The 6 WAYS To Heal & Move On From A Toxic Breakup Or Betrayal! | Lewis Howes
Lewis Howes talks with Esther Perel, Jordan Peterson, and others about healing from toxic breakups and betrayal. They discuss how the pandemic changed relationships, why play and storytelling matter, and how to work through fear and loss.
Chapters
All the unknowns are filtering onto your relationships, and the relationship becomes the holder of all that stress. It's not just people didn't get along. Is that.
Is there anything that you feel like you still need work, healing in order to let certain things go, or are these things always going to be with us at certain times? Different stresses or pains or wounds or PTSD from the past of individual lives?
Look, the notion that when you heal, something utterly disappears is one component of healing. But the other part is that you need a bigger trigger to reactivate an old wound. But there is a whole new range where the wound can live without being activated.
You've healed a certain amount of triggers, but there might be a bigger.
So, you know, you. You come back from Iraq, from Afghanistan, from all the wars that people have fought here, or you are a refugee from Syria or from Afghanistan. I mean, all sides. You may not at every siren jump anymore, but if suddenly, if there's a bomb, yes, you will jump.
Gotcha.
So the range and the response, you know, to the danger shifts. That's the piece around healing. I think for me, it was a real surprise that this fear that I got to experience. I didn't remember that it had been a long time since because you're constantly.
Doing the work, you're constantly in the.
I have kind of created a life where I have a sense of ownership, I have a sense of control. I have a son. But I always live with dread.
You do?
I do still today. That my whole life live with dread like that.
Every minute something could happen, the sky could fall and the whole thing could disappear, because that is the core story of my family. But I don't have the dread all the time. But when it grips in the past, it would grip without anything happening. It just was happening to me because I had a day where I just didn't know what I was going to do with my life. So it disappeared. I could talk about it, but I wouldn't necessarily feel it. It's physical, it's visceral. It's like you described the chest for me. It's the gut, it says. Right. But when the pandemic arrives, it's a trigger that is strong enough to bring back that sense of dread. And at that time, I wasn't aware of my dread. I was feeling my dread. That's very different. That's what I mean by the external versus the internal. Now, what people struggle with, people have struggled with prolonged uncertainty. Here are the five things of the pandemic that have affected relationships the most. One, is a prolonged sense of uncertainty. It's not just that you're not sure when this is going to end, but you're not sure about you're not being sure. Okay? This thing keeps coming and going all the time. One minute you say it's gone, the next minute you realize, oh, it's not gone at all. Then it's the notion of what we experienced was a collapse of all the boundaries. Here I am, I'm at home, I'm on my chair at my kitchen table, and I am a therapist and a supervisor and a podcaster and a mother and a friend and a wife. And, and, and. And I haven't left the chair, and I'm still just in sweatpants with the. You know, and I'm like, where is work? Where is life? Where is morning, where is night? Where? It's just like all the roles have collapsed. And we are not made like this. We are physical people and we are spatially oriented, and we change location for our activities, we change clothes for our activities, and they help us enter the role. Now I'm going to work. Now I'm going to play sports. Now I'm going to the club. Now I'm going out. Now I'm going to visit my mother. And I feel different. I look different, I wear different. I have rituals. I have things. A different bag, a different racket. None of this. Do you know what it means when your entire arsenal of rituals that give meaning and frame your parts dissolves? You get exhausted. So that was the collapse of boundaries. Then there was the sense of ambiguous loss. You know, we lost spontaneity. We lost plans. We lost the weddings, the graduations, the parties, the promotions, sports games, everything.
Yeah.
There is the loss of death, but there is that other loss. The buildings that are standing, but they're empty. They're physically present but emotionally vacated. We have the grandparents and the parents that are physically gone but emotionally present. We call that ambiguous loss when they are either physically present and psychologically gone or psychologically present and physically gone. That ambiguous loss became a part of what then Adam Grant began to describe in the languishing. Languishing is you're not depressed. You're just like, lifeless, flat, listless. Nothing is really giving you the sense of meaning and purpose and joy that you generally want that has happened in your relationship. And what happens when you are in a period of liminality like this, where the big dilemmas are not getting answered, is that all the unknowns are filtering onto your relationships and the relationship becomes the holder of all that stress, and that is part of the divorce rate at the moment and the weight that has felt on the relationships. It's not just people didn't get along. It's that people needed in the relationships to deal. From the political polarization to the racial reckoning to the economic insecurity to the ambiguous loss to the prolonged uncertainty, all of that fell on relationships. This is the story of the last two years that people know, they feel it, but they don't necessarily articulate it.
Hard to make a relationship last if you don't have the tools and you're not willing to work through it.
How do you stay grounded when the ground itself is moving? It's quicksand, is the great adaptation of this moment. And so relationships began to see the cracks inside their relationship. And people also began to see the light that shines through the cracks, both ends.
Yes. Well, play is key in a relationship, and I'm glad that I'm playful and I'm down for this game. Where should we begin?
I'm going to hook you to this game so that you and Marta can tell stories to each other like never before.
This is a game that came to you. You know, this is one of the things that came to you during the pandemic because you wanted to have creativity, you wanted to have play, connection, all these different things. So you created this game. Where should we begin? A game of stories by Esther Perel. And there's no winner, there's no loser. So it's not the type of game I, you know, I'm used to playing. Yes, exactly. So we. We have. We both have a set of cards. Do I pick any, or should I.
Give you one from mine? I'm gonna have you pick from mine.
Should I go first or.
You go first.
Yeah, you go first.
You sure? Yeah, let's go. The safest one. Okay. So then I pick. And do I get to say if I want to answer it or not or no?
You have to answer.
I have to answer it. Okay. A rule. I secretly love to break a rule.
When are you rule breaking?
I feel like I'm always breaking the.
But it's a story.
Okay. Tell a story.
Okay.
It's a story. I actually think stories, relationships are stories. Stories are bridges to each other. Stories bind us.
So here's a rule I like to break consistently.
Yes.
Since we're going on the story of play, in some ways, I feel like I've emotionally and physically matured and grown up in other ways. I feel like I've kept this childlike curiosity Inside of me. It's one of the reasons why I love to interview people and do the podcast. It's one of the reasons I try to make people feel uncomfortable when I meet them for the first time by asking them questions that maybe they wouldn't have thought, you know, answered with a stranger. So one of the things I love to break is, in my relationship is trying to bring play to every moment, even when it's stressful.
You like to be goofy.
I love to be goofy, love to be silly and tease. And I think there's a difference between teasing and bullying. I don't want to be a bully.
It's a world apart.
Yeah, exactly. I don't want to be a bully, but I love to be playful and tease and just throw a little. What about this, you know, a little comment here? Martha, she says that she thinks I was like, you know, a Mexican in another life because I have. She says I have the humor not of a white person from America, but of a Mexican because I'm teasing and playful, and I have a sarcasm that she says is similar to the way that she grew up. So I think for me, I don't take anything too seriously, especially in the relationship, which why I love that you said play is one of the keys to success and which is why if someone is not reciprocal, then it becomes challenging. If they're not wanting to play with.
You, it's like throwing a ball that drops the floor.
Yeah. You're playing ping pong and it just. With yourself. Yeah.
Yes.
So that is a rule I love to secretly break is just being a child having childlike energy, but having maturity at the same time.
Nice.
Yes. Okay, so then what? I finished the card and now it's your turn.
Right now we're doing it like this, but, you know, sometimes I put two. Two cards, and then I get to pick for the other person or people themselves. Then we have little orange tokens in which when you play with the group, we can put pressure on the card. And then we have. The group says, we want you to talk about this. So it becomes very.
To make some kind of, like, have someone do it.
Yes.
So there's all kinds of variations, but it's.
I kind of want to do a sex one with you. I think we took all those cards out, but here, I'll let you just choose one.
You asked for us to take them out, so I was going to go.
I know I should have.
Oh, God. The most humiliated I've ever felt. Oh, God.
You know, the most embarrassing or humiliating.
No, I can tell you immediately the thing. I'm like 10, 11. So it goes back a long time. I stole a candy.
Oh, that's it?
Well, you don't want to be caught.
You got caught?
I got caught.
By who? Your parents? By the store person.
The person that was waiting in line.
They saw you.
That saw me and said to the.
Person, she stole it. No way. What did you have to do?
I gave it back.
Oh, man.
And she said, you have to pay for it. I said, I don't want it. She said, you have to pay for it. I said, I don't have the money. She said, you leave me something and then you come back with the money.
Wow. So you have to pay for it even though you didn't take it.
Well, I didn't have the money. So I went home. I got the money because I had to leave my school.
Oh, my gosh. Oh, you had to leave, like some collateral? Some. Like your ID or your phone at the time?
Yes, yes. I had to leave collateral and bring money back.
That's so embarrassing. It's humiliating.
It's like. Yeah, because if you're going to take something you're not supposed to take, the.
Whole point of it is then I get caught.
It's not to be caught.
You know, it's interesting and I probably love this because I bet other people have conversations when you answer and then it triggers something in someone else. Yes, I stole for a couple years from, I don't know, 10, 11, somewhere around there. 11, 12.
What was it?
Candy. All the time, Right? Candy. And I thought I was so smooth. I never got caught from a store. But one time I went to my. This was the most humiliating, probably and embarrassing and probably most shameful thing. You know, as a kid, kid growing up, my dad brought me and a friend of mine after basketball practice to go to one of his clients. He sold life insurance. And we had to drive, I don't know, 45 to an hour away to a farm. He was like a client of his at a farm in Ohio. And we go there and my dad's like, okay, you kids, like, hang out on the farm or whatever in the house and walk around. I gotta talk to Mr. So and so for an hour to go over stuff. So we're walking around, nosy little kids, you know, 12 years old, go down in the basement, and I'm like, opening up drawers. I'm doing stuff I shouldn't do. I see a wallet. I take out the wallet. I open it up, there's a $20 bill and a $5 bill. And we're looking at each other. We're like, should we do this? I'm like, he will never know. I take the five. My friend takes the 20. I get woken up that night at, I don't know, 4am in the morning, and my dad is hovering over me at this time. My dad's pretty intimidating still, and he's hovering over me. Did you steal from so and so money? And I go, no. Right away, I'm like, am I dreaming? Am I awake? I'm like, no, I'm defending myself, right? Lied right to my dad. And he goes, Mr. So and so was going to buy food for, like, his cows, right? Or for his, like, animals on the farm. And he doesn't have the money to go buy the food. Like, it's gone. I go, I don't know. I don't know what happened. You know, I just lied. But I was also, like, waking up. I was, like, disoriented. And then he calls my friend's parents, and he admits to it. And it was the most humiliating, embarrassing, shameful thing because I had to drive back alone. My friend didn't have to go, but I drove back for the hour with my parents in the front seat, me in the back seat, just so ashamed. And I had to go face this guy and say I'm sorry with, like, the most. You know, he was so frustrated and angry and upset. And I never stole again after that. So I don't know. Did you steal after that moment?
No.
You know, my moment is I taking the thing and somebody goes like this.
No.
They did that?
Yes.
No way.
I still have the book.
Oh, my gosh.
And it's like, you freeze. Oh, the shame do you make.
I'll never forget this guy. Guy's face. Like I was 12 years old.
Right?
Okay, okay. If I could whisper something in the ear of my younger self, I would say. And I'd probably say something very loving. Part of me wanted to be playful, but I'd probably say something loving because that's what I needed to hear. I'd probably say that you are loved, you matter, and it's all gonna be okay. That's what I would say, because I think that's what I needed to hear the most. And it's funny because I've said this so many times on my show, so my audience is gonna get tired of me saying this, but I'm gonna show you this. Over a year ago, I put a photo of my younger self on my screensaver. Right? I've talked about this so many times now. And so for the last year, this is. My therapist, Clara had me do work on my inner child, on healing the relationship that I had with myself back then and really having intimate conversations, exercises with the 5, 6, 7 year old that. That was sexually abused. I've talked about that with you before, which I never really fully healed. You know, that whole conversation with. And it's been a beautiful journey to have intimacy, connection, you know, and bridge the gap from 5, 6, 7 till now and be able to have a conversation between that space and time and really bring the two together, you know, my inner child into me.
So what would this one say to you?
What would he say to me? Oh, my gosh. That's a good. Actually, that's really good.
May I bring him back?
Yeah, yeah.
What does he say to you?
Oh, my gosh. He probably says, let me see. Let me get my heart here. He says, thank you. Thank you for being willing to be courageous in all these scary emotions, all the scary emotions that I'm feeling right now, the things that I'm uncertain about, the things that I'm afraid of. Thank you for having the courage to dive in and be, you know, put all your emotions on the table, address the messiness, handle it all, and supporting me in finding peace and healing that I've always wanted. That's what I would say. Yeah. So. Yeah, I know. It's crazy. It's crazy. Oh, okay. Okay. I'm going to the next one. This is what I do. I laugh when things get deep, too. I get deep and then I'm like.
You laugh while your tears are straight.
Of course.
Of course.
Okay. This is you.
Oops. I would sell everything to be able to. It's interesting. I don't have a dream, you know, I live a lot of my dreams at this moment, so I don't feel like I would sell, but I think if I was to, I would sell everything to remain healthy.
Yeah.
Or I would set everything for my kids or my partner to be healthy. And if I needed to, like, I would go everywhere in the world just to make sure that if there's something that can keep them, it's not just alive, it's healthy.
Yeah. I don't want them just not just suffering and alive.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that at this point, that's the only.
Is that the biggest fear for you?
Yes. But you see, when I say I live with dread, you jumped. Like, really? Because it's not the. You know, I live with the fear of loss. It's not dread, just bad things happening. What's underneath is the fact that my parents had lost everybody and so their entire families, they were the only two that came out. And this is part of my DNA. And so the fear of loss, of traumatic loss and the grief, that's what I fear. So health, or selling everything or imagining myself cruising the world to find the best doctor that could help.
Solutions.
Yeah.
Yes. With something is part of preventing that loss.
Have you had major losses?
No, actually, I, on a personal level, have not. But I often, you know, if one of them drives, I often. At night.
You're worried.
You know, I just. I've never said don't go, but I just like the little cold when they arrive.
You're like my mom, too.
I can easily imagine accidents.
Oh, man.
I can easily imagine. Yes, I am a catastrophizer in that sense, you know, But I. So what does therapy do? It allows you to just. In the mind, it's like. No.
Calms the mind.
You go out, it calms you. But I still like the call, of course, the assurance. So the fear is loss, and the dread is the manifestation of that fear. So I would say everything, actually. I don't know what it's like. I could put it like that. I would sell everything to be able to live without dread. Ooh, that would probably be the.
What would it take from you?
I don't know.
To process.
To let that go.
I look at people who don't have those fears, and I think they are free of this. It's like, what does life look like without worry?
Peaceful.
You know, they have other things. They have other stresses. But it's an amazing thing when I see people who don't have, you know, that is not their thing. Yeah, I don't have their things.
You don't have jealousy or insecurity.
I don't have that.
Do you work with a therapist yourself?
I have. I don't do. I don't work with a therapist at this moment, but I have over the many years of my life. Yes.
Do you think it's important for therapists to have therapists?
Absolutely. Absolutely. First of all, if you don't, then you. You will be triggered by things that people bring into your office, and you will be projecting things on them that don't belong to them. We call that counter transference. So, you know, there. There is what people put on you, but there is what you put on.
Them because you have something unresolved.
Or there is what you can't work with because of what is happening. Inside of you.
Wow.
So it's a necessity.
You gotta be cleansing yourself constantly.
Essential.
Interesting. What do you think? You said you haven't had a therapist in a while or worked with one in a while. Where do you think. What would be.
Where would I go to for today?
Yeah, what would you. What would be available for you today if you were doing today?
I would go to a coach because I need practical help. It's less internal at this moment. It's more. It's more practical things.
What's holding you back from.
I don't. I am a person who likes to receive help.
So I don't just haven't found the right coach.
I wrote the whole piece recently about asking for help in the blog and because I realized that it's very easy for me to ask for help. Actually, when we met early, early on, I asked for help and I just.
Thought like, I've never done this marketing stuff.
It's like, I know nothing about marketing. You like the genius marketer. I'm a therapist who suddenly finds. And I just thought I know people and they can help me. And I don't feel like I have no problem saying I know nothing about this, but because I know, I trust what I do know a lot about. And this is new for me, so I don't experience it as belittling or admitting or vulnerable or I think it's an amazing thing to ask for help. I love. And by the way, I did ask on social, I asked people, you know, how do you feel about asking for help? And like 70 something percent of people said, I don't do it, I don't like it, that doesn't make me feel good, etc. And then I said, and how do you feel when other people ask you for help? And the same 70% said, I love it. And I'm thinking, you know what it's like when other people ask. You don't think they're stupid. They don't know they're vulnerable.
You think you want to help.
You want to help. Well, why don't you think that when you ask for help, other people enjoy that too? So I'm big into the asking for help these days and therapy is a piece of that at this moment. Therapy is not the thing. But that doesn't mean that, you know, Jack thinks I should meditate.
Maybe you need a meditation coach.
So I do. I do. But in movement, I get calm.
When I get walking, you're hiking, I don't sit.
That does not work for me.
What's the one Thing that triggers you the most that you would like to evolve beyond. What's the thing that irritates you or triggers you or frustrates you?
Bureaucrats. Rigidity. Rigidity, which is the opposite of playfulness, not flexibility and arbitrariness. Rules for the sake of rules. Bureaucracy in the big sense of the word. And bureaucrats as a whole. You know that you know things that you know. Rigidity, which means that you write, you don't listen to others, you make your point. I mean, conversations that are not conversations, people that yell at each other for the sake of yelling at each other, cancel culture from all sides. Yes. I mean, my work is about helping people have the difficult conversations that they need to have, want to have, don't know how to have. As long as they want to, I can do something.
How do you cultivate Trust if you're 100% honest with that person? If you are transparent about every action you make in your life, if you're, you know, they have access to whatever they want to see, and you're, you're constantly creating trust, but for whatever reason, they still might be jealous or insecure or not believing you? How does someone get someone to trust them or is it not about them at that stage and it's about the other person and their insecurities?
Well, it depends very much on the particulars of the situation. So I don't know if there's a generic answer to that. I think that you can establish the ground rules explicitly, you know, and have a discussion about it. Are we going to lie to each other or not? Are we going to tell each other the truth to the degree that we can to make that an actual goal and to talk through the consequences of doing that and not doing it. And then I would also say whenever a hiccup occurs in the relationship, maybe you don't call it out at each hiccup, you know, because you have to have a certain amount of silent tolerance, any relationship, to let small infractions go. But if they repeat, my rule is three times, and it's the rule that I share with my wife. If something happens three times that is causing emotional upset, anger, jealousy, disappointment, resentment, frustration, any of those things, anything that you don't want to experience and that you especially don't want to experience repeatedly, then you can call it out. And if you have three examples, your case is much better made than if you just have one. And I would also say that when you call it out, you know, you could say, look, we were at a party the other night, and you were. It looked to me, I felt as if you were paying too much intense, intent attention to Dave. There was flirting going on there. That's what it looked like to me. There was some flirting going on there. And, you know, that made me uncomfortable. Well, you don't say, well, you were flirting. Stop doing it. You say, well, this is how it looked. This is what it looked like to me. And here was my response. And then you want to think, and maybe I'm a damn fool and blind and jealous and stupid and I'm misinterpreting, or maybe it was a harmless flirtation of the sort that people will engage in because it adds a little bit of spice to a social interaction. You want to find out, like it, it's really convenient if it's the other person's fault, except that you're laden with living with that person, so it really doesn't help you anyways. But it's convenient because then they have to change. But you got to think about this over the long run. You're gonna be interacting with this person on a minute by minute basis for decades. If you're the idiot and that's causing trouble, then you should find out. So you want to say, well, look, this is what I saw. What's your explanation of what's going on? And then they'll offer you their viewpoint and hopefully they'll do the same thing. They'll think, well, this is my intent, and maybe they have to go think about it, but this is my intent and this is what I saw. And I think you're being oversensitive in that situation. And you peel back the explanations layer by layer until you both agree on what happened and more importantly, on what you're going to do about it in the future. And that's really hard. And especially if there is something going on that's not straight, because that will require quite a bit of digging. It'll probably result in anger and tears and a fight. And that's very unpleasant. It's. It's easier in the short term to avoid that, but hopefully the consequence of that is you don't have to have that fight again, right? You have to come to a negotiated agreement about. About that situation. And you have to pay attention to your own uncomfortable, negative emotions in order to manage that and not. And not pretend that everything's all right or that you're nicer than you are, or that you're less jealous than you are or less blind. Or. See, one of the things I learned from Carl Jung, the psychoanalyst about marriage was that there is a reason marriage was a vow. Like, the vow is that you stick together. Okay, so now imagine that's a vow. Okay? You do not get to leave, period. Okay, so what does that mean? Well, on the upside, it means that you don't have to be alone. It means that your family will have continuity over decades. It means that the narrative of your life won't be fragmented and broken by divorce or sequential divorce. It means that your children can grow up and maybe have their children within a continuing family. It means that your children will be able to maintain relationships with the grandparents on both sides and the cousins. Like it's a big deal to maintain that. There's huge advantages in it. It means that you'll have someone there when you're not well, and so will your partner. And it'll means that you have someone to share all of the positive things of life with. So there's huge advantages to it. Okay, so why does it have to be a vow? Well, I don't think you can tell the truth to someone who can run away. Because if you tell the truth to someone and they can run away, then they'll run away. Right? Right. Because you're a mess, man. And not. Not just because of your own inadequacies, but because human beings are so complicated and. And have such dark corners and. And. And have had, you know, unresolved problems in their life sometimes that stem back generations and are twisted and bent in all sorts of ways. And you. You can't re. It's very, very difficult to reveal that, except to someone who can't run away now that. That. You know, I'm not saying that people should never separate. I am saying, though, that it's better not to if you can manage it. But then the other thing, too, is if you can't run away, then you're motivated in a different way. It's like I'm stuck with this woman, and she's stuck with me. And unless we want to have this same goddamn fight over and over and over for the next who knows how long, why don't we straighten it out and then we can put it behind us? See, the vow gives you a kind of desperation. That is another motivation to actually solve the problems. And if you've got a way out, you can always stay hidden. You can guard yourself. You can protect yourself and even protect that part of yourself that thinks that it can leave if things get too bad. Now, the problem with that, in my estimation, is that you're going to drag your stupidity into the next relationship.
Right. Always do. Right.
Well, generally speaking. Right. And so now you can get very. You can, you can, under unfortunate circumstances. You can get tangled up with someone who's not playing a straight game with you and won't and it's just impossible. But I'm not talking about the limit cases, you know, I'm talking about the average case, the average amount of unhappiness and trouble. It's still plenty. And then the. Sorry, just one more thing I'd add to that. You also have to, in some sense, shake the illusion that the other person is somehow not you. You're so tied up with them that there's no difference between you and them in some sense is that what's good for her is going to be good for you and vice versa. One of the things we try to do to the two of us is we try to say yes to each other. Now, there's rules that go along with that, which is, well, I'm going to say yes to you, but that sort of means that you shouldn't ask me. Unreasonable. You shouldn't make unreasonable demands. I'll say yes as much as I possibly can and then you'll do that in return and then we get yes out of the deal instead of no. That's also a huge plus.
Most people, I believe, who think they are evolved enough for a relationship or not.
Right. When do you know?
For a long time. By the way, I count myself in that category where I thought I was.
I really thought.
There were times in my life where I really thought I was a great. I was a great guy. It wasn't that I was ever a nasty person. I was never a mean person. I was never a. That wasn't the great partner I thought I was. It's not like I. You know, there are times in my life where I thought, God, I'm just. I'd just be a great partner to someone. And I was not ready to be a great partner to someone. Because I think the first time you really give yourself to something, really commit yourself to not just your own happiness and your own needs. Because that's what most people talk about when they talk about a relationship is their needs, their happiness.
Right.
How good it feels to be in a relationship, it's about them. But it's not about seeing someone else, truly seeing someone else and understanding who they are and understanding what their needs are and supporting them and their happiness and their goals.
It's a great relationship when you stop thinking about your needs and you just say, I'm gonna give this person and look at them from a place of understanding and want to bring them so much joy and fulfillment and not expecting return. But hopefully the other person is saying the same thing about you.
Well, yes and no. There's a lot of. There are a lot of people who, on that idea, that ethos, have lived a very masochistic life for a long time. Really? That, by the way, what you just described could describe one of two things. One beautiful, one terrible. What you just described could either be an extraordinary relationship of two givers, or it could describe unrequired love. It could describe the person who is giving, giving, giving, giving, giving to someone and playing the martyr in their own relationship. They keep ignoring me. They keep, you know, not meeting my needs. They keep being selfish. They keep. But I am just gonna show up and be my best partner and love them and give my all and one day they will turn around to meet me in that many, many people have caused tremendous suffering to themselves and wasted a lot of good years.
So is it both giving yourself? Make sure you're asking for what you need, but also giving?
It's a combination of respecting what your core needs are. What do I need? Like, when it really comes down to it, what's my standard for what I need? Now, how exactly someone meets that standard is. That's where the messiness of relationships comes in. Because you say, I want to be respected. And then someone does something and you go, I don't feel respected. But they go, but that doesn't mean a lack of respect to me. So now we have a whole conversation on the execution of a standard.
Oh, my God.
And different definitions of what meets that standard. That's. That's where the confusion comes in, and that's where we have to have some really loving, cooperative conversations to figure out, am I, you know, am I being. This is one of the hardest parts of relationship. Am I being reasonable in asking for what I'm asking for? Or is this my insecurity speaking? You know, am I. Which one is talking? And sometimes we're so close we don't even know that's the danger. That's. By the way, I see one of the most valuable jobs I can do for people in my work is not to be a smarter voice than they are. Because people. People can be great. They can when it comes to their friends or people around them or whatever, they can be very smart. But to be an objective voice outside of their drunken haze, because we're so close to something, we get. We're not sober and now we don't have logical answers to questions because someone's. We get to the point we're arguing about something. I don't even know if I'm right. I don't know if the thing I'm saying is if I'm being the insecure one or if I'm being the reasonable one. And sometimes we leave a situation and we go, God, I was insecure. And sometimes we leave and we go, I can't believe I let someone convince me I was crazy. They like, they were the one that was doing the wrong thing, and they convinced me that I was nuts.
So how do we step out of that emotional feeling where we're feeling overwhelmed or disrespected or hurt or sad or like the relationship didn't meet an expectation or communication was off and we're in it and we're communicating and we're both frustrated? How do you step out and look at it from a different point of view so that you just don't keep repeating that conversation over and over? I mean, don't hurt it further.
Yeah, I. I think there's a. We have to have a really healthy combination of always questioning ourselves and. And saying, where is this coming from? For me, and would it really hurt me to compromise on this standard? Is. Is. Would it be the more loving thing to do to understand this about my partner? But in order to that that needs to be. Be combined with a simultaneous respect for ourselves and what we need and to, I think, go to a situation and say, okay, I want to be the most understanding, compassionate, loving partner I can be who doesn't inhibit or limit my partner, who supports them, wants them to do great. But I also need to recognize that it's not. What was I saying? I lost my train of thought. I need to be the person that can be understanding. What was I saying? Be understanding of my partner.
You want to be the most understanding of someone else, but you also have to know your own needs.
Be understanding of someone else.
But.
Oh, that's right. I need to be the person that is understanding of the needs of my partner and what they want. But at the same time, what was it Loves my. I need to be understanding of my partner's needs. Ah, that's it. I need to be understanding of my partner's needs. But the context of me being super compassionate and understanding needs to be that I am that this is happening in a loving environment where my partner wants. Wants to be my teammate. If we're in a situation where our partner isn't showing empathy for us and isn't like if you feel they're not trying to. That we're always coming to that side. That's a problem.
That's tough.
That's a problem.
There should be seeing. I see where you're coming from as well. Type of energy and communication.
Exactly.
Not just I'm not getting what I want. You did this wrong.
You need to feel you have a teammate.
Yeah.
And a lot of people feel like they're constantly being understanding but they don't have a teammate on the other side. I'm constantly trying to grow and understand your position. But I don't feel the same from your side. That then becomes a problem.
How do you have the conversation so that it switches or becomes more of a equal partnership and teammate. If you feel like you're the only one being on the team, how do you get the other person?
I think we need to communicate a lot. About what? About the spirit of the relationship. You know what I mean?
Like not keeping score.
Yeah. Like pride is a very hard thing to give up in a relationship because we become competitive often very quickly. When we feel threatened, when we feel vulnerable.
When we throw.
Our partner's done something to hurt us. Now I'm. Now how do I score a point or how do I. And that's. That's a. Just once you get into that cycle, it's like you're just. It spirals. It has to. One person has to be prepared to break that cycle. I'm not going to do that game. And I do believe that we have to love the way we want to be loved. And we have to constantly educate our partner on what it is to love. Not from an arrogant place. But we're all. In a sense. Both partners are always educating each other by you do something I don't like. And if I have a loving, compassionate response to that, I'm also showing you what I want this to be in reverse. When I do something you don't like.
Right.
Here's the response I want.
I'm not attacking you.
Not a game playing response. Not a. You know, like if you see a partner, you're in the early stages of relationship and you feel your partner was really flirting with someone over there. Having a conversation about something that made you feel uncomfortable. But from a loving place and from a kind place and from a place of. That made me feel, you know, it hurt me to see that and not. I'm gonna blame you and I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna get angry. But that, you know, that made me Feel uncomfortable bringing an energy like that. Most people aren't used to that in a relationship. We're not used to that standard of communication. We're used to doing something and then someone attacks us.
Reacting.
Yeah, exactly. So I think it's educated. We're constantly educating.
What's it gonna take for us to not react to a situation where we feel hurt or like we. Our expectation wasn't met from our partner and come from that place.
God, it's so difficult because.
Why. Why do we react so much?
Sometimes it's just space. Like how I need to take a moment to. To process something so that I can say I can have a more evolved.
Response and not react. It's funny. I've been, you know, the relationship I've been in, which is newer in the last five months. I want to talk about something right away and address it. She doesn't want to talk. She wants to have space. So she doesn't react. Yeah. So she's. And she'll say, like, I don't want to get angry at you. I don't want to yell at you. That's not the type of person I want to be. So I'd rather just not talk. And then I'm in limbo and I'm like, I just want to, like, get resolved this thing. Let's at least communicate and then we can move on as opposed to holding on to something for half a day or a few hours.
Yeah. Here's the thing. Space is easy. When you get a text you don't like, you know, or when you see something you don't like from afar and you're not going to see that person for a few hours or till tomorrow. Now you have space to go through. You know, I'm angry. You know, I'm really, really angry. I'm upset, I'm sad, I'm hurt. I feel rejected. I don't feel enough. I. You know, you can kind of cycle through. Through those and then have a couple of sensible conversations with people whose opinions you respect. You and I have done this.
Not that big a deal. Take a break.
Okay. This thing, I'm feeling this, and I'm hurt, and I'm this and I'm that and that. And you have a couple of smart voices, either that come from in here.
Which is hard to do, which is.
Very hard to get that objectivity and. Or that come, you know, from just one or two people whose opinions you really respect who aren't going to tell you what you want to hear.
Yeah.
Who aren't going to tell you you're so right to be. To feel that way, get angry. Someone who is brave enough and close enough to you and smart enough sometimes to recognize. I'm concerned that you're overreacting to this and that this. This reaction is not going to serve you.
Yeah.
And I think you need to bring this energy to the conversation that is extremely valuable. What's hard is when you get information in real time and you're with the person and you're in the same room, and now you're dealing with, trying to process and create that, you know, okay, I need to. I'm trying to get to a more positive place here while being asked to communicate in real time. Well, real time elicits reflex responses. And reflex responses are often harmful to a relationship. It's the reflex responses are often based on instinct. Instinct is very dangerous. False instinct so often told, you know, trust your instincts, and it's just not often great advice.
If you're not emotionally intelligent and if you're jealous all the time, then having a jealous instinct isn't necessarily the best, best thing.
But some of these instincts are kind of hardwired. Right. What we're doing with a lot of our better nature is overcoming certain programming that we have. You know, in a riptide, you get pulled out to sea. Your instinct tells you in that moment to swim back to shore against the current. Ignore the riptide. I just need to get back to shore. Which is stronger, you or the current?
The current.
And it will drown you. You will exhaust and drown before you get back.
True. So until it washes you to shore, just like.
Right. So in that moment, fighting harder won't save you. Thinking clearer will. And thinking more clearly means I need to swim sideways, I need to swim parallel, let it take me out, swim further, or swim parallel. Because I've actually, I'm giving myself a longer journey. But then when I'm out of the current, then I can swim back to shore. Now, that's not. Instinct won't get you to do that because that requires thinking clearly. Instinct will drown you in that moment and in a relationship, in dating, your instincts will get you killed.
That's true.
You know, your instinct says a woman goes on a date with a guy and has a great time and says, your instinct says, clear the calendar for the next three months. We found him.
Right?
We did it, guys.
We had an amazing night. Clear the schedule. We were connected on every level.
He's awesome. We have a great connection. Clear the calendar. This is what we're doing. Now, even if I'm not even saying someone hates the rest of their life, you can like your job and still be so caught up in the chemical rush of this was amazing that this is all you want to do now, right? Well, this isn't good for what you want to happen here. What do you want to happen? Well, you want to get to know this person better, spend more time with them, invest at an organic price pace based on the level of investment that's going on.
Right.
Thing I've said for years, don't invest in someone based on how much you like them. Invest based on how much they invest in you. People don't do that. People invest on instinct. I really like them and my investment is proportionate to how much I like them, not how much I'm seeing.
There's a mutual investment in a relationship that's. You've been together for a long time, we've been married together for a long time, and it just feels like it's not working. And you're talking about divorce and both of you aren't happy, but you've got the kids, you've got the home, you've got the lives together and both of you aren't happy.
Right.
And you've addressed this and talked about it. You've tried different things. They haven't worked. Maybe. Is there a way to rekindle those three things things and find that connection again? Maybe. Maybe you've lost that attraction and that balance. Is that even possible in these times? Or is divorce the only way to then go find true happiness or connection somewhere else?
If a true connection ever existed in that relationship, then it can be fixed. But that's the key. Did it ever really exist? And we've got to examine that because again, many people have been living off the fantasy of their perception of things, what they wanted to believe it was and wanted to hold on to this feeling of being in love when in reality they were involved in an unhealthy attachment to this individual. So we have to go deeper and find out, is that there? So if the connection was there, yes, we can work on everything else. We can get things on track. It's going to. Cause it's going to create a lot of deeper emotional discovery, so to speak, as far as finding out, okay, why is there a disconnect now? How do we fall off of track? How can we now correct these specific things? Because there's very specific things that need to change. Are we both willing to put in that work? All right. And if both sides are willing to do that. Then it absolutely can work. Now, if there was no connection.
Yeah, Divorce, Get a divorce.
Get a divorce sooner than later. I'm a man of God and I would love for everyone to be able to stay married. Right. But I.
Even when people have been convinced that you get married, you stay married forever. Even if it's a religious thing or you feel like the pressure of society.
Like, here's why, despite those things, you don't stay married, especially when you have kids. So so many people stay married because of the kids. Right. But if you can't create a positive environment, environment at home, you are damaging the kids worse than you would in divorce. Divorce isn't, in my opinion, the greatest struggle for the child. It's lacking the understanding of what just happened here. So if you've been feeding your kids all these years, that mommy and daddy love each other and everything's all good, despite our dysfunction. Exactly. So now one day you wake up, we're getting divorced, the child is confused. And the thing is, we're not honest with the kids about why this happened, what went wrong. We're not saying, yeah, you know what? We knew a long time ago we weren't best for each other. We're not giving them the honest truth for them to learn and not make the same mistakes.
Repeat the pattern.
Exactly. What the child now thinks is you can't trust love.
Wow.
You can't trust marriage because you can love each other and one day, now it's over. And now they become dysfunctional, or they now have dysfunctional relations because of their skewed perception of things, because they lack clarity in understanding what just happened here. But going back to divorce versus staying together again, what a child needs more than anything is a positive, loving environment. If you can achieve that together, great. If you can't, you are better off apart.
Wow.
Because when you speak to adults now, adults who are struggling today grew up in dysfunctional households. And it didn't matter if it was a one parent or two parent household.
I felt it, man.
Exactly. Dysfunction is dysfunction.
Yeah.
And we pick up on these things. No one is that great of an actor that they're hiding it from their child. The child sees the problem, Feels it.
Feels it, feels it.
Exactly. And then you don't even realize you neglect the child in certain ways because you're dwelling in your own issues, your own struggle. There are women right now who have mommy issues or they have what I call I don't want to be my mother's sin. Where they saw their mother allow herself to be Treated poorly, abused, suffered through a horrible marriage. And the woman is like, I don't want to ever be that. And now because she's holding on to that, she either becomes her mother or creates other issues, not trying to be her. All right, so it still creates a negative cycle of dysfunctional relationships, all stemming from we stayed long, longer than we should have. We try to hold on to something that we can't work. My thing is this. Even for those who are spiritual, if you're going to say we're not supposed to get divorced because of God, well, God didn't say act a fool in the marriage. At the same time, like, what's the point? Exactly. How are you glorifying God or your spiritual beliefs by staying in a negative marriage for the sake of staying, you're defeating the purpose. The purpose is to have a healthy, happiness, happy union, to raise healthy, happy children. If we can achieve that together, it's time to go. I mean, I wish it could be different, but that's just the reality of the world we live in because too many of us have made the wrong decision in who we married. And we have to accept that. I'd rather you accept that now. Go through your healing process and both you can find your happiness and learn how to coexist as our co parent parents. And again, creating a positive environment in that co parenting relationship. Because I don't want you to be co parents and still be dysfunctional. Exactly. Again, defeating the purpose. All right. I want you to get away from each other so you can find happiness, not be more negative.
Yeah. Heal, move forward.
Yeah, exactly. Be happy. Be happy for them if they found someone else. I know that's tough for a lot of people, but be happy. If they're at peace, you find your peace. Let the children see happy, healthy relationships, not just with other people within yourself. Wow. Stop showing them a miserable father or mother. They see it and they hold on to resentment. I can't tell you how many, I won't say every, but I want to say 90% of clients that I've seen, and I would argue that if you spoke to any therapist or coach out there, the majority of people have issues stemming from their parents, graduates, growing up in that household.
Yeah. Or their. Their environment.
Exactly.
Their parents or their environments.
Yeah, exactly. And it's just all dysfunctional relationship. Relationships is the backbone of society. When we allow that to be as dysfunctional as it is right now, that's the reason why we have all these problems. We fix that, man, this world becomes a hundred times better.
Place to live easily, more loving, more.
Peaceful, more enjoyable, happy people around doing horrible, negative things.
All right, when do you. When should people, you know, when do they know that, okay, we just need to work on things in our marriage or relationship. Like, not every marriage is going to be perfect all the time and happy. Like, there's going to be some dysfunction or challenges or issues that arise. Hopefully you've addressed all those things. But let's say you've set expectations early. You both understand these things before you got married. Like, you commute communicated everything, and you're aligned to a certain vision for your marriage. 5 years goes down the line, and it seems like things are getting worse and worse. Maybe expectations change, maybe values change. Who knows what it is? When do you know? Like, okay, it's getting too far, or we should stay in this relationship. When should we get divorced? Or should we keep trying to.
To me, the first sign that we have problems is that when whatever is going on in our marriage is affecting me in a way that I can't be the best husband or wife I need to be, we got a problem. That's step number one. I think what's happened is we've normalized dysfunction too much. We've normalized this idea that we're going to all have problems.
Yeah.
But we all have problems because we don't learn how to work through them. Because. Because we have dysfunction and individual dysfunction that we have not processed and resolved. That's the reason why dysfunction is so common. It's not healthy, though. Like I've heard some people say, well, arguing is healthy in a relationship. No, it's not.
No.
No. Disagreement is acceptable. But when yelling at each other is not good. Exactly.
I just watched the Will Smith and Jada the Red Table talk of Will Smith, like, opening up about their marriage. I don't know if you watched this yet.
I haven't watched it yet.
I watched it last night. It's actually really powerful what he said, Jada. I guess when they first started dating or whatever, at one point she raised her voice at him and sweared at him or did something where she made him look foolish in front of other people. And he took her into the other room and said, can I speak with you for a minute? Privately. Took her to the other room and said, I can't be with someone who's going to raise their voice, yell at me, or swear at me. It just doesn't work for me. And it's gonna put me into a shell. Like, I'm not gonna be the best version of myself. And if that's you, then I love you, but we can't be together anymore. But I need us to be able to have complete peace. If we're. If we don't agree on something, then we have to set ground rules where we step away. We take care of our anger on our owns, not in front of the other person. Then we come back and communicate from a peaceful, loving place about what we're upset with or frustrated with. And so we never put that on the other person. When I heard that, I was like, wow, that's so powerful. Because most of us. Most people, it seems like in relationships, will allow themselves to yell once and swear once, and then it's just like once you said, you son of a b.
Once.
It's like you can say whenever you want.
Exactly.
And then that respect is gone, that, you know, that love is gone or it seems to be gone.
And the other part is we expect our partners to be our emotional punching bags. We think, well, because you love us, you should deal with our crazy moment, our dysfunction, our disrespect, all these things, because. Okay, but we show you love in other moments, so don't blame me for this one. No, like, focus on giving your partner the best of you, not the worst of you. Yes, they should help you through your struggle, but struggle is not an excuse to blatantly do disrespect, stress out, throw negativity at your partner. Yeah. You know, you can't do that. So I think we have to all hold ourselves accountable to a higher standard of how we behave in our relationships. And, yes, stop giving this excuse that, well, we're all going to have our dysfunction. No, listen, it can happen, granted. But we should be focused on, as will laid out for Jada in that talk. We have to discuss things peacefully.
Yes.
We have to come to the table calmly, maturely, and see how we can resolve it and not just lash out.
That's not healthy, because screaming is not communicating.
No.
It's not creating a connection. There's not an attraction there. There's no balance.
Exactly.
You don't have those three things. It destroys all of it. And, you know, whenever I have gotten in arguments in the past in my relationships, all I want to do is go be alone afterwards. I'm like, I don't want to be around you. I just want to be alone. Like, I need space to, like, heal and recover now because it's very traumatic, or at least it has been for me. And that's just been my personal experience. And I think that's why it is so important to learn how to communicate in a peaceful way. And sure, you might get frustrated and tension might come up, but you got to create ground rules, I think, for yourself and your partner. What are we going to do when that happens?
Exactly?
Maybe we just. Until we can breathe and, like, communicate calmly. But I don't think there's anything good that comes from screaming.
No, not at all.
I witnessed that with my parents screaming and escalating, and it was just like, it never felt good in the house. There was nothing that ever came from that that was good. They always had to, like, apologize to each other in ways, and then it was, like, passive aggressive for a week. And it's just like, why can't we just be, you know, more peaceful about these things? So I think it's really important. It doesn't just affect your relationship. It affects the people that are in your relationship. Family, friends. It affects those people.
Even affects your co workers, because, you know, I'm a firm believer that people take a lot of their relationship issues into the office, and it affects their attitude, their energy, their focus, and they don't realize how they're hurting their efficiency and hurting their ability. Ability to do so much more and do so much better, whether they're an entrepreneur or they work for somebody because their relationship is dysfunctional. And so, like, I'm a firm believer in, if we can help people who work in corporate or whatever have stronger, better relationships, their careers will thrive, their companies will thrive. Like, it pours into everything. So we have to create that positivity in our lives so that we can reach our true potential.
Mm. I think it affects everything in business. I mean, when you're having a bad relationship intimately, it affects the way you show up in your career, for sure. What's. What's one thing you wish men understood more about women in general and one thing you wish women knew about men in general.
All right.
Every man and everyone's different. You know, everyone humans different, but in general, based on all the work you've done and the. The things you hear over and over again, one thing you wish men knew about women and women knew about men.
This may sound bad, but what's coming. I always just say what comes to mind.
All right.
I never practice any of these things is learn to look past her words. And what I mean by that is, a lot of times, again, women don't always fully express themselves as much as women will say, men are horrible communicators. Women are actually horrible communicators. And it's because, yes, they talk, but they're not always clear. And part of it is because women can see past our words, all right, Sometimes to the point where they overanalyze and over rationalize things, and it causes them to look at things the wrong way. But they know how to pay attention to all the small details. They understand if our moods are different. Even if we say we're okay. They're very in tune with the that. So they kind of have that expectation with us. And though I want women to be more clear and transparent, I want men to be more aware and be more in tune with your partner. It's not just about her saying, I'm okay. Look at her. Pay attention. Does she show you she's okay? Does she really look like there's nothing going on right now? And if you can see past that, I'm not saying badger her because, yes, she might not want to be badger, but at least one, show a true concern for her feelings and show that you are going to be there for her when she is ready to let you know and have that talk. You want to create a very secure environment with your partner, a very safe environment where she can open up to you, she can be herself. And again, I do believe that starts with look past the words. And even in understanding how to keep her satisfied and happy. It's like the woman who says to you, you don't need to buy me anything for my birthday. All right? Exactly.
Don't listen to her words.
Exactly. Look past that. And even if you think she's telling the truth, you know what? There's nothing wrong with still doing a little special something for her. It just shows that, again, you're more in tune with what's really going on with her emotionally and not just what she's speaking. But I do believe that as you do that more, more often and you show a willingness to hear her out, we have to consider our partner's feelings. I think too many men don't consider their partner's feelings when you do that. She will become more transparent when she knows that she can be open and honest. And you're not going to reject how she feels or what she says or call it crazy. She'll be more willing to speak up about it. So I do think women, I mean, men need to be more in tune. Look past the words. As far as what I wish women. Women would know with men. So it's kind of the flip side of that. He can't read your mind. Yeah, he can't read your Mind. And a lot of times, men generally just don't know there's a difference between the man who loves you but does not know how you want to be loved and the man who doesn't care about what you want and how you want to be loved. All right, don't confuse the two. Some guys, some guys, not doing the right thing is simply a lack of knowledge and simply not a lack of caring. Exactly. So it's like I tell women, you got to be more specific. If you say, I need you to spend more time with me, what does that mean? How much time exactly? What are we doing together?
Exactly.
I have this example where I was counseling this couple and the wife was like, he doesn't spend any time with me. I just want him to watch some TV with me. You know, whatever. So I said, okay, cool. I'm going to speak to, to your husband. We're going to get this worked out. So I spoke to him. He said, all right, deal, I'll do it. I said, let's do it for a week. Let's see what happens. So a week passes. I said, what's the progress report? He says, man, I did everything you told me. I watched TV with her every single day I was there, you know, I showed interest. I asked her, I said, what happened? Oh, he didn't do anything. I said, what do you mean? He said, he watched TV with you? She said, yeah, he watched TV with me, but he was on one side of the couch and I was on the other side of the couch. So you see, in his mind, if you asked me to watch TV with you, I did that. In her mind, you asked me to.
Cuddle you and caress you.
Exactly.
She wanted intimacy. She wanted desire to be shown. She wanted a closeness or non sexual intimacy is what I call it. And that's what she was really looking for. So on one end I can go back to the man and say, listen, look past the words. If she says, I want time with you, it usually means she wants a closeness to you. She wants to feel there with you. So be mindful of that. But on her end, be more clear, be more specific. It's not fair to hold it against him or to claim he doesn't care when you didn't explain to him what you need. I tell women all the time, one of the greatest tests to seeing if a man is serious about you is not seeing what he does on his own or what he already knows. It's seeing how he hands handles your desires and your feelings. If when you express those Things to him. He makes the corrections. You're good, but you got to be specific. You got to make it clear. Let's see if he actually does what you ask him to do.
What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome? Was it conflict resolution? Was it boundaries? Was it not abandoning yourself? Was it communication skills? What was the fear? Fear of what?
Fear of failure.
Like a relationship not working.
Relationship not working. When you have been through, as you date and you go through relationships and you've been through betrayal and heartbreak and hurt and pain, you can become pretty cynical about love. And if you're not careful, that cynicism can really be a hindrance for you. Because you cannot be a cynic about love and acceptance. Expect to attract it at the same time.
Ooh, snap. That's true.
Yeah.
So how did you keep your heart open after going through breakups and maybe after, you know, challenging things happening in relationships where that hurt you? How did you stay open to love?
I had to reframe my thoughts and ideas and my perspective about the past.
What did you think about them then?
I had to learn to allow the past to stay in the past. I didn't want someone to come into my life and I make them pay for something they had nothing to do with.
Yeah, that's tough.
In my past.
Yeah, that's tough.
And when I got married, who did I want my husband to meet? This bitter, broken down woman who had been through the wringer in all these years and all these relationships, or did I want him to meet someone who.
Because we're all.
We're always in the process of healing, we're always in the process of growth and our emotional health. But did I want him to meet someone who was committed to that growth and that process and going forward, being committed to the same commitment, which is. Which is what really success in marriage boils down to. Being committed to the same commitment. Because, you know, when I was younger, I thought it was about this involuntary feeling of love. And then as I got older, I realized it was a conscious decision to love.
It's not just, oh, I have this attraction to this person. I feel love towards them. It's a conscious decision because you're not.
Always going to feel love. You're going to go through ups and downs and peaks and valleys. And if it were about a feeling, you'd be all over the place emotionally.
Up and down.
Yeah, it's about a decision. And so when I talk about earlier, when I talked about separating your feelings from the facts, that's what I mean. Like You're. You're going to have a range of emotions, but the fact is, this is a person that I've committed my life to.
Yeah.
This is a person I've committed to grow with this. So I made all of these commitments to this person. And then you go forward with that in mind.
Did you have fears around getting married?
I had a fear of the unknown. What is marriage really like? You know, I see other people who are married, some of them happy, some of them not. Obviously, I see a lot of people getting divorced. So what is it about marriage? What makes it work? Do I know what makes it work? Do I have what it takes to make it work? So it was. It was the fear of the unknown, because I hadn't done it before. Marriage, by nature, changes you. It's the closest relationship you'll ever have. It's very different from the parent, child relationship, every other relationship, friends, everything.
Yeah.
I wondered how it would change me.
From being in a relationship and dating to then being married. What have been the biggest differences and changes?
Allowing someone to see me at my most vulnerable state.
Did you allow that during the dating process?
I allowed it to a certain extent, but I didn't live with my husband before we got married. That was a choice that we made, really. We did not want to live together. And so when we got married and we moved in together, I had not lived with anyone since I was in College for 20 years.
Wow.
So, again, it's that adjustment in life, just sharing my space with another human being every day. How to handle that?
Yeah. And you got married a week before the pandemic in 2020?
Yes.
March 8, 2020. Yes, you said. So what was that? I mean, that takes a lot of guts to not live with someone beforehand in the modern world, to not fully see the person who they are. So I commend you on that. So did you. What did you learn going through a pandemic for the last two years? Getting married a week before and then moving in together and sharing a life during, you know, arguably one of the scariest uncertain times in the last 20, 30 years.
Everything changed in the blink of an eye. We got married on March 8th in Los Angeles, big wedding. All of our family, all of our friends hugging, high fiving, kissing, had no idea what was about to happen a week later. And I do look back on that day because I thought, you know, when we were talking about our wedding, do we wanna do something small? Do we wanna. You know, we ended up just inviting our people and everyone came out and now I Look back on that day, and I cherish it so much.
Yeah.
Cause people haven't now do that for a couple years.
Right. And I haven't seen a lot of those people since. So it just made those memories even more special to us. But also, yes, a week later, the world shut down, so we decided to take a mini moon. We weren't. We were going to do a big honeymoon over the summer, so we just went to Newport beach and we were there for a few days. And we were in a bubble. We didn't know a lot about everything that was happening in the world until we came out of this bubble. So we came back to la and I mean, there was no toilet tissue on the shelves.
The.
The grocery store. I mean, it was just empty. Everything was empty. I'd never seen anything like it before. And I was like, so you mean to tell me I waited all this time to get married and the world is about to end?
Wow. It was.
It was crazy.
So what.
What did you guys create? Did you guys come together and say, let's build a strong foundation in this time? Did you. Do you feel like it's made the relationship stronger? Has it been stressful living with someone for the first time in 20 years? How have you navigated it all?
We adapted really well. And during that time, we had every day and all that time to spend time together. And the pandemic, it challenged all of us in different ways, but it also presented us with an opportunity. For us, it was noise cancellation, headphones through the first few months of our marriage, because we got to really sit and be together and be still and be quiet. You know, My husband is an RB singer. He travels all over the world. And he had. He was leaving a week after we got married to start traveling again. Not anymore, of course, that. That didn't happen. And so we got to spend a lot of quality time together. And I will tell you what I learned about him.
Yes.
What I talked about earlier, about when you see the true measure of a person and how they handle adversity and how they handle difficult circumstances. And because all of his, you know, live music was impacted greatly.
That's how you make most of your money. Yeah.
And I never heard him complain, not even once. And I saw him be a source of encouragement to a lot of other of his artists and musician friends. And, I mean, I was even shocked. I was like, okay, we're all about positivity and, you know, wake up happy every day. But really, you really wake up this happy every day?
Sure.
And it was Inspiring to see. And I knew in those first few months that because you always, you know, you. Every love is about taking a risk.
Yeah.
You know, we talk about that fear because we're. It's a risk. There's a fear of being hurt again. There's a fear of those triggers being exposed again. And in that moment, I knew, and I believe that I had made a right decision. But in those months after the pandemic, I saw it for myself very early on in my marriage, who my husband was in. In stressful times, in difficult circumstances, and how he was a source of inspiration and strength for a lot of people, including me.
So were you. Was each day kind of a confirmation that this was a great decision?
We.
I leaned into this and. Yes, that's beautiful.
Yes, it's been. It's been two years of just this amazing time in my life because I used to get asked a lot why I was still single for so long, and I started to feel pressure from people. I never put the pressure on myself, and I know a lot of people perhaps do, but if you're not careful when you're single and people are asking you, well, I don't understand, why aren't you married? Or what's going on, you can start to internalize it and feel that there's something wrong with you or that there's something off within you. And it can almost be something that you become embarrassed by because people are asking you, as if you've missed some mark in your life, some milestone that you should have achieved by now. Not asking me if it was a desire of mine, by the way, if I wanted to, but just asking me why wasn't I.
Why do you think people care so much about other people being in a relationship or being single?
Well, the question, I think, speaks more to who they are than it ever did to who I was. Because I was okay. You know, there were lessons that I had to learn to get to the place where I. I could go into a successful marriage. I needed to learn those lessons. There are almost 8 billion people on this planet. We can't all be doing the same things at the same time. And we're not supposed to be. We're all supposed to be living our individual life paths in our individual life journeys. There are some people who don't think that. They think you need to be married by a certain age, you need to have children by a certain age, or you're not living the right path. It's just not true. This is not a race. Why is it not a Race, because we're not all running in the same direction. So I learned very early on, and I think living in New York actually helped with that because I was around so many other young professionals who were at the top of their games and their careers, and we were. Saturday night, we're here. Wednesday night, we're at a show, and the live music and everything, and just embracing our full lives and accepting that being single was not a rest stop for me until I met my husband and really got to live. Well, if I had done that, I wouldn't have lived until I was 42 years old. So what would I have done with all those years in my 20s and 30s? So it wasn't a rest stop. And I embraced that, that time of. And just did so many. I traveled all around the world by myself, solo, Went to all the restaurants that I wanted to go to, watching sex in the city. Sometimes I would go by myself. You know, I had this vibrant group of friends. I was not waiting to live my life. And I think that people, they project their own view of what they think life should be onto you.
You know, relationships are beautiful. I love. I love being in relationship with all types of human beings, men and women. I just love being in relationship. And the challenge with intimate relationships is that one of two things are gonna happen. You're gonna get married or you're gonna break up. And they're both scary. For people getting married or breaking up, it's like they're both a challenge. There's something you're letting go of and taking on when you do either ones.
Yeah.
And it's like, oh, man, it's so challenging. So when we get to the point where we eventually, you know, if we're gonna go through a breakup, how do we do it in a way where there's love and beauty and grace and not craziness and jealousy and anger and resentment. Because I've been in previous relationships in my past where I'm not proud of the way things ended on both of our accounts. And I'm sure a lot of people have experienced some type of nastiness in a breakup based out of hurt, pain, resentment, anger, frustration, not feeling good enough, whatever it may be, feeling, you know, taken advantage of. So what's the process? If you know that something is not working and you've tried to work it out for a while, and you're. You're giving your all, they're giving your all, and you love each other, but it's not working for months and months, maybe years. How do you Start the process of doing a breakup without it being painful. Oh, and is that possible?
It's not possible.
It's not possible.
That's not possible. That's not a realistic goal.
Pain is inevitable.
Well, we're hardwired to bond.
Yes.
We just are. Like, the latest studies in neurobiology show that when the people that we're hanging with the most, we actually sync up physiologically.
Really?
Yeah. So we start. So we're actually. Our brains will start to hook up. Brains are social creatures. So if you're going to part ways, it's. There's no way for that to not be incredibly painful. But so conscious uncoupling is more about, okay, how are we going to suffer in an effective way?
So pain is inevitable. You're going to experience pain. It's going to be challenging. How do you do it in a way where you can still be okay with it?
Yeah, well, that you're going to be.
Able to not drag it on for years or something, right?
Oh, exactly. Well, that's when people create a negative bond as opposed to a positive one, because I can't let go. See, that's the brain, though. The brain doesn't want to let go at any cost. The brain is hard. Even depression. There have been studies that shows, you know, even puppies get depressed, you know, when they can't find their moms, they go in the corner and they're just like, really depressed. And I heard there was one scientist who was kind of pontificating on the reason for this. I thought it really made a lot of sense, which is it's nature's way of slowing us down so we don't move too quickly away from. From the object that we are attached to. So nature is really kind of errors on the side of attachment. And so we don't necessarily do that in our value system. We might say, I can't stay with someone who doesn't. Really isn't in the center of my mission. I'm not going to. I'm not going to dim down and live a lesser life in order to keep this relationship going. I can't do. It would be such a betrayal of myself.
So.
So, you know, and we have to recognize that, you know, in previous generations, people didn't really have that. Like, it was just. You just did that. You, like, dimmed down, you settled, you.
Took care of church because of your family, whatever, you know, like, so this.
Is a new emergence that's happening. And I think it's part of, like, our grand awakening that's Happening in the world. We're all growing really super fast right now.
And if our partners aren't growing with us, it becomes a challenge.
It is a challenge. It is a challenge in terms of prioritizing how you're going to spend your time or what you're going to do with your energy or being able to share your inner world. Esther Perel's. Esther. I'm sorry, Esther's lame. But you know this. The relationship expert who does talks a lot about infidelity. She's got a new book coming out, and one of her things that she's talking about is existential affairs, you know, and like the love affair with life and the love affair with mission and patience.
Being in love, being high on life. Yeah, yeah.
It can pull on us. Anyway, so. So I lost the through line right there. What was I saying?
Good question. I lost it, too. Going into the five steps. Going into the five steps. So the pain is inevitable, but how do we do the suffering in a loving way?
We don't want to have ineffective suffering.
Yes.
Okay. So ineffective suffering is when you take the bait of your biology and you. You go to form strong. Very strong. Super strong. Strong. Right. And so you go into fight or flight, and you want to. You want to lash out. That, you know, soulmate to soul hate phenomenon. So, so you want to lash out, but what it will do is create a negative bond and keep you just as invested, but only this time through a toxic, negatively reinforcing negativity. Yeah, right.
That's not healthy because you love the person. You don't want to hate them or be mad at them constantly.
Yeah, yeah. So I think where we want to go is. Or I know where we want to go is to be able to find a way to de. Escalate the intensity of the emotions that we're feeling.
How do we do that? When we are hardwired to be jealous or angry or just reactive? How do we say, okay, I'm going to be in the ohm state right now and calm and meditate and not let any of this affect me?
Well, one of the reasons it's so hard is because our relationships actually regulate our emotions. They reg. They're. They're fear regulators our relationships.
Yes.
So when there's a rupture of attachment, you know, that phenomenon, like the one person who's hurting you the most, that's the person you want to see the most to comfort you. So because they are. You're hardwired to get regulated by that person. They're the one Person who can comfort you and soothe you.
So the, the. The.
Otherwise, you're the puppy in the corner. Just like depressed.
Yeah. Or enraged. Right. Or freaking out. I mean, depression is actually a higher level of, you know, on. On Elizabeth Kubler's Ross's stages of grief, you have bargaining, denial, and anger. And then you have depression. So depression is like, I'm starting to come to terms with this. So it's actually a good thing in a breakup.
But.
But I think you're saying, like, how do you deal with the. The anger and the rage and the jealousy, all of that stuff. So one of the things that I offer people is a simple technique called affect labeling in the psychological world, which is basically the ability to put a name on each of your feelings.
Okay, so give me an example.
So an example is, first of all, there was a scientific study done where subjects were looking at a computer screen and they were seeing, you know, faces of horror, faces of rage, faces of hatred. And they were being monitored in all of their vitals, and they're kind of going off the charts. Their blood pressure is rising, and their heart rate is going. And then they did another technique with this. They had the same pictures to a new group, but put a name. Hatred, rage, despair. And the vitals did not go up in the same way. So what that shows is that when we have a name for the experience that we're having, we don't get as overwhelmed. So language serves kind of as a container.
So how would we use that in a breakup?
So I have a practice where I just very simply advise people to ask yourself, you know, kathryn, honey, what are you feeling right now? I'm feeling terrified. I can see that you're feeling terrified, Honey, what else are you feeling? I'm feeling so humiliated. I can see that you're so humiliated. What else are you feeling? I'm feeling really pissed. Okay, Okay. I can see that you're feeling that. What else are you feeling? I feel exhilarated because we have all these feelings showing on at once. They don't have to get on with each other, you know, so it's so that. That process. And then sometimes if the feelings are overwhelming, I also give them. People an opportunity to do this process of tonglen, which is a Buddhist process. I'm not Buddhist myself, but it's a beautiful practice that Pima Chodron actually made very popular. If you breathe a certain feeling into your heart. So I feel despair. I'm going to breathe despair in. I'm not going to turn away from it. And on the out breath. I'm going to breathe out a blessing to everyone in the world who in this very moment is suffering with this very feeling, including myself. And it starts to be like you can start to hold the feeling more because you've made a bigger playing field and you see it as an impersonal experience. And then you become, you know, a force of good. Ideally, what happens is we want to harvest the seeds of growth that are inside of each of our feelings. So for instance, the feeling of rage, there's something underneath it, like a violation has occurred. And there's a part of us that's saying, I, I should be treated better, I deserve respect, I deserve that my, that my feelings should matter to the people that love me and that I've opened my life up to and I deserve to have better. So that can actually become a stand then that you take. Yeah, you know, because we're going to move into self responsibility. How was I giving my power away? How is it okay, how was I treating people to disrespect me? All of that kind of thing?
Sure.
Right. So you want to harvest the seeds of growth that are. Because this is the thing. There's also a teacher, Ken McLeod, talks about karma and he breaks karma down basically to its original Sanskrit meaning, which means the ability to plant seeds for the future. It's action, seed results. So every action we take, every choice that we make in that moment when we're in a breakup is planting a seed for the future. And a lot of people who end up in that negative spiral where you're years later fighting back in court and stuff is because at the very beginning, people planted bad seeds, hatred and rage. And that's what that grows in your backyard. And you're eating those bitter fruits for years to come. So it becomes actually self destructive. It's meant to hurt somebody else in the way that you feel hurt, but it becomes self destructive. And so, you know, it's one of the principles in step one of conscious uncoupling is, you know, do no harm and plant good seeds.
Do no harm to yourself or other people.
Other people even. Do no harm to anyone. Even though you want to lash out.
You want to get mad or upset.
Run around the track, work out, do a great work of art. You know, just like throw paint on a canvas, writing.
Don't react to your partner or your.
Don't send the email. Right.
Or the text message.
Or the text. Right.
Don't do it. What does that do when you do those things?
Well, it's starts to Plant those, those bad seeds. I mean, it's very easy to cross the line and say things that you can never ever take back and that kind of color life moving forward. And I think what happens to us is that we go, we go down a path of living a lesser life in the aftermath of a really bad breakup, an ugly breakup.
And so it's longer to bounce back.
Too much longer to bounce back. And also the mo. I mean this goes into step two of the process. As long as you're pointing the finger, anger at someone else, even if they were misbehaved and did terrible, terrible things, you're not using the opportunity to, you know, look at yourself and how you co created the dynamic that allowed for that to happen.
You're responsible for everything too.
So and, and the only way you're ever going to trust yourself to love and be loved again is to take responsibility for your part of it because then you can make an amends to yourself and make a decision to never behave that way again.
Right, right. And the first step you have here is called find emotional freedom. Is that part of this process we talked about?
Well, find emotional freedom is the first one with the affect, labeling and like so that you're. So that you have your feelings, they don't have you.
They don't have control over you.
They don't have control over you. Exactly.
Gotcha. And the second one is reclaim your power in your life.
Yes.
Getting back your own power, which always.
Means, you know, that you know the path to power. Right. Path to power is responsibility. Of course. Of course, yeah.
Otherwise you're a victim.
Right. You gotta get out of victim consciousness. And it's so easy to be in victim consciousness. And the thing about a breakup is when you're traumatized, what happens to us is, you know, trauma is basically that whatever is happening is more than you can wrap yourself around. So you can't actually hold it. It's overwhelming. And so it starts to overwhelm us in a way that has us start to tell the story over and over and over again. And that's where we're burning our friends out because we just want to talk about what she did and what he did. You know, it was so terrible.
Get over this already.
So it's normal to need to tell the story and to be a bit obsessive about the story, but the way that we're telling the story is really critical because you could be telling the story from a victimized perspective over and over again, which is, is kind of solidifying your. That that point of view.
Right.
And then kind of destin, you know, making it destined for you to then move into living a lesser life of being more guarded, you know, I mean.
Saying I was right about my past and how this is, you know, always going to show up this way.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, I. I liken a broken heart to a broken leg where, you know, we understand that when you break your leg, it's never going to be fun. But we know you go to the doctor, you get it set properly, and you tend to the break properly.
It takes time to heal.
And then eventually it takes time you.
Don'T run on it right away.
Right.
Six months, a year, you know, you're fully recovered.
Yes. But you do whatever you have to do to make sure that you're not going to run with a limp for the rest of your life. You know, that you're not going to be in agony every time it rains. And that's kind of the heart's equivalent of if you don't, you know, take the proper steps to set your heart in the right direction. So, you know, telling the story over and over again from a victimized perspective is like not setting the brake properly.
You're going to go through painful experiences, but suffering is optional. And I was causing myself all of this additional stress and suffering over the end of a relationship, and I started asking myself, well, if you. If you really believe that the best is yet.
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