Summary
Joe shares his breakthrough realization in his own marriage: you can’t change your partner, and trying to is what makes relationships feel like impossible work. The shift comes when you realize that your triggers are yours—they reveal what you need to heal in yourself.
He discovered that he and his wife were “perfectly matched” to trigger each other’s childhood wounds. Rather than seeing this as a problem, he reframes it as a gift: the relationship becomes a path to freedom. Every conflict, fully owned, leads to growth.
Key Concepts
- You only get the love you can let in
- Partners are perfectly matched to trigger your wounds
- Your relationship triggers are about you, not them
Key Quotes
“Anytime I was upset, that was me. That was mine.”
“I was going to accept the love that I was capable of accepting. I was going to love in the manner that I was capable of loving. And it didn’t have anything to do with the other person.”
“We were perfectly matched to work this stuff out.”
“If you can see, oh, this perfect person is geared exactly to have me heal the stuff that I need to heal, then you can see this person as a blessing.”
“I cannot think of anything except for maybe raising my kids that has given me more freedom than being married to my wife.”
“‘My partner doesn’t want to grow. My partner doesn’t want to do any of this work.’ And I would say, ‘Wow, that’s your perfect match, isn’t it? That probably is exactly like your parents.‘”
Transcript
Here’s what makes your relationship feel like work. You’re trying to change the other person. Not only does it make it feel like work, it makes it feel like it’s impossible work because you can’t change another person. You know, there’s that classic story about one finger pointing at you as three pointing back at me. And I remember that moment when I learned it with my wife. I remember that we were in therapy and at some point I was like, “Yeah, there’s nothing I’m going to do that’s going to change this woman. The only thing that I can do is change myself.” And more importantly than that, what I realized is that anytime I was upset, that was me. That was mine. It doesn’t mean that there was something she was doing that was unacceptable or that I needed to ask to have change or I needed to draw a boundary. All that was true. But if I was triggered by it, that was that was me. Somebody else could be sitting there not triggered by it. Like she used to wear these like just crazy outfits. like she had like feather boas and you know she dressed by braille you know and it was an artist thing in the in the ‘9s and I was so bothered by that at some points and I was realizing somebody else would just think it was the greatest thing in the world me being bothered by it isn’t about her me trying to change her isn’t about her it’s about me and that’s when I realized when I started to really focus on myself in the relationship what I realized is that the relationship ationship was a way for us to learn our own freedom, but more importantly for me to learn my own freedom. That I could use everything I was triggered by in the relationship to learn about myself, to find my own freedom. That I could find every way that I felt out of control in the relationship to be a pointer for where I needed to do the work to understand myself better. And I realized at some point in that in that whole thing that it’s like, oh, she might never change. I might actually not want to end up being with her, but it didn’t really matter because what I saw was that if I kept on using this relationship to heal myself, then I would find a great relationship either with her or with somebody else because I was going to get into a relationship that I was capable of being in. I was going to accept the love that I was capable of accepting. I was going to love in the manner that I was capable of loving. And it didn’t have anything to do with the other person. And so I just really started focusing on working on myself. I’m triggered. That means there’s something in me I don’t like. I’m upset. That means there’s something for me to learn. And as that started happening, as I started working on myself, there was something else I started to realize, which is I was perfectly matched with my wife to trigger each other. Like I I was exactly in a way like her father, just enough to trigger her. She was exactly like my mother in just enough of a way to trigger me. That we were going through our childhood wounds with each other. That often times I was listening to her, but I wasn’t listening to her. I was listening to my mom or my dad. It wasn’t her. I was just living in some old trauma. She was living in some old trauma. But we were perfectly matched to work this stuff out. And luckily, I had a wife who also wanted to work it out with me. She also realized at about the same time that there was no way she was going to control me that the thing she was going to do is she was going to use the relationship to learn about herself. That’s something that I’ve learned now working with thousands of couples is that almost everybody is matched. If they’ve been in a relationship for say over 6 months and they’re stuck in a pattern, that pattern very much is a pattern that they’re trying to heal from their childhood. And nobody’s better, nobody’s worse, nobody needs to change and nobody doesn’t need to change. They’re just repeating a pattern so that they can learn and heal and learn how to grow and love each other more. That’s it. And and in that love themselves more, what I notice is that that is perpetually the case. And if you can see that in your relationship, if you can see, oh, this perfect person is geared exactly to have me heal the stuff that I need to heal, and it’s triggering exactly the parts of me that need to heal, then you can see this person as a blessing. And the work isn’t the work. The work is your freedom. It is the most direct path to your freedom. I cannot think of anything except for maybe raising my kids that has given me more freedom than being married to my wife because I just kept on seeing this as a path to understanding myself. This as a path to seeing what triggered me, to seeing what I didn’t love about myself, to seeing what I was ashamed of, to healing those things. And she was perfectly positioned to do that. And so then it wasn’t work, then it was like freedom. It was a gift. It was just a like a deep welcoming of any conflict that we had because I knew each conflict that we had, if we focused on ourselves, eventually we would find freedom. We would be closer. We would grow together. There’s definitely going to be some of you who are thinking to yourself, “Yeah, that’s all well and good, Joe. I can do all that, but my partner doesn’t want to do that. My partner doesn’t want to grow. My partner doesn’t want to do any of this work. My partner wants to blame me.” And I would say, “Wow, that’s your perfect match, isn’t it? That probably is exactly like your parents who didn’t want to meet you or your sister who didn’t want to meet you.” And so, there’s something in that for you to learn. Now, that doesn’t mean that you stay with them or you don’t stay with them. That’s a choice that you’re going to make. But as long as you’re choosing to stay with that person, then it’s a time to choose to make it about you, not make it about them. What do you have to do to love them as they are? Even when you’re walking away, even if you choose to leave them, what’s required from you to love them as they are, to not look for them to change? So, if you and your partner are both interested in really learning the skills, then I really recommend the connection course. In the connection course, you’re going to be able to hang out with each other and learn skills about really going into and understanding one another and learning to understand yourself, how to deal with getting triggered, how to be in wonder, how to be in empathy with one another. And you get this free course at the end of it about how to have great fights. So, you get so much for couples and we’ve had so many couples come in and do the connection course and they do every single segment just with themselves and then they get to ask questions and everything. But it’s such a cool thing what happens to couples. I cannot tell you at least 25 times in the last year somebody’s told me that I might have saved their marriage through the connection course. So, I highly recommend it if both you and your partner are interested in doing