Summary
Joe and Brett explore the art of fighting well in relationships — how conflict can become a vehicle for deep growth, intimacy, and healing rather than a source of destruction. Joe shares the journey behind his YouTube series on fighting, which grew from a moment when co-facilitators witnessed him and Tara fight and didn’t even recognize it as a fight.
The conversation covers the full arc of how couples learn to fight: from avoidance or abuse, through learning tools (which often get weaponized), through constant processing, to eventually seeing fights as opportunities to heal trauma. Joe distinguishes productive fighting from cycling — if you can look back on a fight with pride days later, it’s working. They discuss how partners are always perfectly matched, why knowing you can leave is essential to loving, and how the logical/emotional partner dynamic masks deeper patterns. Joe shares how a painful period of fighting years into his marriage ultimately destroyed his subtle narcissism — a gift he wouldn’t trade for anything.
Key Concepts
- Every fight can bring you closer together
- Naming “I’m in my trauma” transforms conflict
- There is no right or wrong, only perspectives
- Loving presence must be embodied, not performed
- You must know you can leave to truly love
- The logical vs emotional partner dynamic is a trap
- Painful fights can destroy subtle narcissism
- Disdain, not fighting, signals a dead relationship
Key Quotes
“I can’t wait to have a fight because every one is this opening and becoming more of ourselves.”
“If you can’t look back on that fight with pride then you’re cycling, you’re re-traumatizing.”
“There is no unconditional love without empowerment. There is no real empowerment without unconditional love.”
“I guarantee you — if you have been with a person for more than a year, you are equally advanced. Your trauma is so well matched it’s unbelievable.”
“It’s really hard to love something that you think is oppressing you.”
“The part of yourself that you’re holding back from the relationship is the part that needs to be healed in the relationship.”
Transcript
I can’t wait to have a fight because everyone is this opening and and becoming more of ourselves and it requires each person to learn how to fall into non-defensively it’s so good when you can move from no that’s not yeah yeah you’re right I see that or you’re right I see how you can see that I see how that reality is true for you and and mine is true for me and I’m not saying yours is wrong or mine is right for most of my life anytime that I would imagine an amazing relationship the the first thing that I’d think of or first image that would come to mind is like an elderly couple sitting in the park sweetly holding hands seemingly on the other side of whatever whatever challenges life brought them and just being there with each other and as I started to have relationships of my own they were typically anything but that except for maybe in some of the early early parts of the relationship where it’s just like oh wow everything’s going so perfectly because we’re being exactly who we think the other one needs us to be for as long as that will last right exactly with With a Little Help from some love chemicals thrown in the mix from the from that first three months of euphoria Crush yeah yeah yeah and and also you know we we start to recognize that there’s you know some of the best sex we ever have is like after a good fight and like what the hell is that about yeah yeah and so yeah you just recently recorded some YouTube videos a series basically about relationships and how to fight well in relationships and I’d love to go into that today yeah that would be fantastic yeah that Journey with the YouTube was quite a thing you know we decided to do this YouTube channel and so I did it the way that I normally do it is I I research how do you do a YouTube channel and I spoke to all these people and we were lucky enough to know some YouTubers who’ you know done a tremendous amount and they all told us how to do it and these are the ways to make the videos and hear your options and blah blah blah blah and and what I normally do is I just follow everybody’s advice until we we we kind of nailed it enough to go oh this is what they meant we’re doing it and and then I usually say oh now what do I need to do to make this feel like it’s really good for me not for anybody else not for like what what would I be really proud of and that’s when it dawned on me uh this summer in August actually it dawned on me what I would like to do is really do a teaching in a video that is not like Alisal right usually YouTube a teacher is like hey here are three things that going to make you more productive you know and and and I was like what if we just talk about all the things and we take our time with it and we do like five six minutes on each of the things and I think we did how to fight we I know we did how to fight and there’s 20 maybe 22 teachings just about how to fight on that YouTube channel and then it was really cool because once that was done we said oh we could make a course out of this like so anybody who’s done the connection course could do this course about how to fight for free as long as they had this tools of the connection course we could just give it away and and like create exercises that flow into it so anybody who’s done the connection course could watch these videos and then have these exercises and they could do it as a couple and we thought wow that’s it was such a neat thing when you find that expression that feels fully yours and I don’t know if YouTube is going to like it at all you know like YouTube might hate this but I I I was so proud of it watching it I was like this is this is what I want to be doing so that was was a really cool experience let’s find out yeah Perfection let’s find out yeah exactly let’s find out um anyway so yeah so I I totally diverged there what what was your question you yeah so what what made this something you wanted to talk about in the first place what made what made this the topic of this whole YouTube project for example yeah um well the thing that brought it top of mind to remember how important it was was recently it was right before ground Breakers we’re doing this really intense thing Taran and I you know it’s there’s always some tension and we had this fight in front of a couple of of the co- facilitators and ter and I we don’t hide our fights we’re just going to have a fight we’re going to have it and so we finished it and took about five minutes or something like that we looked at them said hey well we’re sorry that you had to sit there through this with us or something I’m not sure we even apologized but we said something to like wow that was must have been Intense or something and they were like that that was a fight what what what and that brought a top of Mind how important it is to to learn how to fight really well how to fight in such a way and when I yeah when I say really well what I mean is that you’re fighting in such a way that every fight brings you closer and you’re fighting in such a way that that you feel stronger better your personal growth has happened after your fights that it’s not something that is just a release of tension it’s not a sports game right often times people have tension they go to a sports game they yell they scream they feel better and there’s some benefit to that but the to do that in a fight can have a lot of destructive uh a lot of D destructive consequences and what’s far better is to know that every time you fight you get closer together every time you fight you get closer to yourself every time you fight you know how to be together in a way that’s what is is more loving more yourself more connected and and then the relationship itself becomes this growth opportunity becomes a spiritual path it becomes a self-development path or whatever you want to call it yeah before we get into more of how to fight well I’m curious what is how do you distinguish between fighting well where the relationships closer afterwards yeah or during during the fight from something like recreational fighting or cycling in it or fighting because we’ve learned that that’s what love looks like right so if we’re not fighting there must be something wrong like yeah how how would you how do you clarify that distinction for us yeah there’s a lot of ways if you are fighting over the same thing over and over again then you’re fighting isn’t healing then you might fight over the same thing three four five times as you’re working it out but every conversation is a little different every every fight is the fights aren’t abusive is another one you’re not going to make progress if you’re personal story about this Tara and I I remember we went to our therapist early on in the relationship and we were describing our fights and she’s like yeah that’s verbal abuse and we’re like that’s not verbal abuse that’s just what people do we we saw our parents do it like that that you just yell at each other like that and and she was like no that’s verbal abuse and we looked into Jo were like oh shit we’re verbally abusing each other and there’s you know there’s semantics with that and everything but what the way I would take it now is that we were trying to control each other with our anger so anytime that you’re trying to control somebody with the threat of something I would call that abusive and so we were we were abusive to each other and so that’s another way to just know and abuse would look like like things like taking anger out one another without permission it would excuse me anger would look like uh things that would be done things that are abusive would be things like yelling at each other without permission getting angry at each other without permission threatening threatening divorce threatening something in the future it would look like um any kind of physical violence obviously uh it would look like any kind of uh the way I would say one way to think about it is if you’ve lost yourself in the fight if you if at the end of the fight you’re like that what happened or that’s not how I want it to be or and I don’t mean right after the fight I mean two days three days after the fight if you can’t look back on that fight with pride then you’re cycling you’re you’re you’re re-traumatizing because what’s happening in the fight is typically when two people fight in a relationship and we go into this in other podcast I know you’re both in your trauma right so if a human being fought in fuah and they’re back in Ohio and and a car backfires they think they’re in fuia again if they have PTSD if they’re in their trauma we think that we’re kids again we think that we’re in old relationships again we’re not in that moment and so we are wildly reactive to one another’s statements I was just talking to a a person and they were talking about how they have two marriages and I think this a lot of people would relate to this one marriage is between them and one relationship is between their parents except for their so let’s say them is John and Nancy so one relationship is John and Nancy and one relationship is the father of Nancy and the mother of John and they’ve they’re literally seeing each other’s mother they’re seeing their own mother and their wife and seeing their own father and the husband they’re just in their trauma they’re not even in the reality that they they live in and they’re reacting that way and so if you’ve lost yourself like that if you’ve lost yourself in your trauma then you’re not you’re not fighting in a productive way those are some of the easy ways to know yeah so it sound it sounds like some on some level it is that you’re actually here in the fight you’re not back there correct in in the trauma correct there some there’s some way that what is happening now is actually right registering as a new experience with some neuroplasticity some window of Tolerance whatever ows it to transform and allow one another to see each other more clearly to see themselves more clearly yeah and and it doesn’t have to be 100% it can just be oh I’m in my trauma right now like I’m I I can’t I can’t be trusted in this fight right now I’m in my trauma I’ve said that dozens of times to terara she said it to me oh I’m in my trauma right now and then the other one can say oh right this isn’t you this isn’t actually how do I hold you how do I love you how do I how do I be with you in your trauma so it doesn’t ret traumatize and you can actually see what’s really going on and so it doesn’t have to be oh my God I’m starting to go into my trauma I have to run away from this fight that can be quite avoidant often times the way that we heal in the fights is by actually going into our trauma with somebody loving us and that that’s the opportunity in almost every major fight in almost every major fight one of the biggest opportunities that you can have is is somebody there loving you in your trauma someone there giving you what you couldn’t get when you when you first received that trauma that’s the opportunity that’s why so much growth is possible yeah so you you pointed to the possible avoidant way of saying I’m in my trauma right now and you know this is this can be a common pattern of when there’s a difficult conversation to be had I’m just going to state that I’m in my trauma and avoid it yeah yeah and and there’s different ways we can avoid we can also avoid with when you said X I felt blank and I made a story that whatever in such a way that is actually taking me away from my emotional experience rather than like inviting inviting the exploration of it yeah uh there’s lots of formulaic tricks and tools for relationships that can be helpful and can also be yeah I I cannot tell you how many times I have seen like what I call the New Age fight do you know what the new age fight right it’s they they’ve learned some even it could be view it could be any nonviolent communication it could be anything and they they’re fighting using it such as nonviolent communication where it’s really important to State your need somebody might be saying something like I really need you to stop right now that’s that’s not nonviolent communication so you can take any series of a a protocol and you can turn it into ways of fighting that are not productive yeah yeah so how how would I I think there seems to be kind of a journey that people follow through in their development where maybe they’re fighting unconsciously they’re not aware of the way that fighting can lead to growth or they’re they’re they’re just in the trauma and then there’s a stage where they’re like oh there’s actually there are practices there are tools there are framew works there are there are ways that we can relate to each other that lead to deeper connection and yeah that may even be a fight that leads us to deeper connection not not the only thing that leads us to deeper connection right yeah and then sometimes in that process people can get kind of stuck in a sort of like a cycle of forever processing yeah you know where sometimes they feel like any anytime they’re interacting with a partner they need to basically point out the most uncomfortable thing they can notice in the relationship at any time and then that ends up leading to focusing on little tiny things yeah yeah that make the relationship feel like Discord all the time somehow it feels processing because we’re talking about it all the time we’re stating our feelings yeah yeah you’re it’s like you’re looking at my photo album I don’t know that’s like you’re describing the history of of the way we fought so how how did how did you and Tera move through that how did how did that if I were just if I were just describing the first part of an arc what is the rest of the Arc of a relationship that learns to fight well and transforms through it yeah so they can start a little differently some people start the arc with we don’t fight at all and and we’re happy look we’re happy and it’s very um Stepford Wives is that what that you know that very Fake Plastic watering plant kind of world and so there’s and then some can start with like violent mean abusive fights so if we start with the mean abusive fights it’s usually it starts that way and then there’s some tools that they learn and they kind of start working a little bit but they really want to get that fight out and and the reason that that’s happening is because they’re not really addressing the underlying trauma they haven’t really seen what it’s like to heal might have felt a resolution once or twice but they haven’t really felt what it means to feel so they’re using the tools but they’re starting to co-op the tools and then there’s this constant processing as you talked about and that one usually involves trying to be each other’s therapist and you’re still trying to fix one another and one of the main things that you learn in fighting well is that you can only fix yourself you can put zero attention on fixing the other person you can put zero attention on their health their well-being their how do they how do they get better unless they ask you you focus fully on yourself and that’s a really important part of of fighting is that full focusing on yourself and then and then you start to have these moments where you can see through the fight and show up in a loving way which is the best way to be the therapist is being a non- therapist is just being loving and to be there loving with them and that’s when you start to realize that the that you’re dealing with trauma that you’re dealing with old patterns and conditionings and that your relationship is this opportunity to see through them and to heal those and then it’s game on I can’t wait to fight I can’t wait to have a fight because everyone is this way of of of opening and and becoming more of ourselves and it requires each person to learn how to fall into non-defensively how do I go from defensive to non-defensive really quickly and when you’ve done it two three four five times it’s really easy because it’s so cool it’s so good when you can move from no that’s not yeah yeah you’re right I see that I see or you’re right I see how you can see that I see how that reality is true for you and and mine is true for me and I’m not saying yours is wrong or mine is right so hu that’s that’s the trend yeah that’s the trend line yeah how how about the people who don’t fight yeah well unfortunately the most common trend line there is don’t fight don’t fight don’t fight don’t fight divorce don’t fight don’t fight I don’t know what happened I thought we were told happy and she just walked out is a lot you you hear that story a lot um but if it’s if it’s going into healing it just has the first step of we don’t fight and then then the fights are we’re having the fights but we’re not fighting about the real thing we’re fighting about the the dishes or the coffee machine and we’re not saying our full truth and so this is a really critical part is you have to say your full truth in a relationship you do it with an open heart you do it with kindness this isn’t I got to tell you my truth so I could get to right to be a complete asshole to you it’s not that it’s undefended Open Heart full truth even if it brings a fight because those are the fights that heal the one the the part of yourself that you’re holding back from the relationship is a part of yourself that needs to be healed in the relationship and so so that’s the next step so they do these small fights their skirmishes and they’re they’re but they aren’t about the real thing and then they start to learn how to speak their truth they speak their truth some of those fights might get a little while but it usually doesn’t last long for folks like that and then they go into the oh I can heal it maybe they’ll learn some skills maybe they’ll do the same thing where the skills are weaponized as the other group and then eventually they’ll see that the trauma is healable and then once you feel that once you see that three or four times you’re addicted it’s just it’s the best thing ever yeah we talked a little bit about how a lot of relational skills can be weaponized uh I’m also curious how like how how could being a loving presence itself be weaponized or be a defense and I I asked this because in I’ve had experiences in in in fights where I’m like okay I’m going to be a loving presence and my my partner will be like angry or Express something and I’ll just be like yeah I’m here with you in it but there’s some way that I’m actually not there’s some way that I’m actually like in in that place I’m sort of a vacuous amorphous non entity not meeting the person with my uh with my feelings with my truth and I’m just I’m here to hold space and it can be like the most frustrating thing it can be maddening to be in a relationship with somebody and really be showing up vulnerably which is what anger really can be and feel unmet in it when someone says yeah I’m just here and I’m loving you and there’s a difference between when that actually is real it seems like there’s like a difference between when someone’s like I’m I’m going to practice being a loving presence and my muscles are all tense and I’m holding them really tightly and I’m not feeling what I’m feeling right now and I’m smiling versus like fully allowing the Heartbreak that’s beautiful beautifully said I think you answered the question the the the Nuance is it can get a little confusing because there is a natural response to loving presences to bite it to get like to test it to are you really going to love me you’re not going to love me like they say something different but that’s really what’s happening they’re they’re poking and testing to see if that Love’s real if they’re really going to be loved and so sometimes that you’re just going to be just like just like the others just like exactly Mom and Dad yeah exactly so there’s sometimes where you show up in that loving presence and exactly it does exactly what it’s supposed to do it brings all that stuff to the surface to be loved which is the trauma because they’re in their trauma and they’re like oh there’s love I can I I’m safe enough to go into my trauma and be loved here and I I and I’m testing it and both of those things can be true and so if you’re a person who disassociates normally you can be pretty convinced wait I’m not loving them right so the first thing I would say is if you’re in loving presence it’s you to decide if you’re in loving presence or if it’s it’s not them to decide it it’s you do do you feel like you’re in your body or not and that’s the difference are you in your body or have you left your body are you fully in your head saying I’m loving presence are you transed out and then you’re being present in a way but not embodied and so it’s a very love to love somebody is a very embodied thing it’s literally to feel we’ve all had that moment with our maybe not all of us but many of us have had that moment with our wife or husband or boyfriend girlfriend where you look across the table and you’re just like oh whoa just love you that’s how it feels that’s how it feels when they’re raging that’s how it’s like it is an embodied feeling it is it is a pleasurable feeling that’s happening and you can’t force yourself into it what you can do is go into your trauma respect each other learn how to fight and then some trust builds something happens where you realize oh this is trauma this isn’t us this isn’t personal this is just weeding a garden and I can enjoy weeding a garden or I can hate it it’s my choice and then then some once it it’s it’s a blessing it’s blessing is a weird word because it has a a connotation of of religion but it’s a GI it’s a gift when that happens it’s not something you can particularly control you can just set the conditions for it you can just tend your soil yeah and speaking to that gift you were talking about how when when you are deeply loving the other person it is natural that more of their trauma will come up to test to test it to to see if that love is real and and so there’s there’s a way that this can happen where you get deeper into a relationship and you find more and more love for one another and it seems like things are getting worse on some level you’re like like you used to see me as like I couldn’t do anything wrong and you loved all of my quirks and now you see me as this like as your avoidant dad or you see me as something to fix like some problem like I’m just a project or all like and so there’s a way that that can be registered intellectually or even emotionally as the relationship is getting worse something’s falling apart when in reality something that can be happening is you’re going from talking about the dishes from fighting about the dishes to fighting about what’s actually real in your relationship to actually surfacing the fight that never got to be had in your early life and finally like finding a a place a relationship where that can be seen and actually loved in the way that it needs to be loved not in a prescribed way but in in an emergent way that shows up in the relationship exactly I can’t tell you how many times the following has happened I’m working with a couple or I I and I’m working with one person in a couple and they tell me something that happened in the relationship and they’re so distraught and I’m like oh good I cannot tell you because I see the progress that they’re making even though it feels like shit in that moment it’s it’s very much as if somebody is running a long marathon race and they’re saying I am tired it’s like yeah that’s what happens when you’re running a marathon Race that’s a good that’s good that means you’re on Mile 24 you know that it means you’re you’re making progress you’re there um and so it’s very it’s a very similar thing that there’s a there are certain things that are challenging in the fighting that are progress and you can’t see it until afterwards I was just saying this to Tara the other day we had I I can’t remember seven eight years ago now we had a really bad moment in our relationship and we had had these really amazingly healing fights for years we years like I thought it was all Beyond it I had hardly had a memory of our like vicious fights and all of a sudden they came back like with with like Vengeance for the six-month period And I was like what the and we both for years oh I wish that hadn’t happened not quite that it’s not I wish that hadn’t happened but it was that that thing that incident happened we could have handled it differently blah blah blah blah blah and and I was saying to her just I think it was just last night I was like it was just last night and I said you know I think that that series of fights is what destroyed my narcissism and it wasn’t I mean there’s no narcissism and isn’t all completely destroyed ever but the there was a way in which I was subtly holding myself above Tera and it was that set of fights that destroyed that my brain can’t conceive compare myself to terara anymore and and and like as I’m talking about it I literally just you can see I’m I like I well up that was like such a huge gift for me to feel to have that thing gone that was so painful to hold myself slightly above in in even a subtle way and it was a horrendous set of fights and I would not give it up for any the the amount of peace and love that it brings to my heart on a daily basis today and I thought at the time I was like maybe our marriage is over maybe I don’t know about what I’m talking about maybe like I I questioned everything during that and but we just kept doing what we do as far as being there for each other and it was in that moment I remember in those fights there came a place where I I learned to just or we learned how to just sit there and loving attention with each other just in the face of absolute shit from one another yeah I got I got you I’m right here I gotta yeah when when you said made me question everything yeah I memory comes to mind of in in my relationship with Alexa which we’ve been together now around five or so years and a half or something not nearly as long as you and Tara but a couple years ago we had a kind of a similar similar thing where we were just having this this series of really big fights and you know I had been trying to do basically what I talked about earlier as I’m in loving awareness I’m here for your anger but I wasn’t really showing up until eventually something switched and I got like right back in her face with my anger and it was like it was measured it wasn’t at her it was actually just like being in my anger and she felt met in it and it whole lot changed in the relationship but what required me to get what was required for me to get to that point was that I was forced into actually questioning everything questioning all the assumptions which it’s like a gift for something to bring you into a place where you actually question in all of the assumptions just the way that you know in extreme sports we’ve considered being close to death a gift because it makes you close to your mortality and that helps you refine your values and what’s important to you there’s something about the being near the death of a relationship that really crystallizes and clarifies and in that moment I also you know I I got it wrong I was I like went off the handle and I screamed at her and not to manipulate her or change anything but just as an expression of like I think I said something like I am actually here I am here and it wasn’t until I actually let myself Express that instead of being like I’m here I’m here for you that she actually felt it and it’s kind of tricky to talk about because I don’t want people to hear that and be like oh yeah let me just go yell at my partner now and that’ll be healing CU there was so much more more context to it and even in the moment I it wasn’t exactly how I want it to be right yeah it’s an interesting thing the we talk about in view we talk about how we talk about open-ended questions and things that help you get to view but view is something that can happen in even when you’re yelling and it sounds like that’s kind of what happened you were you were so frustrated there there’s your whole body but the unconditional love that is view showed up with the anger and it’s it’s not I I’ve seen that it’s rare but I’ve seen it I’ve seen that moment of so clear it’s so boundaried it’s so yeah and she had the capacity for it in that had the capacity for it in that moment because it it could have gone very differently had she not which brings me to another question potentially potentially but her capacity to be there for it was greatly enhanced by the actual State you were in which was like I love you you know like you said I am here but you were saying I love you I can I can feel I can say the way you talk about it I can feel that yeah yeah and so so I am curious to talk about kind of the window of Tolerance like when when you’re having a fight how how would you how do you talk about how people can track or pay attention to the capacity that they’re available for the capacity the partner might be available for recognizing when when we’ve gotten out of that tolerance with seeing it in a partner in a subtle trauma that we’re not noticing or in ourselves you spoke earlier to you and terara saying oh I’m in my trauma right now and that sounds like kind of a later stages of a long-term practice probably went through a lot of different that’s an Advan yeah exactly yeah you’re putting me in my trauma right now was probably the first stage of that yeah yeah uh yeah it’s a great question the the main thing is you’re responsible for your own window of Tolerance you can’t be responsible for the other person’s you just can’t and the other thing to really know is that it’s projection if you’re thinking to yourself they’re not in their window of Tolerance then best thing to do is say I’m not in my window of Tolerance because most likely you’re projecting it um and if you’re holding somebody responsible you didn’t see that I had my window I was outside of my window of int T you know then sorry if you can’t you didn’t see that I was outside of my window of that’s absolute shit it’s not not your job and at the same time it doesn’t really matter if it’s yours or theirs if you feel like they’re outside of their window of of Tolerance then just say it just say I don’t want to fight like this and that was a big one for for us it’s I just don’t want to fight like this the other thing to really know and and I want I think I want to Define what we mean by window of Tolerance here window of tolerance means that the nervous system they’re in their trauma so bad that they can’t see outside of it is one way to say it the other way to say it is their nervous system is so amped up that they’ve lost themselves is another way to say it and so or yourself so the other thing is it’s all about their window of Toler like you always respect their window of Tolerance whatever they claim it to be even if it’s avoidant it doesn’t matter you you you you do it so I remember early early early on in our relationship I felt the same thing that Alexa felt which was I’m angry why don’t you meet me in my anger this is this is my form of vulnerability why are you running from me when I’m like this and and the more that she the more I felt abandoned the angrier I got and so there was this whole thing that was happening it was very very common dynamic in relationships and so and she would say okay if you treat me like this I’m going to go or I can’t handle this I’m leaving and I thought that it was about me and what it was really about was she needed to know she could leave she needed to know that she didn’t have to put up with it and as she stopped putting up with it as she saw that she could leave it wasn’t about me telling her what was right or wrong for her then she could more and more show up for my anger and show up as herself so if they have it you just give them the time that the the most important thing however is that if you are leaving because your window of telence isn’t good then it’s really important to say when you’re going to be back how to re-engage because if you don’t give that to the person then it’s abandon and there you’re just going to push them deeper into their trauma typically so it’s really important to just be able to say I I I am going to go now to take care of myself and I will be back and this is how I will be back or this is when I’ll be back or these are the conditions under which I will be back but some way that they know I’m not leaving you permanently because when you’re in your trauma when someone says I’m out it’s forever it’s just how it works so those are the important pieces yeah and and again as you just said being able to know you can leave yeah like being able to question the assumption that you’re stuck that oh we have kids together we have house together we have we’ll never find another love that is like this ever these these these beliefs can really constrain the space and make us feel trapped and then we fight fight like caged animals rather than fight like that’s right yeah that’s a that’s a really great point is I say this a lot it’s really hard to love something that you think is oppressing you so the other way I say this the same thing slightly differently is there is no unconditional love without empowerment there is no real empowerment without unconditional love there you have to know that you are empowered to leave to be able to love you have to know that you’re not trapped or you beautifully said fight like a caged animal and that that that that is not pretty in a marriage okay so a little earlier you you said that nobody’s right and nobody’s wrong yeah and I can just hear the collective hair bristling in maybe two-thirds of the audience right now yeah uh so what you have to say the easy version of that which is a little I think maybe more of how I was saying it and then I’ll go into the hard version of it which is what you just said is that you see that their perspective is there’s truth to that perspective so you and I both look at the Bay Bridge and you’re in um the Salesforce Tower looking down on it and I’m underneath it looking up and I take a picture and you take a picture and then we argue over is this the Bay Bridge or is this the Bay Bridge know this is the Bay Bridge but they’re just different perspectives and they’re both true and so the the main piece there is to see that there that’s a perspective and there’s truth to the perspective and so there’s no right or wrong there’s there’s no this isn’t the baybridge this is the baybridge there’s really learning and and and that’s really important because what we really want is to be seen in a fight what we’re really looking for is to be seen but Joe they really hurt me right yeah I’m traumatized now exactly and so it’s very much about that it’s very much about feeling that deep feeling seen and the way to do that is to realize that there’s truth in every perspective it doesn’t mean that you have to act a certain way because of their perspective and that’s where I think people get confused they you really need a perspective to be wrong if you think that you have to act a certain way because of it oh if this is the Bay Bridge then I’m going to have to swim because there’s nowhere for me to drive a car but if this is a bay bridge then I’m going to have to fly to get to it so that’s a critical piece but the the harder version is literally there’s no right and wrong and so this is about a contextual awareness as well as something else so the contextual awareness part of it goes something to this effect water boils at whatever 100 degrees C whatever I think it’s 100 degrees C yeah depends on the altitude so it doesn’t actually boil okay but at sea level water boils at 100 degrees C depends on what planet at at sea level 10,000 years ago at sea level today because they’re different sea levels so there always context to whatever truth there’s no truth without that context as as far as a human’s perspective goes and so there’s definitely things that are going to create more pain for us ideas that will create more pain for us or less pain for us and there’s more valuable ideas and and in math there’s clearly this is an answer that’s going to build a stable bridge and this is going to be an answer that right but the as far as the Human Condition goes as far as psychologically there right and wrong is something that we do to create separation and create judgment and so and and thinking that you’re right thinking that somebody else is wrong thinking Better or Worse all of those things are incredibly painful not just for you but for the other person and so often times was something that I see in a relationship which I I was caught in and fascinated often times there’s an emotional person in the relationship and there’s a logical person person in the relationship this is a really common Dynamic and it’s a really common dynamic in like every single kind of couple that I know you know lesbian couples gay couples queer couples straight couples like I just see this it’s not all relationships but it’s many relationships this this very common thing and typically they have this agreement especially when they are early in their fighting where the logical is right and smarter and they know somehow they know more and the emotional one is more likely to be wrong and what’s actually happening there is that there’s an empathetic response going on so the the one who’s more emotional is more empathetic and so they’re feeling oh they’re right they feel right you know and it it’s not really ever about the logic at all and and there’s usually a a better and a worse feeling the conviction and then like there’s conviction here we must this must be the truth exactly and and the person who’s logical isn’t feeling their emotions so they’re repressing their emotions through Judgment of you’re wrong or I’m better so there’s all like it just feeds in perfectly to one another and this is a a something in a relationship that really seen through totally will change the dynamic and you can’t make the other person see through it you can only see through it yourself you can only say oh wait no I’m I’m not going to buy the story that I’m wrong I’m not going to buy the story that I’m right or I’m better than I’m not going to spy the story that I’m somehow more advanced or something like that I guarantee you I can say this with absolute certainty if you have been with a person for more than a year you are equally Advanced you are on wonderfully equal ground your trauma is so well matched it’s unbelievable your lessons to be learned are so equivalent you are an algebraic equation that has an equal sign between the two two parts of it that’s it’s just it’s always that case and and it’s funny even today Tara and I will be talking about a couple that we’re working with or we’ll see like couples that are friends and we really want to side with one of them we really want to say that that that person’s more calm so they clearly understand and it’s always the case that if you look long enough you’re like nope perfectly matched it’s a perfect match and going going back to you know the fight that you described with Tera where afterwards you were like oh that actually like destroyed a whole bunch of yeah the ways that I thought I was better similar in in my case I like after the after that one fight with Alexa I I realized that oh I actually had been thinking that I was more calm and therefore better better regulated better something and it was such a relief for that to fall away for both of us and and when so I want to go back to the to the truth truth piece because it’s an interesting interesting way how in English we have the same word that can mean a lot of different things so when you say a story is true that’s like that’s a philosophical statement and when you say there’s truth to any perspective it’s more of like a contextual statement like you said it matter the context is what matters so because we’re still using the word true in each of those phrases it might seem like both are actually about what is true when seeing the truth in a perspective is actually really about being curious about the context it’s less about finding that the story is true and more about where is my partner coming from what is their context how how is it that they see it the way that they see it and what can that illuminate from my own perspective to broaden it expand it and also what emotions would I have to feel to consider that perspective what what emotions am I avoiding by collapsing that perspective into right or wrong yeah I think that’s that’s the most important thing we could argue over the semantics of truth but what you just said is absolutely the most important thing which is what do I have to feel if I can’t collapse my partner into wrong yeah or right yeah yeah that’s a that’s the that’s that’s the profound bit as far as the truth part of it I I like thinking about it is in there is truth to every perspective like there is a truth in the picture of the Bay Bridge from the bottom or the picture of the Bay Bridge from the top both are true they’re just true from a point of view yeah so their truth speaks to the perspective it’s taken from and both of them are incomplete I think it’s just as important of a realization but to realize your perspective is absolutely incomplete or I would say wrong if you like need to put a fine point on it there’s something that I absolutely am not seeing there’s something I am missing and that’s that’s really important to see as well because that makes a fight really really simple oh yeah there’s something I’m not missing there’s some way I’m wrong guaranteed I guarantee that like I can only look at this thing from this angle and therefore there’s an angle I’m missing there’s something I am missing there there’s some way in which I don’t get it yeah not and that one’s a little fine too because it’s not wrong like I’m bad wrong it’s just like yeah I’m not right so one more thing I want to cover before before we go yeah you know it’s it’s been said that the the sign of a dead relationship is apathy so we’re talking about how you know some couples they don’t fight start out by not fighting some couples they start out with these big raging fights and maybe they progress through a transformation into deeper connection through the conflict and you know we also have relationships that are there’s just a whole lot of passive aggression and then passive aggression slowly turns into apathy and I’m curious if if you if you find yourself in in such a relationship where it’s getting to the point of apathy how how would you recommend What would you have to say to someone who wants to try to bring it back from the brink or like if if there just seems to be no fight available because the the shits have all been given so I find that the the true sign of a dead relationship is disdain when one person feels disdain for the other person that seems to and the apathy is part of it right they say it’s almost like apathy it’s not apathy like I don’t really give a shit it’s apathy like you’re gross and not worth dealing with like it’s like a little there’s some there’s an underlying anger to it that’s not no longer wish wishing to be felt I think the so and the if I recall the the the the studies on this have a couple still willing to fight and means that it’s not lost but if the couples you know in these tests it’s like once they have say I’m not going to fight anymore somewhat apathetic response then that’s when the relationship is is pretty much gone and what I would say there’s three things I would say to answer that question the first one is speak your truth with an open heart you want to save a marriage Speak Your Truth an open heart speak your truth with kindness say what’s true for you um the second thing I’d say is listen to them with view let let all of it be heard let connect move to connection and and and see them fully without without without taking it personally yeah to to yeah I’m going to repeat it yeah and to see them as they are without needing them to change without any kind of management of them so again it’s view it’s it’s having them feel seen and not taking it personally so yeah I see that you disdain me right now and you wouldn’t put your the words in your mouth but just oh I see you right now I see you’re really frustrated with me right now I I see that you want to give up on the marriage and I get why that would be the case let’s talk about it so it’s really allowing their truth to come out and having a really safe space for it and it’s really about speaking your truth in a way that makes it as safe as possible to be heard if the person you’re with doesn’t want to work on the relationship then grieve then you’re not nothing’s going to happen you can’t chase somebody into loving you it doesn’t work that way so usually the person who would ask that question the reason I say it is usually the person who would ask that question is the person who chases the love and and so you can’t you can’t chase somebody into loving you you can stop being reactive but if they’ve given up that’s that’s their business you can’t you can respect them enough to just let them have that moment I had a phone call just yesterday from a person who’s running a business with two co-founders and at some point she was talking about how ways she could fight ways that she could leave all these things and I just said to her do your partners want to work on it and she was nope like okay so what does that tell you and she was like yeah I mean so that like we have to not work together like just that quickly and so that’s that’s that’s what I would say to folks who ask that question awesome cool we talked about the uh the Youtube videos that you just filmed on this topic where can people go to find this yeah so you can go to the YouTube channel Joe Hudson YouTube channel and then you can go to our playlist we have a playlist we’ll be releasing one every once in a while once they’re all released uh we will have a available exercises to go with them and anybody who’s done connection course can have those exercises for free and I really highly recommend that you watch them in order uh because they’re designed to be that way yeah awesome yeah thank you you Joe and thank you everyone for listening yeah yeah thank you man what a great conversation appreciate you thanks for listening to the art of accomplishment if you enjoyed what you heard today please share it with a friend and remember to follow us and rate US in your podcast app the art of accomplishment was produced and hosted by myself Brett kler and Joe Hudson mon Kelly is our production coordinator and this episode was edited by on replay