Beyond Happily Ever After: Katherine Woodward Thomas on Redefining Love | EP 590

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11you're a marriage family therapist right you've been doing this for 20 30 years and you've been teaching hundreds of thousands of people around the world about you know relationship advice and all this good stuff so you've got some great wisdom as a licensed therapist but also with your own experiences so i think that's where we learn the most from our own experiences because Because you're divorced as well. Yes. And you had to figure this out for yourself also. After a decade, we decided to unmarry. So it wasn't the one anymore. Well, he was, though, for that time. For that time. For that time.

0:45And this goes back to the happily ever after myth. When we made the decision, you know, my prayer was like a little less than pious. It was, you know, are you effing kidding me, God? Like, seriously? Right. I've got all these people who look to me for the answers. and how to find love. And they really like open up to possibility in their lives after all sorts of things. But then I'm going to get divorced. So what's that message? And how do I even convey that message? So I know you talk, you love to talk in School of Greatness about failure a lot. So that was like a great crash and burn. In that moment, it could have really been a disaster.

1:22And you were the woman that was like, I'm calling the one. I'm teaching you all how to do it. And now I'm essentially failed at calling in the one. Yeah. Yeah, well, and so you know what? I know enough to look at my own feelings and whatever's going on for me and to see it as reflective of what's going on for all of us. So I have kind of a deeply personal relationship, obviously, with my feelings, as we all do. But I also have an impersonal relationship with them because I'm really interested in the evolution of love in the world, both for myself and our collective capacity. Conscious love, yes.

1:56Yeah, conscious love, conscious relationships. So as and I'm committed to that. So as I'm going through this, I'm going, well, you know, this is really common that when we go through the end of a relationship, we feel ashamed. Where does that come from? Why do we feel ashamed? Like, why do we go to now I'm inferior to be single again? Or, you know, I was better when I was like, what, where is that coming from? So I actually started to research that happily ever aftermath. And I found out a lot of things about it that were really fascinating to me. One is that it's only about 400 years old. Believe it or not, it was created in Venice, Italy.

2:29No way. Which, you know, us romantics, we're not surprised. That's funny. But it was created during a time when the lifespan was under 40, when half the children were dying before the age of 16. Really? Wow. Which, you know, is probably a good idea, a better idea to keep families together to give them the best possible chance at survival. and also there was a law at the time that these fairy tales were created that a noble person could not marry a commoner and so people if you were born into poverty you were going to die into poverty like there was no hope of ever getting out of poverty so the happily ever after myth was was came as like an escapist fairy tale for people because it was right after the renaissance so People actually were literate.

3:16Even though they had no money, they were literate. And they loved the fairy tales, in large part because of the upward mobility. And also it happened in a faraway distant land, you know, because it couldn't happen in Venice because there was a law against it. But then it went to France and it kind of stuck and it almost like took over our world about what our aspiration for love should be. And we're also kind of collectively in that trance that it actually occurs to us as a failure if we do not. But look, this is the reality. If you like look at the statistics, the statistics are that the majority of us are going to have two to three major relationships in our lifetime, which also implies at least one or two major breakups as well.

3:57Wow. So it's no longer the norm to meet and marry one person. The one, like 21 when you're in college and then you're with them for the rest of your life. Very unusual. I mean, it happens. Sure. You know, so I think, you know, like we update our computer programs and our child rearing practices and our diets and our exercise programs. I think we have to update our aspirations around love. Of course. And we need to shift from the question of, you know, how we're going to value the union according to how long did it last and start to ask the question, when did I learn and how have I expanded my capacity to love moving forward?

4:34It's so challenging when you're in the relationship and you love someone so much. and they bring so much value to your life and they're so incredible, but something's not working or you can't give them what they want or they can't give you what you really want. And there's like just conflict where you can't figure it out and you've got to end it or you've got to evolve it. How do you call on the one? How do you know it's the one if you're going to end it at some point? Like that's the confusing thing. See, this is important for us to realize that we live in a very mobile society that values growth and evolution.

5:11Yes. Right. And in a way, America is kind of torn between these two ideals of the stability of family and commitment and devotion. And most of us really believe in that 90 % of us are going to get married at some point in our lifetimes. But we also are a country that was kind of founded upon the ideal of the pursuit of happiness. and we are a creative bunch and we love change and we love evolution and we love you know personal growth and development and those two things are not always the best bedfellows so in a you know perfect world um we all grow together but different people have different callings and different people have different aspirations to how much they're willing to grow and what that how they're going to navigate the tension between just wanting to be you know comfortable in life and kind of set in life or how much you're going to be risk oriented and keep, you know, striving to become your best self.

6:06And I think, you know, I think here in the school of greatness, I can pretty much assume that most of us are the latter. Yes. And so it is going to create a lack of stability. It's going to do two things. It's going to create, you know, it's going to create a lack of stability that we are going to, and it's also going to inspire us to grow. Right. Because we don't want to lose each other we want to learn how to stay related because i don't about losing each other well i mean look if you have a you know crash and burn relationship somebody's got a personality disorder they're like an addict they're like unethical with you they're toxic you're gonna have to cut it off you need to set that boundary you're not gonna be able to do that but then you know in many relationships you can transition certainly if you have children or if you're business partners, we wanted to kind of wrap in business too, because I think, you know, I've had two business breakups in my lifetime that were almost as heart-wrenching as my divorce, right?

7:03They can be very, very difficult to navigate. So any kind of, so you really don't want to lose people entirely. You want to do things like one of the things I have people do is to become very conscious of the agreements that you've had as a couple. Like you will always prioritize me, but you will always rescue me when I'm in trouble, that kind of thing. Or you will always love me the most. I will always love you the most. I will sexual fidelity, that kind of thing. We are people of our word. So we have these agreements with each other. And then we have to update the agreements and become conscious.

7:37Who are you going to be to me now? What are my expectations of you? What are your expectations of me? So that's how you kind of evolve a relationship to a new healthy form.

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8:52Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.