How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship

27:19I don't want, I can't have an insecure God. Like I can't have a God who's like, if you don't like pray to me in this certain way, I'm not going to feel right. You know, like I need to have like an abundant God, a generous God, a loving God who knows me and who likes me. I wish I could remember who said this, but somebody said that the true feeling of being one with God is relaxing completely in the presence of somebody who you know is deeply fond of you. And if people had been taught that in childhood, that that's what God presence feels like, relaxing completely in the presence of somebody who you know is very fond of you.

28:00Yeah, not being afraid constantly. Oh, my God. Instead of what James Joyce called the hangman God, you know, the judge, the executioner. You know, this is like, like, of course I created you. I love you. You know, like I made you the way you are. This is fascinating. How many, how many relationships do you feel like you've been in, in the past? Like intimate relationships, whether it be like dating or sexual or. Oh, like 40. 40. Okay. You know, like 45, maybe 45. I was trying to remember, cause I had to inventory it when I was, it's part of like the sex and love addict recovery. Good. So 40, 45 intimate, loving relationships, sexual relationships.

28:3945 deeply intimate relationships, Lewis. How many of these relationships... That's good. Yeah, you're not joking. No judgment here. I mean, no... No, I don't feel it. How many of the relationships you've been in had God at the core or the center? None. how many uh there we go in the future do you feel like god will be in the relationship in some way if god's not in the relationship it's not a relationship wow you know um and and i heard a prayer recently um in one of the 12 step rooms and this is about every relationship you know not just sexual and intimate but somebody said dear god please Please only bring me relationships where you can be first and I can be me.

29:33Oh, man, that's good. Say that one more time. Dear God, please only bring me relationships where you can be first and I can be me. Man, that gives me the chills. I know. Isn't that beautiful? Imagine every relationship in your life like that. Right. Friends, family, you know, intimate relationships. Yeah. That's a beautiful life. Isn't it? with every relationship like that. Because then you're not feeling judged or you don't have to people please, you don't have to impress. You know, obviously you got to create boundaries and you have to communicate and you have to, you know, stand up for yourself, but you don't have to worry about what happens when God is at the center.

30:09Yeah. God is going to have your back no matter what. And their back. Yeah. Right? I mean, to know that they also have their own higher power. Of course. Right? I mean, I got super high off of becoming other people's higher power as much as I got super high off making somebody my higher power. It's like, oh, let me be the thing you worship. That's a rush. Big rush. Until you crash. Until you get depedestalized. And then you don't even want to be in the room when that happens. I mean, that's such a terrible crash for everybody, the terrible disappointment of that. I say this to my sponsees a lot.

30:47If they idealize me at all, I'm like, okay, I just want to point out that like that language sounds a little bit idealizing, please don't do that to me or you. Because when you inevitably discover that I am not this ideal, I don't even want to be in the room when that statue comes crashing. Right. Like that's going to be really bad for both of us. So like, just don't, don't do that. Like let's not do that. Wow. This is fascinating.

31:19When do we make a decision that I'm going to choose to love this person? We don't make a decision. We don't decide. Because if you decided, you could actually decide to fall in love. And there's so many people who would love to fall in love, maybe even with the person that they're actually with already, but struggle to do that. or people who have fallen out of love would like to fall back in love or the person that's trying to woo them is perfect for them in every way. Why can't I just love them? That would be great. I just don't. So we can't quite make ourselves fall in love. But you know what happens is that people fall in love.

31:53It's very psychological because it's with an incredible absence of information. It happens quite quickly. You don't know the person. You don't. You have a few data points and you're connecting them to create a Mona Lisa with five data points. Out of a flawed human being. Potentially flawed. You have no even idea where. And you have the rose-colored glasses. Everything's cute. Those things that are going to become incredibly annoying later on are still cute to you. And you just fill in the gaps with optimism, with hope, with, oh, they're probably like this. And so you really don't know the person you've fallen in love with most of the time.

32:34Because I say, if you need to know the person, you have to wait until you have your first fight. If you don't know how they fight, you don't know how ugly it gets. You don't know how ugly they get. And that can make a big difference. But that doesn't usually happen before you fall in love. It happens after. You don't know how they fight. You don't know how they travel. You know, maybe you love to travel and they are such an anxious mess in an airport that you really want to just, I am not with this person at all. You know, like, you don't know that. you don't know how they are with their parents, your parents, with the holidays, whether they are a mess, they're fun.

33:09There's so much you don't know. What would you say are three or four things that individuals could do today to enter a relationship in the best way possible to give them a chance for happy, healthy, long-term love? How much time do we have? But I'm going to start with this. I think the thing we get wrong most about relationships is that we are absolutely clueless about how critical the first steps are. Those first dates, those first months, what you are doing is you are creating an unspoken contract with that person about what our couplehood is going to look like, who's going to be responsible for what, what the dynamic is going to be, what the vibe is going to be, who's going to be pursuing, who's going to be the pursued.

34:05Everything you do is a precedent. But you don't realize that you're setting a precedent. So you're just like, oh, this part's okay, this part I didn't love as much, but fine. No, it's not fine. I mean, maybe it's not a big deal, but if that's what's going on, that's what the other person is expecting would be cool to go on. Forever. Yeah, yeah. In that relationship, you are setting, like if somebody tends to be 10, 15 minutes late to all the dates and you're like, it's only 10 minutes, I'm not going to be, you know, I'm not going to, then you are signing up for the fact that you get to be late.

34:41And if suddenly 10 dates in, you're like, you know, it's really not cool that you're late. They'll be like, where have you been for 10 days? That's not a new thing. You know what I mean? there's literally that expectation the other person has that if this is what goes on, this is what goes on. But if you're not aware that you're writing this unspoken contract and signing it and agreeing to all these precedents, then you're setting yourself up for a relationship that a lot of people are like, oh, I'll fix this later. I'll fix it in post. And like, oh, I don't know. Yeah, right. This isn't a movie.

35:10Here's why. I'll say this last part about this piece. Relationship dynamics are like cement. You can mold it when it's wet, when it's fresh, but you can't. It's much more difficult to do when it's dry, and it dries very quickly. So you have to be aware of that. Yeah, and if you want to jackhammer it two years in the future because you don't like the way it's laid down, that's going to cause real damage. And it's hard to mend that. It's not like, well, I forget the Japanese saying where they break a bowl, and it's like golden. It's like, oh, it's not. Yeah, yeah. It's not that. This is like you're breaking a road.

35:49Yes. And you're breaking a path and you have to almost create a bridge. Right. Once you break it two years later. Right. And that person has to want to go over that bridge. Right. Every time. And that's for each thing. Yeah. For each thing you want to fix or change or tweak. This is interesting. I'm so glad you're saying this because we've known each other for how long? Eight years maybe or something like that? I don't know. Eight, nine years. And, you know, we're not super close talking all the time. but you've seen me go through three different relationships in the last eight years. And you've seen me kind of show up differently in this relationship based on what we've talked about.

36:24And there are things that I did differently, I think, because one, a lot of the wisdom I gained from you and other different therapists and psychologists that came on that I was able to learn from. Two, I was doing a lot of my own healing work in the practice every week with someone that was helping guide me to heal in my last relationship and going to this new one. And three, because I was just sick and tired of experiencing so much pain and sadness and suffering in relationships, like the pattern that I was choosing, that I was like, I need to do something completely different than I've always done.

36:58Whether this works out or not, I have to just try something completely different. And I felt like what I've done has really worked well for me. I don't know if it'll work well from everyone, but it sounds like I'm doing what you're saying people should be doing, which is entering a relationship in a way that is going to lay the cement and the foundation for the whole relationship and really doing it early on, not waiting. So a few things that I did with Martha and we did together is when we started dating, I said, listen, I'm going to be, we're going to date each other, but I'm not going to have sex with you.

37:35right it's one of the first things i said like it's not happening where you know that wasn't the case in previous relationships so that's the first thing i was like how i want to get to know someone without chemical interference you know without sexual chemical interference that was always blurring me you know in the past that was the first thing and it's almost like we got to know each other as friends and you kind of hear people who are married a long time or happy they're like, yeah, we were friends early on, or like we were just in a friendship first. And then it grew into something because we really loved each other, right?

38:11You hear that a lot. Not that that's always the case, but that was what we did. And I think that was really helpful for me to see all the parts of her and say, do I accept all the parts of her? And maybe I don't have to like all the parts, but can I accept it? Because she's not going to change who she is. Maybe, but this is pretty much who she is. And I was able to see clearly, I accept all the parts of her to get into a committed relationship after a few months, right? I was spending a lot of time together, traveling together, seeing her family. Like all the things we did early on, I was like, I put myself in those situations, friends, family, travel before getting committed.

38:47And that was really helpful. It was kind of like a year cycle and a few months. The next thing that I did is I told her the truth about everything. And from my past, what I'd done in my past, things i was proud of not proud of everything and i told her my vision for my future and i said this is the man i am now this is the man i'm growing into and this is the man i want to be in my vision for my life my career my family everything and i'm not going to change it for one person to make one person happy you've got to accept this part of me and i want to know what your vision is for your life and see if we're in alignment obviously things might change and evolve but if that's what you want, I want to be accepting of your vision for your life and you accepting of mine.

39:36And that was really helpful. And then we also did a values exercise. I never created a values exercise in any relationship before. It was like, oh, we like each other and you're beautiful and you like me and whatever. We're having fun. Let's just be together. But we went on a trip and I said, I want to do a values exercise and get clear on what you really value around family, friendships, money, time, everything, raising kids, like, what are the values in your life that you have? And we wrote them separately and then looked at them together. So there wasn't any influence. And we were in alignment on our values, which was helpful.

40:15And so having that clarity of kind of like, no chemical interference around sexual acts to values to this is a vision of my life this is my lifestyle this is what i want to create do you accept it because if you don't i'm not changing for you and we're able to get an alignment and that doesn't mean it's all going to be perfect and it's like it's going to work out but that created a foundation the pavement you were talking about where we were like okay let's cement this let's start to like mold it and start to let it dry now that we are in agreement of these things with each other. And there was one other thing that we did that I'd always wanted to do because I'd always ended every relationship in therapy and then it ended.

40:57And I said, I want to start my next relationship in therapy. If that's with you or someone else, I'm not getting in a relationship unless someone else is willing to agree to have a session once every six weeks with someone where we can get clarity on agreements because there was never agreements in relationships that were clear and that people stuck to. And I was like, I want agreements so that if there's a disturbance, we can create an agreement quickly so there's less disturbances. And she was like, yeah, sounds great, I'm in. Those things that we created from the beginning have given me so much peace.

41:33You asked me like, how are you feeling before the interview? I was like, I felt pretty peaceful. And it's because I've never been in a relationship where I feel fully accepted for me. And I feel that. So I have the energy to go out in life and tackle what I want. And it's been really beneficial. But I went through, you know, 20 something years of pain and suffering in choosing relationships without having the courage to do these kind of activities early on. And I don't know if that's something that you would recommend for all people. It took a lot of work. It takes time. It's like you can't rush into something.

42:07But it's given me a lot more peace in this relationship. So I am so excited to hear that that's how you went about it. I'll tell you why. First of all, that's why you're at peace, because you've done the due diligence. There's not these corners of her that you've never seen, exposed, or don't know about, and like, well, I like what I see, but who knows what I don't. You actually have seen a lot, because you've asked a lot of questions. the due diligence you did over there, that investment of, if I'm choosing a life partner, I'm going to vet this as much as possible. I'm actually going to put in the work to build a foundation.

42:49People always say like, oh, we have a good foundation. Did you build it? Or did you just, are you just evaluating what actually turned out? Or did you intentionally, deliberately build a foundation. You did. That kind of due diligence is extraordinarily rare. And why it's so such a shame that it is rare is because we give that due diligence to purchases like homes and cars. I know people that spend two hours a day studying car models before they make the commitment on their next car, but they're not going to spend an hour thinking about their next relationship or what they should do or about whether they should have kids or how they want to raise them or what their values are or all of those things.

43:31To me, like if they're ever going to put in the work to do the research, do the due diligence and put in the effort to build something intentionally, deliberately, mindfully, relationships is where it should be. And by the way, not just romantic ones, because all these rules of relationships are true for all kinds of relationships. Yeah. I mean, what is the big mistake that people are making today then in relationships by entering the relationship? Is it they haven't healed from the previous one? And can you enter a new relationship while being wounded from the previous one? Or do you need to be on some type of healing journey to set yourself up for a better opportunity, do you think?

44:11First of all, I think you can get into a relationship in any situation. It just might mean that you will have more work to do and that the relationship will have more work to do if you're coming at it from a wounded place or something like that. When you said, I told her what the plan was. In other words, you told each other, and this was your individual thing. You're like, this is the ride I want to be on. So that's what you'll be joining me for. You need to know if you want that ride. And she's saying the same thing to you. This is the ride I want to be on. and you need to know if that's the one that you want to join me on.

44:43Now, they're not in conflict necessarily at all. Each person's goals and dreams or how they want to develop or what kind of life they want. But it's very thoughtful and it's very important to say, this is the vision, are we sharing it? And to ask all these questions, to have these conversations, they're not easy to have. They're not. Because I'm sure it wasn't the case that everything you said, she was like, yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. Stuff needed to be worked out. And then you're like, is this critical? Is this deal breaking? Is this something that we can manage to accept? You know, you would use that word a lot.

45:16It's totally about acceptance. That's correct. That's the question. So you're actually walking into a bit of a marsh when you do that. It's not like all skipping along. But as long as you're willing to do that work, you get off and you get off into dry land. That's true. Dry, peaceful land. Abundant, fertile land. that you're just like, ah. No, it doesn't mean there's not going to be challenges and life's going to throw things at you. But I think if you're in it together and you're able to create agreements early on, then it just doesn't mean you have to have a lot of disturbances within the relationship.

45:51There might be things coming at the relationship that you need to handle together. But when we're in disagreement constantly about each other or what's wrong with the other person and what they didn't do or what they didn't do for me, then it's just going to be a weaker foundation, I think, when you don't have agreements. What you guys did is for a year and however many months, you actually practiced communication, conflict resolution, negotiation. You practice all these very important couples, relationship and communication skills that would have come up a little bit here, a little bit there, but not in that substantial a way.

46:28So you guys developed these muscles and these habits with one another of like, if we have a problem, we know how to talk about it. We know how to be honest about it. We know how to resolve it. So that's the other part of the peace and the confidence. You've worked all that out. You develop those skills together in the formation. That's why they're going to therapy every six weeks or whatever it was. Great idea. Let's get a little bit of guidance on that because it doesn't hurt. It actually helps quite a bit. And there was nothing wrong in the relationship early on. It does not have to be to learn good habits.

47:00It was amazing. But it takes time and investment. I told her, I was like, I don't think I'd have been ready for you 10 years. If I met you 10 years ago, I wouldn't have been, I wouldn't have seen you the same way. I wouldn't have been, I didn't have the tools or the skills to like deal with my emotions. I was still healing. I was still growing. And I, and you know, and I was doing my interview show and I had resources, but I think a lot of people don't have the tools or the skills to have the courage to speak up for what they want to navigate challenges in a relationship when they feel their button is pushed and they're just reactive they don't know how to respond calmly because they're in fight or flight i've been there many times in the past like it's a it's a massive problem for people they don't have the tools do you see i mean how do you see like the younger generation people in their 20s or 30s being able to get into relationships and have these tools if they've never been trained like It took me a long time to have a lot of pain to be like, okay, I need to learn something different.

48:01But look how much research you did along the way. You know, this is the third interview we've had. We speak outside of this sometimes. But you are prepared. You do the reading. You do the research. You've learned so much from so many different experts. You are not a layperson coming at it. You practically have an honorary PhD in psychology and relationships already for all the stuff that you've done. We're serious. But most people don't have this. Most people do not. That's my point. In other words, you do have to put in the work. You had put in the work. And the books I write and the things I do is to get people to be more thoughtful and more mindful about how they feel and what they want and what they do.

48:45because we can't be on autopilot all the time. And most of us are on autopilot all the time. One quick thing I wanted to touch on because I think this is something that young people say to me a lot and it's problematic. They say, one person will say to another, I don't like when you did so-and-so. And that person will say, well, that's who I am. I'm not going to change and you shouldn't try and change who I am. And I think it's really important that people distinguish who you are from what you do from behaviors from behavior yeah they're not asking you to change who you are a lot of the time i mean if it's like oh you hate skiing you must come with me on skiing vacations three times a year and not gonna happen but if it's about i don't like when you say those things to me well that's just who i am no no that's what you said it's not who you are and so people get stubborn and they don't want to change things that you actually should change 100 and be open to yeah i mean you can't be disrespectful and say well this is who i am accept me for being disrespectful to you or stubborn or difficult or whatever it is yeah and i think it's also i think it's also important to know like hey before you get into a relationship make sure you find out if this is the way they are and they're not going to change that maybe they're not for you what i really find surprising is sometimes somebody will say to me um yeah the other person the person they're dating they just keep telling me what they want and what they like and what they want and what they like and it's like it's so annoying and i'm like i'm sorry They're giving you the user manual for how to be in a relationship with them, and you don't think it's important for you to read it.

50:19It's amazing. They're communicating that. That should be the best thing ever. Now, you like it or you don't like it, but it's not annoying that they're doing it. You should be doing the same. They're giving you the instruction manual on how to be with them. Exactly. Pay attention. No, I think it's really important. I think I probably over-communicated more in the first year, probably out of trauma from the past of like, okay this is really who i am and this is my truth and i just want to make sure you're okay with this yeah she's lying on the couch watch i know what should be going i heard you the first three times 20 times and i'm like she's like you were really traumatized in the past i'm like i just want to make sure you know who i am all my flaws all my past where i'm at where i'm going this is what i want you sure you're good it's like kind of mile markers right you got a later cement it's like every mile marker okay you're still on the same path make sure you're in alignment because it's not worth me being like, I'm invested.

51:11And then you want me to change who I am. So I think you got to be willing to accept the person and make sure you figure out all their behaviors or as much as you can within the first six to 12 months before you take the long road with them and say, all right, am I down for this journey? If it's a little bumpy, am I cool with it? You know, or don't choose the person. If they have bad behavior over and over, like you don't have to choose them. If they're not going to let the change, like you either accept it and that's it. But you had this on your, I think this is on your website as well. A quote from you, it said, mental health is about diagnosable conditions like depression and anxiety.

51:50Emotional health is about common experiences like loneliness, failure, and heartbreak, the non-diagnosable stuff. And you also mentioned that you grew up, another quote from you, she said, I grew up with my identical twin, which of course made me an expert in spotting favoritism. So when I became a psychologist, it didn't take me long to recognize how much we favor our physical health over our emotional health. For example, if we get a cut on our arm, we can just tell by looking at it whether we need a badge, a stitch, or an ambulance. But when we sustain an emotional wound like rejection, failure.

52:28We have no idea how to gauge whether the wound is deep or whether it requires emotional first aid. And a few of us would know how to treat it ourselves if we did. And as a psychologist, you find that unacceptable. You said our physical health and our emotional health are the twins of our general well-being. And as such, we should treat them equally. how can we start to self-diagnose the emotional wounds that we deal with? And how can we know when we are having a symptom of an emotional wound that is worthy of a deeper look rather than just a quick rub it off or a bandaid? I would use a similar guideline that you do for a physical wound.

53:11You might wake up with a little bit of a scratchy throat or a sniffle, But you don't know if it's going to go somewhere. If two days later you're still sniffling and scratchy, you might consider you have a cold or something worse and you might want to do something about it, but it might go away. It's the same thing. We get, you know, wounded all the time. Every time you check social media and that person didn't like your thing or, you know, share your thing or respond to your thing, we feel rejected and every little swipe that doesn't get swiped back, you know, we feel rejected. There's a lot of rejection in the world today because we're tethered to so many people electronically, just the opportunities are tremendous.

53:48But if it nags you, really nags you, if it's really bothering you, if you're having trouble shaking it, that's when you might want to consider doing a quick exercise or doing something to actually treat the wound rather than just waiting for it to go away. So for a feeling, what would that nagging feeling look like for someone if it's an emotional wound? Is it a physical sensation internally? Is it like their chest is tied? It's a preoccupation, probably, and it's a mood, probably. A rumination of something? It can be a rumination or just you keep thinking back, like, well, why hasn't she haven't responded?

54:22I thought the date was good. Why is it like she's not responding, I guess. It's like now she's ghosting me. Like I don't understand. And it's four or five days and it was one date. Right. And you just don't get over it. Now, you don't have to run to therapy for that, but there are certain exercises you can do to just revitalize your self-esteem, your mood what's a couple what's an exercise that someone can do if they're they feel rejected or feel like someone hurt them whether it was intentional or not there are two things um actually there are many more than two i'm gonna mention two one is the don't do the don't do is the first thing we all do is become very self-critical in our efforts to understand why it happened we review everything that might not be great with us to see if that's the reason is it because i'm not this or i am that or i'm too much here i'm too little here maybe it's because, oh, I knew I shouldn't have done.

55:10Like there's this, and this is not, you just got rejected. Not the best time to go through the greatest hits of your insecurities. You know, you want to be doing the opposite, reviving your self-esteem, not actually reviewing all the wounds that you've sustained in the past. Because when you look at past wounds, you reactivate them emotionally, right? If, you know, you had physical injuries, if you think about them, they're not going to hurt. But if you think about some of the emotional times, about the rejections or about the depressions or about something that got you really upset, you're going to get upset again, even if it's 20 years later.

55:42Isn't that interesting? It is, but that's the problem. When we think about a memory of trauma that we have yet to heal and we relive that in our mind, is it almost just like we're living that moment all over again? Yeah, but it's not one that you have yet to heal. It can be one you've healed. If you think about something small and incredibly irritating that happened 15 years ago and you start literally thinking through the details, you're going to start to feel really irritated. It has zero consequence or meaning in the present, none. But that's how we are. I mean, our emotional reflection reactivates these things.

56:17And it's important because that's when if you're spinning about, oh, I'm not this enough or that enough, and that person rejected me, was it for the same reason? Is it this? Like, what's going on? Like, you start to question yourself, and that's just doing damage to your self-esteem. because if it's after one date and really truly if it's after five, whatever the reason is, it's about chemistry. It's about fit. It's about timing. It's not personal. It's personal in that you might not have been good fit for them, but it doesn't mean you're a bad person or not a great fit for anyone else. Why do so many people take it personally when they get rejected in a dating situation or relationship?

56:55It's not only that. They take it personally and then they generalize it to mean something even bigger than what it does. I never find love. Really, she just didn't swipe back. That seems like a leap in inference to make from that, but it's a very natural thing we do. We assume it's us. Now, literally, people do that when they text it with somebody back and forth for a bit, and then that person disappears. You have no idea if you're even talking to a real person. You have no idea. That person might be in the hospital. They might have been chatting with you to piss off the person they're actually living with at the time.

57:26They might be going through whatever week at work. There's a thousand things that can be going on for you to assume that you did something wrong in five texts that was so bad that like it's completely unnecessary. But that's where the mind goes. So let's stop that damage. That's the first thing to not do. But the thing you can do is the opposite. You want to remind yourself in those moments of what you bring to the table, what you do have to offer. Now, you can't fool yourself. You can't say to yourself, I'm the most gorgeous person in the world if you're not. And if the feedback that you get is that you're not because your mind won't believe that.

58:03You know, we have this automatic way of thinking that will reject things that fall outside the sphere of what it considers believable. And so you can't just like convince yourself of something that's not true. You have to focus on the things that are. So think about your best attributes. I have amazing eyes. I know I'm going to find someone who will want to gaze into them. I am such a great listener. I'm emotionally available, and I'm always up for doing things. Those are wonderful qualities and characters that somebody will appreciate, etc. You actually review what is worthwhile about you and not do the opposite.

58:38It almost sounds like before you start dating or getting into a relationship, one of the best things that you can do for yourself is build your self-esteem, is what it sounds like. Because when you have a quality or high level of self-esteem, you're not going to get into a relationship that's not good for you. You're not going to stay in one that where someone's treating you poorly or not respecting your boundaries, or you're not going to take the scraps of something because you're just lonely, right? So building self-esteem sounds like a great foundation for the individual before even getting into a relationship.

59:11It is doing, and the way you do that is doing what you did in your relationship on an individual level, i.e. you get to know yourself and you get to accept yourself. All the parts of you. All the parts of you, because there's no one who's perfect, right? Every good quality you have comes with a downside. It's going to be true of everyone, right? Let me examine for yourself. For me? Yeah, what's a good quality that comes with a downside? I can think of several, but okay.

59:45I have a sense of humor I enjoy my sense of humor I sometimes deploy it in ways that are maybe not bad timing or something yes because if the joke is going to be funny I'm going to say it no matter what just because I can't pass it up and I'm going to be upsetting someone by doing so potentially I try not to it leaks out in sessions sometimes when they're like sad and like yeah whatever um inappropriate i'll give you a quote you know and i'll give you this is terrible i shouldn't do it just because it makes me sound so bad um good now you have to do it you have to do it okay i'm not gonna say anything about the person but it was a session in one in which somebody was having an issue in a relationship and i was challenging on why they're not you know setting more limits with their partner who needed limits set with them certain boundaries right and they said yeah that's how it is and this person was very successful you know and they said that's how it is i'm a i'm a lion in the boardroom and a pussycat in the bedroom and i said i agree with every word except cat it was funny to me not funny to the other person i apologized uh for it i apologize again if they happen to be listening that wasn't but the point was actually sound of course i didn't need to but the joke was dangling and I couldn't.

1:01:06And so here's a thing that has a downside. Sure, sure, sure. Right? Somebody who's very, very, let's say, conscientious about things, that's a wonderful thing that they're conscientious. But it's also a standard that they're probably going to likely have that they'll likely want to hold you to as well. So lovely to receive it, but then they're going to be expecting it. And so that can be a pain, you know, sometimes. I mean, there's always a downside to things. So you just have to learn to accept and to go, this is great. Yes, it comes with that. I'll accept it because I like that. Yeah, exactly.

1:01:44Why do you think people struggle with emotional regulation, not just in life, but even heightened more in relationships? And how can someone learn to regulate their emotions in a relationship if they've been so used to reacting in fight or flight mode for so long what do you think is a process they can start have you started them we'll have you add to asadia well i think the people that trigger us the most are the people that we're closest to so it's hard to you know they well they uniquely know how to push our buttons as well um hopefully they don't do that on purpose but you know they they have the knowledge to be able to push our buttons but also just it's like family you know you think you've grown so much and you think you've become so kind of wise and you've healed and then you go back for christmas with family or for the holidays put your buttons and trigger you within two days something has you feeling like a 14 year old who's mad again you know it's those people that are closest to us have this unique ability to impact us so i think it's really it's a it's really easy to have patience with a friend you know people like oh it's so much easier with my friends yeah no you don't see your friend every night of the week you see them once every couple of weeks it's like a little honeymoon every time you get together because you just you're just excited to see each other of course they don't push your buttons the same way but the person you're with every day is going to so um i think having we we have to almost step back from it a little bit and go this isn't necessarily a sign that my partner is so much worse than everybody else it's a sign that this person is so close to me that it's the easiest place for me to get triggered and it's probably the place i the place i have the least patience because i give so much energy everywhere else in my life i take for granted that this person's going to be there at the end of the day right you know we go to work and we give our best energy and then we go home and whatever is left we hand to our partner and you know we've reserved our patience for everyone else in our lives so i think take taking a step back and going what would it look like this is a very hard thing to do but what would it look like if i gave my partner the kind of grace or patience or understanding that i give to other people in my life that frankly probably do a lot less for me that show up a lot less for me yeah what would it look like if i started showing up for them in that way I think isn't a bad question.

1:04:23Interesting. What would you add to that subject? I would say one of the problems with emotional dysregulation is we as human beings tend to select the person who enables the dysregulation rather than the person we want to be with the most. Why do we select that person more? Because they tolerate our insufferable behavior a bit more. So sometimes as a woman who's suffered from lots of emotional dysregulation in the past, I would find myself just seeing somebody's tolerance of my insufferable behavior as a symbol of love. So sometimes people who can't regulate their emotions will look for the punching bag in their life.

1:04:54They'll look for the person that they can be dysregulated for and that person remains committed and they see that as a signal of love and they connect with the person who actually has weak boundaries. So a combination of emotional dysregulation and selecting somebody who is tolerable. Who accepts the dysregulation. Yeah, it leads to that dysregulation not being resolved. I think the key question is that with emotional dysregulation, we know if we do that at work, we'll get fired. And we know that if we do that in public, we'll get arrested if we do that in public. But when we pick a partner and we make sure that that partner doesn't actually have a willingness to walk away, or that partner just allows it the most, we might just exude all of our dysregulation on that one party.

1:05:35So it's really important when you suffer from emotional dysregulation to select a partner that still, just because they can tolerate it doesn't mean they should. And they should still, and you on the receiving end, still have a threshold of how much you can and can't accept. And only when a partner or a person who's emotionally dysregulated meets somebody that they genuinely love and respect, but also has a very clear threshold of how much they can handle, does a dysregulated partner start to monitor their own reactions. But if they feel like they can get away with it, sometimes they will. So I think dysregulation can lead to selection of enablers, rather than selections of compatibility.

1:06:13What is this quote? I'm sure you both have heard this. If they can't accept me at my worst, they don't deserve me at my best. What do you guys think about that saying in relationships? I used to be a big banner for that because I was a nightmare myself. So I was like, oh, I love this statement. But I think if you can't respect somebody at your worst, you don't deserve them at your best. And so while you're at your worst, if you totally disrespect that person and totally crush their boundaries, you don't deserve them when they're at their best or you don't deserve them when you're at your best so instead of expecting somebody to tolerate your behavior respect remember you also have a duty of care to them and you should also say at my worst i don't want to put them through so much suffering at my worst i want to express myself i understand i'm not going to be perfect but doesn't mean i treat them as an emotional punching bag that's so i can't yeah emotionally punch on them all day long and then say well you have to deal with my emotions and then you'll get a party on your birthday like it doesn't really work that way so it's almost like a form of manipulation and i'm saying in the worst case scenario because i've been that person that had that kind of mantra but it's actually how we treat our loved ones at our worst is a symbol of how much we respect them and we need to try and be mindful of that because some people just can't tolerate you at your worst doesn't mean they don't love you it's just that they can't they're not equipped for that level of like emotional dysregulation you should you should be able to i mean you're worst as a child i'm assuming you're going to scream and throw tantrums constantly but then hopefully you learn how to develop your emotions and navigate your emotions so that you can be frustrated or have a breakdown but not trash on someone yeah not punish someone not punish someone to say you're doing this to me right it's like learning how to you know maybe you need to step away or maybe you're going to get loud for a moment but you're not going to attack someone ask yourself would you tolerate you at your worst if at your worst you get abusive right now yeah yeah right i mean i'm good right now but yeah in the past i wouldn't but right now it's fine but in the past if your worst looks like emotional abuse if it looks like infidelity if it looks like a physical abuse um would you tolerate you at your worst and if you would perfect you're probably in a healthy space if you wouldn't what would you suggest to somebody who's going to have to what would you say to yourself if you had to experience that and if the if you would say to yourself oh just leave don't tolerate that then don't expect your partner to tolerate it now why is it so hard to leave a relationship when after many years when someone treats you poorly or they have dysregulation frequently let's call it on a weekly basis or every other day it seems like dysregulation or this type of emotional i don't know if you want to call it abuse or roller coaster roller coaster emotions, lack of respect.

1:08:58Why would you say, Matthew, it's so hard to leave a relationship? The relationship is failing. It's not healthy, but people tend to stay. In your work that you do with a lot of women, why do women stay so long? Maybe there's kids or not kids involved, but why do women stay and how can they start to shift to make it healthier or get out of it in a healthy way i think it's well it would be it would be termed the trauma bond right that there's a there's this behavior that makes life really hard with this person or it might even make it intolerable but we tolerate it for as long as we can and then you know if it ever got too too bad for too long we would just have to leave right if it was if it was just hell 24 7 no matter what we would leave it would be enough we would reach a certain pain threshold but there's doses of moments right of good moments there's that moment where you know someone does something that hints a different side of them it hints at the potential for kindness the potential for understanding it hints at what the relationship could be or was in the beginning or was in the beginning and and that reels us back in and we are so elated and so happy to have this moment that we then say okay i'm gonna i'm gonna go back in and then of course the other side the other shoe drops which it always does and um you know i i think of it as a a broken clock right the the broken clock is right twice a day you don't think is a good what it's not a good watch for telling the time yeah right it's failed in its fundamental function but when it's right you go well you know like that kind of relationship you're describing is the broken watch we're trying to use this thing to tell the time thinking that oh no it was right a minute ago well maybe maybe it is working after all and then we have to wait another 12 hours before it's right again so that you have to ask yourself am i in that broken watch relationship um and if i am what's what's the way to get out of that well i think one of the ways is to properly tune into your feelings because i think we don't really tune into what our experience is we are so focused on where it could go or the fact that we think that we will be uh we'll never be okay if we lose this person that i will how will i get by can i can i deal with the pain of losing this person if i could just get them and turn them into the thing that i need them to be then i'll be happy we're so fixated on that that we're not fixated on the pain that we are in constantly yeah which is making us miserable or if we really paid attention we'd look at how this disproportionately makes us miserable a i worked with someone who ended a relationship with a very toxic person and this person was never around this person was completely dismissive even on the weekends when they were together this person was just on their laptop paying them absolutely zero attention and the woman that i was coaching i remember at the end of the relationship she said i just don't know how i'm gonna do this how i'm gonna be on my own and then i showed her the relation yeah like if i'm not i don't know how i'm gonna be on my own and then i actually showed her the relationship you are on your own i said this person's never home they stay out on the weekends you're completely alone even when you're in the same room you've spent the last five years learning how to be alone you're already good at this you just have this old association that that i when i leave i'm not going to be able to take it but you already have the tools why is it why does it seem like it's easier as a girlfriend or a guy friend of a person in a struggling relationship why is it easy for them to see man this has been two years you've been in this pattern this loop of up and down emotional roller coaster and it doesn't seem healthy when it's so hard for the person in the relationship to realize, man, this is broken.

1:13:28This is not working, but I'm going to keep trying to make it work. I'm going to keep trying to get that clock to hit the right time every minute. Why is it so hard for people to understand they're in a broken relationship? The investment they've placed into it makes it very difficult for them to see objective reality. In their mind, they have a vision of the future. It might involve children, it might involve a home, it might involve any kind of connection. And they think that vision can only be achieved with the person they've invested the most in. They don't realize that vision is still achievable outside of this relationship.

1:13:57They attribute the ability to achieve all of that to this relationship working out. As a friend or a family member, you can say, well, you're still a great person. You can still find love. You can still have kids. You can still get married. But you can do it outside of this relationship. They don't see the vision outside of the relationship. So they've zoomed into the perspective of only through this person can I achieve my end goals. We as friends and family can say your goals are still are separate to this individual. They can still occur but with somebody who doesn't have the unhealthy traits that make it impossible in this certain situation.

1:14:30What do you think of the things you know we're talking about why relationships fail but what do you think of the things that people don't do before committing to the relationship that end up causing it to be just a rocky foundation to start with which is destined to fail? What are things that women do or men do that you think set up a rocky foundation? I'll let you start. They don't communicate what is a deal breaker to them. They know all the things that they like. I like to go on dinner dates. I like to do this. I like to do that. But they forget that the stability of the relationship depends on the actual deal breakers rather than all the things that you love about the person.

1:15:07What are some examples of deal breakers that people don't communicate? It might be lack of availability, emotional availability. It might be lack of affection. So they might be funny. They might have a great job. They might be beautiful, all of those things. But if they are emotionally unavailable or if they are not considerate or if they're not compassionate as a person, but I haven't realized that, that deal breaker is still there causing disruption of peace every single day. But if I realize my deal breakers and I go into it with a mentality that as long as I don't care if you're an angel on paper, but if you've got even one deal breaker, chances are we'll fight about this deal breaker forever.

1:15:38Really? It could just be that, you know, we disagree on a deal breaker might be commitment levels. How much commitment do I want? Or just a deal breaker might be how much time we spend together, quality time. It might be any of the love languages. One of them might be a deal breaker for you. But if that person has even one deal breaker, it will resurface again and again until the relationship slowly starts to corrode. So it's important to express what you think emotionally might be a deal breaker for you. And what do you what do you think are the biggest deal breakers for people? We just say it's sex or topics around sex, money and topics around money, family, kids, religion or something else.

1:16:18God, I suppose it could be anything depending on the person. Or is it just literally like we could have three things that are right, but if we have two that are off, like eventually it's going to be harder to make it work? Like, what do you think? I mean, I think if we have a very different vision for how we want to live our lives, those are really hard. One person wants a family and the other one doesn't. But to the point of communication, those are things that often people turn a blind eye to. Why is that? Why do we not communicate deal breakers and things that are actually really important before committing to the relationship?

1:16:57We have a scarcity mindset. it it's that that fear of nothing better is going to come along look i think that in our love lives especially we really want to meet someone oh it's a universal thing we really want to meet someone and when we haven't met someone we can start to get scared as time goes on and we think there's something wrong with us and I'm broken and I'm never going to find someone and what if it never happens for me and god it's so hard to meet someone and so the most dangerous moment in love and dating is the moment you meet someone you're attracted to that is the most dangerous moment because if you meet a person you're attracted to in a place of scarcity and fear that is precisely the time that you lower your standards and you lose your boundaries because the instinct is don't do anything that could mess it up the instinct is not let me see how right this is don't do anything to screw this up now people have different ways of dealing with that fear but if you take you know one example is some people go into like anxious fawning right i'm scared i'm just gonna do everything i what what kind of category characterizes anxious fawning i'm gonna anxious fawning fawning yeah i'm gonna like so i'm anxious And my instinct when I'm anxious is to try to make you happy.

1:18:41Because if I can make you happy, maybe you'll never leave me. So for a lot of people, what that means is I overgive at the same time as under communicating what I really need, which is a really poisonous combination. Right. Because it simultaneously means you burn out giving to someone, but also no one knows what you really want. And you can resent the person for not giving you what you need that you haven't communicated it. yeah you resent them but you're too afraid to rock the boat because you don't want to lose them and it's fascinating to me like you can literally look at different types of people and how they how they react to that like if you if you are doing that and you come across an avoidant someone who's avoidant is going to get pushed away they're going to be like this is a lot and you're going to keep giving even though they've pulled away because that's what you do but you're not going to communicate that it's hurt you that you've pulled away so with an avoidant type you won't get your needs met because you won't communicate as they pull away you'll just keep giving hoping that they'll come back if you come across an anxious person and you're anxiously fawning that person might consume you everyone but most people or not most people some people have had that experience with a parent where their parent was just trying to get their own needs met and they became the child that gave and gave and gave and gave and gave to try to make the parent happy but because they had no boundaries around that they became deeply resentful of this one-sided relationship with their parent people then go into that in relationships too where it's like they just live in service of this other person who's anxiously taking as much as they can if you come across a secure person and you're anxiously fawning then that person's going to have a hard time connecting with you because they're not going to know what your preferences are you're going to say they're going to say what do you want for dinner and you say what do you want for dinner and they'll go uh i don't know chinese food and you'll and you'll go that was me too i wanted that and if you do that three times in a row they'll realize they don't know who you are yeah they can't connect with you they don't know how to make you happy and they can't really trust you because they can't trust that you're ever really saying what you really think so i say this to highlight the fact that this is how these dynamics get started is we're coming from a place of fear and when we're coming from a place of fear we go to the weapons that we know how to use right we all have our weapon of choice for some people it's i don't let anyone screw with me and that's their weapon of choice and the moment they think they could get hurt they reject someone before that person can reject them other people is my weapon of choice is making trying to do as much as possible for you that i make myself indispensable we it's worth everyone asking like what's my weapon of choice what do i default to and if i never question what i'm defaulting to i'm gonna be i'm gonna always be in the same kinds of relationships and by the way that anxious fawning i'm talking about who does it attract the toxic person right because that person sees a free lunch of course like i'm i'm gonna come and take everything from the buffet here and then when i'm with it i'm out so we then we go how why do i always attract people like this or why do i always fall into these patterns it's because there is a a weapon that we are overusing and at some point we have to like it's a very brave thing to go what weapon am i overusing and recognize by the way that's meeting a need that there's some need it's meeting right if i if i'm a healthy need but if I'm like if I crack jokes and make everyone laugh and I know I can do that then it meets a need for me it's control I know that I can control the room through making people laugh now it also might be a barrier to connection in situations where sincerity is called for and we never get deep because I'm always making jokes but if I stop joking and I say I'm going to try and create a deeper connection and that means I'm going to pull back from the sarcasm let's say i've taken away my own most practiced sharpened weapon and i may not know how to operate in this new territory i now may find myself almost like a toddler in conversation going i don't know how to play this game right i don't know how i'm how to connect with people when i'm not being funny and it requires us almost to get worse before we get better to feel like we're taking a step backwards before we take a step forwards.

1:23:16The step forwards might ultimately be a far healthier relationship or a far better relationship than anything we've ever experienced. But we might have to go almost like go back to like learning how to walk again in an area and give up that power we're used to feeling so that we can have something much more rewarding on the other side of it.

1:23:39I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to the next episode on the School of Greatness.

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1:24:57And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.