Love, Marriage and Relationships on Lockdown with Bruce Muzik on Thrive Time with Eric Edmeades

Foreign. Hi, welcome back, it's Eric. Ed Meads here with another episode of Thrive tv. And today I've got a really special guest, Bruce Music A very good friend of mine and also the creator of Love at First Fight. Bruce is a phenomenal presenter, great trainer, but also a very good man. And I think that's always a good sign when we're going to be talking about relationships. As I mentioned the other day when we interviewed John Gray, I find that today the topic of relationships is more interesting than it's ever been before because we have people facing extremes that they've never really had to deal with. Some people are locked up together and some people are locked up apart, and some people are having to cope with having their parents in their house, some people are coping with having children in their house. And. And there are polarity problems because as we've seen during this crisis, there are some people that operate at the hysteria end of the spectrum, and then there are other people that operate at the denial end of the spectrum. And what we're hearing from a lot of couples out there is that they find that the husband and wife are often at different places on that spectrum. In other words, one of them thinks it's okay for the kids to go out and play with other kids in the park and the other one doesn't. So there's a variety of interesting tensions that are circulating in relationship at the moment. And so I wanted to bring yet another expert that can come and talk to us about how to diffuse tension, how to create magic, and how to create more closeness at a time when there is a little bit of pressure. Bruce, it's a real privilege and honor to have you here with me today.

Thanks, Eric. It's always a blast being with you. And to introduce me as a good man is probably the highest praise you could have given me. So I'm secretly flattered over here.

It's not a secret anymore. Everybody knows. So, Bruce, let's jump in with. There's a couple of different areas that I want to go to here, but I, you know, what I'm aware of is that most relationships have little cracks or potential cracks in them all the time. And that's been my experience that it's very rare that I've ever. I've only ever seen one. There's only one marriage I've ever seen where I felt like there's never been a crack and there's never one one in my entire life. And the rest of them, it seems to me that there are little cracks or Potential cracks. And that what happens often is that something will come along that will expose those cracks. And for example, children. A lot of times people think, oh, we'll have kids, and it'll just be amazing. And then kids are like, one of the most wonderful ways to expose every crack and potential crack. But it strikes me that right now, with increased anxiety that some people are experiencing and fear and restriction and genuine financial worry and a variety of different things, a lot of people's crazy cracks and potential cracks are about to be exposed. Talk to me about how you feel about that. What have you been observing and what can we learn from it and how can we protect ourselves?

Okay, perfect. Well, I think you're right. Quarantine is going to be just like having children. It forces the cracks to come out. And just like having children and just like quarantine. The thing that having children and being in quarantine have in common is that they both involve extended amounts of time together and reduce the amount of time you get to spend apart. And I think in all of life, but particularly in romantic relationships, we've got to balance two opposing poles. One is what Ken Wilber would call being communal. Being part of a group, being part of a couple, being part of a family, interacting outside with other people. And the other one is being agentic, which on this side is being alone, being a me being. And when you've got two me's that come together in a we and then breed, and now you've got four of you in a family together in quarantine, you have no time to be a me alone because you can't leave and go outside. And unless you've got a big house where you can lock yourself away and hide for a little bit and get your me time, all of this time together forces you into a space of, oh, my God, I'm like, I'm overwhelmed. I'm desperate to get out. I've got no alone time. And all this wee time then has the cracks come out? Because you start to go into a state of stress instead of anxiety. Your fight or flight mechanism gets activated subtly in the background. And then a little innocent conversation about, you know, who's gonna put the kids to bed turns into a blowout fight with, you know, one of you sleeping on the couch and the other one in the bedroom. So that's what I see. It's the balance of the we and the me that gets totally messed up during quarantine.

Yeah. And I think that, you know, one of the things that happens with that is that There are areas where maybe before people were tolerating, and I'm not a big fan. You know, people talk about toleration being a virtue, and I'm not of the opinion about virtue at all. And now what I think we're going to identify is like, oh, I didn't think I was tolerating very much, but actually I may have been. You know, we had John Gray on the show the other day, and he pointed out something really interesting, and that was that very often with his wife, if he was out in the world working, she really respected that he was working, that he was out there slaying dragons. But when he was working from home, she felt ignored. And isn't that fascinating? And I know that I've had that same pattern in my house. And so I think we have to watch for those little quirky things that maybe don't really have any meaning, but watch for the meaning that we create on them. Let me ask you this. Let's say it's exactly the thing you've talked about. There's some tension that's been building up in the day, and of course, maybe the parents are trying to do the best they can to put on good faces for their children. And now something like that happens. There's a conversation about who's going to put the kids to bed. Just something very normal and mundane, but not so mundane in the current environment. And then it starts turning into a little heated. Talk to me about diffusing that, you know, and I want to hear it from both sides because I feel as a man, there are certain things that I've been able to do in my life that have been able to diffuse those arguments. But then I've tried that same strategy another time, and it's just been like oil on the fire. And so I want to hear from both sides, what do you think men can be doing to diffuse, and what do you think women might be able to do to diffuse?

Okay, I'm not going to answer the question the way you want me to because I am quite an advocate of staying far away from gender differences when it comes into relationships. Of course, gender differences come into certain areas of relationships, like sexual attraction, definitely. But in my experience, gender differences don't come into the heart. We all have hearts. We're all human, and we all relate, whether we're male, female, straight, gay, whatever the case may be. And I think when those arguments start to escalate, the first thing that I would do is I would attempt to soothe my partner. This is a quite a controversial idea. And, you know, in our culture, Eric, we've, we've been. Or certainly I was, I was brought up with the idea that independence is the pinnacle of accomplishment or growth as a human being. Once you've, once you don't need anybody anymore, you've arrived. But in relationships, you're never independent. The very nature of a relationship is that you're. The two of you are dependent on each other. And the minute you enter into a romantic relationship, a certain set of relational needs come online that never come online when you're single. So, for example, the need for touch, the need for sex, the need for comfort, the need for reassurance. And where I think our culture does.