5 Keys to Make Their Relationship Thrive (3 Red Flags to Look For!) | Taylor Swift & Travis Kelce

In this special episode of The School of Greatness, Lewis reacts to the internet-breaking news of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's new relationship. Drawing from the expertise of six of his favorite relationship experts, Lewis offers valuable insights and advice, including a discussion on the three red flags to be on the lookout for in relationships. This episode serves as a unique opportunity to explore the dynamics of high-profile relationships while gaining valuable wisdom from experts in the field, all in the context of the buzzworthy Swift and Kelce romance. Sadia Khan discusses the importance of asking a fundamental question before dating and navigating relationship red flags. Michael Bungay Stanier offers insights on pre-marital considerations and how to address challenges in relationships, while Martha explores why women often choose troubled partners over healthier options. Sheleana Aiyana debates the need for complete personal healing before starting a new relationship. Mark Manson defines toxic relationships and the significance of trust and respect, prompting self-reflection. Dr. Caroline Leaf explores the attraction to broken partners and the desire to fix them in relationships. In this episode you will learn,The biggest red flags to look for when starting a new relationship. The single most important question to ask someone before you start dating. Three critical questions to ask before getting married. The #1 reason so many people seek out toxic relationships. If it is possible to find lasting love while you’re still healing your personal emotional wounds. For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1507For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960FULL EPISODES:Sadia Khan – https://link.chtbl.com/1491-podMichael Bungay Stanier – https://link.chtbl.com/1477-podMartha Higareda – https://link.chtbl.com/1423-podSheleana Aiyana – https://link.chtbl.com/1436-podMark Manson – https://link.chtbl.com/1485-podDr. Caroline Leaf – https://link.chtbl.com/1481-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  Why go into a relationship with decades of baggage, pain, frustration, and old programming that didn't work in previous relationships? If you want a relationship to have more harmony and to last longer and be healthier, I think it's powerful to get. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:42Lewis Howes?

  So today, I want to talk about a few things. First off, there are so many new relationships happening in the world. And we see a lot of this talk and discussion about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, who are potentially dating, interested in dating, or maybe wanting to start a relationship. Now, I don't know anything about either of them, and I wish them both a lot of happiness, love, and success, whether they choose each other long-term, or whether they're just having fun right now and dating. And this really isn't about them. This is about you. This is about you figuring out, is your relationship that you're currently in, or the relationship you're going to get in next, a healthy, conscious relationship that will set you up for peace, for harmony, and for lasting love?

• 1:27Lewis Howes?

  And so today, I want to talk about the five keys to healthy, lasting-love relationships, and really, three things to watch out for, the three flags to watch out for. And if you are fascinated by Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce and what they're up to, or any other friends that you have who are getting in relationships, or you like to watch people in the public eye who are in relationships, and you want to observe. To see how they're entering relationships and if they're following these five keys, or if they're following three of these red flags. To be aware of what's happening so you can see and kind of observe if you think that these relationships will work in your life with your friends or those relationships you watch publicly.

• 2:09Lewis Howes?

  So again, all the best to these two, Travis and Taylor. I wish them a lot of success. But what I want to do is break down from a number of different therapists and relationship experts, the different keys to lasting love. Now, if you don't know who I am, my name is Lewis Howes. I'm a New York Times bestselling author of the book, The Greatness Mindset, and I host this show, The School of Greatness. And over the last 10 years, I've had the privilege of interviewing some of the top therapists, relationship experts and brilliant minds on a lot of different topics. But we cover a lot of love and relationships here. I have been in previous relationships myself that didn't work out. I've learned a lot from my own mistakes

• 2:52Lewis Howes?

  and I'm in a very healthy, harmonious relationship now and very excited about it. And I did things differently this time around. And I, again, I want you to think about and reflect on if you're doing any of these things in your relationship to create peace, to create harmony, to create more joy and fulfillment together as opposed to stress in relationships. So what we're going to do is we're going to see a few different clips to cover these five keys. And before we get into that, I want you to think about these three things. I really started to learn through pain, through sadness, through suffering in previous relationships, about what doesn't work. And now I've got a lot of peace in a new relationship

• 3:36Lewis Howes?

  and it came down to a few of these three elements that supported me in finding alignment. Alignment in a relationship will bring you peace and will bring you more harmony. Now, it doesn't mean you're going to have this perfect relationship and everything's always going to be great, but it allows you a foundation, a structure of support in a relationship to be able to navigate the challenging times, to be able to navigate. The hard conversations to be able to address things that are uncomfortable or maybe unfamiliar in your relationship. That's what this is about. It doesn't mean that your relationship is going to be perfect forever and last forever, but the goal is to create a more conscious coupling experience.

• 4:17Lewis Howes?

  Something that serves and supports both of you and is also going beyond both of you that serves those around you. I don't know if you've ever seen a relationship or been in a relationship where it just seems like it's all consuming. Like your friends, they're they're always talking about it in a negative way. They're always stressed about it. They're always consumed by the relationship and it's not serving their passions, their dreams, their health, their well-being or their communities. They get bogged down by it and they they they feel like they get stuck and they can't get out of it. And no matter how much you give them advice or how much your friends tell them you need to get out of this relationship, they just can't get out of it and it consumes them. That is not a supportive relationship. And it means they're missing probably one of three things.

• 5:02Lewis Howes?

  They don't have the right values, vision or lifestyle to support them in thriving. And again, a healthy conscious relationship from all the top experts that I've interviewed. The people that have been in relationships for decades, been married for thirty, forty years, happily married and still love each other. They talk about having the right values, the right vision and the right lifestyle and sharing those things together with each other. It doesn't mean it has to be perfectly the same, but they have to be aligned. And you have to be willing to grow with your partner. So again, I want to cover these quick videos and reflect on them and share more about again,

• 5:42Lewis Howes?

  whether this relationship that you're in currently will work or one that you're observing or watching from afar, you think will work. But these insights, I believe, if you pay attention, will truly help you. So let's go ahead and dive into this. This first question, this first video is the question you should ask yourself before you start dating. So again, whether you're you have friends or you're observing someone from afar getting into a relationship or you're getting into a relationship. This is the question you want to ask yourself before you start dating. So let's watch this real quick. What should we really be asking ourselves before we start dating someone?

• 6:23Sadia Khan?

  How are my personal insecurities going to ruin this relationship?

• 6:27Lewis Howes?

  Ooh.

• 6:27Sadia Khan?

  Yeah, I think that's the first and foremost conversation to have with yourself. Because we go into a relationship almost blind to our own wounds, and they resurface in the relationship and we blame them for not providing the medication of a wound that existed before we met them.

• 6:42Lewis Howes?

  That's so true.

• 6:43Sadia Khan?

  When you go in wounded and expect the person to provide you medication, but you don't even tell them what disease you have, we are then going to punish them for everything they do.

• 6:51Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 6:52Sadia Khan?

  You go in expecting them to be the healer or the doctor to a wound that you didn't create, but you don't even tell them your diagnosis. And as a result, it's destined for failure.

• 7:02Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, this is big. It's destined for failure if you're expecting someone, when you're entering a relationship, to heal you from a wound that they did not create. And you not even communicating what wound it is. So if you're already wounded from something in the past, from some other relationship or from childhood or whatever it might be, and you do not communicate this wound, but you go into a new relationship, you've got to be asking yourself that question, you know? Am I expecting someone to heal me without even knowing my history? And is that fair to them? Is it really fair to them to be able to read my mind, to be able to heal me from something they didn't wound me in?

• 7:46Lewis Howes?

  And I think we should be asking ourselves that again, whether you're in the relationship, you're watching a relationship from afar. Just ask yourself that question. Have I been working on that healing journey? Am I communicating this process with the person I'm entering a new relationship with? And am I expecting them to be the doctor and to prescribe exactly what I need to heal? And also, if they give me the tools to heal and I don't apply them and I get mad at them, That's a whole nother can of worms. So really, think about the wound that you've experienced, the pain you've had in the past, and ask yourself, like, am I even ready to get into a new relationship if I have this wound? Do I, do I have the tools to navigate my pain or the problems from the past if I have not addressed them yet?

• 8:30Lewis Howes?

  So think about that and be willing to ask that question when you're getting into a new relationship. So that's key number one. Let's go into the second one. And that one was from Sadia Khan. And we'll have all these links below so you can watch the full video, full audio episodes of these conversations as well with more context. This one is the question to ask before getting married and also figuring out what to do when things go wrong in a relationship. So let's go into this one.

• 9:01Lewis Howes?

  What would be the three questions that every person should ask their partner before getting married?

• 9:07Michael Bungay Stanier?

  I'm going to take one of the questions from the book, which is, how will we fix it when things go wrong? The repair question. The relationships that last are the ones that get repaired. And most of us are not very good at repairing relationships. You know, most of us, we, we break by easier than we think. When you're like, in the first two years of marriage, really, and all the years until it's like, this is amazing. She's amazing, I'm amazing, we're amazing. But after two years, it's like, okay, the veil drops a little bit. You kind of get clear on other things and then it will go off the rails somewhere. You know, it might be an explosion. It might be a dent or a crack or a bend or something, but something will happen. So I would say, how will we fix it when things go wrong?

• 9:52Michael Bungay Stanier?

  How will we fight? You know, how will we fight in a way that will not break us, but will be a, a, a source of learning and growth and clearing and kind of resetting?

• 10:06Lewis Howes?

  So what I'm hearing there is, you know, in the beginning of a relationship, if you've ever been in one, you know that there can be a lot of excitement. There can be a lot of fun and play and adventure. You wanna travel everywhere with the person. You wanna go try new restaurants. You wanna, you know, enjoy it. You wanna talk about it. You know, you wanna tell your friends, oh, I met this person and they're incredible. They're amazing. And everyone seems flawless when you first meet them, right? Or when you're watching someone, a celebrity couple, you know, and they're getting involved and they're starting dating for the first time. You see all the media talking about them and the celebrations and the fun and the excitement. And oh, well, how's it going? You get excited about the possibility. The challenge is, like our friend here is saying,

• 10:50Lewis Howes?

  that there eventually will be problems. And even though the possibilities seem exciting and fun and like thrilling and you have these chemicals and these feelings that are so, you know, just like you feel this excitement of this connection and this possibility of what could be. Eventually, there's gonna be a problem. And the repair question is one of the keys to success in a healthy, conscious relationship. He is saying that there will be problems. There will be challenges. There will be struggles. There will be stress, especially if you're together for a long period of time. If you wanna commit to being in a relationship for long periods of times, there's gonna be pain and we can't avoid pain. But how we resolve problems is a huge factor

• 11:35Lewis Howes?

  to the success or the failure of relationships. And when we learn how to repair, and like my friend Jay Shetty says, learning how to fight and argue is key. And we need to create agreements around repairing and arguments. When we don't agree on something, when we're frustrated, when something sad or horrible happens or we feel anger, we need to learn how to repair in peaceful ways, not problematic ways. We need to learn how to argue respectfully and not be putting others down. Because that will only harm us long term in the relationship. It'll only create more blame, more frustration and more sadness in the relationship. So again, at the beginning of a relationship, whether you're in it,

• 12:19Lewis Howes?

  you have friends who are in it, or you're watching some celebrities online who are, you know, this is so cool and exciting. Yes. Have fun, be excited, be in the moment, all those things. But as you start to get into the relationship and start to get committed deeper and deeper, really have those conversations about how are we going to repair our relationship when we do have a breakdown, when we do have some frustration, when we're not in alignment on something, there's friction, there's there's something that's causing pain or discomfort within us. How will we repair? How will we come back together stronger than ever in a loving way? Not in arguing way, or blaming way, or make wrong, or anything like that. So again, the repair question is one of the keys. How will we fight?

• 13:04Lewis Howes?

  How will we argue? And how can we repair in a conscious, more loving way? To serve the relationship as opposed to hurt the relationship. That's the next thing. I love that one. Let's go into this next one. This next one is about, this is from my fiancee, Martha. And this is about why women go after the troubled man and not the healthy man. So again, I wish the best for Travis and Taylor and, you know, I hope they're both healthy right now. But this is not really about them. This is about you and your relationship, or the relationships in your life, and being aware of this. But it always seems to me that some women tend to go after

• 13:48Lewis Howes?

  the bad man, the bad guy, the rock and roll guy, the guy who kind of puts them down, the guy that doesn't seem like, you know, he cares that much, right? It seems like there are some women that do this in relationships. And I was always curious, I said, why do women go after this man who's got a ton of problems? As opposed to a healthy, conscious man? And let's hear what Martha has to say.

• 14:11Lewis Howes?

  Why do women seem to go after the troubled man as opposed to the healthy man?

• 14:15Speaker 04

  I think it has to do with your past.

• 14:20Speaker 04

  It has to do with your inner child. I think it has to do with unresolved trauma. I feel, and it is my experience, that when you are with someone, you meet somebody and you feel this crazy amount of chemistry, crazy amount of chemistry. Like, my advice is like, run away. Because that is not something healthy. That is unresolved trauma. That is you being a child inside of an adult body, looking at another child inside of an adult body, that his unresolved trauma will touch you in a way, will complete your unresolved trauma.

• 15:04Speaker 04

  And you're gonna learn a lot of lessons, but are going to be painful. So why don't you learn them on your own instead?

• 15:12Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, this is powerful. Uh, you know, when we are not, we haven't dealt with our unresolved trauma. We're trying to feel something. And typically, there is a chemical reaction when we meet someone that is maybe more problematic. And we want to fix, or we want to solve, or we want to rescue, or something, because we feel like it'll complete some feeling in us, something missing within us. Because what's missing within us, we want to solve somewhere else. It's, we typically don't want to deal with it inside of us, because it's painful. So we want to find someone else who's troubled and try to solve their pain, and try to rescue them, try to get them to a place of peace, because maybe it'll make us feel more valuable about ourselves.

• 15:58Lewis Howes?

  And this is something I've done in the past many times. Um, and it's, it never worked out well. There was chemistry. There was like this explosion of excitement. But it eventually didn't last. And it's because we are missing conscious connection. So when Martha's talking about chemistry, I think you need chemistry. I think it's important to have it. But when it's like this explosion of... Chemicals rushing through you and you feel like, man, this is, this is the greatest person in the world and I feel so deeply and so excited. Just be aware of that. It doesn't mean it's going to be the wrong person for you, but I think it's important to be aware of it. You want to have excitement, you want to have those butterfly feelings and be like, wow, this person's really inspiring me and I feel this sense of a connection with them

• 16:43Lewis Howes?

  and we have so many things in common. That's awesome. But when it's an obsession and it's like, all you can think about is them and all you can do is like, you wonder what's going on and it's like, man, this is an explosion of feelings. There's typically something underneath that and you just need to be aware of it. I'm not saying it's not going to work out, but you've got to ask yourself, are we bonding through trauma and chemistry? Or are we bonding through conscious connection? There's a difference. And I think chemical trauma bonding is fun and explosive, but it usually burns out at some point and there's a lot of sadness when that happens. There's a big emotional hangover, right?

• 17:28Lewis Howes?

  You get so excited and then those feelings fade. After six months, a year, two years, they start to fade and problems arise because you didn't address the things that you cared about, your values, your vision, your lifestyle. You didn't look at those things within the other person and you really didn't speak about the things that are the most important to you and make sure they're the most important to the other person as well. One of the things that Martha and I did early on in our relationship is we, we went on a trip together and I wanted to really make sure that we were in alignment. We were dating for a number of months, we were spending a lot of time together and I wanted to say, you know, how could I do things differently? How could I consciously communicate about my values, my vision and my lifestyle? So we created the little

• 18:11Lewis Howes?

  Journaling ceremony, where we wrote down our values. And we each did it separately, and then we looked at them together. So there wasn't an influence by seeing someone else's values first and then rewriting them down. We both did it separately, we came together and we reviewed our values together. And there was a lot of alignment there, right? And even if you have all your values in alignment, it doesn't mean it's going to be the perfect relationship and it's destined to work forever. It doesn't mean that. But what it does mean is it's setting you up for less conflict, setting you up for less breakdown, less stress. Because the relationship will have moments of breakdown, no matter what. But you want to set a foundation of harmony, peace and alignment. You want to be in as congruent agreements as possible.

• 18:56Lewis Howes?

  And the more you can do that, the more you don't have to think about that stuff and stress about it when conflict arises. Because you both know where you're at on your values, your vision and your lifestyle. So we did that exercise and we also did just a lot of communication about who we were individually, what our lifestyles are, and where we want to be in the future. Now, things can change and maybe there's adjustments. And so you need to have flexibility around these things. But having a good sense of values. When we did that, we were aligned on like 80% of our values. So we were like, great. And the values that she cared about, that I didn't write down on my journal, it didn't bother me. So it wasn't an issue, right?

• 19:38Lewis Howes?

  And the values that I had, that she didn't have written down, they didn't bother her. So we were at least in alignment. There wasn't something completely off. You want to think about the vision. You know, when I communicated my vision to her, I said, this is the vision for my career. This is the vision for my health. This is what I want to create with family. This is where I'm heading. Again, allow for flexibility, but communicate your desires and your wants early on. Don't just say what the other person wants to hear. Say what's authentic to you. Because you don't want to abandon self in the process of entering a relationship just to please someone. Trust me, I've done that many times in the past. It never worked out. It worked out poorly. And you're always going to resent yourself by doing that. So stay in alignment with who you are

• 20:20Lewis Howes?

  and at least who you believe you're going to be in the future or where you're going. The third thing is lifestyle. So again, if you are a person that loves to be in warm weather, and you like, you know, I want to live in Los Angeles and I want to live in somewhere warm weather for the next five to 10 years. And you meet someone that says, I don't want that lifestyle. You know, I want to live in the cold and I want to be in a small town. I don't want to be in a big town. And I want to be more at home all day. I don't want to go travel and be on adventures. You have to think about these lifestyle decisions and are they in alignment? Or is there some, is there some ways of like, accepting that of the other person? And can you live a life with your lifestyle where you feel like, I'm doing what I want to do.

• 21:04Lewis Howes?

  I'm in the spaces, the places, and around the people that I want to be around because this is the lifestyle that works for me. Again, it doesn't mean it has to be perfect alignment, but you want to have congruency within the two to make sure the lifestyle is good. So if you're in completely different cities, if you're long distance, maybe it works for a period of time, but it may not work forever. So you have to ask yourself, do I want to be in a long distance relationship forever? And if that's not a part of your vision or your lifestyle, then it just may be more challenging to make the relationship work. I'm not saying you can't make it work, it just may be more stressful, more challenging. And we have enough challenges already, so we're trying to limit these challenges within ourselves.

• 21:48Lewis Howes?

  You know, Martha, my fiance, she's an actor. She does acting and she's gone for three months at a time. She does in other countries, sometimes she's here locally in Los Angeles. Sometimes she's got to travel, sometimes she's got to leave places last minute. So I had to ask myself, do I accept this lifestyle of hers? Knowing that I don't want to change her, I don't want her to change her lifestyle for me. Can I accept her lifestyle if this is what she wants to do for the next five, 10, 20 years? And I had to say, yes, I do accept this. Like if she's gone for three weeks at a time or four weeks at a time, I'm okay with that. We can make it work because I have a flexible schedule where I could travel on the weekends if I need to. She could come back on weekends and that works for my lifestyle.

• 22:32Lewis Howes?

  But you, you may not want that. You know, if you're, if you're

• 22:36Lewis Howes?

  Traveling every weekend on tour and someone else is traveling somewhere else every weekend for a game. Does that lifestyle work for you? Maybe it does because you're used to it. But maybe you want to be in the same place with your partner more consistently. So you've just got to ask yourself, do our values, our vision and our lifestyle line up? Ask these questions and be honest with the person when you're dating them. Before you get committed, be as honest as possible about these things. It's key to minimizing stress and creating more love, peace and freedom in your life and in the relationship. Let's go to the next one. This one's an interesting one. This one is about doing therapy at the start of a relationship.

• 23:19Lewis Howes?

  And most people don't think about this until the relationship gets bad or there's problems. But I want you to reframe this and think about potentially trying something different. So let's go ahead and watch this and see what he says.

• 23:30Michael Bungay Stanier?

  What's the question that's at your heart in terms of setting up intimate relationships for success?

• 23:35Lewis Howes?

  I'm just trying to think about all the things that I did with Martha, my girlfriend, which is essentially the opposite of everything I've ever done before. Thing that really made me say, oh, this is my partner, right? And I can really feel safe emotionally, spiritually, physically, safe with this person. It's early on, I said, listen, I've made a lot of mistakes in my past relationships and none of my past relationships have worked. But in each one of them, I wanted to do therapy when they weren't working. And the partners that I chose never wanted to do therapy with me. They were resistant. They took a year and a half, two years of like it not working. And me saying, hey, can we do this and find support? And they never wanted to do it. And I said, listen, this isn't really an ultimatum,

• 24:16Lewis Howes?

  but I want to feel emotionally safe. Would you be open to going to therapy in the beginning of the relationship? Not when things have problems in the future, but can we go together now? She was like, 100%, that'd be amazing. I'm down for whatever. She was like, I've always wanted to do that too. I felt like, okay, just her acknowledging that. And then us doing it has been a beautiful foundational process.

• 24:39Lewis Howes?

  Again, this was something I was getting to share when I was doing this interview with Michael. And it's something that I did recently with Martha, right? When we started a relationship a few years ago. After, you know, kind of dating for a few months and then getting committed to her. I said, listen, I really want to start in therapy. I'm doing coaching and therapy on my own. And I knew she was doing therapy on her own. And for me, the healing journey is always going to continue. It's always going to be happening for the rest of my life. So I love coaching, you know, as an athlete. And I think the greatest athletes have coaches to help them get to the greatest position in their athletic endeavors. And so when I got into business, I said, I want to have a business coach, you know, to keep my health in check.

• 25:23Lewis Howes?

  I've got an accountability and health coach and attritionist. And I always thought to myself, well, why don't I have an emotional coach as well? Why don't I have someone help me with my, my feelings, my emotions and my relationships? You see a lot of top athletes now talking about their mindset coaches. You see this on all the different Netflix and Amazon shows about the quarterbacks out there and the elite athletes. They have these mindset coaches. There's nothing different from having a mindset coach and a relationship coach. It's just guiding you to get to be the best person you can be in the thing you want to do. And if you want to be a great athlete, a great musician, someone who is, wants to optimize their career,

• 26:02Lewis Howes?

  get a coach or someone to hold you accountable to improving your skillset to be the best at what you can be. Same thing in a relationship. Why go into a relationship with decades of baggage, pain, frustration, and old programming that didn't work in previous relationships? For whatever reason, if you're single right now, it didn't work. It didn't work for the relationship to last. And it doesn't mean you're bad or wrong. It just means, oh, maybe I chose poorly, or maybe that was part of a season of time for me to have that experience with that person, to teach me these lessons for the next person. But if you want a relationship to have more harmony and to last longer and be healthier,

• 26:43Lewis Howes?

  whether it works or not, but at least be healthier, I think it's powerful to get support. Whether you have a therapist or coach, or you lean on a mentor or a guide to give you some guidance or support. I just think it's helpful and it's wise. You know, we weren't really taught how to have successful, happy, fulfilled relationships. Typically, growing up, unless you have the perfect model with your parents. My parents got divorced, so I never got to experience that happy bond of connection as a model for relationships. And I think most of us have seen a lot of challenges in relationships or experienced it ourselves. So we don't have all the tools, and that's okay. That's why it's important to get a coach. You know, the greatest athletes have coaches.

• 27:26Lewis Howes?

  The greatest musicians have vocal coaches to work on their vocals and their performance, to enhance their performances. This is a good thing. It's important to invest in this or to lean on people. I'm always looking for men who have been married for thirty, forty years. And I'm asking them questions. I'm saying, how did you do it? How are you still doing it? How do you keep things exciting and fun? And how do you make sure you don't stress about stuff? I'm always asking questions, and I think that's a wise thing to do. So for me, it's important to, to think about these things. And we started therapy together. It was one of the biggest breakthroughs that I've ever had because we were able to minimize frustrations

• 28:09Lewis Howes?

  early on, or minimize disagreements, or minimize misunderstandings. And when we got together, we would work with a, a coach, a therapist, that would allow us both to communicate in a healthy, conscious way, with a third party giving their experience, giving their tools, their wisdom, and coaching both of us. It brought us closer together. It has given us more tools. It's allowed us to create agreements where now we don't have those frustrations or those conversations that could lead to arguments. We have more tools to support each other and to support the relationship. And I think that's what you've got to think about when you're getting into a committed, long-term relationship. How can we do this?

• 28:54Lewis Howes?

  If you don't want to have a coach or a therapist, or find someone who's been in a relationship longer to guide you, that's fine. But I still think you've got to be working on learning, you know, getting books, listening to podcasts, getting these tools to support you in emotionally growing. The ability to have emotional mastery in relationships is huge. And it can either set you up for success or cause you a lifetime of misery and sadness if you don't learn how to master or manage and navigate emotions. There's a great book by Susan David called Emotional Agility. It is huge. We'll link it up below in the description. That's an opportunity for you to learn about your emotions,

• 29:37Lewis Howes?

  reflect on your emotions and master them so that when you're entering a relationship, you again can come there with conscious conversation, not reactive conversation, with conscious guidelines and agreements, not demands. And I think that's a valuable part of having therapy and coaching to hold both individuals accountable in a relationship. And this is from Shalina. This is one of the five keys. The fifth key in setting yourself up for a healthy relationship is from Shalina. She talks about, do we need to be fully healed before entering a relationship? Let's see what she has to say.

• 30:16Lewis Howes?

  Do you think it's possible to find love, lasting love, if you haven't healed yet?

• 30:20Sheleana Aiyana?

  I do, and I think there's degrees. There's degrees of healing because I don't think any are healed in terms of we're perfect. But we can be on the journey and be self-aware enough and to know how to qualify a person for willingness. And if we meet a person who has the willingness and the core values match, and both people say, yes, here's my baggage, here's your baggage. I see you and I acknowledge that this isn't going to always be easy, but I'm willing to do the work along the way. That's a great sign that the relationship has potential. Because that was Ben and I.

• 30:52Lewis Howes?

  You're both on a healing journey.

• 30:54Sheleana Aiyana?

  We were on a healing journey together. We weren't like, oh, we've done our work and now we're going to fade off into the sunset together. We're like, okay, we're committed to being together. And soon, we quickly realize there's no better match than each other. And yet, it's still going to be difficult. So when it gets difficult, what are we going to do about it? That's the thing you need to clarify. Because if you're with a person who says, well, relationships should be easy. If we have to see a therapist or if we need to do inner work, then there's something wrong, which is the belief system of many people out there, then you don't have a chance. But if you're both aware enough to say, yeah, I've got some stuff. You know, I'm avoidant or I'm anxious and I'm going to work on that. And I want to work on it with you. Great.

• 31:34Lewis Howes?

  This is huge, guys. You know, because some people will say, "Well, I'm not ready for a relationship because I'm not fully healed yet." Again, the healing journey is going to last forever. If you have these two things, the values matching and a commitment, and you're both open about the baggage like she talked about. You're open about the challenges, the pain, the baggage, the problems of the past. If you have values that match and you have a commitment to doing the inner work, then it could still work out. I'm always a fan of do as much healing work as possible before entering a relationship. I like that personally, but love heals also. And so when you find someone who wants to do the work on themselves, independent of you,

• 32:18Lewis Howes?

  who wants to create a commitment and their values match, don't push someone away just because you don't feel like you're fully ready. Be willing to explore it a little bit, dance in the relationship. You don't have to fully commit right away, but be willing to connect, willing to go on dates, willing to have those conversations, and see if there's a connection, right? If you're, "Oh, creating some alignment with each other." It doesn't have to be, "Okay, we went on two dates and now I need to make a decision." You can give it some time. You don't have to rush, and you can also take as long as you want before you're both ready to commit. And I think when we're willing to do that work, whether it's therapy or coaching, again, it's becoming more open-minded these days because you see so many different people talking about therapy and healing. And I think that's a great thing.

• 33:04Lewis Howes?

  Because I want to live in a world where people are in love with themselves in a healthy, conscious way, and they have love in their lives and relationship. Imagine a world where people are in love. Where they're in love with their life, they have love with a partner, they love their mission, their values, their vision. Just imagine a world where more people are in love. Beautiful, magical things will unfold. And it doesn't happen overnight and doesn't happen automatically. We've got to be willing to work on ourselves and do the different things to support us in this growth. Those are the the the five main keys I wanted to talk about from those videos. We've got three kind of things to watch out for.

• 33:48Lewis Howes?

  So again, if you're getting into a relationship and you're having a lot of fun and it's exciting and everyone's supporting it and loving that you guys are having this fun, that's great. But here are three things to watch out for that could be red flags or could be concerns if the relationship is really right for you at this moment. And this first one is from Saudi Akhan, which will link up the full episode to watch as well, which is about red flag number one. And it's about competition or cooperation with your partner. Let's watch this.

• 34:22Lewis Howes?

  What would you say are the the big, three big flags that a man or a woman should look out for when they're entering a new dating relationship?

• 34:30Sadia Khan?

  Competition or cooperation? And what I mean by that is when you have a partner that values your well-being and wants to see you feel less anxious, wants to see you feel happy, wants you to feel connected, they are cooperative. So when they say, when you say things like, oh babe, I haven't heard from you all day, they're like, oh, I'm so sorry, I completely forgot. I'll call you in five minutes, give me 10 minutes, I'll call you. But other times you'll have a partner where you say, oh, you know, I haven't heard from you. Stop trying to control me, you're you're always taking over, you're you're so needy. It's stuff like that, is it competition or is it cooperation? When you voice a concern, do they actually want to see that you, the relationship get better and your well-being matters? Or are they so stuck on their autonomy and independence and not being controlled by you

• 35:13Sadia Khan?

  that they reject and neglect their responsibilities towards you? It's those partners that are in competition with each other, who can hurt who the most or who can stay the most disconnected, who can stay the most independent? Why are you together? I don't understand those relationships, it's torture. It's real torture, so it's like, oh, I'm liking extra pictures. She told me not to like pictures, now I'm gonna do 10 times more. Oh, you know, he told me not to post bikini pictures, now I'm gonna post 10 times more. Why are you together if you're gonna hurt each other? Because hurting them should be hurting you if you're in a healthy relationship.

• 35:47Lewis Howes?

  Powerful competition over cooperation. Now, as a former professional football player and I used to play at a high level with the USA team, handball team, the national team. I grew up in a state of competition. I wanted to win. I wanted to compete in sports. I wanted to win and compete in business early on in my twenties. And it helped me get results in certain ways, but it also left me feeling very alone and empty in other ways. And it wasn't until I turned twenty-nine, thirty, when I realized, okay, this competition thing doesn't work. It doesn't work at a certain level. Yes, you want to compete in sports to win, but there's a way to collaborate with your teammates so that it's a team win.

• 36:32Lewis Howes?

  There's a way to collaborate with your team and your career or your business where it's a team win. Where it's not about you versus the world or you versus your partner. And I brought that into some of my relationships in my twenties where it was like, I needed to win. I needed to be right. I needed to look good. I couldn't be embarrassed or humiliated because I lacked the emotional agility, to be honest. And I didn't have the tools to heal and navigate my emotions. I took this competitive mindset into every area of my life. And I failed miserably because I did that. And so you want to think about entering a relationship. It's okay to be the top of your game in life. It's okay to be a super successful person and be driven. That's, that's awesome.

• 37:16Lewis Howes?

  But you've got to ask yourself, am I bringing the same energy to my career, to my sport, to my musical endeavor, to my art? This, this competitive energy, am I bringing that into a conscious relationship? If so, then I would argue that it's not as conscious as you think. And again, it doesn't mean you can't have fun for a while and it's going to be some great memories, but it's just going to make it harder to last long-term in harmony and peace. So I'm trying to give you the tools and the, the insights that I've learned from some of the top people about just how to create more harmony and peace in your relationship.

• 37:56Lewis Howes?

  It doesn't mean you can't grunt it out and struggle for ten years and, you know, and last a long time. But no one wants to be sleeping in separate rooms frustrated at each other, having the silent treatment and constantly having to go through this loop of we love each other, we hate each other. We're in this together, we're gonna break up. No one wants that. I don't think that's a fulfilling relationship. It might make it interesting, it might make it exciting, but I don't think that's truly what the definition of conscious love is. So again, no right or wrong here. I've been in a lot of those types of situations in the past. It just never served me at the highest level, and it never served the relationship when we're in that state of competition. So he's gotta be looking for that, you know? Whether you're in a relationship, whether you're observing friends

• 38:41Lewis Howes?

  or observing other people in relationships, are they bringing competition to it? And there's a difference between playful competition and really right and wrong conversations. Are they, or are they bringing this cooperation? Are they in this together? Are they willing to make it work? Are they willing to support one another? Are they showing up for each other? Do they want the best for their partner? Or do they wanna win and they want their partner to be beneath them? You know, you've just gotta be looking and observing at these things and asking yourself these questions when you're in relationships or when you're watching others in relationships. I think that's a good red flag to watch out for, to see like if this will last long term. Are they in competition or cooperation?

• 39:25Lewis Howes?

  This next one is from the number one New York Times bestselling author of the massive hit, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a [BLEEP]. And his name is Mark Manson, and he has the definition of a toxic relationship. So let's hear and watch what the definition of a toxic relationship is so you can watch out for this in any relationship you're in or watching.

• 39:50Mark Manson?

  That is the definition of a toxic relationship. A relationship where love is present, but respect and/or trust is not. In a lot of ways, we psychologically behave with love the way addicts behave with their substance. We justify it, we delude ourselves, we lie to ourselves, we rationalize decisions that we make that are completely irrational. My hierarchy for relationships is trust and respect are tied for number one. Most people have had an experience in their life where they loved somebody very deeply, but they didn't trust them, and it doesn't work. It doesn't matter how much you try, how much effort you put in, how much you cry and argue and fight. The trust isn't there. It doesn't work. If the respect isn't there, it's not healthy. So we have to be very careful. Love can be an absolutely incredible thing.

• 40:34Mark Manson?

  It's one of life's greatest experiences, but proceed with caution.

• 40:37Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right, right. This is fascinating. You know, we, we hear these stories in music, in songs, in poetry, in movies, that love is all you need. We see that. We've heard that. Love is all you need. But I truly believe that love is not enough. Love is not enough. And what Mark is saying here, he's written books about relationships. He's studied this. He's in a long-term marriage, happily married. But he was like, if you don't have trust and respect, you can love someone all you want. But if you don't have trust and respect, it's going to be toxic. And this is something to watch out for. Again, if you are in a long-distance relationship,

• 41:20Lewis Howes?

  if you are a high-profile personality, if you are around a lot of people of the opposite sex, if you have people adoring you, if you have opportunities, if you have a big social media following and people are commenting and messaging you, if you're out with your friends a lot and your partner doesn't trust or respect you to live up to the values, the vision, the lifestyle and the agreements that you've created. Now, you can have different agreements about what is okay in your relationship or what is not okay. But if you don't trust and respect the person to live in accordance of their values, vision and lifestyle that you've talked about and the agreements of your specific relationship. If you can't trust them, then love is not enough.

• 42:04Lewis Howes?

  If you don't respect them to make conscious decisions and you don't have to be constantly checking in and asking them where they are and who they're talking to. If you don't trust and respect that person, it's just going to be more difficult to create a healthy relationship. You're going to be anxious. You're going to be insecure. You're going to be questioning the person. No one wants to be questioned. Now, if they're doing things out of alignment, if they're sneaking behind your back, if they're hiding things, if they're not open about who they're going to see at night or they're not telling you something and they're, they're, they're lying to you and you catch them in that, then okay, then address it, handle it and move forward. In the best way possible for you.

• 42:45Lewis Howes?

  But if you set these things in motion early in a relationship, and you have these challenging conversations about what is it you want? What are your values? What is the vision you have? What is your lifestyle? And here's what I want in a relationship in terms of agreements, so that I can fully trust and respect you, and you can fully trust and respect me. Whether you share passwords with each other on your phone or not, whatever the agreement is for you, whether you don't care if someone's out late at night with their girlfriends, other guy friends, or not. Whatever the agreements you create for yourself, for me, it doesn't matter. It's what you create as agreements. And when you don't create agreements, but you just expect the other person to live in accordance to the way you think, that's when nightmares happen. That's when there's frustration, when there's let down,

• 43:31Lewis Howes?

  when there's breakdowns. It's when you don't communicate what you want. And you're just trying to play it cool and act all casual in the beginning of a relationship. But then later, there's things you don't like that the other person's doing. Number one, you haven't communicated what you want in your agreements. Or number two, you don't accept the lifestyle the person you are choosing to be in a relationship with is choosing to live. Therefore, the lifestyle, the third thing, is out of alignment. So I had to ask myself this question with Martha. You know, she, when we were dating the first few months, before we became committed as a couple, I had to ask all these lifestyle questions.

• 44:13Lewis Howes?

  For the last 20 years, she's been a famous actress in Mexico. She travels the world doing movies every year, TV or movies. She does two or three projects a year. I had to ask myself, is this a lifestyle that I'm willing to accept? If she continues this for the next 20, 30 years, can I accept this lifestyle? Can I accept that she's going to be on set and doing, you know, potentially romantic scenes with other men? Can I accept that she's going to be traveling a lot? Can I trust and respect her for the decisions and the choices that she makes in her career, in her profession? And I had to ask myself honestly, and I was able to accept it. I said, "Cool," because I don't want to change her.

• 44:54Lewis Howes?

  We should change anyone entering a relationship to be someone completely different. Because we were attracted to them, to who they are. Not to, okay, now you've been this career, this profession. But now I want you to be close to me and never do this anymore because I need to feel safe. That is an insecurity you've got to work on, not they need to work on. And just because you love someone, or you have chemistry or connection, or you shared interests, or you're sexually attracted to them. It doesn't mean it is enough. You need trust and respect as well, as Mark was talking about. So if you are out of alignment on these things, if you do not trust and respect the person you're with, if you do not accept the choices they're making. Maybe they like to go out and party and drink a lot.

• 45:39Lewis Howes?

  If you don't want that lifestyle, don't try to change them. Either accept who they are, but don't try to change them for something they're not in this moment. And don't even try to talk about potential. Don't say, well, maybe in five to 10 years, they have the potential to not be this way. You either accept the person for where they're at now, or don't be with them. Or be willing to say, alright, I don't accept this. I'm gonna try to change them and they're gonna resent me for changing them. And that's gonna be friction. Again, it doesn't mean you can't stay together and make something work and and create a relationship together, but we're talking about harmony, peace, and fulfillment in the relationship to the highest level that you can. Knowing that there's going to be challenges and problems along the way.

• 46:22Lewis Howes?

  So can we minimize stress? Can we minimize frustration in a relationship? Now, if you're saying, you know what, I like having a chaotic relationship, then ignore all of these red flags. Ignore all of these toxic traits and these signs that maybe this isn't gonna be good. If you just love the chaos and you're attracted to chaos, then do the opposite of everything we've talked about, okay? But if you want peace and harmony and fulfillment in a relationship from someone who has been through a lot of stress in relationships. That I self inflicted and I chose poorly and I made poor decision for someone who has experienced that frustration, pain and sadness and loss many times in my past. It's just not fun. It's not fulfilling anymore and it never was fun.

• 47:04Lewis Howes?

  I just was, I guess addicted to the chaos of it until I learned to heal and and really get clear on what I wanted. So again, that's something to think about. Trust and respect. Love is not enough. You also need trust and respect to create more peace and harmony. This one is from Dr. Caroline Leaf and then we have one more after this. This is why we attract broken partners that we want to fix. So this is Dr. Caroline Leaf, who is a neuroscientist and talks about this in terms of relationships. Why our brain chemistry is attracted to certain types of people.

• 47:41Lewis Howes?

  Why do we attract certain people? You were saying like we attract someone that might have something broken inside of them so we can bring harmony or balance?

• 47:47Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So basically it's humans, humanity because of a wired for love nature. When something is off, we're drawn to that to restore balance. That's why very often you'll see, you may recognize your brokenness in someone else. What we're talking about here is the essence of what I have missing in my relationship.

• 48:04Lewis Howes?

  What I have missing in my relationship to myself?

• 48:07Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Self, yes.

• 48:07Lewis Howes?

  I need to find in someone else that I can fix.

• 48:10Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yes. Instead of me fixing myself, I'm trying to fix someone else. And you can't fix anyone else. The only person you can fix is yourself. All we can do is support other people.

• 48:20Lewis Howes?

  You can't fix someone else, you can support them. All we can do is fix the things within ourselves. So this is a red flag to look out for when you're, when you see something broken in someone else and that excites you because you think maybe I can fix this. You can't fix or change the person. You can support the person on their journey. You can be there by their side. You can give them comfort. You can give them compassion. You can give them guidance. You could. Walk them to the water, but you can't force the person to drink it. They're gonna learn to heal and evolve on their own timeline. And that may not be on your timeline. It's not gonna be in the next three months unless they want it to be.

• 49:01Lewis Howes?

  It might take them years until they want to create wholeness within themselves. All we can do is learn to create wholeness within us. You know, I think we all have some brokenness or something we need to unlearn. That causes us to feel this type of suffering sadness or pain. And it doesn't mean something's wrong with us. It just means, are we living our highest authentic selves personally? And if we're not, and you want to improve, there's some things we can either unlearn or that we can learn to create more wholeness and harmony within us. And when you get to a place of healing and healing the spiritual energy within you, the brokenness within you, the sadness within you, the longing, the loss within you.

• 49:42Lewis Howes?

  When you learn to cultivate an environment of spiritual healing, of wholeness within you, it is one of the greatest feelings you will ever have in your life. And you won't be attracting other people who aren't on that same journey anymore. It's when we haven't dealt with those things within us, we feel like something is broken within us. We may not even consciously be thinking about it, but subconsciously, we see someone else who might have some problem or struggle or challenge. And we think, oh, maybe I can help this person and it'll bring me more value. It'll make me feel better about me. Trust me, I know this from the past. I did this so many different times in relationships. I thought, let me find someone who's got some broken challenge

• 50:26Lewis Howes?

  or who doesn't believe in themselves and let me give them belief. Let me help them achieve, succeed, believe they're lovable, believe they're worthy, believe they're deserving, because within me, I didn't believe those things. But I thought that maybe I could help others do that. And it just never worked. It never worked and it left me feeling frustrated and like a loser and a failure when I did that. So you gotta be working on this spiritual journey within you to create harmony within yourself first. And then attracting someone else who's also doing that inner work. So you're supporting one another, you're not fixing one another. So these are the five keys to setting up healthy, conscious love to support yourself,

• 51:08Lewis Howes?

  to creating more harmony and love, more joy, more abundance, more fun, and less stress. And really three things to watch out for, three red flags. Again, whether you're entering a relationship, whether you have friends getting in relationship, whether you like to watch celebrities get in relationship, just observe and see, okay, am I doing these things? Are my friends doing these things? Are other people doing these things? And to watch out for to see if you're on the right path. And even with all these things, it doesn't mean it's gonna work out. There might be challenges and things out of your control that don't work out. But my intention for you with this information, to serve and support you with some great experts who talk about relationships,

• 51:52Lewis Howes?

  who have years of experience themselves in relationships, who've gone through pain and problems, myself included, in relationships, and who've come out on the other side with more wisdom, more insights. And that's what this is all about. I've got, if you're looking to understand how to heal and how to address the parts of you that you might feel like are broken or have some struggle with, this book, The Greatness Mindset, a lot of it is about healing. The first third of the book is all about addressing those different things within you that are holding you back from greater success, but also greater love and fulfillment within yourself. So make sure to get a copy of this today to support you on your healing journey and developing a stronger mindset

• 52:36Lewis Howes?

  in the decisions you make in your life. We'll have this linked up below. And also, my friend Jay Shetty's got an amazing new book out called Eight Rules of Love. So if you wanna learn more about love and relationships, here's a great book to check out as well with some amazing insights, research and science also about creating the love that you want. So again, check out The Greatness Mindset. It's all about unlocking the power of your mind to live a better life. Check out Eight Rules of Love. We've got all these different videos and full interviews from these clips that we talked about today to dive deeper on this conversation of relationships, intimacy, healing, lasting love. So make sure to check those out.

• 53:19Lewis Howes?

  Let me know in the comments below what your biggest takeaway was. Let me know what you Learned in your previous relationships and what has been successful for you? Let me know if you believe in this idea of values, vision and lifestyle. If making sure that those are in alignment, it will set you up for more success in relationships. Or if you completely disagree and if you think not having the right values together, not having a shared vision and being on completely different lifestyle paths, you can make it work also. Please let me know. I'd love to be, to learn more about that from your point of view. Again, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Let me know your biggest takeaway below in the comments. Make sure to share this with a friend, subscribe to our channel wherever you're watching and listening.

• 54:03Lewis Howes?

  And again, all the best to any couples out there that you know or that you're watching from afar. I wish everyone happy, healthy, successful relationships. I wish you all the love in your life and I'll see you next time. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels, at Lewis Howes.

• 54:47Lewis Howes?

  I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness Newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com/newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.