Pillow Talks EPISODE 14: How To Navigate Different Beliefs In Dating And Relationships

Typically, if you disagree with someone on, like, a political belief and you just throw it in their face like you're wrong, here's 10 facts. All it does is it drives them further into believing what they believe.

Hello, and welcome to the Pillow Talks podcast. We're your hosts, Vanessa and Xander Marin. I'm a sex therapist with 20 years.

Of experience, and I'm just a regular dude. We share the ups and downs in our relationship while giving you step by step techniques for improving yours.

So make sure to subscribe for your weekly double date full of totally doable sex tips, practical relationship advice, hilarious and honest stories of what really goes on behind closed bedroom doors, and so much more. It's the sex education you wish you'd had. Pop quiz. Xander.

Oh, boy. Not ready for this.

What are three things that you should never discuss on a first date?

I'm gonna go with your ex girlfriend, your mother, and your potential love of science fiction.

Interesting. Okay, arguments could be made for those, but I was thinking more like sex, politics, and religion.

Oh, that's good.

We are gonna be talking about a pretty heavy hitting topic today.

We're gonna be talking about the stuff that you are not supposed to talk about.

Yes.

On your first date. Fortunately, we are not on our first date, so we can talk about this.

Well, we obviously think sex should be talked about much, much more openly than it is. I think sex is a perfectly fine topic for a first date. But politics and religion are incredibly sensitive subjects in dating and in relationships. And I think, you know, especially in the last few years, politics and social issues, like, we've gotten so divisive that it's really only added fuel to the fire. We asked our Instagram audience, are you currently dating or in a relationship with somebody with whom you have at least one major difference of opinion on political, social, moral, or religious beliefs? And 60% of people said no.

So that means 40% of people are in a relationship with someone with, like, at least one major differing belief. Right.

But the majority of people are not. And we also asked them, would you be open to dating or being in a relationship with somebody if you knew beforehand that any of their core values and beliefs were significantly different? 77% of people said no.

So the really interesting thing here is that 40% of people currently are in a relationship with someone with one major differing belief. However, only 23% of people said that they would do that in the future. So a lot of those 40% of people who are currently in one relationship like this are kind of saying, I wouldn't do it again.

Dating.com did a more scientific study than we did and they found that 84% of single people said that they would not even consider dating someone with opposing political views and 67% admitted to ending relationships because of opposing political views. We heard about this a lot from people from our Instagram audience too. You know, people ended relationships, early dating relationships, but also a lot of stories about people ending relationships after years, even decades because their beliefs were so different. Sounds like our audience is maybe slightly more open to the possibility of dating people with different beliefs.

A solid 7% more open. That's great.

You coming in hot with the numbers.

Today we're 7% better.

So today we're going to tackle this really thorny question. Should different belief systems be deal breakers? How do you navigate having different political, social, moral, religious, ethical beliefs than the person that you are dating?

Before we get into all of this really juicy stuff, we're going to give you our review of the week. So this week's review is I've been a big fan of Vanessa and Xander Marin for a while now. Their Instagram is single handedly saved my long term relationship. I've been applying their tips and tricks along the way as well as learning to have a sense of humor when sex or life doesn't go as planned. They make a dynamic duo of sex and love expertise. I enjoy their banter, their hilarious quips, and their willingness to share so much helpful free content with their audience. Thanks. Well I say I Xander, say thank you to this reviewer. That was a very, very nice review. And if you are listening to this and this is your review DM us on Instagram and we owe you a piece of advice.

One piece of advice.

One piece of advice. What does that mean if you have no idea what I'm talking about? We are playing this fun game where you leave us a review on Apple podcasts. You take a screenshot of it because unfortunately Apple is slow. Sometimes not all the reviews go up. You send a screenshot to us on Instagram Vanessa Marin Therapy and we will enter you in perpetuity into a drawing where if we pick your review and feature it in our podcast then we will give you advice to one of your questions. So you'll like shoot us a question and we will send you back a voice memo or a video going into much more detail than we typically do in our Instagram stories addressing your specific situation. Super fun contest, fun little prize. And the fun doesn't stop. Just do it once. It's the gift that can keep on giving yes.

As soon as you write a review, you are entered into the giveaway for every week going forward. I'm noticing, though, that this person said they have learned from us how to have a sense of humor. When things don't go as planned, they.

Put it into words better than you or I ever have. I think that's so important. I think we take ourselves so seriously sometimes, and sex isn't always a serious thing.

Well, I was actually thinking about whether we wanted to talk about how things just did not go as planned right before we started recording this podcast.

Oh, they did not.

But I like the little speech that you just gave there. Yeah, we actually just had a funny little instance of this. We like to pick the listener questions beforehand so we're prepared. It was Xander's job to pick them over the weekend, and he didn't. And so I was feeling kind of bummed out about that. And it's hard for me, like, to come into the podcast, recording the podcast when we're not, like, fully prepared for it. It just kind of gets in the way of my creativity. So I was a little bummed. This did not go my way. I was feeling a little deflated about, like, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to bring the energy today. And then what did you do?

I had a surprise for her, actually. You know what? I'm gonna come clean here. The surprise that I had for you, I actually.

It was for you, wasn't it?

It was for both of us. I brought it up here before we even started, before Vanessa even found out that I forgot to pick the listener question. So I. I had this chocolate ready to go, but I hadn't had a chance to offer it to Vanessa yet because she was flipping through our. Our little outline and realized, you know, the questions aren't in there. And so by the time I finished and was getting us back together, I was like, you know what? I've got a fun little treat surprise for you. Let's have a bite of chocolate before you record this meaty podcast about politics and religion.

It really worked.

Yeah. Now you're happy.

I'm happy. I had my piece of chocolate. It was delicious. You were very proud of yourself. I feel like you kind of cheated a little bit now, but it was good enough. It worked. Pro tip, if something doesn't go your way, your partner's upset, just feed them a piece of chocolate. Should we call it a day for today, then?

Yeah, I think that's good. I think this has been a pretty good podcast. I Think we've given the people a lot of really good advice.

Leave us a five star review, please.

Yeah. So look, here's. Here's the deal. Let me just wrap this podcast up real quick, guys. Basically, if you guys are disagreeing about politics, social issues, religion, instead of arguing, just offer your partner a piece of chocolate, call it a day.

I honestly think that that could really help.

This is a really good chocolate bar. I think that if you gave a piece of this, who, Vanilla Crunch, you.

Can call it out. We got to get sponsored by them. That's free advertising.

Yeah.

You.

You get one free shout out and then you sponsor us. Okay.

All right, for real, though, let's get back to the podcast and the tips that we wanted to share with you. So we've got a lot of thoughts about this topic and we got a lot of great tips from our Instagram audience, people shared with us. You know, here are some things that have really helped us. Here are things that I wish I had known, you know, earlier in the relationship. So we're gonna go through some of our favorite tips.

Should we give a little disclaimer here? Vanessa and I don't really have many areas where we have any extreme disagreement, so we really wanted to crowdsource a lot of stuff and talk it through. We certain have a lot of experience working with couples that have disagreements. Yeah, this is a big part of working on relationships, but I just wanted to throw that disclaimer out. You'll hear about one area. We had some difference of opinion and kind of how we handled that, but just wanted to throw that disclaimer out there. Vanessa and I are not wildly off.

Okay, so our first tip is to get clear on what's important to you and why. We always like to start with a little self discovery. We think it's so easy to focus more on your partner, the other person, but, like, it's always got to start with us. I think it's important for each and every person to take a little bit of time to consider, like, what are my exact beliefs? You might not even know until you started dating someone where you're like, oh, I do not like those beliefs. But we want you to figure out, you know, what is it that you believe and how important are those beliefs to you? And we're talking about a lot of different categories of things too, right? Political beliefs, social issues, religious beliefs. Like, those are very different things. There's. And you can definitely spend a lot of time, like, digging into exactly what it is that you believe.

Yeah, I think it's so important to try to understand what is important to you and kind of how important it is relative to other things. Because you have these set of beliefs, but not all of them are equally important to you. Like, which ones. Which types of things are you thinking about on a daily basis? Which things are you wanting to discuss on a daily basis? For example, you may have been raised religious, but maybe didn't go to church all the time. But maybe recently you do go to church a lot, and that's a really big part of your day, and you talk about religion all the time. Like, that is much more important than some of these other things that we're talking about. It's important to kind of almost like, categorize those beliefs and, like, how important are they to you? Before we even get into what it would be like if you had a.

Partner with different ones, figuring out which ones are really your core values, and it ties into a value for you. It's not just like, oh, I believe in X, Y, Z. It's like, this is a very important thing to me. It's very central to me.

Yeah. Central to the way I live my life.

Mm. I think another really interesting thing to take a look at is, like, where did your beliefs come from? I know I have definitely fallen for this trap of feeling like, oh, yeah, like, I have all these beliefs, and they're so important to me, and they're.

Really well thought out.

I came up with all of them, and. But then I think about, like, where did I grow up? What do my parents believe? What do most of my friends believe? What do you know? What kind of climate did I grow up in? And sometimes I realize I'm really the product of my upbringing. I have a lot of the beliefs as my parents and the people who are really close to me because I value their opinions and took some of those on. So I think that's really important for us to acknowledge and recognize, especially with other people. So, like, maybe you were raised by Democratic parents and you're a Democrat. Your partner was raised by Republican parents, and they're a Republican. So it just gives us each this opportunity to examine. And again, kind of going back to what Xander was saying about, like, what are beliefs that you just have because that was the only thing around you or the main thing around you for most of your life, or is your.

Belief completely the opposite?

Yes.

You got so pissed off at your parents that you're like, a Democratic. I'm switching parties. Don't know why.

Just am taking a look at that and seeing Again, going back to that idea of, like, yeah, what. What things are really core to me and really genuinely important. And then finally, the last question I think about is, how important is it to you to have someone who agrees with you? I think most of us, if you just get asked that, do you want to have someone who agrees with you? Yeah, I want my partner to agree with me.

Because it's kind of like, validate, you know, it's like, oh, yeah. Just the agreeing is like validation that you believe in something good or. Right.

But then let's ask you this. Why? You know, why is it important to you to have a partner who agrees with you? And we're going to get into a ton of other stuff in this episode about how important it is to have agreement in relationships, but that's just such an interesting question to ask yourself. Why is this important to me?

Do you really want someone who agrees, like, literally with everything with you? Because then that might get a little boring. Like, maybe you want people to agree in principle, but then you have some interesting discussions about the finer points. I think a lot of us immediately jump to, like, oh, yeah, well, I want someone who agrees exactly with me. And then if we follow that all the way through, it's like, that would actually be super boring. Then you wouldn't be able to talk about anything and just be like, oh, I think, blah, blah, blah. And they go, yeah, I agree. Conversation over.

Yeah. Tip number two is to get curious about your partner's belief. So just like, we're encouraging you to dig in a little bit more to your own beliefs, have that same level of curiosity for your partner. So where do their beliefs come from? You know, we just talked about, hey, your upbringing might have really influenced your beliefs. Maybe your partner's upbringing has really influenced theirs. I think about this one a lot when it comes to social issues. Like, there are a number of social issues that I hold very dear to my heart, that I'm very passionate about. And it's really easy for me to have a reactionary response to somebody not agreeing with that. And sometimes I need to take a step back and see, like, was this person even given the opportunity to learn about this issue? Have they ever met somebody who deals with this? Have they ever heard real stories about this? And I think a lot of us, A lot of us are raised in sheltered ways. A lot of us are raised in environments where a lot of people all feel the same sort of thing, kind of taking that context into consideration and saying, yeah, where did this belief come from? Was my partner, even given the opportunity to learn anything different, to be exposed to anything different.

This isn't to say that, like, all you need to do to form a good partnership is to educate your partner, because that kind of.

We'll get to that.

That's. That's a kind of a different dynamic. Yeah. It's just important to understand the why.

And then, just like we were recommending that, you ask yourself, why are these beliefs important to me? Kind of getting curious about why your partner's beliefs important to them. I think that the why behind someone's belief is really important. When somebody disagrees with you, it's really easy to lump them into a box and kind of make a lot of assumptions about them based on that one belief. So I think political parties is a great example. You're a Democrat, and you're meeting a Republican or a Libertarian or, you know, whatever. It's very easy for you to think like another fucking Republican, and you have all these assumptions of, like, who you think they are and what you think they believe. But the reality is that for any single belief that you can come up with, there are an infinite number of reasons why somebody might believe that belief. So, for example, if you're a really staunch Democrat, it might make a difference to you if you have a Republican partner who says, I'm a Republican because I hate paying taxes versus I'm a Republican because I hate gay people. Those are very big differences in what the why is. And by the way, I just want to be super clear that I'm not saying all Republicans hate taxes and hate gay people. I'm just trying to use a really extreme example of how different our reasons could be for believing any particular thing.

Yeah. And I think it's also important to remember that with politics and with religion, a given religion or a given political party stand for a lot of different things. And just because you are in one party or you practice one religion, it does not mean that you must therefore agree with every single bit of that. I definitely affiliate with a certain political party. I'm not just, like, writing a blank check for every single one of those beliefs. And like, yep, I support that. I support that. It's like, I support a lot of things. There's other things that I would change, but I'm not leading that political party. It's not up to me.

Yeah.

Nor do I want to be leading that political party. I'm perfectly happy recording these podcasts for you.

Yeah. I just think that sometimes when we hear the backstory around someone's beliefs, it Helps us develop compassion and helps us see them as a whole human being rather than just a list of their beliefs. Right. And so that kind of leads us into tip number three, which is to look for commonalities. Somebody from Instagram sent this into us. They said, sometimes we disagree, but oftentimes we see that we agree on the same issues and just have different ways of fixing it. Most of the time we often explain it by saying we're different sides of the same coin. So they're kind of talking about like, what are the intentions or the motivations behind the beliefs.

Yeah. So understanding the intentions or the motivations behind your partner's beliefs might help you see more nuance than just the black and white of that belief or like of the difference in your two beliefs. And the reality is you two may actually have the exact same intention. So a really good example here that's also quite topical is the COVID vaccine. You may both be feeling like, I want us to be safe, I want us to be safe and I want us to be healthy. And one person may be saying, I am pro vaccination because I don't want us to get Covid. And someone, your partner may be, I am against the vaccine because I don't think it is safe. I think there may be too many side effects. I don't want to risk the side effects or not knowing what's going to happen later. And in reality, you're both agreeing on this underlying premise of I both want to say to be safe and healthy.

So obviously these are really complex situations. Like, I know somebody who's pro vaccine could definitely jump in and say, hold on, we have safety statistics that we can show. And so, you know, we're not trying to get into a debate about the vaccine right here, but I'm just trying to point out, like, it's very easy for us to go into those kinds of arguments. But what we want to encourage you guys to look at is just find like, what are those base underlying motivations and intentions? They are not the whole picture, but oftentimes you may be able to find some sort of commonality there. Like, ah, we both have the desire to like protect each other and keep each other safe and healthy. We have different ideas of what that looks like and how we do it. But that's a tiny commonality there. That's a thread.

Also pro tip. I know we're not really talking about like how to change someone's mind on any of these things, but really one of the first steps to getting towards a more Shared understanding to just validate those underlying beliefs rather than immediately jumping in of, no, you're wrong. No, I have data. I have the right data. I need to show you to convince you, really the way to someone's heart, so to speak, is to really validate that underlying concern of, I hear that you really want us to be safe. I am with you on that a hundred percent. It is scary knowing that there is something out there that we could or we couldn't take in terms of this vaccine and it might make us safe, it might not make us safe.

Safe, yeah. Just looking for that underlying intention, that motivation, because oftentimes there are really ways to connect with each other around that. Another option is to create your own common ground. So we got this great quote from somebody on Instagram. They said, I'm an atheist married to a devout Christian. We decided early on that our true common ground was that we want to love everyone unconditionally. And that was and is enough for us to know that we're on the same page. Despite having wildly different religious beliefs, these two have identified. This is our core, core belief, our core value. And we can hold on to this together as a couple, even if we express that core value in very different ways.

Yeah, that gets back exactly what I was saying a little while ago about how like political parties or religions have a lot of different ideas and oftentimes there are a number of ideas within one that nearly everyone is going to agree on.

Tip number four, gonna be a big one. I think for a lot of people this was one that challenged me a little bit, but see the value in being accepted, exposed to different beliefs. So I will definitely say earlier in my life I was a much more black and white person. I was like, you're with me or you're against me. And as I've gotten older, I've really softened in that. I really just don't believe that there is a right and wrong in so many situations. I think that it's so much more valuable for us to really look at validating everybody's perspectives and experiences. And if my 16 year old self heard me saying that right now, she would lose her shit.

She would get down off her soapbox and lose her shit.

She absolutely would. I'm softening. I'm softening up in my old age. You know, I think there is a lot of value to being exposed to other ideas, different beliefs, to more diversity. I think it can be so beneficial to us in a lot of ways. Someone on Instagram said it definitely creates space for good conversation and creates opportunities to challenge one's own beliefs. Instead of just blindly accepting your beliefs, you're forced to support, support them and back them up or even change them.

I can definitely back up this person. I mean, this was my experience. The college that I went to, I went to a liberal arts college. Liberal arts colleges are notorious for being extremely liberal. You know, most in the name, yeah, it's in the name literally. And however, the one I went to, Claremont McKenna College, is kind of notorious for being not the most liberal. Liberal arts College is pretty 50, 50 when it comes to the political bent of the students. And so the really interesting thing about that is that you are not just by default exposed to people of the same political beliefs as you. First you meet people just walking around the dorms and out at parties and in class and you don't know what people believe yet. And then you start hanging out and talking and you're like, oh, you think things that are totally different from what I think. And like, where I grew up, I was never exposed to a lot of different ideas. And like, very quickly, you know, in my freshman year, it was like, oh, wow. I have friends that think a whole variety of things. It was a really new experience for me. And ultimately I think it was really valuable. It helped me have more respect for people with different ideas and realize there's a lot of ways of looking at things and that it is really important to understand why you believe something and be able to acknowledge, like, yeah, you know, I don't have a good reason for believing this. It's just kind of what I believe. Or like I've done all this research, I really care about this and I'll. Let me spout off a lot of facts and try to convince you or something like that.

You know, for me, I think these last couple of years the US grow more and more divisive. It's been a really frustrating couple of years. And that little 16 year old girl in the soapbox inside of me, you know, just like wants to throw up her hand and say like, these other people's beliefs are totally unacceptable. This is up like trash, trash. But the 37 year old me is able to say, like, is doing that going to actually lead to any change though? Is it going to lead to anything being any different?

And I think research shows typically if you disagree with someone on like a political belief and you just throw it in their face like, you're wrong. Here's 10 facts. All it does is it drives them further into believing what they believe, not Focusing on the, quote, facts that you've given them, but instead doubling down on the facts that they have.

So, yeah, it's just helped me realize that we all have so much learning and growing to do, and we have to make the space for that. For me, the Black Lives Matter movement has been a really great example of this over the last year and a half. I'll just speak to my own experience. Like, I have learned so much more than I ever knew. I mean, in 2019, like, I would have said, yeah, I'm not a racist person at all. All, but just being exposed so much more to what the black experience is like, to the countless black educators who have taken time and done this emotional labor. And we've also paid for courses. You know, we've paid to do more training about this because we really value that. But I've learned so much. I've come to appreciate so much more nuance. I'm finding new ways that I can be so much more actively engaged in the work of anti racism, recognizing ways that I was doing harm in the past. So it's just really shifted my views. I think I'm approaching it in a much different way. And I see so many people going through that same experience too. You know, it's the power of education, of exposure. It really can make a huge difference. And another completely different example, you know, there's been some really fascinating research done on homophobia. People who have really strong homophobic views oftentimes have had little or no experience with actual gay people. And so there's been research done on having homophobic people just, like, even hang out with gay people. Like, bless those gay people who had the patience and the grace and the compassion to be part of that research, really finding that. It's just that exposure changes those beliefs. People who started this study being incredibly homophobic towards the end of it were so much less so because they saw that other person as a human being rather than just as like, oh, you believe differently than I. You're different from who I am. Somebody on Instagram also spoke to this. They said, I personally know people who have transitioned to a different gender than what they were assigned at birth. Whereas my boyfriend has never met a trans person, he personally doesn't understand how someone could go through that or feel that way, which sometimes leads to him saying things that upset me. I try my best not to get angry, as I know it's a lack of exposure, upbringing, and a lack of. Of knowledge.

I can understand this because it's like, when you are not exposed to someone of a differing view or of a differing practice. Sometimes all you have is your own experience, your own eyes as a lens to see the world. And so you try to think, well, how could I do that? Could I live my life that way? No. And so then maybe you're like, oh, well, how could anybody else? Until you actually meet people or expose to people with a different viewpoint or a differing way of life, it's really hard to understand what that's like.

That brings us to tip number five, which is to value open mindedness over agreement. So this one was really inspired by the stories that were shared with us on Instagram. We heard from couples who have been together for decades and maybe like went into the relationship thinking they could change their partner's mind and having to eventually realize, no, not gonna change. And so over and over again, people kept pointing to how valuable it was for each partner to be open minded, even if they were both really ground into their personal beliefs. So the most basic aspect of open mindedness is really just being willing to listen to like hear your partner out to make the space for the two of you to have different beliefs. We also want to challenge you a little bit on this too. Can you both be open to changing your minds? So we're not saying you have to change your mind, but could you be open to the possibility of it? Could you at least consider the other side? Sometimes we have certain beliefs because we just haven't been exposed to anything different or we haven't learned about alternate ideas or beliefs yet. So I think this gets back to that self exploration that we recommended in tip number one is really identifying, like Xander said, what are your questions, core beliefs versus beliefs that you have. For something that feels so central to who you are as a person and how you live your life, maybe that's not something that you're going to change your mind on. Still, I think there is a value in at least hearing the other side considering it. But maybe there are other beliefs that you know are not particularly important to you. You just maybe have believed that your whole life. You're willing to kind of hear it out and maybe there actually would be the possibility that you would change your mind.

And this brings us to Vanessa and my big example of ourselves. So Vanessa and I disagreed over the death penalty when we first started dating. For some people, that really could have felt like a deal breaker. As for us, it didn't really. It was just sort of a. I don't even know how this came up. It wasn't like that early on in our relationship, it must have just been like, honestly, what probably happened was I think the death penalty has been on the ballot in California as a proposition, like to abolish the death penalty. Like every couple of years it's on the ballot. And I think we were doing our ballots and I was just kind of by default, I was like, oh, yeah, definitely voting to abolish the death penalty. And Vanessa was like, whoa, really?

Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly how it happened, actually. Yeah. So we ended up having this interesting discussion right in the middle of voting, of going over it. And for me, I think what I had said at the time was like, I'm not, maybe not morally opposed to the idea of taking someone's life who has done something really terrible to another person, but it wasn't something that I ever really thought through that much. It was just sort of like, I don't, don't necessarily think it's a terrible thing. I think you were really patient with me and, you know, you didn't, you definitely didn't judge me. It wasn't this like, oh my God, you're a terrible person for believing that. I learned more about the death penalty. Honestly, I was just completely uneducated about it. So I learned more about it. I learned more about the systemic issues that come up around it, particularly, you know, people of color are given the death penalty and the death penalty is enforced far more often. So I learned, you know, so much more about it. And I came to realize, okay, I can't get on board with this. I'm not a proponent of this. And I even really changed my ideas about morally, do I believe that it's okay to end someone else's life? And I think a lot of it was because of the patience that you had with me, the ways that you explained it, the ways you helped me get educated, the ways I just explored education on my own around it. But I think the open mindedness that both of us had, it very easily could have led to, like us shutting down and screw you. You believe that, like you're a terrible person. You believe that. Leander was saying it could have been a deal breaker in a different relationship, but it ended up not being.

You probably did a lot of that kind of like research on your own. Like, I think what I kind of led with was just like, oh, for me, it's like an ethical thing. How can we as a society not killing other people if that is the main value of our society, then how can we then as a society go out and Kill people. To me, it felt morally or ethically backwards. And so we just kind of talked through that. I think Vanessa was open minded, so. Oh, that makes, to me, that makes a lot of logical sense, but I don't really know enough about all the other details of it. And then, yeah, I don't know, sometime later you were like, oh, I've actually been reading a lot about this and I've changed my mind.

So again, I think it's just both of us being willing to be open minded and just consider different opinions, to do more education, to have calm conversations about this. And again, like, we're trying to be really clear here. The point of this podcast is not to teach you how to change your partner's mind or like, yeah, you're gonna get on the same page by the end of this podcast. We think that for a lot of couples there's just gonna have to be things that you agree to disagree about for the rest of your relationship. But there can be some wiggle room in certain areas. And maybe having that wiggle room and feeling that like, oh, my partner's really willing to listen to me and hear me out and educate themselves a bit more. Like, maybe having that creates more space for the big unmovable things between the two of you, it just creates like a little more goodwill around it.

Yeah. So being open minded like this, it can be really beneficial outside of your relationship as well. Someone on Instagram told us. Truthfully, I think it has made me more open minded to be able to talk about and sometimes change my mindset based on new information or a new point of view. We live in a society where it's so easy to surround yourself with like minded people. You unfollow those who contradict your beliefs. I get it. Some people are toxic and I've unfollowed people for similar reasons too. However, that in itself can be problematic because how do we learn when we're surrounded by people who are just like us? All I'm trying to say is, in a sometimes ugly world, I'm so grateful to have someone who has different opinions and beliefs as me and that we can speak so openly about them and learn from each other.

I think this person needs to teach a master class on living in a relationship with big differences. I mean, what a beautiful way to put it. It sounds like in this relationship they still disagree, but they're able to just talk about it openly, learn from each other, respect each other, and that keeps them both feeling good about those differences.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's such A less toxic environment than like trying to talk about political, social, religious issues on social media where it's just like people throwing up. Someone posts like a one sentence thing about something they believe and then 100 other people like tear them down with one other sentence. What kind of conversation is that really? You have no idea where that person's coming from. It's not like a well thought out belief. It's just like, oh, I think that everyone should get a million dollars every week.

Sounds good to me. Tip number six, set some boundaries. So we know we're talking about a lot of like big lofty ideas. We also just want to give you some really like practical things to do here. One simple thing that you can do is only talk about your differences when you're calm.

And with all of these boundaries, these are probably good things to explicitly talk about with your partner. Like, these are not necessarily. You should just start doing this. It's like you should have a conversation and decide both of you agree that you are going to follow these. It's not really a boundary if only you said it with yourself and the other person is not aware of it.

Okay, so only talk about things when you're calm. If you're in the middle of an argument about something else or things are generally tense between the two of you. Probably not a good idea to throw abortion into the mix as well.

I'll just go out on a limb and say it is definitely not a good idea.

One person suggested don't watch the news together. They said that they and their partner watch the news separately so they can each stay educated and up to date, but that watching the news just felt too triggering to do together. Another thing is you might just need to agree to disagree. And I know that that sounds like a really simplistic sentiment, but it can be surprisingly powerful in some situations. Just saying like, hey, you know what, let's just agree to disagree on this one.

Agreeing to disagree is kind of a buzzword that's thrown out there a lot these days. I think the real key is the agree part. In order for this to work, both parties have to actually really agree and agree that they are going to enforce this agreement to disagree. It's one thing to just be like, oh, we're just going to have to agree to disagree in a kind of passive aggressive way. But it's another, if you guys are like, you know what, we've talked about this a lot. It feels like we just keep having this recurring circular argument. Neither of us are feeling good about it. How would you feel if we both agreed to disagree on this, and that would mean that we don't need to continue having this argument. We don't need to keep coming back to it every week whenever we see the news that's all triggering or whatever. So it's the actual agreeing part that I think is the more important thing than the disagreeing part. Because if you can agree, then who cares? Don't even think about the disagreement. Just don't talk about it.

Another quick tip. Don't talk about this kind of stuff when you've been drinking. This is definitely a recipe for disaster. So let's just say all difficult conversations, and really, this is even more so than just like, religion and politics and social stuff. Like, any serious conversation that you need to have has to be sober.

Yep, definitely. Vanessa and I fell into this trap early on in our relationship. Had a couple fights early on that could have been very easily avoided. I think we both woke up the next morning being like, I feel really crappy physically and emotionally, not entirely sure why. And then we kind of talked about it was like, oh, we got into that argument. Let's not do that again.

We've definitely had arguments where we didn't even remember what we had argued about. We just woke up the next morning.

I remembered arguing, but that's about it.

Yeah, terrible. So, obviously, Xander and I are huge fans of communication, but we also think that sometimes it's okay to consciously not talk about certain issues. So if you and your partner just always get into arguments whenever you discuss something, if you can't see eye to eye, it just always creates tension. Like, it can be a healthy boundary to set to say, hey, look, we love each other, we respect each other. We have the space for each other to feel differently, to believe differently about this. It's just not something that's good for us to talk about anymore.

Yeah, I think that's the key, is the agreeing about it, the talking about it. Like, don't try to avoid certain topics, because that's like, a whole other thing of, oh, I'm going to purposely try to, like, move this conversation away from this topic that could possibly bring up this other topic that I know is going to go horribly wrong. Don't do that. That is going way out of your way. I was trying to, like, manage how somebody else feels, which is not a very healthy thing to do. But, yeah, it's more of like, oh, whoops, we accidentally mentioned this and started to get onto this topic. And then you both go, oh, you know what? Hey, this is the thing that we both would prefer not to talk about. So how was your day today?

Great. Thanks for asking. And finally, we have tip number seven. Celebrate your commonalities. Outside of religion, politics, moral beliefs. You know, when you have really serious disagreements over big issues like this, it's really easy for that to connect, consume your entire relationship. But the reality is those beliefs are just a small part of who you are, what your relationship is like, what your lives are like. It's also worth spending some time and attention on the other facets of your personalities, on the other facets of your relationship. So focus on those shared interests, those hobbies, those other commonalities that the two of you have to remind yourselves that you it's not just one big political shit show in your relationship. All right, and to wrap this up, we have two more quotes from Instagram that people shared with us. So one person said, it has taken a lot of reflection and mindfulness in realizing that you can't change someone to hold your beliefs. So there's no point in fighting about it, which is hard for me, being a control freak. You need to know that you love them at their core, regardless of the value or belief that differs and respect one another's differences in opinion.

I think this one is so huge. This is a huge. A huge shift away from ego. The ego of thinking that you can change someone to hold the same beliefs as you, or you can change them to do what you want and instead learning to accept them for who they are, you know, the flaws and all. And accepting them for who they are and respecting them. That. I think that's a. That's a huge, kind of like, long term relationship shift.

Yeah. Do you want to read the second one?

The second one is pick and choose your battles. Not every hill is worth dying on. That's a good one. Like, it's so simple. Would you rather be right or happy? I think a lot of us, maybe early on in relationships or earlier on in our lives, care more about being right. And as time goes on, many of us tend to realize happiness is a lot more important than feeling like we're right all the time. All right, so it's time to move into some listener questions. So first question is, how do I stop my partner from trying to convert me to their point of view? This is the flip side of what I said. The person who is still thinking that they can convince everyone of their perspective.

And this is the question that Xander added to our little podcast, glass prep sheet in exchange for the piece of chocolate.

Oh, was it Worth it?

That's a pretty good question. It's a tough one.

I know.

It's taking me a minute to think about.

I'm trying to keep you on your toes.

Thanks, babe. I guess the first thing that comes up for me around this one is to go to your partner and maybe ask them first to listen to this podcast episode together with you so you guys can like open up a conversation. And then I was thinking it could be nice, give your partner this opportunity after you've listened to this episode, but kind of say something like to them, like, tell me, what is it that you want me to hear about your belief? I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna hear you out. Maybe you won't even respond to it. I'll just let you speak and you tell me what's important to you. Why is it important to you? What do you want me to know? When did you come to believe this belief? What other beliefs does it relate to? Like, you know, give them the space to really just share with you whatever it is that they want to share and see how open minded you can.

Be and be like, hey, give me, give me the hard sell.

Give me the hard sell. Yeah, you can make against me. Just hear them out, see how open minded you can be. So for you, open minded might just mean literally, I'm just gonna listen. I'm not gonna respond, I'm not gonna argue back, I'm just gonna listen. Even if I know there is no way in hell I'm changing my mind about my belief, I'm just gonna listen. But maybe open mindedness for you in this context is, you know what? God, my partner just keeps trying to convince me about this and it's really not something that I care about that much. So let me see, let me hear my partner out and, and see what do they really have to say about it. But I would say like, give them that space to share with you whatever it is they want you to share and then kind of set it up so you tell your partner, you tell me everything you want to tell me and then we're going to walk away from there. We're not going to have another conversation about it. If you want to loop back around to it maybe like the next day or something, you could tell your partner like, hey, thank you for sharing that with me. I thought it was really interesting what you had to say. And it might be like, I still feel the way that I feel and I still feel really strongly about the way that I feel. I'm glad that we have a relationship where we can create the space for each other to express ourselves and express our beliefs and the things that are important to us. So give them that space. And then if they keep pushing, you're going to have to have a separate conversation with them at another time where you say, listen, we've got to find a different kind of way of talking about this. I'm not going to change my mind. I'm hearing that you're not going to change your mind. So this might be something that we need to use some of those other tips with. Like, maybe it's that we have to agree to disagree or we have to decide that we're not going to talk about this issue anymore.

Are you open to another perspective?

Oh, okay.

How open minded is Vanessa right now?

I don't know.

Oh, boy.

All right, give it to me. What's your other perspective?

So I have another. This is not another perspective. This is another suggestion. This could also be. I can see myself in the person that this questioner is referring to. I think this may also be a kind of like male, female dynamic as well.

You think the guy's the one who's trying to convert her?

Yeah. So I think there may be an element of sort of mansplainingness, which I can relate to. It's definitely something I still do occasionally, something I really did a lot in the past. But what I do think is so that to the person asking this question, it is worth having a discussion saying it's been really feeling to me, like, every time we talk about X, it feels like you're really trying to convince me or convert me, like, really hard and that's not feeling good. I'm curious, like, what is your experience? Are you really wanting to convince me or what is that like for you? Because I can recognize that while that's how I'm feeling about it, you may be having a different intention. So the person may be feeling like, oh, I like wanting to debate. I enjoy talking about it and kind of like debating. And I was seeing this as a fun thing. However, I'm hearing you're saying that this is not feeling fun. This is something that came up, Vanessa, early on in our relationship where I'm.

Like, no, this is not fun. Xander's like, yeah, we're just debating. It's so fun. And I'm like, I hate this.

Yeah. So, like, and informed from my past, I was talking about the college I went to. There was a lot of friendly and maybe not always so friendly, but friendly and also breaking some of the rules. A lot of friendly but drunken debates about politics and social issues. And so it was something that I was just very used to doing. It was kind of like what you did. You just debated, and it was fun to argue. And, you know, you'd come away friends at the end and. And then all of a sudden I was doing this with Vanessa and it was feeling very hurtful to her, and so I was confused as to why she was getting so upset. And I think we had a conversation the next day, and I really heard her saying that that didn't feel fun to her. It doesn't feel fun to debate in the way that I felt like I was just having a sort of fun debate. So it wasn't a matter of who was right and who was wrong about that, but it was just like, hey, like, someone's feeling okay about this. Someone is feeling really not okay about this. So, like, like, why would I want my partner to be feeling not okay about something? So I think it's worth just trying to see, like, what is your partner's intentions with the way that they're trying to convert you? Because you may feel like, oh, my God, they're just, like, being a dick and trying to convert me, and they may feel like I'm just trying to, like, have a little discussion and my partner's just not even engaging.

I'm open minded. I can see that happening. It happened to us. So sure.

Next question is, I just ended a relationship because we had different political beliefs. I'm not sure how to address that going forward. Do I put this as a deal breaker in my dating profile? Do I ask these questions right away with someone new?

Okay, so I think one thing that we didn't actually clearly say so far in the podcast is that I think there is the space for there to be deal breakers. Yeah, I think that there are definitely going to be beliefs that you have that you hold so dear to your heart. They're so central to who you are, how you experience the world, the kind of life that you want to lead, that I think it's perfectly fair to say, like, this is a deal breaker for me. I can't be with somebody who doesn't believe this. That being said, it also still is complicated because human beings are flexible and we do change. So you might meet somebody who initially says something that's incompatible with your beliefs, but maybe they realize, like, oh, wow, this person that I'm dating is really passionate about this. Let me learn more about it. Oh, actually, I don't really believe What I, you know, used to believe I can change my mind. I think that leading with a list of deal breakers or even being so explicit with it that it's like on your dating profile, like that could cut off the possibility of you meeting people who are open to shifting their perspectives and open to changing their minds. So I mean, it's, it's all a choice. Like, it's definitely your choice. You absolutely could put it on your dating profile. Like, hey, I'm really looking for people who believe this or feel this. I would phrase it more like that. Like looking for people who are like minded versus no, no.

Like, list of 20 things. Yeah, I think that we get into this really interesting kind of black and white type of thinking around deal breakers and dating. Oftentimes on the one hand, we kind of people either will be like, oh, I've got this whole list of deal breakers, or people be like, oh, I'm super open minded to whatever. And a lot of us don't feel like we can land in the middle. Like a lot of people might be like, well, I don't want to be that person that's got a list of 10 deal breakers. And I never find someone because I'm just finding the one flaw in every, in every single person. And so then you feel like, well, in order to not be that person, I can't have any deal breakers. When in reality it's like having A list of 10 to 20 deal breakers is probably going to lead to a bad time dating. But having one or two really important ones that are central to you that may actually help you kind of like narrow down the field.

I've never really thought about it this way before, but I think there's something about like putting deal breaker on your dating profile or really leading with that and the questions that you ask people. It's like you're looking for deal breakers versus putting it on your profile as like, I believe this and I'm looking for people who believe the same sort of thing. Like you're looking for compatibility. And I think that's just a very different way of living in the world and going out in the world. Like, I want to look for the things that are going to bring me joy and happiness and a sense of fulfillment versus I'm looking for the deal breakers.

Also, if you put a bunch of deal breakers on your dating profile, the signal that that may send to someone else is you are a person with very rigid thinking because. Yeah. And is, is that the type of person that you want to attract? So it's a balance. You kind of have to be like, well, I want to be open minded because I also want someone that is not so rigid in their thinking. So then maybe I therefore also can't be so rigid in my thinking.

So we know we have given you a ton of information in this podcast, so definitely head on over to our episode page to get all these tips. We have them all written out there for you. It's@vmtherapy.com Episode 14 the number 14 and we will also put a link there for our free guide, the Simple Daily Check in for Couples. So if you're finding yourself feeling disconnected because you've been arguing about different political or religious or social beliefs, this guide can help you form some new habits around communication that focus on building daily connection and intimacy instead.

It won't solve all of those disagreements, but it'll it'll give you more things to agree about.

I thought you were gonna say more things to disagree about. I hate this guide. I love this guy.

Well, if that happens, then that's a problem. But hopefully you'll both enjoy it. We really hope so. And that's all for today's episode of Pillow Talks. We really hope you enjoyed this episode and we really thank you so much for listening. Join us again next week when we will talk about how to get over shame around masturbation.

Sam.