The Biggest Mistakes People Make In Relationships EP 1149

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The School of Greatness is sponsored by Capital One. Nowadays, most people subscribe to everything music, tv, even dog food. And it rocks until you have to manage it all, which is where Capital One comes in. Capital One credit cardholders can easily track, block or cancel reoccurring charges right from the Capital One mobile app at no additional cost. With one sign in, you can manage all your subscriptions all in one place. Learn more at capital1.comsubscriptions terms and conditions apply. This episode number 1149 on the Biggest mistakes People make in Relationships. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Maury Schwartz said the most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love and to let it come in. And Rumi said, your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built and against it. Today's episode is all about relationships and we all love this topic and I wanted to bring together some of my favorite moments from the past few episodes to help you understand your relationships better and know when to take them to the next level or possibly put an end to a relationship that isn't supporting you and isn't really a part of your greater vision of your life. In this episode, we discuss what causes most relationships to fail. With psychotherapist Esther Perel, the top things divorce lawyer James Sexton thinks most people get wrong about about marriage. The biggest mistake people make when choosing a partner with Lori Gottlieb. How happily ever after is a myth we've been sold with marriage therapist Catherine Woodward Thomas and so much more. If you're enjoying this, make sure to share this with someone that you think would be inspired by this as well. Someone who's in a happy relationship, someone maybe who's questioning their relationship. Someone who's trying to get into a relationship. Send this to your friends Lewishouse.com 1149 and make sure to connect with me over on social media and subscribe to this, this episode and this podcast over on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or anywhere else that you're listening to your podcast right now. And a big shout out to the Fan of the week from Nancy Lee, who wrote a review over on Apple podcast about the Law of Attraction episode we just had on episode 1145, who said, I loved everything about it. It's quick, informative, interesting, and has such great positive delivery. I've been listening to your School of Greatness since January. I enjoy the guests and your interviewing style. I'm 68 years old and try to learn new things and keep brain growing. So, Nancy Lee, thank you for being the fan of the week and for leaving a review. And if you want your chance to be shouted out on the podcast, then go to Apple Podcast right now and leave a review of this episode as well. Okay, in just a moment, it's time to dive in and talk about relationships. In this first section, Esther Perel shares the biggest obstacles that come up for couples that cause a relationship to either thrive or fail. What are the core reasons or the core things you see over and over that either end or make a relationship challenging to be in the longer you're in? What are the. What are the ones that. What are the challenges that come up over and over that you see?

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

A thriving one, yeah.

What can go wrong and how do you fix it? So you started with the middle question.

What goes wrong?

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

You've lost interest.

But it's more than losing of interest. It's also when you are doing different, you degrade the other person. They're less important to you, they don't matter. And ultimately what we feel in relationships is that we matter. That is the essential reason for connecting to people, is that we are creatures of meaning. I matter to you. I'm someone, you care about me, you want my well being, you're proud of me, you want good for me, you're benevolent, all of that. When you are indifferent, the whole thing goes. And then you start to. There's that coldness that creeps in, that sense of estrangement, that complete disconnect that. The second one is neglect. Neglect. When people just basically take each other for granted. You know, they take more care of their car than of their partner, their dog or their dog, anybody, anything, their yard, anything, anything. Gets attendance, their business for sure, their business for sure. You know, everything gets priority. Everything gets reviewed, evaluated, attended to 360s, you name it. You know, new input. My God. It's like people have this idea that they put it all in when they were dating and then once they seal the knot, it's like as if they tied the knot. It's like now they don't have to do squat anymore. And they go into this kind of complete sense of complacency and laziness. It's an amazing thing. They think this thing is just going to live on its own like a cactus. Violence, violence, the abuse, the level of disrespect. I mean, most people talk nicer to anybody else than their partner when a relationship. Because you can't get away with it. Because you can't get away with it. Because if you talk like this at work, you're gone. Because if you talk like this with the police, you're gone. Because if you talk like this on the street, you're being punched. But with your partner, you have that sense that they're going to be there anyway. They're just going to take it because it's family. And family is this kind of. This thing that doesn't dissolve so easily. So you can just lash out at them and talk to them with a tone and a dismissal that is phenomenal. So that kind of violence, I'm not talking physical Violence and all the other big, big things.

You're talking about aggression or resentment or all of that. All of that, you know, passive aggressiveness.

All those things.

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

So how do we even get to this place of these.

These places after having been so in love and so romantic? Right?

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

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

We also learned jealousy and all possessiveness.

Vengeance, you name them. The beauty and the not beauty.

Yeah, we saw it all as children, right? We saw the fights, we saw the love. We saw the, you know, we saw the coldness, the lack of intimacy. The intimacy, yes, yes.

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

I'll.

You know. And we find ourselves often much closer to the apple.

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

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

Exactly. Exactly. Wow. Okay. And where does sex play into all this? And desire?

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

In 60 years.

In 60 years. The women's movement, which goes after the abuses of power, the gay movement, which introduces the concept of identity to sexuality. The fact that sex is for connection and pleasure. The fact that for the first time we have sex before marriage, and many times, a lot, we used to marry and have sex for the first time. Now we marry and we stop having sex with others.

Okay?

Monogamy used to be one person for life. Now monogamy is one person at a time. And people go around telling you I'm monogamous in all my relationships and it makes perfect sense to them. Okay? All of that in a very short amount of time. The fact that I choose you to marry or to live together doesn't matter. Commitment, because I'm attracted to you, because you give me butterflies in my stomach. And the fact that I think that if I don't have these butterflies anymore, maybe I don't love you anymore. And the fact that sexuality in long term relationships is rooted in wanting only desire. I feel like it. I want to not. I have to not. We want many kids after two kids. The only reason to continue doing it with you is because we feel like it.

Right?

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

Right? Exactly.

So this is an amazing revolution, sex.

That is confusing all of us and.

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

Right? Exactly. For 60 years you're going to be with them or whatever it is. Yeah.

It's an amazing ideal.

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

I think the fact both men and.

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

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

Wow. Is this a fact or is this fact?

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

Really? Wow.

And it's always been translated as well. That's because women care less about sex rather than. It's because women care less about the sex that they can have in their committed relationships, which is often not interesting enough for them. And it often has to do with the fact that the story, the character, the plot is not. It's not seductive. The romance, which is an essential ingredient of turn on for the woman often disappears in the long term relationship.

The.

It's like people look at each other at the end of the day and you want to fool around. You want to do it. You're up for it tonight. Now this is really not. This is not very much of a turn on for most women. And the idea that foreplay often starts at the end of the previous orgasm, you know, and not five minutes before the real thing, which for her is not the real thing. The whole the real thing is everything else.

So it's essentially the game. Yes, it's creating a game.

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

Safety, security, family, someone to protect. Be there. Right?

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

Yeah, right.

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

They're not depressed and down and lonely and sad.

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

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

You calibrate it.

So sometimes you're.

It's the same as when you walk. You have to move from one foot to the other. A balance is not about staying on one side. A balance is the ability to see. Right now we don't need caretaking. We can be mischievous, we can be naughty, we can be playful, we can break our own rules. We can stay home and not go to work at 8 o', clock, right? And now we are in a playful zone. Now we are feeling that we are bringing our own little transgressions home. We are alive. We're not just being dutiful, responsible, good citizens, right? It's that it's very small. You know, I always think when I go and I see people at lunch and you see them talking and they're well dressed and they're awake and all I see who is here with their partner. Because you can see them, they're engaged, they're giving the best of themselves. That's erotic. No, the majority are not there with their partner. They're there with their friends, with their colleagues. Their partner is going to get the leftover when they come home at night. Sorry, you know what? Forget the night date. Meet at lunch, when you actually have energy, you know, when you. And in the middle of the day like that, when you're awake, when you have something to offer. It's a very small thing, but they don't do it. They don't do it. And you say, why not? Why not? Why don't you stay an hour extra at home in the morning? And not just. Because when you have a headache and just say, this matters to me, all in all, you know, committed sex is premeditated sex. It's not just going to happen because whatever is going to just happen already has. So you're going to make it happen because you say we matter, we're important, let's do this, let's spend. Doesn't mean if you're going to make love or have sex. It just means we're going to take this hour and there's nothing else that matters in this moment. But just you and I to be together, to check in and then we'll see what unfolds. That's the erotic space in which sex may happen. Probably will, doesn't have to, but it is the place from which it is much more likely to emerge. But people don't do that. They do the responsibility. That's the love. Right. The citizen, the commitment, the caretaker, the burdens, the safe. And then they say, I'm bored. I would be too.

Oh, exactly. There's no mystery. There's no risk taking. Right, Exactly.

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

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

Be not every day, not every day.

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You can do every day is just a quick check with yourself. You know, is there something that I should notice? Is there something that I can be thankful for? Is there a little Note that I could write. Is there, you know, just a way that I can show up? It's small. It's really small. Here's the thing. There is work and then there is the creative work. You know, I'm talking about a level that is creative and that elevates you and that actually gives you, you feel, you feel taller, you just feel like you're engaged, you feel awake. Rather than this, this is the other seated position. It's comfortable, it's great. But nothing happens here.

Sure.

This, this is alert. Here's the essential word, is curiosity. When you're curious, you lean forward and you watch. You're open to the mysteries of life. This is, please don't bother me with anything because I don't want any stimulation. I've had my share. I've been, you know, and this is the position that most people have at home. So when people say it's too much work, I basically say, look, if I was to say this, in your business, would you say this is too much work or you would say, that's very good advice. This is high rate consulting fees. It's like, excuse me, but you don't think for a minute that your business would thrive if you let it languish like that. Never. You have a reward system. You have incentives, bonuses, bonuses. But there is no incentivized system in the private domain. So people just think, why bother?

Right?

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

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

I would say the first thing is almost one of the first things that our parents teach you. Please and thank you. Do you know how many people stop thanking their partners? Thank you. Thank you for doing this for me to thank you for picking up the shirts.

Thank you for, you know, making you feel appreciated.

Yes. Appreciation. Appreciation is huge. Gratitude, acknowledgment of the presence of the other in your life. Not did you do this? Did you call, did you pick up, do this? You know, half the time. Expectations, expectations, of course, you know, expectations is often a resentment in the make. With the expectation comes the fear of it's not good. Thank person, first of all. And because it also makes it feel like this is not a given. Nobody owes you squat, you're not owed anything, you're not that important. You're actually quite replaceable.

Right.

And with the divorce rate that we.

Have, what's the Rate at right now.

50 on first and 65 on second.

65 on second. Wow.

It's not good, right? It's really, you know, it costs a lot of money. It's not good for the health. I mean, it's just like, you know, it's not good for the jobs. It's. It's just. It's like, okay, now you could say maybe people should marry, but it doesn't matter if it's marriage legally or. The idea is that we can do better. We can do better. In general, I really think that the quality of our lives depends on the quality of our relationships. I mean, nobody's going to write, you know, you worked 60, 70, 80, 90 hours a week. And, you know, no, they're going to say, he was there for people when they needed to. He was there at every game, he was there at the party. He's the guy who, when you were in his presence, he had charisma. Not because he could stand in front of a huge crowd, but he had charisma because when I was in his presence, he made me feel special. It's a different charisma. So appreciation, gratitude, thank you. Little things to go out of your way rather than just to do the minimum. A lot of people start to do the bare minimum just so that they can't be scolded.

Right.

Go an extra thing on occasion. Just do something for the other person just because it matters to them. Even if you couldn't care less rather than, it's not important to me. I don't need this or I don't care about this. Give each other a lot of individual space. Not everything needs to be shared. People have different passions, different interests, different friends, and they need those separate spaces to exist. Admiration, I think, is huge because admiration is also that you kind of really see the otherness of the other person. Don't try to make your partner into one person for everything. There is no such a person. Find multiple sources of connection, of intimacy, of friendship, so that you can have a group of people support you and don't have one person who has to be there for you for everything. Especially when you're in the dumpster.

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

Yes, yes, yes. One person for the whole village. That is a unique. And then we're upset when they don't fulfill the mandate.

In this section, divorce lawyer James Sexton talks about the top things to consider before getting married and what most people get wrong. You were Talking about before we started that marriage is a technology.

Yeah.

Now what, what is the technology of marriage?

I think anything that's designed to solve a problem is a technology.

Right?

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

Now you gotta clean it, you gotta use water. Exactly.

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

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

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

Yeah.

You're probably not going to go out.

Or you're going to wear a helmet. At a minimum.

Right?

At a minimum, you're going to wear a helmet. We probably wouldn't go out. Now let's look at that number, though. 53% end in divorce.

That's us or global.

Us.

Us, us only.

Okay, now think about what percent stay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah.

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

Yeah.

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

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

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

And we're shamed when we're divorced.

Right.

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

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

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

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

Yeah.

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

Well, I just got a Tesla.

I have a Tesla.

I actually don't care about cars.

I'm not a big car guy either.

But I got one for tax reasons, actually.

Cool.

And I had a 1991. I still have a 1991 Cadillac El Dorado. Okay. They had like 60,000 miles on it. Okay. I Uber everywhere. I don't really use the car. Yeah.

If you have any car you want.

But I like the Tesla. I like the Tesla. Okay. Because it's fuel efficient. It's, you know, I just wish I had a bigger.

So you're a pragmatic guy. You asked nice too, though. You asked most people that question. They're gonna get a Ferrari, Ferrari, Lamborghini. I want a Maserati.

Okay?

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

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

That's a great question. I think, you know, if you buy a house, you get a lead paint disclosure, you get a HUD disclosure that talks about, about the loan, you get all kinds of disclosures.

Right.

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

So they should go into your office.

Before, but for a different reason.

Yes.

Prophylactically, yes. They should come in proactively and learn about what's about to happen legally, what's about to happen to my rights, you know, what's about to change in terms of how I own property, the financial obligations I'll have to this person. I would also say one of the best things they could do is talk to someone candidly who's been married for an extended period of time. You know, that's not something we do. We're not encouraged to be honest about our relationships. We're not. I mean, one of the things you talk about mask of masculinity that I loved is about particularly for men, but I think it's true for women too. We don't share candidly what's really going on in our lives. We're in a very curated society where you put up on social media the best picture and the best vacation photos and the best of everything we're doing. And we don't share with each other the challenges. We don't share with each other even, even really relevant information. Like when I meet a Couple who's been together for 20 years. You know, I want to know. I mean, I love the story. Oh, how did you meet? You know, how many times a week do you have sex? Who started, who initiates it? Do you ask the shiz? Do you always do the same stuff because you've been together for 20 years and you know what each other like or like, do you try, like, do you like, like call an audible every once in a while, just do some wacky thing? Like, what is it like, what is it really like the day to day of your relationship. And so many people, I mean, you've been in relationships, I've been in relationships. So many people just don't talk honestly, even when I'm with my guy friends, you know, do we really talk honestly about the day to day of our relationships? The way we talk to the women in our lives, like the nickname they have for us or the nickname we have for them? Again, it's private to some degree information. But if we could share that stuff a little more, we'd have a lot more accurate of a perception of where our relationship stands in the scheme of things and how we're doing, you know, because I really think there's this perception that people have of, you know, oh, we're only having sex this many times a week. It's like, well, okay, is that a lot? Is that too little? Like you have nothing to compare it to?

Right, right.

You know, so in marriage, there's no way to know to how if you're doing well at it, because you can't say, well, you know, we have fights every now and then. Well, okay, people have fights every now and then. But if you have a fight every week, that might be a lot, but how would you know? What would you compare it to? Right. So I would say one of the best things you could do to people who are considering getting married is put them in a room with people who've been good at that technology, who've managed to not only endure marriage, but endure it and still like it.

And thrive. And thrive.

Right.

And still say, you know what? I'd sign on for this again. Like in a room full of people, I'd still pick this person.

Yeah, that's cool.

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

Not many.

Yeah.

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

Where did it work now? Exactly? See, one of the principles that inspired me to write the book was the idea that, you know, again, I hate using car metaphors because I'm not a.

Car guy either, but.

But it's the best analogy I can think of in the sense that if when you bought a car, you did every bit of preventative maintenance that a mechanic told you to do.

You change the oil every two months or whatever. Yeah.

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

Prevent it.

Yeah.

Loss every day. Not after you do all the stuff.

She tells you to do. When you go see her, your teeth.

Are going to do well.

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

Can't keep it. Yeah.

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

Yeah.

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

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

I was married for 12 years.

12 years. Got divorced.

Yep. Got divorced.

While you were a divorce attorney?

Yes, while I was a divorce attorney.

So you're hearing these stories every day.

And going through your marriage. But you know, my, Yeah, I mean, my marriage, I think, benefited from my experience as a divorce lawyer.

You knew the cues of what not to do or what was going to work.

But it, it was hurt by the fact that I love what I do for a living and was so consumed with it that I worked constantly. You know, my ex wife, who is one of my dearest friends to this day, she's remarried to an amazing guy who's a great stepdad to my sons who are now older, they're both in college. But I'm very blessed. I mean, I've had an experience of divorce where I'm still close friends with her, I'm friends with her husband, you know, and I'm very lucky for that because I look at it like there's a lot of people I love that I wouldn't want to be married to.

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

Conscious uncoupling. Yeah, absolutely.

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

It really is. Yeah.

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

Yeah.

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

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

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

There's not this pain and resentment for years.

No. And I have to tell you, as a divorce lawyer, as a practicing divorce lawyer, huge. I would say more than 50% of the people that I represent. It's that kind of transaction. It really is that it's just two people that their time is done and now we just have to figure out how to divide up the things they have and work out the schedules with the kids. That's good in the Jar. I would say at least 50% good. But, but the thing is, the other 50% are louder, are so much more interesting. So much. It's like. Cuz really, who wants to hear about like, oh, think I talked to my ex wife yesterday and she's, she's lovely. She's moving to Rochester soon. Like, you know, that's her life.

It's the drama.

She threw a bat at me, she set my car on fire. It's way more interesting, you know.

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

It's a great question. I would say the following. I think one of the most common things people will say to you about marriage is, you know, marriage is hard. Marriage is hard. I don't know that that's true. I think if you consider paying attention hard, then marriage is hard.

Right.

If you don't consider paying attention hard, then I don't think marriage has to be hard. I think that it's. Again, not to use the metaphor again, but you know, losing weight is harder than maintaining your weight. And I really think, look, you're gonna have challenges, you're not necessarily gonna have fights. You're in challenges. Life is gonna throw challenges in your way. Illness, adversity, career issues, you know, day to day miscommunications with each other. If you're not paying attention, those things get huge. And then the big, big things happen. So people come in and they go, I'm getting divorced because he's sleeping with his secretary. You are. That's a great reason to get divorced. And that's a legit thing. He's not, he's sleeping with his secretary because there's something wrong in the marriage. Yeah. You know, and if you don't want to look at that because you have some culpability in that. And it's easier to just go, oh, this harlot came and took him away. And it's a lot easier to say that. But the truth is, you know, you stopped paying attention. You know, and this is the question. I find myself when I have a minute, you know, with a client who I've been some miles with, and we're sitting outside of the, you know, the courtroom waiting for the case to be called. And I have enough of a rapport with them, and we've been enough of a distance together that I feel like I can be candid with them. I'll say to them, was there a moment where you realized your marriage was over? What was that moment? You know? And you would be amazed at the insight if people think about that question that they give to you. I had a woman who said to me, and it was, to me, a very powerful example. I discuss a little bit in the book. She said there was a kind of granola that she liked, and you could only get it at, like, a certain store, like a Whole Foods or something like that. And her husband used to always buy it. Used to always buy. Whenever she was running low, she would just open the cabinet and there'd be another bag of it there. And she loved that because he didn't say, like, oh, and look, honey, I bought your granola. Like, I get credit for that, you know, like, he just would do it. He just saw that this was something that he was paying attention. He just saw that there was this little thing, and it was this little kindness that he showed her that let her know she was important. He was still kind of trying to woo her without being obvious about it, and he was still paying attention, she said. Then one day she just ran out of the granola, and it wasn't there. So she thought, well, maybe he's, like, busy, and he just didn't notice. So she kind of left the bag out. And, you know, sure enough, he still didn't replace the granola. And she said she had a tangible memory. It was about a year before the actual divorce. But she said she had a tangible memory where she thought, okay, this is over. You know, this thing is over now. And I think that that's the thing that's kind of. If you boiled my book down. One of the things I say to people is there's this thing in every relationship, some little thing that you had to. That you did for your partner, or some little thing that you just had to tell them that at some point you just stopped telling them. Yeah, you know, I don't know if it's. It's just in the morning saying like, God, you're so pretty once you walk, or if it's her saying to you, like, you know, I love your strong arms or whatever it might be. Like, there's just those little things, like, we just want someone cheering for us. We just want. Why do we. Why do we get together? We want connection. We just want connection. Like, there's no other reason to get married other than wanting connection.

In this part, psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb discusses the biggest mistakes people make when choosing a partner. What happens when we never deal with our emotions or feelings?

Well, you first of all, get sick.

Emotionally sick, emotionally sick, mentally, emotionally, 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, you're going to eat right, you're going to exercise, you're going to do all the things that you want to do to take care of yourself. You're going to get enough sleep. Those things also help your psychological immune system. They're not totally separate. The mind body connection is profound, but at the same time, are you going to 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. 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, feel the range of feelings that make us human.

What is that state called? Sick.

Sick.

Sick.

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

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

Right.

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

Yeah.

I mean, I think that it has to do with a sense of vitality. Right. Which of course, like vitality. The word like life is right in there. When you wake up in the morning, are you excited about what you're doing? Is there meaning in what you're doing? Do you feel connected to how you're spending your days? Because at the end of your life, are you going to look back and say, what did I do that was meaningful? You know, maybe you should talk to someone. In my book, there's a woman that I treat. She's 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. Right. 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 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.

You.

Even if it's unpleasant or even miserable.

She'Ll keep finding chaotic environments, 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. Feel like we're 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 being in prison, who get out, go back into prison because they feel like they need to be back in that environment? 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 never, 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 still wants that redo. And so it's kind of like they're not aware of this, but what they're saying is, basically, I will not change mom and dad until you give me the things that I did not get in childhood.

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

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

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

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

To heal together.

To heal together. Right.

And so that relationship could thrive if.

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

In fact, it could potentially be the strongest bond ever if you both were able to go through that.

Yeah.

But if you're unwilling to go through that, then what you're being.

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

Right, right.

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

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

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

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

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

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's. 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 going to change my dance steps and I'm going to 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. On that road. That. That's your neural path.

Yeah.

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, 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.

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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.

Yeah.

Like, you know, here's what happened. Or 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 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 wired into us.

It's like the ego death to us. It's like the emotional death. If. 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. Yeah. 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 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.

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, Right.

Well, I haven't told this.

I told my book club. 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. And they might. Even if they have, like, a great partner and they have close friends, you know, they have a great family, whatever it is, they feel like, I cannot tell anyone, because vulnerability for men in our community culture is not okay, even though we say that. So this is.

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 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.

How do I.

She's so profoundly uncomfortable. And 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, like, 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 encouragement.

Because it's so much harder for man in general in 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 almost, why would you expect them to keep opening up when they have something they want to share if you're going to 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. 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, like, 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.

And in this section, marriage and family therapist Catherine Woodward Thomas breaks down how living happily ever after is a myth that we've all been sold. No one ever teaches you how to get out of a relationship in a healthy, loving.

It's astounding how few of us know how to do this.

Yeah, you're the only one I know who knows how to do it.

I have seen the most high level, advanced spiritual people make a total mess of, you know, the end of a relationship. Really? Yeah, we just don't know how to navigate it. And I, I have a theory about it. I think that inside of our happily ever after myth, which kind of assumes that if the relationship ends before one or both people die, that it was a complete disaster and a complete failure of love. And so inside of that, we just never really, like, figured out, well, how can we bring conscious completion to our intimate relationships or to really any relationships for that matter?

I mean, why do people, and just so people listening know you're a marriage family therapist, right. You've been doing this for 20, 30 years, and you've been teaching hundreds of thousands of people around the world about, you know, relationship advice and all this good stuff. So you've got some great wisdom as a licensed therapist, but also with your own experiences. So I think that's where we learn the most, from our own experiences. Because you're, you're divorced as well.

Yes.

And you had to figure this out for yourself also.

Well, and, you know, let me just say I'm also the author of Calling in the one, right. Which came out in 2004, which has sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

So you called him the one and then the one.

And then after a decade, we decided to unmarry.

So I wasn't the one anymore.

Well, he was, though, for that time.

For that time.

For that time. And. And this goes back to the happily ever after myth because, you know, when I, when we decided to end our union, I mean, it wasn't, you know, an easy thing to do. And when it, when we made the decision, you know, my prayer was like a little less than pious. It was, you know, Are you effing kidding me? God? Like, seriously, right? I've got all these people who look to me for the answers and how to find love, and they really, like, open up to possibility in their lives after all sorts of things. And they learn the calling in the one technique and process which has, you know, worked for many, many thousands of people. But then I'm gonna get divorced. So what's that message? And how do I even convey that message? So I know you taught you love to talk in school of greatness about failure a lot. So that was like a great crash in that moment. It could have really been a disaster.

And you were the woman that was like, I'm calling the one. I'm teaching you how to do it. And now I'm essentially failed at calling in the one.

Yeah, well. And so you know what? I know enough to look at my own feelings and whatever's going on for me and to see it as reflective of what's going on for all of us. So I have kind of an, you know, I have a deeply personal relationship, obviously, with my feelings, as we all do, but I also have an impersonal relationship with them, because I'm really interested in the evolution of love in the world, you know, both for myself and our. But our collective capacity.

Conscious love.

Yes, conscious love, Conscious relationships. So as. And I'm committed to that. So as I'm going through this, I'm going, wow, you know, this is really common that when we go through the end of a relationship, we feel ashamed. Where does that come from?

Why do we feel ashamed?

Why do we feel ashamed? Like, why do we go to, oh, now I'm inferior to be single again? Or, you know, I was better when I was like, what? Where is that coming from? So I actually started to research that happily ever after myth, and I found out a lot of things about it that were really fascinating to me. One is that it's only about 400 years old. Believe it or not, it was created in Venice, Italy, which, you know, us romantics, we're not surprised.

That's funny.

But it was created during a time when the lifespan was under 40, when half the children were dying before the age of 16, really. Which, you know, is probably a good idea, a better idea to keep families together to give them the best possible chance at survival. And also, there was a law at the time that these fairy tales were created that a noble person could not marry a commoner. And so people, if you were born into poverty, you were going to die into poverty. Like, there was no hope of ever getting out of poverty. So the happily ever after myth was.

Was.

Came as like an escapist fairy tale for people because it was right after the Renaissance. So people actually were literate, even though they had no money, they were literate, and they loved the fairy tales in large part because of the upward mobility.

Okay.

It was like that. And also it happened in a far away, distant land, you know, because it couldn't happen in Venice because there was a law against it. So, you know, it's kind of. But then it went to France and it kind of stuck. And it almost like took over our world about what our aspiration for love should be. And we're also kind of collectively in that trance that it actually occurs to us as a failure if we do not. But look, this is the reality, if you, like, look at the statistics. The statistics are that the majority of us are going to have two to three major relationships in our lifetime, which also implies at least one or two major breakups as well.

Wow.

So it's no longer the norm to.

Meet and marry the one like 21 when you're in college and then you're with them for the rest of your life.

Very unusual. I mean, it happens.

Sure.

You know, so. So I think, you know, like, we. We update our computer programs and our child rearing practices and our diets and our exercise programs. I think we have to update our aspirations around love. And we need to shift from the question of, you know, how we're going to value the union according to how long did it last? And start to ask the question, what did I learn and how have I expanded my capacity to love moving forward?

It's so challenging when you're in the relationship and you love someone so much and they bring so much value to your life and they're so incredible, but something's not working, or you can't give them what they want, or they can't give you what you really want, and there's like just conflict where you can't figure it out and you've got to end it or you've got to evolve it, I guess. And, you know, how do we. First off, before you even go into that, you've got five steps to doing that.

Okay.

How do you call on the one? How do you know it's the one if you're going to end it at some point? Like, that's the confusing thing.

Well, I think, see, this is important for us to realize that we live in a very mobile society that values growth and evolution. Yes, right. And in a way, America is kind of torn between these two ideals of the stability of family and commitment and devotion. And most of us really believe in that. 90% of us are going to get married at some point in our lifetimes. But we also are a country that was kind of founded upon the ideal of the pursuit of happiness and we are a creative bunch and we love change and we love evolution and we love, you know, personal growth and development. And those two things are not always the best bedfellows. So in a place, you know, perfect world, we all grow together, but different people have different callings and different people have different aspirations to how much they're willing to grow and what that. How they're going to navigate the tension between just wanting to be, you know, comfortable in life and kind of set in life, or how much you're going to be risk oriented and keep, you know, striving to become your best self. And I think, you know, I think here in the school of greatness, I can pretty much assume that most of us are the latter.

Yes.

And so it is going to create a lack of stability. It's going to do two things. It's going to create, you know, it's going to create a lack of stability that we are going to. And it's also going to inspire us to grow.

Yes.

Right. Because we don't want to lose each other. We want to learn how to stay related in a way. Conscious uncoupling is about that, because I don't.

Losing each other.

No, it's. Well, I mean, look, if you have a, you know, crash and burn relationship, somebody's got a personality disorder, they're like an addict, they're like unethical with you, they're toxic. You're gonna have to cut it off. You need to set that boundary. You're not gonna be able to do that. But in, you know, in many relationships, you can transition, certainly if you have children or if you're business partners. We wanted to kind of wrap in business too, because I think, you know, I've had two business breakups in my lifetime that were almost as heart wrenching as my divorce.

Yes.

Right. They can be very, very different. Difficult to navigate. So any kind of. So you really don't want to lose people entirely. You want to do things like, one of the things I have people do is to become very conscious of the agreements that you've had as a couple.

As you had as a couple.

As a couple. Like, you will always prioritize me. You will always rescue me when I'm in trouble. That kind of thing. You'll, you know. Or you will always love me the most. I will always love you the most. I will. Sexual fidelity, that kind of thing. You know, we are people of our word. There was one woman that I worked with who had been divorced 10 years earlier, hadn't seen her husband in eight years. He was already married to somebody else. She hadn't talked to him in eight years. She had never been on a date. And when we worked together, it was because she was still like, she was Catholic, so she was still kind of covertly keeping her vow of fidelity. So we have these agreements with each other, and then we have to update the agreements and become conscious. Who are you going to be to me now? What are my expectations of you? What are your expectations of me? And when you start. So that's how you kind of evolve a relationship to a new, healthy form. But I think you asked me how to call in the One.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's so much I want to learn.

There's a lot to say.

The challenge is, you know, the challenge is how do you call in the One? And then how do you know it is the One? And how do you. And then how do you deal with coping with when it's not the one right now or it's not the right time, or it's not working, that it's not the one anymore right now?

Well, so there are different questions. So I think how to call in the One is about being very intentional and being more future oriented than past oriented. So a lot of us have, you know, certain things in our histories, in our childhoods, we have certain, you know, dynamics that were happening in our families. And so we have insecurities. We have beliefs that, you know, I'm not good enough or I'm not wanted, or men always leave or those kinds.

Of stories that I can't trust people or whatever it is. I don't have faith in humanity or something.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and so we're kind of like. Or. And then we go to, how am I going to have love? And there's like a sense of resignation, like, because it's become an identity. It's become a self sense. So one of the things we do in calling in the One is we look and name that identity really specifically according to each person's story. Like, if your dad left when you were five, what did you make that mean about you?

Yes, I'm not worthy. Or that everyone's always going to leave me. Or that.

Yeah.

Close to someone, they're going to leave.

Right. Because inside that consciousness, we're going to show up in ways that then validate that story. And it's so covert. And it seems like it's just happening to us and we don't see how it's happening through us. One of my favorite stories about this Is a woman who was in her 20s and she was a client of mine and she met this guy and they really liked each other and they were hot and heavy for a few weeks. And then all of a sudden he stopped calling completely. No texts, no calls. 1, day, 2, day 3, day, 4, day, 5, day. By the fifth day, she's like beside herself because her dad left when she was five and never came back. So in her world, men leave. And so she did what she thought was a great preemptive strike against being hurt. And she just texted him that she met someone new and she's not interested in the connection. Like that to her was her way of getting her power back as opposed.

To just having a conversation or reaching out and not making assumptions.

Exactly. She just hang out again or.

Yeah.

She was so in her assumption. So anyway, two years later, she met him at a club and found out that he had been taking a break because he was like seriously thinking about asking her to be in a long term committed relationship. And then he had to go back to certain women and close things up with them. So he was like distracted. Ending these other relationships.

Yeah. Trying to make sure it was the right thing.

Sabotaged herself. So it. So in calling in the one, we make that conscious and then we go back and say, what's the deeper truth? You know? Well, your dad left, but not every man will ever leave you. And probably if you learn some relationship skills on how to navigate difficult conversations, patients, you'd have a higher chance of staying together. Right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

And maybe they will leave you again and maybe not everyone will.

But not exactly. Yeah, exactly.

You can't say, well, see, I'm just, I'm right now because this person left or they were interested and then they left. Like that's called dating. You know, people all the time, they don't have to make a decision in the first two weeks or the first two months to be with you or not exactly. It's called getting to know someone and seeing where it goes. Right. It's not like you're not good enough. Maybe it's just not a good fit or the right timing or maybe he's into someone else, whatever.

So I get people, I kind of help people to wake up out of that trance and get into a place of real possibility, like the recognition that you actually have the power to influence what comes your way and what doesn't come your way and get into a sense of possibility and then begin to live into a vision and start to align with that vision and live in integrity with that vision. So that you're not like living your neurosis, you're kind of living. And you know, the thing about having these, you know, a lot of us have been doing our work and we kind of know our issues, quote unquote backwards and forwards. But there's something different about actually even giving up the right to have a certain conversation. Right. So you can like sit in therapy for five years and talk about men always leave me. Or you could have a moment where you say, it's not actually true. It's the story of a five year old. This is what's actually true. And that's going to require me to show up in a different way. And I need to start showing up now in integrity with the future. I'm committed to creating. Calling in the one is not about necessarily, you know, finding the guy. It's about becoming the woman that you would need to be or becoming the man that you would need to be in order to find that partner.

Yeah.

I had a, another friend of mine who's a, you know, does a lot of relationship work as well. I was like, what's the best way to find like a great partner? He said, create a list of everything you want out of that person, everything you want from them, and then go be that yourself.

Yes.

I was like, oh man, that's strong. You want them to be funny and attractive and outgoing and adventurous and successful, Then you've got to be all those things.

Yeah.

You can't just be half those things and expect someone else to give you more value than you're bringing to the table. Really. I mean, you've got to show up in a powerful way.

Definitely.

So I was like, that is strong.

That's it. And the other thing about crawling in the one, I mean, you're a man of very clear mission.

Yes.

And a lot of folks who are here with us today are very clear mission people. So you really need to find, like, you need to be living your mission and you need to find someone who's sharing your mission.

Sharing it or supporting it?

Sharing it or supporting it. But even the support needs to be. This is my contribution to that vision.

Yes. And if it's taking away from the vision, it's really challenging because if somebody.

Doesn'T actually have that same value system and they're just kind of rah, rah, I'm not going to get in the way. Like, you're gonna go create a family, then you're gonna create a home, and then you're gonna have kids maybe. And you know, and if they really have, like a traditional value system, they're gonna be like, oh, you're out, you know, running around talking to people again. No, you should be home with the kids this weekend.

That's a challenge, you know, so you.

Really do, I think you have to find a mission partner if you really want to go all the way. And also to maximize the potentials of the connection. I mean, that's the ideal. And then, you know what? But we human beings seem to make it work in all sorts of funny configurations. And every single relationship is unique to the people who are in it. And relationships will inspire us to continue to grow if we're really committed to maximizing the potentials of each connection.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode All About Relationships. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, make sure to subscribe to the podcast over on Apple, Apple Podcasts or Spotify, make sure to leave a review over on Apple Podcasts as well. And let me know what part of this episode you enjoyed the most. And of course, share this with some friends. Lewishouse.com 11:49 you can take that link and post it over on social media or text a few friends that you think would be inspired by this episode as well. And I want to leave you with a quote from Marcus Aurelius who said, when you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is it is to be alive, to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. I'm so grateful for you being here today, for you listening and taking part in this episode. I hope you got a lot of wisdom and I hope you can take this wisdom and integrate and apply it into your daily life in your relationships. In my opinion, the key to success in life is successful, happy, thriving relationships. And and the key to successful relationships is really being your most important, authentic, vulnerable self in those relationships and being of service in those relationships. So see about your relationships right now. Look at them, reflect on them, take inventory on them. Are they working for you? Are you supporting one another? Or are they maybe not where they need to be? If so, what can you do to get them back on track? Or what can you do to start creating new relationships to really help you thrive in your life? Again, I'm so grateful for you. And if no one has told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.

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