THIS Is What it Actually Takes to Have a Happy Relationship | Tom Bilyeu on Women of Impact

and it's one of the key ways to be in a relationship and make that person feel better about themselves when they're around you is to understand that leadership is fluid and there gonna be times where I'm leading there's gonna be times when you're leading and that if you can follow into being a follower as rapidly as you take the leadership role it just feels rad I need to be new and I went from housewife to co-founder of a billion dollar company quest nutrition and now president of impact Theory our mission with this show is to empower you and all women to recognize that you really can become the hero of your own life welcome to women of impact I think it's safe to say almost universally that every single human on the planet wants to be in love that heart-fluttering stomach churning heads in the clouds I can't believe it kind of love I mean Disney has made billions of dollars selling the fairy tale of happily ever after we spend close to 20 billion dollars for Valentine's Day to show a love for each other I mean there's even a drive-through chapel in Vegas that has got in on the love action where there's a demand there's a supply and yet despite the fact that we all love to be in love we still find ourselves with an approximate 50% divorce rate and that's just data on people that chose to break up let's not forget the couples that agreed to stay together out of convenience or for the sake of the kids or the couples that are living in quiet desperation all the couples that are suffering from bed death now I've been married for close to 18 years and I'm here to declare it's frickin hard no matter what Hollywood may try and tell us arguments are not solved with a romantic slow motion kiss in the rain or by molding a clay plot while an orchestra plays overhead it takes a willingness to take a hard look at yourself to stand naked Liat you inadequacies admit when you were wrong and be willing to change be willing to communicate be willing to open yourself up to being vulnerable you must be willing to give to receive and to compromise so today I wanted to do a different kind of episode I believe beyond anything else knowledge is power and so I wanted to bring on a guest who can give us tips tactics and their own perspective on what it actually takes like no BS what it actually takes to have a happy relationship to give a perspective that my own estrogen eyes may not other ways see to enlighten us with a viewpoint that we may not otherwise understand the more we know and understand about relationship dynamics pitfalls hurdles and conflicts the better we can be at navigating those river rapids and in my opinion there is only one person on this whole planet that can do that so please help me welcome in today's in-flight entertainment the pilot to my plane the yin to my yang the mister to my missus and the half to my whole the love of my life my hubby mr. Tom very sweet welcome to the show your first man on the show will to do a very special episode for Valentine's Day and it's just I've had 18 years of marriage with you and the lessons that we've learned along the way have just been so empowering and like enlightening but I can only talk from my point of view so I was like you actually make the perfect guest so I want to welcome you and then also I want to start with one of the things that you have always said is like the base and foundation to relationships selection matters so that's where I want to start talk to me about selection matters what you mean by that so this is I feel so bad because for a long time it didn't dawn on me how important it was and I just thought that I was like King [ __ ] at relationships and then I really started to think about the way that you are in the relationship and how would I be able to apply the things that I'm learning from reading books and all of that stuff about how to make a relationship work if you weren't so adept at one just being good at communicating - you're so good at letting things go and realizing how much grace you were giving me in the relationship to make mistakes to try things that didn't necessarily work or to just be playing young and stupid I don't remember when it hit me but I remember how it felt when I was like wait a second if I didn't have that then all of the knowledge and tools and tactics wouldn't go anywhere if you didn't have a growth mindset as well then this would really be sort of dead in the water and really made me start to reflect on how much this is actually that I have tools and tactics and how much of this is that I just really chose wisely and really began to realize you need both for sure you need the tools you need the tactics you need communication the hard work that you were talking about in the intro all of that's real but you really need to pick somebody that has certain sort of objective Universal characteristics like either already a growth mindset or a willingness to pursue it I mean we got together so young and I think either I know neither of us had a growth mindset but we understood very early on that you either grow together or you grow apart so we put equal energy into improving and then there are things that are specific to you there are certain things you're gonna like not like the fact that we're not both you know just sort of alphas banging our heads together that we found a nice yin-yang balance like you were talking about what do you think that about the yin and the yang because this is a question that I get asked a lot and people are surprised that we're actually very different but sometimes I actually think that being too different can also be detrimental to the relationship and for me and you we talk very heavily on values so when we first got together talking about the values to our core because even though we're different in personalities I actually haven't found that that's been a problem well it creates all the issues in our marriage but you're absolutely correct about that narrowband of different but not to differ yeah why do you think that fine line is so I think that that you have personality what I'll call the combination of inbred traits just the way that you are your default orientation I don't think you've done anything over your life to have the the default personality type that you have nor do I feel like I've done anything for mine but the values were added on so your personality types I think are yin yang your values though I think need to be very similar deadly similar because if you really clash on something super important and we talk about this it's like when you when you're arguing arguing and arguing you may have a base assumption misalignment and it's like oh you think things are one way I think things are another way but once I understand your base assumption oh you think you know X Y Z then it's like okay well it's not a value now I understand where you're coming from that perspective I can adopt it easily but if it comes down to yo we now understand what the base assumptions are and I still think you're crazy because now we're talking about a value the way things ought to be and once you get to the way things ought to be and you have a collision there so I understand your position you understand mine but I think you're crazy and you think I'm crazy that's where it gets dangerous you can have some you will have some but oh if you have too many and you don't know how to navigate or compartmentalize or say hey cool like we'll put that on the back burner you can have a real problem cuz I remember when we first met one of the things that almost everybody universally told me that I knew was like I never this goes you don't normally go after somebody like that he's not your he's not your type he's very different and that was because I was brought up in North London around a Greek and Turkish community and so that was who was around that's who I dated but everybody so when I had said I had met this guy and you had met my friends for the first time a lot of people were like he's so different from you like how can you guys relate so when you even went to my dad and asked for his blessing to marry me and he said no a big part of his argument was you guys come from different worlds right you come from America I come from a very traditional Greek family in England so our religions are completely you weren't even christened I came from a Greek Orthodox background and so when I hear people talking about this type of thing from the surface it may seem you guys will never last like how are you ever going to agree on things but I always went back to but I know who you are like your core values as a person you treat people well you treated me well you showed love and respect to my family you always give me a respect you never try and shut me down so like to me that's what's important it's not about where you come from or whether you have the same religious background or if you at least for me I would say it didn't make a difference it was like are you a good person are you good human being are you gonna treat me well so I assess what my values were and then looked at yours and saw how they aligned well but from the outside I think people can just look at how you were brought up and that dictates who you are but actually don't agree with that it can play out badly there's no question like so one in a lot of things in our relationship one of us is devoid of opinion and the other feels very strongly so I wasn't religious at all and when we thought we were gonna have kids you were like look our kids are going to be christened in the church I had to get baptized to marry you in a Greek Church so if I had had very strong religious convictions in a different direction that would have been problematic but you did in a sense of like you saying I don't believe in God and I didn't leave but I wasn't giving anything up in order to get baptized so it was like all of the traditions and all of that stuff which are wrapped around it I didn't have any so it was like yes I wasn't converting emotionally I was doing it in order to give you what you wanted to be able to get married in the church and all of that but it was easy because I didn't feel like I was giving anything up like if I had had another if I was devout in another direction that might have been a sticking point for me because then I would have said okay well sure I'll do it to get married but like I don't want to raise our kids in that religion I want to really raise them in this religion so I think there are times where you can't BS yourself you dad wasn't like barking up the wrong tree he just didn't understand us well enough to know sort of where we were like you weren't actually dogged ly religious and so we sort of found an equilibrium there we both have a sense of awe we both know there's something bigger than ourselves and at this point neither of us sort of think of that in a traditional religious sense so that was easy to overcome because I didn't have any you know trappings of religion that I felt like I was turning my back on in order to get baptized that was easy to overcome we both wanted to be around our families so navigating things like that it was like of course you're gonna want to be around your family and you were like of course I'm gonna want to be around my family so we would fly back and forth every holiday even when we were poor and it was like painful and we had to take the world's cheapest flights and do crazy lay overs and we would still go see both families at at Christmastime so it was like there was no argument there there was no like you know why would we do that and you weren't saying well we just saw your family Thanksgiving like why can't we do Christmas at mind like we we saw things so similarly that it just became easy to sort of from a place of like you're saying mutual respect it was easy to be like yeah I get why that would be important to you so between sort of these you feel strongly on something and I'm I don't feel strongly I feel strongly on something you don't feel strongly or then we shared things where we could give that mutual respect and understanding it's worked out and the thing that scares me about it is how much of that we didn't really have the knowledge to like put a finger on it when we fell in love we didn't but we always said to each other we'd communicate and from the beginning I think you have to establish communication with your partner even when you have to say the hard things because the amount of things that we've had to communicate and they've been hard so that's actually one thing I really want to go deep on and the other thing I actually want to talk about just as you'd mentioned it is not trying to change each other so at the time I was I was religious it I was like pushing on people but I absolutely believed in God very you know traditional and christened I really want to get married in a Greek Church so when I came to you and I asked you and I said hey I really like this is important so language I said this is important I want to get married in a Greek Church we had the communication where you said okay because it's important to you that's fine but I need you to know this does not make me believe in God I'm not going to change my belief system you had articulated all of that right from the beginning and I didn't try and change you I didn't try and convince you to believe in God I didn't try and convince you to join my religion and to believe in it I was like okay if that's who you are I respect that now if I try to change I think that would have been a very difficult I don't know if we would have been able to lost because it would have been a fundamental difference in seeing the world and all beliefs it's really interesting because you're right that would have been a really dangerous one to try to change but I would say that I don't even know who I am without you and when I think about how young we were when we got together and how much we've shaped each other through reward and punishment simple as it's like I would be a very different person and I like that like I don't I don't have an interest in trying to extract who I would be if I didn't know you any more than I would try to extract myself from the other people who've contributed so meaningfully to my beliefs and to my values and you know being in a culture even that if that's a company like all that stuff really shapes you so I'm very grateful for the contributions that you made to I am so we we very much have shaped each other I would say with a high degree of intention but there anything is a difference between change or an influence I don't know I feel like you there's such a common stigma around saying you don't want to change somebody and trust me if you go into a relationship saying oh they're like this now but I'm gonna change them you're [ __ ] you are done that is going to end in absolute catastrophe but now I'm gonna hold two competing ideas in my head because the other side of that is yes that's very true but as I get into a relationship we go ooh when you do that it really like it doesn't sit well with me that's not something I can be involved in long term then you do set out to shape each other now the one agreement that we had in the beginning was I don't we don't have a better word for this maybe just influence but it doesn't sound quite truthful so the word we used was manipulate I'm gonna manipulate you and we talked about this I'm gonna manipulate you you're gonna manipulate me the only thing I promise you is I'll never do it without telling you exactly what I'm doing so it became very easy where it was like you know if we wanted a change like you know be healthier exercise more push yourself in business I was so lazy in the beginning and you were very direct about hey you promised me that you were ambitious you promised me that you were really going to take a swing at this but you're laying in bed four and five hours a day like you were very clearly encouraging me pushing me both on a reward front and on a punishment front so when I did something that was in alignment with what I had told you I was going to do with my life that was going to push and propel us forward you were just beyond encouraging and it was so warm and so lovely but then if I was being a lazy [ __ ] like you weren't afraid to be like yo what's going on you didn't make me feel badly about myself you were never talking down to me like I don't want people to get the wrong idea but it is reward and Punishment for sure so and it's been one of the most amazing guiding forces in our lives yeah and because of them with you for so long it's really hard to see how the outside world is interpreting you um I totally write we use the same language yes Ward and Punishment manipulate because we know what we mean well people are freaking the poorest so language matters and let's talk about that in our relationship well we've had to define the language that we use so that we understand each other in the way that is meant because the amount of times especially early on in our relationship you'd say one thing I'll to fly off the handle like I thought that wasn't what I meant like yeah but you use this word and for me this word means XY and Z and so we had to have that communication and understanding how to influence each other with the goal that we have in mind talk to me about the words that we use and how we develop them it's really interesting we could literally derail on this and do a whole podcast just about this because I think people are are way too caught up in you know what words are acceptable what you can and can't say and my whole thing is a don't ever be so sensitive that you can't go at that word hits me funny or whatever but I want to stop and really understand this and I've never understood people that are interested in throwing up a roadblock and saying I'm no longer gonna listen to you because you said XYZ and I'm not interested in shutting people down I'm not even interested in trying to prove something to them I want to understand their position and see if there's something usable in that for me so that I can put it into my own worldview and it was very easy for us to say first of all we're in our 20s we don't have a better word to manipulate but I don't mean anything sinister by it so let's just talk only about what this is it's like we have a shared vision we know we're trying to accomplish in our life the only word that I know is manipulate but hey it has these really weird connotations and I promise I don't mean any of that like so are you with me do you understand where I'm going and then my thing is you earn trust with people over time like the number of times and this this is critical if you're in a relationship and you weaponize the knowledge that you have about that person against them you know my every insecurities I mean the [ __ ] really weird nuanced ones in 19 years of being together you've never weaponized anything against me not something that I said in the past you don't do the like bringing something up from a past argument you don't do any of that [ __ ] and it would be so easy for you because your mind is like a steel trap it [ __ ] terrifies me and you remember all of that stuff like for me I'm gonna [ __ ] forget it anyway so but I mean I know your insecurities well enough I could certainly weaponize them against you but I don't want you like I don't even have the desire or the inclination it's like I could end this argument I could drop her to a bag of sobbing rubble if I just said this one thing I've no interest in doing that it's like it's so terrifying to think how fragile Trust really is that it only takes one gnarly comment that was aimed to be cruel and you can really do a lot of damage so we had earned all that trust so by the time we're talking about stuff like that it's like we've already been together for a while there's a lot of trust built up it's it's so important to to treat people kindly and to make them feel better about themselves in there around you yeah and we're so used to each other in each other's language that even when I know you're trying to move me let's say and I even say to you like I see what you're doing there video it's good strategy it's working and so I'll give you the credit for the strategy because that's the one thing no one ever wants to feel like they're being secretly manipulated like their advanced the other person's advanced that and that that is super important but now the thing that I've heard people say and I remember he said this first but manipulation is moving somebody to your advantage and influences moving them to their yeah great I would say that we always moved each other to mutual advantage it was always about the relationship but even the language we use with each other so we have like for instance a word that we say that which is important I say the word important to you maybe two or three times a year you say it back to me that word for us we have both come together to define and say this word means that no matter what's happening you drop what you're doing and so if you're with the president in the United States and I say hey I need you it's important it means that you're going to drop it but at the same time I have to acknowledge that I kind of use that word so those are kind of little tools and tips and tricks that we have done to communicate because we never want the boy that cried wolf right where it's like let's say I'm feeling down or I'm upset or something's happened I don't ever want to keep calling on you and then when I really fricking need you and then you're busy and like I just don't have time so we've really defined that word and what that means to us another thing which I want to go deep into is defining roles this has been massive for us because I feel like especially my role in the relationship has absolutely changed from the time we were going to get married to where we are now so talk to me about what you feel or like actually you were the one that came up with the phrase defining roles yeah so I think that it's really been a fascinating journey going from I was going to work and be the provider and you were going to take care of the home and the kids and then no longer thinking about having kids and then going in and founding a company together it's been it's been really incredible so in the beginning I say that we had sort of a blunt-force trama view of it so I had always thought of the Alpha is good and powerful and the beta is sort of weak and subservient and we saw this documentary about wolves and the beta was bigger and stronger and was just a [ __ ] beast the Alpha was the decision maker so we had always talked I was the Alpha you were the beta with that understanding you're not weak you're not subservient at all it's a partnership and we just have different roles now the role is better than the other they're just different and once you understand like where someone sort of naturally gravitates to then it's like you can own because a big struggle for me in the beginning was I felt for you to find me sexually attractive that I had to be better than you at everything and that if I wasn't that you would think I was weak and you wouldn't be attracted to me anymore and I remember I had this breakthrough that came from this movie I'd watched as a little kid called Darrell it was about this Android kid and he realizes that his mom feels useless because he's perfect he doesn't need anything he's AI so it's like he doesn't have needs or anything so the mom just feels completely unnecessary and that's really devastating for her so he realizes oh I actually its it would be good for me to be imperfect and so I finally had that realization with you where it's like wait a second Darrell had it right all this time and me trying to be better than you but everything is creating all the stress makes me look like a dumbass it just is really stupid and I thought who ever would want to be worse at everything than the person that they're with so that the other person is always better at everything that'd be [ __ ] miserable existence so I was like let's really be honest there are definitely things that you're better at than I am and the weird thing is there are many traditional email things so logistics spatial orientation systems it's like all things that I'm just uniquely terrible at you're really good with and so it was it was sort of jarring to be like wait these are supposed to be the things that I'm good at I'm not you really are gifted and then once I started saying you're better at this than I am and then we began to go okay well here's where at least is better here's where you're better and I'll hear you out you hear me out but basically this is your domain you make the decision this is my domain I'll make the decision so using business terms you've got the visionary and you've got the integrator and that I think is is very powerful for people to understand sort of at a high level like where are you even if it's just with a family dynamic you know where are you who's good at what what are your areas of expertise when are you going to say okay this is where you really shine when you can say this where I really shine and you want to uncover every rock to find places where your partner is amazing and you want to celebrate them for that and you want to make sure that they know that they're rad there you want to make sure that you carve out the space for them to be awesome there because it's gonna make them feel good and it's one of the key ways to be in a relationship and make that person feel better about themselves when they're around you is to understand that leadership is fluid and there going to be times where I'm leading there's gonna be times when you're leading and that if you can follow into being a follower as rapidly as you take the leadership role it just feels rad and when you're doing it in a way that makes sense meaning I'm gonna follow you when you're the right person to lead and you're gonna follow me when I'm the right person to lead it it gets pretty interesting yeah I remember very early when I was having that discussion and initially when we were talking about roles it was definitely more traditional about you're gonna go out and work I'm gonna stay home I'll cook I'll clean I'll take care of the bills and we had a plan it was we're gonna make enough money is that we could make her own movies but we had definitely defined those roles and over time you had gone into entrepreneurship you were really deep in that and I was basically a stay-at-home wife and I was not enjoying it and over time it started to really weigh on me and I started to realize that I was changing so as we started quest I was changing I started to realize oh my god she loved this business side of things and it really scared me because I felt like there's this part that was really I was really enjoying but I didn't want to let you down and I didn't want to go back on my word I felt like we had made an agreement and this is kind of almost showing I didn't have a growth mindset back then because right now I'd be like your volleyballs I'm growing so this is the new me but back then I didn't realize and I didn't think of it like that and so I felt terrified to talk to you to tell you how much I love this other side of things and how I no longer wanted to be a stay-at-home wife I no longer wanted to take care of you now that didn't mean I didn't love you but I didn't want to take care of you I didn't want to cook for you all the time I didn't want to put your clothes out and I wasn't sure how you would react to that like am I the person going back on the agreement am I you know not to bring in my half to the hole you are for sure you're going out every day and you're working hard and the last thing I wanted was for you to think that I was just taking that for granted but there was a lot of emotion in like that went on for me and so I had to finally sit you down and talk to you I'm just being honest and you basically said like who doesn't want their clothes put out for them who doesn't want to be good for them it's freaking amazing it is rad why would I not want that but the only thing that I would want even more is to see you happy and so if that means I have to stop having my food you know cooked and stuff like that then so beer because your happiness is the thing that I seek for the most but you need to give me time to mourn mmm and that was so powerful explain what you mean by that and why that was important yeah so as a kid I dreamed I'll be the provider which made me feel very powerful and then I I don't I don't advise anyone to take for granted how powerful that is now for a guy but not always but for a guy as a you know looking at the bell curve sort of right in the middle I would say most guys that gives them this sense of like pride and purpose and meaning which do not overlook that you you have to processor it at a minimum you don't have to accept them you have to understand it and so that's always what I wanted I wanted more than anything to be able to work so that you could stay at home not realizing that that would not be fulfilling for you but I need an understand fulfillment at the time so I get that you're taking care of me you're really allowing me to build the business and I suddenly had this real like heartbreak for people who the husband and wife choose the husband goes and works the wife doesn't end up getting divorce and wife's like what the [ __ ] we had always agreed that I was gonna help you build your career and now I'm having to start over and I had this real sense of like you know I could not do what I'm doing I couldn't work as hard or be as focused if you weren't facilitating my life which is why I always said you were the CEO of billion enterprises it's like you were making sure that I was able to go do all of the things I wanted to do kept the house in order it was like you would tell me where to be when are we doing what and all that and that was incredibly incredibly valuable so to me it was like hey this is working this is amazing not yet understanding you're not being fulfilled I see you start to take off all the things that you were doing before they stopped getting done there's a little sense of like oh whoa like that meaning and purpose that I had before it's it's not making sense anymore and so now I'm losing connection to what I thought was my role and I'm losing you know some very amazing perks of being in this relationship and I need a red hot minute to to get through that and so I thought that I was like you know I'm not being is like yeah [ __ ] yeah like do what you want do you think and so I needed that second to reorient what did that process look like in your mind to it was entirely the phrase there would be nothing more nothing would shout shatter my own values faster than not wanting you to be exactly what you want to be in supporting you every step of the way so it was like yes you feel some kind of way about losing something that you had both the vision and just like you said it's rad to have somebody who's looking after you 24/7 it's [ __ ] amazing and so yes you're losing that and yes it doesn't feel good and anybody that would ask you to be like this is awesome it's just not being realistic but at the same time like at the absolute core of my being is I want you to be happy but like fulfilled happy at like the deepest core part of your soul and whatever room we have to make in the relationship for that to happen then we need to do it we need to do it immediately and and that to me man that's just like if you want your relationship to succeed in the long run you really do have to put the the bond of the pair as the the primary importance right you can't pretend you don't have your wants and needs but you also can't pretend that the other person doesn't have theirs and they are of equal importance like no matter because at the time I was the breadwinner for sure and so there was no like well you're the breadwinner she should take the backseat it's like no [ __ ] like whatever you're doing half that [ __ ] is hers she has earned it so whatever you guys have you need to make that space and I really really really really believe and view us as equals so when we founded impact I told the lawyer make it the ultimate divorce nightmare because they were like one of you should be 51% the other should be 49 and you even said you'd be 51% like it's not a problem and I was like absolutely not under no circumstances make it the ultimate divorce nightmare we are 50/50 equal if we deadlock that's [ __ ] it and I bet on our ability to navigate that and I love that and most people probably watch and listen and don't have a business together like ours but the core of what you're saying I think is so important whether it's in the business or just in your personal life it needs to be seen as 50/50 all along the way and you both have to come into agreement about what that looks like because it could have been a moment that we would have broken up like if I attend to you and said I don't want to be a stay-at-home wife anymore I want to go into business I want to find my own path and you like disagreed or you said yeah but babe but you had said I think I probably may have relinquished looking back now like if you like the pipe like but we're gonna have a family like I'm gonna that would have been the death of us right maybe not immediately maybe a year two three years down the road but the fact that you were so open to giving me the space to for me to become who I am and who I'm growing in to be like that's so important and I do the same with you even though I knew you're always ambitious and you always have big dreams it's making sure I'm always giving you the space to be able to do that and not feel like you're asking me for permission but but definitely the buy-in and because we've been together for so long and we've even been talking about the stages of our relationship I really want to talk about loving each face for what it is because anybody listening right now if they're in a relationship they're at some sort of phase whether it's the beginning the middle they've been for a long time and this has been one thing that we talk very openly about because I remember being somewhat worried as a woman they're like hey my ages and what is the phrase the women social currency diminishes their sexual market value diminishes over time where's the guys go up because the men are not made for resources access to resources women are valued for beauty and yeah so it's that as a woman that freaking sucks the older I get the less likely I am to be attracted to other people to be attracted to me but yet you as you get old you get wiser obviously you've become an extremely successful waif you know very financially secure you're getting more appealing to people and so let's talk about how we've had to process that this was something I will give myself a lot of credit for from the [ __ ] jump I'm talking from being a teenager I was like ooh that is that's a gnarly dynamic and as I got older I was able to couple on top of that the realization that I don't think monogamy is a default position but it's like we're sort of in the middle we're for sure we can do monogamy and not a big deal but we also can do the other side where you know we can be promiscuous so it was like okay I get that I also get that if you're going to be in a relationship with somebody commitment is a big part of it and it was important to me to let you know look you're young and you're hot right now I am well aware that you're gonna become a bag of bones and you're gonna be just skin and wrinkles and it's gonna be gnarly and so am I by the way and I'm okay with that like I get where we're going I'm going to enjoy this phase while you have your looks holy hell I'm going to really enjoy them but I want you to understand that's not why we're together so we are together because we're sharing a life and I believe to the core of my existence in anybody that wants to take the Pepsi challenge in this I will say open your soul up to this truth there is nothing nothing better in life than shared experience it's the only thing it can't be you can never rush it so we have grown up together and I wanted to literally on our first date like let you know and it wasn't like I was trying to play games the topic came up and I'd already thought a lot about this where it's like okay here's the truth of being a man and a woman you're always going to find somebody else attractive I'm always going to find somebody else attractive commitment is it said that on our first day and I remember that was the biggest thing I was like wow I love how honest he is it was it's so weird to me that people tell each other like oh my god if you find that person attractive like and they flip their [ __ ] and they're going crazy because the waitress is good-looking and they think their husband like glanced or whatever I told my ex I like swipe it and we it was like one of the biggest arguments we ever had yeah this is crazy and so I was like of course you're gonna find Brad Pitt attractive with the ABS this is like right around Fight Club I was like [ __ ] I thought he was attractive like if I could reach in the screen and pull his abs on for myself I would do it in a heartbeat so I was like look I'm gonna find other people attractive don't be [ __ ] weirded out by that because I'm gonna commit to somebody and regardless of the fact that I find other people attractive I'm gonna be into you I want to share a life with that person to me that's it's I didn't have the words back then but it's anti fragile if the only reason that person is with you is because they only have eyes for you talk about the world's most fragile position the second you're not in shape or you're you have the flu and you look like 10 pounds of ass or you get older it's like yo what is this like for me what if we lost all the money would that mean that you'd no longer want to be with me so it's another fragile position it's like I just don't want to be there so it seemed very clear to me there's a difference between attraction and commitment and so when you're in the beginning of a relationship and they've done the neuroscience on this you cannot tell the difference between someone who's had a bump of cocaine and someone who's looking at the photo of somebody that they've newly fallen in love with it's all-consuming it is a rad feeling it is super fun I enjoyed every second of it while we were in that phase but it's like you don't need to read a lot of books on neuroscience to realize oh this is gonna change and because by then I'd become obsessed with reading about the brain I already knew hey this is gonna change the way that we feel about each other the neuro chemistry it's going to be a different cocktail in a year or two years or whatever and how many people have to make a joke about the honeymoon phase is over before you go what is the honeymoon phase what is beyond that how does a relationship thrive beyond that so that was my obsession in my early 20s was really like figuring that out so anyway I'd hit you with that early on you're gonna turn into a bag of bones one day but I need you to know like I will find a way to connect with you physically you know as we age and part of that is just my obsession with that shared experience yeah I'm glad you brought up the the brain chemistry in that first time that first period because so many people I and that I've spoken to Fran and stuff it's always a year or two years down the line where they're just gotten used to each other that electricity that you first felt you don't have that anymore so then it just becomes a live every day as is but as me and you it was always we we don't ever want to take each other for granted and if I'm gonna be a hundred percent honest right at the beginning of course we just can't keep your hands our hands off each other right it's like literally all we can think about is you know finding some time alone and I think I may have worried is he not into me anymore is he not attracted to me anymore have I changed oh my god if I put on weight like I absolutely know myself well enough to know that would have been where my mind would have wanted to have gone but because I've also worked on myself and my own self-esteem but also you had laid that groundwork of it's never always gonna be like this and we have to accept it but enjoy it for what it is instead of like always mourning what the last phase like really enjoy it and we have you know like you said we've been together for 19 years and we've gone through many phases now and we've always addressed those phases almost when it's over than if you've noticed that I try to be aware of it in real time I try to really you know enjoy it while you have it don't take it for granted don't get numb to it and I know it will continue to change like I do think about will there come a day where I don't feel the sense of urgency around my ambition that I feel now almost certainly I mean when you look at just the neuro chemistry of it it's sort of inevitable when you when you think about hormones changing like when you were saying oh we couldn't keep our hands off each other first of all I want people to know you have to keep your sex life alive for so we're super aware of that that's something that we actively talk about for sure and when we first got together legitimately it was distracting it was like I couldn't do anything because all I wanted to do was have sex and that's not sustainable like I actually wouldn't want that in my life now it's funny how we've come to the same conclusion in different ways like for me because you always like I'm never gonna be in a sexless marriage and you pretty much said that from like almost eight one church that you know my biggest fear since I was 14 as being in a loveless women what's interesting is for me I been around women my mum's friends every adult woman that I'd ever come into contact with when I was younger you'd his stories and you'd his snide comments and so you would hear I'd hear like people in my family making jaws birds like oh it's his birthday I guess I've got to give it up or it's like well if he's lucky and I would hear this growing up and so I just adopted that but oh yeah if he's lucky I'm giving you a gift it's me giving it to you and I remember when on that first date where you're like I'm never going to be in a sexless marriage I want to make sure that we're always communicating I don't if you said this on the first date but over time we'd said we need to make sure that we're both on the same page about what is satisfactory and what's satisfying for both of us because I want you to feel satisfied and I want to be satisfied but if we're not having that discussion we can never get there and then also I really didn't like the way I had been taught to see sex in a couple's relationship it is not me giving you a gift it is us both enjoying this moment together right shared experience like you said but the mindset that I had been taught about that was that the women have for control the guys are there to basically be given a gift whenever the woman allows it and there was some weed control factor that I didn't like I didn't like that I didn't like that I could see women using sex as a weapon that never sat well with me and so for me and you it was always like babe once truly satisfying to you it doesn't mean that I'm always gonna do it I'm not a puppet or you know a rag doll but look I need to hear what you really find satisfying because then we can communicate and work through do we actually like if it was ten times a week okay can we actually sustain 10 times a week do I personally want 10 times right but we had to have that conversation without anyone feeling threatened without either of us feeling like we were needy or asking for something that always feels weird as well so we always used to say don't make me feel bad for asking and I won't make you feel bad for saying no yeah so it was like that way hey if we're on the same page then great but I'm not going to be like traumatized or huffy and puffy if you're not in the mood but don't be surprised if I seek more frequency than you do and then also understanding another thing going to when I was brought up I had a lot of women say this was like they would expect flowers if they didn't get flowers on Valentine's Day or in certain occasions then they were going to quote-unquote punish their partner and for us the one thing also that was very powerful and still is very powerful that we say to each other don't test each other like if 19 years together like if you don't know by now how much I frickin love you my obviously clearly failed but if you do then don't test me if there's something you want if this my away I can make you happy know that I love you I just may be blind to it talk to me about that and the hard lessons you've learned in that oh god you're gonna make me talk about this Jesus this makes my list of like most embarrassing things ever but sure here we go you brought it up so I'm about Christmas lists so you make a list of the things that you want so that nobody has to guess at what you want and you don't have to fake liking something that you open I thought man people spend money on this [ __ ] like don't they want to get you something that you want so anyway my family from the time I was a little kid like it starts writing to Santa and we just never stop so my family's always in Christmas lists but you're like no no no I don't like to do lists you didn't say it was crass but that was basically the vibe and so you're like oh I've been hinting at what I want for Christmas for months now and I was like what and so I'm like what has she been bringing up like I owe my god like I'm racking my brain I'm trying to think and I was dirt poor I want people to remember that when I tell this story dirt poor and I'm like [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] what does she say like it's something nice okay expensive what sort of at the edge of my budget what might it be oh my god that's right she mentioned Crest Whitestrips and they were like $60 for me that was like crazy money so I was like [ __ ] okay okay so we didn't even spend Christmas together so you were in England beginning I want to come back after weeks of like racking my brain about what you could possibly had been hinting about and the real answer was a watch now I'm so funny I love to you so much she's not funny to me I was so embarrassed horrified the reason why I wanted to bring that up though is because that happened so early on I didn't get what I wanted and I need spend money on something that I didn't want yeah and I was like huh maybe we should communicate more about what we really want and it was you saying that that really changed things because I definitely used to be there like well if he loves me he'll remember if I mean it's me he says he loves me so I made all these justifications in my mind and then when you know cuz I want it isn't a justification what I want people to understand is that's how it works for you so for you you simply assume everybody's like you you don't realize that you have that that's how you're right and I'm just not worried like that so like I can't think of anything more stressful than somebody expecting me to remember what I'm supposed to do when in what sequence what they want like whatever oh my god like the reason I have an executive assistants cuz I can't remember that [ __ ] I have my talents I have my strengths I know what they are I lean the [ __ ] into them but on the other stuff I there are just certain things that I have to outsource you're very right cuz I am good at that so I just see you taking for granted right and there's a few things that were I had to remind myself does 19 years not count for anything I mean obviously haven't been 19 years when we had this discussion but all of that it's like if someone has spent years and years really working a showing that that how much they love you you can't just then think it doesn't count on this one day because they forgot it and then also is understanding that where your strengths like you said your strengths and your weaknesses are and I do want to see you succeed I see in your face how hard it is when you've disappointed me and because I know you so well I see how heartbreaking that is for you that you feel like you've disappointed me so here I am saying I don't want to see that look on your face so if this is really a freaking partnership which we've committed to that it is a partnership I need to help you and so in that communication in discovering how you feel how I feel where we can actually fall down if we don't address it we have changed the way we do things we have changed havior I know either put it in your calendar that it's a date for me and you if something is important to me which I don't want to deny sometimes like if it's really important just because you don't agree it doesn't mean that I just want to swallow it so if it's important for instance that you booked dinner you booked restaurant for me oh no you'll forget so I've grabbed your phone in the past put an alarm in your phone that says booked anniversary dinner because I want to set you off for success but it's important that you book it so those are little tips and tactics for anyone listening or watching at home well we've been able to really reframe the way we think and then act in accordance Church this so much we can talk about obviously we've had 19 years of lessons I think that this has been hopefully very useful for people at home because it definitely has been for me I love talking about this sort of thing so thank you mr. Binney for joining us where can people find you at tom bill you cross all them socials and thank you for being my first male guests and women having me it was wonderful guys guys I really hope you enjoyed this episode drop in the comments if you found the interesting if you want to see more of him on the show and if you're not following him follow him at Tom bill you if you're not following me following me at Lisa Billy and guys if this episode brought you value please please do click that subscribe button and share it with your friends because really are trying to impact the world and guys until next time be the hero of your own life [Music] what up guys Lisa here thanks so much for watching this episode and if you haven't already subscribed if that little bone right in front of you click click click away we release episodes every Wednesday so be sure to get notified until next time go be the hero of your own life

Channel: Women of Impact

Views: 182,168

Rating: 4.940537 out of 5

Keywords: women of impact, woman of impact, lisa bilyeu, tom bilyeu, impact theory, quest nutrition, motivation, inspiration, Tom Bilyeu, Lisa Bilyeu, Women of Impact, Impact Theory, Valentines Day, Love, Divorce, marriage, bed death, values, growth mindset, relationship, alpha, beta, monogamy, commitment, changing roles, housewife, religion, sex life

Id: cb6MFpGNjuE

Length: 48min 21sec (2901 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 12 2020