people are kind of asking what should they do now? What— how do they tell if they're in the right relationship? How do they know when to dive in and when to pull back? How do they know whether or not they're coming from their feelings or whether they're coming from their trauma? And yeah, we haven't had an episode yet on relationships in particular.

And just to be clear, we're talking about romantic relationships? Are we talking about like all relationships?

Yeah, well, you know what, let's, let's go into romantic relationships, but I think it applies to all relationships.

Most of it applies to, to close relationships, I would say. Yeah, you know, maybe not like acquaintances, but most of it will apply to like the bosses that we keep working for or whatever, parents. Yeah, great. Let's do that. Let's keep it focused on the romantic. Great, great.

And I think one of the reasons for that is that the context of these closest relationships, including the romantic relationships, involves a lot of spiritual growth, a lot of personal development, a lot of our own, our own stuff comes up and it's a container in which we get to experience and recreate a lot of our patterns and work through them. And, you know, the same isn't necessarily true in a lot of work relationships. On some levels it is, but to some extent You know, there's something special about the romantic relationship that more often comes up, and people have very specific questions about it.

Yeah, I'd say more agreement is on that. It's true that there's more agreement, like, oh, we can work on our stuff here together, that there's not— I'm not— I don't need to be a professional, that I can actually work on my stuff here. Yeah, great, let's do it. Relationships, what's, what's a good starting question here?

A good place to start would be sort of to, to lay out the, the framework of what a romantic relationship actually is and where it comes from, what brings us into them, what attracts us to them, what kinds of relationships we're attracted to. And that's a pretty fractal multi-question right there.

Yeah, so it's interesting because you said something earlier about like, am I coming into this relationship out of a healthy thing, or am I coming out of— into this relationship in the trauma I would say there that I don't think that question is relevant, meaning that the people that we're attracted to, that we find ourselves in relationships with, are people who hook into our particular trauma, our particular projections, our particular patterns perfectly. And so if we have a long-term relationship, you can pretty much be sure that that's— those two patterns interlock kind of perfectly, and And so that's one of the main reasons I think that we find ourselves attracted to certain people and then we find ourselves married to certain people is that we have an instinctual way of finding the person who, from one perspective, can trigger us the best. And on another perspective, I would say, has the biggest opportunity for our healing, mutual healing. And So that seems to be why people become attracted to one another, is to solve that thing. And, and the other way I would put that is if you take a look at like young children, young children get taught what love is in a particular way. Love is associated with shame, or love is associated with, you know, authoritarianism, or love is associated with money, or love is associated with food, or. And that creates certain patterns, certain ways in which they're trying to get the love, certain ways in which they're scared of getting the rejection. And however that pattern gets set in or created, that's where you're going to find somebody in your romantic relationship that holds the other side of that pattern. That's why you hear so many people talk about things like, "Oh my gosh, he's so much— my husband is so much like my father. My husband is so much like my mother." my wife is so much like my father. It's, it's that there's oftentimes we're recreating those patterns so that they can be healed, or at least that's the opportunity. The opportunity is you get to heal patterns if both people are willing to do the work.

Yeah, I, I noticed that there's a way of seeing this as a feature or a bug.

Yeah.

And like, oh no, I just keep getting into the same relationships, I'm just keep dating my mother or my father, and there's something wrong with that, and that makes there's something wrong with me. Or right, what I see you also pointing to is that there's those there's an opportunity to heal these things. There's an opportunity to feel the feelings that haven't been felt yet.

Yes.

And this is perhaps one of the distinctions with a romantic relationship, as far as consensus agreement versus, say, a boss, is that at least in a romantic relationship, that's the place where culturally we expect to be most accepted as we actually are.

Right.

And we have— we tend to develop the most interdependence, which is not universal.

Or codependence, or dependence. Yes. And I— okay, and I would question, but this is for a different podcast, I question the non-consensuality of a job. But, you know, I think that we are all responsible for our own decisions.

I mean, the consensual reality of what people agree is the purpose of a romantic relationship versus what people tend to culturally agree is the purpose of a work relationship.

That's a great question because I think a lot of people think that the agreement behind a relationship is that we're here to make each other happy. And I think that's terminal. I think that, that, that kills a relationship. I think my experience is that, that not only kills a relationship, but it also allows us to lose ourselves in others. It creates a tremendous amount of pain if we take responsibility for anybody's happiness or give our responsibility for our own happiness to anybody, and all the subtle and not so subtle ways that that happens. And I think that that's the particularly in societies where romantic love, that crushy feeling in the first 3 months where you have that crushy feeling and you get that feeling of massive oxytocin and, "Oh," and then you're like, "Wait, being with that person makes me feel this way." And then obviously that goes away after about 3 to 5 months. And then, "Wait, what's happening? Why aren't they making me happy anymore?" And then everybody starts doing things to try to make the other person happy and has expectations of that. And then that's where all the trauma shows up. So I think if, if you're actually in a relationship where both people are saying, okay, we're here primarily to use a relationship as a way to create our own freedom, to make ourselves happy ourselves, and to be kind and supportive to one another, then that's going to be a relationship that's successful. Unfortunately, most relationships, I think, in our society, consciously or subconsciously, are more in the vein of, "Okay, I'm here to make them happy or they're here to make me happy. And that's my job in the relationship. And they're not making me happy, so they need to change." There's a lot of that, like trying to get each other to change in a relationship, which is just brutal.

I wonder what it's like to go into a relationship with, uh, with the agreement of, you know, this, like, relationships are meant to make us feel warm and fuzzy for a time so that we build attachment and connection, and then push our buttons.

Yes, that's right. Yeah.

And when my buttons get pushed, that's exactly what I'm here for.

And I'm here to heal my own buttons, not yours. And I'm here for my own transformation, not for yours. You can see that metaphor play out completely in the sexual relationship too, where if you're having a sexual relationship where it's all about pleasing the other person, it's going to be horrible sex. If it's all about pleasing yourself, that's also going to be horrible sex. But you can't exclude the fact that you're there for your pleasure, they're there for their pleasure, and the only person responsible for your pleasure can be you. There's nobody else who can know what you need or what you want or how to be with you. I mean, you're, you're the authority in that. And it's the same with healing inside of a relationship.

Yeah. And with, and with growth.

Yeah.

Um, I've seen and I've experienced this before in my relationships where each partner, one partner feels like they are responsible for the other's growth.

Yeah.

Or in somehow, in some manner guiding it, or in some manner more equipped to to facilitate it, and that just stifles things immediately.

Yeah, uh, that's, that's hell. That's absolute hell. Yeah, Tara and I definitely went through that phase. It was brutal. Yeah, and full of arrogance and hubris and, and distraction from your own shit, and among a whole bunch of other things. Yeah, right.

And so this, this comes back to, you know, in the process of getting into a relationship there's this possible having this, like, consent, this agreement that, like, what relationships are for, how, like, this desire to have for each of us to, to use the relationship for our own freedom and our own growth. And part of that might even be not requiring the other person to have that same agreement. Just, that's just the way that you live individually, and that's the way that you show up in relationships.

And I would like that to be true. I don't know if it is. I don't think I've ever really seen any relationship get through the bottoms unless both people people have agreed to the fact that they're there for their personal growth. They might make it as far as they stay, but that it's dead inside, you know. They might be married for 50 years, but it's just like brutal and cold and unfulfilling.

Yeah.

But if— I don't know of any relationship— I'm just tracking right now— I, I can't speak to any relationship that I have found that is like healthy and rewarding and fulfilling and that changes with the, you know, the multiple marriages that we all go through over 20 or 30 years or 40 years that hasn't had the agreement that we are here, like, that it's not about changing the other person, it's about our own personal growth and how do we be with ourselves, be better people— or better people's not right— but learn how to be more and more of ourselves.

Yeah, I think that that comes to— that brings up a common sticking point that can happen around this work when when somebody discovers a practice like this, or discovers any kind of path that is— that they're finding really helpful for their healing and for their growth. And then they start to feel like their partner is not on board with it. And they might be like, okay, well, now I need you to agree that we're each in this for our own freedom, and you need to be in— so there can still be sort of a trying to change them to make them the one that wants to use the relationship for their freedom and support each other in that.

Yeah. And also, hell yeah, absolutely. People, I see that all the time where people start discovering something in themselves, and, and I would say out of a deep love and care, they want their partner to join them, but also out of a desire to be happy. Like, oh, if they change, I'll be happy. That's the thing. It's like, if you think that your partner is going to do anything that makes you happy, like if you have the fantasy that, oh, if they become this and this this and that, they'll make me happy. That's like an absolute illusion. It's not how it works. It, it doesn't mean that being with certain people would be more conducive to thriving than other people, right? It doesn't mean that you should be with the partner and just learn how to endure it all. I'm not, I'm not saying that, but we're responsible for our own happiness. Nobody else can take control of that. Nobody else can provide that for us. And The more clear that gets, the more likely you are, or I think it's a foregone conclusion, the more you will be in healthy relationships.

Let's scroll back a little bit to the process of getting into a relationship from this framing, from this perspective of, you know, relationships are a path to my growth. And I can use relationships to make myself happy at the same time that my partner is making themselves happy and that we are both co-creators and co-conspirers of our, of our own individual, yeah, agency and autonomy and growth, and developing a healthy interdependence and not codependence, knowing that we're attracted to relationships that are mirroring our own traumas in some sense, or matching them. A lot of people have a question, have a wondering about like, well, how do I know if what I'm getting into is healthy if I know that— if I, if I can just assume that the relationships I'm getting into are based on my trauma patterns, how do I tell if that's going to be healthy or if that's just going to re-traumatize me and recreate the situation, reprove my belief system?

So let me back up off of that question for a second so that I can answer it more precisely. So I have had the really lovely experience of several times being with people on their kind of their first date, either being in the booth next to them at a restaurant or showing people who might have interest in one another, like showing up and being with them for the first time that they're meeting. And if you're listening to it the right way, it's like a contract negotiation where they're giving each other pieces of information about each other and they're telling themselves how they're going to act. And so in both cases where I got to experience this, from the outside, I got to say, oh, I know exactly how that relationship's going to go. You can see the entire thing in the first couple moments. And so first date or two, and there's like all these subtle agreements that are being made subconsciously or not fully consciously. And so just to say that like whether we're conscious of it or not, we're that wise in it, you know. It's like we might not be knowing how we're handling like our heart palpitations and our, and our breath and exercise. We're not engineering it, but we're taking care of it. I think the same thing is happening. I have seen the same thing to happen. I'm On two occasions, every occasion I've gotten to see it where people are on their first date. So there's this beautiful subconscious intelligence at work. That's the first part of that, which I think is really important. The second part is, am I attracted to this person because of my trauma, or am I attracted to this person because it'll be healing? Both. You're going to re-traumatize yourself in the relation. Every marriage re-traumatizes some of the things that we learned from our early childhood, and every relationship has the potential to Or not just marriage, but any kind of long-term relationship has the chance to heal us from our traumas. Both are their case. The easiest thing to say is, if you guys both agree that we're here to work, do the work to find our own freedom, then you're going to get a lot more of the healing and a lot less of the retraumatizing. If there's no agreement like that and one person's like, in full blame mode, full change the other person, full defense mode, then you're going to get a lot more retraumatization. That's just how it is. I think it's a false pretext to say, is this the right person for me that I'm attracted to? The right thought process is, oh, I am attracted to this person, therefore they are that. They do have that kind of click. They have that thing in them that, that attracts the part of me that needs to be healed. Are we gonna do that, or are we gonna, are we gonna be, you know, unconscious in this relationship? I think that's, that's the way to tell the difference. Is the person willing to do the work?

Yeah. And then, then there's the open question of, is the lesson for me in this relationship to let more love in and open up and let down my defenses, or is it to draw boundaries and, and, you know, decide what—

I don't see the separation in those two things. Those are the same thing in my world.

Yeah, I see that, I guess, as more like a common question where it's like, that's a common question. There's definitely something for me to learn in this relationship, and is the thing for me to learn to dive into it, or is the thing for me to learn to walk away from it because I'm having feelings and trying to interpret them, right?

So there's this kind of age-old question in all spiritual growth, and this— and the way you're posing it right now is kind of the relational version of that question. But the non-relational version of that question is If I am truly at peace, I should be able to live on top of a disco and be at peace. And if I'm truly at peace, why on earth would I live on top of a disco, right? It's like that's kind of like, so do I move or do I stay on top of the disco? That's kind of the question. And so the thing that I disagreed with in the first phrasing and that I didn't hear in the second phrasing was, you know, do I open my heart and stay open? And the answer to that is always yes. And the question of boundaries is, do I need to draw a boundary so that I can maintain that open heart and so I can maintain that unconditional love? Or do I need to look at my own experience to be able to maintain that unconditional love to maintain that open heart. And even that is somewhat of a false dichotomy in the fact that oftentimes it's both. The other part of it that's kind of a false dichotomy is that thinking that the drawing the boundary is more about the other person. Meaning, so somebody, for instance, is— you got a boyfriend and 6 months in, the boyfriend lies to you. Now, there's certain people who would be like, Yeah, I'm done. We're finished. There's not even a question. And there's other people who would put up with it because of all these other cool things, but then 2 years down the line, they're just tired of the lying. And so they're like, should I be good with the lying or should I draw the boundary with the lying? And the truth is, drawing the boundary about the lying is really a version of learning, oh, I don't have to accept lying in my life. It's internal work more than it is external work. The external saying of it is just a way to affirm the internal realization that, oh, I don't have to live with somebody lying to me, and it doesn't help me thrive, and it doesn't help them thrive. And so in a way, it's all internal work. Sometimes it's drawing the boundary, and sometimes it's leaving. So there's that false dichotomy between is it my problem or their problem. That's the false dichotomy. It's always about you being responsible for your own happiness.

You know, that's— that speaks to the process of healing in a relationship, and that which leads to showing up in a different way, which leads to— leads to drawing boundaries, leads to opening your heart, leads to, yeah, taking actions and being— taking on ways of being that you've never had before, and allowing your partner to do to do that, allowing your partner to change into something you've never seen them be before, seen anybody be before in your relationship with you.

Yeah.

And so that's a continuous process of feeling helplessness and grieving whatever a relationship was, whatever our identity was in relationship.

Yes.

And I think that that also paradoxically keeps— is what keeps the relationship fresh and keeps the spice going.

Absolutely.

You know, there's like that the NRE, the new relationship energy, that often is considered to die off after a certain period of time. And in my experience, it comes right back every time a relationship goes through a big move and a big healing process and becomes redefined and open and more, more accepting and more aware of more parts of both people.

Yeah, I think it's a more grounded version of the new relationship energy every time, is my experience. But yeah, it keeps it fresh and alive and Yeah, that's a beautiful way to say it. And one of the reasons that relationships in particular are so— we take them so personally is because we suffer under the illusion that the other person's actions or reactions are going to affect us more with an inordinate amount of pressure, so to speak. So Meaning, oh, if he quits his job, then what does it mean for me? Oh, if she, um, you know, becomes a vegan, what does it mean to me? Right? Like, and so we're constantly monitoring the person's change on the other side and what it's— how it's going to affect our life. More profoundly, we're monitoring what they're doing and how it's going to affect our identity. And also we're monitoring to see if they're going to hold us in place or not hold us in place, right? So, "Oh, wow, you're going through something that makes it that you don't want to caretake me anymore, but then who the fuck's going to take care of me?" Because I've created my whole system to create caretakers. I've created a system where I feign helplessness and I'm weak and a victim, and therefore, I find people who want to take care of me. So, if you stop taking care of me, then I'm going to have to become empowered But really, I feel that caretaking is love, so now I feel unloved. And it goes like that. We get very scared by what the other person's growth typically. And so there's a lot of pressure. We'll exert a lot of pressure and get very angry over it typically, or sad or whatever. We'll use every tool in the toolbox to try to keep the person. In the place where we feel safe.

It's interesting to see the pattern where often in a relationship where somebody is afraid of being held back or of holding back, they're also— the same person is also doing, doing the disempowering for themselves and the other, or, or bidding for the disempowerment.

That's right, totally it is. And the other thing is that like all these fights that we get into in our relationships, they're all— you can all— you can break them down to pretty much the same basic thing. It's like One person feels unseen and— or so both people feel unseen in that moment or feel unheard, unseen, not grokked, not respected, some version of that. And there's a desire to change the other person. And that is the quintessential part of all fights and that somebody's closed or both people have closed down their heart. And said, "Oh, I'm not going to be open." So every fight can be resolved with one and/or both people saying, "Oh, I'm going to love you unconditionally even in this situation. Here, let me take the time to see you. Let me make sure that I'm seeing you correctly. Let me make sure that I understand what you need to be respected. And I'm not going to try to change you anymore." If you flip that switch in a fight, the fight goes away. And it might take a while to go away. And that's why I said, so most people, and that when they're in that fight, they do this. They're like, yeah, I'm not gonna open to my heart until they open their heart. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna see them until I'm seen. Like, I'm always the one who's seen them. I'm always the one who's—

I need a partner that does the work.

Yeah, exactly. All that version, right? As if it's like saying, hey, I'm not going to be free until they're free. Like, what the hell? It makes no sense from this perspective. Like, oh, if I drop my needing to be seen, if I drop my closeness, if I lower the armor, that's my freedom. I get that no matter what. If the person's yelling, if the person's like— I get that. And my freedom might be to leave, my freedom might be to draw a boundary, but I get my freedom. And why would I care? This is that, that focus, you know, the focus on self. Like, and then they have to make their choice. They get to make that choice. They—

so it's—

yeah, that's the fascinating piece, is just that every one of the fights, I don't care, I've never seen a fight that isn't basically about that in a relationship.

Yeah. And then if you do find your freedom, then you're giving your partner an opportunity to love you in your freedom. Which will do things for them as well.

Yeah. And unless you have somebody with like a severe psychological disorder, when you show up and you listen to them and you unconditionally love them and you hear them, they won't continue to react the same way towards you. They will change. They will— oh, I feel seen, I feel safe. And then they will show up more loving, they will listen better, they will want to meet you there. Yeah, it might take them 20 minutes, but they'll want to, right?

Or, or even a few weeks or however much time it takes.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. And, uh, another thing that this points to about this, you know, being in relationships where there's, there's an agreement that each is in it for their own freedom and supportive of one another.

Yeah.

Um, there can then become a level of, well, what does that mean and what are the tools. And I see this be a common thing where somebody gets on to some path of like what works for them. And I've seen this happen with somebody who gets really into psychedelics and then the other partner doesn't, or somebody gets really into, uh, into this work, into view art of accomplishment type work, or somebody who gets into whatever is out there, and then the other partner doesn't necessarily agree that that's their path. And then the argument is not about that we're here for both of our freedom, but the argument is about what path to freedom actually is.

And then you're trying to change them. Yeah, I mean, Tara went a completely separate way for a decade. You know, I know I've talked on this thing about her making fun of my path, and you don't get to control that in another person. But the best approach in that is to learn what their path is. What does happen sometimes is people are like, that's not my path, but they're not doing any path, they're not doing any work. You know, that like, like, therapy is not my path. That's not my path. I, I'm just reading books and, and intellectualizing, and that'll be my path. And but you're not seeing the growth. And so then address that issue. Then the issue is like, hey, I don't see the— I don't see whatever you're doing being effective. Like, I don't see you living up to your side of the agreement, which is, you know, working on your own freedom. And so I think that that's more of the thing to try to get somebody else to do it. But there is a subsection of this. Let's take it out of transformation for a moment where it's like, I am clear that I want to be non-monogamous and that's what I need to do for— or I am clear that I need to try to start a billion-dollar company and that's what I need to do. And the other person's like, I am clear I don't want to be in a non-monogamous relationship, or I am clear that I don't want you to have a boyfriend, or I'm clear that I don't want to be the wife of a or husband of a, you know, multinational CEO. There's something in that which is really fascinating. And I think that that's basic misnomer there is that people think— and those are big ones, we can do small ones too, which is like, I'm clear that like I don't want to do the dishes, and I'm clear that I don't want to live with someone who doesn't do the dishes, right?

I'm clear I want to wake up at 8 in the morning and I want to meditate with my partner, or I'm clear that the kids should have a certain schedule.

Right. Yeah, exactly. And so, in that one, what usually be— one person compromises or both people compromise. And I'm going to use that word really specifically, like to compromise, meaning that I am going to neglect some aspect of myself to make you happy. I highly recommend never doing that. Highly recommend never doing that because that always builds up resentment. There's always— now you're walking around the house going, "I can show these 3 parts of myself but not these 2 parts of myself. Can't say this thing. I got to walk on eggshells." All this other weight and friction comes into the relationship rather than saying, okay, like What we're going to do now is we're going to figure out a way that you get your needs met and I get my needs met. And we're going to be smart enough to do that. And we're going to commit to doing that. And if for whatever reason that can't be done, which in my experience never can't be done, then okay, then maybe the relationship's not right for us and let's admit that. Let's get there. But neither of us are sacrificing. We're both going to get our needs met and we'll find a way to do it. There's always a way. Like, okay, we're going to get someone to come in and do the dishes, or we can do the dishes at like 7 o'clock at night together, or we're using— I would hate to say this, but disposable, recyclable, and put it all in the compost, or what. I mean, there's a thousand solutions to every problem. And if you're not in a power struggle with the person, if you're not trying to get them to change, there's always this solution.

Yeah, I think a part of that is seeing, seeing the other's needs or the other's stated needs as not threats, but as something that points to a deeper need. That's right. Because then you can kind of climb down the ladder of apparent needs into what's actually needed, which tends to become sort of the same thing. The need for, the need for safety, the need for autonomy, the need for connection.

Yeah, beautifully seen. And, and that is why The job is to constantly keep an open heart, right? Is to not armor up and think you're under attack, to see that you can only really be attacked on something that you're thinking is bad about yourself. And so, like, "Oh, I want you to get your needs met. Of course I do. And I want my needs to get met. And how do we do both?" is the open-hearted approach as compared to, "No, I will not do that." And the crazy thing is, it's like, I see this in, you know, no, I will not have a non-monogamous relationship. If you have that boundary, that's fantastic. I love that boundary. But it's— it is so much different than saying, oh, I really hear that you're sexually unsatisfied in the marriage, and I want you to be sexually satisfied in the marriage, and I'm not okay with us having relationships outside, or I'm not okay with us not having relationships outside of the marriage as long as we're not connected, or whatever the boundary is. It's so much different than I won't do that. I won't do that is this armored defensive than saying, oh, I can really acknowledge and see your needs and I really want you to get your needs met. And oh, by the way, this scares the fuck out of me because I think we're about to get a divorce because you have a need that I'm not gonna be able to fulfill.

I hear a vulnerability of, okay, these are my needs, these are your needs. There's openness to that this might not actually be a match and that we can't both get them met at the same time. And there's an openheartedness to really looking for where that correspondence might be.

Yeah.

And ultimately, once again, going back to that original principle of each of us is in it for our own freedom. And in support of each other's freedom.

Yeah.

Uh, which means if I have a need, my need doesn't necessarily— like, my need doesn't need to become a control pattern upon you.

Correct. Yeah, that's it.

My need becomes something that I inquire into myself and vulnerably share my process in, and it's my responsibility to get that need met.

Yeah. And the other part about, like, this— I think about relationships, like, we first talked about, like, the Like if you think about like standing upright and having your arms out like in a cross, most poetry, most stuff is— most art is written about like the arms of the relationship, the beginning and the end. And we're talking right now about the body of the relationship, which is kind of where most of the self-help books hang out. And the thing about that body of the relationship is it's— if you— I'll tell you in a story, which was working with a client, and the client was saying how she felt like she was being attacked all the time by her husband. And I was like, yeah, so who gives a shit? And she— I remember her looking at me like, what? I'm like, yeah, but like, so he's attacking you. If you are different than your authentic self because of an attack, they've won. He's won. You're like, the only thing that you have to focus on is being authentic in the face of that attack. 'Cause otherwise, like you're already out of yourself. You've already, you know, like lost, so to speak. So how do you wanna be in the face of this attack? If it's true even, which it's most likely not true. It's most likely the way it kind of works in relationships is someone thinks they have something to defend, the other person sees that defense as an attack. They think they have something to defend, and then the first person sees that defense as an attack. And both people thinking they're defending themselves and both people feeling attacked. That's typically how it works.

And then creating an attack by doing something like, like not being their authentic self, right, in the face of an attack, which then makes the other partner feel more disconnected, more abandoned.

That's right. So it's like, oh yeah, great, they've attacked you, so how do you want to be? And I've never seen somebody deeply get in contact with that and say, okay, yeah, what I want to do is be closed down. They might say that they want to draw a boundary. They might say, oh, what I want is to is to say, "Oh, I don't want to be treated like this," or, you know, "Please stop yelling at me. If you have to keep on yelling at me, then I'm going to leave, and I'm happy to come back when you're not yelling at me." Lots of ways to handle it, but I've never heard anybody say authentically, "What I want to do is I want to like shut down and attack. That'll feel great. Wow, being defensive feels freaking great. I want to be more defensive with my husband." I've never seen like, "The marriage that I want is, uh, 55% more defensive. And, uh, you know, like, it's just— it's not what's right. That's true for us. And so that's the, the thing. And, and, and it reminds me of this other story. I love this story. As, um, Tara and I saw a therapist, uh, years, years back, and, and he had this story which I loved, which was he was working with the client, and the client went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and started to pee and missed the toilet. And he noticed a thought. The first thought he had was, "God damn it, she moved the toilet." And in that moment, he had this recognition like, "Oh crap, I'm totally holding her responsible for everything. None of it's her job." And it kind of saw through this whole thing of he was blaming his whole life on his wife. Do you want a life where you're blaming somebody else for your own happiness? No, nobody wants it. And yet here we are finding ourselves in this, in the middle of a relationship. And just that acknowledgement of this isn't the way that we want to be with each other, this is the way we want to be with each other, that's huge.

And so we've, we've talked now about sort of the beginning of the relationship and the kinds of agreements and the kinds of the sort of a consensual reality in the, in a relationship for for growth and for freedom. We've talked a lot about the body. And now, what if you do this work, and you find, oh, you know what, this, this relationship has played its course?

Yeah.

And what we're actually looking for is something different, or what I'm looking for is something different. Or my partner left me, and they are shutting down, and I feel powerless. And how do I stay connected to them? While they're shutting down to me.

Before I get there, one of the things I'll just say about the middle of the relationship too is that one of the things to just look for in a relationship is there's a lot of places where somebody thinks they want something and they have so much craving for it that they're actually pushing it away. That can be like a jealousy. If you find yourself in a relationship where you have this strong desire for something and you keep on trying to get it and you can't get it, then it's really great to acknowledge that you're actually pushing it away, which means subconsciously you're not ready for it, don't want it, haven't admitted what it's going to do to your identity, some version of that. I, I just think that's a really good, like, little helpful hint for people who find themselves like, I just want this, I want this so badly, and I can't get it here. It's like, to know that that energy is actually pushing that away from you, which means that there's some way in which you haven't fully accepted your desire for it and willingness to receive it.

Yeah, it seems to apply across the board to cravings.

Yes. Yeah, the deep cravings. Yeah. So on the end of the relationship, the ending of the relationship is often like the most productive time in a relationship if you're approaching it like this is a spiritual growth thing. And so what I've seen, the great story I have on this is like, you know, the first time I experienced it, I had a friend who had the love of his life, had been in the longest relationship, which at the time was 11 months or something. He was perennial bachelor until he was 40 or something. Anyway, he was in this situation and at the time he was overweight, drinking too much, his business was failing, and had this breakup, had lost himself quite a bit in the relationship, had this breakup. And we had this conversation about like, "Hey, this is a great time if you can mourn it." And so he had this long drive. He was doing restoration work and he had this long drive across Arizona every day, not every day, every week. And he would cry and mourn the whole time there and back. And then 2 months later, it was crying, mourn for a couple hours there and back. And 6 months later, he wasn't drinking too much. He was in shape. He was running a successful business. Got new contracts. His entire world had changed. And when I asked him about how did that work, a couple of things that he said that were exceptional. One is he goes, "Oh my God, I had no idea I could make sounds like that. When I was mourning, I had no idea." And the other thing was he said, "I started by mourning the relationship, but then I mourned everything that got me into the relationship, all the trauma, all the patterns that got me into that relationship. I could mourn and move through them." And, and that's the opportunity in the end of a relationship, is if you fully mourn it, you're not going to replicate the relationship. If you fully allow yourself to feel the sadness and the heartbreak and the hurt, it will increase your capacity to love in the future, and it will mandate a deeper form, a more connected form of love from the next relationship. You'll be attracted to different people. And so there's this huge opportunity in a breakup to allow that mourning to occur and to, and to move through all those difficult emotions and embrace them and love them. It's like a gigantic opportunity rather than dismiss it.

And that includes the person breaking up and the person being broken up with, or whatever, or even the people around them, you know, mourning the, mourning the identity of the couple and the way that they related to them.

Yeah, that's right.

Um, and one of the things that seems to be just like a really common factor when, when I see people or in my life after a breakup remain friends or be really close friends or even decide that they actually want to stay together but just in a completely different form of relationship. The factor there is that they've actually grieved it fully.

Yes, that's right.

And those who have not done that are the ones who are continuing to hold the bitterness and get into another relationship just like it.

Yeah, that's exactly right. That's, that's exactly the pattern that I see in the world. I think the other And the front end of breaking up with somebody is this moment, "Should I break up with them or should I stay with them?" It's like that crazy moment that people have. And my response to that is almost always the same, which is, "Why don't you just be fully who you are? And if it ends, it ends. And if it doesn't, it doesn't." It's the same thing I tell people who are thinking about quitting a job. It's like, there's all these ways that you have stopped being yourself in the relationship. Why don't you just be yourself in the relationship? And if it becomes a dumpster fire, it's a dumpster fire. You're done anyways. And if it doesn't become a dumpster fire, and it's like some like 70, 80% of the time, the relationship heals just from that, just from people showing up and saying, this is how I want to be, you know, love it or leave it, but I'm not going to defend myself. I'm just going to be me. And I hope you stay, or I hope you don't, or whatever it is. Like, it doesn't matter. It's just like, my job is just being me here and not being defensive about it. And it's incredible how much that changes. Yeah, yeah.

And the inauthenticity is the source of a lot of the pain, all of the pain, really.

That's correct. Yeah. And usually the person on the other side is more attracted, more excited, more eager to be involved after, you know, whatever, 1 to 6 months of pushing up against the, "Oh no, wait, no, wait, this isn't what we agreed to," that kind of stuff. But it's amazing how often that works. And if it doesn't work, then as far as keeping a relationship alive, it definitely works as far as teaching people how to be themselves in the next relationship. It works as far as creating a more amicable split up and all that stuff.

Yeah. And then the final piece I just see to mention here is that it can be a journey to be fully authentic in a relationship, and to hold somebody to being fully authentic in a relationship isn't loving them as they are in their journey. And the same is true for yourself.

That's right. Yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't think that journey ever ends. I hope it doesn't. I hope I continue to find ways to be more authentic and, and more, more supporting of myself and others. I think That's the other piece is that I think is really critical is that anything that you can't love about your partner, anything that you want to change about your partner, the most useful thing to know about that stuff is that's something you can't love about yourself. It's something that you have no flexibility in yourself. It's something that you judge yourself for or would judge yourself for. That my ability to be Patient and loving and caring towards every aspect of Tara is a direct reflection of my capacity to be loving and patient with the aspects of myself, period. And so I think that's a really important way to look at it. There's nothing that you're— there's nothing that the other person has in them that you don't have in you, and that you— there's no way it's like, I really love their this, but I can't love it in myself, or vice versa. It's not how it works.

Yeah, and it's the people who love themselves who tend to also be the most attractive.

Yes, and definitely the most— they create the healthiest relationships. Yeah, like, I've never seen, like, two people who just, like, deeply love themselves and can accept themselves who, who are, like, in a just diabolically horrible dysfunctional relationship. Like, it just— like, you just think about— you can't even imagine it. And so, yeah, exactly. And the other thing to say about that, I think that for some people that's a little scary, like, oh, I'm gonna love myself. There's some fear if I do that, then, you know, I'll be non-ambitious, or I'll be evil, or I'll be— there's a, there's a slew of things that— look around, see if you can find anybody who truly loves themselves and is evil, or truly loves themselves and is like, you know, non-ambitious, like self-care and all that stuff doesn't go away with self-love.

Oh, beautiful. I think this is a great place to wrap it up.

Yeah, man, that was good. I, I could see us having a whole nother podcast on, on relationships. I feel like we could delve in deeper. Oh, you know what would be cool? Maybe we do it with you and, um, and Alexa.

Yeah, I'd love that.

Interviewed me on that thing. That would be really cool to have like a three-way conversation. That'd be fun.

Yeah, let's do that next time.

Okay, awesome. All right, thanks, Brett. All right, good to see you.

You too.

Bye.

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