Roger Nygard | The Truth About Marriage: What Makes Happy Relationships Work | Wellness Force

Do you know everything about your partner? I mean, you'll never know everything, but you should know some basic things, especially the core values that you both hold. And it might come out in such things as, do you prefer antiques or ikea? What's the most a person should spend on a pair of shoes? How often should we have sex? What religion should we raise our children, if we have any? How light or dark do you want the bedroom? Is it okay to leave the TV on all night? I can't sleep, honey, unless the TV's on all night. Well, can you live with that? I mean, it's good to know all these things in advance. And let's say you don't know some of these things, you're in for a shock and a surprise, a constant life of surprises, and you'll never get them all. But if you can get a lot of them understood, you don't have to agree on all these things, but at least you know what you're in for. Sa.

Roger, welcome to Wellness Force.

Thank you. So I'm so happy that we get a chance to talk today.

I was telling you before we recorded about your incredible book, the Truth About Marriage, the path to find a soulmate, how to make relationships work. How to make sense of this whole masculine, feminine polarity, especially now that we're in enforced lockdowns. Who knows what's coming? It's been a very stressful time for so many people, man. So this show is, like, the perfect timing for us to explore the nuances of what it means to. To spend your life with someone, to be with someone energetically, physically, spiritually, emotionally. Like, what an incredible topic. I watched the film and I'm excited. We're going to go deep today. I have a ton of notes for you, ton of questions, but just as a jumping off point, you're a single man. This quest for the soulmate and the truth about marriage. Like, one of the things that inspired me the most is you mentioned your grandma Doris in the film this is. She was 100 at the time, I believe, when you interviewed her and you spoke about this, how do you think that your natural curiosity for this topic started? Like, when did the curiosity for the truth about marriage and finding a soulmate actually start for you?

All of my films are me searching for answers to something I'm obsessed with, and it generally comes out of pain. And this new film, it's about relationships, right? And so it came from my own feeling of inadequacy and failure in relationships. And it's like, why can't I do this right, why is it so hard to get to not only a lifetime partner, just to the altar? And so I want solutions. I want answers. And so I sought out experts and quizzed them, interrogated them on what's the problem? There must be something wrong, because if I was selling you a product and you said, is it any good? And I said, yeah, it's great. Everyone loves it. You gotta have it. And then if you ask me, well, what's the guarantee? And I said, there's no guarantee. Well, your next question will be, well, okay, what's the failure rate? And I said, oh, only 50%. You'd say, go back to the drawing board with your product. There's something wrong here. So I set out for myself to try to figure out what my problem is. And then if you want to come along on the journey, on the documentary, you find out, you learn what I learn about relationships.

Wow. I'm thinking about this too, because when I was, like, I don't know, five years old, six years old, I saw adults and I saw how adults treated one another, specifically my, I guess you could say broken home. My parents divorced when I was really, really young, and that flavored the way that I looked at relationships. And I've done a ton of healing work on what is my actual soul truth when it comes to partnership, to union. Did that flavor, first of all, your curiosity to do this film? And also, what was that like for you as a child and how have you reflected on that and how that really is a lens of your work now?

Well, you put your finger on it. I mean, the source of who we are today is right. The first seven years of life are crucial to setting the framework of who you are as a person. You're pretty well set by age 7. Who you are, your personality is really. Your trajectory through life is kind of determined by age 7. And that doesn't mean you can't do anything about it. And that's what counselors are for. And people that the experts, they're here to help us broaden our choices. Right? Our choices get narrowed by those first few years, and then every ensuing year as we gather more experience, and then we go to a counselor who says, no, no, no, you have more choices. And it starts opening up. Or podcasts like this, opening up through awareness, your choices, I mean, it's still going to be limited by, you know, some things you just can't change about yourself in certain aspects of yourself will always be who you are. And part of the secret to happiness, according to the experts is first of all accepting yourself for who you are and what you are as a species.

Yes.

And then do the same for your partner. You have to accept who they are. They may not pick up that sock ever to your satisfaction, or they may never learn to cook well, or whatever it is that you are expecting. Because when you date someone, you put on this mask and they put on a mask and it's the two best versions of yourselves are meeting. And. And you think that, okay, I can now project my future. But the thing is, when you're not being yourself, your future is not what you're predicting. And so, you know, there's an old joke, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. Well, what happens is people in relationships end up having a lot of frustration with themselves and their partner because they can't reach expectations. These ideals that we set for ourselves, that society sets for us, our parents, friends, everyone sets for us. It's virtually impossible to reach these ideals that our culture sets for us because our culture has gotten out of sync with who we are as a species. The way we evolved on the African savanna to deal with what was in that environment. And so you get frustrated, unhappy. Well, maybe it must be we're falling out of love. And so I got to find a new partner who's going to be a better match. And then it just becomes a cycle of the same thing over and over again when the work you need to do is here yourself and then which when you do that, it encourages your partner to rise to your level and so you won't keep trying to trade up for a better choice and you work on yourself and get better. And, and because you're just trading for a new set of problems and you're throwing out a shared history, which you can't, is gone. You can't, you got to start over again with someone new. So what do you do? You got to learn who you are, accept who you are, and then be as genuine as possible. That's one of the things I learned.

The self awareness quotient is I would say at least half or more, because if we don't know who we are, and I mean that's a big topic, I mean that's a podcast within itself, a self awareness podcast. And in some way, Roger, like every best selling author, world class speaker, anyone that comes on the show, they're always peppered into this conversation is the acknowledgement of self awareness. Because in the book you talk about how to find love and stay together and really like keep the Passion alive. So many people, they are with each other for three years, seven years, ten years, and they change. Like their self awareness is also in the understanding that their interests change, their passions change. Like, so there's a part of us, and I'd love to hear what you think about this because how long did you research and actually film? How long was this project total?

Yeah, seven years from starting to reading a stack of books six feet tall, you know, And Chris Ryan says, we're not in a relationship, we're in a series of relationships with the same person because they're changing and you're changing.

That's what it feels like. And so I'm a year and a half with my girlfriend, my partner, Kerry Michelle. And like, I've seen her change so much in a year and a half. And I know that I have too. But the question I was gonna ask you is when it comes to the self awareness, and I love, love, love man that you've done work about, why are we here? You're a filmmaker that's done so many things, but the nature of existence. This is where you addressed the really kind of impossible subject of the world's philosophies, religions and belief systems. The belief of who I am is completely contextual in those first seven years. I mean, we're literally on drugs. Like, our hemispheres are connected. We're children, we're walking around in Theta State. We're so sensitive. We're like a rose, you know, we're like a rose. You have to treat a rose gently. Did anything for you happens? Ages 0 through 7 that specifically flavored the way that you show up to your filmmaking?

Oh, for sure. I mean, there are mechanical things. Like, I discovered photography. I found my dad's camera, which had a half a roll of film in it, And I found his 8 millimeter camera. And once I get my hands on something, I'm taking it apart. I'm curious, I want to know how it works. And I realized I had a real desire for learning about and being creative visually in images and then movies and then eventually documentaries. So that was going on in a creative sense. But I can distinctly remember, and I'm very lucky that I had a mother who encouraged me to be creative. I mean, I would come home from my kindergarten or first grade with my drawings, which were not anything special. But she told me, these are amazing. It's fantastic. You are so creative. So I started to think as my as the cement is hardening into who I was as a person, I was thinking, oh, I'm creative because this is the feedback I'm getting from my creative expression. And that stayed with me because it hardened into who I am. And so now as an adult, when I create a film, a project, write a manuscript of whatever, and then I present it to the world or I get reviews if someone doesn't like it or I get a bad review, my first instinct isn't, oh, I'm not good enough. My first instinct is, oh, they don't get it because I know I'm creative, because that's what my mother taught me about myself or helped me to become. And it's really. It can make you sad to think, well, if I didn't have someone who encouraged me to become my best self as a child, I'm at a disadvantage. And. And a lot of people are, because if their first instinct is, I'm not good enough, you're not going to try, right? And the secret to Success is persistence. 99% of it is persistence and a modicum of talent. But you've got to keep trying and failing over and over again until something clicks. And thankfully, because of that childhood experience, I keep going and trying different things. And I failed on so many projects, but I get some of them over the finish line and put it out there and. And then it's. The reward for me is huge that I finish something and that then propels me to the next thing. But if someone stopped and didn't keep trying and didn't get something there, or now they're in a job they hate, I hate my job. And what do you do with your life? And if you give me one minute, I'll go down a quick rabbit hole. What I learned from the Nature of Existence, my first or my prior documentary about existentialism, by studying all the belief systems in the world. Religious, scientific, atheism, all of them. I sought out experts in each of these disciplines and interrogated them and said, why do we exist? Why are we here? And what I found is that it first came from Julia Sweeney, who's an actress. And I asked her about why are we here? And she said, well, what usually comes up is people say, I want to be happy. It's a pursuit of happiness, and happiness is a false goal. You can't pursue happiness. Happiness is a side effect of having a purpose in life. So the real question is, what is my purpose? And it's something you have to give yourself. You have to choose. You find a purpose, and when you're pursuing it, you're naturally happy. When you're not pursuing it if you're in a job you hate, of course you're unhappy, you're depressed. If you find someone who's depressed, give them a piece of paper and say, for the next five minutes, draw a picture of a flower or sketch something while they're drawing. Even if they're not a good artist, they're happy because they're expressing themselves. They've forgotten about whatever it is that their frontal lobe has made them worry about. Because we understand the concept of time. Once we had frontal lobe evolved into our species, we understood we're going to die someday. That creates anxiety. What things like yoga does or art is it stops us from thinking about the future and the past, and it forces us to be focused in the present. And when you're in the present, it's when you're happiest. And so taking that to its conclusion, what I learned in the nature of existence was our purpose here as a species. And my purpose, your purpose, making podcasts, mind, making films, is to be creative, to express ourselves creatively every day in some way. It doesn't matter how. One minute, five minutes, 20 minutes, you know what, whatever. Sketching, writing poetry, write a book, write a short story, plant a garden, bring forth life. If you're an architect, you design a house, a business person, you design a business plan. It doesn't. Anything that you offer your creativity to will make you happy. And then you complete it and offer it to your social group for their feedback, good and bad, and that propels you to the next thing. What the default is for most people is to have a child and to try to raise a new, better version of themselves. And so you spend 20 years or 18 years or however long it takes until they move out of the basement, and your goal is to help them become a better version of you. And then you're back to where you started. Now what do I do? And so you see a lot of people when the kids leave the nest is taking up pottery classes or other hobbies and getting back to being creative again. And that's the point. Find something you can do every day for a few minutes, even if you hate your job. Carve out time to do that thing that makes you excited to be creative.

Wow. The creative juice is like, why we're here, because it's God experiencing God. I'm not talking about a bearded man in the sky. I'm talking about, like, consciousness itself. So in your work, with the nature of existence, I'm sure there was such a dovetail with the truth about marriage, because there is a core element of frustration. Like, why are relationships so difficult? It's one of the big questions you talk about in the film and in the book and this question, it applies to all people. And I don't care if you're hetero or homo or however you identify. Like, relationships can be hard because in my experience, and I'm curious if you can extrapolate on this, like I show up as that 0 through 7 child inside, right? I'm a 40 year old man, but on the inside of me is everything that I, that I acquired from parental example, ages 0 through 7, like you had mentioned. That's when the wiring was really set. That's when the neuroscience was locked in. However, in my journey with Wellness Force and we explored this physical, emotional, spiritual intelligence. I know that like I can't just read a book and learn. I have to actually take what I've learned and, and then go put it into practice. So what have you learned from the film yourself, you know, in your quest for a soulmate? Cause you're a single man currently. But what have you learned about this question? Why are relationships so difficult? And then after that, what have you actually been applying?

Well, the good news, it's not really our fault. Things are we're all doing relationships wrong, some less wrong than others. And it's weird because you'd think that in high school there would be a class teaching us how to have a good relationship because it's the most important thing you're going to do in your life.

Why isn't there like a relationship? Why isn't there a relationship 101 in high school? Like what are we doing?

Seems obvious because there are. What I found is there are some very basic things that we're all doing and very easy changes, very simple changes you can make to your life that would vastly change the trajectory and the happiness and the longevity of relationships. And all the experts, essentially, I coalesced it and they were in agreement on some certain basic things. And my goal in the film and in the book was first to find out what the problem is. The first half is about that and the second half is, well, here are some simple things that anyone can do to change things right now. And I'll give you one example. Probably the most basic thing we're all doing wrong is listening. We're terrible. Especially men or the masculine one in the relationship. Either person can be more or less masculine than the other. And typically you partner with someone who has the opposite mixture of masculine and femininity that you have because we're not designed to duplicate each other. We want to complete each other. We want someone who's the opposite in many ways. And what the masculine is the worst at is listening terrible listeners. What does that mean? I'm going to be very specific here. The feminine and the masculine have these things they need daily. It's almost like a relationship vitamin. And if you don't get it, you're going to feel a little bit confused, then anxious and then angry, and then it leads to arguments and then maybe you break up because you're not getting this nutrient you need. And this nutrient that the feminine needs is about 15 to 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes a day of active listening. That means you come home, you put down, you put your cell phone on airplane mode, turn off the computer and the tv, you make eye contact and say, honey, how was your day? Or honey, how are you feeling? And then shut up and listen. The hard part is the shutting up. It's counterintuitive because the masculine wants to offer solutions and interject and don't do it. This is where it takes discipline. If you want the best outcome, just say, how was your day? And then offer empathy. Oh, that's wonderful. Oh, that's terrible. I'm so sorry that happened. That's wonderful. That's all you're allowed to say. Because she or the person, the feminine person who's in their feminine, because I need this too when I'm in my feminine, they don't want your solutions. They just want you to listen while they're downloading and processing the emotions of the day so they can feel better. And at the end of that 15 or 20 minutes or 30 minutes, they feel vastly improved. And they attribute their happiness to you, their partner, and improves everything, including your sex life. Everything gets better. And if you're the feminine person or the one who's in your feminine, who needs this listening vitamin, you also have to be mindful of not to get greedy about it. Don't demand more than your 20 minutes per day or this precious resource is going to vanish over time. Because the masculine can only handle about 30 minutes maximum before what Dr. John Gottman calls flooding happens. The masculine brain easily floods or becomes overwhelmed when talking about emotional things. It's not as well designed. The feminine brain can handle that for hours, no problem. It's so much more designed and better designed for it. And there's a counterpoint to this, that the masculine needs one of the nutrients that that person who's in their masculine needs is consider that we, as humans, we need connection. We love to connect both masculine and feminine. Feminine's instinct is to connect. 247 masculine wants to connect. But as soon as I have connection, I start to yearn for freedom. And so I want, I need to, I need to get away. And once I'm away, I miss her. And then I want to connect again. And I go through this endless cycle, this orbit of connection and disconnection. And if you try to get in the way of it and block it and say, you must be with me 24 7, it's going to create frustration and then anger and then arguments and, and you don't want that. And so when the feminine person understands this or understands their partner who's in their masculine, and both people need to do this occasionally. But you know, Dr. Gray, John Gray calls it going to the cave. The masculine, he needs to go to his cave once a week. Yes, once per week. You need that. And it recharges your batteries. It makes you excited to be together again. So the way to facilitate, the best way to facilitate this disconnection is to, for the masculine or the person who needs the disconnection to say, honey, I am going to go away for the weekend with my friends, going to go fishing, or I'm going to, hey, honey, I'm going to go play golf. And then you follow it up with, once you announce your disconnection, you announce when you're going to reconnect. And honey, and I can't wait to see you for dinner at 7 o'. Clock. So now that person feels secure, they know, okay, he's disconnecting. And I know when he's going to reconnect. It's totally normal, nothing to worry about. And it's a good thing. But if you say seven o', clock, make sure you're home at seven o'. Clock. If it's gonna be midnight, say midnight, because your word is crucial and call if you're gonna be late. You have to maintain who you are and your bond and your word and be genuine with your partner.

I gotta pause you right there because one of the things I loved in the film and in the book, Neil Strauss and I had read the Truth, I also read the Game. I read the game in my 20s. Probably not a good book for a 20 year old to read. But then when I read the truth in my 30s, I felt redemption because his exploration of polyamory showed him that he really just wanted to feel loved and feel whole. Like you had talked about. Right? We're looking for completion here. And when two People show up without any awareness of their patterns, without any awareness of their attachment styles, and without any of the emotional intelligence that you're speaking about. Right. The awareness of the masculine, feminine, the awareness of the orbit that you spoke about. These are really, really, really important concepts, not only to know, but to embody and to actually act from that awareness. But the one thing he said in the film that I loved is he goes, you know, the best way to handle conflict is I'll ask my partner, and I'm sure you're going to explain this better than me. But he said, like, hey, when she's talking to me and when there's a problem, he asks her, do you want me to listen? Do you want me to take an action, or do you want me to just give advice? But please share with us the better way that he explained that. But that was kind of what I remembered.

No, you got it. I think Loving touch was the other one.

Do you want Loving Touch? Yes, but there's. There's a skill set that the masculine. And it can float between men and women because sometimes men need to vent too. But it seems to be more. Not blanket statement, this. It seems to be more like. Like the man might be listening and holding space and the woman's processing, of course, that can fluctuate between genders. But please, please go deeper on that because I love Neil Strauss's work and I thought his element to your film was powerful.

Yeah, well, part of my book was about attraction. I wanted to understand attraction, why we are attracted to each other. How can I be more attractive since I want to attract a mate? Right. And what is it all about? And it turns out there are very specific cues that affect human beings. Our brains are wired a certain way. And so that's one reason I sought out Neil Strauss. And I was amazed and pleased to see that he had matured as a person. And now his book, Truth essentially repudiates everything in the game and shows how he's changing. And I'm sure he's going to write another book and he's going to have a completely new, more advanced take on as he continues to mature and learn. It never ends. You don't become the perfect master, ever. Humans are too complex, and your partner is going to be. Is too complex an individual to ever fully understand. But talking to someone like Neil who had experienced the extremes, I guess I looked for the extremes in a lot of people that I interviewed. And for example, I followed three couples in the movie, three married couples, but I interviewed six. And the three that made the cut are more extreme. The three that didn't make the cut were normal. And normalcy is not as interesting to watch, and it doesn't teach the lesson as well as when you see the extreme couples. Oh, this happened here. And Neil had been a very extreme single person. And I found an example in the real world of a very extreme single person, this guy named Don Blanchito, who was the most single person I knew who was living the life of the game. And it was fascinating for me to check in on him again. Seven years later, I interviewed him in Brazil, where he was enjoying loving life as a single man. Seven years later, when I looked, checked in, he was married and had a child and had completely changed. He'd gone through essentially the same arc that Neil Strauss had gone through, which all humans essentially do. We go through these arcs of learning and maturing.

Yes. I loved watching that in the film, too, because he has some unique profanities. I'll let y' all watch the film. But. But he had a certain way that he described women, and he was kind of like, I guess you could say, just like a walking stick of testosterone when you first interviewed him. And then later on, he and his wife were talking about their unique challenges, and they said, sometimes I believe she was Brazilian, too. Right. Sometimes they fight so hard and then. But they realized, like, they took a breath and they had that emotional intelligence, Roger. They had the intelligence and the awareness to look at one another and know that this is for the greater good. This is about our sacred union. This is about our partnership. And that emotional maturity cannot come by just reading something. It has to come by letting the experience of life unfold. And I can only imagine what it was like to see the transformation. Like, were you shocked when you followed up with them?

Extremely shocked. I never expected it. But that's what makes for a good documentary, right? You need to have surprises, and you want to see characters change. In movies. All your favorite movies, the main character goes through a big change because that's the human experience. And he was the perfect embodiment of that.

The four questions again, that Neil Strauss talked about. The last one, you said, physical touch. So it's like, do you want me to listen? Do you want me to take an action? Do you want me to speak or give advice? Or do you want physical touch? I love this. I mean, I'll use that in my relationship right now. Last night, like, it's so powerful. That is a huge gem that I got from your film, and there's tons of gems in this film, you don't have to guess.

Why are we guessing? Trying to guess. No. Mind reading? Yes. Mind reading is not allowed.

What would you like? Right. Can you extrapolate on that a little bit? Like, and, and when you interviewed with Neil at his home, like, did that, did that come from his work in the game and the truth or how did he even come up with that?

Well, many years of therapy helps, you know, self realization and self understanding that comes. That's why we have therapists and counselors, people who have experience or objective, who can give you solutions and suggestions. I mean, ideally, one of the things that all the experts agreed that if you're someone who's thinking of getting married right now, the best thing you can do to increase your chances for longevity and happiness in a relationship is premarital counseling. Enter the relationship. Understanding better the rules of the game. Most people don't do this. And they found that religious couples tend to do better than non religious couples in marriage. And it's not because they're religious, it's because they're forced to do premarital counseling by their religion. And so they get a better understanding of each other. And in the book I made a list. For example, at the end of the book, I put an addendum for people to help them do this, which I called a personal priorities checklist. So that what you could do is sit down with your partner and you each fill out this form and then you exchange forms and discuss it with the idea of getting to a mutual priorities checklist between the two of you.

Here it is. If you're watching on video, if you're.

On YouTube with us, I mean, do you know everything about your partner? I mean, you'll never know everything, but you should know some basic things, especially the core values that you both hold. And it might come out in such things as, do you prefer antiques or ikea? What's the most a person should spend on a pair of shoes? How often should we have sex? What religion should we raise our children, if we have any? How light or dark do you want the bedroom? Is it okay to leave the TV on all night? I can't sleep, honey, unless the TV's on all night. Well, can you live with that? I mean, it's good to know all these things in advance. And if, let's say you don't know some of these things, you're in for a shock and a surprise, you know, a constant life of surprises. And you'll never get them all. But if you can, can get a Lot of them understood. You don't have to agree on all these things, but at least you know what you're in for.

Yeah, there's no Roger. I feel like this work, even the question, the truth about marriage, it's really about the truth about how I will show up, how I will choose to show up in marriage. And this could be and can be and I believe will be more of like a personal development section in adolescence and middle school. Like, we're here doing it. I mean, we're educating, we're inspiring right now. And I think about the way that most couples go through conflict based on their paradigm of 0 through 7 and their attachment styles. You interviewed the Gottmans, and the Gottmans are so powerful. We've talked about them with Mark Groves, with Mark Wolin, with different people that have come on the show. They have the Four Horsemen that really, like, dictate whether or not couples will stay together. And I believe in your film, they said it was a 90%. They're able to watch couples go through conflict. And I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's a 90% accuracy of whether the couples will stay together or not. And it was.

They can predict.

They can predict, isn't it?

It's mind blowing that they could watch you together with your partner for five minutes and then predict with 90 accuracy if you'll be together and how happy you'll be based primarily on one thing. They're looking for the existence of contempt from either partner. It's like rolling the eyes, sighing, dismissiveness, because that shows you're not a team.

Contempt was the big one, the four Horsemen. Criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. My biggest trigger is stonewalling. Like, that's still things that I'm processing from childhood. Stonewalling. So which one of these spoke most to you? And then also, why is the contempt one really the deal breaker?

I like when things are quantified because then I can understand how to implement it in my life. Like the 20 minutes of listening. Okay, I'm gonna do that every day. I'm gonna try this experiment. I'm gonna give 20 minutes of active listening every night and see if it. If it changes things. Right. One of the things that Gottman, Dr. Gottman, quantified was the five to one rule of positive to negative. What they found in stable couples was not how much they argued. You could have one couple that argues a lot, one that never argues, or rarely. And then somewhere in the middle, they argue, you know, an average amount. Well, they can all be equally stable and happy if they reach the 5 to 1 ratio of. Every time there's a negative interaction, you must have five positives to make up for it. So negative is obviously arguing, but it could be rolling your eyes, ignoring, stonewalling, forgetting a birthday. Whatever it is that makes a partner feel bad, that's a negative interaction. If you do that, you need to have five positives. What's a positive? A hug. Touching them on the arm as you walk by. A kiss, you look wonderful. Flowers. A new car. I mean, whatever. All these are positives. A new car is worth just as much as a hug. They're each one positive. So you can't solve everything with money. And, well, I bought you a house. Why aren't you happy?

How many people try to solve it by buying things instead of being vulnerable? I mean, that's powerful if you can.

Hit five to one or better. And he said that, really? The masters of relationships, he said, hit 20 to 1. 20 positives for every negative. So that's something you can look at your life and quantify it and grade yourself, and then you can know how much better you need to do.

One of the things, too, though, that Chris Ryan talked about in the film was it's that space and kind of stress that creates the passion as well. So it can't be like all positive. There has to be some negative for the polarity to exist. Right?

Offer passion. Yes, well, passion, a formula. And why does passion go away in a relationship? Part of the reason is that the longer two people are together, the more similar they become over time. You see it happen all the time, right? They start to look the same, dress the same, sound the same. And passion comes from going out of.

The house with slippers on, like, just wearing this plaid shirt with striped pants. I'm like, okay, if you want your.

Passion, you got to try harder than that.

Yeah, come on.

It doesn't come naturally. You got to work for it. And the way you work for it is you rekindle the polarity, Recalibrate the polarity. Get yourselves back to your masculine and feminine poles when you want to be passionate. And so, again, what does that mean? How do you quantify that? How can I make active changes? I went and audited a passion class, and it didn't make the cut of the movie, but it's in the book. I described the entirety of what happens when all these couples gathered for a seminar on how to be passionate again. Everybody wants to increase their number, right? I asked people in the film how Many times do you have sex per week? What's the normal number of times? And the married people said, once or twice a week is the typical average. Then I asked them, well, all right, how many times did you have sex when you're first dating? And it was usually once, twice, three, four, five times a day when they first started out. And they miss it. They miss that passion. Partly, we're designed to reduce the passion. Passion changes to compassion over time so we can raise children. You can't be having sex five times a day when you've got to take care of the children. So we're naturally designed to want and need less sex over time. But it doesn't have to stay that way. You can actually rekindle it. And in this class, what they would do is they would take the men and the women and separate them into two groups and then remind them what it is that it means to be masculine or what it means to be feminine. For example, the masculine group, they would teach them how to be present again. You forget how to be present with someone. When you're present with someone, what's more attractive than focusing on someone and giving them all your attention? Well, we stop doing that because you come home, you look at the iPhone, you turn on the tv, you don't even look at each other anymore, right? You sit side by side.

The iPhone is the killer. I mean, this is like the bane of relationships is the iPhone.

It's crushing people in many reasons, and this is one of them, because it takes. The masculine is primarily responsible for maintaining the presence, being present. And then the counterpoint to that, the feminine, is invitation. You've got to invite your partner to be present with you. You could call that flirting, right? And. And so by reminding people of how to behave this way, be present with your partner. How do you be present? Well, imagine you're on a motorcycle and you're driving. If you're not present every moment, you're going to die. You have to stay totally focused on what you're doing. Same with your partner. You've got to be totally focused on them when you're being present, when you want to get your passion back. And the invitation from the motorcycle is, look how fast I am. Look how beautiful I look. Look how sleek and powerful and sexy I am. The invitation to take a ride. And so the feminine has to provide that side of it. So that was one of the dualities that they rekindle. And they go through others and teach people how to go back to their poles when they get home. Because when we. The work environment is a masculine environment. Everyone's masculine at work. And so it's hard for the feminine person in the relationship to flip that switch back to feminine from masculine when they come home. But you can learn to do that.

God, this is so good. Because I have explained this before, both in our community and on the show a few times. Like, masculine is about completion. It's about sagittal plane doing. It's about moving forward, moving things forward in any capacity. And then the feminine is like the butterfly or the lake, you know, it's just seeking expansion and pleasure and fun and all these things. And neither one of them are bad or good. They just are what they are. Right. And so I feel like. And I'm curious how you feel about this and how this is talked about in the film and in the book. When we look at masculine being very kind of linear and completion focused, and then we understand the feminine is about playfulness and expansion and exploration and testing boundaries. Don't you think that in relationships that in order for freedom to truly exist, there has to be some kind of structure? There has to be some kind of awareness of here's where the healthy boundaries are. Because there is, unfortunately, from what I've seen, especially here in SoCal, there's this voice of, like, I don't know if it's the sacred feminine rising again, but it's this voice of, well, if it doesn't feel good, I'm not going to do it. And I'm just calling bullshit on that. Like, sometimes things aren't going to feel good because freedom can only exist when there's healthy boundaries. Can you expand on that?

Well, yeah, there's a couple of things at work here. One is boundaries and expressing to your partner what your needs are. I mean, ask for what you need. How is he or she going to know if you don't ask? And so that's one part is it always comes back to communication. Yes, of course. What does that mean? Ask for what you need. So that's where you can find out what your boundaries are and what you like and what you're afraid to tell your partner. Because what if I feel shameful? If you're with somebody that makes you feel ashamed, you can't be yourself. And if you're not yourself, you got to put a lot of work into being someone else. And it's exhausting and tiresome and eventually you can't take it anymore. There's a couple in the film that are polyamorous, and I went to their when I got invited to their wedding, which was held at a fairy convention. I thought, oh, I must go to this. This will be fantastic. And it was. They got married at a ferry convention in Oregon. And before they got married, they agreed they would continue dating other people after they got married and having sex with other people. And they're a very high functioning couple. They're still married and going strong. And I attribute the fact that they're high functioning, not to that they're having sex with other people. That's not the point. The point is that in order for them to be polyamorous, they had to be fully open with each other about who they were in order to be polyamorous. You can't hide that from your partner, otherwise it's called cheating. And so whether you're monogamous or not, and monogamous is the way of our society and the reasons why that works best for most people. And in order to be monogamous, you still need to be open, fully open with your partner about who you are, what you need, what your fantasies are. And your partner, ideal partner, should be fully accepting. Yeah. Or even if they don't like it or don't want to partake in it, understand you have a need for it. And so there are ways to address that. Right. Maybe role playing. There are ways to get what you need from each other without going outside of the boundaries that you have agreed to set for your relationship.

And those boundaries, if they come from love, not fear. And I hate to be reductionistic, but I do believe that, yes, it's multi contextual, but everything we do is a choice of love or fear. And I know I haven't seen the nature of existence yet, but I'm sure that you cover this in that film. So we'll be sure to link that film in our, in our show notes today. But man, when I think about the polyamorous route, it just triggers the shit out of me because I feel like I've done so much in my 20s and even in my early 30s where I explored so much with different women and in different situations. It's like now that that's satiated within me, I can see that the only reason I'm potentially triggered by it is because maybe there's not an acceptance and not a forgiveness of the mistakes that I've made, you know, of the way that I treated women. And I think I'm still forgiving myself for that. But that's my process around polyamory. You show in the film that polyamory is totally Possible as long as two people are very clear in their boundaries and have done their work. But what's your personal view of polyamory, especially after doing this film?

Well, this particular couple, they call what they do situational polyamory, which means that they're monogamous with each other at all times until they mutually decide we're going to have a polyamorous weekend. And each partner has a veto over what the other partner does. So nobody's off on a, you know, an individual tangent. There's still a unit, and they're agreeing on what's best for the. For the couple, the union. Neil Strauss talks about that. Yeah. Neil Strauss says that. Yeah. You. You've got. You make a choice. What's best for me, what's best for my partner, and what's best for our relationship. And if those three things coincide, that's something you should do no matter what it is. And then getting to that point, though, is. Is the hard part, because you've got to be genuine and honest about who you are and what you need and so does your partner. So you can find out where those things do overlap and what is outside those boundaries.

And also, you said, be genuine about who we are and what we stand for, and be honest about if there's any dysfunction that the ego is attached to that is making someone say, this is my preference. Because I have found that specifically in the poly community, there are people with sex addiction that are masquerading as very acute and aware and, you know, and wanting to have, like, sex with multiple people. It's just like a sex addiction with, like, some kind of conscious label stuck on it. So the deeper understanding of who we are. And again, I'm not anti polyamory. I think you have shown in the film that it's possible and actually can be healthy for some people. But I believe it's something to take a caution flag to, especially understanding Neil Strauss's work. Right. And his journey from the game to the truth. But you personally, do you believe that that'll be something ever in your life, in your lifespan?

I wouldn't rule out anything. I mean, that is, as long as it's not harmful to others. I like to try to not be closed off to considering anything at all. And partly that's because I don't adhere my life to a rule book written by someone a thousand years ago or something I just heard on a TV show. I'm open to new information if you bring me a good. If you make a strong case for something. I'll listen, I love nothing better than when someone makes a great point. But when they say, well, no, you have to do this because they said so 10,000 years ago, I'm a little skeptical. I mean, I need more than that. Give me some data. And that's what the Gottmans do. They bring data to their conclusions. It's not just I sat down and thought about it, and now I'm a guru, like the Buddha did. And, I mean, he came up with some really interesting and helpful suggestions on how to live your life. But the Gottmans bring data, they did research, and they talk to people and they examine people. And the thing about science is you can replicate the experiment and test it and see if it works. You listening right now? Do the experiment, go home tonight and listen to your partner for 20 minutes without interruption. Do it for one week and see if you get positive results. If you do, you'll say, this is great. I'm going to continue it.

Yes, man. This is what we talk about in the show is like, this space between gathering information like this, which is fun. I think all of us love to gather, right? We're like, let me listen to as many things as possible. The real rubber meeting the road is like implementing, you know, go home and practice this with your partner. And notice how you want to reach for your iPhone.

Here's another one I'll give you. Here's one called capitalization. Researchers came up with this. Harry Reese and Shelley Gable, I think their names are. I'd written them down, but it's called capitalization, where if your partner comes home and has good news that happened to him or her that day. Oh, I got a promotion. Oh, they liked my work. My assignment at work, or I sold more than anybody else. I was the top of the leaderboard today. This is your opportunity to capitalize on that and offer a hey, that's wonderful. I'm so happy for you. You have now capitalized on their good news. They feel better about it, and the happiness you feel in that moment lasts all week. The problem is, if you fail to do that, if you don't capitalize on it, it's a negative strike against you, and then it counts against you. So it's a double whammy. If you don't do it, you're going to be penalized. And if you do do it, which is really easy, if you just make a conscious effort to be supportive of your partner's good news, it increases your happiness as a couple for as long as the next entire week seems like.

A pretty simple thing to do. Listen up, y'. All. I mean, that seems like a very small yet powerful, like, potent ingredient.

But when you're stuck on your iPhone, you know, and you're into your own.

Thing, this is one of the unintended consequences of technology striving forward in the name of progress. What kind of progress are we actually having when people are more disconnected than ever, but quantified to be connected through their phones? I mean, that's another conversation, and I hope you do a film on that one day. The reason I'm bringing that up is because there's ingredients to love. And one thing that we didn't cover, which I just want to go back to real quick, was these four horsemen you mentioned. The contempt was the number one. We talked about that earlier. But can you, as an ingredient in love, like, taking out the contempt? Why is the contempt such the deal breaker? Like, why was that in your film in. The Gottmans talked about this. Why was that the number one thing compared to defensiveness, stonewalling, and criticism?

Well, you know, the scientists look at the why question last. First they look for trends and then connect the trends to behavior and then try to explain it with the why. And it seems to make sense that if your partner doesn't value you or your opinion, then you don't feel like you're valued or the relationship is valued. You maybe you start to feel like an object or it's transactional. You're not in it together. It's the togetherness that you. The couples that last and are happiness, they think of themselves as a unit, as a duo. One of the other techniques that the Gottmans use is they ask people to describe things that happened to the couple in the past. And when they describe their history in a positive way, that shows that they see themselves as a positive unit. When they describe all the negative things that happen, then that's not as good a sign. That's a worse sign. And they look for that, for those signals, for, okay, what is the. Let's diagnose the problem so we can offer some solutions to this couple. So you need to get out of the contempt rut and be actively participating in the relationship in a positive way and valuing what your partner has to say or offer. If you don't value that person, why are you partners with them? That's the existential question of relationships. What are you getting out of the deal? A lot of people are together transactionally. They're in it for other reasons than for valuing each other as A human. I mean, you know, money, resources, staying alive. That's what most of human history was. This idea of getting married for love is 160 years old. They look back. Tai Tashiro, one of the psychologists I interviewed told me that when they look back and studied history, this idea of I'm special, I have a birthday, I have a soulmate is a very new idea in human history. The vast majority of time that humans existed is we were paired up for reproduction. Like arranged marriages or it was about bringing two families together or sharing resources. It was about survival.

It was about surviving. Very ancient brain stuff. Exactly. It's shocking to me because there is my. And I don't know if it was Disney when I watched Disney as a kid or something, but I feel like we have all been force fed this story about, like, relationships and marriage need to be this way. Like, the man should act this way and it should be like a knight on a horse and the woman should be dainty and wearing white dress. I gotta tell y' all that this is like the ultimate bullshit story. Like, it's just not true. Like we.

Well, nobody can live up to that.

It's so much pressure, so much expectation.

You're set up to fail and be frustrated because no one can reach those ideals.

Yeah, and I love this because, like, the whole question of, like, what even is love? I have my own definition. I'd love to know your definition and also what you talk about in the film as love. Because you interviewed some incredible people in this film, like Dr. Chris Ryan and the Gottmans alone. But not to mention all the other experts that you've brought on to feature this, like, from everything you've learned from the film and just even in your own expression, what is real love? Like, what is real love?

There's so many definitions. One of my favorites was Matt Ridley, who was an author who wrote the Red Queen, said love is wanting to monopolize somebody sexually and socially.

That's a pretty negative one, isn't it?

Damn depressing. One of the rabbis I interviewed, he said that love is giving. Period, end of, you know, stop. It's about giving. And Dr. Pat Allen, she takes that idea a little bit further and she says that it's about giving for men or the masculine and it's about receiving for women. Because men and women, we fit together, right? The man gives the sperm and the woman receives the sperm. She has the egg. And it's on a micro level. We are mirroring on a macro level what's going on on this Biological level. So things have sort of changed a little bit to where both couples work now. But the providership thing was a big deal for a long time because. Partly because when a woman is pregnant, she's kind of slightly more helpless when she has to carry a baby around and after the baby's born and she has to carry the baby and it's harder. You can't hunt when you're carrying a baby around.

I mean, it's a lot of a woman. It's a lot.

It's teamwork. It's teamwork. Right. We're designed to have different strengths to complement each other's strengths. And so that a part of who we are. Even though our culture has changed and everybody wants to be equivalent in so many ways and we are equals, but we're not the same. We have different strengths and we should value that in each other and not criticize. Well, you're not as good at me as I am at talking about relationships. Well, we're not designed. I'm not designed to be as good at talking about relationships as someone with a more feminine disposition. Apparently, that's the way it worked out. And if you look back even further, when humans were evolving on the African savanna, it was a much different social structure. And that's what's natural for humans. We evolved to live in that environment. And we've gone now into this many different environments because we've evolved such large brains and technologies and the ability to live in many different climates. But at that time, we lived in small tribes of 150 people or fewer. That's what's normal. Our brains are designed to connect emotionally with up to a gross 150 people, give or take. If someone new comes in who is important to us, someone gets bumped. And part of the problem with something like Facebook is we think we're connecting with thousands of people, but we're not. We don't have the ability. We can only connect with a small number to be happy, to be truly happy, you just need two or three or four or five close people in your life.

Yeah.

And then you reach maximum happiness. That's all you need are five genuinely great people. Get. Fill up that dance card. And you did great.

And also too, it's a lot to manage because there's an energetic. There's a psychic load. Right. So if I have five, one, two, three, four, five people in my life that I really tend to like a garden and I'm loving them and we share great interaction that takes up psychic space. So I think about like the way that relationships can get complicated. And I'd love to get your take on this, because complication exists, I believe, when people retract, when people aren't sharing, when they're withholding information, when there's the structure that exists where one person gets hurt and they shut down or they, the other person might try to control. So there's this, it feels like there's. The complication exists because of the unmanaged polarity, because of the pendulum that swings side to side. Do you feel like that exists because of the ever changing society that we're in, where men and women are both working? Or what's, what's, what's the real complication here?

Well, we live in a culture that's out of sync with who we are as a species. That's the way it is. That's the way it's always going to be going forward. So we're always going to have a difficulty being true to ourselves in the culture we're immersed within. So what do you do about it? Because we're going to have constant conflict with our partners and people we know. We have to learn how to handle conflict better. And there are ways to improve how you handle conflict. And I'll give you an example. One of the ways, the experts said, is if you have a disagreement over how messy the garage is, that means you need to discuss it. Okay, well, the masculine brain does not do well with ambush discussions. It does much better with knowing what's coming. And so the best way to argue or deal with the conflict is, Honey, I'd like to talk about the garage. When is a good time for you? Hopefully later today. And then if he says, no, no, I'm busy, I can't do it. Okay, how about tomorrow morning? Okay, fine. So now this is what Dr. Pat Allen recommends. Write it down on a piece of paper. Tomorrow morning, 10am we're going to discuss the garage. Put it on the refrigerator or whatever, because now that you've written it down, it's real, it's not. Oh, I forgot about it, you know. Well, you said, I, you know, becomes. You said. And I said, no, it's written down. We agreed, 10am we're going to discuss it. Now both people have time to sort of get used to the idea. We're going to discuss the garage tomorrow. And when you do it, when you argue by appointment, the outcomes are much better because you're much more logical and rational about it and it's not an emotional thing. And instead of saying when you're in that discussion. You are such a slob. I can't stand it. That's putting someone on the defensive. Eliminate the word. You substitute the word I in every case. Instead of saying, you're a slob, you say, I feel anxious when the garage is this messy. Can you please help me? Well, now he or she is going to be much more inclined to. Because of course I want to help you feel better. And eliminate the word should. You should do this, you should do that. Should is the. No one should. You don't know what they should or shouldn't do. Talk about yourself, how it makes you feel. This makes me feel. I feel this way. And then the way to end every conflict or argument is to say, I hear what you're saying. What can I do to help us feel better? And then let them tell you what you need to do. And then a hug, and everything ends so much better that way. Eliminate the word. You argue by appointment. Eliminate the word should, always and never. Those are two more to get rid of. Because if you say you're always this way, you never do this.

That's the worst.

Well, you're wrong. You've lost the argument right from the start. Because no one is always this or that.

Anytime. It goes from a singular event to an always. I feel like it's a recipe for disaster, man or woman. When anyone ever says, and I can attest to this, too. It's like, you always do this. I mean, there's nothing constructive that can come from the word always.

So here you go. Once again, it's quantified. You can try and experiment. Ask for an appointment to discuss something, talk about I, not you. See if you have a better outcome. If you do, you'll want to continue doing it that way instead of the old way.

Argue by appointment. It's a big one. That's a. If, if, if people, they've already gotten so many things from this conversation. If you get one thing from Roger, argue by appointment. Because the arguments are going to come. It's not like we need to go, please, God, can we have no arguments at all? Well, I don't know if that's real life, we're going to have arguments, right?

But our society has designed an environment where we're naturally going to be at odds with each other.

Yeah. And it's the acceptance of that. Because really, that's a good story. That's like God experiencing God. And I don't mean, again, the bearded dude in the sky. Like, we're all. We're all made in an image of God. We're all in the understanding of this. And whether you're spiritual or scientific, there is a simple secret that William J. Doherty talked about. And I loved it because I just pulled it from your book a few minutes before we started the Simple Secret. When you asked him on how to get more of what the man wants, and I'll speak to that, he goes, if you want more what you want, give her more of what she wants because she is going to be in a generous mood. But here's the caveat. You have to be sincere. Can you share a little bit more about that?

That's such great advice, isn't it? It boils it all down.

And people, people kind of hide behind this. I've heard men say, happy wife, happy life. I don't agree with that 100% because I think that's kind of a cop out. Can you share more about what Doherty had mentioned?

Well, yeah, that's the aphorism for the more complex idea here, that in a relationship there's someone who tends to be more logical and one that tends to be more emotional. And when you're in a conflict, logic doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. What matters is feeling better to the emotional person. The logical one wants to litigate. Well, you said this and I said that. You see how I'm right. The emotional person doesn't care about any of that. The emotional person just wants you to acknowledge that you've heard them and that you understand they're hurting and that you want to help them feel better. So we all want to just get back to happiness faster. So how do you do that? By saying, I am so sorry that I made you feel this way or that this has happened. How can I help us feel better? If you limit your. Especially if you're the logical one and you remember this. If you limit your responses to those types of phrase, it'll be over so much faster and you're back to happiness and you can go watch the game sooner.

What is it about us men that sometimes wants to fight against that simplistic answer?

Yeah, well, we're designed differently. You know, we're designed to be. There's a reason why one is more emotional and one is more logical. It's a better team. Teamwork is better when you're different and you have different strengths. You know, the emotional one is good at reading information from a being that can't speak. A little baby that can't tell why it's hurting or cold or tired or hungry. But a mother can read from those signals much better than a father can. Or for some reason it makes sense to be designed that way.

Yeah.

And then the father or the person who's going to be the one going out to find some sustenance and bring it back has to focus on other things like eye hand coordination or whatever it is. So there's nothing wrong with either one. They're both different and they're both equally important.

There is something in me that I can recognize, and that is I was raised primarily by my mom. And I think a lot of people in our society, like the fathers, will leave. And like you had said, I think it's part of the masculine. When the masculine feels there's too much connection and something's not working. The masculine wants freedom, like contract expansion. And for me, I was raised by a single mom on welfare. So what I've had to come to terms with and really do a lot of healing work on is like my propensity to do more into the feelings instead of into the logical. And it goes to your point too, because in relationships it can flow back. The energy can flow between masculine and feminine. And so I've done a lot of work on, like, okay, how do I take a breath? And I don't know if you talked about this in your interviews or in the Truth About Marriage in the film. I didn't notice it. But I'm curious how you feel. Are there tools to settle our nervous system that either the Gottmans recommended or any of your experts recommended, like breathwork or maybe somatic experiencing, or what are some of the tools that people really can use to get them in these states of clarity? Because it's one thing to hear it and practice it, but sometimes, Roger, when the system is completely overwhelmed, there's really no way that logic can get in if we're in panic or fight or flight. So are there any practical tools you can share with us about that?

Well, that's why I wrote the book, because I found so many and I couldn't fit them all into the documentary and I put a lot of them in. But it really, the key is it's such a cliche to say we gotta communication. But it's not just communication. It's about being active, an active participant in your relationship. And the way Dr. Gottman puts it, every relationship deteriorates naturally over time. So if you start a relationship, it's going to end in a little while if you don't put active intention into maintaining it. You know, it's like a spinning wheel. If you Stop spinning it. It's going to stop spinning eventually. You got to keep putting energy into it. Hard work, it's not easy. And it requires self understanding, self realization, and an ability to be wrong and to realize that you can do better. It's really hard to get to that point. And if you can just be open to. The hard thing is if you're with somebody, you started out with two as two masks and two facades, but now you want to open up, come out of the closet and say, here's who I really am. It's so scary, right? Because what if they don't like who you really are? So how do you get to that point? And that's where therapy helps. Getting help from a counselor. Therapy should be mandatory for everybody from day one. It's just advice from someone with experience who can help you, give you good tools. There's nothing wrong with it. Even if you're not in a relationship or if you are one of the go to therapy. One of the therapists, John Friel, put it this way, when couples come to him for divorce therapy or marital therapy, usually it's like someone going to the emergency room and saying, I broke my leg seven years ago. Can you fix it? Well, if you had come seven years ago when you first broke the leg, I would have been able to do a much better job at helping you walk normal again. It's going to be very difficult at this point to help you re achieve a normal gait. You know, we have to re break that leg and start over. And it's going to be painful and difficult, but you can't not do it or you're going to repeat that with the next person. So, yeah, you got to do the hard work. But the result is it's such a big payoff that it's worth it.

It's a massive payoff. And just to close the loop on that and get into the end of our show, because I've just scratched the surface on the book. There's so much wisdom, and you absolutely have to see the film the Truth About Marriage. It is, I would say, the most logical and deeply emotionally expressed film when it comes to the real truth about marriage right now in 2020, especially with what's going on with people being forced at home. And that's a whole other topic. But the one thing that I wanted to ask you about this was for the people that are single, you know, you yourself currently find yourself single. And I don't know about your history, if you've ever been married or if you have children or any of that?

No children. I got close three times and frustrated and wondering why I couldn't pull it together.

So that might have been the fuel for this film in some ways?

Totally was, yes.

So for people that are wanting the soulmate, how do they increase their chance of finding that soulmate? By doing the inner work on themselves. What does that look like?

Well, you know, it's like you got to lower your expectations a little bit, because once you realize that society has given you expectations that are impossible for anyone to meet, that's hard to do. Right. I've got these ideals for someone, and I want the perfect person. And so soulmates are kind of a problematic concept. You can't. It's better to find someone that can. You can both grow into soulmates over time and look at it that way. That makes sense to me. Give. Give openly to someone when you're dating, but that doesn't mean that you should confess everything on your first date. They have to earn the right to know who you are, and that's why it takes time to open up fully and to feel safe to open up fully. If you feel like you can't be yourself with someone, why are you with them? Right. Sometimes you know that love at first sight. Sometimes you're with somebody and you just feel like, I can be myself. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I can be myself without any fear of retribution or shame or someone being displeased with me. In fact, they celebrate who I am. If you can find someone who is that way with you, they're going to want to be with you and you're going to want to be with them.

The odds are if society is in control, I think, against people. But it's not that society is the controller. We decide we are the controller. And the reason I say that is because our society is built upon selling you things because you feel inferior. And only if you buy our things and follow our narrative, will you be loved, Will you be whole? Will you be complete? I was just a guest on different podcasts, Robin Openshaw, and we talked about this. In the increasing chances of us doing the inner work of finding the soulmate, do you believe that it comes down to doing consistent inner emotional work? And if so, could you just give maybe a couple examples of what that inner work might look like?

Yeah. I mean, how do you know who you are if you don't? How do I know who I am if I don't examine myself? I'm going to keep making the same Mistakes over and over again. And that's why I got so frustrated and sought out all these experts to help them solve my problems. I mean, I got free two hour sessions with all these amazing experts.

That's why I do podcasting, that's why I do the podcast.

And so, you know, you get to benefit from that. If you see the film, you learn what I learned. And they all had great advice of one kind or another. I learned from every single person, whether it was a psychologist or a rabbi or a couple, a polyamorous couple or who everyone has advice, good advice, and I learned from them all. And I'm still learning. Perfection is impossible, right? Eventually you find someone who makes you feel good, you feel better being around them than not being around. If you make it more complex than that, you don't have to make it more complex than that. Just focus on and you first have to know what you want, right? You can't ask for what you want if you don't know it. And that's part of the biggest problem. So many people are confused about what they want or they think they want something that they've been told they should want and then they find out later, 20 years later, I didn't really want that. Why was I pursuing that? So that's where the self work is necessary. You've got to find out who you are. And you can read books, you can watch my documentary, you can get one on one help from a counselor, whether it's a psychologist, a life coach, whatever. You need to find someone with experience and good ideas who can listen to you objectively and give you some hard tasks to do to improve yourself. But at least sort of like the alcoholic, you know, you got to hit bottom and want to improve. If you want to improve, you will, but it's up to you, which it always is.

And if everything that you've learned has altered you in some way, I'm sure it has. Like what's something you can share with us that you really took to task? What's one of the biggest things you learned about yourself by directing this film?

When I was writing the book, my publisher was really rough on me and I put a lot of personal information in the introduction to the book that I. She made me put it there. It wasn't there when I started. She said people are going to want to know who you are and why should I listen to this person? So that was the hardest for me. It's very difficult for me because I grew up in a family where sharing wasn't natural. Emoting. It wasn't, you know, like, I've got a buddy of mine, Joe Ionetti, who I wrote a film called Suckers with. He's. He's Italian. And it's natural for them to express how they feel in the family. That wasn't my family.

I'm half Italian. I know what you're saying. Yeah.

My experience was, coming from a Scandinavian family was there's nothing wrong, and you shut up about it. So I had to overcome that and learn how to say I love you. My first love taught me to say I love you. I didn't. Had never told someone I love them since I was a child until she taught how. And it wasn't easy for her to get me there. And it probably was part of the reason the relationship didn't make it, because I made it so hard. But I learned vastly from her, and I owe her the. The. That great debt for teaching me that.

Wow. Thank you for sharing, man. Thank you for being so curious. Following your passion, sharing with the world, this book, this film, what a wonderful exploration we've had. You know, we covered a lot of ground. Is there anything you think we missed when we look at this question? You know, the truth about marriage? Is there anything you want to express to the audience?

I'll give you one thing that is particularly timely, because when people are forced to be home a lot more, as we have been in the past year, nine months, six months, One of the things all the experts told me when I asked them about that, what should we do to survive this? They said, ban criticism until we get back to normal. Don't try to use this as an opportunity to fix your relationship. Wait until we're back to some sort of normalcy, because you're not seeing things in a normal way. In this pressure cooker, a lot of people are going to break up or give up or see this as a reason to try to fix things. So those are the two things that they said we should most be aware of. Ban all criticism, because that's gonna lead to trouble and get through it. But don't try to use this as a reason to demand that we fix everything now.

What a deep gift this is. And I'm not saying, like, the lockdown is a total gift, because I'm not gonna spiritually bypass it like that. But we can choose, especially with what you just mentioned, we can choose to see this as a gift because it is showing people the truth of where they actually are as a couple or where we actually are as a society. This is the Great pause. Right. The 2020. Like the year where we look in the mirror. And I love that because please do not use this as a reason to say that the relationship's not going to work out unless that's your soul. Unless it's really your soul telling you that. It's great. It's great advice. It's great wisdom. Everything's going to be linked in our show notes today. And as we say goodbye, Roger, for just this last question, and it's my favorite question, man. And it's just this question of living life. Well, of wellness. With everything you've been through, you know, this, directing this film, directing many films over the past couple decades, and with all your emotional intelligence, how would you define wellness? Like, what's your definition of living life? Well, what's your definition of wellness?

Doing it because it's making you afraid. Do those things that you're afraid of. Go out there and do it. Those things that you're afraid of. And this is Neil Strauss, I'm quoting now. If you're afraid of something, it's probably the thing you need to do most.

And that is wellness. Leaning into the fear.

Yes.

Yes.

Go for it. Take a trip. Go somewhere once we can travel again. Get out of your normalcy and go experience the world. There's so much out there that is awaiting so many joys and pleasures that you're missing if you're afraid.

The truth about marriage Dot com. Roger, thank you for coming on the show.

Oh, it's been my pleasure. Thank you, Josh.

Man, that was fun.

Great.

I enjoyed that.

Yeah, yeah. You're an excellent host. I love how you run the ship.

Oh, thank you, man. Have you done a lot of podcasts this year?

This is probably number 50.

No shit.

Yeah.

50 shows.

Yeah, 50 different shows.

Is that your team PR? You hired them to reach out?

Both. And it's not just this movie, but it's some that's a combination. I've got a couple other movies, too, and so every time I've got something coming up, you know, they all kind of overlap. Like my film Suckers or Six Days in Roswell or two that I just re released. And then this film has been going. I've been doing podcasts since February.

What's your next project? There doesn't have to be. I was just curious if there is.

I have a show on Showtime right now called the Comedy Store that just started airing. It's a docu series. It's five episodes.

Cool. And is it about the comedy? Just what is comedy?

Or just it's about the Comedy Store in Los Angeles.

Got it.

The history of this. There's one famous comedy club.

There's one here in La Jolla. There's a Comedy Store.

Yes. Right.

I think they're closed.

I believe probably right now they are for sure.

Well, how can I support you, man? I mean, we will be in touch about when the show comes out, but if there's any other way that. I mean that your consciousness, your heart, your message, it's valid right now.

Keep me in your Rolodex, in your contacts, and if you want to do a follow up, you know, next year or whenever, you know, stay in touch.

Okay, cool.

Yeah.

And if there's anyone you think would be at your level of consciousness with. Because really, what I believe you're doing is you're just getting people to look within, which I've done a lot of plant medicine ceremonies, a lot of breath work, a lot of deep exploration. The more I. The more I dive into the spiritual world, the more I realize that so many people inside of it are full of. So, yes, when I come across somebody who's like, you know, you're grounded, but also you like to explore, I take notes.

I found that in the nature of Existence because I talked to a lot of gurus, and I'd say about 30% of them were there just for the power or it was a job. And then 30% of them were just reciting, regurgitating scripture, which gets boring quickly. And then the other third were truly enlightened beings. And those are the ones that I enjoyed the most.

Well, check out that film, too, man. Pleasure meeting you.

Likewise. Well do. Let's stay in touch.

Okay. Awesome. Roger. Have a good day, man. Thank you.

Ciao for now.

Bye.

All right, bye.