You Won't Find The PERFECT Relationship Until You Know This

If you want to stop being in relationships that you feel like you're failing in and they aren't making you happy, then you need to stop repeating the.

Same patterns that you've always repeated.

And you need to learn how to become the best partner for someone and also learn how to attract the right.

Type of partner for yourself.

But how do you do that? Well, today I put together a masterclass with the five most impactful conversations with relationship experts that we've had here on the School of Greatness to help you understand how to create lasting love in your life. In this first section, I'm speaking with the one and only Esther Perel, who is a psychotherapist known for her expertise in modern relationships, erotic intelligence and infidelity. And on the most important internal work that you need to do to improve.

Your future relationships, what is the main thing you would recommend people work on themselves, whether in transition of relationships or in a relationship? Is there one thing that they could always be working on to improve themselves to be better for other relationships?

If their entire story about the relationship that just ended is about what the other person did wrong to them, something is missing in the story. That doesn't mean that the other person may not have done things that were hurtful to them. Who were you in this relationship?

Absolutely.

What role did you play? What did you see that you didn't want to pay attention to? What things do you wish you had done differently? What pieces do you wish that your partner had seen and accepted from you differently? Where did you wish you would have said less? And where did you wish you would have said more? What do you learn from this relationship? And if, when you say what you learn, it's just that I want to make sure that the next person is.

Gives me what I need, you know.

Or is less of this or more of that, you know, who do you want to be in the next relationship?

How are you going to add value?

A relationship is a story of many people. It's not even a story, just of two. Who was too involved in your relationship? Who was not involved enough? So there's a cast of characters in a relationship and it's all those questions that you want to ask when you are in transition. I think that's it. But they are both directions. If you find yourself with a spotlight only on the other person and you in a passive, receptive stance, you're missing a whole pan of the story and.

You'Re probably more of the problem of the relationship than them. If you're just focusing on them, probably.

A relationship is not about this person and that person. The relationship is what happens in between. This is my view on relationships. It's not an essentialist view. This is this personality and that personality. It's the dynamic. You can have a dynamic with a certain partner. You've had dynamics with certain partners. And of course, it was just the right fit between the match and the ignition. And so you had enough inside of you to react with a certain kind of, let's put your jealousy. But you may meet another person who acts differently, and you may still have a little bit of that jealousy inside of you, but it doesn't get activated because this person is responding very differently to you. And when you say, where were you? They don't say, why do you always have to ask me that question? They just say, I just want to do this. It's all good, darling, I'm right here. I've got you back. And then you don't go into your chest pain, you know, pain. So this is very important to understand. We are not the same person with different partners. We may have certain things that come out depending on what is being sent over to us. So the relationship is a figure 8. It's what I do that makes you do something, that then makes you react to me a certain way, that then draws that out of me, that draws that out of you. And each one actually creates the other. And when you get that view of relationships, when you come out and you're in transition, you say to yourself, let's say I was with someone who completely disconnected, okay, they disconnected. Did I push them away? Are there ways in which I contributed sometimes to the disconnection? And that is not self blame. That is understanding the dynamic. You can take responsibility about things without blaming yourself, and you can hold the other person accountable without blaming them. It's not a blame dance, but it is an understanding of what did I do that made you do what you then did to me, that then made me. That's the relationship.

Yeah. And if someone's like, you know what? They're listening to you, Esther. They really want to have an amazing relationship. They want to have a rich life, knowing it's not going to be perfect, but they want to create beauty and adventure and play and go through life, through the sadness and the adversities and all the things that happen in life. And they're thinking to themselves, how much should I pour into myself for my dreams, my health, my friends and family? How much should I pour into the other person, into their life that I'm creating A partnership with. And how much should I pour into the relationship itself? What would you say to that?

But you asked me. It's different questions, right? What keeps a relationship alive is one question. How much do you invest in a relationship is a different question. So I'm going to go to the one about what keeps it alive, because it's part of. And I'm suddenly watching the box and thinking it is what I'm most interested in, because I work on eroticism. What keeps us alive, what keeps us hopeful, what keeps us engaged with possibility.

Not physically alive, but connected.

A lot connected to life, Life force, life energy. Why? Because I think everybody understands relationships that are not dead versus relationships that are alive, teams that are not dead, companies versus companies that are alive. What is flourishing versus surviving. And because it is part of my personal history and I come from a background of survivors, of parents who were in concentration camps. And I wanted to understand how do people stay alive when they spend five years in a concentration camp? So that's why I've got interested in eroticism. Sexuality is a piece of this, but sexuality is not eroticism. You can have sex every day and feel nothing. Eroticism is the poetry that accompanies it. It's the meaning we give to it. Yes, right. It's the story that's attached. So eroticism in a relationship is the quality of imagination, curiosity, playfulness, mystery, risk taking, novelty that people bring to their relationship. Those are the things that I think bring life to a relationship. So in the research of Eli Finkel, it means doing new things together, taking risks beyond your threshold, out of your comfort zone. Because if you do pleasant things that are familiar, it's cozy, it's friendship, it's love, but it's not exciting, it's not erotic, it's not necessarily desire, it's calibrating your expectations so that you have. And that means diversifying your intimate connections or your deep connections. For me, intimacy doesn't mean sexual either. It just means people that are important to you, that accompany you through the life stages and to the big events in life. These three things, expectations, calibrating expectations, diversifying your social connections and taking risks and doing new things is the research of Eli Finkel for thriving relationships. But then in that piece, I think play is essential. It's huge. And it is actually the quality of emotions that is the least talked about.

How often are you playing in your relationship?

All the time. Humor is essential. It's an essential salve and bomb. In my relationship, I can be in the middle of an argument and Then I start to laugh, and then I just get perspective, and we just kind of ground ourselves back again. It's flirting, it's teasing, it's making fun of. It's that whole realm of we're not really serious and we don't take ourselves that serious.

And what happens when relationships are taking themselves very serious and they're not playing?

Look, I had a teacher who once said to me, if a couple comes to you for therapy and there is absolutely zero humor left, it is diagnostic, really. Now, is it true? You know, nobody has proven that scientifically, but what you know is that humor. And if you listen to my podcast, if you listen to the sessions on where should we begin or on how is work, you'll see in the middle of talking about trauma, painful event, major fight, strife, I laugh with them. I manage to see if they can see themselves, if they have a bit of distance, of perspective, if they understand sometimes the absurdity of the things that we get into, the things over which we fight, the way we do it. And even if it's just a glimmer, a smile on the side, on the corner, I know they know that. I know that we know. And it creates that complicity, and it invites a new possibility.

Some people may be resisting the humor. They're like, no, they want to hold on to the seriousness.

Yes. If you want to hold on to righteousness, to I am right, to victimization, to I have the view that is the only view that matters, and only my perception and my experience is the truth, then you are in a polarized system that is rigid and unyielding. Humor and play is possibility. Possibility invites change. Change invites healing.

Yes. I want to ask you a few more questions, then I want us to play your game for a little bit. Over the last two years, was there anything that came up for you personally in your own inner world that you noticed? Oh, there's something like we talked about, it created a lot of pressure for people. If there were things that came out, was there anything for you that you were like, huh, there's something I still need to work on myself or need to continue the healing journey of that came out in the last couple years with being at home and not doing things the way they used to be.

I will answer this in two ways. The way that I experienced the. The pandemic. So in the first, in the beginning, right after I left you, I went back to New York and I went in lockdown. And basically it was in the. You know, we suddenly kind of. I got gripped with a Bit of a panic. And primarily because I thought, I can't catch this thing, because if I catch it, I am now suddenly considered elderly. I'm past 60 plus.

We're 35.

Yeah, yeah. For the pandemic, it changed. It suddenly shifted overnight. I became elderly. And that meant I wasn't sure if we entered the hospital, me or Jack, that we will pass the triage.

Interesting.

And he's older than me. And I got really, really scared. I had a lot of post traumatic stress symptoms that are very much connected to the Holocaust and to my family experience. That sense that overnight, this whole life I have built could just disappear like this. And it was irrational. I was terrified that Jack would die. To the point you wanted to know about humor in my relationship. So we are in the middle of construction at the time, and the workers. And at day point, he comes to me and he says, I asked the workers to create, to dig a hole in the garden. I said, oh, yeah, why? He said, so that when I die, you can just roll me right in.

Oh, my God.

Wow.

Talk about humor.

But I cracked up because he showed me, girl, you gripped in fear. And I just started to laugh. And I just realized, no, no, no, he's not there. Because I was ready to stop construction. I said, we're not making this.

No one can come here within a thousand yards of our.

No, no. It's more like, we will not survive.

No way.

I was. I really. When it's post traumatic, it's. Trauma is the word. Right. So I really was very, very, very scared. And his humor diffused it for me and just brought me back and said, we're continuing to build. We're going to live. We're going to survive. Don't worry, girl. It's like. So this was one. And it slowly, you know, I entered into the long term of the pandemic and it dissolved. And that's when I understood. This came out of that. I missed my friends, I missed my dinner parties, I missed intimacy. And I created a host of different group experiences. Pods. I had a movie club on Zoom, on three continents.

That's cool.

I had a book club. I had a yoga group that met four times a week still, till now, that is over two continents.

Wow, that's cool.

And I had a hiking group. I had a swimming group in the summer. And then one day I said, I need to play and I need to continue to have conversations where I learned something new. I was so freaking tired of talking about the pandemic.

Sure, sure.

And I said, I'm Going to create a game, not having any idea of what this thing was going to become and what it represented. I just thought, I want to do something creative and I'm going to. I want people to be able to talk about something that isn't just like, you know, when you live six months like this in lockdown, you begin to have the same conversation.

Of course. Yeah. Yeah, of course.

So I just thought, how am I going to make couples have fun, get energized, you know, be curious about each other, talk about something else? And I thought, we need to play because play is a container. Play gives you the possibility to take risks, to talk about things that you would otherwise not talk about. Because it's under the guise of play allows you to ask questions that you would otherwise not ask, certainly not to your partner. Because we get more shy with the people that we live with than with strangers sometimes.

Interesting. Yeah.

You know, you're more daring to ask sometimes questions to strangers you're never going.

To see again or people you've just.

Met than the person you live with for decades on end.

That's interesting.

So play became very, very central when. When you play, you still are able to lift yourself from the ground. And it means you can enter the world of imagination where the rules are different. And every child, at this moment, around the Ukrainian crisis, you can see when kids are still able to play, it is the moments when they are not in hypervigilance. It is an essential survival skill.

Yes.

Underrated. And from that place came.

That's correct.

Where should we be?

It's one of the key. It's one of the key things in relationship and in life is what I'm hearing.

It's essential.

It's essential.

It's essential.

Now, here's another side question before we get into this.

Play is problem solving. Play is creativity. Play is risk taking. Play is spontaneity.

It's all these things.

It's the other side of fear.

Next up, I speak with Jillian Teki, who is a renowned relationship expert on why understanding your own psychology is the key to attracting the right type of.

Person for your life.

In order to know who is right for you, you have to understand your own psychology. You have to understand yourself. You have to understand where your vulnerabilities lie, where your weaknesses lie, where your strengths are. The trauma that you've been through. You know, if you've been. If you've had a rough go at life, then you're going to need someone who makes you feel really accepted and safe and doesn't judge you for that. It doesn't give you a hall pass to bring that trauma in. But the reality is our past is our past. And so understanding who's the right partner for you is not only understanding your psychology, but getting really real with yourself. Because people will say, oh, I just wish I was this person. I'm really attracted to outdoorsy people. And I just wish I was more outdoorsy. Oh, I could be more outdoorsy. No, you have to be really real with yourself. You hate the outdoors. You might be really attracted to someone who likes the outdoors, but sorry, Charlie, like, that's not gonna be right. Be right for you.

You can't sleep in a tent for three nights with bugs. That's not you.

It's not you. You gotta be super real and like that person who you really attracted to does that.

It's not gonna work long term.

It's not gonna work long term. You could have a fun fling, but it's not gonna work long term. So really knowing yourself and honoring yourself is how you choose.

Well, yeah, that could be the summer fling. But then it's like if you're with the outdoorsy guy who. That's his. He wants that to be his life. Six months in the mountains.

Exactly.

Exactly.

I'm trying to create a stable home with kids in the future.

Exactly. It doesn't work.

It doesn't mean they're not great people.

It's just not gonna work.

It's just not what you want for the vision of your life.

Exactly. And people have to get really real with themselves. And they don't. And then they end up paying for that.

What's been the biggest mistakes you've brought to relationships? Me personally, that you've later had to realize and take accountability for. Okay, yeah, I was responsible for this. Or this. Or I could have shown up differently.

Yeah, for me, definitely has been in the past. Codependency. And what it looks like is it's funny. You know, relationships are funny. I mean, I've had some really beautiful relationships and I've had some not so beautiful relationships. And that's why certain people are going to bring out certain things in you, whereas others are not. But I've definitely brought codependency and low self worth to relationships. Like depending on my partner too much for my happiness.

Really.

Yeah.

What happens when we depend on our partner to make us happy?

Catastrophe. So here's the paradox. I think that we need to be with someone who wants to make us happier and that we want to add value to each other's Lives. We want to make the path easier, but no one can walk our path but ourselves. And so what happens is that when. And it's unconscious, you know, and it's. Part of it is also conditioning. It's like be with someone who makes you happy, this or that. You know, the problem is that if you don't feel at least mostly whole, you know, we all have our things that we're dealing with, but if you don't, if you feel really fragmented and you think a relationship or another person is going to actually bring all the pieces together, then what's going to happen is that you're going to be really disappointed because then you're relying on another fallible, flawed human, Imperfect human. Imperfect human. And you're gonna have all these expectations and your, your shoulders are gonna be crushed by the weight of failed expectations constantly. But you know, so yeah, I've done that. Not really standing on my own two feet emotionally. I have brought stress to a relationship and not. And not my self awareness around stress to the point where I've closed or. Yeah, where I've closed. You know, not been receptive to love.

Guarded.

Yeah, guarded. Or just tense and stressed and just totally expecting to be loved anyway. And it's, it's, you know, relationship is so filled with paradox. It's like, yes, they should actually contribute to your happiness, but you also have to know how to make yourself happy. No, you don't have to love yourself completely to be in a relationship, but yes, you have to love yourself at some level, you know, or you learn to love yourself in a relationship. But also you can't enter a relationship hating yourself. There's just so many paradoxes. And I would just say that people just need to find sort of the balance for themselves. And like the reality is that we should be adding value to each other's lives. We should want to root for our partner and we want to see them win and we want to see like their path be just like paved with gold. And we will do anything to help them, but we can't actually pave the path for them. And that's the key difference. And we can't expect that from someone.

Right?

I think that's. You're speaking my language right now because, you know, over the last couple years of doing my own healing journey, I was just like, if I enter a relationship again, right? It was kind of like if, you know, because I was just like, I'd rather be happy and on my own. But I love intimacy and connection. It's like, okay, I want it, but it's like not at the expense of like suffering and abandoning my values and my vision, my lifestyle, my needs.

Yes.

But I was like, I just want to make sure that I'm always taking care of it and loving myself and taking care of myself and creating my own joy and happiness and fulfillment independent of a relationship. Never needing someone. But the way they show up can just add to that joy. Add to that happiness. And I want to be in a relationship with someone that is a joyful person. It's kind of like their baseline.

Yes.

Because they've processed stuff. They've been on the healing journey. They're whole, not perfect, but whole and continuing to improve. But they're just. Their baseline is joy. When someone's baseline is joy, you don't have to do something to make them joyful. They are joyful.

Yes.

And so it's getting your place to a state of peace and joy and fulfillment in your own life so that you don't need the person to make you happy.

Yeah, absolutely.

And then you're not going to self abandon, I think, or diminish your self worth in the relationship. If someone's abusive or acting out of character consistently, you're not going to stay in that. You're going to be like, well, that doesn't work for me.

And that's really the key point because honestly, what's epidemic in terms of what I see personally is just low self esteem and people. It's sort of like two camps. I see people either being selfish and not appreciating their partner, not giving enough to their partner, not giving enough, or I see the people tolerating too much bs.

Right.

And so to the people who tolerate too much, it's like something you have to do, something to raise your self esteem, something. Because what people tolerate out there is what I've tolerated.

It's.

It's unbelievable actually. But part of that is also because people are so afraid to be alone and they're afraid to start over and.

The time invested with that last person.

Exactly. Love your life single. You can really love your life single, but also really want a relationship. I don't want to discourage. I think that life is better in a good relationship. It just is. And getting love from a partner and sharing and having that exchange is really profound. But you know, you also have to give up your preferences to be in a relationship.

Right.

You know, like I tell single people all the time, like you want to lie in your bed diagonally, like go for it, like all that secret single behavior. Enjoy it. Because when you're in a relationship and you're living with someone, you can't necessarily do that, but you have to really, like you said, being in the position where you'd rather be single than just in something subpar, that is an amazing position to be in.

Yeah, it's huge.

It's huge.

Are you in a relationship right now?

I'm actually not, which is wild. I mean, I guess it's not that wild. So the whole reason why I do this is that I taught yoga for 20 years. And so yoga is, like, probably the most important thing in my life other than people in my life. And I had a really difficult marriage that only lasted two years. It was like.

Actually.

How long were you together for before four years?

Well, we were together two years prior to that. And. Interesting. This is an interesting story. So I would say 90% was perfect before we got married, but the 10% that wasn't was so. So profound. And, yeah, I felt. Seen, Safe, love, adored. I adored him. We had amazing rapport. We laughed hysterically. I really like it when I make people laugh. If you can understand, I have a really dark, nasty sense of humor. So if you can understand my sense of humor, I immediately feel very connected to you. Right. And so we really connected. And. But there were things that I would never tolerate. And this is something like, we're cool. Like things not working out with him. And then my mother died. So I went through a lot of tragedy to get to the place where I am now. But I'm very cool with him. In fact, I have a joke that I should probably. That he should probably send me a bill because I have this whole career based on this relationship that I had with him.

The wisdom you gained from this relationship. Oh.

So I'm actually very grateful. But there was an interesting story, which is that we went to. We were about eight months into our relationship, and I felt totally in love. We were both totally in love. And I don't know what triggered this because this was a while ago, and I just don't think about it anymore. It's not traumatic for me, but something triggered him, and he had a proclivity towards avoidance, and I had the proclivity towards anxiety. And my father was very, very avoidant and shut down. So here we are.

Anxious and avoidant is not a good combination.

It's not a good combination. So it's a bad combination. But. So he was shut down over something that I have absolutely. Something that was not warranted. And we went to this show called.

It was His Own Traumas.

Totally his own stuff. This was not something that. I mean, I can take a lot of responsibility and have, but this is not something that I did. It was something that he interpreted. So we went to this show called Sleep no More. And I don't know if you heard of it, but it was like a thing in New York and it was really, really crazy and really cool. And you get there and they give you like these masks, like from Scream, basically, like these crazy masks. And so you. Even though if you go with someone, it's a very. You kind of get separate. They separate you into rooms. So it's a very solitary experience and everyone's behind a mask. So you're having your own experience. But on our way there, I could. He was in what would be the first of many of like these moods where he would shut down. And I didn't know what was going on back then. I didn't have the courage to say what is going on? Like, speak up. Like, what's happened? Did I do something?

Let's talk about this.

Let's talk about it now. It wouldn't even.

Yeah, you didn't have the tools then.

Yeah, I didn't have the tools and I didn't have the self esteem then.

The courage.

Yeah, all of it. And so when we went, he was totally shut down. We were separated. But there were times where you would recognize the person because you know what they're wearing. And I would be so psyched to connect with him. And he would pretend like he didn't see me. It was like a total stonewalling. And I was so incredibly upset. And all I could think about is I gotta get this relationship back on track. Like, I have to like make this better.

From that one day, from that, from.

That one night, because he was stone. I knew that I was like, his feelings changed about me. I have to make sure that I. That whatever it is that triggered him doesn't trigger him again. So all this stuff came up.

So you interpreted that too?

Yes, exactly. So I. So I got really anxious, you know, I. Low self esteem, I don't want to. Or like, it's not that it wasn't perfect, it was really bad. So in other words, if I were to encounter that today, that relationship would have ended that day.

You'd be like, hey, this doesn't work for me.

Yeah, without question. That actually wouldn't even have been a conversation. It just would have ended because I would have known from a value system perspective and also from what is good for me that that is absolutely we can have fights, we can have disagreements, but that is not allowed in my world.

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Visit t mobile.com homeinternet to check availability today. Price guarantee exclusions like taxes and fees apply fastest based on Ookla Speed test intelligence data, second half of 2025. All rights reserved. In this third section, I speak with my good friend Matthew Hussey, who is a leading dating expert on why it's so difficult to break the negative relationship patterns and what you need to do instead.

Why do women sabotage when there's a good man in front of them?

The question can be applied equally across the genders and we all. I know I've sabotaged potentially wonderful relationships before. Almost did it with the relationship that, you know, turned out to be my marriage. I almost like screwed that up and, and we have to look at what's.

Why do you think you almost screwed it up?

We get into these patterns where we chase the wrong things. I can't take credit for that phrase. My wife Audrey loves that phrase and I got addicted to it too, because it's such a great phrase, this idea that if you chase the wrong things, it might be fun sometimes, but until you start chasing the right things, that chasing the wrong things will always loop you back to where you started. And, you know, I got to the point as a single person where I realized this is not, this is not as fun as it, you know, this has become A kind of drug of its own. And what am I really chasing here? Does it leave me feeling better at the end of it? Does it leave me feeling more anxious? In my case, it actually left me feeling more anxious. It left me feeling worse about myself. And I. You know, I think in some ways, the. The longer we take to find our person, I don't believe in the one, but I do believe in our person, because it's a very different thing. But the longer we take, I think some of us, we have to now justify all the people we said no to, because if I'm going to go for this person, then why did I say no to those people? They were great in these ways, too. And so we kind of were chasing this idea we have in our mind of something instead of being present with who is in front of us and what's actually unfolding in front of us. What I wasn't paying attention to at the beginning of meeting my wife was that I felt. I felt like I was home. And that isn't. That's a. That's a subtly different feeling. I felt like I was home. I could truly be myself. I felt genuinely accepted and not judged. And it was a kind of an unfamiliar feeling. I don't know that I was fully ready for that feeling.

Almost felt unsafe because it was so safe.

Yeah, it felt unsafe. We had an argument at the beginning of our relationship where we weren't even in a relationship yet, I don't think. But we. We had an argument where she started talking about some other guy.

Oh.

And it got. And it got under my skin. And then I was an about it. Like, I was not.

You weren't even committed yet, huh? You weren't even in a committed relationship, were we? Oh, you were.

You were.

She said, yeah. Yeah.

Okay, we were. But she started talking about someone, and I. It got like my ego flared up. My ego flared up. And then I started being really cold and quiet. I didn't say anything for ages. And she was the one making all the conversation. And at a certain point, she was like, what's going on? And I was like, nothing. Because what am I going to tell her? I'm not going to tell her at this early stage that I got insecure about a guy I don't even know, and that. That somehow, on some deep level, has made me feel threatened and how now I feel like I could get hurt in this and it's robbed me of some kind of power that I must have been holding on. I'm not going to tell you all of that. Because now you have even more potential to hurt me. I'm not going to give you all of that now. I once had a relationship where I told someone, like, I debated all night whether to tell an insecurity that I was feeling.

Really.

And then I did at the end of the night. This was different relationship. At the end of the night, I spoke an insecurity, and she looked at me and she said, I find that. I went, what? She goes, I just didn't know that you felt like that. I find that unattractive. Oh, how? It was the. It was one of the most horrendous.

Yeah, like your biggest fear.

Yeah. I was like, it for me. I didn't want to say it. I wasn't gonna say it. So then I was like, why did I say it? Renee Brown.

Vulnerability is strange.

This doesn't work for men. Be vulnerable. Yeah, I find that unattractive. That's why you have so many up guys in the world now, and they follow other up guys and they're all in their little circle of doing everything wrong because they got hurt. They're hurt. They just hurt people who have decided that the best way to deal with that hurt is to armor up and to hate everyone and to hate women and think that you're all against us.

And.

Look, I had a little moment in that moment where I was like, never doing that again.

Yeah, exactly.

That's the last time I ever do that. And then I met Audrey. And when I felt insecure about this person, I was quiet and passive and then passive aggressive and quiet and. And she eventually, like, wringed it out of me because she's too perceptive. And she. Nothing gets by this woman. Nothing. And I eventually, after her having to drag it out of me, I eventually said it. And then I hated that I said it because I had that thought in my head. Well, there you go. And then. So she got it out of me, and then I went cold all over again because now I was, like, ashamed.

Really?

Why did I say that? Now she's going to think, now I'm not going to. I'm not that attractive guy. I'm not Mr. Alpha.

I'm not.

Blah, blah, blah. All of this is happening. It's not like I'm verbalizing this to myself, but this is what's happening. And I'm supposed to not seem threatened. I'm supposed to be bulletproof. I'm not supposed to get threatened by another person like that. And then I said that it had, like. I was like, I wish I Hadn't said that because now you're going to think this. And she was like, what? She was like, oh, my love. Firstly, it doesn't change how attracted I am to you at all. I'm so attracted to you. My God.

And.

The fact that you told me that. It's just. I love it because I get to know. I know you better. I get to know you better. It doesn't change anything. It just. I love knowing you better. And if something's on your mind, I want you to share it with me because I want to be able to, like, talk, you know, I want to share why you don't need to worry about that. We had to go through so much that day to get to that little moment. And in a hundred other early dating phases with other people, that would have been the end of the relationship. That would have been it. Because someone would have not got it out of me and I would have never said anything, and I just would have held onto it and it would have eroded the relationship. Or they get it out of me, but then I don't feel safe with that person from their reaction. And so I now back off. Or, you know, there's so many ways that moment can go wrong. And in this relationship, what was normally a moment where it would go wrong was a very healing moment for me. And she's had her own moments like that. And we chase these things that feel off.

Next up, I speak with Bea Voce, a trained couples counselor, on the importance of understanding yours and your partner's trauma and working together to build a healthy and healing relationship.

Conflict without repair is just pain over.

And over and over.

Yeah, but then conflict with repair is healing. I actually really like thinking about it this way. So you each come into the relationship with all of your relationships behind you. So it's your relationship with your caregivers. It's the relationship with the person who broke your heart or the 12 people who broke your heart before that. It's the pain that you did to other people, and it's the pain that other people did to you, caused to you. You walk into your relationship with all of the unhealed pain, and you basically walk to your partner and you say, heal me. Here it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Here it is. Yeah, yeah. But we don't know that's what we're saying. That's not why we get into. That's not why we think we're getting into relationships. But that, to me, is when we're talking, when I get a little more kind of spiritual and Woo woo. And esoteric about it. I deeply believe. I deeply believe that we get into relationship to heal the parts of ourselves that nobody else could heal before. And when we find the relationship that is the one we decide to basically put on the altar, as this is where I'm gonna do my work. This is where I'm. Then what you are saying as each partner is, I am signing up to be here to help you heal the parts of yourself that nobody else that came before me could help you heal. Like I'm up for that task and vice versa. It's to me, that lens is. It's a gift that we give each other when we sign up for relationships and say, it doesn't matter how perfect I want you to be, I know you come with unhealed wounding, and I have the exact recipe that's probably gonna bump up against those wounds. But if we're responsible enough and we do our work enough, that what I also can do is support in the healing of those wounds.

Yes, I heard Gabor Mate said that if it's hysterical, it's historical. And if someone is reacting based out of a trigger or something, and they're reacting hysterically to a situation or an environment that even isn't a physical threat, but feels to them like there's a physical threat, there's some type of history behind it that's causing them to be hysterical or reactive in whatever situation. And what I'm hearing you say is that healthy conflict takes courage is what I'm hearing you say. And what I lacked for most of my life in every intimate relationship I was in was courage. For most of my life, I would stuff it down. I was in the second phase, the power struggle phase, for most of my relationship life. And I'd get into relationship for two years, three years, four years, and just kind of repeat the cycle thinking it was the person I was with and get in a new relationship and kind of repeat the cycle of phase one to phase two, and you're in phase two forever, and you're trying to get into interdependence. Right. But it never felt like it for me until this. My. My marriage now. And what I'm hearing you also say is that you're not getting into a relationship with a human being, you're getting in a relationship with their nervous system. And if their nervous system is wounded and eregulated or deregulated, then that's what you're getting in a relationship with is how someone perceives everything in the world. And if they're traumatized or if they have thin skin by every little thing that you say or do or don't do, that's the relationship you're getting into. Not the person and how they look, but what's inside their nervous system and how they respond to their environment.

You know, I often say, like, if we were to go on first dates and be like, all right, what. When you're. When you're just off the rocker, what do you, like. Like, when. When you're super triggered, when you're a 10 out of 10, when you're a 5 out of 10, what do you. What are you, like? What. What are we up to?

There's a bear inside of me. There's, like a bear that wants to destroy. If I'm, like, not regulated, you know, it's like, I'm like, let me just take on the world, you know, it's like a bear.

Same. I can get. I can get both. I can get loud, and I can get super.

I can get super quiet.

And just like, you don't. You don't even feel my heart. Like, I can go to both of. And they're not places I'm proud of, by the way. And by the way, no matter how much work we do, these pieces live inside of us. It's not that the little kid ever goes away. It's that when you start to understand what your nervous system is, like, when it gets dysregulated, like, oh, I know that my chest tightens, or I start to talk really, really fast, or I start to sweat, or maybe it doesn't feel so physiological, but I can start to. I can start to feel you become my enemy. I'm, like, trying to build my case against you, right? So, like, we've all kind of been here in one way or another. When I begin to understand what my particular brand of dysregulation looks like, then I can start taking responsibility for when I'm going there. And that adaptive part, that young, because that's really what it is. It's the part of ourselves that's just trying to fight for. Keep me safe, Keep me safe. We can sort of do this thing where we put the kid in the back. It's like, okay, you're five. I don't want you to go away, but you also can't drive. And this is another thing that Terry talks about, which I think is also really smart, which is like, you put the kid in the back and you gotta give the kid love, but the kid needs a boundary. Like, that's what kids need. They need love, but they need boundaries. So you put the kid in the back and you're like, hey, kid, I got this. You don't need to be the one. And they generally don't wanna be the ones to be in the fight anyway. They're like, oh, great, hands off the wheel. I can take a nap or play Legos in the back. And then, and then the more regulated part of you can start to come online, but you've got to take care of the part that's dysregulated. Generally speaking, you're either better at auto regulating, so regulating on your own, or co regulating. Like, you need somebody to help you regulate and we want to get better at the other. That's generally what we need. I. I fall into the co regulation category. Like, I really. It feels like at times I need my wife to help me. Like, I need her to help calm me down. Like, I can't. And that's been a huge.

But if you attract an independent person and they're like, hey, I don't. I'm independent. Like, get away from your.

That's her.

You're clinging some to someone who wants to be alone.

But that, but that's also where the healing comes into play, right? So because I have been like, so save me, save me from my own emotions that I don't feel like I can handle on my own. And she's like, that doesn't actually work. What do I have to do? I have to build the skill of auto regulating. I have to build the part of myself that understands how to take care of myself.

And probably the more you do that, the more she wants to come in.

And 100 co regulate exactly.

As opposed to feeling she needs to do it.

100%.

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I think, like, honestly, people have been asking me a lot about just my marriage because I've been in. I've been married for 26 years. Like, how do you go the distance? How do you go the distance? I feel that one of the things that I also got wrong is I didn't remind myself enough what a kind and caring person Chris is, and that I, you know, I. I am guilty of also, like, attacking Chris when I've been really unhappy. And, you know, I will unpack a lot of this stuff because, you know, Chris and I have been in, like, intense therapy for the last. Intense. Meaning it's been intensely awesome.

Yeah.

But it's profound how much my coping mechanism with stress was the exact opposite of Chris's. So when I feel stressed out or anxious, Louis, I go into hyperdrive. I like, go, go, go, go, go, because I feel safer when I'm busy. Okay. My husband goes into the corner and thinks. And what ends up happening over time is your relationships are an opportunity to truly heal.

The.

That doesn't work if you're willing to work together on it. And so what happened over time for us is the more I became successful, the more I did, the more I was solving problems and taking care of this, and 15 steps ahead, the more it reinforced to Chris, well, she doesn't need me. And what if I were to make the dinner reservation? She's gonna just probably have made a different one anyway. And meanwhile, I'm over here in my emotional corner going, why is nobody planning a birthday party for me? Why am I the one that's always, like, doing everything? When is somebody else gonna come? And Chris is over here going, I'm not needed.

Yeah. Like, I've tried, but then you just. You say you don't want it or you change the plans or. So after a while, it's like, why am I gonna try to do anything Correct?

And here's where we make a major mistake. We have a breakdown that's at the surface level. So I'll give you an example. This Is a really dumb example, but I think every couple might be able to relate to this.

Sure.

So you know how you get a lot of cardboard boxes?

Yes.

From Amazon boxes.

Amazon boxes that arrive at your house or your apartment. Everybody now orders stuff online. So I get boxes, I unpack the boxes, and then I have this little thing where I'm like, I might need to ship it back. So I don't.

You keep the box?

Yep. By the door.

I gotta throw it away right away.

Well, Chris does too.

Yeah.

And he also does not want the box to go into the garage. We need to slice it down and.

Flatten it, Recycle it or get rid of it. Yes.

But you have to flatten it for the garbage folks up in southern Vermont to pick it up.

Gotcha.

So I would make a Jenga puzzle right at the top, like, right by the door of the garage. And when Chris would walk in, because he's asked me several times, can you please just freaking slice and flatten the boxes and take it out to the recycling? That's where it goes. And I have this intention that, okay, I'll do that tomorrow, because after I, like, look at this stuff, I might ship it back and I might need the box.

Right.

And then.

The truth is, I hate flattening boxes. I don't want to flatten boxes.

Sure.

And so I don't do it. And every time Chris sees the Jenga puzzle of boxes, he silently feels like, I think he's my maid. And at a surface level, and this is what everybody does at a surface level, we argue about the boxes. At a deeper level that's not getting resolved is the fact that my partner has asked me to do something, but he's asked me to do something at sort of a physical surface level. He has not said to me. When I see that Mel, it actually triggers something from my childhood. My parents were never home. Nobody came to my games. I was a latchkey kid. When I would walk in that door, hoping somebody was home, and I opened up the door and there was nobody there, I felt like my needs did not matter. And when I see the boxes stacked, and I've asked you twice to do that, and you still don't do it, it's retriggering that. And over the course of his childhood, it didn't matter what he said. The behavior of the adults didn't change. And so we step into these relationships with people, with friends, and with your lover, and it becomes literally a magnifier of the things you have not resolved. Like you're so unconscious to your patterns. I'm thinking cardboard boxes. He's childhood trauma. There are other ones. He's not talking to me. I'm childhood trauma. It's like all of that gets magnified by cardboard boxes or the shit you're fighting about on the surface. And so knowing that you have a place to talk about something minimizes the number of times that you like, even get upset with each other. But I want to go back to something that you said that I think is the hundred million dollar question.

Give it to me.

Not question, $100 million answer. It was my number three. And I said it in the opposite way that you said number six. I said, if I could go back and give myself advice 28 years ago when I met my husband Chris, what would it be? And the third thing I said is always remind yourself that he is a kind and loving person who just wants to be loved. That's all. We all are. Okay. You said, I'm never going to be angry with you. I'm not going to take my anger out on you.

Now listen, I'm not perfect. Maybe one day I get frustrated and I react. I'm not saying. But that's my intention. But I quickly clean it up and I take responsibility. Yes, 100% responsibility. I'm not saying I'm trying to be.

Perfect here, but so what I have learned in the past two years, that has been profound for me to be whole and to be able to truly stand in full power, Right? And what has been profound in my marriage is that at the heart of all mental health issues for me, at the heart of all your interpersonal issues with anybody else, is your own inability to handle uncomfortable feelings.

That's it.

That's it. And I have the just disgusting and awful toxic behavior of expelling my uncomfortable emotions at people and my inability to tolerate stress or disappointment or frustration or expectations not being met or hurt feelings, that creates this sort of disruption in my body. And all of this stuff over the years, like I would expel it at people. I'd have a terrible tone of voice. I would blame on my anxiety. And I didn't know any better. Cause I didn't understand that healing actually doesn't start up here. It actually starts in your body and your ability to not only tolerate emotions, but to regulate the way that you feel when you experience emotion. And my husband has the opposite way. He withdraws. When he feels painful things in his body, he withdraws. And so the thing that has changed everything for me, Louis, is truly realizing that the second I started to dig out all the uncomfortable feelings and the that had happened or anything else and I learned how to sit with it. I learned how to give myself the assurance and the love that maybe I didn't get as a kid, that I didn't experience in other relationships that I wasn't experiencing that moment. Learning how to do that for myself, learning how to regulate my nervous system, how to tolerate the awful stuff that happens to all of us in life. That has been the biggest game changer in my relationship because I don't get angry at Chris.

I hope you found this masterclass on relationships supportive on your journey to either finding your perfect relationship, your perfect person, or how to improve the relationship that you're currently in right now. Comment below. Your Greatest Takeaway which section did you enjoy the most? What resonated with you the most and always? I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, you matter. It's a beautiful journey and I can't.

Wait to see you in the next episode.

If you are looking to manifest a new reality in your life, if you're looking to create a new dream and attract it and draw it to you faster, then you need to understand this concept. Manifestation is not about wishing for something.