Struggling To Heal From Past Heartbreak? (Watch This)

Nothing is really giving you the sense of meaning and purpose and joy that you generally want. That has happened in your relationship. All the unknowns are filtering onto your relationships, and the relationship becomes the holder of all that stress.

Hey, guys, thank you so much for being here. A quick message before we dive in. You may be watching the show, but haven't taken a moment to click the subscribe button below. So if you've ever gained value from this show, it would mean so much to me if you click the subscribe button right now. And not only will this allow you to see these messages first, all this great content we have, you're gonna get notified first when it comes out. But the bigger our subscriber base grows, the more people we can impact and the bigger the guests we can get on this show as well. So again, thank you so much as always for your support. It means the world to me. Make sure to click the subscribe button below and let's dive into this conversation. 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, it's 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, you 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 I thought, 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?

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

The sky could fall and...

The whole thing could disappear. Because that is the core story of my family. But I don't have the dread all the time. But when it grips... Now, 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 gonna 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. 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 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 The weddings, the graduations, the parties, the promotions, everything.

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 they are either physically present and psychologically gone or psychologically present and physically gone. Yes. 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, flatless, 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, where 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 adaptation 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. Well, play is key in a relationship, and I'm glad that I'm playful and I'm down for this game. Where should we begin?

I'm gonna hook you to this game so that you and Marta-- We play it all the time. -We tell stories to each other like never before.

This is a game that came to you. You know, this is one of the things that came to you during the pandemic, 'cause you wanted to have creativity, you wanted to have play, connection, all these different things. So you created this game, Where Should We Begin? A game of stories by Esther Perel. And there's no winner, there's no loser, so it's not the type of game I'm used to playing.

Exactly.

Yes, exactly. So we both have a set of cards. Do I pick any or should I give you one?

I pick from mine. I'm gonna have you pick from mine.

Should I go first or you go first?

Yeah, you go first.

You sure?

Yeah.

Let's go with the safest one. Okay, so then I pick, and do I get to say if I want to answer it or not?

No, you have to answer.

I have to answer it. Okay. A rule I secretly love to break. A rule.

When are you rule breaking?

I feel like I'm always breaking the system.

But it's a story.

Okay, tell a story.

Okay. It's a story.

Why?

I actually think stories, relationships are stories. Stories are bridges to each other. Stories bind us.

Here's a rule I like to break consistently.

Yes.

Since we're going on the story of play, in some ways I feel like I've emotionally and physically matured and grown up. In other ways I feel like I've kept this childlike curiosity inside of me. It's one of the reasons why I love to interview people and do the podcast. It's one of the reasons I try to make people feel uncomfortable when I meet them for the first time by asking them questions that maybe they wouldn't have you know, answered with a stranger. So one of the things I love to break is in my relationship is trying to bring play to every moment. Even when it's stressful.

You like to be goofy?

I love to be goofy. Love to be silly. And tease. And I think there's a difference between teasing and bullying. I don't want to be a bully.

It's a world apart.

Yeah, exactly. I don't want to be a bully but I love to be playful and tease and just through a little, what about this? A little comment here. Martha, she says that she thinks I was like a Mexican in another life because she says I have the humor not of a white person from America but of a Mexican because I'm teasing and playful and I have a sarcasm that she says is similar to the way that she grew up. So I think for me, I don't take anything too seriously. and especially in the relationship, which is why I love that you said play is one of the keys to success. And which is why if someone is not reciprocal, then it becomes challenging if they're not wanting to play with you.

It's like throwing a ball that drops the floor.

Yeah, you're playing ping pong and it just with yourself, yeah.

Yes.

So that is a rule I love to secretly break is just being a child, having childlike energy, but having maturity. at the same time.

Nice.

Yes. Okay, so then what? I finished the card, and now it's your turn.

Right now we're doing it like this. But, you know, sometimes I put two. Two cards, and then I get to pick for the other person or people themselves. Then we have little orange tokens in which when you play with the group, we can put pressure on the card. And then we have. The group says, we want you to talk about this. So it becomes very.

To make someone kind of, like, have someone do it.

Yes. So there's all kinds of variations, but it's...

I kind of wanna do a sex one with you. I think we took all those cards out, but here, I'll let you just choose one.

You asked for us to take them out, so I was gonna go for that.

I know, I should have.

Oh, God. The most humiliated I've ever felt. Oh, God.

The most embarrassing or he's destroyed.

No, I can tell you immediately the thing, it's, I'm like 10, 11. So it goes back a long time. I stole a candy.

Oh, that's it?

Well, you don't want to be caught.

You got caught.

I got caught.

By who? Your parents? By that store person.

The person that was waiting in line.

They saw you.

That saw me and said to the person.

She stole it. No way. What did you have to do?

I gave it back.

Oh, man.

And she said, you have to pay for it. I said, I don't want it. She said, you have to pay for it. I said, I don't have the money. She said, you leave me something, and then you come back with the money. Wow.

So you have to pay for it even though you didn't take it?

Well, I didn't have the money. Oh, wow. So I went home. I got the money because I had to leave my. My school. Oh, my gosh.

Oh, you had to leave, like, some collateral. Some, like, your ID or your phone at the time.

Yes. Yes. I had to leave collateral and.

And bring money back. That's so embarrassing.

It's humiliating. It's like, you know. Yeah. Because if you're gonna take something, you're not supposed to take the whole point of it.

Is then I get caught.

It's not to be caught.

You know, it's interesting. And I probably love this because I bet other people have conversations when you answer and then it triggers something in someone else.

Yes.

I stole for a couple years from, I don't know, 10, 11, somewhere around there, 11, 12.

Candy, yeah.

What was the candy?

Candy all the time.

Also candy.

Right, candy. And I thought I was so smooth. I never got caught from a store. But one time I went to my, this was the most humiliating probably and embarrassing and probably most shameful thing, you know, as a kick growing up. My dad brought me and a friend of mine after basketball practice to go to one of his clients. He sold life insurance. And we had to drive out of the 45 to an hour away to a farm. He was like a client of his at a farm in Ohio. And we'd go there and my dad's like, okay, you got you kids like hang out on the farm or whatever in the house and walk around. I got to talk to Mr. So and so for an hour to go over stuff. So we're walking around, nosey little kids, you know, 12 years old, go down in the basement and I'm like opening up drawers, I'm doing stuff I shouldn't do. I see a wallet. I take out the wallet, I open it up, there's a $20 bill and a $5 bill. And we're looking at each other like, Should we do this? And like, He will never know. I take the five, my friend takes the 20. I get woken up that night at, I don't know, 4:00 a.m. in the morning. My dad is hovering over me. At this time, my dad's pretty intimidating still and he's hovering over me, Did you steal from so-and-so? Money? And I go, no. Right away, I'm like, Am I dreaming? Am I awake? I'm like, no, I'm defending myself, right? Lied. Right to my dad. And he goes, Mr. So-and-so was going to buy food for his cows, right? Or for his animals on the farm. And he doesn't have the money to go buy the food. It's gone. I go, I don't know what happened. You know, I just lied. But I was also like waking up. I was like disoriented. And then he calls my friend's parents and he admits to it. And it was the most humiliating, embarrassing, shameful thing because I had to drive back alone. My friend didn't have to go, but I drove back for the hour with my parents in the front seat, me in the back seat just so ashamed. And I had to go face this guy. and say, I'm sorry, with like the most, you know, he was so frustrated and angry and upset, and I never stole again after that. So I don't know, did you steal after that moment?

No, you know, my moment is I'm taking the thing and somebody goes like this.

No, they did that?

Yes.

No way.

I still have the book.

Oh my gosh.

And it's like you freeze. Oh, the shame. The shame.

I'll never forget this guy's face. Like I was 12 years old, right? Okay.

Oops.

Okay. If I could whisper something in the ear of my younger self, I would say, man, I'd probably say something very loving. Part of me wanted to be playful, but I'd probably say something loving because that's what I really needed to hear. I'd probably say that you are loved, you matter, and it's all gonna be okay. That's what I would say, because I think that's what I needed to hear the most. And it's funny because I've said this so many times on my show, so my audience is gonna get tired of me saying this, but I'm gonna show you this. Over a year ago, I put a photo of my younger self on my screensaver. I've talked about this so many times now. And so for the last year, since my therapist, Clara, had me do work on my inner child, on healing the relationship that I had with myself, back then and really having intimate conversations, exercises with the five, six, seven year old that was sexually abused. I've talked about that with you before, which I never really fully healed that whole conversation with. And it's been a beautiful journey to have intimacy, connection, and bridge the gap from five, six, seven till now and be able to have a conversation between that space and time and really bring the two together, you know, my inner child into me.

So what does this one say to you?

What would he say to me? Oh, my gosh. That's a good, actually, it's really good.

May I bring him back? Yeah.

Yeah.

What does he say to you?

Oh, my gosh. He probably says, let me think. Let me get in my heart here. He says, thank you. Thank you for being willing to be courageous in all these scary emotions, all the scary emotions that I'm feeling right now, the things that I'm uncertain about, the things that I'm afraid of. Thank you for having the courage to dive in and be, you know, put all your emotions on the table, address the messiness, handle it all and supporting me in finding peace and healing that I've always wanted. That's what it would say, yeah. So, yeah, I know it's crazy. It's crazy. Oh, okay. Okay, I'm going to the next one. This is what I do. I laugh when things get deep, too. I get deep and then I'm like, okay.

You laugh when your tears are streaming down.

Of course, of course. Okay, this is you.

Yups. I would sell everything to be able to. It's interesting. I don't have a dream, you know, I live a lot of my dreams at this moment, so I don't feel like I would sell, but I think if I was to, I would sell everything to remain healthy. Or I would say everything for my kids or my partner to be healthy. I mean, if I needed to, I would go everywhere in the world just to make sure that if there's something that can keep them, it's not just alive, it's healthy.

Because I don't want them just to suffer and live. Not just suffering and alive, yeah.

Yeah, I think that at this point.

That'S the only, is that the biggest fear for you?

Yes, but you see, when I say I live with dread, when you jump to, like, really? Because it's not the, you know, I live with the fear of loss. It's not dread, just bad things happening. What's underneath is the fact that my parents had lost everybody, and so their entire families, they were the only two that came out. And I, this is part of my DNA. And so, the fear of loss, of traumatic loss and the grief, that's what I fear. So health or selling everything or, you know, imagining myself, you know, cruising the world to find the best doctor that could help. Solutions, yes, with something is part of preventing that loss, you know.

Have you had major losses?

No, except actually I On a personal level, have not. But I often, you know, if one of them drives, I often at night... You're worried. You know, I just, I've never said don't go, but I just like the little call when they arrive.

You're like my mom too.

I can easily imagine accidents.

Oh man.

I can easily imagine, yes, I am a catastrophizer in that sense. You know, but I, so what does therapy do? It allows you to just, in your mind, it's like, no, you're fine. You go out, it calms you, but I still like the cold.

Of course, there's your assurance.

So the fear is loss, and the dread is the manifestation of that fear. So I would tell everything. actually, I don't know what it's like. I could put it like that. I would sell everything to be able to live without dread. Oh, that would probably be the.

What would it take from you?

I don't know. I don't know. I look at people who don't have those fears, and I had. I think they are free of this. It's like, what does life look like without worry?

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You know, they have other things. Yeah, they have other things. It's an amazing thing when I see people who don't have, you know, that is not their thing. Yeah. I don't have their things.

You don't have jealousy or insecurity.

I don't have that.

Do you work with a therapist yourself?

I have. I don't work with a therapist at this moment, but I have over the many years of my life, yes.

Do you think it's important for therapists to have therapists?

Absolutely, absolutely. First of all, if you don't, then you will be triggered by things that people bring into your office, and you will be projecting things on them that don't belong to them. We call that countertransference. You know, there is what people put on you, but there is what you put on them.

Because you have something unresolved.

Or there is what you can't work with because of what is happening inside of you. So it's a necessity.

You've got to be cleansing yourself constantly probably. Interesting. Where do you think, you said you haven't had a therapist in a while or worked with one in a while. Where do you think, what would be.

What would I go for today?

Yeah, what would be available for you today if you were doing, today I.

Would go to a coach. Because I need practical help. It's less internal at this moment. It's more practical things.

What's holding you back from...

I don't. I am a person who likes to receive help, so I don't... You haven't found the right... I wrote a whole piece recently about asking for help in the blog. Because I realized that It's very easy for me to ask for help. Actually, when we met early on, I asked for help.

Absolutely. And I just thought, I've never done this marketing stuff. Yes, for years.

Like, I know nothing about marketing. You're like the genius marketer. I'm a therapist who suddenly finds that, and I just thought, I know people and they can help me. And I don't feel, like, I have no problem saying I know nothing about this. But because I know, I trust what I do know a lot about. Sure. And this is new for me. So I don't experience it as belittling or admitting or vulnerable or... I think it's an amazing thing to ask for help. I love... and by the way, I did ask on social. I asked people, you know, how do you feel about asking for help? And like 70 something percent of people said, I don't do it. I don't like it. That doesn't make me feel good, etc. And then I said, and how do you feel when other people ask you for help? And the same 70% said, I love it. And I'm thinking, you know what? It's like when other people ask, you don't think they're stupid, they don't know, they're vulnerable, you know, you think... You want to help. You want to help. Well, why don't you think that when you ask for help, other people enjoy that too? So I'm big into the asking for help these days, and therapy is a piece of that. At this moment, therapy is not the.

Thing that you need.

I need. That doesn't mean that Jack thinks I should meditate.

Maybe you need a meditation coach.

So I do, I do, but in movement. I get calm when I'm walking, hiking, or- I sit, that does not work for me.

What's the one thing that triggers you the most that you would like to evolve beyond? What's the thing that irritates you or triggers you or frustrates you?

Rigidity, rigidity, which is the opposite of playfulness.

Not flexibility, yeah.

And arbitrariness, rules for the sake of rules, bureaucracy, you know, in the big sense of the word, and bureaucrats as a whole, you know, that, you know, things that, you know, rigidity, which means that You write, you don't listen to others, you make your point. I mean, conversations that are not conversations, people that yell at each other for the sake of yelling at each other, cancel culture from all sides. Yes, I mean, my work is about helping people have the difficult conversations that they need to have, want to have, don't know how to have. As long as they want to, I can do something.

Right.

If they think they know it all and if they think they know you even better than you know yourself, but they have no curiosity.

What are the core reasons or the core things you see over and over that either end or make a relationship challenging to be in the longer end? What are the ones that, what are the challenges that come up over and over that you see?

So there's always three questions, right? What's a thriving relationship?

A thriving one.

Yeah. What can go wrong?

-Huh.

And how do you fix it? Okay, so you started with the middle question.

What goes wrong?

I think there's a number of things in a relationship that become the kind of cornerstones of the demise. Okay? And I'm not going to list them in order, but they all are part of each other. Indifference. and contempt and neglect and violence are probably the four most important. I'm not talking about big violence. Microaggressions are plenty. Indifference, when you start to feel like the other person fundamentally is not really caring about you anymore or you don't care about them, what they feel, what they think, who they are, what they're about, there's a... You don't care.

You've lost interest.

But it's more than losing of interest. It's also When you are indifferent, you degrade the other person. They're less important to you. They don't matter. And ultimately what we feel in relationships is that we matter. That is the essential reason for connecting to people, is that we are creatures of meaning. I matter to you. I'm someone. You care about me. You want my well-being. You're proud of me. You want good for me. You're benevolent. All of that. When you are indifferent, that whole thing goes. And then you start to coldness that creeps in, that sense of estrangement, that complete disconnect. That. The second one is neglect. Neglect when people just basically take each other for granted. You know, they take more care of their car than of their partner. Their dog or their dog, anybody, anything, their yard, anything, anything gets attendance.

Their business.

Their business for sure. Their business for sure. You know, everything gets priority, everything gets reviewed, evaluated, attended to 360s, you name it, you know, new input, my God, it's like people have this idea that they put it all in when they were dating, and then once they seal the knot, it's like as if they tied the knot, it's like now they don't have to do squat anymore, and they go into this kind of complete sense of complacency and laziness. It's an amazing thing, they think this thing is just going to live on its own. Right. like a cactus, right? Violence. Violence. The abuse, the level of. Of disrespect. I mean, most people talk nicer to anybody else than their partner when a relationship separates. Because you can't get away with it. Because you can't get away with it. Because if you talk like this at work, you're gone. Because if you talk like this with the police, you're gone. Because if you talk like this on the street, you're being punched. But with your partner, you have that sense that they're going to be there anyway, they're just gonna take it. because it's family. And family is this kind of this thing that doesn't dissolve so easily. So you can just lash out at them and talk to them with a tone and a dismissal that is phenomenal. So that kind of violence, I'm not talking physical violence and all the other big, big things.

You're talking about aggression or resentment or.

All of that, all of that, you.

Know, passive aggressiveness, all those things.

Yeah, all of that. And then, and then. Contempt, I think, is the top one. Contempt is the killer of them all. Because in the contempt, there is a real degradation of the earth. It's that complete, you're nothing. You're nothing. I can kill you with that one gaze, that one eyebrow that goes up, you know, who do you think you are? And that's it. You're done. You're done.

So how do we even get to this place of these places?

After having been so in love and so romantic, right?

Is desire Reflect that or if we're not desiring the person anymore, then we start to feel one of those categories or does that not play into... Look.

The truth is this. There's only two relationships that resemble each other. The one you have with your parents or the people who raise you and the one you have with the people you fall in love with. People can sit in my office all the time and say, I have this with no one else. I don't have this with anybody at work, nobody among my friends ever thinks like that. You're the only one who speaks like this or thinks this about me or with whom I do this. No, you're the only one and now we go back in history. And I'm sorry to be the psychologist, but that's really, it is the place where we often learned about closeness, trust, loyalty, commitment, sharing, taking, receiving, asking, all these essential verbs of relationships. We learned that at home.

We also learned jealousy and all that.

Possessiveness, vengeance, you name them. The beauty and the not beauty.

Yeah, we saw it all as children, right? We saw the fights, we saw the love, we saw the, you know.

We saw the coldness, the lack of intimacy.

Yes.

And we bring that with us and we often promise ourselves, I'll never be that one. I'll never be this way. I'll never talk like this. You know, and we find ourselves often.

Much closer to the apple And then resenting ourselves. We resent ourselves. We're like, how did we do that? Why did we get to this place?

And then we feel ashamed about it. And since we don't like to feel ashamed about it, we hide it. And one of the way we hide it is we blame the partner. That's just one of the ways. We are very resourceful in not owning our shit.

Right, exactly. Exactly. Wow. Okay. And where does sex play in all this and desire?

I mean, one of the fascinating things for me in looking at sexuality is that it's probably one of the dimensions of relationship that has changed the most in a very, very short amount of time. For most of history and in still the majority of the world, sex is for procreation. Sex is a marital duty on the part of the woman. Nobody cares particularly if she likes it and how she feels and if she wants it. and men have the privilege to go and find sex elsewhere. In a very short amount of time, we're talking 60 years, we have contraception, which is the liberation of women for the first time to free sex from reproduction, from mortality, from death in pregnancy and in childbirth, sorry, all of that. And for the first time, sexuality moves from just biology and a condition to a part of our identity and a lifestyle.

In 60 years.

In 60 years. The women's movement, which goes after the abuses of power, the gay movement, which introduces the concept of identity to sexuality, the fact that sex is for connection and pleasure, the fact that for the first time we have sex before marriage and many times, a lot. We used to marry and have sex for the first time, now we marry and we stop having sex with others. Monogamy used to be one person for life. Now monogamy is one person at a time. And people go around telling you, I'm monogamous in all my relationships. And it makes perfect sense to say that. Okay? All of that in a very short amount of time. The fact that I choose you to marry or to live together doesn't matter. Commitment, because I'm attracted to you, because you give me butterflies in my stomach. and the fact that I think that if I don't have these butterflies anymore, maybe I don't love you anymore. And the fact that sexuality in long-term relationships is rooted in wanting only desire. I feel like it. I want to. Not I have to, not we want many kids. After two kids, the only reason to continue doing it with you is because we feel like it.

Right, it's fantastic.

And hopefully it's pleasurable, we connect, it feels good, it rounds up the whole thing. That's it. And hopefully it's at the same time and for each other, because plenty of desire continues, but it's not always at home.

Right, exactly.

So this is an amazing revolution.

Sex that is confusing all of us.

And how do we sustain it? So that's why I became fascinated in the nature of erotic desire and how do we sustain desire, because it is the first time ever that we have a grand experiment of the humankind where we want sex with one person in the long haul that is fun and connected and intimate and playful and we live twice as long. Go figure.

Right, exactly. For 60 years you're going to be with them or whatever it is.

It's an amazing ideal.

So how do we navigate this? If we're going to choose one partner and be with them until, you know, we're both gone, how do we navigate the challenge of keeping the desire continuously.

I think the focus, both men and.

Women, because the woman probably sees other men who are attracted to her and, you know, vice versa. So it's like, how do both parties do this?

Look, we know that women get bored with monogamy much sooner than men.

Wow. Is this a factor?

That's research.

Okay.

That's not just fact. That's. That is men's desire in long-term relationship goes down gradually. He actually is much more able to remain interested. And maybe just because he's interested in the experience itself and he has a partner there. Women's desire post-marriage sex. Really?

Wow.

And it's always been translated as, well, that's because women care less about sex. Rather than, it's because women care less about the sex that they can have in their committed relationships, which is often not interesting enough for them. And it often has to do with the fact that the story, the character, the plot is not seductive. The romance, which is an essential ingredient of turn on for the woman, often disappears in the long-term relationship. It's like when people look at each other at the end of the day and you want to fool around, you want to do it, you're up for it tonight. Now, this is really not very much of a turn on for most women. And the idea that foreplay often starts at the end of the previous orgasm. you know, and not five minutes before the real thing, which for her is not the real thing. The whole real thing is everything else. So it's essentially the game.

Yes. It's creating a game. Seduction.

It's a plot. It's a coming close. It's a team.

Mystery.

It's what animals call pacing. It's that I come to you, but I don't overwhelm you. I come just a little bit so that you can come a little bit toward me, and then I don't immediately answer. I actually go back a little bit too. Have you ever seen animals? They do this kind of pacing and it is an essential playful ingredient of seduction and excitement. So women's desire plummets, but we interpret it as women are less interested in sex rather than women are interested in probably just about the same kind of things that many men are. But women have always known what to choose above what turns them on, which was what gives them stability and safety and security. Right.

Family, someone to protect, be there. Right.

So what people do, look, this is we want one partner today to give us everything that involves stability and security and everything that involves playfulness and mystery. Okay. That's the grand ideal. Okay. I want to be cozy with you and I want to have an edge and I want you to surprise me and I want you to be familiar and I want you to give me continuity and I want you to give me novelty. That's it. As if it's a right. And no Victoria's Secret is going to solve that. Yeah.

Right?

So then it becomes, what is desire? Desire is to own the wanting. If you ask people a question that goes like this, I turn myself off when, I turn myself off by, not you turn me off when, and what turns me off is. You're gonna hear, I turn myself off when I do emails, when I spend too much time on the phone, when I overeat, when I don't exercise, when I have bad bad days at work, when I don't feel confident, when I numb myself, when I feel dead, when I don't feel thriving, when I'm not alive. You will really hear that it has very little to do with sex. And when you ask people, I turn myself on when or by, I awaken my desires. Not you turn me on when and what turns me on is, which is, I.e. you're responsible for my wanting. What people will talk to you about is, when I'm in nature, when I'm connected with my friends, when I get to do my sports, when I play music, when I listen to music. It's stuff that gives me pleasure, that is alive, that is vibrant, that is vital, that is erotic in the full sense of the word as life force. And from that place, people remain interested in having sex with somebody else for the long haul. Not because they've scratched their arms for two seconds. I feel good about myself. The biggest turn on is confidence. You ask people, when do you find yourself most drawn to your partner? Every description has to do with when they're in their element, when they're on stage, when they're doing their sport, when they are radiant, when they are in their studio, on the piano, on the horse, you name it. It's when they are in their element, i.e. They don't need me to take care of them.

They're not depressed and down in the dumps and sad.

They're not needy. They don't need me because desire is about wanting you. Love is also about needing you. Caretaking is a very powerful experience in love and it is a very powerful anti-aphrodisiac.

So how do you experience love and desire at the same time?

You calibrate it. So sometimes you're It's the same as when you walk. You have to move from one foot to the other. A balance is not about staying on one side. A balance is the ability to see right now we don't need caretaking. We can be mischievous, we can be naughty, we can be playful, we can break our own rules, we can stay home and not go to work at 8 o'clock.

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Okay, let's get back to this video. And now we are in a playful zone. Now we are feeling that we are bringing our own little transgressions home. We are alive. We're not just being dutiful, responsible, good citizens. It's that. It's very small. I always think when I go and I see people at lunch and you see them talking and they're well dressed and they're awake and all that, I see who is here with their partner. Because you can see them, they're engaged, they're giving the best of themselves. That's erotic. No, the majority are not there with their partner. They're there with their friends, with their colleagues. Their partner is going to get the leftover when they come home at night. Sorry, you know what? Forget the night date. Meet at lunch, when you actually have energy. You know, and in the middle of the day like that, when you're awake, when you have something to offer, it's a very small thing. They don't do it. They don't do it. And you say, why not? Why not? Why don't you stay an hour extra at home in the morning and not just because when you have a headache and just say, this matters to me. All in all, you know, committed sex is premeditated sex. It's not just gonna happen. Because whatever is gonna just happen already has. So you're gonna make it happen because you say, we matter. We're important. Let's do this. Let's spend. Doesn't mean if you're gonna make love or have sex, it just means we're gonna take this hour And there's nothing else that matters in this moment, but just you and I to be together, to check in. And then we'll see what unfolds. That's the erotic space in which sex may happen, probably will, doesn't have to, but it is the place from which it is much more likely to emerge. But people don't do that. They do the responsibility, that's the love, right? The citizen, the commitment, the care taking, the burdens, the safe. And then they say, I'm bored. I would be too.

Exactly. There's no mystery. There's no risk taking, right? Exactly, yeah.

There's no risk taking. That's the word. If you want desire, it's risk. And the risk is an emotional risk. It's not about sexy risks. It's really a risk on the emotional front, is that I bring something else to you differently from the way I typically present myself. you know, how can I do this? What can I do today that will be different from the ways that I've done it until now? How can I do something that I think would actually improve our relationship? Me, right? Not something that I want or that you want, but that I think would be actually good for us, that third entity, the us. Right? And you check every time, you know, how often do you just go on the tried and trodden, as in, you know, it works. Sex that just works for most people is really not interesting enough.

Right.

So why does it mean it works generally?

Right.

What.

What about the people listening who are saying, man, that sounds like a lot of work that every day you have to change, do something different and unique and be.

Not every day. Not every day. Not every day. But what you can do every day is just a quick check with yourself. You know, is there something that I should notice? Is there something that I can be thankful for? Is there a little note that I could write? Is there, you know, just a way that I can show up? It's small. It's really small. Here's the thing. There is work and then there is the creative work. You know, I'm talking about a level that is creative and that elevates you and that actually gives you, you feel taller, you just feel like you're engaged, you feel awake rather than this. This is the other seated position. It's comfortable, it's great, but nothing happens here. Sure. This is alert. Here is the essential word, it's curiosity. When you're curious, you lean forward and you watch, you're open to the mysteries of life. this is please don't bother me with anything because I don't want any stimulation. I've had my share, you know. And this is the position that most people have at home. So when people say it's too much work, I basically say, look, if I was to say this in your business, would you say this is too much work?

Right.

Or you would say, that's very good advice. This is high rate consulting fees.

Exactly.

It's like, excuse me, but you don't think for a minute that your business would thrive if you let it languish like that. Never. You have a reward system. You have incentives. Bonuses. But there is no incentivized system in the, in the private domain. So people just think, why bother?

Right.

And that's the difference, is that the ones who have good relationships are the ones who created their own internal incentive is incentivized system.

What are some of those incentive systems that you've seen over time that really work or are effective for long-term relationships?

I would say the first thing is almost one of the first things that our parents teach you: Please and thank you. Do you know how many people stop thanking their partners? Thank you. Thank you for doing this for me. Thank you for picking up the shirts. Thank you for, you know, making you feel appreciated. Yes, appreciation. Appreciation is huge. gratitude, acknowledgement of the presence of the other in your life. Not did you do this, did you call, did you pick up, do this, you know, half the time.

Expectations.

Expectations. Of course, you know, expectations is often a resentment in the make. But the expectation comes the fear of it's not gonna... Thank person, first of all. And because it also makes it feel like this is not a given. Nobody owes you squat. You're not owed anything. You're not that important. You're actually quite replaceable.

Right.

And with the divorce rate that we have.

What's the rate at right now?

You've got 50 on first and 65 on second.

65 on second.

Wow. It's not good, right? It's really, you know, and cost a lot of money. It's not good for the health. I mean, it's just like. you know, it's not good for the jobs. It's just, it's like, okay, now you could say maybe people should marry, but it doesn't matter if it's marriage legally or the idea is that we can do better. We can do better in general. I really think that the quality of our lives depends on the quality of our relationships. I mean, nobody's gonna write, you know, you worked 60, 70, 80, 90 hours a week and You know, no, they're gonna say he was there for people when they needed to. He was there at every game. He was there at the party. He's the guy who, when you were in his presence, he had charisma, not because he could stand in front of a huge crowd, but he had charisma because when I was in his presence, he made me feel special. It's a different charisma. So appreciation, gratitude, thank you. Little things to go out of your way. Rather than just to do the minimum, a lot of people start to do the bare minimum just so that they can't be scolded. Go an extra thing. On occasion just do something for the other person just because it matters to them even if you couldn't care less. Rather than I don't, it's not important to me, I don't need this or I don't care about this. Give each other a lot of individual space. Not everything needs to be shared. People have different passions, different interests, different friends. and they need those separate spaces to exist. Admiration, I think, is huge, because admiration is also that you kind of really see the otherness of the other person. Don't try to make your partner into one person for everything. There is no such a person. Find multiple sources of connection, of intimacy, of friendship, so that you can have a group of people support you and don't have one person who has to be there for you for everything, especially when you're in the dumpster.

We used to have a village of people to do that. Now we just expect one person to be the village, right?

Yes, yes, yes, one person for the whole village. That is a unique, it is. And then we're upset when they don't fulfill the mandate. And that's the more important, like, I can't talk to you, you're not supportive of me, you're not excited for me. Excuse me, find other people. Right.

I can't be everything for you.

Yeah.

No.

Exactly.

No.

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, you know, 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 don't call it out at each hiccup, you know, 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 we, 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 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'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 oversensitive 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 to 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. 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 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 or. See, one of the things I learned from Carl Jung, the psychoanalyst about marriage, was that there is a reason marriage was a vow. Like 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 you can't, it's very, very difficult to reveal that except to someone who can't run away. Now, that, you know, 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 that you're going to 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, in 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 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.

If we're going to go through a breakup, how do we do it in a way where there's love and beauty and grace and not craziness and jealousy and anger and resentment? Because I've been in previous relationships in my past where, man, I'm not proud of the way things ended on both of our accounts. And I'm sure a lot of people have experienced some type of nastiness. in a breakup based out of hurt, pain, resentment, anger, frustration, not feeling good enough, whatever it may be, feeling taken advantage of. So once the process, if you know that something is not working and you've tried to work it out for a while and you're giving your all, they're giving your all and you love each other, but it's not working for months and months, maybe years, how do you start the process of doing a breakup without it being painful? Oh, and is that possible?

It's not possible.

It's not possible.

That's not possible. That's not a realistic goal.

Pain is inevitable.

Well, we're hardwired to bond.

Yes.

We just are. The latest studies in neurobiology show that when the people that we're hanging with the most, we actually sync up physiologically.

Really?

Yeah, so we start to we're actually our brains will start to hook up. brains are social creatures. So if you're going to part ways, it's, there's no way for that to not be incredibly painful. But so conscious uncoupling is more about, okay, how are we gonna suffer in an effective way?

So pain is inevitable. You're gonna experience pain. It's gonna be challenging. How do you do it in a way where you can still be okay with it?

Yeah. Well, I bet you're gonna be able.

To, and not drag it on for years or something, right?

Oh, exactly. Well, when people create a negative bond as opposed to a positive one because they can't let go. See, that's the brain though. The brain doesn't want to let go at any cost. The brain is hardwired, even depression. There have been studies that show, you know, even puppies get depressed, you know, when they can't find their moms. They go in the corner and they're just like really depressed. And I heard there was one scientist who was kind of contificating on the reason for this. I thought it really made a lot of sense, which is that it's nature's way of slowing us down so we don't move move too quickly away from the object that we are attached to.

Oh, man.

So nature is really kind of errors on the side of attachment. And so we don't necessarily do that. In our value system, we might say, I can't stay with someone who doesn't really isn't in the center of my mission. I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to dim down and live a lesser life in order to keep this relationship going. I can't do that. It would be such a betrayal of myself.

Right.

So And we have to recognize that in previous generations, people didn't really have that. It was just you just did that. You dimmed down, you settled, you just.

Went to church because your family, because whatever.

So this is a new emergence that's happening. And I think it's part of our grand awakening that's happening in the world. We're all growing really super fast right now.

And if our partners aren't growing with us, it becomes a challenge.

It is a challenge. It is a challenge in terms of prioritizing how you're going to spend your time or what you're going to do with your energy or being able to share your inner world. Esther Perel's, Esther, I'm sorry, Esther's lame. But do you know this, the relationship expert who does, talks a lot about infidelity. She's got a new book coming out and one of her things that she's talking about is existential affairs, you know, and like the love affair with life and the love affair with mission and.

Being high on life.

Yeah.

Yeah, it can pull on us. Anyway, so I, I can't, I lost the through line right there. What was I saying?

Good question. I lost it too. Going into the five steps. Going into the five steps. So, you know, the pain is inevitable, but how do we do the suffering in a loving way?

We don't want to have ineffective suffering.

Yes.

Okay, so ineffective suffering is when you take the bait of your biology and you go to form... It's strong. Very strong. Super strong.

Strong.

Right.

And so you go into fight or flight and you want to lash out that soulmate to soul hate phenomenon. So you want to lash out, but what it will do is create a negative bond and keep you just as invested, but only this time through a toxic, negative, constantly reinforcing negativity.

That's not healthy because you love the person. You don't want to hate them or be mad at them constantly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think where we want to go is or I know where we want to go is to be able to find a way to de-escalate the intensity of the emotions that we're feeling.

How do we do that? When we are hardwired to be jealous or angry or just reactive, how do we say, okay, I'm going to be in the home state right now and calm and meditate and not let any of this affect me?

Well, one of the reasons it's so hard is because our relationships actually regulate our emotions. They write, they're fear regulators.

Yes.

Our relationships.

Yes.

So when there's a rupture of attachment, you know that phenomenon, like the one person who's hurting you the most, that's the person you want to see the most to comfort you. So because they are, you're hardwired to get regulated by that person. They're the one person who can comfort you and soothe you. So the, otherwise you're the puppy in.

The corner just like depressed.

Yeah.

Or enraged.

Right.

Or freaking out. I mean, depression is actually a higher level of, you know, on Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's stages of grief, you have bargaining, denial and anger, and then you have depression. And so depression is like, I'm starting to come to terms with this. So it's actually a good thing in a breakup. But I think you're saying, like, how do you deal with the anger and the rage and the jealousy? All of that stuff. So one of the things that I offer people is a simple technique called affect labeling. in the psychological world, which is basically the ability to put a name on each of your feelings.

Okay. So give me an example.

So.

An example is, first of all, there was a scientific study done where subjects were looking at a computer screen and they were seeing, you know, faces of horror, faces of rage, faces of hatred, and they were being monitored in all of their vitals. and they're kind of going off the charts, their blood pressure is rising and their heart rate is going. And then they did another technique with this. They say the same pictures to a new group, but put a name, hatred, rage, despair, and the vitals did not go up in the same way. So what that shows is that when we have a name, For the experience that we're having, we don't get as overwhelmed. So language serves kind of as a container.

So how would we use that in a breakup?

So I have a practice where I just very simply advise people to ask yourself, you know, Catherine, honey, what are you feeling right now? I'm feeling terrified. I can see that you're feeling terrified, honey. What else are you feeling? feeling so humiliated. Oh, I can see that you're so humiliated. What else are you feeling? I'm feeling really pissed. Okay. Okay. I can see that you're feeling that. What else are you feeling? I feel exhilarated. You know, because we have all these feelings going on at once. They don't have to get on with each other, you know, so it's. So that. That process. And then sometimes that the feelings are overwhelming. I also give that. give people an opportunity to do this process of Tung Lin, which is a Buddhist process. I'm not Buddhist myself, but it's a beautiful practice that Pema Chodron actually made very popular. If you breathe a certain feeling into your heart, so I feel despair, I'm going to breathe despair in. I'm not going to turn away from it. And on the out breath, I'm going to breathe out a blessing to everyone in the world who in this very moment is suffering with this very feeling, including myself. And it starts to be like you can start to hold the feeling more because you've made a bigger playing field and you see it as an impersonal experience. And then you become, you know, a force of good. Ideally, what happens is we want to harvest the seeds of growth that are inside of each of our feelings. So, for instance, the feeling of rage, there's something underneath it, like a violation has occurred and there's a part of us that's saying, I I should be treated better. I deserve respect. I deserve that my feelings should matter to the people that love me and that I've opened my life up to and I deserve to have better. So that can actually become a stand then that you take, you know, because we're gonna move into self-responsibility. How is it giving my power away? How is it okay? How was I, you know, treating people to disrespect me, all of that kind of thing?

Sure.

Right, so you want to harvest the seeds of growth that are... Because this is the thing, there's also a teacher, Ken McLeod, talks about karma and he breaks karma down basically to its original Sanskrit meaning, which means the ability.

To.

Plant seeds for the future. It's action seed results. So every action we take, every choice that we make in that moment where we're in a breakup, planting a seed for the future. And a lot of people who end up in that negative spiral where you're, you know, years later fighting and back in court and stuff is because at the very beginning people planted bad seeds of hatred and rage. And that's what that grows in your backyard. And you're eating those bitter fruits for years to come. So it becomes actually self self-destructive it's meant to hurt somebody else in the way that you feel hurt, but it becomes self-destructive and so, you know, it's it. One of the principles in step one of conscious uncoupling is, you know, do no harm and plant good seeds.

Do no harm to yourself or other people.

Other people even do no harm to anyone, even though you want to lash out.

You want to get mad or upset.

Run around the track, you know, work out. Work out. Do a great work of our friends or.

Yeah, you know.

Just like throw paint on a canvas. So you should have written a book. Don't react to your partner or your. Don't send the email.

Right.

Or the text message. Or the email.

Or the text, right. Don't do it.

What does that do when you do those things? Well, it starts to plant those bad seeds. I mean, it's very easy to cross the line and say things that you can never, ever take back. And that kind of color life moving forward. And I think what happens to us is that we go, We go down a path of living a lesser life in the aftermath of a really bad breakup, an ugly breakup. And so it's much longer to bounce back, too. Much longer to bounce back. And also, I mean, this goes into step two of the process. As long as you're pointing the finger at someone else, even if they were misbehaved and did terrible, terrible things, you're not using the opportunity to look at yourself and how you co-created the dynamic that allowed for that to happen.

You're responsible for everything, too.

And the only way you're ever going to trust yourself to love and be loved again is to take responsibility for your part of it because then you can make an amends to yourself and make a decision to never behave that way again. Right, right. And the first step you have here.

Is called Find Emotional Freedom. Is that part of this process we talked about?

Well, find emotional freedom is the first one with the affect labeling and like so that you're so that you have your feelings, they don't have you. They don't have control over you.

They don't have control over you.

Exactly. Gotcha.

And the second one is reclaim your power in your life. Yes. Getting back your own power.

Which always means, you know, you know the path to power. Right? The path to power is responsibility. Of course.

Of course.

Yeah.

Otherwise you're a victim.

Right. You've got to get out of victim consciousness. And it's so easy to be in victim consciousness. And the thing about a breakup is when you're traumatized, what happens to us is, you know, trauma is basically that whatever is happening is more than you can wrap yourself around. so you can't actually hold it. It's overwhelming, and so it starts to overwhelm us in a way that has us start to tell the story over and over and over again. And that's where we're burning our friends out because we just want to talk about what she did and what he did. It was so terrible.

Get over this already.

So it's normal to need to tell the story. to be a bit obsessive about the story, but the way that we're telling the story is really critical because you could be telling the story from a victimized perspective over and over again, which is kind of solidifying that point of view. And then kind of destined, making it destined for you to then move into living a lesser life of being more guarded.

Saying I was right about my past and how this is always going to show up this way.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I liken a broken heart to a broken leg, where, you know, we understand that when you break your leg, it's never gonna be fun. But we know, you go to the doctor, you get this, you get it set properly, and you tend to the break properly.

It takes time to heal. It takes time to heal.

And then eventually it takes time.

You don't run on it right away. Right, and six months, a year, you know, you're fully recovered.

Yes, and you, and you, but you do whatever you have to do to make sure that you're not gonna run with a limp.

Yes.

For the rest of your life, you know, that you're not gonna be in agony every time it rains. And that's kind of the heart's equivalent of if you don't, you know, take the proper steps to set your heart in the right direction.

One thing I've learned in my research above all else is that in the absence of love and belonging, there's always suffering. So when I hear about your experiences growing up, that's suffering. Yeah. You know, that's real suffering. And for me, not making the drill team when I was, I think it was in eighth grade, by itself is not a lot, but how my family responded to it, it was like when things changed for me and I didn't feel like I belonged to my family anymore. So I think that I still am trying to figure it out. I don't know that I've interviewed anyone, even spiritual leaders, who have the belonging thing completely nailed, because I don't think it is what we think it is. I think it is. You know, I don't think that it's having a big posse of friends or having a crew or rolling with a bunch of people. I think I'm still trying to figure it out because I still feel lonely and alone and on the outside of things on a really regular basis.

Really? I mean, you're going on a book tour with thousands of people, a 15-city tour, millions of fans around the world and you still feel alone?

Yeah, I can feel really lonely.

Why?

And it's really hard because you know, you talk about that book tour, I'm severely introverted.

Yes.

Super private. And so I love that connection between me and an audience, but it can also be hard on me. And also, I'm talking about things that no one, it's weird to me that people sign up to talk about them, but they're hard topics sometimes. And we laugh and we have fun and we'll sing.

But.

I think what I've learned in doing the research on belonging is that belonging is being a part of something bigger than yourself, but it's also the courage to stand alone and to belong to yourself above all else. And so I think I spend a lot of time belonging to myself, and sometimes that makes other people uncomfortable. And so I think that's hard. I think I do feel, I'm always looking for, I don't know about you, but I'm always looking for the roadmap. Like I want to find the researcher, storyteller, Christian, lover of all people, fighter of the resistance. I want to find the blueprint of who's ahead of me believing what I believe in and doing it really well. But there's not really a blueprint sometimes.

We're all trying to figure it out.

Yeah.

We're all trying to figure it out.

I don't get to copy anybody. And so it's hard.

Yeah.

It's still hard. But here's a thing that has changed everything for me. I belong to me. So even when I feel alone and I wonder like who's my crew and who are my people, I belong to me for sure, for the first time in my life maybe.

Yeah, and I think we lose ourselves sometimes by trying to belong in groups that we don't fit in.

Yeah.

You know, I remember being in, you know, the youngest on these sports teams growing up. I was playing on the junior varsity as a freshman or the varsity or whatever. So I was the youngest and I remember just wanting to fit in just like you did in that team. I wanted to fit in, I wanted to feel like they liked me, like I mattered. like I was a cool kid or whatever. And when they would do things that I didn't really agree with or they would bully other kids or make fun of people, it's like I didn't want to not say anything, you know, I didn't want to stand against them because I want to belong. So if I did stand up against them, then that means I was alone. And that was my biggest fear, was being alone.

Oh yeah, because that's what teams and groups deliver. They deliver this thing that you're not alone. The problem is, There's just, I was so shocked to learn in the research that the opposite of belonging is fitting in. Because fitting in is assessing a group of people and thinking, who do I need to be? What do I need to say? What do I need to wear? How do I need to act? And changing who you are. And true belonging never asks us to change who we are. It demands that we be who we are. Because if we fit in, because how we've changed ourselves, that's not belonging. That's not belonging because you betrayed yourself for other people. And that's not sustainable.

Yeah, you start to lose yourself.

You start to lose yourself exactly what you said. And so I think it's hard. You have to show up as who you are.

How do we find out who we are?

That's the life's work, right? That's freaking hard.

Do you know who you are?

Yeah, I do.

Who are you?

In what way?

If someone just said, who are you, Brenee? What would you say?

Brenee Brown. Mom, partner, researcher, storyteller, Texan. I don't know. I ask them how much time they have. Because, you know, the thing is that we want to, when we ask people who they are and we want to know, we like those really easy files to put them in.

Of course.

But I'm a complicated person.

Are you?

Yeah.

And so I think, I know who I am.

What makes you complicated?

I don't know if I'm complicated, but I'm complex.

You're interesting.

I hope so.

I'm very interesting.

I think you are. I think what makes me complex is I think what makes everyone complex is the paradoxical nature of people. So, you know, like I speak in public, I love doing that, but I'm incredibly introverted. I'm kind of a traditionalist around things. My kids say yes, ma'am, no, ma'am, but I also raise them to challenge authority every time they get the opportunity to do that. But to be really polite when they're doing it. Sure, sure. So I think I'm unapologetically earnest. Like I believe in the goodness of people, but I believe it's hard work to stay out of fear and stay good. And so I think I understand people. I think I have a lot of empathy, but I'm also not afraid of discomfort. So I think there's just a lot of push and pull. And I think that's true of all of us. I do not like to be defined. I think that was, Do you?

I was gonna say, I feel like my entire life, I didn't wanna be defined as well. They were like, you,'re gonna be this jock in college, you're gonna be like this alcoholic, you're gonna be in the frats. Yeah. All my siblings said this to me, and I was like, no, I'm not. I made a bet with each one of my siblings, $100 each, that I wanna have one sip of alcohol in college. 'Cause I was like, I'm gonna go against everything you think I'm gonna be. Yeah. I joined the school musical because they were like, you,'re just gonna do sports. I sang, I play guitar, I salsa dance. I was like, I'm gonna do everything different than what people would expect of a tall white man, right? That's awesome. I was like, I want to be different. And I think in that process, I was like trying to discover who I really was, what I liked, my dreams, what, you know, what was fun for me. Yeah. As opposed to just trying to fit the box and the mold of everyone else.

Because you can lose yourself in that fitting in, I think. You can lose lose yourself in the fitting in and you can lose yourself.

In the rebuttal to the fitting in. It's true.

Trying to go against it all true, yeah. Yeah, it's really hard. I mean, it's the thing that it's a quote that is Braving the Wilderness is all about this, starts with this quote from Maya Angelou that we're never free until we belong nowhere, we belong everywhere, which is nowhere, which is no place at all, which I thought was a terrible quote for many years. And I was like, why are you saying that, Dr. Angelo? You're pissing me off. But then I realized, really, and she says the cost is high, but the reward is great.

And.

I think that's the thing, that I feel like I belong everywhere I.

Go.

No matter where it is or who I'm with. as long as I never betray myself. And the minute I become who you want me to be in order to fit in and make sure people like me is the moment I no longer belong anywhere. And that is hard. I mean, that's a hard practice. That's an everyday practice.

Wow.

Yeah, 'cause I can be whoever you want me to be like that.

You're like a chameleon, you said.

Oh, I can be totally like a chameleon. Like sometimes it's really funny because like I always, because I travel so much, I have all these miles. I always sit in business class and I'm normally the only woman in business class. Every now and then there's one other maybe, which is a conversation we should be having too.

Sure.

But it doesn't matter what dude sits next to me. Like I can talk about whatever that person like, and it's so funny because we'll talk about sports usually first or football or we'll talk talk about politics and he'll say, what do you do? And I'll say, I study vulnerability and shame.

Oh, well, huh?

Well, I'm gonna play some angry birds, you know, and right that moment, like, I can just, it's not that I know everything about everything, it's just, so you're saying most men don't wanna chime.

In and learn more about that. No, that's usually, if I wanna go.

To sleep, I'm like, I'm a shame researcher. What do you do? You're like, okay, Right. But I think I can be anything.

Yeah, you're adaptable.

I'm adaptable, and adaptable is great. Because anyone that comes to my home or here to work, I can make you feel comfortable.

Of course.

But then if I get so adaptable that my goal, my intention of adapting, is to make sure you like me, then that's when I betray myself. Yeah, yeah.

When would you say is the time in your life you've been the most alone?

High school.

It's the whole journey.

Yeah, it just sucked.

It does suck.

And you know, my daughter just graduated from high school and she had this amazing experience. You know, just incredible experience. And it was so healing to watch.

Oh, that's nice.

Yeah, and I think it happened because I think she has the confidence to put herself out there and student council president and that kind of, I think because we have a rule at our house that no matter what, you belong here. No matter how goofy, awkward, afraid, wrong, it doesn't matter, you belong here. And so I think when we give our kids a platform like that at home, it gives them the courage to take risks outside of home. Does that make sense?

Because they feel safe coming back, no matter what happens, they always have a place to come home to.

Yeah, and I grew up in a house where it was very chaotic. I'm the oldest of four, and fitting in and being cool was the most important thing. So I think without that pressure, I probably would have never tried out for that drill team. But in my world growing up, you only did did two things. You were a cheerleader or you were on the drill team, and preferably you married a running back or a quarterback. I mean, that was the way it went. And so for me, I probably would have been like president of the French Club, you know, or I would have been in debate or those kind of things. Newspaper.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah, yeah, photographer for the yearbook.

Yeah.

But those things did not have a lot of value. Really? Not, no.

Your parents didn't instill that as something credible or worthwhile?

No, it's just I cool was the number one value at home. Cool, lots of friends, popular. Yeah. And that just wasn't my, I wasn't that thing. You know, I was, yeah, I wasn't. And so what I did is I just started drinking, smoking weed, hanging out with, you know, I found, I found a place to be, you know, cool. And, yeah, that just goes bad fast.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Have you ever had a conversation with your parents about this?

Oh yeah, we've talked about all of it.

You have?

Yeah.

You've let it go, you've processed it all.

Oh yeah, 'cause they read my books as I write them and they're like, shit, this is exactly what every parent wants, a child who grows up to be a shame researcher. But no, they just, that's the miracle of my parents. Like my parents, they've taught me the best thing about parenting that anyone I think could ever know, which is It doesn't end when your kids leave. Like they keep growing and exploring and learn, you know, and however hard it was for me not being able to be, you know, we did not do vulnerability growing up. Really? No, no, no, no. Like yeah, like our family motto was literally lock and load. Like get ready, you know, family trips, you're in the car for five hours, that's all six of us, you really have to go to the bathroom, but the rest stop is on the other side of the highway, we're not pulling over, like suck it up, hold it. Like we were tough. We were tough. Like we'd fall down and get hurt. You know, my dad would say, I got bigger scratches than that on my eyeball. You know, like, yeah, we were tough. And so, and we were taught to outrun vulnerability. We were taught to suck it up, soldier on, get her done. And so however hard that was for me growing up, imagine what it was like from my parents in the 50s. You know, my dad, who was the youngest of six, his dad died when he was 16.

You know, was he able to process that or no?

No, he just did the next thing you do. Played football, played college ball. My mom, who's my grandmother, who I named my daughter after, was an alcoholic. And she was drunk every other day of my mom's life. But she was the the most amazing person in the world, but everyone knew she was an alcoholic, so my mom wasn't allowed to have friends at our, at her house growing up because it was the 50s and she was divorced, you know? And so my mom became the head of the drill team and the, you know, the valedictorian. And, and so however hard it was for me growing up, having to try to outrun vulnerability, it was a million times harder on my parents.

Yeah.

And they didn't, they did what they knew how to do. and they loved us as much as they could love us with the tools they had. And so I don't have, I think the hard part comes from people that I've interviewed my whole life where the parents don't grow and change and they see anything a child trying to do differently as criticism of what they did, as opposed to my parents who lean in and say, tell me more about that. I have a funny story. We heard a funny story about my dad.

Yeah.

It's great. So we do a lot of choice theory with my daughter and my son. And so choice, my husband's a pediatrician. So like we know a lot about child development from our just from school. And so when Ellen was little, we used to do this thing where we would say, you know, you have two choices. Like, Louis, you have two choices. You can either hand me the water, I'm gonna have to take it from you. What is your choice? So that if you decide not to hand it to me and I have to take it, it's not my fault. That was your choice.

Right.

And so one night I was talking to Ellen, we were at my dad's house in Santanego, and I was like, Ellie, you need to turn off Door to the Explorer. It's time to go to bed. And she's like, mm-mm. And I said, Ellen, you have two choices. You can get up and turn off the TV, or I'm gonna get it up and turn it off for you. And if I have to get up.

And turn off the TV, you're gonna.

Lose privileges to watch it tomorrow. And that's your choice. Yeah, that's your choice. So do you know, and I would hate that for you, but that will be your choice. and my dad was sitting in the recliner next to me, and he's like, Ah, damn, sis, what are you raising? A hostage negotiator? And I was like, Dad, and he's like, Seriously, Brene? We had four of y'all. We didn't have time for that. So the next day I come home, I'm visiting friends in San Antonio, and he's watching Ellen, and he's in the driveway. It's like 110 degrees in San Antonio, and he's sweating. He's like, Ellen, you have two choices.

You can either put the bicycle up.

Or I'm gonna have to put it For you. And the second one's a d*ck choice. So I was like, wow, you're so close.

You're getting there.

You're getting there.

But you're getting there.

My parents are amazing in that way that like, they're learning and changing. So I think it's harder when parents say, I'm done. What you got was what you got. No apologies, no change, no remorse. Take it or leave it. And if you do it differently with your own kids, you're a sucker.

If we're gonna go through a breakup, how do we do it in a way where there's love and beauty and grace and not craziness and jealousy and anger and resentment? Because I've been in previous relationships in my past where, man, I'm not. I'm not proud of the way things ended on both of our accounts. And I'm sure a lot of people have experienced some type of nastiness in a breakup based out of hurt, pain, resentment, anger, frustration, not feeling good enough, whatever it may be, feeling, you taken advantage of. So once the process, if you know that something is not working and you've tried to work it out for a while and you're giving your all, they're giving your all and you love each other but it's not working for months and months, maybe years, how do you start the process of doing a breakup without it being painful? Oh, and is that possible?

It's not possible.

It's not possible.

That's not possible. That's not a realistic goal.

Pain is inevitable.

Well, We're hardwired to bond.

Yes.

We just are. The latest studies in neurobiology show that when the people that we're hanging with the most, we actually sync up physiologically.

Really? Yeah.

So we start, so we're actually, our brains will start to hook up. Brains are social creatures. So if you're going to part ways, It's, there's no way for that to not be incredibly painful. But so conscious uncoupling is more about, okay, how are we going to suffer in an effective way?

So pain is inevitable. You're going to experience pain. It's going to be challenging. How do you do it in a way where you can still be okay with it?

Yeah, well, that you're going to be.

Able to not drag it on for years or something, right?

Oh, exactly. Well, that's when people create a negative bond as opposed to a positive one because they can't let go. See, that's the brain, though. The brain doesn't want to let go at any cost. The brain is hardwired, even depression. There have been studies that show, you know, even puppies get depressed, you know, when they can't find their moms. They go in the corner and they're just like really depressed. And I heard there was one scientist who was kind of contificating on the reason for this. I thought it really made a lot of sense, which is that it's nature's way of slowing us down so we don't move too quickly away from the object that we are attached to.

Oh, man.

So, so nature is really kind of errors on the side of attachment. And so we don't necessarily do that in our value system. We might say, I can't stay with someone who doesn't really isn't in the center of my mission. I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to dim down and live a lesser life in order to keep this relationship going. I can't do that. It would be such a betrayal of myself.

Right.

So, you know, and we have to recognize that, you know, in previous generations, people didn't really have that. Like it was just, you just did that. You like dimmed down, you settled, you.

Took care of your church because your.

Family, whatever, you know, like, so this is a new emergence that's happening. And I think it's part of like our grand awakening that's happening in the world. We're all growing really super fast right now.

And if our partners aren't growing with.

Us, it becomes a challenge. It is a challenge. It is a challenge in terms of prioritizing how you're going to spend your time or what you're going to do with your energy or being able to share your inner world. Esther Perel's, Esther, I'm sorry, Esther's lame. But do you know this, the relationship expert who does, talks a lot about infidelity. She's got a new book coming out and one of her things that she's talking about is existential affairs. You know, and like the love affair with life and the love affair with mission and...

Being high on life.

Yeah.

Yeah, it can pull on us. Anyway, so So I lost the through line right there. What was I saying?

Good question. I lost it too. Going into the five steps. Going into the five steps. So the pain is inevitable, but how do we do the suffering in a loving way?

We don't want to have ineffective suffering.

Yes.

Okay, so ineffective suffering is when you take the bait of your biology. And you go to fight. Strong. Very strong. Super strong.

Strong.

Right. And so you go into fight or flight and you want to lash out that soulmate to soul hate phenomenon. So you want to lash out, but what it will do is create a negative bond and keep you just as invested, but only this time through a toxic negative bond.

Toxic reinforcement negativity. Yeah.

Right.

That's not healthy because you love the person. You don't want to hate them or be mad at them constantly.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I think where we want to go is, or I know where we want to go, is to be able to find a way to de-escalate the intensity of the emotions that we're feeling.

How do we do that? When we are, you know, hardwired to be jealous or angry or just like reactive, how do we say, okay, I'm gonna be in an home state right now and calm and meditate and not let any of this affect me?

Well, one of the reasons it's so hard is because our relationships actually regulate our emotions. They're fear regulators, our relationships. So when there's a rupture of attachment, you know that phenomenon, like the one person who's hurting you the most, that's the person you want to see the most to comfort you. Because they are, you're hardwired to get regulated by that person. They're the one person who can comfort you soothe you. So the, the, the, otherwise you're the.

Puppy in the corner, just like depressed.

Yeah.

Or enraged.

Right.

Or freaking out. I mean, depression is actually a higher level of, you know, on Elizabeth Kubler Ross's stages of grief, you have bargaining, denial and anger, and then you have depression. And so depression is like, I'm starting to come to terms with this. So it's actually a good thing in a breakup. But, but I think you're saying, like, how do you deal with the anger and and the rage and the jealousy. All of that stuff. So one of the things that I offer people is a simple technique called affect labeling in the psychological world, which is basically the ability to put a name on each of your feelings.

Okay, so give me an example.

So.

An example is, first of all, there was a scientific study done where subjects were looking at a computer screen. and they were seeing, you know, faces of horror, faces of rage, faces of hatred, and they were being monitored in all of their vitals, and they're kind of going off the charts, their blood pressure is rising, and their heart rate is going. And then they did another technique with this, they say the same pictures to a new group, but put a name, hatred, rage, despair, And the vitals did not go up in the same way. So what that shows is that when we have a name for the experience that we're having, we don't get as overwhelmed. So language serves kind of as a container.

So how would we use that in a breakup?

So I have a practice where I just very simply advise people to ask yourself, you know, Catherine, honey, what are you feeling right now? I'm feeling terrified. I can see that you're feeling terrified. Honey, what else are you feeling? I'm feeling so humiliated. Oh I can see that you're so humiliated. What else are you feeling? I'm feeling really pissed. Okay, okay I can see that you're feeling that. What else are you feeling? I feel exhilarated. You know because we have all these feelings going on at once they don't have to get on with each other, you know. So that process, and then sometimes if the feelings are overwhelming, I also give them people an opportunity to do this process of Tonglen, which is a Buddhist process. I'm not Buddhist myself, but it's a beautiful practice that Pema Chödrön actually made very popular. If you breathe a certain feeling into your heart, so I feel despair, I'm going to breathe despair in. I'm not going to turn away from it. And on the out breath, I'm going to breathe out a blessing to everyone in the world who in this very moment is suffering with this very feeling, including myself. And it starts to be like you can start to hold the feeling more because you've made a bigger playing field and you see it as an impersonal experience. And then you become, you know, a force of good. Ideally what happens is we want to harvest the seeds of growth that are inside of each of our feelings. So for instance, for instance, the feeling of rage. There's something underneath it, like a violation has occurred and there's a part of us that's saying I should be treated better. I deserve respect. I deserve that my feelings should matter to the people that love me and that I've opened my life up to and I deserve to have better. So that can actually become a stand then that you take.

Yeah.

You know, because we're going to move into self-responsibility how is that giving my power away? How is it okay? How is I, you know, treating people to disrespect me, all of that kind of thing?

Sure.

Right, so you want to harvest the seeds of growth that are... Because this is the thing, there's also a teacher, Ken McLeod, talks about karma, and he breaks karma down basically to its original Sanskrit meaning, which means the ability to to plant seeds for the future. It's action seed results. So every action we take, every choice that we make in that moment where we're in a breakup, planting a seed. Planting a seed. For the future. And a lot of people who end up in that negative spiral where you're years later fighting and back in court and stuff is because at the very beginning people planted bad seeds of hatred and rage. And that's what that grows in your backyard. And you're eating those bitter fruits for years to come. So it becomes actually self-destructive. It's meant to hurt somebody else in the way that you feel hurt, but it becomes self-destructive. And so, you know, it's one of the principles in step one of conscious uncoupling is, you know, do no harm and plant good seeds.

Do no harm to yourself or other people.

Other people even. Do no harm to anyone, even though you want to lash out.

You want to get mad or you want to get nice?

Run around the track.

Work out.

Do a great work of art. You know, just like throw paint on a canvas.

So you shouldn't react to your partner.

Don't send the email.

Right.

Or the text message. Or the text, right.

Don't do it. What does that do when you do those things?

Well, it starts to plant those bad seeds. I mean, it's very easy to cross the line. and say things that you can never ever take back, and that kind of color life moving forward. And I think what happens to us is that we go down a path of living a lesser life in the aftermath of a really bad breakup, an ugly breakup.

And so it's...

There's longer to bounce back, too.

Much longer to bounce back. And also, I mean, this goes into step two of the process. As long as you're pointing the finger at someone else, even if they were misbehaved and did terrible, terrible things, you're not using the opportunity to, you know, look at yourself and how you co-created the dynamic that allowed for that to happen.

You're responsible for everything, too.

So.

And, and the only way you're ever going to trust yourself to love and be loved again is to take responsibility for your part of it. Because then you can make an amends to yourself and make a decision to never behave that way again.

Right. Right.

And the first step you have here is called find emotional freedom.

Is that part of this process we talked about? Well, find emotional freedom is the first one with the affect. labeling and like so that you're so that you have your feelings they don't have you. They don't have control over you.

They don't have control over you exactly.

Gotcha.

And the second one is reclaim your power in your life. Yes. Getting back your own power.

Which always means you know the path to power.

Right?

The path to power is responsibility. Of course. Of course. Yeah otherwise you're a victim. Right. You've got to get out of victim consciousness. And it's so easy to be in victim consciousness. and the thing about a breakup is when you're traumatized, what happens to us is, you know, trauma is basically that whatever is happening is more than you can wrap yourself around. So you can't actually hold it. It's so, oh, it's overwhelming. And so it, it, it starts to overwhelm us in a way that has us start to tell the story over and over and over again. And that's where we're burning our friends out because we I just want to talk about what she did and what he did. It was so terrible.

I get over this already.

So it's normal to need to tell the story and to be a bit obsessive about the story. But the way that we're telling the story is really critical because you could be telling the story from a victimized perspective over and over again, which is kind of solidifying that point of view. and then kind of destined, you know, making it destined for you to then move into living a lesser life of being more guarded. You know, I mean... Saying I was.

Right about my past and how this is, you know, always going to show up this way.

Yeah. I mean, you know, I liken a broken heart to a broken leg, where, you know, we understand that when you break your leg, it's never going to be fun. But we know you go to the doctor, you get you get it set properly and you tend to the break properly.

It takes time to heal.

And then eventually it takes time.

You don't run on it right away.

Right.

And six months, a year, you know, so you're fully recovered.

Yes. And you, and you, but you do whatever you have to do to make sure that you're not going to run with a limp.

Yes.

For the rest of your life, you know, that you're not gonna be in agony every time it rains. And that's kind of the heart's equivalent of if you don't take the proper steps to set your heart in the right direction. So, telling the story over and over again from a victimized perspective is like not setting the brake properly.

It's like continually just walking on a broken leg. It's like walking on it, you feel it like cringing, you know, it's really the bones grinding. What do you think is more important in the relationship to make sure your values are in alignment to make sure your shared vision is in alignment or your lifestyle. The way you want to live your life. Like one wants to travel more and the other wants to stay home.

I think lifestyle, you know, is most the thing people fight about more than anything is money. Even people with lots of money, the number one thing we fight about is money. And the second is choice, even if they have a housekeeper.

Really?

Yeah.

So that must tell you that lifestyle is you see, you don't have to have the same values. You know, you could be of a different religion, you could be Muslim, I could be Hindu, and we can actually get on. We could come from a different culture and we can work that out. I come from a family where everybody was divorced and my husband doesn't, but we get on really well. So I think values are nice, but that's, you know, we've got to have exactly the same values. We don't always have the same same value. Some people value things more. I mean, some of the things my husband likes to watch on television, I find that, you know, it's all my, oh, that's a chick thing. I was trying to, what was it? I was watching the new episode of Sex and the City. I hate this. I actually didn't love it either. So, no, I've got to watch it. I'm invested in it now. So sometimes he'll go and do something else. It's like if you're with someone who loves sport and you don't, you don't have to love loves sport. My husband loves cooking. He's always cooking. I don't really love that. I don't mind, but it's all the shopping and then the chopping and then the cleaning. I'm like, let's just grill some fish. But he likes so that. But we don't have the same thing because I don't value cooking at all the way he does. But lifestyle, if you're up all night and your partner goes to bed early, if you're an outdoor person, you love to travel, they love to stay home, you love family and they don't. I think lifestyle isn't what you're going to spend the rest of your life with one person. So I think you should look, I mean so many issues about our kids are going to private school, no they're not. I believe in punishment, I don't believe in that. It makes a very unhappy home. So lifestyle is important, values are important, too. And goals and dreams are important, but you can have different goals. Like my husband has no desire to write best-selling books, you could say, but imagine if he did, we'd be competing. But when I'm writing, he cooks me lovely food, he brings me tea and coffee, he knows I have to be left alone because I'm in a writing mode. So we're not the same because he has no interest. He tried once to write a book, he absolutely hated it. He threw the whole thing away. but I couldn't do what he does. So are our values the same?

Yeah.

Are our goals and dreams the same?

No.

But is our lifestyle the same? Yeah, we like the same thing.

Yeah.

We tend to go to bed together, get up together. We like to travel to the same places. You know, if I was with someone who wanted to go out all night until 2 A.M. be hard. That would be really hard because that's. If I was with someone who wanted to bring people home every night. have a party, that wouldn't work. So I think we really forget that having the same lifestyle is really important because that's what people fight about the most.

I got a couple final questions here. What do you think we should feel when we start dating someone and we've been dating them for a while? What do you think we need to think or feel or know internally that we can move forward towards a commitment.

Your feelings are the most real thing you have. I always think you should feel your feelings until they no longer require to be felt. I say, you know, I met this person. I didn't really like them, but oh my God, the sex was amazing. So I overlooked all these things. I met this person who was mean, rude to waiters, dismissive, rude to my family, but they were just so so compelling and so gorgeous and so out of my league that I tolerated it. Tune into your feelings. They will tell you very quickly, you know, our gut is our gut instinct. Our gut is the second brain. If someone doesn't seem nice and doesn't seem kind and is treating you badly, why stay? Why wait for that to get better? If you feel that they're not really a nice person, then why hang around? If you notice behavior that's a red flag, they always forget their credit card. They seem to diminishable. So, you know, I don't know how I ended up with a narcissist, but often we do. We go, yeah, I just, I overlooked that.

There was something else that was more compelling.

They were so good looking or so nice or they were very generous. They took me to great places, and I overlooked the fact that either they were annoying or mean or even boring. I just thought, I'll stick this out. You know, your feelings are the most real thing you have. And you've got to feel your feelings until you get the message and then they go away. And often we just ignore feelings.

Can your feelings ever lie to you?

No, I don't think so. I met many people at my wedding day. I knew it. And one of my friends said, I knew I was marrying the wrong person. on my wedding day, I waited for my wife to come there and I knew I was making a mistake, but I couldn't let people down. You know, Charles and Diana both tried to call off their wedding. Both of them knew it was wrong, but they felt, wow, we've got to go ahead with it.

Right.

If your feelings are saying no that early, then at least go, hey, there's no rush to get married. There's no rush to move in. There's no rush. I mean, there maybe is a rush to have have children. But more problems occur from picking the wrong person or staying with the wrong person because you're not tuning into your feelings. When you tune into your feelings, you know because the feeling is, I feel a feeling of rightness with this person. I love waking up to this person. I love coming home to this person. Even on my worst day when they annoy me, I imagine my life without them and think, oh no, my life so much better with them. So I don't think your feelings can ever lie because they come from the gut, which is the seat of your emotion. I think we lie to ourselves, but our feelings don't lie. And you know, in the 10 people in that book, every single one of them had lied to themselves that there's a girl in there who wanted to kill herself. And her lie was, I've got to be good. I need to be good. And I said, but being good makes you want to die. She goes, I know. I said, I think it's time to stop being good. She said, you know, I'm going straight to Victoria's Secret now. I said, yeah, I think you need to be bad. You need to be naughty. If being good makes you want to die, what's the point? And then the girl in there with OCD, and OCD is nothing more than I can't control what's going on in here, but all the cups are going.

To be just right.

And everything, now I can control out there, because I can't control in here. And for her, it was just a question of, look, control in here, look at the thoughts and change them. And so many of us are so busy not really feeling what we feel. We think we can Netflix our feelings or Krispy Kreme donut our feelings or nice bottle of wine our feelings or you know even Amazon or eBay our feelings. But you can't, you have to feel your feelings. They're the most real thing you have. When you feel your your feeling, go what am I feeling? I don't know, but I'm not gonna eat it or drink it or shop it, I'm gonna sit with it.

Until it no longer needs to be stopped.

And then it goes away and it goes away really quickly and it stops coming back.

It wasn't a completely new world, I didn't have to explain to my partner, you know, this is how I'm feeling.

And them being like, well, I don't.

Understand, because I can't even imagine, you.

Know, and it was kind of just like an unsaid thing that we both.

Just kind of understood, like, hey, if you were getting.