Why Most Relationships Fail | Lewis Howes

When you are doing different, you degrade the other person. They're less important to you. They don't matter. Ultimately, what we feel in relationships is that we matter.

Hey guys, thank you so much for being here. A quick message before we dive in. You may be watching the show, but haven't taken a moment to click the subscribe button below. So if you've ever gained value from this show, it would mean so much to me if you click the subscribe button right now. And not only will this allow you to see, see these messages first, all this great content we have, you're going to get notified first when it comes out. But the bigger our subscriber base grows, the more people we can impact and the bigger the guests we can get on this show as well. So again, thank you so much as always for your support. It means the world to me. Make sure to click the subscribe button below and let's dive into this conversation. 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? Okay, so you started with the middle question.

What goes wrong?

I think there's a number of things in a relationship that, that, 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, 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.

You 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 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, 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 gonna live on its own, right? Like a cactus, right? Violence, violence, the abuse, the level of disrespect. I mean, most people talk nicer to anybody else than their partner. When a relationship is great 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 gonna be there anyway. They're just gonna 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.

Yeah, 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. There 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, 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.

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 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 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, 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 shit.

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. 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. 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's fun, it's pleasurable, we connect, it feels good, it rounds up, deepens our relationship, 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 as go figure.

Right?

Exactly. For 60 years you're gonna be with him or whatever it is. Yeah.

It's an amazing ideal.

So how do we navigate this? If we're gonna choose one partner and be with them until, you know, we're both gone. How do we navigate the challenge of keeping the desire continuously?

I think the first 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.

Okay.

That's not just fact. That's. 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 sexual 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 seductive. The romance, which is an essential ingredient of turn on for the woman, often disappears in the long term relationship. 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 mystery. 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 sexual 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 going to 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, 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.

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. 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 who 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, not every day. But what 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 a tight. 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. This, this is alert. Here is 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, 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? 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. 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.

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And with the divorce rate that we.

Have, what's the rate at right now?

About 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 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, that is. That is a unique. And then we're upset when they don't fulfill the mandate.

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

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

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

I think I'm not going to say them in order of importance, but one of them that really matters is your relationship to others. If you are a person that values relationships, that sees the presence of others in your life as central, and you are with somebody who does not want community or does not know how. And I'm talking not about what they would like to learn through you, but their value is you do things alone, you live alone, you rely on yourself, you know, you don't bring people over to the house. I have a couple I just spoke with yesterday, you know, and he loves to have people Over. And she just. Nobody should come ever to the house.

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. It's. His whole life is about being with people and her whole life is about not being with people necessarily. That's not how she experiences him. Now the question is, is she drawn to more of what he has to offer and is he drawn to more of what she. If these are totally. Then okay, different values come together and they mix and match. But if you have these two separations like that. So that's one. One of the beautiful questions I ask in how is work? Is were you raised for autonomy or were you raised for loyalty? Were you raised for self reliance or were you raised for interdependence? Which one would you say?

For me it was self reliance, meaning what you have.

Nobody will ever help you as well as you can help yourself. You only have yourself to count on. Don't trust people, you're on your own, buddy.

Or raised for interdependence.

Loyalty. You're never alone. There's people around you you owe. Others, others are there for you. Relationships is what makes you.

I think I was both based on like circumstances.

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

Yeah, yeah, of course.

Okay.

So I think both.

I think that question is a fundamentally interesting question.

Okay.

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

Raised for self reliance or loyalty.

Yeah.

Okay.

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

Or doesn't want to travel once it's.

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

What do you want to be like?

What are you 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 that's the same, but someone with a similar mindset, as we're saying.

I met a husband of mine with whom I am, for more than three decades, who had never left the US When I met him, really, I never knew such a person existed. Coming from Europe, that was unheard of in Europe. No, he lived in the States. He was American. I came from Europe. In Europe, you travel everywhere, all the time, even if you have nothing. You work one month, you get the money, and then you go to the next country, which is two hours away. He had never been outside of the U.S. well, he will always tell me he'd been to the Virgin Islands, but.

You know, for the rest.

And I thought, oh, my God, how does one, you know who is such a person? But I knew it was because of the circumstances of his life and that if he could, he would. And he was intensely curious. If you just said, oh, he's never traveled, then you misinterpret. You don't want to just look at a 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 he's 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'm gonna 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, too.

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

No.

Okay. I mean disappointment, which can lead to suffering. It's part of a relationship. The minute you have a relationship, you have an expectation. That expectation means that you want something. Love, closeness, intimacy, partnership. You know, business affiliation.

You name.

It creates dependence. The moment you have an attachment, you have dependence. That dependence means that you have power or I have power. If I expect something from you, I confer power on you. You have power over me. I have power over you. By definition, there will be moments when that power doesn't go in the direction that I want.

And I'll be disappointed.

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

It's how we heal the disappointment.

Yes. It's how you repair all these breaches. Moment by moment, you come back, you know, and the repair is not. I am so sorry. 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 spatula, but I.

But you still care about you.

I still care. You're still in my life.

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

And that means also how you come and you say you take responsibility. Yes. I think. I actually think that taking responsibility is the ultimate freedom. I messed up. I shouldn't have done this.

Can I do that?

It really is being Accountable.

What if you're.

Instead of blaming the other?

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

Doesn't matter. It wasn't. You don't have to agree with anything. I didn't mean to. It wasn't my intention. Yeah, 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're a flawed person who can be accountable without that becoming a major source of shame. And I'm terrible. It's a different, different thing between saying, I messed up and I messed up.

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

That was my fault was like a humiliation.

Well, it's more like, look at when.

I'm like, why shall I.

No, it's more like, here's all the actions I'm doing. Right?

Right.

Today I've done this, which was an expectation, and I've done that. And I took the trash out or whatever. I'm just. And I, you know, did something kind of you. And I wrote a note and I did this and I took it to dinner. I did all these things well today, but I messed up on this one thing. So for me, I used to say to myself, like, gosh, but can't you see the whole picture of, like, all the good things I'm doing? Why do I need to be an hour conversation about, like, one small thing? That's what I used to feel like. And do you feel like we should just be saying, you know what? Take responsibility anyways for those moments, even if you're doing lots of good things. You know what I mean? Yes, but I'm not a perfect human being, you know, it's like I might slip.

The story is told by you.

Yes.

The other person is the one that needs to think to tell you about all the good things that you've done. You felt, I do all of this, I do one thing wrong, and now I have to go into the dark pit.

Yes.

You know, but that's because you had a partner who did not enough tell you about all the good things you did.

This was about me.

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

Well, I think. Yeah, exactly. Or I think it's more like, okay, if we're going to acknowledge one thing that I didn't do, at least acknowledge something of that's right. Did do right.

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

It's a must.

It's a must.

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

You should need it.

I should need it.

You should need it. You totally should need it.

Got. You don't only acknowledge the bad. Also acknowledge the good.

Not also. It's. It's. It's a must. It's a mandate. You know what happens sometimes in distressed relationships? Because you were in a distressed relationship at that moment, and this is true, you directly take this into the workplace. In a distressed relationship, the tendency is to highlight the negative and disregard the positive. The positive is just a given. The negative will make a big deal out of it. So the one thing you didn't do becomes the whole conversation. And then what does that person do? Of course, that person says, but you disregard all the other stuff, and rightly so, because it has been disregarded. In a distressed relationship, the positive, if we get there on time, it's because there was no traffic, and if we get there late is because of you. The good is chance. The bad is attributed to you. Or in a different version of that is what we call negative attribution error. If I am in a bad mood, it's because I had a bad day. But if you're in a bad mood, it's because you're a nasty person who is always so cantankerous. Mine is circumstantial, yours is characterological. So when you'd say, I was in a relationship in which when I did one thing bad, it was so overblown and I felt like everything else was being disregarded, that's a sign of a distressed relationship in and of itself.

Interesting.

The fact that because in a normal relationship, somebody else says, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Then you finally don't do something and says, oh, I really messed up there. I forgot. Sorry.

Right.

And it's not such a big deal, okay? Because you are seen for the whole person. If you have to make a speech about, you should see the whole person, you're not in a good relationship.

Ah, there you go.

Okay.

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

Gotcha. Gotcha.

You shouldn't have to say this.

So I wasn't crazy.

Okay.

Gotcha.

No.

Okay. Gotcha.

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

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

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

You don't acknowledge your team the best.

I do.

It's hard.

In the show we see a lot of the things that are slipping through. Right?

Yeah. My tendency is to.

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

How much has your team taught you? Because look, you are probably like me. We wouldn't be sitting here on some level if we were not actually more self critical people, of course, and very demanding of ourselves. And hence we surround ourselves by people who we think we can be demanding from as well. And that is true. But it is also important that we learn to be sometimes a little kinder with ourselves and not just highlight the negative while at the same time asking the girlfriend to not be like that. Even though you are doing it with yourself and to also do it with our team. I don't think you can go wrong.

Before the interview continues. If you feel like you're not living your most authentic life, not leaning into your purpose, and not living the life that your future self would be extremely proud of. I've written a new book called the Greatness Mindset and I think you're going to love this. Through powerful stories, science backed strategies and step by step guidance, the Greatness mindset will help you overcome all the different challenges in your life to design the life of your dreams and then turn it into your reality. Make sure to click the link below in the description to get get your copy today. Okay, let's get back to this video.

When you have been through, as you date and you go through relationships and you've been through betrayal and heartbreak and hurt and pain, you begin. You can become pretty cynical.

Yes.

About love. And if you're not careful, that cynicism can really be a hindrance for you because you cannot be a cynic about love and expect to attract it at the same time.

Ooh, snap. That's true.

Yeah.

So how did you keep your Heart open. After going through breakups and maybe after, you know, challenging things happening in relationships where that hurt you, how did you stay open to love?

I had to refrain my thoughts and ideas and my perspective about the past.

What did you think about them then?

I had to learn to allow the past to stay in the past. I didn't want someone to come into my life and I make them pay for something they had nothing to do with.

Yeah, that's tough.

In my past.

Yeah, that's tough.

And when I got married, who did I want my husband to meet? This bitter, broken down woman who had been through the wringer in all these years and all these relationships, or did I want him to meet someone who. Because we're all. We're always in the process of healing, we're always in the process of growth and our emotional health. But did I want him to meet someone who was committed to that growth and that process and going forward? Being committed to the same commitment, which is, which is what really success in marriage falls down to being committed to the same commitment. Because, you know, when I was younger, I thought it was about this involuntary feeling of love. And then as I got older, I realized it was a conscious decision to love.

It's not just, oh, I have this attraction to this person. I feel love towards them. It's a conscious decision because you're not.

Always going to feel love. You're going to go through ups, downs and, and downs and peaks and valleys. And if it were about a feeling, you'd be all over the place emotionally.

Up and down.

Yeah, it's about a decision. And so when I talk about earlier, when I talked about separating your feelings from the facts, that's what I mean. Like you're, you're going to have a range of emotions. But the fact is, you know, this is a person that I've committed my life to.

Yeah.

This is a person I've committed to grow with.

This is.

So I made all of these commitments to this person. And then you go forward with that in mind.

Did you have fears around getting married?

I had a fear of the unknown.

Yeah.

What is marriage really like? You know, I see other people who are married, some of them happy, some of them not. Obviously, I see a lot of people getting divorced. So what is it about marriage? What makes it work? Do I know what makes it work? Do I have what it takes to make it work? So it was, it was the fear of the unknown because I hadn't done it before. Marriage, by nature changes you. It's the closest relationship you'll ever have. It's very different from the parent, child, relationship, every other relationship, friends, everything.

Yeah.

I wondered how it would change me.

From being in a relationship and dating to then being married would have been the biggest differences and changes.

Allowing someone to see me at my most vulnerable state.

Did you allow that during the dating process?

I allowed it to a certain extent, but I didn't. I didn't live with my husband before we got married. That was a choice that we made, really. We did not want to live together. And so when we got married and we moved in together, I had not lived with anyone since I was in College for 20 years.

Wow.

So, again, it's that adjustment in life, just sharing my space with another human being every day and how to handle that.

Yeah.

And you got married a week before the pandemic in 2020?

Yes.

March 8, 2020, you said. So what was that? I mean, that takes a lot of guts to not live with someone beforehand in the modern world, to not fully see the person who they are. So I commend you on that. So did you. What did you learn going through a pandemic for the last two years? Getting married a week before and then moving in together and sharing a life during, you know, arguably one of the scariest uncertain times in the last 20, 30 years?

Everything changed in the blink of an eye. We got married on March 8th in Los Angeles, big wedding. All of our family, all of our friends hugging, high fiving, kissing, had no idea what was about to happen a week later. And I do look back on that day because I thought, you know, when we were talking about our wedding, do we want to do something small? Do we want to, you know, we ended up just inviting our people and everyone came out. And now I look back on that day and I cherish it so much.

Yeah.

Because people haven't been able to do that for a couple years.

Right. And I haven't seen a lot of those people since. So it just made those memories even more special to us. But also, yes, a week later, the world shut down. So we decided to take a mini moon. We weren't. We were going to do a big honeymoon over the summer, so we just went to Newport beach and we were there for a few days and we were in a bubble. We didn't know a lot about everything that was happening in the world until we came out of this bubble. So we came back to LA and I mean, there was no toilet tissue on the shelves. The grocery store, I mean, it was just empty. Everything was empty. I'd never seen anything like it before. And I was like, so you mean to tell me I waited all this time to get married, and the world is about to end?

Wow.

It was.

It was crazy.

So what.

What did you guys create? Did you guys come together and say, let's build a strong foundation during this time? Did you. Do you feel like it's made the relationship stronger? Has it been stressful living with someone for the first time in 20 years? How have you navigated it all?

We adapted really well. And during that time, we had every day and all that time to spend time together. And the pandemic, it challenged all of us in different ways, but it also presented us with an opportunity. And for us, it was noise cancellation, headphones through the first few months of our marriage, because we got to really sit and be together and be still and be quiet. You know, My husband is an R and B singer. He travels all over the world, and he had. He was leaving a week after we got married to start traveling again.

Not at all.

Of course, that didn't happen. And so we got to spend a lot of quality time together. And I will tell you what I learned about him.

Yes.

What I talked about earlier, about when you see the true measure of a person and how they handle adversity and how they handle difficult circumstances. And because all of his, you know, live music was impacted greatly.

That's how you make most of your money. Yeah.

And I never heard him complain, not even once. And I saw him be a source of encouragement to a lot of other of his artists and musician friends. And, I mean, I was even shocked. I was like, okay, we're all about positivity and, you know, wake up happy every day, but really, you really wake up this happy every day.

Sure.

And it was inspiring to see. And I knew in those first few months that because you always, you know, you. Every love is about taking a risk.

Yeah.

You know, we talk about that fear because we're. It's a risk. There's a fear of being hurt again. There's a fear of those triggers being exposed again. And in that moment, I knew and I believed that I had made a right decision. But in those months after the pandemic, I saw it for myself very early on in my marriage, who my husband was in stressful times, in difficult circumstances, and how he was a source of inspiration and strength for a lot of people, including me.

So were you. Was each day kind of a confirmation that this was a great decision? I leaned into this, and, yes, that's beautiful.

Yes, it's been. It's been two years of just this amazing time in my life because I used to get asked a lot why I was still single for so long, and I started to feel pressure from people. I never put the pressure on myself, and I know a lot of people perhaps do, but if you're not careful when you're single and people are asking you, well, I don't understand why aren't you married? Or what's going on, you can start to internalize it and feel that there's something wrong with you or that there's something off within you. And it can almost be something that you become embarrassed by because people are asking you, as if you've missed some mark in your life, some milestone that you should have achieved by now. Not asking me if it was a desire of mine, by the way, if I wanted to, but just asking me why wasn't I.

Why do you think people care so much about other people being in a relationship or being single?

Well, the question, I think, speaks more to who they are than it ever did to who I was. Because I was okay, you know, There were lessons that I had to learn to get to the place where I could go into a successful marriage. I needed to learn those lessons. There are almost 8 billion people on this planet. We can't all be doing the same things at the same time. And we're not supposed to be. We're all supposed to be living our individual life paths in our individual life journeys. There are some people who don't think that. They think you need to be married by a certain age, you need to have children by a certain age, or you're not living the right path. It's just not true. This is not a race. Why is it not a race? Because we're not all running in the same direction. So I learned very early on, and I think living in New York actually helped with that because I was around so many other young professionals who were at the top of their games in their careers, and we were. Saturday night, we're here. Wednesday night, we're at a show, and then live music and everything and just embracing our full lives and accepting that being single was not a rest stop for me until I met my husband and really got to live.

Well.

If I had done that, I wouldn't have lived until I was 42 years old. So what would I have done with all those years in my 20s and 30s? So it wasn't a rest stop. And I embraced that time of. And just did so many. I traveled all around the world by myself, solo, went to all the restaurants that I wanted to go to, watching Sex in the City. Sometimes I would go by myself. You know, I had this vibrant group of friends. I was not waiting to live my life. And I think that people, they project their own view of what they think life should be onto you. And so it's. It's our job as individuals to again, reframe our perspective and mindset and make a decision for ourselves that we're going to live our own life path.

I should be asking, is this relationship worth it? Instead of is this relationship perfect? Perfect. And I was asking myself, because I've seen Instagram relationships so long, I've never had one, and I've seen movies and everything else, I thought any sort of issue within a relationship was fatal. And I'll be honest with you what the issue was. We had a problem in bed, and I've never encountered that before. And it, I think it's emasculating for a guy when your partner might not have the same interest in sex as you. You do. And I think I was emasculated by it. I think I didn't understand it. And she, probably because I wasn't creating a safe space, she did not want to talk about it.

Right.

And for me, that felt at the time like a dead end. Like you've hit. Like going through a maze and you hit. You hit a cul de sac, as we call it, like a dead end.

What would a safe space have looked like for you to create?

Just honestly, to ask some very thoughtful, unloaded questions and to listen.

You weren't willing to do that. You just didn't have the tools or the awareness.

I did not have the tools. I didn't. I didn't know how to communicate. And communicate is. Communication is foundational to everything. It turns out, most of the time, as I've seen in my life, whether it's when I dropped out of university, my mom didn't speak to me for three years, whether it's my business partner becoming an alcoholic and only finding out when he was downstairs lying on the floor as a drunk, or whether it's in that situation that we tend to all want the same thing, but we don't have the tools to communicate. So it sounds like we're pulling in different directions. And I think in that situation, again, it was one of the moments in my life where I learned the importance of mature communication and creating a safe space and understanding that what someone self prescribes as their issue is not necessarily Their issue. And sometimes people don't know what their. Their challenge is.

Right.

So someone might say to you, I don't like sex. And for you, that again, it feels really binary. It's like, well, you either like it or you don't, so. And you're not willing to talk about it, so it's over. But things, as I learned in this case, are often much more deep and complex. And sometimes people can't self diagnose what's.

Going on with them.

But if you create a safe space together, you can go on the journey to understand what that actually means. I wasn't willing to. So broke up with her.

Wow.

I'm back with her now.

It's the same relationship.

Same relationship.

It's her.

Yeah.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

Interesting.

I will be.

I 100% marry her. She'll 100% be my wife. Because it's. Yeah. I mean, I've never met a person like her, but.

Wow.

So this is that. That relationship then. And you ended it. How long did you end it?

For a year.

Come on.

Yeah, I ended up for a year.

Were you in touch at all? Was little Thomas really?

So she. The pandemic happened, and she had some troubles in her life that she wanted to go, you know, figure out. So she flew to Indonesia, she flew to Bali. And the longer time went on, and the more time I had on my own, and I'll be honest with you, the more time I had to try all the wrong things and have them fail me.

Right. You were like, okay, yeah.

I was like, oh, that was the one.

Oh, wow.

That was the one. And I became sure, and sure as the days went on that I would never find a love like that. I would never. And I was sure of it. I was utterly convinced I had made a mistake and that I was the problem. And although I didn't know this, the issue we had in our relationship would be fixed. I went to the airport, got on a flight, and I flew 22 hours to Indonesia to, more than anything, apologize.

Wow.

Because I felt like I threw a good thing away for a bad reason. And I hurt. I know I hurt her. And I knew that even though I didn't think she would be interested in me or take me back or anything like that, I knew that if I am to be the mature person I am, my apology, if it's not manipulation, should come without an expectation.

Right.

You see what I mean? Because when apologies come with an expectation, they are just manipulation. So, yes, I thought you just actually have to go There and say what you mean and leave it there and.

Then come back, not try to get in a relationship with her, but just do it for the sake of you being a good person.

Exactly.

And owning up to your part of the street.

And then, because then I could have another relationship with someone else and start the record personally in myself that I am now the mature person who's willing to communicate and be humble and admit his own deficiencies so I could then be the person I wanted to be for the next person. And it just ended up being, being a very, probably one of the most interesting moments of my life. How, how that situation played out because I got there, she was being very distant with me.

Did she know you were coming?

So when I was in like the Do It Doha Airport, I said, oh, by the way, I'm going to be in Bali, so be nice to see you. She was very distant with me. She wouldn't come near me. She was like sat quite far away from me when we met with some friends. And then as the days went on and on, she said, look, I don't know what the future holds. I'm going to, I'm staying here. And, and I could see it. So I apologized to her anyway. Then on the second, the next day, by the way, that was an ego blow. That was a moment where my chimp brain showed up and said, take revenge. Play it. Play a game. Try and get her back. But fortunately, by this time in my life, the other part of me that had, that knew I had self sabotaged myself with my ego for years and that the games had always failed me. Manipulating someone has always failed me. Abandoning my character and integrity has always failed me. The chase and then all of that had always failed me. So in that moment, which is, I'm going to stay here in Bali, super graceful and nice. Thankfully, I see all of these things like a balancing act and it's like, which force will win? You don't have to be a hundred percent mature, but if you're 60, 40, and that, and that's the words that come out your mouth, that's a good place to start. And fortunately, in that moment, my maturity won. The next thing is, she sits me down the next day and goes, I've been sleeping with someone since we broke up.

Oh, zing. And I'm seeing that pressure, how you're.

Gonna show up with that pressure.

And again, my chimp shows up. It's, it says finisher.

Oh my God.

It says manipulate games. Tell her off, make her feel like, oh, wow, that's my ego.

It goes, go on, Steve.

But fortunately, I gave her a kiss on the cheek. I was like, I understand. I understand. We can't. We're in a co working thing. We carry on doing our work. By the way, at this point, we're not romantic, so we're not.

Right.

I'm just. Babe, it's okay. Give me a hug. Thank you for telling me. You didn't have to tell me. And I literally looked her in the eye and I remember saying to her, she'll listen to this. I was like, I know that must have been hard to say to me. So thank you, because you've told me. You didn't have to tell me, but you've told me. Because X, Y and Z, we carried on working. Next day.

This is where you ended it with her. It's been a year. What's she gonna do?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Of course, your ego doesn't care if you ended it, if it was your fault. Your ego gets triggered. Especially. I think this is quite a masculine thing from what I've read as well. We get triggered in a different psychological way because of various prehistoric reasons, which I won't go into. And then the last thing was, I realized that she was going to stay here. She wasn't interested in me. So I was going to leave. And I sent her this really wonderful message and a voice note, which I've played before publicly on stage. And I said, I'm leaving Bali on Saturday. But listen, you're on your journey. It's been amazing to see you. Etc. Etc. She responds. And she says she's surprised, but she says, okay, okay. Can I see you before you go? My ego shows up. Don't let her see you before you go. That's your last chance of getting a victory.

Oh, no.

Do not let her see. Make her feel bad. Play a game.

Oh, man.

You've got the power there, Stitch.

She wants something.

Yeah.

You've taken away from.

You have to take it away from her. That's one last ego restoring victory. And then reflection, asking myself who I am and who I want to be, what my values actually are, and what has happened, succeeded in failing in the past. I said, sure, you can see me before I go. And in those three days, everything changed.

What happened?

She made plans for us over those three days. It was like. And I'm not sure if this is a karmic thing or a spiritual thing or whatever it is, but it was like she realized I'd finally learned how to love her. And it was like life had Sent me these three tests to check if I still had that ego, if I was still immature, if I was willing to hold a safe space. And because I passed those three tests those last few days, everything changed. And we have been wildly in love ever since. To the point where I'm sure she's my wife.

I'm sure we're gonna.

I could have ruined that. On three occasions. There was three challenges.

Like she was testing you. Whether she was thinking of a test.

Or not, she'd never think of it.

Right.

She's too pure, she's too authentic.

It's the human experience to say, well, I don't fully trust this. Okay, I'm gonna. Maybe not thinking, but it's just the body's response. Probably.

Yeah.

It just comes out.

It taught me something about the nature of.

No, if you would have reacted differently in any of those three, should have been like, something's not safe here. Like she would have not trusted you to be able to want to get back in a relationship.

But is the world not doing that to all of us in all facets of our life? Is it not sending us tests? Whether it's the barista who you might be rude to that day that turns out to be the daughter of the person that you end up going and trying to pitch business to in three years time is life not testing us at all times to see what we're ready for and what we deserve? And that's kind of the broader picture. Lesson I learned was like Mel never had to change. In fact, any. Nothing externally needed to change for me to get the results I'd always been looking for in my life. I had to change. And then the world sent me things. And this sounds very woo woo and I'm the least woo woo person you'll ever meet. The world sent me a different set of things. It said, because you've changed, we're going to mirror a different set of results. That old Einstein quote about doing the same thing and expecting different results. Yes, you've taught me this as well. Because if you have a huge amount of self responsibility when it comes to your relationships, you say, I did that. I said this to you last time we spoke. When you're talking about your past relationships that have failed, you said, but that's on me. And you say, because I picked them. And I think about that so much because I had my hairdresser come to my place in LA the other day and he walks and starts cutting my hair. Says, my girlfriend, she's not really interested in me. She's been, she, you know, she's been talking to a lot of other guys and she's been going for this guy just because he's got money. And he walked in and when he walked in he had this two thousand dollar sneakers on a Louis Vuitton bag dripping in diamonds and gold. And I thought, you've got what you deserve. And people hate that. The concept that the people that they've attracted into their life, the results they've attracted into their life are a mirror of who they are. And I said, swim. I said, well, what did she do? Well, she's, she's a hostess in a nightclub. Okay. Like how did you meet her? Well, I was in, you know, I was at a, at one of the tables in the nightclub and I was one of the big spenders that I put on my table.

So you're attracting from that space.

Yeah, that's, that's what you've attracted. So if you did some work on you to figure out why you need to wear diamonds all the time, where that comes from, that need for validation or whatever it is, you could drop the diamonds, you could stop buying the Dom Perignon in the nightclub and you might end up in a different environment and attracting someone else for other reasons and values. And it was the same with me throughout my entire life until I did the work on me. I attracted all the wrong people.

Really.

God, of course. Attracted all the wrong people that wanted me for all the wrong things that wanted me for the mansion in the countryside or the range over or the, or the car.

The car you have now is pretty sweet.

Yeah, I don't, funny enough, I don't actually have a driving license, so I have a driver, so. But I can't drive. I lost my license. I thought I don't need it anymore anyway. So. Yeah, and so, yeah, I think about that a lot now because I had to do the work to find the love I was looking for.

You can't blame others. You got to, you got to take responsibility and ownership. And that's why I said with you it's like for me, maybe there was things that I didn't like about these other relationships I was in, but I was the one choosing those relationships. I was the one staying after, you know, six months, 12 months, two years when it wasn't working and things weren't shifting and I continued to repeat the patterns that I was bringing into the relationship. So we all have choices, but when we blame others, it's really easy. But when we take responsibility, it's much harder. Women who are watching or listening at home that just want to find their match, their partner, what's the first step they can take to start getting out of the weeds of like failure after failure and start seeing some progress to greater potential matches or.

Couple of things. I mean, firstly, there's a guy called John Kay who wrote a book called Obliquity. And the whole idea of the book was Obliquity is when you reach goals through indirect means. So if you take building a business, you're far more like if your goal is to make money, instead of focusing on making money, focus on all the things that provide value to people.

Yeah.

Because the making money part will be the byproduct.

Right.

If you focus on I need to get rich, I need to get rich, I need to get rich. You're probably not going to do the things that are going to get you rich.

Right.

Because what makes you financially wealthy? The relationships, you take time to build that often for a long time you don't ask for anything, you don't even care to. You just building you, you know, the products that you create for no reason, then you just think that they're great or that you think they have value or whatever. The service that you provide people, it's just, it's not what's the quickest way for me to make money. Most people like that don't get rich in a relationship. There's all these things that build a relationship that really have nothing to, that don't feel like they have anything to do with a relationship. Like, who would say knowing what you would do with the next 10 hours of your life if it was free is actually going to be a huge determinant of the, the health of your relationship. It's like one's over here and one's over here.

Right.

Shouldn't we be talking about how to have better sex?

Yeah.

Shouldn't we be talking about how to communicate well with my partner? No, we're talking about you being an independently attractive, purpose driven, independent person who is attractive just to watch from afar because of the life you lead. That's going to lead to a much better relationship, by the way. Even that will lead to better sex. Yeah. Because your partner looks at you and.

It'S like this person, this is a person.

This isn't just an extension of me.

Yeah.

This is a person. So it's the indirect things that, that contribute. And so let's now take that to the single place. I'm single. What's, what do I do next? Understand and study and this is a big part of what I do in my work, so I'd encourage people to come check that out. Study the things that contribute to getting you a relationship that often have nothing to do with getting a relationship. The things you do with your spare time. Do I. You know, do I do. If I want to learn yoga, do I do it on my own at home with a YouTube video? Learning yoga, by the way, on its own could be a good thing just because it makes you more interesting, you have more to talk about, you feel confident in yourself, all of that. But, okay, now let me do a more sociable version of that. Let me go and do a class where I might actually have the chance of meeting other people. Maybe they're not men. Maybe there are other single women. But other single women are useful, too. Another indirect variable, because you have more single friends or more fun friends, more charismatic friends, friends who come knocking at your door going, hey, we're going out. Get out of your goddamn pajamas. We're going out. Right. That person is going to be great for your love life.

Makes you more desirable and makes you leave the house. Yeah.

Instead of staying in every weekend, makes you leave and go to places where people are. You know, the books you read. Who would say the books you read have anything to do with your relationship, but they do on a date when you have shit to talk about.

Absolutely right.

So there's all these factors. Now, the reason I'm saying that, because, of course there are direct factors. But look, my programs in my. My company, which, by the way, people could go to howtogetheguide.com to go and find all of these. But the programs I have there are about very direct things like how to flirt strategies, how to meet someone, how to do this, how to do that. But that's one piece of it. Right. It's. I encourage people to do all those indirect things. And then someone can't say, I'm just sick of going out. I give up. On what? On what?

Yeah.

Like someone said that to me in a seminar and say, I just feel like giving up.

Tell me on yourself, on life. What are you giving up on?

I want to hear this. Tell me, what are you giving up on? Well, I. Meeting people. Meeting people. Would you not meet people? If you. If someone said you can never find the love of your life, that's off the table, would you really stop meeting people? Your need for a human interaction would disappear? I don't think so. You'd stop flirting with people. That's part of your character. Flirt. Being flirtatious is a part of who we are at times. So why would we lose that being sexual? Would you really lose that you're going to stop being sexual just because the end result isn't coming? I don't buy it. You stop doing hobbies, you'd stop getting out there. All the things that you have to get rid of to say I'm done with relationships are things that would absolutely erode your life, even if you take the relationship out of the equation. So I think people have to. I understand. I know there is a terrific level of like, dating burnout right now. And if you're out there feeling that right now, I, I urge you to think about this differently and to say, I don't have to, to constantly have it in my mind. I'm trying to meet someone. I'm trying to meet someone. I'm trying to meet someone. That game gets boring. And now when you go on a date and it doesn't go anywhere, you're a failure, you're exhausted. Yeah, I'm done. See it as life. This isn't dating, it's life. It's meeting people, it's experiencing a great conversation, having a fun moment of interaction, of flirtation, doing things you want to do anyway, doing hobbies you want to do anyway because they enrich your experience of life. All of those things are really important. You don't have to call it dating, just go live.

It's kind of like the analogy you said about running a business. If you're focused on I need the relationship. Whereas, like, I need to make a certain amount of money is getting the relationship, as opposed to, why don't I add value to the world and I'll attract the customers that will pay me and I'll make some money.

Because I need to make money focuses on things that make the short term economics work. And those things are generally not good for a business. That's it. Same in love.

I want to ask you a couple final questions. This just came to me. I don't think I've ever asked anyone this, but since you're the love guy, I'm gonna go there. Typically, I would ask the three truths question, which is, what are your three truths? If it was the last day of your life. But I'm going to ask you a different spin on this. Imagine it's the last day of your life and you've been in a committed, compatible, loving relationship with the woman of your dreams for the last 30, 40, 50, whatever years. And you've been a part of this journey and Experience where you've built this incredible castle with all of its dents and wears and tears and love and magic and unicorns and everything. And it's your last day, and you've got a. Lights are gonna go off, and you're not gonna be on this world anymore. And your partner has one more day to live. Hypothetical. You're 150 years old.

Your partner has one more day.

Your partner has one more day to live. Let's screw that. Your partner has a few more years to live. She's gonna live a little longer than you. And you get to write three things. A love letter to your partner.

Right.

About the three things you loved about her the most, that brought you the most joy, the most incredible life from this relationship that you built together. What would you say or write to her? Are the three things you love the most about this woman that she would remember and go on for a few more years afterwards, but that would be.

Specific to a relationship, right? To a specific person.

To that relationship. Yeah, to that person and the relationship. Imagine the relationship is everything you could ever dream of.

Got it.

You created the relationship of your dreams. It's the golden standard for the world to look at a relationship and say, wow, they lived it.

They did it.

They loved, they went through it. They were vulnerable. It wasn't perfect, but, man, this couple is the golden standard.

Man.

Okay, what would you say are the three things? So I want you to go there because I believe you're going to create that in the relationship that you want to create. What were the three things? You would write a love letter to your wife on your last day about the three things you appreciated the most about the love you created together.

That. Maybe one would be your. You made me feel safe enough to be the best I could possibly be. You know, Your love made me feel so secure, gave me such a platform to go and make an impact in the world on that. That, you know. And don't get me wrong, I think we should have our internal security. But. But I felt so secure in the relationship that this gave me. This relationship gave me the energy to go out there and do amazing things with that energy. So I made a bigger impact in the world because of the energy that your love gave me.

I'm getting chills already. This makes me emotional just thinking about.

Seeing if I have anywhere to go from there.

So safety, security.

That you. You made me feel like I wasn't alone in the world. And I don't just mean because we had each other. You could feel very lonely in A relationship, especially if you don't feel seen, but you find someone who sees you, who really gets you and all of a sudden you don't feel so alone in the world because life is lonely. You can have tons of people around you. But there's a certain existential loneliness that many people feel in life that.

For.

Moments or times evaporates when you feel a true connection with someone and you see each other.

Wow.

This is, that's. That to me is transcendent. So you, your ability to see me made me feel less alone in the world. And I guess.

You, you were a.

Role model for me.

Wow.

That through observing you and, and seeing the way you live and seeing the way you approach things that there were so many times where I noticed you were better than me. And that taught me how to be better. It taught me how to. I grew because I saw the way you were. And that showed me, no matter where I thought I was, being around you showed me how wonderful people can be and that made me want to be more wonderful, I guess.

Those would be the beautiful love letter. What's the letter you would write to yourself? You're 200 years old, it's the last day still. And you write a letter to your 32 year old self.

32 now, 31, 32 in a couple of weeks.

You write a letter to your 32 year old self and say one piece of advice, looking back at what you'd say to yourself on how to become the best partner to create that magical relationship.

One thing I would say looking back at, looking at myself saying, here's a, here's a piece of guide to being.

Here's what you need to do to become that partner with that, with that other person. Here's what you need to let go of. Here's what you need to step into. Here's where your ego needs to take a check.

I think. How many things do I get?

Give yourself a few.

Let's do a couple. I think I always loved just the idea of question everything. You know that thing that you take for granted that you're right about, you know, question everything because it's, I mean it's just amazing to me the things I look back on now and I no longer disagree, I no longer agree with what the 23 year old version of me thought or the 25 year old version of me thought. And I think understanding that at least we're not very good at thinking about all the ways we might be wrong today, but we're really good at knowing the ways we Were wrong before. Right. And it's more, that's, you know, if you think of a lot of self improvement people, right. Gurus, leaders, whatever people want to call themselves, they struggle. They're very good at telling stories of how they fucked up, ah, five years ago or ten years ago.

But now you're, you should have seen me then.

But not many people are good at talking about today.

Yeah.

And I think that that's a kind of blind spot we, most of us have in life, people in general. And I think if we can apply that thing of, oh yeah, God, I was so wrong about that five years ago. I was so, I couldn't be more wrong about that. And I know that now. We should apply that to the next five years too.

Yeah.

You know, in the next 10 years and say, there's a lot of shit I'm going to look back on five years from now and say, God, I did not know what I was talking about. That doesn't mean we should not trust ourselves on anything. You know, there's, I've heard it said, you know, strong opinions, loosely held. You know, it doesn't mean we shouldn't be passionate about what we think now, but it does mean we should leave room for questioning. And to that end, I think I would tell myself to be kinder to myself over the course of my life for things that mistakes I'd made within relationships. I have definitely, I have definitely been the person and even today have to wrestle with making. Doing something that I know that wasn't the best reaction to that. I wish I'd have handled that differently. I wish I said a different thing. We should have phrased that differently. I wish I didn't say that and then really, really beating myself up for it. You know, not letting it go even after you finish the argument, even after you get to the other side, holding onto it. Yeah. Continuing to berate yourself for it. And the shame about that is that it lacks humanity. It makes us forget that we're human and that we don't get everything right. And the only way we're gonna get more right is by making certain mistakes and learning from them. And it also stops us from being effective because that energy that we're putting into to berating ourselves is actually stopping us from doing the very things that would move everything forward from that mistake. It doesn't make relationships better. Mistakes actually make relationships better. Relationships better very often because you learn.

Or hopefully you'll learn.

You learn those things, they really can transform mistakes, can transform relationships, but not if you sit There consistently dwelling on them. They make relationships better if you can improve from them and move on and be the thing you want to be now. So I think I would tell myself to be kinder to myself for mistakes, to not obsess over things I should have said or done differently. Yeah, you know what? To that end, we should. Halfway through this interview, I was. Kept losing my train of thought. And probably you were going to edit that out to be kind to me.

I'm going to keep it in.

Let's keep it in.

All right.

Because, like, don't beat yourself up over it.

Give people the real shit. Yeah, Matthew Hussey's really eloquent. Look at the way he could string a thought together. Well, I lost. I lost my train of thought three or four times. I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened. I couldn't think of the thing I was going to say next. I kept. Kept blanking. Okay. Show people that. That's. That's inspiring. Oh, if Matthew Hussey can be in the middle of an interview and just go completely blank and not know what the hell he was saying.

Yeah.

Then what am I worried about? Yeah, that's more interesting. And that's, you know, that's a real relationship. Yeah, real relationship. That's. That's the real stuff. That's the stuff we're not seeing when we see other people's relationships and everything. The highlight. Real great and everything. No, this is like, if we want to. If we want to change our world, forget the world for a moment because it always seems a bit grandiose when we talk about changing the world, but changing our world, let's bring in the real because that, that genuinely changes things. You know what makes relationships better? True realness. Vulnerability. People living their truth. People being more real, being more upfront, more direct. You know what makes you more attractive on a date? Being more real. Not going there. You people worry about their hair and is this all right? Tell a real fucking story on the day. That's what's gonna. You want to talk about Deep attraction. Not surface level bullshit. Surface level Bullshit is in 2D on Instagram. Deep attraction, the kind of attraction that gets relationships comes from real stories, real shared experiences. And if you want. And if you do want to change other people's worlds, as you know, because you're so good at it, it's bring people the real.

When you're frustrated in the relationship, when you're fighting, you're arguing, you're not seeing.

Oh, great.

You think they're the problem, they're not understanding you. What should we ask?

Well, first. First of all, what am I actually frustrated about?

Right.

Let's start there. What am I frustrated about? What are the problems that I am having? Because so often we don't even communicate with our. Like we're not even clear. Right. What the problems are. What are the areas of frustration? What are the problems? And then before you go and try to solve it, you then have to ask, what is my contribution? Because everyone is making a contribution to the very problems that they can't stand in their relationship.

What is my contribution to this problem?

Correct. What is my contribution to the problem? Because once we. Because it's so easy, it's easy to point the finger.

Yeah.

But it's really hard to point the finger back at ourselves. It's really hard. And so before you start doing, hey, before you start doing this and. And you're not doing right and you're wrong and you're pointing the finger at whoever you're in the relationship with, you start to do this assessment and say, okay, what's really the problem? What's really what? Have I not been communicative enough? Have I not set my expectations? You know, have I been too harsh? Like, you got to really start doing the assessment of yourself and then bring that conversation.

I think also to go even deeper is like, why is this triggering me?

Exactly.

Why is this a problem for me?

Yes.

Like, yes, maybe it's not the other person's doing something to me, but the trigger of it is something I haven't healed or addressed from the past.

Yes.

And that's when I'm triggered.

Yes.

But they're just being them and, you know, depending on the situation. But it's like, what's the root of this frustration for me?

Dude, this is so true. And this is why I talk about this in the book. I talk about how expectations are the secret software that run our life.

Yeah.

And what I mean by that is that we don't actually sometimes react to life events. We react to our expectations of events.

Right.

So if situations or people exceed our expectation, we're happy. If situations or people don't, we're devastated.

So what should we do? Have no expectations.

No, you can't do that. Because expectations are like blood pressure. You know, too high, it's not good. Too low, it's not good. Because expectation, we need motivation. Expectations are our hope. Right. So we do have to have hope, but we've got to set it properly. Because so often when our expectation is not set to your point that you made, we end up reacting based upon an unsaid expectation. And so it's not that what the person's doing is wrong. It's that we have not set expectations for ourselves. We haven't identified what those triggers are. We haven't identified. Oh, wait a minute, wait a second. They're not the problem. It's how I'm looking at it is the problem. So in order to set expectations, I have every person that reads the book ask these two questions. One, Is it realistic or unrealistic? How do you know? Comes down to one word. If you. This is how you determine if your expectation is realistic or unrealistic. Control.

What do you mean? Are you trying to be in control.

Or if it's within your control to do it, you can expect it. It's a realistic expectation. If it's out of your control, you cannot expect it. So I'll give two examples. You know, your podcast is amazing. It's incredible. One of the most dynamic podcasts in the world.

Thank you.

No matter how hard you try, you cannot force somebody to go listen to it.

No, can't. I can hope.

Hope.

I can have a range of what I think people.

Right.

Yes.

I can have a target. I can have a goal. But if I put. If you put a. An expectation of like, hey, it's got to be a million by next month.

Right.

I would argue that's unrealistic because it's out of your control.

Right.

What's in your control? I want to produce the best podcasts.

Yeah.

With the best conversations and the best guests, with the best marketing and the best publicity. All in your control. Realistic to expect. Now, let's apply that to people. You're in a relationship.

Yeah.

You know, I want this person to love me in a certain way. I want this person to, you know, have. Have this amount of sex. I want this person to. To go work out. I want this person to go eat. I want this person.

Can't control that.

You can't control it.

You can communicate it, which set up.

The structure for it, but you can't control it.

Yeah.

And so often our expectations with others are unset. Why? Because we're trying to control what we don't. You and I only control ourselves and the remote. Wherever the remote. That's it. I can't control anybody else ever. And too often we spend so much energy trying to get someone to behave and live in the way that we want.

Yeah.

Instead of behaving in the way that we want. Right. Living the way that we want. And if we live the way that we want, then whoever we're in the relationship with, either that is going to compel them to say, hey, hey, you know what, I like what you're doing. And then you say, hey, I like what you're doing, so let's do that together. Or it won't. But when we try to get somebody to be what we want them to be and do what we want them to do, that's called manipulation.

What happens when we are in a relationship, when we are trying to control or manipulate someone else in an intimate relationship or they're doing that to us, what happens?

What happens is love goes down. Fear rises. Here's what I mean by that. The fear of if I don't do this, they're going to leave. So that person, you know, everyone has different degrees of self determination. And so in a relationship, when you've fallen in love and you really care about somebody and they're asking you to do something or be something, that could be a very compelling thing to do even when it's not who you are. And so the fear of if I don't, will they leave? Okay, so then it becomes a performance based relationship.

It's not good.

It's not good. I'm doing this because I don't want them to go, but I know it doesn't bring me joy. So it's no longer is love leading the way, it's fear. It's fear. It's fear. And okay, you know what? I'm going to do this because this is what they want and I'm going to become this. But every moment that I do it and it's not in my heart is a moment that my soul gets crushed. Every single moment.

This is my life. This is my life up until now. Where, you know, not all the time, but I could see a pattern in my past relationships where I would just do things to make the other person happy. Even though I didn't want to do them because they were angry or upset or frustrated or whatever, they had some expectation and I would sense like, man, the love is going down a little bit, A little bit. But I, when I took responsibility and accountability, I was like, but it's not their fault. I'm the one choosing to do these things because I'm afraid that they're going to be angry at me or that they're going to leave or they're not going to love me. So it's my responsibility to stand in my truth.

Yeah.

In those tough, challenging moments when someone's like, you don't support me. You're not doing whatever they're saying.

Yeah.

It's tough to do that. Oh, we're triggered. It's challenging, but I think if someone's going to leave you by you standing in your truth and being frustrated by you constantly, then that's maybe not the right fit for you.

Well, not only is it potentially not the right fit, you got to think about something. You got to put yourself at the end of your life, and you got to say.

You posted a quote on Instagram recently about this. Yes, I saw it.

That's a good quote.

One of the regrets. One of the regrets of the dying.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, that quote.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I really. I use that as a prompt.

Yes.

To get people to think about in your life. But if you do that. So I. So let's say in that. In that dynamic, you become what they want you to be, even though it's not who you really are. You get to the end of your life, and can you live with doing what was expected but never what was destined? Can you live.

Oh, man.

With doing what was expected but never what was destined? And if the answer to that question is no, then you got to make some changes now. So tough it is.

Why does love trap us? Because I'm speaking for myself.

Yeah.

Because I don't want to say the world does this, but I sense a lot of other people do this. When we feel the sense of chemistry and connection and intimacy and vulnerability and love, whether it's real or not, we sense that feeling of intimacy with someone else. Why does that trap us? And we stay in these things in general. I'm not speaking for everyone, but we tend to stay in these things much longer than we should. Like, you'll hear people say, I knew I should have got a divorce seven years ago.

Yeah.

It's like they break up with a divorce. I always ask them, when did you know that you weren't supposed to be with this person? Five years ago, 10 years ago. The day I got married. Right. You hear these things and you're like, why do we stay?

Right.

Why is it so hard for us, this trap of love?

Right.

Why don't we get out of it sooner?

Right. I mean, there's so many. There's so many reasons. The reason that comes to mind is worth. Self worth.

E. We don't believe we're worth. Or we're afraid we won't find something as good. Or.

What do you mean?

All of it? What I mean, is that it can take a while for you to come into a revelation of what you're worth and that you are worthy to be happy and pursue happiness on your terms and come to the revelation that, you know, this dynamic is no longer, you know, making that contribution to my life.

Not that they're bad and wrong.

There you go. Right, Right.

Not that it's all their fault.

There you go.

Just wasn't the right fit.

And for me, you know, when you're in that situation, it can take a long time for you to get to the place where you feel enough worth, where you're ready to say, you know what? I'm going to endure the fear. I'm going to endure the challenges to make that kind of move. So when you talk about love, love cuts to the core of our word because we all need it. And when I say love, we all need love. I don't mean just romantic love. I'm just saying we all need to love and be loved. I think it's just part of our humanity. It's just part of how we were created. It's part of our divinity, right? God is love. We are. God is in us. We love, right? And we serve. And so part of that love is, oh, man, I want so much of it is focused on giving. Because think about again, think about how we're socialized, right? Oh, you do the right thing. Oh, Mommy, Daddy loves you. Oh, you're, you know, oh, I wanna. But it's not like, you know, do you love you? Do you know you're worthy? Do you know that you are worth it? Do you love who looks back at you in the mirror? Do you love who looks back at you when you take the selfie? Because at the end of the day, love becomes complicated because we never actually get there with our worth and who we really are. And so we go into the relationship and we haven't really done the work. We kind of feel worthy. We don't quite feel loved. And we bring all of that. That's a recipe for this, you know? And here's the thing. It's okay, right? We're all. Love is like a rocky sea, right?

You know what I mean?

You want. Hey, we're on the. Oh, man, it's going to be right. It's okay. Because we all have our stuff. So it's not about finding somebody who don't have stuff. You want to find somebody who can help you with your stuff, who's willing to help you with your stuff. So that as you bring things that Are difficult. They're like, hey, it's cool, let's work this through. But you both find a healthy way to do it. Yes, but one of the reasons why I think people stay in things is because of worth. And you need time to get to a place, and some people never get there where you realize what you're worth. Because at the end of the day, I go back to happiness. It's like peace and joy. You know, we only live this life once. You know, I'm a Christian. I believe in heaven, I believe in that. But I also believe that this is this, this earth, this life, this particular existence. We only get it once. So when you really put that in the broad scheme of things, you think, okay, am I living right now according to my choice?

Yes.

Am I doing the things that bring me joy, bring me peace, or am I allowing things in my life that are working against it no matter what they are? It could be a relationship, it could be a job, it could be a living environment. Whatever it is, I have to take control and do this assessment and then make the decision, okay, from a relationship standpoint, if my relationship isn't everything I wanted, okay, what do I need to do to fix it? But first I got to fix me.

Yeah.

And I got to work on me and I got to love me. And as I love me, it will then help me learn how to love others and make the assessment, okay, you know what? Maybe this person is going to be able to walk with me and I walk with them. Great. Maybe not. But let me not just point the finger and do the work. The other thing I want to hit is when you talk about setting expectations, that second part of setting expectations is communication, right? Is it spoken or unspoken? And we talked about this earlier, you've got to actually ask the question. So even in this situation, when you talk about difficult relationship, this scenario, instead of making the assumption, whatever your area of frustration is, sit down and frame it as a question. You know what? I was expecting that, you know, in this relationship that, you know, we would sit down and eat every night at seven o'.

Clock, right? Because this is what we did with my family.

Right.

So I just assumed that's why I just assume you would do the same.

Thing is that your expectation is that. Is that something I can expect from you is. And let them say yes or no. Oh, okay. So for you, like, you don't ever expect to be home at 7, you're.

Going out to dinner, you're going out, right?

Oh, okay, got it. Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. Great.

Wow.

Now we're actually having a real adult conversation. Right. We have an adult conversation because we're taking accountability.

Yeah.

And we're communicating. And so when it comes to setting expectations in any area of life, you got to know, is it realistic or unrealistic vis a vis control? And you got to ask, is it spoken or unspoken vis a vis communication? And when we start to do these tools, you know, it does free us up. Because the reason why I wanted to write Live Free is because so often we're not. And when I say live free, what I mean is that when you and I live free, when anyone lives free, it means they are not under the mental, physical, or emotional control of anyone or anything. That's what living free is. Living free means when we get into a situation and we start to feel like, oh, this. This person is starting to feel like this person is making me mad or contributing to my discontent, then I would say to that person, okay, pause for a minute. Pause for a second. It's super easy just to turn all your attention to what they're not doing, right? No, no, no, no. How do you want to feel in the situation? What would give you more power in the situation? What would give you more peace? Okay, you know what? I'm identifying that there are some things in my relationship that are incompatible.

Yes.

I am going to spend some time observing what those things are and identifying if there are certain things I can live with.

Yeah.

And what I can't.

Right.

And communicating about that.

Communicating those areas that I can't. To see if it's possible. We can set our expectations together.

The biggest challenge you'll find is when you communicate those things out of expectation or anger or frustration, the other person's probably not gonna be able to receive it. If you're already making someone wrong for what they're doing or not doing. It's very challenging to have an adult conversation, bro. And this is.

I've been there before.

I've done that, and I've received it. Yes. And it's. It's challenging to do. But when you come from a place of 100% responsibility, accountability, and figuring, why is this triggering me? Why is this really affecting me, dude? Then you can come from a calmer place of like, okay, I didn't like this, but I don't need to make you wrong for this in this moment, because we can talk about it, come up with an agreement that then moving forward, we can either live up to or not, and then we can make a decision if this frustrates Me.

Correct. I mean, very challenging. It's challenging, but it's good work. And for me, you know, I. That's. You talk about flaws. Like, that's an area that I have been, you know, outside of identifying what my needs are and being okay to admit those needs, one of the flaws, man, is that, you know, I have a really strong sense of right and wrong.

And if someone's not doing that, according.

To me, that's wrong.

Right, right.

So.

So if something happened, right, Dude, I'm. I'm like, that's wrong. You know, so when Megan and I have had moments of disagreement, you know, I have at times mishandled it completely because I have in my mind, made the decision that on that particular thing that she may have done that I didn't. Like she's wrong.

Yeah. For you.

For me. But no, no, no, I didn't. For me, came as I evolved and as I grew, initially it was like, no, that's wrong.

Yeah.

Wrong in the world.

Not just wrong for divine.

Wrong in the world. So here's the problem with that. The problem is when I make the decision and judge her action as wrong, the moment I bring it up, I bring it up in a way of attack. And anyone, when they feel attacked, it's gonna. They're gonna get defensive.

You can't do that in relationship.

You can't do it. You can't do it. But. But it happens all the time. And, dude, what would happen is I would, you know, get on my self righteous, you know, soapbox.

I can't believe we did this.

There you go. There you go.

What were you thinking?

There you go. Judgment.

You know, what's she gonna say? Oh, you're right, Devon, I'm a bad person. Everything you say is truth, right?

No, dude, listen. I learned the hard way what that did was it pushed her first. It doesn't mean that the point of what I was bringing up, whatever we were dealing with didn't have merit. Didn't mean that. It just meant that the way I went about it was wrong and my intent was not being realized because I came at it from judgment. And I'm right and you're wrong, and da, da, da, da. So as I bumped my head, I realized, oh, got it. The way I see the world is the way I see the world.

Yeah.

It's not exactly how the world may be. So when I use how I see the world as the way that she has to see the world, I am the one with the problem. Yeah. Because I've got to understand and Take into account the two different perspectives.

Right?

So what I had to learn to do is express it from here. My love.

Yeah.

When this happened, here's how it made me feel. Here's. Here's. Here's was my takeaway.

Is that the way.

Is that the right way to think about it? So instead of doing like this, I had to do like this. Oh, yeah. When that. When. When you said that I felt this way about that, you know, I. Man, how can we. You know, and that approach, bro, that approach is what then brings the communication.

Right?

Then she wants to be contributing in.

A more supportive way and also just talk it through.

Right.

Because it's not a pointing the finger. I'm not pointing the finger at her. You know, she's not pointing the finger at me. We're actually talking about. So she'll say, hey, you know, there are certain things that you do that make me feel this way. I was like, oh, okay. Now here's another hard truth. There's some situations I'm like, I'm not responsible for those feelings. Right.

Doesn't mean you have to change who you are.

No.

I love you. I understand what you're saying, and you know, I love you, period. I understand you feel a certain way about certain things. That's not my responsibility. Right. So the same way that I feel about certain things, you're like, hey, that's not my responsibility. Right.

Yeah.

I still got to go do my work. I still have to go on my journey, and I still have to continue to get to that place of peace and healing and contentment inside the journey, if that makes sense.

On a scale of 1 to 10.

Yeah.

Of jealousy. 10 being extremely jealous, human being, 1, being not jealous at all. Where would you say you lie in.

Life or, like, relationship.

In relationship.

Oh, man, I'm not jealous. I'm lying. It's like a one for me.

Did you ever used to be jealous in relationships?

Never. And I'll tell you why. Because I love me. Okay? So I'm like, yo, listen, I ain't jealous of no other dude. I ain't.

I'm not.

And the reality is, if any woman that I was with found, you know, for whatever, more comfort or, you know, it was like, hey, I want to go over there and experience that person. God bless you. God bless you. Not the right fit.

Yeah.

You know, and. And if I was a jealous person, I couldn't be married to my wife. You know, my wife is one of the most successful. I mean, first of, she beautiful, but she's also One of the most successful, you know, women, you know, actors in Hollywood, you know, she's an icon. She's known around the world, you know, I mean, she got men. She's got men, you know, I mean, literally, you know, and men all around the world, you know, desire her and would probably do anything for her. And that's who she was before we got married. So if I was the jealous type.

Of work, I couldn't.

I'd be miserable, miserable, miserable. Because right now she's in, you know, New York on a TV show, I'm here in la. You gotta have trust and gotta have trust, right? So if I, if I'm a jealous man, oh, man, I.

What is jealousy saying about us?

Insecurity, Massive insecurity. I don't feel safe with me, so I don't feel safe with you.

What do you mean? I don't feel safe with me.

Meaning if I am secure with who I am and I feel good being alone, right? I feel safe in my isolation, I feel safe in my loneliness or periods of time when I'm by myself, then I trust that you're going to feel safe and you're going to honor whatever needs to happen. But if I don't feel safe, like, I don't really like being alone much and I don't really like being by myself, then. Then you don't feel. What are you doing? What's the problem? What's happening? So that insecurity and not feeling safe with self, you transfer onto the other person. Because if you're content with your personal time, you tend to be more content when others have personal time independent of you.

You're not worried.

You're not worried, you know, and then also one of the things that could happen is that you got burned in the past. You know, someone did you wrong, they violated your trust, and so fear has crept in and so that fear is driving your jealousy.

Yes.

You know, I'm afraid that what happened before is going to happen again. And so as a result, I'm transferring that previous pain onto my present situation. And that's always a recipe for disaster, right? Because the person you're dating is not the person you dated.

You can't expect them to repeat the same thing exactly.

Now, but here's the other thing, because life is a mirror, right? And whatever we put out, we get back. If you keep putting that out, if you put it out on the last situation, this person you're dating may not be a cheater at all. But if you don't trust them and you Keep getting mad.

You're gonna push them away. They're gonna want to cheat.

It's like, you know, again, everyone still has to be the key for saying it's okay.

Yeah.

Right.

But that energy that you're putting out is sometimes the energy you get back, even from somebody who may not be predisposed to do those sort of.

Yeah.

Not saying it's your fault that someone breaks out their integrity.

Correct.

But you might have influenced it.

Correct.

In a way.

Correct. And so the person that's jealous has to, one, get control of that security and two, get control of that fear. And also. Also say, you know what? Listen, if that person I'm dating is foolish enough to step out on me, that's on them. That is on them.

Are we lying to ourselves so much?

Because it is shameful. And a lot of times we hate that we got there.

We hate ourselves.

We hate ourselves that we got there. How in the world did I get to this place? How do I need these pills to go to sleep or to wake up? How in the world do I have to keep kissing they butt to still work at this job? Like, this is not me. This is not who I want. And so because we have disdain for who we have become, it's like if we acknowledge it, that reinforces that we're acting actually there, and maybe we can't live with that. And so it's this vicious cycle of faking to make it. And that's why a lot of people say, you got to fake it till you make it. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Face it, face it, so you can make it be real so that you can actually move on to there. And a lot of people are delaying the inevitable. You can't hold up a facade forever.

No, it's got to crumble.

At some point, it's going to crumble. The sad thing is, a lot of time it crumbles. Crumbles when it has more people to damage. A lot of times almost always.

Right?

Yeah, a lot of time it crumbles. Now I have three children, and they're in relationships, and now everything's dependent on me. And I've built this empire of podcasting or business or fitness, and now I'm in this space in place that if I'm honest, it'll cost too much. May I submit to you, if you're not honest, it's going to cost you too much. Yeah, I'm already on Lewis. Let me stop.

So how do. Have you. Have you had to heal in the last 10 years, your relationship from stuff that happens every year? Or is it only stuff from 10 years ago that you guys have to work on?

Bro, you know the answer to this question, man. I'm a flawed man. Yeah. My wife is a flawed woman. We serve an amazing God. We're people of faith. But he knew we were going to mess up and there was room in the plan for imperfection. Like, that's what I always tell people because I'm a pastor and people know I'm a person of faith and they think I'm just going to throw the Bible at them all the time. And what I tell them, I was like, no, no, no. Just first look at my life. Like, I've experienced amazing grace and now I have to extend amazing grace and I have to receive amazing grace because I'm still gonna mess up. My wife had to forgive me for something before I came up here.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, this is a daily walk. But that's why I tell everybody. The beautiful thing about journey, if you can get this stuck in your brain and in your heart really, is that this life is about progression, not perfection. I know culture sells us perfection. I know your parents may have wanted perfection from you. I know you've probably required perfection of yourself, but that is the wrong metric. This is about progression. How much did you move forward from yesterday to today or how much did you move past? I know you wanted to cuss them out last week, but you only said one cuss word this week. You know what I'm saying? Or last year it was about being successful. You didn't take any breaks. But this year you actually took a few days and, and, and had soul care and self care and spiritual enlightenment and getting back into your place of faith. Like, how did you progress? And I think for me, in all of my relationships, especially the one with my wife, the one that I'm in covenant with, I have to know that I'm going to need grace because I'm still figuring it out, right? Like, there's nobody, anybody on earth that says they're a relationship expert, are liars. Nobody knows everything about all relationships. We're just trying to share from our journey and truth that we, that we've experienced. And I know for me that in the journey that I'm in right now, I make a lot less mistakes than I made 10 years ago.

Right.

Because I've progressed. But am I going to make more mistakes the next 10 minutes? Probably, you know what I'm saying? And so it is daily. And yeah, there's tons of healing that has to happen from every lie, from every deception, from every wrong word that was spoken. I tell people this because a relationship is all about trust. And this is the thing that people don't really factor in. You can spend decades, years, months building trust, but this is the truth. Trust is lost in buckets, but gained back in drops.

Yeah.

So you could have an entire five gallon bucket of trust built up.

Yeah.

But one thing that you never said you would do, you do and the whole bucket goes out. And now you have to come back in every day, drop by drop, drop by drop. You don't get a fountain of trust built back up. And that's where most relationships fail, is because they lost the trust and they were not diligent enough to build it back up.

Because it takes a lot of hard work.

But the problem is you have history with that person and a lot of times they would rather start over with somebody else else to do the same exact thing instead of going back and. Yeah, it sucks.

Yeah.

No, didn't we talk about this? You know, I don't, you know. Oh, come on. But no, this is valuable and I'm the one who tipped this thing over. And so I'm going to be the one to be consistent enough or disciplined enough to put those drops back in.

What's been the biggest lesson for you in the last 10 years of putting drops back in over a decade plus with your wife? What's the lesson you've learned as a human being through that discipline, through that daily drop?

Yeah.

After breaking trust back in the past.

Yeah. Yeah. Trust is way more valuable than money. Trust is way more valuable than connection. Trust is way more valuable. There's a book that I encourage everybody to read. It's called the Speed of Trust. And, and basically the premise is that where there's trust, everything takes less energy, it takes less money, and it has better results. But where there is no trust, it takes more energy, it takes more money, and there are minimal results. And you can apply this to business relationships, you can apply it to your family. And I think our culture is one that, that doesn't trust. We. You prove to me and, and, and, and at the moment that we don't go into situations with trust. There's this disconnection that doesn't allow people like, the vibe's not right or all these different sayings. I think for me, I've learned that trust is probably a higher commodity than anything else. My greatest relationship, me and my wife Natalie, don't have to be doing Anything. But when I'm in a bed in a hotel with a woman that I fully trust, it's more satisfying than any platform I've ever been on.

Wow.

It's more euphoric. It's more. When I can say something and somebody believes me and I don't have to prove it to them, but they know what I'm saying is real.

That's amazing feeling.

Oh, what are you talking about? Name the places you get that. Name the places you got to make presentations to make people you pay believe you. Come on, let's be honest. Like, because there's still not full trust there, but when you put in so much trust that that person, your yes is a yes and your no is a no. And then you fully trust what you say. Yeah. When I told my wife that I was going to take care of her and I would never hurt her again. And to be able to now, 10 years removed. We just did a 10 year vow renewal and we went out to this sand desert and now it was me and our three kids and we're sitting there and glass Runway. It's on YouTube. And we just, like. It was just the most beautiful thing to look into her eyes and say the words unscripted. That came from my heart and to look at her and knew they were hitting her heart. And she fully trusted what I said. You can't tell me nothing. Like, nobody. Like, there's no feeling like that. And the sad truth, Louis, is most people will never feel that. They will never know what it is to have another human being with your flaws, with knowing the worst about you. I can't hide from my wife. She knows everything that I do. She knows when I do take showers, when I don't take showers. She knows when I leave the toilet seat up or when I put it down. She knows, like, so in the most vulnerable place. She knows when I do my workout and when I don't. Like. I can't hide from her. I can hide from people on social media. I can hide from people that are. That I work with, but from her, I'm vulnerable. And to know when I speak. She trusted it was well worth everything that I had to do.

And what happens if you are 100% in integrity with your word? You're following through, you're being honest, you're showing up, you're delivering in a relationship, but the person doesn't trust you.

Yeah.

After years.

Yeah.

And you're like, you have access to my phone passwords, you, you know where I'm at 24,7 yeah. And you still don't trust me. Is that still my responsibility? Or is that the other partner's work they get to do?

So the beautiful thing about the story that I'm telling you, I'm telling you from my side. Yeah, but if you were to talk to my wife right now, there were things she had to do on her own during this whole process or she wouldn't have made it. She wasn't sitting there, like, prove to me that you were. No, there was self discovery. She was going on, do I want to say, stay in this relationship. Is this worth it? What do I bring? What do I have? What am I worth? And that's why I tell people all the time, no matter if you're a couple, you're still single. Like, even though you're in a relationship, you still have to be single enough to continue to improve. A lot of people stop improving once they get in a relationship.

Like, I got it. Like, what else do I need to do?

I made it. And all that other stuff. But when you are in a relationship, there are still two victims, very single people that need to work on their communication, work on their insecurities, work on their ability to communicate, work. Like, and if you stop developing your singleness in marriage or in relationship, that relationship, come on. Is headed for, at one per one point, for somebody to be on another level and be like, this is not what we signed up for. Hey, I thought we were partners. I thought we were. We were doing this together. I thought we were growing and going towards this together. And that's why I encourage people all the time. Like, what have you brought to the relationship lately? Like, what skills have you improved? In what? Has your emotional intelligence gone to another level? Has your spiritual awareness gone to another level? Has your faith gone to another level? Have you learned a new language? So when we go on our vacation two years from now, we don't get swindled as the, you know, like, what are you bringing to the relationship? And I just would encourage every couple not to focus on. Because when I say this, a lot of times they'd be like, see, you ain't brought nothing to the relationship in three years, Kathy. Like, hold on, hold on one second. Like, no, ask yourself, what have you brought to the relationship? And if you both are asking yourself, that's part of the reason we wrote that, this book, taking your relationship from good to great, because it allows people to evaluate where they're at, spiritually, emotionally, and then be able to say, what do I need to change? How do I need to do this. And that's the only way that you can go from good to great in any relationship.

My friend Matthew Hussey talks about this. He talks about relationships for women, on how to really attract the right man in their life, the right partner. And he said to me one time, you know, if you want to find a great partner, make a list of, of all the things you want from them and then become that list yourself. Whatever you want someone else, you need to become that first and really add that value to them as well. It's kind of like what I'm hearing you say is, okay, after a year, two, five, 10 years, you have to keep becoming that list yourself to keep that partner excited or engaged and trustworthy and connected. And both parties have to be working on that list.

Is that right? I have a little different perspective on the list because sometimes the list limits. You tell me more like, so I tell people a lot of time because specifically a lot of my sisters, a lot of they make lists now. They got lists. He got to be 6, 5. He's got to have this amount of money.

They're becoming the things that they want from the qualities, not the, the things, the quality.

Yeah. And that's the thing. Sometimes I do believe that there are certain things that you need to be able to, to lay out and really ask yourself, am I becoming those things? I don't think though, the package always comes the way you think it's going to come true. And so a lot of times like six, five shredded.

Yeah.

And, and, and, and all kinds of things, even some of the qualities. Because the thing is, I tell people this, you write down what you want. I believe God factors in with your mate. What you need to see. The problem is like, if you ask Natalie, I'm not what she wanted.

What if she want.

She wanted some big Hispanic model for lotion. Like she wanted somebody, you know what I'm saying? The typical beautiful. But what she needed was me. And, and when you look, a lot of people make these lists at the beginning of their list, but somebody needs to start a podcast interviewing couples who actually made it.

Right?

So somebody you maybe need to do a series of relationships who lasted for 40 plus years that thrived. That thrive, resented each other and, and not that were business partners.

Right.

That thrived. Because if you ask a lot of them, which I did a lot of research writing Relationship Goals, the book, when you ask them, most of them did not get what they wanted on their list. They got what they found out they needed. And the. Honestly, the things that I need. I don't never write down on the list because I need somebody to help encourage me when I want to go have ice cream instead of stick to my dot, I don't write that down on the list. I just write down I want somebody supportive. Well, in my mind, when I'm writing that down on the list, I'm thinking, support me in whatever I'm feeling at that moment, maybe not support me in what I've decided in a different moment. And I need that, but it's not necessarily that I want it. And I found out that a lot of times when you rip up the list and start becoming the best version of you that you can be, you will then begin to see that I am now worthy and worth being with somebody who's worthy and worth being with.

Right.

And you don't settle for a lot less. And that's why I called it a relationship goal. Goal. I know it's a proper. A popular term in culture, but I said people aren't doing good at relationship is because they don't have aim. Like, they're not aiming at a goal that actually is going to produce the greatest end for them. And so that's my whole thought about it. I do believe you got to become your best version, your best self. But then when you do that, a lot of times it creates an entitlement in people that they will. They will dismiss the right thing because of the wrong package.

And what happens if you continue to be your best version year after year and the other person's not willing to go on that journey? Yes. Is it till death do we part? Even if they're constantly pulling you down and saying, I'm not going to work on myself. Yeah, you do all the work.

This.

I don't trust you. Even if you're 100% honest.

Yeah.

Is it, you know, is that there's all.

There's always provision in a relationship, especially when there's infidelity and there's different things that have happened that there may be. This may be an unhealthy situation that we. That we can't progress in. I honestly feel, though, a lot of people give up too soon on that.

Yeah.

Nothing good ever comes out of the easy way. There is nothing great. I'll say great that comes out of easy. If it's going to be great, there's got to be some work that goes.

Into it, some pain.

So there's got to be some pain, there's got to be discomfort, there's got to be. Do I got to do this again. Are we still talking about this? And I really do believe in our society today that we rush into things because we know how easy we can get out of them instead of taking the time. That's honestly why I written books and done series and millions of people have watched it. Because I'm trying to convince people like, hey, like, take this seriously. It's not just like, oh, we met at the bar, we hooked up, we live together now. We should make a life together. And I'm not saying that people haven't been in relationships that have worked like that. I'm just saying that if you had to take a test to get a driver's license and, and, and, and be able to drive legally in your state, it's easier to get in a relationship with somebody, build a marriage, have kids that are going to affect the rest of us with no actual preparation, no training, no training, no required reading, no counseling, no honesty. Know, like, hey, just before we get married, let me tell you how much debt I'm in. Hey, just before we get married, let me tell you that your friend and that friend and that friend, I slept with all of them just before. There's no requirements. And that's why I'm saying if, if we don't put that in and build that into the relationships we want, how can we expect? It's gambling. It's like, maybe this will work or maybe it won't. I think we can be more intentional on setting a real goal. And I believe those goals need to be put on principles that have lasted in faith that can last for a long time, man.

What are the main principles that every relationship should be founded upon?

Bro, I wrote a whole book about it. I'm going to give you three of them. Let me give you three of them. The first thing has to be transparency.

Yeah. About everything.

Everything.

Like, I had this thought. Yeah, I looked at this. I did. Any idea?

So I'll say this. You have to be wise because you have to. Depending on the layer of relationship you're in right now. If you just meet somebody today and you don't even know if you want to be with them, I don't think it's wise that you tell them everything. But I do believe that there's a difference between transparency and honesty. And many people have adopted the thought process and the philosophy of being honest but not transparent. Honest honesty is, is when you ask me, I'll tell you the truth.

But until then. But until then, I'm hiding something.

Yes. And a lot of times, most of us don't get asked the questions that.

We need to answer because those questions.

Are scary to ask.

Oh my gosh, they're scary to ask.

And you don't want to know the answer.

And you don't want to know a lot of times and then it automatically, if the person is not emotionally secure enough, then you're like, what, you don't trust me? Like, there's so many different, different things that are there. And that's why I always ascribe to the philosophy of being transparent. You don't have to ask me. I'm going to offer it up. I'm going to tell you, hey, this. When you, when you talk to that guy at the restaurant, that made me feel some type of way and it made me really start thinking about the insecurities of my last relationship and why we broke up. And I'm not asking you to solve it at this moment, but I'm letting you know how that made me feel. And I'm just going to process with that. There's no question that your mate could have asked to get that response that genuinely. Because then they'll say something like this, are you okay? Yeah, I'm fine. Like, and the truth is, no, you're not. But I don't emotionally know how to let you know that. That honestly, it wasn't really what you did. It's what I've been through.

Yes.

That triggered something in me and now I'm insecure about what I know I have, but it's because of what happened to me. Like, sure. But that takes being transparent. And what I found is when I'm transparent, it honestly provides more empathy from the other person to be able to, man, I'm sorry you felt that way. Well, what can I do? And like that then is deepening that relationship more than it is creating a wedge, but between it. So I would say, number one, transparency has to be the top thing that you have in a relationship. I think that you need to have common faith goals. I think for me, a lot of things that I found in relationship is a lot of people like each other, but what their, their faith is founded on are two totally different things. And I think you should be equally yoked in the or equally compatible in the things that you believe. And, and when you do that, it's more easy, it's easier to have conversations about how to raise children, finances. It's easier to be able to go to. For me and my wife, we're Christians that believe in the Bible. And so there are certain things that we disagree on. And then we can go to the Bible and we're like, okay, but this is something that we believe together. Let's wrestle through this. Let's work through this. Let's. How does that make you feel? Let's ask somebody. There are so many problems that have been solved because we believe the same things foundationally in our faith. And I'm encouraging people a lot of times that when you do that, it creates a foundation that moves past emotions. A lot of times that, yeah, it's just like, well, I can't get it, and I can't get it. But then when you go to certain thing, love is patient, love is kind, love keeps no record of wrong. First Corinthians 13 is jacking me up right now. Love offers forgiveness. Love. Oh, love is long suffering. Like, these are words that we have adopted from a book that we believe has truth in it and principles to live by. And because we are on the same level in that faith, it corrects us sometimes when we don't want to be corrected. And that's where I tell people the Bible is one of the only books you can read, that when you read it, it reads you. Like, and. And for us, that has helped us. And so transparency, having strong faith foundations. And then the third thing that I would say is fun.

Yeah.

If you cannot have fun with the person that you're in relationship with, good luck. Like, because there's certain things.

Life is hard.

It is hard. There will be trouble. It's promised. But. But if you can find somebody to look at in the. In the darkest part of the valley and laugh and laugh with them. It happened to me and Natalie on the plane yesterday. I told you before, we brought two of our daughters with us, and they're seven and three years old. And we're on a plane from Tulsa to la. Three and a half hours. You can imagine all the fruit snacks and the I. IPads and all of the different things. Crying, just the whole nine. And my wife is pregnant right now, so put that on top of it. So. And she's trying to eat, and I'm sitting in the chair next to her and something drops off of her plate. And I can just. I can see the breakdown break down just right up ahead like a movie. And I just look at her and just start laughing. And she sees me and she breaks out in between minutes, laughing. We are dying on the plane. Not because everything's good, because we have somebody to be through and go through everything with us. And that joy. I mean, literally, we got off the plane and all the other stuff. She said, I haven't laughed like that in so long. And she was just kept laughing about it. And those are the moments that I found. Like I told you a little bit before, but our son mj, he's five. He was diagnosed with autism. And this has been the greatest emotional faith journey that we've been on. He's five years old, still nonverbal. I'm the guy of faith. I lead a church. I'm a pastor. I believe. And in my home, there's a situation that has not changed yet. And it's challenged everything. The one thing that has gotten us through, or excuse me, the three things that have gotten us through. The three things I just gave you, transparency, our faith foundation, being the same and being fun. I wouldn't be sitting here today talking to you. On my way to a fourth child after my wife battling depression, me challenging my calling, trying to figure out why is this happening at the moment where everything great in my life is happening. And it's those three things. Being transparent about how I felt and my emotions and her being transparent about how she felt and her emotions and having our faith anchored to something that was stronger than us and us having fun that I told you before we came in here I am having the most fun in relationship. I'm not faking. This is authentic. This is the joy that I have to be. Because we have decided that there's some principles we have to live by that most people aren't going to show you in reality television. Most people aren't going to give you in a blog or a tabloid.

So I started creating processes for myself.

To get through the long nights when I couldn't sleep.

What's a process look like?

One of them was I created a.

Little meditation for myself to listen to over and over.

Another one is I wrote a letter.

To myself from my inner mother telling me.