The 5 BIG SIGNS That Relationship WON'T LAST! | Esther Perel & Lewis Howes

Are you looking for a love story or are you looking for a life story?

The person you're with is the wrong person and the only reason you got with them is because you were broken.

Had you in a relationship, you are on thin ice and the sun is coming out.

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 healthy, having enough to eat, having children, having grandchildren, having good jobs, being respected in the community.

Is happy and thriving.

He's happy and thriving. It's not about you and I are talking on the couch and I'm pouring my heart 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, so we.

That's one version.

That's one version is you have got to look at the word happiness 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 dancing every week. So Eli Finkel has a best answer for you on that. 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. 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 ask the 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 still? 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. So back to Eli Finkel's research. 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.

Okay, that was the first thing. What's the second? You said there's 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 dysregulate. 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, no stability. 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 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.

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Because you learn to love yourself in the context of your relationships with others. You know this idea that you go first to work on yourself here and then you prepare this little 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, 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 person. 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?

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. 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. 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 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. Her space, the whole thing. And I'm thinking, wow, this is a tough one. It's not just about the house. It's. 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 him. 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, it's different. Values come together and they, 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 is 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 you have.

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, buddy. Or raised for 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 me, 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.

Okay.

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, 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 or doesn't want to.

Travel once it's doesn't want to, but it also likes comfort, likes repetition, 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? You know, if you want a family, then make sure that you find someone who wants a family. What do you want to be like? What are you gonna do? Try to convert? Now, I don't think you have to have the 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. 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'm a. A husband of mine, with 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 in Europe. No, I 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. Which is two hours away.

He never traveled outside of the U.S.

He had never been outside of the U.S. 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 misinterpreted. You don't want to just look at the manifest thing 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 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.

Do you think it's just impossible?

I think you need to calibrate.

Calibrate.

Always calibrate, too.

You calibrate. You constantly will be disappointed. Do you know a single relation where you haven't been 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'm so sorry. The repair may sometimes be, hey, do you want a glass of water?

In a relationship between a man and woman, what is the biggest problem that you see today that women face that are holding them back from staying in a healthy relationship? And what's the biggest problem that men are faced with and them being happy with their partner. They're in a relationship.

So I always talk about healing, and I do believe that healing is the number one biggest issue. But I want to take a different angle here. I think that another huge issue that both men and women are facing from women's standpoint and is really understanding that men are different in how we think, how. How we behave, how we're overall wired. And the same thing goes for women, I mean, for men. So essentially, men lacking an understanding of the emotional state or the emotional side of women and not knowing how to tap into that or navigate through that, whereas she also struggles with trying to navigate through his logical side and how he goes about things. And that disconnect because both, Both sides are expecting the other to understand them where they are, all right? And they're not trying to understand the other person. And so we. We get caught up in our own feelings, our own perceptions of things, and that creates this huge fight, this huge battle, rather than really learning how the other side operates.

This is going to be an oversimplified question, a response that you have because each person is unique. But I want you to fill in the blank. If a woman understood X about a man, they would be happy in their relationship.

The simplicity of a man, they would be happy.

If a woman understood the simplicity of a man, they would be happy in their relationship.

Yes.

They would have less stress, they would have less arguments, they would have less pain. Suffering.

Yes.

Because what does it mean to be the simplicity of a man?

So there's a few things. One, a lot of women overthink and overanalyze in their relationships. And so a simple example I gave in one of my videos is like, let's say a guy says. She said, ask the man, what do you want for your birthday? And he says, listen, just. Let's just watch a movie together, have some pizza, drink some liquor. I'm good. Have some sex. That's all I need for the night. And the woman thinks, let me get him a wallet. He's like, no, I didn't ask for that exactly. Like, it's so simple. He's telling you exactly what he wants. The words coming out of his mouth. It's what he means. The problem is so many women have been conditioned to dealing with liars and manipulators, dealing with men who are playing games, that when they are with a good man who's being forthcoming and honest, they don't know how to take that. And also because women are very. They're in the details, all right? So they are going to see what you need. They're going to analyze and say, okay, I can get this for him. They're going to. They're more thoughtful in their approach. They go deeper, which is why they become so frustrated with us because we don't. When we don't understand that. When they said, I'm okay. That they really weren't okay. That bothers them when they told us we don't want anything for Valentine's Day, but they really wanted something and we didn't get that. That bothers them because it's like, why aren't we looking deeper? Why aren't we learning them and being more in tune with them? Because that's how they are with. And so again, it's a disconnect of. We operate very differently. But if they would just understand we're very simple. And the man who wants to be with you, who wants to love you, is being very plain and clear. If you would just honor and accept that, it would make things so much easier.

And if a man knew X about a woman, they would have a happy life.

What's the right word? It really goes back to understands that her emotions. I'm trying to find the right way to phrase this, but it's really understanding the emotional side of the woman. And what I mean by that is, again, if you're with a woman, let's say you guys are walking down the street and she says, I don't feel safe right now. All right? To a man, we may analyze the area and say, well, there's nothing of danger here. What's your problem? You're crazy. No, don't do that. If she says, I don't feel safe, you have to understand how she feels. That's her emotion right now. And her emotion is reality to her. She may not be able to explain it. It may be something within her, within her spirit. But as men, we make a mistake of dismissing it because it doesn't line up with our logic. And now it's, you're crazy. You're this, you're that. Rather than no, try to understand. She's feeling like this for a reason. And even if we can't always explain, explain it, honor it. Now, the man's concern is, well, now she can manipulate you and play you, because even when it doesn't make any sense, she can say, I feel this way. But if you're with a good woman and she's been good to you in every other way, why question that? She's playing games now. Give her the benefit of the doubt. So I think if we would just learn to embrace what her emotions are at the moment, we would be able to have more peace. Because again, a lot of fights come from. You're trying to force your logic onto her. She's trying to tell you how she feels right now, right? And it's like this. No Meet her where she's feeling right now. Acknowledge that, say, okay, you know what? I understand it. Let's handle it from that perspective.

Why is it so hard for let's talk about men in this situation to acknowledge someone's feelings when in the man's mind you might be acting crazy, these feelings are irrational. Or why would I acknowledge irrational feelings when there's nothing to be afraid of in this moment? If that's what a man is feeling, how do they get out of that space and say, okay, this is irrational in my mind, maybe this is seem crazy because I don't feel this personally. How does a man learn to connect on that level so that they feel safe in that moment, even if it is irrational?

So three things. It's going to be awareness. Why did I just lose my train of thought for the second one? Awareness, awareness. I'm missing the second one. And then communication at times when things are not chaotic. All right, so the problem is you can't be trying to have this full, deep discussion at this. If you feel like she's being irrational, if you feel like this is not making any sense now you're trying to have this deeper discussion that maybe she's not ready to have at the moment. All right? She's feeling all over the place. Who knows what's triggering her right now. Wait till things are calm. And now let's revisit what happened the other day.

Don't fix it when it's not. When it's chaotic.

Exactly. It's almost like, you know, sometimes a woman doesn't want you to fix it. She wants you to listen and acknowledge how she feels. And so we can talk about. We can revisit it at a different time, but in that time, she needs you to embrace where she's at emotionally.

What if the man's just like, it doesn't make sense. You're making no sense right now. What you're saying is irrational. Maybe it's illogical.

It's crazy.

None of it makes sense. How do they wrap their heads around the madness of the emotion that is not real to them?

It really is. This is. Oh, it's about practice. So that was the second awareness. Practice, awareness, practice, communication. So the practicing of it is just simply understanding. Listen. It doesn't always have to make sense, all right? What does it hurt you in that moment to just be more compassionate and considerate of how she's feeling, even if it doesn't line up with your logic right then? You know what I'm saying? And again, we can Revisit this and use it as a moment to now learn more about each other. But right now is not the time.

So the next, so tomorrow, three days later, we can say, hey, listen, you know that time when we were walking down the street and you were afraid nothing was around? Can we talk about that?

Exactly, exactly. And now we can gain better understanding because at that moment it may be easier for her to articulate it, but in the moment of her emotions running all over the place, it's going to be hard for her to get it out. Clearly not because she's trying to be difficult, it's just she's feeling all over the place. It's just hard. It's like think about a child. And I'm not trying to reduce women to children, but think about a child being in their frantic moment, something happening to them, and you're saying, tell me what's wrong. They can't tell you. It's hard for them to say it, but once they're calmed down and at a better place, they can.

Absolutely.

So we just have to be, we got to be patient as well. We got to be patient with each other and give grace. We're going to have moments where, yeah, it may not make sense, but again, overall, if you're with a good woman, why act like she must be, she's being difficult or evil right now.

Absolutely. You know, there's a lot of good women. Speaking of good women, there's a lot of good women out there that are friends of mine who are single. They've been single for years. I'm thinking of a few of them specifically in my mind. So I'm going to speak to these women's archetype because I think there's a lot of women like this out there. They've been single for, they haven't been in a, they've been dating, but they haven't been in a committed long term relationship for a while. Good women, they make their own money, they're independent, they're kind, they're compassionate, they're loving, they've got their own vision, but they're struggling in finding the right guy who will commit. What do you think is missing from those women? Or is this a timing thing? Maybe it's like, hey, you've been trying this for eight, 10 years and you haven't found someone. Maybe it's still timing. Maybe they haven't showed up in your life yet. But if they're going on dates, they're doing these things and they still haven't been able to find A partner that feels like a good match, the right match. What's missing from them or is nothing missing?

It's hard to say because, you know, without knowing them individually. The issues can vary, you know. I'll tell you what I've seen as common barriers for women. One of the most common, and they may not like hearing this, but one of the most common is a lacking of being in touch with their feminine side. And that only really plays a huge role depending on the type of man they desire. If they desire a very masculine man, man who has his stuff together, a guy who can be a leader, at least has those qualities, then not being in your feminine is going to work against you. You're going to come across more difficult. You're not going to come across as someone that's peaceful. And again, I think every man, every man who has stuff going on for himself can say what he needs. Almost most importantly, or at least near the top, is peace. Every man needs peace.

Oh, man, I've been saying that my.

Whole life, you know, peace. And so if he does not view you in that way because again, you project more masculine energy, you project more resistance, more of a difficult nature, he's not going to. You could be the most beautiful, amazing woman. It's like, and he may want to sleep with you, but he's not going to want to take you serious or marry you. So that can be one problem. Another thing can be timing. You know, it's a lot of times is we have to understand everything doesn't happen tomorrow. There is a process to this, but in that timing, what's important is that you don't drag on with the wrong men. Yes, a lot of women reduce their time or reduce their window of opportunity. Staying with the wrong guys, staying dating, even the wrong guys. So it doesn't have to be a committed relationship. It could just be you're dating and getting to know each other, but you knew after a couple days that he wasn't it, and yet you're still letting it continue. And even though you're not fully committed in this relationship as an official boyfriend girlfriend, you're emotionally invested and your ability to now be available to someone else is severely hindered. So you're not going to be able to meet that great guy or that great guy may come across, you hear that you're dating this guy and say, I'm not even going to bother with that. And so that hurts you. So timing is it. But you have to make sure you're leaving yourself available.

Here's a question do we stay in relationships longer when we haven't fully healed the past?

Hell, yes. Absolutely.

I'll probably raise my hand here for pretty much every past relationship where I have known a different level. Like, something's not right, something's off. Okay, let's work on it. Let's try to make it work. Still, things are off. It's like you have a knowing inside and sometimes you try to force it to make it work. And I'm as one to blame as anyone here. And what I realized is like, oh, I haven't fully healed certain things, and it's why I've stayed in the past in relationships much longer than I probably should have. But I was afraid. I was afraid of hurting someone, I was afraid of hurting myself, I was afraid of whatever. And when I started to learn that, like, this is something you talked about over and over, that the healing process is the key process to build a foundation for the potential for a great relationship, for something to flourish. Yes, you want to have. You know, the dream is to have a rainforest of an environment in your relationship where things can grow, things can flourish. There's green trees around you, there's water flow, waterfalls. Not an environment of a dangerous desert where things go to die in the relationship. And I don't think we can truly allow things to grow if we don't learn to heal. And that's something that you taught me years ago, and you teach so many people around the world this. But if people don't even think they need to heal something, how do they do it?

They can't. There's no way. You can't overcome an obstacle you don't believe exists. Right.

You know, I'm fine, I got this. Nah, I've dealt with this stuff in the past. Like, that was me.

Exactly. And so the problem is most people don't heal until they hit a wall, until something knocks them on their behind. And now they have to see things differently and accept the issues that they've been holding on to. But also, I think the problem for a lot of individuals is they're not healed and they're in environments with people who haven't healed either. And now those unhealed people are going to validate your issues. They're going to validate your unwillingness to face those things.

This is so hard because whatever guy friends, girlfriends, whoever you are, and you lean on people and say, this person did this, and they validate, you say, leave them. They're no good for you. You deserve better. You don't deserve that. They shouldn't be doing this Right. They start to validate to be on your side, but they're not healed either. If they're coming from that place, maybe they're correct on certain things, but it's learning how to communicate to your friends in a healthier way probably also.

Well, I think, yes. Because a lot of people, they tell their friends the bad and they don't always tell them the good.

Yeah.

So the friends have a very skewed perception of the relationship or whatever situation that you're facing. But we also have to be aware enough to understand who we're seeking guidance from. Like, I may speak to my friends because I need to vent at the moment or I want some feedback, but I'm fully aware that they are not the end all be all to this, that they may be speaking from their own hurt place. I still can filter their perspective through the understanding of they're not healed enough to give me full, proper, great guidance. All right. But they might give a perspective that I needed to look at. And that's why I will still talk to them, because I want to hear different perspectives. I want to make sure I'm not missing any blind spots here. All right, so it's good to talk to different people, but only if you understand how to not just take them as, oh, well, my friend said this, so this is it. No, your friend may be broken too, and they're going to lead you down an even more broken path.

Exactly. So the conversations you have with some people, they're not healed and they're not helping you fully because they're validating something that you don't need to hear necessarily.

Absolutely.

Maybe some of it is right, but not all of it.

And not to mention, it can happen in other ways. As far as, like, I've seen people where the friend was in a toxic relationship that they were unwilling to leave. So now when their other friend came to them about their toxic relationship is, oh, you know, give them a chance. Oh, you know, cheating happens in every relationship. They'll come up with all these validations to stay because they can't look themselves in the mirror and tell themselves to walk away. So how are they going to tell you to do it?

All right.

Now, some people can do that. Some people can still tell you opposite of what they're going to actually are willing to do. But a lot of people consciously or subconsciously are trying to validate how they would handle things or how they have handled things. All right, so if it's. I would leave because someone called me out There out my name one time, then I have to tell you that you got to leave. For that reason, I can't tell you to be considerate of, well, maybe it was a mistake. Maybe this can be fixed. Oh, no, no, no. Because I drew that line. You need to draw that line. A lot of people don't understand how to give that unbiased advice. So that's why you have to be very careful going to friends and family.

Healing is, again, a lot of clarity comes through healing. You'll be able to see things differently in a relationship if you are from a healed place. I think a lot of us, myself included, have stayed in relationships longer than necessary because we haven't healed something yet, and that's why we stayed in them. So would you say that people who have healed and addressed the past, the traumas of the past, the pains of the past, are much quicker to get out of a dating situation when they realize, oh, this isn't for me, like, I thought it was going to work out, but I don't need to keep trying for months and years to try to make it work. It's not working. I'm willing to walk away. Would you say people healed are able to do that better?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Basically, the more healed you become or when you have become healed, your willingness or ability to tolerate toxic energy is diminished. You don't know how to operate or how to stay in those environments any longer, because now you see things so much clearer. It's almost like if you were to detox your body and start to eat healthy now, you go back to eating some fast food and it will destroy your stomach. So your willingness to eat that bad food is no longer there, or at least it's diminished because now your body knows what healthy feels like. All right? So emotionally, once you get to a healthy place and you know what healthy is, you can't tolerate dysfunction as much anymore. You can't tolerate someone who does not want to face their issues. You know, it reminds me right now real quick of even when it comes to business or you know what, even when it comes to fitness, a lot of people, once they've achieved great success or once they've achieved getting that body they always wanted, they look at those who do not have differently. Before, they may have been in that pool of people that said, my circumstances, there's nothing I can do. It's too hard. But once you've achieved it and you knew what work it took to get there, now it's like, no, you're just unwilling. You don't have enough desire to push past the obstacles to get the results you're looking for. And so, again, when you become healthy, your willingness to tolerate this person just can't get past their issues. It's like, no, because I got past mine. I know what it takes. I know you can get there if you're willing. But so many are not willing.

Let's say you got in a relationship, you got married, you've been committed for a while, and you. Neither of you have healed. But then one of you decides, you know what? This isn't working. I got to heal the pain from the past. They go on that journey, they get relief, they find peace in their heart. They're not triggered. Whatever it is they've started and have continually been on the healing process, but the other person continues to be in their own traumatic past experiences. What if they're not willing to heal? Would you recommend, like, is that relationship able to work still? Are you able to find ways to say, well, we still love each other, and we have a lot of chemistry and connection most of the time? What would you say about that? If the other person's unwilling to heal?

I hate to say this, but I have to be honest, all right? I can never encourage someone to remain in a toxic situation. All right? I do think that we can take an approach that says, let's see if we can work this out. Let's give them a little bit of grace here. And the main thing is, can we achieve progress? All right? Rome isn't building a day. And if we've been behaving or we've been tolerating this dysfunction for so many years, we can't expect it to be perfect tomorrow. But are you willing to at least start to walk on that path and make progress? Though I don't want to encourage divorce, I cannot feel comfortable telling people to stay trapped in a marriage with someone who doesn't want to face their issues.

Right?

If you have freed yourself from that, you. You have healed. They've got to be willing to make a move. And here's the problem. People are afraid to heal, or people are afraid to face the issues that requires them to heal. All right? Because you have to. It's like I remember a quote. I'm probably saying it wrong. To heal, you have to face the pain or you have to dive into the pain. Something like that.

All right?

So people understand it's painful to go and revisit your past. It's painful to let those emotions you've suppressed, depressed all these years come back out and so now your fear of healing or facing the process of healing is greater than your fear of losing this person. All right? And they think because you're married to them, you're not going anywhere.

You're stuck for life.

Exactly. So for that reason, that's not enough incentive to face their fear of facing their issues. The only thing that may get them to do it is the threat of divorce.

Wow.

Or is the actual divorce happening again? It's not that I wanted to get to that point. I hope and pray everyone could avoid that. But the reality is some people won't get it together until there's a real consequence on the table, and that will be divorce in that situation.

So, okay, let's say someone's like, you know what? I feel like I'm good. It's never been about me. It's been about everyone else. It's their problems that why the relationship doesn't work.

Hold on. I gotta stop you real quick.

Yes. Because this is.

Is like hitting my spirit.

I got to say. Give it to me.

The other thing to consider is that some people will never change. They will never heal. And the reality is that the person you're with is the wrong person. And the only reason you got with them is because you were broken. Had you not been damaged in the first place, you may not be with.

This individual because you wouldn't have chose someone like this if you were coming from a healed place.

Exactly.

And it.

If you were healed, you would have been your true self. Your true self may not have aligned with this individual. Now, I'm not saying that there aren't circumstances where people still end up with the right person when they were both not healed. I do think that's possible to happen. But a lot of people, I would argue the majority when you. Because I always say if you're not healed, you are 99% likely to choose the wrong person. So I do see still strongly believe that the majority of people are with the wrong individual. And that's marriage, relationship, whatever. Because that brokenness, that damage, attracted something.

Else that was broken.

Exactly. And allowed you to tolerate it or it allowed you to feel safer in that environment.

Wow.

Here's the thing that people don't realize. When you have not healed, if you were to get with a healthy person, it would essentially demand of you from the jump to basically heal or step your game up. And again, people are afraid to face their issues. So to get with another broken person, subconsciously, it validates me staying broken, it validates me not having to face my Issues. Because now we all have issues. You see, as long as we all have issues, I don't have to face mine. But if you have corrected yours, how can I validate my own?

What is the biggest lesson you learned about marriage and relationships? Being in a committed relationship during an extremely adverse time of the world. What's the biggest lesson for you?

How much time you got, bro? Listen, I've learned so much, right? But here's the number one thing that I've learned. We have been sold a myth. Ooh, what is that myth that love heals all? You know, marriage is the answer. Like, if you're not married, there's something wrong with you. Like, you gotta be in a relate. Like, we've been sold a myth. And here's what I mean about the myth. We have held marriage up like it's the top of the mountain, and when you get there, all of your problems are answered and gone.

That's not true.

It's not true. And that. That I cause it, you know, from. From being, you know, from a kid. We're watching movies. We're watching television shows. We're listening to music. It's all about love. It's all about finding it. It's all about getting to that mountain of. Oh, when I find the one, then I can relax. No, marriage is like getting to the beginning of the mountain.

Oh, man. Base camp.

Base camp. And guess where the summit is. And guess what? That altitude is steep. It's high.

It's hard to breathe up there.

It's hard to breathe up there. It's jagged. It's not a smooth, you know, ride. That's what marriage is. And so, you know, understanding, you know, and coming into the myth of it, it's like, oh, got it. I love my wife. She loves me. The union is great, yet we got work to do. And until we do our work, the union itself can't subsidize it. And so that myth that marriage is the answer was one of the myths that I, you know, came completely directly had to confront. And what I realized.

When did you confront it? At what. What year in the marriage or what day?

You know? You know, what it was is that it was gradual. You know, it was gradual for me, you know, and part of that gradual revelation was looking for the marriage to bring me a certain level of fulfillment that I was not actually pursuing on my own.

So.

So don't get me wrong. Yes, marriage is great. Love is great. It can be fulfilling. However, if we are not actually doing our work and finding out what makes Us happy, what makes us fulfilled. And we're relying on the union to do that. We. We ultimately find ourselves becoming manipulators to.

Get what we want.

To get what we want. We trying to like, because we expect.

That that person or the relationship is supposed to provide us something. Exactly what is the relationship supposed to provide us?

Here's what I believe a great relationship provides. Right.

1.

First and foremost, you know, let's look at it for a minute. Like a business.

Yeah.

Right.

So you. You know, if you have a. If you have a business and you have a partner, what. What makes a great partnership when both bring something to it. Right. Because you have a partner.

Yeah. If your partner is just taking everything and not adding value to the business, you're like, why is this person making money?

There you go.

Why am I paying back? There you go into this person.

There you go. So when you look at it that way, you know, the purpose of a relationship is both people making a contribution, so that that contribution enriches the lives of both. Right. So I'm bringing something. You're bringing something. Now we both, you know, our happiness, our joy is enhanced. It's not created. This is very important. The myth is that the marriage will create your happiness. It's not true. It can enhance it if you already have it. So if you have a partnership, both people are bringing their contributions, and then, as a result, your business thrives because you have two people who are committed to. Here's the second part. Both going in the same direction. Right.

Is that related to values, then? Or is that.

It's related to values. It's related to purpose. You know, I had one of my friends, you know, we were talking, and they kind of gave me this visual, Right? And so I think this is. And it was very helpful when it came to, like, marriage and relationships and how to think of them. So they were like, all right, so I want you to look forward. Like, do an. Do a visualization. And I want you to look forward. And when you look forward, I want you to see God. I said, okay. And they said, now start walking to God. I said, great, I'm walking to God now. They said, now your partner is right next to you. Right. So hold their hand. Great. I'm holding their hand. And now we're both walking to God. It's beautiful. Now turn to your partner. And then they turn to you. And now try to walk to God.

It's challenging.

Exactly.

Sidestep it over there. You know, he's like a crab or something.

Exactly. Precisely. So when you talk about the, you know, what is the purpose of a union? A purpose of a union is that when you have your right purpose partner and that person is committed to you, and you're committed to them, and you both are heading in the same direction, you both can walk together.

Right?

Right.

But when you're trying to get somebody, you know, to a direction that they otherwise may not want to go, they're.

Turned the opposite way, they're turned the.

Opposite way, or they're trying to get you where you may not want.

Want to go.

You can't get there from there. So I believe that the purpose of a relationship is one, you know, making a contribution to each other's happiness. You know, having that partnership, not making.

The other person happy.

You cannot do it. And I talk about it contributing to.

The other person's happiness.

This is why I wrote the book. You can. This is another myth, this idea. How many times have you seen it in movies? How many times have you heard people say it, oh, this person makes me happy. Oh, they make me so happy. It sounds so good to say, but what happens when you say someone makes you happy? It means you are outsourcing your happiness to that person, because that same person that makes you happy can then make you mad. Okay, so then tell me, who's in control of how you feel?

The other person.

Exactly. So why don't.

They're victim to their.

There you go.

Their. Their. Their way of being.

Whatever they're doing, their way of being, their mood. I don't. But here's the reality. No matter how much somebody loves you, they don't. There's. It's impossible for someone outside of us to contribute to our happiness in. In a perfect way. 24 7.

So is love enough?

No. No. There's love enough. No, you can love somebody and not stand them.

Right, Right.

I love my wife. My wife loves me. We still have to do our work and make the commitment to walk this thing out. Right. Like, we still have to communicate. We still have to understand. Like, oh, okay, that's your issue. Or that's my issue. Right. Like, so love is great, but love is not enough. And that's the myth. People think. Like, oh, if love is all you need. That's right.

A good line of his love.

No.

Makes me feel good when I hear that.

Right.

But it's not all you need.

No, you need compatibility. You need compatibility. I need compatibility. Like when you have compatibility, when again, you talk about people going in the same direction, it's like, okay, cool, we're Committed to going in the same direction. We're committed to the same type of life. We're committed to allowing each other to be the full self that we were created to be. That, to me, in addition to love, is what can make a great marriage or make a great relationship. But love alone, it's not enough. There's a lot of people you love you can't stand. There's a lot of people you love that you broke up with because you say, you know, I love them, but we're just not compatible. And that love may never go away. But so often we're romanticizing love in a way that it produces so much pain in those who don't have it.

As a movie producer that produces a lot of movies around faith and love and community and connection, I'm sure there are some lines in your movies that you produce. You didn't write the scripts.

No, I didn't produce the scripts.

You produce the movies that have lines like this that maybe remind people of this way of living. You make me happy or whatever the line is. Right. I'm sure there's somewhere in one of your movies, as someone who is producing certain movies for entertainment, knowing that sometimes maybe there's a line in here and there that that's not really true for you or where you're at in relationships, how do you navigate that? Not saying it's right or wrong, but just how do you navigate that as a human?

Yeah.

Knowing that's coming out in some of the entertainment.

Right. In the movies that I do, I always try to put in truth. So. So this point of view is something, you know, the movie that comes to mind that I worked on when I was an executive was jumping the broom. And that was a romantic comedy, you know, an upper class family, working class family, you know, get their. The son from the working class family marries the woman, this daughter from the upper class family, in a weekend wedding in Martha's Vineyard. And Laz Alonzo and Paula Patton, you know, were in that film. And my wife Megan was one of the stars of that film. And we started dating at the premiere, you know, from the premiere, about nine months after production, which was very cool. And in that movie, you know, we intentionally put. Worked on that to make sure we put real truth on the difficulty. Right. Of like, yeah, you can. Two people can love each other, but then what do you do with their families? How do you navigate conflict? How do you navigate an overbearing mother? How do you navigate, you know, parents who have a certain image for what they wanted for Their daughter and who their daughter's marrying doesn't align with the image. And so that movie has a lot of truth in it. And ultimately, we didn't cut corners at all. And that's why the movie was so successful. And I'm getting ready to do another romantic comedy, and we're putting more truth in. So for me, I'm always mindful and cognizant of how I feel and think about love, and I try to represent that when I'm doing movies that are on that subject, because I'm not trying to sell a fantasy. Right. I want to sell the reality. And that, yes, you can win, and, yes, when you find that partner that you fall in love with. But there's gonna be challenges, and there'll.

Be more challenges of different classes and different backgrounds are cool.

Absolutely.

I'm a big believer, whether this is true or not, that we. We talk about, we write, we podcast on the things that we become experts on, the things that we need the most.

Yes.

So the school of greatness. I talk about all subjects, so it means that I'm flawed in pretty much every area of life I don't believe in. I'm constantly looking for more wisdom to improve. Right.

Yeah.

Where do you feel like in the relationship side of things that you. I think I asked you this question last time a couple years ago. Where do you feel like you still need the most improvement in relationships for you?

Yeah, so I need the most improvement in a number of areas.

How long do we have?

Yeah.

Exactly. Hey, hey.

I have not perfected this thing, and I'm working on it every day. And anybody that tells you they perfected it, they gonna lie about everything else. So the first area that I'm working on, and you may relate to this because of the work that you do. You know, my father passed away when I was nine years old. You know, he passed away of a heart attack when he was 36. That was a very traumatic, you know, experience for me and my brothers. So my older brother's three and a half years older, my younger brother three and a half years younger. And so coming out of that, you know, my mother didn't have money for therapy or anything like that. And so, you know, we were in church and we watched movies.

Right.

And so. And then also I was very active in school. And what I began to see is like, oh, okay, If I perform or achieve at a certain level, people would say, oh, Devon, good job. Right. Pat me on the back. Right. So I said, oh, got it. So the more that I Serve at church, or the more I achieve at school, or the more that I, you know, do my chores at home, the more approval I would get.

Yeah.

So what I began to do was I began to seek that out, and I began to become really good at meeting everybody else's need. And so that Persona, right? Of like, oh, you need something done, give it to Devon, right? It's like, oh, yeah, I'm your guy. I can do it. Da, da, da. Right? Because I was finding my value in all of the achievement and all of the approval that came with it. In my. In middle school, people started calling me Mr. Perfect, you know, and at first I was like, oh, this is great. I love that. Oh, wow. Mr. Perfect, right. But then as I got older, it became a trap.

Why?

Because I'm not perfect. No one's perfect. But I had this image that I had to live up to. I had this expectation of myself that, oh, I've got to do everything perfectly. Right. So, getting to your question, a lot of pressure. Oh, my goodness. Are you kidding me?

Exhausting.

It's exhausting. That's why I talk about in the book, I had to kill Mr.

Perfect.

I said, I gotta. I gotta let go of this Persona because, you know, I'm not that, and I need to be who I really am. And so when you talk about what the area I need to improve on so, you know, bringing that into marriage, right? Like, hey, I'm here to serve, and I'm here to be the best husband I can be. And I'm here to give and I'm here to sacrifice all that's beautiful.

But when it crosses boundaries.

But here's the boundary, though. The problem is that no matter how altruistic you or I may want to be in our relationships with our women, if we do not first acknowledge that we have needs, right. Our altruism is flawed.

How so?

Because we are serving in order to fill the hole in our soul, to get approval. There you go.

Get pat on the back.

There you go. You know, and then also it's like, oh, well, no, I don't have any needs. No, I'm here to meet your needs. No, you're human. I'm human. I got needs.

I think I can relate to this big time. For most of my life, until up until recently, I would do things in order to receive love in relationships. And I would not do things if someone got upset at me. I would not do those things anymore to just try to make them happy so they would continue to love me even when it would Cross my boundaries, or when I didn't agree with something, I would do it to make the other person like me, love me, make, you know, be happy with me. And then I found myself resenting myself the longer that would go on because I was doing things that I didn't believe in or didn't agree with or there was a boundary of mine. I was crossing my. My line to serve someone else. Yeah, I think it's. It's learning that balance, probably, or like navigating and learning how to communicate. Communicate expectations, which is a lot about. In your book, which I love. The whole book's about setting clear expectations and not going into a relationship with the viewpoint of, well, this is the way a relationship is supposed to look, based on society just thinking that the other person knows what you think and they know and you know what they think. And having that is not going to work.

It ain't gonna work. It ain't gonna work.

And after nine years, not to put your marriage on the spot or anything, but after nine years, how important is still communicating expectations? Nine years into marriage.

Man, it's every day, right? Oh, oh, you can't autopilot this thing.

You can't say, this is what I expect one day, and then it'd be good for the rest of life.

Never. It will not work. It won't work. And here's why, you know, I go back to that. Our flaws, right? We're. We're all flawed.

Yeah.

All of us. And all of us have traumas and tragedies and things that we have experienced in our life that we have compartmentalized. And that's why I go back to this earlier thought of, like, you know, the myth that marriage is going to, you know, it's going to save you, and it's everything. The reason why I think that's a myth is because the more you are with somebody and the more that you love them and they love you, the more those flaws.

Fears come out.

The fears come out. The trauma because of vulnerability, and you're actually sharing your life with someone and you're allowing someone to see who you are. And there's also certain things you don't know that you've gone through that have impacted you to the level that they have.

That's coming up now.

Exactly. And so in a great relationship, it serves as a great mirror. So when you talk about setting expectations, you know, nine years in, it doesn't stop, because all of us are changing. And also to that point, we have to learn to communicate. We have to get Our words out, we have to say, okay, you know, hey, babe, can I expect this? Can you expect that? Let's get to the middle so that we understand. Okay, cool. Here's what I can hold you accountable for. Here's what you can hold me accountable for instead of assuming. And that assumption again. No. No matter how much they love you, no matter how long you've been together, no one can read our minds. No one. No one. No one. And so when you start behaving, and then here's what happens. Dude, we have these unspoken expectations. Unspoken expectations are relationship killers. You have this unspoken expectation, you treat the person as if you have spoken it and they know it, and you.

Fault them for it.

Blame them.

Yeah.

And you judge them. You judge them when they don't meet the expectation they may not have been aware of. And then you make a false assumption about their intent for you.

They don't care about me. They don't bother me. They don't think about me.

There you go.

They're selfish. Whatever.

There you go. And so in our head, instead, we become the judge and jury over somebody.

Without even telling them. Without even telling them what they were supposed to do. Exactly.

And giving them the opportunity to say yes or no.

That's it.

That's it. Because too often in relationships, we're trying to control. And so just because you have an expectation, it does not mean that person is obligated to meet it.

Right.

That person has to agree.

Right.

That person that you're with is free, the same way you're free. Okay. And if they want to meet that expectation, great. And if they don't, then you can talk about what that means.

Right.

Hey.

Okay.

You know, I have a certain expectation. Okay. That's not something you want to meet. All right, let's talk about if we are compatible. Let's talk about if we are going in the same direction. Very important. Instead, we suppress. We allow these feelings to fester. We get mad. We.

We then get bitter. Yeah.

You know, and then we, you know, someone asks us a question, we turn a cold shoulder. You know, it's like, well, why? Because we haven't actually communicated. We haven't actually asked the question, hey, can I expect this from you? Is this okay? Is this all right? Is it not? Is it cool?

Yeah.

Right. And so that's why, you know, in the book, I spend so much time talking about communicating expectations, learning to set expectations. Just because they know, because they love you doesn't mean they know. And I have seen so many relationships go by the wayside because there was this idea, this myth that, oh, just because they love me, they're supposed to know what I want. No, they don't know. Everybody has a different upbringing.

Exactly.

They were exposed to love and marriage in different ways. And so what may look like love to somebody may look like death to somebody else. So you got to communicate and find the happy medium of what you. What works for your relationship.

How do we learn to love ourselves so much that it doesn't matter what our partner does or doesn't do?

Oh, man. Lord have mercy.

Like, is there a way where you can fall in love with yourself without a sense of ego? Like, I'm God, but love yourself so much that it doesn't matter if your partner meets your expectations, communicated or uncommunicated, whether they're supporting you in the way that you want or not, whether they're proud of you or not? Is there a way that we can do that? Or should we be expecting something out of our relationship in return? You know, either way, bro.

Listen, listen, man. You know, listen. My views on this may be a little contrarian, so I'm just going to take my truth. So I'll answer the love question in a minute of self, but I want to hit the piece that you just hit, which is the expectation, right?

Yes.

I personally believe that if you give to get in a relationship, you are on thin ice and the sun is coming out because. Right, right, right. Because, again, what happens is you're not free.

Mm.

You're not free. You're not actually giving from your heart because that's what you want to do. You're giving from manipulation to get something in return. Because they get something in return.

Yeah.

So you're treating that relationship like the stock market, right? Well, yeah. If I give a certain amount of money to a certain stock or portfolio, I can expect a certain return.

And hopefully it goes up, right?

Hopefully it goes up. Right. But that's the dynamic, you know? But relationship is not stocks, man. That's somebody's heart. That's somebody's life. And so when you're investing in someone with the hope that they'll do something for you, you're messed up.

What if that person never contributes in the way you contribute? Let's say, after years, is it the right relationship still?

Okay, this is true.

Should you let go of the expectation? Well, I don't need that in return.

Great. So here's how I think you answered it. And I want to hit the love part, so. So I believe everyone should give freely from how they Feel and want to feel and they give to that person because that's what's in their heart to do over time. It's not an indictment on that person if that person isn't giving as much. It just may be a revelatory about compatibility. Right. It's like, oh, okay, got it. You know, the person that's giving. Right. I'm in a relationship. You're in a relationship because you have needs. You want those needs to be met. Okay. I'm seeing there's an imbalance. Right. Like, I feel great about everything I'm giving, but I also recognize that there's some needs that are not being met. And maybe there's some compatibility issues we need to talk about.

Or you can communicate about it and see, that's right.

That's exactly right. Like, hey, you know, look, I have needs. I'm in a relationship because I want people to contribute to these needs. Like, I'm going to be fine no matter what. But I'm in this relationship because I actually love the idea of someone else, you know, contributing to my well being. So you have to assess it and see if there's compatibility and alignment. Not pointing the finger. Because so often we're so ready to point the finger. Oh, this person's not giving as much as me. Oh, it's like, no, no, no. If life is a mirror, what is the mirror reflecting? What is a relationship reflecting? And oftentimes, in my experience, relationships are the greatest teachers. Greatest of who we are greatest.

Right?

Who we are and who we aren't.

Okay. Like, like. And too often people run from difficult relationships.

Yeah.

I believe that you should, whatever the lesson is, you got to get about you before you break up.

Heal it within the relationship first.

There you go. Because then you take that healing to the next relationship.

Yes.

If your relationship is revealing your own brokenness and your issues that you got to deal with and then you're saying to that other person, oh, it's your fault, that brokenness and that healing that you didn't do. You're taking it wherever you go.

So people come in because they're impaired and they want the pain to go away. Maybe they've tried something else that didn't work. And you're like, talk medicine, right. Without having to take a pill, how can I relieve this pain, this suffering, this problem? But the problem, what I'm hearing you say, is never about another person. It's always with them.

Well, not always. I think that relationally a lot of people don't realize that even if the Other person is problematic. So, right. When I was training, one of my clinical supervisors once said, before diagnosing someone with depression, make sure they aren't surrounded by assholes. So, you know, it's not like there aren't problematic people out there, their environment. Right, but then what is your response to that? And I think that people don't realize how much agency they have. They don't realize that they can choose their response to their circumstances, they can choose their response to the people around them. And I'm not saying that there aren't incredibly daunting circumstances right now in the world, for example, but then how do you respond? What are you going to do about it? And I think that's where people get stuck.

And I love your TED Talk because you talk about rewriting your story from the past. And I believe that we hold onto our stories and we probably continue to write them in a more powerful way that keeps us trapped or traumatized. Is that fair to say, that something happens in our past, we hold onto the story daily or whenever we're triggered, and it's like amplifies the story in our minds?

Well, it does. And the problem is that often whatever that version of the story is, we carry with us and we never revise it. And so you create a story when you're younger, for example, about something that happened in your life, and then as an adult, you've never looked at that story through the adult lens. You're still looking at it through the childhood lens. And so that's why I say that when people come in. That we're all unreliable narrators.

Yes.

That we all tell a story through this lens. And the thing is, these are usually faulty narratives, so there's a broader version of this story that people haven't looked at. And so I feel like in a lot of ways, what I do as a therapist is I act as an editor. And I have, of course, a writing background. And so. So I help people to revise their stories because the reason they can't move forward in the story, the reason they can't get to the next chapter, is because of something is wrong with the story. They are stuck. And so it's almost like I'm helping them with writer's block.

I mean, for me, life is an interpretation.

Yes, right.

There's an instance that happens, and we can interpret it as good or bad, or we can interpret it as, this is a neutral event, and I'm going to make the most of this. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, absolutely. And also how we Attribute other people's parts of the story. Right. So who are the villains and the heroes in the story? You know, I talk in the book about the difference between idiot compassion and wise compassion. And idiot compassion is what our friends do. They back up our story no matter what we say. This happened, this happened with my boss, this happened with my partner. This happened with my parent. Right. This happened with my best friend. And we say, yeah, that was terrible. Screw them, they're a jerk. You know, that's awful. You're right, they're wrong. Don't let anyone treat you that way. That's what we do. And if you listen to your friends stories, you start to realize over time that even though the situation and the names might be different, the kind of story they're telling is similar. It's kind of like if a fight breaks out in every bar you're going to, maybe it's you.

Yeah, exactly.

We don't say that. That's idiot compassion.

Idiot compassion is one where we as friends say, yeah, you're the best person in the world. This person's horrible. Leave them or let them go, forget about them. They're so bad at what they did. There's always two sides to every story.

Well, right. And so the value of therapy is that we offer wise compassion. We hold up a mirror to you and help you to see yourself in a way that maybe you haven't been willing or able to do. And that's where the other version of the story comes in.

So how do we have wise compassion for our friends when they're like, she cheated on me, he left me, they had an affair, whatever.

Yeah.

How do we change our story and also show compassion that we're there for a friend? Not making when they're in a vulnerable place, not making the other person right or wrong, but being there for them and also kind of giving them some tough love? I guess.

I wouldn't call it tough love love. I would just call it reality love love. It's love. It's much more loving to be truthful in a compassionate way. So I sometimes call them compassionate truth bombs because we need to hear them. But how do we do it? It has to do with timing and dosage. So the timing is when they're really raw, when something just happened. You know, now's not the time to say, you know, this has happened with your last three boyfriends. Right.

Maybe you're the.

Have you noticed that going through people's phones is not working well for you? We are not going to say that. Maybe in that moment. So that's timing, and then the dosage is how much are you going to say in a particular moment and in a particular conversation? It doesn't all have to happen in one conversation. So I think that that has to do with being a good listener. And a lot of us don't know how to listen. And I think it's really helpful. I see a lot of couples in my practice too, and if you can say to the person when they come to you with something, how can I be helpful in this conversation? Right now? I know you're really hurting. Do you want to just vent? Do you want a hug? Do you want me to help problem solve with you? Do you want my honest opinion or do you want me to hold off and we can have that conversation another time? Let them tell you what they want so you can give them something that is helpful to them in that moment. And then in another conversation, you might be able to offer them something when.

They'Re not completely raw or broken.

Yes.

Hurt. So what is that specific question? When anyone's coming to you with a challenge or a complaint or hurt, what's the question you should ask them?

How can I be helpful to you right now? I know you're really hurting.

What does that do for the person who's hurting when they hear that?

It helps them to reflect on, oh, wait, what do I need, right? Am I just gonna download all of this stuff and then I'm not gonna feel any different in the the end? Or is there something else that I want right now? And maybe downloading it will make them feel different. Just make them feel seen and understood and heard, which is important. Or maybe they want something else, but let them tell you. And I think the other thing is these three words that are really helpful when they're talking to you are, tell me more. So instead of saying, when they say, oh, here's what's going on, and we say, oh, well, we try to cheer them up. Like, you know, here's what you can do. We try to fix it. We try to cheer them up. We try to make them make it seem like it's not so bad. Whatever. We do instead, just say, tell me more. We do this with our kids. I can say, as a parent, we do this all the time, right? So your kid comes to you and says, you know, I'm really sad about this, or, I'm really worried about this. We say, oh, don't worry. No, it's not a problem. We say, oh, don't be sad, right? Go have ice Cream, let's go home. Right, Exactly. But the thing is that then you get the message as a kid that like oh wait, I'm not supposed to feel this. And really what it is is we get uncomfortable as parents with our kids feelings.

Why is that?

Because we can't. We are uncomfortable with feelings. We grew up in a way where feelings were messy, feelings were uncomfortable, feelings were something that you know they were going to be trouble.

Yeah.

As opposed to feelings.

Stop crying. Stop crying. Yes.

As opposed to just, you know, let's. Feelings are actually a great thing. People say, oh, there are these negative feelings like sadness, anxiety, anger, whatever, even envy. I always say feelings are like a compass, they tell us what direction to go in. So with envy for example, I say follow your envy, it tells you what you want. If you are feeling envy, that's great because it says what do I desire? It puts you in touch with your desire. What is it that I desire? And what steps can I take to get something like that in my own life? If you're feeling sad, if you're feeling anxious, what is not working right now that you can look at? If you stuff down that feeling, if you pretend it's not there, it just gets bigger. And here's what happens. It doesn't go away. It comes out in too much food, alcohol, drugs, insomnia, a short temperedness, inability to function, distractibility, that mindless scrolling we all do through the Internet. A colleague of mine said that the Internet was like the most effective short term, non prescription painkiller out there.

Wow.

Right. And so what happens is your feelings are still there but you're not dealing with them.

What happens when we never deal with our emotions or feelings?

Well, you first of all get sick.

Emotionally sick, emotions, everything.

Everything. Right. So we have just like we have a physical immune system, we have a psychological immune system and we have to take care of our psychological immune system. So it's just like what do you do to keep healthy with your body? Like you're going to eat, right, you're going to exercise, you're going to do all the things that you want to do to take care of yourself, you're going to get enough sleep. Those things also help your psychological immune system. They're not totally separate. The mind body connection is profound. But at the same time are you going to to be around people who don't nourish you? That's going to hurt your psychological immune system. That's going to make you sick. Are you going to stuff down your feelings? That's going to make you sick. And so how do we take care of ourselves? And part of it is instead of trying to numb out your feelings, because numbness isn't the absence of feelings. Numbness is a state of being overwhelmed by too many feelings.

Wow.

And then not only do you not experience the feelings that you don't want to experience, but you don't experience the other feelings. You mute one feeling, you mute the others, you mute the pain, you mute the joy. So you're living in this state where you don't actually get to feel the range of feelings that make us human.

What is that state called?

I was sick. I was gonna say dead. I mean, I feel like you can be alive but not living. And that's what happens to people, is that they're alive, they're going through the motions, they wake up every day, but. But they're not really living their lives.

What's an assessment we could take for ourselves? If someone's listening or watching to ask themselves how alive or how dead they are and if the people in their life closest are actually good for them or are hurting their psychological states.

Right.

Is there a questionnaire we could take? Like just off the cuff, is there an assessment? Is there a few things we could ask ourselves?

Yeah. I mean, I think that it has to. To do with a sense of vitality. Right. Which of course, like vitality. The word like life is right in there. When you wake up in the morning, are you excited about what you're doing? Is there meaning in what you're doing? Do you feel connected to how you're spending your days? Because at the end of your life, are you going to look back and say, what did I do that was meaningful? You know, maybe you should talk to someone. In my book, there's a woman that I treat. She's the. This young woman who goes on her honeymoon. She's newly married. She comes back and she has cancer. And she says to me at one point, she says, why do we need a terminal diagnosis to have a wake up call? Why do we need a terminal diagnosis to live our lives with intention? Why do we need that to really pay attention? And I think that if we can keep the awareness of death sitting on one shoulder, and I don't mean in a morbid way or in a creepy way way, it's not depressing. It's actually, again, going back to vitality. It helps us feel alive because life has 100% mortality rate. And that's not for other people. We like to believe that. Right. And so the thing is that if we know that we have a limited time here, I think we would pay more attention to what we're actually doing every day.

Why is it so hard for people to pay attention?

Fear.

But they feel like they're stuck sometimes for years. Like, I stay stuck in a relationship that I know is not right for me for years. I stay in a depressed state for years. I stay in a job that I hate for years. It's all based on fear.

Well, I think it is fear. I think it's fear of uncertainty. This is going to sound strange, but change is really hard because we cling to something that's familiar to us. So even though we may know, oh, this would help me, this would be a good change for me. We don't do it because it's unfamiliar. And so if you grew up with a lot of chaos, if you grew up feeling sad all the time or anxious all the time, that feels like home to you, even if it's unpleasant or even miserable.

So you keep finding chaotic environments recreating it.

Yeah, it was funny because my own therapist gave me this great analogy. He said to me, he said, you were remind me of this cartoon. And it's of a prisoner shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out. But on the right and the left, it's open, right? No bars. So basically, the prisoner is not in jail. And that's what so many of us are like. We feel like we're not in jail. We're not in jail. We can change. We can just walk around the bars. But why don't we? Because with freedom, the freedom to walk around the bars, comes responsibility. And if we're responsible for our own lives, that scares us. We feel like, oh, I don't know if I can do that. I don't know if I'm competent enough to do that, or now I'm to blame if things don't go right. I can't blame it on everything else.

Is this one of the reasons why inmates, after a long time being in prison who get out, go back into prison because they feel like they need to be back in that environment, or are there other reasons?

Maybe I think there are other reasons. I think we don't give people the support when they come out, you know, the mental health issues that they needed to be treated for whenever, you know, they never got that support. And then they come out and they're back in the same situation where they don't have that community support.

Why is it so hard for us to take responsibility for our own happiness?

I think that if you grew up in a household where you were seen and heard and understood, those are the people who do take responsibility for the. Their own happiness. I think for people who felt like they were ripped off in their childhoods, there's a part of them that's still in a fight. There's a part of them that still wants that redo. And so it's kind of like they're not aware of this. But what they're saying is, basically, I will not change mom and dad until you give me the things that I did not get in childhood.

So they'll go find a partner that emulates their environment for mom and dad and try to change them. So they.

Well, right. This is the irony of relationship, right? For those people who have not sort of worked through it, this is so common. And I think all of us have this peace in us, right? Because nobody had a perfect childhood. So what happens is people say, okay, when I'm an adult, I'm going to pick a partner who really makes me feel nourished, who really gives me all those things that I did not get growing up. But what they don't realize is unconsciously they have this radar for the people who look very different from their parents on the surface. But then once they get into that relationship, it's kind of like, uh, oh, this feels familiar. Right? And so what they did was their unconscious said when they were picking their partner, hey, you look familiar. Come closer. Even though in consciously they thought, oh, you're totally different from my parents, I'm gonna. This is gonna work out great. But, no, they have radar for that. If they haven't worked out the stuff that's sort of their unfinished business. There's this saying, we marry our unfinished business. We actually do marry our unfinished business. So that is why it is so important as an adult to take responsibility and say, you know what? I am going to have to grieve this loss of what I didn't get, and I'm going to have to work through this and assess where I am as an adult so that I pick people and surround myself with people who are healthy for me.

What if you've chosen someone that you love deeply, but it's unconsciously your unfinished business? Is that the wrong person for you once you realize, oh, they're never going to change? Or is that a point for us to reflect back and say, actually, I need to heal the past, accept this person for who they are, and be willing to flow within this relationship?

Well, what happens is, so you married your unfinished business, but so did they. And so if you can both recognize that, if you realize, hey, wait, we have a lot of conflict in our relationship, or we're really avoidant in our relationship, or we don't feel connected in the way we want to feel connected, that's a great opportunity for both of you to work out your unfinished business.

To heal together.

To heal together. Right.

And so that relationship could thrive if.

You both are willing to look in the mirror at yourselves and do the work. Yes. That could be a really beautiful relationship, and it could be very healing for both of you.

In fact, it could potentially be the strongest bond ever if you both were able to go through that. But if you're unwilling to go through that, then what you're gonna be in.

Both people have, right? Well, both people have to be willing. I mean, that's the thing. So it's like you may wake up one day and say, oh, wait a minute, I have all this unfinished business. And then your partner says, yeah, it's all you. You're the problem in the relationship. You know, it's kind of like in couples therapy. So often I'll see something like someone will say, like, you never listen to me. And I'll say, how well do you listen to them?

Right, right.

It's always like, if you're just yelling.

At someone all day, are they gonna want to listen to you?

Right, right. So, you know, there's this dance that we do in relationship, and what happens is people are doing these dance steps, and people become very. They become very ingrained. It's like, oh, here we go. You can script out people's arguments. You know exactly what they're going to want.

It starts with one thing, and then it goes back into many different things. And you're like, oh, yeah.

And you know exactly how it's going to go and who's going to feel what and who's going to accuse the other person of what. And that's the dance. And so if one person changes their dance step, the other person either is going to fall flat on the dance floor, or they're going to have to change their steps, too if they want to keep dancing. And usually. So we always say, you can't change another person, but you can influence another person.

Before we continue this video, make sure to subscribe below and turn on the notification bell right now so you don't miss out on these great videos every single day. You were talking about before we started that marriage is a technology.

Yeah.

Now, what does that mean? What is the technology?

I think anything that's designed to solve a problem is a technology, right? So I mean, this mug is a technology, you know. And what is the problem to which this technology is a solution? Well, it's the problem of I can't hold hot tea in my hand. It's a problem of I don't want to use an encouragement. Kudos to you for using non disposable ones. That zero waste. And the truth is that it's designed to solve a problem. So the next question is, who has that problem? Well, anyone who wants to drink a beverage has that problem. And the next question, and I think the most important question is what problems does it unintentionally create? So every technology is a Faustian bargain in the sense that it solves a problem and it creates a problem.

Now you gotta clean it, you gotta use water.

Exactly.

You have to store it. Find stylish ones. I mean, you went, you know, classic plain, but you gotta find ones with witty sayings on them and it can break. And now my favorite mug was broken and how am I gonna replace it? I mean, again, some of these problems are silly little problems in exchange for really great benefits. But most people never ask themselves the question, the technology of marriage, which is a man made technology, a human made technology, we got together and said, hey, let's create this legal contract governed by a state, right, Governed by the state. Let's come up with something that let's turn a lover into a relative, you know, let's find a way to turn this into a legally binding contract. And people just go and sign up for this technology and they spend more time thinking about what cake they should serve at the ceremony than thinking about what did I just sign on for and why did I sign on for it and what are some problems it might create for me in exchange for the things that it solved for me. And by the way, will it even solve the problem that I'm trying to have it solve? And one of the things I talk about in the book is, you know, if you got married to solve the problem of being alone, you might be alone still in your marriage. Like you solved if you got married because you want to have sex, you want to have more sex. You know, being married is no more a guarantee of getting sex than living near a restaurant as a guarantee of getting fed. You know, it doesn't mean just because you're in it, you're going to receive the benefit that you think you're going to receive of it. And how many couples before they get married really sit down and say, hey, we're going to sign up for this technology. What do you want to get from it? What should I be wanting to get from from it? How will it change over the years? That just doesn't happen. So if that doesn't happen, how are we then surprised that it doesn't work? 53% of the time.

53% is now the divorce rate. The divorce rate, then more probably still don't work, but they're in it.

Exactly.

So that's the part. And it's funny that you go there because that's where I go with it. So 53% is already terrifying. Right. If I said to you there's a 53 chance when you walk out of this room, you get hit in the head with a bowling ball.

Yeah. You're probably not gonna go out or.

You'Re gonna wear a helmet at a minute. Right. At a minimum, you're gonna wear a helmet, but you probably wouldn't go out. Now let's look at that number though. 53% end in divorce.

That's US or global.

US.

US, US only.

Okay, now think about what percent stay.

Together for the kids that should get divorced but stay together.

Kids stand each other.

They stay together.

That they stay together because they don't want to upset the kids or they don't want to give away their stuff.

I would say another 75% stay together even though they want to get divorced.

Okay, so let's say 20. So another 25% of married people, let's say. I mean, so. So now we've got a technology with a failure rate over 75%. So now what percentage stay together for religious reasons? Probably a declining percentage over the years. But let's say more, you know, 5%.

That might be the same as kids and, you know, might be the same. Yeah.

So if I say there's a technology with a failure rate of 80%, Toyota had a 0.0001% brake failure. Nice save on there. A 0.001% brake failure on one of their vehicles. And they recalled all of them.

Yeah.

So if I said to you 80% of technology, we still use it.

Yeah.

Not only do we use it, we sell, celebrate its use.

Yeah. It's part of our culture. And we're shamed if we're not married.

Absolutely. Well, because it's considered a sign that you're not mature and forward thinking.

And we're ashamed of we're divorced.

Right.

But now we're being celebrated to get out of marriages if it's not what we want or if we're not getting what we want.

That's a trend that's definitely starting to change.

So I think leave him, divorce him or whatever, you know.

Well, I think his self actualism, you know, became more of a thing. And after the 1970s, you know, people started thinking about like, you know, themselves and their happiness. It wasn't just about the unit anymore. It was about, you know, finding yourself. Then, yeah, it became more acceptable to be self interested. I'm not going to say selfish because not all self interested behavior is selfish, but it became more acceptable to say, I'm not happy. You know, I married this person when I was 20.

Yeah.

And now I'm 40. And shockingly, I'm not the same person at 40 that I was when I was 20. And now I'm a different person and it's no longer a good fit. You know, I mean, the analogy I tell people is if I said to you right now, you can have any car you want, what car would you have?

Well, I just got a Tesla.

I have a Tesla too.

I actually don't care about cars, but I got one for tax reasons. Okay, cool. And I had a 1991. I still have a 1991 Cadillac Alvarado.

Okay.

They had like 60,000 miles on it.

Okay.

Just, I uber everywhere.

I don't really use the car.

Yeah, any car you want.

But I like the Tesla. I like the Tesla, okay, Because it's fuel efficient. It's, you know, Right. Switch out a bigger.

You're a pragmatic guy. You ask nice too. You ask most people that question, they're gonna get a Ferrari, Ferrari, Ferrari, Lamborghini. I want a Maserati. Now, if I then said to them, okay, you get one car though, whatever car you pick, that's the car you're gonna have for the rest of your life. Suddenly a Lamborghini is a terrible idea. You can't put a car seat in it for a kid. And you can't, you know, when you're 80 years old, get into that car, Right. So if you are only allowed to have one car, you got to find a car that not only makes sense when you're 20, but 30 and 40, but when you're 70 and when you have kids and when the kids have gone away. So again, like a minivan, that might make sense. When you got three kids, when the kids go off to college, that minivan no longer makes sense. Well, marriage is a technology where you're signing on with one person and saying, for the rest of my Life, I'm going to be with this person. And that's a very challenging thing. But here's the thing. I actually think people give more thought to the car they're buying than they do really to the technology of marriage. And what about it specifically they like or don't like.

What training or information do you think do you wish every couple would go through before signing up for the technology of marriage?

That's a great question. I think.

You know, if you buy.

A house, you get a lead paint disclosure, you get a HUD disclosure that talks about the loan, you get all kinds of disclosures.

Right.

You sign a will, there's all these pages that explain to you in great detail, you know, what's happening when you sign that. Well, you get married, you don't even get a pamphlet. You don't even get like a one page brochure. That, by the way, this is the most legally significant thing other than dying that you will ever do legally. And you don't get any information about what just happened. So the, the first thing I would say is I think everybody who's going to get married should have an hour consultation with a divorce lawyer.

Absolutely. So they should go into your office.

Before, but for a different reason. Prophylactically.

Yes.

They should come in proactively and learn about what's about to happen legally, what's about to happen to my rights, what's about to change in terms of how I own property, the financial obligations I'll have to this person. I would also say, say one of the best things they could do is talk to someone candidly who's been married for an extended period of time. You know, that's not something we do. We're not encouraged to be honest about our relationships. We're not. I mean, one of the things you talk about, mask of masculinity that I loved is about particularly for men, but I think it's true for women too. We don't share candidly what's really going on in our lives. We're not a very curated society where you put up on social media the best picture and the best vacation photos and the best of everything we're doing. And we don't share with each other the challenges. We don't share with each other even, even really relevant information. Like when I meet a couple who's been together for 20 years, you know, I want to know. I mean, I love the story of.

How did you meet?

You know, how many times a week do you have sex?

Who started?

Who initiates it? Do you ask the shiz, do you always do the same stuff because you've been together for 20 years and you know what each other like or like, do you try, like, do you like calling audible every once in a while just do some wacky thing like, what is it? Like, what, what is it really like the day to day of your relationship. And so many people, I mean, you've been in relationships, I've been in relationships. So many people just don't talk honestly, even when I'm with my guy friends, you know, do we really talk honestly about the day to day of our relationships? The way we talk to the women in our lives? Like the nickname they have for us or the nickname we have for them? Again, it's private to some degree information. But if we could share that stuff a little more, we'd have a lot more accurate of a perception of where our relationship stands in the scheme of things and how we're doing, you know, because I really think there's this perception that people have of, you know, oh, we're only having sex this many times a week. It's like, well, okay, is that a lot? Is that too little? Like, you have nothing to compare it to.

Right, right.

You know, so in marriage, there's no way to know if you're doing well in it because you can't say, well, you know, we have fights every now and then. Well, okay, people have fights every now and then.

But if you have a fight every.

Week, that might be a lot, but how would you know? What would you compare it to? Right. So I would say one of the best things you could do to people who are considering getting married is put them in a room with people who've been good at that technology, who've managed to not only endure marriage, but endure it and still like it, thrive.

Right, right.

And still say, you know what? I'd sign on for this again.

Yeah.

Like, in a room full of people, I'd still pick this person.

Yeah, that's cool.

You know, and how many of those opportunities we really get to talk to people that way about the relationship?

Not many.

Yeah.

And maybe also talk to someone who's been through divorce and ask them what didn't work and why didn't it work.

And where did it break out? Exactly. See, one of the principles that inspired me to write the book was the idea that, you know, again, I hate using car metaphors because I'm not a car guy, but it's the best analogy I can think of in the sense that if when you bought a car. You did every bit of preventative maintenance that a mechanic told you to do.

You changed the oil every two months or whatever.

A dentist, you know, and she always says to me, by the time your tooth hurts, you're screwed.

Prevent it. Yeah, Loss every day. Not after you get it.

You do all the stuff she tells you to do. When you go see her, your teeth are gonna do well. So it's for me, who knows more about how a car breaks down than a mechanic, Right? So I know what I know. People are in my office, and I get a very candid view of them, and I get to talk to them. And I have been very blessed that people trust me with tremendously personal information. And so what I wanted to do with that information is just find a way to leverage that into some kind of wisdom that people could use and say, you know what? Just don't do what they did. When we were talking about titles for the book, you know, it was a hilarious escapade because, you know, one of the first ideas was, well, we'll call it Everyone Screwing Everyone. Because it was about how people just abuse each other in the process of divorce and how they're really taking advantage of each other. And then we said, well, no, that's too pessimistic. And we said, well, you know, maybe we can, you know, just call it, you know, vows and talk about, like, the promises that people make. But it's not really the promises that are interesting. It's the way that people go in with good intentions with those promises, and they just can't keep it together.

Can't keep it. Yeah.

So I really think that. That, you know, for me, the best thing we can do with anybody is to, yes, show them a model of success. Right. And show them a model of failure. You know, and look, you've said it a million times on this show that you learn just as much from your successes as your failures. You might learn more from your failures to some degree. So we don't have those role models. We don't have relationship role models. You know, and, you know, one of the things you talked about. Masculine. Masculine. When you're talking about Neil Strauss and his marriage and how he says, look, it was my stuff. It wasn't like I said, oh, I don't like marriage because I don't like this about it. And I don't like that it would force me to do this and force me to do that. And really what it was is he just didn't want to look at his own stuff.

Yeah.

And he felt like, to have a good marriage, you'd have to look at his own stuff, which is absolutely true, you know, and terrifying. Most of what my book is about is about. Yeah, you got to look at your stuff if you want to be successful in this technology, you got to look at it, own it, and share it with this person.

Be aware and be honest with the person about who you are and what you want, what you don't want. Now, you were married for how long?

I was married for 12 years.

12 years. Got divorced.

Got divorced.

While you were a divorce attorney?

While I was a divorce attorney.

So you're hearing these stories every day and going through your marriage.

But, you know, my. Yeah, my marriage, I think, benefited from my experience as a divorce lawyer.

Knew the cues of what not to do or what was gonna work.

But it was hurt by the fact that I love what I do for a living and was so consumed with it that I worked constantly. You know, my ex wife was one of my dearest friends.

To this day.

She's remarried to an amazing guy who's a great stepdad to my sons who are now older. They're both in college. But I'm very blessed. I mean, I've had an experience of divorce where I'm still close friends with her, I'm friends with her husband, you know, and I'm very lucky for that because I look at it like, there's a lot of people I love that I wouldn't want to be married to.

Sure.

And she's one of them. She's someone I love. She's someone. Someone I appreciate who I think is just an amazing person. But we don't have the chemist, the exact ingredients that you need to be successful in marriage. Because we met when we were 17 and what we wanted when we were 17, 18, 19, 22 when we got married, 24 when we had kids. When we turned around and were in our 30s, we went, you know, we don't actually have that much in common. And so either I'm to going have to stop being who I actually am. Like, I love to travel. You don't love to travel. You love, you know, I mean, from silly things. You love shabby chic furniture. And I like very zen aesthetics. You know, like, you love this kind of movie and I love this kind of movie. And you reach a point where you kind of go, well, do we white knuckle it now because we don't want to quit something that isn't working? Or do we say, you know what? Let's call this, let's call this this, and let's find someone who feeds us in the right way and see if. Or just be alone for the right reasons, you know, And I'm very blessed that the person who I was married to was mature enough to see it the same way and to have that painful but really wonderful conversation that so few people can have. And that is to say, look, this, this thing was successful. You know, we both are leaving this better people than we were when we came into it. And we're leaving it with two kids that are the exact chemistry of the two of us, and they're made up of the two of us. But we're gonna kind of take our different paths now and let's still love each other, let's still respect each other.

Conscious uncoupling.

Absolutely. I mean, that's the term that's been handed to it. But, you know, the truth is, is I think people been doing it for years. You just don't hear about it. It's not that my divorce is the least interesting thing about me.

It really is.

Like, if I said to you like, you know, tell me 10 things about yourself, the fact I'm divorced wouldn't make a list because the fact that I tried to marry someone and stay with them forever and it didn't work out isn't that interesting. It's not that unique. You know what you hear about the people who talk about their divorces incessantly are people who were wounded by them.

Yeah.

And. And now they've been victimized by their divorce. And so it becomes a tremendous part of their identity.

They hold on to it for a while and they talk about it and here's what happened.

And, and so, you know, they're the, the silent. You know, there's a huge number of people that had divorces like mine where the marriage just ended, it ended in a friendly fashion. They continue to co parent successfully together and they both live their lives.

There's not this pain and resentment for years.

No. And I have to tell you, as a divorce lawyer, as a practicing divorce lawyer, a huge, I would say more than 50% of the people that I represent, it's that kind of transaction. It really is that it's just two people that their time is done and now we just have to figure out how to divide up the things they have and work out the schedules with the kids.

That's good to know.

Yeah.

I would say at least 50% good. But, but the thing is, the other 50% are louder, are so much more interesting. I mean, so Much. It's like, because really, who wants to hear about, like, oh, I talked to my ex wife yesterday and she's lovely. She's moving to Rochester soon. Like, you know, that's her life.

It's the drama.

Threw a bat at me, she set my car on fire.

It's way more interesting, you know. Oh, man. Do you feel like, you know, marriage, I hear this all the time. It's something that's not going to be easy.

Right.

There's going to be challenges, there's going to be fights or arguments and there's going to be some things that you're not going to agree on. Sure, if you agree on everything, awesome. But it doesn't sound like there's many marriages that are always perfect and always smooth. After 10, 20, 30 years, there's going to be some conflict. So does that mean in your opinion, that we should just be like, you know what, let's throw in the towel when it gets too challenging or, you know, it's getting challenging, that's when we got to dive in deeper and like, come together as a marriage because we signed up for this.

It's a great question. I would say the following. I think one of the most common things people will say to you about marriage is, you know, marriage is hard. Marriage is hard. I don't know that that's true. I think if you consider paying attention hard, then marriage is hard. If you don't consider paying attention hard, then I don't think marriage has to be hard. I think that it's, again, not to use the metaphor again, but, you know, losing weight is harder than maintaining your weight. And I really think you're, look, you're going to have challenges. You're not necessarily going to have fights, you're going to have challenges. Life is going to throw challenges in your way. Illness, adversity, career issues, you know, day to day miscommunications with each other. If you're not paying attention, those things get huge. And then the big, big things happen. So people come in and they go, I'm getting divorced because he's sleeping with his secretary. You are. That's, that's a great reason to get divorced. And that's a legit thing. He's not, he's sleeping with his secretary because there's something wrong in the marriage.

Yeah.

You know, and if you don't want to look at that because you have some culpability in that and it's easier to just go, oh, this harlot came and took him away. And it's A lot easier to say that. But the truth is, you know, you stopped paying attention. You know, and this is the question I find myself when I have a minute, you know, with a client who I've been some miles with, and we're sitting outside of the, you know, the courtroom waiting for the case to be called. And I have enough of a rapport with them and we've been enough of a distance together that I feel like I can be candid with them. I'll say to them, was there a moment where you realized your marriage was over? What was that moment? You know? And you would be amazed at the insight if people think about that question that they give to you. I had a woman who said to me, and it. It was to me, a very powerful example. I discuss a little bit in the book. She said there was a kind of granola that she liked, and you could only get it at, like, a certain store, like a Whole Foods or something like that. And her husband used to always buy it. Used to always buy. Whenever she was running low, she would just open the cabinet and there'd be another bag of it there. And she loved that because he didn't say, like, oh, and look, honey, I bought your granola. Like, I get credit for that, you know, like, he just would do it. He just saw that this was something that he was paying attention. He just saw that there was this little thing. It was this little kindness that he showed her that let her know she was important to him. He was still kind of trying to woo her without being obvious about it, and he was still paying attention, she said. Then one day she just ran out of the granola, and it wasn't there. So she thought, well, maybe he's, like, busy, and he just didn't notice. So she kind of left the bag out. And, you know, sure enough, he still didn't replace the granola. And she said she had a tangible memory. It was about a year before the actual divorce, but she said she had a tangible memory where she thought, okay, this is over. You know, this thing is over now. And I think that that's the thing that's kind of. If you boiled my book down, one of the things I say to people is there's this thing in every relationship, some little thing that you had to. That you did for your partner, or some little thing that you just had to tell them that at some point you just stopped telling them. Yeah, you know, I don't know if it's. It's just in the morning saying, like, God, you're so pretty when she walks by or if it's her saying to you like, you know, I love you, your strong arms or whatever it might be like there's just those little things like we, we just want someone cheering for us.

We just want.

Why do we, why do we get together? We want connection. We just want connection. Like there's no other reason to get married other than wanting connection. So those little disconnections that. Yeah. You know, and that's. It's death by a thousand paper cuts, you know, and that's the challenge for me is that's what people need to sort of find their way to connect to again.

Yeah.

Society has brainwashed us to believe that love and identifying it takes time. That's a lie. In most situations when it takes months, you have not fallen in love. You've learned to tolerate them. You've grown attached.

Wow.

All right.