Marriage, Love, and Death

Welcome back, everybody. Shortly before our wedding, Alexa and I sat down with Tara to talk about marriage, what commitment means to us, and the fear of losing a life partner. This was a sweet and vulnerable episode to record, and I really hope you enjoy it.

Woohoo! I feel nervous.

Yay! I welcome your nervousness. I love nervousness. Thank you. Yeah, I look forward to hearing your questions.

The curiosity that's coming up first for me is I have so many projections of your relationship with Joe. And at this point, it's really, really positive. I know you pretty well now, and I love your relationship. I really admire it. So there's a lot of curiosity there to begin with. But the thing I'm noticing is I've always had a lot of projections since, since I barely knew you. So the question is, is like, what is it like to be playing the role of a person who really helps others relate well. You both really help people change the way that they interact with all kinds of people, but especially the people that they really care about. So then what is it like to be that role pretty publicly together with your partner, who is also your business partner? What is it like to have that much projection on your relationship?

It feels like there's a lot of questions in there.

Yeah, you're right.

I don't even know where to start answering that. Give me a second because I had like 40 thoughts run through my head. First of all, I'll say to be doing it publicly is incredibly vulnerable and sometimes incredibly hard for me. And it is what we teach, so then I have to walk what we're teaching and remind myself like, "I gotta walk my talk." So that part is hard. And there have been retreats where Joe and I have started haggling over what we're gonna do next very publicly in front of participants. And that's always edgy, but I'm always like, nope, I'm not gonna bring this to a back room. We're gonna do this here. Not all of it, but parts, parts of it here so that we can figure this out together in front of people and have them watch our process. That has hap— you all probably have seen that it can be messy. It's hard. It's also great. I feel like, first of all, I love working with Joe. I love working with Joe, which was a surprise of our marriage. It was not— you know, we went in having two very different careers, and at some point they merged. And I'd always dreaded the idea of working with a love partner. I'd heard horrible stories about it. And—

Yeah.

And it's been— I'd say it's been like the greatest surprise of this act of our— this portion of our marriage is how much we love working together. Like, we just love working together. We love creating retreats. We love being in the room together. The last two retreats we've done, we haven't always been in the room together. And it's like, wait, I miss being in the room with you. It's, it's just been a surprise. Um, having the projections on us is, I mean, it's part of being a facilitator is dealing with the projections. So I'd say we're, accustomed to it. I always want to shed the golden shadow projections, the golden projections, those positive ones, because Joe and I, we work hard to keep our marriage alive. It has not always been easy. We've had hard years. Our first years of marriage were brutally hard. You know, there's that first love and you can kind of get swept away by the energy of love. And then you have to come crashing down and learn how to— we had to come crashing down and learn how to, like, who are we without all of that, um, projected bestness on each other? And, you know, learn how to climb the mountain together from reality, from authenticity, and not just emotion and love, but reality. And so The golden projections always feel, um, they don't, they don't feel like they do honor to the work Joe and I have done, and they don't feel like they do honor to the reality of marriage, which is it is work. It's joyful, it's playful, it's the most fulfilling self-work, having someone else reflect you to yourself, and it's work. So I, the golden projections break my heart a little bit. 'Cause I wanna say like, oh yes, it's amazing. We're an amazing couple and we fricking work hard at it and we struggle and we fight. And some of you have seen our fights very publicly. Like we, you know, we have to tangle with different parts of our personality to find that sweet balance spot. And we live in that dance.

Hmm.

It's funny when we use the word fight, like what you guys, what you're referring to as far as anything I've seen that would be referred to as a fight is like in much of my experience of relationships and what has been, you know, modeled to many of us looks like just baby smooth or maybe like a little bit of like ripples here and there.

Yeah.

And it's like, oh, one of you feels unseen. And the other one is like, "Hmm, yeah, you feel unseen. I also feel unseen." And then like, you sit in it for a minute and then something moves. And it's not like, I've never seen you guys in like a big, like, fight fight.

Yeah, anything I would consider to be a fight, yeah.

Not to say that it doesn't happen, and not to say that that would be a sign that it's not a beautiful relationship, It's just, it's just an interesting, like, the different levels of like what we could be talking about when we say the word fight.

I think when I— yeah, it's really interesting. Joe and I, our fights were big early, right, right after marriage, that first year or two, we had big fights. We had to get— that's when we started therapy and really learning like nonviolent communication and how to communicate and say, oh, when you did this, I felt like— that's where a lot of our work comes from, all of those lessons, because neither of us had good role models for fighting. It was like, take you down. Um, so right, I imagine on the surface our fights look very, very subtle and sort of calm. They don't feel calm inside. They feel equally like, ah, ah, you know, there's the— there's a— this is uncomfortableness about them as we have to, you know, whatever we're, we're haggling over, they're like inner haggles.

Yeah. And I also notice a fluidity in it and less fleeing from it into reactivity, more just being like, this is the way that I'm feeling right now.

Yes, that's exactly right. We both have, I think, have a practice of let's dive into it and we'll go at it, go do our emotional work separately. Like I might go hit the pillows and like, ah, I hate this, you know, hit the pillows or steering wheel. Move my anger and my grief, my fear. And then we come together and it's like, okay, diving in and figuring out what's the, what's the nugget that wants to be seen or the hurt that wants to be held. Mm-hmm.

So I have another question around this, uh, like how you guys have, like you started out thinking you wouldn't wanna work together and now you work together and very smoothly. I've worked with past partners before in my life. It's been commonplace. Sometimes it's worked really well. Sometimes it's been codependent. Sometimes it's been just in pattern. And I'm curious for you, how did that journey go with you and Jill from not wanting to work together to recognizing you wanted that and doing it from a place that isn't codependence or just like, we're merging now, now we're just the same person, we're doing the same thing. Of course our careers are the same in some sense. What— how did that happen?

It's a great question. And it almost happened so smoothly that I can't tell you how it happened. You know, when those changes like we just had it, I don't even know. I can't even remember logically how it happened. Give me a second to remember. It's interesting because in a way we were always—

this is a—

I'm going to contradict what I said earlier. In a way, from day one, we were always doing quote unquote the work together. I very much remember thinking, I can marry this man because he's as dedicated to learning about himself and supporting his self-development as I am. And that was to me the number one principle, most important thing I was looking for in a life partner was someone who would do the work with me. So that was in our marriage from day one. Before we even agreed to get married, we agreed to do a 10-day meditation retreat together and be in therapy together. Like those were, and then travel through Southeast Asia for 6 months. Those were like 3, um, agreements we made to do together before we even decided to get married. So that was always— it was always there. We were always discussing self-development. We were always discussing meditation and awakening and therapy and self-discovery. And that was just— that was, that was the very found— a very foundation of our marriage from day one. So we weren't doing it professionally then for the first 20 years or however long, but it was always there, which is, I think, why the— why I can't even remember when it became professional, because it was just always in the field. Um, there was something I wanted to say, I forgot. How is it not to be codependent and mergy? I would say we've had moments of being codependent and mergy Like that is the journey is like learning when I'm merging and like, oh, pull back, back to myself, my roots, my backbone. What do I want here? And so it's not that it doesn't happen, it's just becoming aware of it when it does happen. And the codependence piece, once upon a time I had a really negative connotation of codependence. I went to a women's college, like I'm never gonna be codependent. And then, oh my gosh, I'm being, you know, when I first became a mom, I very much felt codependent. Codependent, like, oh, I'm just in service of Joe's career and all I'm doing is taking care of the kids. And at some point I had to redefine codependence and redefine what was actually happening for me. There was finding my needs and speaking up for them, and then there was tracking inter- or intra-dependence, which I would very much say Joe and I are in tra-dependent. We very much depend on each other for different things and support each other, but it's bidirectional. Joe supports me, I support him. So it goes both ways, whereas I think codependence just goes one way and one person's needs aren't getting taken care of. Yeah, there was something else. Yeah, I don't know if that answers your question, Brett.

Yeah, it does. I see like the codependence being one-directional as maybe one way it can go. Another way could just be if we're both trying to get our own needs met and not seeing how those needs are met, then we could just be in, we could be at an equal kind of dynamic of both feeling unmet.

Yep.

And so that makes me, that kind of ties back to a question that I had moments ago that is around you know, both of you, both of you being dedicated to your self-development. Both of us feel dedicated to our self-development. And what failure modes have you found in that? For example, I just thought of this idea of anything that comes up in our relationship might mean that we have to go do some work about it. And it might get a little bit, I don't know, like the most derogatory way to describe it, like navel-gazing or self-indulgent. But also another one could just be that we're like, fixated on the path in a dogmatic way rather than like really just deeply living everything. And I'm curious if you have, if you and Joe have ever found yourself sort of fall into like a self-development black hole together because you both share that drive, that desire, and perhaps some of the same blind spots.

I can't think of one we've fallen in together. I can think of ones I have personally fallen in. One of my biggest learnings was after experiencing sort of a heart opening, was I was just in love with everything. And so that I could see the, I could see what everything was coming from or the care behind it. And I could feel the love for it and from it, even if it was kind of twisted. And I didn't have boundaries. So I had this huge heart opening without access to my own boundaries, which was a huge hole for me. With Joe and everybody else not having boundaries. You know, those heart openings, your boundaries are there to allow the heart opening, not have the heart opening so you don't need any boundaries. So that was like, I would say that was a good year or two of my life of having to find the, the boundaries so that I was included in the heart opening. It wasn't just for everybody else. And that was definitely hard in our marriage 'cause certain things had to change. And I had, and Joe had to watch me really struggle to find and hold, not say them, but hold them. That was the part. I could name a boundary, but holding it was a very different action. So that was one kind of pitfall in the process for me. There was another one I thought of when you first brought it up and I can't remember what it is now. Navel gazing. Oh, the second pothole for me was sort of when I first discovered projection work. And this happened right around the time of that heart opening, it, Without Boundaries. In the projection work, I'd be like, oh, I'm projecting. And then I assumed it was my responsibility to take care of everything. Oh, if I'm projecting that this person is crossing my boundaries, then I'm crossing my own boundaries. And that's about me. And I kind of could go into spin on the projection work as opposed to like, oh, and I still get my boundaries.

Like, oh yeah.

Like it is about me and I still get to name what I want. I still get to say I don't want that and I can't be around you if this and I can't be around that person if XYZ or I'm gonna go take care of myself this way. Yeah. So those were my two biggest potholes and they very much happened in relationship in my marriage. So.

Yeah, maybe a different flavor of the same question is just like, what is it like to be, um, in a marriage with the person I assume is your primary sort of like, I want to say spiritual playmate, but maybe, you know, self-development partner.

Um, so yes, he is primary, but I have an entire community of people who are I would consider my spiritual sangha and self-development sangha. I have my women's group, my dear women friends. I was just with friends from college when we last talked, Brett, and I very much consider them part of my sangha. So it's amazing to have Joe as my principal partner, the person I spend probably the most time with, the person I dream next to. Share that journey, but he is not the only one, which I think is part of our sanity. Like, I have a very big community of a deep— not necessarily huge, but a deep community of people who also are my spiritual and self-discovery sangha. And I couldn't be partnered with someone who wasn't. Like, I, you know, I couldn't. They're two of the things I care about. Aside from like my kids and being a parent, they're two of the things— the spirituality and self-development are two of the things that I feel like, oh, this is what I was put here to do, whatever that means, right? This is like my soul's journey. So I would have to have a partner who met me that way. I don't think I couldn't not.

That really resonates for me.

I was going to say, I think a lot of what I'm speaking to speaks to your two relationship too, right? Like you have those same shared— It's like a shared, like, "Oh, this is the ocean we want to sail in." Yeah, that really resonates.

And it feels really good to me to be on that journey together with Brett. And I guess I do have this feeling. It's like a little bit of a feeling of like, huh, I can't quite find the right metaphor. It's sort of like, oh, I'm— this is, this is clearly it because I am all the way up this, uh, roller coaster with you and it feels like, you know, nothing could compare to this. This is it. This is the thing. And also, that's kind of scary. It feels like all my eggs are in this basket.

Yeah, I could dive down a rabbit hole on that fear. I'm not sure if that's what we're here, but if you were—

yes, that's exactly what we're here for.

Can you hang out with the fear, Alexa? Because it is true, right?

This is—

yeah, and just hang out with the upper, just breathe and hang out with it.

I noticed there's a lot of sadness immediately. Yeah.

Yeah. And if you hang out with that and just be with it and let your breath move through it Mm. What was that?

Yeah, I feel like I just dropped down deeper. Yeah. Great.

So letting yourself be in that down deeper. And just hang out, nowhere to go, just hanging with it. What's that?

Yeah, there's this, um, bounciness here, which is, um, I think kind of just a general, like, um, huh, it's pretty hard to put words to. There's a lot of feeling of grief It reminds me, of course, of losing Brian, my former partner who died, and in general of all of the mortality that's really going on around us right now. And a feeling of like, on the one hand, that the deep knowledge that life can be really hard helps me kind of bear the fear that it will be hard in that way again, because yeah, it probably will. And there's no time to waste. You know, there's no reason to try to hold that at bay. Um, like, after Brian died, I wasn't like, oh, I wasted all this time with somebody who died on me. It was more like, oh, every moment when I could have showed him more love, I wish I had.

Yeah. And what's that feeling?

There's a wanting to pour myself out.

So just curious, if you look at Brett, what does that feeling want to say to him? Or if anything?

I want you to want to be here with me as much as I want to be here with you. Mm.

I do. I do.

I think we just found some of your vows. And so having named that, how is that feeling in your system? You talked about the fear. What, having gone down to those depths and named that to Brett, what happens? What's going on with the fear, if anything?

Yeah, it's not currently feeling like fear. It feels like aliveness and kind of electricity.

Yeah, great. Can you let your whole body just have that aliveness and electricity? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. You all can't see her, but she's positively glowing.

Yeah, me too.

Yeah, so beautiful.

What comes up for me in that process was like when I, when I heard her— and this is also true like other times she said this— where she feels like she has all her eggs in one basket, there's like a constriction or a fear in me. And like tracing that back to You know, for her it traces back to having lost a partner. For me, it traces back to being in an extreme sports world where people were frequently losing partners. And, you know, at the time I was in a long-term relationship and we both felt that like, wow, we are each other's person. There's nobody that gets us anything like each other and we're traveling all the time. We don't even have like stable friends other than those that we see while we're traveling and jumping. And so we felt this like deep eggs in one basket thing. And that I think is part of the catalyst that had us open up our relationship and explore polyamory was this like, I want there to be somebody else that you feel connected to in case I leave you. Wow.

Wow.

And we wanted that for each other.

Mm-hmm.

And so there's something very visceral that comes up for me when I hear Alexa feel like she has all her eggs in one basket. And I want to, like, my initial kind of, I guess my initial response was to be like, no, no, no, that's not true. You got eggs everywhere. There's people that love you. You got like this, that. Yeah. And also there's the reality of the way that that feels for her. And there's the reality of the way that, there's a way that it's true. There's a way that it's fully true. And there's also the way that it's not. But like, I, in witnessing this process, I feel more capable of being there in the way that it is fully true. And there's grief in that. Like grief in that it's not just a potentiality. It's actually a reality that one of us is gonna lose the other unless we both die at the same time. Which is going to feel for all intents and purposes like all eggs in one basket.

Yeah. Yeah.

Despite the support structures we have.

That is what makes love so edgy, right? It is finite. Our time here is finite. That's the amazing— to me, that is the— what you just named is like, yeah. And I feel the same way when I look at Alexa right now. People can't see her, but her eyes are tearing up. It's just so beautiful. It's that finite, finite preciousness of love in the heart, right? That the heart has capacity for that, knowing that there's an end, knowing there's an end line. To me, that's just like truly amazing that as humans we do that again and again and our hearts can and want to do that.

Yeah.

And Brett, what I would invite you to do is be with the whatever the emotion when Alexa says, "Oh, all my eggs in one basket." You can see the truth, not truth, but be with the what's the emotion that comes up for you. So you're staying with yours, being with her words, but also staying with yourself.

Yeah, yeah. Initially it's like, it's a fear of being responsible for her devastation and heartbreak in the event that I depart. Uh, which is very clearly some mommy stuff too.

Uh, yeah. And can you hang out with the fear? We'll just do the same thing, just be with it and see how it wants to move or be seen or what it wants to do. So you're just following it, hanging out with it.

Yeah, inside there, there's the fear of There's the fear of being loved as I am, inclusive of my, uh, some form of like not knowing my risk tolerance, my naivete, my not being able to guarantee any form of safety.

Uh, can you stay hanging out with that? Let your heart and head hang with that fear.

Yeah, underneath that there's a grief of— there's a grief underneath feeling like all of that has ever been my responsibility. Yeah, or so beautiful feeling Yeah, feeling penned into my own cage of that I need to be some sort of like safe, stable, predictable, alive for someone else.

Yeah. And staying with that grief that I need to be safe, stable, dependable for someone else, can you stay with that and just see how if at all it wants to move. So you're letting it move through the system if it wants to.

Yeah, it was like a slight shaking, maybe more fear.

Mhm. Yeah. And if your body wants to have that shake, give it this, give it what it, you know, let it sequence.

Exactly.

And letting yourself breathe right through it.

Yeah, it feels like there's like the— there's a fear of being alone that I project onto her. Like, I project that she wouldn't be able to handle losing me if— when, when she speaks of the eggs in one basket thing, when in reality I feel like I wouldn't be able to handle it. Or there's like the fear of—

yeah, you want to just turn towards her and share from it. Go make contact with it and see how it wants to what it wants to share with her.

What comes up is sort of strange, but it's like a, an apology for any way that I've tried to create safety in any way that suppresses myself or us.

That's not strange.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

So beautiful. I wish everyone could see what I'm seeing. So beautiful, the two of you.

Which is breaking my brain a little bit. It's like, like I'm seeing, I'm seeing how much I've actually really bought into that. Like, not that I need to, but just like feeling like I really, really want to create safety.

Yeah. Yep.

And there's been some obligation in it, which is why there's been some, like, some tension around that.

Right. And you said the whole mama piece.

And yeah, there's still a part of me that wants to go BASE jumping, thinks about it at some point every day. And then there's a part of me that's like, oh, it's been like several years now. I'm not current. I haven't done it recently. It would be I feel confident that I could go do it safely, but also Alexa wouldn't have the context that my body has to feel confident with me. And I'd be putting her through something. Um, if I did. And then there's both sides of that that have felt in tension, like the tension of, I don't need to be responsible for someone's emotions about my safety. And then the other one of, I am responsible for the consequences of my safety or lack of safety, or—

Yeah, that's beautifully said too. When we, when we haven't gone down to the bottom of it with that apology, I'm sorry, that you just said to her so beautifully, then we can only ping-pong between, oh, I'm responsible, and fuck responsibility, right? We can only kind of ping-pong between the two. Yeah, opposed Right? We just kind of go back and forth reacting. Yeah.

Yeah.

So there's an irony here, something funny. Right before we started recording, I got a text from my sister where she's like, "I want to skydive with you sometime." And I would absolutely love that. And there's the part of me that's like, "Ah, what if?" What if something happens to her? I've had that happen, like, for friends who've, like, lost their sister on a skydive. And it's just like, there's all these backstories that just, like, well, that could be what happens now. Uh, and also there's just this, like, there's still something very alive in me that I've been a little bit afraid of for the past number of years of Like there's something alive in me that still wants to go out and like, take the risk and be like fully out there and exposed. And then there's a part of me that's like, oh, I don't need this story that I need to be fully out there and exposed to fully live. Which is true. I don't need that story, but there's still something in there that wants it.

And that scares me a little bit as we go into this, you know, marriage and we've got our eggs in the basket and And you're doing a podcast where you were just totally fully exposed in front of how many thousands of people?

Right, right. Well, that's different. Like, great, slay my ego, that's fine. Like, my—

The body.

Body, that's fine. But it feels less fine if it is like the consequences it has for others, and that's more identity. I can see there being my identity wrapped up in others there. Am I taking responsibility for them?

Yeah, I do want to say something. Yeah, um, you have evidence that I can survive the death of a partner.

Oh, I do, I do. And I just also have so much evidence of how much that sucked.

Yeah, no doubt.

And also there's so much evidence of like how much that is done for you in a strange way. There's, there's this way that I feel like Part of what has had us both attracted to each other so deeply and also both of us be so committed to self-exploration, self-understanding is how we've each lost a lot. For me, it was friends and a lot of acquaintances and people more on the like inner circle, but not a partner. And then in the periphery of my life, just being regularly happening over the course of decades. And for you, you had one particularly deep loss of a partner. And we've both been on journeys with things like survivor's guilt and wondering what we could have done differently if only we'd been seeing more clearly and picking up the pieces and going through the grieving process. And so I feel like there's— like, I benefit a lot from the fact that you have lost a partner and gone through that. And yes, I'm also very scared of having you go through that again on my account, uh, which is— yeah, there's identity there and not wanting to be the bad guy.

So we could— I don't want to rabbit hole, but a question that I want to give you for later is like, what would make you dying be the bad guy? Hmm.

Yeah.

What comes up is a dream that I had some couple of years ago. I just like kind of had this really, really intense dream where I just, in this dream, I was I basically died in some various, like some dream way that was actually a combination of a number of different ways. And the question came up in me, like, what if your death was a gift? Like, what if you saw it that way? And I like, it rippled through my life as though like all the people who are grieving and I could see the gift in it. And it was like a really powerful dream. There's a way that I'm like perhaps scared of letting that insight ripple all the way through because it's like, well, if I really see it as a gift, that's one way of seeing it. But if I really see it that way, just fully, if I let that really happen, then what will that mean? Will that make me more likely to, to leave everybody in a way that in that frame would be a gift, perhaps even the more tragic, the more of a gift, but like, I also don't want to be fetishizing that. So that's what I think the fear is. If there's, if like, if I really let that all the way in, will I just fetishize my own death or something? And so that maybe there's a wisdom in that concern. And there's also a way that it, prevents the full integration of fully letting myself see the way that it could be a gift if I were to leave Alexa. And it doesn't mean that I'm going to be more likely to do that. In fact, it might actually be more likely that I stay safe because I'm letting myself see all the ways that that could happen. I'm not afraid of them.

Yeah. What I hear is like the fear is if we let the fear fully through in, then there's more of a chance of it creating itself. I remember this with birthing, that I had a midwife teach me like, "Oh no, you have to actually acknowledge all your fears that you're going into in birthing." And I was like, "No, no, no. If I acknowledge them, then they're more likely to come true." She was like, "No, and the not acknowledging them is how they're likely to come true." That's the golden algorithm, right? And acknowledging them and feeling through the fear is how you sort of not ensure that they don't happen, but you, prop yourself up. You like— I forget exactly how she phrased it. So that's what I hear you saying when you say this.

Yeah, yeah. My phrasing would be that you process it, you process that data so that it is included in your—

right, so then you're not acting out on it. And I'm curious what your heart says about it, not the mind. I see the mind, really, but what's your heart say?

This might be my mind interpreting the heart, but it says like, Alexa chose this in me. It's not like this, this aspect of myself that I have this feeling that I, that I wrestle with or work through this particular flavor of feeling is not an inconvenience to Alexa. It actually is something that she's looking for. And so in feeling that, there's a lot of shame that falls away. There's like constriction that releases. And of course, I want to check with Alexa that that feels at all true for her, but Yeah, beautiful. But there's something in me that moves when I— there's like a heart opening, softening.

And it even looked like Alexa just softened next to you.

And yeah, I want to own that it doesn't feel like I chose this part of you. Like, this doesn't feel like the thing that I'm attracted to, but I do feel like I'm saying yes to all of you. It's part one of this answer, and part two is And I have a partiality towards you not having, yeah, like the feeling of obligation to stick around for me, or like the resentment that's in there and the as Tara said, the sort of like ping-ponging or swinging back and forth. Yeah. And part 3 is, "I don't really know what makes it that I'm so in love with you." On some level, you know, that I chose you is evidence that I absolutely am choosing this, even if I'm fighting it also.

Yeah, truly, deeply feel You're choosing this. There's not a shred of me that doubts that.

But don't leave me or else I'll be sad and it'll be your fault.

Back to obligation, Brett. Come on.

Don't worry, I'll take care of your feelings. Everything will be okay.

Okay, great.

I'll make sure that your feelings are Safe.

Doesn't that feel so much better? Oh, it's so beautiful. Yeah, really beautiful work.

Yeah, yeah.

So we got any other marriage advice?

My advice is go cuddle. You just did really deep deep, beautiful work together, can you go cuddle and snuggle and whisper and giggle together? That sounds really good.

Yeah, yeah.

My marriage advice: integrate.

Sounds lovely.

Oh, that's really good advice. Yeah, especially for when your partner is your primary spiritual playmate.

Yeah, the integration is key, and integrating together is really fun.

Yeah, yeah, there's a twinkle in your eye when you said that. What kind of integration are you talking about?

Whatever comes to my— no, not whatever comes to mind. Snuggles, cuddles, and whatever else. Yes, all of the above. Beautiful integration. Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Such a pleasure.

I love you so much.

Quite mutual. I love you so much.

Me too.

I love that I'll get to watch your marriage, and I've already watched so much of your partnership. Like, I feel so blessed. Even when I didn't know you were a couple. Yeah, yeah, thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Tara.

A pleasure, a true honor.

All right, thanks again for listening. If you're feeling the love, reach out and let us know how this episode touched you. You can find us on Twitter @artofacomp or through artofaccomplishment.com. From our hearts to yours, see you next time.