World’s 1# Couples Therapist: The Main Reasons for Breakups - Dr. Shalet

0:00We get into a relationship, we fall in love with someone, and actually it's not the person we fall in love with necessarily, it is the version of ourselves. And so if I fall in love with you, it's because I like who I am around you. We need a safe home. We need someone to love and we need something to do, right? So when things change around that, we look for it. We look for purpose, love or safety. Victoria Shillette is a world-leading psychotherapist working with couples and adult individuals. She specializes in humanistic psychotherapy and is a certified relational life therapist. She was a successful child actress and she left acting in her early 30s to pursue a career in mental health.

0:45Let's always choose guilt over resentment. If I say no, I might have to feel guilty. No, sorry, I don't want to do that. But that is always better than resentment. I've gone over my own boundary and now I want to blame you for it. It's better sometimes to do less. Yeah, if you're going to resent them. I feel like if my wife would be arguing because she has less tolerance to things that in the past she had a high tolerance for and then I tell her baby I think this is related to your menopause I don't think the conversation is going to go well so like baby your hormones are not where they used to be I love you I'm here to support you but this is not you so there are more breakups or divorces now than 20, 30 years ago.

1:32Why is this?

1:36Do you think that we should be going as a couple to therapy, even if we don't have severe problems?

1:52Victoria, in a nutshell, what is it that you do? I help people relate to one another. in a more healthy and relational way. I'm a psychotherapist. I work with adult individuals and couples. Right. So is it safe to say or assume that you're a couples therapist? I am. Why is this important to you? Ooh, that's a big question. I think relationships are really, really fundamental for me. and I feel that we all need to relate to one another better for the world to be a better place. If someone is going to tune into this conversation for the next hour or so, why should they trust anything that you're saying?

2:41So what are the credentials that allow you to be a subject matter expert? So I am trained under one of the best relationship couples therapists in the world, Terry Real and I found him about 10 years ago and he wasn't very well known here at that point and I traveled to the states to go and work with him and train with him and I came back and I for a time I was the only one trained in relational life therapy here working with couples and that changed rapidly over lockdown because you could suddenly do the training online so brilliantly we now have lots of rlt therapists here and what are the most common reasons why people go see you um i think i'd put it in two categories there are usually people are going through some kind of transition so that might be the beginning of a relationship getting married, about to have children, having had a first child.

3:48Or then a lot of the time it's later during that family life when children leave home, menopause, retirement, illness, all of those transitions where the dynamic in the system of your relationship or your extended family changes. And then I work a lot with infidelity. interesting let's we'll discuss infidelity later but um is it have you identified the common denominator of who within the couple is within the couple is usually triggering or the one deciding to bring the couple to therapy is it usually the man the woman oh i i wouldn't say It's usually one. One could argue that a lot of women are more likely to seek it out, but that's not always the case.

4:44The common denominator is that there is what my teacher Terry calls a kind of, there is a missing mechanism for correction. So we don't know how to say to the other, this doesn't work and I'd really like it this way. And so we've lost, we've built up resentment and we've built up a kind of the same fight over and over again. And we don't know how to have it differently. Is there a common fight that brings you to that point? We all have the same fight over and over again. Really? Not the same fight as everyone else, but we often are fighting. Within the relationship. Within the relationship. Yeah.

5:20You know, again, we kind of talk about marrying our unfinished business. so there is stuff that we bring into the relationship that we are trying to work out in the in the relationship so if i'm in a relationship in which i've been fighting regularly over the same topic and we can't seem to solve it then we should go and see you sure if you want the relationship to to thrive and is there a particular age bracket that this is more common or a length within the relationship um no i think it kind of hits those markers that i was talking about before it's usually when something interrupts the flow of the the couple so kind of having a child something big changing your life one of you changing often will instigate something some conversation that needs to be had what can we do to avoid that because these things will happen so or so in our lives so potentially or ideally we're going to have kids So that's going to change our couple's dynamics or someone would change career paths and so on.

6:26So what should we do in those changing moments in the relationship? It's a good question. And I think that that's why I often I'm a big advocate for going to therapy at the beginning of a relationship. Because you find that you have a lot of goodwill. There's a lot of love. There's a lot of wanting to make it work. And the resentment hasn't built up yet. And so what happens is that you learn skills to communicate better. And so when you start to go through difficult periods, you know how to ask for what you need without it being a criticism, without it being a judgment, without it coming out as a passive aggressive statement.

7:06And so it's learning the skills to be cherishing all the way through. I think when someone, especially traditionally speaking, when someone goes to therapy, usually the outside world tends to think that there's something fundamentally wrong with you. You're crazy. And if you're going to couples therapy, maybe a friend of yours from the outside might think they must be having severe problems. Now, I'm of the opinion that as the world advances and things improve at a global scale, things get more accepted. and I believe that psychology or going to therapy is one of those. Do you think that we should be going as a couple to therapy, even if we don't have severe problems, because maybe mammals in general are not meant for monogamy?

7:59Oh, there's two questions there. Let's address the first bit. I think going to therapy is increasingly being more understood as not being there's always a problem necessarily or that you're crazy to use your words. But I think I see it like going to the gym. Yeah. Right? We go to the gym. We look after ourselves. I would rather look after myself in my relationship so I don't leak over my friends with my keep ranting about my marriage or or over my children you know that's really important it's how do you take care of the relationship I want to be in this marriage I want to be in my marriage for the rest of my life so how do I cherish that and really do the work it's the most important relationship in my life why wouldn't I do the work to really really take care of it And I think that we don't have many models for that.

9:00So back to the piece about biologically, are we biologically wired for monogamy? Technically, no, not necessarily. We're not like some mammals or species that just mate for life. But we have pair bonding hormones that mean that we are there and we're invested in child rearing. That goes without saying. But no, we're not biologically wired just for monogamy. Yeah, I can relate with what you're saying, in particular with the notion about work and the feeling of sacrifice within marriage or a long-term relationship. Because if we look at other definitions of a relationship or marriage, especially the ones that are portrayed on Hollywood, they are based on dopamine.

9:48This short-term feeling, pleasure that is not logical whatsoever. It's coming from the limbic system of our brains, which only registers emotion and yeah, and we tend to make decisions based on those, but that at some point dies. And then a lot of people think that if I don't have that vivid, strong feeling, then maybe my marriage is fundamentally wrong. I've had this discussion a lot of times with my girlfriend because we've been just a bit over seven years together and the first five years, which I think is quite long, everything were roses and flowers, but then the last two years, some things felt like an effort and i had this discussion with her where we both agreed that the fact that it feels like it's an effort doesn't necessarily mean that we love each other less it's just part of the journey and no one teaches you that no one teaches you that so do you think this should be something that maybe they should teach us in school or should we just go to therapy i mean generally speaking as you said this is the most important relationship in our life because I define it in that way because that's the person that you're going to spend the most time with.

10:57So by definition, you need to get it right. And then if you have children, you're modeling to the next generation how to be in relationship. And so, you know, we become teachers going forward, or even to the people around us, how to model a version of what we would like to have seen growing up. now I'm not interested in going back and and chastising generations for doing it wrong quote unquote um everyone's doing the best they can and I'm sure my son will turn around and tell me I got it wrong at some point um and I will have done because I won't have seen it will be a blind spot of mine but all I can do to help him going forward is to be the best version of myself and keep working on that and keep healing the stuff in me so that I don't pass it on to him.

11:48And of course, hey, I've messed up in his short life so far. I mean, he's eight now, and I'm sure that there are things that I wish, if I look back, I could have done differently. But that's continuous work. And I've been working on myself in therapy for a long time. I think it's this idea that there's a goal, that we get to an arrival point, and then we're done. And I think life is continually learning about ourselves and growing so therapy for me is like I said like the gym but also a kind of a really important thing but it's also a privilege you know we have to be real about this you know I don't think everyone should have to go to therapy it's expensive there's long waiting lists I think it has to be more I'd love love for it to be in the kind of education system and then for example if we take the analogy the fitness analogy probably in the 40s and 50s doctors were not recommending anyone to exercise or to go for a run because they would tell you that it would increase your cortisol levels and it's unhealthy for you and so on and then slowly and gradually in the 60s 70s they were telling you you know it's actually good for your heart is good for your lungs and so on and so forth.

13:01So there's been a positive evolution towards fitness. But if I look at the dating world, I think it had a reverse effect. So there are more breakups or divorces now than 20, 30 years ago. Why is this? Well, I think the ability to get divorced, for women to leave, women are now able to leave financially in a way that they weren't before so that's one layer of it um i think also we are we have life was simpler then the roles were clearer and we are more distracted we live at a faster pace now which means that we can't we don't communicate we don't take the time we try and spread ourselves too thin and you know 20 30 years ago, we weren't doing as much and we weren't as distracted, I would say.

14:01You're saying their roles were more clear. Can you expand on that? Well, there were, if we go back to a time when people were, women were predominantly at home and men were working, those roles were very clear. We weren't trying to juggle. We kind of knew what the other was doing and what their role was. I'm not saying necessarily that's the right thing. But the right thing is that there is a role. There is a role. They're clearly defined. We knew what we were doing then. We knew what our part was in the kind of team. We knew where our place was, as it were. That sounds awful. But now I think we're all trying to do everything and we expect the other to know what we need.

14:45That's the worst part of I see in couples is that we hope that the other will just know women are worse. Expectations. Yeah. Well, women are worse for kind of, I shouldn't have to ask for it. It should just happen. Like?

15:02Like, women will often talk about, I'm being really general here, but women often talk about the mental load and it's big and I know it myself. And what we need to get better at and what I support myself and other women to do is to say, I need help here. I need you to do this. I need you to do this. Can you take care of that? You know, often we talk about, okay, if we wrote down all the things we do in our family to contribute, to make our house work, the family work, let's write them down. So I do this, I do this, this, this, and you both write it down. And then you start to see what the other one's doing, because often we miss what the other one's doing, how they contribute, what they're doing.

15:45And suddenly you can say, well, can you take a bit of that? Can you take a bit of that? So I don't feel like this is so unfair. And I don't feel burdened by this. But I feel like that's like opening a Pandora box, because if you're showing me what you're doing for the relationship, and then I'm showing you what I'm doing, feels like a direct comparison. And if the scale is completely uneven, there may be something hard to approach in the relationship. Yeah, and it's a difficult conversation, because believe me, if you don't have that conversation, it will come and bite you down the line so we should have it at an early stage meaning this is the value you bring this is the value i bring this it goes back to that mechanism of correction that terry talks about this idea that you know you realize something doesn't work for you and i often talk again about the brilliant gabel mate talks about let's always choose guilt over resentment so we often have a choice to make if you want to so okay so you have a choice to make someone says do you want to do this or can you do this?

16:43If there's a doubt in your mind and there's not a full body yes, I can do it. And you think, maybe I don't want to do that. For the other person. Yeah. For the other person or for the family or whatever. It's like, am I going to resent you? If I say yes, am I going to then be really angry that I did it? Right. If I say no, I might have to feel guilty. No, sorry. I don't want to do that. But that is always better than resentment. If I say yes now, and I don't really mean it, I'm likely to resent you going forward. And resentment is I have gone over my own boundary and now I want to blame you for it.

17:20And I don't want to put myself in that position. Resentment is toxic to a relationship. But sometimes you can resent someone else, your partner, because of your own choices, not because of what the other partner is. That's what I'm saying. I've gone over my own boundary and now I want to blame you for it. It's better sometimes to do less? Yeah, if you're going to resent them. Okay, okay, so I got it. And so you have to say there's a hard conversation of I'm going to say no. And the reason I'm saying no is because I know that if I do it, I'm likely to feel resentful. And I love you or our relationship too much to do that.

17:54And that goes back to the roles because I know that I'm maybe adding more value to this relationship. Our roles are not clearly defined. I don't know how much value you're bringing, but I think my value is bigger. So I resent you. Well, I don't know if it's that. It's necessarily about the roles per se, but it's more about the longevity of the relationship. It's, okay, I see that you're doing all of this. So maybe we need to take something off the plate. Or maybe we have the resources to get someone else to do that so that we aren't fighting over that and you don't feel so burdened by it. And often if I make a choice to do something, so I can, I'll speak from my own experience, I can sometimes feel like I'm doing more than my husband in the parenting domain, let's say.

18:38And often I think I can feel anger about it and then I kind of go, but actually it's really important to me that I do it. Even if he weren't here, I would want to do this for my son. So actually I have to own that I'm burdening myself because it matters to me, not because it matters to him, let's say. And of course, parenting matters to him. But, you know, there are certain things I choose to do and I could lump them into, well, I do all the parenting in this regard. But actually, he might say, well, you don't need to do that. That doesn't matter. But it matters to me. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does make sense.

19:13But then how do you go about it? Because, for example, let's say that with my girlfriend, let's just give a very easy example. I'm a person that enjoys surprising you, the small things on a daily basis, even after so many years, which actually it is very much true. I do it for her. But if I'm very honest with myself, I enjoy doing that for her. But it's like reciprocal. So I see you're happy, but I feed from that happiness. So am I doing it for her? Yes. But at the same time, there is a side effect that is for me. Now, when she does maybe something for me, maybe it's because of the way that she was brought up or in any other, I don't know.

19:58She might feel like there's a different level of effort because she might not get that happiness, that reciprocal happiness in the same way. Now, I definitely know that that doesn't mean that she loves me less than I love her. but it feels strange in a way so it feels like more of an effort for her yeah because this is important for me i'm doing it for you not only for you because it also makes me happy but god damn it how come this doesn't make you also happy to do it for me see what i mean yeah well then i'd ask her why she's doing it and what it costs her to do it yeah what does it cost you to do this and also then i'd ask you you know this is costing her is it that important to you Wouldn't you rather someone gave freely because it gave to them to do it?

20:46I think the roles, things that you're mentioning, is profoundly important. Because in my relationship, and I think one of the reasons why it worked over so many years, and I'm young, and because of the life that I live, I'm exposed to a lot of different other people. and I'm still faithful and only with one person at such a young age and also for her. And this is, I think, because we both have very clearly defined roles. So she's not a career person and I fully respect that. I don't need to be with someone that wants to be a super big entrepreneur or a CEO in a corporation, but she respects that I do want that for my life.

21:29So I would be the financial supporter of our family, but she is more, she takes care of the small details. You know, like, for example, right now we have a dog, we don't have kids, but like she, I pay things for the dog and then she does like the smaller things like clean the pool and so on and so forth. So that works. And we've never discussed that. It just naturally grew to be like that. Does that make sense? Or should we be discussing it? Well, I think that, yeah, I totally hear what you're saying. And there is like, how do we define the role? How do we get clear about it? Because also you can start in a role that works perfectly and we grow and then we change.

22:08And then we suddenly go, oh, maybe it doesn't work for me anymore. Can we talk about that? Can we negotiate? Can we find a way to do this differently? And that's also important. You know, I would argue it's not necessarily that it's just the roles. It's that you both come from a place of a similar value system, right? You have a similar value system that is keeping you aligned with one another. and maybe she doesn't want to do some of the things that she's always done and maybe there is a part of her that needs to kind of air some of the feelings she has about it. It doesn't mean she won't do it, but so that no resentment builds up, she needs to work out what is it that she feels about these particular things that she's doing that cost her something.

22:48I feel like this happens more and maybe I am completely wrong and it's a men binary way of thinking, but more in women because I have friends, they're in their 40s, they've been married for quite some time and then they hit the 40s and they tell me that their wives, they used to like to do A, B, C and D for them and for the marriage. And all of a sudden, maybe it's because something changed in their lives. It could be their kids not being so young anymore or whatever it is. But all of a sudden, they don't like to do those things anymore. And for the man, for the husband, that's a big shock. They feel like maybe you don't love me.

23:21How do I cope with that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is a big shift. And a lot of the time, this is the start of menopause. Okay. So we are in our hormones that keep us buoyant for our teens, 20s, 30s, that make us able to tolerate a lot. Okay. Because we're constantly supported by these hormones and they start to deplete and it makes us less tolerant, sorry to say. And that's a biological reality. Wait, okay. So what you're saying is that when a woman hits the menopause age bracket, that same woman would be less tolerant to... Sometimes. I'm not saying always. You know, in perimenopause, which can last kind of 10 years, right, up until menopause.

24:10And there is a point at which our hormones aren't supporting us the same way. And suddenly we ask ourselves, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to do it like this. This isn't working anymore. It's not, I don't love my family necessarily, or I don't love my husband or my partner. It is, wow, I have now found that this doesn't work for me anymore. Can we shift? And do you think women generally attribute that feeling to their hormones change, or they unconsciously think my marriage is not working? I don't love this person as much. Yeah, I think sometimes. And it's not always perimenopause.

24:48I want to just add that. Sometimes it really is. I've reached a stage where maybe my children are growing up. Who am I now? Who, if I've been at home, who am I? What do I want? You know, I've been here present for my children. Even if I have been working, most women have been doing both too. So have men. But I think, you know, we talked about, we used to talk about men having midlife crisis. It's a kind of a point at midlife where our children are growing up and we start to say, okay, what is the next bit going to look like? And there is this kind of existential threat or kind of feeling that comes in.

25:26Is it lack of purpose for a period? A lot of the time, yes, it's lack of purpose. It's, I think we need, you know, three things. We need a safe home. We need someone to love and we need something to do, right? So when things change around that, we look for it. We look for purpose, love or safety. What's the easiest thing that a man can do in that situation when her wife is going through that period? Learn about the menopause. Learn about the menopause. But you know what, Megan, maybe I'm wrong. but I feel like if my wife would be arguing because she has less tolerance to things that in the past she had a high tolerance for and then I tell her, baby, I think this is related to your menopause.

26:10I don't think the conversation is going to go well. So like, baby, your hormones are not where they used to be. I love you. I'm here to support you, but this is not you. Well, it is her. I might be with you sitting on the couch. It is her. What you can say is you can stay on your side of the fence, which is what I talk about in couples therapy, is say, wow, this is, I'm feeling destabilized. This is new information for me. And, you know, I, for a while I saw that you were happy doing this, or maybe you weren't and we didn't talk about it. And so that's the kind of check-ins, the regular check-ins that I would talk about in therapy of, is this still working for you?

26:48Are we holding on to things that aren't working? Because if someone keeps doing stuff that they don't want to do because they're tolerant. Women are really, really good at just taking care of people, making sure they don't complain, okay? Women are really, really well-trained for being needless and wantless. And so suddenly, when you haven't got the hormones to support you or when you reach a point in your life where you think, actually, I want to know who I am because I've spent my life looking after everyone else, then you can get interested in, okay, sounds like you want to know you want to tell me what you need so tell me what you need now how do we make that happen I'm on your side I want this to work it sounds like that doesn't work for you anymore why am I going to keep asking you to do it yeah you don't want to do it anymore okay great so how do we do this moment the man should keep an open mind yes and just absorb as much information as possible from the other person yeah and be willing to work with it yeah I'm never going to say stand in the line of fire of someone raging at you ever but I'm also going to say you can sidestep that by saying, okay, I mean, regardless of whether it's hormones or otherwise, the minute that someone says, this isn't working for me, this is the mechanism of correction that we need.

28:03How do we go? Okay, well, if it's not working for you, it's not going to work for me. It's in my interest to support you to get what you want, because then if you're happy, I will be more happy. If you're unhappy in relationship, I'm not going to be happy.

28:22in the same situations of friends in their 40s, 40s or 50s, and they go through problems in their marriage, sometimes the woman or sometimes also the men, they propose to have an open relationship because they feel like our trust is there, we've been there together for so long, but there's more to life than just you or me from a sexual perspective. Can open relationships work long term? They can. They take a lot of work. A lot of work and more communication than you have ever imagined. Do they need to start as an open relationship or they can become at some point an open relationship? I think, no, I think they can become.

29:08But like I said, the piece that's imperative is the communication. you have to both be on board or all be on board whoever's involved all know what the parameters are what the boundaries are you have to keep check in if you think i was talking about check-ins in a kind of monogamous relationship is a lot it is all the time you've got to keep checking in when you're in an open relationship particularly at the beginning of that opening up and if you've got kids and if you've got family then there is a lot to manage can you give me an example of what checking in looks like? So you come back together and you say, this is what I'm intending to do this weekend.

29:50This is where I'm going to be. How are you going to be in that? What do you need while I'm away? What do you need when I'm doing this? You really, really check in. Are you still okay with this? Are we still okay? It sounds like, at least from my perspective, the more you check in, the more probable is going to be that there's going to be more probable is going to be that you have a problem against it so meaning that if i'm constantly asking you do you have a problem with this do you have a problem with this no it's not i do you have a problem it's are we are you okay am i okay like where are we do you have anything you want to bring up yeah it's it's an open conversation, not is this a problem for you.

30:35It's got to be a shared endeavor, as it were. And if we don't, like I said, if you don't want to have the difficult conversations, you're going to have them later and they're going to be much harder. Life is a series of difficult conversations. I don't want to make it an argument. It's more about how do we realize that we care about each other and there's a knot. How do we unravel that so that we're both on the same page? And maybe we won't always agree, but we will be understanding what is going on over there and understanding what's going on over here. And I'm not holding on to anything that I'm not sharing that will impact you.

31:17When should one know that this is a solution to their problem in their marriage? To open it? Yeah. How do I know? Because I would assume. What are you looking for? I would assume that almost everyone after a long relationship, let's say many, many, many years being with that same person, I think it's only natural that from a sexual point of view, you might be interested in someone else. And maybe there are other reasons, cultural or psychological, that basically stop you from doing it. But I think almost everyone from a physical need perspective, at some point you're attracted, you could be attracted to someone.

31:59Sure, but then that's the same question as cheating, right? Like there's, because a lot of people cheat to have sex with someone else. Yeah. Right? So I'm not saying, obviously this is open and we know what's going on. So the driver is there, but then I'm always interested in what are you looking for? Whether it's in cheating or whether it's opening up the relationship. what are you wanting and why wouldn't you so don't ask someone why they cheat ask them why they wouldn't so why don't you want to cheat well actually because it's going to break up something that I really care about I don't want to hurt my partner I don't want to have to talk to my kids about that whatever so there are questions to ask about why wouldn't you open the relationship and Why would you?

32:49And you've got to weigh it up. And that's a totally unique conversation with every different couple that chooses. What are the main reasons why people cheat? There are a myriad of reasons. Let's go with men first. Whether it's men or women, there's a common thread, which is we are often looking to find a part of ourselves, another part of ourselves. So we get into a relationship, we fall in love with someone, and actually it's not the person we fall in love with necessarily. It is the version of ourselves. So you just said, I surprise my girlfriend because it really fills me up, right? We're selfish.

33:32We're selfish beings, okay? Everything we do serves a purpose, right? And so if I fall in love with you, it's because I like who I am around you. And I like what I do. So then oftentimes the longer the relationship progresses, I suddenly don't like who I am anymore in this relationship. So I want to go and find a version of me that I like. And so someone else becomes a different mirror. And I can be something else there. Because I'm not holding on to the resentment or I'm not saying something or I'm not in a role that I don't like anymore. But in the way you're describing it, that sounds healthy for me.

34:10Maybe not for my partner because she's going to be hurt. Yeah. But it sounds healthy. It seems like I'm going to get a different perspective about myself, about life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you get that in your friendships. You get that with your work colleagues. So you don't need to be with someone else to get that same feeling. No, not necessarily. But that's one of the reasons that people cheat, okay? Because it's an unconscious driver. You know, you meet someone, you like how you feel with them. You like who you are, right? And so sometimes we cheat because we're unhappy. but not as, it's not as common as people think.

34:47You know, people think happy people don't, happy people in relationship don't cheat. That's not true. I see it time and again. And you can be happy and love someone dearly and you are moving away from a part of you. You're in pain somewhere. You've buried a part of you and you get that soothed somewhere else, or you get it met somewhere else. The conversation to have is back to why don't you cheat? Well, I don't want to hurt my girlfriend. So, okay, what's the difficult conversation I need to have? It's like, wow, I don't like who I am here anymore. I need to do something. Can we shift something?

35:24Because I want to find this part of me. Come with me. Let's go do this together. I need to feel myself in a different way again, or I need to explore myself. And I'd like you to come alongside me. Some people don't want to do that. They want to open. Some people, if you want to remain with the person you're with, that's the conversation to have. In general terms, men tend to think that women cheat because they have feelings for someone else. But men also think that men can cheat without having any feelings whatsoever for somebody else and still be madly in love with their partner and be able to go back home and still be the best version of themselves for them.

36:06Okay, so what are they getting outside of the marriage? Perhaps it could be the hunter's feeling. So that's a prey and if I want it, I can have it. Okay. Or it's just a sexual pleasure. Yeah, that you're saying you can't get in the relationship that you're in. Perhaps it could be different. It will be different. Yeah. It's a different person. But there's something you're wanting to explore or express in yourself that you're freeing yourself to do with someone else, perhaps. So basically, in a nutshell, what I'm saying is that it feels like men, and again, maybe I'm fundamentally wrong, but it feels like men, most men want to cheat because of a physical need.

36:52And I think, and again, I could be very wrong, women might cheat because of an emotional need or an emotional attachment. Maybe, but I would say there's still the same feeling. We're still feeling it feels good, right? You can say, why do you cheat? Because it feels good. It's flattering. I feel seen. I feel understood. I feel sexy. I feel whatever it is. There are loads of reasons to cheat. But really, why don't we is more interesting. And then once that trust is broken, let's say someone cheats on you. Can you repair that trust, realistically speaking? Yes, you can. It takes a lot of work. It's really painful.

37:36and it takes time, you have to start from, I no longer trust you in this area. They are not trustworthy in that area, okay? Just because someone cheats doesn't make them wholly untrustworthy, right? They may still be able to be reliable with the kids. They may still be able to be reliable at work. Do circumstances matter? What do you mean? Because I feel like for a lot of people, cheating is very binary. So if you're cheating, you're just a horrible person. But maybe you were a great father, a great husband in every other aspect of the relationship, but you just cheated. And maybe the way that you cheated was this one time with a random person that you didn't have feelings for.

38:15So it's not a secondary relationship that you have long term. But I feel like a lot of people, both men and women, perhaps they have this relationship with cheating as a very binary thing. How should we approach it in a healthy way? know what your partner suggests they they know about themselves for some people it really is that binary and for some people they think that that's what they do and then the reality hits and it happens and if you've got children it's a very different playing field you're suddenly on and so So it's easier to say than to actually work through because the reality is that you don't know how you're going to feel.

39:06Some people want to put that marker down, say, if you ever cheat, I'm leaving you. Then you know the marker. Why would you go over it unless you want them to leave you? Interesting. What landed in you then? A lot of things. A lot of things. Especially because, for example, I have a younger cousin and I feel like infidelity is becoming more and more common. And my cousin, I think she's on her late teens or early 20s. And sometimes when we gather with our family and she shares what's happening in her circle of friends, it's quite shocking for me to see that that's normal for both men and women. So it seems that cheating or having multiple sexual encounters with people that are not your partners is absolutely fine.

39:53Yeah, that and various other things. But also, if someone cheats once, we tend to think that that person would do it again. Even if that happened within our relationship or in a previous relationship. So if I start dating a woman that cheated in her previous relationship, I'm unconsciously going to think that you might do this to me. Yeah, sure. She might. Okay. So that person is more prone to do it. I would say the person who is likely to do it is the person who hasn't understood why they did it in the first place. So if you've worked out why you cheated and what it was offering you and what it gave you, what the meaning of it was, what you were looking for, and resolve to either not do that again because it hurt you too much.

40:44Because often people cheat and they have no idea of how they are going to feel about what happened because it wasn't worth it. Or because they found a part of themselves that they wanted to find, but the devastation it caused was really, really devastating to them as well. And so people can resolve to think, do you know what? I'm never doing that again. I am never going to do that. But only if you've done the work to understand why. And then what are the chances of a second time relationship being successful? Same answer. Same answer. If you come back to someone, if you split up and you come back together, unless you've worked out why it went wrong or what led you to breaking up, you're more likely to split up again.

41:35If you've done that work, there's a chance. I think there's kind of 50%, 60 % chance that you can survive or maybe more the later, the older we are. But yeah, certainly if you do the work to understand what went wrong, why did we split up? Have we understood that? Have we worked through it? Then yeah, you have a chance to survive. And then also maybe just a bit away from cheating, but fighting in general. I think fighting in couples is normal. But I think as a couple, sometimes we don't know if the frequency of our fights is too much or too little. And we wonder, would other couples fight as much as us?

42:16Is there a healthy frequency to fighting? I mean, it depends what you mean by fighting. Disagreeing severely for an extended period. So then you're not getting to the knot. you're not understanding what the disagreement is what it means so there's i often think why are we fighting what are we fighting for because i'm more interested in the couples who don't fight i'm interested in the couples who don't disagree don't seem to have any problems don't ever seem to rile each other up that for me is really interesting not because they exist couples they absolutely and they're not cheating any of those no but they're they're passive in their aggression or they're more distant and they're withdrawing and there are things that resentment builds up.

43:07And so things aren't spoken. The couple who are fighting it out, while I want to help you to stop fighting, because fighting suggests that you've got to win, right? Why are you trying to win? This person's on your team. How about coming to something where you both win. How about going, oh, wow, how do we find an agreement when we disagree? What is okay to disagree about and what isn't? Are both men and women approaching a fight with that same perspective or is it more men or women, that winning mentality? Oh, if you're a fighter, you want to win. You know, we've got a fight, flight or fix response.

43:49So we go to fight and I'm going to want to win. If I'm fighting, I want to win. I'm protecting myself. And that's gender agnostic. And then if I flee, I might want to flee because that feels like winning and protective because it's removing myself. I'm walled off from you. I'm not going to give you anything. So my girlfriend and I, when we fight, and I have to really admit that right now we barely fight, but when we fight, it's not a fight. it's just a disagreement and then at some point she learned how to deal with me and learned how to deal with her and how to most importantly reach a conclusion which is what really matters to both of us that lesson learned but in the initial stages of our relationship in the in the initial year so i'm a person that it's not that i like to win i do like to win but not necessarily in their relationship what i like is to go to the point and solve it i'm very solution oriented and she likes to take her time and leave me alone for some hours sometimes days and it's like and then we'll revisit this topic and we'll see how it is and that for me it feels like i'm dragging this and it's in the back of my head and i just want it gone so can we not sit down calmly what's the thing you want gone what's the feeling the feeling that we have a problem is there is there a right or wrong way to go about it i think what i'm picking up from you is a sense of, if there's a problem, I need to make it go away.

45:13Yes. Okay. So I'm interested in what is it about being in a problem that is difficult for you? I just don't like to be in the problem state of mind. I'd like to be thinking on how to solve it. So rather than spending too much time thinking about the problem, can we spend the same time thinking about the solution? And let's work together. We don't have to be shouting at each other. Sure. But can, I mean, why should we leave the problem on the table? You go and do your thing, I go and do my thing. The problem is still there. And I don't think it's going to be solved by itself. But in her mind, which I also respect, she's like, I need my time to gather my thoughts.

45:51And even if the problem is there, it's okay. And in the first years of the relationship, I was like, God damn it, I love you. But no. Yeah. Sit down and work it out with me. What I would call a kind of issue of pace. Yeah. You're speedy and she takes her time. And that's fine? It's totally fine. Well, it is what it is. You can't make it any different. You're not going to speed her up. And the more you speed her up, the more she's going to come to a conclusion that won't serve you in the end. Okay. So what I would support you both to do is for her, I would say to her, was she here? Cool. It's fine for you to take some space and work it out and process it.

46:25But you've got to give him a time that you're going to come back. You've got to tell him, okay, I will come back to you at this point. So you're not waiting. Yes. So you know, okay, I can park that. We're going to come back to it. She's just going to process her stuff and then we'll talk about it. But it's not just like, when's this going to end? When's this going to end? Interesting. You need to know she has to have that space. It's in your interest that she has that space so that she doesn't come to a quick solution that doesn't really work for her. Yeah, if there's a deadline, you definitely manage my expectations.

46:56And then let's take this to a more severe situation. So let's say that one of the two people in the couple suggests a breakup, meaning a short-term breakup so i love you this is not working for me i need some time you know i think we've heard this so many times does that actually work so let's take a month let's take two months i don't think so you don't think so it's better to fully break up well well i'm like well what are you moving away from i agree with you by the way and i'm so happy to hear this what are you moving yes you can have some space so you can say hey look i just need a night two nights just on my own.

47:33I need some space. And maybe you take, I don't know, a week. But to break up, I don't understand what that does, because you're not working on the relationship. So often with couples, I see people say, we just need a break, and they want to go away. And I say, but what's that going to do? You're going to have the break, you're going to feel better, you're going to come back, and we go back to the same problem. This is going to repeat. you're not actually processing or doing the work to understand what is this this knot that we can't get through what is it i don't want to sit within myself so most of my couple's work surprisingly to many people is actually individual work in front of the other so i would if you and your girlfriend were working with me i would be working with you in front of her a lot of the time and then i would work with her in front of you.

48:24And what that does is it expedites the process because you're just mirrors to each other. We bring our own wounds to the relationship. And often there is a core wound that is really, really similar. And that's why we end up having the same fight over and over and over again. I feel like also we're bringing previous wounds from previous relationships into a new relationship. For sure. How can we avoid that? We have to do the work to heal the wound and the ideal relationship will be the one that doesn't feel it on the surface you know we so you talked about it earlier the idea of the perfect marriage we go and see the movies and they get married and that's the end of the movie you don't see the actual what happens afterwards right this high and then yeah into the happily ever after it's not it's constant work and it is working on it and coming back to each other and leaning in and pulling each other up and calling each other out with love right and that's the thing that terry real teaches so well it's how to call each other out with love it's not complaining can you give me an example on how to do that so i might say to you um instead of complaining and saying you made me feel something i might say hey is now a good time to speak and i just check in with you have you got space to be with me to talk and then i say look this is what i saw happen and this is my experience of what was happening I made it mean this about you and about me and about us and then I had a feeling that came after that thought and the feeling I'm left with is this so what I'd like going forward is that you do something like this instead and I get really specific about what you can do that will be different I don't say don't do that again I get specific about what I want instead That's calling someone out with love.

50:10It's not blaming. It's not attacking. It's owning. I've made up a story. Now I'm feeling about it. And usually that story is based in my past. Okay? So when someone's triggered, it usually happens in three stages. Okay? So the feeling or the response is really fast. Comes on really, really big. Right? Really quick. It's disproportionate to what just happened. And you can't let it go. It's lingering and lingering. and I still need to have that argument. I still need to come back to it. That's not really about what just happened between us. Suddenly, my body is in a really old place and I'm not reacting to you.

50:49I'm reacting to something that happened years ago. In a previous relationship in a different environment. Childhood. Yeah. Usually childhood.

51:02okay so it seems to me that the one solution that can fix almost every problem that you are describing is communication how does healthy communication look like in a couple because i've been i've seen i've witnessed this didn't happen in my relationship luckily but I've seen in other friends relationships that they get into an argument because the man, usually the man cannot pick up on a tell of the woman so he does something she doesn't like it she expresses it with her body language she's expecting for him to get it and then she's moody the whole day and then he's like what did I do wrong and And the conversation that I have with my friends, with my guy friends about this is that they, we feel, they feel like the woman is expecting the man to read their minds.

52:01Yeah, often they are. And we'd much rather want for them to tell us simply, what is it that you want or how is it that you feel? Don't make me guess it because I don't want to guess it. I'm not going to guess it. Most likely I won't guess it correctly. I'm completely on your side. We are terrible at it. I'm really sorry. It's mostly the women, right? It's sometimes men too. I'm not going to generalize in that sense. But yes, I'm on your side. Whoever it is, I'm going to speak to that person and say, with love, you've got to say what you want. You've got to find a way to say what you want. And often, if you aren't good at saying what you want, then like anything, we swing kind of violently to this kind of really rigid way of saying what we want, which comes out as critical of the other, rather than saying, this is really hard for me to say what I want, and it's really important that I do.

52:46and then how do we know that that's a legit feeling because a lot of times you do want to communicate but you're wondering is that really really something that I feel like it just it crossed my mind from now and then I feel it but it's not a severely strong you know feeling but why wouldn't you let the other know then okay so we should be sharing as much as possible with respect and with love yeah with respect and with love and also I would ask I often say I want you to think about who are you sharing for? Like, what is this going to do for the relationship? Is this going to be like, there's a lovely quote by a therapist called Virginia Satir.

53:26And she says, loving someone is the willingness to show them who you are. And so I may have missed it, but it was along those lines. And what that means is if I give you a new phone that we've never seen before, or I give you an old BlackBerry and you can't remember how to use it, or you can't work out how to do it. You kind of need the manual, right? Because otherwise it's frustrating. So if I'm in love with you, my job is to give you the manual to me. You know, if you press this button, this is going to work. If I withhold that manual, you're just going to keep pressing buttons. I'm going to get really annoying.

54:01And then you get the wheel of death and it's not going to work. So how about we give the other our manual? This really works for me that is helping your partner to give you what you want i fundamentally agree with you and that in my opinion really comes from a like logical perspective but sometimes this is what i encounter is that if your partner maybe is less um strong than you and you want to share feeling something that you know in this case she's not going to like because it's not something that is positive about the relationship, but you're not saying it to cause an argument, but to build on it.

54:38So we can both learn and see how can we approach it. But you just hold on to it and you don't share it because you know it's going to destabilize the relationship. And sometimes, and this happened to me, especially in the first years of my relationship, and maybe Olivia is not going to open the door after this episode because I'm sharing too much, but I would be sharing how I feel and those feelings were not incredibly positive and her reaction to it was well this is giving me insecurities and is destabilizing the relationship i don't have i don't feel like it's secure just because you're sharing these things and then my answer would be i'm just sharing them because i love you and because i want for this to be solved i could just not share it and carry on and see where it goes but that was a constant and a lot of people want that confidence they need it.

55:27Yeah, but the more you know, intimacy is truly knowing someone. I don't want to hide stuff. And at the same time, I don't have to share every thought I have with my partner. I don't have to share everything I think because what's that going to do, really? It's important to have our own private life so long as it doesn't hurt the other, right? and our thoughts can't hurt the other but our actions can right so it's how do I think about I want to share this with you and I realize that I'm anxious that this is slightly rocking the boat or it is it has the potential to destabilize us but if I don't share it we risk destabilizing the relationship later down the line.

56:19And it's really important to me. I love you and care about you. How do we get to a place where this can be understood, changed, fixed? We find a solution for it. I don't know. And I'm alongside you in finding out what that looks like. This isn't a criticism of you. You've got to know that when you're sharing, it's not loaded. Yeah. Okay. It's not loaded as a criticism or blaming or really own where that's coming from. In my relationship or my experience in this relationship, but previous relationships too, I came to a conclusion in which there are four fundamental pillars that if you take care of the four of them, you're going to be in a healthy, satisfying, purpose-driven relationship.

57:09And they don't go in a particular order because I feel like if you lose one of them, the other ones would fall. But one of them is communication. The second one is respect. The third one is friendship. And the fourth one is sex. So if you lose one, you might lose one of the others. So if you lose sex, maybe communication is not great. Or if you lose respect, it might impact also sex or so on and so forth. But these are the four fundamental pillars that I really look to take care of. Does this make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Are there any other pillars that I'm missing? Say them again. So you have friendship, you have respect, you have communication, and you have sex.

57:49Yeah, I think there's a kind of, in that communication, I would consider a kind of spiritual, psychological well-being of the other, because we are changing beings. Okay, so the communication is paramount. And it is about really knowing where your partner is, how they are. We think that, you know, you've been together seven years. You probably think you know everything about her. And most of us think that. There's so much we don't know. Is that boring for me to think that? Is that a bad thing? Yeah, it limits you. And it will make up a story that you know her. So then you tell yourself it's boring.

58:31And none of us know it. We're always changing. I learn something about myself every day. And my husband doesn't know that yet, unless I've shared it with him or he's asked. So it's how do we constantly keep being curious about the other? You know, if you're saying people cheat because they want to find out about themselves in a different way, or they want to have different kind of sex, or they want to just feel differently, then there's something to grow. And that goes for your partner always too. And when should someone know that, so how can you know that you should keep fighting for the relationship if you keep struggling?

59:11or when is it best for you to walk away? In RLT, we call this the relational reckoning. So the question is, am I getting enough from this relationship to make grieving what I'm not getting worth my while? Okay. And if I decide that it's worth it, I have to let go of what I'm not getting. How much of external advice, not professional, but usually friends and family, you end up sharing these things with them before you take the decision. And I feel like sometimes they give you terrible advice. Should we be listening to external advice? It's hard. Friends and family are invested. They love you. They love you both, perhaps.

59:54They love the whole family, whatever it is. And they are invested. So I understand and it's really important to have a community of friends. But what I say is when you're in a struggle, limit the number of people you talk to. Choose a few people that you rely on and who are less invested and can be as kind of objective as possible. And if not, go and get some help professionally. And then you've mentioned that healing after you break up in that grieving process is very important. I've seen that some people, when they break up with someone, they immediately start another relationship. And some others, they just lock themselves and they take some time.

1:00:38what's the best way to go about it? Consciously. So what I mean by that is sometimes, and people who have been left often find this the hardest, is when I say, I want you to look at your part in how this got to this place. What was on your side of the fence? What did you miss? What did you not say? What did you do that contributed to the end of this relationship? Because it's not always one way. and if you aren't consciously really learning what your pattern was you're going to repeat it in the next relationship and how long does that take generally speaking as long as a piece of string it's however committed you are to understanding and then at the same time i think you know being on your own for an extended period of time is not the answer either because you can get to a place where you feel healed and you feel really really like you can be in relationship but then you get into relationship and bang something's activating once again let's say that you're going on dates but you don't want a relationship is that a healthy healing process or not providing that you are being really clear with the people you're dating

1:01:48if you're wanting to feel what it's like to feel yourself in in connection with someone having a nice time with someone so long as you're really clear that i don't want a relationship and i I'm not at the stage where I'm ready to commit to anything. That's on them to say whether they want to date you or not. And then I feel also like a lot of couples, going back to my four pillars, one of the fundamental pillars why they end up breaking their relationship is because sex, their sexual life really takes a turn. How can we keep our sex life good, happy, high? keep behaving like a lover. Give me examples.

1:02:32Well, think about how you start your relationship. And, you know, if you think about people who go and have an affair 20 years into a marriage, suddenly they become this amazing lover. They make all the effort that they were making at the beginning of their long-term relationship. And suddenly it's over here. If you'd been doing that in the relationship you were in, it's like money in the bank. Keep being kind, keep cherishing your partner. Keep surprising your girlfriend. Keep doing the things that really, really cherish the relationship. Go on dates. Go have date nights, whatever it is. Really, really act like a lover.

1:03:10If I said to you, Terry always uses this example. If I said, oh, I love this plant. I love this plant. And it's amazing. And I go, yeah, I want to have it forever, but I don't water it. It's going to die. You've got to keep watering. And then, all right, so I'm going to give you an exercising analogy. So if you stop exercising for an extended period of time, let's say one, two, three years, when you go back at it, it's going to feel like you need to put much more effort to get that rhythm. I feel like when you stop having good or regular sex with your partner for an extended period of time to get back to that intimacy, you know, state of mind, especially from a psychological perspective, it's really hard.

1:04:00You really need to force it. How much do we need to feel like we're forcing that? Because sometimes it feels like maybe if I really need to force myself, this shouldn't be. Okay. Well, I'd hope that you take heed and other people take heed of don't let it get to that point where you haven't exercised for three years. It's not about the frequency. It's about the quality of the sex that you're having, okay? So you can have sex once a year and it could be mind-blowing and that can keep you going for some people, right? If you have the same sex, if I came to a restaurant and I had the same meal every single time, I'm pretty much going to get bored of it, right?

1:04:44I want variety. I want to change it up. I want to do something else. Isn't that monogamy, having the same dish over and over again? You can have different sex all the time. You can mix that up with the same person. Let's say always having a steak just with a different sauce. Ah, okay. Am I wrong? Maybe I'm wrong. I think you're wrong. I'm wrong, okay. Because we grow. We grow and we want different things. We can explore different things. And also there's a level of intimacy that spending a long time with someone and really knowing them inside out and backwards is really, really sexy in a different way than at the beginning, right?

1:05:25You would do things at the beginning because you're not so attached, right? It's easy. Once you become attached to something, there's more to lose. And so, we hold ourselves back with this illusion that we're holding a part of us back. And then often that's what people want to go and get met everywhere else. And I say, no, lean in. Like there is nothing more sexy or beautiful than really, really knowing your partner. And who loses the sexual drive towards the other person more, men or women in a long-term relationship? I wouldn't know the data on that, but I would... What's your assumption based on your experience?

1:06:05I'm going to say that oftentimes it's women who lose the drive. I think the thing is we don't really think about... sex changes. We don't talk about sex changes in a long-term relationship, right? It goes from being spontaneous to being responsive. So that's why I say keep doing the good things because people respond to each other. If I keep being a good partner, if I keep cherishing you, keep seeing you, you're going to be more likely to respond to a touch, to a kiss, to any of that. If I expect it to be spontaneous for the rest of time, good luck. It's going to die. You have to schedule sex.

1:06:45When you've got kids, when you've got family, you have to make it a thing. Really schedule it. It sounds really, really unromantic, but by God, does it keep a long-term relationship going? Because you keep, you don't fall off that kind of treadmill, literally, to use your analogy before. You keep investing. And the more we do it, the more we want to do it. but only if it's good sex okay if you're just doing it because you think you should you're not engaging you're not being in the relationship what is good sex whatever feels good to you to both of you to all of you whoever's involved good sex is the sex you want to keep doing keep coming back for keep trying keep doing other things okay i'm going to give another gym analogy okay so when you go to the gym you have usually a plan and that plan should vary if you want to keep seeing progress yeah every three months at least that's the frequency that one of the UK's leading fitness expert shared with me in the show sure so every three months can you reverse engineer that into a sexual relationship so should we be introducing new things every three few months years decades i think that's a really really i've not heard well i understand that from a kind of um exercise routine i'm interested to think about it in that in that way with sex yeah i think variety in the relationship changing it up doing different things is always going to be good novelty is what is keeps the spark alive in some respect but there's also the tenderness sometimes really really tender loving gentle sex is really important and then sometimes really fun new different kind of sex that you've never had before might also be fun but it's a it's a mix and I think you could apply that and tell me how you go if you reverse engineer it and put it in into practice what does that look like and is she up for it um i was reading recently that the key um to not lose not necessarily your sexual drive but the sexual desire towards your partner is not losing intimacy so intimacy doesn't necessarily mean for you to have regular sex with your partner but to be intimate meaning kissing each other holding hands hugging each other while you're watching a movie that seems to play according to the book that I was reading, which I forgot, but I will put it in the bio, in the caption in this episode, that seemed to play a much bigger role than the quality or the frequency of sex.

1:09:33Yeah, well, it's bids for attention, what the Gottmans talk about. Like those little bids for attention and connection are really, really important. And if we don't keep responding to each other in those ways, whether that be the hand on the, holding each other's hands, touching each other, kissing each other, lying on the sofa together, whatever it is, those things, those bids for connection are really, really important. Is there anything that you think is very important that we didn't cover when it comes to having or maintaining a healthy relationship?

1:10:15That we didn't cover? But I think one thing that I really support people to do is when you realize that either of you have been triggered, and usually if one gets triggered, the other one gets triggered, and you're in the spiral, I teach people the 10 commandments of a timeout, which is what Terry Real talks about, which is a way of calling a timeout. And that timeout is, I love you and our relationship more than I care to stand and have this row. I'm gonna I'm gonna take some time out and I because if I stay here I'm going to say or do something I regret so I'm gonna put the relationship first I'm gonna take a time out and that has to be adhered to and that is I come out away and I take 20 minutes and then I check in with you are you okay am I okay if neither of us aren't ready to come back without going straight back into that conversation we don't do it and then it's it's 20 minutes it's three hours it's six hours it's you know there's a whole kind of range of time and then you come back and when you do come back together you are not allowed to talk about that same conversation for 24 hours and the point of that is to reconnect to feel to regulate each other by being around each other we're okay we've got other stuff to talk about or we can be with each other and then we can come at it from our prefrontal cortex our adult wise brain rather than that fight flight amygdala part that is that first consciousness, that reptilian brain that just wants to protect itself.

1:11:41Like if that's there, you're not ready to have the conversation. So that's a really, really important piece. And then it goes back to the piece I was talking about before about how to speak, to own. This is the story I made up. This is what I feel as a result of that. And can we do it this way going forward? And I was just thinking, what about distant relationships? Do they work? Can they work? Sure, they can work. And what are some fundamentals that we need to keep in order for that to be successful? I guess it's, again, I mean, it feels like a broken record. Communication of what your expectations are, what the boundaries are, how much you need to see each other, how much you need to hear from each other.

1:12:25Those things will be important. But yeah, lots of people maintain a distant relationship for a long time. And does it need to have like an end date at sight for that relationship to work? No, none of us have an end date. We never know. An end date as in we know that within a year or two years, we're both going to be living in the same city altogether. For some people, yeah. For some people, they, you know, we are all recreating unconsciously our childhood, what we saw in childhood somewhere, right? we either do it by going i'm going to be completely different to my parents yeah or i'm going to be really similar and even if you're trying to do it really really differently the same dynamics is there a better approach or they're both they both no we just you just got learning along the way because you also forget that you are you and your partner brings their own version of that okay so now we've got four we've got four parents in the room and two people so it's a kind of it's you're always having to navigate what am I trying to heal what am I trying to heal and the person in front of you is simply a mirror and I said it earlier that almost every couple I work with there is a really really similar core wound at a really similar age and it can look completely different on the surface but it's the same wound and the reason that they can't move away from each other they don't want to end even though they've hurt each other over and over again is that that wound is being activated and they need to heal it and they can heal it in relationship we are hurt in relationship and we can heal in relationship that's the only place we can heal you can do the work on yourself but then you get into a relationship and something gets activated again so often i say to people you can leave but unless you do the work you're going to repeat this in the next relationship victoria if you had to compress all your knowledge from all the experience you've gathered throughout your career into one essential advice just one that we should implement in our daily lives what would it be?

1:14:37The problem isn't out there it's in here the world is just a mirror and it's showing us where we need to heal feelings are just information about us in a previous interview you shared a top tip and it goes accept every feeling you have no matter how overwhelming it's information about who you are and what you want embrace it as part of you I had some therapy myself and it made me reevaluate what I wanted. Why is this important?

1:15:22Because feelings are things that most of us distract away from and they cause so much problem when we try and move away from the feeling. A feeling is simply energy in our body. It will move through us if we allow it. The feelings that we don't want to feel and we suppress will just keep knocking on our door. You know, there's a great saying, you know, life conspires to make us feel the thing we want to feel the least. It just keeps coming back. Feel me, feel me, feel me in different guises. And so if you can feel it, my therapist always talks about being the seismograph. So what she says is we are, if we can just register every feeling like a seismograph just registers an earthquake.

1:16:06You don't make a story up about it. You just go, oh, that's there. Okay. Okay. and then it will pass and it will change and it will keep going. You're just registering. Wow, that's a feeling. The minute we attach a thought to it is where we start really hurting ourselves over and over and over. It's just information. Anger is a boundary. It's telling us what we do and we don't like. And it's just information. If we act it out, it becomes difficult. Thank you. Thank you for coming. you've given me and everyone here a lot to think about. I personally believe that the world that we live in has been designed to be lived as a couple.

1:16:54There are no cars for one person. There are no restaurant tables for one person. There are very few beds for just one person. They're usually for kids. and I think a good relationship can add tremendous value to your life but a bad one can have very negative profound impacts also and as we were discussing before the episode we have very dopamine-based biased definitions of how a relationship should look like portrayed by Hollywood or our parents, but we don't have the tools and knowledge to understand what's the baseline of how a healthy relationship should look like. How does good communication play a fundamental role into our relationship?

1:17:50What are the different stages in our lives that we should be watching out for? Because those ones are going to be important in defining how the relationship might change and we need to be prepared for those those are things that nobody's teaching us then we don't get that in school we don't get that in university most parents don't also teach us that religion also doesn't teach you that so i really thank you for shedding a light into this very important topic that i think almost everyone wants to know about so thank you for coming and sharing all this and i really want to do this again because there were so many other questions that I have but that would make it for a very very very long episode that perhaps won't be very commercial but we should do this again thank you very much thank you so much for having me thank you