Relationship Expert: The SECRET to Healing Your Relationship After Conflict

27:18Simple, not easy, everybody. This is super, super tricky. You have to really listen. Even when you feel heightened emotions, you have to say, I'm gonna listen, you're gonna listen, we're gonna create an agreement around who's listening. Without interruption, right? It's like... It is hard. This is hard. It's like, we don't really realize how challenging these skills can be to put into play. Like we need so much repetition for these to. So listen, you're going to, you're going to go one at a time. You're going to say it's your partner's turn. They're going to say something that pisses you off and you're going to jump in.

27:49That's going to happen. Like we just have to know that that is going to happen as we're practicing this. This is a lifelong journey here. But the move is to know who's most dysregulated and that person should get repairing first. So first before ever entering into a repair conversation, you need to both, I call it do nothing. Like go into your separate sparring corners and like drink water, take a bath, phone a friend, talk to a therapist, do whatever you need, put your feet on the ground, like whatever you need to start to ground a little bit to start to regulate. Once at least one of you is, you know, regulated at like a, on a scale of one to 10, like a three or below, then you're ready to have a repair conversation.

28:35Then you're ready to, you're ready to go in. At this point, if I, if we're, if you and I are repairing and I'm, and you're the one who needs repairing first, I have to overhear, be like, okay, it's not that I don't get my turn, but my turn just isn't right now. For a lot of us, especially my people pleasers who are listening that's me also recovering in the house you have to know that you're going to get a turn yeah so how i think about it is you like zip down this little meat suit you just zip it down and you just take your perspective off and you put it over the side and you just take a little cat nap you just take not that your perspective doesn't matter not that it's not important it's just taking a nap for the time being so that i can come in over here and focus 100 % of my effort and energy and attention, even though I have my truth over here, even though I have my perspective over here, I have what happened that really hurt me over here, we're going to address that.

29:29We're just not going to address it right this second. So if I know that, then I actually can zone in on you. Now I can start to get curious about what is happening over in your world. This is what I was talking about with the second piece, which is agreement. Yes. We get so caught in needing to agree. Like you're going to say something and all of a sudden it's going to need to change my mind about my worldview and what happened for me. We don't need to do that. Agreement is the enemy of attunement. And attunement is really what we need in order to repair. We need empathy, right? Attunement, empathy, I can use them kind of interchangeably.

30:07And there are two types of empathy, emotional empathy and cognitive empathy. Honestly, there are probably more. This is Susan David at Harvard. She talks about this, and I think it's a really brilliant way to think about it. Emotional empathy is I feel what's happening over here with me. And as you talk and you speak and I start to learn more about what's going on for you, I can start to feel how that feels for you, how that hurt you. It's not that I leave myself, but all of a sudden I can start like, oh, wow, if I believed what you believe, I can totally see how that would hurt and how you would be angry and sad and frustrated about that.

30:46That doesn't mean by the way that I don't have my perspective. It's just taking a nap. It's just still over here. But now, because I know it's only taking a nap, I can just come over to you and be like, be so immersed in your experience. Cognitive empathy, I might not feel what you feel, but now I can start to understand it on a really different level. Your story is starting to make sense to me. I'm starting to be like, ah, okay, well, again, if you believed that, that makes sense to me. It's not necessarily happening in my body, but I can understand it cognitively. This doesn't mean we agree.

31:21And I think this is so important because it's where we find collapse in conflict is when we feel like we have to take our perspective away or the thing that happened to us away in order for you to feel repair. I also have something that I call the 70 % rule that I discovered because this is a hard one for me, which is when we start to expect about 70 % attunement, 70 % of you're trying, you're doing it good enough, you're asking the questions. It might not be exactly how I want you to ask them or in the tone, but you're like doing, you're doing. You're trying. Yeah, yeah. It's like 70 % there.

32:05The 70 % is the couple's work. It's like below 70%, the couple needs more work. But anything beyond the 70%, that 30%, that's really your work. That's the part of yourself that is sort of unrepairable with. That's how I think. I'll never forget. Emmy, my wife, and I were in this fight, and she's trying to repair with me. It's before bed, and she's pulling out all the stops. Trying everything. everything she could possibly do to pull it out everything and we're in there for maybe an hour and eventually i just look at her and i was like i don't think there's any way for you to win right now and she looks at me and she goes thank you and it was actually in that moment that i started to understand this more that i was like oh this is mine to do this is the part of myself the well of loneliness that i am so deeply needing quote-unquote needing somebody else to meet in me because I'm so afraid to meet that black well of sadness in myself.

33:06Once I got that, now I know what's mine to do. I know where my work is because she has met me as much as she can meet me. This is important work for me to do. And then the last one is responsibility. And we know this because of the MITT and I know this from the landmark world, which we both did years and years ago. And generally, when we don't know what it means to truly take responsibility, we're either absolving responsibility and putting it onto you, so I'm blaming you. Yep. Or I'm taking all of it. Yeah, yeah. And I have so much shame. And then you're resentful also, probably. Yeah, it's like.

33:52And you can't actually meet your partner in that space. You can't actually meet their pain in the place where I feel so much shame about the thing that I did that all I can think about is like, oh, I can't believe I hurt you. What is it about me that made me do that? And now I've completely left your experience. So neither work. Like we've got to - And the partner feels abandoned because you're in your shame world versus trying to repair still, right? It's like, yeah. Completely. It's like, okay, you did this bad thing. now you're in this world and I have to tend to you, even though you hurt me.

34:25So now I feel like I didn't get repair. Yes. Because now I'm trying to soothe your pain of feeling so guilty and shameful. Yeah. Now we're over here in your world where what happened to what I was just going through and now I've been completely left. This power struggle phase is exhausting. It's a tough one. It's a tough one.

34:48and by the way just to name you don't actually go through you know merging and power struggle and interdependence and interdependence as some like linear you know you can go back into the power struggle when there's a new transition that you're going through when someone loses a job when there's something really big that happens like you can you can kind of go you can you know move through the phases and it's not it's you know as we know relationships aren't so linear yeah um but but knowing that there is a way that when you're either blaming outward or you're blaming yourself neither of those places are going to help you actually meet the needs of your partner that's so true and it's really important to get there's i actually brought this we can go over it if you want.

35:33This is it. Okay. So this is, this is, um, I, I got this from, uh, uh, Terry real also. I think, listen, I don't necessarily buy into one modality of couples work or another, but I think this simplifies where we go when we're triggered. So I think it's kind of an easy, easy model to look at. So what is this? What is this? So this is called the relationship grid. This is explaining when we go into blaming outward, right? We go, it's, it's what you call grandiosity. This is where this isn't me. This is all you. You did this. You did this. You need to take responsibility. That's right. Like this isn't, this isn't me.

36:08I didn't, I, there was no fault over here. We tend to, and this is going to be on the dramatic end of things. We tend to either go up, one up to grandiosity or one down into shame. But we do a couple of other things too. We either go into boundaryless behavior and boundaryless behavior is yelling. It's crying. is exactly how it sounds. It's crossing over your boundaries in order to get my needs met. Or to protect ourselves, we wall off. These are the silent people. These are the ones who are going like, you know. We give in also? Is that what we do? Or is that more boundaryless? Well, it depends on where you fall in the quadrant.

36:44We'll get to that. I used to give in to like someone blaming or screaming or crying at me. So I didn't create a boundary to try to keep peace, but I never had peace. No, no, no, no. I have a guess of where you fall, but I want to say. Okay. So those are the four places on the quad. But we basically embody one of these four places. So in grandiosity, if we go one up into grandiosity and we tend to be more boundaryless, this is behavior that's – it's, again, the very dramatic end. This is where all abuse and violence lives. This is yelling. This is hitting. This is throwing things. When you are being grandiose towards your partner and you're not having a boundary.

37:24Is that what you're saying? It's not actually not having a boundary. And we can talk about boundaries in a bit. Boundarylessness is, it's like the way that we express ourselves. So if someone who's walled off is going to get quiet and reserved and distanced, the boundaryless person is going to get needy and please, and it can show up in a lot of different ways. Actually, that's the one. If you're getting needy and graspy, that's down here. So up here in grandiosity, your boundarylessness, that's where it looks like anger pointed at you. I'm screaming. I'm getting big. I'm trying to intimidate you.

37:58When we go down from boundaryless and shame-based, so now we're in the one down category. Now I'm not yelling at you and making things about you. I'm over here being like desperate and need. Please don't leave me. Please. I'll do anything. Like I didn't mean to do that. I can't believe I just did that. Again, I'm being dramatic. Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. But, but, and my guess is neediness. Yes. I'll make it go away. Okay. I'll do anything that you need. This is appeasement, but appeasement can also be walled off but you're probably going to find more appeasement in the like okay i just want to make this is why i kind of feel like this is where you may have lived i don't know but maybe not the extreme no no but in that area for sure most of us by the way don't inhabit the exchange some of us do but you know this is like you can think about what the moderate version may look like i would do this i this is where i live i live in boundary listen one down and so how it would look for me is i would be she would my wife goes into kind of a walled off closed down space and I would do it super covertly.

38:55I would be like, oh baby, are you like a little bit shut down right now? Do you, like I wouldn't go into like, I would therapize her. I would be like, do you need space? Like, is there something that you need? But I'm not doing it from a regulated place. I'm doing it from a place of please don't leave me. Wow, really? Yeah, totally, totally. Okay, so then we go over to walled off and shame based. This is like - Just create, before you go on there, what would happen if she left you? Like, or someone left you. What would happen for you if someone's like, you know what, I've tried, this just doesn't work for me anymore.

39:25I think we're done. How would that make you feel? By the way, that's happened. But what happens in you when that happens, I guess, or that's happened. It's actually sort of what I talked about before. It's the place in me where I go is this lonely well that feels like if I touch it, it's so big that I'll die. That's how it feels. It feels like this space of like there's one place i can't go it's that dark thing that lives in this amorphous place that if i touch it it's like the world ends what is that thing is that you being alone or not loved by one person or not accepted by one person or is that what does that mean for me it's the it's the space of if you leave me you prove that i am actually as unlovable as i may think i am And that's in kind of my unhealthiest space.

40:21That's where I go. I've done a lot of work on that part. But the part in me that will always exist, that I'll always do work on is the part in me that feels like no matter what I do, am I actually lovable? Can you really love me if I have a big reaction? Am I worth loving or would you leave? Would you walk? And so part of, again, my kind of young adult life and growing up in relationships would be, I'm going to be big and I'm going to get loud so that you can prove to me. So you can come in and show me. Show me you're not going anywhere. No matter what I do. No matter what I do. You'll still be here.

40:59Yes. Yeah, which I got to tell you, it didn't work so well. It was not a winning game if we're going to talk about, you know, not. Why do you think I'm in the space of repair? Repair has been the hardest place for me in all of my relationships. And I have had a lot. So this is just like the work that I've had to do for myself. I grew up in Salt Lake City where my parents were hippies and I wasn't Mormon. But I grew up so desperately wanting to fit in. And so I went to church. I dated the Mormon guys. Your parents didn't go to Mormon church. No, no, no. They weren't hippies. They weren't LDS. No, no, no, no.

41:35But you were in a community where a lot of people did. It was Salt Lake City in the 90s. Mostly everyone was Mormon. So you wanted to fit in and be accepted. I wanted to do. That's what they were doing. And so you're like, I'll go. At such a young age, I learned how to chameleon. Uh-huh. I learned how - I did the same thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was. I remember in junior high getting into seventh grade and being like, okay, there's a new game to play. And it's called I'm Going to Be Liked and Popular by Every Single Person in This School. And I will do everything to fit in with every single person.

42:07And so that's what I did. You could take me anywhere. And the Bea you would see in hip hop dance class would be a completely different Bea you would see in church with my friend or dating my boyfriend or whatever it would be. And by the way, it worked. Of course. Everything you would, I was miss high school until it didn't work. It worked until you realized my nervous system is still unregulated. it worked until i would i would date i would literally be like i gotta tell you i'm kind of like an indoor outdoor cat i like i can be outside but like you know i actually feel really good inside and being warm and cozy and whatever and i would date you know pro athletes and be like yeah let's go on a black diamond on a really crappy day outside where it's gonna be you know super cold and yeah let's go i'm in and like the whole time i'm like i hate this i hate this is terrible.

43:01But I didn't care because all I wanted to do, it was like, I was great at the game of seduction. And in fact, I went, I used to teach a workshop when I was younger called Seduction 101. I used to be in the, in the. So you like seducing men. Oh, it was a game to like, get them to be into you. Yes. But then what? You didn't know what to do with them? But then about six months later, like you're saying, what am I doing? I was probably a lot like your ex, like six months later, I would be like, oh, I can't keep the game up any longer. Now it just, now I don't know how hide it anymore so here's this thing that it's actually really vulnerable and here's how it's gonna it's gonna come out sideways and lopsided and not cute and you're gonna accept me for who i am not that i'm not this perfect person that you saw for six months totally i mean it sounds like my life yeah i gotta i gotta tell you from from all of your exes i just want to say i'm sorry to my exes i'm sorry i i i didn't know better and it wasn't it wasn't by the way i was not doing this consciously this was who i was it was like survival it was as easy to me as drinking up this glass of water and drinking it like there was nothing to it it wasn't like i had to sit there and be like oh what am i going to do next to make this person like me what happens when you seduce a man from a wounded place or a man seduces a woman from a wounded place what happens to that relationship?

44:22So there is a theory that we attract somebody who is at our level of emotional development. Or based on their psychological wounds, Dr. Tara Swart would say. Yeah, you attract based on your psychological wound. Totally. And so as much healing as I've done, I'm going to scan the room and probably be attracted to the person who's done just as much healing and is on in about my stage of development. I mean, because what would happen when that I dated a fantastic one of my best boyfriends, he was amazing. I was bored out of my mind. I was bored out of my mind and ended up breaking up with him for no reason other than I just couldn't name it.

45:07But it just didn't like make me feel alive. I had no idea what healthy love felt like or looked like healthy love is a little. It can feel a little boring at times in some way it's not supposed to be like this no i know firework that's that's i had to learn that though i had to learn what and i feel peaceful i exactly i wouldn't actually call it boring i would feel peaceful calm peaceful not boring yeah yeah but that's how it felt in my system 100 and so what would i do i would scan for attraction it's not like i knew out of the gate that's who i was going for so what happens when someone wounded attracts someone wounded well guess what we're going to hit against each other's wounds.

45:44Now, I want to say this because I think this is important. Okay. We don't necessarily... It's almost impossible to go into a relationship fully healed. Of course. My perspective is we do most of our healing inside of relationships. It's going to be harder to do that healing when two people come from trauma, when even one of you comes from trauma. It's going to be harder. It's going to be more volatile. It's going to take more work. You both need to be committed to saying, I want to grow. That is, to me, the number one thing to look for. And it's not just someone who wants to do it, but who can.

46:25Can, willing, and will do it. And will do it. And so you watch behavior change over time because we're all fallible human beings. It's not, you know, we're - You're not perfect yet? Wouldn't you imagine that I am after all this? Just talk to my wife. She's definitely going to be imperfect. What kills trust more than anything in a relationship in your mind? Threatening the relationship. Threatening it. Yes. What does threatening the relationship look like? Saying you're going to leave when you actually are not going to leave. To me, this is the number one trust killer. Because what happens when you start to threaten that you're going to leave and then you don't do it, and then the next time you get into a fight, you threaten to leave again, your partner now starts to not feel safe bringing things to you because they feel like every time they're going to, they say something that you're going to disagree with, that the relationship is on the line.

47:13So they'll stop feeling safe bringing things to you and you'll stop trusting yourself. So it is a one-two punch that is so detrimental to the health of a relationship that, and the threatening to leave and not doing it. I mean, think about it. You, when, when you say it, I'm going to, and then don't, think about how degrading to your own sense of what you're going to do, your own sense of responsibility, integrity, all of it. Even if, yeah, yeah. If you don't do what you say you do, you're weakening your identity. And part of you feels that. Like, part of you feels that. And so as much as you can, if you do not intend to leave, there's a very big difference of I'm actually contemplating leaving.

47:56Really, it is on the table. And we need to address the thing that is going to have me stay or go. and being in the heat of the moment triggered and just saying you're out, but not meeting it. And then five days later, you're in a spiral again. It's so detrimental to the health of relationship. I cannot overstate it. I can only imagine the amount of traumatic experiences you've had in past relationships, because I know I've had a lot of them. And one that reminded me of this is when I was 23, I was in a relationship with a woman who was a few years older than me and it wasn't good from the beginning like it was just the dynamic wasn't right all these different things but you know she threatened to like take her own life multiple times not not like leave the relationship but she threatened is she threatened that and as a 23 year old i had no clue how to handle any of this let alone intimacy like i was just so okay what do you need me to do is like oh you know it happened to multiple times where it was like a threat to ending her life and i'm just like how do i navigate this what if this actually happens you know and i just didn't understand anything about it and i remember one day after like whatever the third time is happening after like i don't know six or eight months or something she was like i laugh i don't know about you but i have like a a laugh when something's really traumatic you know it's like thinking of a memory i'm like this is not that funny but it was scary this is like in therapy when someone laughs and it's not funny and you've got to be like yeah that's not funny there's a reason you know yeah it's not funny but it's just like i can look back and it's kind of funny 20 years later or whatever but she i was sleeping on my this is how bad she was i'm sleeping on my sister's couch i have no money uh i'm sleeping on my sister's place and she comes she's trying to call me all day and she comes to the her my sister's house where she knows i'm living and she's like i'm on the why i laugh but if something's bad she says i'm on the i know right she goes she goes i'm on the doorsteps with a knife it's funny so i'm on the doorstep with a knife i'm gonna stab myself in the stomach if you don't come out right now and get back with me.

50:20And I kid you not, this is all of her text, right? This is all her text because I didn't pick up her calls. And she was like calling me obsessively all day. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't pick up. And I kid you not, I was just like, something switched off in me where I was just like, this was multiple times after eight months or something. And in my mind, I said, do it. You know, I was just like, I'm sick of being this person where you're threatening to do something that you don't do, you know? And I'm talking about if you're threatening to leave a relationship but i'm a 23 year old and i'm just like i'm sick of this i'm tired of this manipulation and i was at the point i was like in my mind i said do it i didn't text her that i called 9-1-1 and i said my girlfriend ex-girlfriend is outside of the house here's what's happening she's threatening i have all the text messages can you please come and do something i don't know what to do and i just called 9-1-1 they came and arrested her against I laughed because it was just a crazy moment in my life.

51:17And I remember just being like, I didn't know what to do. What do you do in these environments where someone's threatening the relationship, threatening to take their life or doing something extreme, hurt themselves, harm themselves, harm another person, threatening something? These are things that we as human beings usually are not equipped with. We don't have the skills, the tools emotionally, physically, logically on how to navigate the emotions of another person or the threats of another person. And it is a scary thing when someone threatens any of these things to exit the relationship, to exit the world or harm someone.

51:54It's terrifying. This is where 12-star programs like Al-Anon, Coda, Adult Children of Alcoholics, this is where programs like this are actually really helpful because they're not only free, but they, so they're helpful resources in that way, but they teach you about what it actually means to take care of yourself when you are with somebody who cannot take care of themselves. And these could be relationships where you can't leave, where it's dangerous, where, and that's really what they're there for. So I do think this is where programs like that, because you're right, we don't, who's teaching us this?

52:32No one's equipped to deal with somebody who says, I'm going to kill myself if you leave me. I mean, no one, unless you've ever been in that situation, you have no idea how you're going to react. No idea. Especially if you're wounded psychologically and your immune system or your nervous system's off. It's like, ah. Yeah.

52:52Again, your main focus is how to repair from conflict, something you've researched for a long time. Is there anything that someone can do in a relationship that is unrepairable? i think that's up to the people in the relationship like for some people infidelity is a deal breaker yeah period yeah for others they can actually get through it and it will make them stronger that's just the truth so i think in some ways that's a per that's a pretty personal question you know even people there are people in relationships where someone has murdered someone else and they're still in that relationship. That person is in jail and they visit them.

53:32Wow. That's, you know, so is there, I don't think I'm the person to answer that. I think that deeply depends on your value system. Interesting. But in your work, I guess, with people who come to you for repair, you know, information and expertise, what have you seen that is almost like a deal breaker? Every time this happens, it's hard to come back. Here's what I'll say. If there's active addiction, it's really hard to... It's hard, if not impossible, to repair. Because you're in a cycle of retox and detox, and you're not really in relationship with that person. You're in relationship with their dysregulation and their addiction.

54:09Right. And that is almost... You're just saying, I commit to accept this life for the rest of my life. Yeah. And some people do. So I'm not even saying that's bad or wrong to stay, but I'm saying it's really hard to repair with someone who is in active addiction. it's also really hard if not impossible to repair in situations where there's high levels of manipulation you know personality disorder yeah yeah yeah and i know you've had dr um romany on a couple of times yeah and and so she'll speak to this much more intelligently than i will but but because what's happening in manipulation cycles is there is no intention to actually repair there is intention for power and control and coercion and when only one person is in on that game and the other person is trying to repair both people have to be in on the repair in order for it's a two-person game you can't deal with them no no so those except i'm with this type of person they're never going to change is this the life i want and maybe i don't have a choice because my life's in danger my kids life's in danger i have to learn and then you make it work and then you make it work however you need to make it work you get yourself in a program you get a therapist you just you you learn to live with it in a way that that you need to yeah interesting so if someone's in addiction and unwilling to to get out of addiction that's really hard to have a thriving relationship you're in a you're in a relationship with their dysregulation they're consistently going to be in either on a substance or coming off of a substance and that's impossible to you have in order to repair you have to be in a regulated place at least one of you and if one person is always the one who's dysregulated they haven't and and with addiction it's hard to come into a regulated state ever really like you're always again and kind of detox or retox that's that's consistently happening in the background.

55:53So it's, it may not be impossible, but it is really, really hard. And it takes a lot of skill. And it's probably, I would say one mistake I see couples make a lot. And I see this online more than anything, is that they, to your point of therapy and getting into the work, they try over and over again to work whatever their trigger dance is without support. And their nervous systems are in too much intensity to actually address it on like you need a third party i i thank goodness for the kind of generation of practitioners and facilitators and therapists and coaches who came before us who normalized therapy because now we're in a culture who says therapy is fine yeah but getting into therapy earlier to your point that you've talked about i think or coaching or whatever getting support earlier a lot of times people here's the thing a lot of times people wait a really long time to come to see a couples therapist or practitioner.

56:48And by the time they get there, it might not be too late. It might be too late. But at that point, you've got to have somebody who is so skilled to work with you. And the truth is couples therapy is super hard. There just aren't that many great couples therapists. If you start at the beginning, though, when things aren't as bad, your couples therapist doesn't have to be as good. Yeah, it's true. But if you start where things are like, It is do or die and you're on the brink. Good luck. Your therapist, first of all - It's like a miracle. It is. It's just really hard to find a really good - And here's the thing, you know, you got to give - Yeah, I feel for couples therapists because you're not just trying to help a relationship.

57:30You have to address each individual's childhood wounds and nervous systems and understand the psychoanalysis of each individual and their nervous system. And then the relationship, it's like you're helping three people. Yeah, it's not. Two individuals and a relationship with individual history of both and then relationship history. It's three entities. Totally. In an hour session once every month. I know. Good luck. I know. Or 50 minutes, which is what a lot of couples do. Good luck. I know. I know. It's going to take years. And that's why there is a lot of negative feedback with therapy because it's like, oh, we've been going once a week or once a month for six months and we're not getting improvement.

58:08It's a slow moving process. Because you need, I feel like you need extreme exposure therapy individually to start healing and processing these things, each individual. And if one person is willing to do the work more than the other, it's going to be harder for the relationship to really thrive. And it's going to feel like it's taking years and you're still not getting anywhere. Well, and this work in general, repair work in general, is hard and takes a long time and is a slow process. This is something that I liken it to going to the gym because I feel like you want to see muscles right away, but it's like years.

58:43And you're never, you would never expect to get fit going to the gym once a week. You would never expect to get fit going once and never showing up again. That's sort of how we psychologically think repair works is I'm going to show up. I'm going to, and I'm going to somehow naturally know how to do this, but you got to go to the emotional fitness gym and you've got to practice all the time. It's like literally it's almost like we're expecting that we should be able to be able to play Beethoven on the piano before ever being able to play chopsticks. Oh, yeah, we have to. This is the exposure. This is the exposure that over and over and over the small things.

59:18This is why like having a simple. OK, I know I need to do nothing at the beginning. I need to regulate myself. That's OK. That's one thing I need to practice. That could take. You could practice that for years. That's hard. OK, I need to practice perspective taking. There's a fantastic, I don't know if you've interviewed him, but he's a former CIA agent named Andrew Bustamante. I haven't yet. He's fantastic. And he has this, I love what he talks about around perspective and perception. Perception is where I sit over here every day. It's, okay, how do I look right now? Is this interview going well?

59:52It's where I live most of my life. Perspective taking is coming over to you and being like, okay, so how does Lewis think this is going? What's going on in Lewis's world over there? That's the skill. And really, you go one step further and it's perspective getting, which is not just, okay, you have another perspective and I can do the work to get in your world. But now I get it. I've been curious enough and even curiosity as that one skill. That's a freaking hard skill. That's complex. That's like learning how to get out of your own way, ask the right questions, ask them in a way that's going to elicit something.

1:00:29from your partner that you've never heard. Like these are hard tools. These are hard skills to learn. We need to practice them. But if I can practice getting out of my own perception over here and perspective take over there, but that's a, that's, he's talking about that as a CIA skill. Like we're not practicing that on a day-to-day basis. It can be really trick, but it is, but it is the practice that is required for entry. There is no other way. These, these are the skills that we have to. Relationships aren't as hard. This is, I think it was Alison Armstrong. And this is a quote from her that I'm going to butcher because I butcher every quote.

1:01:05I just can't remember them exactly. But it's something along the lines of relationships aren't as hard as we make them out to be. But the skills that we need are. Like we need to, we've just haven't been trained for relationships. That's it. We know, we psychologically understand that in order to get fit, we have to go to the gym. Period. Full stop. We have to work out. We just know that. No one needs convincing of that. We have not yet learned. We haven't like really gotten at the core of ourselves what it takes to be in healthy, long-term, secure, functioning relationship, especially for people who come from trauma.

1:01:39It takes a lot. It takes years and years of practice. And you can't expect to come into a relationship fully healed. That doesn't happen. You do your work on your own. But ultimately, most of the work that you're going to do is when you get triggered inside of relationships, period. Yes. And learning how to integrate the tools you've learned from the healing journey in the emotional reaction and say, how can I feel safe here? What's the tool I can use in this moment to calm my nervous system, to regulate so that I can take a break, not feel like I'm getting threatened and listen and then respond and know that I'm going to be safe after this uncomfortable hour to five hour conversation, 10 minute, whatever it is that I'm safe after.

1:02:21it's still going to be okay. I may not like it, but this is going to help me thrive. And I think the more we can learn how to have calm conversations when our nervous system is frustrated, it's just going to help us be better in relationships. Yeah. And that takes, we're not going to be able to have calm conversations if we're not used to that, or that wasn't modeled for us at the beginning. So don't expect that that's going to be, that just means, okay, next time I'm going to be a little more, or I'm going to be able to say one thing that's a little, that's that's the it's the micro exactly it's the micro repairs that actually ultimately 100 100 yeah it's a journey it's healing's a journey for late thriving relationships journey listen i'm only four and a half years in i'm a almost a year in marriage and i'm sure you know i'm gonna have to continue to learn how to do this like after kids and it's like she's gonna be different after kids her priorities she's already different yeah she's already totally i mean it's like and i have to continue to evolve and i have to continue to learn new skills and i have to continue to be even more present and more patient, which is like the thing I need to work on the most, all these things, right?

1:03:24It's like, I got to lean in and it's uncomfortable. It's not what I would like to do. It's not like, oh, this is all easy. But this is transformation and growth, which is ultimately the dojo of relationship. Exactly. And I think it's not easy, but it's rewarding if we're willing to lean in. And we can take the comfort convenience road and just keep things simple, I guess, or just try not to rock the boat. or we can lean in and say, how can I continue to develop as a human being to have the best relationship I can have? Or why am I in a relationship? It's like, if I'm not willing to go all in and try to transform myself and be of service to the relationship, sure, we have to take care of our needs.

1:04:04We don't want to neglect ourselves, but how can I take care of me and then serve the relationship? I just think that's the only way we're going to have a long lasting, healthy relationship that's going to have bumps and bruises and stuff like that. But like long term healthy is taking care of self and service to the relationship. It's a beautiful frame perspective. But again, I mean, I don't know, ask me in five years, but I mean, I just think that's probably the path. It's like, you've got to be willing to continue to reinvest in you and the relationship always for growth. You know, there was a moment right before Emmy and I got married.

1:04:38It was two weeks before our wedding and we got into one of the biggest fights we'd ever been two weeks before the wedding you both probably try to sabotage it you know it's like fear some some subconscious yeah yeah it was over something dumb too it was like i couldn't it was one of those fights that devolved so quickly that anyhow we ended up taking two nights of space and two weeks before you're supposed to get married two weeks before our wedding two weeks before our wedding wow we take two nights of space space for her is like a breath of fresh air she's like ah space for me is like it's painful it's a lot of pain she's like i'm free and you're like she's not going to think about it for two days.

1:05:14She's going to like romp around, do whatever. I'm going to be like in my pain body. And I want, you know, I'm just, anyway, that's who I am. So, so anyway, the first night I cry myself to sleep and I am just sobbing and sobbing and sobbing. And, and in that moment, I have this voice that I hear and it's like me, but smarter, like that version of me who just knows something I don't. And she starts being like, it's okay, keep crying i've got you and i'm crying and i'm sobbing she's saying it's okay i've got you keep crying keep going you're not going to be alone i'm here with you even if emmy leaves i'm here even if she goes away and never comes back i'm here and i'm sobbing and i'm sobbing and i'm sobbing until i until i basically cry myself to sleep at night and the next day i rewrote my vows and i said to her and i think about this i come back honestly i don't even remember any of our other vows this is the vow that i come back to all the time i said here's my heart the most vulnerable thing i can do is say to you you have it and and you do you have my heart because what i really want to say is you have my heart please keep it safe don't hurt it Don't hurt me.

1:06:35And what I know I'm saying is here's my heart. I know you'll drop it. I know you'll break it. And in the moments where you can't help me pick it up because of your wound and your trigger and your and your thing, I will do the work to pick up the parts of myself that are hardest for me to love and hardest for me to be with.

1:07:03and I won't have the expectation that you'll do that work for me. And I know that when you're able to hold my heart, you will. But when you're not able, I've got me. Yeah, that's beautiful. And I come back to that all the time in the moments that it is hardest to get me. Yeah. I think that's necessary. And that's very internal family systems kind of mindset. set. Yeah. There's lots of parts of us. I use it all the time. Grant talks about this a lot. Gabby Bernstein talks about this a lot. It's like, there's lots of parts of us. This is the body keeps the score. There's many parts of us and the highest conscious version of our adult self has to kind of build this like connecting relationship with all the parts of us that are wounded or the past parts that we haven't healed.

1:07:50And knowing that the adult in the room, the highest, healthiest whole version of us, it's like what you did there. It's like you had a conversation spiritually with the wounded part of yourself and you integrated safety within you. And as woo and weird as that sounds, I think psychologically, we all have this like psychological mind and it can mess us up a lot. It's like thinking of all these things, like our brain, we have to kind of take back the reins and the IFS format mindset is like having that relationship with the wounded parts of us, not making them wrong. It's also allowing them to have a voice, not trying to block them out.

1:08:28So I used to try to shut those voices up and get this wounded part away from me. I don't want to show this part of me, but it was like, gosh, then I'm just abandoning myself. I'm doing what I felt everyone else did to me when I was younger. If me as the adult is trying to kick out the five-year-old, the seven-year-old, the 13-year-old, the 23-year-old who felt like not enough, then I'm not healing that part of me. I'm trying to remove him from me. And that's not, that doesn't feel good. And that's what's yours to own. A hundred percent. That work your partner can support with, but ultimately your partner cannot heal for you.

1:09:05They can't do it. They can't do it.

1:09:11And it's where we get ourselves into trouble. I've certainly have where you expect, this is the 70%, right? Where your partner can only show up so much, but if they're giving 70%, like a solid 70, that 30 % is your, and you're still not, you know, you feel unrepairable with that 30 % is yours. Yeah. I mean, you could also even reframe it. If it's 70, 30, you could say like, they've got to give a hundred percent of themselves and you've got to give a hundred percent to like, what do you call it? 70, 30 or a hundred, a hundred. But it's like, you got to be willing to go all in and it's going to look differently.

1:09:43But if we are not able to learn the strategies and the tools for self-regulation, that is healing the parts of us that we're ashamed of, feel not enough. Healing the parts of, I heard you say this early in the conversation, it's like, I used to feel like if anyone knew this about me, no one would love me. Totally. If anyone knew this part of me at this season of life, if anyone knew I thought this thing, if I did this thing, how much shamed I felt, no one would actually love me. And that was my biggest fear. If anyone knew that I'd been sexually abused and raped by a man, no one will ever love me.

1:10:19It was 25 years I've kept this secret from the world, from anyone in my world. And it rocked my heart. It rocked everything inside of me. And I was just like, I have to project confidence. I have to project that I'm strong. I have to project that all these different things. Because if anyone knew that this happened to me, no one would love me. No one would accept me. I would be alone for the rest of my life. It was a survival mechanism. So I had to learn how to heal and have like grace and acceptance for that younger version of me when the healing journey started and just know that like, okay, that's why I showed up in certain ways.

1:10:57And that's why I attracted certain people. And that's why I had no boundaries. And that's why all these different things and have compassion for that 25 years of life, which you're like, man, I missed out on all these opportunities. And what if I just would have known this sooner? It's like having compassion and letting that go and just saying, okay, now how do I create safety in me every day? How to create this sense of safety, a sense of harmony. And it's not always going to be perfect, but the more harmonious that I can create inside of me, the better I'll be in every relationship. And it's a constant journey.

1:11:29And I'm never going to be perfect. And it's - Of course. What comes up for me as you say that is this idea also around what we are tracking in our nervous system with our partners, that when there are secrets, when there are things that we're keeping, we may not understand it, but on the subtle body, we are feeling an incongruence. Yes. And that might have nothing to do with us. It might have everything to do with your shame and you just... But depending on our wounding, we'll then make it about us. And this is where we can also start a trigger dance. So this is, it's just, there are so many, there are so many ways in, everybody, so many ways in to, to conflict.

1:12:19Yeah. I felt, I felt incongruent for most of my life based on shame, guilt, lying, stealing, you know, whatever it is. And so you can imagine partners you would attract would either pick up on that or be incongruent themselves or, or, or then be getting mad at you at other things, even though they're feeling a group, right? That's just... Yeah, yeah. So it's like having compassion for your younger self and having the wisdom now, hopefully, and saying, how can I use this wisdom now moving forward to stay incongruent as possible, knowing that we are, again, have crazy thoughts and dreams and all these different things.

1:12:54It's got to come up, all these things. But it's like, how can I live with my intentions, my words, and my actions in alignment the best I can every moment? When you do that, you feel peace. you may not like situations in life like things are going to happen where you're like i don't like that you might still react but if we can create more harmony and peace within us by being integrity with ourself you're going to be in a more harmonious relationship with others it's just going to naturally attract others energetically or you'll be able to be more discerning like you said and be like oh this doesn't work for me or this relationship i'm going to put this on a pause or maybe i shouldn't work with this person because you'd feel a lot of alignment you know it's I love this and I also think there's another kind of take on it, which is we so – we're in this era right now of authenticity, being authentic with ourselves.

1:13:53And not that that's not important. It's super important. But what I'm finding interesting is that as authenticity rises in the conversation and speaking your truth rises in the conversation, there's another thing happening around – how do I want to say this? How hard it is for us to hold complexity. Yeah, yeah. Gray. Gray. Yeah. Gray areas. I believe this. And so, and so I have to hold to this and I can't change my mind and I've, or, and that there's like, you know, this is kind of an Esther Perel that has been talking about this a bit. And I think, I think she's really onto something here where, you know, she has this quote, which is relationships are not problems to solve, but paradoxes to manage.

1:14:50and inside of ourselves when we're on our own we have to we're forced to look at the paradoxes inside of ourselves so maybe the part of us that wants to move close to our aging parents and the other part of us that wants to stay where we live because we have community yeah and we have to wrestle with that on our own like that's a that's a friction that we feel in ourselves I as soon as we have somebody else in the room a partner all of a sudden the paradox inside of ourselves that we would need to wrestle with we can now polarize and project onto the other person so maybe you know we're talking about parenting maybe there's a conversation within myself around sleep training or what's the other one sleep training training or co-sleeping and maybe there would be a or breastfeeding for six months but i want to keep my career and so i'm gonna need to do i do that for six months or a year how do i manage the and do i want to do formula and that's these are complexities that we need to navigate and wrestle within ourselves but when we polarize with another person all of a sudden we no longer need to wrestle with the complexity within ourselves because if you hold the pull of we sleep train, then I can just hold the pull of, okay, no, no, no, we co-sleep.

1:16:16And that's the truth that I want to stick my stake in the ground on. And I'm going to fight for that because we've now polarized into these two different perspectives and I no longer have to wrestle with that inside of myself. And so it's interesting as we sort of started to have this conversation about authenticity and speaking our truth. And And it's almost as if we're losing the ability to hold complexity of this idea that sometimes it's not going to feel good or we have to do things that are really challenging that might challenge the ideals that we thought we once had but that feel more in line with the self that we're coming into.

1:16:56or we're needing to wrestle with it within our partnership because we both have these different values or ideas about how we want to raise kids or where we want to live or all of these things. And so I think in ways, there's a way that we've simplified the conversation of authenticity and integrity and that has, it's almost like this social atrophy, this atrophying of, honestly, is it atrophying? Did we ever have this skill? I don't actually know. But that really makes me wonder about how we build our relationship with our ability to hold complexity. We're seeing this in the social political divide, right?

1:17:37And one way I see us being able to do this is through, and this is a huge conflict resolution skill, but is through stories, like truly being able to sit with someone else's story, not need to be in agreement over it, but actually sit with it and contemplate it. But we don't need to do that now because everything in our feed is feeding us. It's an echo chamber of everything we want to feed us. So we're getting fear from where, you know, from the other side and we're getting fed the information that's from our side. We never have to listen to another person's point of view. But now we're in relationship and our partner has a different perspective and we want to be authentic with ourselves.

1:18:19What do we do? Right. And something that me and Martha did early on was like, I was very clear. I was like, we need our values to be aligned. otherwise it's going to be hard we need our values our vision and our lifestyle to be in alignment what happens when one of those values or the vision changes exactly where in the beginning i was like we need to be like 80 aligned on all of our values vision and lifestyle and she was like i'm in and i need you to be flexible you know what i mean it's like and it was like it can't be so rigid it has to be this way it's got to be absolutes like you were talking about absolutes, where I was more like, well, I want these things to be in alignment.

1:18:58Otherwise, what are we doing? Why are we getting into a relationship if we're not in alignment? At least we have to have some alignment somewhere. You can't have complete friction. And she was like, yes, and I need you to be flexible on things. And I go, okay. So it took time for me to learn how to be more flexible and make sure we're also staying in alignment. So I didn't feel like I was compromising values. Same for her. She doesn't want to compromise values, But she was like, you can't be so strict on a rule here on this one thing. If I didn't live up to something, I'm like, okay, I get it.

1:19:27I got to be more flexible and this and this. And I think that's been a great thing. It's like, how can you be flexible with your values, with your agreements and making sure that things are going to evolve and change and you got to be okay with it? Well, there's certainly research on rigidity in relationships and how if you are the more rigid and the more you expect perfection, obviously this is not going to surprise anybody, but the less satisfied you're going to be with your relationships. You're going to be miserable. Well, Bea, this has been powerful. I want to ask you a couple of final questions before I do.

1:19:56Where's the best place for us to support you, follow you, connect with you all alone? You can go to my website, beavoce.com, B-A-Y-A-V-O-C-E. And I'm at beavoce on Instagram is mostly where I hang out. But on my website, I have a couple of resources. I have a free repair PDF that you can get, which has a ton of scripts for all sorts of conflicts. So that's a good one. And I also have another worksheet on the change and effort mismatch. So for people who are in that kind of change and accept dance, if they want some support there, that's also free. And then I'll be launching a group for repair.

1:20:35Awesome. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. Appreciate you. I 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 wanna make it easier, you wanna make it flow, you wanna feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is gonna help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.

1:21:14Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

1:21:53And now it's time to go out there and do something great.