55: 3 Realizations For Harmonious Relationships With Mark Groves

Okay, so you are who I look to for love advice. You have create the love. You have millions of people following you over there, changing their lives. Dude, you are posting the most hilarious memes I've ever seen around anxious, attachment, around.

Those are good, eh?

All these different attachment types. It's hilarious. Give us the backstory. How'd you get into this? For anybody that doesn't know of you, or maybe they know a little bit, but we need to hear the Mark Groves story.

Oh, man. Where does it begin? I was born in.

You know, I think there's always different iterations of our story and who we are. And I'd say the birth of the part of me that wanted to teach and talk about relationship was the same part of me that really became a student of it. So there was sort of both happening at the same time. I was learning so much, and then I was wondering why no one else was being taught this. And then I was sharing what I was learning. And, you know, the birth of that was from relational breakdown, you know, from, like, why am I so good at talking about everything but my feelings? Like, that's not a skill set issue. There's something else going on here. I was in sales at the time, and I was really good at sales, and I was. I just gotten engaged, and I ended the engagement after my sort of exploration of, like, how do you decide if someone's the one? How do you decide whether to stay or go? And I was with someone who was really incredible. So that made the choice really challenging because, of course, the momentum of culture and society is get married, have kids by a certain age. And if you don't do those things, you sort of feel like you're not. Like something's wrong with you. And I thought when I ended that relationship, I don't know about her personal experience, but for me, I felt like a failure. And I wondered, why is it that I feel more connected to myself than I've ever felt? I'm back in my own soul. I'm, like, back on my path. Whatever that even meant, I didn't understand at the time. But why do I feel so light and so free, yet I'm being shamed and judged by other people?

And so a lot of my work that was birthed probably about three or about four years later, five years, I went back to school, studied positive psychology, and I read the Science of Relationships. I just read studies, and I was in pharmaceutical sales prior to that. So I have background in understanding clinical.

I heard you were crushing pharmaceutical sales, like, right out of the gates.

I was pretty good at it. Yeah, there's no doubt, like, sales was just my jam.

Yeah, you're good at enrolling people.

Yeah, I loved, like. You know, it's funny, when I started to teach relationships, my friend said to me, well, finally you can use your ability to get people to change for good. And I was like, yeah, that's true. You know, you sort of, like, look back at the history of your work and you think, like, oh, my God, I actually helped facilitate disease rather than, you know, As I started to study emotions more and the impact on our bodies, I started to see just how much the source of disease and inflammation was actually dysregulation and unhealed emotional experiences, the inability to be in grief and pain. And even now we're socialized to think that if you're sad, there's something wrong with you, as opposed to your circumstances might very well dictate that you should be sad.

That's beautiful, buddy. Yeah. The emotional body. So in all your study of relationship sciences, you went from the pharmaceutical business into that and you completely transformed your life because you've had transformation upon transformation, the metamorphosis. And continue to tell us more about, like, the origin.

Yeah, you know, I was just a living project at that time. Like, I was my own experiment. Like, I'd learn these things, apply them. You know, I certainly had all the things that the books talked about of anxious attachment. Then I became avoidant once I got really hurt, you know, I didn't. I just had all these awarenesses. And, you know, I think a lot of this is true for, you know, most people become the teacher they needed, I think, especially if they go into healing work or wellness work or whatever. You know, someone who, like, you know, with you, with health, fitness, nutrition, you know, you find the path, like something that all of a sudden unlocks this, hey, it isn't how I thought it was, or it's not what they taught me. And when you break out of that paradigm, for whatever reason, could be illness, could be a breakup, could be, you know, rock bottom, sort of come in any anyway. But they're always an invitation to realign with your actual path. They are a why in the road that says, are you going to choose finally to be who you actually are? And are you willing to do that at the cost of belonging? And really, it's just a false sense of belonging, you know, like, if you're wearing any mask or pretending you like shit you don't like or whatever it is to belong. And a lot of people turn our volume down. And this is part of survival is being parts of families. You know, they say being funny is not okay. Being sad isn't okay. Being you isn't okay. And so you adjust who you are to belong to a group, and then you realize that you don't belong to yourself. And rock bottoms are an invitation, no matter what they are. I think relationships offer more of them. They offer moments. We're willing to do stuff for love that we're not willing to do.

For other things.

So true.

Yeah.

We sacrifice ourselves. I love how you said you turn your volume down. There's been so many moments in my life where it's like, not only turn it down, but maybe hit the mute button altogether. And then you just become a shell of what you really are.

Well, you think you like. If you're someone who avoids conflict, I turn down my volume to avoid conflict. I was certainly conflict avoidant. You actually, if you're trying to avoid conflict, AKA a perception of chaos, which ultimately is disruptive in a good way because it like brings forward truth, it brings forward freedom. But if you're turning down your volume to avoid chaos, you're actually internalizing chaos. So you actually don't. You don't create conflict outside of you, but you are living in conflict within you. And, you know, you think of all the work. This is shown in relational research where they look at the physiological response that a couple has when they're in a high conflict relationship. They cannot be in a fight, and even not in a fight, sitting beside each other, their bodies are acting like they're beside a tiger. You know, it's when they look at people have high conflict. Right. Same. And when they look at people have high conflict relationships, they actually heal slower. So imagine if it's just in that study, it's just a wound on the arm, a little puncture. But imagine when it's something greater, like cardiovascular disease or cancer or autoimmune or anything like that. That's why whenever anyone says to me, like, oh, I'm in. I'm having a hard time healing this thing. Often I look at their lives and I'm like, they're boundaryless. They're not in a state where they can rest and digest and heal.

Yeah, they're in resentment. They're in holding on to anger, sadness, whatever it is. And they're unwilling to allow their body to heal because the body keeps score.

Right? Right.

So super powerful. I've been there. And even I would measure my HRV in past relationships. One in where it's like, hey, why is my HRV so low? And it was the mental psychological inflammation of my own mind that was causing the micro inflammation of the heart and it was causing my HRV to drop. And it was all on days where it was really high and euphoric and connected and grounded and feeling like team my HRV would skyrocket. So it's also the symbiotic nature of the two. Even the two energetic fields coalescing and dancing together and then being in harmony versus disharmony, which is where a lot of relationships are. Because what you said, the boundary lists, not having boundaries, not having things that they stand for, they let go of themselves. It's a really lonely place to be.

It really is. And it's sort of, you know, that saying, it's like, it's a. It goes along the lines of like, I'd rather go to sleep alone than go to sleep beside someone and feel alone. Yeah. I think a lot of us, you know, if you look at sort of where the origins of relationship come from, at least the subject of marriage, you know, they very much were contracts. You know, like, marriage wasn't where you went for love. And now, you know, there's a great book by Eli Finkel, who's a researcher called the all or Nothing Marriage. And he argues that marriages of today are actually better than they've ever been. There's just fewer of them. And, you know, I'll hear someone say, like, I don't believe in marriage. I'm like, just redefine it. Like, you're just trying. You don't believe in an agreements that you saw parents have or a culture create, but you can design. You know, it's like any word, you. You define it. We can both say tree. And I can think of a pine tree, and you can think of a birch. It's important that we define it together. If, you know, it's even how we define friendship. Right. Like, you know, it's. We have to mutually create those agreements together.

That's beautiful.

Yeah.

The whole marriage thing trips me up a little bit. And it is all because of the way I saw my mom and dad.

You know, it's the passionless.

Yeah. It's all the association of it.

So I love the ridiculous. Sorry, go on.

No, go ahead.

I was going to say, you think of the ridiculousness of the statement, I'll never get married because if you get married, you get divorced. Getting married isn't the reason divorce exists. I mean, literally, you can't get divorced unless you get married. But it's actually dysfunctional relationships that create divorce. It's not marriage that creates it. It's the relational constructs that create it.

That's beautiful. So give us three things people can do to ignite this harmony within the relationship.

Three things. Three ways to get five things to be happy. Yeah.

This is. This is going to be the blog post with you.

Yeah. Right. Well, the first one is, I recognize that your relationship is a separate entity from who you are, that it is actually a third entity. So there's you, there's your partner, and then there's the relationship. And the relationship requires deposits. It requires. Especially when we damage the sacredness of the relationship, we're making withdrawals. So we have to think about it as. We have to nurture it as this space that lives between myself and the other person. And in that space, you know, maybe the second thing. I've never created a list of three, but I'll do it right now. The second thing, I think would be to see all relationships as sacred, to see that the space that lives between you and another is sacred. And if you see it as sacred, then that person that you still hold an energetic charge with, you'll start to see dishonors, the sacredness of the relationship if you maintain contact with them or energize that. That the way you speak to your partner determines whether you are honoring the sanctity and the sacredness of the relationship. And I think of it a lot like a blood vessel, like an artery, that the things that go unspoken, the things that go unrepaired, become damage to the endothelium, to the endothelial wall. And so it's like a similar idea, the buildup of plaque, you know, all that kinds of things.

Yeah, 100%.

So the third, I mean, the third is along the same lines as the other two, but more important is define yourself as a self. Like, create sovereignty and separation within the relationship. The thing that kills connection, the thing that kills desire, the things that kill relationships is the lack of recognition that we don't often have a self in relationship. So I give up what I love. I make compromises, and then I start to resent my partner. I might still have old systems of codependency. If you're male or female, you have to look at all the different systems that operate within you that say that you have to be a certain way and what power you get from different positions. You have to totally deconstruct. This is the harder work. You have to totally deconstruct. All the systems that live within you that create codependent dynamics in relationship, and they are often very subtle. You know, Like, I remember working with this one couple where the woman said, we have everything. Like, we have great conversation, we love each other, we. But when it just comes to the bedroom, there's no desire. And I said, well, has there ever been desire? Yes, there has been desire, okay? So we know it exists. So we know it can go somewhere, which means we can probably bring it back. And I said, do you ever hold back telling the truth from your partner? And she's like, no, we talk about everything. I'm like, okay, how about in the bedroom when your partner is, you know, doing a little cunnilingus? Do you tell them the truth? Do you tell him the truth when you're intimate? She said, actually, sometimes I hold back because I'm afraid to hurt its feelings.

And, you know, that makes sense, right? Because women are socialized 100% to not tell the truth. Because. Especially in bedrooms, because sexually, we're very fragile generally in terms. Because our worth is generally connected to our sexual performance, because men have been socialized there. So just seeing that lack of safety for her to actually share the truth and him also not get the truth will crush desire between both of them. The fact that she's, you know, experiencing this, you know, again, him going down on her, but her not actually sharing the truth and letting him just participate but not be engaged.

Yeah.

Is a fractured intimacy. And that means both people can't be fully embodied in that moment. One's being protected from the truth, and the other one feels like they can't tell it, which creates the environment, that it's not safe, even though it might literally be safe. These are these subtle ways that we have no idea that connection is being eroded. Because we blame the connection when it's actually what we've been taught about connection. So that's important.

I love that aspect that you bring up.

I think that's so powerful.

And one of the things I love.

To do in getting to know anybody is to go deep with them. So asking them, what lights your soul on fire? And even a friendship with you, my brother, like, creating the sacred space that you and I have. It's like, I want to understand you from the inside out. And in a romantic relationship, especially with sex, because that's kind of what we're talking about is in the very beginning, what turns you on? What do you like? What do you not like? What does it feel like when I do this versus this, this movement versus this movement this versus that. And there's so much information that you get and having those conversations early on versus just trying to go and like, I know how to do this because it's what I've done my whole entire life. Like everybody's different, right? So opening up and exploring with all those questions, I mean, that's what relationship is for. It's the canvas of creation. We can create anything if we just ask the right questions and we honor that sacred environment. So I love what you said, dude.

That's powerful space, right? Of. Of recognizing one that your partner is always changing. Yeah. Have to keep getting to know them, you know, and what a disservice to believe, you know, we already know that we change all the time, but in some way we sort of want our partner to stay the same or we want our relationship to stay the same when it can't. It is ever moving, ever changing. And if we're not mindful, it will move away, it will move away from us. You know, our partner might have new desires, new interests as we do. And if we're afraid to pursue our own desires and interests that might feel like they pull us away from the relationship, but what they often do is bring us more full to the relationship. You know, where I don't resent the relationship because I'm not pursuing these things. Actually it is a place where my freedom is birthed, where my expression is birthed and that both of you can talk about that. Hey, when you pursue that passion that scares me, it feels like it might be pulling you away and being able to share that. I mean, that's so important. And the other side too is like, listen, if your partner desires, growth, desires, conversation, desires change and you don't, you're likely going to grow apart.

Yeah, I was going to ask you that because I hear from women actually all the time. I'm into personal development. I've been studying this work. I've been doing this. Like women are these voracious personal growth.

They really are.

They're like on it, right? And then you have their bros that just aren't most guys, unfortunately. They're like watching football on the weekends with their boys and they're doing these things. So it's like, what do you say to the men that have these incredible women that are on these growth track things? How do you inspire them to keep growing, to add to that sacredness of the relationship as well? Because it's a big issue. I hear it often.

It's massive issue. You know, I certainly hear it too I think there's a couple dynamics to that. One is I hear from men too. So, you know, it's a. I'm like, hey, you're looking for each other, but you both can't see each other because you don't believe. Believe each other exists. I mean, that's an issue. The other side of it though is very true. You know, like if you look relationally at history, why do you know, Harriet Lerner is amazing. She's a psychotherapist who teaches this, but I remember Harriet Lerner. Yeah, Harriet Lerner. She has a book called Dance of Intimacy.

I'll put that in the show notes. Click on it. Anger, Amazon Associates link. I'll make at least 25 cents on this book.

Exactly. I just made you a nickel, Richard. Yeah. In it she says, why do women pursue relational knowledge more than men? And she said, well, if you look at it, all subordinate groups need to learn the needs and nuances of the dominant group. So it is evolutionarily true that a woman needed to learn how to be safe in male aggression and male emotion. So evolutionarily they needed to learn more about emotion, how to keep the peace, how to maintain community. Right. Those things that are, and I'm obviously gender rising. But this is true more often than it isn't. The other side of that is that men have been socialized away from emotions. So what we want from men now is more emotion. Yet the very thing that society severs from them is emotions. So the thing that his partner most wants from him is the thing that society says he can't have because his masculinity is on the line. So as men, we have to separate our emotionality from our masculinity. They're not correlated. They're actually two separate entities. Masculinity just is. And emotionality is a separate thing. I think it's when you know from a research based level this is true, that most divorce is initiated by women. And by the time a woman leaves, she's gone. So and that's true, I'd say of all breakups, most breakups, not all breakups is that the person who's leaving has already been preparing and planning and prepping. And they're often six months to a year ahead of the other person. So by the moment they say, I'd like to work on this, it's about two years till they actually leave. And by the time they're leaving, they're gone. And that's when often men will be like, okay, I'm ready to do the work.

Yeah, finally.

No. And so the cost of a breakup is often much higher on men. And why that is, we're more likely to get remarried, probably mostly as an avoidance of self and avoidance of space with self, because we don't know how to manage the grief and the pain. We are not socialized to do that. We have hardly any capacity for shame.

And you gotta think, like, when your partner says to you, hey, you're not showing up. We have to be able to hold inadequacy, and we have to expand our capacity for inadequacy. It's humility. It's shame. So you're basically telling me there's a better version of me available. Yes, there is. The moment you learn something about yourself, there's a better version of you available. So you have to learn how to hold healthy shame. And that's different than unhealthy shame, which is, there's something wrong with me as opposed to there's now a better version of me available. I got to choose to step into it. The, you know, reality of that poor. Part of why it's harder generally on men is that men tend. In the research, I think it's like 67% of the time when they have something struggling in their life, they turn towards their partner. Women, it's below 40%. So when a man loses his relationship, no matter the gender construct, he generally is losing his social support For a woman, they often turn towards their friends. So this is a big difference.

I felt that big time in my most recent breakup, like, she was my best friend and I'd rely on her for that social support.

Yeah.

And it was devastating because it's like, I want to share everything with her, but she's no longer there. So then it's finding new support structures, and it's spending more time with your guy friends and not having to go. Like the Francis Waller stuff he told me to go through, not having to go back through that feminine. Feminine cycle of needing the feminine to complete them, you know, who I am as a human being, which is super important. That was life changing, by the way. Thank you for that referral.

Yeah. The initiation.

Magic, when you start to see those processes as initiatory processes, you know, it's like whenever anyone says to me, my partner left, and they took it. You know, I feel like they've taken everything. Not literally, but, you know, an emotional standpoint. Because, of course, literally that can happen from an emotional standpoint. I feel like I lost everything.

Yeah.

And my next question is always, what did you give them that they could take, like that is part of you. Right. Because if someone completes me or I feel empty without them, it means that a part of my wholeness is in the relationship. And if my wholeness, happiness and wellbeing is in you staying or going, then now the weight you have to carry to be with me is my wholeness. And so we can't both be two whole, complete beings in the relationship because I require you to be whole. So if you leave, it's just too much weight to hold. If I say you make me happy, then now if you leave, I'm unhappy. Well, my relationship, my. Of course your relationship will contribute to your well being. I'm not negating that. It will contribute to your well being and be one of the most important aspects of your well being. Any relationship, how you relate to anybody. But if it completes you, then you need to figure out where it left, you know, when it. When it's gone, what it took. Because a relationship should never complete you. It should never complete you. It should enhance you. It should make you a better person, you know, invite you to be a better person.

Yeah.

And that's how you feel. I know you've been through quite a journey in your current relationship.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I know it's deeply.

It's deeply fascinating to me. And I think anybody listening to this would probably love to hear kind of how you work through that together because it's such a beautiful example of figuring out what doesn't work and then figuring out what does work and then making it work. That makes sense.

Yeah. I mean, our relationship ending was so for you listening, we were together for four years. My partner, Kylie, and then we broke up for nine months, 10 months, something like that.

And then we got back together and, you know, we had a friend over the other day and she said, thank God you guys broke up. Really sort of laughed because I agree. You know, there was two really important healing events that had to occur in the fracturing of our relationship. One of them was that I needed to learn to no longer tolerate ambivalence from another. You know, somewhere along the line, my sort of core wound was, you don't see me. You don't choose me.

Enough for you.

I'm not familiar with that wound at all.

Right. That's a heavy one. It's sort of gut in the. In the heart.

I feel like I just got kicked in the nuts when you said that.

Well, that was so tough because I had these moments where I'm like, you know, we had these conversations where I would Say, you know, like, listen, I'm creating a story and currently I'm creating it with you, and this is what I want. Yeah, if you don't want what I want, that's totally cool. I love you no matter what you choose. But if you can't choose this part of the story, which was about having kids and moving on, she was like, I can't, I can't. You know, initially it was, yes, yes, I can. But I was so certain in myself, in those moments which I normally would have complied the story, I would have bent my needs or my deal breakers to accommodate a timeline or whatever. But it was like some of the first moments in my life that I was like, no. Like I'm so rooted in who I am now. And that came from me learning in those moments, but in that relationship and through all my past relationships, that whether they choose the relationship or not is separate from whether I choose me or not. If I choose me and they don't choose the relationship or me, I'm still intact. I haven't left my own soul, my own story to accommodate them.

And I think this is an important sort of caveat too, because, you know, people will say, well, what's the. You know, compromise is normal in relationship. There's a difference between compromise, which feels like it deepens intimacy and trust, and self abandonment and self betrayal, which fractures intimacy and trust. Because I can't. You can't trust me. To tell you the truth, if I self betray, you can't trust that I will stand in my own self. When you are out of line. And you see this occur a lot in relationship where someone acts up or does something that's not okay and the other person doesn't stand up to them. They're not would know where I met and they have lost respect in the relationship. You know, there's a line from the book no more Mr. Nice Guy where Robert Glover is the author.

That's a great book, by the way.

So good. And whether you're male or female or anything in between, how you define if you're defined as a nice person. It's a great book because it follows sort of the wounding patterns that create that which.

Have you read the asshole book too?

The one written for women?

No, it's for men.

Oh, no.

How to be an Asshole?

No. Is it good?

So good. I'm sending it to you.

I gotta read it.

It's on the way. Yeah, don't worry about it.

Yeah, no, I'd like to read that. I think, you know, that's that, like, what pickup culture teaches is how to pretend that you have high self worth. Yeah. Self worth manipulates and creates desire and attraction on an evolutionary level. So it's sort of a psychological hack. But the problem is, is that you can pretend you have high self worth, but in the moments where you actually have confidence crumble through. Exactly. You' self will come. And you see that when people pretend to be something and then they experience rejection early in the dating process and they lose their shit because they're. They're. They're not actually who they're pretending to be. So in all this, Kai and I go through these conversations a few times, and, you know, at one point, it's just like, we've tried everything. We've gone to couples therapy together, we've done coaching together, we've done all the things. And it's like we've tried to fix whatever might be going on within us to make this relationship work. So we know it's not us, and we know it's not the relationship. It's just that we can't do this. The universe is saying, it's time to close the door. So, you know, when we were having that conversation, I recognized that.

That she needed to initiate that, that it was important for.

Her growth to choose it. Yeah. And she said at one point to me in a conversation, like, why don't you just leave me? And I said, grow up. I said it in a little different way, but actually not nicer. I was like, grow up. Like, no, like, you're an adult. If you want to leave, leave, but don't make me leave. Like, you're trying to subcontract your own life to me.

I think everybody said that at one point in a relationship, why don't you just leave me? Like, I know I've said that totally.

And I remember writing this article when I started writing called, why, why don't you just cheat on me? And it was about, like, how I wish this woman would cheat on me so I could leave. And interestingly, I got quite a few messages from people who, like, wished the death of their partner. If they would just die, then I could go. And it shows you how much we don't believe we have a choice that, like, they have to die or cheat on me for me to have a reason to leave. Not just to leave, which. Look how many buried narratives and traumas are in that truth.

That's wild.

Well, yeah. And so, like, part of that, when she finally chose it and I also chose.

Was this moment where both of us Were like, in our adult selves, and there was no codependency anymore. And our relationship, you know, was no longer a prison where we both felt like we had to be. Or we're two good people and we're both working this work. Why can't we make, you know, all the bullshit? And as opposed to we're like two humans who just recognize, like, sometimes relational containers are meant to close and to shift. One thing that was maybe one of the most power. It was for certain, one of the most powerful things I've ever experienced was the relationship ending and love still existing. That we closed the container with grace and love and pain and grief and sadness and joy and wished each other the best. We did a closing ceremony.

And I mean, that's one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about.

But, oh, my God, was it one of the most beautiful because I got to experience, like, just the rawness of love at its. That we just couldn't make the relationship in the way, In a romantic sense work at that point. And that just the fact that love existed, that relationships can end and love doesn't go anywhere was such a lesson for me.

Because so often in the past I would have wished not to love them because of the pain was so intense. And then I just really started to see. Because through that breakup was the first time I'd really ever navigated heartbreak sober, really, ever. It was the first time I'd ever navigated heartbreak sober with no delicacy to that. And so I had nowhere to go. Like, I had nowhere to go other than into grief. That was old grief. That was breakups I'd never dealt with. Yeah. You know, childhood attachment stuff I never really dealt with.

And, you know, that's where I discovered Francis Weller. And. Yeah, that's why I said, like, you can be met in this darkness. And, you know, there's a line from Francis Weller that I'll never forget that just sort of like, described.

There was a moment about two weeks after we broke up where I was sitting by this river in Mount Baker, Washington. This glacial river, this beautiful setting. Yeah. Butterfly flies up, you know, a fucking bald eagle right in front of me. And I remember thinking, like, how did I get here? And the voice, voice came to me. That was like, at what moment did you think you were God? That, like, you could choose?

And I'd been fighting the sort of truth of the relationship for a while, as we do, but the momentum of my life required that Relationship to end. And I think, you know, I'm always humbly reminded that.

The soul's journey will always try to express, express itself and ask for you to listen.

And we're stubborn as fuck, you know, humans are stubborn and so many of us are socialized to be disassociated from the calls from the truth.

And listen, the truth always comes out when I just decides to come a little more gently sometimes. And if you don't listen, you get the cosmic fucking dump truck on the head. And sometimes some decisions are really, you know, some of my most important lessons were both expensive and painful.

But you know, they, they bring you into integrity with who you actually are and they invite you to become fully self expressed. That's what they do. They say, can you be you and be in love and be in relationship and be all these things at the cost of not being like, you know, it's kind of how business can be run. Can you create a business or a purpose or a passion or whatever? And it doesn't even have to monetize. I don't care about that. But the thing is, is that most people will say, you can't do that. That's not how it works. And I had someone recently say to me about the app that I've been building, well, you have to do it this way. And I was like, no, you don't. Most people who have done it that way, it's worked, but you can do it however the fuck you want. And I think we forget that about relationship too. You know that like, what is it to choose grace when other people have chosen hatred? What is it to allow love to still be present and to observe the pain of that love and to allow it to heal both of you? It's so different, it's so radical. It's so against what society says, which is hate each other, treat each other poorly, use the kids against each other, speak ill about them. I never once spoke about her because there was nothing ill to say.

Yeah, there's nothing, dude, she's such an angel. And you know, my last relationship, same thing, I would not.

Speak anything ill about her. Like they're just complete love. And I was a little teary eyed. I don't know if you saw me, but seeing you sit down and do the closing ceremony and all the love.

I like feel that in my whole heart, brother. And it's such a beautiful thing to have that level of consciousness in a departure that's just so beautiful. And you sitting there with the butterfly and the eagle and you Know what God said in that moment? Or it's like, have you thought you were God in these moments and you could choose? Because I'm the same. I'm a controller, and I think I can literally choose and control everything, you know, and then God smacks me upside the head and he's like, hey, listen, dummy. Like, I literally sent this perfect human for you or whatever. Whatever the situation is. You know, wild. So.

Yeah. And knowing, like, without the fracture of our relationship, we wouldn't have both undergone the different journeys to.

Stand fully in ourselves. Yeah. And that was required for both of us. And, you know, like, I would say this in front of her because I've said it before, but, you know, I knew that I could create a relationship with anybody who wanted to create a relationship with me. Yeah. Like, when our relationship ended, I was certain that it didn't. There wasn't a one. I had hope, of course, like thoughts of us reuniting, but I actually ended. We re. Ended the relationship like it was over. And you can't. Can't leave a relationship and not leave it completely. You have to close the door. You can still have hope. I'm not saying don't have hope. That's natural and that's. But you can't think that in the future it has to be them because everything you do will try to get there rather than knowing that whoever is there.

It won't matter because you'll be so aligned with yourself. Yeah. And you're not attached to an outcome. As soon as you're attached to an outcome, you're missing the beauty of the.

Sort of randomness of the process.

Yeah.

The expectations. It just robs the present relationship or anything of it. So having no expectations or no goals for it, but just enjoying the eternal now moment in every situation. And it's so hard to do.

Yeah.

It's.

Yeah. So much more truth would be revealed. Like what you said about truth. There's three. And I love this old quote or the proverb, whatever it is, but there's only three constants in life. And one is the sun will come up, the moon will be there, and then the truth will always be present. And that's so true in every relationship that we're in.

It's.

It's.

We're.

We're looking for the truth.

Even though it's literally like you look at most families and most relationships are designed to pivot around a truth that they don't think the system can hold.

Yeah.

Truthfully, it's interesting because the system's holding it. But it's holding it implicitly. It's holding it as a secret. Or we don't discuss, like, dads and alcoholic moms of this or whatever. But what we don't see is that the truth, when brought forward, blows the system up.

And blows the system up.

Right. It invites it to hold it, and you get to step out of your role in the system that is about maintaining it. Instead, your role in the system becomes what one might call the black sheep. You know, that. That you're the truth bringer to the relationship. And when a couple, or. Yeah, mainly a couple, let's say, are also oscillating around the truth, when we bring it forward, we afraid. We're afraid that it will fracture the relationship. Ironically, it's the only thing that will deepen the relationship. You know, there's a great line from Glennon Doyle's book called Untamed, where I think she's talking about Elizabeth Gilbert said to her, Elizabeth Gilbert, such a great writer. She says, there's no such thing as one way liberation. Like, if you are liberated, the other person is to, whether they know it or not. And I think that's an important thing to remember.

That's powerful.

Right? There's no such thing as one way liberation. I was talking to a guy recently who took my breakup course, and he said to me.

I realized that if the relationship wasn't for me, it wasn't for her.

Yeah, he just didn't know that.

And I think that speaks to something that's very true for us in relationship, is that we don't realize that.

Why would you ever choose someone who's not choosing you? Like, part of rules for choosing someone should be that they choose you too. Like, if you're choosing people who don't choose you, then you've been taught somewhere along the lines that your choice should always occur unconditionally of choice back or love back. Which I think can be confused with unconditional love. Right. Like, I can love someone and not tolerate their shit. Because we often confuse unconditional love with unconditional tolerance. Mm. But I thought that was really powerful what he said, because I thought of that reason. You know, when you think of any time someone has left you, it was always in service of you. If you take the gift.

Yeah. And it's always a gift.

It is always a gift. Sometimes they saw something you didn't see yet or were not willing to look at. And maybe you were socialized not to look at it. Maybe you were cultured not to look at it, which is true for a lot of us, but that wakes us up. Everything is an invitation to see more. Put on a different pair of glasses. And once you put the glasses on, you can't pretend you're not fucking wearing them anymore. And boy, do we try. Ram Dass has that line where he says, we want to go back to bowling and bowling, just be bowling again. But you can't.

Ah, so true. Once consciousness expands, it can never go.

Back to the way that it once was.

It can't pretend to not know your bullshit. You can't pretend to not know your escape mechanisms. You can't pretend to not know your dysfunctions. You can't. And if you try to pretend not to, you will do exactly what they want you to do, which is start to turn towards materialism. That's what feeds materialism, you know, you think of addiction. Gabor Mate says, when we ask someone why the addiction? We're asking the wrong question. The question is, why the pain? And that's true of all materialism, you know, and anything that we are focused on getting more or creating more or exploiting more, because what do we do with the planet we extract? We don't restore. Well, if we're. If our whole goal is materialism and extraction, then what is at the. What is in the line of fire and what are we choosing that is at the cost of humanism? Relating, relationship, Prioritize that everything you do will be about liberation and relating. Yeah, then you don't need materialism. Materials will be the pathway to the relating in the humanism.

But the machine doesn't want that, bro.

The machine wants you to buy all the shiny objects once a month and get all the updates.

And the machine wants you to have dysfunctional divorces. It wants you to have relationships that are about self abandonment. Because you think like, if you are awakened and sovereign within your relationship, then you are now awakened and sovereign within your relationship to the medical system, to your emotions, to the recognition of what really creates inflammation. We already know that stress creates inflammation. So what creates stress? Relationships generally create stress. So if you can figure out, and everyone can, how to improve your relationships, you will radically change your life. It is the most important thing you will ever change. Because the only reason we don't have healthy relationships with things like our body, food, all that kind of stuff. Not minimizing the total misinformation about food and sugar and fat and all those things.

You will heal your relationship with those things too. It's just that the core is human relating. If you do quit Sugar, or you do quit those things. You will discover that there is probably grief below what Sugar was treating. There's, you know, that's why the pathway is always. It doesn't matter where the rock bottom is. It can be with your relationship with your body or your health or your finances. Relationship to money is a whole other one. And then all of a sudden, you're like, oh, wait, I'm out of the system. Oh, wait, I'm out of all these systems now. Yeah.

Which is why beliefs are tricky to begin with. I used to have so many beliefs, and they were. I was so empowered by my beliefs. But the older I get, the more I am willing to let go and reinvent myself in every moment because I don't know what I don't know. And Jesus said in the Gospel of Thomas, which is 300 books that weren't included in the Bible, right. He said, to know thyself is to be known. And the greatest thing we can do is know who we truly are. Our shadows, our light. Understanding all the aspects of us, all the distortions that we project on every partner that we've ever been with, any stranger that we've ever come up to. It's all a reflection of our own consciousness. So the more we clean that up, the more that truth animates us, the more it opens up and enlightens all the events around us so that we can finally see. Not with our two eyes, but we can look and we can see. See with our first eye. And that's when we see all the. It's painful in the beginning because there's so much out there that we've just been sheepish around, like all these ideas, all these beliefs, all these programs that have been installed in our mind unknowingly, Right. Most of them by our parents as kids and everything else.

Right.

But then we become liberated and we become free.

And that's what the world is going through.

Yeah, it's all that. I mean, let's stay on a Christ kick, because I love a good Christ kick. There's a line from Christ which is also from the cabalion, as above, so below. But the line from Christ is to be in the world, but not of the world. And I think that's that thing, you know, we. We can't pretend we're not human, that we're not. We don't have nervous systems and hearts and vasculature. And I mean, understanding your nervous system and your nervous system is ultimately your greatest sensitive, sensitive sensory information gatherer. That is Often more attuned on an implicit level than you are on an explicit level. And it can get stuck in trauma responses. It can get stuck. And that's probably some, I would say, for sure. The most important work we can do is learning how to regulate ourselves separate from what's going on in the world. But. But also recognize that the world will influence how you regulate. If you watch the news all the time, you can't expect to be regulated all the time. That's the point of the news, to keep you scared. And then when you're scared, you. Your relationships will suffer if you're stressed. You know, we were talking about endings. I mean, ultimately, what is a relational ending? It's a reminder that all things end and it then brings us closer to death. Well, we don't have a healthy relationship with death. Even as Stephen Jenkinson says, we say relationship to death, we try to distance ourselves from an act that is just natural. It's not a relationship to death. It's just death. And that's the greatest gift you can ever bring, is accept is going down the path of your own death. And then when you look at that book by Bronnie Ware called the Five Regrets of the Dying, you don't have to read the book, just look it up. And there are all five things that are relational and emotional. Like, I wish I hadn't worked so hard. I wish I would have time with family. Right. It's like, imagine that's palliative care. Well, we're all really in palliative care all the time. We just don't know. Like, at any moment we could all go. And especially currently, with the way the fucking world's going, kind of like we're so afraid of death that we are hijacked.

Hijacked.

Right. And this. What does social media do? They talk about it. It's a race to the bottom of the brainstem. It hijacks you. It keeps you on. If you don't know what the product is, as it says in the Social Dilemma, you are the product. So the whole point is an attention economy. And this all comes back to relationship. Because it all pulls you away from presence within yourself.

Yes. Which is true security.

It's everything. Everything. Because then you become an authority over yourself. You are able to discern whether something is right for you or not. And that's true relationally. That's true. Like, is you're able to separate. What's true for you is separate from what's true for me. But when relationship really thrives and that Sacred space is honor between you and I. I'm not trying to make you wrong. Because the relationship itself can hold two truths. It can hold that you believe something or you experienced a situation different than me. Of course. That makes sense. Yeah. A healthy relationship can hold two truths. It can hold multiple truths. Because it's not about being right. It's about deepening intimacy and understanding. So when I am open to your truth, I might then have myself transformed. But now we're in a state where you're wrong, I'm right, this is this, and that's that. The divisiveness is certainly working. I could go on about that all day. Yeah.

The separation. Let me separate you. We have people buying into different agendas. And it's all the rulers. Let's say there's 100 of them. I personally think there's like 3,000.

Right.

Let's say they're choosing different narratives and themes. Most of them are in bed with each other. Like, you have these anchors and these news source. These news tycoons that actually own board seats on the shot. Companies too. Oh, yeah, Right. So they're just in bed together.

Very enmeshed. Codependent.

So enmeshed. And then also they control the communication businesses.

Right.

And then.

And this is not a conspiracy. This is fact.

No, it's. You look at the Venn diagrams of the people that are involved, and it's like there's very few people that are controlling all of these quote unquote ants.

So terrified of that, though. That's. We ha. That's why we have to increase our capacity relationally, because then we can increase our capacity here. Hold this information that you're sharing. Yeah.

And you can't get angry. A lot of people are getting angry. They're protesting. There's like fires in Australia and Germany and like shit's hitting the fan. And then you have a lot of people that are not even looking at it. They're just not even paying attention.

The right choice. And now their work is done.

Yeah, exactly. And there's no room for any other choice. There's no room for another truth in the container of the sacred relationship.

Even though there's multiple truths existing that are saying that doesn't make sense. Yeah, that's censorship and propaganda too. You know, it's control, the narrative.

Yeah. So what do we do, my brother in the world today?

Talk to a Stanford professor of medicine and he said we should never moralize public health. That's a failure of public health. But we've certainly moralized it. And I think it just, you know, what do we do? Ultimately, you free yourself, you know, and you can do this relationally. You know, like, the more you free yourself from the systems that operate, you know, I said that earlier. What is one of the three ways to get five things? It's the. One of them was to deconstruct the systems that still operate in you and in the ways in which you leave yourself. Like, every time you do something that in excess, you are treating the pain of being present within yourself. And so it's about not.

Wait, hold on, say that again. I need to hear that.

Every time that you do something in excess, you are treating the pain of leaving yourself.

Just let that sink in.

When you think about that, like, what's the way out? Well, the way out is staying within yourself and processing whatever that is. The grief, the anger, the rage, the sadness, the joy, whatever it is, it could be all those things.

And what it does is it increases your capacity. It stretches you. It stretches you. And the more stretched you can be, the more conscious you can be of the systems that are constantly operating, the less you will be enrolled by them. You know, like, you know, I heard a great. There's a great podcast from Rebel Wisdom that was called the Art of Sense Making, and it's fascinating. He said, whenever you're enraged, you know you've been enrolled. And I was like, fuck, I'm enraged.

A narrative.

I just see so many people getting taken advantage of, and that warrior just wants to come out and rage into the dying of the night, as it said. Right, right.

Well, everyone's work is to be a bridge, to be a bridge between the narratives, between the positions. You know, I heard another one person say, you know, I used to be sort of left leaning, and now I consider myself a radical centrist because it's so hard to hold the center. I never would have thought that I would even be considered right or left or whatever. I consider myself a libertarian. You know, I'm. I consider myself pretty mindful of people's feelings and thoughts. But, man, I. I just. You know, there's that Indian, the indigenous saying that the left and right wing belong to the same bird. Yeah. Like, so the.

Yeah. The only way out of it is to be that radical centrist.

You have to be the bridge. You have to be able to translate and hold space. You know, I heard a. I don't know who said it, but it was such a great line. He said, the person said that when you draw a circle to exclude me, I draw a bigger circle. To include you. And that's our work. To draw the bigger circle.

That's beautiful.

Which is not to tolerate. Again, not tolerate shit. But to expand our ability to have compassion, tolerances, you know, having a boundary is beautiful. It's. It's loving.

The Don who I work with, and I've told you about him. Yeah, the shaman who's just like, total sorcerer. But I was all heated one day about the population agenda, and I was talking about Bill Gates, and he looked at me and he put his hand on my shoulder and he says, you know, he's like, imagine we're having Thanksgiving dinner and he's just one of those uncles that not everybody likes at the table, but he's still part of our family.

And I was like, okay.

Yeah. Like, can you see love? Right? Like, remember this exercise I did from a book was for the day, to look at everyone through the eyes of Christ.

Yeah.

That's so powerful.

That's beautiful to do in relationship too. You will never see more of God than we see in our partners.

The pathway, right? Like pathway. Yeah. Find someone who is brave enough to tell you the truth of who you are. Keep them, you know, that is the greatest pathway to your self expression, your soul's expression, or let them go. If that's the path of soul's expression, you know, the other side of that, too. I heard this great. I was on a Ram Dass kick last week, and I love him because he's this merger of the spiritual with the psychological. He's a bridge.

He's so good.

He's so good. And he said, you know, in 200 to 500 AD, we removed your ability to speak directly to God in Christian and Catholicism. And he said, the reason we did that is we gave a purpose for the priest.

And. Right. And you think about that. He's like, all of a sudden there was a pathway to get the God and you didn't have it. Yeah. As opposed to, like, we all have a direct relationship to whatever deity we want to believe in, you know, to whatever we call it, let's say. Yeah. It doesn't matter what it's called. We just know that it exists. And what it invites is that there is no space between your suffering and mine. That if you suffer, I'm suffering. If the planet's suffering, we're suffering. And that's why you can't fight for any movement and not fight for the earth. They can't be separate. They must be together. And boy, are we ever invited to, you know, step into spiritual arms.

She's going through her own ascension right now, Mama Earth.

Right, right. And she's saying, like, will you stand? You sort of look at the representative conflict that's occurring. You know, I think it's sort of laughable that there's this argument of natural immunity versus shot derived immunity. It's like, what? So we think this is the classic narcissism of humanity, that we think we're smarter than the universe, than nature. Nature. One choice and one.

Yeah, you know, it's crazy, buddy.

It is. And it's like, what do you do with it? You transform yourself. You stay in your sovereignty. You stand for what matters to you, whatever that is. I respect any choice.

Yep. And not be. Not get so consumed with it. Because as the warrior that I am, I find myself sometimes getting wrapped up.

Oh, yeah. Don't go on Twitter in that moment.

Yeah. You know, it's. I spent a year in Sedona. Like, oh, my God, is this truly happening right now? Like, what can I do?

And don't go into your inbox. Right. That's how you'll find the enraged people.

I like this. It's like, in the future, you know, we're looking at maybe freedoms being taken away. So we're living in the pain of loss. And anytime we're living in the pain of loss, it's just a message to us that the vision that we have for our future has not been secured. So what is the vision that we have for Mother Earth? What is the vision that we have for our romantic partners and the relationships that we're actually in? And I think the more we focus on vision and we talk about our vision, the more it'll have to materialize.

So, yeah, liberation is everything. Can you be liberated and be in relationship? That's. Most people experience a lack of liberation. Their relationships are prisons. Think of the vows we've had. Till death do us part, I will honor and obey. What death? Your mortal death? Or just the death of the part of you that needed the relationship and chose it as at the time to complete you, when that's exactly the perfect choice because you needed to learn that you needed to be liberated. Yeah.

Death is like. I love that you bring up death. I know Ram Dass talks about death, but one. One of the things that Don told me once, he's like. He's like, look at over there. He's like, look to your left. And I looked over and he's like, you see that? That's death. Death is always following you. Death is always right next to you. Make death your best friend. Because when death is your best friend, you can truly live, right? And I was like, okay, like, I'm listening. Like, it's nothing to be afraid of. Like, use death. That's why when employees come around me and they're like, hey, I got this thing going on and I don't want to come around you. I'm like, dude, cough in my face. Let's see what happens, right?

Like, there's no fear. Fear is the illusion. Fear is the.

I do.

Like the old quote, even though the acronym is completely overplayed, but it's false evidence appearing freaking real. Like, that is.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Just about that acronym. Also. The evidence appearing real. Well, beliefs become our prisons. You know, the idea that you can't do something, the idea, you know, someone else's fear becomes our fear. And then as they say, thoughts thought over and again. Yeah. Become beliefs. And so that's what you said earlier. You know, like, beliefs can be both empowering and imprisoning.

And it is important to understand what beliefs live below. The reasons you don't fully self express and fully be who you are. Because, like, if you're liberated, we're liberated. And if you fully self express and step into your power, and I'm uncomfortable with that, you are actually liberating me because I likely have a belief that I can't fully step into my power and be who I am. So when we turn down the volume to make other people comfortable, we're not making them comfortable, we're not making them expanded. We might be giving them the perception of comfort, but they're really getting the perception of disassociation. And then they'll go, buy more shit.

Damn, this has been fun, my brother.

Burn it all to the ground.

Burn it all.

All the ball, all the start over fake shit.

Go deep.

Use a relationship as a vehicle. Yeah.

Big, big love, man. Where can people find you?

You can find me on Create the Love on Instagram. Create the love.com. if you want to check out. I have courses on breakups, dating, boundaries, codependency.

Best courses on the Internet.

I appreciate that. And I have an app called Mind M I N E apostrophe D. And on that, there's all the relational teachers that you could want all vetted. Amazing. There's frickin so many videos on demand. Anything you want to learn about best teachers in the world, Check it out.

Yeah, we'll put that in the show. Notes to you guys.

The mind dot com.

Mr. Mark Groves, thank you so much. My brother yeah, this was fun. I've been looking forward to doing this ever since I started the Drew and you'd podcast.

Me too, man. And I can't wait to have you back on mine. Oh yeah, my podcast. Go check out the episode I did with Drew. He tells his story.

It was good.

Yeah, so good.

Powerful podcast. You've had a lot of great people in there too.

So thanks, man.

Let's go.

Hey, my friend, real quick. I wanted to tell you about one of my favorite products. It's from Soul cbd. It's absolutely incredible. I love increasing my cannabinoid receptors in the body. Helps me deal with inflammation response. I've also noticed when I take it before bed, I take about a thousand milligrams. It gives me an extra hour sometimes of deep sleep. Deep sleep is so important. Most people get, as they age, 30 to 45 minutes of deep sleep. I'm hearing from some of the people that have been listening to this information from me for years. I've been getting two, two and a half hours of deep sleep. I've noticed my resting heart rate drops three to four beats a minute, which is absolutely exceptional when it comes to increasing hrv. When it comes to increasing your mental clarity in the morning. And when I take Soul cbd, I also notice that I'm not foggy like some other CBDs that include a little bit of THC. It takes me sometimes two, three hours in the morning to have the effects.

Wear off and then I'm good to go for the day.

But I actually like to wake up in the morning. I love my sun gazing and all these other aspects that I've talked about.

On this show in the past.

So if you're interested in a high quality CBD to help you sleep to get increase the quality of your life, check out my good friends company Angie and Mike Lee over at Soul CBD. You can go to mysolcbd.com drew and get 15% off right now. You can go to mysolcbd. Com Drew and get it right now.

It's as simple as that.

Talk soon.