Most conflicts follow some variation of this Conflict Resolution Curve:
🆕 Inception – The moment a conflict is registered
🌶️ Getting Hot – The in-between space
💣 Big Bang – The climactic moment of the conflict
🧊 Cool Down – The period after our conflict reaches a “resolution”
🆕 New Normal – How life will be after this conflict
BUT WAIT!! There’s one step that we often miss after a New Normal has been established.
🪡 Relationship Repair – Building goodwill back into the relationship
Every relationship has conflict. And if you say that you and your partner are an amazing team and NEVER argue, who are you kidding. It's probably that you're not looking properly or maybe just ignore the emotions that arise in a conflict. What often tends to happen is that once a conflict has been resolved, people “move on” with their lives but rarely do we go back and look into repairing any damage that the conflict might have created.
Kimberly Hill, our guest on the show, shares what she does to build a healthier relationship. Listen to the full episode to learn more.
If you enjoyed listening to this episode (or the podcast), please share your diagnosis with 1 close relationship or anyone else who would enjoy listening to this as well.
If you would like to share your story, fill out this quick form.
The best gift you can give us is positive feedback and your observations. Follow us wherever you are listening and do us a favor by adding a Review on Apple Podcast.
LoVita – Love Vitamins for a healthier is a community by Partners for Partners. We share stories about how Partners are working intentionally towards building a healthier relationship. To learn more check out the links below 🔗
LoVita Blog for Frameworks
Sign up for our monthly Newsletter for exclusive content
We're also on Social media – Instagram, Facebook,
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Connect with Kimberly Hill
Website: http://www.kimberlyninahill.com
Instagram: @kimberlyninahill
Podcast: The Self Confidence Project
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Every relationship has conflict. And if you say that you and your partner are an amazing team and NEVER argue, who are you kidding. It’s probably that you’re not looking properly or maybe just ignore the emotions that arise in a conflict. What often tends to happen is that once a conflict has been resolved, people “move on” with their lives but rarely do we go back and look into repairing any damage that the conflict might have created.
Kimberly Hill, our guest on the show, shares what she does to build a healthier relationship.
I also work really hard on my relationship on repairing conflict, so conflict happens. We can’t avoid it all the time. We have two people with two childhoods and two different sets of beliefs. We’re gonna have a bad argument from time to time. What I work really hard on is repairing with my partner is making up for arguments, is making sure we do something after to create positivity back in our dynamic versus just like leaving these conflicts to fester. So resolution and repair is huge and has made a huge difference in my relationship
Julie shares with us how she sends out energy to her Angels through a wish or a prayer or whatever term people might prefer to use in their own comfort. The idea being that you're not using directive action to ask for something. You're more of sending out this energy and this request to the things that you don’t have a lot of control over.
Some other things we talk about in the episode
1️⃣ Importance of Self Discovery
2️⃣ Looking at Polarity
3️⃣Conflict Decision Making Tree
Sometimes we don't have the healthiest ways to deal with conflicts. This framework can really benefit making conflicts easier. Here’s how it works.
1️⃣ Take a deep breath and ask yourself, can you think of one nice thing about your partner?
2️⃣ Can you say what really made you upset?
3️⃣ Can you honestly say what you need at this moment?
4️⃣ Can you honestly say what you need at this moment.
If you enjoyed listening to this episode (or the podcast), please share your diagnosis with 1 close relationship or anyone else who would enjoy listening to this as well.
The best gift you can give us is positive feedback and your observations. Follow us wherever you are listening and do us a favor by adding a Review on Apple Podcast.
LoVita – Love Vitamins for a healthier is a community by Partners for Partners. We share stories about how Partners are working intentionally towards building a healthier relationship. To learn more check out the links below 🔗
LoVita Blog for Frameworks
Sign up for our monthly Newsletter for exclusive content
We're also on Social media – Instagram, Facebook,
All above links in a single page
Connect with Julie Hilsen
Website: https://www.youneedapeptalk.com
Instagram: jhilsen
Facebook: jhilsen
Book: Life of Love
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Julie Hilsen is a spiritual activator who has written the book, Life of Love a Joyful Guide to Self and Sensuality. She is delighted to share how the everyday person in everyday life can reach a higher state of happiness through self-discovery and the simple task of asking. Her approachable book details how to call in your angels and guides as a supplement and to accelerate your ability to live a life of love.
Importance of Self Discovery
If you don’t understand why you need what you need or what is it that you’re asking for, it’s very hard for you to communicate that information. A lot of the times we come into a relationship just hoping that a person’s gonna be able to pick up the pattern or really help us do that hard work. Philosophically and logically, we do get that it’s something that we have to own. Consistently we come to a relationship because we’re so intimately tied, expecting our partner to be able to help pick up the slack and be like, “oh, you should know this by now.” “I always get angry when you do X, Y, and Z.” Well, okay, have you spent any time really understanding why X, y, and Z makes you upset? That’s still your responsibility.
Julie shares how she understand the needs of herself and her husband to build a healthier relationship.
Once I owned that, that my husband, even though he loves me to the moon and back, can’t read my mind once I was able to realize he wasn’t a superhero. He’s a mere human. He’s Im mortal just like me. That, me giving him, Cold shoulder isn’t gonna teach him to love me more.
You have to show up how you want to be loved and, and you know, show by example. And you have to lovingly ask from a place of resource, because when you ask from a place of scarcity or you’re feeling lack, then your partner picks up on that. That angst and that that feeling of frustration. And it’s just a hard platform to start from.
Once you find your inner light and you own that, you do have an inner light, that you’re responsible for your inner light. And once you come to relationship on, on that basis, then you can go and and request from a place of resource and a place of giving because you can’t expect them to give you something that you aren’t able to recognize. Or ld appreciate
Looking at Polarity
One of the ways to get started, understanding ourselves better is to pay attention to the way we self-talk. A bit more kindness to ourselves because sometimes that’s an ingredient that’s incredibly lacking. Julie shares her thoughts about how people should look at polarity in their lives.
We cannot continue to exist in a world of absolutes. because that’s not, that’s not who we are. We’re everything. We’re good and we’re bad. We’re messy, and we’re clean. And, and as soon as we accept that in ourselves and embrace that whole gamut of, of who we are as a person and accept and love even the messy parts of ourselves, the sooner we can show compassion for ourselves.
It opens up a, it opens up a dialogue, it opens up a healing when you can say from your heart, Hey, this is where I am and I’m just gonna accept it. I’m not gonna label it. I’m not weak, I’m not strong, I’m not fat. I’m not skinny.
it’s not to beat yourself up, it’s just to accept, hey, this is human nature. Like our brains try to make everything simple, that our brains are constantly trying to protect us and make sure we can get to. Fastest answer and the easiest possibility, but that’s not always the best for our joy. Our best for our joy is to connect to what’s really happening and accept it. Just be there with it.
Calling on the Angels
Julie shares on how she calls on the Angles every day.
I say, please show me the highest expression of this day. And then something recently I’ve added. Thank you for the obstacles that have been presented. I release them. They no longer serve me. I learned from them. I had my lesson. Now I, I release that back because you’re right. It’s opportunities. It’s opportunities to grow, to grow and ascend. So just because something’s not perfect doesn’t mean it can’t be a perfect moment.
Conflict Decision Making Tree
Below is a chart that Julie shared with us regarding the Conflict Resolution Decision Tree. To learn more about how this works, check out her book – Life of Love or listen to the episode.
2/2/2 Date Night Framework for Partners to Build a Healthier Relationship with Saami and Nathan Jaeger –
Love Vitamins for Relationships
Our conversation with Saami and Nathan Jaeger was filled with fun Activities, Practices and Rituals that Partners can take away and practice in your relationships to add fuel to your love Tanks. First they share about a Gratitude Practice that they use for MANAGING RESENTMENT. Then, we get into one of their rituals of 2 COFFEE AND A TREAT and I love it not just because it has 2 coffees in it but also a treat. At the end, we get into their practice of 2 x 2 x 2 DATE NIGHTS.
The Framework of 2/2/2 Date Night, which they found on a Reddit feed sometime ago, adapted to their liking, is that
Every 2️⃣ weeks we go on a date
Every 2️⃣ months, we go on a weekend away
Every 2️⃣ years (or twice a year), we'll go on a bigger adventure or a bigger holiday
This is definitely another exercise that we are excited to try out in our relationship. Our cadence might change to different numbers but the idea remains the same. What do you think would be an ideal frequency for your date nights – 1/1/1 or 2/3/2 or something else? Let us know in the comments below
Listen to the full episode to hear what they share about how this changed their relationship and got them out of their worst fight early on.
If you enjoyed listening to this episode (or the podcast), please share your diagnosis with 1 close relationship or anyone else who would enjoy listening to this as well.
If you would like to share your story, fill out this quick form.
The best gift you can give us is positive feedback and your observations. Follow us wherever you are listening and do us a favor by adding a Review on Apple Podcast.
LoVita – Love Vitamins for a healthier is a community by Partners for Partners. We share stories about how Partners are working intentionally towards building a healthier relationship. To learn more check out the links below 🔗
LoVita Blog for Frameworks
Sign up for our monthly Newsletter for exclusive content
We're also on Social media – Instagram, Facebook,
All above links in a single page
Connect with Sammi and Nathan Jaegar
Website: https://dateforever.com.au/
Instagram: dateforever
Podcast: Date Forever
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Sammi & Nathan Jaeger are the Co-Host of The Date Forever Podcast. And they are on a mission to empower couples to create thriving relationships. Because with better relationships we can create a better world. Sammi & Nath fell in love as housemates and have now been married for over a decade and love sharing relationship insights from couples and experts on their show.
This is the second part of our conversation. If you haven’t listened to the first episode, you can check the episode on Let the air out of the balloon to prevent resentment. Our conversation with them was filled with fun Activities, Practices and Rituals that Partners, can take away and practice in your relationships to add fuel to your love Tanks. First they share about a Gratitude Practice that they use for MANAGING RESENTMENT. Then, we get into one of their rituals of 2 COFFEE AND A TREAT and I love it not just because it has 2 coffees in it but also a treat. At the end, we get into their practice of 2 x 2 x 2 DATE NIGHTS.
What comes first – Success or Happiness?
A big part of being happy in a relationship is managing resentment. Saami and Nathan share about how they implemented their Gratitude Practice. Before going into bed, they ask each other what are they grateful for today? Sammi shares “Sometimes gratitude flows thick and fast, other times it’s so easy to come by. But what that’s meant is that all day I’ve trained my brain to be looking for the things to be appreciative for the things that I’m grateful for. Like this glass of water on my desk, like I’m so grateful for that.”
This ritual of intentionally practicing gratitude does 2 things – It increases the good credit in your emotional bank account or as you refer to – is refueling your love tank for your relationships. The second, this is checking to make sure that all the parts are functioning as expected to do a “check” on the whole system.
2 Coffee and a Treat
One of the ritual that they have is something they practice pretty much every week. Nathan says “We would go for two coffees and a treat. So we would go, and find a new cafe around the place, have a coffee each and then have something, little to share, share a little treat.” With a practice that costs less than 20 AUD, it creates new shared experiences for them. Nathan adds on what they noticed as an effect to this practice, “the conversations that we have when we’re outside of our own home, when we’re actually out somewhere together are so different than when you are in your home together.” At home there are many distractions like the dog, doing household chores, the Television, and much more that can slowly chip away at your attention and the quality time with your partner. Whereas when you go somewhere new, you senses are activated to up different cues from your surroundings. The environment around you is what often prompts conversation, and a new one. This is what they were noticing as well. “The conversations and the deepness, I guess that level of connection that we were having when we were out somewhere else was so much better than when we were in our home, even if we were doing the same activity”, adds Nathan. This ritual which involves Coffee and Treats sounds like such a fun idea, something that we will definitely be trying out ourselves.
Looking each other in the eyes when sharing a drink
Another activity that they shared with us was about a really intentional practice of looking each other in the eyes when sharing a drink. They learnt this apparently from some Airbnb guests, a Korean couple who stayed with them around four years ago. They though this practice was just beautiful and implemented it into their life as well. It just adds that additional layer of a silent – I love you, I appreciate being able to share this moment of eye contact with you. Such a beautiful, free, enhancing way to add to something something that we already do, which is drink. Nathan adds how this is kind of PDA (Public Display of Affection) without any PDA, “No one else will probably even realize what you’re doing. If you’re out at a restaurant or a cafe, it’s just that micro moment of connection.”
2/2/2 Date Nights
This Framework, which they found on a Reddit feed sometime ago and adapted to their liking, is that
Every 2 weeks we go on a date
Every 2 months, we go on a weekend away
Every 2 years (or twice a year), we’ll go on a bigger adventure or a bigger holiday
This Framework, they share, “really just helped us kind of set that benchmark or that baseline for our romantic relationship, and really just helped us to actually find the time to prioritize it.” Previously they had a very ad-hoc approach to what they were doing. Date nights were unstructured and not very intentional as the weekend would roll around and they wouldn’t have a clue as to what to do.
They talk about how this need to have some structure around Date Nights was one of the challenges they had to face early in their relationship. The fact that only 1 of them was planning and organizing most of their relationship and social activities got overwhelming at some point leading to a really big fight, probably their worst.
Now they divide the month into two half and plan their date nights for their halves. Sammi explains some of the many benefits, they found when doing it this way – “we get the opportunity to both give and receive. We both get the opportunity to create a moment or an experience, something that I really wanna do and Nate’s just now invited to come along with me or something that I know that he will really love. We both get those opportunities now. And it’s a framework that it’s allowed us to have some predictability, rhythm, heartbeat, pattern around its priority. You’re a very important part of my life and I treat it that way. I treat you that way.”
A lot of people could benefit from just a little bit of structure to set them free to plan things, like they said, to give and receive that love and it’s all about creating opportunities for connection. A framework like this takes something we do anyways, plan things for each other and just puts a little bit of structure around it.
This is definitely another exercise that we are excited to try out in our relationship. Our cadence might change to different numbers but the idea remains the same. What do you think would be an ideal frequency for your date nights – 1/1/1 or 2/3/2 or something else? Let us know in the comments below
Fuel Collective
Saami and Nathan share their story about how they started working on the 8 different tanks. Listen to the episode or check the resources below to learn more about the types of tanks and the full story.
Let the air out of the balloon to prevent resentment in relationships with Sammi and Nathan Jaeger –
Love Vitamins for Relationships
We chat with Sammi & Nathan Jaeger, Co-Hosts of The Date Forever Podcast about how to increase the positive or the goodwill in your relationship to help you counteract the negative or the deficit that we tend to collect in our relationships.
Saami and Nathan were around 23 and 24 when they got married in December 2012. And they've been together now for about 15 years, just celebrated their 10th Wedding Anniversary. Congratulations! At LoVita, we're always curious as to why people get married. Everyone has their own reasons, and we really wanted to know why they decided to make that step after 5 years of being together in their relationship. Sammi mentioned that's something she had struggled with herself in the beginning and shares their wonderful story of how she ended up eventually taking the name Jaeger.
Bonus – an exercise to keep fueling their love tank. They had so many things to share. One of the first things they talked about, which I loved, is how they phrased it "let air out of the balloon". It's a weekly check-in conversation to help prevent resentment in their relationship. On what they do to build a healthier relationship, Sammi starts with saying they put goodwill into our relationship all day, every day. Listen to the episode for more.
If you enjoyed listening to this episode (or the podcast), please share your diagnosis with 1 close relationship or anyone else who would enjoy listening to this as well.
If you would like to share your story, fill out this quick form.
The best gift you can give us is positive feedback and your observations. Follow us wherever you are listening and do us a favor by adding a Review on Apple Podcast.
LoVita – Love Vitamins for a healthier is a community by Partners for Partners. We share stories about how Partners are working intentionally towards building a healthier relationship. To learn more check out the links below 🔗
LoVita Blog for Frameworks
Sign up for our monthly Newsletter for exclusive content
We're also on Social media – Instagram, Facebook,
All above links in a single page
Connect with Sammi and Nathan Jaeger
Website: https://dateforever.com.au/
Instagram: dateforever
Podcast: Date Forever
—
Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/message
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/support
Sammi & Nathan Jaeger are the Co-Host of The Date Forever Podcast. And they are on a mission to empower couples to create thriving relationships. Because with better relationships we can create a better world. Sammi & Nath fell in love as housemates and have now been married for over a decade and love sharing relationship insights from couples and experts on their show.
Why they got married
Saami and Nathan were around 23 and 24 when they got married in December 2012. And the’ve been together now for about 15 years, just celebrated their 10th Wedding Anniversary. Congratulations! At LoVita, we’re always curious as to why people get married. Everyone has their own reasons, and I really wanted to know why they decided to make that step after 5 years of being together in their relationship. Sammi mentioned that’s something she had struggled with herself in the beginning and shares their wonderful story of how she ended up eventually taking the name Jaeger.
I really love that you’ve asked this because I did not wanna get married. I didn’t really believe in the institution of marriage. I didn’t really understand why anyone would wanna involve the government in their relationship. , I didn’t really, put a lot of value on having the piece of paper. And at the time, like I was like 20 when I had those, Opinions, thoughts, beliefs, values, and there are a few things that really changed my mind. Like my, for reference, my parents were together for quite a long time, like 20 years, but they never got married. So I have a different last name than my brother, despite us having the same biological parents. My parents, my, my mom was quite fiercely independent. She. Had me at 21. She worked in a very heavily male dominated field and a lot of my resistance to marriage was like from a feminist point of view of like, I do not want a man to feel in in any way that he owns me. I want to have an adult relationship where we both agree. Mm-hmm. , and I’m not exactly. . There wasn’t one thing, there wasn’t one thing for me that changed the idea, but a part, a big part of it was that it was important to Nathan. And I was really challenging his view of the world by saying, no, I, that’s not something I want to do.
Nathan adds that one of the biggest real benefits that they saw was of creating that family together and creating a milestone moment creating their family together which gives a feeling of “this is us,” co-creating something new together, rather than having a level of separation while they weren’t married. Saami adds on to that
but it was interesting for me cuz I kind of went through that evolution of like, no, I don’t wanna do that. Hold on. I’ve met somebody and it’s really important to them and it’s how they see the progression of a relationship. And then it was like, okay, I’ll get married, but I’m not changing my name. Like, no, that’s. , I’m keeping it. And then in the time that we got engaged, I really wanted us to be united front. I had connected with this idea, like Nathan saying about being one nurse and creating our family. Mm-hmm. . Because I believe that, a couple can be a family without the dogs, without the kids. Nathan and I are family. Yeah. but there was, this sounds so corny, but I saw on Pinterest. Someone had set up a photo gallery in their home and right in the center of it was their last name, and it was surrounded by all of these beautiful family photos. And I just thought, gosh, I want that. I want Nathan and I to run out onto the field with the same GK ons. And he had a cooler last name than me,
They also mentioned that they had even considered a separate last name. Although, things turned out differently at the end, their relationship is a true testament of holding the space to be able to go through all of those layers of change. Initially they had very different ideas of what it meant to get married, but by the time it actually came around to the special day, their ideas had changed. And the fact that both of them approached those conversations with this sense of togetherness, is such a valuable concept that many relationships kind of find themselves struggling with.
Challenges
Nathan talks about how they didn’t really consciously work on solving disagreements early on in their relationship. They had some pretty bad fights but their willingness to work things out keeps them in this relationship where they can date forever.
probably the first 12 months or two years of our relationship, I feel like that we were very much scoping each other out and working out each other’s boundaries and, and a lot of those sorts of things. And so we did have a lot of arguments or disagreements or like real deep conversations kind of in that, in that early stage of our relationship. And then I think once. We kind of got over those initial hurdles of, of yeah. Feeling each other out and, and working out how we can actually work together and co-create together.
Sammi adds on how they got to a point where they figured out that this pattern wasn’t really suitable for a long-term relationships and spending their life together.
Nathan and I were like already in love when we got together because we’d been living together for a year as housemates. So I think a lot of the teething issues that people go through, we had sort of done that as friends, so we like our, our real honeymoon. The, oh my gosh, this is all really brand new kind of stage was probably kind of short. Really? Yeah. And then we entered like a power struggle sort of phase for what, what I now know is like this sort of power struggle phase. And then we went into a don’t rock the boat phase. Like, he’s so great. He’s so amazing. I don’t wanna lose him, therefore I’m not gonna. call him out on that thing that I didn’t like and I’m just gonna ignore that need that, oh, it doesn’t really matter. And then somewhere from there we fig, we started to figure out that that was not a long-term sustainable way to be doing our life together.
Weekly Check-in Conversation
We wanted to learn some exercises or practices that they use to keep fueling their love tank. They had so many things to share on this. One of the first things they talk, which I loved how they phrased it “let air out of the balloon”. It’s a weekly check-in conversation to help prevent resentment in their relationship. On what they do to build a healthier relationship, Sammi starts with saying they put goodwill into our relationship all day, every day
And that’s not to say that we don’t ever make withdrawals from that, but we’re having a really good conversation a couple of weeks ago about what are some of the things that we do to prevent resentment in our relationship. We have a weekly check-in conversation every week where we ask, is there something that you want me to apologize for? , is there something that I’ve done that maybe in the heat of the moment it wasn’t right to talk about or it was so it felt insignificant at the time, but then when you reflected on it, it did actually hurt and there was something, something that might build resentment there. So we’ve got this weekly opportunity to like let air out of the balloon.
Nathan adds on how their practice is makes it much easier to break free of patterns that are not healthy, while not building resentment from their partner’s side as well.
So rather than like, yeah, the same thing potentially occurring like week after week after week. yeah, it is turning into a much bigger kind of repeat behavior type of thing. this, this. Question that we do weekly does really give the opportunity to, yeah, air any of that dirty laundry or air, anything that you might have been hanging onto for a little while, and chatted out before it actually becomes a big thing. And I think that helps from both sides as well, because like if I’ve done something to upset Sammy, and it’s something that. Integrated or that I’ve been doing for quite some time, like it’s probably a habit that I’ve actually trained myself to be doing, which then becomes a lot more difficult for me to then try and undo when Sammy does finally bring it up. And also on her side, it’s been building this resentment over time because it’s been this long-term repeat behavior. Whereas if, if you’re able to see the behavior once or twice or whatever, and then have the conversation. . It’s not something that’s embedded into my behaviors or habits or anything like that
Kim Sorrell and her husband were diagnosed with Cancer 4 months apart and only one of them survived. In this episode, she shares stories of grief and humor to put forward her thoughts as an expert on love.
A couple of our biggest takeaways from this episode that Kim shares
“Love is a one-way street. Love is not a transaction… Love is 100% up to you to give, period. Whether you get it back or not. You don’t give love to get love.”
“ The best gift you can give yourself is to get outta yourself a little bit and stop thinking about what you need to receive and think more about what you wanna give and want to give desire to give, because it's fun to give.”
If you enjoyed listening to this episode (or the podcast), please share your diagnosis with 1 close relationship or anyone else who would enjoy listening to this as well.
The best gift you can give us is positive feedback and your observations. Follow us wherever you are listening and do us a favor by adding a Review on Apple Podcast.
LoVita – Love Vitamins for a healthier is a community by Partners for Partners. We share stories about how Partners are working intentionally towards building a healthier relationship. To learn more check out the links below 🔗
LoVita Blog for Frameworks
Sign up for our monthly Newsletter for exclusive content
We're also on Social media – Instagram, Facebook,
All above links in a single page
Connect with Kim Sorrell
Book – Love Is
Website – https://www.kimsorrelle.com/
Instagram – @kimsorrelle
Facebook – loveisbykim
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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/message
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/support
Kim Sorrelle is the director of a humanitarian organization, popular speaker, and the author of two books. Her first book, Cry Until You Laugh, is about her and her husband’s battle with cancer after being diagnosed just four months a part. Her second book, Love Is, chronicles her year long quest to figure out the true meaning of love, a sometimes funny, sometimes scary, always enlightening journey that led to life-changing discoveries found mostly on the streets of Haiti.
Defining Love as a one-way street
What do you define love as? We started off with the most important questions and Kim defined it as a one way street instead of being transactional. Some might agree others might say it has to be somewhere in between with some boundaries of course. There is not right way of course, just your way of love. That’s the beauty of love.
Well, it is different than what I thought it was. I think there’s a lot of myths surrounding love, a lot of things that we’re told about love or are done in the name of love that are not love. Like one of the things we’re told about love is that it’s a two-way street. We put a number to it. It’s 50 50 or it’s a hundred- a hundred. You go through marriage counseling and these are the things you’re told, but it’s not true. Love is a one-way street. Love is not a transaction. If I give you money and you give me a pair of jeans, that’s a transaction. If I give you love to get love and return, that’s a transaction. Love is not a transaction. Love is 100% up to you to give, period. Whether you get it back or not. You don’t give love to get love.
Love is who you are basically. I think that’s another misconception. We think of it as an emotion, like fear or excitement, and it’s not. We don’t live in fear. We don’t live in excitement every day’s, not in Disney World, and every day’s not watching the Halloween movie or something, and then hearing every creek in the house when you go to bed. But you do live in love. That is something that you live in. That’s something that embodies you. It’s something that you are, and how you show up with it, then it is up to you.
What does grieving for Love looks like
Kim had shared with us her very emotional story of her husband passing away. So we wanted to know how trauma impacts ones ability to love.
That’s a great question. I was 47 years old when my husband died, and I thought we were gonna be that old couple in our nineties and rockers sitting on a front porch drinking lemonade and smiling at each other, or whatever it is that 90 year old people do when they’re sitting on the front porch drinking lemonade, and all of a sudden at 47, that dream of that life was gone. I had to develop a whole new, I had this understanding of love that I wasn’t dependent on my husband’s love to give love. I wasn’t dependent on that. I’m still able to love because of that. I think we all have probably seen some people who, almost feel like it’s disrespectful to laugh again or live again when you love so deeply and you lose somebody, that you can kind of stay stuck in this sadness, with this cloud over you, and that somehow you’d be disrespecting them to laugh again. And I think the opposite is, I think to really show my husband respect and to really honor him, I need to live. I need to live and be happy, because he made me happy and so I, I wanna live and be happy for him.
Manifesting your Love to reality
Kim shares with us a wonderful story of how at the age of 18 years old she got married. At that age, even though she had ambitious plans for her life and had no intentions to get married, she fell for a tall, dark, handsome man. They had babies and at some point in their marriage she felt like she was doing everything and him not much more than taking the trash out once a week. Kim explains how things changed after that that turned their marriage around.
And I started looking at him as just a paycheck and I thought, well, why is this guy living in my house? What’s he contributing? Why is he even here? He is just giving me more work to do instead of making macaroni and cheese for dinner, which would be so easy, I feel like I have to make a better dinner. Cause he’s there or I’ve got more laundry. but then I thought, you know what? No, I want a happy marriage. I want a happy marriage. So I decided, That I was gonna do everything I could to make him happy. Whatever it was, I was gonna do everything I could to make him happy. And so I started doing things like I’d go to the grocery store and I’d buy his favorite treat, and I would make his favorite dinner. I’d write a little note before work, anything I could, and I didn’t put a time limit on it. I didn’t say, I’m gonna do this for six weeks, and if fat guy doesn’t respond, then I’m outta here. I didn’t do that. I knew that I wanted a happy marriage and I figured it had to be up to me. And so the most amazing thing happened though, in doing this. Love has this incredible way of, even though you’re not giving love to get love, it comes back to you. And so things did change in our marriage, but I think a lot of the change was me, like my heart softened toward my husband, and I just grew more in love with him and, and loved him deeper, and it was a real turning point in our marriage.
Love the person, not the act
Well, one would thing that there should be some boundaries right. Sure, the idea of selfless love sounds great in theory but is that really practical? Kim explains more about how our love is for the person and not their actions. She shares about her stories and how love doesn’t keep score.
Our takeaway from the conversation: It is important to set up the relationship for the way you want to receive love, rather than having these unchecked expectations or this belief that things are just gonna miraculously work out. On the concept of familiarity. the longer you spend time with each other, the more you pick up your patterns of familiarity and what another person likes. A small change in the environment, but especially early on when you’re learning each other, you’re understanding your definitions of love is what it means to show up in love. It’s not fair on either party to just assume that the other person should know with one look of an eye what’s actually going on. That’s not a kindness we extend to our partner, and it’s definitely not something you would expect of our friends, and yet it’s a fallacy that we fall into with those that we share a home with.
After loosing a loved one
Kim shares her very powerful and emotional story of how it was to loose her beloved husband to Cancer.
It was quick, but not immediate. I mean, he was diagnosed and we had this incredible six weeks together. They thought he’d live about a year and it was just six weeks. But we did have this great six weeks together watching Cash Cab and playing rummy. I mean, the things that we did just hanging out at the house. He did so good. Like we had great hospice care, great palliative care, so he wasn’t in pain cuz it’s a very beautiful cancer. And it wasn’t until the very last day, that he woke up in pain. And I called the hospice nurse and she came right over and gave him extra morphine and she was on the phone. We were in the bedroom and he was sitting on the edge of the bed cuz he was, he didn’t wanna lay down. He was in pain and I was, Holding him from behind and she was on the phone calling for a hospital bed and a commode and, you know, whatever equipment. Cause up until then, we’d just been in our bed together. Just life as usual. And I was saying, guy, do I call my kids? What do I do? She’s like, oh, no, no, you’ve got lots of time. You have weeks anyway. You’re, it’s okay. It’s okay. Well, in holding him, I could just feel his mis. I could just feel it and I just, whispered in his ear and I just said, baby, just go. And that was it. That quick. He took his last breath. That was it. I consider that very merciful. As you see people just kind of linger. Who are in just a lot of pain and it can go on for weeks and months. And so it was real merciful for him to just go that quickly. He was a great guy. Like, if anybody should go that quickly, it should be him, I figure. Even though we had that six weeks, it was still a shock because it was quicker than we thought. But I felt like I had to be strong for my kids. I felt like I had to be strong for everybody else, and I was still going through cancer. So it was a weird time of really trying to process. And, I cried a lot during the six weeks from his diagnosis till the time he passed. I would just, I tried not to, but I would just start crying and he would just hold me and say, don’t cry for me. Don’t cry for me. You’re the one. It’s gonna be here, don’t cry for me. And, so then I didn’t quite know how to process things and then I was finally able physically to go back to work. And when I was, I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do. I had some businesses I didn’t know if I was gonna go back to there. I’d been running a nonprofit and resigning that because I got diagnosed with cancer. I ended up thinking, oh, I’m gonna take it slow. So, Took a job as a part-time bookkeeper of an organization that my father and I had started about 10 years before this, and, is being run by somebody else. And so January one that year I started as part-time bookkeeper, and 12 days later there was an earthquake in Haiti that killed 200,000 people. So I went from part-time bookkeeper at full-time 24 7. And within two weeks I was in Haiti. And then for the next several years I was in Haiti at least part of every month for the next many years. And I really believe that was the healing, that in service there’s healing, that there’s nothing that heals grief like surface. When you get out of yourself and give to others, that’s when real healing can take place.
Final Thoughts
The best gift you can give yourself is to get outta yourself a little bit and stop thinking about what you need to receive and think more about what you wanna give and want to give desire to give, because it’s fun to give, you think about the holidays or birthdays or whatever, and I love giving gifts. I’m not great all the time at receiving gifts as I am at giving gifts and giving, is fun. and that’s what love is, is it’s, it’s just giving. The more you can do that, the happier you’re gonna be. And who doesn’t wanna be happy?
Brent Downlen, the host of The Fallible Man – Building Better Men, joined us to share his experience, learnings and stories of working in personal development with men who want to grow as men.
We talked about topics like
☑️ Honest gut-check for your relationships
🐛 Communication on Real Issues
👫 Touch Base Communication
🧬 Generalizations for Men and Women
🚸 Evolution of the relationship with Parenthood
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Brent Dowlen is a men’s coach & podcaster. He hosts the Fallible Man Podcast. His journey started from a desire to become the best husband, Father, and Man he can be. The Fallible Man is a Lifestyle of Personal Development aimed specifically at Men’s self-improvement and growth.
Brent joined us to share his experience, learnings and stories of working in personal development with men who want to grow as men.
Honest gut-check for your relationships
To share more about what Brent and his wife do to build a healthy relationship, he explains how they started with a gut-check.
The first step in that is we had a real honest gut check about four or five years into our marriage and realized that while we thought we were perfect. We just weren’t talking, there were some problems under the surface and we just weren’t talking about it or dealing with it. I don’t think it was a purposeful thing that we were avoiding it. It just didn’t occur to us that we should be talking about these things. Once we got past that point of honesty with ourselves and stopped pretending we were perfect and started giving ourselves some room to breathe on that. Then we started getting focused.
One of the things we do, we like, we actually continue to do like marriage seminars whenever possible. We’ve been married for 21 plus years and we focus every chance we get to go do like a marriage class. This is part of it is we make a purposeful, intentional choice to go. We still got a lot to learn. Let’s see what they have. It’s also really fun because we look at some of the questions that come up from like the different classes that we go to or whatever, and it makes us laugh because we look back at our marriage and go, yeah, we used to do that.
Communication on Real Issues
Brent explains that one of the problems in their relationship early on in terms of communication was just there wasn’t any communication on real issues.
it was just there wasn’t communication on real issues. Both of us saw and encountered issues in our marriage and just personalized that. We went, oh, that’s my problem fix. I need to take care of this. We didn’t talk about it, and if she was frustrated with me, she didn’t tell me, Hey, I’m frustrated with you, or, I don’t like the fact that you did this, or it was, oh, well, I must be reacting to him badly. We just kind of pretended everything was perfect and kept going and kept going.
Brent goes on to share more about some of the other problems during that time like they were in the middle of a job change and had lost their home. He had lost this job and were behind on everything. Money was just coming in hardly. They were sleeping in a friend’s couch. He explains how everything just got bad and there wasn’t that polite space anymore because we had nowhere to go at that point. And one of the most beneficial things of their marriage early on, was they moved away from their families.
I had one family member in the area that I worked with and, and we’re very close. But when you’re away from everybody, all of your friends, all of your comfort spaces, well, when you start to fight or when you start to have a problem, You got nowhere to go and you got no one to cry to. All you gotta is each other when you don’t know anybody else. You need to go somewhere where neither of you know. Y’all can find good work. You can find a community to plug into, but where you know, no one start over with just you two, all of the space to run away. There’s no shoulder to cry on where you can go back to mom’s house or nope, no, no. Best friends, you can talk to ’em on the phone, but there’s no buddies to go out and, man, I can’t believe she did this right. Get away, get some space where all you have is each. And I mean that, probably carried us through the first several years. We were so focused on that.
Our takeaway – Marriage is not only the journey of two people, but it’s also the journey of the individual willing to do the work and show up to grow themselves so that the “we” can benefit from it. It’s a true testament of the two-part nature of being in a relationship. There is the, the showing up for the we and taking care and being able to listen and communicate and grow with your partner. But there’s a lot of work that happens behind the scene as an individual in your own life that you have to be accountable and responsible for.
Touch Base Communication
Brent explains more about their style of touch based communication and what it means for them
We’re very touch base in our communication to the point where I’ve actually had friends tease us because, It’s not even like a sexual touch, it’s I’m constantly touching my wife. She’s constantly touching me, right? If I’m by her, my hand is on her hip or on her shoulder or close to her touching her hand. I want to physically connect. And for us, a lot of times that’s where the communication starts is just that little touch. There may not be any words being said, but that little touch betrays how we’re feeling at the moment. She knows I might not have the right thing to say cuz I’m good at that. I’m gonna stick my foot in my mouth. But when I lead in with walking up behind her at her computer and putting my hand on her shoulder and just being there for a minute, it changes the pace and helps fill in the words. I don’t know what correctly to say.
Our takeaway – Non-verbal communication is a very important concept and physical touch, even non-sexual, but just intimate physical touch, lets your partner know, I’m here for you. Sometimes there isn’t the right thing to say or we just don’t know what is the right thing to say. But we can still express I’m here. I’ve literally got your back in this moment, and I want you to know that I am that person that you can lean on and take support from, even if I might not always have the right thing to say. So yes, we firmly believe in the value of non-verbal communication.
Generalizations for Men and Women
Brent explains how in general, men and women all tend to flow in a state of reactivity most of the time.
Very little of your day is actually constructed of intentional, purposeful decisions. We’re just reacting from one moment to the next moment to the next problem. Very seldom do we actually stop and get intentional in the moment and stop reacting to things. You actually have to actually put the brakes on. We don’t like to do that. So men and women both just flow in this just state of reactivity. If you can break that cycle, you can open up communication. If you can get them to be intentional instead of reactive, you can disrupt a lot of the small problems we run into.
The other thing we do is we make assumptions about what the other person should do based on how we feel and think.
Guys want to have downtime. Well, that’s fact we do because there’s actually a difference in the way men need to unplug versus the way women need to unplug psychologically. Like our brains actually need, men need that blank space for us to unplug.
Our takeaway – Generalizations are a great place to start getting curious. They give you a way to start that conversation on – Hey, what are these differences? And when you’re getting curious, then you’re starting to dive deeper and really get to the bottom of your individual truth. But you have to start somewhere, which is what I think the value of generalizations and stereotypes actually tends to be. There is a faulty understanding that we should start and stop with stereotypes and generalizations, but that I think is an incomplete journey and just one part of a much larger story.
Evolution of the relationship with Parenthood
Brent how children change everything, going from hormonal changes, body changes, emotions running up and down both for men and women. Brent shares his own stories and stories from his friends on how men get protective of their kids and try to be the provider for the family. He also shares his advice to couples
I try and tell couples they should always wait at least three years before they have children because you need that time to build you and to solidify you. Because the minute you have a baby, the next 20 years is theirs. The number one divorce rate is right after kids leave. It’s not in the first couple years. That’s the second highest. That first two to three year period is number two. The highest divorce rate is right after the kids leave the house, because after 20 years, if you only have one kid, all of a sudden you’re living with a stranger. It’s been all about the kid for 20 years, unless you’ve been really, really active. About your marriage and prioritizing that marriage. It becomes all about the kid. And so that’s one of the things that we have learned and tried to do is we try to prioritize our marriage in front of our daughters.
You have to be more proactive once there are children. You have to be very proactive in your preventative maintenance because it is so easy and it’s not usually intentional. It’s so easy to become so ingrained in the child or in the children if there’s more than one that you, your relationship takes third, fourth, or even fifth priority.
Final Thoughts
My message to men is just be intentional. you invested in this relationship, so be intentional with every part of this relationship. It’s so important to be intentional every moment you don’t get that back. Every moment, every conversation, be present, be intentional, and guys don’t ever stop growing. Marriage takes work every single day, grow you. Don’t try and change your wife. Just grow. You become the best you and your marriage will grow with that.
Dr. Ray & Jean have been married since Valentine’s Day in 1998, and in 2002, they Co-Founded the Lighthouse Emotional Wellness Center, a counseling center in the Chicagoland area. They created and perfected a unique approach to coach couples to have amazing relationships, called Couples Synergy, and have helped thousands of couples transform their relationships. When it comes to relationships, they believe that they cannot teach it unless they live it. They are a real couple who have worked hard to create an amazing relationship through the difficult challenges life brings us all. They cohost the podcast, Couples Synergy: Real Couples, Real Storie… Real Relationships. Dr. Ray & Jean help couples create the relationship of their dreams, with the partner they fell in love with!
The quotes below are taken from the episode transcription and might have some minor errors or missing words.
Relationship Check Ins – Time for Hearts
When asked about the value of doing regular check ins in a relationship and how to check in with your partner, Dr. Ray had the below to share
It’s not a surprise that we are all locked up in our head, right? We are ultimately alone in our experience, our human experience, and it is very common for couples to feel alone, even within a loving, committed partnership. And if couples are not checking in with each other. And getting to know their partner, where they’re at in that moment, then we lose that opportunity of consistent evolution together. And so that check in is not just about, how you doing, but it’s really about what is, what is your experience right now in this world, in this moment.
And so one of the things, we definitely do. As a check in and as a show of affection towards each other, is that we always start and end the day off with a show of affection, of an embrace, so the first thing that you’re doing in the morning when you wake up is you are starting that day off with an embrace with your partner, and that the last thing you do at the end of the night is you are closing out that day with that embrace.
Jean adds that this a practice in time that they call as time for our hearts to have a conversation
And it reduces anxiety, it reduces depression, it increases oxytocin and the bonding hormones. So it just makes you feel better. And there are certain days we don’t get to do it cuz like we gotta catch a plane or something and we feel off. All day.
Deeper Connections
We touch on the above need for check ins in a relationship as a trigger and not necessarily a long conversation. On the topic of how to get to a deeper level if there is something that needs to be discussed in more details, Dr. Ray shares the below
A lot of times people have the cart before the horse. Think that when I have a conversation with my partner, I’ve gotta jump into the deep stuff, and so what happens is they, they have this long periods of time where they are not connecting with their partner. And then when they do have that time now, they try to stuff all of these deep conversations into a small period of time. Typically, it’s maybe a vacation. They’re not spending time together, they don’t have quality time. And then they say, well, you know, when we go on vacation in a month, then we can connect. And then what happens is they go on vacation and then everything that’s stuffed in the closet comes out. They end up in a fight.
So it’s, it’s the, the smaller touch points, the smaller connections that add up. To be able to have , those deeper conversations. And by that time you already are connecting with each other, priming each other, understanding all of the different dynamics that are occurring. So when you are having the deeper conversation, half of it is already done.
To summarize: Check-ins really are like cashing into your emotional bank account. They are creating deposits of happiness and love and care and affection, which you are then able to leverage as that healthy foundation for when you do need to have those deeper conversations. But the concept of a daily check-in doesn’t need to be a conversation per se. It could be something more, a little bit more intimate, like a physical touch, which is what the embrace example is kind of catering too. Usually when we think of check-in, our brains automatically does go to a conversation like, “oh hey, how’s your day doing?” Or “How’s your day been?” Or “you seem a little off, you wanna talk about it?”
Finding time with your partner
If there is a conversation that you do wanna have on a deeper level, how do you get alignment from your partner? What sort of techniques do you use to get each other’s attention? Do you block some time on your shared calendar, if you have any or anything else? Jean shares
This idea of time, we hear it all the time. That We don’t have time. We very rarely spend time on screens. So once our day is done, we typically go outside, we have a fire and we talk, or we have records if we’re inside, cuz it’s cold out and we listen to records and we talk and we do this five times a week. We’ve always enjoyed doing stuff like that more than, being distracted by something. Those allow you to have those more organic conversations.
Dr Ray adds
I think that it depends for each couple, for some couples. Maybe they do need to schedule a time to talk and they say, Hey, if you got some time this week, I really want to connect. I really want to talk some things out. And that might be okay for that couple, but for another couple, that actually might be a trigger, it may be a way of having power and control over each other. It may be a way of putting off your partner. So it really comes down to each couple. How each couple needs space and time, emotional consideration in order to have those deeper conversations. So the investment in the account is happening separate from the rebuilding and the healing.
We all know that the most successful people in the world, they always talk about meditation and starting their day out. Because we need to be able to center ourselves before we, go out into the world and, and deal with everything that we’re being bombarded with. Well, now you have the complication of two people coming together and, having different needs. And how do you find that that sync between the two of you when the world is going to be affecting you in many different ways.
The research says: that couples should be spending a minimum of five to six hours of quality time per week, and that is without screens. So it’s not even cuddling up and watching the same show together. That doesn’t count. Or going out with another couple that doesn’t count either. It’s spending that time connecting and bonding and talking about each other’s experiences through this world.
3 THINGS YOU CAN DO TO CHANGE YOUR RELATIONSHIP RIGHT NOW
To get to a better future and change your relationships, Dr. Ray and Jean explain 3 things you can do right now
1️⃣ Do something new, exciting and thrilling together. When focused on an activity, especially if something new, allows you to bond at a different level. For a while it substitutes the labels of you being partners for being friends and lets you stay away from bigger topics and just focus on having fun.
2️⃣ Surprise each other Surprising each other is a really good way to add to that connection so that you can get into the more difficult stuff later. Surprises can add that missing spark and help you communicate how much you care for each other
3️⃣ Sleep naked together Yes, sleeping naked. Shocker right. Experts found 57% of couples who slept in the nude claimed to be happy together, compared with 48% of those in pyjamas, 43% of nightie wearers and 38% of those in onesies.
These three things shared, remind us of the concept of reconnection through recalibration. A jolting of your system by doing things that you don’t normally do, a complete opposite of monotony. By introducing these elements into our everyday life, we make it easier to talk about the harder stuff later.
Dealing with Conflicts
On the topic of dealing with conflicts and tips on solving the problems in relationships, Jean suggests.
What we focus on grows and the human brain is designed to seek out negativity or potential threats much faster than something positive and so people wanna talk about the problem instead of where do we wanna reach for.
When we’re first interviewing a couple, we ask them, “if you had a magic wand, how would you like your relationship to be?” And sometimes they’ll say, “well, I don’t like that.” We’re not doing this. Like, no, what do you want? that place. Which then it’s like if, if you get that agreement that you both have a common vision of where you wanna be, well then you can work backwards and and reverse engineer it. If you start focusing on the positive stuff what you like about your partner, what they’re doing well, it’s easier for you to do more positive stuff and you’ll see more. And that is the momentum because the other stuff, we don’t have to practice.
When you think about in the beginning it’s what can I get? And the longer you’re together and the more common experiences you have, the more your brains mirror each other. Cuz our brains are designed to do that. And so then you want to say, what can I give? Because if I give him something that makes him happy. My brain becomes happy too. If I give him grief, I get grief. You can feel what your partner’s feeling and it’s not so selfish anymore. And, and the selfishness in the beginning, it’s not good or bad, it’s just the way we’re wired. It’s the way we’re designed, and as we mature, we care more about making sure they’re. because we can’t be happy if they’re not happy.
When we’re younger, we can, when we’re younger, we think, you know, I can keep score and I can win and, and my partner’s gonna lose and I’m gonna win. you don’t keep score with your teammate.
Dr. Ray adds
The fact of the matter is conflict is inevitable in every relationship. We can expect it to happen. We just don’t know when or where, but it’s gonna happen. Analogy I use when it comes to conflict is that it, it’s like a credit card bill and the the bill is always gonna be due. And the choice you have at that point is whether you’re gonna pay it now or you’re gonna pay it later with interest? This calibration has to happen. It has to happen consistently. When you are focusing on the problems, then that is what you’re gonna create more of.
Keeping Love Exciting and New
In the beginning of a relationships, everything’s new and exciting. You’re interested to learn more. But as you spend more time with your partner, your frequency tune in sync and the sense of security makes you start feeling comfortable. So how do we keep exploring and how does one keep maintaining that curiosity, that mysteriousness within each other?
What is it that you do to keep exploring and how do we keep maintaining that curiosity that mysteriousness within each other? Let us know in the comments below. Listen to the episode to learn about our guests story and learn what they do to keep the fire burning.
Comfort vs Discipline for Dealing with Pain
Jean shares an analogy of comfort and discipline. We notice a trend here, which is that a relationship is built over time and discipline. That component of showing up, checking in with your partner, doing the fun activities, creating that organic space that’s disconnected from tech to be able to have those deeper conversations. All of these are forms of discipline so that eventually one day when that fire say, diminished a little bit, instead of feeling like “everything’s breaking apart and I don’t know what to do”, you can be like, “hey, I have a feeling that things are getting a little bit cold in this relationship. Can we do something about it?” All of the work that you would’ve done previously enables you to then have a successful and healthy conversation at the end. But really it’s the building up of those smaller things that we do every day, rather than taking the easy way out and choosing the route of comfort and being like – oh, I don’t need to worry about this.
When we’re in pain, we have two choices. The first choice is to comfort ourselves so we drink, eat, stuff we shouldn’t eat, watch tv, distract ourselves. All of those things make us numb. and make us sicker over time. so the pain comes, I hurt my back. I’m gonna take a pill and lay on the couch. Well, now my muscles are getting atrophy. And, and you need more and more of that comfort stuff. And you get less and less sensitive to the subtle pain where you could actually do something. The other thing you can do when you’re in pain is discipline. Really takes discipline to love another human. takes the discipline of, if we are using the back as an example, I gotta go to physical therapy and it’s gonna hurt and I’m gonna push through it and I’m gonna get stronger and I’m gonna heal and I’m gonna get you joy. comfort leads to temporary pleasure that goes away where doing the discipline consistently leads to a joy and, and a feeling of safety in the. And connection, and you cannot have that without work. You have to know yourself. You have to know your partner. You have to invest, you have to do your work just in the same way, taking care of your body.
Individual Growth
First we talk about how to channel your pains and communicate with your partner without assigning blame, to which Dr, Ray says
You can’t prevent that from happening. You are going to dish out blame from time to time. It doesn’t matter how, how peaceful a person you are, at some point it’s gonna happen. And that’s, that’s, it’s one of the rules that we came up with when we did the hike. You know, we, we hiked 180 miles. It was grueling. We crossed 10 mountain passes, all our food survival gear on our backs, and the first thing we noticed is that when you go through difficult times, you go through pain, you go through discomfort, the first thing you’re gonna do is you’re gonna blame your partner. Yeah. It’s just, it’s just what happens. You know? It, you, your partner is your closest, the closest human. The closest connection you can have to another human being, physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally. And so when we hurt on the inside, we have to get it out. Yeah. And the first thing that that we’re gonna do is it’s gonna go at our partner.
Jean adds
It’s really important when your partner does blame you to not take that personally as best as possible. And also to to understand everything is a 50 50 in a relationship, meaning that you’re both contributing equally to what’s going. And so the question I always ask myself is, what is it about me that chooses to hang out with someone like this? Ha. if this is not that pleasant in that moment. So what, what have I done to teach him how to treat me? What, what boundaries do I need? What, what do I need to show up at? Maybe nurture him because he’s hurting and I’m treating him in a way that maybe someone else did and, and I’m activating that and, and. Tricky things to figure out and they require a lot of calmness. Yep. That you don’t have initially in blame. When you’re in blame, you can’t figure that out. Your brain doesn’t even work. You’re just like, what? You’re, you’re in fight or flight and it doesn’t work. And then later you can dial it back and you can look at what, what’s going on here? And typically if you’re the person who, you know, stepped on your partner and they got a reaction, Blasted you, you didn’t even know you did it. And you’re like, what, what did you hear me say? And it’s like the telephone game. They’re hearing something that they heard 20 years ago. And if you take that personally, you keep it up at the surface and now you’re fighting about whatever toilet paper, right? not about that. It’s about what it brings up. And that’s true for all of us.
Iceberg Moments
Dr. Ray explains the above with an example and something they call Iceberg Moments
Those moments where you’re in pain and. Have this need to blame your partner. Or that it happens. It is something we call iceberg moments, and you think about an iceberg, 15% above the water, 85% under the water. And when, when each of us as individuals go through something painful it brings up something from our past that 85% under the. And we are dishing out a hundred percent onto our partner when maybe they’re only part 15% part of what the issue is. And so when couples do that deep dive and they really start understanding more and more about their partner and where they came from and what they brought with them, it’s easier than. Like easy at all. But it’s easier to see that moment as an iceberg moment, and to not take it personally. Oh, my partner is hurting right now. And what’s being brought up for them is this whole past history that I was not part of, but it’s being played out in the moment.
Jean adds
and you’ll always attract a partner. Who knows exactly how to smash into your iceberg because your iceberg smashes into theirs and if it didn’t, you probably wouldn’t have a relationship. And so it’s designed that way because we get wounded through relationship and we heal through relationship. And so we come with all our wounds and no one teaches us how to heal that. And a lot of it is very unconscious. We’re not very aware of why we’re so activated by someone. and it’s, it’s that discovery that can lead to a deep sense of healing between two people. That’s where the work is and it’s, it’s incredibly beautiful and most often when we first meet a couple, they’re saying, if my partner would just change this, I’d be fine and of course it’s never about that, but they don’t even know that. They don’t even know what it’s really about. And, and that discovery of bringing that deeper stuff up into consciousness, I think someone said we learned how to have a conversation we didn’t even know we were supposed to have. Mm-and it takes that type of, eyes to see it. We can’t see it. Just if two people are so close, they can’t and you have to get that distance and sometimes that pain can give you some distance to understand yourself and then to come back to your partner and go, this is what I discovered through that.
Walkabout – Conversation with yourself
We then talk about our last topic of how do you work on your own individual self and Jean sheds her insights on this with a practice they call Walkabout.
There’s an exercise we practice and we give to people, and that is to go on a walkabout. And a walkabout is 48 to 72 hours. By your to go somewhere you’ve never been and you can’t have any agenda. You have to feel what you feel at any given moment. Are you hungry? Go find food. Do you wanna sleep? Sleep? Do you want to learn something? Go out in nature, whatever you wanna do. And people are so scared, they’re like, well what if I don’t wanna go home in the end? Or what if my partner doesn’t wanna come back? We’ve never seen that happen, but I’m sure it could. But we don’t have that type of time cuz the. 24 hours, you’re just all in your head. And then it starts to go, and then you can have a conversation with yourself in, in, in a bigger part of yourself, a higher self and the universe. And then you can come back. And I do it when I’m angry. You, you do it more regular, like as a schedule. Right. I’m a runner, so that’s kind of my process. Right. But, but it’s a difficult thing. Absolutely impactful.
Dr Ray then shares a beautiful idea below. It is scary to ask because a lot of the times, people are afraid of what they’re going to find. If they do take the time to have that conversation with themselves, they’re afraid of the scary things that might come up and therefore the reckoning that they’ll have to do. By embedding this as a daily practice, it becomes a little bit less scary and you don’t have to indulge in it or schedule time and make it into the special big thing. You can also just piecemeal it and that makes it a lot less scary and therefore just a part of your everyday life. And that’s how you’re able to bring not only the best of yourself to the relationship, but also help yourself grow in the process.
The whole point is to completely, unplug, to disconnect yourself from, the monotony of life and everything that is. All the pressure that you have. So you can’t be online. , you can’t be on your phone, you radio, read books, drink. If you check into a hotel, you can’t watch tv. You can’t listen to the radio while you’re driving. you can’t talk to anyone either. Mm. So you know, you can order at a restaurant if you’re going to. Or you could check in a hotel, but from that point forward, you don’t have conversations with people because that is gonna pull you outside of yourself, and we need that time within to really understand our insecurities. And, the things that we wrestle with, Carl Young talked about it being the shadow, the shadow. Part of ourself that we hide from the world, and if we don’t understand that and our focus is just on removing it, well, it is going to permeate into our relationship for sure.
In this episode, we bring to you a quick and easy free at home date night idea called creating a Shared Relationship Vision.
It doesn't matter if you're just starting your relationship or you've been together for several years, it's never too early or too late to sit down with your partner and talk about what you aspire from your relationship. This is why we came up with a list of deal breaker questions. By taking the time to go through these questions, you can create a Relationship Vision that you and your partner are willing to invest in.
List of deal breaker questions: https://tinyurl.com/lovita1
Takeaways
1️⃣ We believe that a discussion around a Shared Relationship Vision should be a recurring exercise, perhaps even a Tradition. People and their priorities change over time. This exercise can keep partners in alignment.
2️⃣ Just because you and your partner share different perspectives doesn't mean that you are not on the same page. This activity is all about helping you understand your similarities and differences, and if and whether you want to invest your time in addressing those gaps and remember. Remember – It's okay to disagree.
Our inspiration for the activity was from our previous conversations with Brendan Kumarasamy, a communication expert and Victoria Raider, a possibility coach on their take on the value of working towards a Relationship Visions. Links below 🔗
https://lovita.blog/2022/11/11/unleash-prosperity-in-your-relationship-with-victoria-rader-a-possibility-coach/https://lovita.blog/2022/08/29/communicating-relationship-boundaries-with-brenden-kumarasamy/
LoVita – Love Vitamins for a healthier is a community by Partners for Partners. We share stories about how Partners are working intentionally toward building a healthier relationship. To learn more check out the links below 🔗
All below links in a single page – https://linktr.ee/lovitalovevitamins
Website – https://lovita.blog
Newsletter – https://mailchi.mp/81f58463e76b/subscribe
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lovitalovevitamins
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/lovitalovevitamins
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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/message
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/support
Shared Relationship Vision
Today, we are sharing a quick and easy free at home date night idea called creating a Shared Relationship Vision.
It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting your relationship or you’ve been together for several years, it’s never too early or too late to sit down with your partner and talk about what you aspire from your relationship. This is why we came up with a list of deal breaker questions. By taking the time to go through these questions, you can create a Relationship Vision that you and your partner are willing to invest in.
Intention
This concept of a shared relationship vision has come up again and again as we interviewed relationship coaches and experts for our podcast. In our conversation with Brendan Kumarasamy, a communication expert, he brought up the concept of a shared Relationship Vision as a way to get on the same page. When we talked with Victoria Raider, a possibility coach, she brought up the concept of establishing a Shared Relationship Vision as a way to either find your soulmate or save yourself years of misery. We thought let’s be explicit about this and practice it for ourselves.
Things you need
📝 A list of Deal Breaker Questions. (Some sample questions available on Framework Relationship Vision. You can a complete list for free that we used) 🤫 A private and quiet space to have a conversation with your partner
Rules
Take a few moments to look over the list of questions you gathered and collect your thoughts. Then go ahead and set the space and environment for the conversation. Remove any distractions like cell phones. If you have pets or kids make sure that they are entertained so you don’t get interrupted.
Feel free to break up the questions into parts or segments . So you can take breaks in between as well.
Our Discussion
Listen to the episode for our conversation around the below topics
What do you consider cheating? In the context of a relationship
Do you have my back no matter what?
Takeaways
1️⃣ We believe that a discussion around a Shared Relationship Vision should be a recurring exercise, perhaps even a Tradition. People and their priorities change over time. This exercise can keep partners in alignment.
2️⃣ Just because you and your partner share different perspectives doesn’t mean that you are not on the same page. This activity is all about helping you understand your similarities and differences, and if and whether you want to invest your time in addressing those gaps and remember. Remember – It’s okay to disagree.
Experiment with a few different Deal Breaker Questions that suite your relationship. Let us know what you think about the date night activity in the comments below and share your story.
In this episode, we talk about a fun and gamified way to share among partners more about each other's day. Here's how the activity works
🙋♀️ One of the partner is the Storyteller. Your role is to start by sharing more about how you spent the day. When you hear EXPAND, stay on the event you just mentioned and give details. Continue giving details until you hear ADVANCE, after which you move on to the next event of the day. Continue for 2 minutes.
🧟♀️ The other partner is the Listener. With the power to use only two keywords "Advance" and "Expand". Say EXPAND to have the Storyteller share more details about what they just mentioned. Say ADVANCE to move ahead to the next event of the day.
🔀 Switch roles. Play daily or when needed. Increase time as you see fit.
Takeaways
Find a time-bound way to share about your day with your partner while sharing the responsibility of storytelling
Find opportunities in your day to savor the small moments that can easily slip away
Give your partner the control to be curious and learn more about your day – encouraging them to use the keyword Expand to dive into more details
Our inspiration for the activity was from an Improv exercise called Advance and Expand, used to explore environments in more detail.
LoVita – Love Vitamins for a healthier is a community by Partners for Partners. We share stories about how Partners are working intentionally toward building a healthier relationship. To learn more check out the links below 🔗
All below links in a single page – https://linktr.ee/lovitalovevitamins
Website – https://lovita.blog
Newsletter – https://mailchi.mp/81f58463e76b/subscribe
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lovitalovevitamins
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/lovitalovevitamins
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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/message
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/support
Have you ever been in a situation when you ask your partner about their day and all you get in response is “it’s been the same” or “fine”. How about if we tell you that you can gamify this mundane question of “how was your day honey” to make it more fun. It’s an activity we call “Advancing and Expanding” and all it takes to play is 5 minutes with your partner and their attention.
When given a time constraint, an Advancer is someone who likes to rush through the events to get to the end of their story whereas an Expander is someone who is comfortable to dwell in the details and having an incomplete story. Find out whether you are an Advancer, Expander or somewhere in between?
How does this help? It helps build a more meaningful bond between partners and a healthier, every single day. We’ll explain more but let’s first play.
Activity
A fun and gamified way to share among partners more about each other’s day. Here’s how the activity works
🙋♀️ One of the partner is the Storyteller. Your role is to start by sharing more about how you spent the day. When you hear EXPAND, stay on the event you just mentioned and give details. Continue giving details until you hear ADVANCE, after which you move on to the next event of the day. Continue for 2 minutes.
🧟♀️ The other partner is the Listener. With the power to use only two keywords “Advance” and “Expand”. Say EXPAND to have the Storyteller share more details about what they just mentioned. Say ADVANCE to move ahead to the next event of the day.
🔀 Switch roles. Play daily or when needed. Increase time as you see fit.
This game has the most impact when you’ve spent the day away from each other. That makes sure the two stories shared are different and have more room to explore.
Listen to our example in the podcast episode using the links above OR check out the super cute reel on our Instagram account.
Takeaways
Find a time-bound way to share about your day with your partner while sharing the responsibility of storytelling
Find opportunities in your day to savor the small moments that can easily slip away
Give your partner the control to be curious and learn more about your day – encouraging them to use the keyword Expand to dive into more details
In this episode, of "Skip the Beat", we talk about
Self Identity in a relationship
The balance between Sharing vs Controlling
Setting healthy boundaries in your relationship
Takeaways
How others see us is crucial for our self-identity; start by understanding your beliefs and then share what you learn and know.
Remain adaptable; acknowledge that your identity is malleable and that conflicts aren’t bad – just opportunities for curiosity and growth.
Regardless of how you are received when you share your truth, stand by your boundaries
Before you can share with your partner what you want, there is a lot of self-identity work that is needed to be done to answer how you are and who you want to be.
Doing identity work, we start to realize that identity as a concept is quite malleable, it’s quite fluid. Looking at it in terms of “this or that” is very reductionist. Identity is more of an amalgamation or a culmination of different moving parts.
To discover the fine balance of how much and when to share in a new relationships
Digest and discern what are the important things to share
Start to build a foundation of mutual respect and understanding by sharing in small doses and using curiosity to ask questions
Start with – Sit with yourself, and identity, what are those non-negotiable boundaries within you? What are the things that you don’t know you can’t function without?
Navigating the fine line between controlling and letting go can be tricky. We often feel like we have to give something to get something. By transforming our ORs into ANDs, we can change this negotiation in our favor. Start having these conversations with yourself, to understand where our boundaries start and when it gets to sacrifice.
To build a healthy partnership, work on laying down the foundation for your relationship so difficult conversations don’t have to be hard ones and can be everyday, honest and real conversation. Building a healthy relationship requires hard work and being intentional about normalizing such difficult conversations.
LoVita – Love Vitamins for a healthier is a community by Partners for Partners. We share stories about how Partners are working intentionally toward building a healthier relationship. To learn more check out the links below 🔗
All below links in a single page – https://linktr.ee/lovitalovevitamins
Website – https://lovita.blog
Newsletter – https://mailchi.mp/81f58463e76b/subscribe
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lovitalovevitamins
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/lovitalovevitamins
—
Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/message
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/support
Inspiration A word from the Shona language in Zimbabwe, Ndini, that translates to “this is me” in English.
Themes
Self Identity in a relationship
Balance between Sharing vs Controlling
Setting boundaries
Takeaways
How others see us is crucial for our self-identity; start by understanding your beliefs and then share what you learn and know.
Remain adaptable; acknowledge that your identity is malleable and that conflicts aren’t bad – just opportunities for curiosity and growth.
Regardless of how you are received when you share your truth, stand by your boundaries
Discussion
Before you can share with your partner what you want, there is a lot of self-identity work that is needed to be done to answer how you are and who you want to be.
Doing identity work, we start to realize that identity as a concept is quite malleable, it’s quite fluid. Looking at it in terms of “this or that” is very reductionist. Identity is more of an amalgamation or a culmination of different moving parts.
To discover the fine balance of how much and when to share in a new relationships
Digest and discern what are the important things to share
Start to build a foundation of mutual respect and understanding by sharing in small doses and using curiosity to ask questions
Start with – Sit with yourself, and identity, what are those non-negotiable boundaries within you? What are the things that you don’t know you can’t function without?
Navigating the fine line between controlling and letting go can be tricky. We often feel like we have to give something to get something. By transforming our ORs into ANDs, we can change this negotiation in our favor. Start having these conversations with yourself, to understand where our boundaries start and when it gets to sacrifice.
To build a healthy partnership, work on laying down the foundation for your relationship so difficult conversations don’t have to be hard ones and can be everyday, honest and real conversation. Building a healthy relationship requires hard work and being intentional about normalizing such difficult conversations.
LoVita 