Heal Your Past Relationships & Find Love [MASTERCLASS] EP 1335

All the unknowns are filtering onto your relationships. And the relationship becomes the holder of all that stress. It's not just people didn't get along. It's that.

Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome to this special masterclass. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in. Do people even really want to stand out to have a committed long-term relationship? or they more just, they say they want the commitment, but their actions don't back it with just constantly being surface level or constantly being a part of the noise as opposed to trying to stand out. It's like they might try to, especially with guys, it's like, okay, maybe it seems like more women want to be committed than more guys want to be committed.

I. Well, that's a tricky one. I Most people, I believe, who think they are evolved enough for a relationship or not.

Right. When do you know?

A long time, by the way, I count myself in that category where I.

Thought I was a great guy.

I really thought there were times in my life where I really thought I was a great guy. It wasn't that I was ever a nasty person. I was never a mean person. I was never a... I wasn't the great partner I thought I was. It's not like I... You know, there are times in my life where I thought, God, I'd just be a great partner to someone. And I was not ready to be a great partner to someone because I think the first time you really give yourself to something, really commit yourself to not just your own happiness, and your own needs, because that's what most people talk about when they talk about a relationship is their needs, their happiness, right? How good it feels to be in a relationship. It's about them. But it's not about seeing someone else, truly seeing someone else and understanding who they are and understanding what their needs are and Supporting them and their happiness and their goals.

It's a great relationship when you stop thinking about your needs and you just say, I'm gonna give this person and look at them from a place of understanding and want to bring them so much joy and fulfillment and not expect in return, but hopefully the other person is saying the same thing about you.

Well, yes and no. There's a lot of There are a lot of people who on that idea, that ethos, have lived a very masochistic life for a long time.

Really?

That, by the way, what you just described could describe one of two things. One beautiful, one terrible. What you just described could either be an extraordinary relationship of two givers or It could describe unrequired love. It could describe the person who is giving, giving, giving, giving, giving to someone and playing the martyr in their own relationship. They keep ignoring me. They keep, you know, not meeting my needs. They keep being selfish. They keep, but I am just gonna show up and be my best partner. And love them and give my all, and one day they will turn around to meet me in that. Many, many people have caused tremendous suffering to themselves and wasted a lot of good years.

So is it both give to yourself, make sure you're asking for what you need, but also giving?

It's a combination of respecting what your core needs are. What do I need? like when it really comes down to it, what's my standard for what I need? Now, how exactly someone meets that standard is that's where the messiness of relationships comes in. Because you say, I want to be respected, and then someone does something and you go, I don't feel respected, but they go, But that doesn't mean a lack of respect to me. So now we have a whole conversation on the execution of a standard.

Oh my gosh.

And different definitions of what meets that standard. That's where the confusion comes in. And that's where we have to have some really loving cooperative conversations to figure out, am I, you know, am I being, this is one of the hardest parts of a relationship. Am I being reasonable in asking for what I'm asking for? Or is this my insecurity speaking? You know? Am I, which one is talking? And sometimes we're so close we don't even know. that's the danger. That's, by the way, I see one of the most valuable jobs I can do for people in my work is not to be a smarter voice than they are, because people can be great. They can, when it comes to their friends or people around them or whatever, they can be very smart. But to be an objective voice outside of their drunken haze, because we're so close to something we get We're not sober and now we don't have logical answers to questions because someone's we get to the point we're arguing about something. I don't even know if I'm right. I don't know if the thing I'm saying is if I'm being the insecure one or if I'm being the reasonable one. And sometimes we leave a situation and we go, God, I was insecure. And sometimes we leave and we go, I can't believe I let someone convince me I was crazy. Right. They were the one that was doing the wrong thing and they convinced me that I was nuts.

So how do we step out of that emotional feeling where we're feeling overwhelmed or disrespected or hurt or sad or like their relationship didn't meet an expectation or communication was off and we're in it and we're communicating and we're both frustrated. How do you step out and look at it from a different point of view so that you just don't keep repeating that conversation over and over. I mean, and don't hurt it further.

Yeah. I think we have to have a really healthy combination of always questioning ourselves and saying, where is this coming from for me? And would it really hurt me to compromise on this standard? Would it be the more loving thing to do to understand this about my partner? But in order to... that needs to be combined with a simultaneous respect for ourselves. and what we need. And to, I think, go to a situation and say, okay, I want to be the most understanding, compassionate, loving partner I can be, who doesn't inhibit or limit my partner, who supports them, wants them to do great. But I also need to recognize that it's not, what was I saying? I lost my train of thought. I need to be the person that can be understanding. What was I saying? The understanding of my partner.

You want to be the most understanding of someone else. But you also have to know your own needs.

Be understanding of someone else. But oh, that's right. I need to be the person that is understanding of the needs of my partner and what they want. But at the same time, love. What was it? Loves my I need to be understanding of my partner's needs. Ah, that's it. I need to be understanding of my partner's needs, but the context of me being super compassionate and understanding needs to be that I am that this is happening in a loving environment where my partner wants to be my teammate. If we're in a situation where our partner isn't showing empathy for us and isn't like If you feel they're not trying to, that we're always coming to that side, that's a problem.

That's tough.

That's a problem.

There should be seeing, I see where you're coming from as well, type of energy and communication.

Exactly.

Not just, I'm not getting what I want, you did this wrong.

You need to feel you have a teammate. Yeah. And a lot of people feel like they're constantly being understanding, but they don't have a teammate on the other side. I'm constantly, trying to grow and understand your position, but I don't feel the same from your side. That then becomes a problem.

How do you have a conversation so that it switches or becomes more of a equal partnership and teammate? If you feel like you're the only one being on the team, how do you get the other person?

I think we need to communicate a lot about what, about the spirit of the relationship. You know what I mean?

Not keeping score.

Yeah, like pride is a very hard thing to give up in a relationship because we become competitive often very quickly when we feel threatened, when we feel vulnerable, when we feel our partner's done something to hurt us. Now how do I score a point? And that's just once you get into that cycle. It's like you're just, it spirals. It has to, one person has to be prepared to break that cycle. I'm not gonna do that game. And I do believe that we have to love the way we want to be loved, and we have to constantly educate our partner on what it is to love. Not from an arrogant place, But we're all, in a sense, both partners are always educating each other. By you do something I don't like, and if I have a loving, compassionate response to that, I'm also showing you what I want this to be in reverse. When I do something you don't like, here's the response I want.

I'm not attacking you.

Not a game playing response, not a, you know, like if you see a partner, you're in the early stages of relationship and you feel your partner was really flirting with someone over there, Having a conversation about something that made you feel uncomfortable, but from a loving place and from a kind place and from a place of that made me feel, you know, it hurt me to see that and not, I'm gonna blame you and I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna get angry, but that, you know, that made me feel uncomfortable. Bringing an energy like that. Most people aren't used to that in a relationship. We're not used to that standard of communication. We're used to doing something and then someone attacks us.

Reacting.

Yeah, exactly. So I think it's educate, we're constantly educating.

What's it gonna take for us to not react to a situation where we feel hurt or like we, our expectation wasn't met from our partner and come from that place?

God, it's so difficult.

Because why do we react so much?

Sometimes it's just space. Like how I need to take a moment to process something so that I can say, I can have a more evolved response.

And not react. It's funny, I've been, you know, the relationship I've been in, which is newer in the last five months, I want to talk about something right away and address it. She doesn't want to talk. She wants to have space so she doesn't react. Yeah. And she'll say, like, I don't want to get angry at you. I don't want to yell at you. That's not the type of person I want to be. So I'd rather just not talk. And then I'm in limbo and I'm like, I just want to, like, get to resolve this thing. Let's at least communicate and then we can move on as opposed to holding on to something for half a day or a few hours.

Yeah, but I that here's the thing. Space is easy when you get a text you don't like, you know, or when you see something you don't like from afar and you're not going to see that person for a few hours or till tomorrow. Now you have space to go through You know, I'm angry, you know, I'm really, really angry. I'm upset, I'm sad, I'm hurt, I feel rejected, I don't feel enough. You know, you can kind of cycle through those and then have a couple of sensible conversations with people whose opinions you respect. You and I have done this.

Yeah, we've been like, it's not that big a deal. Take a break.

You go, okay, this thing, I'm feeling this and I'm hurt and I'm this and I'm that and I'm that. you have a couple of smart voices either that come from in here, which.

Is hard to do, which is very.

Hard to get that objectivity and or that come, you know, from just one or two people whose opinions you really respect, who aren't going to tell you what you want to hear.

Yeah.

Who aren't going to tell you you're so right to be, to feel that way.

Get angry.

Yeah. Someone who is brave enough and close enough to you and smart enough sometimes to recognize I'm concerned that you're overreacting to this and that this reaction is not going to serve you. And that I think you need to bring this energy to the conversation. That is extremely valuable. What's hard is when you get information in real time and you're with the person and you're in the same room and now you're dealing with trying to process and create that, you know, Okay, I need to, I'm trying to get to a more positive place here while being asked to communicate in real time. Well, real time elicits reflex responses and reflex responses are often very harmful to a relationship. It's the reflex responses are often based on instinct. And instinct is very, very dangerous.

False instinct.

Yeah.

So often told, you know, trust your instincts. And that's just not often great advice.

If you're not emotionally intelligent and if you're jealous all the time, then having a jealous instinct isn't necessarily the best thing.

But some of these instincts are kind of hardwired, right? What we're doing with a lot of our better nature is overcoming certain programming that we have. You know, in a riptide, you get pulled out to sea. Your instinct tells you in that moment to swim back to shore against the current. Ignore the riptide, I just need to get back to shore. Which is stronger, you or the current?

The current.

And it will drown you. You will exhaust and drown before you get back.

True. So... Until it washes you to shore, just like...

Right. So in that moment, Fighting harder won't save you. Thinking clearer will. And thinking more clearly means I need to swim sideways. I need to swim parallel. Let it take me out, swim further or swim parallel because I'm actually giving myself a longer journey. But then when I'm out of the current, then I can swim back to shore. Now that's not, instinct won't get you to do that. 'Cause that requires thinking clearly. Instinct will drown you in that moment. And in a relationship, in dating, your instincts will get you killed.

That's true.

You know, your instinct says, a woman goes on a date with a guy and has a great time and says, your instinct says, clear the calendar for the next three months. We found him.

Right.

We did it, guys.

We had an amazing night.

Clear the schedule.

We were connected on every level.

He's awesome. We have a great connection Clear the calendar. This is what we're doing now. Wow. Even if I'm not even saying someone hates the rest of their life youe can like your job and still be so caught up in the chemical rush of this was amazing that this is all you want to do now. Mm-. Right? Well, this isn't good for what you want to happen here. what do you want to happen? Well, you want to get to know this person better, spend more time with them. Invest at an organic pace based on the level of investment that's going on. Right. Thing I've said for years. Don't invest in someone based on how much you like them. Invest on that based on how much they invest in you. People don't do that. People invest on instinct. I really like them. And my investment is proportionate to how much I like them. not how much I'm seeing there's a mutual investment.

How do you cultivate trust? If you're 100% honest with that person, if you are transparent about every action you make in your life, if you're, you know, they have access to whatever they want to see and you're constantly creating trust, but for whatever reason, they still might be jealous or insecure or not believing you. How does someone get someone to trust them? Or is it not about them at that stage and it's about the other person and their insecurities?

Well, it depends very much on the particulars of the situation. You know, so I don't know if there's a generic answer to that. I think that you can establish the ground rules explicitly. and have a discussion about it. Are we going to lie to each other or not? Are we going to tell each other the truth to the degree that we can to make that an actual goal and to talk through the consequences of doing that and not doing it? And then I would also say, whenever a hiccup occurs in the relationship, maybe you don't call it out at each hiccup, because you have to have a certain amount of silent tolerance. in any relationship to let small infractions go. But if they repeat, my rule is three times. And it's the rule that I share with my wife. If something happens three times that is causing emotional upset, anger, jealousy, disappointment, resentment, frustration, any of those things, anything that you don't want to experience and that you especially don't want to experience repeatedly, then you can call it out. And if you have three examples, your case is much better made than if you just have one. And I would also say that when you call it out, you could say, look, we were at a party the other night and it looked to me, I felt as if you were paying too much intense attention to Dave, there was flirting going on there. That's what it looked like to me. There was some flirting going on there. And you know, that made me uncomfortable. Well, you don't say, well, you were flirting, stop doing it. You say, well, this is how it looked. This is what it looked like to me. And here was my response. And then you want to think, and maybe I'm a damn fool and blind and jealous and stupid. and I'm misinterpreting, or maybe it was a harmless flirtation of the sort that people will engage in because it adds a little bit of spice to a social interaction. You want to find out like it. It's really convenient if it's the other person's fault, except then you're Laden with living with that person. So it really doesn't help you anyways, but it's convenient because then they have to change. But you've got to think about this over the long run. You're going to be interacting with this person on a minute by minute basis for decades. If you're the idiot and that's causing trouble, then you should find out. So you want to say, well, look, this is what I saw. What's your explanation of what's going on? And then they'll offer you their viewpoint and hopefully they'll do the same thing. They'll think, well, this is my intent. and maybe they have to go think about it, but this is my intent and this is what I saw. And I think you're being over sensitive in that situation. And you peel back the explanations layer by layer until you both agree on what happened and more importantly, on what you're going to do about it in the future. And that's really hard. And especially if there is something going on that's not straight because that will require quite a bit of digging. It'll probably result in anger and tears and a fight. And that's very unpleasant. It's easier in the short term to avoid that. But hopefully the consequence of that is you don't have to have that fight again.

Right.

You have to come to a negotiated agreement about that situation. And you have to pay attention to your own uncomfortable negative emotions in order to manage that and not pretend that everything's all right or that you're nicer than you are or that you're less jealous than you are or less blind. See, one of the things I learned from Carl Jung, the psychoanalyst about marriage, was that there is a reason marriage was a vow. The vow is that you stick together. Okay, so now imagine that's a vow. Okay, you do not get to leave, period. Okay, so what does that mean? Well, on the upside, it means that you don't have to be alone. It means that your family will have continuity over decades. It means that the narrative of your life won't be fragmented and broken by divorce or sequential divorce. It means that your children can grow up and maybe have their children within a continuing family, it means that your children will be able to maintain relationships with the grandparents on both sides and the cousins. Like it's a big deal to maintain that. There's huge advantages in it. It means that you'll have someone there when you're not well and so will your partner. And it'll means that you have someone to share all of the positive things of life with. So there's huge advantages to it. Okay, so why does it have to be a vow? Well, I don't think you can tell the truth to someone who can run away. Because if you tell the truth to someone and they can run away, then they'll run away.

Right. Right?

Because you're a mess, man. And not just because of your own inadequacies, but because human beings are so complicated and have such dark corners.

And.

Have had, you know, unresolved problems in their life sometimes that stem back generations and are twisted and bent in all sorts of ways.

And.

It'S very, very difficult to reveal that except to someone who can't run away. Now, I'm not saying that people should never separate. I am saying though that it's better not to if you can manage it. But then the other thing too is if you can't run away, then you're motivated in a different way. It's like I'm stuck with this woman and she's stuck with me. And unless we want to have this same goddamn fight over and over and over for the next who knows how long, why don't we straighten it out? and then we can put it behind us. See, the vow gives you a kind of desperation that is another motivation to actually solve the problems. And if you've got a way out, you can always stay hidden. You can guard yourself, you can protect yourself and even protect that part of yourself that thinks that it can leave if things get too bad. Now, the problem with that in my estimation is, is that you're gonna drag your stupidity into the next relationship.

Right.

Always do.

Right.

Well, generally speaking, right? And so now you can get very, you can, you can, under unfortunate circumstances, you can get tangled up with someone who's not playing a straight game with you and won't, and it's just impossible.

But.

I'm not talking about the limit cases, you know, I'm talking about the average case, the average amount of, unhappiness and trouble. It's still plenty. And then the. Sorry, just one more thing. I'd add to that. You also have to, in some sense, shake the illusion that the other person is somehow not you. You're so tied up with them that there's no difference between you and them in some sense, is that what's good for her. her is going to be good for you and vice versa. One of the things we try to do too, the two of us, is we try to say yes to each other. Now, there's rules that go along with that, which is, well, I'm going to say yes to you, but that sort of means that you shouldn't ask me unreasonable, you shouldn't make unreasonable demands. I'll say yes as much as I possibly can, and then you'll do that in return, and then we get yes out of the deal. instead of no, that's also a huge plus.

Is there anything that you feel like you still need work healing in order to let certain things go, or are these things always going to be with us at certain times? Different stresses or pains or wounds or PTSD from the past of our individual lives?

Look, the notion that when you heal, something utterly disappears is one component of healing. But the other part is that you need a bigger trigger to reactivate an old wound, but there is a whole new range where the wound can live without being activated.

Right, you've healed a certain amount of triggers, but there might be a bigger--.

So, you know.

Right.

You come back from Iraq, from Afghanistan, from all the wars that people have fought here, or you are a refugee from Syria or from Afghanistan, I mean, all sides. You may not at every siren jump anymore. But if suddenly- If there's a bomb, yes, you will jump.

Gotcha.

So the range and the response to the danger shifts. That's the piece around healing. I think for me, it was a real surprise that this fear that I got to experience. I didn't remember that. It had been a long time since...

Because you're constantly doing the work. You're constantly in the work.

I have kind of created a life where I have a sense of ownership, I have a sense of control, I have a sense... But I always live with dread.

You do?

I do.

Still today?

Yeah, that my whole life. Live with dread like... That every minute something could happen.

The sky could fall and...

The whole thing could disappear.

Really?

Because that is the core story of my family. But I don't have the dread all the time. But when it grips... In the past, it would grip without anything happening. It just was like happening to me because I had a day where I just didn't know what I was gonna do with my life. so it disappeared. I could talk about it, but I wouldn't necessarily feel it. It's physical, it's visceral. It's like you described the chest for me, it's the gut. It says, right? But when the pandemic arrives, it's a trigger that is strong enough to bring back that sense of dread. And at that time, I wasn't aware of my dread. I was feeling my dread. That's very different. that's what I mean by the external versus the internal. Now, what people struggle with, people have struggled with prolonged uncertainty. Here are the five things of the pandemic that have affected relationships the most. One is a prolonged sense of uncertainty. It's not just that you're not sure when this is going to end, but you're not sure about you're not being sure. Okay, this thing keeps coming and going all the time. One minute you say it's gone, the next minute you realize, oh, it's not gone at all. Okay, that. Then it's the notion of what we experienced was a collapse of all the boundaries. Here I am. I'm at home. I'm on my chair at my kitchen table, and I am a therapist and a supervisor and a podcaster and a mother and a friend and a wife and.

And.

And. And I haven't left the chair. I'm still just in sweatpants with the, you know, and I'm like, Where is work? Where is life? Where is morning? Where is night? Where it's just like all the roles have collapsed. And we are not made like this. We are physical people and we are spatially oriented. And we change location for our activities. We change clothes for our activities. And they help us enter the role. Now I'm going to work. Now I'm going to play sports. Now I'm going to the club. Now I'm going out. Now I'm going to visit my mother. And I looked I feel different, I look different, I wear different, I have rituals, I have things, a different bag, a different racket. None of this. Do you know what it means when your entire arsenal of rituals that give meaning and frame your parts dissolves? You get exhausted. So that was the collapse of boundaries. Then there was the sense of ambiguous loss. We lost spontaneity. We lost plans, we lost the weddings, the graduations, the parties, the promotions.

Sports games, everything.

Yeah.

It's not, there is the loss of death, but there is that other loss, the buildings that are standing but they're empty. They're physically present but emotionally vacated. We have the grandparents and the parents that are physically gone but emotionally present. We call that ambiguous loss. when you are either physically present and psychologically gone or psychologically present and physically gone. That ambiguous loss became a part of what then Adam Grant began to describe in the languishing. Languishing is you're not depressed, you're just like, eh, lifeless, flatlessness. Nothing is really giving you the sense of meaning and purpose and joy that you generally want. That has happened in your relationship. And what happens when you are in a period of liminality like this, the big dilemmas are not getting answered is that all the unknowns are filtering onto your relationships. And the relationship becomes the holder of all that stress. And that is part of the divorce rate at the moment. And the weight that has felt on the relationships. It's not just people didn't get along. It's that people needed in the relationships to deal from the political polarization to the racial reckoning to the economic insecurity to the ambiguous loss, to the prolonged uncertainty, all of that fell on relationships. This is the story of the last two years, that people know, they feel it, but they don't necessarily articulate it.

Hard to make a relationship last if you don't have the tools and you're not willing to work through it.

How do you stay grounded when the ground itself is moving?

It's quicksand.

It's the great adaptive of this moment. And so relationships began to see the cracks inside their relationship and people also began to see the light that shines through the cracks, both ends.

Yes. What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome? Was it conflict resolution? Was it boundaries? Was it not abandoning yourself? Was it communication skills? What was the-- Fear. Fear of what?

Fear of failure?

Like a relationship not working.

Relationship not working. When you have been through, as you date and you go through relationships and you've been through betrayal and heartbreak and hurt and pain, you can become pretty cynical about love. And if you're not careful, that cynicism can really be a hindrance for you because you cannot be a cynic about love and expect to attract it at the same time.

Ooh, snap. That's true.

Yeah.

So how did you keep your heart open after going through breakups and maybe after, you know, challenging things happening in relationships where that hurt you? How did you stay open to love?

I had to reframe my thoughts and ideas and my perspective about the past.

What did you think about them then?

I had to learn to allow the past to stay in the past. I didn't want someone to come into my life and I make them pay for something they had nothing to do with.

Yeah, that's tough.

In my past.

Yeah, that's tough.

And when I got married, who did I want my husband to be? this bitter, broken down woman who had been through the ringer in all these years and all these relationships? Or did I want him to meet someone who, because we're all, we're always in the process of healing. We're always in the process of growth and our emotional health. But did I want him to meet someone who was committed to that growth and that process and going forward, being committed to the same commitment, which is what really success in marriage boils down to, being committed to the same commitment. Because when I was younger, I thought it was about this involuntary feeling of love. And then as I got older, I realized it was a conscious decision to love.

It's not just, oh, I have this attraction to this person. I feel love towards them. It's a conscious decision.

Because you're not always gonna feel love. you're going to go through ups and downs and peaks and valleys. And if it were about a feeling, you'd be all over the place emotionally.

Up and down, yeah.

It's about a decision. And so when I talk about earlier, when I talked about separating your feelings from the facts, that's what I mean. Like you're, you're going to have a range of emotions. But the fact is, you know, this is a person that I've committed my life to. Yeah, this is a person I've committed to grow with. this is. So I made all of these commitments to this person, and then you go forward with that in mind.

Did you have fears around getting married?

I had a fear of the unknown. Yeah. What is marriage really like? You know, I see other people who are married, some of them happy, some of them not. Obviously, I see a lot of people getting divorced. So what is it about marriage? What makes it work? Do I know what makes it work? Do I have what it takes to make it work? So it was the fear of the unknown because I hadn't done it before. Marriage by nature changes you. It's the closest relationship you'll ever have. It's very different from the parent-child relationship, every other relationship.

Friends, everything, yeah.

I wondered how it would change me.

From being in a relationship and dating to then being married, what have been the biggest differences and changes.

Allowing someone to see me at my most vulnerable state.

Ooh.

Did you allow that during the dating process?

I allowed it to a certain extent, but I didn't live with my husband before we got married. That was a choice that we made.

Really?

We did not want to live together. And so when we got married and we moved in together, I had not lived with anyone since I was in college for 20 years.

Wow.

So again, it's that adjustment in life, just sharing my space with another human being every day.

You got married.

I know how to handle that.

Yeah, and you got married a week before the pandemic, 2020.

Yes.

March 8th, 2020. You said. So what was that? I mean, that takes a lot of guts to not live with someone beforehand in the modern world to not fully see the person who they are. So I commend you on that. So did you What did you learn going through a pandemic for the last two years, getting married a week before, and then moving in together, and sharing a life during arguably one of the scariest uncertain times in the last 20, 30 years?

Everything changed in the blink of an eye. We got married on March 8th in Los Angeles, big wedding, all of our family, all of our friends, hugging, high-fiving, kissing, had no idea. what was about to happen a week later. And I do look back on that day because I thought, you know, when we were talking about our wedding, do we wanna do something small? Do we wanna, and, you know, we ended up just inviting our people and everyone came out. And now I look back on that day and I cherish it so much.

Yeah, 'cause people haven't been able to do that for a couple years.

Right, and I haven't seen a lot of those people since, so it just made those memories even more special.

To us.

But also, yes, a week later, the world shut down. So we decided to take a mini-moon. We were going to do a big honeymoon over the summer. So we just went to Newport Beach and we were there for a few days and we were in a bubble. We didn't know a lot about everything that was happening in the world until we came out of this bubble. So we came back to LA and I mean there was no toilet tissue on the shelves. the grocery store, I mean, it was just empty. Everything was empty. I'd never seen anything like it before. And I was like, oh, so you mean to tell me I waited all this time to get married and the world is about to end?

Wow.

It was crazy.

So what did you guys create? Did you guys come together and say, let's build a strong foundation during this time?

Yes.

Did you feel like it's made the relationship stronger? Has it been a stressful move, living with someone for the first time in 20 years? How have you navigated it all?

We adapted really well and during that time we had every day and all that time to spend time together. And the pandemic, you know, it challenged all of us in different ways, but it also presented us with an opportunity. And for us, it was noise cancellation headphones through the first few months. of our marriage because we got to really sit and be together and be still and be quiet. You know, my husband is an R&B singer. He travels all over the world and he was leaving a week after we got married to start traveling again.

Not at all.

Of course that didn't happen. And so we got to spend a lot of quality time together. And I will tell you what I learned about him.

Yes.

What I talked about earlier about when you see the true measure of a person and how they handle adversity and how they handle difficult circumstances. And because all of his, you know, live music was impacted greatly.

That's how you make most of your money.

Yeah.

And I never heard him complain, not even once. And I saw him be a source of encouragement to a lot of other of his artists and musician friends. And, I mean, I was even shocked. I was like, okay, We're all about positivity and wake up happy every day, but really, you really wake up this happy every day?

Sure.

And it was inspiring to see. And I knew in those first few months that because you always, love is about taking a risk. We talk about that fear because it's a risk, there's a fear of being hurt. Again, there's a fear of those triggers being exposed again. And in that moment, I knew and I believed that I had made a right decision. But in those months after the pandemic, I saw it for myself very early on in my marriage, who my husband was in stressful times, in difficult circumstances, and how he was a source of inspiration and strength for a lot of people, including me.

So were you, was each day kind of a confirmation that this was a great decision? Yes.

Yes.

I leaned into this and that's beautiful.

Yes. It's been two years of just this amazing time in my life because I used to get asked a lot why I was still single for so long. And I started to feel pressure from people. I never put the pressure on myself. And I know a lot of people perhaps do. But if you're not careful when you're single and people are asking you, well, I don't understand why aren't you married or what's going on, you can start to internalize it and feel that there's something wrong with you or that there's something off within you. And it can almost be something that you become embarrassed by because people are asking you as if you've missed some mark in your life, some milestone. that you should have achieved by now. Not asking me if it was a desire of mine, by the way, if I wanted to, but just asking me, why wasn't I?

And why do you think people care so much about other people being in a relationship or being single?

Well, the question, I think, speaks more to who they are than it ever did to who I was, because I was okay. You know, there were lessons that I had to learn to get to the place where I could go into a successful marriage. I needed to learn those lessons. There are almost 8 billion people on this planet. We can't all be doing the same things at the same time and we're not supposed to be. We're all supposed to be living our individual life paths and our individual life journeys. There are some people who don't think that. They think you need to be married by a certain age. You need to have children by a certain age or you're not living the right path. It's just not true. This is not a race. Why is it not a race? Because we're not all running in the same direction. So I learned very early on, and I think living in New York actually helped with that because I was around so many other young professionals who were at the top of their games and their careers and we were Saturday night, we're here Wednesday night, we're at a show and the live music and everything and just embracing our full lives and accepting that being single was not a rest stop for me until I met my husband and really got to live. Well, if I had done that, I wouldn't have lived until I was 42 years old. So what would I have done with all those years in my 20s and 30s? So it wasn't a rest stop. And I embraced that, that time of. And just did so many. I traveled across all around the world by myself solo, went to all the restaurants that I wanted to go to, watching Sex in the City. Sometimes I'll go.

Myself.

You know, I had this vibrant group of friends. I was not waiting to live my life and I think that people, they project their own view of what they think life should be onto you.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus Channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.