Love Expert Reveals the Secrets to a Successful Relationship | Spirit on Women of Impact

we've got all this early filtering going on and we need to see them in different environments and then compare do they actually appear to be who they say that they are over time right because people will tell you one thing but their behavior can tell you something completely different [Music] love can be intoxicating it can make you feel like the sun is out on a rainy day like the birds are chirping during the thunderstorm in fact falling in love cannot only be magical it can be easy you see falling in love isn't what most people struggle with it's staying in love that can be the challenge overcoming jealousy insecurities differences mistakes resentments and grudges is freaking difficult and like arsenic it can be a slow poison that if not addressed will kill your relationship but luckily for us today's woman of impact is our love surgeon here to help us revive the beating heart of our relationship a licensed therapist nationally certified counselor and host of love goes on she aims to empower people with the skills tools and information vital to developing sustaining maximizing healthy intimate relationships so guys please help me in welcoming the woman pretty much called upon on every television outlet including dr phil divorce court steve harvey to give her expert relationship advice the lovely spirit thank you so much for having me i'm so excited while i'm blushing by that introduction where i want to start is i heard you say something super freaking powerful which was there's a massive difference between chemistry and compatibility and like i mentioned in my intro chemistry sometimes it just happens you don't have to work at it sometimes it's just sparks flying and you can't help and there's like such fire between you and that is nature's way of making sure that we procreate right so that's it that is exactly it and so it's all chemical you're not in control of that that's why sometimes if you've ever walked into a room and you've been like oh my gosh our eyes locked and i was just on fire and everything about them is amazing and sometimes you don't even want to let them go when you realize they're not the right person for you out of the bedroom and you go everything else is wrong with this relationship but my gosh when we're together the fire is just incredible that is chemistry my dear right but that doesn't last right nature makes sure that you procreate and you basically move on so i've been married now for 18 years i just had my 18-year wedding anniversary and it has been very difficult hard work but the most beautiful work i could ever possibly do in my life but the reason why we have been able to sustain 18 years is because every step of the way we have been in communication about what works for him what works for me and our compatibility as we change and grow like one thing i was very aware of and i would love to dive so deep with you girl is to talk about addressing issues as they come up how to make sure that you are compatible and not just staying with someone because you're holding on to an old fiction yeah of what you thought you were or were going to be yeah and then making sure that you're addressing that so you don't hold on to resentment and grudges because those are the things that i think will eventually be the downfall to people's relationships and it becomes a point where it's been splintered for too long so talk to me about the process from chemistry to then finding out if you're compatible and then we can go down to how we can make sure that we don't then become resentful and grudgeful down the road i love this we are talking about everything that i want to talk about so this is so exciting okay and it's important too and the reason for that is because oftentimes people are afraid as chemistry changes they're afraid and they mistake the chemistry changing for them falling out of love okay so what happens is when we first have initial chemistry we call it nre which stands for new relationship energy when we have new relationship energy with somebody that we first start dating it's everything is incredible everything is amazing and intense and our bodies literally respond to that chemistry we have more dopamine flowing in our bodies more adrenaline flowing it's literally a chemical process that allows us to feel what feels like love but it actually is lust right so just like you said it's the thing that really makes our heart beat faster it makes our palms sweaty it makes our pupils dilate the thing that gives us butterflies in our stomach when we're talking about or see the person and so that actually lasts roughly for about 18 to 24 months and just as you said for the exact reason it's all about procreating that's why early in our relationships we find that we are having sex like rabbits and all we want to do is really just be with them and experience them in any and every way possible well it's your body's way of tricking you into actually getting pregnant right but because after we get pregnant we can't keep focusing on one another like we actually have to focus on the offspring that we've actually created the brain goes through another chemical process around 18 to 24 months and so now instead of us having all that new relationship energy now we've got bonding hormones present so all the oxytocin all the the the good feelings that make us feel more like we're great friends something almost like how you would feel for a sibling or your best girlfriend or your best guy friend and all of a sudden if we're not careful and we don't know what that is we go this relationship has lost its fire it doesn't really have the same flair and some people will mistakenly go off to start other relationships in search of that new relationship energy and other people will say oh okay well i guess that's what is what relationships are so now i'm going to accept kind of this humdrum mellow kind of thing instead of looking to revive my relationship over and over again so we have to talk about that new relationship energy because when we're in that space also our brains are so love drunk literally that we're not sure whether or not we're compatible with somebody we actually may mistake that chemistry for compatibility but compatibility is actually very different and compatibility is about how do we line up in the areas of our lives in such a way that if you never changed and i never changed we would still fit like a glove and we would both be happy and have our needs met in this relationship for the rest of our lives so how do you then start to work on that compatibility for a long-term relationship um because there's going to be many elements i call it like dust settling so let's say you're not compatible and you you butt heads on something it's like okay well you still have a bit of the flutter so you don't really address it and so the dust kind of settles and then a year goes by and you still don't really say anything and that thing that you kind of thought was annoying but you still love them for it now is just freaking annoying right and it starts to build up and just like thus settling it becomes so big it's you can't clean anymore yeah they're deal breakers and it's so funny you know i just found this meme the other day that i shared with my husband and i said this is how relationships work and it said you know early in the relationship when you're first lying together in bed at night all you want to do is put your head on their chest and listen to their heartbeat and that is the rhythm that rocks you to sleep and then somewhere years later you go you know i'm going to record you at night so you can hear how loud you're snoring because i want to kill you and i want you to know it too right right and that's the thing it's like that didn't happen overnight right it's not like you woke up one day and went oh yesterday i loved it and now he just freaking annoys me so where's the gap because that's i think something that we people don't talk about enough about how to avoid those little things that end up becoming like the biggest freaking splinter in your relationship yeah and i say you have to learn these things so that you can avoid what i call a starter marriage which is you marry for the wrong reasons all of a sudden somewhere down the road years later you find that this is not the relationship for you and unfortunately in order for both of you to be happy you wind up having to leave and be with other people and take what you learned with you so these are the tools and the lessons that we really need to learn in order to avoid the starter marriage okay and so what i like to tell people is when you are dating that is the perfect time to really go slow and take stock and you have to see dating much like you see interviewing for a job so if you've ever been a supervisor or a manager i want you to think about dating in the very same way because you are hiring for the most important position on earth and that position is for your life mate and that's how we have to see dating we have to look at the individuals that we are dating as potential candidates to fill this position instead of dating thinking that this person is supposed to be our life mate so unfortunately we give boyfriends or girlfriends the husband or wife experience when we don't even know if we should be hiring them for that position okay so it's got to be like a test drive so when we're first interviewing people they're like candidates and you go well tell me about yourself well tell me where you're from and you're thinking about them within context of your employment right in terms of the organization that you're thinking about having them come on board you might like them and interview them a second time or a third time you may have them meet other employees of the company in social settings over dinner or in the boardroom during meetings dating should be very similar to that because what you're wanting to learn is who this person is you're wanting to get past the representative right because their representative is not who they are their representative is who they think you want them to be so that's very important because they're filtering you and trying to adjust while you're filtering them so we've got all this early filtering going on and we need to see them in different environments and then compare do they actually appear to be who they say that they are over time right because people will tell you one thing but their behavior can tell you something completely different it takes time in order to see that and the hard part is unfortunately not only do we often jump in bed too quickly and the reason why the jumping in bed is important is because the moment that we bring sex in all of those hormones flood our systems and it clouds our judgment again we go back to being love drunk i literally am intoxicated the moment that i have sex with you and i am not going to see you the same so it's like going to bed at two with a 10 and then waking up at 10 with a 2. what do you mean by that right i mean so if i'm partying i'm having a great time by the time i go to the club and it's 2 a.m the person that i'm leaving with in my drunken state in my high state in my party state they are a 10. it's two in the morning i'm feeling great everything is wonderful i am going home with a 10. okay then at 10 in the morning after all of those intoxicants have come out of my bloodstream and i'm sober and i roll over and i wake up with you and all of your makeup is on the pillowcase or all of my hair as the man is on the pillowcase and we've taken off all of the lashes and the nails and i get to see you all of a sudden i'm like whoa who are you you're a two you are not a ten you are a two you are not somebody that i would have actually dated so we need to be able to see that person with a clear eye and sex complicates that because it literally clouds our brain it gives us a brain fog so the longer that we can hold out on the sex the more objective we can be about who the person is that's important the other part of this is we have to know that over time time is what allows us to see a person in different situations we can talk about theoretically whether or not we think we line up in a particular way but having actual experiences where we're challenged to see who we are is totally different which is why to go back to the starter marriage i often tell folks if you really want to know who somebody is divorce them right or break up with them many people learn way more about a person at the end of a relationship than they did in the entire relationship so it is not about time that heals our wounds or creates something different but what you do with that time so therefore it is also important in terms of compatibility how we date a person if every time we date we just go out to dinner in a movie we're not having any conversation how do i know about you how do i know about how you handle challenges how do i know how you handle being caught off guard how do i know how you handle social settings how do i know how you treat other people if we only date in places and spaces that never really show me who you are but now when we're together i'm not dating you to just have fun nights i'm dating you in places and spaces that require the full range of you to show up if we don't ever exercise that point of who we are until we're already married or until we've already moved in together or we've already created children or other kind of lifetime commitments that find us stuck together we've created a whole set of problems for ourselves that now we may be resentful of now we may be frustrated with now we may become annoyed because i'm stuck with you in a different way and i'm going to make different choices based upon those consequences that we've already created oh that was so amazing god that was fire um so i understand in asking the questions i love that take your time um one thing i always say is you earn your credibility so it's over time right it's like when you need them are they going to be there they may say they are but time and time again if you've asked have they showed up so it's kind of like over time test not even test them but like put them in different situations i freaking love that so much and so but what happens though especially let's say someone like me who's married young you change over time and so certain things that you know may come up as your partner is changing becomes more and more irritable but again it's like well we've been together for five years or whatever and so you you often make excuses for the little things that start to frustrate you only for it to then build build build build so let's say someone hasn't you know is in the middle of their relationship and so what you have just said has already passed they have their stuff they're like exactly especially while we're in quarantine and things like that so how would you then advise somebody in fact here's a question if you have some animosity or resentment or grudge whatever word you want to use towards someone whose responsibility is it to get over it ah okay so the real answer to that is that it's both of your problem because there are three parts to this scenario there's you there's your partner and there's the relationship and the relationship is its own living breathing entity and it's up to the two of you to constantly work together in partnership to resolve the problems in your relationship so i often tell people you are not the problem and your partner is not the problem the problems are the problem and it's up to the two of you to work together as a team to solve the problems what typically happens though is when one of us is frustrated about a thing we personalize it and blame the person right you are the thing that's making me feel this way instead of owning i feel a particular kind of way or i'm having a particular kind of experience in this relationship with you and that's not the experience that i want so we spend unfortunately too much time talking about the problems and not the solution often times when i have couples that come in for couples counseling they can tell me ad nauseum what the problems are in their relationship right because they've talked about it a thousand times they can say it was 1976 and you had on the purple shirt and i was wearing that and we were standing over there and we go guys so let me make sure we're arguing about something that happened 44 45 years ago okay so now the problem is because couples get hung up on talking about the problem instead of we understand we have communicated we're in agreement that we know what the problem is even if we don't see it the same way we've identified succinctly what the problem is now what we're going to do is not talk about the problem anymore but we're going to talk about all the possible solutions for the problem whether we're going to implement them or not let's just weigh out our options and see what they are now once we brainstorm all of the solutions we are then going to pick one or two of those solutions to try okay who's going to be responsible for what well i'm going to have to do this part and that means that i'll have to do this part okay i'm in agreement once we come up with the solutions we have to decide then how long to try those solutions for all too often we say okay that's fine so i'm just gonna do that going forward that is what it is but because old habits die hard and sometimes they don't die at all it's important that we decide we're going to try this a new way for a specific amount of time for the next 24 hours for the next three days for the next month and then we're going to come back to the table to evaluate how well that solution worked if it worked great then you continue and you do more of that but if it didn't work oh i forgot i was supposed to be doing that oh i didn't realize you were doing it and that didn't work we still have the problem now we need to get rid of those because those weren't viable solutions for us we need to go back to the solutions that we proposed and try something else but unfortunately what happens is i'm having a particular experience in this relationship i don't feel like you're getting it you don't understand it we're not talking about the actual problem we're talking about examples of the problem i call them the leaves on the trees and we never get to the root of the thing so we're talking about all these things that never actually resolve the problem and over time i just become resentful i become frustrated i withdraw i check out whatever happens we stop being on the same team in pursuit of solving the problem oh my god so true and the fact that you put emotion and you connect emotion to all this like forget it right it's just it becomes this perpetual like no you did this and you did this and it becomes the blaming game and what i so freaking love about what you just laid out is it's so binary it's let's do this let's test it for 24 hours let's come back together and let's see how we feel did we do it or not yes we did it did it work no cool move on right yeah it's like it's such a business mind as well and i love it because it removes the emotion of whatever you're feeling right then which can cloud how you are approaching the uh the solution yes because you know what i really want to do as a therapist is to demystify relationships i really don't want people to walk around thinking this disney fairy tale that maybe there's a prince charming out there and if i'm lucky i might meet them or there is this princess out there it's like no there is a science to relationships and if you learn the science not only can you have the kind of relationship that you want you can control the intensity of it you can control the duration of it you can control the quality of it there is a science to every single thing we just haven't learned how to do it so i like to break it down into very pragmatic ways for people to go oh my gosh this makes sense to me oh wait a minute i thought they were the problem wait i'm the problem i haven't learned how to do it right i'm not talking about the right thing i'm not communicating the right thing in order to get what it is that i want everything starts with us as the individual and then radiates outward and if you don't understand that that's because either you haven't learned to be connected to all the parts of yourself or somewhere along the line somebody told you that what you needed and wanted wasn't important enough for you to express and advocate for you getting what you want in order to be happy that is so true how much of our past carries over into that so whether it be past relationships or even just parents and teachers oh it is it goes to childhood to grandparents stuff to great-grandparents stuff like we learn how to come into relationship through the presence or the absence of the people in our lives whether it's our parents being in relationship and how they did it step parents and and extras parents staying single quality of relationship we learn how to do it and then as adults we're just simply re-enacting the same patterns over and over from our past that is so true the advice my grandmother gave me just before i got married she's i'm greek so she came from a tiny village this really really old greek woman can't speak a word of english and she pulls me aside and she's like look if tom has to hit you don't worry it probably means you deserve it my grandmother and so it's like i understand where she comes from so i actually just thought it was quite funny um but there is something actually heartbreaking to it in that that's the belief that she had growing up and what if i was born not in london but what if i was born in that same village i wouldn't have thought of it as oh yeah yeah you're so cute i would have gone oh okay [Music] so i love what you're saying about it just not being your parents but yeah basically where you come from where your parents have come from your great grandparents and and how tightly you're still connected to that because like you said had you still been there had you still been a part of that culture it may have been supported in a different way so if you were in a situation and your partner struck you you may be supported in a different way people might say girlfriend you don't have to take that let us help you let us rescue you and all of a sudden you go okay i matter and that's not acceptable but had you been back there then it might have been well what did you do you go back and apologize right that teaches you a different experience and that's what i so freaking love about you your message and everything you do because you um eliminate the emotion when you're giving people advice and it's so tactical that yeah no matter where you're from what your beliefs are you do the try this and this right and so it's like you you're kind of able to cross all these boundaries and all these other people's beliefs and visions of what they think a relationship should be can be and you're kind of just breaking that down with very tactical um guidelines and yeah which i think is so impactful girl like that's so freaking amazing oh that's so awesome listen i tell people at the end of the day we all are human beings and to break us down into our smallest parts there are three parts of ourselves okay there are our feelings our thoughts and our behaviors okay your feelings are your body's alarm systems to what you need okay so for example if i'm cold that's a feeling if i'm hungry that's a feeling if i'm horny that's a feeling everything that we are boils down to our feelings of what we need our thought process are the strategies that we think about in order to get our needs or our feelings met okay and our behaviors are what we execute the strategies that we execute all in pursuit of getting our need met so for example if i'm hungry i may then think okay so i'm hungry how am i going to no longer be hungry well i could go in the kitchen and cook i could go to the local deli and go buy something okay yeah i'm tired so i'm gonna just go buy something so then we get up and we go down the street and we buy what it is that we need in order to satisfy the hunger okay so now the behavior is i get up and i go do a thing the important thing that we need to remember though is that as it relates to our feelings or our needs by the time that we feel them or recognize that we have a need we're already operating at a deficit so we're already slightly in trouble by the time i realize that i'm thirsty i'm already dehydrated right by the time i recognize that i'm hungry i'm already in need of nutrients and we also need to know that our needs are different over time they're more intense or less intense over time sometimes i'm ravenous i could absolutely eat an entire cow and other times oh i could go for a nosh just like something to take the edge off but if we're not in tune with our own needs one we can't communicate that to somebody else and two we can't properly figure out what options or strategies we need to execute in order to get our needs met and so unfortunately when we're disconnected from our needs when we're disconnected from our feelings then how do we enter into partnership with someone else expecting them to be able to meet what we don't even know how to identify for ourselves and that's important in relationship because i cannot respond to what my partner doesn't communicate and i can't help to meet a need and know how to behave or show up in order to help get the need met if i don't even know it or can't communicate it for myself that's amazing what happens if the wiring is crossed so you you say okay i feel really lonely so um or like i'm i'm feeling lonely so i go to a bar right and so my behavior is i don't want to be i feel lonely so my behavior is let's find someone to not be lonely with so let's say you pick someone up and then you realize the next day that didn't fill the hole that you thought it would and so now your behaviors your feelings and your thoughts all are actually working against each other instead of working for each other so they're out of sync right so that means that i'm executing the wrong strategies which oftentimes is the problem that's why in therapy when we talk about cognitive behavioral therapy or cbt we're talking about if you can change the way that a person thinks and the way they behave everything else falls in line right so if i'm feeling lonely only one of the strategies that i thought about was go to a bar now perhaps i only thought about that strategy because i don't know anything else i don't have any other options or coping skills i haven't expanded myself enough to know that there are other options or other means to get my need met how you know if you have the right strategy much like when we were talking about solutions how you know if you have the right solution is i actually went to the bar i did everything that i did did it satisfy my need if it didn't then i need to go back to the drawing board and how i'm thinking about getting the need met and sometimes i have other options that i've thought about but i haven't tried them or i need some help maybe some professional help maybe my social support friends family maybe some online learning but i need to figure out some new strategies and how to meet people to satisfy this cure for loneliness and sometimes it becomes so convoluted because we may have trauma or other experiences where there are other needs that have to be met before that need can even be touched so perhaps if i have abandonment issues or if i have a trauma history perhaps the reason why i feel lonely is because i can't execute the right behaviors in order to connect with people i go to bars when i should be going to bookstores i talk to guys when i should be talking to girls i'm thinking sex when i need to be thinking emotional intimacy but i'm thinking about and executing the wrong behaviors that are not meeting my needs what up guys lisa here thanks so much for watching this episode and if you haven't already subscribed click that little bone right in front of you click click click away we release episodes every wednesday so be sure to get notified until next time go be the hero of your own life

Channel: Women of Impact

Views: 172,163

Rating: 4.950007 out of 5

Keywords: women of impact, woman of impact, lisa bilyeu, tom bilyeu, impact theory, quest nutrition, motivation, inspiration, Spirit, Women of Impact, Impact Theory, OWN, Love Goals, chemistry, compatibility, falling in love, lust, relationship, sex, dating, life mate, interview, intensity, duration, connection, feelings, thoughts, behaviors

Id: 2dkk3D8tXDs

Length: 30min 33sec (1833 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 05 2020