Why Most Relationships Fail: Is It True Love or Fear? (Spiritual Partnership vs. Ego-Based Love)

What's up, everyone? It's Josh Trent. This is the AMA where we're going deep on something that applies to all human beings, and that is love. How do you attract a conscious, spiritual relationship instead of the beatdown that many of us go through? We're talking about this and so much more on this AMA here on wellness and wisdom. All right, Mar. So this is a big one. When I think about most relationships, what if I told you, what if I told all of us that most relationships are not, not built on love? They're actually built on some form of fear? Some form of fear. Do you relate to this?

Yes. In my personal experience for the past 15 years that I've been dating, I believe all the relationships that I was in were built on some fear or some wounds.

And this is fine because it's the human experience that we go through pain to find the joy. That's the way that our creator designed it. And I don't think we ever get out of this life without feeling pain, experiencing pain. But today we're going to go deep on the contrast between two wounded egos coming together or two whole people coming together. And we're going to give practical strategies, y'. All. This is not just some woo woo conversation about how to love yourself. Quote, quote. Because we know that self love is a huge part of this equation. Yet self love is not a light switch that you flick one day when you feel like it. So, Mark, have you ever wondered why relationships feel transactional and exhausting? Like, this is really what we're talking about today?

Of course. Do you know why?

What do you think?

I feel like this actually goes back to the quote that I saw today that was so good that I saved it. And I feel like it's actually a really good thing to reference right now. It says so few people are willing to work on themselves for healthier relationships because most are still subconsciously seeking a parent to take care of them rather than a partner to grow with. And I feel.

Let that land. Yeah, let that land, y'. All. We're literally dating our parents energetically, not physically energetically.

And I think that's the transaction that we're seeking. We're seeking someone to come and just embrace the wounds with their love that we have. But that's not really the meaning of why we're meant to be together with someone. It's not about. I believe it was Stan Tatkin that said, like, we were fitting each other's wound. And so basically, we're just like the perfect match that fits in the wound and complements the wound of the other person. So I believe that could be the transaction, the healing part. But we often don't see the healing in the relationship.

You know, whether it's Gabor Mate or whether it's the Gottmans or whether it's Stan Tatkin or Mark Groves. Like any of the highest level relationships and spiritual coaches in the world, don't you feel like they're all saying the same thing with different words? And that is the imago or the puzzle piece that fits. My wound is an exact fit to my husband or wife, my boyfriend or girlfriend's wound. And that's actually how it was designed. I think we all got drunk on the Cinderella story, Mar, where like the glass slipper fits and, you know, everybody lives happily ever after. And I think what happens that we're going to go deep into today with some practical things. And we'll start out, by the way, by just defining what is ego, love versus a spiritual partnership before we get to that definition. The point I'm making here is this. We have all been really indoctrinated by media. We have been sold this falsity, this bullshit story that love is supposed to feel and look like this white picket fence college degree. It's the same indoctrination that the matrix wants us to have when it comes to success or relationships or physical health. You're not accepted unless you have a six pack. You're not accepted as a man unless you have this many zeros in your bank account. You're not accepted as a woman unless you look a certain way unless you're beautiful enough. And y'. All. It's just exhausting. It's all bullshit. I know you feel this, right? So take that same awareness that conditioning has been happening for millennia and apply it to relationships. Because relationships are an aspect of the five sides of the Pentagon. It's on the screen right now. This is what we teach and talk about so much in our liberated life VIP program and in our tribe, mental, physical, emotional, spiritual and financial. Now, Mar, where do you believe that relation. This is a trick question, so I'm going to put you on the spot. Where do you believe that relationships both with self and other live in the structure of the wellness Pentagon? Which of the five sides do you think it exists on to the highest degree?

Are you talking just about romantic relationships?

I'm talking about the relationship to self and to other significant other.

I feel like it lies in all of the sides of the Pentagon.

Yes, you got it. I was trying to trick you. I was trying to trick you. And you totally got it. So, yes, Mar is right. And really the foundation of all of this is the physical, right? Because the physical is where the mental and the emotional reside. And then our spiritual and financial is how everything else is fortified. So the path to all of these is wherever you are. And let's start with wherever all of us are. And this is defining what exactly is hello Kitty? Mar, what's your cat's name?

Sammy.

Sammy's here for the AMA today, y'.

All.

If you're a cat lover, make sure you've subscribed on Spotify or YouTube. So the ego based love. The ego based love, which by the way, cats don't have ego, right? Children and cats, the reason we love them so much, children and pets, is because they're just present. They don't have any conditioning that we have. Like, they haven't believed that they're not loved yet. They haven't believed that they're not worthy. So ego based love, what is it driven by? What exactly is it? It is insecurity, it is attachment wounds, it's control and it's validation seeking. So just full stop, this is where partners become each other's essentially emotional crutch. And a source of mutual expansion is really what we're looking for. So how do we get there? We get there by living the definition of a spiritual partnership. A spiritual partnership is a place in self awareness. It's this deep place of knowing who you are, knowing what your values are, and knowing what your purpose is in life. Now that is a hefty bag to carry if you've never been down that route. And on the screen right now, we link to the exact process of how to get clear on that that we've already done. And, and so it's a really great training tool for you to just click the screen right now wherever you're watching. So unconditional love, unconditional growth, being whole in oneself and doing the work to make oneself whole, to have mastery over our own unique individual pentagon, and then finding a woman or man who's committed to the same thing, that's a spiritual partnership. Like, that's the juice, y'. All. And so we meet ourselves, right? We meet ourselves in first accepting the definition of what a spiritual partnership is versus an ego driven partnership. And just be honest with yourself right now. Just take a quick inventory, huh? Am I leaning towards an ego driven partnership or am I leaning towards a spiritual union? And just be real with yourself. There's no shame right I personally am in the middle. There are many times where I feel like we're very spiritually connected, we're very spiritually driven. But whenever my conduit between my spiritual portion of my pentagon gets dirty or I allow the other four to take it over, I notice that I start shifting more to the egoic frame in my relationship. And so ego driven fear is really coming from, oh my God, I'm going to die. Oh my God, I'm going to be abandoned. That's not the place that your partner is going to be able to thrive from. Spiritual love is freedom driven. Right, Mar? Like, what do you think about this? The freedom versus the fear. That's really what we're talking about here.

That's a big one. So I always like to speak from personal experience. And so far, my experience of dating until this year, it's been always fear driven. So always like fear of abandonment, fear of being rejected, and fear of not being good enough. And like all the connection was based around fear. And so I'm not even sure if it was ever love. Maybe it was some form of love, but it just doesn't feel like the love that's spiritual. So I feel like there's a difference between the fear based love and the spiritual based love, which is the fear based love asks, what can I get from you? And the spiritual asks, how can we grow together as a team? So I think that's a huge difference.

All right, so look, we've got this definition, but defining something doesn't mean that we've embodied it right. It's really the self awareness starting point. So if I know where I'm at, on a scale of 1 to 10, and me, I'm at a 5 personally, right? I'm working on a 6, I'm working on a 7. These things get to be accepted with grace because there are going to be weeks or months or maybe even years where you may have been stuck in the ego driven version of love. And I want to say this with full heart, full compassion. It's okay, y'. All. It's okay. Like, you're okay wherever you are. You're okay wherever you are. Wherever you're starting from in this process, if you've been noticing that you're a control freak, if you've been noticing as a man that you're hypersensitive to feminine critique, if you've been noticing as a woman that you're manically controlling and you're trying to get him to, to act and behave in the exact way that makes you feel safe because you heard it on Instagram that it's a man's responsibility to make you safe. Before you listen to the episode with Alison Armstrong where she said, as a woman that teaches women it is a woman's responsibility for her to be safe. It is a man's responsibility to feed that safety. But first and foremost, it is a woman's responsibility to make herself feel safe. That flies in the face of this new age spiritual babble mar, where everything is loaded on the shoulders of the man and the woman can just rest on a lily pad next to a lake like that. That is not reality. Right. Reality is exactly what we described. Remember, the spiritual relationship are two whole selves focused on freedom and expansion. The ego driven narrative that I see on Instagram, on social right now from men who are, by the way, going through a grappling factor and really using the pain of women to tell women's ego and pain exactly what those ego and pain structures want to hear. And that is it's all the man's fault. The man makes me feel safe. If I don't feel safe, it's the man's fault. We've really accosted this pain body in the feminine and these women are being sold by men, which I think is so ironic. These male coaches that are feeding this bullshit to these women from the new age mantra, and that is your man has to make you feel safe. Is it your man's responsibility to feed your safety and to fortify your safety? Absolutely. Absolutely. But is it also your responsibility as a woman to do all the things in your pentagon to make yourself feel safe? Because that is the definition of what we described. So think about this. If you're in an ego based relationship, how do you recognize it? You know that you're addicted to these highs and lows, right? Think of a roller coaster more. When you were a little kid, did you ride roller coasters?

Possibly, but wrote it more in my adulthood in relationships.

Okay, sweet. But you know what it feels like when you're in at Magic Mountain and Colossus is going up to the top and it's about to drop. You get like that heart. You start to feel alive. You're like, oh my God, this is scary. Well, what's really interesting is you know that you're in an ego based relationship when you only feel alive. When you're fighting, you only feel that it's real when the roller coaster is going up and down and up and down. True spiritual union has ups and downs, but it has a baseline of Almost boredom. And this also flies in the face of people that say, unless it's crazy stupid love, it's not real. That narrative is actually feeding the roller coaster. You also know that you're locked into an ego based relationship. If you feel incomplete without them, if you don't feel whole unless they're in your presence, that is actually a call that your creator is giving you to do the inner work. You also feel jealousy and power struggles. You feel like there's this crazy control dynamic where unless your man or unless your woman is behaving the exact way that you want them to, then you don't feel peace, then you don't feel safe. So these are things to be aware of. And then lastly, your wounds are leading because you're truly afraid to be alone. That's really the core of all of this. We all have universal core wounds. And we talked about this with Mark Tollefson in a podcast. We did that. We'll link in these show notes today. By the way, everything we're talking about today, y', all, is@joshtrent.com 72 1. You can get all these resources, all the tools. It'll change your life if you let it. So, damn, I can already hear people, like, nodding. Mar. There's a lot of people, like, going, yeah, yeah, this is me, but let's flip it. What does a spiritual partnership look like? Like, what are the ways we know that we're moving in the direction of a spiritual union?

Well, before I get to specifics, I want to share a story. Because last year I went through this whole process where I finally fully focused on myself. And I believe it was the first time since my teenage years that I completely removed the idea and dating. And it actually got the idea from the podcast with Mark GROSS and Kylie McBeath that we did last year. And I remember Kylie mentioned, just remove dating. The idea of dating and even the thought of being with someone for at least six months and see what happens. And that's exactly what I did. I just removed all the dating apps and removed the idea of finding a man. And I got so okay with being on my own. Just cultivated a life that I really love, focused fully on myself, my own healing, my friendships and all of that. And I got okay with even spending the rest of my life on my own. If it was meant to be, I was like, if that's meant to be, I'm totally okay with that. If somebody comes, I'm also okay with that. And, well, as I told you before recording, I'm currently In the early stages of dating someone. And it's the first time in my life that I feel completely different than ever before. And suddenly it feels safe. It feels like I'm finally just secure in myself. Like you said, like a woman should provide safety for herself first. That's the first step. Like, I feel the safety because I know who I am, I know what I want. I know that I have a life of my own, that even without the man will still be an amazing life. And so I don't dependent on him. So I think that's such an important thing to do before we get into the dating stage, is to take the time just for ourselves. So that goes hand in hand with healing our deepest wounds, which of course, it happens a lot of times in relationships, but there's a lot of things that we can also heal on our own or at least become aware of the wounds that we have so that when we get into the relationship, we actually know, okay, this is what triggers me. And I can pay attention when that happens and be more aware and instead of being reactive, be responsive. So I think that's one step. Another sign of a spiritual relationship, I would say, is the mindset of growth. So both parts need to be growth oriented. Otherwise you either get stuck in the same old pattern and the triggers and the fights and you will never evolve. And it usually ends with a breakup eventually. And emotional intelligence, I would say, is a big piece. So being vulnerable, being open, communicating openly, it's such a huge piece because if we don't communicate enough, things get lost in translation, we assume something that's not true and problems happen. So I believe those are the most important things. I probably missed a bunch of them, but these are just my minds right now.

It's a great start. One thing I love that you mentioned the book. So the book is Liberated Love. And you can go to the episode today. Joshtrent.com 721 to get these links because what y' all are doing is you're coming into this experience because you saw the title, you resonated with what we wanted to share today. There's this quest, there's this thirst in you and in me and in all of us. To have this spiritual union, to have these two holes coming together to make a brand new whole. And I think what's really interesting, mar that you said is you just took a break. You took a conscious break and that allowed you. That afforded you the resources and the capacity to fill yourself up. And that's really powerful. Like, I'm so Proud of you. And I'm proud of anyone that does that because I went through that as well. I did a year of abstinence in my early 30s. It was conscious, but it was also unconscious. I knew that when I was deep in my addiction with pornography and over sexualizing women that I just needed to go cold turkey. I just needed to take time away because my soul was calling me for this wholeness. But I can look back on it now and realize it's not easy. When you've operated in a certain paradigm for so long, there has to be an identity shift. And this is the main thing that if you get one thing from this podcast today, y', all, please hear me right now. Like, let this stick to your soul. This is the number one thing that I want you to get from this conversation. The freedom that you're seeking is on the other side of the shift in your identity. The freedom that you desire that you're craving is on the other side of your new identity. Now, what do I mean by this? The current identity of who you are right now may be a five when it comes to spiritual union versus ego driven. You may be at a seven, you may be at a one, you may be at a ten. And then you can hop on this podcast with me and share with us how you're at a 10. But what I'm saying is that the process of going through, first being aware of your identity, then getting clear on your values and who you are and what you stand for, and using that as fuel to actually go from identity A to identity B. That's what this is all about. That's the secret sauce. That's the thing that literally hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on every year by people that are seeking growth, that are seeking self development. And so the one thing that I would add to this is to recognize that conflict in ourself and conflict with our loved one is not bad. In an ego driven relationship, we look at conflict as the devil. Oh my God, I'm having conflict with my person. Therefore, good vibes only they're not the right one. Like, you should just go and have brunch and drink mimosas. What the fuck? So it's so ridiculous. It's so utterly ridiculous, this narrative. In the new age spiritual world, do what only feels good, brother. If it doesn't feel good, don't do it. Go with your highest excitement. Are there times for this mindset? Sure. Maybe 5% of the time, the rest of us here on planet Earth that have not blasted out to the 12th dimension are operating from a frame that we see challenges and conflict as growth opportunities. And this is the big piece that I want to say. It overlays all the other points you made mar to recognize we're in this spiritual union. People in spiritual unions see conflict as a measurement of growth. I saw a clip today from Jordan Peterson, and he said, you know why people get divorced after 10 years? It's a mathematical solution. Let's say they have five disagreements a day, and after five years, the pain of having the disagreement makes them not speak up anymore. Well, if you multiply that out, it's about 10,000 fights that were never had. 10,000 fights that either the man or the woman didn't feel were necessary to actually get through. They resisted the conflict, they resisted the pain, and that's what got them divorced. It wasn't the fighting that got them divorced. It was the 10,000 fights they never had. Like, let that sink in, y'. All. It's the very thing you're resisting about resistance and conflict itself that is sabotaging your pathway to the spiritual union. And it's talked about in the Bible. It's talked about in many religious texts. It's talked about in the Dao De Qing. It's talked about in so many. It's talked about in the Buddha's teachings. I mean, anything we resist, to quote Napoleon Hill, it persists. So that's what I want to say now. How do we transition this? Because that was a little bit heavy, and I get that. Let's transition to how to actually call in the One. Because calling in the One isn't just a book title. It's reality. But in order to call in the One, here's the secret. You must be the One. You are only going to attract not what you desire, not what you want, but who you are, who you actually are. So the best way to do this is to realize that you become whatever it is you seek, but it's a process of becoming that in the seeking. Here is an amazing clip that we had from Paul. Check. And in this clip, he essentially describes for people that are looking for their soulmate, this is the equation. So let's listen to Paul right now.

Don't be in such a hurry to find your soulmate, because if you really knew what a soulmate was, you wouldn't be in such a hurry to find your soulmate, because you'd be getting ready for your soulmate. Who's your soulmate? Your soulmate is the person that loves you so much they will tell you exactly the the truth of what they experience with you, for better or worse. They'll tell you when you're lying. They'll tell you when you're being an. They'll tell you when you're not following through on your commitments. And if you're not ready for your soulmate, you will reject her and keep looking for the woman that you already had. And the next one will do the same to you. And eventually you're going to have to stand face to face in the mirror and cry your goddamn eyes out because there's not anyone left to put up with your. So your soulmate is the mirror that God sends to you that will love you enough to let you do that for them. And if the two of you can survive each other, you found your soulmate. If you don't survive each other, you're not mature enough to have a soulmate.

Okay, so you just saw this incredible quote that is linked@joshtrend.com 721. Heal first. You attract what you are, not what you want. That's the secret sauce on top of the secret sauce. Practicing healthy detachment. Healthy detachment doesn't mean avoidance, by the way. Have you explored this dynamic more, how to practice healthy detachment without being an avoidant person? Have you ever struggled with that or dealt with that yourself?

Yes, because in the past I used to attach very easily, very quickly, which also goes to like getting intimate physically very quickly. So to be able to practice detachment, I need to remove the thing that I know is getting me attached to another person. So that's one part of it. But also practicing detachment on a very spiritual level, as I was reading the Bhagavad Gita, and it's all about the art of detachment. So I think not just for relationships, but for everything in life. Just like not being attached to the results of our actions, which goes for relationships, like when we're starting a relationship, not being attached to the idea that this is the one, this is the relationship that I will be in forever. Because we never know. We can't attach to that.

We don't know the future because it hasn't happened yet. And actually, if you want to get really deeply metaphysical, there is no such thing as the future. There is only an ever present now. And you don't have to read Eckhart Tolle's book or listen to Bruce Lipton or go deep into Dispenza to recognize this. The cold, stark reality is that this moment that we're here together right now, where we're connecting through this Podcast. This is actually it. It's just this ongoing multiplication of a present moment on top of a present moment on top of a present moment. Because, y', all, what happens when you ruminate on the past, that's depression or the opposite of expression. What happens when you're in fear about the future? That's anxiety, right? Or fear of being enough to handle it. So what I'm saying is let go of your attachment to having it have to be exactly what Cinderella told you and replace that with pure, authentic, humble desire. Detachment. That's healthy. Doesn't mean that there's no place for desire. And this is what a lot of people get wrong because of the spiritual babble that we're in. We're in a new age soup of people that are just accosting each other and going through essentially pain appropriation. Where I talked about earlier, these men with ponytails typically are telling women exactly what their ego wants to hear, not what is true for a spiritual union. And it's the other way for men. The red pill community tells men, she doesn't deserve your trust. She's just a hoe. She'll leave you. I mean, this shit is so toxic. It's so toxic, right? But in the middle of all of this, there's you. There's this place of self awareness. There's this special connection you have to you. You're doing the work on yourself. You're in mastery of the five sides of your Pentagon. You're in the process of liberation. Not because you think it's cool and trendy and you're just looking for purpose, but because, you know, based on everything we've talked about in this podcast and also the masters that we've brought on, like Paul Cech, you know that it's this healthy detachment, still having desire wrapped inside of it without a firm grasp on what it has to look like in the future. Like, I really hope that sinks in because what we're talking about here is boundaries inside of us and boundaries with our man or woman. One thing that I know mar, and maybe you've dealt with this in your life, is I have boundaries that feel true to my soul. I start to enforce those boundaries, those boundaries get pushed back on, and then I just let the boundary collapse because I'm in fear of losing someone's love. Have you ever had this experience?

For sure, yes. Yes. That's how I navigated most of my relationships in the past as well. Just the fear of being abandoned and rejected. So you let go of your boundaries to keep the relationship, but you don't really realize that relationship is not functional at all.

And it's totally human that we do this. I've definitely done that before, right? Like, I let my boundaries collapse with probably like my first five, seven girlfriends just because I wanted love, I wanted affection. I didn't. I didn't get enough of that when I was a child. And honestly, most of us don't. It's not to blame our parents. It's just this big repeating cycle where we come to our great, great, great grandparents and the trauma they went through. This trauma rides down the rails on our emotional epigenetics. And once it gets to us who are here in this conversation, we can actually shift reality. We can play a new reality game, but only if we're interested and we have the awareness from a place of humility to make it stick, to make it embodied. So what I'm saying here is boundaries are something that are serving you and they're serving the other person. And it's a place of self love and self awareness that boundaries were even placed in. So the person your soulmate is and the person you are have to be a match energetically. They have to be a match from a value standpoint, Mar, you would never want to be with a man that had really porous boundaries, right? Because you'd essentially test him and you'd walk all over him. It would just happen. And he wouldn't want you to have porous boundaries either, because then he couldn't trust your truth. He couldn't trust who you are. If you said, hey, I'm going to wait two months to sleep with you, and you slept with him on the first night, he's not going to respect you. I know I wouldn't. That's one of the reasons why I loved Kerry Michelle, because, like, she made me wait. She made me wait. And I'm like, huh? That's actually the first time that's ever happened. My ego was so attached to women giving their sexuality to me right away that the first time it was presented to me from her, which it really was the first time. And I was like, wow, this is so refreshing. This is so refreshing. A woman who wants to get to know me before we sleep together. I mean, that's the unconsciousness that I was operating from in my mid to late 30s. So start with honesty. This is where we start is with honesty. Right, Mar, if you had to give one piece of advice to round out the conversation, what's the piece of advice that people get to know about moving towards Spiritual and soul union versus egoic attachment.

So many things.

That's a big question. That's a big question.

I could talk for, like, an hour or two about this, but speaking of boundaries, I feel like when we finally start to say no to the things that are not aligned with our values and who we truly are, we open the door to something that is in alignment with us. And I feel like that was a big thing for me because I used to say yes to all the things just to get the love that I never received. Once I started saying no to those things that were not what I really wanted, suddenly all the things that I ever wished for started appearing. So I think that's one piece, and I think it also goes hand in hand with authenticity. So if you show up authentically as you, without the fear of, oh, if I say this, he will not like me, or if I do this, he will abandon me. If you show up as who you truly are, you'll attract people who are in alignment with who you truly are. So, yeah, that's what I have.

Mic drop, y'. All. Mic drop. If you love this podcast, please share it with somebody that you believe may be stuck in egoic attachment and is moving towards spiritual union. Listen to this multiple times. Because the concepts and truth that was brought forth in this podcast isn't something that I'm just reading. It's something that I'm living. It's something that I personally am working on on a continuous basis. There will be times in my life where I feel like I'm close to a 10 out of a scale of 1 to 10 in my relational dynamic. There will be times where I feel like I'm at a one. But the whole point here is with grace and over time and as all of this wisdom is embodied, that we find ourselves never dropping below a 5 anymore. And then one day we wake up and we're practicing healthy detachment with desire, and we realize we're at a six. What I'm saying is it's a continuum, right? And wherever you are is where you are. I'll never forget this, Mar. I was like. I think I was, like, 25 or 26, and I was dating a woman, and things fell apart, and I moved to Hawaii. Actually, I was 22. I was 22. And my grandma, with her wisdom, she just dropped this on me. And elders have a lot of wisdom, y', all, if you haven't found this out. And she goes, oh, you're breaking up and you're moving to Hawaii. And I was like, yeah, I just need a fresh start. And she said, well, wherever you go, there you are. And I didn't get it at the time. I was like, what? What the hell is my grandma talking about? But she just dropped that little nugget that here I am, you know, over 20 years later, speaking about on a podcast. Wherever you go, there you are. Just because you change your environment doesn't mean that you change your internal environment. You change your internal environment by committing to this mastery process. And it's hard, but it's so worth it. Would you want it the other way, y'? All, like, once you know what's possible? Would you want to go back? Would you really want to go back? There's just no way. No, you'd never want to go back. All right, so Share this podcast, subscribe wherever you're watching, wherever you're listening, and leave us a voicemail, leave us a comment, you can email us Podcast wellness and wisdom. You can also leave your voice@joshtrant.com forward/ama. So until we see you on the next week's episode, we're both wishing you love wellness, but most importantly, peace and power. We'll talk with you soon.