Summary
Joe and Brett explore the dynamics of romantic relationships as vehicles for personal growth and healing. They discuss how we instinctively find partners who trigger our deepest patterns — the same patterns formed in childhood — creating both the potential for re-traumatization and for profound healing. The key distinction is whether both partners agree they’re in the relationship for their own freedom and growth, rather than to make each other happy.
The conversation covers the body of relationships — how every fight boils down to feeling unseen and trying to change the other person, and how opening your heart unconditionally resolves conflict. They explore the false dichotomy between “staying open” and “drawing boundaries,” showing these are actually the same thing. Joe argues that compromise (neglecting parts of yourself) always builds resentment, and instead both partners should commit to finding ways to meet both people’s needs.
They also discuss the ending of relationships as potentially the most productive time for growth — full mourning prevents replicating the same patterns and increases capacity for love. Joe suggests that before deciding to leave, simply being fully authentic in the relationship resolves the question naturally about 70-80% of the time.
Key Concepts
- Partners are perfectly matched to trigger you
- Both partners must want better
- Every fight is about feeling unseen
- Compromise builds resentment
- Boundaries and openness are the same thing
- Mourning a relationship prevents repeating it
- Be yourself and the relationship question answers itself
- Craving pushes away what you want
- What you can’t love in your partner you can’t love in yourself
Key Quotes
“One of the main reasons I think that we find ourselves attracted to certain people and we find ourselves married to certain people is that we have an instinctual way of finding the person who can trigger us the best.”
“If we take responsibility for anybody’s happiness or give our responsibility for our own happiness to anybody… that kills a relationship.”
“Every fight can be resolved with one and or both people saying oh I’m gonna love you unconditionally even in this situation here, let me take the time to see you.”
“I highly recommend never compromising… because that always builds up resentment.”
“My ability to be patient and loving and caring towards every aspect of Tara is a direct reflection of my capacity to be loving and patient with the aspects of myself. Period.”
“If you fully mourn it you’re not going to replicate the relationship. If you fully allow yourself to feel the sadness and the heartbreak and the hurt it will increase your capacity to love in the future.”
Transcript
one of the main reasons I think that we find ourselves attracted to certain people and we find ourselves married to certain people is that we have a instinctual way of finding the person who can trigger us the best welcome to the art of accomplishment where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease I’m Brett kisler here today with my co-host Joe Hudson hey Brett Hey Joe good to see you man yeah good morning so we’ve been getting a lot of questions from people about relationships and people are kind of asking what should they do now what how do they tell if they’re in the right relationship how do they know when to dive in and when to pull back how do they know whether or not they’re coming from their feelings or whether they’re coming from their trauma and yeah we haven’t had an episode yet on relationships in particular and Jessica we’re talking about romantic relationships are we talking about like all relationships yeah well you know what let’s let’s go into romantic relationships but I think it applies to all relationships most of it applies to to close relationships I would say yeah you know maybe not like acquaintances but most of it will apply to like the bosses that we keep working for or whatever parents yeah great let’s do that let’s keep it focused on the Romantic great great and I think one of the reasons for that is that the the context of these closest relationships including the Romantic relationships involves a lot of spiritual growth a lot of personal development a lot of our own our own stuff comes up and it’s a container in which we get to experience and recreate a lot of our patterns and work through through them and you know that the same isn’t necessarily true in a lot of work relationships on some levels it is but to some extent you know there’s something special about the Romantic relationship that more often comes up and people have very specific questions about it yeah I’d say more agreement is on that it’s true that there’s more agreement like how we can work on our stuff here together that there’s not I’m not I don’t need to be a professional that I can actually work on my stuff here yeah great let’s do it relationships what’s what’s a good starting question here a good place to start would be sort of to to lay out the the framework of what a romantic relationship actually is and where it comes from what brings us into them what attracts us to them what kinds of relationships we’re attracted to and that’s a pretty fractal multi-question right there yeah so it’s interesting because you said something earlier about like am I coming into this relationship out of a healthy thing or am I coming out of into this relationship and the trauma I would say there that I don’t think that question is relevant meaning that the people that we’re attracted to that we find ourselves in relationships with are people who hook into our particular trauma our particular projections our particular patterns perfectly and so if we have a long-term relationship you can pretty much be sure that that’s those two patterns interlock kind of perfectly and and so that’s one of the main reasons I think that we find ourselves attracted to certain people and we find ourselves married to certain people is that we have a instinctual way of finding the person who from one perspective can trigger us the best and on on another perspective I would say uh has the biggest opportunity for our healing Mutual healing and so that seems to be why people become attracted to one another is to solve that thing and the other way I would put that is if you take a look at like young children young children get taught what love is in a particular way love is associated with shame or love is associated with you know authoritarianism or love is associated with money or love is associated with food or that creates certain patterns certain ways in which they’re trying to get the love certain ways in which they’re scared of getting the rejection and however that pattern gets saddened or created that’s what you’re gonna find somebody in your romantic relationship that holds us the other side of that pattern is why you hear so many people talk about things like oh my gosh she’s so much my husband is so much like my father my husband is so much like my my mother or my wife is so much like my father it’s it’s that there’s often times we’re recreating those patterns so that they can be healed or at least that’s the opportunity the opportunity is you get to heal patterns if both people are willing to do the work yeah I I notice that there’s a way of seeing this as a feature or a bug yeah and like oh no I just keep getting to the same relationships I’m just keep dating my mother or my father and there’s something wrong with that and that makes there’s something wrong with me or right what I see you also pointing to is that there’s there’s an opportunity to heal these things as an opportunity to feel the feelings that haven’t been felt yet yes and this is perhaps one of the distinctions with a romantic relationship as far as consensus agreement versus say a boss is that at least in a romantic relationship that’s the place where culturally we expect to be most accepted as we actually are right and we have we tend to develop the most interdependence which is not Universal codependence or dependence yes and I okay and I would question and but this is for a different podcast I have a question the non-consensuality of a job but you know I think that we are all responsible for our own decisions I mean the consensual reality of what people agree is the purpose of a romantic relationship versus what people tend to culturally agree is the purpose of a work relationship that’s a great question because I think a lot of people think that the agreement behind a relationship is that we’re here to make each other happy and I think that’s terminal I think that that that kills a relationship I think my experience is that that not only kills a relationship but it also allows us to lose ourselves and others it creates a tremendous amount of pain if we take responsibility for anybody’s happiness or give um our responsibility for our own happiness to anybody and all the subtle and not so subtle ways that that happens and I think that that’s the particularly in in societies where romantic love that crushy feeling in the first three months where you have that crushy feeling and you get that feeling of massive oxytocin and oh and then you’re like wait being with that person makes me feel this way and then obviously that goes away after about three to five months and then wait what’s happening why are they making me happy anymore and then everybody starts doing things to try to make the other person happy and has expectations of that and then that’s where all the trauma shows up so I think if if you’re actually in a relationship where both people are saying okay we’re here primarily to use a relationship as a way to create our own freedom to make ourselves happy ourselves and to be kind and supportive to one another then that’s going to be a relationship that’s successful unfortunately most relationships I think in our society consciously or subconsciously are more in the in the vein of okay I’m here to make them happier they’re here to make me happy and that’s my job in the relationship and they’re not making me happy so they need to change there’s a lot of that like trying to get each other to change in a relationship which is just yeah brutal I wonder what it’s like to go into a relationship with uh with the agreement of you know this like relationships are meant to make us feel warm and fuzzy for a time so that we build attachment and connection and then push our buttons yes that’s right yeah and when my buttons get pushed that’s exactly what I’m here for and I’m here to heal my own buttons not yours and I’m here for my own transformation not for years you can see that metaphor play out completely in the sexual relationship too where if you’re having a sexual relationship where it’s all about pleasing the other person it’s going to be horrible sex if it’s all about pleasing yourself that’s also going to be horrible sex but you can’t exclude the fact that you’re there for your pleasure they’re there for their pleasure and the only person responsible for your pleasure can be you there’s nobody else who can know what you need or what you want or how to be with you I mean you’re you’re the authority in that and it’s the same with healing inside of a relationship yeah and with and with growth yeah um I’ve seen and I’ve experienced this before in my relationships where each partner or one partner feels like they are responsible for the other’s growth yeah or in somehow in some manner guiding it or in some manner more equipped to to facilitate it and that just stifles things immediately yeah uh that’s that’s hell that’s absolute hell yeah Tara and I definitely went through that phase it was brutal yeah and full of arrogance and hubris and and distraction from your own and among a whole bunch of other things yeah right and so this this comes back to you know in the process of getting into a relationship there’s this possible having this like consent this agreement that like what relationships are for how like this desire to have for each of us to to use the relationship for our own freedom and our own growth and part of that might even be not requiring the other person to have that same agreement just that’s just the way that you live individually and that’s the way that you show up in relationships and I would like that to be true I don’t know if it is I don’t think I’ve ever really seen any relationship get through the bottoms unless both people have agreed to the fact that they’re there for their personal growth they might make it as far as they stay but it’s dead inside you know they might be married for 50 years but it’s just like brutal and cold and unfulfilling yeah but if I don’t know of any relationship I’m just tracking right now I can’t speak to any relationship that I have found that is like healthy and rewarding and fulfilling and that changes with the you know the multiple marriages that we all go through over 20 or 30 years or 40 years that hasn’t had the agreement that we are here like that it’s not about changing the other person it’s about our own personal growth and how do we be with ourselves be better people or better people’s not right but learn how to be more and more of ourselves yeah I think that that comes to that brings up a common sticking point that can happen around this work when when somebody discovers a practice like this or discovers any kind of path that is that they’re finding really helpful for their healing and for their growth and then they start to feel like their partner is not on board with it and they might be like okay well now I need you to agree that we’re reaching this for our own freedom and you need to be in so there can still be sort of a trying to change them to make them the one that wants to use the relationship for their freedom and support each other in that yeah and yeah also how yeah absolutely people that I see that all the time where people start discovering something themselves and and I would say out of a deep love and care they want their partner to join them but also out of a desire to be happy like oh if they change I’ll be happy that’s the thing it’s like if you think that your partner is going to do anything that makes you happy like if you have the fantasy that oh if they become this and this and that they’ll make me happy that’s like an absolute illusion it’s not how it works it it doesn’t mean that being with certain people would be more conducive to thriving than other people right it doesn’t mean that you should be with the partner and just learn how to endure it all I’m not I’m not saying that but we’re responsible for our own happiness nobody else can take control of that nobody else can provide that for us and the more clear that gets the more likely you are or I think it’s a foregone conclusion the more you will be in healthy relationships let’s scroll back a little bit to to the process of getting into a relationship from this framing from this perspective of yeah you know relationships are a path to my growth I can I can use relationships to make myself happy at the same time that my partner is making themselves happy and that we are both co-creators and co-conspirers of our of our own individual yeah agency and autonomy and growth and developing a healthy interdependence and not codependence knowing that we’re attracted to relationships that are mirroring our own traumas in some sense or matching them a lot of people have a question have a wondering about like well how do I know if what I’m getting into is healthy if I know that if I if I can just assume that with the relationships I’m getting into are based on my trauma patterns how do I tell if that’s going to be healthy or if that’s just going to re-traumatize me and re recreate the situation reprove my my belief system so let me back up off of that question for a second and so that I can answer it more precisely so I have had the really lovely um experience of several times being with people on their kind of their first date either being in the booth next to them at a restaurant or showing people who might have interest in one another like showing up and being with them for the first time that they’re meeting and if you’re listening to it the right way it’s like a contract negotiation where they’re like giving each other pieces of information about each other and they’re telling themselves how they’re going to act and so like in both cases where I got to experience this I got to from the outside I got to say oh I know exactly how that relationship’s gonna go like you can see the entire thing in the first couple moments and so first date or two and there’s like all these subtle agreements that are being made subconsciously or not fully consciously and so just to say that like whether we’re conscious of it or not we’re that wise in it you know it’s like we might not be knowing how we’re handling like our heart palpitations and our and our breath and exercise we’re not engineering it but we’re taking care of it I think the same thing is happening I have seen the same thing to happen on two occasions every occasion I’ve gotten to see it where people are on their first date so there’s this beautiful subconscious intelligence at work that’s the first part of that which I think is really important the second part is am I attracted to this person because of my trauma or am I attracted to this person because it’ll be healing both you’re going to re-traumatize yourself in the relation every marriage re-traumatizes some of the things that we learned from our early childhood and every relationship has the potential to or not just management any kind of long-term relationship has the the chance to heal us from our traumas both of their case the easiest thing to say is if you guys both agree that we’re here to work do the work to find our own freedom then you’re going to get a lot more of the healing and a lot less of the re-traumatizing if there’s no agreement like that and one person’s like in full blame mode full change the other person full defense mode then you’re going to get a lot more re-traumatization that that’s just how it is I think it’s a false pretext to say is this the right person for me that I’m attracted to the right thought process is oh I am attracted to this person therefore they are that they do have that kind of Click they have that thing in them that that attracts the part of me that needs to be healed are we gonna do that or are we gonna are we gonna be you know unconscious in this relationship I think that’s that’s the way to tell the difference is the person willing to do the work yeah and then then there’s the open question of is the lesson for me in this relationship to let more love in and open up and let down my defenses or is it to draw boundaries and and you know decide what I don’t see the separation in those two things those are the same thing in my world yeah I see that I guess as a more like a common question where it’s like that’s a common question yeah there’s definitely something for me to learn in this relationship and it’s the thing for me to learn to dive into it or is a thing for me to learn to walk away from it because I’m having feelings and trying to interpret them right so there’s this kind of age-old question in all spiritual growth and this and the way you’re posing it right now is kind of the relational version of that question but the non-relational version of that question is if I am truly at peace I should be able to live on top of a disco and be it peace and if I’m truly at peace why on Earth would I live on top of a disco right it’s like that that’s kind of like so do I move or do I stay on top of the Disco that’s kind of the question and and so the thing that I disagreed with in the first phrasing and and that I didn’t hear in the second phrasing was you know do I open my heart and stay open and the answer to that is always yes and the question of boundaries is do I need to draw a boundary so that I can maintain that open heart and so I can maintain that unconditional love or do I need to look at my own experience to be able to maintain that unconditional love to maintain that open heart and even that is somewhat of a false dichotomy and the fact that oftentimes it’s both the other part of it that’s kind of a false dichotomy is that thinking that the drawing the boundary is more about the other person meaning um so somebody for instance is you got a boyfriend and six months in the boyfriend lies to you now there’s certain people who would be like yeah I’m done we’re finished there’s not even a question and there’s other people who would put up with it because of all these other cool things but then two years down the line they’re just tired of the line and so they’re like should I be good with the line or should I draw the boundary with the line and the truth is drawing the boundary about the line is really a version of learning oh I don’t have to accept line in my life it’s internal work more than it is external work the external saying of it is just a way to affirm the internal realization that I don’t have to live with somebody lying to me and it doesn’t help me Thrive and it doesn’t help them thrive and so in a way it’s all internal work sometimes it’s drawing a boundary and sometimes it’s leaving so there’s that false dichotomy between is it my problem or their problem that’s the false dichotomy it’s always about you being responsible for your own happiness you know that that speaks to the the process of of healing in a relationship and that which leads to showing up in a different way which leads to leads to drawing boundaries leads to opening your heart leads to yeah taking actions and being taking on ways of being that you’ve never had before and allowing your partner to do to do that allowing your partner to change into something you’ve never seen them be before seen anybody be before in your relationship with you yeah and so that’s a continuous process of feeling helplessness and grieving whatever a relationship was whatever our identity was in relationship yes and I think that that also paradoxically keeps is what keeps the relationship fresh and keeps the spice going absolutely there’s like that the NRE the new relationship energy that often is considered to die off after a certain period of time and in my experience it comes right back every time a relationship goes through a big move and a big healing process and becomes redefined and open and more more accepting and more aware of more parts of both people yeah I think it’s a more grounded version of than new relationship energy every time is my experience but yeah it keeps it fresh and alive and yeah it’s a beautiful way to say it and one of the reasons that relationships in particular are so we take them so personally is because we suffer under the illusion that the other person’s actions or reactions are going to affect us more you know with like an inordinate amount of pressure so to speak so meaning oh if he quits his job then what does it mean for me oh if she um you know becomes a vegan what does it mean to me right like and so we’re constantly monitoring the person’s change on the other side and what it’s how it’s going to affect our life more profoundly we’re monitoring what they’re doing and how it’s going to affect our identity and also we’re moderated to see if they’re going to hold us in place or not hold us in place right so oh wow you’re going through something that makes it that you don’t want to caretake me anymore but then who the going to take care of me because I’ve created my whole system to create caretakers you know I’ve I’ve created a system where I gained helplessness and I’m weak and a victim and therefore I find people who want to take care of me so if you stop taking care of me then I’m gonna have to become empowered but really I feel that caretaking is love so now I feel unloved and you know it goes like that and it’s very you know we get very scared by what the other person’s growth typically and so there’s a lot of pressure we’ll we’ll exert a lot of pressure and get very angry over it um typically or or sad or whatever we’ll we’ll use every tool in the tool book to try to keep the person in the place where we feel safe it’s interesting to see the pattern where often in a relationship where somebody is afraid of being held back or of holding back they’re also the same person is also doing doing the disempowering for themselves and the other or or bidding for the disempowerment that’s right totally it is and the other thing is that like all these fights that we get into in our relationships they’re all you can all you can break them down to pretty much the same basic thing it’s like one person feels unseen and or but so both people feel unseen in that moment or feel unheard unseen you know not grocked not respected some version of that then there’s a desire to change the other person and that’s that is like the quintessential part of all fights and that somebody’s closed or both people have closed down their heart and said oh I’m not going to be open so every fight can be resolved with one and or both people saying oh I’m gonna love you unconditionally even in this situation here let me take the time to see you let me make sure that I’m seeing you correctly let me sure make sure that I understand what you need to be respected and I’m not going to try to change you anymore if like you flip that switch in a fight the fight goes away it might take a while to go away and that’s why I said so most people in that when they’re in that fight they do this they’re like yeah I’m not gonna open to my heart until they open their heart I’m not gonna I’m not gonna see them until I’m seen like I’m always the one who’s seen them I’m always the one who’s I need a partner that does the work yeah exactly oh that version right as if it’s like saying hey I’m not going to be free until they’re free like what the hell it makes no sense from this perspective like like oh if I drop my needing to be seen if I drop my closeness if I lower the armor that’s my freedom I get that no matter what the if the person’s yelling if the person’s like I get that and my freedom might be to leave my freedom might be to draw a boundary but I get my freedom and why would I care this is that that Focus you know the focus on self like and then they have to make their choice they get to make that choice they so yeah that’s the fascinating piece is just that every one of the fights I don’t care I’ve never seen a fight that isn’t basically about that in a relationship yeah and then if you do find your freedom then you’re giving your partner an opportunity to love you in your freedom which will do things for them as well yeah and unless you have somebody with like a severe psychological disorder when you show up and you listen to them and you unconditionally love them and you hear them they won’t continue to react the same way towards you they will change they will oh I feel seen I feel safe and then they will show up more loving they will listen better they will want to meet you there yeah it might take them 20 minutes but they’ll want to right or or even a few weeks or however much time it takes yeah exactly yeah and another thing that this points to about this you know being in relationships where there’s there’s an agreement that each is in it for their own freedom and supportive of one another yeah um there can then become a level of well what does that mean and what are the tools and I see this be a common thing where somebody gets on to some path of like what works for them and I’ve seen this happen with somebody who gets really into psychedelics and then the other partner doesn’t or somebody gets really into uh into this work into a few art of accomplishment type work or somebody who gets into whatever is out there and then the other partner doesn’t necessarily agree that that’s their path and then the argument is not about that we’re here for both of our freedom but the argument is about what path to Freedom actually is and then you’re trying to change him yeah I mean Tara went a completely separate way for a decade you know I know I’ve talked on this thing about her making fun of my path and you don’t get to control that in another person but the best approach in that is to learn what their path is what does happen sometimes is people are like that’s not my path but they’re not doing any path they’re not doing any work you know that like like therapy is not my path that’s not my path I I’m just reading books and and intellectualizing and that’ll be my path and but you’re not seeing the growth and so then address that issue then the issue is like hey I don’t see the I don’t see whatever you’re doing being effective like I don’t see you living up to your side of the agreement which is you know working on your own freedom and so I think that that’s more of the the thing to try to get somebody else to do it but there is a subsection of this let’s take it out of transformation for a moment where it’s like I am clear that I want to be non-monogamous and that’s what I need to do for you know or I am clear that I need to try to start a billion dollar company and that’s what I need to do and the other person’s like I am clear I don’t want to be in a non-monogamous relationship or I am clear that I don’t want you to have a boyfriend or I’m clear that I don’t want to be the wife of a or husband of a you know multinational CEO there’s something in that which is really fascinating and I think that that’s basic misnomer there is that people think and those are big ones we can do small ones too which is like I’m clear that like I don’t want to do the dishes and I’m clear that I don’t want to live with someone who doesn’t do the dishes right I’m clear I want to wake up at eight in the morning and meditate with my partner or yeah yeah it’s unclear that the kids should have a certain schedule right yeah exactly and so in that one would usually be one person compromises or both people compromise and I’m going to use that word really specifically like to compromise meaning that I am going to neglect some aspect of myself to make you happy and I highly recommend never doing that I highly recommend never doing that because that always builds up resentment there’s always now now you’re walking around the house going I can show these three parts of myself but not these two parts of myself I can’t say this thing I gotta walk on eggshells all this other weight and friction comes into the rather than saying okay like what we’re going to do now is we’re going to figure out a way that you get your needs met and I get my needs met and we’re going to be smart enough to do that and we’re going to commit to doing that and if for whatever reason that can’t be done which in my experience never can’t be done then okay then maybe the relationship’s not right for us and let’s admit that let’s get there but neither of us are sacrificing we’re both going to get our needs met and we’ll find a way to do it and there’s always a way like okay we’re gonna get someone to come in and do the dishes or we can do the dishes at like seven o’clock at night together or we’re using I would hate to say this but disposable recyclable and put it all in the compost or what um there’s a thousand solutions to every problem and if you’re not in a power struggle with the person if you’re not trying to get them to change there’s always the solution yeah I think a part of that is seeing seeing the others needs or the others stated needs as not threats but as something that points to a deeper need that’s because then you can kind of climb down the ladder of apparent needs into what’s actually needed which tends to become sort of the same thing the need for the need for safety the need for autonomy the need for connection yeah beautifully seen and and that is why the job is to constantly keep an open right is to not to not armor up and think you’re under attack to see that you can only really be attacked on something that you’re thinking is is bad about yourself like oh I like I want you to get your needs met of course I do and I want my my needs to get mad and how do we do both is the open-hearted approach as compared to no I can’t I will not do that and the crazy thing is it’s like I see this in you know no I will not have a non-monogamous relationship if you have that boundary that’s fantastic I love that boundary but it is so much different than saying oh I really hear that you’re sexually unsatisfied in the marriage and I want you to be sexually satisfied in the marriage and I’m not okay with us having relationships outside or I’m not okay with us not having relationships outside of the marriage as long as we’re not connected or whatever the boundary is like it’s so much different than I won’t do that right I won’t do that as this armored defensive and then saying oh I can really acknowledge and see your needs and I really want you to get your needs met and oh by the way this scares the out of me because I think we’re about to get a divorce because you have a need that I’m not going to be able to fulfill I hear a vulnerability of okay these are my needs these are your needs there’s openness to that this might not actually be a match and that we can’t both get them met at the same time and there’s an open-heartedness to really looking for where that correspondence might be yeah and ultimately once again going back to that original principle of each of us is in it for our own freedom and in support of each other’s Freedom yeah which means if I have a need my need doesn’t necessarily like my need doesn’t need to become a control pattern upon you correct yeah that’s it my need becomes something that I inquire into myself and from vulnerably share my process in and it’s my responsibility to get that need met yeah and the other part about like this I think about relationships like we first talked about like the like if you think about like standing upright and having your arms out like in a cross most poetry most stuff is most art is written about like the arms of the relationship the beginning and the end and we’re talking right now about the body of the relationship which is kind of where most of the self-help books hang out and the thing about that body of the relationship is it’s if you I’ll tell you in a story which was working with a client and the client was saying how um she felt like she was being attacked all the time by her husband and I was like yeah so who gives a and she I remember her looking at me like what I’m like yeah but like so he’s attacking you if you are different than your authentic self because of an attack they’ve won he’s won you’re like the only thing that you have to focus on is being authentic in the face of that attack because otherwise like you’re already out of yourself you’ve already you know like lost so to speak so how do you want to be in the face of this attack if it’s true even which most likely not true it’s most likely the way it kind of works in relationships is someone thinks they have something to defend that other person sees that defense as an attack they think they have something to defend and then the first person sees that defense as an attack and both people thinking they’re defending themselves and both people feeling attacked that’s typically how it works and and then creating an attack by doing something like like not being their authentic self right in the face of an attack which then makes the other partner feel more disconnected more abandoned that’s right so it’s like oh yeah great they’ve attacked you so how do you want to be and I’ve never seen somebody deeply get in contact with that and say okay yeah what I want to do is be closed down they might say that they want to draw a boundary they might say oh what I want is to is to say oh I don’t want to be treated like this or you know please stop yelling at me if you have to keep on yelling at me then I’m gonna leave and I’m happy to come back when you’re not yelling at me lots of ways to handle it but I’ve never heard anybody say authentically what I want to do is I want to like shut down an attack that’ll feel great wow being defensive feels freaking great I want to be more defensive with my husband I’ve never seen like the marriage that I want is uh 55 more defensive and uh you know like it’s just it’s not what’s right that’s true for us that’s the the thing and and it reminds me of this other story I love this story it was um Tara and I saw a therapist uh years years back in and he had this story which I loved which was he was working with the client and the client went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and started to pee and missed the toilet and he noticed a thought the first thought he had was God damn it she moved the toilet and in that moment he had this recognition like oh crap I’m totally holding her responsible for everything like none of it’s her job and it kind of kind of saw through this whole thing of he was like blaming his whole life on his wife do you want a life where you’re blaming somebody else for your own happiness no nobody wants it and yet here we are finding ourselves in this in the middle of a relationship and just that acknowledgment of this isn’t the way that we want to be with each other this is the way we want to be with each other that’s huge and so we’ve we’ve talked now about sort of the beginning of the relationship and the kinds of agreements and the kinds of the sort of a consensual reality in the in a relationship for for growth and for Freedom we’ve talked a lot about the body and now what if you do this work and yeah you find oh you know what this this relationship has played its course yeah and what we’re actually looking for is something different or what I’m looking for is something different or my partner left me and they are shutting down and I feel powerless and how do I stay connected to them while they’re shutting down to me before I get there one one of the things I’ll just say about the middle of the relationship too is that one of the things to just look for in a relationship is there’s a lot of places where somebody thinks they want something and they have so much craving for it that they’re actually pushing it away that can be like a jealousy if you find yourself in a relationship where you have the strong desire for something and you keep on trying to get it and you can’t get it then it’s really great to acknowledge that you’re actually pushing it away which means subconsciously you’re not ready for it don’t want it haven’t admitted what it’s going to do to your identity some version of that I just think that’s a really good like little helpful hint for people who find themselves like I just want this I want this so badly and I can’t get it here it’s like to know that that energy is actually pushing that away from you which means that there’s some way in which you haven’t fully accepted your desire for it and and willingness to receive it yeah it seems to apply across the across the board to Cravings yeah yeah the Deep Cravings yeah so on the end of the relationship the ending of the relationship is often like the most productive time in a relationship if you’re approaching it like this is a spiritual growth thing and so what I’ve seen the great story I have on this is that you know the first time I experienced it I had a friend who had the love of his life had been in the longest relationship which at the time was 11 months or something and he was like perennial Bachelor until he was 40 or something anyway he was in this situation and at the time he was overweight drinking too much his business was failing had this breakup had lost himself quite a bit in the relationship had this breakup and we had this conversation about like hey this is a great time if you can mourn it and so he had this long drive he was doing restoration work and he had this long drive across Arizona every day and not every day every week and he would cry and mourn the whole time there and back and then you know two months later it was crying mourn for a couple hours there and back and then and six months later he wasn’t drinking too much he was in shape he was had he was running a successful business he got new contracts he at his entire world had changed and when I asked him about like how did that work a couple things that he said that were exceptional one is because oh my God no idea I could make sounds like that you know when I was mourning I had no idea and the other thing was he said you know I started my mourning the relationship but then I mourned everything that got me into the relationship all the trauma all the all the patterns that got me into that relationship I I could mourn and move through them and and that’s the opportunity in the end of a relationship is if you fully mourn it you’re not going to replicate the relationship if you fully allow yourself to feel the sadness and the Heartbreak and the hurt it will increase your capacity to love in the future and it will mandate a deeper form a more connected form of love from the next relationship you’ll be attracted to different people and so there’s this huge opportunity in a breakup to allow that morning to occur and to and to move through all those difficult emotions and embrace them and love them it’s like a gigantic opportunity rather than dismiss it and that includes the person breaking up and the person being broken up with or whatever or even the people around them you know mourning the morning the identity of the couple and the way that they related to them um and one of the things that seems to be just like a really common factor when when I see people or in my life after a breakup remain friends or be really close friends or even decide that they actually want to stay together but just in a completely different form of relationship the factor there is that they’ve actually grieved it fully yes that’s right and those who have not done that are the ones who are continuing to hold the bitterness and get into another relationship just like it yeah that’s exactly right that’s that’s exactly the pattern that I see in the world I think the other and the front end of breaking up with somebody is this moment should I break up with them or should I stay with them it’s like that crazy moment that people have and my response to that is almost always the same which is why don’t you just be fully who you are and it it ends it ends and if it doesn’t it doesn’t like it’s the same thing I tell people we’re thinking about quitting a job it’s like how like there’s all these ways that you have stopped being yourself in the relationship why don’t you just be yourself in the relationship and if it becomes a dumpster fire it’s a dumpster fire you’re done anyways and if it doesn’t become a dumpster fire and it has like something like 70 80 percent of the time the relationship heals just from that just from people showing up and saying this is how I want to be you know love it or leave it but I’m not gonna defend myself I’m just gonna be me and I hope you share I hope you don’t or whatever it is like it doesn’t matter it’s just like my job is just being me here and not being defensive about it and it’s incredible how much that changes yeah yeah and inauthenticity is the source of a lot of the pain all of the pain really that’s correct yeah and usually the person on the other side is more attracted more excited more eager to be involved after you know whatever one to six months of you know pushing up against the the oh no wait no wait this isn’t what we agreed to you know that kind of stuff but it it’s amazing how often that works and and if it doesn’t work then as far as keeping a relationship alive it definitely works as far as teaching people how to be themselves in the next relationship it works as far as creating a more amicable split up and all that stuff yeah and then the final piece I just see to mention here is that it can be a journey to be fully authentic in a relationship and to hold somebody to being fully authentic in a relationship isn’t loving them as they are in their journey and the same is true for yourself that’s right yeah I mean I don’t I don’t think that Journey ever ends I hope it doesn’t I hope I continue to find ways to be more authentic and and more more supporting of myself and others I think that’s the other piece is that I think is really critical is that anything that you can’t love about your partner anything that you want to change about your partner the most useful thing to know about that stuff is that’s something you can’t love about yourself it’s something that you have no flexibility in yourself it’s something that you judge yourself for or would judge yourself for my ability to be patient and loving and caring towards every aspect of Tara is a direct reflection of my capacity to be loving and patient with the aspects of myself period and so I think that’s a really important way to look at it there’s nothing that you’re there’s nothing that the other person has in them that you don’t have in you and that you there’s no way it’s like I really love their this but I can’t love it in myself or vice versa it’s not how it works yeah and it’s the people who love themselves who tend to also be the most attractive yes and definitely the most they create the healthiest relationships yeah like I’ve never seen like two people who just like deeply love themselves and can accept themselves who who are like in a just diabolically horrible dysfunctional relationship like you just think about you can’t even imagine it and so yeah exactly and the other thing to say about that I think for some people that’s a little scary like oh I’m gonna love myself there’s some fear if I do that then you know I’ll be non-ambitious or I’ll be evil or I’ll be there’s a there’s a slew of things that look around see if you can find anybody who truly loves themselves and is evil or truly loves themselves and is like you know non-ambitious like self-care and all that stuff doesn’t go away with self-love oh beautiful I think this is a great place to wrap it up yeah man that was good I I could see us having a whole nother podcast on on relationships I feel like we could uh delve in deeper oh you know it’d be cool maybe we do it with you and um and Alexa yeah I’d love to interviewed me on that thing that would be really cool to have like three-way conversation that’d be fun yeah let’s do that next time okay awesome all right thanks Brett all right good to see you you too bye thanks for listening to the art of accomplishment if you enjoyed what you heard today please subscribe and rate US on your podcast app we’d love your feedback so feel free to send us questions or comments you can reach out to us join our newsletter or check out our courses at Art of accomplishment.com thank you