Therapist REVEALS Why Finding Love Is SO HARD...| Lori Gottlieb & Lewis Howes

you see it's kind of like they are giving you their owner's manual but if you don't read it then you're gonna keep making the same mistakes over and over they're saying here let me tell you what happens for me when you do that and if you ignore the operating instructions i think you gotta have a dream the school of greatness please welcome us i wanted to ask you about why you think it's so hard for just for people to find a partner today in this climate it seems like it's hard for people to find a great partner yeah and then why is it hard to stay in a healthy you know thriving relationship when it just seems like so complicated and challenging for men and women or individuals coming together to be in a happy relationship i think it is complicated because no one teaches us how to love and be loved so you either get that modeling growing up or sometimes you don't get the best modeling growing up but people don't really talk about it in the way that i think people would need and so i think one of the problems is that people both want closeness and they fear closeness at the exact same time right and so people kind of walk on that tightrope and a lot of people get tangled up in that paradox why do we want it so bad and what is the thing we fear about it so much well the thing we fear is is that it's going to wound us right so i mean love has the power to wound but it also has a power to heal so that's why we have that paradox because we want it but we're a little bit afraid of what might happen and by the way if you sign up for this you will get hurt that just that's just part of the deal even with someone who really cares about you even in a really loving relationship at times you will hurt each other but then why how do you repair it ah well is there a way to get into relationship without hurting each other um no because people are human right and you know when i'm talking about hurting there's different degrees of hurting you know hurting could be you didn't understand me and i felt really hurt by that right hurting could be something much more you know delicious right yeah so there's something those are very different things um you know but i think i think what happens is people need to learn what we call rupture and repair so there's a rupture something happens between you and then how do you repair it there will always be ruptures really um and and so you know how do you how do you guys repair it together that's the biggest predictor of whether a relationship is going to be successful and people are going to be happy in it your ability to repair to repair with each other yeah what is um okay first off how do we get to a place where we have less ruptures to where it's like once a year once every six months as opposed to like every other day a little micro rupture is that even possible yeah so i i think that the the reason that people have ruptures is because they they don't feel like they under they are understood okay um i remember one of the most formative things that happened for me was very early on when i started seeing couples i had this couple come in and i remember that they were there's a lot of tension between them and the woman said to her husband she said you know what three words i really want to hear from you and he said what do you think i love you i love you right and she said no the three words i want to hear are i understand you and i just sort of sat there in my seat and thought wow i understand you that understanding someone is a way of showing love really making the effort to really listen to them to hear their point of view and this is where as a couple's therapist the idea of separate realities comes in okay tell me more separate realities is we have to acknowledge that you are going to view things through your own lens and both of them are right both of them are valid and where people get into trouble is they try to convince the other person that their reality is right yes so you see this for example take an example of a parent and an adult child and you have the parent who you know the adult child comes to them and says i feel like you really favored my sibling growing up and the parent says that's not true we love you both equally we were there for you and they hear it as an accusation so you have a choice in that moment you can say okay i'm going to defend myself against this accusation and what the parent hears is you were a bad parent that's not what the kid is saying the kid is saying um you weren't there for me in the ways that i needed you to be sometimes yes sometimes it's not black or white it's not all or nothing it's not good or bad it just is in that messy middle right and so you can say i'm going to try to understand your reality even though there's a gap between my what i intended and what you experienced that's okay that there's a gap right so where romantic couples get into it is the same thing there's a gap between my intention and your experience of me right and i'm going to make you believe that my intention trumps your experience of me right but my attention was good i meant to say it this way i meant for you to be understood but the other person's like well that's not what i felt well what happens is so so you see this in therapy right so somebody says well that's not what i intended and i will say to them it doesn't matter that that's what you intended it did it had that effect right right how does someone change their way of being or their intention or their actions so that the other person feels accepted or heard or seen or understood or loved in that moment i think the question we don't ask ourselves enough is how is what i'm about to do or say going to be experienced by the person i love you really got to get into the head and the the heart of the other person with how you just interact in that sphere of influence right right and i think people say oh that's so much work and it shouldn't be that that hard and that's too much effort but once you start to going back to i understand you once you start to understand them it becomes very easy you see it's kind of like they are giving you their owner's manual they are giving you the operating instructions but if you don't read it then you're going to keep making the same mistakes over and over they're saying here let me tell you what happens for me when you do that let me tell you what happens for me when you say that and if you ignore the operating instructions you're going to keep getting into accidents what if the operating instructions is completely against who you are like you're i don't know let's just say your love language is you like giving physical touch but the other person likes receiving gifts or acts of service for an example and you're like this is draining for me to do this thing that the person wants or feels loved by it feels like so much effort and work is there a way to make it so that your strength is actually something they love yeah well let's let's turn this around so if if your partner said to you it's too draining for me to actually love you in the way you like to be loved yeah it sounds crazy right it's too draining for me to make the effort to show you love in the way that makes you feel good right yeah it sounds that's you know there was an episode on our podcast we have this podcast called dear therapists where we do actual sessions with people and then at the end we give them homework where they have to try out the advice and they report back within a week and so you can see because we want people to see that actually even one conversation can help you make real shifts in your perspective and so we have this mother and daughter on and the mother this was during covet and the the mother like brought over the she said like i have all these homemade masks and i'm going to bring them to and the daughter said i really don't want those and what does the mother do she brings over the mask she's like i'm showing that i care about you i want to keep you safe and this is a way for me to show that i care about you and she's like and i also brought over cookies for the kids and i brought all over these other things and the one thing you picked out was that i brought the masks and that was a loving gesture and the daughter's like no it actually was not a loving gesture because i told you specifically i don't want that so why do we have such a hard time listening to people when they tell us exactly how they want to be loved it's not that hard to not bring the masks right then why do we do it is it because we feel like we that's how we want to live our lives or why do we do those things right because we aren't we're paying attention to our needs and we're not paying attention to the other person's needs and this is the primary problem in most relationships whether they're romantic relationships friendships siblings work whatever it is um is that people think about the me or the you like am i the problem are you the problem as opposed to we have a problem the us right we have a problem i had this i had this couple in therapy um he had had an affair and they both wanted to repair the marriage okay so they were both interested in that so there was a rupture there was a rupture and a big rupture right affairs are these incredibly painful betrayals and he was all in in wanting to repair this and he took ownership he said i'm sorry i want to make this work she said okay i want to figure out how to applau how to accept this apology and forgive and move on i want to figure out what what do we do is who are we as a couple now what does this mean how do we move forward and he was not a person who was used to opening up and a lot of men experience this they don't know how to be vulnerable they're afraid to be vulnerable and so many men will come in by the way by practice and they'll say i've never told anyone this before they've literally never told anyone women come in they say i've never told anyone this before except for my mother my sister my best friend right so they feel like they haven't told anyone but they actually have so he opens up for the first time and he says it was almost like a whisper he could barely say it and he said i'm so lonely wow in the relationship in the relationship just in general like he didn't even know just i'm lonely he's not blaming her for the loneliness by the way he's just saying i'm so lonely and it was almost like he had gone in ripped his heart out extended it to her on an outstretched hand and here's his heart sitting there and she says i feel exactly the same way wow and i thought oh there's this bridge there's this bridge now between them right but then she adds but i didn't do what you did right in other words i was lonely too but i didn't cheat i'm a better person and what i said to them was i said listen you can go to this place of who's morally superior um who's right and wrong and who's more injured right um suffered more than you did i'm the victim here you can go to the place of like casting someone you can cast each other in a role of who's the villain and who's the victim or you can say it's not a hymn problem or a me problem it's an us problem our there's a loneliness in our relationship and how do we as a team deal with it because we both we have the problem in the relationship relationships are like biospheres they're like ecosystems so what you put into the relationship is the air that you're both breathing someone says like oh yeah i i yelled in the relationship but you know but she like iced me out it's like look at the environment look at the toxic air that you're both breathing if you yell she'll ice you out if you ice him out he's gonna yell right right like this is the this is the air you can't put toxic put toxicity out there and then expect that things are going to be okay that things are going to be healthy right so how what was the homework for that couple on how to repair and what was the prescription i guess the therapeutic prescription yeah well for them it was it was really looking at the relationship from the us perspective is we have an issue that we're trying to solve we want to solve this loneliness thing in our marriage people think people are so self-interested in relationships without realizing it and we all do this um you know we think like in the moment i'm going to do this thing right and we don't think about how is that going to affect the couple it's going to be good for me so we're gonna do it i'm gonna say this thing because i have to get it off my chest um you know i'm i'm gonna keep this secret because it'll be better for me no what's what's better for the relationship and we don't tend to think about that so for them it was about um remembering that if the thing that you're about to do is good for the relationship it's going to be good for you we forget that we think it's the opposite you know it's like if it's good for me it'll be good for for him or her too or them too no um if it's good for the relationship it's good for everybody does that mean certain things you shouldn't say then yeah like well i didn't do that like yeah i'm lonely too but i didn't cheat yeah right it's like yeah i'm lonely too that's that's the moment of connection right there i'm lonely too and what he did in that moment before she made that comment he reached toward her he teared up yeah it was beautiful he teared up and he and he moved toward her and he took her hand and then she says but i didn't do it oh dagger right right to your heart you're already wounded you're both wounded right and so people put up their swords to protect themselves and what they don't realize is that they're actually going to make themselves feel lonelier you keep that sword up you're going to be very alone you're going to feel very disconnected from your partner that takes a level of what just emotional intelligence awareness peace what does that take in order to like not say that final thing or you know try to one-up the other person in a relationship what does that take right well the reason that we do that is because there's what's happening between you and your partner in the moment you know he cheated she's very injured by that that makes sense they've talked about it a lot at this point they'll talk about it more it will be ongoing um but then there's sort of you know the unfinished business we have this saying we marry our unfinished business and what we mean by that is if i see a couple um you know show me tell me how you were loved as a child and i will tell you how you're loved now right how you love now tell me who who you love now and i'll tell you who loved you as a child really is there a way to break that cycle though yes yeah so that's where the awareness comes yes so the unfinished business so part of it is she had she grew up in a family where her father was cheating her mother knew nobody said anything so now you know she's got all of that on top of you know the crimes of her father in her mind are now the crimes of her husband and and they're very different people you know her husband was a very different person from her father but she could not separate the two of them right right what is the um what's the reason why people want to know why the other person did something like yeah you cheated why does the the partner always want to know why why did you do this was i'm not doing enough of this what is the reason behind that and is that beneficial to want to know why the person cheated or lied or manipulated or whatever the thing they did i think why is important but why is not simple so i think what they want is a simple why like you know let me connect the dots i cheated because of x and then it's like oh that makes sense right it doesn't always make sense so we so then we can just avoid x and it'll never happen again have you ever had the situation where you find out that a friend like somebody cheated in a friend's relationship and everybody is asking what happened why and the reason they want to know is not so much of their concern for their friends of course they are but because they want to know oh i don't want that to happen in my relationship so if i can find out why it happened in your relationship i can make sure that that doesn't happen in mind wow and i think that when it happens in your own relationship you think if we can figure out the why then we can make sure it will never happen again people want guarantees but there are no guarantees and the reasons that people have relationships are very nuanced it's not like well my father died and i was feeling dead so i wanted to feel alive again maybe that's part of it but there might be other reasons too why they have affairs you mean yes yes yes so people always think that if i know why and by the way like in that example of him saying i was really lonely you know there was a why it did not bring relief right you think it's like oh if i solve the mystery then i'm going to feel like some sense of healing of relief no you really have to deal with what's in front of you right now from all the cases you've uh experienced what are the three main causes of cheating or someone having an affair well that's the thing there are so many right so it could be something going on in the relationship like there's a lack of connection someone's trying to control the other person someone isn't present enough for the other person um they're bringing their own childhood stuff to the relationship so there's a lot of conflict in the relationship um there's there's too much agreement in the relationship meaning agreement meaning nobody's talking about what you need to talk about so everybody's just kind of dealing with all of the things that are not working on their own and say i don't want to rock the boat and so everybody's very smiley everybody agrees with everybody but underneath there's a sense of like oh i don't really feel like i'm in this um you know we can't really talk about the things that i want to talk about or the both people generally feel that way yeah and so there's a lot of like you know just being too nice interesting okay so those are the couples people say oh i never saw it coming if i see a couple and they agree on everything and they have no conflict and there's like nothing going on there like what are we not talking about here not because i'm looking for problems but because people are not clones of each other right you know they're going to have differences yes and then there are reasons that people cheat that have literally nothing to do with their partner the product could be amazing partner is amazing and it's not about the partner so i remember i had a couple and she and she was so confused by this she was so injured by this beyond just the betrayal but because she said i gave you everything that you always wanted i gave you stability i gave you warmth i gave you unconditional love i gave you joy and fun and gave you all those things and still you cheated why was i not enough and he said but you were enough it wasn't it wasn't that you weren't enough it was that i did not know how to deal with enoughness like i have not i have not dealt with my childhood wounds wow right um i didn't feel worthy of enough wow and so he had a lot of stuff to work out and it literally had nothing to do with what she was or was not giving him and she was like why why why and she was like beating this out of him and he's like it's not about you she could not accept that because it was better for her to feel like i have an answer that makes sense to me that there's something i can do differently and that was not the answer that's why you hear the cliche thing it's not you it's me when someone's like breaking up or when something happens no one can really accept that because they always think well if if you if i was great you'd still want to be with me you know no no no i would say sometimes it is the other person and that's just and that is how they're breaking up that's they just say it that way they just say it that way but but in this case it was true he was saying there was nothing that you could have done differently this was something about me that i'm just seeing now and by the way sometimes and this is the thing that the trade partners have the hardest time accepting the reason for the affair is i was trying to save the marriage people think oh please you know like don't give me that really um but this is what people do they're trying to save the marriage so they want they're trying to get their partner's attention they're trying to say they couldn't say it to their partner for whatever reason um because maybe they had tried to try to say it to their partner and their partner was like i don't know what you're talking about say what what were they you know like like i don't have enough of you or we don't have enough connection or i can't bring up things that are uncomfortable in this marriage because every time i do you try to shut me down so they've tried maybe um and so then they blow it up and they say like there's the only way that i can get you to see that there is a problem in our marriage they sabotage it yeah right and it's not necessarily conscious it's like they're doing this thing because they didn't know what else to do but they're not like i'm gonna have an affair to do that sometimes they do it because they say i really want to keep there's so much good in this marriage and i really want to keep it but there are certain things needs that i'm not getting met in this marriage and my partner is not listening to me about this so i'm going to get those needs met and i'm not even talking about sexual needs they're going to get those needs met somewhere else so that the marriage can stay intact so we don't rock this boat because if i bring this up my partner might leave me wow so it's getting the need somewhere else because the partner's not giving you what you need in that moment but you still want to want to hear it but you still want to stay in the marriage but you need to get your needs met somewhere if you can't get them met in the marriage you're like where do i go right and they're not necessarily sexual in these people think affairs are always about the sex they're not always about the sex what could it be about what other ways about i want to feel alive i feel dead yeah i want to feel i want to feel special i want to feel understood this other person listens to me so they they're still having a sexual interaction but it's not necessarily about the sex sometimes and by the way because we don't know how to define affairs everybody defines it differently so it's kind of like people think when i'm with my partner because we see the world through a similar lens we're going to agree on what betrayal means what does it mean to cheat what does an affair actually mean and you'll find that people have wildly different definitions like what's the range is cheating is cheating you have been getting together with your ex even though it's completely on the up and up you've been getting together with your ex but you didn't tell me you were having these lunches with your ex that feels like a betrayal to me i should have known about it even if nothing's happening i should have known about it that may seem like an affair to some people it seems like a betrayal we can call it a portrayal yeah um or someone will say like you're having an emotional affair with this person how do you define that what does that actually mean you might have different definitions of that like why can't i have a friend who is you know who is not a romantic partner but you see this person as as threatening but this person is not threatening right um do you think people can have um opposite sex friends while they're in marriages yeah and and the partners but but the but the boundaries the lines have to be explicit like what do you and your partner say about what those lines are so that you'll know when they're crossed if you haven't talked about what those lines are you don't know when they're crossed until they're cry until someone says wait a minute you crossed a line and the other person says i didn't know the line was there i thought it was over here so it could be like um it's interesting i was meeting with someone years ago who is uh someone older than me in my industry i was like i'd love to meet you to like it was non-romantic at all russia was like i'm inspired but you're creating i'd love to like have lunch with you or have a coffee and um i can't remember what she said she said something like we just have to make sure it's in public because me and my husband have an agreement if we're meeting someone on the other side something like that but it was it wasn't that ex detailed but she was like oh we just need to make sure it's in public and you know i just never do anything one-on-one privately with anyone like so and i was like okay cool yeah wherever you want to go and i was like that's a good boundary an agreement it's like and that and that works for them that might not work for someone else someone else might feel like well that's really controlling but you don't know the history of their relationship and um and she didn't by the way have to say that to you she could have just said like let's meet at wherever of course yeah right exactly yeah um you know so maybe she was just trying to let you know hey by the way this isn't anything yeah whatever whatever you might be thinking yeah don't be trying anything so uh which i thought was cool but it is but it is cool that they talked about it yes and that's the point is that people need to talk about things people assume that their partners think about the world in the same way they do and they get into trouble when they realize wait a minute you think this and then they judge the person for thinking something else like how and i'm not talking about affairs now but just anything like how could you think that how do you think that way how do you believe that as if yeah then you wouldn't want to have you wouldn't want to talk about that person anymore because you feel judged already right right right sorry what were you going to say well i think that people need to come at each other with curiosity rather than criticism isn't that interesting oh you think that tell me more just say those three words tell me more or say more tell me i'm curious i want to understand how you think about this not because my way's better so what if the thing that someone starts telling this you know story or fantasy or whatever it is uh value system they they have and it's completely against what their partner thinks or believes then what if they're like oh we're in a big conflict here of what you think and what i think yeah i think it's it's i think underneath the sort of content is the process the process is what's going on on an emotional level between you and usually there's some um there's some kind of agreement on an emotional level like you might think blue and i might think green but actually we both think colors right like there's something that's that's there's some point of connection there but people kind of back into their own corners because again the worst thing that you can do to somebody is try to get them to think your way instead of being curious about understanding how they think interesting you don't have to agree with it but you just have to understand it because people want to be understood more than anything else agreed with really just i can see why you think that way or why you felt that way i don't you know i don't agree with it but i can see i can see that that's how you think about it i get that so understand but you don't agree with someone you don't have to agree okay i like that those are two different things understanding them and agreeing with them it's kind of like if your kid comes home from school and says like you know that teacher was terrible they they marked me off for not turning in my homework you might agree with the teacher yeah okay they should mark you off or not tonight but i understand where you're coming from but i understand that you're really upset about this i get why you're upset i get that it feels bad to be marked off for something and maybe you know maybe we can talk about like what's going on for you and why you didn't turn it in let's talk about that underneath it interesting yeah uh how many of the the married couples that come in how many percentage-wise would you say there's some type of affair or cheating that happens with the couples that come to you or just in therapy do you think what's like the challenges it's really interesting that you ask that because when i think about all the betrayals that happen in couples you know betrayals of like you gave me the silent treatment when i needed you or i was sick and you had a toothache you know it's like or um and you didn't call me or you know like all the betrayals that just happen in on a daily basis um the betrayal that really gets people is you know this idea of cheating it really cuts to the core in a way that the other people can be awful to another person like you can scream at someone and say horrible things which i think is just psychological you know just betrayal right there drama yeah it's trauma it really is yeah yeah it's like holding someone hostage to your emotions um you know you're you're really like it's a real assault it's an emotional assault i think yeah i think it's horrible and then you know oh but but wait a minute you had lunch with this co-worker oh my god can you believe and then you tell all your friends he was having lunch with her betrayed me yeah but that you don't say to your friend like you wouldn't believe the way what he called me or what he said to me when he screamed at me in that moment right it's really interesting to see you know what affects us on this deep core level and i think it's because we have this idea in in modern society that our partners are supposed to be everything to us and there's this little bubble of the two of us and it's the two of us against the world like it used to be you'd have community for some of your needs you had friends you had family you had all these different things and now it's like this is the person if the person strays in some way then i am threatened in this way because i don't have the safety of us anymore even though the the other thing is is arguably just as bad just as bad yeah if someone screams at you and allows their emotions to take over and puts it on the person they say they love the most for me it's just like you said psychological war yeah and i feel like you know the psychological things are harder to get out of than someone like punching me in the face i don't know i mean physical abuse is not good either but for me it's like the psychological messes with your emotions right well what's so confusing about it is that people are not always that way right so it's once in a month he does this or she yells this way you know right right so it's kind of like you know but look at all the look at all the good things look at all the other things and so it's it's hard for people to reconcile um you see this with narcissistic people a lot and i don't like to use diagnostic terms very much because i think the behavior is more important than the diagnosis um but when we look at narcissistic traits for example um we all know people who have been with someone who is incredibly charming incredibly confident incredibly into you in this way that makes you feel like you are the center of the universe you're the center of this person's universe and then they do something so callous like what so i mean you know something that they just they lack empathy um in a moment when um you know like your your mother died and they didn't show up for you in the way that you would expect right um or even just something on a daily basis you know just something where like their needs were so much more important than yours um we had on on the deer therapist podcast we just did an episode called um i think it was like audrey's narcissistic ex-husband and again we don't we haven't met him so we cannot give him a diagnosis um and i don't even know that he you know fits a diagnosis but her perception in the marriage was just that his needs came above hers but she said i was addicted to his approval his approval meant everything to me the fact that he could have had anybody and he chose me so we all get sort of swayed by those people it's very easy to get swayed by those people some people figure it out before they get into a relationship with them that oh wait a minute you know this feels really good for a moment but this isn't what i want to live in my vision this is yeah right right but other people you know it takes them a long time to kind of figure it out um and so for her she was so damaged by then they they got divorced and he was about to get remarried and it's been seven years since they got divorced and she's still so damaged by it because she never processed it she never understood her own role in it why was she with him so i think it's easy to blame the person who's you know narcissistic you chose to be in a relationship and stay in the relationship at the same time well what was the draw for you you know what is that pattern and usually it's it's people who have their own issues with intimacy um you know it's it's a narcissist is a great partner for someone who and i say a great partner meaning you know it's that's how who they're gonna choose it's not a fun it's not a fun relationship but it's a great partner for somebody who really is afraid of getting too close because the narcissist will never let you get too close to him never fully open up vulnerably they will never let you get there because they are so ashamed their main thing is they're covering their shame what would you say is the main traits of a narcissist grandiosity really wanting to be the center of attention this veneer of confidence being very easily wounded um oh wait a minute you complimented this other person's whatever it is they get so wounded like well why didn't you compliment mine right yeah um oh you think that person's attractive they'll like ice you out wow so super jealous too or no very very but they act like they don't care oh you want to do go ahead like passive aggressive jealous or something right yeah very passive aggressive yeah huh any other signs that people should look out for if they're like starting to date someone they're like huh this seems very narcissistic i think that jekyll and hyde quality that you know one minute you're like this and the next minute you're incredibly cruel you can be incredibly warm and loving right and incredibly cruel and the two you toggle between the two in a way that is frightening it's like a split personality huh yeah yeah but it's not because the narcissist is doing the thing you reel them in the narcissist reels the person in with the charm which you are the center of the universe and then oh you're getting too close to me so i'm gonna be cruel so it's interesting so it's like if you're with someone who's showing these traits and they're just wowing you and they're so nice and loving and grandiose uh but then if you truly open up and you want to get to know their heart that's when they start to do other things or what happens then yeah yeah you're too close if you get too close to them right either you're being too intimate with them although they would they want you to be somewhat in smooth them so they know how to use it against you right they can manipulate you that's right that i can use against it against you in the moment when you are most vulnerable wow um or they don't want they don't want you to know too much about them right they hide well they they hide their vulnerabilities they don't know how to get authentically close to another person why does someone become a narcissist oh that's you know i i think so many people anybody who's had experience with someone like that wants to know that and and you'll see that you know this is this is when we talk about we marry our unfinished business right so it's it's the person who um grew up feeling very um they didn't get their needs met they didn't get you know they they were either neglected um or they were or they grew up with a narcissistic parent so what do we do with parents who don't meet our needs on the one hand we rebel against them we say i'm not going to be like that i'm not going to choose someone like that so the narcissist doesn't choose another narcissist if the narcissist grew up with a narcissistic parent they don't choose another narcissist they choose someone like the other parent who was with the narcissistic parent and then what they do is they take on the traits of the narcissistic parent now why do they do that even though they were so injured by that kind of parent it's like it's like the person who grew up with an alcoholic parent or a person who like couldn't self-regulate why did they become the angry yeller even though their parent was the angry yeller and they said i would never do that how do you get close to a parent who couldn't get close to you you become like them that's your connection to them this is completely outside of your awareness you don't realize that but we still the wish never dies that we can be close to our parents the wish never dies so what do we do if we don't process this so if we process it if we process it then we know okay i have to watch out for that i have to find another way to grieve what i didn't get growing up i have to really go through that grief process and i'm going to have that that that loss is going to live with me but it's going to live with me in a way that isn't so sharp so you really have to grieve it but if you don't grieve it you repeat it you take on the trait of one of your parents you take on their choice because that helps you feel close to them oh i'm going to feel close to you in this way this is not in your conscious awareness wow and then people don't realize that they think oh my gosh one day someone says to them you are exactly like your mom your dad and like oh my god i am right if they're not if they if they if they can get past sort of like the narcissistic protection yeah of course which would be they can't hear it i'm not like my parents no i'm not like them at all i'm not like i don't like them at all like if you could take a videotape of a scene from your childhood and you take a videotape of how you're acting now with your own child you would be stunned wow so how does someone if they're okay they've realized they're maybe there's narcissistic traits or that's a full-on narcissist that they're in a relationship with what are the next steps they should take is there a way to actually i mean you can't really change someone in a relationship when i'm hearing you say you can't no matter what you do the person's not gonna change right so do you need to change in order for them to change or is it just if you're someone who's diagnosed narcissist there's no hope for actually healthy growth in the relationship well someone who has narcissistic traits generally doesn't come to therapy because they don't think they have a problem right they're like no i'm good right so how they come in is they're having some relational difficulty right and the relational difficulty is either they're coming in for couples therapy because the other person dragged them there yeah um you know so often we say that you know the reason that people come to therapy is to deal with the people who won't go to therapy right so you know you're coming to therapy to deal with the person in your life who won't come to therapy it's funny yeah the three previous relationships i was in i was like we need therapy we need to like we're getting the point was like somebody's not working here let's go to therapy and like try to work this through none of my partners wanted to go to therapy they resisted resisting resistant i was like what we're not figuring it out on our own like i'm trying you're trying it's not working let's go let's have someone look at no it's like so much resistance i was just like right and so in that in that case i'm not saying they were all narcissists but there are no no so i'm not even talking about so so i well let me differentiate so there's if you know a narcissistic person meaning diagnosed narcissistic um or even people with narcissistic traits they tend not to come on their own to therapy unless they actually agree to come in couples and they're coming because their partner is making them yes that's the only reason um or and and then you kind of see like how flexible are they with their story right because everybody's coming in with their story both people yeah right um the other reason like in maybe you should talk to someone john right when i talk about him he's this guy who's in his 40s he's married he has some kids and he is incredibly insulting to me from the minute you know he walks in the door um everybody else is the problem you know in fact the chapter is called idiots because he says everybody else is an idiot right why can't people why aren't people as smart as he is why aren't people as competent as he is why can't people do things right why does he and he's like the the the beleaguered victim um you see that sometimes that's right i'm talented and smart i'm the victim because i'm a victim of all these other people are causing so much anxiety in my life like why aren't they doing things the way that they should be done why are they why are they complaining about all these things not realizing that he's the one doing the complaint about everything yeah right right um you know and we call it complaining from the victim position um you know or being being the offen offend being offended by from the victim position sure you know everybody else is the problem um or or the reason that people are are cruel to another person is they say you know like like i was the victim so i can hurt you twice as much so if you hurt me i have a right to hurt you right right i'm doing this to protect myself right no um so so when john came in he was you know he you very much say a lot of people would say i don't want to treat somebody like that because they don't know how much progress they're going to make because if they can't self-reflect yeah well you have to be able to see yourself what you know in the book i talk about the difference between idiot compassion and wise compassion so idiot compassion is what we do with our friends so your friends say like listen to what my partner did or my mom or my you know my kid or my sibling or whatever it is and we say yeah that's terrible you're right how dare they you know you're right they're wrong it's it's just we we just back them up blindly because we think we're being supportive but if you actually listen to your friends over time you might hear that there's a pattern that they are kind of complaining about similar types of things it's kind of like if a fight breaks out and everybody you're going to maybe it's you we don't say that so in in therapy what we offer is we offer wise compassion and in wise compassion we hold up a mirror to you to help you to see yourself in ways that maybe you haven't been willing or able to do and compassion is the key word here because we're doing it compassionately so someone who comes in and they're not able to self-reflect they're not able to see their reflection in the mirror and say yes oh i have a role in this too yes it's true the other person does this but i have a role in this too so when you're asking about change when people come in for couples therapy i always give them an assignment before they come in and the assignment is this because normally the first thing that will happen if i don't is they're going to come in and they're going to name all the ways that their partner needs to change and then we get nowhere so i say to them i want you to come up with how you can make this relationship better i want you to come up with what you're going to do what are you going to be working on to make this relationship better even if your partner never changes and they each have this assignment so from day one they come in and even though they they might have a lot of reasons that you know things aren't working out that they think are their their partner's issue their goal in therapy is to work on the one thing or the two things or the three things that they think they can do to make the relationship better and it changes the whole course of the couple's therapy because it's not about changing the other person the magic of this is that they say well what's the point of doing it if they're not going to change well first of all again going from the me and the and the you to the us is things are going to go more smoothly because you're going to be doing something to improve the relationship but the other part of it is and where the magic comes in is you can't change another person but you can influence change in another person absolutely so when you do something differently you are helping the other person to change no one changes because you say i want you to change in this way that doesn't really happen they might do it you know they might pay lip service to it it doesn't really last but if you start changing if you make it easier you help them to change by making it easier for them to change so let's say they really need space give them some space let's say you know you try to control them less let's say that you don't engage in the same familiar argument over and over and over um you maybe you do something kind for them and then people say about that they say well why should i do something kind why should i go first if they would be nice to me i'll be nice to them it doesn't matter you need to go first because someone needs to do something somewhere someone needs to change the dynamic it's like a dance and so if you do something nice for them you might notice that they not because it's a tit for tat not because they're doing it because it's because they feel safer they feel more loving toward you they feel like oh that was really nice i really liked that now i actually want to on my own volition want to do something nice for you yeah and what if what if someone says i'm gonna i'm gonna improve all you know three five ten areas that i know can improve and after six months the other person's like yeah i deserve all these things and i'm not gonna give any more then what keep coming back have you seen that where people come back everybody's like okay i've done this i did this i did this and they're still not happening they're still upset and they're still not shifting in certain ways well first of all i think that what they engage in then is what i call the pain olympics which is like whose pain is greater yeah you know like i'm working so hard i'm working 12-hour days well i'm taking care of the kids or i'm doing this or you know like i'm doing all of this kind of labor in the relationship and you're doing all the it's there's no there's no winning the pain olympics like let's just say that you're both at a ten okay you both win we both are in people lose like you heard about but you both lose if you keep trying to compare it the point is you're both you're both struggling and what's really interesting about couples is that couples don't tend to tell the other person exactly how they're struggling in a relationship instead they act it out they act out their fears or their disappointment or their hurt in other ways but they don't directly say this is how i'm struggling and so if you're in couples therapy you're going to start talking about those things and if you're you know if you're not then then you're not really doing couples therapy so you know i mean i think that your therapist will tell you very early on like this is the work that we're doing and this is i think some people think that couples therapy is you come in you download the argument of the week or the struggle of the week you leave you come back the next week and you download the new thing no that that's that's like talking to a friend there's no point to that what should the point of therapy be the point the point is that you want to be doing the most of the therapy of couples therapy takes place outside of the therapy room meaning what happens in between sessions so we came in we talked about this you learned something new about yourself you learned something new about your partner and then we always say insight is the booby prize of therapy that you can have all the insight in the world but if you don't make changes out in the world between sessions the insight is useless so then okay you have this insight you learn something what are you going to do with that knowledge use it like why are you wasting your time and your money coming in here every week if you're not going to use it what's been the thing that you've seen as a therapist where you realized oh this is something that i have done in my relationships or oh actually this is a really good lesson for me because i used to do that and i don't want to do that anymore or something like that has there been anything i would say all of it really i mean i think that that's what makes relationships so interesting and people think that it's only happening to them they're like you only do this you know it's it's really interesting that they think my friends don't do this does it their partners don't do this or or or i only act this crazy around you right like i don't i don't do this nobody else elicits this kind of response to me well of course they don't elicit that kind of response in you because you're not in an intimate relationship with them they're not bringing up all that unconscious stuff that comes up when you're in that intimate relationship um so i think that the good news for couples is that anything they bring in i've seen it before i've experienced probably some of it before um you know and and so universal and if people could stop be so you know people can blame and shame um you know they blame the other person they feel shame themselves and then they don't really make progress because they're afraid to really look at these things because they're really uncomfortable talking about them right but when they find that oh this is just the human condition and this is what happens when we get scared this is what happens when we feel threatened and maybe it's not even your partner who's threatening but it's something about being this close to someone or there's something your partner does that reminds your nervous system of something that happened earlier like who am i talking to right now am i talking to the child who had to come up with a way to protect yourself from whatever was happening and it was very effective it was ingenious as a child because you had to you didn't have agency or am i talking to the adult who has agency and doesn't need to use that way of protecting yourself that is actually creating some conflict in your relationship which everything goes back to healing yes like if we want to create a thriving healthy relationship within the human condition which is going to have some you know bumps along the way it sounds like we we need to constantly going back to healing if there's something within me that's stressed where can i heal is that what i'm hearing you say and and the thing is that that we expect our partners to do that healing for us the person who's going to heal us is ourselves and that is goes against everything we believe about love and when i said at the beginning of our conversation that love can wound but also love can heal what i mean is that if you can heal yourself in the context of a loving relationship right not the other person healed me right the other person didn't heal me but i was healing myself and the other person was there as i was doing it and the other person was healing themselves as well and and what happens is you learn how to heal yourself because you have the safe environment in which to do it if you have an environment that's not safe you're not going to feel safe enough to do the work that you need to do to heal yourself wow so what does a safe environment look for another partner to feel i'm safe and i can process the things i need to process in a healthy manner that your partner can handle the truth of who you are oh all the messiness of you all the stuff in your past as long as you're kind all right that your partner can handle the truth of who you are that you can show up you can be authentic they're not going to judge you they're not going to use it against you it's like ah yeah steve that thing that you told me like three months ago that's why you're doing this thing right now no never do that don't do that don't use it against them wow um you know you're just like your mother don't do that that's the worst thing probably right right it's like i'm showing up here and i need you to show up here and how can we show up for each other what does that look like can you handle the truth of who the other person is and so what does that require requires emotional regulation this is the best thing you can do by the way as a parent for your child emotional regulation that can you regulate we did on the dear therapist podcast we had someone on who was like i just i can't when my children have big feelings i can't handle their feelings right and and when my husband and i can't deal with this with my husband right and so it was like how do you handle how do you regulate yourself emotionally how do we learn to do that that's a skill that it is a skill master especially if your parents did not know how to regulate themselves emotions people are screaming and reacting or passing aggressive and yeah slamming up doors right or the opposite where there was just they couldn't regulate it all so they numbed out so you got nothing right they loved you they had yeah there was no kind of warmth or affection or even talking about feelings like you had a bad day at school but you knew i don't i my parents are not going to know how to talk about that with me they're going or they're going to try to talk me out of my feelings you're fine you're fine like oh don't be sad hey let's go get some yogurt yeah let's go get some ice cream when our partner comes to us at the end of the day let's say or in the middle of the day they call us and they say i'm feeling emotionally overwhelmed i'm feeling like betrayed with my friendship my parents did this on my work like they're just feeling like i'm emotionally a wreck what can the partner do in that moment to make them feel in a safe space and feel like it's okay to express it without also having them be like okay are they going to do this every day you know it's like because right that's not good either if they're always going to be an emotional like avalanche uh on your partner daily you know what i mean it's like how do you create that balance right i think that you need to learn how to listen and you need to learn how your partner wants to be listened to and people don't bother to ask and so we assume that the person wants in that moment what we would want if we had that exact same problem that day so when your partner comes to you and they say oh my gosh you have to hear what happened today you might say to them what how can i help right now do you want to just vent right now do you want to hug do you want me to help problem solve with you what would be helpful right now and they might say right now i just want to tell you what happened and i don't want to hear what you think about it i don't want to hear i don't want to problem solve i just want you to hear it i just i just want i just want to vent right now and then they might say but like tomorrow i might want your ideas opinions right i might want to talk about this with you that's such a challenging thing for someone when someone comes to them with like a problem or a challenge it's i think it's so hard for someone to have the self-awareness to say how do you want me to listen to you right now and how can i help right right how do i okay right now what can i do i feel like it's so hard for maybe i'm speaking for myself and for you know men in relationships that i've talked to it's hard for them to be like okay you're overwhelmed how can i listen to you yeah there's a fire i've got to put it out no no no no no it's challenging can you can you emotionally regulate yourself because just like with the parent and the child if you are emotionally regulated if your child comes home and says oh this is the thing happening oh my gosh you're like oh my gosh oh no let's call the school let's call the teacher no right so it's it's more like oh let's talk about it it's almost like both parties learning emotional emotional regulation for each other it's like without dumping on someone how do i regulate and heal or process and then communicate i'm going through something challenging we always say one person there can only be one person going crazy at a time right no really i mean like like someone like it's like a seesaw right you can't like someone like one person has to be the adult only one person can go crazy at a time so if one person is going to regress and kind of go into that childhood place or they're really dysregulated whatever it is the other person has to stay emotionally regulated you can't get regulated by your partner you have to be regulated in that moment for your partner and emotional regulation or learning that skill what i'm hearing you say goes back to healing first right it's like learning to process whatever trauma challenges pains hurts that has happened in your life whether it be recent or in the past processing grieving healing forgiving that journey which my therapist says healing is not an event it's a journey it's not like it doesn't happen one time it's like a journey um it seems like it's something we should be working on consistently is that right right and working on healing yourself and so when your partner comes to you and you feel really just activated by what they're coming at you with you kind of have to take some breaths and you have to take care of yourself then in a way that you weren't taken care of before if you're getting really triggered by it it's probably because you had that experience with your parents and nobody was there for you you didn't know what to do in those moments or you didn't have a boundary or something right right yeah and so to be able to say okay how can i stay grounded right now what do we do as a couple right now so that we both are able to have this conversation yeah should people get into relationships without healing first so people always think that this is a really interesting question because people always say you have to be whole and then you can get into a relationship i think that it's not again not that your partner is going to heal you but we start to heal when we are able to learn more about ourselves and you don't learn a lot about yourself in a vacuum okay we are most revealed in an intimate relationship that is where we are most revealed yes you know and if you by the way if you think oh my friends know me really well you know this other person knows me really well this person i've known since kindergarten knows me really well they don't know you and the way your partner knows you intimately they're not going to see you in the same way and so when somebody when somebody can really see you in that way and love you and be there for you and be imperfect and not be all good or all bad you know when you say to your partner like you're always this well no there's you're sometimes that but you're not always that uh you know when you paint somebody becomes you know you get roles in a relationship like you're the irresponsible one you know you're the one who overreacts well no um sometimes you're right i was late for pick up you know you're right but let's not mail it do kitchen sink fighting which is like let's name all the times that that not only was i late but that i let you down in these other ways right if you can deal with that one incident that person will probably say you're right i needed to leave earlier i didn't account for traffic next time i'm going to do it better as opposed to oh my gosh this avalanche is coming at me i don't even hear this person anymore i don't even hear what they're saying right it's because then you're just shut down yeah you're being made wrong over and over again right it's hard to really like pay attention and focus there's like a wall and when someone says to the to their partner like you're too sensitive you know you're so sensitive the response there's yes i'm sensitive and you know that and so why wouldn't you want to take my sensitivity into account i see it as a strength that i feel things i feel a lot of things yes and i use those feelings and i know that maybe my boundary has been crossed or this doesn't feel good to me and so if you know that i have these sensitivities why wouldn't you take those into account right right let's say we've gone through a breakup and you're like man i feel wounded from this previous relationship where there was a lot of hurts and pains that just you know didn't feel good what would be the process that you would recommend for someone while they're single to really grieve heal forgive process in order to set themselves up to being the best person they can be when they're in that next relationship well first of all you've used the word forgiveness a little bit so i just want to talk about that for a second so i think there's this idea that if we forgive someone that we will be set free in some way and i don't think that's always the case we have this expression forced forgiveness which is like you know you don't actually forgive the person whether it's a parent or an ex or you know someone who really wounded you you don't have to forgive them and i think with parents it's easy to say i can have compassion for them now as an adult because i see what their life was like or i see what their struggles were i see that they had mental health issues or whatever it is or i see how hard their upbringing was but i don't necessarily forgive what they took from them in their childhood or how they treated me so you're saying it's sometimes it's good not to forgive it's okay i'm saying i'm saying if you truly forgive that person great but that's not necessarily the goal it doesn't make you less of a person it doesn't make you less evolved because you can have compassion but not forgiveness and the same with an ex if someone really hurt you maybe you can have compassion for the woundedness in them that made them treat you in that way but you don't necessarily have to forgive them in fact i think that can do more damage than good when you tell yourself that you forgive someone when you actually don't that forced forgiveness can be a trap and it can leave you in a stuck position for much longer than you would be if you just acknowledge that i don't actually forgive them i can see that they were wounded i'm not going to put myself in that position i'm going to choose a different kind of partner next time right i'm not going to i don't need to beat myself up or hold a grudge anymore but i don't want to forgive is there a way to like not hurt yourself and still not forgive but why am i why is so much of my emotional real estate going in that direction you know it's like we only have so much emotional real estate how much time are you thinking about thinking of this other person we have this again i keep talking about the podcast because these are such common issues that on the deer therapist podcast we had this this woman come on and she was spending so much emotional real estate on this person who this person who had treated her badly and and and we were like you are spending so much time on this that you are not even available for another person right now you are not available you won't even think about people who are who are it's kind of like i use this analogy to dry well that there are people who they keep going back to the dry well they know there's no water there they know that there's like an emotional void there and they keep going back every day expecting that there's going to be water there just anything about it yeah like thinking like i'm going to keep trying to get this like this time you're going to be emotionally if the person has never been emotionally there for you in the way that you want what should they do just move on so it's like go where the water is go to a different well and they don't they're so focused on but i want water from that well i want it from this particular well dry well yeah it's like you're never going to get water that well is dry go where the water is psychologically why do we fixate on that sometimes because they they had a dry well somewhere in their lives and they think i'm going to now we call this repetition compulsion freud called it repetition compulsion and i'm not all on board with freud but but there are certain things that that he wrote about that actually do play out that i see all the time and one of them is we say this time i'm going to choose a partner who is exactly like that person who didn't meet my needs we don't do that consciously right in fact they look very different we think aha i won because i chose someone very different but then when you get into relationship with them you see they're also not emotionally available or they also have an anger issue or they also are withholding or whatever it is and so then we say unconsciously but this time i'm going to win this time i'm going i couldn't get my parent to do it but i'm going to get them because sometimes they can be so loving and kind and all these other things so this time i'm going to get them to do that but you won't again we don't change another person you can only change yourself in that case the change might be i'm going to go where the water is i'm going to choose differently i'm going to go with the water is and i'm going to look at why i don't go where the water is because so many times people don't see that they are literally surrounded by water but they don't take it they won't drink it to them it's almost like water is the water is the poison even though the poison is the dry well why is that because they don't know that it's safe they never experience it feels so foreign to them it's like it's like it's kind of like you are in this war zone and we're gonna fly you right your whole life and we're going to fly you into a safe territory and you land in the safe territory but you've never been in a safe territory before so they speak a different language and they drive on the other side of the street and they have different customs and and they wear different clothes and you're like this feels really uncomfortable because i've never been in a place like this even though it's really warm and safe and the people are really nice there but you're like i don't know all i know is the familiar this is why people don't change because they say i would rather be in something that is familiar to me because at least i know it than to go in this situation where i don't know the customs and the language and i don't know how to be around people who are kind to me i don't know what how to be in those situations is this so relevant to me right now because my my girlfriend we started dating and uh within the first couple months i go this is really weird this is really weird it's and i go i don't know what it is it's just something feels weird there's nothing wrong it just feels weird because it's so healthy i go it's so healthy that i just never experienced this and it's so foreign but i know this is so much healthier than anything i've ever experienced and i'm like i just needed to communicate and i was telling my therapist i was like i don't know what it is it's just so healthy it just feels good it feels good but then you don't trust it you don't just like but it's just it's just different it's just like this is it's just blue it's just weird to the mind right and you and you have to get used to it like wait there's peace wait a minute there's not bombs going out everywhere like okay yeah there's peace i'm not going to get exploded on you know it's like it's out it it's like a process of like learning how to adapt to a healthy environment right has been for me yeah and for people who grew up that way that is what they seek and that feels good to them and when someone isn't good to them they get out of that very they're aware of it right and they say they say so the way you feel in a healthy relationship is how they feel in an unhealthy relationship right they feel like really on edge and they're not going to stick around the the goal here for you is to say wait a minute this is actually staged don't sabotage it and to not let your fear blow it up yeah yeah yeah it's uh it's weird i don't know it's just really weird there's a word cherophobia which means fear of joy so cheryl means fear and phobia i'm sorry cheryl means joy and phobia means fear and people who grew up in those environments that didn't feel safe often struggle with cherophobia because when they feel joy they don't trust it like maybe sometimes their parents were there for them and then oh my depressed mom would go back into her room again and you know i couldn't trust it like it felt so good to have a mom but then she's gone again right so then when they grow up and then they meet someone who's there and really available they think uh oh the other shoe's gonna drop eventually they're gonna do something right i cannot trust this peace this healthiness this joy so what should someone do when they're in that situation where it's like wow there's a healthy environment but maybe they're in a previous relationship where it felt healthy for six months or a year and then something switches in the relationship and it's not healthy but you stick to whatever pattern you had before what should they do in that speaking of myself what should i do you know or someone like me when they're in a healthy environment when they've got an amazing partner that's when you have to realize that the war is over oh my gosh so you know you're not in the war zone the war is over and it's like ptsd it really is and so you have to look around and you have to ground yourself you can put your feet on the floor you can breathe you kind of have to orient yourself to your environment and say hey it's peace time the war is over gosh yeah and and not conflate your past with the present so people are time traveling what they're doing in that moment they're saying wait a minute you know like i but i'm in the war i've got to be hyper vigilant no you're actually otherwise you're safe although we're trying to yell that or explode it on or whatever i'm going to step on a bomb yeah yeah yeah and and also the first time something happens in those relationships like a healthy relationship doesn't mean that there's no conflict or that you don't disagree or whatever it is it's that it's going to be handled really differently hey let's talk it's all good let's figure it out it's okay it's not again rupture and repair how do we repair and so it's not like oh there's a rupture that's the end of our relationship there's a rupture and we're going to have lots of them in the course of our relationship so let's learn let's see how we repair things together let's see how we work as a team yeah that's powerful what would you say if someone's getting into a relationship a new relationship when would they know what would the signs be that this is uh the environment of a really great match for both of you what would that environment look like or those things happening look like or feel like it depends who you are so if you're someone again who grew up with you know what we call secure attachment then um what looks good to you is what you saw growing up that you guys you know you might have disagreements but there's a there's a lot of good will you know there's that the gottmans who are these marital researchers they always said you need you know we talked about the goodwill bank that you need to put five deposits into the goodwill bank for every one withdrawal that you make so you know do you have that five to one ratio are there like five positive interactions between the two of you for every sort of difficult interaction because if it's five difficult and one positive the relationship's not gonna work it's it's it's well again it's not gonna work but if you grew up again with with this other kind of modeling um attachment or insecure attachment secure attachment is what you want you want secure attachment right insecure attachment is as you grew up you grew up with you know different there are different versions of it um you got too much of something not enough of the other thing whatever it is but but in a way that was exaggerated in a way that it really affected you so you know we talk about the good enough parent like no parent is perfect um so it's more about being the good enough parent that's secure attachment but if there was you know like a constancy to the enmeshment or the or the withdrawal or the neglect or the chaos or the anger or whatever it was um or the you know the parent who was really inconsistent which is really confusing for kids like one minute the parent is like this the next minute the parents is like that so they're more insecure attachment right right and then so then if you're in that relationship that might feel normal to you as an adult was that healthy no of course not i mean so when you know you have a healthy match what does that look like right so so you know it's it's i think you have to you have to say like what is the what is the quality of this relationship on a daily basis what does it look like on a daily basis and sometimes it helps people to keep a journal we had this woman on the podcast she was in this relationship and it was really really dysfunctional and guy and i were like you know it was so apparent and and i think to the listeners too and guy and i were saying to her listen you keep justifying his behavior you know you keep saying oh but then he's also like this so you know there was no reality checking we said we want you to actually keep a journal every day we want you to write down like what is going what's what are the deposits in the bank what are the withdrawals from the big and she kept the journal and it was very eye-opening of all the things yeah right because it was kind of like you know you can you can justify anything in your head but when it's all there on the page is this the kind of relationship that i want [Music] and then you have to do the work of why why am i attracted to this why am i in this why do i stay yeah why do you think people stay in something like that where they they have pages and pages daily of things that like are around neglect and you know frustration as opposed to an environment quality of peace and abundance you have to remember too that that change doesn't happen just because you have an insight so you know if it did it would be so easy awareness isn't good for me but i'm not going to change though yeah um well people you know it's like this is why new year's resolutions don't work too because you know it's not like you just the nike thing like just do it um change goes through this process so you there's there's actually a chapter and maybe you should talk to someone called how humans change and it starts with um pre-contemplation where you don't even know that you're thinking about making a change like maybe i'm going to leave this relationship someday you don't even know you're thinking that that's pre-contemplation contemplation is you're thinking about it but you're not ready to do it um then there's the preparation stage and in preparation you're actually thinking about what would that look like let me look at apartments let me think about so it's a process i have an idea of um leaving tomorrow but here's the thing about the stages of change so so there's there's the preparation then there's action where you make the change like you actually leave that's not where it ends maintenance is the next phase because you might want to go back right right it's at 3am of the soul right you're like oh i'm so lonely and oh he's texting me and you know whatever um maintenance is how do you maintain the change and the big misconception people have about maintenance is that you make the change and you're going to maintain it and if you slip up like you know you you give in at 3 a.m and you're like oh yeah i know you're lonely and you miss it yeah or or you know like oh you know i'm gonna eat healthy and then oh no you didn't eat healthy for one day oh i failed no built into the maintenance phase is that you're going to slip back that's human and you have to have so much self-compassion in the maintenance phase and people think oh if i have self-compassion then i'm not holding myself accountable that's not true because nobody has ever succeeded at something through self-flagellation at least in the long term self-flagellation is where you're like you know oh you're so terrible you're awful think if your kid came home and was like oh i really you know i did really badly on that test and you said that's terrible that's awful you know like are they gonna do better on the next test you're gonna say oh let's see what didn't work let's see what you didn't understand that's okay let's see what you can do maybe you need to study differently or let's see what happened um if you slip back which you will you have to be really kind to yourself and say okay let me let me try to check in with myself what happened oh my mother called and that triggered me or oh i'm really worried about this thing about work and you know and and i was feeling insecure or i'm just really lonely and i didn't have a better coping strategy for being lonely so next time when i'm lonely at 3 a.m i'm going to do this instead right and you're really kind to yourself and then the next time you do it differently wow okay so more quality the the the quality on a daily basis that's really like the main thing i'm hearing you say of like this could be a potentially healthy match if the daily quality is solid is good is positive is inspiring right is there anything else to look for if like this could be a great match same the same values well yeah i mean you people people think you know just because we're really we really have fun together and really attracted to each other that it's all going to work out when one person wants kids and the other person doesn't or one person wants this lifestyle and the other person doesn't yes um or this person's values are different from mine as you said um you know and i think at the end it really comes down to the character qualities so many times people ignore the basic character qualities about a potential partner like is this person responsible do they do what they say when they say they're gonna do it um can i trust them and i don't just mean trust in terms of what we were talking about earlier with affairs i'm talking about can i trust that they have my back can i trust that that you know they're going to um show up for me in the way that they say they will are they reliable um generosity and i'm talking about emotional generosity can they be emotionally generous in the moment with me and the number one quality by the way when you look at studies of what what will predict whether a couple whether somebody is a good partner in a couple is how flexible is this person flexibility right flexibility yeah flexibility around what around everything just can you be flexible instead of like my way is the right way and that doesn't mean by the way that like you give up your sense of self that you agree with everything the other person says it's can you see another point of view can you entertain another point of view can you be open are you open yeah yeah is your partner flexible so if you feel like you're a good team you got uh the character qualities of they show up for you they're reliable you feel like you can trust them they have emotional generosity flexibility similar lifestyle and the quality on a daily basis is good then that's a pretty good mess what i'm hearing you say again there's those intangible qualities but if all of that if all of that is there and that's going on yeah yeah like look at the goodwill bank how's the goodwill bank going yes um you know if you did the assignment that we gave this person elena on our podcast um you know to like really keep that log of the day-to-day um what does it look like and you have to think you know people think when they first meet someone they're thinking so much in the present instead of you know like they're like yeah well you know this person doesn't really call when they say they will or yeah this or that but it's okay because they're all these other great things and you know they're like obsessed with that person and i always say to people like is this the marriage you want is this what you want 15 years from now is this do you want to worry about like where why this person isn't calling me or are they going to be there or they forgot to do this or they said they were going to pick up the toilet paper but they didn't every time they always have an excuse they lie about the little things like you know there are those people who are like they won't just tell you yeah you know what i forgot to do that this is i i had this they had this experience with this couple where he was always coming up with excuses because he didn't want to take responsibility for the things and they were just little lies and she's like why would you lie about these tiny little things instead i want to be responsible instead of just right and so and so there was this one time where he was supposed to go to the market and she was always they had kids and she wanted him to get organic strawberries because she was worried about the pesticides and the little kids and he bought the regular ones and and he used to lie about it and be like oh they were out of organic and this time he said you know what i just it totally slipped my mind it totally slipped my mind i should have bought the organic ones and i didn't do it and she started crying she said you told me the truth all i wanted was the truth i just wanted you to own it and acknowledge it and take responsibility he's like i'll go back and i'll go exchange them right now she's like no no no it's fine like you told me the truth you forgot please don't forget next time he never forgot again wow but do you see how these little things in relationships can change a dynamic yes in a big way he never forgot again and she trusted him yeah what would you say are the biggest red flags then women should look for when entering a relationship well i think it's not a gender thing you know i think i think people i think you you know you look for just how how do i feel around this person mm-hmm um you know do i do i feel on edge is there something you know i think even when people are ignoring the problems there's a place of knowing that we all have inside of us that gets drowned out by all the noise out there right the bigger voice is like i really want this to work out or look at look at how great you know on paper this person is or or i feel really good about myself because this person's a catch you know or whatever it is or i'm this age and i really feel like yeah you know what happens if i don't if i give this up what if i don't find somebody those are those really loud voices there might be this really quiet voice that says i don't think this person is the right person for me or i don't really trust this person or this person isn't really as stable as i would like or this person drinks too much or this person doesn't really emotionally regulate or this person says mean things to me and i don't like that and yeah they were drunk but i don't like it right and be aware of that yes if they continue doing this which they probably will or may are you okay with that right well if you talk to them about it and what is that look again the repair and then do they change their behavior as a result of that right if they don't change the behavior then right right you can justify it any way you want but you're not listening to that voice inside of you so i think we all have this place of knowing it's not your friends opinions like you know it's always like i think your friends have all these opinions and then we try to like crowd source all these guys amazing you're so lucky to have this guy in your life he's a catch like what a great guy you don't have to live that life right and i think the same thing by the way going back to affairs like people say like leave the guy like he's trash leave him and it's like you don't have to live this person's life and this person might have really good reasons why the affair didn't break their marriage um you know so that when some when someone had an affair don't go telling 12 of your friends like right away like you need to process this maybe go to a therapist process this but don't go telling like 12 people and don't broadcast and don't go on social media about this because you might actually find that you love this person and want to stay with this person and that this person really is the right person for you and they will never do this again and they will not you know like they understand what happens but telling the world and your family your friends they're never going to support that person in your life every time you go around for the next years you're gonna make it uncomfortable right and that's gonna be rupturing the relationship in the future right and what feels really good in the moment is to blame your partner now yes they're responsible for having the affair but they're not necessarily responsible for all the other factors that are going into this yes interesting what are the um what are some unrealistic expectations that people should stop having how long do you have less entering a relationship because i feel like yeah people not just women on men and men or women but people have an expectation that their partner should be kind of like everything you know and should be perfect and yeah all these things what what are some things that they could have a standard you know i want my relationship to have this standard but this expectation is unrealistic if you ask people if they have unrealistic expectations about certain things nobody thinks they do so people will say no no no i know that they don't have to be like you know the hottest person or the most this person or they make the most money or they're the most charming or funny or entertaining or whatever it is i know that but that's not what their behavior says you'll find um so people with unrealistic expectations are often the people who don't realize that they have them people who who actually have realistic expectations sometimes think they don't have realistic expectations it's interesting there's like sort of a lack of self awareness there that's funny um the the unrealistic expectations have to do with um you know maybe it's like you know it could be around appearance it could be around what the other person is going to do for them when somebody isn't satisfied in their own life they somehow think it's the other person's responsibility to make them happy to fill the hole to fill the gap um you know when they're having a hard time in their life suddenly they're bored in the relationship right it's like i don't feel good about myself and oh look i wonder if maybe i'm with the wrong partner i wonder if she's the problem i wonder if he's the problem um you know i'm feeling stuck in my life oh maybe i need a new relationship as opposed to maybe there are other things that are making you feel stuck in your life and and this idea that i think that some of us have that we would never articulate but that your partner's there to save you you know save me from my damaged childhood save me from the other hurts in my life save me from these wounds and when there's misattunement in the relationship and there always will be so again i'm very you know suspicious of couples who say oh no we agree on everything there will be misattunement because somebody's tired one day somebody had a bad day or you're just different people and you see the world differently um so when there's misattunement suddenly that person becomes oh you don't understand me as opposed to wait you didn't understand that let me explain it again let me help you understand me because you you you thought this but actually what i'm trying to say is this right right but then people don't do that so they think oh they just they just sit with it and they go my partner never understands me every time i say something my partner thinks this but i've never tried to help them to understand me they're supposed to magically intuitively be telepathic read my mind read my mind and understand me in exactly the way that i need to be heard and seen and felt now in therapy we have this expression feeling felt that that's what you want you want to feel felt and it's such a great feeling when it happens but even therapists will get it wrong you know sometimes i will misunderstand someone but the person doesn't like yell at me about it or they don't think like i need a new therapist because we'll repair it right there in the moment but they don't do it with their partner they'll go home and their partner will make the same mistake i did and they will say oh i don't know if i should be with this partner he doesn't understand me and the partner's like bewildered like i didn't even know that i didn't understand because you never told me i didn't understand yes so i just assumed that i was that i understood you when when do you know that your partner understands you even if they completely disagree with you when should someone know like okay they disagree with everything i just said but i feel felt and they understand me at least yeah because we say that expression feeling felt because you feel it so it's not it's not up here it's in here god probably just oh you're good it's an emotional feeling i feel okay my partner disagrees with everything i just said but they understand where i could be coming from if they stepped in my shoes i think it has to do with respect right you feel respected in that moment you feel like like and you feel loved and cared for like you and i see this very differently but i love you i care for you um i don't agree with you but i respect you as a as a human like i respect you as a person yes um i'm not gonna like cast aspersions on your character right because of this right right right like i can i can accept and acknowledge the separateness of us as two different human beings and when people get really enmeshed they have a real problem with that like someone will say my friend did this can you believe that my friend did this and her partner will say like yeah well but i can kind of see because you also did this and she's like how can you take her side i'm not taking her side i'm just giving you a perspective i see it a little bit differently i can see why you felt though i can see why you feel hurt i can see both and and if you can't accept the both and about yourself and your partner then you're going to end up feeling very alone it's almost like you need to be flexible in their communication as well and them not siding with you on everything but saying okay i understand where you come from and i see this perspective i just see it differently yeah so having the flexibility to be okay with that also i can hold both yeah you can hold both and i can hold both and we care deeply about each other and we have each other's backs which doesn't necessarily mean we agree we have the same perspective on every single thing yeah the beginning of this year i had i started seeing a therapist in a previous relationship and the therapist had me just working on my own healing stuff that's like healing stuff that i was going through she had me put a photo of myself around five or six years old on my phone so i see it so i still have this up where i just constantly remind myself like you're safe you're okay i got your back we're we you know we're healing together things like that it's been a beautiful journey for me to like work on inner child healing and just kind of the memories of the past and um i'm i'm curious about just like the consistency of healing in a relationship and because i heard you say that like it's hard to fully heal alone we almost need a mirror to be able to practice and integrate this that's what i think i could just say right you need to have someone where you can practice it coming up if you're in a vacuum you're not going to be triggered right right it's like can you show up differently in the future and not repeat the past what is the thing people usually need to heal is it something from childhood is it something from previous relationship is it their whole life it can be anything from you know there's different we use the word trauma a lot and people say oh you know trauma is trauma is something big like someone died in a car crash or you were in the war or you know um systemic racism right all traumas that people accept as trauma think about though the daily traumas the little teens the little the little t's but they're big t's because the trauma might have happened to you once like you got in this bad accident and you're traumatized by that or you know whatever it might be the the dailiness of a parent saying you're stupid what's wrong with you you're so stupid right we had someone on our podcast like that um and um and he you know we we really like got him through that in that hour of of going through a way to think about it differently and he he needed to understand like this was real trauma right and he knew that right he knew that but he kind of felt almost like like nah it's not really that silly or something right right right but you know just like you're worthless you're stupid what's wrong with you all those things and think about the number of times that that happened if you add all those up i mean that's trauma so when you talk about when you talk about the inner child and i love what your therapist had you do um it's really important that we are able now we weren't then able to be that adult for our inner child but now we are so don't expect your partner to be that that you have to be that for yourself and then your partner is there because you're not in that toxic environment anymore right so it makes it safe for you it makes it safe for you as the adult it makes it safe for you as the child and at any given moment by the way a different age of us will be exposed so like you know you go home for thanksgiving you're 12. um you know with your siblings or whatever it is right you know something happens with your partner that just feels very similar to you of some feeling you had when you were five you're five you're going to act like you're five um you know there are times when you act your age so you don't know like so i always say to people like when couples are getting added in couples therapy i'm like how old are you right now i will say that to them and they'll step back for a second and go oh i know exactly how old i am i'm eight i'm 16. so you mean how old are you emotionally reacting yes yes yes right now right now physically yes that's what i meant that so they're they're doing something something's happening for them and they're not able to kind of i can see them regressing and their partners getting really frustrated and you're watching this happen and i just say to them how old are you right now and if they can just step back and they they have so much compassion for that kid that they are at 8 or 12 or 16 or whatever they are and so does their partner by the way when their partner says oh you look like a grown man but with that eight-year-old and they don't mean it in a pejorative way they don't mean it they're not judging their partner they become really compassionate like oh that eight-year-old and they move toward their partner like i can see that so the partner isn't healing the eight-year-old but the partner is is creating this environment that lets the eight-year-old do the that lets the adult do the work for the eight-year-old there what should the adult be saying or doing for the younger version of themselves that is having an emotional human experience that is not their age in this moment what's the conversation or the it's exactly what they wished at age eight that that someone would have said to them we all know what that is we all know what we wanted to hear because as a kid you fantasize about it you look at other people's parents and you say oh that interaction you know like you can see what it what you would like it to look like my parents were like that you know yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so saying that out loud internally to your 8 12 16 year old self right right and i'm really kind wow have you ever noticed how unkind we can be to ourselves uh-huh you ever noticed my entire childhood it's pretty much unkind right to myself right and and but we carry that into our adulthoods and so um i i had this this patient who was like so self-critical and she did not realize it and you have to realize i said to her this that the person we talk to most in the course of our lives is ourselves yes and what we say to ourselves isn't always kind or true or useful i say that all the time to people i will say that until i'm blue in the face because people don't get it until they try this exercise which is what i had her do i said i want you to write down everything you say to yourself over the course of a few days and then when you come back next week we're going to talk about it and so she did the assignment she was very skeptical she's like i'm not that i'm not bad i'm not like not that like every thought that comes to you yeah yeah like everything like when you hear it's like this radio station is playing in the background that you think you're not hearing because it's just like playing in the background or like a tv show that you have on in the background right you're like i'm not really paying attention to it i'm doing other things but no you hear it and so she came back and she starts to read this and she said i can't even read this i am such a bully to myself wow and they were little things she would do in the course of a day like she was typing an email and she made a typo and the voice in her head said you're so stupid like it was spontaneous and she would not have paid attention to that before like she didn't know she was saying that or she passed her reflection in a mirror and she said god you look terrible now if your friend or someone you cared about made that typo or looked however she looked that day you would not truly think that person is stupid or that they look terrible you think like oh you know like they made a typo it's like there's no emotional generosity toward oneself yes so what should we be doing so and so it's starting to notice how do you talk to yourself you know like whose voice is that it's not yours we are not born with that voice so that voice came from people who raised you it came from the culture it came from um you know the people around you it came from whatever we're being told it's external is the point it's external to you it is not of you so we need to listen to that voice inside of us that is of us and we will be so much kinder not only to ourselves but to other people because as we always know like the biggest bullies are are you know twice as mean to themselves right yeah so when you think about like the environment i talked about the biosphere before like the the ecosystem in your relationship that's the ecosystem in your home we saw during covid right where everybody was like in the same contained space and we were all worried about the contagion of the virus and i said to people i want you to look at the contagion of mood look at the contagion of anxiety if someone is anxious or someone's in a crabby mood or someone is being unkind everybody's going to be crabby or anxious or or unkind yes right because it's so contagious so when a partner is coming from that space of angry upset or negative mood what should be done in order to try to shift that energy without them along but without allowing it to be going on for so long that it's just like sucking up all the air in in the energy of the atmosphere what what should happen next right i mean it depends what they're going through if they're if they're going through something that's kind of like a like they're grieving something or there's a loss the worst thing you can do is rush their wellness we call that actually rushed wellness where you are trying to kind of oh well it's been a year shouldn't you be over this it's like but the person's still dead what does that even mean you know so so how are they grieving what does their grieving process look like what kind of support are they getting are they able to talk about it do they have a therapist do they have a grief group um you know what are they doing in their lives to go through this process um how can you support them in it um so so there's that but i think if you know if people are just being crabby or they're just being unkind because they're worried about a promotion at work or or um you know someone their their their brother said something mean to them or you know whatever happened um and they take it out on you that's when you've got to say wait a minute what's going on here right let's talk about what you're upset about right before it gets to that point um you know and if someone's really anxious all the time it's like what are you doing to let's talk about the anxiety in the household because it's really contagious like i can support you in certain ways but you might need to get a different kind of support maybe it's medication maybe it's a therapist maybe it's you know why don't you explore some options sure if someone is bringing in this contagious energy from a previous relationship you know they're they're they're recalling events from the previous relationship they're talking about the previous relationship they're in fear on things that happen they don't want it to re occur in this current relationship how important is it to let the past be in the past and not bring it up or how do we not ruin the current relationship by talking about the past relationships what is that balance it's like well here's has happened in my previous relationships but not talking about it all the time right so that's called punishing the need punishing your partner for the crimes of some for someone else's crimes yeah you don't want to punish your partner for someone else's crime so your other partner previous partner treated you a certain way and then you don't trust your partner you know you're you're like why are you looking through my phone oh well because in my last relationship this happened and so i want to make sure it's not going to happen to me again but i didn't do that to you right and i don't like people looking through my phone if there's a difference between secrecy and privacy we all need privacy and relationships yes we all need privacy so secrecy is something like you know carl jung called secrets um uh it was like like emotional poison or something like that it was you know it's it's it's a poison um when you keep secrets that's different from privacy privacy is we're allowed to think things and feel things we don't need to share every thought or feeling that comes across our frontal lobes right we don't you know or anywhere in our brain or in our heart we don't need to share everything right so it's not like you have an x-ray of the other person um so what i was in this relationship that i'm talking about she was she was like what but but you know that i have these trust issues and he said but i'm not breaking your trust i didn't but i'm not i'm not doing anything to break your trust and you know and and by the way let's redefine trust so a really good redefinition of trust is um that you are okay with what you don't know that you feel safe with what you don't know right then you really trust someone if you can feel safe with what you don't know that's trust what she was confusing was she was saying i will trust you if i know everything no no no trust is going to be if you don't know everything and you feel safe yes how does someone get to that place where they have no reason to mistrust someone you know they're everything they say they're doing they're backing up you know maybe you checked their phone because you thought something and then you didn't see it and everything was fine like how do you get to a place of just accepting their word and trusting them right so it's within reason so if someone says you know what i have a sensitivity around if i text you and i don't hear back for you know five hours um and you're in town and you're at work and things are normal or whatever right your phone is near you yeah yeah and i know you keep your phone by you all the time that's going to make that's going to trigger me and so then you want to make sure that you respond to the person in a timely manner but that doesn't mean like you have 30 seconds so it has to be reasonable right you have 30 seconds or else i'm gonna like you know i'm off to the races um you know those kinds of things what does it mean what is what do you mutually agree on like how often do we need to be in contact what does it mean to be in contact um and and what feels good to both of us because it's not going to work if it doesn't feel good for both of you both it's only feels good for one and the other person feels like uh i'm constantly having to do something i don't want to do right that's not good right and then what the person does is they become untrustworthy because they don't want to report in and so then they start hiding things just because they weren't given enough space it's kind of like i use this analogy with parenting but i think it works in relationships too which is the aquarium so it's like you don't want to be so confined that you feel like you're in a fishbowl but you don't want the boundaries to be so loose that you're like in the ocean you want to be in an aquarium with your partner which is that like we're in a safe contained space but we both have enough room to swim around i've got some darkness over here i can just chill and i can go there yeah exactly i'm still in the bubble but you know let me just be alone for a minute yeah yeah so the difference between secrecy and privacy in a relationship um what's what do we need and should everyone have access to someone's passwords and phones and at all the time or necessary i mean you know i think that people have to agree again but i i think this idea that um you know like you can look at my phone whenever you want will feel very intrusive well but it it feels very interesting i'm saying i don't think that that's i don't think that person has the definition of trust that i'm talking about which again is that i feel safe with what i don't know right um meaning i know that you're not doing anything to betray me so i don't need to look um if someone gives you reason to look that's a completely different thing you know if someone's if someone gives you any kind of reason um that's that's that's like a completely different kind of conversation that you have sure but if this person has been trustworthy to your knowledge um you know this idea that like we need to know everything about each other by the way you want to kill sex in a relationship know every single thing about each other you will kill the erotic energy right in the relationship right you need you need some separateness you need some differentiation between you are you and i am i and we are different people and if you know every single thing about that person um there's no gap to bridge what what happens with the erotic energy is like we want to bridge this gap we want connection right we've been a part we want to connect if you've been fused it's kind of like oh wait actually i want space right you need space you need space yeah it's the mystery that brought you together in the first place that made you attracted to each other you know it's like if you know everything all the time it's hard to keep that going you need that space how much space you feel like you need in a relationship to make it like still feel that sexual attraction and chemistry it's everybody's different um you know but i think i think you know it i think when one person feels like wait a minute this feels intrusive that's their their body is telling them something you feel all these things in your body so a lot of people say how will i know like as if it's an intellectual thing and i always say your body will tell you you know when you recoil from that person you know when you feel like oh i hear their voice and they've just walked in the door and i'm not ready for this you know it's not even like like something that goes it's like you feel it in your body did you just tense up did you feel it in your stomach like what just happened did your breathing change right what should you do in that space where you're not like i want to leave this relationship but i just need space and and create a conversation where it's safe to say that i think it's all about audience and presentation so so choose your audience well do you have a partner who can hear what you're saying and not not hear it as a rejection take it personally because you know a lot of what people call complaints are actually compliments and what i mean is i talk about this and maybe you should talk to someone is that when someone is complaining about something they're basically saying i want to get i want to have a better relationship they're not saying to you i want to break up with you they would just say i want to break up with you so when they're saying like hey i want to come to you with this like i need more space i'm saying that because i want to be in this relationship i value this relationship i love you i care about you and what's not working for me is that sometimes i need some space after work or i need some time to myself on the weekends i don't want to do every activity together or i need to go out with my friends or whatever it is and and that's what's going to help me in this relationship because i want to be with you i can't i won't be able to be with you if i don't have some kind of if we don't work out something around the space some arrangement around it so so it's a compliment like i love you enough i care about this relation enough to brit this relationship enough to bring this up with you if i didn't care i wouldn't bring it up i just leave and how toxic is it in your opinion to think that the partner is supposed to make you happy the the thing is even if you don't call it toxic it's just dangerous okay why because because they can't they can't make you fundamentally happy they can bring you joy it's it's you know it's a great joy to be with someone who's company you really enjoy of course um but they can't heal those wounds for you they can't take away the hurts they can't um repair everything that happened for you in your life they can't do that you're going to have to do that for yourself again they can provide that sort of containing warm holding environment in which you feel safe enough to do that but they can't do it for you right and when you depend on someone else you're talking about expectations earlier when you depend on someone else to do that for you they will inevitably fail because hashtag human right because they are human yeah um they can't they can't do that so don't have an expectation that you meet this guy or this girl or whatever and they're going to make me happy they should be able to add to my joy be additive yes they're going to they're going to your quality of life will be greatly enhanced if you have a good relationship right okay but you got to focus on your own happiness but but in terms of you know those things where they're going to be misattuned to you sometimes they're going to upset you sometimes they're going to do things that you think how could the person i love me make that choice right um you know they're not going to be some like you know magical fairy person yes and what about um the online world how have you seen this as a therapist the online world uh supported or hurt relationships you know is online dating in it overall have you seen it be a positive thing and also it's just social media hurtful or helpful when in a relationship with someone and i would say to both social media and online dating both and yes um i think that online dating makes it um possible for people to meet who ordinarily would not meet um but that's really all it does so it's not like you know it's like we used to meet people in a much more organic way but we don't do that anymore so now you can meet people and it makes it a lot easier the downside of that is that there's this illusion with online dating and apps that you know you go out on a date i hear this all the time from people they went out on a date they had a good time no butterflies but it was they had a really good time like they spent three hours there like they you know they had a pretty good time um but yeah no you know i don't know i just didn't feel like the chemistry or i don't know or whatever it was and so you know but there's this other guy you know whatever so then they like keep going through the apps as opposed to why wouldn't you go on a second date with that person that you just had a pretty good three hours with like spend another two or three hours with that person you spend one hour and you do it do coffee so you can get out you know easily if you want to um but you had a pretty good time and i think people think that like it's gotta all be there right away and actually they did these studies where they followed couples over 20 years this longitudinal study and what they did was they didn't do reporting where you look back and you say what was your first date like they actually did reporting at the time so they got all of these reports you know they followed them every five years and they would interview them and the people who were happy 20 years later when they recalled their first date they would say oh yeah i was so into him i was so into her it was amazing right in those reports often they would find what they reported at the time was really nice person you know like yeah no i had a good time like like there wasn't like this magnetic connection of the butterfly sometimes there was but in more cases than not there wasn't really and then when you looked at people who were like divorced or really unhappy but still married and you asked them about their chemistry i didn't i didn't really like him that much they've revised the story but when you go back to what they actually said at the time they were like you know lots of chemistry so in other words our opinions about people change the more we get to know them and so if you go out with somebody once twice three times right and you had a pretty good time that first time go out with them again like why wouldn't you go out with them twice or three times um and see what happens people won't do that and they keep like cycling and juggling all these different people like maybe the next person will be you know like i'll feel more attraction to but maybe that person you don't have as much kind of emotional chemistry with right um you know so then that person's ruled out um you know you don't have enough in common or whatever it is sure um so like at what point are it's like musical chairs like at what point are you gonna sit down because the chairs are gonna get filled well i think you hear people say you know don't settle but it's like how do you know when you've not settled right and you found a great match but it's well so so the thing is i you never want to feel like you're with a person where you settled and you don't want to feel settled for but i think again going back to defining things what does settling mean so so there was this there was a study that was in one of my earlier books where men and women were asked you know what would it what would it take to get a second date like what what qualities would a person need to have so men named three things that a person would have to have for them to want to go on a second date with that person and they said she has to be attractive enough and they did not mean like she has to look like a supermodel they meant like i think she's cute that's all i think she's cute like they know you know they know that they're not like a supermodel um themselves um she has to be easy to talk to and she has to be kind like she can't be like oh you know mean to the waiter or you know like kind of entitled or whatever you know just like just like seem like a really nice person sure okay that person gets a second date women named 100 things so from 3 to 100 100 things that would not get a guy a second day and they were you know these like really really picky things if he was this who is that he was this or that or the other thing like you know oh he wore khakis and and you know like just really ridiculous i didn't like like you know or his hairstyle he's a hairstyle or he did this like really like by the way people are nervous on first dates they yeah they're sweaty either people can get nervous they might be like maybe they were a little bit overly animated because they were trying to impress you maybe they you know they were just like trying to entertain you and it was a little too much but like overall you had a good time and overall you there were these there was enough there that maybe you'd go on a second date and if they're that way on the second date then no don't go on the third date right but i think we have to we have to kind of remember that like it's a process and so many people want immediate gratification they want like that story of like we met it was immediate explosive and chemistry and right and so when someone feels this like instant attraction and explosive chemistry and like finishing of each other's sentences or whatever this is these butterflies the whole time i couldn't stop thinking about them all week is what i'm hearing you say is that sometimes or most of the time like 20 years later those don't work out no they can work out but but sometimes and again it depends where you are in your own healing yes um sometimes what your unconscious is doing is saying oh you look familiar familiar come closer right you look familiar like it's like this and his unconscious and her unconscious like and them you know whoever you're dating right this works in this is not gendered at all this works no matter who your partner is and who you are right that if something feels familiar to you in this very you know unconscious way and you haven't worked that stuff out the unfinished business you're going to be like yeah this feels really familiar but it feels so good right come closer it feels so familiar to me if something feels unfamiliar but it feels good is that a sign that that's you and your girlfriend yeah it's like oh maybe you're like you're choosing something different and you're experiencing something different is that something that people should keep exploring or what do you think yeah yeah absolutely if it feels better right it feels good again keep that journal look at the look at the bank account that you guys are creating together your joint bank account are there five deposits for one withdrawal right right um you're experiencing that right now it's unfamiliar but it feels healthy feels good yeah yeah man what else do you see right now that people are really struggling with when you're doing therapy with them or just the emails the calls coming in for the podcast you guys are doing what's kind of a common theme of right now i would say connection i think people are lacking the connection people are lacking connection or they they want to learn how to better connect so they have someone that that they want to connect with but they're bundling it up in all kinds of ways that's sort of what happens on our podcast every week they're bundling it up they're they're bundling it yeah what does that mean um you know it's like they they they want to have this healthy relationship and they're afraid to have the conversations they don't know how to have the conversations um they're doing things they know they shouldn't be doing um they don't see their own role in it you know all of those things but again i think you know i think that that it's so relatable because we all act this way we all have our blind spots we all think that we're extremely self-aware and you can't see what you don't know you don't it's like you don't know what you don't know right right what's someone what's something we should do on a weekly basis to check in with our partner to make sure we're cultivating that connection is it a question hey every sunday we're going to have this 10 minute conversation what should we talk about or i i notice as a therapist that people talk more about what they don't want than what they do want with their partners so they'll say like i don't like it when you do this or i wish you wouldn't do this as opposed to i really like when you do that i felt great when this happened i want more of that or i like that just appreciating that right um if you're always telling people what you don't like about them it's hard for them to see what you do like about them so i think that people need to spend more time telling the other person what they do want you know when we talk about complaints as compliments you can say to somebody say you feel like your partner isn't being affectionate enough with you right you could say like you never kiss me when you come in the door or you don't hug me enough or you can say i really love it when you come in the door you kiss me as opposed to being like uh i supposed to make them defensive by saying you're not doing this enough and they're like what do you mean i was just doing this earlier and i did this before and you don't you're not appreciating it but when you show like you said appreciation i really appreciate it when you do this right it's going to make you want to hopefully do it more right and also not arguing with people's feelings like like i can see the other side of that where someone says to someone you know i really like it when you hug me when you come in and and then you know maybe it's a guy who says to her like but i do i hug you all the time right and she's just like okay now we're gonna fight over the content which is like how many times do you actually hug me and when was the last time you hugged me which is different which is just like oh oh you know to register for yourself oh she feels like i don't hug her enough so it doesn't matter whether i do or i don't the point is she feels like i don't so i'm going to make a conscious effort to make sure that maybe when we're watching tv together i'm going to put my arm around her right right instead of arguing about but i just hugged you yesterday you know when i came home and i hugged you the day before and i'm sure that i hug you every day don't argue about it just be like oh noted all right let me give you a hug later yeah yeah what would you say you know obviously you're you work with a lot of couples that are experiencing some type of problems right most of them don't come into you and say everything's amazing we're just here to like just make sure it's still amazing you know which i think it's actually i think it'd be healthy for relationships to you know get into therapy sooner when things are actually good for like just a checkup every now and then and say hey how can we keep cultivating this but i'm curious from the relationships you've seen that have been thriving like it's pretty healthy happy thriving like it seems really good what would you say those key things that they all have in common um kindness kindness yeah you can't take back the unkindnesses um they're there they live there you know people will remember by the way um you know i remember three years ago when you did this thing yeah i remember i remember when you said that thing i remember how it felt in my body um so kindness is is especially important and i would also say there are all these cultural norms that we have to get rid of like i had this couple where um you know it was a heterosexual couple and she said to her to her husband i just i feel i want to get closer to you i feel like you know i want to know what's going on with you i wish you would share more with me about your inner life i feel like there's this distance between us and he was like this guy's guy right and finally finally he um he opens up to her and he gets a little tear and i see her body i'm watching her and she's sort of she's there with him right and then he starts crying he starts talking about something really difficult he he has been holding in for a really long time and she on the one hand feels so much compassion for him and on the other hand she's terrified because you know she kind of looks at me like what do i do now um and so is this interesting thing in our culture about safety with men and vulnerability because on the one hand she's saying to him i don't feel safe when you don't share with me i feel distance from you i feel separated from you i feel disconnected from you i don't feel safe in our relationship when you're over there and i'm over here and we are not meeting but on the other hand if you start crying in front of me like that and you really are vulnerable and you let down your guard like that i also don't feel safe not because of anything you did wrong but because i've been told by society that you are weak when you do that right like i feel like you are that now not my rock and you are now str you are not strong for me and i didn't even realize i had those perceptions i didn't realize that that's how i grew up but that's what society has been telling me that when a man cries like that in front of me that he's weak and now i don't feel safe and that somehow as a woman i'm weak if i don't have a man to be strong for me so we had to talk about all of these all of these ideas that have been you know we've been brainwashed yes and so then we have to like do the un-brainwashing and then they could actually come closer to each other and he didn't have to be the rock all the time and she didn't have to feel like you have to save me all the time i'm so happy you said this lori because i wrote a book about this a few years back called the mask of masculinity and i went on tour i don't know if i told you this before but i went on tour to talk about this and the rooms were typically 50 50 men and women who were in the rooms and i would say this exact thing that like women would say well i wish my my partner my husband were were more sensitive or emotional or vulnerable and open up and i'd say well you've got to learn to be there and be able to handle it because i've talked to so many men who say you know what my wife keeps telling me they want to do this and i finally do it and then they're like well i need you to be strong now i don't feel safe exactly what you said i was like i'm so glad you said this from a therapist point of view and not just you know a guy saying this but i'm so glad you're saying this and that you've witnessed this with your your couples that have come in and you've actually seen this because i feel like it's it's so hard for men to want to express their vulnerabilities and if they don't and i had a previous girlfriend that i would cry in front of that i would show you know my vulnerabilities and was freely doing it i never held back because i was comfortable doing it myself in certain moments you know when i'd see something on tv or a movie or a sensitive thing would show emotion and it's like she couldn't handle it it's like she could not handle it and she was like crying is weakness and she didn't cry in front of me and i was just like man you're never gonna have respect for me if you think i'm weak for showing vulnerabilities and then why would i want to be vulnerable around you if you're going to disrespect me i'm going to want to gain your respect and i'm going to want to get harder and have a wall which luckily i didn't do but it's like in general a lot of men do that well what you're doing is you're being really courageous right so i think it takes an incredible act of bravery to say to somebody this is who i am yeah and so and she's saying oh that makes you weak no it makes you strong that's what i say it's like it's like it's like you you are so okay with yourself yeah i don't care if you make fun of me i'm still gonna do it this is me and i'm gonna show up and i'm gonna share with you and i'm gonna be in this relationship um it's so interesting that you say that so i'm raising a boy and i notice this um because during um you know everyone was saying talk to your teenagers talk to your kids about what they're experiencing a lot of them are anxious and depressed and all these things are happening and my son one day said to me he said you know that's really easy for people to say but boys don't talk about this stuff and i said and i said yeah what what do you think makes it so hard and we had a little chat about it and we actually put it on instagram because i thought it was really important and all these people responded to it so he started then he wrote an article i saw you right he wrote he wrote an article for time magazine but he um he started this thing called talk with zach on instagram he saw us yeah and he just wants to model that like for boys and men that like you can talk about what you're feeling you can be vulnerable in fact not only can you but you should because you want to be a whole human being and i think that it's been really interesting because it's opened up the eyes of women and girls yes that's beautiful you know it's like it's like i have so many men who come to me for therapy and they say i can talk to my guy friends people think that your guy friends will make fun of you if you open up to them they won't actually the people who are who i'm most afraid to talk to they'll say your girlfriend is my girlfriend my wife right like my sister like these are the people who like but your girlfriend or your wife especially because they depend on you in this way absolutely they tend to need to be the rock because they may not be the emotionally stable person majority of the time maybe they are or not the problem is though like so john in my book he's one of these people who would like hold it all in right and then there's this this tragic thing that happens in his marriage and he and his wife are both grieving and he says i had to be the rock like i couldn't cry and he's the one who has insomnia he's having nightmares but he can't talk about any of it she's the one who always cries all the time and i said maybe she's crying for both of you and it just stopped him in his tracks maybe she's crying for both of you and when he was able to start talking about what had happened and this loss that they'd had in their marriage and their family their marriage completely changed it transformed right because he didn't have to be he thought she didn't tell him you have to be the strong one for me it was something that he just took in from the culture and when he was able to share in the grief and the loss and they were able to kind of do this together it was a game changer what i feel like society needs in general is more men to be courageous enough to be vulnerable in sensitive moments and more women to be strong enough to be there when their male partner is being vulnerable and sensitive yes and not making them wrong or laughing at them or feeling unsafe in those moments i truly believe that when when men can learn to have a safe environment to communicate effectively and vulnerably inappropriate times there are gonna be a lot happier people in general there's gonna be a lot less stress in the world it's gonna be a lot less fighting arguing power struggles political struggles you know wars i just feel like when men can learn the process of being able to express themselves and being accepted for it they won't need to put up these walls and try to like protect themselves all the time right and and what what happens is they don't deal with what they're experiencing so so you'll have so many women come into therapy and say you know oh i think i might be struggling with depression or anxiety or whatever a relational difficulty and then just never talk about it and you can see what happens it affects their physical health right it affects their health and and it comes out in other ways right the anger the stoicism yeah too much food too much alcohol um you know drugs um just a short temperedness in relationships pornography any kind of any kind of distraction from the pain it's really they're self-medicate they're really trying to medicate themselves they're saying you know like i am really into stress but i don't know where to go with it so how can i mean what needs to happen first men should start being more vulnerable and intimate in their relationships you know even if their partners are not willing to accept that or women should start saying hey i want this like your your couple came to therapy and said i wish she would do this but then when he started to open up she was like i don't know how to handle this here's what i say to couples about that now i say you're going to need a disclaimer um because there's nothing they can do at that point if you've given the disclaimer that doesn't you know that doesn't keep them aware so you can say to your girlfriend your wife you can say you know i i'm you you ask you want me to be closer with you you want me to open up to you um i really want to do that i think it would be really good for us i'm worried that if i do that you're you know they're all these stereotypes in our culture you're gonna you're gonna feel really uncomfortable that it's gonna make you uncomfortable and i'm asking you that if i do this that you are able to sit with your discomfort and be present with me now that's a lot of words right that's a lot of words not a lot of people will say it that way but but you can say something like it like i want to be able to do this but i need you to be able to be there and and not judge me because the last thing if you if you judge me if i feel like you think i'm weak or you think anything like that you can bet that we're not going to be having conversations like this yes i i think this should be uh highly encouraged uh video or audio to listen to so if you're one person listening to this you should have your partner listen to this with you and listen to this last part specifically and say hey listen let's try this if you feel this way so you're both on the same page so i i encourage you listening to this with your partner or watching this with your partner um yes you know how how men will often say like oh when she's crying i just want her to stop crying yes right and yet when a man is crying yeah it's not so how will how will a man help a woman to stop crying he'll usually like go and hug her and comfort her what does a woman do to get a man to stop crying she just freezes she really does she'll or she'll use words like it's okay it's gonna be okay no really it's not that bad right she generally won't go and hug him because it's she's so uncomfortable what should women do in that moment go and hug him hug him i'm here i'm here tell me more tell me more see more i'm here let's talk about it wow that's beautiful i really want to hear this imagine all the men listening imagine your partner doing that it'd probably feel like freedom peace like finally this feeling so for all the ladies listening if you have a male partner who's been resistant to being vulnerable listen to what laurie is saying about this because this could really heal your relationship in a big way and help it thrive in that process i think that's a big part of the the repair process from what i'm hearing you say is like you know obviously when a woman feels safe to be vulnerable uh they're gonna feel like they can trust their male partner more and when a man feels safe to be vulnerable he'll be willing to do that and trust you more with that emotional burden as well or that weight that he's feeling so you asked me earlier sort of like what is the secret to successive relationships um this this is it being able to to know that if you go to your partner with something that feels delicate that they won't they won't smash it that they won't drop it it was like what i said before i felt like he had he had like you know grabbed his heart and like extended it to her and said i feel lonely and she said but i didn't do that right like that you can you that if your partner is going to give you something think of it as like something really fragile and delicate like you know when you mail things that's just like fragile like be very careful with it like it's really delicate you have to be really gentle be really gentle when your partner is handing you something delicate be really really gentle or you can bet that there's going to be a lot of loneliness in that relationship because people are going to go into their own silos man this is so good so the keys of thriving relationship kindness being gentle when there's vulnerabilities is there anything else you would add there or if you can do those two things that's a pretty good relationship and take care of your own healing do the work don't expect someone else to do it for you do the work and bring that work to the relationship i love this i love this um you've got an amazing book maybe you should talk to someone i feel like this is a such a game changer for so many people so make sure you guys pick up a copy of this book you also have a workbook same title maybe you should talk to someone workbook the workbook it's called how changing your story can change your life and it takes people through the process of rewriting their story and getting a much more accurate accurate version of their story which is a game changer for your healing process to rewrite the story of the past right yes and even the the faulty narratives that we carry around in the present we carry around all these faulty narratives you know i'm unlovable i can't trust anyone nothing will ever work out for me how do you rewrite those narratives yeah and so this workbook workbook takes you through a step-by-step process of doing that it's based on maybe you should talk to someone in the book but it's also based on my ted talk which is about how changing your story can change your life um and um you know everybody said when maybe you should talk to someone came out they said i learned so much from the book but i want to be like i want i want a guide to do that and so i put together this guide for everybody who has been asking for it and i really wanted to give people the experience of what i do with people in the therapy room how i help them edit their stories yes yeah where can we get that the workbook um wherever you buy amazon independent bookstores wherever you get your books it's all there and where's the and everything uh the podcast everything's on your website too yeah the podcast is called dear therapist so you can listen on apple or spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts um it's a great podcast and guy is your co-host on there he's been on the show as well he's amazing so you guys have a great banter there so dear therapist the workbook you're also on instagram i see you over on instagram all your content as well we'll link up that everything in the show notes the ted talk this is amazing um i want people to you might need to go back to this conversation and take some notes and start really implementing some of these things so hopefully this has been a helpful resource for people i appreciate you sharing how else can we be a support to you what else can we do to take action on so let's get the workbook get it for you and your partner um get this book listen to the podcast what else can we do yeah i would say like the the best thing that people can do is to just um you know benefit from all of this is to actually use it yeah in their own lives i feel like you know emotional health is not just a thing that happens between you and yourself or you and a partner but on a societal level if we could all do these things we would live in a very different kind of world absolutely yeah i love this lori i'm so grateful for you for coming back on and sharing this wisdom and i acknowledge you for and just showing up and doing the work with people you're in the work on a consistent basis you're hearing these stories you're getting feedback by giving exercises you're you're just a wealth of information and knowledge i acknowledge you for showing up and making tools for us like the book and the workbook and the podcast because this stuff is messy for a lot of people it's really messy it is and that's why you know i feel like in the therapy room you work with one person or two people or whatever it is and i really wanted to make this accessible to everyone and that's why i'm writing these books and doing the podcast and ted talk and all of that and having these conversations with you um because i think that people you know nobody did this for people right like growing up like we don't that's not what we do we learn all these subjects in school but we don't learn about emotional health and so i really want to make it accessible for people and valuable for people i love it lori um i asked you this question before but i'm curious again your three truths so imagine it's your last day on earth oh my gosh and uh you've you've accomplished all of your dreams and written lots of books and created more and more content but for whatever reason no one has access to your content anymore it's got to go somewhere else um your books this podcast everything it's all gone for whatever reason hypothetical but you get to leave behind three lessons to the world um or whatever they call three truths and this is all we would have to kind of have access to your content what would you say would be those three truths for you oh that's really hard on the spot i would say the first one is you are enough yes um i think that people forget that that you can be messy and fallible and imperfect and all of those things but you are enough your essence is enough um i would say um if you uh the thing about if a fight breaks out in a bar in everybody going to maybe it's you um i would say um your blind spots are important to shine a light on it's really important to shine a light on your blind spots yes um and i would say um be kind to yourself because then you will be kind to others absolutely i always uh i've heard this in the past i can't remember who but it's kind of in the personal development talk it's like what's inside of you comes out so if you're you know if there's uh whatever you get cut off in the car in front of you if you're reactive and angry there's anger inside of you if you're like okay he's probably just having a bad day and smile or she's having a bad day then there's kindness inside of you so it's like whatever's inside of you comes out so be aware of what's coming out of you and how you're reacting to situations that could be a blind spot too so right and and what we were saying before about like that biosphere that um you know if you yell at that person then what are you putting into what fumes are you putting out into the world that other people are going to be breathing and you're breathing them too absolutely final question what's your definition of greatness um i think it's very different from our culture's definition of greatness um i think greatness is like a feeling of peace i think it's a feeling of peace but not not in a kind of a way just for you but i think like making peace for other people in the world yeah um that you're offering peace that you're creating a way for people to find peace that you act you you navigate through the world in a way that creates peace for other people 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 is completely off actually 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

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 829,101

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

Id: jMJ37orRk9Q

Length: 135min 56sec (8156 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 24 2021