SSP147: Answering Some Hard-Hitting Questions About Relationships

Hey, what's going on, my friend? Welcome back to the podcast. It's Jordan Kanlish here on this episode. We've got a solo episode for you. So these solo episodes that I do are usually coming from an Instagram live that I've done. Now, if you don't follow me on.

Instagram already, check me out.

State shifters. I do lives at least once a week and either on TikTok@jordancanlish01. So all my live streams, I don't really plan them too much. I kind of just allow whatever comes through me to be shared. And I trust that the right information will be received for you to maybe unlock something within yourself, something that, that gives you an insight or a breakthrough or a deeper understanding as to what's next in your journey. So I invite you to listen with your heart, listen with your body. Allow yourself to receive what you need from today's episode. And before we dive into things, I just wanted to share something with you. You know, I want to give you three of my favorite audiobooks. This is in alignment with today's sponsor of this show, Audible. And I want to tell you a little bit about these three books because audio books completely transformed my life. The minute I started using Audible and I was consuming books and information while I was driving my car, catching the bus and train to work, when I used to work as an accountant, it really started to unlock things within me. So here are my three favorite. Number one is Letting Go by David Hawkins.

Powerful book.

I've listened to it many times and it's a book I always recommend to my clients. Number two is Green Light by Matthew McConaughey. This was by far one of my favorite audiobooks. It's read by the author, and Matthew McConaughey is just a legend and it was some of the best storytelling I've ever heard. Third one is Will Smith. Will's book was, again, amazing storytelling and it was just so damn entertaining and full of wisdom. Now, if you are not using Audible already and you want to get a hold of one of these books for free, I've got a special trial for you. If you sign up through the www.AudibleTrial.com StatesHifters link, you get a free trial and a free audiobook to use. Now, you're probably already using Audible, but if you're not, I highly recommend it. So jump on that link audibletrial.com state shifters and get your free audiobook. Now, enjoy today's solo episode.

Good to be with you. Gonna be flowing for the next 20 minutes or so. And the theme of today's live is I'm gonna be answering some tough questions about relationships, and I've got a few questions prepared that I'm gonna start to rip through, and I'm gonna just start to express whatever I feel like is relevant and in response to those questions. So thanks so much for tuning in, guys. Great to be with you. These questions about relationships are what come up a lot in the clients that I coach, the conversations that I have, the friends I'm around. There's just some very common questions or struggles that I see a lot of people have in their relationship. So I wanted to speak to some of them because sometimes we don't always have a space where we can go into some of these difficult questions. So I hope that by me answering it and flowing on today's live, it's going to give you some clarity, because I'm sure you would have approached some of these questions at some point in your journey. So question number one. Question number one. How do I know if this person is the one? How do I know if they're the one? You know, I have this conversation a lot with friends right now in my life because, you know, I just turned 30 this year, and 30 is. Once you turn 30, there's almost like this element of serious now in your relationship. So you got to start to figure this stuff out, because, you know, for the. For the women, there is a bit of a clock that's ticking if you want to have a family and have kids. Right? So how do I know if she's the one? That's the question that comes up. And I've been with my partner for nine years, and, you know, I've never really asked that question because when I met her when I was 21, we were just flowing. We were just going with what felt great with. With what felt like expansiveness at the time. Liam, good to see you, bro. And what I see happen for people who start dating later on in life, that's the first question that they're asking when they go on a date with someone is like, is this the person I can spend the rest of my life with? Are they the one? You know? And I get it. I get the scarcity or the urgency around knowing the answer to that, but it's the wrong question to ask early on in a relationship. It's the wrong question to ask. What you should be asking in the early phases is, do I feel my best self around this person? Do I feel expansive around them? Am I growing with this person? Am I having fun? Because if you focus on those questions and let that lead your decision making, let, let the answers to those questions decide whether you spend more or less time with this person. The big question is, is he or she the one that, that kind of answers itself. At least that's what I believe. So I would let go of needing to know complete answers to Is this the person I'm going to spend the rest of my life with? Is this the person you want to spend time with right now? If the answer is yes, keep going and trust. I feel like there's a large element of trust here with going into the unknown, not just in relationships, but in your life. Trust the unknown. Like you don't need to know the answer to the big questions. If you're feeling called in a certain direction, if you're feeling called to be around a certain person or leave your job or travel to this place, are you courageous enough to trust that without needing to know where it's going to take you? I like to live my life like that. So far it's working out all right. So that's question number one. Question number two, how can I maintain attraction and passion in a long term relationship? Now, thankfully I have some wisdom to share on this because I've been in a nine year relationship and so far our attraction is great, the passion is good, we're still having lots of sex and one of the keys that I found to maintaining that is spending adequate time apart. We have friends outside of the relationship. I spend lots of time on my own, she spends lots of time on her own. But we travel separately sometimes and it's perfectly healthy to do that. You know, I have different passions and hobbies outside of our relationship and so does she. And in doing that, it allows us to go through our own growth and recalibration and realignment internally so that when we do come back together, the spark and the passion is still strong. Like right now, for example, I'm here in the Algarve in Portugal, you know, I'm spending some time on my own. My partner is in Lisbon and we're in a period right now where we will kind of go back and forth through hanging out with each other. And that's a little bit uncommon because what most people are used to when they're in their 30s and they're in a long term relationship, you just live together and you spend all your time together. And I don't think that's a good move if you. Especially for the man, for the men. If a man wants to really maintain that strong masculine edge, he needs time communing with other men. He needs time in challenge on his own, stripping away any comforts. You know, one of the things I love about being in a relationship is sometimes really comfortable. It's really nice to have someone that you can relate with, especially having a girl or a partner in your life who can you just bring that feminine touch and just like soothe you after a long day. And there's a time and place for that sometimes. For some men, what we need is more challenge. What you need is to remove the comforts. And what I've noticed through doing that is the spark, the attraction stays really strong when I make time for that in my life. So for me, it looks like men's retreats just looks like spending time with my mates in nature. Sometimes for me, it looks like going on a retreat on my own or just being on my own somewhere in nature can just really recalibrate and re. Clarify who I want to be in the relationship and leave my partner in a way that supports our polarity and supports her in a feminine. So that's, that's the answer to that question going into question number three. Okay, so question number three is, what's the best way to communicate my needs without seeming needy again? So it's all okay to have needs in a relationship. You can have emotional needs, physical needs, spiritual needs. But at the end of the day, there's a distinction that I want to help you guys make with this, which is ultimately, these needs are just preferences, right? On a base level, most of our needs are met moment to moment. When you, when you have a relationship with the divine, when you have a relationship with Source or God or Spirit, you realize that that relationship fulfills so many needs in your life. There's an abundance of love always there available. So I like to prioritize that as a baseline relationship. Am I connected with Source? Am I coming from wholeness? Is my heart full? Right? Am I loving myself? And then doing that? Now I'm set up to have a conversation where I could communicate to my partner what I'm needing more or less of from her to start to develop this, this bit of a team teammate relationship where we can support each other and in making sure where we're on track and we're growing together. And how I like to communicate, that is using a framework, right? Frameworks are really easy ways to get good at communicating. One of my favorite frameworks is the nonviolent communication framework. And I think and how that's how that works. Is you start by stating observations. You start by saying, hey, you know, I noticed yesterday when you did this. Then you state your feelings. You know, I felt really uneasy or I felt really disconnected. I felt like, you know, I felt let down by. You get to communicate specifically what you feel. And then after that, then you express a need. So you might say, hey, sweetheart, like, what I'm really needing from you is a little bit more collaboration. Or what I'm really needing from you is more of your presence, you know, and then you can make a clear request at the end of it, like, would you be willing to show up consistently on time for me? Or something like, would you be willing to help me out with these things around the house? And the framework is based around that observation, feeling, need and request. And it's a practice, right? It's a skill. The better you can get at strengthening your ability to articulate yourself clearly, concisely, and make clear requests to the person that you love. The more easier you're setting them up, the more easy you can set them up to be able to deliver on these requests without you projecting emotional needs onto them. Without you projecting stuff. Right? So all of that is based around taking responsibility for your own emotional needs first. Hope that makes sense. Fourth question, how do I balance my independence with a committed long term relationship? Okay, so how do I balance my independence with committed with my committed long term relationship? Now it goes back to what I said before, which is like, how do I maintain passion and attraction in a relationship? The independence part is absolutely essential. You know, for a relationship, relationship to be interdependent, each need to have their own independence. Okay. And what ends up happening for those who struggle with an anxious attachment style is the individual with the anxious attachment will latch on to the other person because they require them to feel safe, they require them to feel secure. And then the person with the avoidant attachment is, they, they just withdraw and avoid uncomfortable conversations because that's how they feel safe and secure. So when you look at attachment styles, developing security within oneself is how you find independence. It's how you find a sense of, hey, I got me. You know what, I'm all good, I'm whole, I'm complete, you know, I'm happy, I'm content. Whatever is required for you to access that level of fullness in your expression, whatever is required to access that level of wholeness in your heart is the key to staying independent. You know, on a grander level, no, I've been, you know, since I've been in my relationship, I really Started my personal development journey when I was about 20 years old. So I'm 30 now. So in this path for about 10 years. I started dating my partner around the same time that I started on this journey. And when I started on this journey, I was working in a corporate job as an accountant. People, some people already know this already. And it was during this period where I started to realize that wasn't my highest purpose. I started to seek more, pursue more in my life because I knew I had more to give. And what started happening was I started to realize that life was pulling me in certain directions. I started to hear this. This call, this intuitive call to step out into certain directions in my life. And while I was in a relationship with my partner, there was a balancing act between honoring her path, but also honoring my path. And what I feel like is important for men is that your purpose has to come before the relationship. As hard as that is to understand for some woman, for a man to really true, fit, free, and to live on his absolute edge, his purpose has to go in front of the relationship. That doesn't mean he disregards his partner's emotional needs and doesn't mean he doesn't show up for his partner when she needs him. But he must honor the direction that life is pulling him. He must honor his highest contribution, whatever path that he's taking him towards. Like, for example, if his highest purpose is to go and become a firefighter, but his partner doesn't want him to go and do it because she's afraid it's unsafe and she wants him to stay home and do, like, maybe a more comfortable corporate job. If the man doesn't honor that higher calling, he will. He will start to resent her. He will start to feel like he's not showing up his knees fullest. And deep down, the woman doesn't want that because she's going to get less of a man. She's going to be less attracted to him because he's not living on his edge. So a man must understand for him to be fully independent, he must pursue his highest expression and follow that relentlessly. So in an ideal world, your partner is amazingly supportive and she can follow you and support you in going after that. So that would be, you know, I hope that brings some clarity for the men and women who are listening. Fifth question. How can I resolve conflicts effectively without compromising my values? What a. What a great question. How can, how can we resolve conflicts better in our relationships without compromising your values? I mean, the first and obvious thing there is you Got to know what your values are. You know, you got to know, what do you stand for in your life? What's most important to you? What are your guiding pillars and principles to which you want to live your life from? Because once you have clarity on that, now you've got a blueprint for how you want to make your decisions. Now you've got something where you can share with your partner, hey, this is what I'm all about. You know, are you on this part two, or what are you. Your values, what's important to you? And, you know, when it comes to conflict, you're really starting to understand your partner's world. You know the quote from Stephen, Stephen Covey, like, seek first to understand before being understood. You know, when you bring that into a relational conflict and you're able to take responsibility or put your ego aside for a moment, understand, where's my partner coming from here? What's causing this, this breakdown inside of her? And then how can I get clear and how can I align my decisions with her decisions and her values? You know that that would be the first point. You know, all of this is based around clarity. No, for. I'll speak to the man again for a second. Like, to have clarity of what's important to you requires space. To really understand and get to know yourself on this, on this deep level, requires time and space where you're uninterrupted, where you're not distracted. Usually for me, it happens when I'm on my own. I get so much clarity when I'm on my own in doing that. That clarity I get to bring into the relationship and. And then I'm able to provide clearer structure and direction to my partner. And ultimately, if you remember that, you know, women are just wanting structure and direction as a man, if you can provide that, if you can provide more structure and direction to a woman and alleviate her of the stress of making decisions, the stress of the burden of decision making. If you can alleviate some of that stress in her life, she's going to feel much more comfortable in her feminine, seems much more comfortable in, in her playfulness and her expression. That's really where you want her as a man. You want your woman in her natural essence, just playing, being free, being rating, and being able to pour back into you through her natural, her natural energy. So for that to be maintained, which again, creates so much attraction in relationship. When you can maintain that, when the man can take responsibility for that aspect, the woman can take responsibility for the nurturing, devotional aspect, then you have a relationship that's an ebb and a flow. It's not a given and take. It's an ebb and a flow. Super important. All right, there's a few more questions here and I'm going to round this out, all right? Or I'll open up to you guys. If you have questions, you're more than welcome to put it in the chat. Next question. What's the key to building trust and emotional intimacy in a relationship? It's the key to building trust and emotional intimacy in a relationship. Well, trust at the end of the day is based upon. It's not just a one time thing. Trust is built over time through consistently showing up for your partner when they need you. You know, to be able to build that trust, you have to have trust within yourself. You have to be showing up for yourself on a consistent basis. And for a man to support his woman in this way, for a man to be able to provide emotional safety to his partner, for a man to be able to have a plan and support his partner physically and emotionally and spiritually, he's got to have his own internal, he's going to have his own game dialed in, right? He's got to be able to show up and understand what he needs what on an emotional, spiritual level, to feel full. So that trust is built on that trust is built upon consistently honoring your promises that you make to yourself, honoring your promises that you make to your partner. And ultimately, when a man has enough emotional capacity, when he, when he has this really strong relationship with himself, he will have enough emotional availability to be able to give from the overflow in his life. And I see too many men just pouring energy, giving, giving, giving, same as the women. Too many people just giving all their energy when they don't have enough to give at the end of the day. And then they start resenting people because they're just like, they're just needing time. They're just, they're just tired or depleted. So many of our problems can be solved just by resting more. You know, if you're tired, you're going to be pretty snappy and unhappy with people, right? At least that's how I am sometimes. Seventh question, We've got two more questions. That was. One more after this. How do I handle jealousy and insecurity in my relationship? You know, it's normal to have this. I just made a video before jumping on here about how, you know, one of the clearest signs of a healthy relationship is that you're able to have, you know, relationships with people from the opposite Sex, like, you know, I allow my girlfriend. My girlfriend has so many friends that are other guys. Sometimes I don't even know these other guys. And that sometimes can bring up jealousy. Sometimes it can bring up, you know, like a bit of fear. That's all that jealousy is. Jealousy is just fear. And when I. Whenever I notice that come up in my life, I'm like, oh, what an amazing opportunity. What an amazing opportunity for me to kind of sit with this part of me that's afraid. And if you look at any trigger in your life as an opportunity, it completely changes everything because now you have another chance to deepen the love that you have for yourself. So when. When I'm triggered, I sit with the fear. I acknowledge it. Okay? Like, I'm with it. I give myself a chance to be with it instead of distracting from it. And then I may communicate to my partner, if I'm feeling jealous about something, I'll let her know. I'll keep her in the loop. But it's perfectly okay to get jealous. What's not okay is to create restrictions. What's not okay to create limit your partner's freedom because you don't like this feeling. You know, a healthy relationship should have the freedom. There should be the ability to go out and be. Go where you want with who you want. Now you've got to have a trust in your partner that they will honor your heart. They'll honor the confines of the love and the trust you're giving to them. So it's twofold, but ultimately it comes back to the same thing. If you trust yourself fully, you'll be much more comfortable giving your trust to someone else. And most likely you'll attract someone into your life who, who honor and respect you to the highest degree. There's any element of disrespect that you have to yourself, then you will probably attract someone who disrespects you to, in some level, although eventually disrespect you. Because life and relationships are just mirroring what you put out. Yeah. So that's why for me, it's like I'm just monitoring. Like, what's the energy that I'm coming from in this interaction, in this communication, in this expression, in this relationship? What's the energy that I'm coming from? Because if it's pure, then it's all good. If it's pure, whatever's meant to happen will happen. And I can trust all of that. If it's impure, then it's going to reverberate back to me in Some way, you know. So it's so important in relationships that you do that. Because then I can trust everything. Then I'm fully okay. My partner can. I've been with my partner for so long now that like we just have complete trust in each other. I couldn't imagine any other way. I couldn't imagine her checking my phone, couldn't imagine me checking her phone to see if she's messaging. And if that's happening in your relationship, I'll really monitor that. And you get to make a decision. You know, you've got to let go of the past. Sometimes if your trust issues are there, you get to decide like you either going to let go of the past and give this person a chance or you're going to end it. There's no point in trying to effort your way into a relationship where each of you feel limited and restricted, or one person's walking on eggshells, or you feel insecure. It doesn't work. Doesn't work. I'd highly advise against it. Final question. What's the best way to support my partner while maintaining healthy boundaries? It's the best way to support my partner while maintaining healthy boundaries. Well, you know what I believe is the purpose of a relationship is to support the evolution of consciousness, support the evolution of, of ourselves. The purpose of the relationship isn't make me happy, isn't to make me fulfilled. It's just to support me in becoming more aware, the same as my partner. So a relationship is a dance to union, you know, to make sure that we're opening up to more love together that we can receive. So the best way that I can support my partner is helping her become more aware. Same thing with my partner. The best way she can support me is helping me become more aware to see more. Now there's no greater person who can support you than the person you spend the most time with. Because they're getting, they're seeing things, seeing little, little ways that you show up, little ways that maybe you go unconscious. And if your partner can be giving you reflections from a place of just honesty, can give you reflections from a place of non judgment, then what a beautiful gift that you have in a relationship. Someone supporting you and being your best self. So one of the best that, that the commitment is there. If you're in a relationship, you've got a teammate and see if you can hold each other to this high standard. Let's being, let's be as present, as conscious and as loving as possible. And when we noticed each of any of us going from that place, let's just be reflective of each other, give each other honest feedback, you know, and a boundary might be around how you want to be communicated to. A boundary is something where you're protecting something. You know, often if you're in a healthy enough relationship, you won't need too many boundaries. But a boundary could be an agreement around how you want to be spoken to or certain things that you know you want to uphold in how you interact with someone. So most of the boundaries that got set many way earlier on in my relationship just around communication, how we expect to communicate with each other, baseline level of respect. And then if there's ever a point where I feel like something needs to be expressed, I'll express that. But I'll know my body if it needs to be expressed. So, guys, I've just answered eight questions about, you know, eight hard hitting questions about relationships. If you missed or joined the live late, highly suggest go back and re listen to this because there was some, I mean questions that have come up a lot for me and the people that I'm coaching, the conversations that I'm having. So, so I hope you got some clarity from the live today. Thanks so much for being on here. I really appreciate your presence. If you're a man, you're watching this. You know, I'm hosting a retreat in Mexico in December, so it's about four weeks away. We have two spots left. If you feel like you want to take one of those spots, just hit me up DM me retreat or click the link in my bio and you can check out more information on there. All right, guys, thanks so much for tuning in. Appreciate you have a great day. We'll talk soon. Peace.