The 9 SIGNS You've Found Your SOULMATE | Lewis Howes

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.

Do you know a single relationship where you haven't been disappointed? Okay. Disappointment is which can lead to suffering. It's part of a relationship.

I believe that, you know, if we date better, we marry better. If we marry better, we family better. If we family better, we parent better. If we parent better, we community better.

Right?

So it all goes back to how we date.

Choosing the right partner in your life is one of the biggest decisions you'll ever make. That's why in this video, I'm bringing together the world's greatest relationship experts to teach you how to know if you found your soulmate. People are struggling in relationships in general, I feel like. I feel like a lot of people are stressed out more than ever today of First, finding a partner dating is just stressful for people. Then when you're in a relationship, okay, what about marriage? Then when you're married, how do you stay happily married? Then when you get divorced, you say, well, I'm a failure. The last 10-20 years, I've been a failure. This was all for nothing. What's wrong with me? And I have to repeat the cycle. How do I find the right person? And I think it's stressful because there's so many options in today's world. With social media, there's so many. everything looks yummy, everything looks tasty, everything looks exciting, fresh and new and interesting. So this is what I loved about this, you've got these questions on the back, I just want to read some of them. Some are from women and some are from men. And I think I want to talk about men first because you say these questions, men have you ever asked yourself, why does one woman not seem to be enough? Why does one woman not seem to be enough? Why can't I ever be satisfied? and will I ever find peace? These last three questions I feel like resonate with a lot of men. Yes. And I've asked myself those questions in previous relationships. I have too. And also being single at different times. And I'm curious, why does it seem like a struggle for so many men to be okay with one relationship?

Yeah, you know, I mean listen, this.

Is really-- Especially today. Totally.

I mean, today is, like you said, it makes it even harder because really because of just the popularity of social media. I mean, honestly, I mean, I would say that that's what's kind of amplified the challenge. The challenge has always been there, but I think with social media, I mean, it really takes that challenge to another level for any man. And so one of the reasons why I wrote the book is to help articulate and hopefully answer some of these questions. And so why I believe that it's really hard for one man to be comfortable sometimes with just one woman, it comes down to me to what the book is really about, which is love. You know, and I believe that love is selfless. Love is sacrificial. And it's not just love of self, it's love of the woman in our life, love of family, love of our calling, love of our destiny. So as men, we're never really taught to feed or cultivate love. What are we taught to feed or cultivate?

Lust.

Sex.

Yeah. So to me, the two things that war within a man are love and lust. And I define lust as a selfish impulse for personal, professional, financial or sexual fulfillment by any means necessary even if those means are detrimental. We live in a culture that almost feeds on the lust in men and also encourages us as men to feed on that. So, what does that look like? With the media promoting just half naked women everywhere.

Everywhere, everywhere. Sex everywhere.

And it's okay as boys will be boys, right? Yeah, yeah. That's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to date you know, one don't even worry about one have multiple. That's what we're taught as men growing up. that the more the better. So, in a dating sense, what happens is if our appetite grows to such a place where we're not feeding the love, we're feeding the lust. What is lust? Lust is selfish. It wants what it wants whenever it wants it, however it wants it. So, as men, especially as single men, when you're in a situation where that's what you feed constantly, that's what's going to be the strongest. And so, when it comes to a world where things are not on your terms, that almost feels like a foreign experience. Because you've cultivated an appetite where the more women the better. And guess what? if this woman doesn't suit what I want, I just get rid of her. I move on to the next. And so, what happens is as men, we sometimes consciously and subconsciously allow that lust to run and potentially ruin our life. And so, when a man decides, you know what? I want to get married, I want to get serious, I want to get committed. Saying I do is not a magic wand. So, if you go from having no discipline in your dating life, no discipline in your sex life, you've had as much as you could possibly stomach, you've had as many women as you could possibly have, and then you meet the one that really captures your heart, she taps into the love inside, but prior to her, and even sometimes with her, you have not practiced discipline as a man. When you say, I do, there's nothing magical that happens on the other side of it. So if you have an appetite and you have no discipline, marriage doesn't just automatically give discipline. So why does it become hard for men to just commit to one because they never had much practice with it? And I believe that if we date better, we marry better. If we marry better, we family better. If we family better, we parent better. If we parent better, we community better. So it all goes back to how we date. And if there's no discipline there as a man, we're setting ourselves up for a massive challenge. It doesn't mean we cannot be successful.

We can.

But sometimes as a man, we think, why is one not enough? Because we've been conditioned to more. And so the idea of just one becomes foreign.

Drop the mic.

Just end.

It right here. So, how do you know what's the right way to date someone? Let me ask this question first. When you're in a relationship and you say, you know what? I'm going to be disciplined. I'm going to work hard at this. Even when you know it's not the right fit, you put in time, you know, six months, a year, two years and you're like, you know what? I'm just going to keep going and make it better. I'm going to try my best to to cultivate the love, but for some reason, that relationship, you know deep down, isn't the one. And you say goodbye to that relationship. Is that you just saying, well, on to the next, there's another option out there. How do you know when it is the right one?

Well, that's a good question. I think a couple things. One, when you're in a situation, the premise of the book as it relates to love is really we gotta start telling the truth. And a lot of times, especially in a relationship sense, It becomes a place where we tell the least truth.

You hide the truth. You hide the truth.

'Cause you don't wanna hurt someone. You don't wanna hurt someone. You may have feelings or thoughts. You may have things. And also, sometimes in a relationship, you can be afraid. If I tell this person the truth, it doesn't even mean the truth that I'm not into them. It could be like, I'm really into you. Or it could be like, here's some things I'm thinking about. The question sometimes is where the fear comes in is judgment. If I tell this person my truth, will they judge me? Will they still like me? Will they still love me? Will they still be there for me? And so a lot of times, whether you're a man or a woman in a relationship, you bring that fear into it. And so as a result, sometimes that fear works against being truthful. So a lot of times in a relationship, you're more truthful with people outside the relationship than you are with the.

Person in the relationship. Telling other people outside.

Everything is happening. Everything is, you know, and you're not telling your partner. And this is why as men and women, we've got to start communicating with one another instead of at one another. And so I really wanted to write this book to help foster more truth so that the point you're bringing up, If you're in a situation where you're with somebody and you're not sure it's the right fit, here is the number one way to begin to identify if it is operating in lust or if you're operating in love.

It's peace.

You know, our peace.

You feel peace.

That's right. Our peace is the strongest barometer. It's our compass. It tells us we're going in the right direction. We're going with the right person in the right direction. Or you know what? I'm going in the right direction, but something about doesn't feel like this is the person that's supposed to go with me. Right, it's really about peace. That's where I... And everyone has the opportunity to define what that means for them. But to me, that's a great way to identify, is this the right person I'm dealing with? So then let's say you don't have peace. The truth is, I need to tell that person as soon as possible. Here's what I'm really going through. Here's why. Especially as a man. As soon as... Don't wait six months.

Don't wait.

Why? Because here's what happens. As a man, The moment you start to know, mmm, this ain't it. I don't, this ain't it. Here's what happens. The more you do not tell her the truth about how you're feeling, either she's going to cry now, she's going to cry later. And when she cries later, you've inflicted more pain. I believe as a man, we're going to be one of two men, men that heal pain or inflict pain. And that truth, as hard as it may be, and as much as she may not want to hear it, it's better for her to hear it early on. before she can have more emotional investment than to hear it later and you knew six months ago you were out of there.

Yeah.

Part of telling the truth is to say, listen, I love you. When I cooperate in love, I put someone else's needs over my needs. I'm thinking about someone else's thoughts even sometimes before my thoughts, someone else's well-being. So in a dating sense as a man, you're like, hey, I need you to know what I'm really feeling here so that we can just have an honest conversation. Like, I don't want to feel this way, I don't know why I'm filming this way, but I don't know if this is just the right fit and do your best to articulate that. It's better to put it all out on the table. Then there you go, six months later, seven months later, something happens. And then sometimes I've been there when I was single. You wait for something to happen, then to use that as the excuse. Oh, well it's 'cause this happened. Well, no, that's not because that. 'Cause if there was really love and there was a long-term plan there, you could work through that.

Right?

But too often I feel like as men, we hold on to what we think. And I think women do that too, because they're afraid. So I think when you go into this idea of like, okay, well how do you date in love? How do you date in mastery? It doesn't mean you can't explore. It doesn't mean you can't find the right fit. This is all about a journey. So love, when you're trying to find the compatibility, you're searching, right? We all find that journey. However, it's dating with more intent. It's dating with more intent. So what does that look like? It looks like, you know, And again, this is just what I believe will help us as men, especially in a dating sense, think beyond sex. Think beyond sex.

How do you teach men to do that when that's all they've been conditioned to think?

Well, here's how. Because again, instead of looking at that woman as an object for your pleasure, look at her as an individual. Look at her as someone's sister, someone's mother, someone's daughter, someone's friend. Humanize her. in your mind. It doesn't mean, listen, if you choose not to wait until marriage and have sex with that person, that's your business. But so often men look at women first as a sexual object, not as an individual. And as a result, when a woman most of the time says, hey, you know what? I don't want to have sex, or I want to wait, or whatever, a lot of men say, all right, well, I'm moving on to the next. If a woman does not want to have sex or share her body with you because she does not trust you, she does not know you, she does not love you, that's a sign of a great woman, not a woman that should be discarded. And so, as a man when you're single and you're discarding women because they don't want to share their body, that's a warning sign to me.

Hey, about you as a man.

That's right, what's going on with you, bro? Why are you on such a path for personal selfish lustful fulfillment that you are discarding potential women that could help make the difference in a positive way in your life? So, for any man it's about hey, Let me look in the mirror for a minute and just stop. Why? Because look at what's going on in the world. There's so much news about the challenges that men are facing. And why are so many men facing all these challenges? Because I believe most men have given themselves over to lust. They've given themselves over to this selfish fulfillment where they want what they want, whenever they want it, however they want it. And as a result, they become the sum total of what that lust makes them. So as a man, no man can turn a blind eye towards what's going on with men in the world. So if anything, allow what we're seeing in the world to then be a motivator for every individual man. Who do I want to be? Am I inadvertently living in a way where I may meet the same fate of some of the same men that I'm seeing in the world?

Right?

Because it's not like, oh, point the finger, oh, look at them. Oh, I would never become that. Wait a minute. The moment any of us as men say, oh, I would never.

You might.

Set the watch. Because All of us have the same struggle. All of us struggle between love and lust. And the issue is getting control, getting discipline, getting mastery to the degree where I don't believe we could ever eradicate lust. I don't believe that. And that's the truth most women don't want to hear, right? But I believe that is the truth. Lust is in every man, no matter.

Who that man is, no matter how.

Faithful you are, no matter how spiritual you are, it's there. It's not even a reflection of the woman in his life at all. However, as men, When we learn to get control of it, when we learn to put love in control of lust, that's when we position ourselves to not allow that lust to destroy us.

A couple of things I want to ask from this.

Yeah.

You are a successful man in Hollywood. You've been married for how long now?

Seven years.

Seven years. Two-part question. The first part is, do you know any successful men in Hollywood who are not married and who have multiple partners. Do you see any of them that are successful in their career but also have that inner peace that you talked about a few minutes ago?

I don't see many successful men that are living according to how you just outlined that have the peace.

They might have the funds.

They have the funds, they have the money, the position, all of that. But I would not say that the men that fit the description that I've been privy have that peace where there's just a sense of like, okay, you know what? I'm cool. I'm competent. I'm here. This is what it is. A lot of times, and I believe that if any man is really honest with themselves, I don't believe the more women you have, the more peace you get.

I think it actually does the opposite.

More chaos. More chaos. Think about it. It's like it's a man at the end of our life, when you think about how much time you spend with women, chasing women, spending money on all those things, you gotta ask yourself, What do we have to show for it? You know, and so for me, prior to getting married, I had to ask the same question, what do I have to show for all this? And I wasn't like when Megan and I started dating that I was like all of a sudden ready to get married, I wasn't. But what I did was a friend of mine encouraged me, don't be afraid.

Don't allow your fear to mess this up. Afraid of what?

Commitment?

Marriage?

Marriage. All of it. Commitment. The unknown.

Because you were dating other girls before then.

Yeah.

You were having fun. Yeah, but I was dating with intention. I was dating saying, hey, yo, here's where I am in life. Here's what I'm looking to do so that there was no lack of clarity with anyone that was dating me where I was. And I talk about this in the book. It's so important. I'll talk about it for the male side and the female side. For men, it's important because what happens is lust makes us a part-time manipulator in a single sentence.

What does that mean?

What does that mean? It means that you're dating multiple women. Those women don't really know that there's as many other women as there are. and they don't even know that you're not as serious as you seem to be when you're with them.

Because your intention is for sexual desire.

Sexual desire, companionship in that moment. Whatever your pleasure is. There's no long term. There's no long term. And at the same time, there's no regard for their real feelings. It's like, this is a woman that I may date on Tuesday. Here's someone I may date on Thursday. Here's a woman I may date on Saturday night. And none of them really know the other one exists. So that's what I mean about not dating with intention. So when you're dating with intention, you're letting everybody know, listen, here's where I am, here's what I'm doing, very, very important. As a man, I encourage any single man to, if you really want to become successful in life, and success to me is nothing to do with happens in the world. Success is to meet peace.

The inner world.

It's the inner world. Success is-- Absolutely, me too. Who is the person that looks back at you in the mirror? And there is where success starts and where it stops. We see a lot of men who have public success, but no personal success. And there used to be a time where that was okay, but now real success starts with who's looking back in the mirror. So I would ask any man, if you are finding yourself dating multiple women for multiple women's sake, why? Ask yourself, ask the question, why are you doing it? And what is the real value that you're getting out of it? Do you find yourself with this unsatiable appetite that no one person could ever quench? And as a result, there's no peace within your spirit. Super important. The second part of that is that if you find yourself saying, Hey, you know what? I am going to get more discipline here, but I still want to explore. Okay, explore with intention. Let the woman know what your intentions are so then they, as an adult, can make the decision if they want to engage with you. That, to me, is what real honesty and transparency looks like. Now, for a woman, if you're dating a man, you've got to get out of the gray area. You've got to get out of the gray area. And what does this mean? That's right. But that gray area is the area where you are most liable. Because in a relationship sense, the one who has the knowledge, the most knowledge, has the most power. And a lot of times men have more power because they know what they're really serious about and what they're not. And the woman that they're dealing with does not know. That's a gray area. He may text you all the time. He may talk to you all the time. You may go out on a date. You may have met his parents, but never has he told you we're together.

Right.

Or he's thinking about the commitment. That's right.

And so for a woman in that situation, she's in a gray area. And I encourage her in the book, you've got to get out of the gray. You've got to ask clear, direct questions, wait for clear, direct answers so that the man that you're dealing with, you get a sense of, Are you dating anyone else? Are we committed? Are we exclusive? What are your plans? Where are you going? Don't be afraid to ask the questions because so often when women come to me for advice, They're afraid, well what if I ask him these questions? That he leaves. Well, he was gonna leave anyway. That's good.

That's great. That's great. I mean, here's the thing. I've dated women in the past who, they're almost so honest in the beginning, it's like, oh my gosh, you're like pushing me away 'cause I'm like, this is not where I'm at in my life. You're talking about kids in the first five minutes. I'm like, I just wanna have fun right now. Yeah, yeah. But then there's other women who are that honest where you're like, wow, I'm actually really interested in you. This is kind of scary that you're so honest. Yeah. But I'm gonna like keep exploring because I like you and I'm that interested.

In you and I want to learn more.

Yeah, no, I think the more honest you are in the beginning, maybe you don't have to say in five minutes.

I want to have five kids.

But I think almost the more truthful you can be earlier on, the better. Because you can start to eliminate those people or know exactly where they're gonna be at.

Well, yeah, you get a better sense of what's what and I also encourage women, you know, I say, listen, Have an observation period and date it.

What's that mean?

Meaning, don't just rush into when you're dating somebody, telling this particular man all of the stuff you want. You don't even know if you're gonna like this person. And sometimes it's like, just on that, like you said, on that first date, they're like telling, oh, here's what I want to do. No, no, no, no. Observe. See if this man is even worthy of knowing what you think.

See if this man is even worthy.

Of knowing your plans and how you see your future. How will you know if he's worthy of knowing?

Because you're going to spend time, you're.

Going to evaluate, you're going to see who he is. And this is why, listen, I know in this modern world what I'm getting ready to say is just uncommon, but I don't care. Let's hear it. I'm going to say it. This is why it's so important. I'd say in this book, I believe it's important to wait until marriage for sex. but most people aren't going to do that. I say in this book, at least wait until you're in a trusted, committing, loving relationship before you have sex. Why? Because when you have sex with someone and you do not know them and you do not trust them, it becomes hard to really get clear on who they are and what they're about. So important. So as a woman, I'm like, listen, if I was a woman and I was dating, oh, you ain't getting nothing from me. Why? Because I don't know you. I was at Facebook on the book tour and this woman asked me a question during our Q&A. And so I said this to her, man. And she said, she was asking me a question about sex and whatnot. And I said, okay, I said, so let me just give you an analogy. Let me, okay, how many women in the audience, after a month of dating a guy, would you give him the code to your phone?

The code to your passcode?

Yeah, and most of them said, oh no, there's no way. A month, are you kidding me? I said, okay, now listen, I'm not trying to get in your business, I'm not going to judge you. I said, but in that same period of time in previous relationships, how many of you in that same period of time have already given him your body?

90%.

I mean, so, if you don't trust him enough to give him the code to your phone, why would you give him your body?

Wow.

So, this is when you know, when you don't give a man your body, right, it gives you a better opportunity to observe and evaluate What does he really want? Is he even really interested potentially in who I am, what I think, or is he just interested in what my body can give him? That's what I say about an observation period, so that you can really see who this man is, what he's about, and really where he's going. And I believe that women have a lot more power in dating than they realize, but a lot of times they give it away.

So much power.

But they give it away. They give it away to men. you know like, oh, yo, it's like no, no, hold on to that power. Evaluate, make decisions. Even if you want to be in a relationship super bad, don't allow your flesh and your desire to then make you so desperate that you lower your standard to the degree where you're allowing men entry into your life that really are not qualified for that.

What if the woman just wants to have fun and they're not looking for a committed relationship either? You know what?

Listen, I'm not going to judge what consenting adults want to do. If that's her point of view, that's her point of view.

Yeah.

You know, and that just is what it is. And at a certain point, you know, when she's doing the same thing and wants a different result, it'll require looking at what she's doing to get the result. Same for any man. You know, when any man gets to a place where he's like, you know, I keep doing the same thing, I get a different result, maybe you have to change what I'm doing.

Yeah, I might be having fun, but I feel soulless inside. Yeah. I feel like I'm not having true intimacy or.

Yeah, exactly.

Lacking the partnership that I really want.

Totally. Totally.

By having this fun. What happens when we never deal with our emotions or feelings?

Well, you first of all get sick. Physically sick, emotionally sick, mentally sick. 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, you know, what do you do to keep healthy with your body? Like you're gonna eat right, you're gonna 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 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 does that state called?

I was gonna say dead. I mean, I feel like you can be alive but not live it. And that's what happens to people is that they're alive. They're going through the motions. They wake up every day, 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. Is there a questionnaire we could take just off the cuff? Is there an assessment? Is there a few things we could ask ourselves?

Yeah. I think that it has to do with a sense of vitality, right? Which, of course, like vitality, the word 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, and maybe you should talk to someone in my book. There's a woman that I treat, she's 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, 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. It's 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. You know, 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 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.

She'll keep finding chaotic environments.

Right, recreating it. Yeah, and so, you know, it was funny because my own therapist gave me this great analogy. He said to me, he said, you 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 trapped. 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 of 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?

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 were whenever, you know, they never got that support. 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 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's 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 from 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 gonna 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, -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 unconsciously they thought, oh, you're totally different from my parents. 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 gonna 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.

Yeah.

But if you're unwilling to go through that, then what? You're gonna be in...

Both people have to be willing.

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. in the relationship. You know, it's kind of like in couples therapy so often, I'll see something like someone will say, 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 wanna 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 gonna look like. It starts with one thing and then it goes back into many different things where you're like, oh, yeah. And you know exactly how it's gonna who's gonna go and who's gonna feel what and who's gonna accuse the other person of what. And that's the dance. And so if one person changes their dance steps, the other person either is going to fall flat on the dance floor or they're gonna have to change their steps too if they wanna keep dancing. And usually, so we always say you can't change another person, but you can influence another person.

How?

By changing your dance steps. So for example, we like to say insight is the booby prize of therapy, meaning people will come and they'll be like, oh now I understand why I keep getting into that argument with my partner. And so then they go home and they come back the next week and I'll say, well, did you do something different when you got in that argument? Well, no, but I understand why I didn't. So, you have to be both vulnerable.

And accountable when you come to therapy. How do we fight better when we are in constant repeat pattern every month or every week it becomes an argument around something for whatever reason. It's a pattern. Couples start to notice it. How does one person or both people recognize and say, okay, I'm gonna change my dance steps and I'm gonna Fight or dance better?

Yeah.

The first thing is to notice sort of what do you own in this? What is your reaction? So we have a choice every time someone presents us with something. There's a great quote in the book, it's a Viktor Frankl quote where he says, Between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space lies our freedom to choose.

Between stimulus and response. So between an action happening and your response to the action.

So your partner says something.

There's a window of opportunity.

Yes, there's that space. Usually that space for us will look like a breath. The breath is everything. The breath, really.

If you don't breathe, you're screwed.

If you need to take the breath or you will just respond, it's sort of like we have these neural pathways that are wired, right? And someone says something and you react not just to what that person in front of you is saying, but it goes back to something that reminds you of something from a long time ago. People who aren't even in the room are in that moment with you. And so that's that neural pathway. And so what you need to do is you need to take a breath. It's like a big stop sign on that road that's your neural pathway. So hold up the stop sign. You can even picture a stop sign in your mind.

Stop.

Breathe. Now you get to choose. How do I want to respond to this? Do I want to respond in the way I've responded the last gazillion times?

Right.

Which has not worked out well. Or do I want to try something different? So that's part one. Part two is perspective taking. A lot of people who are in really highly conflictual relationships have trouble with perspective taking. They can't imagine that the other person has a valid perspective. Now you might not agree with every piece of how they view this, but there's some overlap between how this person views it and how you view it, but you are not willing to see that. And so, I have this new podcast called Dear Therapist. And on the podcast, so much of what we do is we help people to take the perspective of the other person. There's something that you are not seeing right now.

Why is that so hard for people to see someone else's perspective?

Well, two things. One is because, you know, that unreliable narrator thing that we think that we are right and we don't want to be told. And so, what we hear when we say there's another perspective, we're not saying you're wrong. We're saying there's more to the story. So there's a difference between their perspective is valid as well is not saying your version is wrong. We're saying there's more. So people hear it though as you are wrong. And the other part of it is that there's a lot of shame. That people are sticking to a certain story because if they allow that other part of the story to come in, the part that they're responsible for will probably come up. and they feel a lot of shame. So when I see individuals in therapy, they come in and they tell me a story and they leave out the parts that they are embarrassed about, the parts that they feel like that was not my finest moment.

Like what? Give me an example. Like, oh, I screamed back or I.

Did this or... Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, here's what happened or here's, this is the situation and my partner did this or my mother did this or my child did this or my boss did this, whatever. And they don't tell you these other details and they sort of trickle out later on. And they're very relevant to the story. But that's shame, right? And so, you know, that's why the therapeutic relationship is so important because you get to a point where you really trust the therapist and you're able to be really honest about what happened.

How much does shame shape our stories?

Oh, so much. I think that, you know, as humans, we want to belong. And what shame is about is I'm not going to belong. I'm not going to be loved. The greatest human need is, you know, how can we love and be loved? And when you feel like there's something I did that people will look upon badly, they might not like me if I tell them this. That's just, you know, wired into us.

It's like the ego death to us. It's like the emotional death if, like, if someone knew this about us, they would not love me, and I would emotionally die.

-And I would be alone.

-I'Ll be alone, yeah.

-Yeah, and we need other people.

-I felt like this way for many years where I opened up about sexual abuse about seven years ago and for 25 years no one knew because I was so ashamed. And I felt like if anyone knew, how could they possibly love me or accept me or how would anyone want to date me or my family, how would they not disown me? These were the stories that I was writing. I was a bad editor. How does someone who's done something that they're not proud of in the past, who's had something done to them that they're not proud of, whatever, they've been in a situation that they feel shame around, how does someone start to process that shame to heal so that it doesn't continue to run their life and keep them imprisoned?

Yeah.

Well, I think they do what you did, which is you started talking about it, and I think you have to choose your audience, which is really important, especially as you're just starting out. So you want to make sure that--.

Don't tell your abuser. Who's the toxic relationship? Who's the-- yeah.

Well, you know, I think you have to really choose someone who's safe. And if you don't have those people, you know, I think a therapist is a really good place to start. But I do think that it's harder for men to talk about anything, whether it's sexual abuse or even, you know, just sort of like anything they feel vulnerable about. And so men will come into my office and they will say to me at some point, you know, I've never told anyone this before.

And then-- Do women say that?

Yes, so here's the thing. Women will say that. They'll say, I've never told anyone this before except for my mother, my sister, and my best friend.

Right?

You're the only one who I don't know.

You're the only one, right. Well, I haven't told this.

I told my book club.

I told, you know, whatever it is. They've told like a few people, but they feel like, because women It's acceptable for women to talk about these things, and so they feel like they haven't told anyone because they still feel like there's some degree of privacy around it. Men literally have told no one.

No one.

And even if they have a great partner and they have close friends, they have a great family, whatever it is, they feel like I cannot tell anyone because vulnerability for men in our culture is not okay. Even though we say that, so this is still true.

Even though women say, I wish she would open up, I wish she would cry and be more sensitive, but then when they are, they're like, I need you to be strong right now.

Right, so this is exactly what happens in couples therapy. So I'll have two people sitting on the couch and I have a couple and say it's a heterosexual couple and the woman says to the man, like, I really want to get to know you. I feel like we would connect so much more if you would just open up to me. I want to know what's going on. What's going on inside there, right? And he does. And let's say he tears up. Let's say he actually starts crying in a way where like his body is convulsing, right? She looks at me like deer in headlights. She's so profoundly uncomfortable. This is the thing that she was asking for. So what she'll say is, I don't feel safe when you don't open up to me. and I don't feel safe when you're vulnerable with me. It's like Goldilocks. It's like not too much, not too little, but right in the middle. That's how vulnerable you can be with me.

I've been saying this for a long time that I feel like this is one of the main things that hurts all intimate relationships.

Yes.

When a person doesn't feel safe to share their emotions to the person that says they love them the most. and actually makes them wrong for it or makes them less than or retracts their love when they're vulnerable. So I don't know the solution for this besides saying this all the time and besides saying ladies, if you want a vulnerable man who's emotional, you have to accept him when he's emotional.

Well, not just accept but embrace. I mean, that's-- Encourage. Encourage him.

Because it's so much harder for a man in general and our society to be vulnerable based on what we've grown up with and based on what we see that if you're not encouraging it consistently and celebrating it almost, why would you expect them to keep opening up when they have something they want to share if you're gonna make them wrong for it?

Well, right. So that's exactly what happens. There's somebody I write about in the book who, you know, there's this tragedy that happens in the family and he feels like he has to be the rock for the family. He's like, my wife, she can cry about this, she can be sad about this, but if I break down, I'm the thing holding everything up. And that was just not true. Actually, that was the thing that was making their marriage not work, that was making him feel anxious and not sleep and not function well, right? And that was the thing that got his wife to, at a certain point, say, I can't be in this marriage if we can't connect. But he thought he had to be the rock for the whole family. He could not feel his feelings. And instead, what happened was when he finally said, no, actually, this is tearing me apart too, That's when they started healing. That's when they started getting close to each other again.

What's the biggest mistake people find today when trying to find their love or find someone that they, you know, their soulmate?

Oh, my God.

What's the biggest mistake? Is it being yourself?

I I think there's something of a sense of entitlement that most of us have, or that most people have when they're going out to date, where they somehow feel like they're just owed the love of their life, that it shouldn't be difficult, that. That they don't have to do anything, that it's enough that they are just them. you know, it's the, you know that there's, I don't know if you've ever seen Bridget Jones, but there's a, there's a line in Bridget Jones where forget his name, Colin Firth, I think it is. He's, he's looking at Bridget and he's, I think he says, I love exactly how you are. I love you. Like, no changes, nothing. I, I love you exactly how you are. And it sometimes we feel like we're owed that. And it kind of becomes an excuse again, not lazy, to grow, not to, you know, I don't, frankly, it doesn't really matter what you think you're owed in love. No one cares.

I think it's the same thing with work and, you know, so many people are entitled and they think they should just get a job. Yeah.

And so the biggest criticism I get all the time, which I'm happy with as a criticism of my advice, is well, why do you need to do all of this stuff? Why can't you just, you know, go through life and, and, you know, when the time is right, you'll know. Why do you have to do all of these techniques? I'm happy with that criticism. If you, if you, if that's what you think, you're not my audience. Because my audience are the same people that go to a business seminar to make more money. They're the same people that say, you know what? If I want to start a business, I might actually need to know what the hell I'm doing. It's not enough to have confidence. in life. You have to have competence. Yeah. You have to actually know what you're doing. And, and that's what a lot of people don't know in their love lives. If you, for example, there's, there's something I come, I came to understand. I was, I remember once having a breakup. It was the most painful breakup I've ever had. It was really, really in a bad way over it. And a while later, I spoke to this, to this woman on the phone, and I had said to her on, in a brave moment on the phone, I said, why did Why did you want to break up? Because by the way, you talked to.

The one you were dating?

Yeah, the one that had... Later on the phone. Later, like a year or two later. It was less raw. I was feeling a little more... How.

Long was the relationship for?

A couple of years.

Okay, wow.

And I was pretty caught up about it. Now, the funny thing was, to make a long story short, she had actually done something I didn't like and that I thought was inappropriate and disrespectful and I remember going to her the next day and saying, I think we need To break up.

During the relationship she did this, yeah.

Yeah, and she then said to me, okay. That was when I knew she was breaking up with me. It wasn't, you know, when you think you're breaking up with them.

No, she was already doing it.

She was breaking up with me, and it was, what was so painful about it is that she was, she didn't mind. I thought she might get upset, I thought, no, she didn't mind. And that was the most painful part about it. and I.

You shouldn't even fake it. You know, most women would fake that they might. I can't believe this, but they're really.

I know. I know. She looked like she was okay.

This is a good decision.

So I. So I. I remember a while later, we were on the phone, and we became. We're friends today. We're very good friends, in fact. And I had said to her on the phone, why did we break up? I said, what. What was it for you? that I wasn't doing. And I braced myself for the answer. She said, do you really want to know?

Honest feedback.

And I said, I literally thought to myself, wait, do I really want to know? And I said, I grit my teeth and I went, yeah, I want to know. She said, you were boring. And, wow, it was so much worse than I thought it would be. Do you know what I mean? Like, not, not just like, oh, well, you know, it was just, I was young and I was, you know, wanting to be free.

No.

You were boring. It was really cutting. And I remember resisting the urge to bite back.

And I said, I said, that wasn't boring.

Exactly. I said, no, you're shut up, idiot. You asked the question. So now listen. So I said, why was I boring? She said, When I first met you, you were the most ambitious person I'd ever met. and she said, I never met someone with such an ability to decide they want something and then get it. And she said it was so sexy. She said, but as we went into our relationship, the more time went on, the more that was all you were. You were super ambitious. You knew how to get what you want, but it. You were so one-dimensional you know, it was all you did. Even in our free time, you were just. You were on the phone, you were on your laptop, you would talk about your business, you were always talking shop. There was never anything else you had to talk about. We didn't do anything spontaneous. We never went and had adventures. It was just all one track. And she said it got boring. And I said, wow, she was right. She was right. There was nothing I could argue with. And I realized something in that moment. The thing that makes that one quality can make you really attractive.

Right.

But it won't keep someone.

Can make you get the person.

Right.

It can make you sexy, it can make you intriguing, mysterious.

Right.

But it can even for a time make someone worship or idolize you. One quality, but one quality will not hold someone because the reality was there was a flip side to ambition which would have made it Eminently more attractive. And there are a few, right? If you pair ambition, say, with an ability to enjoy life, now that person is really sexy. Super sexy. You combine ambition with a sense of spontaneity, for example.

Adventure.

Very, very sexy.

Yes.

Ambition on its own is, when you look at it from afar, very, very attractive. you go, women will say, I want an ambitious man. I like that. But when they get up close, if it's only one side to a coin, it quickly becomes unattractive. Someone I'm a big fan of, or unfortunately has passed, but Christopher Hitchens, he once said about love, the challenges in not allowing your strengths to negate themselves. Wow. And that's very powerful. statement, because my ambition was my greatest strength that also had the ability to be the thing that crippled me. Because what happens is when you get good at something and you get validation from it, you keep doing it and.

Get better at it.

And it becomes, if you're not careful, a muscle that you, that you train to the point of mutation, and then every other part of you is, is, is not working, is, it has atrophied.

Yeah.

So.

Now you have a complete imbalance. It's like, you know, I remember working out at the gym once in my trainer. I was doing pull-ups and was trying to work out my back. My back was fine. I could keep going. And then all of a sudden, my forearms gave up while I was trying to pull myself up. And I said, this is so annoying. We're trying to work my back, but my forearms and my back's fine, but my forearms have given up. He said, you,'re only as strong as your weakest link. If your forearms aren't there, you're not gonna be able to train your back as well as you could. So here's the point about this, which I find very interesting about dating. To your point of what's the biggest mistake people make? Apart from of course the entitlement, it's over reliance on a key strength that they have come to rely on as their source of validation, success, confidence, Right. Over reliance on that. I had come to over rely on essentially being ahead of the curve for my age.

Yeah.

That was like the thing that I was always based my confidence on was I am way ahead of the curve for people my age.

My business is going great.

Correct. The people I grew up with in my age group are not where I am.

Still living at home. But guess what?

That loan is boring. Yeah. It's boring and it doesn't make an interesting, rounded, sexy person. But when you combine it with something else, it becomes what I call unique pairing. It's a bit like if I wanted to really get a woman attracted tonight, not me, but like send a guy out to get a woman attracted. I could literally, if he went in and he was a little cocky and teasing, but in the right way, not arrogant, obnoxious, but just he knew how to play with her. and then a couple of hours in later, you know, maybe it's getting late. He comes out of the restroom and after being teasing and playful and silly, he says, you know what? It's getting late. I called you a car. I don't want you walking outside. And he says, I have to go as well. I have to get up early. He takes her outside. He gives her a little kiss. He says, all jokes aside, I've had the best night. With you tonight. I'll call you later this week. Puts her in the car, car drives away. That woman will be going, oh, crap. I like this guy. Now, the reason wasn't because he was a gentleman, and it wasn't because he was cocky and teasing. It was because he was both.

Both, yeah.

It's the and.

If he does just one thing, it's not interesting enough.

Because you can replace the cocky guy like that. Women know that. Yes. They can go out tonight and meet a cocky guy in Hollywood any night of the week. They can go out the next, they don't even have to go out the next night. They can turn to their left and meet another one straight away. By the way, they even though people complain about chivalry is dead, you can go out and meet a gentleman. You can go out and meet lots of nice guys. That's all they are.

Right.

Incredibly boring. Women will never, they don't hold a woman.

Right?

So, but now you find like what seems to be a good man, but with an edge, That's a unique pairing. Yes. And that's someone that becomes not an attraction but an addiction. Ooh. And there's a big, big difference. So I believe that we will actually, I believe these pairings already exist within us, but we've overtrained certain muscles. We've overtrained certain qualities that we've gotten used to as habit. For some people it's being funny. For other people it's being intellectual and they're the person that knows everything about everything. They've read every book. They can always quote so and so. For others, it's being seductive. That's the thing they got really good at. So they're really good at, you know, getting someone into bed or getting someone sexually attracted, but they're never the person you want to eat pizza with the next day. You know, so it's like it's finding those combinations that make you go, oh my God, the person I was with last night, they were this and they were this. It's the and. The and is where it's at.

I wonder what else they could do.

Exactly. And by the way, that's what makes it so hard. I say this to everybody. If you want to know why you found it so hard to get over a certain ex, look for the unique pairing.

Because they had multiple things.

There was some unique pairing that made you feel like they were difficult to replace. Oh, and that's what scares us. The more unique pairings you have, the more you become a rare bird in the dating marketplace.

Right.

And when you become rare, people get really terrified of losing you. And that's always the case. Whenever you think of someone you've lost, and you think, like, your heart aches for having lost them.

Like, months and months.

Yeah, you. It's because you go. It's not because you go. They were good in bed. It's because you go. They were good in bed. And they made me laugh. Like. Like, I never find that. And I took them home, and she was a sweetheart to my. Like, this.

There's.

There's those moments where you go, God, I can't find this person again. And that terrifies you. So again, to be more positive about it, be the person. that has the unique pairings that other people are terrified of losing.

Yeah.

You know, I like this because I feel like, well, I don't feel like, but the statistics show that the divorce rate is up higher than ever right now, right? Isn't it something like 50%?

I don't know if you hear these numbers. I hear 50% banded around. How accurate it is, I don't know.

Who knows? But it seems like people are getting married multiple times and they're easy to get out of relationships. They're, you know, and I'll speak for myself. I am a lot of fears about long-term commitments. Most of my relationships are a year, maybe longer, but usually about a year and then I'm either bored or I get scared because I have my own walls and I still get to grow and learn.

For sure.

I'm curious, why do you think so many people bail in relationships and why do you think so many people are getting divorced more than ever now?

Oh man. that's a big question.

I.

Well, there are. I think there are a number of things. I can have a stab at this. I. I think, firstly, there is less of a stigma now than there has ever been about divorce.

It's okay now, right?

Right. No.

You know, and it is. Certainly there are parts of the world where it's not, and there are certain religions and cultures where it's not, but. but certainly less than ever.

Let's speak in America, at least. Right.

There's less of a stigma.

Yeah.

About divorce. We don't feel like complete failures in the same way that we might once have. Or we wouldn't have. There would have been a time where we would have been outcast from society.

Yes.

For it. So there's that. I think there's also a greater sense of entitlement these days where people feel like they're owed and, you know, marriage is. you've met the right person, so it's supposed to all feel great. And when it doesn't feel great and when it's not all working, there must be something wrong with this person. Not with me, not with the amount of effort I'm investing into this relationship. There must be something wrong with this person. Ah, it turns out they're not the one after all. I thought they were, but they're not. The search continues.

So.

So the entitlement has people believing that it, it. shouldn't be effort. And that's a very dangerous way to think of relationships. It's very, if you really want to see who someone is in their relationship, talk to them about sex and passion and desire in their long-term relationship. And you'll get some very heated answers because some people will say it's absolutely paramount. You have to maintain that passion. You have to find new ways to excite each other. Me and my partner, we're always searching. we're always exploring each other. We're always trying to figure out, like, what's going to turn you on tomorrow? What's the, like, how, how do I, how do I do something that's, that you didn't predict? Or how do I get you to know me a little less so that you get desire again? You know, whatever it is, other people, and I've had hosts on TV, get very, very uptight and, and, and upset over this issue, and it's usually they're overplaying their hand when they do. They'll say, well, Matt, it's different when you're in a marriage, when you have kids, when you're in those situations, it's different, right? You can't just think of it like that. You don't think other things become more important. And I always know who they are in their relationship when those things happen because people, I think, don't go into relationships with a healthy view of what is required over the long term.

And what is required?

Well, there's a woman who is a great authority on this called Esther Perel, and she talks about the difference between love and desire. And I'm a big fan of her work, and I think she articulates it very, very well that in relationships, you have to have both love and desire. Love isn't enough. Love is the thing that makes me want to get close to you when I feel things for you. I want to know your mind. I want to know everything there is to know about you. I want to know what you're thinking. I want to know what you're doing tonight. I want to know who your friends are. I want to become friends with them. I want to get close to your mom. I want like all these things. That's love. The desire to almost become merged. But desire exists in the space between two people. So you feel desire when there's a void and when there's some mystery and when you're still getting to know someone. So desire, ironically, is the thing that ends up creating love because desire is like, I want to get close to you because I don't have you. And then when I get close, we feel feelings of love, but not desire now.

Right.

So how do you keep that for years and years? And that's a great question. And it's a, it's a, it's a big one. I think there are many answers, and I think they change depending on the couple.

So you've got to, so what you're saying first before you answer is you've got to have both love and desire throughout the relationship in order for it to be a, a successful one.

Yeah.

In order to maintain, in order to satisfy your needs along the way, because the I think many people get divorced because not because there's a lack of love. I mean, sometimes that's true. You know, sometimes it's true that two people don't give each other enough love. They don't act as a team. And there are problems with that.

Right. But a lot of people spend too much time together.

Lack of love. A lot of people is because of lack of desire.

Interesting.

That lead that create, you know, these weird moments in relationships where sometimes people cheat or they maybe it's not going as far as cheating, but they realize that they're having all of to these thoughts that they're not proud of. Maybe they just have to leave because they think there's something wrong with them because they're bored. You know, I got a question on the Today Show recently. I mean, I mean, it was on the Today Show recently. And me and Kathy Lee, you know, got heated over this issue because, you know, there was a guy on there whose question was, my kids have just gone off to university. How do, you know, we're now basically what he was saying is the kids have all left. So now it's just me and my wife. So How do me and my wife now keep it fresh? And there's a great quote by Proust when he says, I think it's the journey of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes, but in seeing with new eyes. It's very interesting when applied to a relationship.

Because you're not seeing a new landscape, you're seeing the same landscape over and over and over and over every moment.

So you better get good at seeing with new eyes.

All right?

Now the landscape of course, the landscape can change because that person, their job is to be to make themselves less predictable. And you don't do that by like playing hard to get with your partner necessarily. But what you do is you grow, you develop new skills, you learn new things, and you develop yourself in ways that keep your partner guessing about you because they're like, oh my God, I can I have to keep up. I have to keep up with this because they keep evolving. And that in itself, you can start to desire your partner more because you feel like you know them a little less. Not because they're now hiding things from you, but because they're developing. And when someone develops and grows, you're like, oh my God, I don't know this side of you. I need to learn it and it sparks attraction again. So there's that whole thing. But I said to this guy, I said, I know everyone's going to tell you, now your kids have gone off to university, now you have all this time to spend together. I said, but the problem is you're gonna have nothing to talk about. Because you've said it all. You've said it all, and you've been together this whole time.

So there's nothing new to talk about.

I said, I'm gonna give you a kind of strange piece of advice. I think you should use this time to spend some time apart. Wow. Like, go. Like, she go on holiday, and you go on holiday, and then come back and tell each other about it. You know, do have. Have that. Some space so that when you come back together, there's a little mystery. To it, you know that this won't it will be scary and this is this is why people get very emotional about this and they get upset because they're like what do you mean get to know my husband less? What do you mean like spend time apart? We are supposed to be like this the whole time But what they don't realize is a you never know your partner as well as you think you do so the idea that you're like this and you know everything about them is a complete illusion and secondly, I you doing that is death to the relationship. So if you really care and if you really are a team, you'll be able to trust each other, but you'll be able to give each other space to create that desire again.

Otherwise you're suffocating each other.

Yeah, absolutely. So again, I think that's another, another thing that people don't anticipate when they're in the feelings of love and desire all mixed together early on and they decide to get married. They don't anticipate that over the long term. And I think many of us are out there making promises that we cannot keep.

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

Yeah.

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

So I have two ways of answering. Yes. The first one is cultural. Your definition of happy and thriving and fulfilled is probably very different than many other cultures where being healthy, having enough to eat, having children, having grandchildren, having good jobs, being respected in the community, Is happy and thriving. Is happy and thriving. It's not about you and I are talking on the couch and I'm pouring my 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, you know, 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 vicissitudes of the everyday life and all of what we need to get to. All of that. And then we should also be passionate, great lovers, fantastic travelers, exactly. And very few... We're 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 the good, what you call that happiness, This 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 gonna 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 a that very article. About 10-15 years ago, I set out to write a piece, 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 a hundred 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.

Wow.

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 hole that you talk about, there were very few. And I thought that is It 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. 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 create that in an intimate partner? Or is it setting a lower expectation for what we want so that we don't...

It's both. I think sometimes if you lower your expectations you're much better off, no doubt. Calibrate. So back to Eli Finkel's research, calibrating expectations is probably one of the most, the three main things for what he calls successful relationships. 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 thing? 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 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, there's 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? will 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? Like, 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. So, 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 do do it. You need a good amount of self-awareness, but you also need to be in relationships, because it's people who help you become more aware.

Practicing it.

Practicing it, but other people let you see who you are. It's by being with others that you get to know who you are, not just by sitting there alone and say, who am I? Who am I? But this is a relational perspective on life, and I will stand by that. Read the newsletter. I really poured myself into that one because I'm tired a little bit of this. No, what I will say to you, I'm tired of the go fix yourself. First, and then go be in a relationship. Relationships help you to become who you are. That's what happens between children and their caregivers. The next thing is instead of constantly thinking who's the right person I'm gonna 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. That's now, what does it mean to find the right person? And there I will say the simplest way of looking at it is this. 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 who have had love stories. This is a whole different story. I never thought for a minute I would live with these people. It takes something else to have a partner in life with whom you're going to go through the pains, the sufferings, the challenges, the, you know, 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 story per se, are not life stories. It's different ingredients, it's different values. There are some things that you don't need in order to have a beautiful love story with someone. It lives in its encapsulated version on its own. You're not thinking, can I do this with you? Can I get old with you? Can I take you to my parents? Do we share similar... It's about values, life, not just about feelings. So when you're looking for the right person, It's not just what attracts you. It's who can you build a life with?

How many values in common do you need to have with your partner, life partner? Because...

The important ones. It's not how many, but there are a few of them that are really important.

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

I think I'm not going to say them in order of importance, but one of them that really matters is your relationship to others. If you are a person that values relationships, that sees the presence of others in your life as central, and you are with somebody who does not want community or does not know how, I mean, I'm talking not about what they would like to learn through you, But their value is 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 over to the house.

She wants her space.

Her space, the whole thing. And I'm thinking, wow, this is a tough one. It's not just about the house. His whole life is about being with people. And her whole life is about not being with people, necessarily. That's not how she experienced Now the question is, is she drawn to more of what he has to offer and is he drawn to more of what she? If these are totally, then okay, different values come together and they mix and match. But if you have these two separations like that, so that's one 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?

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. People around you, you owe others, others are there for you. Relationships is what makes you.

I think I was both. Based on like circumstances.

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

Yeah, yeah, of course.

Okay.

So I think both.

I think that question is a fundamentally interesting question.

Okay.

That people can ask themselves when they partner in business and in love.

Raise for self-reliance or loyalty?

Yeah.

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

Doesn't want to be alone or doesn't want to travel.

Once it's settled.

Doesn't want. But it's 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? If you, you know, if you want a family, then make sure that you find someone who wants a family. What do you, why do you want.

To be like that?

What are you going to do, try to convince them, you know? 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 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, as we're saying.

I met a husband of mine, whom I am for more than three decades, who had never left the US when I met him. I never knew such a person existed. Coming from Europe, that was unheard of for us. 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 two hours away.

Yeah. I traveled outside of Europe.

He had never been outside of the U.S. Yeah, he will always tell me, he went to the Virgin Islands. But, you know, for the rest, and I thought, oh my God, how does one, you know, who is such a person? But I knew it was because of the circumstances of his life and that if he could, he would, and he was intensely curious. If you just said, oh, he's never traveled, then you misinterpret. You don't want to just look at the manifest thing of, you know, you want to say, and behind this, is there someone who would actually like that who just hasn't had the opportunity and is curious and just says let's go. So don't get fooled just by what you see. Find out what is the belief behind it, the aspiration, the longing, the interest and then you get a sense of what is the value.

Do you think it's, I'll 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 just impossible. I think you need to calibrate.

Calibrate. Always calibrate.

You calibrate. You constantly will be disappointed. Do you know a single relationship where you haven't been disappointed? Okay. I mean, disappointment is 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. 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.

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? A, can I come tell you? I'm really disappointed. You let me down. I thought we were in this together. I trusted you. and you say, I see your point, or do you say, what the hell are you talking about? You're just inventing this. You're delusional. None of the, you know, and everything in between. That's how you do a relationship. It's really based on the repair. It's not based on the, It's how.

We heal the disappointment.

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

I still respect you. So it's how we repair our disappointment on a daily or weekly or monthly basis.

Minute sometimes.

Is the success of the relationship.

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

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

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

So you've been married for seven years?

Yeah.

Together for eight, nine years?

Yeah, yeah, about eight. A little over eight.

Eight and a plus years. You know, there's always those people who say, Gosh, these perfect couples online, they always have this perfect videos, they're always like amazing together, there's never any challenges, you know, it's the person who's not in a relationship or went through a bad divorce, they're just like, oh, they just hate watching people who look perfect online. And you're like, how could they be so perfect? They've gotta have some challenges. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Could you share maybe the biggest challenge you face while being married?

Yeah.

That you're open to sharing.

Sure, sure, yeah.

I think either as yourself or as a couple. Sure, sure, sure.

You know, I think the biggest challenge of being married is, you know, you're taking these two individual entities.

Yeah.

Different people.

Different people, different thoughts, different expectations, different experiences, different realities. And you're consistently, constantly trying to merge the two into one. And that that is one of the hardest experiences in life, period. You know, even in physics, when two atoms come together, there's fusion, there's tension, there's heat, there's friction, there's pressure, there's conflict. And it's the same thing when two people are coming together. So in marriage, you know, it's that same thing of that consistent negotiation of like, okay, my thoughts versus sometimes her thoughts versus our and what's good for us, what's good for the marriage, what's just good for me, what's good for her. So there's this consistent dialogue and debate and dance around trying to find the sweet spot. And I think that's one of the beauties of marriage is that it's constantly challenging us to become our best self and to expand who we think we are. Marriage is really about compromise and okay, how do we find the common ground here? and where is that? And also as a man leading in love, you know, one of the challenges sometimes in leading in love is like, man, okay, I want to say this, but you know what? I shouldn't say that, right? Okay, how do I get my attention across in love? And that is hard. So I would say one of the hardest things in marriage is just the coexisting, you know, and living together. Living together. And also it's like finding that that common ground of the things that she wants to do, the things that I want to do, and the things that we then commit to do together. And there's no rulebook on how to do it. But this is where the love comes in. And so, like, even when people see us on social media, you're like, oh, man, I think what you're seeing is even in the midst of the challenges, you're seeing the reality of what's really there, which is, oh, these are two people that genuinely love each other.

Even if you're going through adversity. or are we?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, totally. I mean, I think that what you see or anyone that sees us on social media at some moments, I think what's coming through is the truth. The truth is that that love is really there. But even in the midst of that love, you know, we still cultivate still coexisting and negotiating and what's right and what's not. And all those things happen all the time.

Really?

All the time.

Oh yeah.

But because you know you love I know I love her and she loves me and we are in love. It's what allows us the environment to still work through so many different things on any given day.

-What'S the thing that you believe you can improve to get to the next level individually for the marriage to thrive even more?

-Yeah, I think where I can improve, I think it's the area where all men struggle, communication.

-Really?

-Yeah.

Excellent communicator, speaker, executive, movie producer, author, writer, freaking pastor, you know, you are the communicator. So if there's a struggle for you, it's like, what are the rest of men? We're screwed, you know? It's like, you're the best communicator there is. The rest of men have no chance.

But there's a difference between communicating publicly and the communicating personally. So the public communication is actually the easier communication.

It's easy for you to write the books.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's not, don't get me wrong, there are still difficulties, but in terms of that interpersonal communication, that's an area where I absolutely want to get better. For sure, for sure. And what I'll tell you is writing this book has really helped a lot. It has helped me tremendously work on that, and not being afraid to be honest, and not being afraid to speak my truth, and not being afraid to say what I'm thinking and doing it in love. And it's been hugely cathartic and very liberating because, as I was saying when we first sat down, you know, so it astonishes me how little we really operate in truth. It astonishes me how little real communication there is in a relationship or even a marriage for that matter.

Or to yourself.

Or to yourself, because a lot of times we feel things, but we suppress. I don't want to think that about myself. No, I can think about it. Well, guess what? Any suppressed thought does not go away. It persists. The only way to get a suppressed thought to go away is to acknowledge that it's there. Hey, you know what? I'm feeling this. I don't want to feel it, but it's here. So now that I'm acknowledging it, I have a question. What am I going to do about it? But if I don't acknowledge that it's there, guess what? It's only gonna get bigger. It's only gonna get worse. So what I've been learning is the more I communicate and the more I'm honest and the more I'm truthful and the more I work on those things, the better I become as a person. And I think that also lends itself to the marriage and the healthier the marriage becomes.

Do you believe that you can over communicate in a relationship? Yes.

I'll answer it this way.

Without a doubt, you can. So when I'm making a movie, my new movie is called Breakthrough. It's a true story of a mother who prays her her son back to life after he dies falling through a frozen lake. And Chrissy Metz, this is Us, stars as the mother. And so, and I do a lot of true stories. You know, one of the last true stories I did was Miracles from Heaven with Jennifer Garner. And so, whenever I'm developing a true story and I sit down with the real person or the family that the movie is based on, I say this very thing. I say, Listen, I'm excited to tell your movie. I'm excited to bring it to the world. I said, I want to be really clear about something. There's a difference between the truth and the facts. I said the facts are for the documentary. The truth is for the movie. So I'm going to help develop a script and produce a movie that will tell the truth of your story. But if you want every fact to be told, that's where you can write a book or go get a documentary made, because the movie is to try to articulate the truth. So when it comes to communication, I think it's important to articulate truth, but sometimes when you're dictating every fact, that can feel like over communicating. People want to know the essence of what you're feeling, but it's not like, okay, so at five o'clock I did this and did this and did this. That's when it's like, wait, it's just too much information. Just tell me the truth. The truth. The truth is like, you know what? I'm really happy right now. And the reason why I'm happy, I had a great day. Or you know what? I'm really sad right now. And the reason why I'm sad, I had a bad day. That's the truth. Over communicating can sometimes be over communicating so many different facts. And so that's how I articulate that. And I think that anybody wants to know the truth, but not everybody always wants to know every detail.

When someone feels like they found the one, and I've heard this a lot, like, I know this is the one, or I thought they were the one, and then it didn't end up working out, and they want to get married, They've decided marriage is for them. They want to be life partners. What are a few of the conversations that they should have to not know for certain but know for better certain that this is the right decision? This partnership is the right decision to move forward in a long-term committed relationship.

Okay.

As opposed to just maybe the infatuation behind it or the initial connection or the attraction. What are a few questions they should be asking each other? that maybe they haven't asked yet to know whether or not they're setting themselves up for that successful long-term relationship.

Okay. Number one, how do you envision your role in a marriage, all right. People don't go in finding out what the expectations are before they get married. They have this assumption that we're just going to transition from how we are in a relationship to being that way in the marriage. No, no, no, no, no. Because a lot of times things change and the level of expectation raises now in marriage. You also have some people who may think for example, you may have a man out there who thinks okay, my job is to court you when we're boyfriend and girlfriend.

When we're married.

When we're married, I don't got to do all that work anymore. Now, I'm your husband, I've given you the ring, satisfy me, make me happy. You got to find that out. out because you're setting yourself up for failure if you don't realize he thinks he gets to take time off now that he's married you. Or he may think as long as I'm paying these bills, don't ask me for anything else. You got to find out so we.

Need to ask what do you... She.

Should be asking that. Yeah, both of them should be asking how do you perceive your role in marriage? What are your expectations from me in marriage? Let's find out what we need, what we're expecting from each other. Number two, Making sure our values are aligned, all right. So, whether that be spiritual, whether that be even financial values, whatever those things are, let's make sure we're on the same page about it. And if we're not on the same page, are these things we can balance out and work out, all right. So, for example, if... Let's look at it from a financial perspective. If I'm a very frugal man.

Yes.

And this woman is a spender.

I have friends in this situation and it's not Good, exactly.

And I'm sure they didn't talk about it in advance. You want to talk about these things and say okay, how do we view this? What are your expectations as a spender? Are you someone who thinks well, I got to be able to spend some free money every month? I go shopping every month. What is it? Let's come to an agreement beforehand that we're both comfortable with but let's understand what we're walking into here, all right. Again, we don't talk about these things we just assume oh, because she's not asking for money now she won't ask for money later and that's not necessarily true. Let's find out what are we expecting? Do our values align in marriage? I definitely think number three, sexual expectations. I think that needs to be discussed and understood. And again, it's all about compromise if a compromise can be found. So, it's not saying okay, well I expected four times a week, you know he or she says two times a week and now we're just going at it. No, well, then maybe we go with three times a week. But we make sure the compromise is something that we can both be happy with. When you compromise on something that you're not going to be happy about, you're not compromising, you're sacrificing. And those sacrifices can be good in some instances, not when it's very important to you or it's going to be important enough that it would cause you to wander if you're not getting it. Never sacrifice something that's going to make you want to look at someone else in your marriage. all right. So, if you need three times a week to be happy and satisfied, make that very clear. Don't agree to two and then... And then wander, yeah. Exactly, and now you're entertaining other people because you never set that expectation. Another expectation as we talked about earlier with attraction is how we keep ourselves up physically. I do think that's a good idea.

What if I just gained 60 pounds in seven years and is that okay since we're married now?

Listen, people need to be honest. so, like I tell some men if you can say, you know what? If my wife gained 60 pounds I don't care, I'm cool with it and you're going to love her with the same energy and desire that you did 60 other pounds ago, great. But if you can't maintain that desire, that passion, 60 pounds lit, you need to make that known now. You can't be afraid and say, well, that sounds too shallow. So, would we rather be shallow now or have a disastrous relationship later. Have you cheating on your partner because you weren't willing to be honest in the beginning, all right. Same and women too because an epidemic that's happening is women are less honest about their attraction needs so to speak, all right. So, whenever we talk about attraction let yourself go I think people automatically think of the woman letting themselves go. But a lot of men have let themselves go. and have fallen far from what he looked like when they first got married. But she's not always being as honest and straightforward about that. One reason may be because she doesn't want the pressure on her so, that's one issue right there or she may be afraid of his ego and think it's too fragile, exactly, and doesn't want to say anything. But again, if you can't maintain the same passion and desire with that fall off, Off, you've got to be honest about that. So, he understands because what happens is this. So, let's just use this example, he lets himself go, he lets himself go, the sex falls off, all right. And the sex is falling off because she's not as attracted to him anymore. But she's not being honest about it. Now, when she does say anything about whether it's his weight or whatever the case may be, he's going to think you're just making excuses, you're just trying to give a reason not to have sex. rather than embracing it as this is the reality of what's holding us back. However, if we had this conversation from the jump and you were honest about it then I always knew this would be an issue. Now, when you bring it back up it's going to be like yeah, you did tell me. Wow, yeah, it happened. So, now it's going to be easier for me to embrace that and actually do something about it.

And have the recognition and awareness about it because you'd already talked about it.

Exactly.

Now, you do a lot of these events and workshops for hundreds of women at a time. Are women opening up in these experiences when you're connecting with them and saying, yes, I do lose the attraction, like appearances are important to me or is it not as important? And from the events that you've done with the women you've talked to, what is the feedback on appearance and looks?

So I will say this, when it comes to appearance, looks and sex, Women aren't as vocal and transparent in a group of people. Really?

Yes. But one-on-one with you.

One-on-one, different story. So, same thing like using the sex example if I ask a group of women are you getting orgasms regularly? There's going to be women in there who lie because they don't want to feel inadequate, they don't want to be the woman who doesn't raise their hand and say yes, I'm getting it good. So, they're going to be hesitant or not know how to answer it. But if I ask in private now, I'm going to get the real truth. Yes, and now she's going to be very clear about loss of attraction, lack of sexual satisfaction, and all these things. So, that's why people have to be careful because I think sometimes we're assuming these issues don't really exist because we're not hearing it in that group setting. Don't be fooled some women just they feel more comfortable privately expressing those things. And I've heard it enough times to know this is real. And again, you just have to even if you haven't heard it enough times pay attention. There's a reason why we're seeing people fall off in marriage. There's a reason why we're seeing this disconnect. And even when it comes to infidelity, there's a great focus on men who've cheated but there's a lot of women who've cheated. And it's not always for emotional reasons, it's for sexual ones too. So, again, my thing is not to sit here and say well, it's about who does work. It's about okay, how do we fix this? How do we make this better? And we have to accept that yes, there are contributing factors to why we see failed marriages why we see infidelity, why we see disconnects in our relationships. Let's address the underlying issues and be honest about it so we can get this on the right track.

Wow. Are there any relationships that you're aware of that have open relationships that are successful? Or do you think it's very hard to do? Because more and more with the Burning Man scene and all these people exploring these things, what's your thoughts on on open relationships or being together but also having multiple partners.

So, I'm going to be honest. I'm very skeptical of open relationships. Now, I don't want to sit here and say it's impossible for it to be successful because I haven't met everybody and I haven't studied it enough. But I have studied it to a certain extent. And from what I have found is again, a lot of open relationships stem from one, the perception that one person can't fulfill me. And since one person can't fulfill me, why not have more than one, all right. And to me, find a person who's experienced that deep and genuine connection, they don't have that perception. Because they had a moment in their life where they met someone that they thought this could be it. I could put my all into this and I would be happy with this one person. If you haven't experienced that connection of course, there's a natural progression to thinking, well, maybe it's not going to work with just one. Can I entertain multiple if I can even handle multiple? The other thing is I do think it also stems from a lack of successful monogamy. And when I say a lack of successful monogamy, I don't necessarily mean that they weren't able to maintain monogamy. It's like, okay, if I get in this monogamous relationship and now I get cheated on or I've had multiple where I've been cheated on. I may start to think what's the point of trying to be monogamous? -Right, it's not going to work anyways. -Exactly, why not just get an open relationship which one allows me to not be so vulnerable to one person. I now have more emotional control and what you'll find a lot of situations is there's still somebody running that show. And what I mean by that is... -One of the people are running the show. -Exactly, and they're running it in a way that it's protecting them, all right. So, I met a woman one time she was into polyamory and she said well, her ideal polyamorous relationship was a man and a woman but they're not allowed to have other people, all right. So, it's like you're trying to control this environment for your sake, all right. For your protection so, that means there's something deeper going on here. So, to me I just tell people when it comes to open relationships, if you really believe that's your thing fine. I'm not here to tell people that they can't live their life that way. But I just want you to make sure you've healed from everything first. If you heal from everything and you still feel like this is for you, do your thing. But you might be surprised what's going to happen when you uncover it and address some of these past traumas and issues. You may not be so so inclined to want to be in this open relationship anymore. And again, I would still argue I argue that if you meet that person you have that amazing connection with it changes the game. And it can completely throw you for a loop because I've seen people who were once into open relationships and completely shifted to monogamy because they met that person it was like I never thought this could happen but it's here and I want it, I'm going for it.

Wow, that's powerful insight. What about 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. 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, like, 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 and find that connection again? 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 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 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, you had a divorce.

Get a divorce?

Get a divorce.

Sooner or 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.

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 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 divorce. And why are we getting divorced? 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 repeating pattern. Exactly, what the child now thinks is you can't trust love. 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 relationships because of their skewed of things because they lack clarity and 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. 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 two-parent household.

Yeah, I felt it, man.

Exactly, dysfunction is dysfunction. 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, 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 syndrome, 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 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 of being married? 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 healthy, happy union to raise healthy, happy children. If we can't 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 rather you accept that now, go through your healing process and both of you can find your happiness and learn how to coexist as co-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 Let the children see happy, healthy relationships not just with other people within yourself. 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 don't want to 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. growing up in that household. Yeah.

Or their environment.

Exactly.

Their parents or their environments.

Yeah, exactly. And it's just all because of 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.

Yeah.

Easily.

More loving, more peaceful, more enjoyable.

Happy people all around doing horrible negative things.

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 communicated everything and you're aligned to a a certain vision for your marriage. Five 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 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 this function 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.

Interesting.

Because we have dysfunction in individual dysfunction that we have not processed and resolve. 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 opening up about their marriage. I don't know if you watched this yet. I haven't watched it. I've seen the 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 sweated 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 into 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 own, not in front of the other person. Then we come back and communicate from a peaceful, loving place about what 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've said you son of a b once, it's like you can say whatever 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 problem 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 disrespect stress out, throw negativity at your partner. Yeah, you know, that's 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 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. 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. I need space to 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're just quiet 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 as well.

Yeah, it even affects your co-workers because literally, 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 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.

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 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's different. But in general, based on all the work you've done and 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 to... 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 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 over analyze 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 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 badgered but at least one show of true concern. 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 know, I need to buy 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 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 will 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 would know with men, so, it's kind of the flip side of that. He can't read your mind. 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 not doing the right thing is simply a lack of knowledge.

And simply, I'm not 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. 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 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, it's you asked me to watch TV with you. did that in her mind. 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.

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 handles your desires and your feelings. If when you express those things to him he makes the reactions, 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. Because a man who's very much into you, he'll do it. I know plenty of husbands or men who are like if she would just tell me what she wants, I'd give it to her. But he has no clue what she wants.

So, communicate very clearly. Don't just expect them to read your mind.

Exactly.

But what do you think of the three or five components to a foundation of a relationship that has the potential to really thrive long term? Committed for decades. What are like... It needs to have these three or these five things. Otherwise, it's going to be really challenging to be to sustain this type of love and and happiness.

I mean, a couple of simple ones, I guess, are I need to, I need to show up for my partner in ways that they need me to, not just ways that are comfortable to me. We, in other words, pay attention to what your partner actually needs, because it's really easy to say, you know, I'm gonna bring them lunch every day. That's like, I'm a really good cook and I'm really, you know, I want to slave away every morning to bring them lunch every day because, you know, that's me giving. They don't care.

They don't care.

Bring you lunch every day. Like, maybe they don't care. Maybe what would mean the most to them is you, them getting home and you really being interested in their day.

Do you think love languages is an important part of this where it's like understanding someone's love language? and giving them their top priorities.

I think that it's an interesting framework and it's been for a lot of people a very successful framework. I think any framework that just allows you to kind of, you know, create a little structure for things that gives you some simplicity around it can be valuable. It doesn't mean it's the only framework you can apply, but it's a valuable model to work from. So it's showing up in ways, not what do I want to give, But what do they actually need?

-I think that's a lot of conflict in relationships. -Yes. -And I think you need to understand, do I want to do something that's uncomfortable every day that's not foreign to me or that's foreign to me? Or do I want to find a partner that enjoys the things that I like to give?

-Well, that's an interesting question. -I might be attracted to you. -Any relationship is going to be a bit of both. But sometimes it works. even without like that's a kind of compatibility issue. I think it even works outside of that in day-to-day stuff because you might say the thing I want to give to my partner is an awesome, you know, night together. But maybe what they need is an awesome night with their friends. And maybe the most loving thing you can do is say, hey, I know you haven't seen this person in a while. You should go and see them. I know that relationship is important to you. You should go and hang out with your mum tonight or, you know, recognizing not what's easy for me to give, but what might be less comfortable for me to give, but is actually what would mean the world to them.

Yeah.

And, and I think if you really want to make yourself irreplaceable to someone, it's recognizing that because no one else is going to do that for them. I mean, you know what I mean? Like, it's, they, some, maybe, but it's really rare to find someone who. who is willing to do that for you.

Okay, so that's number one.

To work on yourself.

Yep.

And to say, I'm responsible for me. My partner isn't responsible for me. I need to do the work to be the most loving, confident person I can be in this world.

What are those?

Fulfilled, has their own purpose, has things that drive them. to me is very, very important.

If... What's the first thing people should do to do work on themselves? Because you threw a few things out there, but what's like...

I mean, firstly, do you have... Maybe here's an interesting question you can ask yourself. If I had 10 hours free right now, what would I do with them?

Interesting.

If you can't give a good answer to that question, you might already be describing one of the weaknesses of your relationship.

And binge watching a series is not the best use of your time.

It's, you know, that if the answer is, oh my god, well I have my purpose, the thing I love getting stuck into, or it doesn't even have to be some grand purpose. Not everyone has found like their life's calling, but it could be, I really want to learn this language, or I really want to see this friend, or I really want to go and, you know, whatever it is. Read this book or learn this thing.

Take care of my health.

Yeah.

I want to. I can't wait to get to the gym. If you should be able to answer the question of my partner canceled on me today. What would I do with that day now? And if you can't, that then you're. You begin to describe the person who's sitting there waiting for their partner to text them, waiting for their partner to make them feel good enough.

That's not attractive.

It's not. And it's not fair to our partners.

It's a lot of pressure.

It's a lot of pressure. And by the way, people put a lot of pressure on their partners by expecting their partner to put a band-aid on all sorts of things for them. You know, if they're feeling like there's a lot of rhetoric about vulnerability right now. Now, I think vulnerability is huge. I think the work that people like Brené Brown are doing and so on is huge. It's massively important. Vulnerability is absolutely an act of courage and we should encourage it more. both sexes all the time. But his vulnerability is something's making me insecure and I'm gonna share it with you because you're my partner and I love you and I tell you things, right?

But you don't wanna do that every day.

Vulnerability if an hour from now I tell you, oh God, I'm feeling insecure again. And then an hour from now you're that thing's affecting me again. and this one tonight because now in a way what we're doing is instead of sharing we're dumping. I'm asking you now to fix it for me, to put a band-aid on it for me.

Make me feel better. Yeah.

Of course it's part of our part. A loving partner will support you and will do everything in their power to make you feel loved and to make you feel safe and to make you feel secure. And it's absolutely true that sometimes what we're feeling as insecurity is because our partner isn't doing their job in those things.

That's true.

They're not building.

They're not building. They're doing things that are proactively making us feel insecure. There's minor betrayals, minor neglects, all of that. But sometimes we have to say, okay, what part of my, what part of this am I responsible for? And it's my It's my partner's responsibility. It's our responsibility in life together to share the load, to work towards things together. But it's not your job to carry the load for me. To carry my problems, to put the band-aid on every day.

I need to... Maybe once in a blue moon. Yeah.

Of course, of course. And we're all gonna do that. We're all gonna have days, weeks, times where we're going through something something really serious. And our partner's job is to show up.

Yeah.

You know, but a friend of mine who's kind of blunt said to me, some days or weeks you get to be needy and difficult and high maintenance and boring and, you know, insecure, and then you don't. And I thought, yeah, like, we get to be those things for a time. until we don't, until it gets too much for somebody else. Because we need to be, at the very least, we need to show our partner we're committed to our own growth.

Yeah.

So the, you know, the first one, what did we have? Show up in ways they need, not just ways you want to show up. The second one's work on yourself.

Yep.

I think, I guess the third one.

It.

To me teamwork is everything. Like being a genuine team is huge. Really looking at each other as teammates as opposed to you're there to meet my needs or I'm competing with you in some way.

Man, I've done that before.

Like we're an actual team. I saw, you know, one of the things I loved most about Chris Rock recent stand-up, Tambourine.

I haven't seen it.

Such a genius name. The whole concept is, you know, about the idea that he couldn't in his last marriage play the tambourine. He couldn't play the backup instrument, right?

Right.

And I thought it was such a great, great metaphor because in a good relationship, in a really genuinely mutually supportive relationship. Some days you play tambourine, some days you're their teammate. You can't, you know, the way he says it, her success is your success and vice versa. You're in this together. And some days that person's the lead and you're on tambourine and a lot of people have never learned how to play tambourine. There's the other thing, I don't remember where it comes from, but every relationship has a flower and a gardener, right? Most people don't want to be in a relationship where they're always the gardener. They want to be never the flower, right?

Blooming all the time.

Yes, and sometimes you have to be the gardener, no matter how long you've played the flower.

Right, right.

You and I have played flowers a lot in our lives, right? We've been used to being a certain you know, having a leader role and having these kind of big lives and big worlds and whatever, and then you go to a relationship and the relationship doesn't give a fuck. You know what I mean? What about you?

No! Yeah.

I don't care that you're the flower out there in the world. Sometimes in our relationship, you have to be the gardener. Sometimes you've got to play tambourine, even if to everyone else, you are the constant flower.

Yeah, right.

Movie reference, Constant Gardener. Well, you can't, you can't be the constant flower, right? You can't, you might be in your business in some way, but the relationship is different. You can't, now you're coming as two equals. And so it's so much of it's checking your own damn ego and being like, I'm in this to be with you as a teammate. Not this or this. This, this.

When do you know you've found your match for life or your potential match for life or you think this could be the match?

By the way, these are much harder questions than the first interview we did today.

Is it when you see these three things after a period of time and you feel convinced that the bricks are being laid equally in a certain way? Yeah. When you say, I'm ready to be committed all in.

I think there are four stages to a relationship.

Okay, stage one.

Stage one is admiration. That's when you don't have a relationship with this person.

You admire like, I look at you.

And I'm like, this person's hot, they have something about them, I like their qualities, I like their energy.

They have a good potential. Yeah. Okay.

And by the way, that doesn't even mean they have good potential for you right now. It just means this is a person of high potential in some way.

You admire them, yeah.

The second stage is connection. And you could, I think in that, in a sense, connection and chemistry are both relevant to this stage. Because you have this person where there's a mutual like, I like things about you, you like things about me, I think you're attractive, you think I'm attractive. We share some common ideas, common grounds in life, our outlook, whatever.

Beliefs. Yeah.

Yeah. That could be found on a great date, right? Doesn't really mean much still. This is the plot of land.

Yeah.

You can have great sex. There'd be chemistry. You can make out all night.

None of this means you're gonna have a great relationship.

Okay.

The third stage is commitment that says.

I.

Want to do this with you. I am committed to. to building with you and you are committed to building with me. That's a really great stage to be at. It's very important. You can't have a relationship without that. Any relationship without that or where that's one-sided is unrequired love by definition. There are a ton of people out there right now who say, I'm just, you know, I created a program recently called Attraction to commitment, which literally dealt with why people keep getting stuck in limbo.

Yeah.

Why they keep getting stuck in the casual phases and it never gets to a relationship. One of the things that fascinates me is how long we stay with something that's just casual, that isn't a real relationship on the hope that it will change. Unrequired love, you know, certainly unrequired commitment.

Yeah, it's a nice time when you're like 23, right?

Right. That's stage three. Stage four is compatibility. And the hard thing I think for a lot of people is I used to question this one myself. Like if you know the idea love conquers all, right?

It doesn't. It does not.

I wish. I like it. I like that phrase.

It's amazing.

I love the phrase. I love the sentiment of it.

It made me amazing bump sticker, you know?

And there's nothing, you know, what is more powerful in the world than love.

And all you need is love.

Yeah, apparently not. We need a little more.

It.

You can have love without commitment.

Right.

And you can have. You can have commitment without compatibility.

Interesting.

And this is where things get. I used to think, well, maybe commitment is enough, and maybe. issues with compatibility can be overcome as long as two people are truly committed to each other. I don't believe that anymore. I think that it goes beyond commitment to truly last. You have to have two people who are really compatible. Like, okay, let's say we got commitment. Two people want to be together.

They admire each other. They have chemistry.

Right.

They say, I'm committed to you.

But one person's sex drive is here. And the other ones is here.

Not compatible.

This is gonna be difficult.

One person likes to spend a lot of money, another person wants to save all the money. One person believes in a certain religion, another person doesn't believe in that.

One person wants to spend five days a week together, the other person is happy with one night a week together.

One person wants their family to move in, the other person wants their space.

These are serious, serious issues. that often end relationships. And so to me, you want to say, how do you know when you found your match?

All four.

Four stages.

All four.

I admire this person. We have connection and chemistry. We have genuine mutual commitment. And we're compatible.

Should we expect, you know, moving forward in relationships with our time, that monogamy is something that we're going to be able to do or with the there's always something better option and that it's more available now than ever, especially with social media, online dating, there's distractions constantly.

Yeah, you don't have to leave your house anymore.

Exactly.

You can pretty much cheat on your partner while lying next to them in bed.

Exactly.

But we are by definition already doing serial non-monogamy. You know, most of us don't come to marriage monogamous. We've come to marriage after years of nomadism, sexual nomadism. So monogamy is a concept that has already been redefined throughout. You asked me before about how has marriage changed. But monogamy had nothing to do with love for most of history. Monogamy became about love with romanticism. It's the sacred ideal of the romantic ideal because the secret cow because monogamy means I'm everything. I'm it. I'm the one. I'm chosen. I'm unique. I'm Iris. And if you are interested in someone else, it means I'm not enough. Versus monogamy, which was basically for patrimony and for children, you know, so how.

Should we navigate this moving forward?

I think so. If I had talked to you 70 years ago about premarital sex and virginity was a precondition, you would have looked at me like this is a taboo, this is impossible. Today premarital sex in the West, it's like nobody blinks an eye. It would have been inconceivable. If I had talked to you about going from families of eight children to families of one child, you would have looked at me inconceivable. If I had told you that we were going to be conceiving so many children through assisted reproduction inconceivable. So today when you say open relationships or non-monogamous relationships or periodically non-monogamous or monogamous shaladansavage or you know or polyamorous it all people will say can't work impossible you know the fact is monogamy is the new frontier but you can have it as negotiated through divorce or through what most people have always done which is proclaimed monogamy and clandestine adultery. Or you can do it through a model of transparency in which people have consensual non-monogamy. This is it. This is the options.

Right. What do you think is going to be working the most?

It's going to be a little bit of everything. There are some people who really need stable, committed, monogamous relationships. They don't want open doors. And there are other people for which open doors probably should be the model from the start. That's kind of who they are, that's their curiosity, that's the way they live their life. And it's not because they're less committed or less loving, it's because their sexuality is organized in a certain way and it lives together with a certain arrangement. And all of that is going to be redefined as we go along. It's the factor what's going to happen, it will be the next front frontier. But if you see it on the level of marriage, people say, you know, if you say, okay, let's look under, you know, you have to look at it from the place of before marriage. You know, a Swedish philosopher said, today, monogamy only exists in reality. It doesn't exist in your memories, and it doesn't exist in your fantasies. So This is not because I advocate it. It's just, first of all, there's nothing to advocate. It's very simple that by definition we have multiple sex partners before marriage. We are not monogamous anymore in the traditional sense of the word. The word has been in flux and we don't really know where it's going. We don't. What we know is that people still seek to connect People want to love, people want somebody who loves them, and how that will play itself out is the mysteries of life. But the fundamental human need for love, for connection, for passion, for transcendence will never change. The expressions, the forms, the institutions in which we will seek those fundamental human aspirations will continuously transform. That's really how I see the evolution taking place.

Sure.

What do you think of what I'm saying?

Oh man, it's just so, you know, it's confusing because you hear so many different options that work, that don't work. You see people that love each other that go through breakup and divorce, you see, and then you see the pain and the struggle and the emotional toll that it takes on some people. Then you see people who are in committed monogamous relationships who feel guilty because they want to be able to explore but they can't because they've made this choice and they've committed to it.

Monogamy is a practice. We are not by nature biologically evolutionary monogamous. It's a practice. It's a choice. And it's a choice.

Not our makeup.

No. And it's a choice then. And monogamy is a continuum. You have mind, you have fantasy, you have memory, you have a lot of things. At what point do we become non-monogamous? Where does non-monogamy start? And all of these concepts are fluid concepts today. There is just no way to define it like that. So we make choices and we make compromises. and we sometimes don't just do what we want. And we often need to think about the consequences of our actions. And we need to think about the larger picture and something that may be perfectly desirable for tonight may not be worth it for the next weeks and the next years.

Yeah, exactly.

And I think that in the era of self-fulfillment and the right to happiness, We don't have more desires today than the previous generations. We just feel more entitled to fulfill our desires. And we feel that we have a right to be happy, my personal happiness. The switch, the greatest switch, is from a social organization in which I think about the well-being of others, collectivist thinking thinks about the well-being of others, and I sacrifice my own individual needs for the well-being of others. To the other side of the continuum is, I have a right to pursue my individual needs and the others will have to adapt to it. And I think that we are a little bit on the extreme end of the other side at this point. We really take ourselves a little very seriously and sometimes at the detriment of other people to whom we do have an obligation and a commitment to, not just our partners. The world.

The world.

So where should we be somewhere in the middle you think or what's...

In an examined state. I don't know that it's always in the middle but in an examined state, in a state that doesn't just say what I like, what I feel, the fact that I have options doesn't mean I have to exercise all these options. The problem of consumer life is that we don't know anymore to make choices. Same with the cereals in the supermarket. Why would it be better with love? So, I could get better. I could get better. I'm like, you know, I'm a victim of FOMO. You know, how do I know this is the best? No, you don't.

Yeah.

When do I find the best? No, you don't. You don't find your partner. You choose your partner. It's very different. You know, if you think you're going to find somebody who is the person who's going to make you stop looking, it doesn't work this way. No, it doesn't. Because at some point, your inner rumblings will start up again, and then you will say, oh, probably... Start looking. you know, it's like you just said, this is it. This is where I decide to put my roots in this moment, you know, and I'm gonna try to deepen them. I think we are all living with paradoxes of choice.

Yes.

You know, from which phone I get, but we cannot commodify a partner and just kind of beta test the partner and beta test the relationship and check out to see, is it good enough or can I find better Yes, you can. The fact is you could find other. I'm not sure it would be better, but you definitely can find other. And there are lots of people you can love, and there's only a few you can make a life with. And they're not always the same. There are a lot of people you can have love stories with.

Right.

And have beauty, but they're not the person you would make a life out of.

How do you know when it's the person you can make a life with?

I think values enter into there a lot more. I mean, you can have magnificent love stories with people you would never live with. They're just too different from you. They have not the same values as you. One wants a child, one does not. One wants to travel, the other does not. One wants a career, the other... Very major different classes, different Veltanschauung as they used to say in German, you know, visions of the world. But you can love them. You can have a beautiful love story with that person and be transported in your experience with them. But you know that that's not the person with whom you're going to build a home, a future, a trajectory, maybe a family if you want that. That's not the person with whom and for that you need more of of shared vision, shared mission, shared values, stuff that is not just in the domain of feelings, but also in the domain of beliefs. It's different. Views about money, views about independence and separateness versus connection, views about emotional expressiveness, views about power.

Wouldn't you say that those differences that we have also attract us to other people? that we have some of those differences. Maybe we don't share the same values or beliefs, but it's also different, unique, interesting. And so it also brings us together or do you think it's not enough?

I think that what attracts you originally is often what becomes the source of conflict later. The very thing that is so attractive because it's different is also the very thing that becomes difficult because it's different.

Interesting.

So of course it's a mix and match. you know, but what makes thriving relationships is not only feelings. It's a mix of feelings, actions, beliefs, touches, physicality. It's a more all-encompassing thing. A beautiful love story can be just about feelings, and you can love more people than those that you can make a life with. That doesn't mean you make a life with people you don't love, but it means that there is a whole other set of ingredients that enter into the making of a life, which is the creation of a world. It's a little different. And in that world, you often can be on the side of, you know, there's a lot of sentences today that I never heard 20 years ago in couples therapy. this is a raw deal. I'm not getting my needs met. Where is my return on investment? Excuse me. Excuse me. Somebody owes you? It's like, wow, I am in a relationship for what it's gonna give me. That is an important piece. Don't misunderstand me. But I'm also in a relationship for why I for what I'm going to give to this person, for what I'm going to give if I want children to these children, not just for what they're going to bring to me. It's like the level of narcissism has to be shrunken a tiny bit on occasion.

Right, exactly.

It's just like, you know, I mean, I'm part of that same, you know, landscape. But on occasion, I think it's like you calibrate it on occasion. Some of us need to really learn to think more about ourselves. And some of us really need to think more about others. Some of us live with the fear that we're going to be abandoned. And some of us live more with the fear that we're going to lose ourselves. Some of us are better takers and need to learn to give. And some of us are consummate givers and we need to learn to take. and often we find a partner who is exactly the missing link. And that can be beautiful complementarity if we actually get to use the other person to become more whole and to learn from them. And we need both. You need to be able to think about yourself and to know what you want and all of that, but you also need to be able to remember that others exist near you, your family, your friends, you know, your loved ones.

Sure.

And that that's what will make the difference the day you die and who will show up at your funeral.

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. so what's the difference between connection, chemistry and compatibility?

So let's start with compatibility. Compatibility are traits that typically fit together. All right? So we're identifying, well, okay, she's a go-getter she likes being outdoors, she's very spiritual, and he's, he likes the same things. So we're identifying traits that make them compatible. Some people may use the zodiac to determine who is compatible, but again, zodiac is really dependent on the traits that they have defined for that sign. And as long as those things are consistent or they are accurate in those cases, then they can say there's going to be some level of compatibility there. So there's going to be some level of fit there. All right. Chemistry is when two people know how to get along and flow with each other, work with each other. So, chemistry doesn't necessarily require compatibility, all right. Because again, think about at work, we can go through team building exercises and build chemistry with our work associates, all right. But we don't have to like them, we don't have to have the same interest as them. Nothing else has to be in alignment but we can learn how to work together and build and create something and make progress and be successful. so chemistry is very independent of that, but again, it's more so learning how to work with each other, flow with each other, get along with each other, coexist together, so to speak. But again, it's very fluid. It can come, it can go, all right? You can build chemistry, you can destroy chemistry. Connection is again, with connection, you will have chemistry, but funny enough, with connection, you may not have what people perceive as compatibility. So, you can have two individuals who you would never think are a match for each other but yet they are feeling this amazing connection with each other. Unexplainable, they never would have thought it would be this person but it's there, all right. But again, you will have chemistry within connection. Connection doesn't come or go, it's either there or it's not. You cannot create it, you cannot destroy it. You can run from it, you can try to reject it, you can pile a bunch of trash on top of it, toxic energy, but it's still there. And it kind of goes back to we talked about this before where you're the one that put me on the, I forgot how you say, the red string Chinese.

Yes, yes, the red string. I stuck out an odd.

Exactly. And so, no matter where you go in the world, no matter what you.

Do, you'll feel connection.

Exactly. And that's why people with connection could fall apart tomorrow, meet back up 10 years later, and it's like they never stopped talking. The connection is always there. So that's why it's the strongest and most important of those three.

Is it fair to say that you need all three to have the most fulfilling type of relationship? And if you're missing compatibility, there will always be some type of stress.

No, I think, I think you need chemistry and connection. And again, if you have connection, you will have the chemistry. The reason why I say you don't need compatibility is because again, what people perceive as compatible doesn't always align with what actually allows two people to be connected and bond and all these wonderful things. So because of that, I would say compatibility due to society's perception of it is not necessary.

It's the least needed thing.

Yes.

But to have, but you, so you shouldn't be coming into a relationship saying, wow, we're very compatible people. We like the same things. We come from the same background. We live in the same city. Our families live nearby. This makes sense. We should try this thing because look at how compatible we are. What I'm hearing you say is, you should make sure you have this connection that if you were gone for 10 years, you think about them, you dream about them, you always want to come back together. That that is more important than having chemistry and compatibility because with connection you will have chemistry, but you may not be compatible.

Exactly. And you're 100% accurate what you just said. Compatibility, and that's where a lot of people go wrong. They choose partners based off of compatibility. They choose partners based off of the logical deduction that this would make sense, this is a great opportunity, you know, we like the same things blah, blah, blah. But those people find themselves miserable because they get caught up in the hype initially. But again, the connection that they need to really enjoy each other, the glue that keeps them together, the glue that helps them overcome difficult times that's not there if you don't have connection, you know what I'm saying? And hell, it's tough even when you have connections. So, if you don't have it, Is.

Connection something you can cultivate if you don't have, or is it something you either have it together or you don't?

You have it or you don't. You can't, you can't make it up out of thin air. You can't create it. Plenty of people have tried and fell miserably. It just doesn't work, you know?

And that's why, yeah, you hear this all the time of like, gosh, he looked amazing on paper. Like, he just like had everything on, he checked every box. She checked every box but there was this, I didn't know they were such a good person. They're such a great person. But I just couldn't connect.

Exactly, it just wasn't there. And let me tell you, that's one of the worst positions to be in. To be with this amazing, wonderful person that you don't have a connection with. Because now, how do I justify and validate to myself, my friends, my family who probably love this person.

Love this person.

Love them. and like, yo, I gotta tell them no, it's just not there. The majority of people are not able to do that. They suck it up and they try to push things along or they convince themselves, I'm tripping, maybe I'm being too picky, whatever. But then inevitably that marriage or relationship still ends up ending.

So, how do you make it work if you have very low compatibility, high connection and chemistry, but you are in complete different industries. You like complete different things. One person likes to be inside, the other person loves to go on long hikes, and you're just like butting heads about every activity and thing you want. Every movie, you don't like the other person's movies. Isn't that a strain in the relationship as well?

Well, I would argue that when there's a connection, you're not going to butt heads. I feel like so when people don't have a connection and they're very opposite like that, you're going to have a lot of tension, a lot of butting of heads, all right. When there's a connection, there's a desire to want to share the moment you enjoy with you. There's a desire to all right, you know what? I may not care for these types of movies but I love seeing you happy and I want to be around you. So, I'm going to try to learn to deal with some of these movies. We're much more willing to make sacrifices be flexible and find a compromise when there is a connection there. And I feel like when there's a connection, we don't view the differences as a negative thing. We view it as wow, they're introducing me to a different world. They're showing me a different side. So, okay, maybe I don't like going out all the time but now it's good that I have someone who likes to go out because she can pull me or he can pull me out the house more often. But I can also help them slow down a little bit and enjoy peace and being at home. there's a balance that's created that makes it a much more well-rounded relationship. So, I think that what you'll find a lot of times in connection is that they're not the most again, compatible based on society's perceptions of compatibility, people, they have these differences, but they make this full unit. It's like this yin to the yang type of deal, you know? It doesn't have to be the same.

Is it possible to find someone with extreme connection, extreme chemistry and 80% compatibility where it's like, wow, we like so many of the same things as well. Or are we just more attracted to kind of the opposite attract type of mentality, yin and yang type of balance?

I think it is possible to have a strong level of compatibility, but if I'm honest, I do think there is some kind of balance that occurs within relationships with people who have connection. It's not completely down the line we're just on the same page or like everything the same. I think there is a difference and I think it kind of goes back to the fact that in nature there's this polarity that has to occur. It's the same reason why masculine is drawn to feminine, feminine drawn to masculine. You don't find a masculine person wanting another masculine person, all right. Now, when it comes to connection or real serious healthy relationships we desire the opposite energy that balances us out.

Why is that? Is that just mother nature, human nature? Why is that you think?

And I can't say this is 100% accurate, but my belief is that again, we are not created to be equal, we're created to balance each other out. We're created to come together and have this full unit. Why do my strengths need to be your strengths? How do we become better? If I am a business and I'm going to acquire another company, and merge with them, I'm not gonna pick the company does everything the same thing that I do as good. I'm gonna pick the company who has a product or a service that's different than mine or that can enhance mine, and we come together and we're like Voltron and we become stronger together. So in having our differences, we are able to create a stronger whole unit rather than the exact same.

Yeah, I think there was a I think a couple years ago, Tyson meat, the meat company, which is a big meat company, chicken and beef and all that stuff, I think they acquired like a couple hundred million dollars worth of Beyond Meat, which is a vegan option. So it's like they are all meat consumption and they were like, oh, but this is something we don't have and it's growing in this space. Let's get on board and let's balance out in some ways. So I see that as a, as interesting approach and relationships and an interesting dynamic. I'm curious about sex on the first date and on the first night. We got this incredible explosion of chemistry like we've known each other for years. We were just, we can't believe we didn't connect sooner. Is sex on the first day of meeting something that can turn into a successful long-term relationship? Or have you just seen from your research and your experiences with the people you've coached that that's a recipe for disaster.

It can definitely turn into a long-term relationship, marriage, successful relationship. I just think that we have to be careful with that mindset. So, I remember one time, I think it was an article I wrote and somebody commented and they said, you know, I've heard of plenty guys and not to make this only about how guys perceive it, but they had said, I've seen plenty guys not want to move forward for a woman who they had sex with on the first date. I've never seen a guy say I can't make her my wife because she didn't have sex with me on the first date. You see what I'm saying? So, it's like one approach is still safe. It doesn't hurt you. It doesn't hurt you to wait. You're not going to lose anything by being patient before jumping into bed. If anything, you're going to increase your chances of making sure you know what you're getting yourself into. You're confirming there is a connection there. We're on the same page so on and so forth. But if you move too fast and God forbid you're wrong that you perceive this incorrectly, now you have possibly set yourself up for other issues. So, again, can it happen? Yes, especially if two people have a genuine connection. I do not believe that sex on the first date will derail them. However, why not take the better more likely approach for success or to be safe, better to be safe than sorry and just wait. There's no need to rush for it.

Yeah, I like that response where you said, you've never, what was it?

You've never met a... Yeah, I won't make up my wife because she didn't have sex with me on the first date. But you've heard plenty of guys say.

I don't take her serious because she has sex with me on the first date. Yeah, man. It's interesting because when I met my girlfriend, Jeanette, we met online and we started talking just via messaging and then a few weeks later it turned into a FaceTime and then it was, I FaceTime every day for a few minutes, then it was FaceTime every day for longer hours, two hours, three hours. And then we met about a month after we started connecting. I went into the meeting of like, I'm just gonna go and be open to possibilities. Like, who knows what this person's gonna be like in person? I don't know. We've had an amazing connection on the phone where it seems like hours were minutes, that type of whole thing. You lose track of time. You can relate in certain ways with each other. and we're both inspired by one another. And then we literally meet and within minutes we're kissing, you know, meeting the first time, we're kissing. And, but I also went into it with like, I'm not gonna try anything sexual. Like, if nothing happens, I'm okay, you know, seeing each other for this weekend and, you know, I just want to go and connect and I have zero intentions of trying anything further. I went into it without that mindset. I was like, if I come home from this and we don't kiss, like, okay, It was an experiment. We're magnets to each other. We started kissing within a few minutes. I kiss her and she was kind of thrown back but like did it. It was like she didn't want to stop. And within minutes, I kid you not, within five minutes, she looks at me, she stops, she looks at me and she goes, you,'re mine forever. And I was like, you are a bold woman. I was like, I just got off a plane to see her. and she. And I go, wow, you're pretty forward. And she goes, do you want to go back on the plane? I was like, no, but I've never heard a woman say this within five minutes. Now, granted, we were talking for a month on. On the phone, but I've never heard a woman say this in five minutes. And if they would, I'd usually run like crazy and think she was crazy. But she was like, I don't know. I'm sorry. I just feel like my heart. My heart says this, and I feel like I just want to say and so I really respected her level of Courage and vulnerability and honesty as well, where usually girls won't say that type of thing. And I was like, wow, this girl's got a lot of Courage, and she says what she feels. And it was just like, man, the chemistry was so. The connection was so strong all weekend and, and for the last, you know, over a year now. Yeah. That it, it made It didn't make logical sense. It made emotional sense.

Exactly.

And I think I just kept going with it. I was like, wow, okay, let's see where this goes. We'll take it day by day. But it's just like, it kept growing. And I think you should have some type of feeling of like instant connection because all the women I've dated in the past, I would say I've had instant connection with most of them, like with all of them, but it wasn't this type of connection. Like you said in the beginning, it's like this. something was different. I had maybe more like sexual attraction.

Yeah.

Then I was like, you know, we're not connecting and vibing in the same way that I love, but the sexual attraction is great and they got this and this. So it's like I'm justifying. Yeah. As opposed to this is what I. What I want. And this is what it's like. It's not even an option. This is what my heart is telling me I need to do.

Yes.

And I think if your heart is not saying, yeah, like pulling you to something, then it's probably a sign that that may not be the right fit for you right now.

Absolutely.

Now, do men and women approach early sex differently, in your opinion, beyond the first date, beyond the one night stand type of thing? Do men and women approach it differently in the first months?

Yeah, I believe so. I think it's more likely to find a man who is ready to go. You know what I'm saying? And has no issues about when the sex occurs within that first month, all right. Whereas there are going to be a lot more women who are concerned and genuinely are not comfortable yet. You know, the problem also is that just because sex occurs doesn't mean the woman was comfortable, all right. A lot of women allow themselves to get intimate but they weren't truly at peace with making that or allowing that to happen. And so there's a lot more that goes on on her end regarding sex than it goes on on his end. And I also believe that women are much more in their head about the situation than the man is. The man is analyzing it.

They're analyzing, oh, if I don't do this, he's not gonna like me and blah, blah, blah.

Exactly, exactly. Whereas I think the man's just excited. He's enjoying the moment. He's just getting it in. But she's thinking, yeah, is this too soon? Am I, is he gonna like this? Whatever, she's just processing so much. which adds to her inability to even fully enjoy it a lot of times. But yeah, it's definitely different. We're not wired the same when it comes to sex. We're just not.

And do you think rebound relationships can work? Let's say you're in a relationship for six months, a year, a few years, 10 years, and you stayed in that relationship too long. You stayed in it because it became hard to get out or it was good on paper, whatever the reason is, you stated you had kids, whatever the reason is. and then you get out and within six months, you find someone and you're married six months later. Is that something that is possible to rebound into the next relationship and that can be your connection chemistry partner for long term? Or is that something, you know, should people wait two to four years until they fully heal and all this time and energy to get into it? What do you think?

It's absolutely possible. One, we have to understand that healing is less about time and it's more about the specific work you put in. If you go through the process and you do all the steps then you can achieve healing in months, all right. People take years off and still never healed. So, the time itself does nothing for you. With that said, the key is has this new person genuinely surpassed how you felt about anyone else? See, I have a golden rule that you do not get in a new relationship if they have not surpassed whoever you had the strongest feelings for. They've got to pass that bar.

What does that mean? So does that mean like the connection is so much stronger, the way you view them as higher, they add more value to your life?

Most importantly, it has to be the connection is stronger. That's most importantly. And so, if you don't feel as strong as a connection, as strong as a desire, as strong as a draw to them, as you did whatever previous person then you should not answer in that relationship because if you do you will automatically have a void a gap. Because it's almost like you ate filet mignon and now you go have some spam. There's a huge gap there, all right. You might be able to survive eating the spam, all right. Because it satisfies your hunger but you know how much better meat can taste because you had the filet mignon.

Yeah, you're not fully nourished.

Exactly, and you'll never be fully satisfied. satisfied because you had that better thing. So it's the same thing with relationships. If you already experienced this higher level of connection to go for anything beneath that, you will never be fulfilled and completely happy with it. You might survive for the first couple of years, but at some point, the smoke's gonna clear and you're gonna be like, man, what am I doing here?

Is this applied to any previous relationships, chemistry and connection or the previous one?

I say any, they've got to surpass whoever held the highest position in your heart. Because I strongly believe that the majority of people are not married to the person they have the strongest feelings for.

Really?

Yes. And an even better test is ask yourself this, if you get with this new person and that person that you've had stronger feelings for comes back into your life, will you be okay? A lot of people, if that person came back and was like, I love you, I made some mistakes, I want you back. It's not that they will automatically leave their new relationship, but they will be torn and conflicted. It will impact them. When you are really with the right person that wouldn't phase you anymore. You'll be like, please get out of here, I'm good, I'm doing amazing. I'm with the person I know is the one for me. But when they are the person you have the strongest feelings when they come back, you're going to be rattled.

So I'm hearing you say that it's not as much the time in between relationships. It's the work, the process of acknowledgement, healing, letting go, where you could meet someone within a couple of weeks, depending on like if you were already unwinding in the previous relationship for a year or two, you could find someone and be like, this connection is just, you can't get us apart and you could jump right in.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. And if you want to learn more about mastering relationships, then make sure to check out this video right here.

The 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.