The Start of Something Real: How to Create Meaningful Commitment

If you feel like you're stuck in this cycle of relationships only lasting one month to three months, then this podcast is for you because we're going to walk you through how to really create meaningful commitments. So it's the start of something real and not just the start of another could have been relationship. Gary, this is going to be a really good one for everyone listening in, because I know a lot of people struggle with this in their love life.

Yeah. And this is like one of those topics that came about from a mastermind I was giving and people just kind of. It just looks like one of those times every once in a while you have a mastermind where like a topic just really hits and like, everyone's like, oh, yeah, I'm having that trouble. I have that issue too. And it's just this issue around, gosh, I'm really good at getting into relationships. I just. And this, this was the client's exact words. I suck at the three month to six month part. Like, I can't get it. Like, I get it off the ground. I just can't really get it going. And so, yeah, I mean, that's super frustrating. It's confusing and it doesn't feel fair because, gosh, it starts with so much hope. It starts with so much possibility, and, like, you've mentally already started planning the future and how it's all going to look and then nothing. Like, just nothing.

Is that what it sounds like?

Our sound effect budget is not very good. So not good. Right. But. And it's. It's. I like this topic because this. Actually, Adam, this is one of the reasons. One of the main reasons why I'm at Love Strategies is that I've always thought with the dating world and the dating apps, it just always felt slightly, I don't know, unethical. In a way. It's like dating apps get people together, but they do absolutely nothing to keep people together. And we at Love Strategies don't do that. Like, we do both. We are very intentional about. We're not just here to get you anybody. We're here to help you find the right person and provide an entire course called that we call Relationship Synergy that helps you get together and stay together with your amazing partner. It's little love step seven. Right. It's not just, hey, let's go find somebody. In many ways, that can be the easy part. It's like, once you've found them. Now what? Now what do you do with this? Because here's. I can tell you the last thing you want to do is once you find your person, start over, you don't want to go back on the apps, you don't want to give this another try. And so this is what we're talking about. Today's, today's pod is like, how do you get this thing really going? How do you start something real?

Right. Well, just on the idea about dating apps, it's really tricky because I know some people in that space who, you know, are part of dating apps or work for that company. That company. I won't speak to any of the companies. And the problem is they're super incentivized for you to just keep coming back for more. Right. You pay a fee to just stay on the apps. So from a business perspective, what do they want more than for you to be in and out of one month, two month relationships on this kind of merry go round dating process? They want that. Now I know that sounds conspiratorial, but like think of the. Just always follow the money, right? Always follow the money. And I will even speak to some dating coaches and I will never name names on this front, but I've seen dating coaches who are like, oh my God, they worked with me and in 14 days they were in a relationship, Yay. And I'm thinking to myself, 14 days, you're celebrating that? That's not what we do around here. That's not what we're optimizing for. I'm optimizing for your life in 5 years, 10 years, 3, 30 years, for the rest of your life. We're not gonna, we don't celebrate around like one thing I love strategies is we don't have a culture within our coaching with all of our clients of celebrating new relationships. I think that's really interesting, Gary. Like we people will come in and say we're in a new relationship. And typically Gary and I say, great, okay, now this is where we get to the next phase. It's not like, yay, okay, yeah, you're not done. Like I'll give a little bit of a celebration if that's what they're looking for. Fine. Yeah, I celebrate that now you're in a committed exclus of relationship. I think that's great. But that's just the beginning. You know, I celebrate when you and your partner are working what we call little love step number seven, which is building relationship synergy. And you're both working on the same page as, as your teammates. You're working together to build this and create this incredible life together. That's when we really start Celebrating is once you get to that phase, you start building a long term future together.

Well, and the other thing we really celebrate, and we just did this yesterday, is on our company Slack, when a former client sends in pictures of their engagement, right? They send the picture, they're there with their partner and the smiles. And it's like, it is like the best thing ever. It's like this happens all the time. But it's like, you know, everybody in the company on the slack seeing these pictures, it's like that's what, that's what we're about. And I say to clients all the time, it's like, you know, I'll have people say, well, I want to find somebody by the end of the month. Like, yeah, that's not the, that's not the plan. That's not the goal. That's. We're here, we're here for forever, not for now. Like, that's, it's just very different framing. And so, you know, we're here to help you navigate what is the hard part, which is the in between phase. It's not just meeting somebody. We can meet people. Meeting people is easy. It's how do we take that, Build emotional intimacy, build connection, build quality and compatibility in that best friendship that does carry us through the next six months, years, decades and forever.

So let's jump into it. I mean, the first one is just recognizing what gets you together isn't what keeps you together, right? Getting together and dating. The first three months, it's a very, very different experience than then going from three months to six months, then six months to a year. In fact, our brain chemistry is incredibly different. The first three months of a new relationship is, if you look at it on an mri, it's very similar to someone who's addicted to cocaine. Like, you are literally just firing and every, all of your synapses are firing. You have all these incredible love chemicals just flowing through your body is what we call the honeymoon period. And that's great. Like, that is such a wonderful experience. I still think back to the first three months of me and Jessica dating and what that was like. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. But let me tell you, that's very different than our relationship now. And that's okay, it's been 10 years. It's. It's just a very, very different phase. And when we're in that early phase, it's so easy to forget that this is not this feeling right now. It doesn't last. And it's not what keeps the Relationship lasting. Yeah.

And I think it's also important for anybody in the dating world to figure out you are probably better at one or the other. Some of you are really good at the getting together, some of you are really good at the staying together because those are not the same skill and they're not, they overlap to some degree, but they're not totally. And so maybe you've been really good at getting together. Now you need to work on some of those relationship maintenance activities. If you've been in long term relationship after long term relationship, you probably have a lot of long term relationship skills. So you're gonna have to work a little bit on some of those getting to know you dating kinds of skills, some of that flirting stuff. And so all of this from dating to long term relationships, all along that entire journey, there's a bunch of skills, a bunch of knowledge, a bunch of insights. You're gonna be a little bit better at some parts than others. And recognizing that is really important because the biggest mistake I see people make all the time out in the world is once I find my person, then I'm set. It's like once I find this guy, then everything else locks into place and you have to find him. Yes. Will it all lock into place? Perhaps, if you know how to do it. Because it's not just an automatic thing. I think it's, it's too often like we put all this effort into finding a partner and then just after that it's like, oh, all right, I'm done. Cool, I'm good. I, I've done everything I need to do here. The rest is just automatic. And it's, it, it's just not, it's just not definitely.

And that's when, that's why when I first started love strategies and started working with women, I developed what we call the seven little love steps. And these are seven steps that take you from where you are now to be in a long term, healthy relationship. And if you want to learn all seven little love steps, you can just go to lovestrategies.com we have a step by step training on the front page of the website that walks you through this entire process. I highly recommend you check it out. But that's why in the, the little love steps we have little love steps six and seven are when you're in an exclusive, committed relationship. And so when people get into little love step number six, that means you're now exclusive and you both have agreed that you're not going to see other people. And it's very Clear. It's very different than little love step number five, where you're still single. Once you're in little love step number six, you're an exclusive, committed relationship. But here's the thing. When people get to little love step number six, they always tend to assume that the relationship will still be firing at all cylinders. And this is where what can happen is the relationship moves into what we call the cool down period. Once you get into a new relationship after about three months of dating, or it could be as long as six months in my experience, but it's typically about three months. The relationship goes from like, feeling like it's moving 100 miles an hour down to like 10 miles an hour. It's when he starts focusing back on work. It's when he starts reconnecting with old friends. It's where you're not texting each other all day every day. You might not get a good morning text the moment that you wake up in the morning. And what happens, Gary, when this typically, What. What's your experience when clients hit the cooldown? What have you heard?

It's always the same. They freak out. They freak out and it's like they come on a mastermind and they're like, Dr. Gary, something's wrong, something's wrong, right? And it's like, okay, well, how many days? How long has this been? And like, you know, it's, it's everything you just described, it's like the testing isn't the same. I, I noticed and they use this phrase a lot. I notice a shift in energy. It's like, yeah. And that's, it's generally a good sign because what this shows is guys put a ton of effort, prioritize getting you into a relationship. They've sacrificed other things, they put other things to the side. The fact now that they're returning to some of those other things, it's not that they're disinterested. It's that they feel secure that they don't have to keep running and taking care of and attending and all. It's like, long term relationships are about comfort. It's about stability. It's about dependability. It's not this frantic, I must keep you. I must keep you. I must keep you. That's not how you can sustain a long term relationship. Long term relationship is like, hey, we're good, right? Yeah, we're good, we're good.

Okay, we're good, right?

And like, that's a cool. It's a cooldown. Yes. So it's, it's an off ramp from something that was going 100 miles an hour, but now we're just going to cruise at a solid responsible 45 miles an hour. Solid, right. Long term, yeah.

The, the tricky thing about the cooldown especially is that because it's little love step number six, you're still not yet committed for life with one another, which is little upset. Number seven, where you're really focusing on your long term priorities, but you're also no longer single. So it's this weird phase where especially if you're a client, you're going from talking to lots and lots of different guys, go, go, go, go, talking to this guy, focusing all your attention to, now you're exclusive with this one man, but it's not quite to that next phase of the relationship where you're, you're 100% all in. You're not living together yet, you're not spending every evening together yet. So it feels like everything is just moving very slow and it feels like there's this big problem. But the reality is you just have to be patient during this phase. Like, patience is the absolute key. That is just constantly. What I'm saying is like, no, now you just got to be patient. You got to focus in on your life. What are some of those other priorities that you disconnected from when, you know, you started dating? Maybe it's, you know, you want to go play pickleball again. Maybe you want to go reconnect with some old friends, get back to doing that Sunday brunch that you were doing with your, all that stuff. Reconnect with old family they haven't connected with. That's a great time to do it because you got to find ways to fill your time during the cool down period, which is again, that new relationship that isn't quite. There's a long term, crazy committed relationship yet. And that's the only way to really bridge that gap. You got to be really patient.

Well, and what happens is we all have much more experience just by the nature of how relationships go. With the falling in love phase, with the early stage. The early stage is exciting. We've had a lot of experience with that. So when things start to cool down and feel a little less exciting, it feels weird and it sets off those alarm bells. But here's the thing. We are all naturally, as humans geared to habituate, right? We call this hedonic adaptation. It doesn't matter how good something is, over time it gets less and less enjoyable, right? You sit down with a big ice cream sundae, best ice cream in the World. First couple bites, amazing. By the end, you're like, okay, all right. Like it just, it wears off. And like that excitement, that's not what love is. It's. It's part of the love experience, but that's not the long term love experience. And we have to just get accustomed to. Love transforms, it shifts, it evolves over time and it settles into this warmth. It's not always the heat of passion. There's something to be said for that long term warmth of long term love. And, you know, not only are you experiencing the cooldown, but like, as you get to know any other human being on the planet for any amount of time, you're going to discover some things. Many of those things are going to annoy you, right? Like you're just gonna, you're gonna learn some things about them that are just frankly kind of annoying, right? Like, do they chew at their mouth open? Do they leave cabinet doors open? Like, are, are they. Do they get up really early in the morning? Do they get. They stay up way too late at night? Like, there's a bunch.

I feel like you're just describing me right now as someone who wakes up really early and leaves the cabinet doors open. But I'll let it go. You know, you are slightly annoying me right now, but that's okay. I've accepted that we're past the cool down period, so we're already bonded for life.

Well, I mean, you have to be aware when your partner starts annoying you. There are certain danger zones. So maybe, Adam, right now you're hungry, maybe you're tired, maybe you're stressed. Hopefully you haven't been drinking. Hopefully that's not what it is.

But it's like, I need to start drinking based on this conversation.

But the, the thing is, it's like anybody, there's going to be friction, there's going to be things. And like, one of the things we know from research is that researchers have tracked relationships that end up being successful that kind of stand the test of time. And the ones that don't, in both of those types of relationships, costs, the annoying things increase in the short term, right? So first we meet somebody, like, they're perfect, okay. Over a little bit of time, you're like, okay, not as perfect as I thought. Here's the key differentiator. For the relationships that end up surviving, they find those costs and then their costs go up. But then after that they go back down. Now, those costs didn't magically disappear. What happened? Well, we reframed them. It's like, oh, yeah, the fact that they chew with their mouth open, like whatever. Like you just, you just learn not to care. The fact that they snore all the time, instead of getting annoyed with it, you're like, aw, isn't that cute? Cute little bear, little snoring little bear. Like, that's fine. Like you find ways to just reinterpret some of those things that annoyed you. The one other thing I would say about this annoyance thing is, and I say this a decent amount, is you do also have to figure out, is your partner really that annoying or are you being too easily annoyed? And sometimes it is you, sometimes it is you being just a little bit too easy, too easily annoyed. I have a friend who's like a, he's a very militant about how the dishwasher gets loaded and is always complaining how his wife doesn't load her right. And like it annoys them every single time. But the thing is, like they have a great relationship. Why? Because dishwasher loading ability is not a long term love. Vision quality doesn't matter. Like there's a lot that doesn't matter. I think it's important to recognize what doesn't matter.

Well, that's how. That's the ultimate litmus test for me, determining where a client is on their journey in a relationship. Because again, we're always leading them to a long term relationship, healthy relationship. But if a client is just over the moon about a guy and so excited, I will always want to just do a little bit of a cost analysis. Like what? Where is he not meeting the mark might be a question. I might rephrase it a little bit differently. And if they say there's nothing about him that I don't like or he's perfect, might be another way to say that without the double negative. And if they say that, my response is always just wait, just wait. Because there is one law of human nature and that is or in relationships, that is that there will always be something about your partner that you really don't like. And if you haven't found it yet, it's common, right? And that's okay. That is okay. When we're single, we, for whatever reason, we forget that it's because we are listening to certain dating advice or we're watching rom coms and we just have this way of thinking about this fantasy of the perfect relationship, but it just doesn't exist. Then you talk to an old married couple and they're like, yeah, there are things that definitely annoy me. There are things I would love to change. But they learn to reframe it later and that's great. That's very, very healthy. And that is truly. I always think of my parents relationship where they've been married for 50 years and you know, both of them have their quirks and their difficulties. Everyone does. But the way they speak about each other, it's in a constant reframe. Like, yeah, it is really, really annoying when your dad does X, Y and Z. But I just love how kind and compassionate he is. Great, okay. It's acknowledge it if you have to and then reframe it. You know, that's what makes it last.

I so love that you use that example because I have a perfect example of this. I've been married to colleen for over 20 years, right? And this has been true of her for 20 years. And it still annoys me, which is probably a character flaw on my part. But she will say, I'm ready to leave. Okay. And what I have learned, Adam, is that this is a lie. This is a lie. This is not true at all. Her ready to. But so what I have to remind myself is when Colleen is quote unquote ready to leave, that's not true. What she means is this is now my five minute warning for me to put on my shoes. And then I now what? I just use it as is a five minute quick check of email that now I just use as a little, little extra, like check in on email, check in on Slack, checking on some other thing kind of period. So instead of getting annoyed, I'm like, okay, five minutes. I didn't expect to have. I can check something off of a list somewhere. And it's just like, and this is the thing, like this is the key with long term. The cost is still there and if I'm honest about it and if she's not listening, it does still annoy me. But, but the difference between something being annoying and endearing is love and patience. And like someday, if God forbid, she dies before me. Like one of the things I'm going to remember most is like, like I'm going to love that idea that like always had the five minute warning. I'm going to love that idea. It's not going to be actually annoying. And like that perspective, that's one of those keys of long term love. I think.

Definitely. And I think for those who are listening, who are type A, which I think is a huge part of our audience, that's a pretty tough pill to swallow. It was for me for sure. But that it just depends on what we're Optimizing for, you know, and if we're optimizing for the perfect relationship, you're never going to find it. It's not going to happen.

Yeah. It's because, you know, nobody's. We're not perfect. Partner's not perfect. That's fine. And I think, you know, one of the things you have to realize is as you're in this in between phase, that little love step six into seven is you just have to embrace this idea that, like, welcome to your collaboration and compromise era. Because relationships, they're not a competition. It's not me versus you, it's us against the problem. And so scorecards, some people like keeping score. Like I did this and they did this and I did more here and they did more there. It's, it's. Those are relationship killers. What we know from the research is that if you approach your relationship from this exchange mentality, which is keeping score, making sure we're always even, that I put in X amount of effort, so you need to also put in the same amount of effort. It's just, it just doesn't last. Right. Because we can't have this relationship where we're both constantly keeping tabs on what we're doing. Right. It's like there's this myth of the 5050 relationship. It just doesn't exist. What does exist though, in long term love is this idea of sometimes you, sometimes me, but always us. Some days I'm going to have an easier day. I'm going to give 80% and you can coast on 20. Cool. Some days you're going to give 90. I'm running on fumes. I'm given 10.

Cool.

Over time, we end up about 50. 50. The goal is balance over the long term. You're not going to get things 100% your way. We all want to get our way right. When it comes to work schedules, priorities, wake up schedules, room temperature, who controls the thermostat. We all want our way. And I don't know, I don't know what you find in your marriage, Adam, but I don't do not always get my way.

I never get my way on that for sure. I've accepted that. I found every way possible to overcome that challenge. And I definitely don't get my way. Yeah, I mean, on a personal note, I will. I found that it took Jessica and I some time to find our lane in the relationship. Like when we first started dating. I think the first year was probably the, the hardest in many ways because she wanted me to be more fun and I wanted her to be more type A like me. And that was constant. Like, you know, my wife, Gary, she always wants people to stay up late, have a great time. She's a good one. She's a good time. She's a good time. Loves to go to concerts, love to do all this stuff. It's. I'm just kind of like, not that fun sometimes. I don't know what to say. I go to bed early. I wake up really early. I'm really intense. I work really hard, and I would want her to be like that. And so it was constant conflict, but it required us both to recognize that actually it's much more of a collaborative thing. Like, she brings the fun, I bring the serious, and it works really, really well. Now it's just like one plus one equals ten in the relationship. Rather than me trying to turn her into a two and her trying to turn me into a two, it's like we're both just. We stay in our lanes and we know our lanes. And I think that that personally is what makes a great relationship. I'm not saying, you know, our relationship perfect. No relationship is perfect.

We.

But it's that first year I've found where you're just finding where it is that is your lane in the relationship and where's his lane and not trying to force him into your lane or vice versa. And that just, you know, I think a lot of people leave relationships too quickly just because they are trying to force it, force it too much, rather than just accepting the person for who they are and acknowledging that you need them to fill in some gaps in your life.

Well, and this is why I say all the time is like, people, the easy part is getting together like this. Part of trying to navigate that first year, those early times together where you're really trying to find alignment with your partner. It's tough. And chances are you haven't had good role models in your life to show you how to get proper alignment. You've had. You've seen parents where, like, one parent gets their way and bulldozes the other. That's very, very common. And so people just don't have a lot of good background training skills in this part of the relationship. And that's why, you know, transitioning into this commitment phase and this real relationship phase is so tough, because one of the biggest levers you have to make it happen, and I'm sure this is what helped you navigate that year, is the initial solution to every single problem in your dating and relationship. Life is the same. It's communication. And we all kind of know that, but so many of us don't communicate very well, very clearly, very respectfully at all times. And so, you know, going into what communication is and how to do it is several podcasts all at once. But I would just two really quick strategies to navigate this little period is, you know, I said about scorecards, it's not me versus you. And the mistake people make in communication is trying to win arguments all the time. That's not how you win. How you win is you approach it as me and my partner. It's both of us together against the problem. Right? And so that's number one. The second part is, always remember in communication, the other person's overwhelming need to feel heard and understood. If someone raises their voice in communication, it means they're not feeling heard and understood. And so first, make sure your partner feels heard and understood. Then start making your points about other things.

Another really hard thing to do if you're very type A and you're really stubborn, if you're like me is really hard, you know, And I'll appeal to those who are in the corporate world or have a lot of employees, because I've always recognized this to be true in relation. Not always, but I've recognized this to be true in relationships. You need to feel, make sure your partner's heard and understood. But I never recognized that, that with employees. And now that we have a large team, that was always something like, I was a bulldozer there as well. Just like, oh, no, it's. It's kind of my way of the highway. I hope I don't sound too horrible, Gary, but like, you know, I think that's like a classic, you know, CEO type mentality. But in the past, I'm going to give a shout out to someone on the team, someone who's joined recently, Phil, who is running our operations here, he's been coaching me a lot on the importance of always ensuring everyone feels heard and understood. And you always speak last. And by the way, Gary, you've been saying that as well, so I got to give you a shout out on that last piece. Like, Adam, you always speak last, Always make sure everyone feels heard and understood. And it's just, it's really changed the game. Like, just basically. Adam, shut up a little bit. It's okay. Like, shut up and listen. Just listen. It doesn't mean you always have to do everything everyone says, do every idea, but make sure everyone feels heard and understood. And so if you have understood, just to land the plane on this. If you know that in the corporate world, because you're more advanced than me, I apply that to your relationships because it's the same thing. People just need to express themselves. Doesn't mean it will always come to fruition. It doesn't mean you actually have to do it. But they have to feel like they've gotten it all out there first before you can make any type of progress. If they're not heard and understood, it will just be pushed under the rug, and then you're going to trip all over that rug, and you're never going to make any progress in your relationship or in your career.

Well, I will. I will say, Adam, in your defense, the leadership thing is especially tough because when you are the CEO or you the boss or the manager, actually, everyone is expecting you to bulldoze and just tell everybody what to do a lot of times. And so it's a little bit of a role expectation there, which I think. And by the way, you need to give yourself a lot more credit. You're a fantastic boss. And, you know, I think everybody at the. At the company definitely feels heard you ask for feedback all the time. And you're always. One of the things you say more than anything is like, tell me what I'm wrong about. You say that a lot. And it's like, that's a really good quality. And it's. It's good to use that same kind of dynamic in your relationship. Right. Like, if you're in an argument, it's like, help me understand what I'm missing. Just say that to your partner. Wait, what? Like, tell. Help me understand what I'm missing here. But. And not in like a crappy way. Like, authentically, tell me what I'm missing here. You could say that wrong, but it's like, you know, like, help me understand what I'm not seeing. Like, help me understand things from your point of view. Wow. Like, you start getting good at some of that stuff. And again, this is the stuff you haven't been taught. You don't necessarily know. So I need a little bit of training and stuff along the way. All of which is to say, because you haven't been taught a lot of this stuff, it's like, last part is just don't get lazy in love. And I think that's one of the big mistakes, like I said at the top is like, people find their partner and they think, like, that's it. Like, you need more. You need a little bit of a relationship protection plan, a little bit of a relationship maintenance Plan you got to keep things going. And it's. It's like I said before, it's like, why I'm here. It's what you brought me into the company to do in the first place, is just create this, you know, little love. Step seven, the relationship synergy program, where it's just like, help fill in the blanks of people's relationship training. So in that program, we talk about boundaries, we talk about closeness and managing love and sexual. How to deal with conflict, how to avoid problems, communication growing, how to avoid things like jealousy and cheating and pretty. Everything you can think of. Everything I've been teaching about relationships for 20 years. That's what's all in that program to help people learn better, how to, you know, navigate this in between, period, and end up in that relationship that lasts forever.

Definitely. So if you want a little bit of help in your love life, you can go ahead and head on over to loveapply.com you can apply for a complimentary love strategy session where someone on my team will speak with you, understand where it is you might be struggling in relationships and whether or not we can help guide you on that path. And I want to give Gary a shout out, because when Gary first started working with us, I really struggled with defining dating versus relationships. Oh, this is our relationship program. Oh, this is our dating program. And Gary said, adam, it's all kind of the same thing. Dating is relationships. It's. In relationships, you know, you got to date in the same way that you want a relationship, and I don't care. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but is that fair to say it is?

It's like, I think it might have been our first argument.

And I. And I heard you out trying to. And honestly, I think it was such a foundational shift because I always came from the lens of dating because that is where my career has led me up to. This phase is very focused on the dating side, and you focus a lot on relationships. I think that's what's blended this so, so well and created this incredible, incredible coaching program we call Love Accelerator. So huge props to you for all of that. And if that's something that you want to explore more again, head over to love apply.com jump on that love strategy session, and we will be happy to guide you to finding that relationship that you truly deserve. You all are amazing. Thank you so much for listening. Gary, thank you so much. My man. All right, speak soon. Bye. Bye.

Thanks, buddy.