Experts On Relationships: Forgiveness, Fantasy, And Conflict

Foreign.

Welcome back to the Man Talk Show.

I am Connor Beaton.

And today, rather than having a special guest on, rather than having a singular guest on, we are pulling clips from previous episodes. And we're doing this because, well, first and foremost, my Incredible podcast producer, Mr. Aaron Durant, came up with this idea of featuring some of the past guests because we have really had some phenomenal guests on. And you know, you are probably busy, you're probably a very busy person and you may not have had a chance to dig into and dive into each and every single episode. And so we thought we would condense some of the top guests recently around relationships and feature some of the really deep and meaningful and impactful parts of their conversations. So we're going to be featuring a few people today. So let me tell you about them and I hope that you enjoy this episode. This might be one of those things that you listen to with your partner that you send to a friend to discuss because there are some really, really great topics, but also some really great perspectives in this short little episode. So here we go. First and foremost is Liz Earnshaw and she's going to be talking about meaning making in relationships. So where find meaning how relationships can help us understand our own view of what matters to us and what's meaningful to us. We're also going to then feature Mr. Jason Gaddis who's going to talk about navigating conflict. And then after that is Justin Laymiller on fantasies and Friends with Benefits. So that's going to be a good one. That was a great conversation that I had with him where we talked about the research and the data around fantasies and what people want and just a lot of the data that kind of exposes the things that we naturally are drawn towards to. So that's the third one. And then finally Shelina Ayana, a friend of mine, on forgiveness and acceptance. So how do we forgive within the context of a relationship and tools to actually do that, but also how to forgive ourselves. So this is jam packed with a few different pieces that you can dive into. I hope that you enjoy. Again, this might be something that you want to listen to with your partner. It might be something that you want to share with a friend. If you're single and discuss some of the topics in here, I always find that to be super helpful. Sometimes I'll share a podcast with a friend and we'll have a follow up call about some of the concepts, some of the topics, and, you know, how that relates to our own life and how we can integrate and embody some of the principles, some of the teachings that are baked into those episodes. So without any further delay, I hope that you enjoy. If any one of these stands out, definitely head on back and listen to that episode. We'll have the links in the show notes for you so you can find it easily. And yeah, let me know if you enjoyed and which one stood out to you the most. I would love for you to say more about this idea and concept of relationships, maybe even marriage serving the function of meaning making. Because I do think that there's a good amount of validity in that. I do think that there's a lot of people who are lacking in meaning. And I think in our society, as it becomes more chaotic and less certain, I also think that people are looking for certain structures to provide certainty for them. And so I think it's not just for me. When I look at how a lot of people are approaching relationships, it's not that, just that they're looking for something to give them a kind of philosophical, existential meaning in their life, but it's also that they're looking for something to just give them some semblance of certainty. You know, it's like, maybe this can just be the one fucking thing in my life that isn't chaos. I turn on the news, chaos. I see my family, chaos. I go to my work, chaos. And so maybe this will be the thing. And I think it puts a lot of pressure on relationships. So I'm going to pause there and let me know what you think about that.

Totally. And that in itself is a meaning, right? Like I am seeking a peaceful life and you're going to give that to me. I am seeking the ability to finally heal myself and you're going to give that to me. I'm seeking repairing the stuff that I'm there. There's a lot of kind of existentialism in our relationships now. And like you said, it puts a lot of pressure on relationships because then we get into them and it's just another human who, you know. And relationships are meaningful and they provide a lot of meaning. But I think sometimes we get into them and there's a lot of frustration because it's like, well, I've always hoped for this because I thought this was going to be the thing that finally made me feel loved or this was going to be the place where life isn't chaotic or we were going to be the power couple together and we're not now we have two kids and we can't be the power couple because one of us had to back away. And so I think like you said, that's, that's out there and we're looking for these things that are going to come from the relationship that are in some ways not tangible the way that maybe they could have been in the past. Right. You can go out and make a certain amount of money or figure out who's going to clean or who's going to do this, but it's pretty hard to overcome a disappointment of what meaning you thought was going to come from that relationship.

So what are some of the things that people are looking for? Like when you say that they're looking for meaning from the relationship, would an example of that be they're looking for the relationship to provide meaning in a purpose sense, in a career, like in a career oriented sense. Like what are some examples of that that you've seen? Because I think it will help the listene like, oh yeah, actually I am doing that. I have tried to do that to my relationship.

You know, I think that it might be something like a career goal, but there's usually something else underneath that which is like, I finally want to feel empowered or I want to be supported or I want to be seen. I want to be the priority. So there's a lot of like these underlying things beneath them, right. Like meeting my husband, I didn't need to get married.

Right.

Like I, I have a career, I'm pretty. If I wanted to, I could have kept going on my own. But what I really wanted was someone who was going to bring me a sense of security. And almost there was this challenge and like, oh, I really want to create a relationship that's healthy because I grew up and experienced such unhealthy relationships. And so this is like if at the end of my life I can create something that is really healthy and secure and communicative. That is what my goal is here in this relationship. So there's so many. But what I find is that we kind of think the other person is contracting with us sometimes for the same thing and then years down the road we find it's not the exact same thing. And that's where a lot of conflict can be created.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's also an interesting dilemma because just what you're saying there, right, Like, I didn't need to get married. Right. I didn't have to do that. And I think that a lot of women feel that perspective as well, which in, you know, the span of human history, as you're saying before, like marriage and relationships served A very utilitarian perspective. And so I think there is a sort of interesting crossroads there where it's like, okay, you know, there's a lot of men that are in that space are like, I don't really need to get married. And all of a sudden you have a lot of women that are also in that space, you know, now within the last, like, 50, 60 years of, like, well, I don't really need get married. And so I do think it's changed the narrative of, like, well, then why should we get married? Why do we get married? And if we do, how do we make that work knowing that the two of us are coming into this with the mindset of, I actually don't need this.

Yeah.

So how has that belief system, that narrative of, I don't need this? Right. Like, because I think my wife and I, like, Vienna and I were sort of the same. It was like, I don't necessarily need to be married, but it's. It serves a function. And so we'll enter into that, into that partnership, into that agreement, just like, we didn't need to be parents. And so I'm curious to get your. Your thought on that. How has that narrative changed the relational dynamics? And are there problems that come out of that?

I mean, I think there's a lot of good that can come out of it, right? So I don't want to say it's only problematic. I think the good is that you're going into it because you really want to be in it. Right. Like, it's not just because you weren't. You weren't able to go to school, so now you feel, like, financial connection with somebody else taking care of you or something like that necessarily, like, you want it. So there might be more dedication in some ways, but I think that on the flip side is when things get tough, there might still be that sense in the back of your mind of, well, I didn't really need this, or, I don't need this. And I think there's also, like you mentioned before, this heavier burden of, I. We entered into this without really needing it, so what has to happen to make us feel like we need to continue being in it? And for some couples, that might be a really high stake, right? Like, if this isn't happening, if I'm not feeling fulfilled all of the time, if I'm not feeling this all of the time, then why am I in this? I could just be living by myself. And so if someone isn't necessarily relationally focused and maybe more avoidant or even Like a more anxious person, they might try to push things within the relationship that don't work relationally because there's this big sense of I can be on my own and maybe less of a relational focus.

Do you feel like the resources that we need in modern day relationships have changed over the past 30, 40 years? And if so, what are some of those resources? What are some of those tools that in your clinical practice today that you see couples really requiring that maybe a lot of people are struggling to. To cultivate?

Yeah. You know, I think one is that people need so much flexibility now, so much fl. And not that people weren't flexible in the past. And I'm not going to write off like all of the challenges that have always come with relationships. I think that many are still the same, but because we're trying to do something different and create like this interdependence. Right. Where we both are able to like, navigate our own needs and also navigate the needs of the relationship. And I'm supporting you and being whatever you want to be and you're supporting me and whatever I want to be. That we need flexibility. And I think flexibility is really hard for couples. Really hard. Because we start the relationship with certain roles. And if you don't continually look at, does this role actually work, you're going to want those roles to continue. And sometimes they, they can't. And sometimes that might feel like a failing rather than, well, you know, this is. We have to be flexible here. Maybe for a while you have to step out of X, Y and Z while I step into this other thing. And are you able to do that? I also think obviously gender roles are having to be rewritten. You know, for example, my, my husband actually just left his job so that he could do more at home because my career was pulling me in a direction where it just wasn't working to be the one who was socialized to be so great at home and so great with the baby and all of that. And so I was working, but I was doing all of these things I automatically know how to do. And my husband had to be flexible enough and open enough about it's okay for gender roles to be flexible to say, okay, I'll quit my job and for a little while I'll do the school pickups, I'll do the lunches, I'll do all of that. So I think there's also a lot of consciousness and you have to work through your ego a little bit in relationships. And you said people want structure, but I actually think we're getting less of it in our relationships. And that's really uncomfortable.

I think one of the things that I really wanted to talk about was how do we navigate conflict? And you talk about resolving how to resolve our inner conflict as a means to getting to zero. Being able to navigate conflict externally in our relationship, but also how to be with our triggers. Right. The things that set us off. And I think from a tactical perspective, I can kind of hear my. Hear the audience being like, okay, how do we do this in real time? So what are some of the things that you would say in terms of how to resolve that inner conflict and be with your triggers when it's like the heat, Right. Your partner's coming at you or there's conflict with your parent?

Yeah.

What does that, what does that look like?

Yeah. So first we want to start with the view we've already, Connor and I have been laying down, which is conflict's not a problem, it's an opportunity. And then if we also have the view that I'm going to stand for three in my marriage, for example, standing for three is just again, a concept that you're operating from a context that says, no matter how bad it gets, I'm going to take a stand for myself, so I'm not going to lose me and I'm going to take a stand for you and I'm going to take a stand for us. So we're standing for three. It's a really powerful frame to then go, okay, when it gets hard between us, I've got to remember to fall back into this kind of contextual agreement we have, which is, I'm not going to throw you under the bus. I'm not going to just make you wrong and leave. I actually made a commitment here. So we have to start with just that kind of frame and context. And then practically, once we get into it, there's a few things we can do. But I got to start by saying conflict itself in the moment, a lot of us actually can't change a whole lot there. And it's better to put your attention on what happens as soon as the conflict is over, which is the repair. I call this the conflict repair cycle that's going to go on the rest of your life in high stakes relationships like a marriage. And if you can get good at the cleaning up the mess part, which is the repair and reconnection part, no matter how bad the conflict was or is or will be, you're going to be okay. And that process of getting good at the repair part is actually what's builds security in a long term relationship. So while there are techniques we can do in the moment, really the book is actually what happens after the moment. How effectively can we get good at cleaning up the mess? I just needed to say that.

Yeah.

And then I can offer a couple practical tips if you want. In the moment. Yeah.

I mean, I like the idea of the repair afterwards because I think people are always like, well, how do I catch myself in the moment?

Yeah.

And usually when I'm working with guys and they're the sort of like the volatile type or the loud type or even the shutting down type, and they say, you know, I lost it. I just lost it in the moment. I totally shut down and I, you know, I stormed out or I lost it and I got angry and I yelled and it's like, well, what did you lose in that moment? You know, it's like, well, you lost your conscious capacity to respond. You lost your prefrontal cortex. Now you're acting from that, from that backseat driver perspective, as you were, as you were saying. And so it is very challenging to catch ourselves in the moment. So focusing on the repair afterwards is important, I think is exactly what you're saying. But can you share some of what you have found to be supportive in the moment? Cause I know that people are definitely looking for those types of resources as well. And then we'll talk about repairing after.

Yeah, totally. So in the moment, especially if you can understand your conflict style seeker avoid. If we just keep it simple. If you're more of a seeker and you want the connection to you want, you're kind of coming at the person, you have to really start to get that that's actually more threatening to the avoider partner or other person. And if you, the sooner you can catch that, that like I'm making this worse, the better. And then you can do things like relax your shoulders, take three huge inhales and exhales instead of like standing squaring off with the other person. You can actually even just change your body language to the side a little bit, 3/4 view or even profile view almost. So you're, you're standing as if like the two of you are going to start to look at the conflict together, rather than I'm in this conflict with you fighting you. However, that said, for either avoider or seeker types, eye contact is pretty critical for not going into memory and making it worse and instead being in the moment. And even as scary and as uncomfortable as it is to look another person in the eye, especially when you feel like you hate them and you want them to get the hell out of your life in that moment. It's the thing you want to do. Because otherwise you are going into looking at the ceiling in bed, for example. Two people arguing in bed, but looking at the ceiling or in the car. We're going into long term memory and now we're stacking up all the negative memories and times that this has happened before and we're actually getting even more activated. So eye contact strangely will help you reduce the charge, even though it feels counterintuitive. That's a big one. Another one is just how can. Again, my body language. What am I communicating with my body? And can I. Can I know my person well enough to know that space is what helps them or closeness is what helps them? Even a hand on the shoulder, a hand on the leg. Can we just take a breath together for a minute and you know, call a pause? Just relax or you know, just relax my jaw. There's, there's lots of things like that we can do if we need to take a break. I call it a pause. Let's. Can we just pause for a minute? This is too, too heated. We can just. A lot of people like keywords or whatever. That's fine. Pause is good because it assumes that we're going to hit play again and we're going to come back. So that's another one that we can do. Well, so those are some ideas.

Yeah, really good. I like the eye contact piece. What about for the people that like drill into other people with eye contact? You know, it's like that intense, like, like, you know, stare, like prison style, staring you down. Any, like, any information for them?

Yeah. Again, outside of the conflict, can you two people have a conversation that, you know, your gaze gets really intense for me, I know it's maybe better for us, but would you be willing to blink or can I remind you to blink or just soften your gaze? Is that okay that I remind you of that? Because you might not be aware that you're doing it. And again, we sometimes see things first before the person, the other person. Right. And if we have agreements that it's okay to bring it up in a non shamey, blamey way, like. Right, yeah, I'm doing that thing, aren't I? Or it's like the voice, the tone of voice is another big one. Right? Hey, I hear you loud and clear. And would you be willing to just relax your tone of voice for a minute? Because a lot of people will say, stop yelling. And the Person who's raising their voice doesn't perceive they're yelling. They think they might be open to the feedback that they're raising their voice, but. Right. We tend to exaggerate what the person's doing. You're yelling at me. It's like, would you. Rather than blame them for yelling at you, you might invite them into. Do you mind just lowering your tone of voice, just. And take a breath with me? Or like, we can help each other out. In other words, I find that when we work together as a team around our patterns in the moment, it's going to go better versus what a lot of spiritual people do is, hey, you go do your work in that side of the house, I'll go do my work in that side of the house, and we'll come back in a. In a better place. That's okay. It's good to have that, you know, skill, but it can be more efficient, actually, in the moment, in the room, if we stay in the room.

Yeah. So the. So the repair, sometimes not even the repair, but the maintaining connection as you move through some of these pieces, rather than separating into different corners and going your own way, which can create that sort of othering or emphasize that othering. What you're saying is, to the best of your capacity with the person that you're in conflict with, to try and maintain some form of connection with them.

Yeah. And this is harder for the more avoidant withdrawer person who tends to retreat. They like space. They're like, sweet. I get a break. I get to go to my corner now, so I get to go leave, basically. That's like, oh, that's relief for them. So it's a little edgier for them to just stay in the room, stay in the house, stay in relationship, stay in contact here. And sometimes we're at our capacity. It is good to take a break and we have to know ourselves well enough and each other to know when we're going in circles and we're actually making this worse. Let's. Let's hit a pause and let's pick this up tomorrow morning or later tonight when we're a little more in the front part of our brain.

Yeah, I know that that was the hard part for me. Like in my early 20s, late 20s in relationships, I was definitely the checker outer. You know, it was like, oh, we've reached a place in this conflict where I don't want to deal with this anymore. So I'm going to go play video games or I'm going to go leave and grab a beer with my buddies. Like, I'm not dealing with this shit. And so like, I had to train myself to pause, like you're saying, and take a moment and gather myself, but then to try and re. Engage and maintain that connection. It was, it was hard, man, because every part of me was just like, f this, I'm out. I don't want to deal with this shit.

Yeah. Have you, I'm curious if that's changed once you got married and got into a committed partnership. Because some people's styles can change once they lock into a longer term relationship.

Yeah, I mean, I definitely, I think the level of commitment that I experienced in getting engaged and getting married has, has changed that. And I found myself more, I don't know what the word would be, but, but certainly more willing and open to staying and engaging in the dialogue and more almost like more responsible for my own nature and experience. I think it's also a byproduct of the work that I've decided to do and, and really committing myself to embodying what I talk about. But I definitely have noticed that part of me is less likely to want to check out or walk away or disengage.

Yeah.

And when, if and when it, it has happened in our relationship that it's always been this like red flag for me to be like, oh, you know, something's like, this is clearly my shadow, you know, this is clearly me right now. And I need to, I need to check in about that because disengaging in that way, I know, is not effective based on everything that I know and have read.

So yeah, definitely style actually switch from being super avoidant before marriage to being more anxious. So I'm more of the anxious partner who. I don't like it if my wife is retreating in any way for a certain amount of time, depending on the severity, it like, it just brings up all this stuff from my childhood. So I had this. And people will notice this. The listener might, you might reflect on your history and notice, okay, under stress. Did I, did I have a parent, at least one of my parents, who was there some of the time and actually helped me when I was struggling some of the time. That's more of an anxious, ambivalent type person who you're in an adult relationship, you're going to be the one who's advocating for connection. Whereas if you grew up in a family with the other parent, let's say, who is just completely avoidant and distant and it's like, go deal with your shit, go to Your room. And it was like, go outside, go to video games, go to books, whatever. You're going to be more on the avoidance spectrum. And so some of us have both. That's what I'm saying is like depending on who we're with, we can either kind of do that retreating thing or we can get pretty anxious.

I'm curious about, you know, for the people that are listening to this and they're starting to sort of think about like, oh, what do I fantasize about and what do I actually want sexually with my partner? Or you know, in my marriage or in my dating life? What do you say to the people that don't have a good sense of what they actually desire or want? Because I think one of the things, or maybe it's less about not being able to know what they want and less about being able to admit what they want. So how do you sort of approach guiding people in coming into contact with our fantasies? Right, what we want, what we desire, what we want to bring out in the relationship.

Yeah, I think there are two parts of that. And one is it can be hard to know exactly what you want until you try it. And I think that's really true when it comes to sexual. And you can have these ideas in mind that sound very hot, very erotic, but then you go to try them and you're like, nope, that's not for me. Right. So I think part of understanding yourself as a sexual person and what you want and what feels good is about engaging in some actual self exploration with a partner or partners. So that's part of it. The other part is how do you express a fantasy or desire to a partner in a way that's not going to shut things down or make your partner feel insecure? Because it can be a tough thing to share a fantasy with a partner. For example, if you have a partner who maybe has a lot of jealous tendencies or feels very insecure, telling them that you might want to open up your relationship or try something different might be perceived as threatening. Right. They might think, oh, you're not attracted to me anymore, or there's a problem in the relationship. So I think there's really great care and effort that comes with sharing sexual fantasies. And so as a starting point, I think there's a lot of validation that's important when you're sharing a fantasy where you talk about how much you're into your partner and how much you love the sex that you're having and how attractive they are. And hey, here's this new thing and Maybe. What do you think of it? You know, would you be open to trying this together? And I think it's also important to go slow when sharing fantasies. You know, don't just, you know, I get a lot of men who write me who will say, I want to watch my wife sleep with other people. How do I talk her into that? And I'm like, okay, no, like, that's not.

That's like the point.

Right. You're not supposed to talk anyone into anything.

Yeah.

So, you know, I think maybe the first part is, have you ever shared any fantasies with your partner? And maybe it's sharing something that's at the more vanilla end of the spectrum before you leap right into, hey, go have sex with other people, and I want to watch, that can be a little bit too much too soon. It's about building up the trust and the intimacy and the communication skills before you get into the more, let's just say, adventuresome types of fantasies.

Yeah, I think that's very good advice, right. To start to share some of those things. Because it is funny, right? I think that a lot of people, we start to build up the courage and we want to have the courage. But then I think for a lot of men especially, it's like, well, I'm going to bring it all in. I'm going to tell her everything. It's like, well, maybe, maybe that's not the best advice. You haven't told her the sort of basic stuff yet. So going to the deep end. I'm curious to get your thoughts. I'm going to take a little bit of a hard right here, but I'm curious to get your thoughts on the impacts of pornography and how that fits into this equation. Because I know for a lot of men, myself included, I mean, my fantasies for a very long time were dictated by the porn that I was watching. And, you know, in my late teens and early twenties, I was watching a lot of porn, you know, hours at a time, multiple days a week, you know, probably watching more porn than I was having sex. And I think for a lot of men, that has become the sort of standard where what they think they want is dictated by the porn that they watch. And they can kind of get any fantasy that they want through through porn. So I'm kind of curious to get your take, if you've seen any research on some of this stuff and what your perspective is on where porn fits into the fantasy world.

So I've looked at this in my own research, and I find that there's a bidirectional link between porn and fantasy. So the biggest link is actually between fantasy driving what you look for in porn. Most people around 80% or so that I've surveyed say that they've sought out porn that depicts their favorite fantasy of all time. So porn is a way that we can vicariously live out these arousing mental thoughts and images that we have. But it also goes the other way around. I mean, I've asked people, where do you think your favorite fantasy comes from? And people don't necessarily always know where they come from. Sometimes it's just something that pops into our head. We don't always know the origins of the thoughts and mental pictures that we have. But some people can readily identify it and trace it to something they saw in porn or an erotic novel that they read where they were exposed to something for the first time, found it very arousing or titillating. And ever since then, it's become this persistent sexual interest that they have. So porn can and undoubtedly does shape our sexual interests. And the question of whether that's good or bad is one that often comes up. And I think it ultimately depends on the type of porn that you're consuming and how you're engaging. Because porn sex is not a good depiction of how sex actually works in the real world. You know, one of my favorite analogies for this, I was on a podcast with Tina Horn, who is a former adult performer a while back, and she likened watching porn to watching a cooking show on television. Right? Where you're just seeing like these little clips here and there and you see the final finished product and it looks all perfect and clean and all these other things, and it looks like you can make this recipe in just a few minutes. And, you know, porn is kind of the same way. Like you don't see everything that goes on behind the scenes. You don't see the hours of extra footage that goes onto the cutting room floor. You don't see all of the pre scene discussion and negotiation of what's going to happen. You don't see the brakes for lubrication or all of these other sorts of things. And so, you know, if you're looking at porn and saying, hey, I want to repeat or replicate that in real life, if you're using it as a how to guide, that's a problematic way to look at porn.

I appreciate that perspective because I think it's. I think in some ways it is. I can't speak for women, but I think that for a lot of the guys that I've worked With over the years, it is this sort of comparison that we use. Right. It's what we mark or sort of grade ourselves against. For a lot of guys, it's like, am I living up to what I saw in the video? If I'm going to act this out in my relationship, am I doing it as well? Am I performing as well? You know, am I lasting as long all of those pieces? And so I think for a lot of guys using it as a how to, that might not be its use. So I think that's probably a good thing to just drop in.

Yeah, I think a good way to cognitively reframe porn is that it's entertainment. It's not necessarily education, and so it's not that how to guide. So if you look at it as a vehicle for sort of exposing yourself to different things, for vicariously living out your fantasies as a way of introducing novelty in the relationship, you know, we actually see in the research that couples who use porn together tend to be more sexually satisfied because it adds that element of newness and excitement. So, you know, there can be healthy ways of engaging with porn. I don't consider myself to be pro porn or anti porn. You know, porn is just porn. I think we need to have what we call porn literacy and to be intelligent consumers of it, just as we need to be intelligent consumers of everything in our lives.

Yeah, yeah. If you're having that Big Mac every day, it might not be the best thing for you. That's good.

Maybe not.

Yeah, maybe not. I appreciate that. Okay, well, let's. Let's shift gears a little bit here and talk about some of the other stuff that you've researched. So you've talked a little bit about friends with benefits, when they work, how they work, what happens after. This is a wildly curious topic, I think, for a lot of my listeners. So maybe I'll just hand the torch over to you and you can run with it. What have you found so far?

So I've actually been studying Friends with Benefits for more than a decade. It was actually the very first topic I studied when I got into sex research. And it goes back to the story I shared at the beginning where I was taking that human sexuality course, or rather, serving as a teaching assistant for it. And I had to run these weekly discussion sections with students, and they'd be asking me their sex questions. And one of the big questions that came up was, how do friends with benefits work? And can they ever work out? Do they always have to get messy and complicated? And I'm like, You know, I don't really know the answer and there's no research on this. So that prompted me to start studying it. And I've published multiple studies on friends with benefits over the last decade or so. The first one was really sort of looking at differences in how men and women are approaching friends with benefits. And I find that there are often a lot of discrepant expectations where men are much more likely than women when they think about the future of their friend with benefits, that they just want to keep it an open ended opportunity for casual sex. You know, they don't really want it to become anything more than that. And by contrast, women are much more likely than men to hope that the relationship changes form and that it either becomes a romantic relationship or that at some point they just go back to being friends who don't have sex. And you can see how this could lead to complications. You know, people are going in and they're not on the same page about what they want it. Someone's probably going to get hurt. And that's something that's reinforced by later research we did. We actually did a one year longitudinal study of friends with benefits. We followed people who had one of these relationships for a year. At the beginning, we asked them why they got into the relationship, how they navigated it, and then a year later checked in with them to see what happened to that relationship. And we find that the people who had very discrepant expectations, who didn't communicate about the rules and boundaries, they just kind of leapt right into it, were the most likely to report that things didn't work out so well. But it was also really interesting just to look at the trajectories that these relationships can take. There isn't just one primary path that friends with benefits follow. It was divided roughly into quarters. So you had a quarter of people who after a year were still friends with benefits, a quarter who shifted back to being friends who don't have sex. There was a quarter who had no relationship whatsoever of any kind of. And then there was a quarter who had shifted into some type of romantic relationship. So, you know, it can go off in all of these different directions, but the people who were least successful in getting what they wanted were the ones who wanted a romantic relationship.

Would you say that forgiveness and acceptance, maybe both or one or the other, is an unfolding versus a location? Because I feel like oftentimes people look at forgiveness and acceptance and it's like, oh, I'm going to get there, I'm going to get to this place, and I will have forgiven or I'm going to do something, and I will have accepted what it was unequivocally, and I'll never have to revisit that. And that might be true sometimes, depending on the transgression. But would you say that forgiveness and acceptance are an unfolding, a process that needs to happen, that requires time and space, or how would you describe that?

Yeah, unfolding is a great word choice because you can't force this process. And these old wounds that we're working with, especially things like betrayal and abandonment, neglect, abuse.

We will find those wounds being triggered in our relationships over and over and over again, and we'll have to process it over and over and over again. And if we're with a safe and willing partner, there will be space for that. But it won't be over the first time you talk about it. And it probably won't even go well the first, second, third, fourth, fifth time you talk about it. But maybe the tenth time that you process it, it'll emerge in a new way and you'll approach it differently. And the energy of that wound will transform the more it's met with love. And so that is really what it's about. And I talk a lot about transforming your relationship patterns rather than obliterating them or smashing them or killing them.

Yeah, it just doesn't work that way. The energy is transforming as we are transforming and meeting ourselves with love and with depth. And it doesn't happen overnight. And often. There's many times that we have to have experiences and interact with new parts of ourselves, meet new parts of our partners, meet new people in the world. There are things that are shaping us and that are preparing us to really reach a new understanding of our own histories. And we don't get to control all of that. Right. It's really not about getting there. It's just about slowly moving toward more peace in our lives. And really just having that awareness helps us slow down in the moments that we need to slow down most so that we don't react, so we don't implode our lives, so that we don't assume the worst of our partner's intentions or so that we can actually be with them when they're reacting from their inner child instead of just getting triggered and leaving and not being in the fire with them. You know, it's what gives us the capacity to just slow down in presence a little bit. And. And that's a pretty vital aspect of being a conscious partner.

Well said. Yeah, being not being in the fire with them, or like observing the fire without getting caught on fire.

You talked about transforming our relational patterns, and I'm hoping that you can just unravel that a little bit more for the listeners who are like, okay, I think I have a sense of what you're talking about. I can see that there's patterns in my past relationships or my current relationships that are yielding results that I don't want. And there are patterns that I don't know necessarily how to deal with in communication or sex or whatever it is. How does one begin to identify their own patterns and then begin to work with them? I know that's maybe a large question, but I would love for you to just tackle that.

Yeah, the. The process of identifying our patterns. I have broken down a whole process in my book, but essentially it starts with taking an inventory of all of your past relationships. And a lot of times when I work with people, they say, oh, well, they were all so different. And, you know, there's no similarities. We're not talking about, like, were they all the same height and they had the same eye color? I mean, for many of us, that is the case. Right. We do go after, like, some very similar types. And there's that whole thing as well. However, that doesn't matter so much as it does what the emotional theme is. And so the emotional theme is that consistent thread that you've carried with you. What did you consistently feel or not feel or long to feel in all of those relationships? And when might you have felt that first? You know, when do you remember feeling that first? How old were you? And when you really tune into that feeling, how old is that feeling? You know, how old are you in that experience? Are you 3? Are you 5? Are you 10? Are you 12? And so really just getting in touch again with that inner child as well helps you see what it is that you've been consistently creating or consistently going after. And often we will attract people who do mirror back parts of our wounds or those things that we didn't get. And they're often, they hold a lot of polarity. They're like opposite to us in ways because they are reflecting back the areas that we long to grow in. And yet we often, in relationship, we try to make each other be the same and we get really upset when we're so different. But if we realize, oh, well, it's like yin and yang, right? It's like my opposite, actually. If you put those two together, you have a power team. It's a really good combo. You don't need two of the same skill sets. We need differences. That's what makes a team. So there is also this process of maturing and rising in partnership where we learn how to bring those differences and put them together. But until we get there, what we find is that most of our relationships have had a lot of conflict around those differences because we so badly want to be seen and understood in the ways that we weren't when we were young, that we can't handle the opposition. We can't handle that our partners are different than us because our inner child just wants to be met fully. So really looking at, you know, what those themes were, how did we show up consistently in the relationship? What was our behavior like? How did we respond when conflict hit? You know, what kind of partners did we attract or call in or did we allow? You know, that's a better word because, you know, we all attract all sorts of things. It's the allowing that's really where we want to put our attention. Right. Because we can all attract all sorts of people, and that's never going to change. We can call in all sorts of different energies, but it's do we allow certain behaviors and why? And so that's sort of the short of it. And it is as well, a very confronting process because we have to be willing to be responsible for our part. And that's not always easy, but it is liberating.

Yeah. Yeah, that's very well said. It is almost never easy, but it can be liberating. I want to pull a thread of something that you had said just before, which was that I'm going to get this wrong a little bit, and hopefully, you know what I was talking about, but you had mentioned something along the lines of that we attract the people who possess the things that we're sort of missing or wanting to cultivate. And I'm hoping that you can speak a little bit more about that, because I think that's very relevant for a lot of people that get into relationships and then begin to see their partner both as the thing that they admire, and then that can oftentimes turn into the thing that they resent as well. So I'm hoping that you can just talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, it's like when we go from the honeymoon phase into the phase where we're having a lot of conflict. At first we're really enamored, and we're so drawn to this person because of how different they are, you know, and then it starts to bother us. And a great example. I. I Could just use my own marriage as an example of this, because we went through this where, you know, Ben is very detailed, very detail oriented, very good at math. He's got the brain of an engineer. He knows how everything works, and he knows how everything won't work. He can point everything out that won't work. And he's also, like, very, you know, fiscally responsible and, you know, more of a. Not even a saver, but just like a little bit more tight. You know, he's financially tight, keeps a close eye on things, and very. Everything's very organized. And I am creative visionary, abundance oriented, very much not principle oriented. Like, I have my own morals and principles, but I'm not living my life as a routine oriented, disciplined being. I'm much more like, how do I feel today? And what do I want to do? And all I. I said I was going to do that thing today, but as long as, no, I haven't made a commitment to anybody. I might change my mind if I feel like doing this instead. You know, I'm very driven by my creative impulses, and we're just very different in those ways. And of course, in the beginning, that's lovely. And then you merge your life and we begin to judge each other for how different we are. And he used to judge me as being more impulsive, and I would judge him as being, you know, stingy until. And we would have conflict about this, and I would come to him with these big visions that I had and these dreams, and the first thing out of his mouth would be all of the ways that it wouldn't work, and I would get so upset and, why are you pooping on my dreams? You know, you're. I can't share anything with you. And all, you know, the. The classic. And soon we realized, you know, after a few years of this dance, that we were actually the perfect team. We just hadn't realized it. Like, I had, like, CEO visionary energy, and he had CEO, like, engineer energy. And so we started to create meetings, to share visions and create plans and to talk about money and to set goals and make agreements. And, you know, we've been together for seven years now, and it's like the most amazing team and the most amazing partnership. We have finance meetings or boardroom meetings, you know, once a month. And we. We have learned each other's gifts. And so I know that when he is challenging me or saying, you know, here's all the things that won't work with your idea, he's not saying, I don't like your idea or I don't want to make it work. He's actually saying, I'm gonna make this work, but first I have to backwards engineer it. And so I just have to be like, oh, wow, isn't this amazing that this person wants to help make my vision a reality? And he's seeing all of these things that I wouldn't have seen. And if I just tried to do it, it wouldn't have worked because I didn't have those details. And he, you know, when he's out on the land or he's implementing a project here, you know, he'll call me and say, well, how do you want this to look? You know, we're building this thing right now. Like, what's your vision? And so we've just learned how to team up. But it wasn't that way. You know, it started out in this resistance of like, why can't you be like me? And so that's often what we attract. Though most of my friends who are couples or who are married, they're the opposite. It's like one person's really. Usually it's one person's really good at math, and the other person is a lot more creatively inclined. Not to say that everybody isn't creative, but you know what I'm saying here? We just, like, have these. We hold these different poles. And so I find that those are always the opportunities for us to come together.

Sa.