The #1 REASON You're Single & Can't FIND LOVE... | Robert Greene & Lewis Howes

What are the qualities that I really, really want? What is important for me that I didn't get in that last relationship? Right. Who am I? Right. That's just the question. Who am I? What are my deepest needs and what are my dark patterns? Right.

Yes.

And then to go through a process of, I think you gotta have a dream.

The school of greatness.

Really.

Yeah.

Please welcome Lewis Howes.

I want to ask about the biggest mistake that you've seen in your research and maybe also your personal experience that people are making when it comes to finding love and using seduction within that discovery of finding love.

Well, the greatest mistake people make is they judge simply on appearances. And of course, you know, we all have sexual desire, we have physical desires, and often we're attracted to people and there's a sexual component, but the character of that person doesn't mesh with us. Right?

Yes.

And so the physical stuff doesn't last that long. It can't go on forever. Although we can go on fairly well if you connect on that level. But it kind of dies down at some point. And then you're confronted with their psychology, their personality, their character. You have to be able. You have to think, can I talk to this person in five years and carry on an interesting conversation? Can I sit across from the table? If you want a long term relationship and find a stimulating conversation with them, because that's really what it ends up boiling down to, you really want to be able to also judge their character. And if you're able to look inside the other person a little bit and to see a kind of deeper connection between you, I believe that the sexual part, which is extremely important in any relationship, will actually be intensified and heightened. Right. As opposed to the immediate kind of animal attraction that we have to people. So if you deepen your connection to that person and love is involved, where you actually feel a vulnerability to them in this kind of back and forth electrical charge, I think the physical component, you know, the value of it increases.

Right.

So that's the number one mistake people make. You know.

Do people have sex too early?

Well, I don't know what's going on necessarily with young people right now. I know the hookup culture is still pretty strong and, you know, guys are watching a lot of porn. And so, you know, that's probably a tendency. And in the traditional. And things have changed. It was the woman who had more to lose by becoming pregnant who tried to keep the sex at bay for at least several weeks or months or longer. And that's kind of been lost. But yeah, I think the fact that the falling in love process generally takes time. Right. I mean, that we do have love at first sight. And it is a real phenomenon, and I've had it myself. Really? Yeah. But the idea. So there's a famous French writer named Stendhal who wrote a great book called On Love, one of the greatest books written about love. It was in the early 19th century. And he compared to Falling in Love to what he called crystallization. And it's based on this thing where you would throw a piece of wood into this mine in Germany somewhere at Salzburg, and then you would pull it out like a week later, and it would be filled with all of these brilliant crystals. And he compared that to the process of falling in love. The person is just who they are. They're like a trunk of a tree. But your mind kind of puts all these qualities on them, crystallizes them into some kind of ideal figure. Right. And so that mental process takes time. Right. It requires also some distance and some fantasizing, you know, sort of basic elements of human psychology.

So what do you mean by distance? Well, like, don't spend all your time with the person in the first month.

And if you're having sex right away, it's too close, it's too intimate, it's too. It's too early to be able to go through that process. Right. And often, you know, there's usually a letdown after the. After that initial sexual encounter if you have it too early. Right. Where. As opposed to letting time go by and letting the other person begin to think about you and fantasize about you. And in their mind, sort of imagine some interesting qualities about you and fascinate them, which is what he calls this crystallization process. I mean, literally think of it that way, that you're. You're. You're having a. In their mind, they're kind of forming this sort of ideal crystal image of you. Right. And it takes time and it takes some absence. It takes the ability to say, you know, you're not in their face all the time. You disappear for a couple days, a couple weeks or whatever. Not weeks, but a few days. You let them think about you, and you let that kind of spell. Because seduction and love is kind of a spell that you're casting, and there's an art to it. And so the mistake people have is they're in too much of a hurry. Right.

Too much of a hurry to what? Have sex? To fall in love? To.

Yeah. Or to have, like, a really, you know, intimate relationship or to get married. Or whatever it is in general in our culture, people are too much of a hurry. They're too much of a hurry to make money, too much of a hurry to get attention. It also involves, you know, in romantic relationships. Right, right.

So what's the difference between seduction and love?

Well, I maintain that the process of seducing is making the other person fall in love. Right.

The process of seducing is getting the other person to fall in love.

Could you.

Can someone fall in love without being seduced? Without seducing them?

No.

Even in love at first sight, there could be like a moment of seduction that turns into that. Or how does that work?

Well, even in love at first sight, which I say I've kind of maybe experienced, it doesn't necessarily lead to something. Right. You still have to go through a process where the other person's character that you start idealizing and romanticizing and thinking about them. You know, even that immediate attraction there is still the seduction process that has to go on. Right. And so, you know, I try in the art of seduction, I make the point that political seduction, marketing seduction, social seductions, because in your office, you're continually seducing. It's the same process. And it's getting. You're getting the other person to think about you and getting them to fall in love with your product, with your idea, with your political platform or whatever it is. And that process of internalizing that other person, of having their presence, their spirit or whatever inside you inhabit you, and you're thinking about them a lot, is a process of falling in love. Right. So it doesn't mean that there aren't seductions where you're seducing the other person and then it's over after a month. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to lead to a relationship, but I don't. So I separate seduction from just having sex. So if you go to a bar and you pick up a woman in the bar, and that night you go back to your place and you have sex, that's not seduction. Right. Because we are psychological creatures. Right. We're not animals. And the process of actually having our emotions engaged by the other person takes a lot deeper process. Right. It can't happen quickly, can't happen overnight. So seduction isn't like, you know, pickup artists don't really like the art of seduction so much.

Why is that?

Because it's not quick enough for them. I'm telling you, you have to go through these steps. I don't want to have to go through all these steps. I don't have to wait three weeks to sleep with her or a month. I don't have to surprise her and give her gifts or. I'm talking about from the male point of view.

Sure.

Do. All of these things that Robert talks about, you know, I want to. Quick. You know, some of them aren't like them, but some of them are. And so there are plenty of books written out there about how to pick up women or guys in a bar. But the seduction isn't about that. It's something else. It's something more elemental. And I talk in the Art of Seduction about how it goes back to our childhood, how we are incredibly vulnerable to the emotions of other people. It begins with our parents, right. In the sense of, you know, we internalize their presence. We're thinking about them. We have this kind of very deep emotional attachment to them. We're seduced by our parents. In some ways, it kind of sets a tone from early childhood, this need to feel vulnerable to other people. Right. That's the thing as well, is, you know, it's. A lot of people mistake seduction. And that's the reason I wrote the book. They have really bad ideas about it.

What do they think it is?

Well, they have an idea that it's this kind of cold process. Typically, it'll be a male seducer, but it can be a woman. And they're really conniving, and they're coming up with all kinds of tricks, schemes, schemes to get the woman or man to, like, fall for them. And either they're after money or sex or something else. Right. And actually, seduction is a matter of vulnerability. It's making yourself vulnerable to the other person.

Really?

Yeah. And, you know, we live in. In times where people have a hard time being vulnerable. You know, if you're insecure, if you're filled with a lot of anxiety, you tend to close up inside of yourself and to let another person in and to let them have some control over your emotions can be kind of a scary process. But if you can't feel that vulnerability, if you can't open yourself up to the power of that other person, there won't be a seduction. It'll be this kind of cold, mechanical process. Right.

So how do we learn to open ourselves up and be vulnerable, to allow for seduction to happen? If we're really interested in someone, we're like, oh, we're really. We want to start dating this person. We're really excited about the potential, but we also don't want to ruin it and mess up.

Yeah, well, you Know, each relationship is different. You know, I talked to a lot of people on this vulnerability issue, particularly women who've come to me for counseling. They've had a bad experience, right? They dealt with maybe a man who was a kind of cold, calculating seducer type or an abusive relationship. Right? And what happens is they get kind of bitter and hardened by it, and they don't want to open themselves up to another relationship. They're not aware of that's happening, but unconsciously, that's what's going on. And I try to tell them, if you let that happen, that means that that person, that abuser, or whoever it was, they've defeated you, not only physically, but mentally. They have conquered you. They have ruined one of the most important aspects of your life. They've made it impossible for you to feel vulnerable and open because you can't trust another person. And it's very difficult. So my process in there is telling them that, making it clear to them that if that happens, then they have this power over you, and you don't want to let them have that power. Right. And so we work on ways, first, making it clear how important it is in life to feel vulnerable, not just to other people, but to everything in the world. That's sort of the subject of my next book. But to feel vulnerable when you read a book, to open yourself to other people's ideas, to open yourself in general to people and to their spirit, to let them in and to let them have some influence over you and some power over you.

Why is that important?

Because it allows you then to have a deeper understanding and a deeper connection with people. So, you know, we all kind of live in these castles where we're trying to protect ourselves, right? And we're all kind of defensive, and it's for good reason. We live in a world that's very harsh. You know, a lot of information, a lot of things going on at the same time. So we kind of live in these castles, and you're not understanding people unless you can kind of open up to their spirit. I talk about in the Art of Seduction, Enter the Other Person's Spirit is one of the key chapters where you're able to kind of put yourself inside of the other person and feel what they might be thinking. Right? Which is, I think, a problem that a lot of men have in dealing with women. That they're trying. That they're interested in putting yourself in their position, trying to understand what makes them tick, what their psychology is about. To do that, you have to kind of let go of yourself. You have to be willing to kind of float and let yourself go into them and open yourself up to their spirit and not assume that you know everything about them or that everything. All of your ideas are correct. So vulnerability is a very important element that we must have in this world in order to be able to have empathy and to be able to understand people.

Is it. You know, you wrote a book about the laws of power, the 48 laws of power. Is this, you know, different than the laws of power, the, you know, the seduction strategies where you're being more vulnerable as opposed to, you know.

Well, believe it or not, I wrote the Art of Seduction as a kind of. Not a sequel, but it kind of played off the 48 laws.

Okay.

And there were a few chapters in the 48 laws that dealt with seduction, such as use absence to create honor and respect, you know, or make others come to you or create compelling spectacles. There were at least eight or 10 of the 48 laws that were very sort of seduction oriented. And the idea is we all want power in this world. I maintain that's sort of my key thesis that drives all of my books. And the. It's not power just in a political sense. It's the idea that you have some control over your fate, control over destiny. Right. And control and the ability to influence the people around you. Well, seduction is the ultimate form of that kind of power. Really? That's what I. Yes, I talk about that in the 48 laws. It's a form of soft power. So people, if you seduce them, they're not even aware that you have gained this kind of power over them. They've opened up to your influence.

It's kind of hypnotizing in a sense.

Right.

It's like this.

You're uneven, aware, being hypnotized by someone's message or their. Their brand or their product or their political message as well, I guess.

Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Just like I like this. I don't even know why I like this person.

Right.

Interesting.

Yeah. Because if people sense that you're trying to get power over them, if they sense that you're scheming, that you've read Robert's 48 laws of power, whatever, they get defensive and they close themselves off to you and you can't move them, you can't maneuver them in the right way. I know about 16 years ago when the pickup artist thing was really big and hot with the game and the game and everything. Neil's a friend of mine, is a great guy.

Great guy.

But, you know, Every woman in Los Angeles, where I live, had been approached by a pickup artist. They all knew the strategies, the negging, all that kind of, you know, putting them down and. Yes, yeah, yeah, they knew all of it. And so it didn't work anymore. It lost all its power because everyone had been exposed to it, right. They could see through the tricks. They could see a pickup artist coming from a mile away. You know, all the little gag little tricks like cards or reading their palm or all this stuff. Oh, come on, man. I know you've read that book. So it didn't work anymore. So if people sense that you're trying to manipulate them, they close off. And that's why in advertising and marketing, they know that they have to make it seem like they're not advertising, that it's just kind of word of mouth. That's just the average person on the street who's touting their products, etc. Because if your advertising is so clearly how you're manipulating, it doesn't work. So the trick in seduction is to have such a gentle touch that people don't even understand what's going on. And that's what a kind of a master seducer can do.

And what I'm hearing you say, that's living from more of a vulnerable state. Is that right? Being open to being vulnerable or.

Well, you know, there are people who are cold seducers and they seduce women. But I don't, you know, there's kind of a limit to it.

Yes.

It's not the kind that I'm interested in.

Gotcha.

So I've known a lot of really great seducers. There was a person in Paris who's sort of the. To me, the. The greatest seducer I ever personally met. He was this Brazilian guy in Paris. Very tall, very handsome guy. But he was the most brilliant seducer I've ever seen. Right. And I've known others as well.

What did he do?

Well, I say it was this kind of openness that he had, you know, and you could call it a vulnerability. It was a kind of a childish, boyish quality. So women felt comfortable in his presence. He might, you know, dump them in a week and go after someone else. But in that week, he was completely at their feet. He, you know, he was inside their brain. He understood them deeply. And he was like a boy, you know, he didn't seem threatening at all. Right. And I know probably the greatest male seducer who ever lived is probably Errol Flynn, the great American, Irish American actor. I think he's Irish, actually. And, errol. Flynn supposedly had slept with, I don't know, like 3,000 women. And he died at the age of 51. I remember when I wrote the Art of Seduction, I was kind of doing the math.

That's crazy.

And it was like Wilt Chamberlain or something like that. Had to be like a woman every other day or something.

That's crazy.

And then I wanted to understand what made him so powerful, right? Because he was one of the icons in the art of seduction. And finally I found a book written by a woman, an actress who'd been seduced by him. And she kind of revealed to it all of his secrets. And the key was he made women feel so relaxed, right. She said just being next to him was like drinking two martinis. I felt so calm and so relaxed. He had this kind of animal presence where he was very comfortable with himself. And that was the thing about that Brazilian man. He wasn't defensive at all. He was very, very comfortable with himself. He, he wasn't arrogant or grandiose, but he just felt comfortable in his own body and his physicality and in who he was. And I think the problem that a lot of people have is they bring their insecurities into the seduction realm. And it's very anti seductive. It kind of breaks the spell because when you're insecure and you're trying to pick up on a man or a woman, the other person can sense it, right? You're not saying anything, but they read it in your body language. Because we're animals that read a lot from nonverbal communication. And when another person is insecure like that, it means they're thinking about themselves, right? And it's a very off putting sense. Like they're more worried about if they say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing and it makes the other person tense. And I don't know if you've ever had this experience, Louis, but if you've ever been around a very insecure person, it kind of makes you uncomfortable.

Yeah, super uncomfortable.

So probably the most important lesson I tell people in the realm of seduction is to be able to project a degree of confidence and calmness and comfort with yourself are probably the most important qualities.

What about when you're in a relationship and you want the relationship to work long term, you wanted to have, whether you're getting married and you want to, you know, you want to last. And you don't want to just hang on to the marriage and be miserable, but you want it to be a happy, thriving existence, healthy, conscious, loving, to the best of your Ability. Should we continue to seduce our partners in committed long term relationships? Or is that not something you do once you're in a relationship?

Well, I have a chapter in the art of seduction that deals with those. I think it's the last chapter. And basically I think a lot of people complain. It used to be women complained about it, but I think it transcends that. Where we've been in a relationship for a year and all the things that I'm going and hearing the woman talk, because I've heard this before. Everything that he used to do, he doesn't do anymore, right? He doesn't take me special places. He doesn't make that extra effort. He doesn't buy me special gifts anymore. All the things that he did when he wanted to have sex, he was like going crazy and doing all these things. He was dressing really well. Now he kind of dresses like a slob. He kind of doesn't want to go out anymore. I hear that more than I hear the opposite. Like, he keeps trying to seduce me and I'm getting tired of it. I don't hear that too much, but I hear that he's taking me for granted, right? So it's not like you're practicing the same things that you did when you were trying to get that other person to fall in love with you. That would be exhausting, right? And I don't think it would really work. But it's that you still do some of the effort, right? You still try to surprise the other person. You still have sides of your character that they don't know about. You do things that they've never seen before. You still take them to places. You still put effort into buying gifts, right? You buy that special gift. You still take effort to take them one night to a special restaurant or to a movie, something that they had, you know, like if you understand, if you listen deeply to that other person and they reveal their secret desires and what they're not getting from the world, just take that in and go. If I give her gift or take her to a place that fills that very thing that she said she's not getting, man, that'll have such a powerful effect on that person. Even if you've been in a relationship for two or three years and I've been in a relationship for decades, I'm afraid I have to admit. And you still have to go through that process.

Really?

Yeah.

What is the questions you can ask to find out someone's secret desires without saying what are your secret desires?

You just have to listen. There okay. So the main thing is get them to talk about their childhood.

Really?

Yeah. I mean, obviously, don't go. Tell me about your father. Was he nice to you?

What question can you ask in an organic, relaxed way that would open that up?

Well, in the course of a context, you can say, I don't know. It's like, are you close to your parents? Do you see them? And then just without being too inquisitive, without making it clear that that's what you're doing, just get them to talk about their early life.

Why is that important to figuring out people's secret desires as adults, asking about their children?

Because it's the key to everything, really, in the laws of human nature. I have a chapter about. I call it about gender, about the mix of the masculine and feminine. And there's a concept from the great psychologist Jung called the anima and animus. And he basically says that from a man, from his mother. If you're straight, because things change. The man from his mother internalizes an image of women, that it will haunt him for his entire life. Right. Because the relationship between a mother and son is very intense. It's not the same as between a mother and a daughter. Right. Because she's the opposite gender. You're suckling on her breast. She's the only person you know for the first couple of years. It's very powerful power. And unconsciously, her image slips inside of you. You internalize a part of it, and you're going to have this. You're going to carry with this. Even if you don't like your mother and you come to not like her later on, that image is still inside of you. And you're still going to choose women that have some of those qualities that you would like, you wish your mother had, or that she did have. So those early relationships, the woman with her father will tell you so much about. About her and about her weaknesses and her vulnerability, really. And what she's missing. Yeah.

So what if they. If the person.

That's one.

Okay.

You know, anything where the person gets excited. Right.

Then just take note of that.

Yeah.

And start.

If you touch upon a subject and you see that they get nervous or they laugh a lot, they're very excited. Just put that in your little index there and go and return to it. You've hit upon a chord. A subject that either excites them or gives them, like, fear or whatever, there's something very powerful going on there. Right, right. And child is a very powerful one.

So what should people be aware of when they're getting into a relationship. What do you think are a few questions they should ask and get answers to to see if it's a potential for a good relationship or it's going to be completely off or they're just wasting their time trying to get into this. Are there any questions you can think?

Well, no, I can't think of questions. It's more like.

Or should it be asking how is your parents relationship and this and that.

It's not that direct, it's not that verbal, it's not that intellectual. It's more of a kind of a spirit meshing between two people. Right. So there are plenty of examples of couples that have done extremely well where they kind of disagree. Political issues, although that can be a problem as well. But there's a little bit of tension on that. But they connect on some deeper level. I refer people to that chapter I was just talking about in the laws of Human Nature where there's a level where we connect to people that is not on the surface, that is kind of non verbal. It has to do with our unconscious. It has to do with things that we've never been able to get from our parents or whatever. And we kind of have these ideals that have been unmet and connecting on that level. Connecting on the level of spirit where your emotions, it's more like your emotions mesh together well than your ideas. Like there's, you know.

Yes.

And because if that other person is, is incredibly dramatic and out there and you know, that's something you can. Even though they have the similar ideas to, it's going to grate on your nerves.

You know, I saw a post recently, excuse me, about something like I'm going to mess this up. But something like you don't marry the person, you marry the person's like trauma. You marry their, you know, in laws trauma. You marry like what they haven't healed yet. You marry their emotional, the relationship to certain things. You're marrying the emotions of the person. Really.

Yes, exactly.

And being aware, like just because they look great and just because you have fun together certain times you're really marrying all the other stuff along with it.

Right. And you won't find that out right.

Away because they're good at hiding it.

Yeah, right.

They're good at like reserving that until six months, a year, two years later. Right.

Yeah.

So it's making sure that your emotions mesh well over your ideals. Is that what I'm hearing over the.

Intellectual part, over just superficial fact that you both vote Democratic or Republican or that you Both like this movie director. I mean, certain tastes that mesh are important, but I don't think there has to be kind of a charge between you. A kind of something that goes on underneath the surface that has nothing to do with just words or kind of superficial things. You know, something deep, spiritual.

Yeah, because sometimes people think, oh, we have all these things in common. We have this connection. This is a great match. But then they don't experience the emotional or spiritual level, right? And then that comes out later and you're like, well, we are from the same city and we went to the same school and we voted, whatever, and we have similar friends and we like to go to baseball games. But if there's not that spiritual or.

Emotional meshing, your idea is very apt. You are mirroring the other person's emotions, right? And so that's not something that you see right away. And you could love the same movies. You can have all these other things, but if that part isn't connecting on the right way, if they're revealing something that's going to really drive you crazy after several months or years, doesn't matter about how well your ideas are similar.

What if your ideas are amazing together? The sexual connection is incredible, but the emotional level is not in sync.

Like, well, you know, it's hard to generalize. You know, have a relationship, it'll probably last just a few weeks or a couple months. You know, it'll be hard to build a relationship where you don't connect on this kind of deeper level. But it's not to say that it doesn't happen. And it isn't to say that people can't change, Right? So, you know, you might discover after five years that this person has qualities that kind of get on your nerves a little bit. You wish you had seen them earlier, but by then you've fallen in love with them, right? And you go, you know, I can appreciate their weaknesses. I can love their weaknesses. I can get over it. It still kind of irritates them. Me. It still irritates me, but there's something deeper. I actually really love this person. And even their flaws are lovable. And that happens, right? So it's hard to generalize about everything. And you can't change. You can, like, see that maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe I'm too cold and rational and they're too dramatic, and maybe I can learn from her or him and become more like them. People change. And you. That's the great thing about a great relationship is the ability for the other person to change. You as well.

To influence you?

Yeah.

How long have you been in your relationship now?

It's over 20 years.

Over 20 years. What do you wish you knew about being in a long term relationship like this 20 years ago? Is there anything you would have done differently on your end or anything that you wish you would have known to. I don't know. It seems like it's been a happy, healthy relationship to last that long. But is there anything you wish you would have knew earlier, Robert? You know, at that point before getting into the relationship.

You mean, and not have the relationship or what? No.

And being in the relationship, like things that you could have. I don't know, it's things you could have eliminated or things that you could have done differently yourself. To make it even greater, I wish you would have, like, solved things before challenges came up for you. If they did come up.

Well, it's.

Or have you just been like, the king of relationships?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not at all. As I. As I've been very clear, I have got my own problems, my own flaws, you know? No, I mean, being more forgiving would have probably helped. You know, I can be kind of rigid and kind of stubborn, thinking I know the right way all the time. And I felt like, you know, she had certain flaws that were really too strong. And if I just, like, you know, go with them and say that I have flaws as well and be a little more humble and being more forgiving of her, I think that would have helped.

Yeah.

You know, and that's not easy all the time.

Mm. How important is it, do you think, being in a healing process before entering a new relationship, as opposed to just jumping into a relationship without the process of reflection, self awareness, looking at what pain has caused you in your past, you haven't forgiven or healed?

It's very, very important because oftentimes your choices with a partner occur for reasons that you're not aware of, really. And I talked about an example in the laws of human nature. That's sort of a classic case in therapy where this man had come to a therapist and he had a series of like, 10 very powerful emotional relationships. And each time he broke it off and he would say, you know, she betrayed me here.

She did.

I found out that this was happening and I no longer loved her. Or on and on and on. The therapist started to go into his early childhood, and he discovered that he had a mother. This man who was very cold, wasn't very loving to him, and he had a sense. And this is what happens to children. It happens to boys when the mother is like that. You feel abandoned. You don't feel like it's your fault. I'm sorry. You don't feel like it's their fault. You feel like something's wrong with you.

And then.

And they have chosen to abandon you. It scars you. It scars that three year old in a way that he'll never get over. And so what his pattern was, each time he got in a relationship before the woman could begin to maybe hurt him and abandon him, he was the one doing the abandoning. It gave him a sense of power and control. It was like he was redoing the mother relationship where he was the one abandoning and not being abandoned. He was not aware of this at all. He'd gone through 35 years of his life and all of these relationships, probably choosing women that kind of mirrored that early relationship as well, but that he could then abandon them so he could have this feeling of power. Now, you might not be having something so dramatic going on in your life, but you will have patterns like that. And I know I've had patterns like that and I've analyzed them and I've become aware of them. And so if you've been in a very bruising kind of damaging relationship, which we've all have, if you've been alive for enough years. Right. It is absolutely essential that you step back and analyze it because kind of negative relationships and traumas like that will reveal a lot of truths about yourself. You will tend to blame the other person for. For everything. But you need to look at yourself and see the patterns that are making you fall for people like that.

You're getting into those relationships over and over again.

Yeah.

So what would it look like when you start the healing process or the awareness process of, okay, I'm the one who's responsible for this pattern. I'm the common denominator of all these relationships. So there's partially me to be responsible for. What would it feel like to start the healing process and what would that next relationship look like when you make a commitment? Would it just feel different? Would it feel like, oh, this is very healthy? How would that look, do you think?

Well, there's a lot of problems. It's not easy. And the main problem, Louis, is, believe it or not, some of those early dysfunctional relationships with your parents are charged with this kind of sexual energy. Really? Yeah. And so you'll find yourself attracted to the very man or woman who's going to hurt you. Whereas the man or woman who's good for you, there's no kind of sexual charge because this isn't everybody. This is maybe a third, I don't know what the percentage is, don't quote me, but you are actually more attracted to the person that has these damaged qualities. Why is that? Because you get to relive some of those early traumas, right? And so the problem that will happen, and I can see this in my own life as well, that the person who is good for you, that's actually caring, that will mesh with you, that physical charge maybe isn't as strong, right. And that's a problem, right, because you want to have that element. But you need to be aware of this. You need to be aware of the fact that, that some of the people that you're most attracted to, you're not attracted to just because of their sexy body or whatever it is. There's also some kind of issues you haven't worked out from your early childhood that are at play in that relationship and that are going to cause you a lot of pain.

Why does that turn us on sexually, do you think? Why is the human brain turned on by drama and, you know, unhealthy relationships?

Like why does that.

Well, you know, I would be a multi billionaire by now if I could answer those questions. I'd be the ultimate doctor of love. But I can say this, that when you're a child, you're two or three years old, you know, we're talking about entering the spirit. Try and enter the spirit of the three year old Lewis Howes. You're very vulnerable, you're very weak, right? You're at the mercy of this person who's very powerful, your mother and also your father. It depends on what you know. You're at their mercy, right? And you're open to them. You depend on them for so much. So the emotional energy that you are putting onto them is extremely powerful, more powerful than any other relationship you will have in your life. And you're not aware of it. And so it's mesh, it meshes with all these other kind of physical impulses and desires that you have. Because a child who's 2 or 3 years old is actually still having like sexual impulses very early on. It's kind of creating a pattern of attraction that you are very rarely aware of. It's not to say everybody is like that, but it's a pretty common denominator that, you know, if you have, for instance, a very narcissistic mother, right, who was more interested in herself than in you, you're going to be Attracted to narcissistic women.

If you're a man.

Yeah.

Gotcha. Wow.

Yeah. And you're not aware of it, and, you know, it creates this. A lot of pain for you. Right. So you've got to go through a process. It's kind of like there's the ancient Greek play of Oedipus. Right. I don't know if you were. He married his. He killed his father, and then he ended up marrying his mother.

Crazy.

Yeah. You know, so we get the Oedipus complex from. Right. And he never realizes it until he's, like, in his late 30s. And he's gone through this, his whole career as elite king of Thebes, and then suddenly he's made aware of it through various things that happen. Right. And it's like, oh, my God, really? I've done all that. This is what my life is. And he's so overwhelmed that he cuts his eyes out and he blinds himself as proof of, you know, how blind he was.

Wow.

And so the Greeks are saying in that play that we're all kind of blind. Fate kind of pushes us around and we're not even aware of it. And the moment of feeling enlightened about becoming aware of some of these patterns in your childhood is actually a great moment. It's very painful, but it's very powerful. You know, sorry, I didn't mean to take it. I don't mean to take it to such a dark place.

No, I love this. Let's say someone has been through a tough breakup, and maybe this is their first breakup they've gone through that was tough, a tough relationship, or this is a pattern. This is their third or fifth relationship in 10 years that's been like, you know, what's wrong with me? What would you say would be the next three things they should focus on after the breakup? On how to find that awareness and open their eyes on how to start, you know, observing men or women in a different way before they get so committed and go all in and start fantasizing about how amazing they are. What would you say are three things they could do before entering another relationship?

Well, first of all, to become acquainted with yourself and to see. Know who you are and know the source of your own desires. So if it's your very first relationship, it's a little hard to see patterns, but you can begin to see patterns of the kind of person that you're attracted to after the third or fourth time and to analyze that and to be aware of it. Now, some people will say, well, won't that kind of ruin the whole relationship game that I'm analyzing myself. That seems so unseductive, et cetera. And if you're in your 20s and you're healthy and you're young, maybe it doesn't matter so much. You're going to have some painful moments, but you're having a lot of fun. Okay, I'm not going to rain on that parade. But eventually you're not going to be. So you're going to be in your late 20s, you're going to be in your early 30s, and the series of bad relationships, they're going to start wearing on you. They're going to start creating trauma, and they'll start infecting you with this kind of negative, this kind of defensiveness where every time you meet someone, you're worried that they're going to hurt you and you can't, like, open yourself up to them. Right. So you've got to as early as possible, understand your own patterns. Why am I attracted to this person? Just simply ask. That's that question, right? It's, you know, like, what was it about him or her that attracted me to that person? You know, is there something I'm not thinking about? Could I have foreseen some of the darker side of this person earlier on? Yes, most obviously. Could I have seen the fact that he could be someone who could be kind of cold and abusive? Yes. You know, oftentimes a man who is like that will love bomb the woman. He'll overwhelm them with emotion, so they get confused and they're not aware of it. That also is a sign when a man overwhelms you in the first two days with so much attention that he's hiding something dark. But don't look at it as if it's always the other person. See your own temptation, why you give in to someone like that, why you are attracted to people like that. Right. Go through that process and then say, all right, what are the qualities that I really, really want? What is important for me that I'm not getting from this person? You know, the sex is great, but there are other things that are more important, like validation. Like, the other person cares about my work and about my career. They're not just interested in me as a physical presence, but they actually show interest in my future, right?

Yes.

What are these things that I need that are very important to me that I didn't get in that last relationship? Right. Who am I? Right. That's just the question. Who am I? What are my deepest needs and what Are my dark patterns. Right?

Yes.

And then to go through a process of. If I. We talked about this earlier. If I now become all defensive and closed, and if I'm, like, always judging the person, you know, oh, he's not right for me. She's not. You know, because you're afraid of being hurt again.

That last person has power over you still.

Yeah. They defeated you. They conquered your spirit.

Wow.

So you can't be afraid to have some more of that pain again. Right. You have to open yourself up a little bit here. Yeah. And if you do that and you're hurt again, at least you can say that that person who hurt me earlier on has no more power over me. You know, I'm still able to fall in love. I'm still able to let myself open myself up to another person.

Yes.

Incredibly important to be able to feel vulnerable to another person. It's a deep human need. It goes back to our childhood. It's part of our human nature. And if you close yourself off, it's not only going to affect your romantic relationships, it's going to affect you in work and everything.

Yeah. So don't jump into another relationship if you're closed off, is what I'm hearing you say. Like, be willing to heal that part or process it.

And then one last thing. You asked for three. Those were two. I could do third. The third is learn to judge people by their character.

So true.

Right. So not the superficial charm and smiles and all the great stuff that they're able to fake, but who they are deep inside. Right. You know, do they have some of these strong character traits? Can they take criticism? Man, you have no idea that that is such an important quality in a relationship.

Taking criticism.

Yeah. If that other person cannot take any kind of criticism, how can you be in a relationship with them? And they'll make you. They find ways to make you pay for criticizing them. They get passive aggressive. They get cold. Oh, I'm never going to do that again. You can't be in a relationship so judge someone like that. Can they take criticism? Can they deal with moments of stress? Can they get outside of themselves and. And think about me? You know, think about how they are in a conversation. Do they hear what you're saying? Do they come back with things that reveal the fact that they've been listening to you, that they picked up signals from you? Get inside them. Get inside their character and be able to judge them on that basis as opposed to their. Their sexy veneer that they have. So those would be the three things those Are powerful.

What's your thoughts on relationships and money? And should we be focusing on money as a factor in relationships? Because it seems to me like a lot of people end relationships with money problems. Or it's one of the main factors.

You mean there's an inequality between the two?

Inequality, or just like the value of money? If someone sees spending money in a certain way, another person sees it in a different way. It's just like the topic of money seems to mess with people. How do we develop seduction with money involved in a relationship? And how do we stay in a healthy relationship and not allow money to ruin the relationship?

Well, money isn't just money. Money is a sign. Money is something that has psychology, has other things attached to it. So let's just say it's a woman who is finding herself losing her attraction to a man because he's not making any money. Right. That could be because it's a sign that he doesn't have enough ambition, he doesn't have enough drive. Or it could be a sign he's just finding himself and eventually he'll discover it. But you kind of turned off a lot of women, and I think, yeah, it's mostly women by the fact that this person doesn't have any drive, has no ambition. They're not trying to make something of their life. Right. And so it's not about the money that they're in. It's the fact that there's something missing in them. Right. That kind of masculine energy, such as masculine women have great drive to make money as well. I don't mean to put it that way, but that kind of drive, that energy that makes them want to get ahead, can be very seductive and very powerful.

That's powerful for women to see that in men.

Yeah.

And to sense that he's just kind of a slacker. Okay. Maybe he's got good qualities, maybe he's a wonderful person, and that's fine. And then the money isn't a problem. You don't care. And maybe what if you do care, it's because it reveals something about their character. Right. The other thing is generosity in a relationship is very important. Right. Not just giving money, but it's also giving your energy, giving your time to the other person. So a lot of a classic turnoff that men will do is that they're not so generous with money, time, attention, et cetera. And it's a sign of something closed inside of them. So, you know, they don't want to pay for a meal, they don't want to pay for Something they don't want to spend money on a nice gift or whatever. It's not the money. It's the sign that someone isn't generous in their spirit, in their heart. They're not willing to take risks. Right. That'll be another thing that the lack of money will say. You know, to start a business and fail would not be such a bad. I don't think would be such a turn off as opposed to never starting a business. As always talking about, oh, I could have been great, I could have done this, but never tried because it reveals a lack of security about yourself. Confidence, because confidence is a key quality. So I think money is often a sign of something else. Another problem, it's revealing something about their character. I mean, it could be he or she isn't pulling in their weight. And that's an issue. Yeah. And I kind of resent that. But that's not about the money. That's about the other person not caring enough to pull their weight or to not thinking about the other person's needs.

It's what's underneath the money.

Yeah, I think so.

You mentioned confidence for a second. How does, how much does someone lacking confidence affect their ability to seduce and maintain a level of seduction in a long term relationship?

Well, confidence is extremely important. I mean, it can border. It can go off into grandiosity and arrogance and hubris and that can be a turn off. But in general, most people, men and women, make the mistake by not having enough confidence. Really secure. Yeah.

It's better to rain someone's confidence down a little bit than to have none at all.

Right.

It's like it's better to have more of it.

Yeah.

And be like, okay, your ego is getting out of control. Let's take it down a little bit.

Yeah, yeah.

Then like I have no confidence at all.

Well, the fact that you feel confident about yourself is very seductive in itself. It has an attractive power. You know, I talk in the art of seduction of charisma. I have a whole chapter on, on the charismatic and the origin of charisma. And what I define charisma is there's a person who has a kind of inner light inside of them. They're so confident that they kind of glow with that confidence that their words are kind of revealing it. Their eyes are glowing, their gestures are glowing and they're very charismatic. It could be a Malcolm X. It could be a Marilyn Monroe, it could be a John F. Kennedy, it could be a Mick Jagger whomever. Right. We sense this incredible confidence in them, this power and it's like an inner lantern that just makes everything glow. And we are so attracted to that. That's what charisma is. Why are we attracted to it? Because we envy people who have that kind of confidence. We wish we could have that and we find it very compelling. We want to know them. We think that some of it perhaps will rub off on us. I know in working with 50 Cent, I wrote a book with him. This guy is very charismatic. He's extremely seductive. He's one of those men that I mentioned earlier who's like in that pantheon of great seduces. And I've seen him up front doing his seduction. So I know I speak from experience. And he has this incredible charisma, this insane confidence. It's not in what he says, it's not in his eloquence, it's just in how he carries himself.

Right.

And it could be a little bit cocky sometimes if he's all seen from him, but man, it is so seductive. And women go crazy over things like that. And men will go crazy over that in women as well. So confidence is extremely important in the realm of seduction. You can almost not go wrong with it. Yes, you can border on being insane and grandiose, but the feeling of that person is comfortable and confident and has that kind of inner force energy that's coming up from somewhere they don't know is very powerful and very compelling. And the lack of confidence is extremely anti seductive.

It is very.

It'll probably hurt the relationship. If your partner is always lacking confidence in themselves, it doesn't make you feel attracted to them.

Right, Right.

So what would you say if someone's been through a break after breakup, after breakup, or even just one bad breakup and they feel heartbroken or closed off, how can they reclaim that confidence? What would you say to that person if they've lost confidence on how to reclaim it themselves? And also if your partner has lost confidence and you're in a long term relationship, how can you help someone gain confidence in a relationship? So individually, how do you reclaim it and then your partner is lacking it?

Well, there, there's several ways to answer that. I mean, you know, seduction is, is, is almost like a skill. It's almost like being able to hit a baseball in bat 300.

Yes.

So the best thing you can do after a bad relationship is go back in the game and try and meet other women and go back in. And, and if you fail to have a kind of a light attitude and not care. But, but closing yourself off will make it harder each time Harder to get outside of yourself. Right. I can remember one time I was in New York. I was young, I was maybe 24. I was on the subway and I just received some great news about my career, about this thing that I had written.

Right, 24.

Yep. Yeah. And I was on the subway going somewhere in Manhattan, and all of a sudden, like, these women were looking at me. And, you know, I'm not saying that never usually happens like that. I'm not bragging. What's going on here? Wow, this is one really attractive woman. What's going on here then? I can't forget that moment. It stuck out in my mind so strongly. There's this energy that I had that they were picking up and they were sensing it and they were attracted to. I didn't say anything. I just heard it wasn't on the. We didn't have a phone then. I just had heard it, and I was really happy, in a great mood. But I'm certain that that was. That energy was kind of projecting itself onto other people.

Yes.

So seduction is a skill. And getting out there and trying your hand at meeting other women and going through the process, you'll learn about yourself. You'll. You won't take things. Don't try and take things so personally. Get back in the game by being defensive and going into your shell and saying, oh, I don't want to get hurt again. You're going to make it harder each time to get out of that shell.

Yes.

You know, so the, you know, that other gender is kind of mysterious to us. We don't really know them. They have a different world, a different personality. Right. But the more you interact with women or men, the more you can kind of get a sense of what drives them and what. You can't ever totally understand them. A man can never, ever understand a woman. There's always a big mystery there. Eventually, thank God there is. But to the degree that you interact with women or men in any situation, you're kind of learning about them. You're getting more comfortable with them, right?

Yes.

So a lot of great male seducers had sisters. A lot of great female seductresses had brothers.

Interesting.

They grew very comfortable with that male or female presence.

And they might have been around the sister's friends, or the woman might have been around their brother's guy friends and been around that energy more.

Right. So if you had just brothers, you know, women seem kind of scary or weird. What do they want? And the opposite is true. So interacting, getting outside yourself, interacting with women, you'll get to feel more confident, you'll learn more, and you'll be more comfortable in their presence. So don't go into a shell. That's the main thing.

That's the key. And what about. Did you have something else?

No, you had a second part.

What about if you're a partner, you're in a relationship for 10 years, and whatever reason you're partner and a woman is lacking confidence, they're insecure, they're doubting themselves over and over. What could the other partner do to help them reclaim their confidence? Or is that not something you can do?

No, you can do that. You can find what it is that they need validation about, and you can, you know, give them pep talks and make it clear to them, this is the most important thing, Louis. Make it clear to them that you still have confidence in them. You haven't lost it, because the sense that that other person is losing faith in you and your abilities is deadly.

That's big.

So if you care about that person and you don't want to see them go down the drain with their insecurities, make it clear that you haven't lost faith in them. And. And show it to them in certain ways, you know, whatever it is that they're worried about, show them that you still believe that they can accomplish something. You know, the relationship I've been in, it predates the 48 laws of power. Just barely, right? And before the 48 laws of power, I was a nobody. I had no money, I had no success. I was very frustrated. I was depressed. Really very depressed, even bordering on suicidal.

Wow.

I was 37. I hadn't going. Didn't bother her. She had faith in me. She had confidence in me, Right. She saw that something probably would happen, and, you know, and then it did with the 48 laws. But, you know, I could sense that she could sense that there was something I could do, right? So she kept boosting me about my writing and about my career. So what is it that person is insecure about? Boost them up. Make them feel like you haven't lost faith in them. And that will be almost enough in itself.

Robert, like always, I've got one final question for you, but like always, I want to acknowledge you for being my first ever guest on the School of Greatness, for always showing up and being consistent in your life since I've known you. In serving people, you're using your uniqueness, your talent, your gifts, your energy to create beautiful pieces of art that serve and help people. And I think it's incredible that you.

Continue to show up and do this. You don't have to anymore, but you keep doing it.

Even when you have your own personal challenges that you're facing, you continue to show up. Just serve. So I acknowledge you for always being the example, even during challenging times for yourself. It's a beautiful thing to see, and I appreciate your friendship.

Thank you, Louis. Of course. Likewise.

Of course.

I have very fond memories of that first time you came, first time in your house, your little recording device. You didn't know really what you were doing.

Zero idea. You gave me an opportunity. You said, hey, I'll interview you.

I liked you. I liked your energy.

Exactly.

And I could see that you were good. Something was going to have come from this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And sometimes when you don't know what's going to happen. Sometimes. But if you have an enthusiasm and an appreciation and a gratitude and you have an energy, hopefully good things can happen. So I appreciate you being the first one, but I think I also was.

Like, hey, listen, I want to sell.

A bunch of books of yours, and we're going to do this thing. And I was excited about selling books for you, and I think it's always important to create a win win experience. But I appreciate you taking the chance on me launching the podcast with you as a first.

Oh, no, no, no. I enjoy it. It's very memorable.

Yes. Yes.

My final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

My definition of greatness is kind of what I've talked about before. It's realizing your potential to some degree. So we may not realize 100% of our potential. I certainly haven't realized 100% of my potential. There are things I probably could have done other. More of. But if you're. If your potential is to raise a great family and raise really great kids, and you've done it, that's greatness. If your potential is to. Is to just build something, however small it is, and you realized it, and you put. Realized 50, 60% of your potential, that is greatness. And then you can. You can go to bed at night feeling good and proud of yourself. Right. So a lot of it is, it's not the money that matters. It's not the attention that matters. It's the inner feeling you have that you have accomplished something, that you have fulfilled your potential, that you have accomplished some of the dreams that you had as a child for yourself. Right. And to have that sense that I have done that, that I have wrote this book, that I created this business, that I started this podcast that's Greatness to me, of course there are levels of greatness, right. But that's enough for me as well. Just the sense that I was born with this potential and I worked and I realized some of my gifts. I think that's an amazing thing. That's greatness for me.

Robert Green, thank you so much. Appreciate you, sir. If you enjoyed that interview, then I.

Know you'll love what we have coming up right now. We could choose to be in prison and suffer with poor conditions and poor treatment, but can we also choose to be out of suffering in our mind and in our heart? Even if there's scarcity, even if there's uncertainty, even if there's physical abuse or emotional abuse, can we still try to and not be in suffering? Or do you feel like there's nothing we can do?

Sometimes it's a both ends, right? Man's search for meaning, basically. Viktor Frankl, right, Viktor Frankl, he's in the concentration camps. He tries to have a little notebook in which he writes his scientific research. The book is the proof of his existence. At one point he loses that little book and he realizes that all trace that he's ever been may forever be gone. And he does develop the notion of local therapy, right? An idea that you cannot change your circumstances, but you can change your response to the circumstances that you still have until the last moment. Fundamental freedom, which is the freedom to the meaning that you give to what is happening to you. And in that sense, no, he can't change his conditions in the concentration camp, but he is able to still maintain a sense of sovereignty and dignity over the human degradation that is happening to him on a minute by minute basis. And I think it's both ends. If you say to the people that are struggling at the borders of Mexico, you have chosen your prison, it's indecent. People are not always choosing their suffering. Sometimes within that, they can still sing a song to their child who hold their loved ones, write a letter to someone that they're longing for, staying alive for the ones that are waiting for them. And that's where you are coming out of the prison or out of the suffering with a sense of freedom. And I think one has to be really careful sometimes to say, we choose our pains, we choose to stay in pain. It. It deserves some discernment.

Sure.

So suffering and pain is not a choice all the time?

Oh, no. I think suffering and pain are part of life. There's three things that religion has dealt with forever. What is not explainable? Why do we suffer? And why is there Evil. And those three things have been the purview of where religion, from an anthropological point of view, really entered. And because of secularization, other people have entered to take the space. People explain to you what is ununderstandable. People are trying to help you with your suffering. And experts, gurus, teachers, speakers, and all of that are trying to help you with why do bad things happen to good people?

What is the answer to that?

There is no answer to that. Otherwise we wouldn't have had religion from the beginning of time. These are not things that are answered. These are things that. These are questions, existential conundrums that we learn to live with. Nobody has ever had an answer. There's so many religions, not a single one has been able to answer. They give you a way to live with it. They never tell you you're not going to suffer. They tell you what you can do with your suffering, right?

Have faith.

Have faith. Go pray, go to rosaries, go do good things. Help other people, you know, change your story. There's lots of ways today that we're dealing with suffering, but nobody has ever said, you're not going to suffer.

So we're always going to suffer.

There is always going to be suffering as part of life on a scale. You're going to deal with loss, you're going to deal with tortured hopes, you're going to deal with disappointments, with heartbreak, with death. I mean, those things you. Nobody is going to tell you that there will never be loss. And loss is probably one of the most important sources of suffering.

Do you feel like with your experience and wisdom, that suffering gets easier for you over time since you know what's going to happen? You know you're going to lose a friend, a pet, you know, a sibling, a loved one. You know you're going to be disappointed. Do you have tools for yourself to suffer less or lesser time amounts, or is it still a deep sense of pain when things happen unexpectedly that are.

Hurtful, I think that you don't suffer less, you suffer differently. And the most important thing is if you're not alone. Probably the most difficult thing in all our experiences, and certainly in the experience of pain or loss, suffering or ache, is not to be alone. So that somebody else tells you, I too have gone through this. That's why we read books that inspire us from other people who have also lost and found their way back and saw the light again. And they created new hope and reconnected with someone and allow themselves to love again and have another child and start another business, whatever it Is, you know. You know, you go through it, but you have a sense that there is that thing called going through it and that you can come out of it on the other side, that there is hope that you're not alone, that there is a day when it won't hurt and ache as much, that there is a day you will be able to wake up and you won't be thinking about obsessing over it, obsessing about it.

When was the last time you suffered the deepest?

I have to honestly say it's been a while. I have been in a really blessed, blessed time.

That's great.

It's a while.

Ten years, three years, seven years.

Look, I haven't had loss since my parents died. I have had periods of high anxiety for things that were going on around illness, around things like that. But I have not had a major crisis, luckily, in a while, except dealing with the proximity of illness in my life, not my own, for that matter. So people in my life, people that are really, really close to me. So in that sense, I have been really blessed in an amazing thing. And you know what happens is that when you don't live it, you know it exists, but you forget. It's like if you've had a wound in your leg, you know where the thing was, but it no longer hurts, and you're looking sometimes with your finger. Was it exactly here? Was it exactly there? There's this amazing way in which when we are not in pain, we have. We. We have the sense of what pain can be. What we. We can't feel the pain. That is, not unless you are reminded of something and you say, I remember. I felt that. I know. And I also had that once. And you can instantly re. Experience the moment with acute pain, but if you don't, if the story is not there, you can say, yeah, I remember. I remember. I've gone through this. But you don't feel it in the moment. And I think that form of resistance, of immunity, I think, is an amazing, resilient quality that we have actually, that we are able to separate ourselves from something for the time being. But I could get hit any minute. We live in such uncertain times. I think that anybody who thinks that they are immune from it are grandiose. I know.

I mean, you have these two podcasts called Where Should We Begin and How's Work? Which I haven't checked out How's Work yet. I'm going to. Where Should We Begin is transformational. It's saving people's relationships, intimate relationships around the world. It's really amazing. Done. And relationships seem to be some of the hardest things for people to figure out. I have my friend Matthew Hussey who helps women find men. And every girl this seems to be that I know is always like, Louis, can you help me find a good man? It seems like women are just trying to find the right partner, find great relationship partners. And then when you're in a relationship it seems to be like people are always struggling in relationships, whether it be intimate or work related relationships, business partnerships. Why are relationships seemingly so hard for so many people when it's the thing we need the most most to feel alive, to feel happy and feel connected.

This is the million dollar question. You know, I'm a relationship therapist for 35 plus years I work with people in their romantic relationships, family relationships, friendships, co founder, colleagues, co workers. So love and work, the two pillars of our life, as Freud said. And if I could just say, why is the same simple feeling of loving or caring not enough? Because the entire human drama is really complex. The same way as nature is complex, so is human nature complex. And I spent my whole career studying what is changing in relationships. Are they more complicated today? Are they more painful today? You know, have our expectations changed? And that I have answers to. I don't have answers to why is it so, you know, but I do.

Is it more complicated now, relationships than 50 or 100 years ago?

Yes, absolutely.

Why is that?

Why? For a very simple reason. For a long time we live, and we still in many parts of the world live in traditional societies where relationship are clearly codified. There are clear rules, there are roles, there are obligations, there's a tight structure from which you can't get out. But it tells you clearly who you are, where you belong, where you're rooted and what's expected of you. And you don't have too much questions about whose career matters more and who's going to wake up to feed the baby and who has a right to demand for sex and what and everybody, every husband knows exactly what they can ask from their wife. And the wife knows exactly what she should not tell her husband. And children know their place and adults can all interact. All of this was super regulated. You know exactly that on Sunday you go to visit your family and that you have to call your grandma and that and nobody. And you go to church or you go to any other religious institution where you go to pray, to be with the community, etc. And you know what? Nobody needed to explain to you why it's important. You just went because I said so. And because that's what you do. That's what we do, and that's what we don't do. Because what will the neighbors say? And there is a community that looks over you all the time. And the streets are narrow like that. And everybody knows what's going on in the neighbor's house right now. Your best friends could be breaking up, and you didn't even see it coming. No, nobody knows what goes on in the neighbor's house. That's where should we begin? Became, I think, so powerful. It gave you back a sense of what actually goes on in other people's lives so that you're not alone, wondering, am I the only one who's going through all of this? This tight structure of our society has moved into what we call today network societies. Network societies is not tight knots. It's loose ends. It's loose threats with commitment that can be revoked at any moment. That's why your women are constantly writing to you. I thought we had something, and the next day he disappears. I thought we had developed a sense of trust. You know, where is the care? Where is the loyalty? Where is the continuity? All these things that now are not just set, fixed, they all have to be negotiated. Everything that was a rule is now a negotiation, a conversation. Who's going to go to work? Who is. Are we going to move you to the west coast, or are you going to move with me to the East Coast? Are we going to have children? Are we ready to have children? How many children? Do we even want children? You know, on and on and on. Am I happy at work? Oh, I could do better. Should I stay a few more months? Should I leave? Should I, you know, is this what I really want to do? Is this who I really am?

Is this my passion?

Is this my passion? You know, this identity quest the whole time? Is this who I want to be? Is this? And all of these questions are rather new questions. Why? Because in the past or in other parts of the world today, you kind of know who you are. Seriously, you're the son of somebody. Even you're the son of somebody. It starts with that, Ben, you know, and you probably will even do what your father has done if you are a man, and maybe not too much of any of the outside the house, if you are a woman, or you may begin a charting course of working outside the house. And all of these things are very, very normative.

And now it's different.

We don't have any of that at this moment. We basically. I call it the Identity economy. We spend our time trying to figure out who am I. We have an enormous industry of self help, you know, with this belief that we are self made, that we can have selfies, that we do self care. It's this self, self, self that is so focused, such the center of everything and so fragile. The frequent self has never been more fragile. We are constantly making sure that it doesn't get overwhelmed, that it doesn't get triggered, that it doesn't get violated, that it doesn't get shattered because it stands there alone like the little Dutchman with his finger trying to hold back the dike, you know. And that is the times I think we are in at this moment. And there, that's the waters I think you swim in.

Sure. Well, I think that's where suffering, inner suffering comes from on the surface is when you obsessively think about yourself, when you, you're obsessively self centric, thinking all.

The time, trying to improve yourself and feeling not good enough.

Right.

I think it's the combination comparing. Now, I don't know that people didn't compare themselves when they all went and stood on the steps of the church on a Sunday morning. I think communities, people have always compared themselves. But there was much, there was a different type of social control, the one that we have on social media today. Social control has always existed. So suffering is part of life, community and not being alone is what helps us with all our experiences. Definitely with suffering. I look at the disappointments of relationships and the struggles that we have. Why are they so challenging? What is the challenge? What can you do about it? When is it you who can do something? And when do you have to realize the limitations that what you will do will not change another necessarily when it does and when it doesn't. And how does this manifest at work and at home? You asked me how relationships have changed. I think we've never had more expectations of love and work than we do today. I think we expect today from love and work many things that we expected before from religion and from community. We want our relationships to be transformative, transcendent, meaningful, spiritual, purposeful, erotic, passionate. And we want it at home and we want it at work.

And we want it at work too.

Oh, because we want work to be purposeful today. We want work to, you know, to give me a sense of identity, of meaning, of self fulfillment, of development. I don't just want to go to work only for the paycheck, I need the paycheck. But I also want the paycheck to be meaningful to me. Work has become an identity economy. It's not just what am I going to do, it's who am I going to be? And it parallels, it parallels. What do we talk about at work? Transparency, belonging, authenticity, trust, psychological safety. I mean when did the entire emotional vocabulary enter the workplace to such a degree that soft skills, what they used to be called, which are emotional and social skills, relational skills, which used to be seen as feminine skills and feminine skills, you can idealize them in principle but disregard them in reality. And these soft skills have very quickly become the new hard skills. And that's why I'm working in the workplace. It's not because I have changed and I suddenly am interested in work. It's because work has changed and is suddenly interested in what I have been doing for decades.

I love this. I'm going to ask you a question that may be hard to answer, maybe it's easy, but you've seen a lot of intimate relationships work and fail over 35 plus years, right?

Yeah.

How many of the relationships, what's the percentage of people in your mind who are in intimate long term relationships, marriages or not married, but together, are actually happy most of the time, thriving, beautiful. I'm sure there's challenges but like they're able to work through them with semi ease. How many relationships in your mind are super happy and thriving after decades of the changes of the times, society, work, family, all the dynamics that happen in life.

So I have two ways of answering yes. The first one is cultural. Your definition of happy and thriving and fulfilled is probably very different than many other cultures where being being healthy, having enough to eat, having children, having grandchildren, having good jobs, being respected in the.

Community is happy and thriving.

Is happy and thriving. It's not about you and I are talking on the couch and I'm pouring my hearts at you and you are telling me I'm the best thing that's ever happened to you in your life and all of that. Okay, that's one version. That's one version. You have got to look at the word happiness in and thriving really in a cross cultural context because a lot of us, by the way, who have the new definition have parents who think about marriage and what is a happy marriage with the other definition. And I'm wondering that maybe we are so unhappy because we want so many other things that are maybe not part of marriage.

We have such high expectations.

We have super high expectations. We want everything. We want a partner to be an entire community. My best friend, my trusted confidant, my passionate Lover, my intellectual equal, my co parent. And on top of it, I want with you to deal with all the physicians of the everyday life and all of what we need to get all of that. And then we should also be passionate, great lovers, fantastic travelers. Exactly. You know, and very few of us.

We're dancing every week.

Yeah.

So Eli Finkel has a best answer for you and dad. He's a researcher on marriage. And basically what he says is that the good relationships of today are better than the relationships of history, but they're very few. Because what you call that happiness is the top of the Olympus. It's climbing the mountain. And at the top of the mountain the view is fantastic, but the air is also thinner. And not everybody can climb the mountain. The people who get to the top, their top is probably better than the tops of the past. Now what is the top? It used to be that marriage was for survival. Then it became a romantic enterprise and it became what I call the service economy. From the production economy to the service economy, you want children, but no longer just eight, so you only want two. So sexuality becomes for pleasure and connection. So it becomes a service economy economy. It's no longer a production. And then from there you go into identity, which is what I want to become the best version of myself. And you're going to help me do so. That's the identity story of marriage. And that goes up the Maslow ladder. Now, if I asked a question differently, I actually wanted to write that very article about 10, 15 years ago. I set out to write in peace. What are creative couples? And do you know, because creative was the word I was interested in. Not so much happy, passionate, but creative, meaning not stable, not solid. But what is this thing creativity, the spark. And I went and I asked almost 100 people, do you know couples that inspire you? Do you know couples that you think have that spark? And the frightening thing was that the majority of people could sometimes come up with one, maybe two, and that was it. You know, they knew people who were very good at renovations and people who were great parents together and people who were great business partners together. But that whole that you talk about, there were very few. And I thought that is so sad because here we are, we want something. I mean, if I say good business partners or business leaders, you would give me 10 people who you think inspire you to run a company or authors or musicians or we all have a long list who can say, what's your favorite musician? I mean, most of us have more than one when it comes to intimate relationships, people have very few models now, maybe it is because what they want is so high that there is very few models actually. And that's probably the challenge of intimate relationships today.

So how do we, how do we find, how do we create that in an intimate partner? Or is it setting a lower expectation for what we want so that we don't?

It's both. I think sometimes if you lower your expectations, you're much better off. No doubt. Calibrate. So back to Eli Finkel's. Calibrating expectations is probably one of the most. The three main things for what he calls successful relationships.

Wow.

And calibrating doesn't mean you lower your expectations necessarily, but you also diversify them. You don't ask one person to give you what a whole village should actually give you.

Right. Okay, that was the first thing. What's the second? You said the three things.

So one is the calibration of the expectation, two is the diversification. And three, which is the one that very much speaks to me is doing new things with your partner. With your partner that if you do the things that you enjoy, that's really nice, that's comfortable, that's cozy, that solidifies the friendship. But if you want to create intensity, it demands risk taking. Doing new things outside of your comfort zone, a little bit more on the edge.

How often should we be doing new things with our intimate partner?

I think as often. I mean, look, the answer to this is very simple. Often enough, but not too often that you become chaotic and you disregulate. Right now you're asking me a systemic question. This is true for an individual, a relationship or a company. If you don't change or grow, you fossilize and you die. If you change too much, too fast, there's no stability. You go chaotic and you dysregulate. So how often? It depends on where you are at in your life. Are you, the two of you, do you have kids, do you have little ones? Do you have aging parents? Are you taking care of somebody? What else is going on here? We'll tell you if this is a period where you need more stability or if this is a period where it's time, time to go and be curious and explore and discover and go into the world and launch.

Right. If you're a young 30 something female, I get this all the time from a lot of women who reach out to me who are ending relationships that were really stressful for them, or they've been single for years and they're trying to figure out how do they find the right person or how do they create the right relationship for them that's going to be a long term partner. If you're a female in your young 30s, what should they be thinking about? Should they be focusing first on themselves, growing themselves, or what are the things they should be looking for in the right partner?

I just wrote my current blog, which is a little bit of a critique of this. Taking care of yourself first, because you learn to love yourself in the context of your relationship with others. You know this idea that you go first to work on yourself here and then you prepare this nice little package and you bring it to relationships that is completely off. Actually, it's interactive. You need a good amount of self awareness, but you also need to be in relationships because it's people who help you become more aware. Practicing it, practicing it. But other people let you see who you are. It's by being with others that you get to know who you are. Not just by sitting there alone and say, who am I? Who am I? But this is a relational perspective on life and I will stand by that. Read the newsletter. I really poured myself into that one because I'm tired a little bit of this. No, what I will say to you, I'm tired of the go fix yourself first and then go be in a relationship. Relationships help you to become who you are. That's what happens between children and their caregivers. The next thing is, instead of constantly thinking, who's the right person I'm going to find, why don't you ask yourself, who do you want to be? Who should the other one be? No, maybe it's on occasion ask, who will I be as a partner? Who have I been till now in my relationships? How have I shown up? What is it that I do? Not just, you know, finding the right part now. What does it mean to find the right person? And there, I will say the simplest way of looking at it is there are many people you will love and they are not necessarily the same people that you will make a life with. Are you looking for a love story or are you looking for a life story?

Ooh, that's good.

You understand. Yeah, There are many people have had love stories. This is a whole different story. I never thought for a minute I would live with these people. Take something else. To have a partner in life with whom you're going to go through the pains, the sufferings, the challenges, all of that.

Can you have a life partner and still have a love story?

Of course, of course you want the life partner to be a love story too. But the love stories per se are not life stories. It's different ingredients, it's different values. You. There's some things that you don't need in order to have a beautiful love story with someone. It lives in its encapsulated version on its own. You're not thinking, can I do this with you? Can I get old with you? Can I take you to my parents? Do we share similar. It's about values, life, not just about feelings. So when you're looking for the right person, it's not just what attracts you, it's who can you build a life with.

How many values in common do you need to have with your partner? Life partner?

Because the important ones, it's not how many, but there are a few of them that are really important.

Which ones would you say that make or break based on your experience?

I think I'm not going to say them in order of importance, but one of them that really matters is your relationship to others. If you are a person that values relationships, that sees the presence of others in your life as central, and you are with somebody who does not want community or does not know how, I mean, I'm talking not about what they would like to learn through you, but their value is not. You do things alone, you live alone, you rely on yourself. You know, you don't bring people over to the house. I have a couple I just spoke with yesterday, you know, and he loves to have people over. And she just. Nobody should come ever to the house. She wants her space, her space, the whole thing. And I'm thinking, wow, this is a tough one. It's not just about the house. His whole life is about being with people and her whole life is about not being with people necessarily. That's not how she experiences them. Now the question is, is she drawn to more of what he has to offer and is he drawn to more of what she. If these are totally, then okay, different values come together and they mix and match. But if you have these two separations like that. So that's one. One of the beautiful questions I ask in how his work is. Were you raised for autonomy or were you raised for loyalty? Were you raised for self reliance or were you raised for interdependence? Which one would you say?

For me it was self reliance. Meaning what?

Nobody will ever help you as well as you can help yourself. You only have yourself to count on. Don't trust people. You're on your own body. Or raised for loyalty, interdependence, loyalty. You're never alone. There's People around you, you owe others, others are there for you. Relationships is what makes you.

I think I was both based on like circumstances.

Correct. The circumstances made you reliable because you were alone with mom, but the messaging was, you have me.

Yeah, yeah, of course. Okay, so I think both.

I think that question is a fundamentally interesting question that people can ask themselves when they partner in business and in love.

Raised for self reliance or loyalty.

Yeah.

Okay.

Interdependence. Are you part. Do you see yourself as connected to others and it's your connections that give you a sense of anchoring, meaning, recognition, relevance, importance in all of that, or do you see yourself as fundamentally on your own? I think travel, curiosity. You often will have a complementarity between one person who is curious and eager to discover and goes on, you know, and then another person.

Your question about doesn't want to travel once it's alone.

But it also likes comfort, likes repetition. Politician likes the familiar. I think the religious values, if you have a person who you know, those matter a great deal. Children, do you want family or do you not want family? If you want a family, then make sure that you find someone who wants a family.

What's the point of being like, what.

Are you going to do? Try to convince them. Now, I don't think you have to have the same. Same values on everything. I think you have to have a similar outlook on life, which is a vision, like exactly the same as when you. A vision. Do you, you know, do you want to own a home? Do you think that economic achievement is important? Do you want to live in an extended family? You think that living intergenerationally really is important? And you have somebody else who says, you know, I don't want your parents over, you know, do you want to live in more than one place? You know, I think these are essential. You know, money, feelings or emotions, religious beliefs, attitude toward life. It's not a specific value about something. A value is a cluster of things. It's a cluster of importance, of systems of meanings. That's a value.

And you may not find someone with everything is the same, but someone with a similar mindset is what you're saying.

I met a husband of mine, whom I am for more than three decades, who had never left the US When I met him, really, I never knew such a person existed. Coming from Europe, that was unheard of? No, he lived in the States. He was American. I came from Europe. In Europe, you travel everywhere, all the time, even if you have nothing. You work one month, you get the money, and then you go to the next country, which is two hours away. He had never been outside of the U.S. yeah, he will always tell me he'd been to the Virgin Islands, but, you know, for the rest. And I thought, oh, my God, how does one, you know who is such a person? But I knew it was because of the circumstances of his life and that if he could, he would. And he was intensely curious. If you just said, oh, he's never traveled, then you misinterpret. You don't want to just look at the manifest thing of, you know, you want to say, and behind this, is there someone who would actually like that, who just hasn't had the opportunity and is curious and just says, let's go. So don't get fooled just by what you see. Find out what is the belief behind it, the aspiration, the longing, the interest, and then you get a sense of what is the value.

Do you think it's. I want to go back to expectation.

Do you feel like.

Like we should lower or should diversify expectations or. What did you say the word was?

Calibrate.

Calibrate expectations?

Or should we be finding someone that can reach that expectation that we want?

No, I think it's.

I think it's just impossible.

I think you. You need to calibrate.

Calibrate.

Always calibrate, too.

You calibrate. You constantly will be disappointed. Do you know a single relationship where you haven't been disappointed? Disappointed?

No.

Okay. I mean disappointment, which can lead to suffering. It's part of a relationship. The minute you have a relationship, you have an expectation. That expectation means that you want something. Love, closeness, intimacy, partnership, you know, business affiliation. You name it. Creates dependence. The moment you have an attachment, you have dependence. That dependence means that you have power or I have power. If I expect something from you, I confer power on you. You have power over me. I have power over you. By definition, there will be moments when that power doesn't go in the direction that I want.

And I'll be disappointed.

I'll be disappointed. Is there a single child that didn't have a disappointment from their parents? It doesn't exist. This idyllic thing you're talking about, it doesn't exist. The next thing is, what do you do with that disappointment? Hey, can I come? Tell you, I'm really disappointed. You let me down. I thought we were in this together. I trusted you. And you say, I see your point. Or do you say, what the hell are you talking about? You're just inventing this. You're delusional. None of The. You know, and everything in between. That's how you do a relationship. It's really based on the repair. It's not based on the.

It's how we heal the disappointment.

Yes. It's how you repair all these breaches moment by moment. You come back, you know, and the repair is not. I am so sorry. The repair may sometimes be. Hey, do you want a glass of water? Or. Hey, did you see this article in the newspaper? John Gottman has this very interesting thing about that. He says the repair is not that you come and you do a mea culpa. It's that you do what he calls bids for connection. You show the other that. That they still matter. I brought a newspaper in at a time when we still had newspapers. That was one of his examples, you know, I brought the paper in, like I think of you. I'm pissed at you. You just annoyed me. We just had a spat. But you still care about you. I still care. You're still in my life.

I still respect you. So it's how we repair disappointment on a daily or weekly or monthly basis. Minutes, sometimes is the success of the relationship.

And that means also how you come and you say you take responsibility. Yes, I think. I actually think that taking responsibility is the ultimate freedom. I messed up. I shouldn't have done this. You know, Can I do that? You know, it really is being accountable.

What if you're.

Instead of blaming the other.

What if it actually, in that moment, wasn't your fault?

It doesn't matter. It wasn't. You don't have to agree with anything. I didn't mean to. It wasn't my intention. We are going to sleep a lot. But it's about just saying it. And for that, it's about saying it. And for that, you have to be able to see that you're a flawed person who can be accountable without that becoming a major source of shame. And I'm terrible. It's a different thing between saying, I messed up up and I messed up.

How I like this distinction.

How do we.

In our mind. Because I think in the past, relationships, when I messed up, in a small term, right. Like a disappointment, a small disappointment feeling saying like, I'm sorry, or taking responsibility or saying, you know what?

That was my fault was like a humiliation.

Well, it's more like. Look at when I'm like, why shall I. No, it's more like, here's all the actions I'm doing.

Right.

Right.

Today I've done this, which was an expectation, and I've done that. And I took the trash out or whatever.

I'm just.

And I did something kind for you.

And I wrote a note and I.

Did this, and I took us to dinner and I did all these things well today, but I messed up on this one thing. So for me, I used to say to myself, like, gosh, but can't you see the whole picture of, like, all the good things I'm doing? Why do I need to be an hour conversation about, like, one small thing? That's what I used to feel like. And do you feel like we should just be saying, you know what, Take responsibility anyways for those moments, even if you're doing lots of good things?

You know what I mean?

Yes, but I'm not a perfect human being.

You know, it's like I might slip.

The story is told by you.

Yes.

The other person is the one that needs to think to tell you about all the good things that you done. You felt, I do all of this. I do one thing wrong, and now I have to go into the dark pit. But that's because you had a partner who did not enough tell you about all the good things you did.

This was about me.

If you are in a relationship, you need that other person to acknowledge all of that positive stuff so that when you have to say something about the moment that you messed up, you don't feel like, you know, this is an endless chore?

Well, I think.

Yeah, exactly. Or I think it's more like, okay, if you're gonna acknowledge one thing that I didn't do, at least acknowledge something.

Of the thing that's right.

Did do.

Right.

It's not. At least. It's a must.

It's a must.

It's a must.

It's not bad if I. I shouldn't be needing that, or I shouldn't be.

You should need it.

I should need it.

You should need it. You totally should need it.

Gotcha. But only acknowledge the bad. Also acknowledge the not.

Also. It's a must. It's a mandate. What happens sometimes in distressed relationships, because you were in a distressed relationship at that moment, and this is true, you can directly take this into the workplace. In a distressed relationship, the tendency is to highlight the negative and disregard the positive. The positive is just given. The negative will make a big deal out of it. So the one thing you didn't do becomes the whole conversation. And then what does that person do? Of course, that person says, but you disregard all the other stuff, and rightly so, because it has been disregarded. In a distressed relationship, the positive, if we get there on time, it's because there was no traffic. And if we get there late, it's because of you. The good is chance, the bad is attributed to you. Or in a different version of that is what we call negative attribution error. If I am in a bad mood, it's because I had a bad day. But if you're in a bad mood, it's because you're a nasty person who is always so cantankerous. Mine is circumstantial, Yours is characterological. So when you say I was in a relationship in which when I did one thing bad, it. It was so overblown and I felt like everything else was being disregarded, that's a sign of a distressed relationship in and of itself. Interesting the fact that because in a normal relationship somebody else says, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Then you finally don't do something and says, oh, I really messed up there, I forgot. Sorry. And it's not such a big deal because you are seen for the whole person. If you have to make a speech about, you should see the whole person. You're not in a good relationship.

Ah, there you go.

Okay. Or you're not in the dynamic in your relationship is not a good one. No, that in itself is a sign of a bad dynamic.

Gotcha.

Gotcha.

You shouldn't have to say this.

So I wasn't crazy.

Okay.

Gotcha.

No.

Okay.

Gotcha.

No. And the interesting thing about this is how much it applies at home. And the same thing happens at work and at work.

So is it a mandate to acknowledge team members at work as well in the good and not just the negative?

I absolutely think so. But I am not the best at it myself.

You don't acknowledge your team the best.

I do. I do.

But when we're writing the show, we see a lot of the things that are slipping through.

Right? Yeah. It's like my tendency is to.

But it's different because in a relationship you're not. There's not a paycheck. Right. It's like maybe there is, but it's different in terms of like an intimate relationship versus a working relationship.

How much has your team taught you? Because look, you are probably like me. We wouldn't be sitting here on some level if we were not actually more self critical people.

Of course.

And very demanding of ourselves. And hence we surround ourselves by people who we think we can be demanding from as well. And that is true. But it is also important that we learn to be sometimes a little kinder with ourselves and not just highlight the negative while at the same time asking the girlfriend to not be like that. Even though you are doing it with yourself and to also do it with our team. I don't think you can go wrong if it's not just kind of fluff. I think that acknowledging the efforts of people is a good thing to learn. And my team teaches me that.

Teach me a lot too. Yeah, I've grown so much in the last seven, eight years of launching this in my business just by seeing how much, you know, my words or my energy could affect someone if you know, I'm only focusing on like what they messed up on. So we do acknowledgement all the time. Every meeting. It's like we try to acknowledge a team member and acknowledge people all the time. Because I've learned over the years of just like it's not good just to focus on the negative and what's not working. Even if you're the boss and even if you're paying everyone or whatever.

And have you ever connected that to the fact that your focus was on self reliance? See, they come together, autonomous people. People who were raised for autonomy need to learn what you're describing to be more to give those comments, to see what other people are doing. They need to learn not to just look like this.

Yeah, that's true. Now in Hal's work, I'm excited to dive in on this. I had a business partnership before the school of greatness. About eight years ago that we started a company together. I guess 11 years ago we started a company. We ran this for like three years. The company took off. It started to be very successful financially. Started making millions of dollars in sales a year with a very small team. It was essentially just us. We outsourced a few things. They did very well until the dynamics of the relationship started to change. We had both had nothing starting out and then we grew. We started to get some success, some financial stability, things like that. And things started to shift where we didn't have our values aligned. We didn't have our, I guess our work ethic aligned and we didn't communicate.

Be specific.

We didn't communicate about expectations. We went into it quickly into a business partnership.

Were you friends before?

We were friends maybe for like six months. Like we just met. We were in a co working space. I was working on something similar to what he was working on.

Let's.

We were just talking and hanging out, helping each other, giving advice.

And then we worked on a project together.

Hey, we should do.

Let's try this thing it did. Well, let's do this again next week. Let's keep doing. We're making money, let's grow it. Okay, now let's build a business together. So there was not a level of communication beforehand or an agreement on, okay, if in five years you want to leave, what's the expectation? If I want to leave, we didn't have that. So I take full responsibility with both of us not clearly communicating expectations. And so anyways, after a few years, we.

I start to get a lot of.

Resentment because I had an expectation that this person was going to be working as hard as me. I'm up till 2am every night. He has kids and a wife. I don't have that. So I can work all day, all night. And I'm thinking, let's grow this thing. Let's build this thing. And I didn't communicate, so I take full responsibility. So after a while, I remember saying to myself, why am I. Why am I giving up 50% of this when I'm doing 90% of the sales generating efforts that are bringing in the revenue? Right? And I even had him. I was like, a lot of our stuff was based on sales from live webinars, and I was the guy who was doing the live webinars. So I even said, like, hey, why don't you try to do this webinar on your own and see if you can generate some sales? And there was zero sales when he did it. So I think he realized, okay, like, in order to generate income, he needed someone to sell for him. And where I was, I was thinking, like, okay, I could probably pay someone five grand a month to do all the responsibilities of him, but he's generating a lot more than that. And so there was a level of resentment where I just didn't communicate. I just got angry and was resentful.

And when you get angry, what do you do?

I would be reactive. I'd be dismissive. I would be, you know, I would be distant. I would focus on my own stuff. And I started thinking of, like, how do I get out of this?

Right?

How do I get out of this? I was also very immature. Didn't know, like, didn't really know myself. Didn't heal my trauma from the past. Like, didn't do all these things before this. And I remember, like, going through a lot of internal pain and suffering because of this lack. My. My lack of emotional courage to have hard conversations.

Was he acknowledging the fact that. Did you have a shared sense of reality? Did he agree with what you see?

No, no, no.

No.

So that's the first thing, I think, until he.

He tried, like, to do a webinar himself to sell. When he didn't make any money on it, I think he was like a first wake up call. Like, oh, I guess I do need.

Louis in a sense.

Like, we need each other. Until a point where I was like, I could just pay someone to do your job, but we started this together, so it was just like, trying to figure.

It was just messing.

And then I remember, like, we were in the middle of Times Square one day arguing, and a friend of ours was there, a mutual friend, and we were arguing, and it just got really heated. And I wanted to, like, literally fight him in the middle of Times Square, because I was like, you're not holding your weight. I'm doing this. You know, it's just like an argument. We're both arguing our case, right? And I was just like, this is not working, you know, and it's not gonna work. I ended up selling the company to him. I remember I ended up started going through emotional intelligence work and starting healing trauma in the past. And I approached him and I said, even though I have this, what was.

The piece that you needed to address from the past that was gonna help you with this?

What wasn't the piece I needed to address, but I think it was a sexual abuse and the trauma that I faced and a lot of, like, feeling abused and taken advantage of my entire life, feeling like people were out to get me, or fairness, like, what's fair? What should we both have, what should we both get type of thing. So I think once I started to do a lot of that work on myself and heal from past hurts from other people where I felt taken advantage of. I remember coming to him and emailing him and saying, hey, I. I want to meet you in person. And literally the first thing I said was, like, 10 minutes of acknowledging him and gratitude for him.

I wouldn't have started this without you.

I was just like, there's no way we'd be here right now without you. I'm so grateful. Even if there was, like, things I wasn't happy with, I was just like, here are all the things I'm really grateful about you. And I think he was in shock because for six, seven months prior, it was a lot of stress for both of us. A lot of residents, resentment, both sides. But that mindset and attitude was able to get us to a place to find a deal where I sold the company to him. Whereas if I didn't come to him from that Place of gratitude. I probably wouldn't have been able to sell it to him. And there were other challenges since I exited that we had. But I remember I needed to come from a place of gratitude. I needed to come from a place of calm and peace in order to make some resolution happen, happen. And you have a show. I know I'm actually over my time right now, so I want to be respectful. But your show, How's Work? Deals with a lot of people who are in partnerships and business that go through different challenges in business.

Right. So your story could be an episode on Housework complete.

Right.

You know, every. Your story says in order for me to deal with my co founder, I needed to deal with the other part of my resume, my relationship history. I needed my past. The past. The way that I had felt that people had used me the way that I felt, that I've always had to do more. The way that I felt that even when I did more, they still thought that they did more than me. The way that I didn't know if I took them on that they wouldn't hurt me more. You know. And so my invisible history that is right there as I'm working with my.

Co founder that he didn't know about.

That he did not know about, you know, that was. That's an episode of Housework. That's what we address, I deal with. It's where should we begin? For anybody who's ever had a job, it's co founders, colleagues, co workers, family business. 65% of startups will fail like yours because of the relationship between the co founders. Just so you know, that's Wasserman. Because the relationship. No, that's an enormous amount of good ideas that fall apart because the relate. That's Howard Masserman at Harvard. That's not my statistic here. And what you did is you first of all went and you realized, I am bringing stuff here that I need to. Then you went to him. You didn't just do gratitude, you actually did basic reality testing. It is true that without him you may not have been where you were or where you started and all of that. It was also true that at a certain moment you no longer wanted to continue be with him. And it's the ability to not have to deprive the other of anything they've done in order to justify and to just say, I know you've done all of this. Of course when you come to me and you first acknowledge my contribution, I'm not on the defensive, then you can come and say I would like to sell you the company. Because if you came and you talked about everything you do, I would answer to you with everything I've done and everybody's holding their card. But if you come and you tell me what I have done, then I don't have to go into that script and I can actually choose a different path. I don't have to hold on my credentials and remind you what I have done here. But this thing about two people who start together and one starts to do more and feels that they are putting in all the effort and they're the degenerating one and then the other one is still trying to tell them, no, no, no, we are equal. And they feel like we are not equal anymore and it's unfair. And then it taps into. And I know that feeling used feeling. I've been there, you know. And now you have this past and the present sitting on each other, the personal and the professional. The invisible resume with the reality of the workplace. I wish you'd come with your partner to an episode, but I invite anybody else in a similar situation to come and do an episode of how it works. That is, it's riveting. It's riveting because you tell it now and I listen to it like that because you made the connections. But the episode is often the opportunity for people to make the connections for the first time before.

Wow.

No, with me in the session, it's a three hour session that then gets edited. But it's a three hour session with the colleagues and the co founders going exactly into that. You know, I have two firefighter pilots in Iraq and Afghanistan together. And they then create a company. The company is very successful. And then at one point, one of them wants to go and do something that the other one doesn't want to do. And their whole question is, were we successful because we had a great idea? Are we successful because we had each other? I have two Brits who are college friends like you who say, let's do this thing. They start with an idea and it becomes this lucrative, successful communications company. But they can't talk to each other. One word, you know, and they realize it in the session. So you're telling me the story after the fact how his work is the actual unearthing of this very dynamic.

Excited to listen. Where should we begin? Is amazing. So I'm excited to listen to this as well. So anyone who's got a job or entrepreneur or got a co founder with you, go listen to that right now. They're both on Spotify, right On Spotify.

And anywhere else where you listen to your podcast.

Okay, this is a question I've asked you before. I think the last time it came on, but I want to ask you again to see if it's different. I'm going to go back and check them. This is called the three truths. So imagine it's your last day on this earth and you have to say goodbye and your body dies and you go on to the next place, wherever that is. It could be any year, anytime, hundreds of years from now. But eventually you got to go and you've accomplished every dream you can imagine. You've healed millions of relationships. You've written the books, you've done the speeches. Anything you want to do, you've created it. But it's all got to go with you. All of your work, all of your message. But you get to leave behind to the world through three things you know to be true from all of your work and life experiences. Three lessons that you would share with the world to live by. What would you say are your three truths?

The quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life. Hence, make sure that you have a rich life and invest in your relationships. Nobody's ever died hoping they had worked more. And then the next one is make it so that when people remember you, they smile.

That's a good one. Never heard that one.

That they were touched by you in a way that really, really left them with something to cherish. I see so many people in my office as a therapist who are left with things that people left them with that are bitter, cruel, hurtful, and I just think I want to be remembered with a smile.

Wow, that's a good one.

As somebody you know, it was great to know her, to meet her, to have her in my life as my mother, as my wife, as my friend, as my boss. If you have that, then you continue to live inside the hearts and minds of others in a way that you.

Leave a positive impact for many years to come. Yeah, that's beautiful. Okay. And the third one?

Oh, I thought this were already three.

The first one is the quality of life.

The second one would have been, therefore you invest in your relationships. Nobody has ever really seriously, people, on every deathbed, people will talk about how they wish they had spent more time with their loved ones. And I actually have to say, I don't think I will say that because I'm doing it, but if it was the third one, I think it would be something inspir by what you probably would think. If you have a dream that has accompanied you your whole life. Go ahead and try it. If it's doable, it would be a pity that you would spend. I mean, there are certain things you won't do. I will never be a pilot. You know, that kind of. But there are certain things that you know, you want to try one day. Just go ahead and do it. What do you stand to lose on some of these things? And I think that's a piece that I take from your work is that notion of there's so many ways that you can explain why you don't go ahead and dare. Dare yourself on some things. You want to play that freaking piano, Go get yourself a music. Whatever it is. Dare. And I like that. I take from you.

That's great.

Thank you.

I want to acknowledge you, Esther, for. For constantly showing up. You bring so much healing to so many people and clarity and inspiration. Every time you speak, I swear it's like sound bites of like clarity and inspiration to how to live a better life and have better relationships. So I'm so grateful for you. I acknowledge you for this. Where should we begin? Is amazing for anyone in an intimate relationship. You have to go watch or listen to it.

Season four coming out soon.

The first two I listened to were unbelievable. I remember listening to the car.

I mean, you have to listen to four when it comes. Three is incredible, but four is even better. They keep getting better is all I can tell you.

How's work?

I'm excited to dive into. You can listen both on Apple or Spotify or anywhere podcasts are anyway.

Yep.

Where else can we support you or follow you? Where do you.

I mean, you know, I told you about the newsletter and the blog. I really write people want. I don't always want to write another book on my website on social. On all the channels. Estherparel.com and it's monthly. It's really what we are talking about, but on a deeper level so that I can't always do another book. Of course there's the books Mating in Captivity and the State of Affairs. And there's two other things. If you're a coach or a therapist, it is my training platform, which is called Sessions with Esther Perel, where I like you bring some of the people that I learn from the most in the field of relationships. And then if you're a couple and you feel like your sexuality has sagged and you're in a rut, rekindling desire is the place to go. It's also on the website and it's the course that you take to kind of reconnect with your erotic self.

Yes, sir.

Appreciate you. You're the best.

Thank you so much.

You become what they want you to.

Be, even though it's not who you really are. You get to the end of your life and can you live with doing what was expected, but never what was destined?

Can you live.

Oh, man.

With doing what was expected, but never what was destined?