Healing Toxic Relationships: What's The Bite That Fits Each Other’s Wounds?

You said we have a bite that fits each other's wound. Can you share about that?

You and I find each other based on memory. Everything is memory. Almost everything we do, choices we make is memory based, whether we know it or not. I pick you based on familiarity and recognition. If you were too strange, I may be able to have sex with you, but I couldn't commit because you're too far away from home. It's not that nature made a mistake. It's that I still haven't learned how to deal with all these different states that I experienced that were unrepaired in childhood. Because I recognize you, you are more likely than not to play some of the characters in my life or to produce feelings in me that recall other experiences with important people with me. And so then I can confuse you with those people.

Stan, thank you for coming on the podcast. I was telling you before we hit the record button, 10 years ago, in one of my previous relationships, my partner at the time gave me Wired to Love. And I wasn't having it at the time. I guess you could say my spiritual awakening or multiple came after that. So it's a huge honor to have you on the podcast and to share your work. And it's such a deep dive into how we do what we do, why we do what we do, not only with ourselves, Stan, but. But for relationships, which seems to be everyone's biggest learning curve. So I appreciate you being here.

I'm glad. I'm glad you invited me, Josh. Pleasure.

One of the things that I was reflecting on this morning, I was actually sitting in the sauna space, and I was thinking about. I'm sorry, Space is beautiful. Yeah.

You have a sauna space.

You enjoy the sauna space.

Well, you have a sauna. Is that.

Well, it's. It's actually a sauna space, which is one of our. It's different. It's photon bulbs, so it's not a traditional sauna.

Gotcha. Gotcha.

You got to check it out if you're. If you're into that kind of thing. You're a sauna man.

I. I love sauna. I love steam room, actually. Even better.

Yeah, it's interesting because when we. When we heat up, we tend to leak out stuff that maybe we're holding onto. So to make the. The corollary, I was. I was sitting in the sauna space, and I was thinking about. I'm so great with work, and I love this, which is connection and sharing real knowledge and wisdom. But my deepest learning curve on planet Earth has been Relationships. And I feel like maybe as a jumping off point we could start. I have, we have a deep craving for relationships to be at times easier where we just wish they were easy. But I bring, you know, we all bring suitcases filled with, I guess you could even say emotional epigenetics or lineage transfer or just issues to the relationship. And it's a paradox that I'm sure in 30, 40 years of your work you have come across as a common thread where people just consistently wish for it to be easier. Can you share people? How you sit at this juxtaposition of so many clients and I guess even practitioners coming your way where they wish it was easier. But yet that's just truly not the fundamental nature of human relationships. If they were easy, there would be no divorces.

Well, relationships actually don't exist except in our heads. It's an abstraction. Relationship is something you and I create from scratch, right? You can't take a picture of it. You can just take a picture of people. It isn't relationships that's so difficult. It's human primates. Human primates are difficult creatures. Warlike and impulsive and aggressive and self centered and selfish and moody and fickle and xenophobic and easily influenced by groups. You know, it's we that are difficult. Trying to be in relationship is hard because we're better off and not better off. But we're, you know, war comes easier than love and, and that's the thing we have to be concerned about.

There's a talk that you've given and it's TEDx, it's linked in the show notes right here where y' all are watching. So it's absolutely incredible. There's 10 minutes of wisdom that I've seen. Never seen it squeezed into that short of a talk. Over a million people seen the video now that, what year was that video? Do you remember being on stage? Like, can you, can you, can your memory, can your body memory take you back there right now?

Yeah, and I just want to black out like I did then. Nerve wracking, that whole process. But yeah, it was, it was a while ago. I, you know, I'm 68 years old. It's very hard to pin me down with dates.

One of the, one of the things I loved in the videos you, you break down, which I believe is the true mark of an elder or a wise educator taking massively complex systems, one part of PACT being neuroscience and breaking it down into ambassadors and primitives. And I'd love for you, for maybe people that have never come across your work. Stan, if you could just explain these two facets. The ambassador being like the hungry energy source and then the primitives being kind of the more fast and energy cheap source. How we relate to that part of our brain and also how that brain allows us to operate in the world. Those two parts of the brain, right?

You know, if, if people are Daniel Kahneman fans thinking fast and slow, there's some, there's some, you know, connection there between what I'm describing as the primitives and the ambassadors. He talks about system one and system two. Thinking fast, thinking slow. And I'm talking about subcortical areas of the brain that shoot first, ask questions later that are survival oriented. The whole brain is survival oriented. But these areas are very have their ear close to the ground. That's why I call them primitives. And using very cheap memory to operate doesn't need a lot of oxygen and glucose. The primitives I'm talking about and not very plastic, but extremely fast. And we have lightning fast recognition systems particularly for threat cues. And so when we talk about primitives we're talking about one area of intelligence, one area of, of being able to think and operate. So the primitives are basically our automatic brain. Most everything we do throughout the day is automatic memory based, reflexive. We're energy conserved animals. Like everything else in biology, any living thing is energy conserv. And so we don't use higher cortical areas like the primitives, the neocortex that are energy consuming, meaning lots of oxygen and glucose to run and highly caloric. And this is what Kahneman talks about is system two critical thinking. Using these expensive but very slow areas of the brain that error correct, error correct. From the primitives, you know, sensory motor information and also predict, plan and rotate objects in 3D in our heads but also able to regulate the primitive areas which want to act now. So holding and waiting, social engagement, all of that. Being human is particularly, you know, relegated to the prefrontal cortex, you know, for better or worse. And so those are the primitives and, and you know, and the ambassadors. And unfortunately or fortunately depending on, on the context, when we feel the least bit threatened and our blood pressure and, and heart rate goes up, we start to move towards what's called hypothalamic system of fight or flight or freeze and in some cases collapse. And that is where we get into trouble with each other. No matter who we're dealing with. It's very easy to shift from love to self protection and war.

A big part of this too. From My own research and interviews. I know that when we're in supreme fight or flight, the PFC shuts down. So we're just not fully present at all. It's actually a. It's a hardware, and it's also a software operating program. If you could talk about that, maybe from your own anecdotes and from your own research. Because a big part of this has been your relationship with Tracy, with your wife, my love. And I think about all of us, you know, whether. However we relate. Right. There's many ways to relate. There's many ways to orient in love. But all of us at times have felt, why did I do that? Why did I treat that person that way? It was almost like I was literally not in my head, which, from a neurobiological standpoint, maybe they weren't.

Well, we're in our head, but we're in our head unchecked. We're, again, using pattern recognition as a way to assess whether we're safe or not, whether we're safe or not. And so we have to understand that we're, you know, built to survive. And. And even if it's our child, even if it's our loved ones, we can feel threatened, and we could mistake our partner for the enemy. That is quite easy to do. In fact, not only easy to do, it is probably going to happen unless people understand how this works and they're able to mitigate this process from snowballing, because it will, if not checked.

And when that PFC goes offline, part of your work with pact, and this might be a great time to introduce this concept, psychobiological approach to couples therapy. This was your term. This is your work. It's a huge, I guess, keystone of how you teach practitioners and also just how couples learn to relate to each other. Neuroscience, attachment theory, and the biology of human arousal. But not just arousal in the way that we think of arousal. Not like, hey, I'm turned on because you're wearing a mini skirt. Like, legitimate arousal from a biological level. Can you go a little bit into the neuroscience? I'd love to start at the head and then drop down into the heart, if you're open to that.

Sure. So when you say the PFC goes offline, it did really, it. It becomes impaired, like other areas of the brain, like the hippocampus becomes impaired under stress. But with cortical steroids being produced even a little bit in our brain, it does affect the prefrontal cortex, and it does burn cells. Right. Corticosteroids tend to be cytotoxic which is why we don't want to be in a stress situation for elongated periods for many reasons, one of them being health. So whenever we have glucocorticoids being produced, we become less empathic, less, you know, we act with less grace. I'm not as interested in your point of view. I'm not going to put myself in your shoes and I start to protect my interests only and just with a slight amount, by the way, we're not talking about, you know, big fight or flight states, but just getting up there. We start to lose a sense of alliance or unity. And so therefore we have to know how to prevent that from happening in relationships as well as in our own body if we can. But there's only a certain degree to which we can do that without losing our stuff.

Yeah, that's interesting you said losing our stuff because our, our stuff, and this is something that I'm researching for my book is like when we absorb emotions, they are literally almost like a cattle being imprinted. We are imprinted in a certain way from our parents behavior. And really if you look at the biology of it, Stan, I'm curious how you feel about this. We are born when our mother is born, we're an egg inside of her. So there's so much that we are imprinted with that we may not even know that pulls us into being in our primitive and not having empathy and making it all about the other person. And then what you talked about in your TEDx was couples can fight as long as somebody doesn't threaten to leave. It's the threatening to leave that is really the ultimate crucible that dissolves all trust and makes people not want to be with one another anymore. Can you expand that a little more?

Sure. It's because the attachment system, as I see it, is a biological mandate that says I can't quit you. We confuse it for love. We confuse a lot of things for love, like attachment systems. You know, as a recipient of somebody who is, who is insecurely attached but their behavior feels unloving to me. But their behavior isn't driven by love or not love. It's driven by safety and security. So the attachment system is nature's glue that holds us together. And we think it's love, but it's actually a very primitive existential threat going all the way back to infancy that losing our primary attachment relationship fills like death, like we will die. Now logically we don't think that, but on some level we do feel it. And so threats to the relationship actually cause more trouble than, than engaging strapping yourself in for the ride and not threatening the end of the relationship. Unless you're going to leave the relationship, in which case you just leave. Sure, but, but it's also a very helpless tool. When people are at their most helpless, they're the most aggressive. And so, so a lot of people throw round threats to the relationship because they can't think of anything else to do. And it tends to be self harming to do that and also maybe something they saw in their family of origin.

Why can't they quote, think of anything else to do?

Because they're in that threat state. And in the threat state we cannot create new, new patterns or new ideas. We're non contingent. It's not a relative relativistic state of mind that, that is able to, to use all areas of the brain. So as soon as we get very upset or get very stressed, a lot of our energy, a lot of oxygen goes to, and blood flow goes to our extremities to striated muscles and is not there for the brain. Because when you have to run or fight, you don't need to do calculations, right? You just get out of the way of the train that's coming at you. So, so that's really what's happening is that we're under resourced in the brain area and we cannot come up with something new. So when we are threatened, we're going to be automatic and in loops that keep repeating. And you put two people together and you have a system that's reacting to itself. It's no longer individuals, it's a system. Nobody knows where this begins or ends. Therefore only one of them needs to do something different to change that trajectory of that fight or that event where people are that upset. So there's always a way to do this, but people have to actually have to predict, plan and prepare for these things when they're sober, meaning not on adrenaline before they get into this live situation. Pattern recognition.

That's interesting. You said sober because really we are drunk on cocktails. It's just they're non alcoholic, they're endogenous catecholamines and there's all these stress hormones going on and our adrenal glands on the back of our kidneys are pumping out cortisol and it's a, it's really a Molotov cocktail. I wonder how you'd, how you'd explain when. Let's just say for, for heteronormative example, a man could be really despondent he could pull back and the woman is getting angry because she's not getting his full presence yet. It's really a strategy that the man created because that's how he survived as a child in the dynamics of his relationship in that type of example. And it could be any, any way that people relate. But let's just use a man and a woman for an example. What would be a way to disarm one another in that situation to get the man out of his primitive and to actually allow him to cultivate his own empathy in that moment? It's kind of a loaded question. I know there's a lot of ways to start, but it's.

I need to, to, to simplify it just a little bit or so. You could be talking about many different things. So give me an example. That's the best way for me to understand what you're talking about.

Okay. Example A. A man comes home from a long day and when he gets home, he's exhausted. Instead of him talking about his feelings, he literally just wants to sit on the couch. His wife has been at home taking care of children and she needs connection and love and she's probably feeling neglected in some sort. So without the right skills, she may start projecting all the ways that she's upset with him without actually saying what she means, which then further drives him into being despondent. How would we change that situation?

Yeah, that's not a heteronormative kind of thing because it's gendered. It's gendered. But truth be told that you're describing people from the distancing group or, or, and with people from the clinging group of insecure attachment or personality. So that could be a female. And there are plenty of females who want nothing to do with reunion and want their alone time and don't discuss feelings. So, so let's take that, let's take male or female, somebody who is, let's say in the distancing group, in the attachment realm. These people tend to shy away from transitions. Home, not home, work, home. Right. Because every place for them feels like work. These folks many times feel too much interpersonal stress throughout life. And they have a strategy of distancing, a strategy of auto regulating, meaning, self soothing, self stimulating without the pressure or demands of another person. So I'm coming home and I'm tired. Yes. But I need to transition. And if I don't believe I can with another person who's going to come at me with demands and expectations, I'm going to want to go in the bathroom I'm going to want to go in the bedroom and shut my, shut myself off. I'm going to do something to get away from what I perceive demands on, on me because I'm performative so. And I have a hard time setting boundaries. So the smart thing to do for two people is to greet each other routinely like you would with any kind of, you know, habit, ritual, taking the shoes off before going inside. For some people that just represents home, not home, just to give a different sense. But if partners reunited immediately, and this is all, all reunions, did it properly, chest to chest, belly to belly, you know, hugging, a hug, hold embrace or holding eye contact at relative close distance for about a few seconds a minute until they see each other relax and then go about their business. They would do better. But I'd go further with this situation. Have a landing, a landing place. We go to the bed, we go to the couch together and, and then be with each other for a while in a low demand or non demand context. In other words, instead of my telling you all the things that happen during the day or complain about the kids or any of that, we just hang out together. We just hang together and relax, enjoy the view. If we're looking outside, kids can come and join us if they want. They just can't interfere. They can't get in between us. They'll join. And that's how we recover faster is together. All things we do better together. As long as the conditions are correct. Right? The conditions have to be right. So that's what I would say with that couple. They have to transition well. And there are people in the insecure world that don't shift from one thing to the other very well. Doesn't shift to. From being alone and focused to interacting or doesn't shift from interacting to being alone. Whereas secures people who are not afraid of abandonment or engulfment, you know, needlessly can shift quickly in either direction and won't have as much of a problem.

Do you find that it's always. Well, that's an interesting phrase, always. I think in that question the answer would be no. But do you find that most of the time there is a certain proclivity of one individual, however they operate in the world that they tend to go to? Or have you seen a large quantity of people where they flip back and forth between anxious avoidant or island and wave to quote, wired to love.

The people who are in the secure zone and which is a wide area. Right? A wide area that's you know, in the coding it's you know, gradients of distancing, gradients of clinging in the attachment world. So it's, there's a wide berth. People in the, in the center are going to fluctuate. They're not going to be card carrying islands or card carrying waves, meaning that, that they're rigidified in one area. Therefore highly predictable. Because I always over respond to withdrawal, distancing, being ignored, not paid attention to or you know, feeling like my, my freedoms are being taken from me, my stuff is being taken. My autonomy or demands are being make made on me where I want to just go away. So those people will do it every time. That's different than, than people who are in the secure zone. And they will fluctuate which is normal. One person is distancing, the other one is more pursuing and, and then they, they change places. That's more normal. When I say I shouldn't say normal, all of it's normal, but it's, it's, it's more like secure and, and the ultimate goal.

Not that there's ever a there there, but in relationships the majority of the time, maybe I'm curious what percentage you might put on it. I could guess. 80% of the time, a beautiful healthy functioning, both partners feel like the anchor or feel like the secure would be a beautiful percentage to hit. And then 20% of the time we're in our projections, we're in our stories, we're in our programs. Is that kind of a healthy percentage there or would you put a different number on that?

It isn't. I think there's a difference between what we call secure functioning and secure attachment. So secure attachment is basically not being so vulnerable to the experience of either abandonment or engulfment. You can move away from me and I'm fine. You can move toward me and I'm fine. Right. It's, I'm not bothered by either. So that's really secure. It's, it's about safety and security as I remember when it comes to depending on another person. So it's a very, very plastic system. Unlike personality, it, it can change in either direction depending on our current relationship. Right. Our current primary attachment relationship. So I wanted to say that about it. But, but it also doesn't have anything to do with health. These are states that are produced by adaptation to our environment as children. And in it, we see it when looking at babies, watching babies interact with their caregivers. We see how these, these systems or these organizations start. They're merely adaptation to the culture, the family culture, the parental culture. In terms of their own attachment values. And that's it. So I'm basically doing what I had to do and what I figured was acceptable very, very early. And I still do it. Right. But it's also based on fears. If I. If I either cling or distance. Right. In some way, I. I couldn't do both in my childhood. I couldn't cling and depend fully, and I couldn't distance when I wanted to without some kind of consequence. That's really. Yeah. And then it gets reinforced in adulthood.

That is so interesting because we all know that we're the product. I mean, so many people in your field that are leading voices, you being one of them, have talked about the way that we are essentially imprinted, to use that analogy. But yet, how do we grow up without growing up? Do you know what I mean? Like, how do we enjoy life with the heart and spirit and mind of a child, but also the responsibility to be the arbiter of our thoughts at the same time?

Well, when it comes to adult relationships, that's the best place. Right? It really comes down to relationships. In the end, that's all we ever care about anyway.

Yeah, so.

So relationships is where we grow up, if we do. Because now we are. We're either. We're either seeing this through a reality function, an executive function that sees life as it is, not how we want it to be, which includes the idea of interdependency. That interdependency means that you and I are engaged in a union where we have the same things to gain and the same things to lose. If it weren't that way, it would either be dependency only or codependency, one direction. So interdependency means we both have a sh. We have a shared purpose for unionizing. We have a shared vision for ourselves. We're on the same page with regard to the construction or architecture of our relationship. It's our build fresh. It's not our parents build. Just doing what we know we're doing something from scratch. Two separate individuals with equal power, equal authority coming together and creating something entirely new based on our preferences today and as best we can think of going forward. So that's. That is something rarely done by couples. Couples operate under a different universe of. Of entitlements where people get lulled into thinking they're family. And they start to think many times they're in an asymmetric relationship where they get to not be fair and just or sensitive to each other. So if we look at where we grow up in in orienting towards a two person psychological system which coupling should be. I know that my fate is tied to yours. Every. Everything I do is going to affect you, which is going to affect me immediately. Therefore, I can't operate as a one person system without threatening you because as soon as I do, I give you the idea that I care only about myself and my interests. I couldn't give a about yours. You're going to do the same and then we square off and that's the beginning of the threat system that accrues. So this is harder to do than. Than it sounds. It's very simple.

It sounds hard.

I have to, I have to consider you at all times. At the same time I'm considering myself or you may get the idea I'm the enemy. And so, so basically what is this? It is character. It is the two of us coming up with our, our agreed upon relationship ethics, our personal relationship morals that are just for us, that we adhere to because it's the only thing that's going to keep us from doing harm to each other. Right? It's there to protect us from each other. Because as I said, human beings, human primates are by nature unreliable, especially over time. So. And we're opportunistic. If we can get away with something, we will. So what's to protect us from the wiles of being this animal? That is what every civilization has done or religion is to come up with principles that govern each other so that we have the ability to hold each other to account based on an agreed upon account. That requires an executive function. Josh of the prefrontal cortex, namely the dorsolateral, for those who are interested, that will do the right thing even when it's the hardest to do, and that is growing up. That's dedication to a purpose, a dedication to, to survival. Basically. When it involves another person. I can't screw you without screwing myself. Anything I do to you is going to happen to me. That's why it's a two person psychological system. Two individuals that are two generals, two bosses have to respect each other, be formal enough to respect each other. But they have a pact or several packs, social contracts to ensure that they behave in a, in a way that is fair, just insensitive, collaborative and cooperative at all times. That's hard.

I could imagine. I mean, that's how it is in my relationship. And we both really want to enforce with love these contracts that you mentioned. You know, if we're two generals and life at times can feel like a war, even though compared to our Ancestors. We are in such a beautiful place, but we have the same software, we have the same hardware like we're designed for when tigers were kind of running around. And maybe it feels like that when someone's yelling at you, you know, things shut down. What was fascinating to me in what you just share, I mean, there was so much. There is. You talked about how the, the secure functioning is different than the social set of social contracts, than the secured. The anchoring point. I love this. In your work you said a two person psychological system based on true mutuality, where everything we do is good for me and good for you. What happens when that contract breaks? How do we reestablish love to be the glue to bring that contract back together? Because I would assume that left unintended, it would. Or left, left, you know, unaware that contract could just float out into the ocean and then people would divorce.

Glue isn't a. Love isn't the glue. Love is not enough. So let's take it out of the feeling realm. Because attachment, the attachment biology is the glue that we confuse with love. Purpose. Purpose is what keeps us going and keeps us together over time happily. So what is our purpose at any given moment? Is it shared or is it just mine? Right. We, you and I, have to create consensus so that we find always where we agree and where we're the same and not simply go for the low hanging fruit, which is where we disagree and where we're different. Consensus builders know how to do this. So you want apples and I want bananas and we fight. It didn't occur to one of us to suggest, but do we both want fruit? Oh yeah, we both do. 1. Okay, well this can be arranged. No problem, right? This is how people have gotten together and unionized from all different cultures across the world. Because they had to, right? They had to. We have to get along. So let's find how we're going to please each other, how we're going to work this out so that we both get what we want and we both avoid what we don't want. And everybody can do that. It's just most people don't think they should have to. I think you should. I don't want to do it.

Where does that come from, that entitlement piece? Is it, is that in itself a protection mechanism or is it something that's more societally taught? Have people learned this by society or by parents example or both?

I think first we have to look at our nature state the, the human primate off the line, the factory line is super better than Any other animal we know. But it's still not that great because of all the things I just said. Take, take your child, take a 2, 3 year old, even 4 or 5 year old, that they're the epitome of the human condition. If they were really big, they'd be killing people. You take my toy, I kill you. Yeah, right. They're everything I just said. So. And then as adults, we're just, you know, a hair away from that. Stress me enough and I become a three year old. So, so, you know, first we look to the human condition. This is all of us, all of us, all of us are a pain in the ass. All of us are, are going to disappoint and can do things that are, that are pro self and not pro social. Which is why we have to think ahead and we have to not be naive. And so you'll do it? You love me? You'll never do that. That's stupid. I love you. I would never do that. Well, that's dumb. That's naive. What about when I don't love you? What am I capable of? What if I don't like you today? What if I'm not that into you? What if I hate you? I'm capable of doing a lot of things. So purpose. We put things in place that we do because it's the right thing to do or the best thing we could do. Regardless of how we feel, it must be done. That's what purpose is. We must do it. And that's a good life.

So if love is not enough, and I've heard this from multiple sources, love is. We've been sold, maybe a lie of love for so long. Disney movies and the Glass Slipper and all these things. Love essentially is not enough. Then what is enough? How would one know? Is there an inventory process of one's way of being, of their soul, of their beingness, where they could actually say, my partner, even with the challenges, I love and respect them. And I've made a decision to love that has nothing to do with what I've been sold that love is, but actually a decision that you just described that has been bringing us together for millennia.

Well, people have done terrible things in the name of love. Right? People have murdered in the, in the name of love. So, so we have to put feelings where they belong, in, in the area of we can't control them. We can't legislate according to feelings and thoughts. I can't legislate what you're thinking. I can't legislate what you feel I can't do that with myself. But what can we do? We can legislate behavior that we can do and, and it's behavior or our adherence to agreements that our self and other preserving that saves the day. But that requires discipline and character. Because if we do things by emotion, well, I just won't adhere to our agreement because I don't feel like it. Because you pissed me off. I want my comeuppance or want you to get your comeuppance.

So come up it come.

Offense is justice. You know, I want you to pay. Yes, you know, and that's how we are. So we have to understand that, that we're animals. And any in the illusion otherwise is actually a function of the interior insula shout out. It's an area of our brain that actually finds it disgusting to see ourselves as animals. Isn't that interesting? But we are and yeah, we are. And it's proven every day. So. So again, since feelings and thoughts can't be controlled by, by will, we cannot wait for the feeling of love to come over us to do the right thing. We have to plan what the right thing is when, when we're thinking about policy, not about, about what happened or about, you know, feeling right. This is, this is just the way it is. This is just the way it is. And people learn it either the hard way or they learned it in, in childhood in their family of origin in terms of a unity and putting the relationship first before the self, which is in a way preserving the self.

Yes. I, I find this to be true all the time in my relationship where there are many times I definitely don't quote, feel like doing something if I'm triggered. I, I don't feel, I don't feel hugging her and giving her a kiss or. But there are many, many times that I do it anyways because there's something inside of me and I don't know exactly where it is. It could be in my brain. It could be a soul awareness that I have. You know, whether you're science or, or spirit based, I think the answer is all the same. It's just the most loving thing to do. It's what creates the most peace, is to do the thing that is ultimately right for the, the couplehood, the universal couplehood. Instead of just me and my own little high chair tyrant that exists inside that's screaming, well, why should I have to be the one to go and make peace, to go and make love? Right? And so that. I wonder if you could expand that a little bit because that I assure you, from what I've heard with my men's groups and all the people that have come to this podcast, that is a overwhelming fight that happens. Why should I have to be the one to make peace, to make love?

Because you're part of a union. And if you don't do it, you're. Because there's only two of you. You're. You're protecting the union. You're not protecting yourself. You live in this union. Noblesse oblige. The person who thinks of it should do it. Right? Because otherwise we both go off the cliff. Oh, you didn't have your hand on the steering wheel. I don't have my hand in the steering wheel. You should put your. Why do I have to put my hand on the steering wheel? And we go off the cliff, we both die. Good times. That's a one person thing, right? Why should I have to do it? Because I'm aware of it right now. I better do it. So. And I want you to do it too. And if you're not doing it at all, then we have a talk later about how come you're not also pulling your weight. How come you're also not protecting this union. Right. You gotta also intervene, not just me. So. Right. Because that's not fair. So. So yeah, it. It is. It is a union. And if we were, you know, if we were in a foxhole together, I'm not going to complain that I have to do something that benefits both of us. I'm going to do it. Because we want to survive, right? We want to live. If the war is in our foxhole, that's Darwinian. We're just not going to make it. It's not supposed to happen. We can't be adversaries. That's stupid. You know, everything that's a danger should be outside, not inside doing the cold plunge.

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What do you see? From I'm on Instagram quite a bit. That's where a lot of our listeners are engaging. And so when I go on there, there are things that the feed the algorithm technocrat gods feed me that at times is very off putting. It's very toxic. It's this, it's, it's proclaiming this war of men and women and you know how women don' men and how they should just focus on their careers and never have children because if your body gets not sexy then it's your worth. I mean just total degrading things but.

Very, very depressing actually very depressing.

But. But there's a part of me that realizes those are coming from the shadow and, and that shadow is essentially asking for some reprieve. Right by the very stance that they're out there. That narrative of darkness really of of hatred and of division in its own encapsulation is wanting some reprieve. It's wanting love, it's wanting acceptance. What do you see? We don't have to focus on this. I just wish you could shine some light on the darkness that you see. What is the societal narrative or what is something that you come across that people have been unfortunately trained or maybe their amygdala has been hijacked, that men aren't safe, women are this way. Just some narratives that we can identify as obvious mistruths.

Well, remember I said that it's in our DNA as human primates to be xenophobic. In other words, in other words, we naturally otherize that will never go away except by culture. Right. Culture restrictions. But right now there are no cultural restrictions on otherizing. It's a Fair game. And you can see it it in all social media, in comments and social media, the idea of disgust and contempt being running wild. We otherize men now. All men are narcissists, all women are borderlines. All this and all that. People now are using terms that were otherwise used to classify or categorize for clinicians sake. Right? Having nothing to do with being a cudgel to hit your partner over the head with or other people. That's what people are doing. It's, it's everywhere. And that's what's also depressing is that there is in a, in essence, in our time right now, a problem with shared purpose and shared vision. We're tribalized and everyone is now fragmented. There is no shared purpose. And whenever that happens, there's civil war. If you don't have people on board with a common good and a common vision, people will fracture. If you have a couple that isn't constantly creating projects for themselves to do novelty things to focus on where they're creating things, constantly creating, they will start to feed on each other. They will start to have the war in the foxhole. So we, we actually, you know, again, I think we're talking about two different things. The feelings and emotions that I'm talking about are earned through deed, daily, through what we do daily. And that is true when we actually get together with the folks that we malign and that are distal in our lives until we get to know them and they're fine people. We change our mind because we're close enough to them to, to feel an earned love of them based on contact and, and fair play. Right. So. So again, we have to look at structure, organization, how people are putting relationships together, what their agreements on. I have to say that if in the human world we don't get anything accomplished without previous agreement and permission to do it, it. Right. So even this I'm doing with, with an agreement, although it's mostly, you know, implied, but I couldn't. We had an agreement to do this interview and permission to speak. Right. And commission permission to do this. Otherwise I couldn't do it. And yet a lot of people walk around and try to, and try to enforce things without having a previous agreement or permission to enforce. And that's. That's a problem.

Yeah. And I wonder why they do that. I've caught myself.

Right.

In full honesty, I've caught myself. And I'm sure along your journey of expansion and consciousness that you've caught yourself doing it too. We're human, right? So I wonder why people Project this unconscious fear, this xenophobia. Like you're talking about this dishonoring of, of anyone that's different than you has different views, different skin color, different ways of being different religion, whatever it is just different. Right. We could all put it in that category. What is it about the human animal that makes us do that? Can we tie it back to biological evolution where we're afraid of tribes? Like where's the, where's the solution for that as well?

It's. I think it's tribal. I think that the people who are familiars and the people that, that we depend on and depend on us, we will decide to trust and, and we'll pour our other ism to anybody who's not in our tribe as a. It's really a safety and security issue. The othering is we don't. I. They're. They're not proven. They're not part of our community. They're not part of what is familial or familiar to me. Therefore they're suspect. And so it's very easy to, to leverage this in human beings. Leaders have done it throughout the millennia. Yeah, used disgust, which this form of disgust is otherism, bringing in disease and bringing in whatever it is that will kill us as a way to, to eliminate people like genocide.

Right.

They're relegated to rats and bugs and all sorts of things that are non human. So it's, it's an ugly part of, of our nature, but we don't get rid of it. I think we have to understand it and not deny it and put measures in to keep us from, from, from acting that out. Acting it out. Which is now being. It's being acted out plenty.

Yes, it is. And we definitely saw that act out in 2020, 2021. The, the fear propagation. You should do what I should do. No, you should do what I should do. It seems like I was just. Yesterday and today, Stan, the grocery stores closed early because of the ice storm. And I went to pick up some things and there's people running in the grocery store as if, you know, there's not enough. This, this illusion, this lie of illusion. I mean there's a grocery store with probably a million items in it. I'm like, if the eggs are gone, I'll just get something else, you know, like. But there's some kind of a software program that we all adhere to that, that plays out not only Stan societally, but in the beliefs about ourself and the beliefs about our partner in relationship. And it, and it does come from this essence it almost feels like. Like a film of lack, if I had to describe it. Like at the bottom of the well, an endless well, thinking that there's water that's going to dry up. And it's very sad. And I felt that ever since I was a little boy, like, why do y' all treat each other this way? What's this all about? What is this whole conversation of lack all about? I wonder if, you know, you said earlier that you could never really go in or go too far away in your relationships as you grew up at home. How did that play out? And how do you see the lack conversation happening? Can you hold both of those in conversation?

I think this is our survival instinct. It's the primitives, you know, always operating. You know, why does my wife want us to hurry to get in a line when she sees other people hurrying to get in a line? She's not that person. She's, you know, she's, she's one of the most social, empathic, loving people I know. And yet this primitive part of her needs to make sure that we get in line before. It's a survival thing, right? It is. You know, you wouldn't think that is, but it is. You know, when somebody cuts us off and we want in road race rage, that is a, a fight reaction to a threat to our life, right? It's a threat to our life. That is how it's felt on a recognition system. A recognition level, on a somatic level. And so we act it out because we were, we were scared, right? We were scared. And then we act out with rage. So all these things hit our survival instincts and we forget that. It looks petty. It looks like, oh, I just want to get the last item in the market. But, but it feel to that primitive area of the brain, it is a survival thing. You're taking the last fruit for my family. Right. Even though it's, it's a PS5 that I want.

Sure, sure.

Don't you. And don't you dare touch a guy. I'll kill you.

There's a part of what you had shared earlier when you, you were at home, and it really, it was a, it was a beautiful personal share where you said when you were growing up, you, you couldn't necessarily be so far away from the connection point, but you also couldn't lean too far into it. How do you see that playing out in your own maturation, in your own development as a man and, and what you do in the world?

Well, it is something to, you know, if, if, if torn away Issues or, you know, ways that I. I had to adapt and give up my autonomy or give up my need to depend. Yeah, that's a level of unfairness that I may not be aware of, especially as an avoidance, somebody in the distancing group, because it's hard to know what I'm missing if I never had it from neglect. That is a cross I have to bear. And it'll be played out in relationships where I'm behaving in a way that is unfriendly, threatening to another person. I'm right. I'm behaving in a way that sends the wrong message. And I think it's them. Right? I think it's them, but actually it's me. I. I am afraid of things. And my fear changes my outward behavior to look threatening to the other person. I don't realize it, but it is so. It's through feedback, it's through strife, it's through loss and regret that we begin to look at ourselves. I don't think any of us are inclined to look inward unless we suffer. I think suffering is the only thing that will turn us inward and have us explore where we came from and why in our history. Otherwise the, you know, otherwise nature just repeats itself, period.

Damn, that's so honest. That's so. Everybody can relate to that. Everyone can relate to that. You know, you said something on another interview with a friend, and I would love for you to share it here. When I heard it, it stuck to my veins. It was so good. And you were talking about the way.

What'S that like, steak? You know?

No, it was good. The word stuck to my veins. You talked about it being nature's little joke where, you know, some. Some of us in the personal development world or wellness world, they might call it the anxious avoidant dance or the positive negative polarity on a battery. Whatever it is that the thing that creates the. The yin yang, the. The force of life that. That gives us the balance of opposites. And you said we have a bite that fits each other's wound.

Yeah.

It's so powerful. Can you share that? About that?

So you and I find each other based on memories. Everything is memory. Everything is memory. Almost everything we do, choices we make is memory based whether we know it or not. I pick you based on familiarity and. And recognition. That's how I pick. If you were too strange, I couldn't because I may be able to have sex with you, but I couldn't commit because you. You're too far away from home. Right. So there's this tension between strangerness and familiarity. So because I recognize you, you are more likely than not to. To play some of the characters in my life or to. Or to produce feelings in me that recall other experiences that were of. With important people with me. And so then I can confuse you with those people. Right. We. We really aren't marrying our parents. It's a mythology. We're marrying everybody. And you happen to trigger certain memories, experiential memories, interpersonally, that I still don't know how to deal with. I don't know how to regulate inside myself. I'm talking about the negative ones. And so I recognize you, but I still can't deal with the anger of my father. And your, and your anger also freaks me out. And so I. I'm not becoming an expert on you. I'm shying away from it. It's not that nature made a mistake. It's that I still haven't learned how to deal with all these different states that I experience that were unrepaired in childhood. Unrepaired. So, so that's just nature. That's just the way it is. We naturally do that. Therefore, we tend to hit each other in areas of our greatest wounds. That's what I mean by. You have the bite that fits my wound. You're able to, to. To hit that spot. I'm able to hit your spot. And that's, I think, part of the recognition system. It could also be that almost anybody would do it. We don't know know. But, but because the primary attachment system is so unique. Right. That, that only people in that orbit are going to experience this memory issue going all the way back to the beginning. But if we were just friends or acquaintances, that would never happen, right?

That's right.

We have to marry each other to experience it.

That is so profound right there. I wish everyone can rewind and listen to that again. Because in relationship, when a partner may le. It's time. Right. Way before it's time, they might say something to their partner like, you're the only one who's ever triggered me in this way. I've never had this type of triggering with past partners. I've only been this upset with you, therefore I should leave.

Yeah.

Can you poke holes in that?

I would say highly, highly, highly unlikely that this is the. You're the first person to trigger me. It is possible in some instances where I've never experienced the you in my family of origin because you're an outlier. You. You know, my family was completely quiet and everybody was Conflict and void. Nobody raised their voice, nobody disagreed with each other. You know that. And now you're, you know, now you expect things you, I meet you and you expect things you, you have, you like to engage. You don't, you don't shy away from conflict. And, and, and so you are the first. I don't know how to deal with you. That's possible. That's possible. In most cases, it's unlikely. You know, this stuff is. It, you know, hits a nerve that goes all the way back and you can usually tell when it does and you can tell when it's. This is a stranger. And I mean a stranger in the sense that they're nothing like anybody in my family. Sure. And that's why they attracted me. And that's the other nature's joke. That which we are attracted to, we also don't like eventually. So the things I'm attracted to are the things I really have an issue with as we get, as we depend on each other. I think it's a dosage issue. You know, I'd like you to take it down a dose, the thing I like, or to you pick it up a little, you know, but, but once we live with it, it's often, if you think about it, you know, your partner, what, you know, things that really irk you. Is it connected at all to what attracted you? Sure, of course.

I would say that's 99.999 of the time. True. Ascended nirvana on a mountain. And you already know all this stuff. Like part of the human experience is to realize why do I love, yet hate, the exact characteristics that attracted me, that brought me to this person in the first place? It's so wild. Nature's wisdom has that in design.

I, you know, I think there's so much complexity to nature, to human beings. You mentioned it earlier. There is our genetic history, you know, our genetic loading. There's our experience in childhood. But our experience is unique because our brain is different than our siblings, even a twin. And so my experience of the same event is going to be different. That's phenomenology. That's, that's a chaos theory. Right. We don't know, you know, and there's so many, so many different factors that go into how we operate and see the world. One thing is true. We've never lived outside of our heads and we never will. Therefore, it's an inside game, it's a perceptual game. And, and you see people fighting about perception as if anybody ever wins that argument.

Yes.

And so there Are a lot. Here's another one. I'm unhappy. I, I don't know why. I'm just so unhappy. Oh yeah, I know it's you. That's what we all do, right? We direct our sense of, of. Of. Of disturbance outward. And our personal narratives that we all have are constructed to protect our interests only, right? We don't see ourselves as part and party to events or what happens. You know what comes back to me? I don't see that I'm frowning and that you mirrored my frown. And now I'm saying what's, what's wrong with you? You know, all these things are happening and that are head scratching. But in my research, using digital video and, and frame analysis of studying couples over and over again in slow speed, fast speed, forward, backward, frame by frame, I, I know now that real time is too fast. And we mostly do not know what we're doing most of the time.

What do you mean real time is too fast?

What do you mean real time is too fast? Real time is faster than thought. My primitives can keep up with real time, but my primitives are, are not. Are making decisions without my permission all the time because they're way ahead and so way ahead of my consciousness. So I don't know why I'm doing what I'm doing in the moment. And if you press me me, I'll make it up. Because in the absence of knowing, I don't know, I know if I'm practicing a presentation, I know how to do that. But if somebody throws me for a loop, I don't know what I'm doing to recover. Maybe it's good, maybe it's bad, maybe it, it's effective, maybe it isn't. But it is going to be automatic, right? It is going to. In a pinch, it's going to be automatic unless I take a deep breath and have some time to error correct, right? Let my brain error correct a bit. So we're, you know, we, we really don't give each other a break because we don't understand how the brain and the mind works and doesn't work. We don't understand how all the features of the brain are also bugs, right? Our, our propensity to compare and contrast is very good for hunting and gathering. Very bad for picking a mate or, or being satisfied with someone over time, right? Our ability to always, always know what's missing and what we don't have is important for survival. But it's terrible for overspending and also for complaining to our mate. I just don't feel like I did with my other partner, which is always going to be the case. Right.

And isn't that a toxic statement? I mean, there's nothing good that could come from that statement in any situation. The one you just said about the partner.

No, nothing good. But I believe my mind, my mind plays tricks on me. I believe my, that my mind is telling me what's true. I'm missing something and therefore I need to fill it up in order to be happy. Yes, that's a never ending thing. It's a trick. So. So again, growing up is understanding in a way that our mind is chattering constantly pushing us to do things. Most of it is bullshit. Most of it is, it is a way to get us to act on something that doesn't need acting.

Right?

But we have to accept we don't get everything we want. Everyone is disappointing, annoying and irritating. Everyone is contradictory, including me. Everyone's a burden. So what? We just don't want to be dangerous.

I heard some really beautiful wisdom the other day as to which you speak. And it was a woman, I believe they had been married almost 70 years. I'll link the, the quote down here, the little clip. And they said what was the secret to the marriage, to the marriage lasting so long? And she said, we just accept that we will let each other down at times. We accept that about one another, that there are going to be times where we let each other down. I thought that was the most wise thing I've ever heard. And it goes exactly as the counterpoint to what you're saying with, well, there are going to be times where in relationship the, the mind is going to tell you they're so much different than my past partner. There's they're this, they're that. That comparison is good for, as you said, hunting and gathering, but not necessarily for loving connection. It brings me to a point that you said in your TEDx, which was mind blowing and I absolutely loved it. I watched your talk like three or four times today and you said in a fight for whose memory is right, you're probably both wrong. Your perceptions are like funhouse mirrors. I mean that statement is an entire podcast right there. But if you could just expand our awareness on that a little bit, I think it could be super valuable for any couple that finds themselves in the finger pointing match. Well, you said it this way. No, I didn't say it exactly that way. I said it this way. No, you said it this way. I mean that is just a dead end road to crazy town. Can you Talk about the funhouse mirror.

Here are in, in brief, the. The potential brain errors that we all have carry around. One is we think our communication is correct and it isn't. We are mostly misunderstanding each other. Much if not most of the time we think we're being clear, but we're not. We think we heard properly, but we didn't. It would take a lot of corroboration and back and forth to make sure that we did understand. And most people don't spend that time, time. So, so this is a fact and we have to remember that when we first started, you know, with our species language, it was just, you know, duck, run, eat, sleep, lion. Right. Think of our language today and think of how many words mean a lot of different things.

Yeah.

So to expect that we are on the same page at any given time is naive. We're never fully on the same page. We approximate each other other, which is good. Right. If we take the time to make sure we understand. So. But most of us are too lazy, cutting corners and using code and shortcuts and that gets us in trouble. So communication is. Just accept it. You can never be sure that you are right about any of that stuff. Memory is horrible. Never, never will be. Good memory is based on capture, capturing experience, which is dependent on many factors including what you ate and how sleepy you are and how much noise there is in the environment, how much light there is in the environment. So the recording of experience is itself flawed. So when we record experience, we fill in blanks. The mind is constantly filling in blanks, things it doesn't see, hear what, smell, whatever. So we're filling in the blanks. So we're already shaping the experience that's becoming memory by adding non experience elements into it that are, that are elaborations. Then memory is containing non memory elements that we did to, to fill in the gaps and to change it. Now I remember something and memory is state dependent. So what I remember is dependent on how I feel at this moment. A bad experience turns good if I'm feeling great. A good experience turns not so good if I'm feeling badly about it. So, so now you have that. Which means that you should not fight over memory as it's a waste of your time and you out of it. It is, it is a tar pit. So if you are complaining about something you did last, the other person did last night.

Yeah, you know, I.

What? Be prepared for a long talk because it wasn't last night, my dear, it was, it was yesterday. Right. And you're an Idiot. Right. So. So fighting over memory is folly, which is why we consider what's done is done. Now we have to think about what's next. How do we put something in place for the next time so this doesn't happen again?

I remember.

How do we just repair this thing and move forward? So that's another thing. So here's the other thing that you were talking about. Memory drives state. State drives memory. As soon as I feel something, I remembered the times I felt like this. As soon as I remember something, I start feeling like it. Right? So you're. I'm angry with you. I remember all the times you've pissed me off. I'm happy and I love you and I'm thinking of all the wonderful things about you. Right? So I'm remembering that. So those two drive each other in a loop. State of mind alters perception. The gustatory, olfactory, auditory, visual, kinesthetic. All of our sensory gates like a funhouse mirror. And we can prove this is right. What I hear, what I smell, everything is completely. Is different based on my state of mind. So we can't really trust our perceptions all too far. I mean, very far either. We have to trust the other person's perception. If we want the relationship to exist, we can't argue with their perception.

This goes back to the phrase, do you want to be right or would you like to be loved? Which is. It's such a relationship and, and it's such a platitude that people throw out there. And. And I. I wish it wasn't because I really want to drive this home from my heart to everyone with us. Do you want to be right or do you want to be loved or in a relationship, to be able to give and receive love. It brought back some. You just brought back a really cool memory. Last year, Carrie, Michelle and I did an NLP training and we learned about the. The 126 bits of information. Life comes at us at 11 million bits and we have this filter we literally have to plug in. We have to slow down life. To quote you that real time is too fast. We have to slow down to 126 bits of information per second. Otherwise, you know, we're just not going to get it. It's just too much information to plug in. So we, we delete things, we distort things, we generalize things. And, and have you gone deep into NLP and your work? Is that something that is a scaffolding around what you do in any way? Neuro Linguistic Programming.

One of our early faculty Meter people wrote the manual on NLP and, and helped shape a lot of our terminology. He was, you know, you know, a core faculty member. So, so I, I, I can't say that I'm that familiar with NLP because I never took a course in it. Yes, but, but breaking down in many ways complex ideas into terminology that can be sort of a placeholder. Right. So we do things like cross commenting, cross tracking, cross questioning, cross interpreting, going down the middle. These are all techniques that are not really very intuitive but, but is considered very, very good skill for gathering information quickly. Right? So, so we're, we train to read faces, to study faces, detail in the faces, micro expressions, micro movements. We learn to, to find people in the spaces to look for them when they don't know. We're looking to find people in between beats instead of on the beat. So, so we get our spidey senses through, through training by looking constantly at detail. Talk about looking at faces going forward and backward. People can do this if they have a, you know, a system where they can study people who are being interviewed under stress, whether they're politicians or movie stars, whatever. Those 20, 20, you know, close ups are there for a reason because the brain loves to see the face in close up. Actually does we use a different area of the brain when we see a face in close up and we look for things that don't read. Right. We could be right, we could be wrong, but that's why it's there. So studying faces when you know that somebody is feeling something or somebody really wants something but they're afraid that they will be exposed and they're being watched is a good study of, of human beings. Right. And so since I have that in my practice, that was my research, we've just studied hours and hours and hours of video watching people. And so, so that's on a skill side for us of how we find how we catch people in the act of being themselves and how we create a situation whereby we put people under, under sufficient pressure to, to catch leakage. They're leaking, right? They're leaking through somatic reactions that we can track, right? We can track their arousal move trending upward or downward and we can track, start to track tells when somebody, when somebody is doing the same thing again and again we track them and that's a way that we can start to understand whether, whether they're saying what is true or not.

I'm so glad, I'm so glad that nature gave us this mechanism to navigate the truth. The micro muscles in the face by.

The way, easy, easier to do when observing two people than when observing one person. So you're, you're observing two people and watching them act and react to each other. Much harder if you're trying to detect this with just looking at a person or talking to a person. Why is that? Because of our own, our own pattern recognition issues system. One that we too easily take what we think we know already without questioning it and without corroborating it and without testing and retesting. We don't do that, but we can when observing people with other people.

It's so fascinating. We covered so much ground today and I'm going to let you go now for now. But before I do, you know, like I said in 2013, I was in relationship and it was Wired to Love at the time and it was this concept of the island, the anchor and the wave. You said to me that it's changed for you and that was, was a lot of what's in the new book in each Other's Care. A guide to the most common relationship conflicts and how to work through them. Can you share with us the differentiation between the two?

I've. I've really focused much more on the top down part of pact. You know, I've written a lot about the bottom up part. The top down part is, is structure, organization, co architecture, a couple building its own, own ethos, its own culture. This comes from social, social justice theory within the couple system, not the greater social justice theory. So so much more on a purpose centered relationship as a top down structure to hold behavior. Because the bottom up stuff is very, very interesting especially from the clinical research, research side of it. But it doesn't really give anybody how, you know, the how to's. So island, anchor, wave I think was so attractive to people because of the cutesy terms and the ability to categorize, you know.

And it also made the attachment theory more exciting just to read about.

Exciting? Yeah, more exciting, more fun. But here's the problem. We need to categorize in order to organize our experience. That's never going away. The problem is, is that we also use categorization to otherize. We use categorization to unfairly and inaccurately categorize ourselves and others, which is unfriendly and not useful. So I found myself a little bit upset by, by my own design that people were overly enamored with this idea and put too much emphasis on attachment. Attachment is only a part of the problem. It's only a part, a small part. And, and it is, it only Makes relationship a more difficult. If you don't understand it it. If you understand the animal you're with and you understand what they're afraid of, they're predictable. So that's great, right? That's the purpose of this. But make no mistake, the big problem is the human condition. The big problem in all relationships can be come down to not personality, not you know, your history of trauma, not whether you're a drug addict, not whether you're an island wave or a goat. It's the human condition that is the central issue has always been, will always be. That's why we need a higher, a higher minded principle purpose based mindset that, that places the bar higher than we ordinarily would. That makes us adhere to our purpose and principle. Otherwise we get what we pay for, which isn't much and we're going to do the same things that all human beings do. We're going to damage our relationships at some point. That's why relationships generally don't last that long is because of our, of our nature. And knowing that is a great step toward, toward understanding ourselves and others and, and knowing what to do about, about it.

Beautiful. Thank you so much for the wisdom on the podcast today. We know you have to go. I always ask one question so maybe you can take one breath and from 30,000ft just share with us your, your final parting thoughts Here to live well is a question I've been asking myself since 2015, since we started this podcast. With all your work and with the new book coming and honestly with everything you've been through, how do you define wellness? You know, how, how would Stan Todkin live well? How would he define a life well lived.

Lived. Oh yeah. Just in a short answer. Gee, when you.

However you'd like.

When you added that last part, I will say that we, we need relationship. There is no denying that we are dependent creatures. Any illusion otherwise is a fantasy. We need others. We do better with people than we do without. In all things things. In healing and getting better from illness, in recovering from a fight, always if the conditions are right that, that, that in the end we only care about our relationships and we lament the relationships that we screwed up and can't do anything about. So keep that in mind. You don't want to end up that way and that having a purpose of commitment, focusing on one thing we do for the self, not for the other. We do it because it disciplines us and it's a, it's a space where we find ourselves so committing to one thing is our way of knowing something well. And it opens up an aperture to a universe we would not see had we not decided to. To make that our purpose. And that includes another person. In this way, nobody is ever born boring. We're boring, perhaps. But looking at our. Our partner and making them our career and paying attention always as much we can, being present is a way to find ourselves in, a way to understand ourselves and to understand all people through just one. And I hope that people may have that experience. That's a good one. That's a good that.

That is a beautiful life. Well lived. Do you ever get the feeling like unless you really commit your heart and sound, soul and spirit to making loving relationships a hobby, a passion, a learning endeavor, that one may never have mastery over these relationships?

Absolutely. And. And they're missing out on something that is quite blissful and. And never stops being that way. I'm more in love with Tracy today than ever because of what we do. It's because of what we do. It's not, you know, know. It's not a passing feeling. It's how we play it. Right.

Wonderful, Wonderful. Let's wrap right there. Thank you so much, Stan, for coming on the podcast. From my heart to yours. Just super, super grateful for the work you do in the world. It impacted me in 2013. Now I have better wisdom where I can see the road from then to now. And so all of us need to check out the new book in each other's care. It's coming out in March, and if.

People want to get a hold of me, it's Stan or anything@the PactInstitute.com that's where people can find the couples retreats that Tracy and I do around the world and those therapists or clinicians that want to train in a psychobiological approach. The trainings we do worldwide, also there for people to sign up.

Excellent. Okay. Wherever you're watching this, it's right below. If you're watching a video, if you're watching it, if you're listening to it on Spotify, it's there for you. So, Stan, until we all see you again, until we all see each other again, we are both wishing you love and wellness. We'll see you down the road and talk to you soon.

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