Summary
Tara facilitates a deeply vulnerable conversation with Alexa (Joe Hudson’s wife) and Brett shortly before Brett’s wedding. Alexa shares the reality behind her publicly-visible marriage with Joe — how their early years were “brutally hard,” how they unexpectedly fell in love with working together, and how the golden projections people put on their relationship don’t honor the actual work they do. She distinguishes intradependence (bidirectional support) from codependence (one-directional), and shares her biggest pitfalls: a heart opening without boundaries, and using projection work to bypass her own needs.
The episode becomes a live coaching session when Brett explores his fear of having “all his eggs in one basket” with his partner. This traces to his extreme sports background where partners frequently died, and reveals a deep tension between wanting to create safety for his partner and suppressing himself in the process. Through guided emotional processing, Brett discovers shame about burdening his partner with risk, which dissolves when he sees that his partner chose all of him — not despite but including the parts he wrestles with.
Key Concepts
- Golden projections on relationships dishonor the actual work
- Intradependence is bidirectional, codependence is one-directional
- Heart opening without boundaries is a trap
- Projection work can bypass your own needs
- Mortality awareness deepens love rather than diminishing it
- Creating safety for others by suppressing yourself breeds resentment
- Your partner chose all of you, including the parts you wrestle with
Key Quotes
“Joe and I we work hard to keep our marriage alive. It has not always been easy. We’ve had hard years. Our first years of marriage were brutally hard.”
“The golden projections break my heart a little bit because I want to say: yes it’s amazing, we’re an amazing couple, and we freaking work hard at it and we struggle and we fight.”
“I had this huge heart opening without access to my own boundaries, which was a huge hole for me… those heart openings — your boundaries are there to allow the heart opening, not have the heart opening so you don’t need any boundaries.”
“That is what makes love so edgy right — it is finite. Our time here is finite. That the heart has capacity for that knowing, that there’s an end, to me that’s just truly amazing.”
“Acknowledging your fears — that’s how you ensure they don’t come true. In the not acknowledging them is how they’re likely to come true.”
“I want you to want to be here with me as much as I want to be here with you.”
Transcript
shortly before our wedding Alexa and I sat down with Tara to talk about marriage what commitment means to us and the fear of losing a life partner this was a sweet and vulnerable episode to record and I really hope you enjoy woohoo I feel nervous yay I welcome your nervousness I love nervousness thank you thank you yeah I look forward to hearing your questions the the Curiosity that’s coming up first for me is I I have so many projections of your relationship with Joe and at this point it’s really really positive I know you pretty well now and I love your relationship I really admire it so there’s a lot of curiosity there to begin with but the thing I’m noticing is I’ve always had a lot of projections since since I barely knew you so the question is mm-hmm is like what is it like to be playing the role of a person who really helps others relate well you both really help people change the way that they interact with all kinds of people but especially the people that they really care about so then what is it like to be that role pretty publicly together with your partner who is also your business partner what is it like to have that much projection on your relationship well it feels like there’s a lot of questions in there yeah you’re right um I don’t even know where to start answering that give me a second because I had like 40 thoughts run through my head um first of all I’ll say to be doing it publicly is incredibly vulnerable and sometimes incredibly hard for me and it is what we teach so then I have to walk what we’re teaching and remind myself like I gotta I gotta walk my talk so that part is hard and there have been Retreats where Joe and I have started haggling over what we’re going to do next very publicly in front of participants and that’s always edgy but I’m always like nope I’m not going to bring this to a back room we’re going to do this here not all of it but parts of it here so that we can figure this out together in front of people and have them watch our process that has hap you all probably have seen that it can be messy it’s hard right I I feel like first of all I love working with Joe I love working with Joe which was a surprise of our marriage it was not we went in having two very different careers and at some point they merged and I’d always dreaded the idea of working with a love partner I’d heard horrible stories about it and yeah and it’s been I’d say it’s been like the greatest surprise of the this act of our this portion of our marriage is how much we love working together like we just love working together we love creating Retreats we love being in the room together the last two Retreats we’ve done we haven’t always been in the room together it’s like wait I miss being in the room with you it’s just been a surprise um having the projections on us is I mean it’s part of being a facilitator is dealing with the projections so I’d say we’re accustomed to it I always want to shed the golden Shadow projections the golden projections those positive ones because Joe and I we work hard to keep our marriage alive it has not always been easy we’ve had hard years we our first years of marriage were brutally hard you know there’s that first love and you can kind of get Swept Away by the energy of love and then you have to come crashing down and learn how to I we had to come crashing down and learn how to like who are we without all of that um projected bestness on each other and you know learn how to climb the mountain together from reality from authenticity and not just emotion and love but reality and so the golden projections always feel they don’t if they don’t feel like they do honor to the work Joe and I have done and they don’t feel like they do honor to the reality of marriage which is at his work it’s joyful it’s playful it’s the most fulfilling self-work having someone else reflect you to yourself and it’s work so I I the the golden projections break my heart a little bit because I want to say like okay yes it’s amazing we’re an amazing couple and we freaking work hard at it and we struggle and we fight and some of you have seen our fights very publicly like we you know we have to tangle with um different parts of our personality to find that sweet balanced spot and we live in that dance hmm it’s funny when we use the word fight like what you guys what you’re referring to as far as anything I’ve seen that would be referred to as a fight is like in much of my like experience of relationships and what has been you know modeled to many of us looks like just baby smooth or maybe like a little bit of like ripples here and there yeah it’s like oh feels unseen and the other one is like yeah you feel unseen I also feel unseen and then like you sit in it for a minute and then something moves and it’s not like I’ve never seen you guys in like a big like fight fight yeah anything I would consider to be a fight yeah not to say that it doesn’t happen and not to say that that would be a sign that it’s not a beautiful relationship uh it’s just it’s just an interesting like the different levels of like what we could be talking about when we say the word fight I think when I yeah it’s a really interesting fight Joe and I our fights were big early right right after marriage that first year or two we had big fights we had to get that’s when we started therapy and really learning like non-violent communication and how to communicate and say oh when you did this I felt like that’s where a lot of our work comes from all of those lessons because neither of us had good role models for fighting it was like Take You Down so right I imagine on the surface our fights look very very subtle and sort of calm they don’t feel calm inside they feel equally like ah ah you know there’s the there’s a this is uncomfortableness about them as we have to you know whatever we’re we’re haggling over they’re like inner haggles yeah and I also notice a fluidity in it unless less fleeing from it into reactivity more just being like this is the way that I’m feeling right now yes that’s exactly right we both have I think have a practice of let’s dive into it we’ll we’ll go at it go do our emotional work separately like I might go hit the pillows and like ah just you know hit the pillows or steering wheel or move my anger and my grief my fear and then we come together it’s like okay diving in and figuring out what’s the what’s the Nugget that wants to be seen or the heart that wants to be held so I have another question around this uh like how you guys have like you started out thinking you wouldn’t want to work together and now you work together and very smoothly uh I’ve worked with past partners before in my life it’s been commonplace sometimes it’s worked really well sometimes it’s been codependent sometimes it’s been just in pattern and I’m curious for you how how did that Journey go with you and Joe from not wanting to work together to recognizing you wanted that and doing it from a place that isn’t codependence or just like we’re merging now now we’re just the same person we’re doing the same thing of course our careers are the same in some sense what how did that happen it’s a great question and it almost happens so smoothly that I can’t tell you how it happened you know when those changes like we just I don’t even know I can’t even remember logically how it happened give me a second to remember it’s interesting because in a way we were always this is a I’m gonna contradict what I said earlier in a way from day one we were always doing quote unquote the work together I very much remember thinking I can marry this man because he’s as dedicated to learning about himself and supporting his self-development as I am and that was to me the number one principle most important thing I was looking for in a life partner was someone who would do the work with me so that was in our marriage from day one before we even agreed to get married we agreed to do a 10-day Meditation Retreat together and be in therapy together like those were and then travel through southeast Asia for six months those were like three um agreements we made to do together before we even decided to get married so that was oh it was always there we were always discussing self-development we were always discussing meditation and um Awakening and therapy and self-discovery and that was just uh that was that was the very found a very Foundation of our marriage from day one so we weren’t doing it professionally then for the first 20 years or however long but it was always there which is I think why the why I kind of remember even remember when it became professional because it was just always in the field there’s something I wanted to say I forgot how is it not to be codependent and mergy I would say we’ve had moments of being codependent and mergy like that is the journey is like learning when I’m merging and like oh pull back back to myself my roots my backbone what do I want here and um so that it’s not that it doesn’t happen it’s just becoming aware of it when it does happen and the codependence piece once upon a time I had a really negative connotation of codependence I went to a women’s college like I’m never going to be codependent and then oh my gosh I’m being you know when I first became a mom I very much felt codependent like oh I’m just in service of Joe’s career and all I’m doing is taking care of the kids and at some point I had to redefine codependence and redefine what was actually happening for me there was finding my needs and speaking up for them and then there was tracking inter or intradependence which I would very much say Joe and I are intradependent we very much depend on each other for different things and support each other but it’s bi-directional Joe supports me I support him so it goes both ways whereas I think codependence just goes one way and one person’s needs aren’t getting taken care of yeah there was something else yeah I don’t know if that answers your question Brett yeah it does I see like the codependents being one directional as maybe one way it can go another way it could just be if we’re both trying to get our own needs met and not seeing how those needs are met then we could just be in we could be at an equal kind of dynamic of both feeling unmet yep and so that makes me that kind of ties back to a question that I had moments ago that is around you know both of you both of you being dedicated to your self-development both of us feel dedicated to our self-development and what what failure modes have you found in that for example I just thought of this idea of anything that comes up in a relationship might mean that we have to go do some work about it and it might get a little bit I don’t know like the most derogatory way to describe it was like Naval gazing or self-indulgent but also the another one could just be that we’re like fixated on the path in a dogmatic way rather than like really just deeply living everything and I’m curious if you have if you and Joe have ever found yourself sort of fall into like a self-development black hole together because you both share that derive that desire and perhaps some of the same blind spots I I can’t think of one we’ve fallen in together I can think of ones I have personally fallen in my one of my biggest learnings was After experiencing sort of a heart opening was I was just in love with everything and and so that I could see the um I could see what everything was coming from or the care behind it and I um and I could feel the love for it and from it even if it was kind of Twisted and I didn’t have boundaries so I had this huge heart opening without access to my own boundaries which was a a huge hole for me with job and everybody else not having boundaries you know those heart openings your boundaries are there to allow the heart opening not have the hard opening so you don’t need any boundaries so that was like I would say that was a good year or two of my life having to find the the boundaries so that I was included in the heart opening it wasn’t just for everybody else um and that and that was definitely hard in our marriage because certain things had to change and I had and Joe had to watch me really struggle to find and hold not say them but hold them that was the I could name a boundary but holding it was a very different action so that was one kind of Pitfall in the process for me there was another one I thought of when you first brought it up and I can’t remember what it is now um navel gazing oh the second pothole for me was sort of when I first discovered projection work and this happened right around the time of that heart opening it without boundaries in the projection work I’d be like Oh I’m projecting and then I assumed it was my responsibility to take care of everything oh if I’m projecting that this person is crossing my boundaries then I’m crossing my own boundaries and that’s about me and I kind of could go into spin on the projection work as opposed to like oh and I still get my boundaries like oh yeah like it is a it is about me and I still get to name what I want I still get to say I don’t want that and I can’t be around you if this and I can’t be around that person if XYZ or I’m gonna go take care of myself this way yeah so those were my two biggest potholes and they very much happened in relationship in my marriage so yeah maybe a different flavor of the same question is just like what is it like to be in a marriage with the person I assume is your primary sort of like I want to say spiritual Playmate but maybe you know self-development partner so yes he is primary but I have an entire community of people who are I would consider my spiritual Sangha and um self-development saying huh I have my women’s group my dear women friends I was just with friends from college when I let when when we last talked Brett and I very much consider them part of my Sangha so it’s amazing to have Joe as my principal partner the person I spend probably the most time with the person I dream next to um share that Journey but he is not the only one which I think is part of our sanity I have a very big community of a deep not necessarily huge but a deep community of people who also are my spiritual and self-discovery singha and I couldn’t be partnered with someone who wasn’t like I you know yeah I couldn’t they’re two of the things I care about aside from like my kids and being a parent they’re two of the spirituality and self-development are two of the the things that I feel like oh this is what I was put here to do whatever that means right this is like my soul’s Journey so I would have to have a partner who met me that way I don’t think I I couldn’t not that really resonates for me um I was gonna say I think a lot of what I’m speaking to speaks to your two relationship too right like you have those same shared it’s like a shared like oh this is the ocean we want to sail in yeah that really resonates if and it feels really good to me to be on that journey together with Brett and I guess I do have this feeling it’s like a little bit of a feeling of like um huh can’t quite find the right metaphor it’s sort of like oh and this is this is clearly it because I am all the way up this uh roller coaster with you and it feels you know nothing could compare to this this is it this is the thing and also that’s kind of scary feels like all my eggs are in this basket mm-hmm I could dive down a rabbit hole on that fear I’m not sure if that’s what we’re here but if you were yes that’s exactly what we’re here can you hang out with the fear Alexa because it is true right this is yeah and just hang out with the app just breathe and hang out with it I noticed there’s a lot of sadness immediately hang out with that and just be with it and let your breath move through it what was that yeah I feel like I just dropped down deeper great so letting yourself be in that down deeper and just hang out nowhere to go just hanging with it what’s that yeah there’s this bounciness here which is I think kind of just a general like huh it’s pretty hard to put words to there’s a lot of feeling of grief um it reminds me of course of losing Brian my former partner who died and in general of all of the uh the mortality that’s that’s really going on around us right now and a feeling of like on the one hand that the Deep knowledge that life can be really hard helps me kind of bear the fear that it will be hard in that way again because yeah it it probably will and there’s no time to waste you know there’s no reason to try to hold that Bay like after Brian died I wasn’t like oh I wasted all this time with somebody who died on me it was more like oh every moment when I could have showed him more love I wish I had and what’s that feeling there’s a wanting to pour myself out so just curious if you look at Brett what does that feeling want to say to or if anything uh I want you to want to be here with me as much as I want to be here with you I do I do I think we just found some of your vows and so having named that how is that feeling in your system you talked about the fear what having gone down to those depths and named that to Brett what happens what’s going on with the fear if anything yeah it’s not currently feeling like fear it feels like aliveness and kind of electricity yeah great can you let your whole body just have that aliveness and electricity yeah yeah exactly yeah right you all can’t see her but she’s positively glowing yeah me too yeah so beautiful what comes up for me in that process was like when I when I heard her and this is also true like other times she said this where she feels like she has all her eggs in one basket there’s like a constriction or a fear in me like tracing that back to you know for her it traces back to having lost a partner for me it traces back to being in in an extreme sports world where people were frequently losing partners and you know at the time I was in I was in a long-term relationship and we like we both felt that like wow we are we are each other’s person there’s nobody that gets us anything like each other and we’re traveling all the time we don’t even have like stable friends other than those that we see while we’re traveling and jumping and so we felt this like deep eggs in one basket thing and that I think is part of the Catalyst that had US Open up our relationship and explore polyamory was this like I want there to be somebody else that you feel connected to in case I Leave You wow wow and we we wanted that for each other and so there’s there’s something very visceral that comes up for me when I hear Alexa feel like she has all her eggs in one basket and I wanted like my initial kind of I guess my initial response was to be like no no that’s not true you got eggs everywhere there’s people who love you you got like this that yeah and also there’s a there’s the reality of the way that that feels for her and there’s the reality of the way that there’s a way that it’s true there’s a way that’s fully true and there’s also the way that it’s not but like I in witnessing this process I feel more capable of being there in the way that it is fully true and there’s there’s grief in that like grief in that it’s not just a punch potentiality it’s actually a reality that one of us is going to lose the other unless we both die at the same time which is gonna feel for all intents and purposes like all eggs in one basket yeah despite the sport support structures we have that is what makes love so etchy right it is finite our time here is finite that’s the amazing cup to me that is the um what you just named is like yeah and I feel the same way when I look at Alexa right now people can’t see her but her eyes are tearing up it’s just so beautiful it’s that finite finite preciousness of love in the heart right that the heart has capacity for that knowing that there’s an end knowing there’s an end line to me that’s just truly amazing that as humans we do that again and again and our hearts can and want to do that Brett what I would invite you to do is be with the whatever the emotion when when Alexa says oh all my eggs in one basket you can see the truth not truth but be with the what’s the emotion that comes up for you so you’re staying with yours you know being with her words but also staying with yourself yeah yeah initially it’s like it’s a fear of being responsible for her Devastation and heartbreak in in the event that that I depart which is very clearly some mommy stuff too uh yeah and can you hang out with the fear we’ll just do the same thing just be with it and see how it wants to move or be seen or what it wants to do so you’re just following it hanging out with it yeah inside there there’s the fear of there’s the fear of being loved as I am inclusive of my some form of like not knowing my risk tolerance my naivete my not being able to guarantee any form of safety uh yeah can you stay hanging out with that let your heart and head hang with that fear and underneath that there’s a grief of there’s a grief underneath feeling like all of that has ever been my responsibility or feeling yeah feeling penned into my own cage of that I need to be some sort of like safe stable predictable alive for someone else yeah and staying with that grief that I need to be safe stable Dependable for someone else can you stay with that and just see how if at all it wants to move so you’re letting it move through the system if it wants to yeah it was like a slight shaking it might be more fear yeah and if your body wants to have that shake give it this give it what it you know let it sequence exactly and letting yourself Breathe Right Through It yeah it feels like there’s like the there’s a fear of being alone that I project onto her like I project that she wouldn’t be able to handle losing me if when when she speaks of the eggs in one basket thing when in reality I feel I wouldn’t be able to handle it or there’s like the fear of yeah and just turned towards her and share from it let’s go make contact with and see how it wants to what it wants to share with her what comes up is sort of strange but it’s like a an apology for any way that I’ve tried to create safety in any way that suppresses myself or us that’s not strange so beautiful I wish everyone could see what I’m seeing so beautiful the two of you which is breaking my brain a little bit it’s like like I’m seeing I’m seeing how much I’ve actually really bought into that not that I need to but just like feeling like I really really want to create safety yep and there’s been some obligation in it which is why there’s been some like some tension around that you said the whole Mama piece and yeah there’s still a part of me that wants to go base jumping thinks about it at some point every day and then there’s a part of me that’s like oh it’s been like several years now I’m not current I haven’t done it recently it would be I I feel confident that I could go do it safely but also Alexa wouldn’t have the context that my body has to feel the confident with me and I’d be putting her through something um if I did and then there’s both sides of that that have felt in tension like the tension of I don’t need to be responsible for someone’s emotions about my safety and then the other one of I am responsible for the consequences of my safety or lack of safety or yeah that’s beautifully said too when we when we haven’t gone down to the bottom of it with that apology I’m sorry that you just said to her so beautifully then we can only ping pong between oh I’m responsible and responsibility right we can only kind of ping pong between the two yeah opposed right we’re just kind of go back and forth reacting yeah yeah so there’s an irony here if something funny right before we started recording I got a text from my sister where she’s like I want to skydive with you sometime and I would absolutely love that and as the part of me it’s like ah what if what if something happens to her I’ve had that happen like for friends who’ve like lost their sister around the Skydive and you know it’s just like there’s all these Back stories that just like well that could be what happens now uh and also there’s just this like there’s still something very alive in me that have been a little bit afraid of for the past number of years of like there’s something alive in me that still wants to go out and make take the risk and be like fully out there and exposed and then there’s a part of me that’s like oh I don’t need this story that I need to be fully out there and exposed to fully live which is true I don’t need that story but there’s still something in there that wants it and that scares me a little bit as as we go into this you know marriage and we’ve got our eggs in the basket and and you’re doing a podcast where you were just totally fully exposed in front of him right right well that’s different like great slay my ego that’s fine like my the body body that’s fine but it feels less fine if it is like the consequences it has others and that’s more identity I can see there being my identity wrapped up in others there am I taking responsibility for them yeah I do want to say something you have evidence that I can survive the death of a I do and I just also have so much evidence of how much that sucked yeah it is no doubt and also there’s so much evidence of like how much that is done for you in this strange way there’s there’s this way that I feel like part of what has had us both attracted to each other so deeply and also both of us be so committed to to self-exploration and self-understanding is how we’ve each lost a lot for me it was friends and a lot of acquaintances and people more on the like Inner Circle but not a partner and then in the periphery of my life just being regularly happening over the course of decades and for you you had one particularly deep loss of a partner and we’ve both been on Journeys with things like survivor’s guilts and wondering what we could have done differently if only we’d been seeing more clearly and picking up the pieces and going through the grieving process and so I feel like there’s I benefit a lot from the fact that you have lost a partner and gone through that and yes I’m also very scared of having you go through that again on my account which is yeah there’s identity there and not wanting to be the bad guy so we could I don’t want a rabbit hole but a question that I want to give you for later is like what would make you dying be the bad guy yeah what comes up as a dream that I had some a couple years ago I just like kind of had this really really intense dream where I just in this dream I was I basically died in some various like some dream way that was actually a combination of a number of different ways and like the question came up in me like what if your death was a gift like what if you saw it that way and I like it rippled through my life as though like all the people who are grieving and I could see the gift in it and the and it was like a really powerful dream there’s a way that I’m like perhaps scared of letting that Insight Ripple all the way through because it’s like well if I really see it as a gift that’s one way of seeing it but if I really see it that way just fully if I let that really happen then what will that mean will that make me more likely to to leave everybody and uh in a way that in that frame would be a gift perhaps even the more tragic the more of a gift but like I also don’t want to be fetishizing that so that’s what I think the fear is if there’s like if I really let that all the way in will I just fetishize my own death or something uh and so that maybe there’s a wisdom in that concern and there’s also a a way that it prevents the full integration of fully letting myself see the way that it could be a gift if I were to leave Alexa it doesn’t mean that I’m going to be more likely to do that in fact it might actually be more likely that I stay safe because I’m letting myself see all the ways that that could happen I’m not afraid of them yeah what I hear is like the fear is if if we let the fear fully through in then there’s more of a chance of it creating itself I remember this with um birthing that I had a midwife teach me like oh no you have to actually acknowledge all your fears that you’re going into and birthing and I was like no no if I acknowledge them then they’re more likely to come true she was like no in the not acknowledging them is how they’re likely to come true that’s the golden algorithm right and acknowledging them and feeling through the fear is how you um you’ve sort of not ensure that they don’t happen but you um prop yourself up you like I forget exactly how she phrased it so that’s what I hear you saying when you say this yeah yeah my phrasing would be that you process it you process that data so that it is included in your right so then you’re not acting out on it and I’m curious what your heart says about it not the mind I see the mind really but what’s your heart say oh this might be my mind interpreting the heart but it says like Alexa chose this at me it’s not like this this aspect of myself that I have this feeling that I that I wrestle with or work through this particular flavor of feeling is not an inconvenience to Alexa and actually is something that she’s looking for and so I’m feeling that there’s a lot of shame that falls away restriction that releases and of course I want to check with Alexa that that feels at all true for her but beautiful but there’s something in me that moves when I was like a heart opening softening even look like Alexa just softened next to you and yeah I want to own that it doesn’t feel like I chose this part of you like this doesn’t feel like the thing that I’m attracted to I do feel like I’m saying yes to all of you it’s part one of this answer and part two is uh I have a partiality towards you not having yeah like the feeling of obligation to stick around for me or like the resentment that’s in there and the as Tara said the sort of like ping-ponging or swinging back and forth yeah and part three is I don’t really know what makes it that I’m so in love with on some level you know that I chose you is evidence that I that I absolutely am choosing this even if I’m citing it also yeah truly deeply feel you’re choosing this is not a shred of me that doubts that but don’t leave me or else I’m sad and it’ll be your fault back to obligation Brett come on don’t worry I’ll take care of your feelings everything will be okay okay great I’ll make sure that your feelings are safe doesn’t that feel so much better oh it’s so beautiful really beautiful work so we got any other marriage advice my advice is Cuddle you’ve just did really deep beautiful work together can you go cuddle and snuggle whisper and giggle together yeah yeah my marriage advice integrated oh that’s really good advice yeah especially for when your partner is your primary spiritual playmate yeah the integration is key and integrating together is really fun there’s a twinkle in your eye when you said that what kind of integration are you talking about whatever comes to mind no not whatever comes snuggles cuddles and whatever else yes all of the above beautiful integration such a pleasure I love you so much quite Mutual I love you so much too I love that I’ll get to watch your marriage ah and I’ve already watched so much of your partnership like I feel so blessed even when I didn’t know you were a couple thank you Tara a pleasure a true honor all right thanks again for listening if you’re feeling the love reach out and let us know how this episode touched you you can find us on Twitter at Art of a comp or through art of accomplishment.com from our hearts to yours see you next time