Pod Insights The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett Dr Aria - Mental Health, Marriage and Mindfulness About this episode In this weeks episode of The Diary of a CEO, I sit down with Dr Aria Campbell-Danesh, a high performance psychologist and an expert in the fields of behaviour change and long-term health.
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Transcript 15,340 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Steven Bartlett? You've made a great decision and I say this as impartially as I possibly can, but this podcast is, it's really the reason why I started the Diary of a CEO. It's to hear these kinds of stories from these kinds of people. And I've got to be honest with you, I spent about a year asking this person to come on this podcast and have a conversation with me. Today's guest is Dr. Arya and he's been on the podcast once before. He's a world renowned high performance coach and he works with some of the world's most accomplished athletes, actors and everyone in between as they try and reach a mindset state that is conducive with success, with happiness and with overall fulfillment. But he's not here to talk about that today.
0:44 Steven Bartlett? He's here to talk about something very, very different, something uncomfortable, something unimaginable. So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.
1:10 Steven Bartlett? Sometimes in life, you have these unbelievable, somewhat cruel coincidences that occur, that it's hard to make sense of. And last time you came on this podcast, I would define it as, for me anyway, a pretty cruel coincidence because we had a conversation to do with life generally and success and the mindset and psychology and all the things that you're an expert on. And for whatever reason, that day, I decided that I wanted to spend 30 minutes talking about marriage, cheating, love and asking you these very personal questions about monogamy, which I've never done before with any guest ever, and which I really had no place or reason
1:55 Steven Bartlett? to ask you more than anyone else. And it just feels to me, for what we're going to talk about in part today, that that was a bit of a cruel coincidence. And you know, one of the questions I asked you was, do you believe in monogamy? And then I asked you, can you love someone and cheat on them? And when I listened to that podcast back, I now noticed why you laughed. Because it wasn't, you laughed, yeah. And it wasn't a normal laugh. It was like a real belly laugh, right? Like a bit of a nervous belly laugh.
2:28 Steven Bartlett? After we came off air on that podcast, you told me something. And it even gives me goosebumps now, thinking about what you said. And it gave the whole team in the room who overheard our conversation goosebumps as well. So
2:44 Steven Bartlett? after our 13 minute conversation about marriage, monogamy and cheating and love. What did you say to me?
2:53 Speaker 01 I told you a story.
2:54 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
2:54 Speaker 01 And that was about two weeks earlier. I'd been travelling back from London home and I got out of the train station. And my wife picked me up and we got into the car. And we had planned to go and have a brunch at my favourite little spot. They do amazing Cuervo's Rancho sauce. I was very excited. And she said, let's go straight home. I've made sandwiches. And she doesn't make great sandwiches. So I said, no, no, I think the brunch is a better option. And she said, no, there's something that I need to tell you. And I said, is it bad? And she said, yes.
3:32 Speaker 01 And I said, is that about the marriage? And she said, yes. And then we began to drive back. And I had this sinking feeling in me.
3:43 Speaker 01 And we drove for about five minutes in silence. And then I went to put my hand on her lap and she said, don't. Don't touch me because you won't want to after I've told you what's happened. And that's whenever it drops. And I remember that 10 minute drive back home then felt like an eternity. I was just looking out the window. And we got home. We got into the house, into the kitchen and I was standing by the kitchen table, hands rested on it.
4:16 Speaker 01 And I said, what's happened? And she said, I've been having an affair with a man from work.
4:24 Speaker 01 And I remember just tears began to stream. I didn't move completely. Motionless tears began to stream. And then she said, and that's not all. And she said, I'm pregnant with this child.
4:39 Speaker 01 And in that moment,
4:43 Speaker 01 I felt like I lost a lot. You know, I'd lost my wife, I'd lost the life we created, I'd lost the dog, our home, her, my parents in law, her family, everything that I really held dear. If someone said, what makes a meaningful life, I would have described these things. And it felt like they'd just been snatched away, just came crumbling down like a house of cards. And then fast forward two weeks and Steve decides to ask, and I remember because the first thing, no, no, it's fascinating because the first thing he asked was, you're
5:21 Speaker 01 married, right? And I did this high pitched laugh and I go, yes. And then, and then the conversation flowed on and it's themes I'd really thought about. Can you love someone and cheat on them? Does monogamy exist? Is it natural? Are we set up to live a life where we're in one relationship with one person only? And so with the past 18 months, it's been a process and some of these themes have been very real to me.
5:58 Steven Bartlett? I just, as I reflect on that conversation and when I played it back after you told me, so we come off air, we're stood next to the table and the microphones and you explained to me what's happened. I'm, for the first time in my life, completely speechless. And the thing that blew me away even more so than what you'd said to me was your ability to be so calm and rational and objective in the answers you gave. And even when I listen back now, although there was that laugh, which was a bit of an indication, you were able to speak about someone betraying you or being deceitful with a level of calmness and apparent emotional sort of restraint that I just admired so much from someone
6:43 Steven Bartlett? that was right in the middle of the emotional hurricane and had just been victim of that act. And you said that, you know, about the topic of monogamy. How did that change your opinion? And also the subsequent 18 months of processing on the topic of monogamy?
7:04 Speaker 01 So as a quick aside, I like that analogy and we touched upon it briefly about the hurricane. And it's funny actually, because a friend of mine showed me a book about a week ago, and it was different personality profiles depending on the day that you'd been born on. And whenever we looked mine up, there's a little meditation at the end, a summary. And it said, the stillest part of the hurricane is its center. And that essentially has been a philosophy that's guided my life, where sometimes it's a storm and it's horrendous and it's raging. But if you can cultivate that sense of stillness and calmness and clarity
7:46 Speaker 01 deep within you, no matter what life throws at you, you will be okay. Because the second part of, whenever I was told that news and the tears were streaming, and I felt that sense of loss and overwhelming sadness. It was a remarkable moment where, in that instant, and I can only describe it as a whisper, I heard a whisper within me, as if it was resonating from my heart, that all will be well, four words, all will be well, all will be well. And I knew even then, I knew whenever, you know, this tumultuous emotion, I knew everything's going to be okay. I will get through this. I'm gonna have to walk through the desert.
8:30 Speaker 01 And I'm gonna have to endure horrific amounts of emotional level, but it's all going to be fine.
8:37 Steven Bartlett? How did you know that?
8:39 Speaker 01 I think it's something that I've cultivated over 10, 15 years. And that's why I do what I do now, because I want to help other people to go to reach that stage. And it began on a journey of Buddhist exploration and understanding the nature of life. And I came to this realization that life involves suffering. There's no promise that it's going to be happy-go-lucky and really pleasant all the time. Really horrific things happen in life. And on one level, there's no way that we can ever rationally explain it away. Sometimes bad things happen, but it doesn't end there. It's a bit like that line that someone once said to me,
9:21 Speaker 01 whenever you're suffering, don't ask, God, why am I suffering? Ask, God, where are you taking me?
9:29 Speaker 01 And so I've developed this ability to
9:35 Speaker 01 begin to view my life as though it's happening to someone else. As though the experience, the thoughts, the emotions are something that I can almost take it back on and have perspective and I can see it and I can feel it. But I know that my thoughts, that isn't just who I am, my emotions isn't just who I am. And that's a temporary experience. And throughout my life, no matter what has happened, even whenever it's been brutal, it's often shifted me in a new trajectory and there's been a new meaningful life ahead of me. And I knew even then, she's going to be okay. She'll be okay. It's going to be a tough road for her too, but she'll be okay. And it's going to be a tough road for me too, but I will be okay.
10:21 Steven Bartlett? Anger.
10:22 Speaker 01 Hmm.
10:24 Steven Bartlett? So many people in that situation, whether rightly or wrongly, just because of the way that they are, would have reacted with anger. And for some reason, you were both calm in telling me, you're calm now. And this remarkable thing, which I, I think I,
10:41 Steven Bartlett? I struggled to understand a little bit is one of your first concerns was her wellbeing versus your own. Why?
10:53 Speaker 01 Because I loved her and I was in the practice of placing her emotional wellbeing and her happiness on the same level as mine, if not sometimes first and foremostly, but at least on an equal playing field. And, and I was just so in that habit and that was the toughest thing to let go of. The thing that I still struggle with today and I'm still, it's the one part that I realised the other day, that I still had a fear of upsetting her or of her not being okay. And so that's something which just.
11:35 Speaker 01 Just really developed and was so ingrained. And it's interesting on the point of anger. If you said, like, your wife, partner for 10 years, married for five, has an affair and is pregnant with another man's child, how will you react? I would have said anger. I would be furious. But it wasn't there, at least not initially. It was this overwhelming sense of sadness. It was just that sense of loss of knowing that, again, that she's potentially done something that she might regret for a long time. And I don't want anyone to go through that experience where they feel like they fucked up hugely.
12:13 Speaker 01 Even if the the future is positive in that moment, my sense is there will be regret or at least shame. And so it was a sadness because that was connected to the loss, the sense of loss of losing things that I held dear.
12:30 Steven Bartlett? It feels like you're living outside your body a little bit. I guess that's what self-awareness is, or at least emotional awareness is. Cause you're being able to see that situation, which is utterly horrific for anyone.
12:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:43 Steven Bartlett? Um, from, as you say, from like a bird's eye view, as if you've like.
12:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:47 Steven Bartlett? Looking down on it. And that's allowing you not to just feel your own emotions, but to feel empathy towards theirs.
12:54 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I think, I think that's the path, in my eyes, that's the path to enlightenment. And I'm not saying that I am enlightened, but I think we're all on that path and we're all progressing through it. And for me, that's what awareness is. It's being able to experience internally your thoughts and your emotions and externally what's happened as if it's happening to someone else.
13:15 Steven Bartlett? You're like holding them out in front of you and analyzing them, right?
13:18 Speaker 01 Right.
13:18 Steven Bartlett? So like, but if you're not holding them out in front of you and it's happening within you, then you are just almost like a passenger on a roller coaster.
13:24 Speaker 01 Totally.
13:25 Steven Bartlett? Whereas holding them out in front of you kind of makes you the conductor or the roller coaster, or at least able to, yeah, understand. And if you can understand, then you can address and then you can overcome.
13:35 Speaker 01 Totally. I love it. Whenever you're holding it really close to you, you're fused with it. Anything that happens instantly will provoke a reaction, whether or not it's emotional or behavioral.
13:47 Speaker 01 But when you hold it in front of you, there's a bit more space. Now, you still experience it. I'm not gonna lie to you. It was a brutal couple of months. I cried every day for maybe three months, for hours, hours. I would walk and I'd process what happened. And if you want, we can talk about that at some point, about my process of moving through it. But yes, it was, I'm not going to say it wasn't emotionally painful, but I wasn't defined by that pain. That was just a part that I was experiencing.
14:19 Steven Bartlett? Let's talk about that. So a lot of people experience grief in many forms, and this somewhat feels like the central emotion. You described it as a loss. It feels like a form of grief. What was your process for moving from, you know, finding out that it had happened to where you are today, where you're, you know, you've quote unquote processed it, I imagine, as much as you might have been able to at this stage?
14:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
14:44 Steven Bartlett? Some, you know, what was your process?
14:48 Speaker 01 Where I think people often catch themselves in a counterproductive cycle is whenever they try and avoid experiencing what they're experiencing. They try and shun it, lock it away, put it in a box, disconnect from it, deny it, and they just focus on the future and where I'm going. And they might try and rationalize it. This happened because of X or because of Y. And then they try and forge ahead. And I think it comes back to bite them at some point. The simplest truth is that we can only ever experience one moment at a time. And I remind myself of that. I don't need to think about right now, the
15:30 Speaker 01 financial separation, the divorce, what it means about friends or family, or will I meet someone again, or how long will it be, or what will my life look like, or where am I going to live? So many different factors that could be overwhelming. I just decided to deal with one moment at a time. All I need to do is deal with this one moment. And what is this one moment bringing me? And accepting and welcoming, it sounds strange, but welcoming whatever comes up. And so whatever emotion came up, I didn't try and push it away, or shunt it, or deny it, or negate it. I let it, I let it sit. And that's why I cried so much, because there was so much sadness.
16:10 Steven Bartlett? Did you write down the emotions you were experiencing?
16:14 Speaker 01 So I didn't write down the emotions, but what I did in the next step is, so the first step was awareness and accepting whatever emotions I felt and seeing that they come and then they go. You know, there'd be moments where I'd be laughing with my brother and then crying a minute later and then talking about something else.
16:35 Speaker 01 The second step was reminding myself of reality because I was so ingrained in in an internal model of what life looked like. I have a strong, stable marriage in which my partner, subconsciously, you know, implicitly, I believe, is faithful. We're meant to be together. We're going to be together for the next 50, 60 years until one of us dies. We're going to have children together. That was my internal model.
17:14 Speaker 01 And I had to rip it apart. I had to take it down. I had to dismantle it. And I had to remind myself of the reality of the situation. I had to, I had to accept it. I had to accept it's over. It's not going to change. There's no going back. The final nail is in the coffin and you need to take that on board. And I'd also write any, I'd write down reminders of, of what had happened. And I also wrote down any insights I had about the situation that I could remind myself of. And I wrote down how I wanted to handle this process. And I can actually read it for you out if you
17:57 Speaker 01 want. Please, please. I've got them. So I, I literally would just write them down on my phone. And so afterwards, I began to split them up into different sections. But this one was for the process. Hold yourself to the highest standard. Choose actions that you can be proud of. How you get through this process is more important than how quickly you get through this process. Because for me, it was important that I still lived with personal integrity, that I didn't, that I wasn't warped or changed or.
18:38 Speaker 01 Consumed with vengeance or acted in ways that was out of spite or out of emotion. I wanted to be able to look back on this in 12 months, 18 months' time and still feel good about it. Have a clear conscience, still able to put my head down and feel as though I handled that to the best of my ability. With God, you can get through this. You can become stronger, wiser, more caring, more compassionate and more loving.
19:04 Speaker 01 And that's another theme that actually the deepest moments of suffering can actually be opportunities for growth, even if you don't want it, there's something there that you can learn and can grow from. You don't need anything from her anymore.
19:22 Speaker 01 And then different reminders, you have nothing to feel bad about. You aren't responsible. You have nothing to feel guilty about, nothing. Because there were moments where my mind would almost begin to, in a way, play a trick on me and begin to try and create reasons to feel bad or to try and create shame. And at those times, while I would accept what came up, I decided not to pursue that line of thinking. Because that didn't fit. Whenever I was calm and clear, this came to me. And so I'd write down whatever came to me whenever I was in a place of wisdom. Then when the emotion hit and I'm not seeing clearly and I've got on a clouded lens,
20:06 Speaker 01 this little baby became my best friend because I'd go back to it and I'd remind myself and then it would reshift my mental paradigm.
20:14 Steven Bartlett? I have this, before, please do keep your phone open because I want to hear the rest of this.
20:18 Speaker 01 Okay.
20:19 Steven Bartlett? But I have this analogy I make in moments where I experience a very similar thing that I'm going to tell you one example.
20:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:25 Steven Bartlett? It's the closest I can come to resonating with what your experience is. I was dating this girl and I broke up with her. And three days later, I find out that she's had sex with someone else, right? And I can only, the way that I described it was, I'm flying on this plane.
20:46 Steven Bartlett? And I'm the pilot. And then suddenly, when I find, when I, when I look down and hear the news that she's just slept with someone, somebody else.
20:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:55 Steven Bartlett? It was like terrorists stormed the cockpit and they chucked the fucking rational pilot out and they were threatening to crash the whole fucking thing. And my whole objective as the pilot is to get back into the cockpit before they crash this plane into the side of a mountain, because if they crash the plane, I'm fucked. And so, yeah, what I wanted to do was lose my integrity. I wanted to crash the plane. I wanted to get her back, take revenge, tell her she's a this, this and a this and a this and a this. And it was this, because I've got to a place of where I'm able to hold situations out in front of me a little bit more than I ever was, you know, in the past. I was at war with myself.
21:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:32 Steven Bartlett? It was the terrorists on one end telling me to crash the plane and the pilot saying, you've been here before, you know, you just need to keep the plane in the air until you.
21:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
21:40 Steven Bartlett? And, and I, and I'm so I'm going for a run, like Steve, go to the gym, go for a run, clear your head, I'm at the gym, the terrorists that, and I'm like, I'm gonna finish, I'm gonna finish, get back in and then I come back and back in.
21:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:51 Steven Bartlett? And the crazy conclusion to all of this was my friend called me and said a few things to me about, um, why she did what she did.
22:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
22:01 Steven Bartlett? My friend said to me, remember, Steve, you rejected her. She really, really, really likes you and she's done this as a way to make herself feel better for the rejection that you gave her. And it sounds like such a pathetic thing to say, but what it made me realise in that moment was much of the reason why the terrorists had stormed the cockpit was my ego was bruised. And the thing that coached those terrorists out the cockpit was my friend massaging my ego again and, and letting me know that some of those stories we sometimes tell ourselves when we get rejected about why we got rejected.
22:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
22:35 Steven Bartlett? Weren't true. It's not because you're not enough. It's, it's in fact because of something you've done. And that was the reason why I managed to take control of the cockpit. I did nothing. I didn't punish her in any way, didn't even mention it. And it was, and so, yeah, but please.
22:51 Speaker 01 Two things come to me there. One is this emotion of anger. So fascinatingly, 95% of the emotion for me was sadness. 5% was anger and the anger struck early on. It was the first night and I remember my brother had come over and was staying with me and I woke up in the middle of the night. The night of that day that she told me and it was like my body was burning. I have an experience anger like that before it was it was almost like I was aflame. I was just infused with rage and I began and I really feel for my brother having to witness this.
23:32 Speaker 01 But I was just moving up and down, shouting as loudly as I could. My wife, my house, my wife, my house. And for five minutes, it was like a supernova. It just was just seething.
23:54 Speaker 01 And then it burnt out.
23:57 Speaker 01 And I cried and I fell asleep and and the next day and then the anger didn't really come much. It would come now and again.
24:04 Speaker 01 But what I realized was the anger was intimately attached to my ego. The anger came whenever I was attached to my ego and I'm very fortunate that I'm able to detach from my ego. The majority of the time, but when I didn't, that's when it hurt because it came about my wife. As if I own her, as if there's ownership, as if it's a part of me. I don't own her, she's free.
24:31 Speaker 01 My house, I didn't even own the house, the mortgage company did, you know? But as soon as we link it to ourselves and make it about us. Yeah. Then it it's it's a place of vulnerability because you're getting inflicted. It's like getting stabbed in the heart, you feel that. But it's an illusion because we are not our ego. You know, we can see our ego and have a relationship to our ego, but once we're fused with it, we're in trouble. And the other part of it is that because I don't want to come across like a saint, like I didn't have dark thoughts. Or, you know, I wasn't angry and I just handled it with grace the entire time.
25:12 Speaker 01 But I operate from a principle that the mind has a mind of its own. And I think we talked about it last time.
25:19 Speaker 01 But essentially, your mind will populate
25:24 Speaker 01 your head with thoughts. Automatically, you're not asking for them. It'll just come up with judges, evaluations, assessments, predictions about the future, past memories, imagined scenarios. You know, if I said, okay, Steve, don't think about anything right now. Just for 10 seconds, have a complete blank mind. And I'm going to say a word, but don't think about anything. Okay, so we'll just do it now. Don't think about a thing.
25:52 Speaker 01 Birthday.
25:54 Speaker 01 Okay, right. So even though you were attempting not to think about anything, your mind came up with it automatically. And
26:02 Speaker 01 from my perspective, we are not our thoughts. We have thoughts, our mind comes up with thoughts, but that's not me. I am the observer of the thought. Now, why is that important? Because my mind would come up with really brutal thoughts. What thoughts? Like torturing the guy. Really? Yeah, getting in a car, finding him, shooting in the back of the van, and doing this elaborate, elaborate of what I would do to him. Absolutely, because my mind was thinking about about seeking vengeance. Justice. Justice, and it was like a Hollywood movie.
26:40 Speaker 01 And somehow, no one found out. I went back along the day. You know, and so yes, you can have those. Or whenever I was in deep pain, the thought of ending my life popped into my head. I didn't have any intent. I wasn't making any plans. I didn't want to kill myself. But my mind wanted a way out of the pain.
27:06 Speaker 01 It was suffering and it wanted an end to it. And what is one option? Killing yourself. And so when I've got a different relationship though with these thoughts, when I think about torturing someone, or I think, or when my mind comes up with the thought of torturing someone, or my mind comes up with the thought of taking my life.
27:32 Speaker 01 There's no judgment. I don't think, oh, that means I must want to do it, or that means that I will do it, or that means I'm a bad person, or that means that I'm evil. It just means my mind, I think what is my mind trying to do? It's, it's trying to solve a solution and it's probably struggling to cope. And it's trying to find a way to make me feel better.
27:56 Steven Bartlett? Neo on this podcast, who came on this podcast, talked about how the mind is actually, you know, people think we're in the search of pleasure, but the mind is programmed to avoid discomfort.
28:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:05 Steven Bartlett? We're constantly in trying to seek, you know, avoid it. And that's why we procrastinate because we've got a big project, which is, we may not feel competent to complete, or, you know, we're a bit, there's a feeling of discomfort around it. So we go and wash the dishes or do the hoovering.
28:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:17 Steven Bartlett? On the, on the, you mentioned wanting to torture this man. I know, right? So like a moment of the mind having.
28:24 Speaker 01 Well, my mind did, Steve.
28:26 Steven Bartlett? Your mind, right. You didn't want to, your mind wanted to.
28:28 Speaker 01 I'm a peace-loving kind of guy.
28:31 Steven Bartlett? But I wanted to know, how do you feel about him?
28:38 Speaker 01 So it's really interesting. I, um,
28:43 Speaker 01 the stage, the, the process went awareness and acceptance,
28:50 Speaker 01 how I wanted to handle the process. And then at some point, I realized I needed to find forgiveness.
29:02 Speaker 01 I'm quite a simple person and I don't, I don't like having a lot of,
29:07 Speaker 01 items or objects or physical possessions. And I don't like having a lot of emotional baggage either. I want to travel light. You know, I want to travel so lightly I could pass through the eye of a needle, so to speak. And the weight of.
29:23 Speaker 01 Anger or resentment or the feelings of betrayal were weighing me down. And I wanted to forgive her and I wanted to forgive him. And honestly, you could view it as ultimately selfish because it's not going to impact their life, but it's going to make mine a lot easier. And during lockdown, I was in California and I was lucky because in Santa Barbara, where I was staying, the mayor didn't close the beaches. Because there's a lot of families there and he said, as long as you socially distance, it's fine. And I'd run along the beach and I had this process where I would say out loud,
30:08 Speaker 01 I would imagine her and I'd say, I forgive you. I'm sending you my love and I wish you all the best for the future. And I processed so much by that, at that point, because I'd been able to understand and see her situation. And in my mind, I have, I have an idea of how it was created and why it unfolded.
30:30 Speaker 01 And so there was compassion there and I was able to reach that really relatively quickly. That, that was easy. The hard part was with him because I didn't know him. I didn't know his personality, his background, who he was. He could be a great friend and an excellent son or potentially a very loving partner.
30:59 Speaker 01 But all I knew about him was that he was prepared to take certain actions. And so whenever I tried it with him and I'd say, I forgive you. It was like there was a knot and a wince and I'd play huh? And I would say, and I'm sending you my love.
31:20 Speaker 01 And I wish you all the best for the future. But you're still imagining pulling up in that van and jumping out and blindfolding and
31:33 Speaker 01 sticking something up his butt.
31:36 Speaker 01 How do you like me now?
31:40 Speaker 01 And so, but I would just notice that, I don't, do you know there's tension there? And, and actually, I will say this was a year after I'd heard the news. So I didn't try and do this initially. I think it would have been premature to have attempted this whenever I wasn't in a space where I had a lot more clarity and groundedness and, and I'd process the emotion. The emotion wasn't being clouded at this point. Now was what am I holding on to?
32:09 Speaker 01 And for a matter of weeks, five, six weeks, I was running two, three times a week and I would just try that, try that process. And then one day it was, it was remarkable. I was running along and I said, I forgive you. And there was nothing. And then I said, and I'm sending you my love. And I felt easy. And I said, and I wish you all the best for the future. And I could tell that I meant it for them or their baby, you know, for them together as a family.
32:42 Speaker 01 And I felt at peace. And it's a bit like that saying, my yoke is easy, my burden is light. Now genuinely, it sounds strange, but I don't really feel anything for them. It's almost as if, you know, if you came to me and said, um, I've got a friend called Mike and he's going through a really difficult time. He was involved in a really complicated emotional relationship. Would you mind sending out positive thoughts to him and saying a prayer for him? I'd say, sure. Like, he hasn't ever done anything to me. I don't have any connection with him. No problem. It's almost that sort of relationship now where they're just other people on their journey.
33:25 Speaker 01 And I had that shared history with, with my wife, which I look upon fondly, particularly the first eight years. We had a wonderful marriage for a long time, but there's no emotional tinge.
33:39 Steven Bartlett? There's
33:41 Steven Bartlett? So an emotional umbilical cord and what is imagining it is
33:43 Speaker 01 It's a letting go.
33:44 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
33:44 Speaker 01 It's a letting go. And so that was, that was a part that for me, because I think there comes a time where you have to say, okay, I process it, I've processed it. How long do I want to hold on to it for now? And that's become my own choice. Do I want to carry this and let it define me? Or do I want to finally let it go and see it float down the river?
34:11 Steven Bartlett? And I think, you know, even you're someone that has a remarkable ability to practice like self-awareness. And, you know, you have that sort of like emotional awareness as well. And it's good to hear, I think, for everybody listening to this, that even your process to, from finding it out to, you know, being emotionally unattached to the matter to the point that you can forgive both of them, wasn't linear at all. It was up, it was down, it was up, it was down, and it was long. And I think people sometimes think that their experience of rejection or deceit or, you know,
34:48 Steven Bartlett? any of these things is uniquely bad because their process to recovery per se isn't linear and it's long. And it feels like the more I've talked about this topic and the more people I've met and, you know, from hearing your experiences, that in fact is the only way out. And I actually think realizing that that's the only way out will make your process out of that deceit or betrayal feel normal and natural and okay, and therefore acceptable. And, and I think that's a really important point that you've made through the story you've told.
35:23 Speaker 01 Absolutely. And each person's journey will be unique. And there will be peaks and troughs and it will wax and wane. And I'm very aware that it's possible that my journey happened over a relatively short period of time because of my history and my background. As a psychologist, as a high performance expert, this is the area that I deal with. It's about developing emotional resilience. It's how would you help people to cope with high stakes environments when they've lost a sense of balance in their life? When they're struggling in their relationships, whenever they
36:01 Speaker 01 experience something in life which throws them, how would you get back up? This is what I've been trained to do for 15 years.
36:08 Steven Bartlett? Isn't it weird that life sent you this challenge?
36:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:11 Steven Bartlett? When you think about your experience, isn't it? Must be a part of you that, because I think I would, I would think to myself, life is testing me to see if I can deal with the worst and still maintain the values and principles that I espouse like.
36:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, it, it sounds, this will sound really odd, but I almost felt at, at times I felt in a way I'm so lucky because I'm so lucky that I am where I am when this happened. If this had happened 10 years ago, I would have been in a vastly different space.
36:45 Steven Bartlett? Why?
36:46 Speaker 01 Because I struggled 10 years to cope with what life gave me on an emotional level and I would react out of the emotion. So I'd experience it and then I would just react. And essentially that's when we make terrible decisions.
37:03 Steven Bartlett? Oh, you crashed a plane.
37:04 Speaker 01 Oh, we crashed a plane. If you look at NASA astronauts, they prepare for the sequence of events leading up to launch and they run through that over a hundred times from putting on the kit, traveling down to the launch space to what could go wrong. And they rehearse that and they run it through. And it's a way of being able to stay calm whenever there is uncertainty or turbulence or danger or threat.
37:36 Speaker 01 Because that's whenever, that's the person you really want to be whenever there's an emergency, like we talked about in the podcast, you want to be the person that still has an air, a pocket, a space of clarity that isn't affected. So that even though you're experiencing all these emotions on a very
37:55 Speaker 01 physical level, deep down, you're still grounded. You can take it. And so from where I was, I did feel
38:06 Speaker 01 as though I'm fortunate that life has thrown at me something that in my mind was one of the worst things that I could experience. There's lots of worse things without a shadow of a doubt, but it was a big one. And find a way to move through. And incredibly, it's informed even my work. Because in the last year,
38:30 Speaker 01 again, whether it's coincidence or not, I don't know. The number of clients I've been working with on relationship issues has gone up exponentially. And it's issues centered on a loss of connection, a loss of intimacy, betrayal, confusion. How do you,
38:48 Speaker 01 how would you say true to who you are in a relationship with someone else where you feel like there's a shift? Or you wake up one day and you're in a space where you don't know how you got there. Where you become like best friends living together, rather than the passionate lovers you were 10 years ago.
39:04 Steven Bartlett? You talked there a second about the calm that astronauts are trained to develop, and how crucial that is to making good decisions. I saw this quote the other day, and it said, when emotions go up, intellect comes down. And I was thinking about, just then, as you said that, I was thinking, what are the factors that make somebody not calm? And then I thought, and I kind of answered myself, I thought, okay, so it's, we talked about the ego playing a big role. And so I guess my conclusion there is the people who will struggle to maintain their calm in situations like that, that are so personally associated, are those with the lowest self-esteem and the most fragile ego. And it feels like the work that you've described, that you've done over the last 10 years, is really like building your
39:45 Steven Bartlett? self-esteem, and really, in some respects, a separation from ego. Yeah.
39:50 Speaker 01 You've nailed it. One, we know on a neuro level, so we know from neuroimaging studies that when we experience emotion, the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for judgment, decision making, impulse control, planning, goes offline, shuts down. So we don't have access to that creativity, the wisdom that we have usually. And again, absolutely, I think the journey, for me, the journey of of life involves developing a robust sense of self.
40:29 Speaker 01 A sense of self that is unshakable, that is immovable, that still experiences life and the whole gamut of emotions and and the beauty and loveliness of life and also the darkness and the destruction of life, but isn't impacted on an essential level by it. And I think that's the journey and that's the journey that I work on with clients. No matter what the outwardly symptoms are, it could be weight gain, it could be relationship dysfunction, it could be struggling to experience that sense of contentment or fulfillment in life, even though I have everything that life says I should have. It could be feeling like I'm I'm lacking or I'm just not doing enough or I'm not being
41:14 Speaker 01 enough. But it all comes back to that stronger sense of self.
41:19 Steven Bartlett? And this, you know, horrific experience, what has it done to your opinion of monogamy? Because I'm sure, I'm guessing from what you've said, the way that you'd planned your life ahead, you thought, when you, you know, when you went, walked down the aisle and you said those words, till death do us part, you then planned the next 60 years of your life and how your life was going to pan out. And when you said those words at the end of the, at the altar, you were totally convinced, totally convinced that this person was the person, your soulmate.
41:55 Steven Bartlett? How do you feel about all of those concepts now, like soulmate and monogamy and till death do us part?
42:01 Speaker 01 The experience led me to a position where I began to question my deepest assumptions about monogamy, about marriage, about lifelong relationships. And in the same way, I began to take a step back and reflect and contemplate. I became very aware that there is a social script for relationships. And it generally goes, the conventional model is boy meets girl. It's not even boy meets boy or girl meets girl. There's a first date, a first kiss, a period of courting. At some point, there will be sex, meeting the parents. Hopefully not at the same time. Eventually.
42:44 Speaker 01 The relationship becomes exclusive, and then engagement, marriage, children, till death do us part. And I realised that that is a social construction. It's a conventional model based on assumptions that monogamy is natural, that marriage is a human universal, and that any structure other than the nuclear one is aberrant.
43:16 Speaker 01 And so then I began to think, okay, well, what are the different, what are the different elements? So on the one hand, we can take, and we touched upon it briefly, a evolutionary perspective.
43:30 Speaker 01 And we are apes. It's not just that we've descended from apes, we are apes. We're one of the five, Homo sapiens are one of the five surviving species of great apes, along with orangutans, bonobos, gorillas, and chimpanzees.
43:49 Speaker 01 And yet, at some point, we...
43:53 Speaker 01 Separated from that psychologically. And actually, the fine print that distinguishes humans from other great apes has been described by primatologists as wholly inadequate. It's a fabrication. And at some stage, we began to see ourselves as special and unique and above nature and exempt from our primal history. Because we descended from hyper-sexual ancestors. So if the Homo lineage has been around for 2 million years, modern humans have been around for 200,000 years. And about 10,000 years ago, there was a shift in going from hunter-gatherers
44:37 Speaker 01 to settled communities because of the advent of agriculture. Now, up until 10,000 years ago, the data now suggests that we actually lived by fiercely egalitarian principles. Everything was shared: food, shelter, water, childcare, and even sexual partners. Casual sexuality was the norm for our prehistoric ancestors. For 95% of the collective experience of our lineage, that is what we experienced. And it wasn't based on meaningless, random relationships.
45:20 Speaker 01 They were relationships that reinforced a social pattern that we needed to survive at minimize our risk and it reinforced social ties. But then with the advent of agriculture, we began to settle. We had then, we had land, we had domesticated animals. And for the first time, private property came into play. And suddenly, there was a change, and there was even a change in the status of women. Because when we look at it, the human and female up until that point was on an equal playing field. They were as responsible for the hunting and the cooking and making decisions about where they were going to settle.
46:04 Speaker 01 And then it changed, and the female became the property of the man, something that he had to maintain and keep. And actually, the reason that property came into play is because we weren't moving. So it did matter what happened to our resources. We were accumulating. And biological paternity, for the first time, became crucial.
46:30 Speaker 01 And so, on a natural evolutionary level, monogamy didn't exist. We didn't live in long-term, monogamous relationships. Then we bring in marriage.
46:47 Speaker 01 And if we fast-forward about five and a half thousand years, in about 2,350 B.C. in Mesopotamia, we had the first marriage between, the union between a man and a woman. And over the next few hundred years, it spread. The ancient Romans, Greeks, Hebrews, they began to adopt this widespread practice. But marriage had a very different meaning across the ages. In the fifth century with Anglo-Saxons, it was about securing trade ties. It was a diplomatic tool. In the 11th century, marriage was about financial, economic, and political advantage.
47:34 Speaker 01 And as early as the 12th, religion became involved. And Roman Catholicism tied it to sacrament and it to being a sacred experience related to experiencing God.
47:48 Speaker 01 Then about 500 years ago, Thomas Cranmer came up with the modern day marital vows that we read out today, and he was the architect of English Protestantism. And then up until 1858, divorce was rare.
48:06 Speaker 01 Marriage was something which was lifelong, and it wasn't really questioned. But then it became a legal process that you could apply to do. And it was still relatively uncommon because it was expensive and a woman had to prove aggravated adultery, bestiality, sodomy, cruelty. And then the divorce gates really opened up in 1969 with the Divorce Reform Act, and marital breakdown could then be cited. So whenever we begin to take a different lens and we see the journey that it's taken, and then we ask, well, where are we today? Since 1975, there's been a drop in marriages by about 30%. More people are now opting to cohab it than they are to get married.
48:51 Speaker 01 Divorce statistics in England and Wales are at 42%.
48:56 Speaker 01 You could arguably say that the system is collapsing, that it is beginning to crumble.
49:03 Speaker 01 And they don't even take a cultural lens. And if I'm talking too much, just-
49:07 Steven Bartlett? No, fascinating.
49:08 Speaker 01 Jump in there.
49:09 Steven Bartlett? Super fascinating.
49:11 Speaker 01 Culturally, the Spanish word esposas means wife and handcuffs.
49:19 Speaker 01 We joke about the wife being the ball and chain.
49:24 Speaker 01 A friend got married, got engaged last week, and the talk amongst the boys was, this is the beginning of the end of your sex life.
49:32 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
49:34 Speaker 01 But women don't fare any better. Forty-three percent of American women report sexual dysfunction. Viagra sales are increasing every year. They're just record highs, year upon year.
49:46 Steven Bartlett? Porn is through the fucking roof. Not that I would know.
49:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
49:51 Steven Bartlett? A friend told me.
49:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
49:55 Speaker 01 The porn industry takes in about $57 to $100 billion worldwide.
50:03 Speaker 01 A US report showed that Americans spend more at strip clubs than they do at Broadway, off-Broadway, non-profit and regional theatres, the ballet, jazz and the opera collectively.
50:19 Speaker 01 We look at the church and there have been hundreds of Roman Catholic priests admitting to thousands of sex crimes. In 2008, they paid out $436 million to victims of sexual abuse, a fifth were under age of five. And that's not to mention the forgotten victims. And we have to ask ourselves, one, how did we get here? Two, how was that story constructed? And three, is marriage giving us what we want? And is it realistic and is it feasible? So number three. So where am I with that? Yeah. Yeah. I'm still torn. I'll be totally honest with you. I can.
51:05 Speaker 01 Say it. I can imagine, okay, so I can imagine on the one hand, I can imagine being in a relationship with, with a woman and, and being with that one woman for the rest of my life. I can also imagine being with someone in a relationship and having more than one sexual partner.
51:28 Speaker 01 But. But if, if it was flipped around and someone asked me, would you want your partners to be with other men? I'd say hell no. Of course. Like, it just seems, that is not something, because I'm so strongly programmed against that, even though that's potentially the biological heritage. I can't imagine being with someone who's with other, with other people. I wouldn't want to be in that situation. And I'm aware of the acute hypocrisy contained within it. Yeah.
51:57 Steven Bartlett? I think everyone feels the same way to some degree. I think people that tell you otherwise are probably talking shit because they're playing defence against not wanting to happen to them to some degree, right?
52:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
52:08 Steven Bartlett? It's a, and I think it's an ideal situation for yourself, but not for the person you're with, from your perspective. I've read this book a long time ago called The Mystery Method by one of the world's number one pick-up artists. And I don't know if this is true, but what he was saying was, men are programmed in a way that seeks the woman to be faithful for them because the risk, the evolutionary risk was if I impregnate you as my wife, or no, if I, if I'm committed to you as my wife and then you are, you cheat on me and get pregnant with someone else's child, I will then spend my resources, my energy, my time, raising someone else's child and then my genetics won't pass on, that person's
52:53 Steven Bartlett? will. And essentially, if you think about it from an evolutionary perspective, I then wouldn't have existed if I didn't have that concern about making sure my sperm was the one that reached the egg. So you think about it from an evolutionary perspective, you wouldn't exist if your ancestors hadn't done a brilliant job of making sure their sperm hit the egg. And one of the ways of doing that was making sure it wasn't another guy's sperm hitting the egg.
53:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
53:21 Steven Bartlett? By being territorial, by being whatever. And on the other side, from the woman's perspective, the book talks about how, you know, if a woman got eight months pregnant, tens of thousands of years ago, she can no longer hunt and gather for herself. So really, she has to find a partner that isn't going to abscond, that isn't going to bounce, especially once they've had sex. And so the book kind of talks about some of the, the reasons why, you know, in society, we typically think women are more in search of a relationship and are trying to, you know, get a guy more than men are typically, is because from an evolutionary perspective, they would have died on the savanna in Africa or whatever, if, if the guy had sex with them, impregnated them at a time when we didn't have birth
54:05 Steven Bartlett? control, got them eight months pregnant and then bounced.
54:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
54:08 Steven Bartlett? And, and I don't know how true that is.
54:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
54:11 Steven Bartlett? It's something that I've believed because I've read this book for some time.
54:14 Speaker 01 So that's the dominant, traditional understanding of human sexuality.
54:22 Speaker 01 Because whenever you look at other species, yes, it's about essentially an aggressive alpha male then being with a female and knowing that their offspring has been continued through that lineage. There's an alternative which has come out more recently where, and there was a paper published in Science in 2015 that actually showed that what separated humans from other great apes was our social organisation.
54:56 Steven Bartlett? Yeah, about 10,000 years ago, we started living next to water and in camps.
55:00 Speaker 01 Exactly.
55:00 Steven Bartlett? Yeah, so and then we were a tribe essentially, I've heard about that.
55:03 Speaker 01 And up until that point, though, it's very possible that we had multiple sexual partners, but biological paternity was less of a concern because our structure was such that, so what we found out now is we didn't used to live with our close relatives, we actually created social ties with other individuals. And so we're set in such a way that the focus wasn't ever on individual survival, it was on group survival, group identity, group welfare. And the reason is, it's the group that keeps you alive anyway. And so it's very possible that then there was a shift which happened actually with
55:47 Speaker 01 this advent of private property, because that's whenever paternity would matter. Because there's some hunter-gatherer communities that believe when multiple men have sex with a female, that it's to collectively, because you have to think, where does our understanding of the sperm and embryo come from? That's very recent, it's a very recent biological understanding. Our ancestors wouldn't have known that. And there are some beliefs where collectively the men contribute to
56:19 Speaker 01 The production of the child.
56:21 Steven Bartlett? Hmm.
56:22 Speaker 01 But actually, it's almost like an amalgamation of the different men then creates that child. And that child becomes part of the group as opposed to that one person's child.
56:31 Steven Bartlett? And this is the thing, just to like, challenge that thinking. Say that there was one man in the group that was slightly better and making sure he was the one that inseminated the female.
56:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
56:45 Steven Bartlett? He, his genes would pass on.
56:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
56:46 Steven Bartlett? His, his genetics would pass on as being slightly better for whatever reason at inseminating a, a, a woman. And therefore, in the next round of, you know, the next generation, he would have a slight advantage. Pretend that, that, the, the kid of that man would have a slight genetic predisposition for being good at that. Which would increase the probability that that would pass on again and again and again. And it seems like that, that those genetics and that ability to be good at inseminating, whether it's through being territorial or being stronger or being more persuasive or being more, you know, more of a peacock.
57:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
57:19 Steven Bartlett? Um, through generations over the space of a million years from the chimps. That would create a scenario where we are programmed to be, through our psychology and our behaviour and our peacocking, good at, you know.
57:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
57:32 Steven Bartlett? At winning.
57:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
57:33 Steven Bartlett? Even through slightly more malicious methods or.
57:36 Speaker 01 Yeah. And then there's also the social conditioning and the ideas of, of marriage, of monogamy, of romanticism, of what that means. And, and I think what had really come particularly through my work with clients is seeing that where people find themselves in trouble is when there's enmeshment. Whenever there's too much, when there's too much closeness, when actually the identity of one person is submerged with the identity of the other. And there's no space.
58:07 Steven Bartlett? Did that happen to you in your marriage, where you became more like her?
58:14 Speaker 01 It's incredible that you ask that.
58:17 Steven Bartlett? Did that happen to you in your marriage? Where you became more like her?
58:23 Speaker 01 It's incredible that you ask that.
58:27 Speaker 01 Whenever we first met,
58:31 Speaker 01 she was the sensible one. She was very prudent, very pragmatic, very level headed. She made very safe, sensible choices in life in general, which is known in that way. I was a bit more of a rogue. I was a little bit more mysterious. There was probably sort of, you know, hint of mischievous of.
58:58 Steven Bartlett? Spontaneity?
58:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, of playfulness. And there's an idea in psychology that that we seek in the other person, a part of ourselves that we've lost.
59:15 Speaker 01 And so there was almost that attraction there. It created that chemistry. It drew us in together. I think she was looking for that excitement and in a way that safe danger. I was actually looking for stability and groundedness.
59:34 Speaker 01 And over time, it connected us and brought us together. But over time, a remarkable thing happened. And that is, just like you said, I began to become more like her. I became safer and I actually lost an intrinsic part of who I was. I lost the the wild child that's in me. I lost the part that's a bit more dangerous, that's a bit more risky, that doesn't always say something which is politically correct. And I became almost like a sanitized, clean version of who I was. And that's not the man that she met. And that's not the man that she fell in love with.
1:00:18 Speaker 01 And on one level, it worked in terms of
1:00:24 Speaker 01 a stable love. There was reliability. There was dependability. There was relatability.
1:00:33 Speaker 01 But it crushed the desire, the slow suffocation of that desire over the last couple of years.
1:00:44 Speaker 01 And so I believe that
1:00:49 Speaker 01 one day she woke up and she sensed that loss of connection, which I also sense too, and that loss of intimacy, and she was scared. And when the mind is scared, it comes up with thoughts, is this it? Am I gonna have to live like this for the next 10, 20 years? Will I ever get that chemistry or that connection back? What if it ever comes back?
1:01:18 Speaker 01 And when we're afraid, we're then seeking that that part of ourselves that we've lost. And so it's almost less about the other person and more about us. It's less about turning away from our partner and more about turning away from a part of ourselves.
1:01:37 Speaker 01 It's less about finding another person and more about finding another part of ourselves in which we feel alive. And I think the affair would have been wildly tempting, wildly exciting. It would have been all the things, it would have given her a lot of the things that we had in the beginning that she missed. And suddenly it was back. And even the structure of an affair is such that
1:02:02 Speaker 01 you can't have the other person and the forbidden is erotic.
1:02:07 Speaker 01 And it's set up in such a way that it just perpetually creates desire because it has to be secretive. It can't be long lasting for long periods of time. There's continual space. Now, if fire needs air, desire needs space.
1:02:26 Speaker 01 And we found ourselves in a situation in which we're seeing each other every day. I used to be traveling, I used to be working away a lot more. We'd have pockets where we'd be apart. And in that pocket, even if you're away for a day or a couple of days, there's a sense of loss on a very micro level. And then a sense of excitement of the person coming back and reimagining that life together.
1:02:50 Speaker 01 And so going back to your point, I did, I changed. And that's something which I've learned from. I've changed and I became.
1:03:02 Speaker 01 Like a squeaky clean version of me. And
1:03:08 Speaker 01 and she ironically ended up turning towards what she'd lost.
1:03:13 Steven Bartlett? That's something you regret.
1:03:16 Speaker 01 I could feel regret in the way that I said it there.
1:03:22 Speaker 01 Yes, yeah, being being honest, if I could have, if I could have changed. On one level, if I could have changed that, if I'd been aware of that and I'd and I'd seen it coming. Then
1:03:36 Speaker 01 I would have wanted to stay true to who I am. And that's the path I'm on now. And I'd be curious to hear your thoughts, but I I want to live in line with my truth. And it's like John eight thirty two, the truth will set you free. And I believe that when we're living in line with our truth, it saves you. And whenever we
1:03:58 Speaker 01 neglect our truth, it destroys you. And so if I, if I
1:04:05 Speaker 01 if I'd been able to stay truthful, I think it would have been a very different trajectory. I don't, because the relationship worked on multiple levels and we and it did. We had a wonderful time together for for eight years. But it's a little bit like putting a frog in boiling water. It was in cold water and the desire is the frog, it's alive. You don't notice the heat, there were unknown factors that were at play.
1:04:33 Speaker 01 And it was a dance, it was both of us, there's no, we're, we both contributed to that situation. I think she wanted me to be that stable, dependable, reliable person. Without realizing that on a subconscious level, she actually
1:04:48 Speaker 01 was attracted to the man that I was. And I wanted to make her happy and didn't want her to. Be the kind of person that creates tension or there being too much grit. But actually, tension is what creates fire at the same time. And so the rough edges were a part of who I was and I didn't need to get rid of them.
1:05:08 Steven Bartlett? It's so crazy. It's almost quite contradictory. The typical narrative you hear about relationships is, especially from, you know, dare I say it, women, movies and on Instagram is, there's this conversation around, can I change him?
1:05:24 Steven Bartlett? And it's, and it seems typically that people want to change that, or they, they hold out hope or they want to change their partner in some way to make them more like the image they have of that person.
1:05:34 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:05:34 Steven Bartlett? But in fact, what you're describing is the thing that ends up saving the relationship is A, finding someone that you love for the way that they are and you're attracted to for the way that they are. But then both parties having a resilience to change to some degree. But because of that understanding that you formed your relationship on the basis of this person being like this. And then, but then you say, okay, so over time, people change. And in fact, in the last podcast we did, there's a quote where you said, change is the only constant. So both of you are going to change anyway. And you talk about the spiritual, psychological change that both parties go on.
1:06:17 Steven Bartlett? And again, this kind of draws it back to the conversation around monogamy is you know, you're going to change anyway. Like you 10 years ago versus you now is probably a little bit more stable and a little bit more, you know, solid and a little bit more rational in your thinking. And because, as you said in the last podcast, change is a constant. How do you form a, how can you guarantee that death will do you part? When change might do you part first? And, and this kind of brings us back to the conversation around monogamy, which is, I guess this is my question to you is like, if you, what do you suspect now? If not marriage is going to be the way that, you know, when you meet someone, what do you suspect?
1:07:00 Steven Bartlett? What's your hypothesis on how that relationship will be constructed?
1:07:04 Speaker 01 For me personally.
1:07:04 Steven Bartlett? Yeah, I've got mine.
1:07:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:07:08 Steven Bartlett? But mine kind of, I can tell you mine if you want first.
1:07:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
1:07:11 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so mine kind of draws on something.
1:07:13 Speaker 01 I'm allowed to say me too.
1:07:14 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
1:07:17 Speaker 01 Safe.
1:07:17 Steven Bartlett? Yeah, yeah. We're both good on together. So it was interesting what you said there about space being the air to a flame, right?
1:07:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
1:07:27 Steven Bartlett? And for me, that's so critical. Earlier on, when you were talking about marriage, one of the factors you were talking about was how, where marriage came from as a social construct and how it centers on like, you know, religion and God and all of these things. And one of the things that I think is also really important to understand is as a general first principles rule, if people are different and we all are different, every single human being on this earth is different, then the solution should be different. Like the glove we fit is different, we have different sized feet and different sized hands. So the solution to love, whatever that is, as binary as it sounds, should therefore be bespoke to who you are and the life you're living in.
1:08:08 Steven Bartlett? For me, I live a life where I get my fulfillment out of the podcast and my work. And that's, it's such a big part of my wiring. I can't change that. It's the way that I am. I'm different from my brother and he's only a couple of months older than me. I'm completely different. And so as it relates to love and me having a bespoke solution to when I meet someone and I want to have kids or I want to, you know, want them to be my partner, the solution should also be bespoke.
1:08:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:08:34 Steven Bartlett? And so I look at the situation that would be right for me. And it is one that's really, really relying on space.
1:08:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:08:41 Steven Bartlett? I love being on my own. I'm happy there. I love having time to myself to reflect, to think, to work on my projects. Space is such a big thing for me. So marriage and the idea of moving in with someone and then being, you know, on top of me seven days a week for the next 60 years is something that I almost can't understand. I'm not sure if I'm like psychologically fucked up and that's why I can't deal with that. But I love this idea, as the founder of Huo said on this podcast, of treating my relationship with my romantic partner in the same way that I treat my relationship with my best friend. Me and my best friend seem to get on perfectly well and I can't see a divorce ever coming, you know what I mean?
1:09:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:09:23 Steven Bartlett? Because we have that space and we have the middle ground that we meet upon, which is the relationship, but we have a fundamental amount of space, which we both need. Like, in fact, my best friend moved in with me in lockdown for a month and yeah,
1:09:40 Steven Bartlett? he started to piss me off. Well, you breathe so fucking loud, you know what I mean? Like, clean up after yourself.
1:09:47 Speaker 01 How loudly do you chew?
1:09:48 Steven Bartlett? We had an argument. I remember, I argued over something stupid, like a video game or something. So I'm going to conclude the point. I know for me that space and the lack of being on top of each other is something that would be a fundamental part of the relationship I have. I'm willing to commit because I actually can't see a world where I would allow them not to, or that I'd be happy with them not, even though I'd allow, it's like permission, right? It's like such a asshole thing to say, but I can't see a world where I would be okay with them not committing to me. So I'm gonna have to concede that. And I think I'll figure that out. Hopefully, if we can keep the sex, good. So space and commitment. I hate the idea of marriage. I don't think religion or the law have any, should have any involvement on the topic of love. I think they have a
1:10:33 Steven Bartlett? terrible track record. Religion with homosexuality and the, you know, the history it has on love and the law. I didn't see why a court would have anything to do with how I feel about someone. So I hate the idea of marriage. Some kind of commitment that offers me space with the right person, where we both understand that at some point we might grow out of each other. And when we do, that's fine. And I'm going to conclude with one point, which you actually said in the last podcast, which was when I asked you about monogamy and about committing to someone for life, you said to me, don't view it like that. Just ask yourself the question every single day.
1:11:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:11:08 Steven Bartlett? Today, am I happy to spend today, this day with this person in this relationship? If the answer is yes, fine.
1:11:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:11:14 Steven Bartlett? If the answer is no, then there's something that needs to be addressed.
1:11:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:11:20 Speaker 01 Thanks for sharing that. Don't use it.
1:11:28 Speaker 01 I've actually got a photographic memory.
1:11:31 Speaker 01 It's in a word board. What I know for for me is there's definite similarities in that realistically, I can't see myself being in a non-monogamous relationship. And if I was with someone, that would be the person that I would be with.
1:11:49 Speaker 01 In the past, though, in our last podcast, when you asked me about the definition of love, that hasn't changed in that I believe that love is fostering that emotional and spiritual growth of someone else. But what has changed is what I've realized in order to distinguish, though, between a partner that you're with and a partner that you have connection and chemistry and intimacy with, there has to be that physical intimacy, which which is maintained and which is and will wax and wane, but which can still be alight.
1:12:30 Speaker 01 Because whenever it dies, it irrevocably shakes the foundation of the relationship. I don't think I put enough importance on that. I almost had like a zen-like view of marriage as opposed to appreciating. And it was it was funny, it was a someone I was speaking to and they were saying, from a male perspective, females want the new man during the day to be kind, sensitive, loving. And they want a Neanderthal. And tie them up. In the evening. And gag them at night.
1:13:08 Speaker 01 And it but do you know what? It got me thinking because what if the same ingredients that lead to a long-lasting, loving relationship or monogamous marriage, stability, dependability, relatability, safety, protection, caregiving, what if these are the same ingredients that kill desire? Because what I think is true is that, and I should just speak for myself.
1:13:41 Speaker 01 What I potentially find attractive in the bedroom might be the things that I actually stand against during the day. There might be power and there might be dominance. And that doesn't match up with how I see myself during the day. And so then you reach this conflict. And I think what I began to do was I began to
1:14:05 Speaker 01 become the new man and only the new man. And actually, what I want to do more often is to tap more into
1:14:14 Speaker 01 all sides.
1:14:15 Steven Bartlett? I mean, far too honest. No, no, you know, there's no such thing as far too honest. We talked about the importance of living your truth.
1:14:21 Speaker 01 That's what I'm trying to lean into.
1:14:22 Steven Bartlett? A hundred percent. And, uh, and there's this great philosopher called Usher. He says,
1:14:30 Steven Bartlett? a lady in the streets and a freak in the bed. And it's like, I, I, and I heard that lyric maybe eight years ago. And I literally say it to my friends all the time when I'm talking about the type of partner that I want. And it's matching up exactly what you said, the civility and the class with the lack of class and the freakishness and the, and, and it's, it's hard to find and maintain the balance. Yeah. I found.
1:14:59 Speaker 01 Yeah. And because sex can be really a journey of somewhere that you go. And so then there has to be that trust and that safety there. And at times it might be about, uh, letting go of responsibility and surrendering. It might be about taking control and being dominant. But it's understanding what it means to you and, and at what times they should unfold and, and be allowed to live. So that your imagination can live. Because when it doesn't, and then it just becomes an act or something that you should do or a way of having children, then we begin to feel lost. And that's, you know, what's happened with a lot of clients that have seen.
1:15:43 Speaker 01 And so going back to how I would want to imagine the situation is, yes, it'd be a monogamous relationship with, with another, um, with, with a woman and.
1:15:54 Speaker 01 I would want to try and stay true to who I am and still keep, keep that whole version of me. And that's what I've learned, keeping, and I've gone back to that. The wonderful thing is, would I, you know, you asked me, but do I regret it? The reason also why I don't regret it, because I'm not holding on to it, is because the changes have happened and I've trusted that it was meant to be and it was meant to unfold that way. And I'm much more in tune with who I am now. So I finally got my motorbike licence and I bought my Triumph Bonnie yesterday.
1:16:30 Steven Bartlett? Amazing.
1:16:30 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I'm doing the things which, and I realised, because I'm drawn to more of a sense of risk and danger and actually activities where I have to be consumed within that moment and be present. And I'm getting back in touch with who I am and how I want to live my life and what I want to stand for. And it's on me to maintain that with the next person that I'm with. Another thing I learnt was the space, because where we went wrong is whenever we didn't have the space. And actually, I realised, I really enjoy living alone. I love that freedom. My other relationships are very important to me, with my brother and my best friends.
1:17:08 Speaker 01 And so I don't know yet what that will look like, but it will definitely involve more space. And, and also that sense of adventure and spontaneity, because that's what I enjoy. I want to travel, I want to see different countries. And I can set my life up where I'm doing that potentially with another person, or still pursuing my passions. And that is a safe relationships, relationship where that person knows that I love them and I'm there for them, but I won't always be.
1:17:42 Steven Bartlett? But then kids comes around.
1:17:43 Speaker 01 In the same room.
1:17:44 Steven Bartlett? fucks up this whole fantasy, like, do you know what I mean? Because then.
1:17:48 Speaker 01 We'll deal with that in podcast three.
1:17:51 Steven Bartlett? But that's, that's the bit where I'm like, okay, it's all wonderful and perfect. I was just thinking then, my last three relationships, they've all lived in another country. And it's, and it's probably the reason why it works is because I can walk around here in my boxer shorts all day, just like drinking my heel, you know, eating my pot noodle or whatever. And being myself, and then we come together when they come there or I go there, we find wonderful, love it, great. And then I go back and have my, you know, my bachelor lifestyle, you know.
1:18:20 Steven Bartlett? But yeah, like I, I, I think kids is a, is a really.
1:18:25 Steven Bartlett? A topic which we would be like intellectually dishonest if we didn't, it didn't. Address because there's, there'll be people listening to this that think, okay, well, that's all well and good. But when you become a father or a mother, you have to be there for your kids.
1:18:40 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:18:40 Steven Bartlett? And there's not a lot of science that says it's not good to be there for your kids, right?
1:18:43 Speaker 01 So. Yes. And in the same way that we can start to though, make sure that we clarify between what the science says and then what the script is. Because absolutely, we know that children will have better emotional outcomes and even physical development and situational success. Whenever they are brought up with a sensitive caregiver, someone who is responsive to their needs, someone who hears them, can hold them, give them safety. But also permission to be able to travel and come back.
1:19:24 Speaker 01 And who's invested in that child.
1:19:28 Speaker 01 But I'm not aware of studies that say that the parents have to be living in the same home, in the one house 12 months of the year. And be, their lives to be set up in a certain way. I don't know what the answer is yet, and I'm not at that stage yet, but I would be curious whenever I am at that stage to begin exploring. And it might not be as radical as it's envisioned at a certain point in time, but there might be enough space or enough still spontaneity or adventure or playfulness. Even on an internal level or in the way that you set your life up, where both partners have that space and still are able to maintain that passion.
1:20:11 Speaker 01 Isn't it crazy how much of life's misery and failure and.
1:20:18 Steven Bartlett? Unhappiness stems from either trying to conform to the conventional way or the script, as you say, or trying to fit into or even sometimes answer an invalid question. We talked a little bit about this on the last podcast where I said, you know, I think so many people live their lives trying to answer invalid questions like, what number is orange is what I said last time. And in the same way, you've got, you know, the question, are you in love? Presumes a yes, just by asking it, I'm forcing you to, to, to say yes or no. I'm also presuming that we've agreed upon the definition of in love, which again is just a fucking maze, because no one's ever told me what that is. No, you're not born and they go, okay, God goes, by the way, if you ever feel this, that's love. Okay. And
1:21:02 Steven Bartlett? you go, okay, got you. Right. Because I, you know, the word is so loosely, I love peanut butter. I love my dog. I love my girlfriend. I love my wife. I love my mom. And it's like, so what is it different? It's such a fucking confusing, complex, nuanced thing, love. And we're forcing it into this yes or no. And people will like, they'll ruin good things because they, they, they feel pressured or they're unsure if this is it. And I just, I just wanted to kind of leave that point there in a sense of like, the idea of like, you know, so I know so many people listening to this will, will be unknowingly programmed by convention. And it's like the first principle thinking and the ability to question why you're doing what you're doing. And then I guess lastly, to have the fearlessness
1:21:47 Steven Bartlett? or the courage to potentially interrogate and then reject it. That can literally save you in every facet. It saved me, like, go to university, get a job, do this. And I, I, I stopped going to school because I thought it was a lot of shit. Dropped out of university after one lecture, started a business. And I am, as I said on this podcast before, I'm the happiest person I know. I've reached a level of success at a ridiculously young age. I managed to like writers, write a new story, write a new script for how life can be lived. And people admire me and listen to this podcast.
1:22:21 Steven Bartlett? Basically only because, not because I'm smarter than anyone else or anything else. It's fundamentally, if you go back to where it started, was because I, for some reason, was willing to question the script and then had the, as they call it, fearlessness. For me, it wasn't fear, for me, the biggest fear was fucking following the script clearly, right? But had the perceived fearlessness to say, well, this doesn't make sense.
1:22:43 Steven Bartlett? Yeah. How does that resonate with you?
1:22:45 Speaker 01 Two things come to mind. One is that, like you said before, the solution in my mind will be bespoke because we're trying to take a one size fits all solution, a panacea, and apply it to everyone. And, and we're all unique. And it's important, I think, for each to begin to become aware of the emotional resistance we have to considering possibilities outside of the conventional nuclear family unit and just begin to think about what that might mean and, and where, where, where we might be able to see change. And the second part is to ask yourselves, what do I think I have to have in order to
1:23:28 Speaker 01 be happy? But in relationships, often people think marriage, children. In business, it could be X revenue, Y setup, Z lifestyle. And then we can ask, what will that give me? Why will it make me happy? Because below will be the emotional need. So it could be in relationships, it could be because I want affection, physical intimacy, a sense of belonging, stability. For somebody else, it could be status, to be accepted by others, not to be judged.
1:24:08 Steven Bartlett? But isn't, just a question, isn't the actual truth, based on that, so on that point of marriage, people thinking that they think marriage will make them happy, they've never experienced marriage before.
1:24:19 Speaker 01 Right.
1:24:20 Steven Bartlett? So where have they got that idea from? It's, I think the actual, the fundamental truth is because they told me it would make me happy.
1:24:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, we've been sold that story. But what do people really want? What are they wanting out of the marriage? If you go deeper, there'll be an emotional need that they're trying to meet through the marriage, that they think the marriage will provide the solution to. But like you're saying, it doesn't. Well, it can, but it might not. And so what people might actually want is Emotional connection or companionship. You know, if you said, describe the marriage, the ideal marriage to me, they might say, well, we're happy and we're there for each other and I have a confidant or a best friend or I have a lover. It's understanding those different parts. When we've broken that down and understand what we're, what we're actually yearning for
1:25:09 Speaker 01 or searching for, we can then ask, can I meet those needs in a slightly different way that doesn't necessarily prescribe to the conventional model?
1:25:19 Steven Bartlett? And that's first principles thinking in essence, which is
1:25:21 Speaker 01 Exactly.
1:25:22 Steven Bartlett? Going back to like the fundamental.
1:25:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:25:25 Steven Bartlett? Yeah, which is how, yeah.
1:25:26 Speaker 01 Yeah. And, and which is what I said before is what I love about your mind because you take it back to first principles. And then that's whenever you potentially become, you know, a
1:25:37 Steven Bartlett? Making new things.
1:25:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:25:38 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
1:25:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:25:40 Steven Bartlett? That's, it's such a, I, I wish the school taught kids how to think in that way because the, when I, if the first principles, just going back to the university point for me, where I wanna be, I wanna start a business and be a millionaire. That's what my stupid ass brain was thinking at that point, right? So this piece of paper, who am I gonna show that to if I'm self-employed? Yeah, it's a good point. I don't, don't want you to show it to myself. Everyone else, everyone else around me is sleeping on their desk and hungover and I'm going to have the same stamp that they all have, but that's actually probably gonna work against me. And I swear to God, this isn't, I'll tell you if it was hindsight bullshit. I was thinking that. I've got this vivid memory of my first day at university and my last, of looking over
1:26:22 Steven Bartlett? and this girl picks up being sat on my right and she was drunk and sleeping on the desk. And I didn't get into a good university because I got expelled from school. So I didn't really take my exam seriously either, again, because of the same thinking. But I remember thinking, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna get the same trophy as her. Is that, how is that gonna help me? If we both show up and we, and I was just thinking, and then you've got, it was boring as fuck, like they, I've been running businesses since I was 14. Day one, they were like, make a poster. I swear to God, the lesson, my last lesson and my first at university was make a poster. And I thought this isn't gonna, in terms of the information part, that's not gonna give me the information I need. And it was that, and I walked out of there, I walked into the business office and I spoke to the head of business at the university and I said, I'm gonna defer for, for a little while.
1:27:06 Steven Bartlett? She said, cool, fill out this piece of paper and you can defer. I never even filled it out and never went back. Turns out I actually hadn't properly registered for university either, like as I was meant to, so I didn't really have to defer. And that was it. And, you know, I wanna, I wanna move on because you spent a long, long time talking about this topic. You said earlier on that you spent lockdown in California.
1:27:25 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:27:26 Steven Bartlett? Which is, you know, I'm jealous.
1:27:30 Speaker 01 You don't know, and it cuts both ways. You don't know what's going to happen in the next moment. We have a projection of the way that we think our lives will unfold. And often we become tied to it and bound to it. And any deviation, we can see as a failure of some sorts. But actually, sometimes life has other plans for us.
1:27:53 Speaker 01 And when we don't know what's going to happen, I think it keeps that freshness. You keep fresh eyes and you stay grateful for what you do have while you have it.
1:28:03 Speaker 01 On the other hand,
1:28:06 Speaker 01 we don't know what's gonna happen, and it could all be taken away from us at any point. And I've got a good friend of mine and his father just had a stroke a couple of days ago. And they now know the outcome is he won't be around. Ten days ago, I was walking in South Ken, and five minutes after I passed and was coming back, there was barriers put up. And
1:28:30 Speaker 01 a refuse collector had been walking out in a bus and knocked him down. And in an instant,
1:28:38 Speaker 01 his life was over. And I just imagined, and I could be completely wrong, but I could, I imagined, gosh, he might have a family, he might say goodbye to his wife and the kids in the morning, and he went off to work. And he had no idea. And she had no idea. And, and the things that were really, that might have been niggling or causing arguments, don't matter now. Like, none of that matters now. And, and I didn't see what was gonna happen coming. And, and I, you know, I lost on one level, I lost a lot. And it makes me really appreciate what I had. But then on another level, that wasn't the end to the story.
1:29:18 Speaker 01 And then it was as if life said, you're on this path and I'm going to shunt you onto a new trajectory. And that's the path you're meant to be on. This is where you're meant to be going. And I believe that it's a part of my path and it was meant to unfold this way. The universe is unfolding as it should. And it's a lesson for me to continually trust. And that's why that voice came up in the very beginning in my heart, saying, all is well. Because I know on a deep level that all is well. It's just about trusting, sometimes letting go of our ideas and living in this moment.
1:29:55 Steven Bartlett? I can think of a better ending. Listen, I don't even, you know, thank you so much for so many reasons, because what you've done today, on one hand, will probably be selfish, selfish, as you move forward and realize that the release of your truth and talking about it and processing it with people is always liberating. But on the other hand, it's incredibly selfless, because there are so many people that are going to have less pain, deal with their pain better, and understand themselves and hopefully be a little bit more self-aware, because you had the guts and the, you know, the humility and lack of ego to share what is an incredibly emotional, touching, personal experience. And so, thank
1:30:40 Steven Bartlett? you so much. It's helped me, you know, and I have no doubt that the hundreds of thousands of people that listen to this, it's going to help them in the same way. If people want to find you, and they want to talk to you about this, and I'm sure there will be a lot of them, you know, the podcast was big back then, it's much bigger now, right? How do they find you? What's the best way to reach you?
1:31:02 Speaker 01 On Instagram, it's at D R dot underscore A R I A, or on my website, which is D R hyphen A R I A dot com.
1:31:13 Steven Bartlett? And what kind of services do you offer people that are going through, you know, various predicaments?
1:31:19 Speaker 01 I do one-to-one coaching. So right now, everything's done digitally. But essentially, it's identifying what aspect of your life right now is critical for you to resolve, and then helping you with the psychology and the mindset to be able to
1:31:38 Speaker 01 Work through that or work with that. So it could be emotional resilience, it could be sustainable weight loss, it could be relationships, it could be taking your business to the next level in terms of how you view yourself as an entrepreneur.
1:31:55 Speaker 01 It might be fears, loss of intimacy, imposter syndrome, whatever issues actually there for you. I'll check if it's something that we can approach from a mindset point of view, and that's where my expertise is, and then help you on your journey as you then have a more empowered mindset, so that you're developing that robust sense of self and you're able to
1:32:19 Speaker 01 change and adapt and be fluid in your journey and keep on growing essentially.
1:32:24 Steven Bartlett? We have, we have such good conversations even off the podcast. We've met up, I think, last week or the week before and had just an open conversation about a bunch of things in life. So I actually wanted to ask you, I've never asked a guest this before, but is there anything that we've missed in terms of the topics that you think are curious to the relationship we have or pertinent to the relationship we have, or any sort of learnings that you've garnered from our conversations that you think we should be sharing with people? Because I feel somewhat, I feel those conversations are so rich, that I, you know, we talked about so much last time and even in our private conversations, I just, I just wonder if there's anything else, any sort of key topics that you.
1:33:08 Speaker 01 I'm sure there will be like, I don't think we've exhausted our conversations.
1:33:11 Steven Bartlett? We'll be back for a third episode. Listen, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. I, yeah, I appreciate it so, so much. More than I've, you know, people, they give up so much time and they fly to come and do the podcast, but the, what you've given today, I don't think you'll realise how selfless that act was because of the value it will give to people. And this is exactly why I do this podcast, to hear these kinds of things and to, to hopefully make myself better and the listeners better for hearing it. So thank you a million, million times over. Thank you, Steve. Thank you.
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