The 5 BIG SIGNS That Relationship WON'T LAST! | Esther Perel & Lewis Howes

are you looking for a love story or are you looking for a life story the person you're with is the wrong person and the only reason you got with them is because you were broken in a relationship you are on thin ice and the sun is coming out [Music] how many relationships in your mind are super happy and thriving after decades of the changes of the times society work family all the dynamics that happen in life so i have two ways of answering yes the first one is cultural your definition of happy and thriving and fulfilled is probably very different than many other cultures where being healthy having enough to eat having children having grandchildren having good jobs being respected in the community he's happy and thriving he's happy and thriving it's not about you and i are talking on the couch and i'm pouring my hearts at you and you are telling me i'm the best thing that's ever happened to you in your life and all of that okay so we one version that's one version is you have got to look at the word happiness and thriving really in a cross-cultural context because a lot of us by the way who have the new definition have parents who think about marriage and what is a happy marriage with the with the other definition and i'm wondering you know that maybe we are so unhappy because we want so many other things that are maybe not part of marriage um we have such high speculation we have super high expectations i want we want everything we want a partner to be an entire community my best friend my trusted confidant my passionate lover my intellectual equal my co-parent and on top of it i want with you to deal with all the physicists of the everyday life and all of what we need to get to all of that and then we should also be passionate great lovers fantastic travelers exactly you know and very few dancing every week yeah so eli finkel has a best answer for you on that he's a researcher on marriage and basically what he says is that the good relationships of today are better than the relationships of history but they're very few because the good what you call that happiness is the top of the olympus it's climbing the mountain and at the top of the mountain the view is fantastic but the air is also thinner and not everybody can climb the mountain the people who get to the top their top is probably better than the tops of the past and now what is the top it used to be that marriage was for survival then it became a romantic enterprise and it became what i call the service economy from the production economy to the service economy you want children but no longer just eight so you only want two so sexuality becomes for pleasure and connection so it becomes a service economy it's no longer a production and then from there you go into identity which is what i want to become the best version of myself and you're going to help me do so that's the identity story of marriage and that goes up the maslow ladder now if i ask the question differently i wrote i actually wanted to write that very article about 10 15 years ago i set out to write in peace what are creative couples and do you know because creative was the word i was interested in not so much happy passionate but creative meaning not stable not solid but what is this thing creativity the spark and i went and i asked almost 100 people do you know couples that inspire you do you know couples that you think have that spark still and the frightening thing was that the majority of people could sometimes come up with one maybe two and that was it you know they knew people who were very good at renovations and people who were great parents together and people who were great business partners together but that whole that you talked about there were very few and i thought that is so sad because here we are we want something i mean if i say good business partners or business leaders you would give me 10 people who you think inspire you to run a company or authors or musicians or we all have a long list who can say what's your favorite musician i mean most of us have more than one when it comes to intimate relationships people have very few models now maybe it is because what they want is so high that there is very few models actually and that's probably the challenge of intimate relationships today so how do we how do we find how do we create that in an intimate partner or is it setting a lower expectation for what we want so that we don't it's both i think sometimes if you lower your expectations you're much better off no doubt calibrate so back to eli finkle's research calibrating expectations is probably one of the most the three main things for what he calls successful relationships and calibrating doesn't mean you lower your expectations necessarily but you also diversify them you don't ask one person to give you what the whole village should actually give you right okay that was the first thing what's the second you said three so one is the calibration of the expectation two is the diversification and three which is the one that very much speaks to me is um doing new things with your partner that if you do the things that you enjoy that's really nice that's comfortable that's cozy that solidifies the friendship but if you want to create intensity it it demands risk taking doing new things outside of your comfort zone a little bit more on the edge how often should we be doing new things with our intimate partner i think as often i mean look the answer to this is very simple often enough but not too often that you become chaotic and you disregulate right now you're asking me a systemic question this is true for an individual a relationship or a company if you don't change or grow you fossilize and you die if you change too much too fast there's no stability you go chaotic and you dysregulate so how often it depends on where you are at in your life are you the two of you do you have kids do you have little ones do you have aging parents are you taking care of somebody what else is going on here will tell you if this is a period where you need more stability or if this is a period where it's time to go and be curious and explore and discover and go into the world and launch right if you're a young 30 something female i get this all the time from a lot of women who reach out to me who are ending relationships that were really stressful for them or they've been single for years and they're trying to figure out how do they find the right person or how do they create the right relationship for them that's going to be a a long-term partner if you're a female in your young 30s what should they be thinking about like should they be focusing first on themselves growing themselves or what are the things they should be looking for in the right right i just wrote my current blog which is a little bit of a critique of this taking care of yourself first okay yeah yeah so um because you you learn to love yourself in the context of your relationships with others you know with this idea that you go first to work on yourself here and then you prepare this little nice little package and you bring it to relationships that's that is completely off actually it's it's it's interactive you do do you need a good amount of self-awareness but you also need to be in relationships because it's people who help you become more aware practicing it practicing it but other people let you see who you are it's by being with others that you get to know who you are not just by sitting there alone and say who am i who am i right but this is a relational perspective on life and i will stand by that read the newsletter i really poured myself into that one because i'm tired a little bit of this no what i will say to you i'm tired of the go fix yourself first and then go be in a relationship relationships help you to become who you are that's what happens between children and their caregivers the next thing is instead of constantly thinking who's the right person i'm going to find why don't you ask yourself who do you want to be who should the other one be no maybe it's for on occasion ask who will i be as a partner who have i been till now in my relationships how have i shown up what is it that i do not just you know finding the right person that's now what does it mean to find the right person and there i will say the simplest way of looking at it is this there are many people you will love and they are not necessarily the same people that you will make a life with are you looking for a love story or are you looking for a life story that's good you understand yeah there are many people have had love stories this is a whole different story i never thought for a minute i would live with these people take something else to have a partner in life with whom you're going to go through the pains the sufferings the challenges the you know the the all of that so you have a life partner and still have a love story of course of course you want the life partner to be a love story too but the love stories per se are not life stories it's different ingredients it's different values there's some things that you don't need in order to have a beautiful love story with someone it lives in its encapsulated version on its own you're not thinking can i do this with you can i get old with you can i take you to my parents can you know do we share similar it's about values life not just about feelings so when you're looking for the right person it's not just what attracts you it's who can you build a life with how many values in common do you need to have with your partner life partner because the important ones it's not how many but there are a few of them that are really that are really important which ones would you say make or break based on your experience i think i'm not going to say them in order of importance but one of them that really matters is your relationship to others if you are a person that values relationships that sees the presence of others in your life as central and you are with somebody who does not want community or does not know how i mean i'm talking not about what they would like to learn through you but their value is you do things alone you live alone you rely on yourself you you know you don't bring people over to the house i have a couple i just spoke with yesterday you know and he loves to have people over and she just nobody should come over to the house her space the whole thing and i'm thinking wow this is a tough one it's not just about the how it's his whole life is about being with people and her whole life is about not being with people necessarily that's not how she experiences it now the question is is she drawn to more of what he has to offer and is he drawn to more of what she if these are totally more yeah then then okay different values come together and they they mix and match but if you have these two separations like that so that's one one of the beautiful questions i ask in how is work is um were you raised for autonomy or were you raised for loyalty were you raised for self-reliance were you raised for interdependence which one would you say for me was that self-reliance meaning what you have nobody will ever help you as well as you can help yourself you only have yourself to count on don't trust people you're on your own body or raised for interdependence loyalty you're never alone there's people around you you owe others others are there for you relationships is what makes you i think i was both based on like circumstances correct the circumstances made you reliable because you were alone with mom but the messaging was you have me yeah yeah of course okay so they both i think that question is a fundamentally interesting question okay that people can ask themselves when they partner in business and in love raised for self-reliance or loyalty yeah okay interdependence are you part do you see yourself as connected to others and it's your connections that give you a sense of anchoring meaning relevance importance it all of that or do you see yourself as fundamentally on your own i think travel curiosity you often will have a complementarity between one person who is curious and eager to discover and goes on you know and then another person your question about to be alone or doesn't want to travel once doesn't want but it's also likes comfort likes repetition likes the familiar mm-hmm i think the religious values if you have a person who you know those those matter a great deal um children do you want family or do you not want family if you you know if you want a family then make sure that you find someone who wants a family what do you what are you doing what are you gonna do try to convince some you know now i don't think you have to have the same values on everything i think you have to have a similar outlook on life which is a vision like exactly the same as when you a vision do you [Music] you know do you want to own a home do you think that economic achievement is important do you want to live in an extended family you think that living intergenerationally really is important and you have somebody else who says you know i don't want your parents over you know do you do you want to live in more than one place you know i think these are essential you know money feelings or emotions religious beliefs attitude toward life it's not a specific value about something it's a value is a cluster of things it's a cluster of importance of systems of meanings that's a value it's and you may not find someone with everything that's the same but someone with a similar mindset as we're saying an overall husband of mine with whom i am for more than three decades who had never left the us when i met him really i never knew such a person existed coming from europe that was un unheard of for us no he lived in the states he was american i came from europe in europe you travel everywhere all the time even if you have nothing you work one month you get the money and then you go to the next country which is two hours away yeah and so i traveled outside he had never been outside of the u.s yeah he will always tell me he'd been to the virgin islands but you know for the right and i thought oh my god how does one you know who is such a person but i knew it was because of the circumstances of his life and that if he could he would and he was intensely curious if you just said oh he's never traveled then you misinterpret you don't want to just look at the manifest thing of you know you want to say and behind this is there someone who would actually like that who just hasn't had the opportunity and he's curious and just says let's go so don't get fooled just by what you see find out what is the belief behind it the aspiration the longing the interest and then you get a sense of what is the value do you think it's uh let me go back to expectation do you feel like we should lower or should diversify expectations or what did you say the word was calibrated calibrate expectations or should we be finding someone that can reach that expectation that we want no i think it's just impossible i think you need to calibrate always calibrate you calibrate you constantly will be disappointed do you know a single relationship where you haven't been disappointed yeah okay i mean disappointment is which can lead to suffering is part of a relationship the minute you have a relationship you have an expectation that expectation means that you want something love closeness intimacy partnership you know business affiliation you name it it creates dependence the moment you have an attachment you have dependence that dependence means that you have power or i have power if i expect something from you i confer power on you you have power over me i have power over you by definition there will be moments when that power doesn't go in the direction that i want and i'll be disappointed i'll be disappointed is there a single child that didn't have a disappointment from their parents it doesn't exist this this idyllic thing you're talking about it doesn't exist the next thing is what do you do with that disappointment hey can i come tell you i'm really disappointed you let me down i thought we were in this together i trusted you and you say i see your point or do you say what the hell are you talking about you're just inventing this you're delusional none of the you know and everything in between that's how you do a relationship it's really based on the repair it's not based on the it's how we heal the disappointment yes it's how you repair all these breaches moment by moment you come back you know and the repair is not i am so sorry you prepare me sometimes be hey do you want a glass of water [Music] and a relationship between a man and a woman what is the biggest problem that you see today that women face that are holding them back from staying in a healthy relationship and what's the biggest problem that men are faced with and them being happy with their partner if they're in a relationship so i i always talk about healing and i do believe that healing is the number one biggest issue but i want to take a different angle here i think that another huge issue that both men and women are facing from women's standpoint is really understanding that men are different in how we think how how we uh behave how we're overall wired and the same thing goes for women i mean for men so essentially men lacking an understanding of the emotional state or the emotional side of women and not knowing how to tap into that or navigate through that whereas she also struggles with trying to navigate through his logical side and how he goes about things and that disconnect because both sides are expecting the other to understand them where they are all right and they're not trying to understand the other person and so we we get caught up in our own feelings our own perceptions of things and that creates this huge fight this huge battle rather than really learning how the other side operates this is going to be an oversimplified question a response that you have because each person is unique but i want you to fill in the blank if a woman understood x about a man they would be happy in their relationship the simplicity of a man they would be happy like if a woman understood the simplicity of a man yes they would be happy in their relationship yes they would have less stress they would have less arguments they would have less pain suffering yes because they mean to be the simplicity of a man so there's a few things one a lot of women overthink and over analyze in their relationships and so a simple example i gave in one of my videos is like let's say a guy says she said ask the man what do you want for your birthday and he says listen just let's just watch a movie together have some pizza drink some liquor i'm good have some sex that's all i need for the night and the woman thinks let me get him a wallet he's like no i didn't ask for that exactly like it's so simple he's telling you exactly where he wants the words coming out of his mouth are it's what he means the problem is so many women have been conditioned to dealing with liars and manipulators dealing with men who are playing games that when they are with a good man who's being forthcoming and honest they don't know how to take that and also because women are very they're in the details all right so they they are going to see what you need they're going to analyze and say okay i can get this for him they're they're more thoughtful in their approach they go deeper which is why they become so frustrated with us because we don't when we don't understand that when they said i'm okay that they really weren't okay that bothers them when they told us we don't want anything for valentine's day but they really wanted something and we didn't get that that bothers them because it's like why aren't we looking deeper why aren't we learning them and being more in tune with them because that's how they are with us and so again it's a disconnect of we operate very differently but if they would just understand we're very simple and the man who wants to be with you who wants to love you is being very plain and clear if you would just honor and accept that it would make things so much easier and if a man knew x about a woman they would have a happy life what's the right word it really goes back to understand that her emotions i'm trying to find the right way to phrase this but it's really understanding the emotional side of the woman and what i mean by that is again if you're with a woman let's say you guys are walking down the street and she says i don't feel safe right now all right to a man we may analyze the the area and say well there's nothing of danger here what's your problem you're crazy no don't do that if she says i don't feel safe you have to understand how she feels that's her emotion right now and her emotion is reality to her she may not be able to explain it it may be something within her within her spirit but as men we make a mistake of dismissing it because it doesn't line up with our logic and now it's you're crazy you're this you're that rather than no try to understand she's feeling like this for a reason and even if we can't always explain it honor it now the man's concern is well now she can manipulate you and play because even when it doesn't make any sense she can say i feel this way but if you're with a good woman and she's been good to you in every other way why question that she's playing games now give her the benefit of the doubt so i think if we would just learn to embrace what what her emotions are at the moment we would be able to have more peace because again a lot of fights come from you're trying to force your logic onto her she's trying to tell you how she feels right now right and it's like this no meet her where she's feeling right now acknowledge that say okay you know what i understand let's handle it from that perspective why is it so hard for for let's talk about men in this situation to acknowledge someone's feelings when in the man's mind you're you might be acting crazy these feelings are irrational why would i acknowledge irrational feelings when there's nothing to be afraid of in this moment if that's what a man is feeling how do they get out of that space and say okay this is irrational in my mind maybe this is seem crazy because i don't feel this personally how does a man learn to connect on that level so that they feel safe in that moment even if it is irrational so three things it's gonna be awareness why did i just lose my train of thought for the second one yeah awareness i'm missing the second one and then communication at times when things are not chaotic all right so the problem is you you can't be trying to have this full decent discussion at this if you feel like she's being irrational if you feel like this is not making any sense now you're trying to have this deeper discussion that maybe she's not ready to have at the moment all right she's feeling all over the place who knows what's triggering her right now wait till things are calm and now let's revisit what happened the other day don't fix it when it's not when it's chaotic exactly it's almost like you know sometimes a woman doesn't want you to fix it she wants you to listen and acknowledge how she feels and so we can talk about we can revisit it at a different time but in that time she needs you to embrace where she's at emotionally what if the man's just like it doesn't make sense you're making no sense right now what you're saying is irrational maybe it's illogical it's crazy none of it makes sense how do they wrap their heads around the madness of the emotion that is not real to them it really is a this is oh it's about practice so that was the second awareness practice communication so the practicing of it is just simply understanding listen it doesn't always have to make sense all right what does it hurt you in that moment to just be more compassionate and considerate of how she's feeling even if it doesn't line up with your logic right then you know what i'm saying and again we can revisit this and use it as a moment to now learn more about each other but right now is not the time so the next so tomorrow three days later we can say hey listen you know that time when we were walking down the street and you were afraid nothing was around can we talk about that exactly exactly and now we can gain better understand because at that moment it may be easier for her to articulate it but in the moment of her emotions running all over the place it's gonna be hard for her to get it out clearly not because she's trying to be difficult it's just she's feeling all over the place it's just hard it's like think about a child and i'm not trying to reduce women to children but think about a child being in their frantic moment something happening to them and you're saying tell me what's wrong they can't tell you they're but it's hard for them to say it but once they're calmed down and at a better place they can absolutely so we just have to be we got to be patient as well we got to be patient with each other and give grace we're going to have moments where yeah it may not make sense but again overall if you're with a good woman why act like she must be she's being difficult or evil right now you know there's a lot of good women speaking of good women there's a lot of good women out there that are are friends of mine who are single and they've been single for years okay i'm thinking of a few of them specifically in my mind so i'm going to speak to these women's uh archetype because i think there's a lot of women like this out there they've been single for they haven't been in a they've been dating but they haven't been in a committed long-term relationship for a while good women they make their own money they're independent they're kind they're compassionate they're loving their they've got their own vision but they're struggling in finding the right guy who will commit what do you think is missing from those women or is this a timing thing maybe it's like hey you've been trying this for eight ten years and you haven't found someone maybe it's still timing maybe they haven't showed up in your life yet but if they're going on dates they're doing these things and they still haven't been able to find a partner that feels like a good match the right match what's missing from them or is nothing missing it's hard to say because you know without knowing them individually the issues can vary you know i'll tell you what i've seen as common barriers for women one of the most common and they may not like hearing this but one of the most common is a lacking of being in touch with their feminine side and that that only really plays a huge role depending on the type of man they desire if they desire a very masculine man man who has his stuff together a guy who can be a leader at least has those qualities then not being in your family is going to work against you you're going to come across more difficult you're not going to come across as someone that's peaceful and again i think every man every man who has stuff going on for himself can say what he needs almost most importantly or at least top of the near the top is peace every man needs peace oh man i've been saying that my whole life you know peace and so if he does not view you in that way because again you project more masculine energy you project more resistance more of a difficult nature he's not you could be the most beautiful amazing woman it's like he may want to sleep with you but he's not going to want to take you serious or marry you so that can be one problem another thing can't be timing you know it's a lot of times is you you we have to understand everything doesn't happen tomorrow there is a process to this but in that timing what's important is that you don't drag on with the wrong men yes a lot of women reduce their time or reduce their window of opportunity staying with the wrong guys staying uh dating even the wrong guy so it doesn't have to be a con a committed relationship it could just be your dating and getting to know each other but you knew after a couple days that he wasn't it and yet you're still letting it continue and what and even though you're not fully committed in this relationship as an official boyfriend girlfriend you're emotionally invested and your ability to now be available to someone else is severely hindered so you're not going to be able to meet that great guy or that great guy may come across you hear that you're dating this guy and say i'm not going to bother with that yeah and so that hurts you so timing is it but you have to make sure you're leaving yourself available here's a question do we stay in relationships longer when we haven't fully healed the past hell yes i'll probably raise my hand here for pretty much every past relationship where i am known at different levels like something's not right something's off okay let's work on it let's try to make it work still things are off it's like you have a knowing inside and sometimes you try to force it to make it work and i'm as is one to blame as anyone here and what i realized is like oh i haven't fully healed certain things and it's why i've stayed in the past in relationships much longer than i probably should have but i was afraid i was afraid of hurting someone i was afraid of hurting myself i was afraid of whatever yeah and when i started to learn that like this is something you talked about over and over that the healing process is the key process to build a foundation for the potential for a great relationship for something to flourish yes you want to have you know the dream is to have a rain forest of an environment in your relationship where things can grow things can flourish there's green trees around you there's water flow waterfalls not an environment of a desert where things go to die in the and i don't think we can truly allow things to grow if we don't learn to heal and that's something that you taught me years ago and you teach so many people around the world this but if people don't even think they need to heal something how do they do it they can't there's there's no way you can't overcome an obstacle you don't believe exists right you know i'm fine i got this nah i've dealt with this stuff in the past like that was me exactly and and so the problem is most people don't heal until they hit a wall until something you know knocks them on their behind and now they have to to see things differently and accept the issues that they've been holding on to but also i think the the the problem for a lot of individuals is they're not healed and they're in environments with people who haven't healed either and now those unhealed people are going to validate your issues they're going to validate your your unwillingness to face those things this is so hard because whatever guy friends girlfriends whoever you are and you lean on people and say this person did this and they validate you say leave them they're no good for you you deserve better you don't deserve that they shouldn't be doing this right they start to validate to be on your side but they're not healed either if they're coming from that place maybe they're correct on certain things but it's learning how to communicate to your friends in a healthier way probably also well but i think yes because a lot of people they tell their friends the bad and they don't always tell them they're good yeah so the friends have a very skewed perception of the relationship or whatever situation that you're facing but we also have to be aware enough to understand who we're seeking guidance from like i i may speak to my friends because i need to to vent at the moment or i want some feedback but i'm fully aware that they are not the end-all be-all to this that they may be speaking from their own hurt place i still can filter their perspective through the understanding of they're not they're not healed enough to give me full proper great guidance all right but they might give a perspective that i needed to look at and that's why i will still talk to them because i want to hear different perspectives i want to make sure i'm not missing any blind spots here all right so it's good to talk to different people but only if you understand how to not just take them as oh well my friend said this so this is it no your friend may be broken too and they're going to lead you down a even more broken path exactly so the conversa the the conversations you have with some people they're not healed and they're not helping you fully uh because they're validating something that you don't need to hear necessarily maybe some of it is right but all of it and not to mention it it can happen in other ways as far as like i've seen people where the friend was in a toxic relationship that they were unwilling to leave so now when their other friend came to them about their toxic relationship is oh you know give them a chance oh you know cheating happens in every relationship they'll come up with all these validations to stay because they can't look themselves in the mirror and tell themselves to walk away so how they're gonna tell you to do it all right now some people can do that some people can still tell you opposite of what they're gonna actually can are willing to do but a lot of people unconsciously or subconsciously are trying to validate how they would handle things or how they have handled things all right so if it's i would leave because someone called me out there on my name one time then i have to tell you that you gotta leave for that reason i can't tell you to be considerate of what maybe was a mistake maybe this can be fixed oh no no because i drew that line you need to draw that line a lot of people don't understand how to give that unbiased advice so that's why you have to be very careful absolutely going to friends and family healing is again a lot of clarity comes through healing and you'll be able to see things differently in a relationship if you are from a healed place i think a lot of us myself included have stayed in relationships longer um than necessary because we haven't healed something yet and that's why we stayed in them so would you say that people who have healed and addressed the past the traumas of the past the pains of the past are much quicker to get out of a dating situation when they realize oh this isn't for me like i thought it was gonna work out but i don't need to keep trying for months and years to try to make it work it's not working i'm willing to walk away would you say people healed are able to do that better absolutely yeah basically the more healed you become or when you have become healed your willingness or ability to tolerate toxic energy is diminished you don't know how to operate or how to stay in those environments any longer because now you see things so much clearer it's almost like if you were to detox your body and start to eat healthy now you go back to eating some fast food and it will destroy your stomach so your willingness to eat that bad food is no longer there or at least it's diminished because now your body knows what healthy feels like all right so emotionally once you get to a healthy place and you know what healthy is you can't tolerate dysfunction as much anymore you can't tolerate someone who does not want to face their issues you know it reminds me right now real quick of even when it comes to business or you know what even when it comes to fitness a lot of people once they've achieved great success or once they've achieved uh we giving that body they always wanted they look at those who do not have differently before they may have been in that pool of people that said my circumstances there's nothing i can do it's too hard but once you've achieved it and you knew what work it took to get there now it's like no you're just unwilling you don't have you don't have enough desire to push past the obstacles to get the results you're looking for and so again when you become healthy your willingness to tolerate this person just can't get past their issues it's like no because i got past mine i know what it takes i know you can get there if you're willing but so many are not willing let's say you're you got in a relationship uh you got married you've been committed for a while and you neither of you have healed but then one of you decides you know what this isn't working i gotta heal the pain from the past they go on that journey they get relief they find peace in their heart they're not triggered whatever it is they've started and have continually been on the healing process but the other person continues to be in their own dramatic past experiences what if they're not willing to heal would you recommend like is that where they should be able to work still are you able to find ways to say well we still love each other and we have a lot of chemistry and connection most of the time what would you say about that if the other person's unwilling to heal i hate to say this but i have to be honest all right i can never encourage someone to remain in a toxic situation all right i do think that we can take an approach that says let's see if we can work this out let's give them a little bit of grace here and the main thing is can we achieve progress all right rome isn't building a day and if we've been behaving or we've been tolerating this dysfunction for so many years we can't expect it to be perfect tomorrow but are you willing to at least start to walk on that path and make progress though i don't want to encourage divorce i don't i cannot feel comfortable telling people to stay trapped in a marriage with someone who doesn't want to face their issues right if you have freed yourself from that you have healed they've got to be willing to make a move and here's the problem people people are afraid to heal or people are afraid to face the issues that requires them to heal all right because you have to it's like i remember a quote i'm probably saying it wrong to heal you have to face the pain or you have to dive into the pain something like that all right so people understand it's painful to go and revisit your past it's painful to let those emotions you've suppressed all these years come back out and so now your fear of healing or facing the process of healing is greater than your fear of losing this person all right and they think because you're married to them you're not going anywhere stuck for life exactly so for that reason there that's not enough incentive to face their fear of facing their issues the only thing that may get them to do it is the threat of divorce wow or is the actual divorce happening again it's not that i wanted to get to that point i hope hoping pray everyone can avoid that but the reality is some people won't get it together until there's a real consequence on the table and that will be divorced in that situation so okay let's say someone's like you know what i feel like i'm good it's never been about me it's been about everyone else it's their problems that why the relationship doesn't work i gotta stop you real quick yes because this is like hitting my spirit i gotta get to it the other thing to consider is that some people will never change they will never heal and the reality is that the person you're with is the wrong person and the only reason you got with them is because you were broken had you not been damaged in the first place zing you may not be with this individual because you wouldn't have chose someone like this if you were coming from a healed place exactly and if you were healed you would have been your true self your true self may not have aligned with this individual no i'm not saying that there aren't circumstances where people still end up with the right person when they were both not healed i do think that's possible to happen but a lot of people i would argue the majority when you because i always say if you're not healed you are 99 likely to choose the wrong person so i do still strongly believe that the majority of people are with the wrong individual and that's marriage relationship whatever because that brokenness that damage attracted something else exactly and allowed you to tolerate it or it allowed you to feel safer in that environment wow here's the thing that people don't realize when when you have not healed if you were to get with a healthy person it would essentially demand of you from the jump to basically heal or step your game up and again people are afraid to face their issues so to get with another broken person subconsciously i'll validates me staying broken it validates me not having to face my issues because now we all have issues you see as long as we all have issues i don't have to face mine but if you have corrected yours how can i validate my own [Music] what is the biggest lesson you learned about marriage and relationships being in a committed relationship during an extremely adverse time of the world what's the biggest lesson for you how much time you got bro listen uh i i've learned so much right but here's the number one thing that i've learned we have been sold a myth oh what is that myth that love heals all you know marriage is the answer like if you're not married there's something wrong with you like you got to be in a relate like we've been sold a myth and here's what i mean about the myth we have held marriage up like it's the top of the mountain and when you get there all of your problems are answered and gone that's not true it's not true and that that i cuz you know from from being you know from a kid we're watching movies we're watching television shows we're listening to music it's all about love it's all about finding it it's all about getting to that mountain of oh when i find the one then i can relax no marriage is like getting to the beginning of the mountain oh man base camp base camp it guess where the summit is and guess what that altitude is steep it's high it's hard to breathe it's hard to breathe up there it's jagged it's not a smooth you know ride that's what marriage is and so you know understanding you know and be in coming into the myth of it it's like oh got it i love my wife she loves me the union is great yet we got work to do and until we do our work the union itself can't subsidize it and so that myth that marriage is the answer was one of the myths that i you know came completely uh directly had to confront yeah and what i realized when did you confront it at what what you know here in the marriage or what day [Laughter] you know you know what it was is that it was gradual you know it was gradual for me you know and part of that gradual revelation was [Music] looking for the marriage to bring me a certain level of fulfillment that i was not actually pursuing on my own so so don't get me wrong yes marriage is great love is great it can be fulfilling however if we are not actually doing our work and finding out what makes us happy what makes us fulfilled and we're relying on the union to do that we we ultimately find ourselves becoming manipulators to get what we want to get what we want we're trying to like because we expect that that person or this relationship is supposed to provide us something exactly what is the relationship supposed to provide us here's what i believe a great relationship provides right one first and foremost um you know let's look at it for a minute like a business yeah right so you you know if you have a if you have a business and you have a partner uh what what makes a great partnership when both bring something to it right because you have a partner yeah if your partner is just taking everything and not adding value to the business you're like why is this person making money there you go why am i paying back into this person there you go yeah so when you look at it that way you know the purpose of a relationship is both people making a contribution so that that contribution enriches the lives of both right so i'm bringing something you're bringing something now we both you know our our happiness our joy is enhanced it's not created this is very important the myth is that the marriage will create your happiness it's not true it can enhance it if you already have it so if you have a partnership both people are bringing their their their contributions and then as a result your business thrives because you have two people who are committed here's the second part both going in the same direction mm-hmm right so is that related to values then or is that it's related to values it's related to um uh um purpose you know um i i had a um one of my friends you know we were talking and um they kind of gave me this uh visual right and so i think this is it was very helpful when it came to like marriage and relationships and how to think of them so they were like all right so i want you to look forward like doing it do a visualization and i want you to look forward and when you look forward i want you to see god i say okay and they said now start walking to god i said great i'm walking to god now they said now your partner is right next to you right so hold their hand great i'm holding their hand and now we're both walking to god it's beautiful now turn to your partner and then they turn to you and now try to walk to god it's challenging exactly sidestepping over there you know he's like a crab or something exactly precisely so when you talk about the you know what is the purpose of a union the purpose of a union is that when you have your right purpose partner and that person is committed to you and you're committed to them and you both are heading in the same direction you both can walk together right right but when you're trying to get somebody you know to a direction that they otherwise may not want to go they're turning the opposite way they're turning the opposite way or they're trying to get you where you may not want to go you can't get there from there so i believe that the purpose of a relationship is one you know making a contribution to each other's happiness you know having that partnership not making the other person happy you cannot do it i talked about this to the other person this is why i wrote the book you can this is another myth this idea how many times have you seen it in movies how many times have you heard people say it oh this person makes me happy oh they make me so happy it sounds so good to say but what happens when you say someone makes you happy it means you are outsourcing your happiness to that person yeah because that same person that makes you happy can then make you mad okay so then tell me who's in control of how you feel you're the other person exactly so why don't you victim to their there you go their their their way of being whatever they're doing their way being their mood i don't but here's the reality no matter how much somebody loves you they don't there's it's impossible for someone outside of us to contribute to our happiness in in a perfect way 24 7. so is love enough no no there's love enough no you can love somebody and not stand them right right i love my wife my wife loves me we still have to do our work and make the commitment to walk this thing out right like we still have to communicate we still have to understand like oh okay that's your issue or that's my issue right like so love is great but love is not enough and that's the myth people think like oh if that's all you need that's all that's right it is love when i hear that right but it's not all you need no you need compatibility you need compatibility i need compatibility like when you have compatibility when again you talk about people going the same direction it's like okay cool we're committed to going in the same direction we're committed to the same type of life we're committed to allowing each other to be the full uh self that we were created to be that to me in in in addition to love is what can make a great marriage or make a great relationship but love alone it's not enough you there's a lot of people you love you can't stand right there's a lot of people you love that you broke up with right because you said you know i love them but we're just not compatible and that love may never go away but so often we're romanticizing love in a way that it produces so much pain in those who don't have it as a movie producer yeah that produces a lot of movies around faith and love and community and connection i'm sure there are some lines in your movies that you produce you didn't write the scripts no i didn't produce the scripts you produced the movies that have lines like this that maybe uh remind people of this way of living you make me happy or whatever the line is right i'm sure there's somewhere in one of your movies as someone who's producing certain movies for entertainment yeah knowing that sometimes maybe there's a line in here and there that that's not really true for you or where you're at in relationships how do you navigate that i think it's right or wrong but just how do you navigate that as a human yeah knowing that's coming out and that some of that entertainment right in the movies that i do i always try to put in truth so so this point of view is something you know the movie that comes to mind uh that i worked on when i was an executive was jumping the broom and that was a romantic comedy you know an upper-class family working-class family you know they're the the the son from the working-class family marries the the woman the daughter from the upper class family on a weekend wedding in martha's vineyard and laz alonzo and paula patton you know were in that film and my wife megan was one of the stars of that film and we started dating at the premiere you know from the premiere about nine months after production which was very cool and in that movie you know we intentionally put worked on that to make sure we put real truth on the difficulty right of like yeah you can two people can love each other but then what do you do with their families how do you navigate conflict how do you navigate an overbearing mother how do you navigate you know parents who have a certain image for what they want for their daughter and who their daughter's marrying doesn't align with the image and so that movie has a lot of truth in it and ultimately you know we didn't cut corners at all and that's why the movie was so successful and i'm getting ready to do another romantic comedy and we're putting more truth in so for me i'm always mindful and cognizant right of how i feel and think about love and i try to represent that when i'm doing movies that are on that subject because i'm not trying to sell a fantasy right i want to sell the reality and then yes you can win and yes when you find that partner that you fall in love with what the challenge is going to be challenges and there'll be more challenges of different classes or different backgrounds absolutely absolutely i'm a big believer whether this is true or not that we we talk about we write we podcast on the things that we become experts on the things that we need the most yes so the school of greatness i talk about all subjects so it means that i'm flawed in pretty much every area of life i don't believe it i'm constantly looking for more wisdom to improve right yeah uh where do you feel like in the relationship side of things that you i think i asked this question last time a couple years ago where do you feel like you still need the most improvement in in relationships for you yeah um so i need the most improvement in a number of areas how long do we have yeah exactly okay hey hey i have not perfected this thing and i'm working on it every day and anybody who tells you they perfected it they're gonna lie about everything else uh so the the first area that i'm working on and and you may relate to this yeah because of the work that you do you know my father passed me when i was nine years old you know he passed we have a heart attack uh when he was 36. there was a very traumatic you know experience uh for me and my brothers um so my older brother's three and a half years older my younger brother's two and a half years younger and so coming out of that you know no my mother didn't have money for therapy or anything like that and so you know we were in church and we watched movies yeah right and so and then also i was very active in school and what i began to see is like oh okay if i perform or achieve at a certain level people would say oh devon good job right pat me on the back right so i said oh got it so the more that i serve at church or the more i achieve at school or the more that i you know do my chores at home the more approval i would get yeah so what i began to do was i began to seek that out and i began to become really good at meeting everybody else's need and so that persona right of like oh you need something done give it to devon right it's like oh yeah i'm your guy i can do it did it right because i was finding my value in all of the achievement and all of the approval that came with it in my in middle school people started calling me mr perfect you know and at first i was like oh this is great i love that oh wow mr perfect right but then as i got older it became a trap why because i'm not perfect no one's perfect but i had this image that i had to live up to i had this expectation of myself that oh i've got to do everything perfectly right so getting to your questions a lot of pressure oh my goodness are you kidding me it's exhausting it's exhausting that's why i talk about in the book i had to kill mr perfect i said i got to let go of this persona because you know i'm not that and i need to be who i really am and so when you talk about what the area i need to improve on so you know bringing that into marriage right like hey i'm here to serve and i'm here to be the best husband i can be and i'm here to give and i'm here to sacrifice all that's beautiful but when it crosses boundaries but here's the boundary though the problem is that no matter how altruistic you or i may want to be in our relationships with our women if we do not first acknowledge that we have needs right our altruism is flawed um how so because we are serving in order to fill the whole in our soul approval to get approval to there you go your pal there you go you know and then also it's like oh well no i don't have any needs no i'm here to meet your need no you're human i'm human i got needs i think i can relate to this big time for most of my life until up until recently i would do things in order to receive love in relationships and i would not do things um [Music] if someone got upset at me i would not do those things anymore to just try to make them happy so they would continue to love me even when it would cross my boundaries or when i didn't agree with something i would do it to make the other person like me love me make you know be happy with me and then i found myself resenting myself the longer that would go on because i was doing things that i didn't believe in or didn't agree with or there was a boundary of mine or was crossing my my line to serve someone else yeah i think it's it's learning that balance probably like navigating and learning how to communicate expectations which is a lot about in your book which i love the whole book's about setting clear expectations and not going into a relationship with the viewpoint of well this is the way a relationship is supposed to look based on society like just thinking that the other person knows what you think and they know and you know what they think and having that is not going to work it ain't going to work after nine years not to put your marriage on the spot or anything but after nine years how important is still communicating expectations nine years into marriage man it's the it's every day right oh oh you can't auto pilot this thing you can't say this is what i expect one day and then it'd be good for the rest of life never it will not work it won't work and here's why you know i go back to that that our flaws right we're we're all flawed yeah all of us and all of us have traumas and tragedies and things that we have experienced in our life that we have compartmentalized and that's why i go back to this earlier thought of like you know the myth that marriage is is gonna you know it's it's gonna save you and it's everything the reason why i think that's a myth is because the more you are with somebody and the more that you love them and they love you the more those flaws fears come out the fears come out the trauma because of vulnerability and you're actually sharing your life with someone and you're allowing someone to see who you are and there's also certain things you don't know that you've gone through that have impacted you to the level that they have it's coming up now exactly and so in a great relationship it serves as a great mirror so when you talk about setting expectations you know nine years in it doesn't stop because all of us are changing and also to that point you get you we have to learn to communicate we have to get our words out we have to say okay you know hey babe can i expect this can you expect that let's get to the middle so that we understand okay cool here's what i can hold you accountable for here's what you can hold me accountable for instead of assuming and that assumption again no no matter how much they love you no matter how long you've been together no one can read our minds no one no one no one and so when you start behaving and then here's what happens dude you you you we have these unspoken expectations unspoken expectations are relationship killers you have this unspoken expectation you treat the person as if you have spoken it and they know it and you fault them for it and you judge them you judge them when they don't meet the expectation they may not have been aware of and then you make a false assumption about their intent for you they don't care about me they don't tell you they don't think about me there you go and and they're selfish whatever there you go and so in our head we become the judge and jury over somebody without even telling that without even telling them what they were supposed to do exactly and giving them the opportunity to say yes or no that's it that's it because too often in relationships we're trying to control and so just because you have an expectation it does not mean that person is obligated to meet it right that person has to agree right that person that you're with is free the same way you're free okay and if they want to meet that expectation great and if they don't then you can talk about what that means right hey okay you know i have a certain expectation okay that's not something you want to meet all right let's talk about if we are compatible let's talk about if we are going in the same direction very important instead we suppress we allow these feelings to fester we get mad we we then get bitter yeah you know and then we you know someone asks us a question we turn a cold shoulder you know it's like well why because we haven't actually communicated we haven't actually asked the question hey can i expect this for you is this okay is this all right is it not is it cool yeah right and so that's why you know in the book i spend so much time talking about communicating expectations learning to set expectations just because they know because they love you doesn't mean they know and and i have seen so many relationships go by the wayside because there was this idea this myth that oh just because they love me they're supposed to know what i want no they don't know everybody has a different upbringing exactly they were exposed to love and marriage in different ways and so what may look like love to somebody may look like debt to somebody else so you got to communicate and find the the happy medium of what you what works for your relationship how do we learn to love ourselves so much that it doesn't matter what our partner does or doesn't do oh man lord have mercy like is there a way where you can fall in love with yourself without a sense of ego yeah like i'm i'm god but yes love yourself so much that it doesn't matter if your partner meets your expectations communicated or uncommunicated whether they're supporting you in the way that you want or not whether they're proud of you or not is there a way that we can do that or should we be expecting something out of our relationship in return you know either way bro listen listen man um you know listen my views on this may be a little contrarian so i'm just going to stick with my chair um one of so i'll answer the love question in a minute of self but i want to hit the piece that you just hit which is the expectation right yes i personally believe that if you give to get in a relationship you are on thin ice and the sun is coming out [Music] because right right right because again what happens is you're not free you're not free you're not actually giving from your heart because that's what you want to do you're giving from manipulation to get something in return to get something in return yeah so you're treating that relationship like the stock market right well yeah if i give a certain amount of money to a certain stock or portfolio i can expect a certain return hopefully it goes up right hopefully it goes up right but that's the dynamic you know but relationship is not it's not stocks man that's somebody's heart that's somebody's life and so when you're investing in someone with the hope that they'll do something for you you're you're messed up what if that person never contributes in the way you contribute let's say after years is it is it the right relationship still okay this is true you let go of the expectation well i don't need that in return great so here's how i think you answered and i want to hit the love part so so i believe everyone should give freely from how they feel and want to feel and they give to that person because that's what's in their heart to do over time it's not an indictment on that person if that person isn't giving as much it just may be a revelatory about compatibility right it's like oh okay got it you know the person that's giving right i'm in a relationship you're in a relationship because you have needs you want those needs to be met oh okay i'm seeing there's an imbalance right like i feel great about everything i'm giving but i also recognize that there are some needs that are not being met right and maybe there's some compatibility issues we need to talk about or you can communicate about it and see if that's right yeah that's exactly right like hey you know look i i have needs i'm in a relationship because i want people to contribute to these needs like i'm gonna be fine no matter what but i'm in this relationship because i actually love the idea of someone else you know contributing to my well-being so you have to assess it right and see if there's compatibility and alignment not pointing the finger because so often we're so ready to point the finger oh this person's not given as much as me oh it's like no no no if life is a mirror what is the mirror reflecting what is the relationship reflecting and oftentimes in my experience relationships are the greatest teachers greatest of who we are raiders right who we are and who we aren't okay like like and too often people run from difficult relationships yeah i believe that you should whatever the lesson is you got to get about you before you break up within the relationship first there you go because then you take that healing to the next relationship yes if if your relationship is revealing your own brokenness and your issues that you got to deal with and then you're you're you're you're saying to the other person oh it's your fault that brokenness and that healing that you didn't do you're taking it wherever you go [Music] so people come in because they're in pain and they want the pain to go away yeah and they've tried maybe they've tried something else it didn't work and you're like uh talk medicine right without having to take a pill how can i relieve this pain this suffering this problem but the problem what i'm hearing you say is never about another person it's always with them well not always i think that relationally a lot of people don't realize that even if the other person is problematic so right when i was training one of my clinical supervisors once said before diagnosing someone with depression make sure they aren't surrounded by right right so you know it's not like there aren't problematic people out there their environment right but then what is your response to that and i think that people don't realize how much agency they have they don't realize that they can choose their response to their circumstances they can choose their response to the people around them and i'm not saying that there aren't incredibly daunting circumstances right now in the world for example um but then how do you respond you know what are you going to do about it and i think that's where people get stuck and you talk i love your ted talk because you talk about rewriting your story from the past and i believe that we we hold on to our stories and we can we probably continue to write them in a more powerful way that keeps us trapped or traumatized when is that fair to say that something happens in our past we hold on to the story daily or whenever we're triggered and it's like amplifies the story in our minds well it does and and the problem is that often whatever that version of the story is we carry with us and we never revise it and so you create a story when you're younger for example about something that happened in your life and then as an adult you've never looked at that story through the adult lens you're still looking at it through the childhood lens and so that's why i say that when people come in that we're all unreliable narrators yes that we all tell a story through you know this lens and and the thing is these are usually faulty narratives so there's a there's a broader version of the story that people haven't looked at and so i feel like in a lot of ways what i do as a therapist is i act as an editor and have of course a writing background and so i help people to revise their stories because the reason they can't move forward in the story the reason they can't get to the next chapter is because of something is wrong with the story they are stuck and so it's almost like i'm helping them with writer's block i mean for me life is an interpretation yes right there's an instance that happens and we can interpret it as good or bad or we can interpret as this is a neutral event and i'm going to make the most of this is that is that fair to say yeah absolutely and also what how we attribute other people's parts of the story right so who are the villains and the heroes in the story um you know i talk in the book about the difference between idiot compassion and wise compassion and idiot compassion is what our friends do they back up our story no matter what we say this happened this happened with my boss this happened with my partner this happened with my parents right this happened with my best friend and we say yeah that was terrible screw them they're a jerk you know that's awful you're right they're wrong don't let anyone treat you that way that's what we do and if you listen to your friends stories you start to realize over time that even though the situation and the names might be different the kind of story they're telling is similar it's kind of like if a fight breaks out and every bar you're going to maybe it's you yeah we don't say that that's idiot compassion media compassion is where we as friends say yeah you're the best person in the world this person's horrible yeah leave them or let them go forget about them like they're so bad at what they did but there's always two sides of every story well right and so the value of therapy is that we offer wise compassion we hold up a mirror to you and help you to see yourself in a way that maybe you haven't been willing or able to do and that's where the other version of the story comes in so how do we have wise compassion for our friends when they're like she cheated on me he left me they had an affair uh whatever yeah how do we change our story and also show compassion that we're there for a friend not making it when they're in a vulnerable place not making the other person right or wrong yeah being there for them and also kind of giving them some tough love i guess i wouldn't call it tough love i would just call it reality love love okay it's love it's much more loving to be truthful in a compassionate way so i i sometimes call them compassionate truth bombs because we need to hear them but how do we do it it has to do with timing and dosage so the timing is when they're really raw when something just happened you know now's not the time to say you know this has happened with your last three boyfriends right maybe you're the problem here right have you noticed that going through people's phones is not working well for you you know we are not going to say that maybe in that moment so so that's our timing and then the dosage is how much are you going to say in a particular moment and in a particular conversation it doesn't all have to happen in one conversation so i think that that has to do with being a good listener and a lot of us don't know how to listen and i think it's really helpful i see a lot of couples in my practice too and if you can say to the person when they come to you with something how can i be helpful in this conversation right now i know you're really hurting do you want to just vent do you want to hug do you want me to help problem solve with you um do you want do you want my honest opinion or do you want me to hold off and we can have that conversation another time let them tell you what they want so you can give them something that is helpful to them in that moment and then in another conversation you might be able to offer them something more when they're not completely raw or broken yes so what is that specific question when anyone's coming to you with a challenge or a complaint or hurt what's the question you should ask them how can i be helpful to you right now i know you're really hurting what does that do for the person who's hurting when they hear that it helps them to reflect on oh wait what do i need right am i just going to download all of this stuff and then i'm not going to feel any different at the end or or is there something else that i want right now and maybe downloading it will make them feel different just make them feel seen and understood and heard which is important or maybe they want something else but let them tell you and i think the other thing is these three words that are really helpful when they're talking to you are tell me more so instead of saying you know when they when they say like oh here's what's going on and we say oh well we try to cheer them up like you know here's what you can do we try to fix it we try to cheer them up we try to make them make it seem like it's not so bad whatever we do instead just say tell me more we do this with our kids i can say as a parent we do this all the time right so your kid comes to you and says you know i'm really sad about this or i'm really worried about this we say oh don't worry no it's not a problem we say oh don't be sad right go have ice cream right exactly but the thing is that then you get the message as a kid that like oh wait i i'm not supposed to feel this and really what it is is we get uncomfortable as parents with our kids feelings why is that because we can't we are uncomfortable with feelings we grew up in a way where feelings were messy feelings were uncomfortable feelings were something that you know was they were going to be trouble yeah as opposed to struggling stop crying yes as opposed to just you know let's feelings are actually a great thing people say oh there are these negative feelings like sadness anxiety anger whatever even envy i always say feelings are like a compass they tell us what direction to go in so with envy for example i say follow your envy it tells you what you want if you are feeling envy that's great because it says what do i desire it puts you in touch with your desire what is it that i desire and what steps can i take to get something like that in my own life if you're feeling sad if you're feeling anxious what is not working right now that you can look at if you stuff down that feeling if you pretend it's not there it just gets bigger and here's what happens it doesn't go away it comes out in too much food alcohol drugs insomnia a short-temperedness inability to function um distractibility that mindless scrolling we all do through the internet um a colleague of mine said that um the internet was like the most effective short-term non-prescription painkiller out there wow right and so what happens is your feelings are still there but you're not dealing with them what happens when we never deal with our emotions or feelings well you first of all get sick and family sick emotionally everything everything right so we have just like we have a physical immune system we have a psychological immune system and we have to take care of our psychological immune system so it's just like you know what do you do to keep healthy with your body like you're gonna eat right you're going to exercise you know you're going to do all the things that you want to do to take care of yourself you're going to get enough sleep those things also help your psychological immune system they're not totally separate the mind-body connection is profound but at the same time you know are you going to be around people who don't nourish you that's that that's going to hurt your psychological immune system that's going to make you sick are you going to stuff down your feelings that's going to make you sick and so how do we take care of ourselves and part of it is instead of trying to numb out your feelings because numbness isn't the absence of feelings numbness is a state of being overwhelmed by too many feelings wow and then not only do you not experience the feelings that you don't want to experience but you don't experience the other feelings you mute one feeling you mute the others you mute the pain you mute the joy so you're living in this state where you don't actually get to feel the range of feelings that make us human what is that state called i was sick i was gonna say dead i mean i i feel like you can be alive but not living and that's what happens to people is that they're alive they're going through the motions they wake up every day but they're not really living their lives what's an assessment we could take for ourselves if someone's listening or watching to ask themselves how alive or how dead they are and if the people in their life closest are actually good for them or are hurting their psychological states right is there a questionnaire we could take like just off the cuff is there an assessment is there a few things we could ask ourselves yeah i mean i think that it has to do with a sense of vitality right which of course like vitality the word like life is right in there when you wake up in the morning are you excited about what you're doing is there meaning in what you're doing do you feel connected to how you're spending your days because at the end of your life are you going to look back and say what did i do that was meaningful you know and maybe you should talk to someone in my book i there's a woman that i treat she's this young woman who goes on her honeymoon she's newly married she comes back and she has cancer and she says to me at one point she says why do we need a terminal diagnosis right why do we need a terminal diagnosis to live our lives with intention why do we need why do we need that to really pay attention and i think that if we can keep the awareness of death on sitting on one shoulder and i don't mean in a morbid way or in a creepy way um it's it's not depressing it's actually again going back to vitality it helps us feel alive because life has 100 mortality rate and that's not for other people we like to believe that right and so the thing is that if we know that we have a limited time here i think we would pay more attention to what we're actually doing every day why is it so hard for people to pay attention and fear and but they're they're like they feel like they're stuck sometimes for years right it's like i stay stuck in a relationship that's i know it's not right for me for years i stay in a depressed state for years i you know i stay in a job that i hate for years it's all based on fear well i think it is fear um you know i think it's fear of uncertainty this is going to sound strange but change is really hard because we cling to something that's familiar to us so even though we may know oh this would help me this would be a good change for me we don't do it because it's unfamiliar and so if you grew up with a lot of chaos if you grew up feeling sad all the time or anxious all the time that feels like home to you even if it's unpleasant or or even miserable and you'll keep finding chaotic right recreating it yeah and so and so you know it was funny because my own therapist gave me this great analogy he said to me he said you remind me of this cartoon and it's of a prisoner shaking the bars desperately trying to get out but on the right and the left it's open right no bar so basically the prisoner is not in jail and that's what so many of us are like we feel like you're trapped we're not in jail we can change we can just walk around the bars but why don't we because with freedom the freedom to walk around the bars comes responsibility and if we're responsible for our own lives that scares us we feel like oh i don't know if i can do that i don't know if i'm competent enough to do that or now i'm to blame if things don't go right i can't blame it on everything else is this one of the reasons why inmates after a long time being in prison who get out go back into prison because they feel like they need to be back in that environment are there other reasons i think there are other reasons i think we don't give people the support when they come out um you know they the mental health issues that they needed to be treated for were whenever you know they never got that support then they come out and and they're back in the same situation where they don't have that community support why is it so hard for us to take responsibility for our own happiness i think that if you grew up in a household where you were seen and heard and understood those are the people who do take responsibility for their own happiness i think for people who felt like they were ripped off in their childhoods there's a part of them that's still in a fight there's a part of them that still wants that redo and so it's kind of like they're not aware of this but what they're saying is basically i will not change mom and dad until you give me the things that i did not get in childhood so they'll go find a partner that emulates their environment from mom and dad and try to change them so they well well right this is this is the irony of relationship right for those people who have not sort of worked through it this is so common and i think all of us have this piece in us right because nobody had a perfect childhood so you what happens is people say okay when i'm an adult i'm going to pick a partner who really makes me feel nourished who really gives me all those things that i did not get growing up but what they don't realize is unconsciously they have this radar for the people who are who look very different from their parents on the surface but then once they get into that relationship it's kind of like uh oh this feels familiar right and so what they did was their unconscious said when they were picking their partner hey you look familiar come closer even though in consciously they thought oh you're totally different from my parents i'm gonna this is gonna work out great but no they have radar for that if they haven't worked out the stuff that's sort of their unfinished business there's this saying we marry our unfinished business we actually do marry our unfinished business so that is why it is so important as an adult to take responsibility and say you know what i'm going to have to grieve this loss of what i didn't get and i'm going to have to work through this and assess where i am as an adult so that i pick people and surround myself with people who are healthy for me what if you've chosen someone that you love deeply but it's unconsciously your unfinished business is that the wrong person for you once you realize oh they're never going to change or is that a point for us to reflect back and say actually i need to heal the past accept this person for who they are and be willing to flow within this relationship well what happens is so you married your unfinished business but so did they and so if you can both recognize that if you realize hey wait we have a lot of conflict in our relationship or we're really avoidant in our relationship or we don't feel connected in the way we want to feel connected that's a great opportunity for both of you to work out your unfinished business to heal together right and so that relationship could thrive if you both are willing to look in the mirror at yourselves and do the work yes that could be a really beautiful relationship and it can be very healing for both of you in fact it could potentially be the strongest bond ever if you both were able to go through that yeah but if you're unwilling to go through that then what you're gonna be both people have right well both people have to be willing i mean that's the thing so it's like you may wake up one day and say oh wait a minute i have all this unfinished business and then your partner says yeah it's all you you're the problem in the relationship you know it's kind of like in couples therapy so often i'll see something like someone will say like you never listen to me and i will say how well do you listen to that right right it's always like if you're just yelling at someone all day are they gonna want to listen to you right right so you know there's this dance that we do in relationship and what happens is people are doing these dance steps and people become very they become very ingrained it's like oh here we go you can you can script out people's arguments you know exactly what they're going to start with one thing and then it goes back into many different things you're like oh and you know exactly how it's going to go and who's going to feel what and who's going to accuse the other person of what um and that's the dance and so if one person changes their dance steps the other person either is going to fall flat on the dance floor or they're going to have to change their steps too if they want to keep dancing and usually so we always say you can't change another person but you can influence another person before we continue this video make sure to subscribe below and turn on the notification bell right now so you don't miss out on these great videos every single day [Music] you were talking about before we started that marriage is a technology yeah now what does that mean what is the technology of marriage i i think anything that's designed to solve a problem is a technology right so i mean this mug is is a technology you know the and what is the problem to which this technology is a solution well it's the problem if i can't hold hot tea in my hand it's a problem of i i don't want to use and kudos to you uh for using non-disposable ones um that zero waste uh yeah yeah listen to it um and the truth is is that it it's designed to solve a problem so the next question is who has that problem well you know anyone who wants to drink a beverage has that problem you know and the next question i think the most important question is what problems does it unintentionally create okay so every technology is a faustian bargain in the sense that it solves a problem and it creates a problem you gotta clean it you gotta use water exactly you have to now you have to find stylish ones i mean you went you know classic plain but you got to find ones with woody sayings on them and it can break and now my favorite mug was broken and how am i going to replace it i mean again some of these problems are silly little problems in exchange for really great benefits but most people never ask themselves the question the technology of marriage which is a man-made technology a human-made technology we got together and said hey let's create this legal contract governed by a state right governed by the state let's come up with something that let's turn a lover into a relative you know let's find a way to turn this into a legally binding contract and people just go and sign up for this technology and they spend more time thinking about what cake they should serve at the ceremony then thinking about what did i just sign on for and why did i sign on for it and what are some problems it might create for me in exchange for the things that it solves for me and by the way will it even solve the problem that i'm trying to have it solve and one of the things i talk about in the book is you know if you got married to solve the problem of being alone you might be alone still in your marriage like you solve if you got married because you want to have sex you want to have more sex you know being married is no more a guarantee of getting sex than living near a restaurant is a guarantee of getting fed right you know it doesn't mean just because you're in it you're going to receive the benefit that you think you're going to receive of it and and how many couples before they get married really sit down and say hey we're going to sign up for this technology what do you want to get from it what should i be wanting to get from it how will it change over the years that just doesn't happen yeah so so if that doesn't happen how are we then surprised that it doesn't work 53 percent of the time 53 is now this is the divorce rate in that the divorce rate then more probably still don't work when they're in it exactly so so that's the that's the part and it's funny that you go there because that's where i go with it so 53 is already terrifying right if i said you there's a 53 chance when you walk out of this room and you get hit in the head with a bowling ball yeah you're probably not going to go out or you're going to wear a helmet at a minimum exactly right at a minimum you're going to wear a helmet we probably wouldn't go out now let's look at that number though 53 end in divorce that's u.s or global u.s u.s u.s only okay now think about how what percent stay together for the kids that should get divorced but they can't stand each other but they stay together they stay together because they don't upset the kids or they don't want to give away their stuff i would say another 75 percent stay together even though they want to get divorced okay so let's say 20 another 25 of american people let's say i mean so so now we've got a technology with a failure rate over 75 okay so now what percentage stay together for religious reasons probably a declining percentage over the years but let's say more you know five percent that might be the same as kids and you know it might be the same yeah so if i say there's a technology with a failure rate of 80 toyota had a 0.001 break failure nice save on their uh thank you a 0.001 brake failure on one of their vehicles and they've recalled all of the vehicles yeah so if i said you 80 of technology you we still use it yes not only do we use it we celebrate its use yeah it's part of our culture and we're shamed if we're not married absolutely well because it's it's considered a sign that you're not mature in forward thinking and we're ashamed or divorced right but now we're being celebrated to get out of marriage is if it's not what we want or if we're not getting what we want that's that's a trend that's definitely starting to change so so i think leave him divorce him or whatever you know right i think his self-actualization you know became more of a thing and and after the 1970s you know people started thinking about like you know themselves and their happiness it wasn't just about the unit anymore it was about you know finding yourself then yeah it became more acceptable to be self-interested i'm not going to say selfish because not all self-interested behavior is selfish but it became more acceptable to say i'm not happy you know i married this person when i was 20. yeah and now i'm 40 and shockingly i'm not the same person at 40 that i was when i was 20 and now i'm a different person and it's no longer a good fit you know i mean i the analogy i tell people is is if i said to you right now you can have any car you want what car would you have well i just got a tesla i have a tesla tv yeah i actually don't care about cars but i got one for tax reasons absolutely cool and uh i had a 1991 i still have a 1991 cadillac alvarado okay they had like sixty thousand miles on it okay just i uber everywhere i don't really use the car yeah um if you have any car you want if you have i like the tesla i like the tesla okay because it's fuel efficient it's you know right i just wish i had a bigger you're a pragmatic guy you ask nice to people you ask most people that question they're gonna go ferrari ferrari lamborghini i want a maserati okay yeah now if i then said to them okay you get one car though whatever car you pick that's the car you're going to have for the rest of your life suddenly a lamborghini is a terrible idea because you can't put a car seat in it for a kid and you can't you know when you're 80 years old get into that car right so if you are only allowed to have one car you gotta find a car that not only makes sense when you're 20 and 30 and 40 but when you're 70 yeah and when you have kids and when the kids have gone away so again like a minivan that might make sense when you got three kids when the kids go off to college that minivan no longer makes sense well marriage is a technology where you're signing on with one person and saying for the rest of my life i'm going to be with this person and that's a very challenging thing but here's the thing i actually think people give more thought to the car they're buying than they do really to the technology of marriage and what about it specifically they like or don't like what training or information do you think do you wish every couple would go through before signing up for the technology of marriage that's a great question i i think you know if you buy a house you get a lead paint disclosure you get a hud disclosure that talks about the loan you get all kinds of disclosures right you sign a will there's all these pages that explain to you in great detail you know what's happening when you sign that well you get married you don't need a pamphlet you don't even get like a one-page brochure this is why this is the most legally significant thing other than dying that you will ever do legally and you don't get any information about what just happened so the first thing i would say is i think everybody who's gonna get married should have an hour consultation with a divorce lawyer absolutely so they should go into your office yes but for a different reason prophylactically yes they should come in proactively and learn about what's about to happen legally what's about to happen to my rights you know what's about to to to change in terms of how i own property the financial obligations i'll have to this person i would also say one of the best things they could do is talk to someone candidly who's been married for an extended period of time you know that's not something we do we're not encouraged to be honest about our relationships we're not i mean one of the things you talk about masculine mask of masculinity that i loved is about particularly for men but i think it's true for women too we don't share candidly what's really going on in our lives we're we're in a very curated society where you put up on social media the best picture and the best vacation photos and the best of everything we're doing and we don't share with each other the challenges we don't share with each other even even really relevant information like when i meet a couple who's been together for 20 years i you know i want to know i mean i love the story oh how did you meet and you know how many times a week do you have sex who started who initiates it do you ask to share do you always do the same stuff cause you've been together for 20 years and you know what each other like or like do you try like do you like call an audible every once in a while just do some wacky thing like what is it like what is what is it really like the day-to-day of your relationship and so many people i mean you've been in relationships i've been in relationships so many people just don't talk honestly even when i'm with my guy friends you know do we really talk honestly about the day-to-day of our relationships the way we talk to the women in our lives like the nickname they have for us or the nickname we have for them again it's private to some degree information but if we could share that stuff a little more we'd have a lot more accurate of a perception of where our relationship stands in the scheme of things and how we're doing you know because i i really think there's this perception that people have of you know oh we're only having sex this many times a week it's like well okay is that a lot is that too little like you have nothing to compare it right right you know so in marriage there's no way to know if you're doing well in it because you can't say well you know we have fights every now and then well okay people have fights every now and then but if you have a fight every week that might be a lot but how would you know what would you compare it to right so i would say one of the best things you could do to people who are considering getting married is put them in a room with people who've been good at that technology who've managed to not only endure marriage but endure it and still like it and thrive right and thrive right and still say you know what i'd sign on for this again yeah like in a room full of people i'd still pick this person yeah that's cool you know and and how many of those opportunities we really get to talk to people that way about their relationships not many yeah and maybe also talk to someone who's been through divorce and ask them what did it work and why didn't it work and where did it drop down exactly see one of the principles that inspired me to write the book was the idea that you know again i hate using car metaphors because i'm not a car guy but it's the best analogy i can think of in the sense that if if when you bought a car you did every bit of preventative maintenance that a mechanic told you to do you change the oil every day everything two months or whatever yeah my sister's a dentist you know and and she always says to me by the time your tooth hurts you're screwed prevent it yeah you lost every day not after you have it all the stuff she tells you to do when you go see her your teeth are going to do well yeah so it's for me who knows more about how a car breaks down than a mechanic right so i i know what i know people are in my office and i get a very candid view of them and i get to talk to them and i have been very blessed that people trust me with tremendously personal information and so what i wanted to do with that information is just find a way to leverage that into some kind of wisdom that people could use and say you know what just don't do what they did when we were talking about titles for the book you know it was a hilarious escapade because you know one of the first ideas was well we'll call it everyone's screwing everyone because it was about how people just abuse each other in the process of divorce and how they're really taking advantage of each other and then we said well no that's too pessimistic and we said well you know maybe we can you know just call it you know um uh vows and talk about like the promises that people make but it's not really the promises that are interesting it's the way that people go in with good intentions with those promises and they just can't keep it together yeah so i really think that that you know for me um the best thing we can do with anybody is is to yeah show them a model of success right and show them a model of failure you know and and look you've said it a million times on this show that you learn just as much from your successes as your failures you might learn more from your failures to some degree so we don't have those role models we don't have relationship role models you know and you know one of the things you talked about masculine masculinity when you're talking about um neil strauss and his marriage and how he says look it was my stuff it wasn't like i said oh i don't like marriage because i don't like this about it and i don't like that it would force me to do this and force me to do that and really what it was is he just didn't want to look at his own stuff yeah and and he felt like to have a good marriage you'd have to look at his own stuff which is absolutely true you know and terrifying most of what my book is about is about yeah you got to look at your stuff if you want to if you want to be successful in this technology you got to look at it own it and share it with this person and be aware and be honest with the person about who you are and what you what you want what you don't want now you were you were married for how long he was married for 12 years 12 years got divorced got divorced while you were a divorce attorney while i was a diversity so you're hearing these stories every day and going through your marriage but you know my yeah i mean my marriage i think benefited from my experience as a divorce you knew the cues of what not to do or what was gonna work but it it was hurt by the fact that i love what i do for a living and was so consumed with it that i worked constantly um you know my ex-wife was one of my dearest friends to this day she's remarried to an amazing guy who's a great stepdad to my sons who are now older they're both in college um but i'm very blessed i mean i've had an experience of divorce where i i'm still close friends with her i'm friends with her husband um you know and i i'm very lucky for that because i look at it like there's a lot of people i love that i wouldn't want to be married to sure and she's one of them she's someone i love she's someone i appreciate who i think is just an amazing person but we don't have the chemist the exact ingredients that you need to be successful in marriage because we met when we were 17. and what we wanted when we were 17 18 19 22 when we got married 24 when we had kids when we turned around and were in our 30s we went you know we don't actually have that much in common and so either i'm going to have to stop being who i actually am like i love to travel you don't love to travel you love you know i mean from silly things you love shabby chic furniture and i like very zen aesthetics you know like you love this kind of movie and i love this kind of movie and you reach a point where you kind of go well do we white knuckle it now because we don't want to quit something that isn't working or do we say you know what let's call this let's call this and let's find someone who feeds us in the right way and and see if or or just be alone for the right reasons you know and i'm very blessed that the person who i was married to was mature enough to see it the same way and to have that painful but really wonderful conversation that so few people can have and that is to say look this this thing was successful you know we we both are leaving this better people than we were when we came into it and we're leaving it with two kids that are the exact chemistry of the two of us and they're made up of the two of us but we're going to kind of take our different paths now and let's still love each other let's still respect each other conscious on coupling yeah right absolutely i mean that's the term that's been handed to it but you know the truth is is i think people been doing it for years you just don't hear about it it's not that my divorce is the least interesting thing about me right it really is yeah like if i said to you like you know tell me 10 things about yourself the fact that i'm divorced wouldn't make a list because the fact that i tried to marry someone and stay with them forever and it didn't work out isn't that interesting it's not that unique you know what you hear about in the people who talk about their divorces incessantly are people who were wounded by them yeah and and now they've been victimized by their divorce and so it becomes a tremendous part of their identity and they hold on to it for a while and they talk about it and here's what happens and and so you know they're the the silent you know there's a huge number of people that had divorces like mine where the marriage just ended it ended in a friendly fashion they continue to co-parent successfully together and they both live their lives there's not this pain and resentment for years no and i have to tell you as a divorce lawyer as a practicing divorce lawyer a huge i would say more than 50 of the people that i represent it's that kind of transaction it really is that it's just two people that their time is done and now we just have to figure out how to divide up the things they have and work out the schedules with the kids that's good yeah i would say at least 50 it's good but but the thing is the other 50 or louder are so much more interesting and so much it's like because really who wants to hear about like oh i talked to my ex-wife yesterday and she's she's lovely yeah you know she's she's moving to rochester soon like where did you feel that's her life it's the drama on this yeah she threw a bat at me she set my car on fire like it's way more interesting you know oh man um do you feel like you know marriage i hear this all the time it's something that's not going to be easy right there's going to be challenges there's going to be fights or arguments and there should be some things that you're not going to agree with sure if you ground everything awesome but it doesn't sound like yeah there's many marriages that are always perfect and always smooth after 10 20 30 years there's going to be some conflict so does that mean in your opinion that we should just be like you know what let's throw in the towel when it gets too challenging or you know it's getting challenging that's when we got to dive in deeper and like come together as a marriage because we signed up for this that's a it's a great question i would say the following i i think one of the most common things people will say to you about marriage is you know marriage is hard marriage is hard i don't know that that's true i i think if you consider paying attention hard then marriage is hard right if you don't consider paying attention hard then i don't think marriage has to be hard i i think that it's again not to to use the metaphor again but you know losing weight is harder than maintaining your weight and i really think you're look you're going to have challenges you're not necessarily going to have fights you have challenges life is going to throw challenges in your way illness adversity career issues you know day-to-day miscommunications with each other if you're not paying attention those things get huge and then the big big things happen so people come in and they go i'm getting divorced because you're sleeping with the secretary you are that's a great reason to get divorced and that's a legit thing he's not he's sleeping with his secretary because there's something wrong on the marriage yeah that you know and you if you don't want to look at that because you have some culpability in that and it's easier to just go oh this harlot came and took him away and it's a lot easier to say that but the truth is you know you stopped paying attention you know and this is the question i find myself when i have a minute you know with a client who i've been some miles with and we're sitting outside of the you know the courtroom waiting for the case to be called and i have enough of a rapport with them and we've been enough of a distance together that i feel like i can be candid with them i'll say to them was there a moment where you realized your marriage was over what was that moment you know and you would be amazed at the insight if people think about that question that they give to you i had a woman who said to me and i it was a to me a very powerful example i i discussed a little bit in the book she said um there was a kind of granola that she liked and you could only get it at like a certain store like a whole foods or something like that and um her husband used to always buy it he stole his but whenever she was running low she would just open the cabin and there'd be another bag of it there and she she loved that because he didn't say like oh look honey i bought your granola like i get credit for that you know like he just would do it he just saw that this was something that he was paying attention he just saw that there was this little thing it was this little kindness that he showed her that let her know she was important to him he was still kind of trying to woo her without being obvious about it and he was still paying attention she said then one day she just ran out of the granola and it wasn't there so she thought well maybe he's like busy and he just didn't notice so she kind of left the bag out and you know sure enough he still didn't replace the granola and she said she had a tangible memory it was about a year before the actual divorce but she had a tangible memory she thought okay this is over. you know this thing is over now and i think that that's the thing that's kind of if you boiled my book down one of the things i say to people is there's this thing in every relationship some little thing that you had that you did for your partner or some little thing that you just had to tell them that at some point you just stopped telling them yeah you know i don't know if it's it's just in the morning saying like you're so pretty when she walks by or if it's her saying to you like you know i love you your strong arms or whatever it might be like there's just those little things like we we just want someone cheering for us we just want why do we why do we get together we want connection we just want connection like there's no other reason to get married other than wanting connection so those little disconnections that's that's the ad you know and that's it's death by a thousand paper cuts you know and that's the challenge for me is is is that's what people need to sort of find their way to connect to again yeah society has brainwashed us to believe that love and identifying it takes time that's a lie in most situations when it takes months you have not fallen in love you've learned to tolerate them you've grown up wow all right

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 819,368

Keywords: Lewis Howes, Lewis Howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, success habits, success, wealth, motivation, inspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success principles, millionaire success habits, how to become successful, success motivation, esther perel, stephan speaks, esther perel interview, stephan speaks interview, signs that relationship won't last, red flags in a relationship, dating advice

Id: 7lLLOjIiIAM

Length: 108min 35sec (6515 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 11 2021