A Deep Dive into Love: Developing, Keeping and Leaving Relationships Featuring Annie Lalla, Amy Chan, and Joe Polish - Genius Network Episode #188

I think of love as choosing. It's the process of choosing one dedicated human to be a sacred mirror to reflect back your magnificence and your madness. Your magnificence, your intelligence, your poetry, your wisdom, your potential and your madness. All your insecurities, your fears, defense mechanisms, your shadow. I mean, nowhere but in your romantic relationship does all your crazy shit come out. And so they're there to reflect both of those and to stand fiercely for your greatness. And I think of love as also a crucible for personal growth. Being in a loving relationship is literally the most transformational workshop going on the planet that I've ever found.

If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network event, or want to learn more about Genius network, go to www.gienstruitnetwork.com. are you in love with the most extraordinary person you've ever met? If yes, that's wonderful and congratulations to you. If not, why not decide right now to never settle for anything less than that? Because if you do, that's how you'll create a relationship that's greater than any fight, bigger than any issue, and strong enough to last a lifetime. Last year in the USA, 51% of married couples got divorced. Maybe you already knew that statistic. But did you know that 60% of second marriages end similarly? And a whopping 73% of third marriages end in divorce? It seems that most people keep making the same mistakes. Here are a few questions to ask yourself. What if you could learn the keys to an everlasting relationship? Would you like to know how to create the possibility of true love? What are tools that could help your relationships transcend conflict? And do you know what it takes to cultivate an epic romance? One person doesn't have all the answers to those questions, but two people do. That's Amy Chan and Annie Lalla. Both are thought leaders in the area, as well as authors, coaches and experts in the art and science of love. Please help me welcome these two extraordinary women, Amy Chan and Annie Lala. Okay, so let me stick with the questions and I might go off questions here. So for those of you who may not know, tell us how you help men and women in relationships.

Well, I hope I help two groups of people, singles, who are done with dating and ready to find their soulmate. I love helping them, and in particular, I like to help skeptics believe in love again. So Joe is perfect, right? And with couples who are in love and committed, I help them resolve recurrent conflict, right? Because that's really where the rubber meets the road. And if I can help them through conflict, I can help them stay together forever. That's what I do. Okay.

I run Renew Breakup Bootcamp, and we take a scientific and spiritual approach to healing and rewiring the heart. So I work with people on the other side after breakup or divorce, and people who come to me typically come because they're trying to heal from the pain of separation. But what we always find is that there's recycled pain. And so not only do we help them with the process of grieving, we help them understand the beliefs, the patterns that keep repeating so that they can start shifting. Shifting them and create the results they want in love.

Yeah. Awesome. So, all right, this whole concept of love right now, love versus lust. Like, what is. How would you define. We'll start with you, Andy. True love. How does one create true love? What is it? How does one create it? Cultivate.

I think of love as choosing. It's the process of choosing one dedicated human to be a sacred mirror, to reflect back your magnificence and your madness. Your magnificence, your intelligence, your poetry, your wisdom, your potential and your madness. All your insecurities, your fears, your defense mechanisms, your shadow. I mean, nowhere but in your romantic relationship does all your crazy shit come out. And so they're there to reflect both of those and to stand fiercely for your greatness. And I think of love as also a crucible for personal growth. Being in a loving relationship is literally the most transformational workshop going on the planet that I've ever found. So, yeah, it's a crucible. It's also a trampoline and a sanctuary. It's a trampoline for your goals and your dreams and your dharma and your purpose. And a sanctuary or a refuge for your heart, for your failures, for insecurities, for your fears. You need both equal trampoline and sanctuary. And, you know, Sims was talking earlier about Michelangelo and David, and it's my favorite metaphor for true love, because Michelangelo is known for seeing the block of marble in the quarry, and he said he saw David inside the marble. And what he did is he just sculpted away everything that wasn't David. Right? So he saw the magnum opus in there. And when you fall in love with someone, they see a vision of who you could become, your highest, greatest self. And what they're doing when they're asking you to change, criticizing with bad bedside manner, what they're actually doing is they're saying, inside of you, I see a masterpiece, and I'm here to just scrape away everything that's not you. Your partner's not trying to change you. They're literally trying to scrape off all your defense mechanisms. Your insecurities, your fears, your coping technologies to get approval, everything that's not you. They're actually trying to emancipate you from your unconsciousness, from your smallness into a masterpiece. And so I want you to start seeing your partner's complaints as an attempt to sculpt you into greatness.

Yeah, that sounds good.

Yeah.

How about you?

I learned about love through Cinderella and Snow White. And let me tell you, I was very disappointed when I grew up. And heartbreak after heartbreak, I thought, what's wrong with me? And I realized one important lesson, that love doesn't automatically equate partnership. And the love that I thought was love was really lust, intensity, a little bit love addiction and codependency. And I think that when I work with people who have a lot of problems in relationships, it's this unrealistic idea of what love is, that there's a perfection, that you're going to lock eyes with someone and you're just going to know that they're your soulmate. And when you're chasing this fantasy, you're not reality based. And what love is and what partnership is, it's we oriented versus self oriented. And I don't think everyone is available or ready for that type of partnership. And if you're not, that's totally fine. But you also have to be super honest with what you're able and capable and available for. And if you're not, just enjoy that.

Phase of your life I want to add to yours. It's we oriented. My understanding of true love is you need to have equal parts integration and differentiation. The relationship's an organism. It's alive and it breathes in and it breathes out. And when it breathes in, we're together, we're connected, we're communal and with breeze out, we're separate, autonomous, sovereign individuals. And most couples have one that's really good at selfing and one that's really good at othering. And you need both. So I think true love is about identifying as the us and the we. But also if you're an empath and you're always up in the we, your job is to become more I more self, more autonomous. And you fall in love with your favorite teacher, you fall in love with the person who emancipate you from your naivete of being all selfing or, or all othering and cross trains you into your other underdeveloped Skill.

So selfing and othering. Elaborate on that a bit. So selfing. When someone is doing, I know what.

I want, what I need, what I think, what I feel. Every relationship that I've seen that's successful has these two sacred polarities. One that's good at Ihood, me, hood, and one that's good at we and us. And they find each other because they need to develop that underdeveloped skill. They need to cross train. You fall in love with your unconscious mind. Sean Stevenson used to say, you fall in love with that which you're not yet good at. And you hire them. You literally hire. The most important job you'll ever hire for is your partner. And you hire them to emancipate you from your night, from where you're not good at either selfing or othering because they're really good at it. But then when they bitch about how you're not selfing enough. I'm married to the best selfer I know, Evan Pagan. I literally was like, why are you so selfish? And he's like, why are you so obsessed with other people's needs? And so I had to learn how to. How to self and become an apprentice to my partner's genius, and he had to become an apprentice to my genius, which is tuning into the system and the needs of the relationship. And so I think every successful relationship needs both of those polarities and they need to cross train.

Yeah, you're smarter than Evan anyway. He's kind of a dumbass.

He says that. I know.

Yeah, it's awesome. Okay, what else do I have here? All right, so start with you, Amy. How can someone know if their relationship isn't working and what can they do about it other than they feel like shit and, you know, that sort of stuff.

Yeah, I think that I always get the question, should I stay or should I go? And it's a very complex issue that depends on what your highest priorities and values are. But when there is a misalignment of values, a misalignment of vision, and a misalignment of mutuality and investment, I think that relationships, they are going to be full of conflict. That's not the problem. You don't want a relationship that doesn't have conflict, but you do need two people who are mutually invested in moving through those conflicts and the ups and downs. And I think one thing I see often, why people stay in these dead end relationships. Well, you might be familiar with the term sunk cost fallacy. It's often used in the stock market. Right it's the idea of throwing good money at a bad deal. And we do this across the board. You might buy a movie ticket, and 15 minutes in the movie sucks, but you're like, you know, I just bought the ticket. I'm just going to stay. And the same thing happens in these relationships. We stay because we've already invested the therapy, the money, the houses, whatever it is, and we keep staying because of what we've already invested, but that's gone. And so if you are pondering, should I stay or should I go, this is a helpful prompt for you. Am I just stuck in the sunk cost fallacy, or can I if I was to focus on present value and future value, or what decision would I make? And that might help you?

And is this person the most extraordinary human I've ever met? I know that sounds audacious. It seems so obvious to me, but this is not. This is news for my clients. Aren't I just supposed to find someone who loves me and makes me feel good? No. You're supposed to marry the most extraordinary human you've ever met, because guess what? They're supposed to feel that for you. And when someone believes that, that. That you're the most extraordinary human they've ever met, honestly, you can do anything. And so the first thing I say is never settle for anything than that, anything less than that. So I know it's audacious, but, well.

I mean, there's people that are going to be like, well, my partner is not the most extraordinary person I've ever met.

No, no, hold on.

But they actually might be. And you're so busy looking for where they're wrong rather than seeing that they have a genius that you don't have. When you fall in love, you're like two eyes that were one. You had one eye until you met your partner. And now you can have two eyes working together in tandem to give you binocular vision, like two wings on one bird. And you're busy criticizing their genius because they're genius. You can't see the genius. Your job is to look for the genius behind your partner's crazy. It's always there. Just keep asking questions. My husband used to think I was crazy until he kept asking, asking, well, why do you do this? Why? When he got right down to it, he was like, oh, my God, you're genius. And thank God he kept going. There's a genius behind your partner's crazy. If you can get curious and they're here to show you the missing genius that you don't have because you just one eye thinking you can see everything. But you need both in collaboration so you can see beyond.

Well, I'm curious about the part with conflict, and we've had lots of discussions where you get in that state, like something happens in the conflict and you feel this relationship is fucking done. I just. I can't go there anymore. But then it could be like two hours later or two days.

Yeah. You never want to break up during a fight.

What's that?

You never want to break up during a fight. Yeah. If someone's not right for you, then in the moment of most connection, deep love, everything's great. Some part of your soul will just go, I love them. I'm clapping for them. They're just not right. So you interview your heart and your soul when everything's working and you get really honest and then you know the truth. Only break up from the highest point of beauty and poetry of your relationship. Knowing that it's not right and not right doesn't mean they're not good enough or you're not good enough. When you use your house key to open my front door, it's not because your key is not good enough or my lock's not good enough. It's just not a match. Right. When it's the right match, the door opens. And so I don't think it has anything to do that something's wrong with you or something's wrong with them. It's not a match. And you keep going until you find your match.

Okay, so I've always loved the saying, you know, we find people whose dents match our dents. So why do we date people that are bad for us? I mean, what is this thing called attraction that sometimes causes. Oh, you know, it's kind of like, I want to eat the Ding Dong or whatever, you know. What is this whole thing as it relates to human dating and attraction?

I think it's complex. You might have an answer. I have an answer.

Yeah. I'd love to start with human beings. We're drawn to what's familiar, and it's across the board, whether it's food or music or romantic partners. And there's a theory called attractions of deprivation, which explains how we are drawn to people who can wound us in a very familiar way to how we are wounded as children.

It's almost nostalgic.

Yeah.

It's home.

It feels safe, it feels comfortable, even if it's chaotic. And our psyche does a wonderful job and it's all subconscious of trying to. Of creating, recreating, the scene of the crime in an attempt to change its ending. I'll give you an example. I grew up with. My parents were immigrants from China, and my father was an entrepreneur. And the only way I got love and attention was when I got good grades. And I learned at a young age, I'm like, oh, when I get an a, I get $40, okay? And it was great. I adapted to become a super achiever. But when I grew up, I constantly found myself pining over people, chasing over people, editing myself, making sure I could do all the things, give all the gifts. And I was like, why am I always heartbroken? Why do I always feel anxious? And so even though the types of people looked very different, the pattern was the same. It was repeating this exact same thing as a child, as if I could only prove myself, edit myself, I'll finally get that love I really wanted. And the emotional experience kept repeating.

Yeah. And so that's attachment imprint. Basically, your parents are your first attachment figure. So of anyone who's supposed to love you in the whole world, it's your parents. So however they love you, good, bad, indifferent, that's what love is. It's not like you have other things to choose from. So if that's what love is, then that's how you're going to love others or expect them to love you. And there's people think, you know, I'm looking for my mate. I have this resume. I want them to be this, this, and this. But actually, what your blueprint is, is you're hunting through dates, looking for someone who gives you a particular brand of owie that's familiar, a particular flavor of heartbreak, and that feels familiar. And to the human nervous system, familiar is coded as safe. I survived it. This guy who writes me poetry and is devoted to me, I'm not familiar with that because my dad used to beat me. I'm just making this up. My dad used to beat me. So this guy just doesn't feel familiar and safe, even though he might be a great partner. So you. When you fall in love, your attachment dynamic and imprint from your parents port right over to your romantic partner. So now you're looking for that same owie heartbreak feeling so that they can play the script, do the dance, and you can finally get the love you never got. But the thing I like to say to my clients, listen, you're going to fall in love with. With someone whose. Whichever parent you had to earn love from, that flavor of Aoi is going to be the blueprint that you hunt for a partner. For. So if you're going to do that anyway, no matter what courses you take, at least look for the most intelligent, good looking, conscious, most committed to personal growth person who has that crazy that you can find. So you can get a designer aoi with someone who, during the relationship, you teach them how to love you the way you never got it. Literally. I knew I was going to marry my mother. My mother was a little cold and emotionally unavailable. So who did I find? Evan Pagan. And he was the most emotionally unavailable person. But he was smart, conscious, committed to personal growth. And over the last 10 years, I've inspired him to learn how to be emotionally attentive and finally give me the love I never got from my mother. And so you can get it. Don't look for someone who doesn't have the crazy. Look for someone who has the crazy the least amount, but enough to give you that flavor of familiarity and then emancipate them from that pattern so that you can get what you need.

Speaking of unavailability, 31 flavors of owie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm curious here. Who has ever pined or chased over someone who was unavailable if you have.

Raised your hand or treated you poorly in any way? Right.

Okay, interesting. So there's a reason why we, on a logical level, we're like, oh, this person is not good for me. They're unavailable, emotionally unavailable, whatever it is. But then everything in your body is like, yes. And so there's a reason. It lies in this experiment with rats. So they've done an experiment where they took rats and they had them in a cage and there was a lever, and every time the rat pressed the lever, they got a pellet of food. And then the scientists were like, okay, well, every time the rats know they press the lever, they get the food. Okay. Continuous reinforcement. Well, what happens when sometimes we give them food when they press the lever, but sometimes we don't. And what they found was the rats got completely obsessed with pressing that lever over and over and over again until they would stop grooming themselves. Some of them died. They wouldn't drink water. And casinos know this, right? Why are the slot machines the most profitable? And it happens in our romantic relationships when someone gives us just a little bit of attention and then they pull back, and then they check their IG story and then they pull back, and then they message you that they miss you or whatever it is. You are getting intermittent reinforcement. You don't know when the reward is going to come. So when you even get a little bit, you get so much dopamine. There's so much of an intensity, and that is what gets you hooked.

Yes. And the way to hack that, by the way, is instead of just looking at the dopamine hit, just ask yourself this question. Who this person is in the world, how they move through reality, the impacts they leave, the wake behind them. Are you in love with that? Because if you check that question and you pit it against the dopamine hit, you'll see that if you're not in love with who they are in the world, then you're just on drugs. You're just the rat hitting the bar. Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. It's pretty good.

Also, conflict. We mentioned conflict, and I just want to give a plug for conflict, because I literally help conflict resolution. That's my. My wheelhouse. Conflict is like going to the gym. Okay? The heart is the muscle. You go to the gym. How do you build a muscle? It has to rip and then grow back every time you have a conflict with your partner. If you know the technology of how to alchemize that conflict into intimacy, which is a skill set, but if you know how to do that, you literally turn that conflict into an upgrade of understanding and mutuality and collaboration. Every conflict is a collaboration trying to have happen that got stymied. Okay. So if you can see every conflict is, okay, how can I turn this into growth? Not a tear in the heart muscle, but a tiny rip that makes it stronger, that there's a whole new availability. Conflict doesn't mean you're not with the right person. Conflict means you're with the right person to build your heart muscle.

Speaking of, I was trying to say alchemizing conflict into intimacy. That was going to be my next statement. So that's very good, by the way.

Conflict into connection.

Re.

Alliteration, maybe. Yeah.

All right. So really, your focus is on when people break up. So after a breakup, what's the best thing one can do? And maybe the worst thing one can do?

Yeah, I'll start with what not to do. Don't stalk their social media. I know it sounds simple, but understand what's happening in the brain, right? When you're with someone for months, years, decades, you have neural pathways that have been wired together. And so after the breakup, your body is in a state of shock. And even though you know on a cognitive level that it's over, your body's like, well, get me the dopamine. Get me the oxytocin. So it's going to drive you to check their social media to try to make up excuses to see them, to have that closure talk. But every time you do go down memory lane, you're only strengthening those old neural pathways and you're not letting them prune away. So that is why you want to do chunking. I would say start 30 days, because if I just say forever, it's too overwhelming. Assess in 30 days and do another 30. The next thing to stop doing. You know those get togethers, when you get together with your friend and then suddenly they're a narcissist and you pathologize them? Don't do that. Do not vilify your ex. And this doesn't mean that what they did isn't horrible or that it's, you know, right or wrong. But here's the thing. If you are constantly blaming your ex, analyzing your ex, hoping for your ex to change, vilifying your ex, you are still in a relationship with your ex. You're just in a relationship with someone who's not in a relationship with you. And sometimes we hold on to the pain because that's the last part of the relationship we've got left. And I've seen people hold onto it for months, years, decades, and they're still in a relationship with this person. So don't do those things by themselves. And I would say quickly, what to do.

Just one thing about the demonizing the ex. Here's the deal. Once you love someone, if you really love them, you never stop. Your heart loves them forever. So when you love someone and then you demonize them, the part of you that loves them, you're now demonizing that. And so you create self loathing and it reduces your self esteem. So you want to, you want to make sure your breakup leaves your partner with more dignity and self esteem than they came in with, because that's what keeps your dignity and self esteem up. And the quality of your last breakup governs the success in your next relationship. So you want to do it in a way that you can triumphantly sign your name to. And it's worth the effort to go back to the ex that has the unfinished business and clean it up in a way that you can sign your name to triumphantly because that's who you are moving into your next relationship.

Yeah, I love that. I think then in what you do is give grief the respect it deserves. When you lose someone, whether it's to separation, rejection, death, whatever it is, you go in a natural state of grieving. And I work mainly with high achievers and high achievers just want to get over It. They want to just like, how can I bypass this? Well, you can't. And that's what causes you to have luggage, right? Baggage. You bring that baggage with you because you never process it. I remember. I mean, why did. I did. I think I was going to grow up to be a breakup expert. I was a complete failure to my parents. They wanted me to be an accountant. But, you know, like when I went through a traumatic breakup and I. I completely broke, I spiraled into depression. I had suicidal thoughts, and I had so much shame because I felt pain. And my friend said to me, after a while, they're like, just get over it. You know, this happened for a reason. And I, I couldn't understand why I was going through that. And I felt so stupid. And now I, I understand. We are all going to lose someone we love in some way. And if you don't give grief the respect it deserves, it stays within you. So I would say do that.

And Kubler Ross has great books on mourning and grieving. It's a whole process. And you want to track the process. One thing I want to say, never break up in a fight. Ever. Never break up in a fight. It's not trustable. It also reduces your self esteem and your self esteem. So as I said earlier, you want to break up from. Think of your relationship as a terrain. Look at topography, find the most, highest, beautiful, most poetic vista, stand there and break up from that place. Because that doesn't reduce the dignity of the other person. They can feel your love and your commitment and your reverence of relationships. And by the way, when you break up, it's not a failure. Nobody thinks of breakup as a failure. When you graduate university, it's not because you failed. You graduated, you got all the education, everything you need. Relationships are education. And when you shift out of the relationship, it means you've graduated, you got what you came to get, which is a nutrient or an education or some information that you didn't have until then. And every couple that you see together, that you're like, they shouldn't be together. They should. Every couple that's together is supposed to be together. And they'll be together until they get that nutrient, that education, that wake up of how to care for another person's feelings or how to stand up for your own needs and not just, you know, be steamrolled and doormatted by your partner. They have to learn their education. And then once that happens, it'll organically disintegrate. So I never try to force a breakup. I just Ask questions that are poised, the answers to which help the person realize that the person they're with isn't. Isn't a trampoline for their dreams and isn't a sanctuary for their heart.

When I was in this relationship, the reason why I started Breakup Bootcamp, I put so much of my identity in him and us. So when the relationship fell apart, I fell apart. And I think one of the greatest lessons I've learned is to not make anyone or anything your absolute everything.

And.

I spiraled for about a couple months, but I carried the anger with me everywhere I went. And I think even two years after the breakup, I was still telling that story. And I remember this one moment when I was having coffee just because repeating the story to someone who never heard it, and they just stopped me, and they're like, so, Amy, does this story serve you? And I'm like, no. And can you tell me another time when he was kind and loving? I was like, oh, yeah. And I started rattling off these. These memories, and I started to smile. And I realized in that moment, it was like that glue that brought everything together, that in my darkness, I could only see what I was set out to see, which was the bad, the terrible, the darkness. And I realize that it's the story. And so you may not be able to change the events of your history, but you can choose to change the story you attach to those events. And I think that applies in everything, not even just relationships, but these hardships.

We go through, I love that, you know, our mind has all these files in it. I think of it like a room, and I want to decorate the room with memories that I love looking at, the same way you might put art in your house. And so that memory of your ex you're always going to have, why would you have on the COVID of the book of who that was in that relationship, all the negative stuff? I don't want that art on my wall. So I go and I look for all the beauty, the education that I got from that relationship, and I put that on the COVID I'm managing the PR of that ex partner so that I'm standing so that their PR in my mind, stays beautiful, because that's what I want them to do for me. My imagination has a whole bunch of lawyers. And their job is one thing to stand for the dignity, the beauty, and the innocence of anyone who's ever harmed me. That's how I love. I use a call on the lawyers what story would make what they're doing make sense. And I sit with that story. And I notice that that usually grows me to the next level. So I think it's important to micromanage the way you hold memories so that they decorate your mind rather than, you know, muddying up who you were in the past. And in terms of a relationship story, I broke up with one person in England. It was the longest relationship I had at the time, and it was devastating. And I had just taken Vipassana the year before, which is 10 days meditation, silent retreat. And it was the only thing that saved me from probably spiraling into that which she talked about. But what I learned is that when you fall in love, you end up elevating your partner to attachment figure. Which means, what does that mean? They're the person that soothes you and makes you feel safe. They're the person that does the thing that makes you feel calm. Once I realized that, that is me taking my parents and putting my partner into the burdensome position of having to make me feel better. And the indicator that you've become an adult is realizing that you have to take radical responsibility for your emotional state, which means your safety now as an adult is up to you to generate in your body, not your partner. Once I realized that the that's a burden that we put on our partner. You have to say or do something for me to feel better. So I learned to take radical responsibility for using all my meditation techniques to breathe through the pain, the trauma, the insecurity, the fear. And I came out of that with a level of power because I moved. I alchemized the sadness and the pain and the impotence and the hopelessness into I can cope. And that left me with higher self esteem. And now I have a great relationship with that person. But I took responsibility for the pain not being anyone else's fault, but my incapacity to generate safety in my body. And I learned the tools to do that. So when I work with clients who are couples, I look them as into the eye as best as I can through zoom, and I say, listen, I don't work for you. I work for your kids. I work for your future unborn kids or your current kids. I want to look them in the eye and say, listen, I did everything I could for your parents to find each other in the darkness. So everything I do is actually about the kids. And so when a child grows up in a house, they've got mom and dad with these different ideas and values. And every time mom and dad have a different opinion that they haven't found a way to collaborate and tessellate or find a transcendent value that includes both. The child is fragmented. They go, I want to be like mom. I want to be like dad. And then they have to split themselves to be in rapport with both parents. And so every time you don't find a transcendent value that you can work from, as in a couple, you're literally putting your children through fracturing. So that's why I help the couple turn their conflict into a collaboration, which means one set of values. Two people coming together are coming from different worlds and different values. The idea that they can find each other at all is amazing. So I get them to be clear about their values and then collaborate and work together so they can find transcendent value that include and go beyond. This is the value of the relationship entity. Not just each person, but the relationship is a unit. And when they have a dilemma or an indecision, they appeal to those transcendent values in order to resolve the conflict. And so that's my first thing about kids. And when you fight around kids, I just want to let you know it's okay. Kids need to see you fight. The thing they also need to see is that you resolve the fight and how you resolve it. So what we do is we get in a fight, we hide in a corner, we resolve it, and the kids never see. So they get afraid of fights. They can handle fights. If they watch you go through the process of finding each other and. And collaborating and making up and make sure your kids know, hey, we worked it out. We're loving hug in front of them. Then they learn that conflict isn't scary. It's a process. And they always find each other again. And when. When you're fighting around your kids, make sure you say this, no matter how small. Listen, Mommy and daddy are having some intense feelings right now. We're working through it. We love each other. We love each other more than this anger. You don't have to do anything. We've got this. That's the important part. You don't have to do anything. We've got this. Because kids automatically think, I have to fix. Mommy and daddy are scared. So if you can say that and then go back to completing it and then let your child know, we completed it. We're in love again. And just look. Just look. We. We solved it. Oh, last thing. Your child is literally piece of DNA from mom, piece of DNA from dad, intertwined and replicated ad infinitum. That's what your child is. And when you don't love each other even if you're divorced, when you speak poorly about your partner in any way, that child goes, half my DNA and all my cells is trembling with insecurity. So when you speak about your partner, even if you're not with them anymore, you speak with reverence and respect. I want that child to know that even if your parents aren't together anymore, they don't. They're in love. They did love each other. They still respect each other. And they were that child you were born from love when we were in love, even though we're not there anymore. And a child that knows that they were born from love, even if the parents are divorced, they can do anything in their life because their DNA is like that.

People that stay together that just do not get along, or not getting along, if they were ever in love, falling out of love, however, you would call that that. Say we're staying together for the kids even though they are miserable.

So you're staying together to show your kids what mediocre love looks like so they can be doomed for the rest of their life to not have true love.

Yeah, no, but you hear that all the time. So what?

Like, well, I wanted. I'd want. I'd want them to know that there is a way to do your divorce or your separation, to stand for your birthright, to have true love before you die. There's a way to do it so that your kids. There's a way to do it that's the most beautiful it's ever been done by two humans. So I enroll the couple in that possibility and is there a way you could love each other outside of this romantic context where. Where the kids go, oh, that's loving rather than staying together, but being hating. So I'm standing for the most extraordinary relationship between the two people, not necessarily the marriage. So what is the context that allows you to have the most extraordinary relationship? It might not be marriage, it might be co parenting. Right. And so that's more important for the kids.

When someone's made up their mind that they want to stay together for the sake of the children, it's not my job to convince them out of it. Right. It's like she should I say or should I go? Is a very personal and deep question. But I would say that if you've made the choice to separate and there is children or pets involved and you have to interact and you can't just do 30 days, no contact, the key is to keep those interactions without emotional charge in the sense picking fights or even Going to them with really great news, where you get that, that's the glue part that keeps you really hooked.

Yeah.

Ask any kids. Are you glad your parents stayed together for you? Even though they were had drama and fighting? None of them say yes. Right. So it's not. I think it's a cover story staying together for the kids. I think you're actually staying together because you're shit scared to leave or you're worried you can't make it. There's other reasons. And if I can find a way for them to both feel safe about that future, then shifting into like a loving co dynamic is usually better than pretending kids can sniff everything under the carpet. I think there is always an overlap between two seemingly disparate systems. I don't care if it's Palestinian, Israeli, I don't think if it's, if it's black, white, if it's a husband and a wife. Because I immediate conflict. I have to believe that there always exists an overlap in the van. We just have to find it. And so I don't believe there's such a thing as value misalignment. I feel like there's situations where you can't be bothered to put the energy in to find the transcendent value and that's okay. But I believe that it exists. So I don't have it. As there's a values alignment misalignment. I think there's a transcendent value that exists and do we want to put in the work to find it. And if you're in love, you usually do want to put in the work. And if you're not, then you probably don't.

So if you were to offer a few action steps, everyone listening, what would you tell them to build a healthier, more meaningful relationship?

Here's the deal. People don't fall in love with you. They actually don't fall in love. They don't fall in love with you. They fall in love with who they get to be around you. They fall in love with how they feel about themselves around you. So whether you're in a relationship or you're dating, just get that that person isn't impressed by all your accolades or your fancy status. They're impressed with if they feel smart, intelligent, beautiful, interesting around you. So whether they're married or not, you just want to create that experience for that person because that's how they fall in love. And so that's one tool you might have. I have lots.

But yeah, I think another one is understand like learning the skills of Conflict. And I think I see people who throw away a good relationship because like, oh, I don't like how they deal with it. Human beings were wired to survive. And so if your partner doesn't feel safe and you want to have what's called a high stakes conversation, whether you want more date nights, whether you want more free time, whatever it is, and you go in, I always use this analogy, are you going in with boxing gloves or a handshake? Because boxing gloves is the timing of the conversation. It's the type of wording, accusatory language is boxing gloves. Because what happens is when you go with boxing gloves and that person can already subconsciously pick up if there's a threat. And when there is, they're into their animal brain, right? They're flooded with cortisol and adrenaline and that's preparing their body to fight flight, freeze or fawn. And you've already lost the conversation before it's begun. And so get really good at learning how to go in with a handshake. And when you have those high stakes conversations and you notice that they start getting defensive, get out of the context and go back to connection. Re establish safety. Because everything else just goes out the window. If you're dealing with someone who's just reverted back to their eight year old wounded child.

Yeah, love that. You have to connect first before you make a request. Every complaint is actually a request in disguise. So you know, I have this thing. I love this little metaphor. Eben uses it too. It's like, how do you go from WTF stance? Which is where we mostly come in our complaints. What the F W. It's energetic. We might not say what the fuck, but our energy is what the F. How do you go from that stance to what I call mlk? MLK stands for Martin Luther King. If anybody had a reason to be what the fuck, it was him. But he didn't. He said, I have a dream of one day someday, you know, what you might say is that someone unpacks the dishwasher and puts it in the cupboard. I have a dream. If you can take every request and scrape off the what the fuck and turn it into an MLK inspirational speech, you will have them. And so take your WTF and turn it to MLK and they will follow you. So that's one hack. Teacher stance. Teacher stance.

Thank you.

There's one more, basically, and this is, this one's hard. If you're angry and you're frustrated and you want to give feedback to your partner, don't. Not while you're triggered because it's not a teaching moment. It's really just a shutter your grumble onto them moment and think you're asking them to change. But it never works. So when you're upset with your partner, you have a choice. Okay, you can either shudder your grumble and upset onto them, and we've seen how that works, or you can actually get a behavior change, which both are fine, but at some point, you're done shuddering your grumble. You just want them to goddamn change the thing. You never get both. You have to choose one or the other. And so if you want a behavior change, you want to get untriggered, breathe ground, regulate, take a couple days strategically, think about, how could I inspire them, MLK style, by sharing what's possible, who I see them be, what your pain was without any shame, blame, or make wrong, and just give them the information so that they can transform their behavior in a moment where they're in a teachable, receptive state. So the idea, when I'm angry with my partner, I literally open my phone, write down, what the. I hate this, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I wait for like 24 hours, and 80% of them are gone after 24 hours. I read them again and I'm like, I'm not bothered by that. So that's good. The 20% that are left are systemic issues that I have a problem with that don't work in this relationship. And so they're important. So I want them to get the behavior change, not just grumble my frustration. So then I think strategically, I talk to my coaches, I work it out. I'm like, when would be a great time to bring this up with my partner in a way that opens their heart, MLK's them and shows them my pain in a way that doesn't make them feel shamed, bad, or wrong. Because if you can do that, your partner will literally come to your rescue. When a man loves a woman or a woman loves a man, they will fly across the cosmos in response to the howl of your pain. But you have to be willing to howl your pain, open your kimono and be transparent if you want them to listen. And most of us are busy being angry and sharing our grumble. You know, anger is the bodyguard of pain. Rather than saying, I'm in pain, will you help me? And once they realize that the thing that is making you in pain is they're crazy, they'll organically change. They're crazy. You don't need to point it out. They have to have the epiphany. So that's really thinking about not giving communication and teaching feedback while you're triggered. Hard to do, but it's very useful and it gets you the outcome you want.

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