Relationship Expert: The SECRET to Healing Your Relationship After Conflict

Relationship expert Baya Voce reveals why the fairy tale version of love is setting us up for failure—and what actually creates lasting intimacy. She shares her personal journey from serial people-pleasing to building genuine connection, including the painful lesson of being engaged to someone who fabricated his entire identity. Most people never exit the "power struggle" phase of relationships because they've never learned the one skill that matters most: how to repair after conflict. Baya explains why therapy at the beginning of a relationship changes everything, how your nervous system—not your personality—determines who you attract, and why the ability to sit in emotional discomfort is more valuable than chemistry. You'll walk away understanding that love isn't about finding someone perfect—it's about two imperfect people learning to heal together. Sign up for Baya’s newsletterFollow Baya on InstagramIn this episode you will:Discover why conflict is required for intimacy – Not optional, not avoidable, but essential for moving beyond surface connection into true partnership and interdependenceMaster the art of emotional regulation – Learn why this single skill, according to neuroscientists, determines your success in every relationship more than communication or compatibilityTransform your nervous system response – Understand how your physiological health—thyroid, cortisol, sleep—directly impacts your ability to stay calm during disagreementsBreak free from the change-accept paradox – Stop trying to fix your partner or change yourself to please them, and learn the framework for healthy boundaries that create mutual respectLearn to repair instead of run – Access the exact framework (truth, agreement, responsibility) for having difficult conversations that strengthen rather than damage your connectionFor more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1836For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Esther Perel – greatness.lnk.to/1686SCMartha Higareda Howes – greatness.lnk.to/1788SCJillian Turecki – greatness.lnk.to/1740SC Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  They say the number one skill is emotional regulation.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  And there is no way around it. You cannot escape this if you want to have a meaningful intimate relationship. There is no way around this.

• 0:12Speaker 02

  Author and TEDx voice, whose programs translate emotional intelligence into everyday team habits. Please welcome Baya Vochi.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  There is no truth in relationship. There are just two people who are having their own experiences and you live in your world and I live over here in my world. And as long as we're arguing for the truth, we're both gonna lose because the truth doesn't actually exist. If we're fighting the truth, we are fighting a losing battle. Period. Full stop. Agreement is the enemy of attunement. And attunement is really what we need in order to repair. We need empathy, right? If you know that you're not arguing for truth, what we're arguing for is your perspective or my perspective getting heard, seen, and validated.

• 0:54Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Conflict without repair is just pain. But then conflict with repair is healing. I deeply believe that we get into relationship to heal the parts of ourselves that nobody else could heal before.

• 1:07Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like you've healed from those relationships with men?

• 1:14Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:19Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. We have the inspiring Baya Vochi in the house and we were just talking Baya right beforehand about how both of us entered our previous relationships in therapy as opposed to waiting for conflict to arise and then try to repair. You have been helping individuals understand conflict resolution in relationships. You've been researching this for a long time. You've been working with people about this. And I'm curious, do you think we need conflict in order to have a healthy relationship? Is it part of a thriving, harmonious, healthy relationship?

• 1:59Lewis Howes?

  Or is it better to just create resolution agreements, acceptance, alignment from the beginning of a relationship, the first six to nine months, so that we can minimize conflict? So we don't have to try to put all of our energy into repairing in the future, which sucks the life out of a relationship in my mind. Where, what are your thoughts on this?

• 2:19Speaker 01

  I mean, listen, I think it's a dance, first of all. And I, I look at relationships in phases. The first phase is the part where you're sort of enmeshed. You've found your soulmate, the other half, the like, how have I not lived without you my whole, like, I have not found you. I'm so, you know, and there is this way that you merge. And this is where you feel like you're never going to fight about anything. We have so much in common.

• 2:50Lewis Howes?

  This person's perfect.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right. And then inevitably, because you are two different nervous systems with two different wounding patterns and different histories, inevitably, at some point, you enter into another stage, which I like to call the power struggle. The power struggle is where you're faced with a whole bunch of tension. This is where your differences start to rub up against each other. All of a sudden, we start to individuate. So that where we thought we were just one amoeba, now we're sort of like, you know, now we're, now we're starting to be like, wait, you're, you're an individual with different desires

• 3:31Speaker 01

  and needs. And I am also, so, so what do we, and so there's inherently tension in this phase. That tension is important. We have to, we have to find the areas of friction in order to move through them, to where actually in the third phase, you get to interdependence. You find a space in your relationship where you have more gentleness. You know one each other's, one another's wounding. And so you're, you're able to work with that wounding a little bit more easily. You know where there's gonna, where you're gonna get caught. You know, you've been in the cycles, you know. But the tricky part is, most people never exit out of stage two. Most people are in the power struggle for the duration

• 4:16Speaker 01

  of the relationship.

• 4:17Lewis Howes?

  What does the power struggle phase look like for most people?

• 4:20Speaker 01

  So it can look like, first of all, it can look a lot of different ways. This is not one size fits all. For people who are a little more conflict avoidant, you might find that the power struggle looks just a little more like distance. Like, huh, they just did something that really bothered me. I think I'm just not going to say anything about that. And I'll just act like that doesn't matter.

• 4:38Lewis Howes?

  Like stuffing your feelings, silent treatment at times.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, 100%.

• 4:43Lewis Howes?

  Uh, that makes me feel uncomfortable. So I'm just not going to speak about it at all for some people.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like the, I like the like stuff down, down. Oh, I can, a lot of, some people might be, I can handle that. That's fine. It's the quintessential, I'm fine.

• 4:56Lewis Howes?

  Until two, three years later, you explode.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  You're definitely not fine. Or two, three weeks later, you're not fine. And if you have two people who do that, you're going to end up, you know, you're going to end up walking two parallel paths and you'll be roommates before long who aren't talking about much. And you're just living different lives in the same house.

• 5:12Lewis Howes?

  Or would that's, would that power struggle phase also be, you don't say what's truly on your heart? You don't have the courage to speak to your partner directly, but you talk about it to other friends and family about what they're not giving you?

• 5:25Speaker 01

  100%, 100%. And listen, it makes sense on some level because if we have grown up afraid of what it actually means to bring our truth, if we have learned that bringing what's real for us creates distance or punishment,

• 5:41Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  then we, we're, we're adapting to, to that response.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  There's a, I, one of my mentors is Terry Real and he's fantastic. And he, he has a line that I think is so profound, which is, adaptive now, maladaptive then. What now is an adaptation that you have, that you have figured out because your mom yelled at you. And so, and your reaction to that, when she yelled at you was to hide and then be good. Now, what are you going to do in your relationship? Well, you're probably going to hide and be good. And so your partner might come to you and be mad at you and you might just start appeasing. No, no, no, it's okay. Oh, I totally didn't mean to do that. I can't believe, and meanwhile, you're over here fuming, but you're not going to say that because what do you think is going to happen? That your mom is going to yell, but it's your partner.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  And so, um, we have to start learning what it actually means to grow out of our maladaptive responses into adaptive responses.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  So if you were yelled at as a kid, for instance, and your adaptive, smart response, by the way, smart response, was to, like I just said, maybe hide in your room and cry. And that actually gave you attention from your dad. So when you cried, your mom would yell, and when you cry, your dad would come and console. So what did you learn? You learned, safety is crying, having a big reaction, and then dad's gonna come console me. Now, as an adult, you cry, hoping for that same attention. And it might not even be conscious, by the way. You just cry because that's the thing that comes up. It just comes out of you like that. It's so easy.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  And all of a sudden, your partner doesn't actually respond to that. Your partner actually needs you to be in a little bit more of a regulated space for them to meet you. And where do you go? You go deeper into the pain. You go harder into the crying because that's the thing that got you attention before. So when we don't understand that there is this younger part of ourselves that is in charge when we're triggered. Now, you can call this the amygdala. You can call this your inner child. You can, there are many, many people have had many, you know, in many traditions have called this different things. I like to look at it as a little kid, as like your five-year-old self who's crying, begging for a parent to hold you and give you attention. And when that matches up, which it just tends to do in relationships with your partner's wounding,

• 8:14Speaker 01

  well, guess what? You're probably not gonna get your needs met.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  It's gonna lead to more tension. So this question of, you know, can we just deal with it at the beginning? And talk our way through agreements and whatnot? So that tension doesn't arise? I don't, I, I think that actually goes a little bit hand in hand with. This narrative that we've all been sold and it's been steeped into our subconscious that is from Disney and Hollywood rom coms and hashtag couple goals on social media around what a relationship should look like. And unless you're in self-development, unless you're in therapy, unless you read relationship books or go to the workshops, there's actually

• 8:58Speaker 01

  nowhere in culture where you're learning that conflict is normal and that you have to, it's intimacy building. Now, there are plenty of unhealthy ways to do conflict. So I don't mean to say that yelling and abuse is, that's not a healthy way to do conflict. But if you can do conflict in a way that actually then lends to repair and then you complete the cycle, then when you, conflict without repair is just pain over and over and over again. Yeah. But then conflict with repair is healing. I actually really like thinking about it this way. So you each come into the relationship with all of your relationships

• 9:43Speaker 01

  behind you. So it's your relationship with your caregivers. It's the relationship with the person who broke your heart or the 12 people who broke your heart before that. It's the pain that you did to other people and it's the pain that other people did to you, caused to you. You walk into your relationship with all of the unhealed pain and you basically walk to your partner and you say,

• 10:06Lewis Howes?

  Heal me.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Here it is.

• 10:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Here it is. Yeah. Yeah. But we don't know that's what we're saying. That's not why we get into, that's not why we think we're getting into relationships. But that to me is when we're talking, when I get a little more kind of spiritual and woo woo and esoteric about it, I deeply believe, I deeply believe that we get into relationship to heal the parts of ourselves that nobody else could heal before. And when we find the relationship that is the one we decide to

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Basically, put on the altar as this is where I'm gonna do my work. This is where I'm then what you're saying as each partner is I am signing up to be here to heal, to help you heal the parts of yourself that nobody else that came before me could help you heal. Like I am, I'm up for that task and vice versa. It's to me, that lens is it's a gift that we give each other when we sign up for relationships and say, it doesn't matter how perfect I want you to be. I know you come with unhealed wounding. And I have the exact recipe that's probably gonna bump up against those wounds. But if we're responsible enough and we do our work enough,

• 11:22Speaker 01

  that what I also can do is support in the healing of those wounds.

• 11:26Lewis Howes?

  Yes. I heard Gabor Maté said that if it's hysterical, it's historical. And if someone is reacting based out of a trigger or something and they're reacting hysterically to a situation or an environment that even isn't a physical threat, but feels to them like there's a physical threat. There's some type of history behind it that's causing them to be hysterical or reactive in whatever situation. And what I'm hearing you say is that healthy conflict takes courage is what I'm hearing you say. And what, what I lacked for most of my life in every intimate relationship I was in was courage. For most of my life, I would stuff it down. I was in the second phase, the, the power struggle phase for most of my, my relationship life.

• 12:10Lewis Howes?

  And I was, you know, I'd get into a relationship for two years, three years, four years, and just kind of repeat the cycle, thinking it was the person I was with and get in a new relationship and kind of repeat the cycle of phase one to phase two. And then you're in phase two forever and you're trying to get into interdependence, right? But it never felt like it for me. Until this, uh, my, my marriage now. And what I'm hearing you also say is that you're not getting into a relationship with a human being. You're getting in a relationship with their nervous system. And if their nervous system is wounded and e-regulated or deregulated, then that's what you're getting in a relationship with is how someone perceives everything in the world.

• 12:52Lewis Howes?

  And if they're traumatized or if they have thin skin by every little thing that you say or do or don't do, that's the relationship you're getting into, not the person and how they look, but what's inside their nervous system and how they respond to their environment.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  You know, I often say, like, if we were to go on for states and be like, all right, what, when you're, when you're just off the rocker, what do you like? Like when, when you're super triggered, when you're a 10 out of 10, when you're a five out of 10, what do you, what do you look, what, what are we up against?

• 13:21Lewis Howes?

  There's a bear inside of me. There's like a bear that wants to destroy. If I'm like not regulated, you know, it's like, I'm like, let me just take on the world, you know, it's like a bear.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Same. I can get, I can get both. I can get loud and I can get super, I can get super quiet and just like, you don't, you don't even feel my heart. Like I can go to both of those places and they're, and they're not, they're not places I'm proud of, by the way.

• 13:45Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  But we, and, and by the way, no matter how much work we do, these pieces live inside of us. It's not that the little kid ever goes away. It's that when you start to understand what your nervous system is like when it gets dysregulated, like, oh, I, I know that my, my chest tightens or I start to talk really, really fast or I start to sweat. Or, or I, it's maybe, maybe it doesn't feel so physiological, but I can start to, I can start to feel you become my enemy. I'm like trying to build my case against you, right? Like we've all kind of been here in one way or another. When I begin to understand what my particular brand of dysregulation looks like,

• 14:29Speaker 01

  then I can start taking responsibility for when I'm going there and that adaptive part, that young, because that's really what it is. It's the part of ourselves that's just trying to fight for, keep me safe, keep me safe. We can sort of do this thing where we put the kid in the back. It's like, okay, you're five. I don't want you to go away, but you also can't drive.

• 14:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  And this is another thing that Terry talks about, which I think is also really smart, which is like, you put the kid in the back and you've got to give the kid, kid love, but the kid needs a boundary. Like, that's what kids need. They need love, but they need boundaries. So you put it, you put the kid in the back and you're like, hey, kid, I got this. You don't need to be the one, and they generally don't want to be the ones to be in the fight anyway. They're like, oh, great, hands off the wheel. I can take a nap or play Legos in the back. And then, and then the more regulated part of you can start to come online. But you've got to take care of the part that's dysregulated. Generally speaking, you're either better at auto-regulating, so regulating on your own, or co-regulating, like you need somebody to help you regulate.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  And we want to get better at the other. That's generally what we need. I, I fall into the co-regulation category. Like, I really, it feels like at times I need my wife to help me. Like, I need her to help calm me down. Like, I can't, and that's been a huge.

• 15:51Lewis Howes?

  But if you attract an independent person and they're like, hey, I don't, I'm an independent, like, get away from your, your.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  That's her, by the way.

• 15:58Lewis Howes?

  You're clinging some to someone who wants to be alone.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  But that, but that's also where the healing comes into play, right? So because I have been like, save me, save me from my own emotions that I don't feel like I can handle on my own, and she's like, that doesn't actually work. What do I have to do? I have to build the skill of auto-regulating. I have to build the part of myself that understands how to take care of myself.

• 16:20Lewis Howes?

  And probably the more you do that, the more she wants to come in and.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  One hundred percent.

• 16:23Lewis Howes?

  Co-regulate.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 16:25Lewis Howes?

  As opposed to feeling like she needs to do it.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  One hundred percent.

• 16:27Lewis Howes?

  And like, yeah.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  One hundred percent.

• 16:29Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting.

• 16:36Lewis Howes?

  You mentioned before that there's a massive link between physiological health and emotional dysregulation. How does this play into relationships then?

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you for asking this. Thank you. Thank you. Because this is so important. So I think one of the things that we're missing in the relationship space as far as like a real conversation in the field is right now, we talk a lot about trauma. We talk a lot about nervous system. And those are important. I don't mean to say they're not. But what we haven't linked in the relationship space is how our physiological and biological health connect to our ability to regulate. So if you just ate a meal that was that had a bunch of sugar, if you haven't gotten sleep, if your thyroid is off, if you don't have enough vitamin

• 17:27Speaker 01

  D, if your hormones are out of whack, if your cortisol, I mean, we, my wife and I were literally just talking about this. She's been dysregulated lately and we were, we were talking about why? And she was like, oh, I just got my thyroid levels checked. Turns out they're all out of whack. And it changed within two months. She had just gotten her labs done and got her, and we were like, oh, this makes a ton of sense. This happened to me too. My cortisol was way out of whack. And I, and I was like, why am I being so sensitive? I don't understand. I've been going through IVF, same thing. But with IVF, I, I know what's happening. It's like I'm taking estrogen, I'm taking progesterone, and I can literally be like, whoa, one day I take progesterone and I'm like, the devil. And then, you know, I take estrogen the next day and I'm

• 18:08Speaker 01

  like, everything's cool. I'm fine. I'm fine. Nothing bothers me. But, but we're not linking that. We're talking a lot about trauma, which again, is not, it's not that it's not important. But there are other reasons why you aren't regulating. And it could be something that is, so getting your labs done to me is one of the most, it's like a low hanging fruit. I mean, if we're talking free, we're talking morning and evening, sunlight, just easy. We're talking about getting as good a sleep as you possibly can and then eating well. Those are three options. The next level up is getting labs. Just to peek under the hood and be like, okay, what's actually going on with my hormones?

• 18:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Function Health is a great panel. They do a membership that's way, it's way cheaper than the actual labs and they're fantastic. I work with them closely, so I, I love them. And, and they also track it over time. So, once you start to understand, it's, it's another way to take control of the regulation conversation and you cannot repair without being regulated, period.

• 19:07Lewis Howes?

  It's really tough. Cause if you're in breakdown or fight or flight, it's hard to resolve any conflict.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  No, you can't.

• 19:12Lewis Howes?

  You need to get down to a peaceful state so you can have a conscious conversation without being freaking out. Because I, again, being in that phase two that you talked about, the three phases of relationships, I was in the power struggle phase a lot because I lacked the courage to sit with someone who is emotionally dysregulated. When they would scream at me or cry or have an explosive reaction or give them the silent treatment, I was like, how do I just make them happy in this moment? And it was like, I would attract people with a dysregu- dysregulated nervous system and I lacked the courage that I needed to get into interdependence. So, I was in that power struggle constantly and I kept repeating the cycle because I was just like, I just don't want someone screaming at me anymore.

• 19:55Lewis Howes?

  I don't want someone crying every time they're not happy with something about me. I was like, I couldn't handle it. I didn't know how to sit with the emotions. So, I'd just change who I was to try to please someone and become a completely different person and then resent myself, them and the relationship and it would fall apart. Cause I was like, I don't even know who I am anymore. I'm constantly evolving and adapting to please this person and I'm never happy. And I take full responsibility because I lacked courage to say, listen, I love you, I care about you, but this doesn't work for me. We need some boundaries. We need some agreements as opposed to it's your way, you're gonna react if you don't get your way and I have to shift to make you happy. So, I lacked courage in that space. They lacked, you know, regulating maybe or whatever it was, courage as well. We both lacked things.

• 20:40Lewis Howes?

  And I realized that I need to be able to sit in the fire.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:45Lewis Howes?

  When there is something that feels uncomfortable and I need to continue to heal so that it's not that uncomfortable anymore. So, it becomes more like, okay, I don't like this maybe, but it's not gonna make me change who I am to make one person happy.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Courage is one way to look at it, but you probably actually had a really good reason.

• 21:06Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Why you went towards pleasing and appeasing and overriding.

• 21:11Lewis Howes?

  I wanted to feel safe.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's like, it like, now, that doesn't work, as you know.

• 21:18Lewis Howes?

  Doesn't work.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  But, but there's actually good reasons we do things that at the end of the day, we might get done with that fight and be like, God, why did I do that?

• 21:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  I can't believe it. Why did I yell again? Or why did I override again? Or there are really good reasons. This is where the digging, this is where therapy or workshops or whatever are so important to start to understand the mechanisms for why you behave the way that you do. Like that's there. I think, I think one thing that feels really important is that we give ourselves a bit of grace here about why we, why we behave the ways that you're not wanting to appease. That's not something, and you're not going into a conversation being like, ah, I'm gonna override all my own boundaries right now. You do it because there's something in your system that locks up that doesn't have any idea how to react other than the way to your point that is going to keep you safe. And I think it's really important that we know that.

• 22:09Lewis Howes?

  Well, something that goes in with that, you have a quote about this that says, "The real challenge isn't just about using the tools. It's about rewiring how you approach conflict." And speaking around this, like, I didn't have all the right tools before. And even if you have the tools, you also say it's about rewiring how you approach conflict. So when there's a breakdown from your partner, or you're in breakdown, they are, you're both are, whatever it is. I think one, we can probably agree on that we need certain tools to regulate our emotions when our emotions are heightened. Period. Every human being. And then it's also figuring out how we approach the conflict. Where I used to approach every breakdown or conflict is, how could I get through this as quickly as possible back to peace?

• 22:52Lewis Howes?

  Back to safety, back to harmony, back to, back to soulmate energy versus power struggle energy, right? How can we just go back to the way it was in the first month? It was so easy and fun and amazing. Can't you just be that person again? Like, it was like, who are you? What is going on? You weren't this way for the first six months of knowing you. Now this like, hurt, wounded little girl is crying every other day and yelling at me. Well, what, this isn't who I knew. So you're like, you're going through an identity shift of the relationship where you're like, what is this? They're maybe seeing something in you that they said, oh, you weren't doing what you used to do, whatever it is, right? We're both not doing something. And then you're in this power struggle, you're just thinking, how do I get back to soulmate energy? This feeling of soulmate, which also I don't even agree with, but because I think it's a,

• 23:36Lewis Howes?

  you know, it's interesting. My wife, um, she's a very famous movie actress, uh, in, in Mexico. And she's done over 40 movies and she was the rom com queen in Mexico. So every movie she did was a rom com for many years and it was number one box office. And she grew up in the Disneyland rom com, this is how relationships are based on cultural. She didn't see that with her parents. Her parents have a very healthy relationship, but she grew up kind of in this movie scene, living these stories and kind of embodying this in her own life as well. And she had to really heal and realize like, it's not about you complete me. It's like, I can need to complete myself and create wholeness within me.

• 24:19Lewis Howes?

  Then we can create inner dependence when we're both creating this wholeness next to each other. Right? It's like, we can both continue to grow next to each other. But part of it is like, the approach to conflict. We, I think both parties need tools, but we both need to approach conflict with saying, instead, I used to wanna create peace. I wanted to create harmony, or I wanted to win and I wanted to be right. It's like, you're wrong, I'm right. I know you're weak right now. I have the answers, like my ego is so big also, right? It was like, I just wanted to win.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, welcome to all of us.

• 24:54Lewis Howes?

  Right? Exactly. But then when I got into the relationship with Martha early on, I was like, the only way I win is that we both win. And if one person loses, then we both lose.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:04Lewis Howes?

  So we both need, so it was my approach was like, how do we both win when there's conflict? And that's something I've learned in emotional intelligence workshops that we've both been through. And it's really about approaching conflict with me to that mindset. And it's not always easy to do, even today, even with the tools. You still have to approach it with, it's not about me being right, you being wrong. How can we both win here?

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, there, just speaking of mindset, I actually think there are, there are three things I think about that when approaching conflict that are really important, that I think we, we've gotten kind of wrong or we haven't been taught. I use the acronym TAR basically so that I can remember it. Um, but it's truth, agreement and responsibility. Now, truth.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  You're saying win lose. Oftentimes, we want to fight for the truth. We want to fight like you you just yelled at me. I wasn't yelling. I was just speaking loudly.

• 26:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. Hell, you weren't.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're you're going too fast. I was going five over. Right? If we're fighting the truth, we are fighting a losing battle. Period. Full stop. There is no truth in relationship. There are just two people who are having their own experiences, and you live in your world, and I live over here in my world. And as long as we're arguing for the truth, we're both gonna lose because the truth doesn't actually exist. It's so important to know this because we often think that we need to, to the second point of the mindset shift, agree with one another. Now, if we think we have to agree, then we think your truth has got to be right, and then my truth has got to be wrong. So how

• 26:46Speaker 01

  does that work? That doesn't that's not that's not an equation that works out. So but if you don't, if you know that you're not arguing for truth, what we're arguing for is your perspective or my perspective getting heard, seen, and validated.

• 27:03Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  The way to do this is one person has got to go at a time. You cannot go at the same time.

• 27:10Lewis Howes?

  Try try doing that with a Mexican family.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 27:12Lewis Howes?

  They all speak at the same.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  At the same time. This is by the way, simple, not easy. Simple, not easy, everybody. This is this is super, super tricky.

• 27:21Lewis Howes?

  You have to really listen. Even when you feel heightened emotions, you have to say, one, I'm gonna listen, you're gonna listen, and we're gonna create an agreement around who's listening.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:28Lewis Howes?

  Without interruption, right? It's like.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  It is hard. This is hard. This is this is it's like we we we don't really realize how challenging these skills can be to put into play. Like, we need so much repetition for these to. So listen, you're gonna you're gonna go one at a time. You're gonna say it's your partner's turn. They're gonna say something that pisses you off, and you're gonna jump in. That's gonna happen. Like, we just have to know that that is going to happen as we're practicing this. This is a lifelong journey here. But the move is to know who's most dysregulated and that person should get repairing first. So first, before ever entering into a repair conversation, you're you, you need to both at,

• 28:11Speaker 01

  I call it do nothing, like go into your separate sparring corners and like drink water, take a bath, phone a friend, talk to a therapist, do whatever you need, put your feet on the ground, like whatever you need to start to ground a little bit to start to regulate. Once at least one of you is, you know, regulated at like a, on a scale of one to 10, like a three or below, then you're ready to have a repair conversation. Then you're ready to, when you're ready to go in. At this point, if I, if we're, if you and I are repairing and I'm, and you're the one who needs repairing first, I have to overhear, be like, okay, it's not that I don't get my turn, but my turn just isn't right now. For a lot of us, especially my people pleasers who are listening, that's me also recovering

• 28:57Speaker 01

  in the house, you have to know that you're going to get a turn. So how I think about it is you like zip down this little meat suit, you just zip it down and you just take your perspective off and you put it over the side and it's just taking a little cat nap. You just take, not that your perspective doesn't matter, not that it's not important, it's just taking a nap for the time being so that I can come in over here and focus 100% of my effort and energy and attention, even though I have my truth over here, even though I have my perspective over here, I have what happened that really hurt me over here. We're gonna address that, we're just not gonna address it right this second. So if I know that, then I actually can zone in on you. Now I can start to get curious about what is happening over in your world.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  This is what I was talking about with the second piece, which is agreement.

• 29:44Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  We get so caught in needing to agree, like, like that you're gonna say something and all of a sudden it's, it's gonna need to change my mind about my worldview and what happened for me. We don't need to do that. Agreement is the enemy of attunement and attunement is really what we need in order to repair. We need, we need empathy, right? Attunement, empathy, I can use them kind of interchangeably. And there are two types of empathy, emotional empathy and cognitive empathy. Honestly, there are probably more, this is Susan David at Harvard, she talks about this and I think it's a really brilliant way to think about it.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Emotional empathy is I feel what's happening over here with me. And as you talk and you speak and I start to learn more about what's going on for you, I can start to feel how that feels for you, how that hurt you. It's not that I leave myself. But all of a sudden, I can start like, oh, wow, if I, if I believed what you believe, I can totally see how that would hurt and how you would be angry and sad and frustrated about that. That doesn't mean, by the way, that I don't have my perspective. It's just taking a nap. It's just still over here. But now, because I know it's only taking a nap, I can just come over to you and be like, be so immersed in your experience. Cognitive empathy, I might not feel what you feel,

• 31:03Speaker 01

  but now I can start to understand it on a really different level. Your story is starting to make sense to me. I'm starting to be like, ah, okay. Well, again, if you believed that, that makes sense to me. It's not necessarily happening in my body, but I can understand it cognitively. This doesn't mean we agree.

• 31:21Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  And I think this is so important because it's where we find collapse in, in conflict is when we feel like we have to take our perspective away or the thing that happened to us away in order for you to feel repair.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  I also have something that I call the 70% rule that I discovered because I, I, this was, this is a hard one for me, which is, which is when we start to expect about 70% attunement, 70% of you're trying, you're doing it good enough, you're asking the questions. It might not be exactly how I want you to ask them or in the tone, but you're like doing, you're doing.

• 32:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  It's like 70% there. The 70% is the couple's work. It's like below 70%, you need, the, the couple needs more work. But anything beyond the 70%, that 30%, that's really your work. That's the part of yourself that is sort of unreparable with. That's how, that's how I think, like, I'll never forget, Emmy, my wife and I were in this fight and she's trying to repair with me. It's before bed and she's doing all, she's pulling out all the stops. Everything she could possibly do. She's pulling out everything. And we're, we're in there for maybe an hour and eventually I just look at her and I was like, I don't think there's any way for you to win right now. And she looks at me and she goes, thank you.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  And it was actually in that moment that I started to understand this more that I was like, oh, this is mine to do. This is the part of myself, the well of loneliness, that I am so deeply needing, quote unquote, needing somebody else to meet in me because I'm so afraid to meet that black well of sadness in myself. Once I got that, now I can, now I know what's mine to do. I know where my work is because she has met me as much as she can meet me. This is important work for me to do.

• 33:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  And then the last one is responsibility. And we know this because of, you know, the MITT and I know this from the landmark world and I, which we both did years and years ago. And generally,

• 33:35Speaker 01

  when we don't know what it means to truly take responsibility, we're either absolving responsibility and putting it onto you. So I'm blaming you. Or I'm taking all of it.

• 33:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  And I have so much shame.

• 33:49Lewis Howes?

  And then you're resentful also probably. Yeah, it's like.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  And you can't actually meet your partner in that space. You can't actually meet their pain in the place where I feel so much shame about the thing that I did that, that all I can think about is like, oh, I can't believe I hurt you. What is it about me that made me do that? And now I've completely left your experience. So neither work, like we've, we've got to.

• 34:13Lewis Howes?

  And the partner feels abandoned because you're in your shame world versus trying to repair still. Right? It's like, yeah.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Completely, completely.

• 34:19Lewis Howes?

  Okay, you did this bad thing. Now you're in this world and I have to tend to you, even though you hurt me. So now I feel like I didn't get repair.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:28Lewis Howes?

  Cause now I'm trying to soothe your pain of feeling so guilty and shameful.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, now we're over here on, in your world where what happened to what I was just going through? And now I've been completely left.

• 34:38Lewis Howes?

  This power struggle phase is like exhausting.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  It's a tough one. It's a tough one.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  And by the way, just to name, you don't actually go through, you know, merging and power struggle and interdependence and interdependence as some like linear, you know, you can go back into the power struggle when there's a new transition that you're going through, when someone loses a job, when there's something really big that happens, like you can, you can kind of go, you can, you know, move through the phases and it's not, it's, you know, as we know, relationships aren't so linear.

• 35:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  And but, but knowing that there is a way that when you're either blaming outward or you're blaming yourself, neither of those places are going to help you actually meet the needs of your partner.

• 35:28Lewis Howes?

  That's so true.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  And it's really important to get, there's, I actually brought this, we can go over it if you want, this is, okay, so this is, this is, I got this from Terry Rill also. I think, listen, I don't necessarily buy into one modality of couples work or another, but I think this simplifies where we go when we're triggered.

• 35:48Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  So I think it's kind of an easy, easy model to look at.

• 35:50Lewis Howes?

  So what is this, what is this?

• 35:52Speaker 01

  So this is called the relationship grid. This is explaining when we go into blaming outward, right? We, it's, it's what you call grandiosity. This is where this isn't me, this is all you.

• 36:04Lewis Howes?

  You did this.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  You did this.

• 36:05Lewis Howes?

  You need to take responsibility.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  That's right. Like this isn't, this isn't me, I didn't, I, there was no fault over here. We tend to, and this is going to be on the dramatic end of things, we tend to either go up, one up to grandiosity, or one down into shame. But we do a couple of other things too. We either go into boundaryless behavior and boundaryless behavior is yelling, it's crying, it's, it is exactly how it sounds, it's crossing over your boundaries in order to get my needs met. Or to protect ourselves, we wall off. Those are the silent people, these are the ones who are going like, you know.

• 36:39Lewis Howes?

  We give in also, is that what we do, or is that more boundaryless?

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Well, it depends on where you fall in the quadrant, we'll get to that.

• 36:44Lewis Howes?

  I used to give in to like someone blaming or screaming or crying at me, so I didn't create a boundary to try to keep peace, but it never had peace.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  No, no, no, I have, I have, I have a guess of where you fall, but I want to say, okay, so, so those are the four places that, the four places on the quadrant, but we, we basically embody one of these four places. So in grandiosity, if we're, if we go one up into grandiosity and we tend to be more boundaryless, this is behavior that's.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  It's it's on again, the very dramatic end. This is where all abuse and violence lives. This is yelling. This is hitting. This is throwing things.

• 37:20Lewis Howes?

  Well, you are being grandiose towards your partner and you're not having a boundary. Is that what you're saying?

• 37:24Speaker 01

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

• 37:58Speaker 01

  When we go down from boundaryless and shame based, so now we're in the one down category. Now I'm not yelling at you and making things about you. I'm over here being like desperate and need, please don't leave me. Please, I'll do anything. Like, I didn't mean to do that. I can't believe I just did that. Again, I'm being dramatic.

• 38:13Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  But but and my guess is.

• 38:17Lewis Howes?

  Neediness like, yeah.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  I'll make it go away. Okay, I'll do anything that you need. This is appeasement, but appeasement can also be walled off. But you're probably going to find more appeasement and they're like, okay, I just want to make that. This is why I kind of feel like this is where you may have lived. I don't know, but we'll go to the others.

• 38:32Lewis Howes?

  No, no, no. But in that area, for sure.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Most of us, by the way, don't inhabit the exchange. Some of us do, but you know, this is like, you can think about what a moderate version may look like. I would do this. I this is where I live. I live in boundaryless and one down. And so how it would look for me is I would be she would. My wife goes into kind of a walled off, closed down space. And I would do it super covertly. I would be like, oh, baby, are you are you like a little bit shut down right now? Do you like, I wouldn't go into like, I would therapize her. I would be like, do you need space? Like, is there something that you need? But I'm not doing it from a regulated place. I'm doing it from a place of please don't leave me.

• 39:08Lewis Howes?

  Wow, really?

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally, totally. Okay, so then we go over to walled off and shame based. This is like.

• 39:13Lewis Howes?

  Just curious, before you go on there, what would happen if she left you? Like, or someone left you, what would happen for you if someone's like, you know what? I've tried. This just doesn't work for me anymore. I think we're done.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, by the way, that's happened. So it's, you know.

• 39:29Lewis Howes?

  Really? But what happens in you when that happens, I guess, or that's.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  It's actually sort of what I talked about before. It's the, the place in me where I go is this lonely well that feels like if I touch it, it's so big that, that I, that I'll die. Like, that's how it feels. It feels like this space of like, there's one place I can't go. It's that dark thing that lives in this amorphous place that if I touch it, it's like, the world ends.

• 39:59Lewis Howes?

  What is that thing? Is that you being alone or not loved by one person or not accepted by one person? Or is that, what does that mean?

• 40:06Speaker 01

  For me, it's the, it's the space of if you leave me, you prove that I am actually as unlovable as I may think I am. And that's in kind of my unhealthiest space. That's where I go. I've done a lot of work on that part. But the, the part in me that will always exist, that I'll always do work on is the part in me that feels like, no matter what I do, am I actually lovable? Can you really, can you really love me if I have a big reaction? Am I worth loving? Or would you leave? Would you walk? And so part of, again, my kind of young adult life and growing up in relationships would be,

• 40:47Speaker 01

  I'm gonna be big and I'm gonna cry, I'm gonna get loud and so that you, I can, you can prove to me.

• 40:53Lewis Howes?

  You can come in and show me.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Show me you're not going anywhere.

• 40:56Lewis Howes?

  No matter what I do.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  No matter what I do.

• 40:58Lewis Howes?

  You'll still be here.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. Which I gotta tell you, it didn't work so well. Was not, not a winning game if we're gonna talk about, you know, not, why do you think I'm in the space of repair? Repair has been the hardest place for me in all of my relationships and I have had a lot. So this is just like the work that I've had to do for myself. I grew up in Salt Lake City where my parents were hippies and I wasn't Mormon, but I grew up. So desperately wanting to fit in. And so I went to church. I dated the Mormon guys. I

• 41:31Lewis Howes?

  Your parents didn't go to Mormon church?

• 41:33Speaker 01

  No, no, no, they weren't.

• 41:33Lewis Howes?

  They weren't LDS.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no.

• 41:35Lewis Howes?

  But you were in a community where a lot of people did.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  It was Salt Lake City in the 90s.

• 41:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  Mostly everyone was Mormon.

• 41:41Lewis Howes?

  So you wanted to, you wanted to fit in and be accepted?

• 41:43Speaker 01

  I wanted to do.

• 41:44Lewis Howes?

  That's what they were doing. And so you're like, I'll go.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  At such a young age, I learned how to chameleon. I learned how.

• 41:50Lewis Howes?

  I did the same thing. Yeah, yeah.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, I, I, I remember in junior high, getting into seventh grade and being like, okay, there's a, there's a new game to play. And it's called, I'm gonna be liked and popular by every single person in this school, and I will do everything to fit in with every single person. And so that's what I did. You could take me anywhere and you, the B A you would see in hip hop dance class would be a completely different B A you would see in a, in church with my friend or dating my boyfriend or whatever it would be. Like that's, and I, and it, by the way, it worked. I was, everything you would, I was miss high school until it didn't work.

• 42:30Lewis Howes?

  It worked until you realized my nervous system is still unregulated.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  I mean, it worked until I was, I would, I would date, I would literally be like, I gotta tell you, I'm kind of like an indoor outdoor cat. I like, I could be outside, but like, you know, I actually feel really good inside and being warm and cozy and whatever. And I would date, you know, pro athletes and be like, yeah, let's go on a black diamond on a really crappy day outside where it's gonna be, you know, super cold. And yeah, let's go, I'm in. And like the whole time, I'm like, I hate this. I hate, this is terrible. But I didn't care because all I wanted to do, it was like I was great at the game of seduction. And in fact, I went, I used to teach a workshop when I was younger called Seduction 101. I used to be in the, in the.

• 43:11Lewis Howes?

  She likes seducing men.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Oh, it was a game.

• 43:15Lewis Howes?

  To like get them to be into you.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:17Lewis Howes?

  But then what? You didn't.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  But then about six months later, like you're saying.

• 43:20Lewis Howes?

  What am I doing?

• 43:20Speaker 01

  I was probably a lot like your ex, like six months later, I would be like, oh, I can't keep the game up any longer. Now it just, now I don't know how to hide it anymore. So here's this thing that is actually really vulnerable. And here's how it's gonna, it's gonna come out sideways and lopsided and. Not cute.

• 43:35Lewis Howes?

  And you're gonna accept me for who I am.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:37Lewis Howes?

  Not that I'm not this perfect person that you saw for six months.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  Totally. I mean, it sounds like I.

• 43:41Lewis Howes?

  A lot of my life.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I gotta, I gotta tell you, from, from all of your exes, I just want to say, I'm sorry.

• 43:47Lewis Howes?

  It's all good.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  To my exes, I'm sorry. I, I, I didn't know better.

• 43:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  And it wasn't, it wasn't, by the way, I was not doing this consciously. This was who I was.

• 43:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  It was like.

• 43:58Lewis Howes?

  Survival.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  It was as easy to me as drink, picking up this glass of water and drinking it. Like, there was nothing to it. It wasn't like I had to sit there and be like, oh, what am I gonna do next to make this person like me?

• 44:11Lewis Howes?

  What happens when you seduce a man from a wounded place? Or a man seduces a woman from a wounded place, what happens to that relationship?

• 44:22Speaker 01

  So there is a theory that we attract somebody who is at our level of emotional development.

• 44:34Lewis Howes?

  Or based on their psychological wounds, Dr. Terrence Ward would say. Yeah, you attract based on your psychological wound.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Totally. And so as much healing as I've done, I'm gonna scan the room and probably be attracted to the person who's done just as much healing and is on, in, in about my stage of development. I mean, because what would happen when that, I, I dated a fantastic, one of my best boyfriends, he was amazing. I was bored out of my mind. I was bored out of my mind and ended up breaking up with him for no reason other than I just couldn't mean it, but it just didn't like make me feel alive. I had no idea what healthy love felt like or looked like.

• 45:13Lewis Howes?

  Like, healthy love is a little, it can feel a little boring at times in some way. It's not supposed to be like this.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  No, I know.

• 45:19Lewis Howes?

  Firework.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  That's, that's, I, I had to learn that, though. I had to learn what.

• 45:23Lewis Howes?

  And feel peaceful.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  I, exactly. I wouldn't actually call it boring. I would feel.

• 45:26Lewis Howes?

  Peaceful.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Calm, peaceful.

• 45:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not boring.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, but that's how it felt in my system.

• 45:31Lewis Howes?

  Hundred percent.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  And so what would I do? I would scan for attraction. It's not like I knew out of the gate, that's who I was going for. So what happens when someone wounded attracts someone wounded? Well, guess what? We're gonna hit against each other's wounds. Now, I want to say this because I think this is, I think this is important. Okay, we don't nest.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  It's almost impossible to go into a relationship fully healed.

• 45:56Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  My perspective is we do most of our healing inside of relationships. It's going to be harder to do that healing when two people come from trauma. When even one of you comes from trauma, it's gonna be harder. It's gonna be more volatile. It's gonna take more work.

• 46:13Lewis Howes?

  You both need to be committed to saying, I wanna grow.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  That is, to me, the number one thing to look for. And it's not just someone who wants to do it, but who can, who can.

• 46:25Lewis Howes?

  Can, willing and will do it.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  And will do it.

• 46:27Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  And so you watch behavior change over time because we're all fallible human beings. It's not, you know, we're.

• 46:33Lewis Howes?

  You're not perfect yet?

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Wouldn't you imagine that I am after all this? Just talk to my wife. She's definitely not perfect.

• 46:41Lewis Howes?

  What kills trust more than anything in a relationship in your mind?

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Threatening the relationship.

• 46:45Lewis Howes?

  Threatening it?

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:46Lewis Howes?

  What does threatening the relationship look like?

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Saying you're going to leave when you're, when you actually are not going to leave. It, to me, this is the number one trust killer. Because what happens when you start to threaten that you're gonna leave? And then you don't do it? And then the next time you get into a fight, you threaten to leave again? Your partner now starts to not feel safe bringing things to you because they feel like every time they're going to, they say something that you're gonna disagree with, that the relationship is on the line. So they'll stop feeling safe bringing things to you and you'll stop trusting yourself. So it is a one-two punch that is so detrimental to the health of a relationship that, and the threatening to leave and not doing it. I mean, think about it. You, when, when you say it, I'm gonna, and then don't, think about how degrading

• 47:33Speaker 01

  to your own sense of what you're going to do, your own sense of responsibility, integrity, all of it.

• 47:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. If you don't do what you say you do, you're, you're weakening your identity.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  And part of you feels that, like it, part of you feels that. And so as much as you can, if you do not intend to leave, there's a very big difference of, I'm actually contemplating leaving. Really, it is on the table and we need to address the thing that is going to have me stay or go. And being in the heat of the moment triggered and just saying you're out, but not meaning it. And then five days later, you're in a spiral again. Like it is, it's so detrimental to the health of a relationship. I cannot overstate it.

• 48:15Lewis Howes?

  I can only imagine the amount of. Traumatic experiences you've had in past relationships because I know I've had a lot of them. And one that reminded me of this is when I was 23, I was in a relationship with a woman who was a few years older than me. And

• 48:35Lewis Howes?

  it wasn't good from the beginning, like it was just the dynamic wasn't right, all these different things, but you know. She threatened to like take her own life multiple times, not, not like leave the relationship, but she threatened. She threatened that. And as a 23 year old, I had no clue how to handle any of this, let alone intimacy. Like I was just so. Okay. What do you need me to do? It was like, oh, you know, it happened a multiple times where it was like a threat to ending her life. And I'm just like, how do I navigate this? What if this actually happens, you know? And I just didn't understand anything about it. And I remember one day after like, whatever, the third time is happening after like, I don't know, six or eight months or something. She was like,

• 49:23Lewis Howes?

  I laughed. I don't know about you, but I have like a, a laugh when something's really traumatic, you know? It's like thinking of a memory. I'm like, this is not that funny, but it was scary.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  This is like in therapy when someone laughs and it's not funny. And you've got to be like, that's not funny. There's a reason, you know?

• 49:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's not funny, but it's just like, I can look back and it's kind of funny 20 years later, whatever, but. She, I was sleeping on my, this is how bad the relationship was. I'm sleeping on my sister's couch. I have no money. I'm sleeping on my sister's place and she comes, she's trying to call me all day and she comes to the, my sister's house. Where she knows I'm living and she's like, I'm on the, why I laugh when something's bad? She says, I'm on the,

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Go to therapy.

• 50:06Lewis Howes?

  I know, right? She goes, she goes, I'm on the doorsteps with a knife.

• 50:12Lewis Howes?

  It's funny. She's on the doorstep with a knife. I'm gonna stab myself in the stomach if you don't come out right now and get back with me. And I kid you not, and this is all of her text, right? This is all her texts, because I didn't pick up her calls. And she was like calling me obsessively all day and I wouldn't, I wouldn't pick up. And I kid you not, I was just like, something switched off in me where I was just like, this was multiple times after eight months or something. And in my mind, I said, do it. You know, I was just like, I'm sick of being this person where you're threatening to do something that you don't do. You know, and I'm talking about if you're threatening to leave a relationship. But I'm a 23 year old and I'm just like, I'm sick of this. I'm tired of this manipulation. And I was at the point, I was like, in my mind,

• 50:56Lewis Howes?

  I said, do it. I didn't text her that. I called 911. And I said, my girlfriend, ex-girlfriend is outside of the house. Here's what's happening. She's threatening. I have all the text messages. Can you please come and do something? I don't know what to do. And I just called 911. They came and arrested her. I laughed because it was just a crazy moment in my life. And I remember just being like, I didn't know what to do. What do you do in these environments where someone's threatening the relationship, threatening to take their life, or doing something extreme, hurt themselves, harm themselves, harm another person, threatening something? These are things that we as human beings usually are not equipped with. Like, we don't have the skills, the tools,

• 51:37Lewis Howes?

  emotionally, physically, logically, on how to navigate the emotions of another person, or the threats of another person. And it is a scary thing when someone threatens any of these things, to exit the relationship, to exit the world, or harm someone. It's terrifying.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  This is where 12 стр programs like Al-Anon, Coda, Adult Children of Alcoholics, like, this is where programs like this are actually really helpful, because they're not only free, but they, so they're, they're helpful resources in that way. But they, they teach you about what it actually means to take care of yourself when you are with somebody who cannot take care of themselves. And, and these could be relationships where you can't leave, where it's dangerous, where, and, and that's really what they're there for. So I do think this is where programs like that, because you're right, we don't, who's teaching us this? How, no one's equipped. To deal with somebody who says, I'm gonna kill myself if you leave me. I mean, no one, unless you've ever been in that situation, you have no idea how you're gonna react.

• 52:41Lewis Howes?

  No idea, especially if you're wounded psychologically and your immune system or your nervous system's off. It's like, ah.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:52Lewis Howes?

  Again, your main focus is how to repair from conflict, something you've researched for a long time. Is there anything that someone can do in a relationship that is unreparable?

• 53:04Speaker 01

  I think that's up to the people in the relationship. Like, for some people, infidelity is a deal breaker.

• 53:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Period.

• 53:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  For others, they can actually get through it and it will make them stronger.

• 53:17Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  That's just the truth. So I think in some ways, that's a, that's a pretty personal question. You know, even people, there are people in relationships where someone has murdered someone else and they're still in that relationship. That person is in jail and they visit them.

• 53:32Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  That's, that's, you know, so is there, I don't think I'm the person to answer that. I think that deeply depends on your value system.

• 53:40Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. But in your work, I guess, with people who come to you for repair, you know, information and expertise, what have you seen that is almost like a deal breaker? Every time this happens, it's hard to come back.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Here's what I'll say, if there's active addiction,

• 53:56Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  It's really hard to, it's, it's hard, if not impossible, to repair. Because you're in a cycle of retox and detox and you're not really in relationship with that person. You're in relationship with their dysregulation and their addiction.

• 54:09Lewis Howes?

  Right. And that is, it's almost, you're just saying, I commit to accept this life for the rest of my life.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and some people do. So I'm not even saying that's bad or wrong to stay, but I'm saying it's really hard to repair with someone who is in active addiction. It's also really hard, if not impossible, to repair in situations where there's high levels of manipulation, you know, personality disorder.

• 54:29Lewis Howes?

  Narcissism.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 54:31Lewis Howes?

  Narcissism.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  And I know you've had Dr.

• 54:33Lewis Howes?

  Romani.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Romani on.

• 54:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  A couple of times, yeah. And, and so she'll speak to this much more intelligently than I will, but. But because what's happening in manipulation cycles is there is no intention to actually repair. There is intention for power and control and coercion. And when only one person is in on that game and the other person is trying to repair, both people have to be in on the repair in order for it's a two person game.

• 54:56Lewis Howes?

  You can't do it then.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 54:58Lewis Howes?

  So you have to accept I'm with this type of person. They're never going to change. Is this the life I want? And maybe I don't have a choice because my life's in danger. My kids' lives in danger. I have to learn.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  And then you make it work. And then you make it work however you need to make it work. You get yourself in a program. You get a therapist. You just you you learn to live with it in a way that that you need to.

• 55:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, interesting. So if someone's in addiction and unwilling to to get out of addiction, that's really hard to have a thriving relationship.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  You're in a you're in a relationship with their dysregulation. They're consistently going to be in either on a substance or coming off of a substance. And that's impossible to you have in order to repair, you have to be in a regulated place, at least one of you. And if one person is always the one who's dysregulated, they haven't. And and with addiction, it's hard to come into a regulated state ever really. Like you're always again, in kind of detox or retox. That's that's consistently happening in the background. So it's it may not be impossible, but it is really, really hard. And it takes a lot of skill and it's probably. I would say one mistake I see couples make a lot. And I see this online more than anything is that they to to your point of therapy and getting into the work,

• 56:09Speaker 01

  they try over and over again to work whatever their trigger dance is without support. And their nervous systems are in too much intensity to actually address it on like you need a third party. I I I thank goodness for the kind of generation of practitioners and facilitators and therapists and coaches who came before us who normalized therapy because now we're in a culture who says therapy is fine.

• 56:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  But getting into therapy earlier, to your point that you've talked about, I think, or coaching or whatever, or getting support earlier. A lot of times people, here's the thing, a lot of times people wait a really long time to come to see a couples therapist or practitioner. And by the time they get there, it might not be too late, it might be too late. But at that point, you've got to have somebody who is so skilled to work with you. And the truth is, couples therapy is super hard. There just aren't that many great couples therapists. If you start at the beginning, though, when things aren't as bad, your couples therapist doesn't have to be as good.

• 57:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  But if you start where things are like, it is do or die and you're on the brink.

• 57:16Lewis Howes?

  Good luck.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Your therapist, first of all.

• 57:19Lewis Howes?

  A miracle.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  It is, it's, it's just really hard to find a really good.

• 57:23Lewis Howes?

  Here's the thing, you know, you gotta give, it's, yeah, I, I feel for couples therapists because you're not just trying to help a relationship. You have to address each individual's childhood wounds and nervous systems and understand the psychoanalysis of each individual and their nervous system. And then the relationship, it's like you're, you're helping three people.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not.

• 57:44Lewis Howes?

  Two individuals and a relationship with individual history of both, and then relationship history. It's three entities.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 57:53Lewis Howes?

  In an hour session, once every month, good luck.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  I know, or 50 minutes, which is what a lot of couples.

• 57:58Lewis Howes?

  It's gonna take years. And that's why there is a lot of negative feedback with therapy because it's like, oh, we've been going once a week or once a month for six months and we're not getting improvement.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  It's a slow moving process.

• 58:09Lewis Howes?

  Because you need, I feel like you need extreme exposure therapy individually to start healing and processing. These things, each individual, and if one person's willing to do the work more than the other, it's gonna be harder for the relationship to really thrive. And it's gonna feel like it's taking years and you're still not getting anywhere.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Well, and this work in general, repair work in general, is hard and takes a long time and is a slow process. This is something that I liken it to going to the gym because I feel like.

• 58:41Lewis Howes?

  You want to see muscles right away, but it's like years.

• 58:44Speaker 01

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

• 59:12Lewis Howes?

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  We have to, and this is the exposure. This is the exposure that over and over and over, the small things. This is why, like, having a simple, okay, I know I need to do nothing at the beginning. I need to regulate myself. That's okay. That's one thing I need to practice. That could take, you could practice that for years. That's hard. Okay, I need to practice perspective taking. There's a fantastic, I, I, I don't know if you've interviewed him, but he's a former CIA agent named Andrew Bustamante.

• 59:37Lewis Howes?

  I haven't yet.

• 59:38Speaker 01

  He's fantastic. And he has this, I, I love what he talks about around pers- per- perspective and perception. Perception is where I sit over here every day. It's, okay, how do I look right now? Is this interview going well? It's where I live most of my life. Perspective taking is coming over to you and being like, okay, so how does Louis think this is going? What's going on in Louis's world over there? That's the skill. And really, it's, you go one step further and it's perspective getting, which is not just, okay, you, you have another perspective and I can do the work to figure, you know, to, to get in your world. But like, now I get it. I have, I've been curious enough and even curiosity as that one skill, that's a freaking hard skill.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  That's complex. That's like, learning how to get out of your own way, ask the right questions, ask them in a way that's gonna elicit something from your partner that you've never heard. Like, these are hard tools. These are hard skills to learn. We need to practice them. But if I can practice getting out of my own perception over here and perspective take over there, but that's a, that's, he's talking about that as a CIA skill. Like, we're not practicing that on a day-to-day basis. It can be really tricky, but it is, but it is the practice that is required for entry. There is no other way. These, these are the skills that we have to, relationships aren't as hard. This is, I think it was Alison Armstrong, and this is a quote from her that I'm gonna butcher because I butcher every quote. I just can't remember them exactly, but it's something along the lines of,

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

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

• 1:01:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  It takes a lot. It takes years and years of practice. And you can't expect to come into a relationship fully healed. That doesn't happen. You do your work on your own. But ultimately, most of the work that you're going to do is when you get triggered inside of relationships, period.

• 1:01:53Lewis Howes?

  Yes. And learning how to integrate the tools you've learned from the healing journey in the emotional reaction and say, how can I feel safe here?

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:01Lewis Howes?

  What's the tool I can use in this moment to calm my nervous system, to regulate? So that I can take a break, not feel like I'm getting threatened and listen and then respond.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:13Lewis Howes?

  And know that I'm going to be safe after this uncomfortable hour, two, five hour conversation, 10 minute, whatever it is, that I'm safe after. It's still going to be okay. I may not like it, but this is going to help me thrive. And I think the more we can learn how to have calm conversations when our nervous system is frustrated, it's just going to help us be better in relationships.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that takes, we're not going to be able to have calm, calm conversations if we're not used to that, or that wasn't modeled for us at the beginning. So don't expect that that's going to be, that, that just means, okay, next time I'm going to be a little more, or I'm going to be able to say one thing that's a little, that's, that's the, it's the micro.

• 1:02:52Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  It's the micro repairs that actually ultimately.

• 1:02:55Lewis Howes?

  Hundred percent, hundred percent. It's a journey. It's, healing is a journey, thriving relationships is a journey. Listen, I'm only four and a half years in. I'm almost a year in marriage. And I'm sure, you know, I'm going to have to continue to learn how to do this like after kids and it's like.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  She's going to be different after kids. Her priorities are going to change. Yeah.

• 1:03:14Lewis Howes?

  She's already different. I mean, it's like, and I have to continue to evolve. And I have to continue to learn new skills and I have to continue to be even more present and more patient, which is like the thing I need to work on the most, all these things, right? It's like, I gotta lean in and it's uncomfortable. It's not. My, what I would like to do, it's not like, oh, this is all easy.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  But this is transformation and growth, which is ultimately the dojo of relationship.

• 1:03:36Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. And I think it's very, it's not easy, but it's rewarding if we're willing to lean in.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:41Lewis Howes?

  And we can take the comfort, convenience road and just keep things simple, I guess, or just try not to rock the boat. Or we can lean in and say, how can I continue to develop as a human being to have, uh, to have the best relationship I can have? Or why am I in a relationship? It's like, if I'm not willing to go all in and try to transform myself and be of service to the relationship. Sure, we have to take care of our needs. We don't want to neglect ourselves, but how can I take care of me and then serve the relationship? I just think that's the only way we're going to have a, a long lasting, healthy relationship. That's going to have bumps and bruises and stuff like that. But like long-term healthy is taking care of self and service to the relationship.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  It's a beautiful frame perspective.

• 1:04:24Lewis Howes?

  But again, I mean, I don't know. Ask me in five years, but I mean, I just, I just think that's probably the path. It's like, you've got to be willing to continue to reinvest in you and the relationship always for growth.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  You know, there was a moment right before Emmy and I got married. It was two weeks before our wedding and we got into one of the biggest fights we'd ever been through. Two weeks before the wedding.

• 1:04:43Lewis Howes?

  And we both probably tried to sabotage it, you know, it's like fear.

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  Some subconscious.

• 1:04:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was over something dumb. It was like, I couldn't, it was one of those fights that devolved so quickly that anyhow, we ended up taking two nights of space. And

• 1:04:57Lewis Howes?

  Two weeks before you're supposed to get married.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  Two weeks before our wedding, two weeks before our wedding.

• 1:05:00Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  We take two nights of space. Space for her is like a breath of fresh air. She's like, ah, space for me is like, it's painful. It's a lot of pain.

• 1:05:10Lewis Howes?

  She's like, I'm free.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. She's not going to think about it for two days. She's going to like romp around, do whatever she needs. I, I'm going to be like in my pain body and I want, you know, I'm just, anyway, that's who I am. So, so anyway, the first night I cried myself to sleep and I am just sobbing and sobbing and sobbing. And, and in that moment, I have this voice that I hear and it's like me, but smarter, like that version of me who just knows something I don't.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  And she starts being like, it's okay, keep crying. I've got you. And I'm crying and I'm sobbing. And she's saying, it's okay. I've got you. Keep crying, keep going. You're not going to be alone. I'm here with you. Even if Emmy leaves, I'm here. Even if she goes away and never comes back, I'm here and I'm sobbing and I'm sobbing and I'm sobbing. Until I, until I basically cry myself to sleep that night. And the next day I rewrote my vows. And I said to her, and I think about this, I come back, honestly, I don't even remember any of our other vows. This is the vow that I come back to all the time.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  I said, here's my heart.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  The most vulnerable thing I can do is say to you, you have it and you do, you have my heart.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  Because what I really want to say is you have my heart. Please keep it safe.

• 1:06:33Lewis Howes?

  Don't hurt it.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  Don't hurt me.

• 1:06:35Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  And what I know I'm saying is here's my heart. I know you'll drop it.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  I know you'll break it. And in the moments where you can't help me pick it up because of your wound and your trigger and your and your thing, I will do the work to pick up the parts of myself that are hardest for me to love and hardest for me to be with.

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  And I won't have the expectation that you'll do that work for me. And I know that when you're able to hold my heart, you will. But when you're, when you're not able, I've got me.

• 1:07:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's beautiful.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  And I come back to that all the time in the moments that it is hardest to get me.

• 1:07:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think that's necessary. And that's very internal family systems kind of mindset. There's lots of parts of us.

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  I use it all the time.

• 1:07:30Lewis Howes?

  About this a lot. Gabby Bernstein talks about this a lot. It's like, there's lots of parts of us. This is the body keeps the score. There's many parts of us and the, the highest conscious version of our adult self has to kind of build this like connecting relationship with all the parts of us that are wounded or the past parts that we haven't healed. And knowing that the adult in the room, the highest, healthiest whole version of us. It's like what you did there. It's like you had a conversation spiritually with the wounded part of yourself and you integrated safety within you.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:03Lewis Howes?

  And as woo and weird as that sounds, I think psychologically, we all have this like psychological mind and it can mess us up a lot. You know, it's like thinking of all these things, like our brain, we have to kind of take back the reins. And the IFS, you know, format mindset is like having that relationship with the wounded parts of us, not making them wrong. It's also allowing them to have a voice, not trying to block them out. So I used to try to shut those voices up and like, get this wounded part of them like away from me. I don't want to show this part of me, but it was like, gosh, then I'm just abandoning myself. Like I'm doing what I felt everyone else did to me when I was younger. If me as the adult is trying to kick out the

• 1:08:46Lewis Howes?

  five year old, the seven year old, the 13 year old, the 23 year old who felt like not enough, then I'm not healing that part of me. I'm trying to remove him from me. And that's not, that doesn't feel good.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  And that's what's yours to own.

• 1:08:58Lewis Howes?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  That, that, that work, your partner can support with, but ultimately your partner cannot heal.

• 1:09:05Lewis Howes?

  They can't do it. They can't do it.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  And it's where we get ourselves into trouble. I've certainly have.

• 1:09:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  Where you expect, this is the 70%, right? Where your partner can only show up so much, but if they're giving 70%, like a solid 70, that 30% is your, and you're still not, you know, you feel unreparable with that. 30% is yours.

• 1:09:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I mean, you could also even reframe it. If it's 70, 30, you could say like, they've got to give a hundred percent of themselves and you've got to give a hundred percent to like, what do you call it? 70, 30 or 100, 100. But it's like, you gotta be willing to go all in and it's gonna look differently. But if we are not able to learn the strategies and the tools for self-regulation, that is healing the parts of us that we're ashamed of, feel not enough, healing the parts of, I heard you say this early in the conversation, it's like, I used to feel like if anyone knew this about me, no one would love me.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:10:01Lewis Howes?

  If anyone knew this part of me at this season of life, if anyone knew I thought this thing, if I did this thing, how ashamed I felt, no one would actually love me. And that was my biggest fear. If anyone knew that I'd been sexually abused and raped by a man, no one will ever love me. It was 25 years I kept a secret from the world, from anyone in my world. And it rocked my heart. It rocked everything inside of me. And I was just like, I have to project confidence. I have to project that I'm strong. I have to project that all these different things. Because if anyone knew that this happened to me, no one would love me. No one would accept me. I would be alone for the rest of my life. It was a survival mechanism.

• 1:10:43Lewis Howes?

  So I had to learn how to heal and have like grace and acceptance for that younger version of me when the healing journey started and and just know that like, okay, that's why I showed up in certain ways. And that's why I attracted certain people. And that's why I had no boundaries. And that's why all these different things and have compassion for that 25 years of life. Which you're like, man, I missed out on all these opportunities. And what if I just would have known this sooner? It's like having compassion and letting that go. And just saying, okay, now, how do I create safety in me every day? How to create this sense of safety, a sense of harmony? And it's not always going to be perfect. But the more harmonious that I can create inside of me, the better I'll be in every relationship. And it's a

• 1:11:28Lewis Howes?

  constant journey.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  It's a con- and and you know, you know,

• 1:11:31Lewis Howes?

  And I'm never gonna be perfect. And it's, you know,

• 1:11:33Speaker 01

  Of course. What what comes up for me, as you say that, is this idea also around what we are tracking in our nervous system with our partners, that there, when there are secrets, when there are things that we're keeping, we may not understand it, but on the subtle body, we are feeling an incongruence.

• 1:11:57Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  And that might have nothing to do with us. It might have everything to do with your shame and you just but depending on our wounding, will then make it about us. And this is where we can also start a trigger dance. So this is, it's just, there are so many, there are so many ways in, everybody, so many ways in to to conflict.

• 1:12:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I felt I felt incongruent for most of my life, based on shame, guilt, lying, stealing, you know,

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  So you can imagine partners you would attract,

• 1:12:29Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  Would either pick up on that or be incongruent themselves, or or or then be getting mad at you at other things, even though they're feeling a group, right? That's just,

• 1:12:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. So it's like having compassion for your younger self and having the wisdom now hopefully and saying, how can I use this wisdom now moving forward to stay in congruent as possible, knowing that we are again, have crazy thoughts and dreams and all these different things. It's got to come up, all these things, but it's like, how can I live with my intentions, my words and my actions in alignment the best I can every moment? When you do that, you feel peace. You may not like situations in life, like things are going to happen where you're like, I don't like that. You might still react, but if we can create more harmony and peace within us by being integrity with ourself, you're going to be in a more harmonious relationship with others.

• 1:13:20Lewis Howes?

  It's just going to naturally attract others energetically, or you'll be able to be more discerning, like you said, and be like, oh, this doesn't work for me or this relationship, I'm going to put this on a pause, or maybe I shouldn't work with this person because you'd feel out of alignment.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  You know, it's, I love this and, and I also think there's another kind of take on it, which is we so, we're in this era right now of authenticity, being authentic with ourselves. And not that that's not important, it's super important. But what I'm finding interesting is that as authenticity rises in the conversation and speaking your truth rises in the conversation, there's another thing happening around,

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  how do I want to say this?

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  How hard it is for us to hold complexity.

• 1:14:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. Gray.

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, like it's like, I believe this and so, and so I have to hold to this and I can't change my mind and I've, or, and that there's like, you know, this is kind of an Esther Perel that has been talking about this a bit, and I think, I think she's really on to something here where. You know, she has this quote, which is, relationships are not problems to solve, but paradoxes to manage. And inside of ourselves, when we're on our own, we have to, we're forced to look at the paradoxes inside of ourselves. So maybe the part of us that wants to move close to our aging parents and the other part of us that wants to stay where we live because we have community.

• 1:15:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  And we have to wrestle with that on our own. Like, that's a, that's a friction that we feel in ourselves. I, as soon as we have somebody else in the room, a partner, all of a sudden, the paradox inside of ourselves that we would need to wrestle with, we can now polarize and project onto the other person. So maybe, you know, we're talking about parenting. Maybe there's a conversation within myself around sleep training, or what's the other one? Sleep training, training, or co-sleeping. And maybe there would be, or breastfeeding for six months, but I want to keep my career. And so I'm gonna need to, do I do that for six months

• 1:15:51Speaker 01

  or a year? How do I manage the, and do I want to do formula? And that's, these are complexities that we need to navigate and wrestle within ourselves. But when we polarize with another person, all of a sudden, we no longer need to wrestle with the complexity within ourselves, because if you hold the pole of, of we sleep train, then I can just hold the pole of, okay, no, no, no, we co-sleep. And that's the truth that I want to stick my stake in the ground on. And I'm, and I'm gonna fight for that because you, we've now polarized into these two different perspectives. And I know no longer have to wrestle with that inside of myself. And so it's interesting as we sort of started to have this conversation about authenticity and speaking our truth. And,

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  and it's almost as if we're losing the ability to hold complexity

• 1:16:39Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  of, of this idea that, that sometimes it's not gonna feel good, or we have to do things that are really challenging, that might challenge the ideals that we thought we, we once had, but that feel more in line with a self that we're, that we're coming into, or, or we're needing to, to wrestle with it within our partnership, because we both have these different values or ideas about how we want to raise kids, or where we want to live, or all of these things. And so I think in ways, there's a way that we've simplified the conversation of authenticity and, and integrity and that that has, that has, it's almost like this social atrophy,

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  this, this atrophying of a, honestly, is it atrophying? Did we ever have this skill? I don't, I don't actually know. But that, that, that really makes me wonder about how we build our relationship with our ability to hold complexity. We're seeing this in the social, political divide, right? And one way I see us being able to do this is through, and, and this is a huge conflict resolution skill, but is through stories, like truly being able to sit with someone else's story, not need to be in agreement over it, but actually sit with it and contemplate it. But we don't need to do that now because everything in our feed is feeding us, it's an echo chamber of everything we want to feed us.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  So we're getting fear from where, you know, from the other side and we're getting fed the information that's from our side. We never have to listen to another person's point of view.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  But now we're in a relationship and our partner has a different perspective and we want to be authentic with ourselves. What do we do?

• 1:18:20Lewis Howes?

  Right. Something that me and Martha did early on was like, I was very clear. I was like, we need our values to be aligned. Otherwise, it's going to be hard. We need our values, our vision and our lifestyle to be in alignment.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  What happens when one of those values or the vision changes?

• 1:18:37Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Where in the beginning, I was like, we need to be like 80% aligned on all of our values, vision and lifestyle. And she was like, I'm in and I need you to be flexible. You know what I mean? It's like, and it was like, it can't be so rigid. It has to be this way. It's got to be absolutes, like you were talking about absolutes, where I was more like, well, you know, I want these things to be in alignment. Otherwise, what are we doing? Why are we getting into a relationship if we're not in alignment? At least we have to have some alignment somewhere. You know, you can't have complete friction. And, and she was like, yes, and I need you to be flexible on things. And I go, okay. So it took time for me to learn how to be more flexible and make sure we're also staying in alignment. So I didn't feel like I was compromising values, right? Same for her. She doesn't want to compromise values, but she was like,

• 1:19:21Lewis Howes?

  Can't be so strict on a rule here on this one thing. If I didn't live up to something, I'm like, okay, I get it. I gotta be more flexible and this and this. And I think that's been a great thing. It's like, how can you be flexible with your values, with your agreements and making sure that things are going to evolve and change and you gotta be okay with it.

• 1:19:38Speaker 01

  Well, there's, there's certainly research on rigidity in relationships and how if you are, the, the more rigid and the more you expect perfection, obviously this is not going to surprise anybody, but the less satisfied you're going to be with your relationships.

• 1:19:49Lewis Howes?

  You're gonna be miserable.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:52Lewis Howes?

  Well, Baya, this has been powerful. I want to, I want to ask you a couple of final questions before I do. Where's the best place for us to support you, follow you, connect with you all along?

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

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

• 1:20:34Lewis Howes?

  Awesome. Baya, thank you for being here.

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:20:37Lewis Howes?

  Appreciate you. I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyleasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment, moving forward. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's

• 1:21:18Lewis Howes?

  episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel, exclusive. On Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.