Time for another podcast.
We look forward to this every week.
Sitting down and having this conversation? I sure do because I really like to dive deeper into topics and just be able to elaborate.
Um, I like speaking more than writing.
So this is really fun for me.
So I love having having these conversations with you.
It's it's fun too for us.
To, to talk to each other, but when when it's the 2 of us talking to each other on these podcasts, it's almost like all of the listeners are in the room with us in a way, even though they're not because we know these conversations aren't just between us.
They're being heard.
By other people.
So it it's a fun thing that kind of adds to the energy of the conversation compared to when it's just you and I, like, sitting and having coffee.
Yeah.
And I especially love when we get the questions on the podcast too, so always feel free to share those.
Um, so today, I wanna talk more about something that's kind of been a theme for us, um, especially more recently again, kind of reiterating it.
Um, what does it look like for us now is a statement that you made to me in the form of a question, I guess, is how good can this get? Meaning our relationship.
So I would like you to share a little bit more around the backstory of why and where did that come from? First.
You know, for me, I've witnessed relationships for my whole life that were more or less dead.
You see people, like the longer they've been together, the more it just kind of seems like the life is drained out of not just the relationship, but out of the individuals.
Kind of like a story that someone told me recently about their grandparents 50th wedding anniversary, and they sat down with Grandpa and said, congratulating Grandpa on 50 years of marriage.
And Grandpa said, you know how many of those years have been happy? 1.
That's heartbreaking.
It really is, but it it seems like that's more more of the norm than 50 years of happiness.
Yeah.
I would say that if if I scan relationships out in public, it looks more like, um, friendships, At best.
Yeah.
So I would juxtapose that, but seeing those relationships, witnessing people in public, people I knew where there just wasn't a lot of excitement, especially when I was younger, when you have new relationships, especially when you're like, when you're a teenager, when you're at college, there's like a lot of energy in those relationships.
There's a lot of passion.
There's a lot of turn on.
There's, like, there's just juice there.
Yes.
Because part of it is novelty.
Yep.
And you can't underestimate all of the unknown about that other person.
It's like the mystery Yeah.
It's that you're trying to get to know.
Yeah.
New relationship energy.
So, at some point, as I started getting into longer term relationships, and especially my first marriage, that lasted about 7 years.
There was the same kind of dying off of that energy that happened in, in my life, in my relationship, and in the way that I felt because of how the relationship was going.
We spend most of our we spend more time with our primary romantic partner than anyone else.
And if that relationship or that energy is dead, some of that deadness enters both people.
And I will say that some of that time is actually sleeping.
If you really look at it, because some people spend more time at their job.
If you take away the sleeping hours.
Yeah.
But the thing that started to gnaw at me is the that excitement, that passion, that desire, that intensity, that the new relationship kind of naturally brought seemed as though it was diametrically opposed to the long term loving intimate, close relation ship.
Somehow it seemed impossible to have both of those things.
And that just wasn't something that I could ever bear that I couldn't have both.
Passion, intensity, desire, and love, and intimacy, and closeness with the same person.
But I like, either had to jump from relationship to relationship to relationship in order to have that passion and that intensity.
Or I had to sacrifice that in order to have love and intimacy and depth and closeness.
And I was never able to accept that.
Even though it played out in my life, I left that first marriage, We started dating new relationship, hot and heavy, intense, passionate, all kinds of desire, and then the same thing started to happen.
And there was less and less and less of that as every year went on.
And this theme came back to me again that was with me in my first marriage, it seemed like maybe it had resolved itself when I met you and you have so much passion and intensity in you.
But then, like, I lost connection to that that I knew was in you.
And I felt it, like, slipping through my fingers.
Yeah.
It definitely was, hidden more than it came out.
Yeah.
And more and more as time went on.
So, you know, that's really where that came from was especially with you, I knew that all of that existed in you.
And that it existed between us, because I'd seen it.
Like, we lived it.
The 1st year of our relationship was spicy.
And, like, I knew we had that between us and somehow it was like we couldn't access it.
And so that's really what started to drive that that desire that really became my one of my driving forces or maybe the driving force in my life is to figure how do you do this? Cause I cannot accept that it's impossible.
I won't accept it.
And that's that's how I got there and really started diving into this work about understanding how men and women relate and how desire works and how intimacy works and how all that interrelates with the ego and trauma and and love and all the different ways that we get that stuff kind of tangled up in our Yes.
So this was quite a while ago.
That I remember I don't remember at what point you really brought forth that question.
But I believe it was after a pretty big, um, event in our lives.
Where, um, you know, I I don't remember how many years into our marriage, but we had found out that we couldn't have kids of our own.
And That hit us both pretty hard.
And it wasn't something like, it hit me really hard because I I thought that that was just the way our life was gonna be because it was the only life that I had known.
You know, early on for me, what was blade was, again, I I've shared this plenty of times, like, working and just being responsible.
Um, and so I became a young mom and my life quickly became about, financially providing for my kids.
And I had 2 daughters and I I got to a point in my previous marriage that, I gave up my ability by having my tubes burned to have more kids because I wanted to give my kids a good life.
I wanted to give him the life that I didn't have of taking vacations more than, I think, maybe twice in my life.
Um, and just be able to provide a bigger, better life.
And I didn't even know what that was, but it was One of the only desires I really remember having, it was about my kids.
And so I I ended my ability to have more children.
Didn't even think real hard about it.
It was there.
And, um, then I went through my divorce and so when we were together and, you know, we had a lot of talk about wanting to have kids together.
So we We went into the methods of, like, what are the options of having kids.
And so Had the surgery to reconnect the tubes.
Long story short, it didn't work.
And so there we were.
And I truly thought that our relationship was gonna be about having kids.
Because why not? You were such a great guy.
Why wouldn't we be blessed with children? And I had organized my whole life up to that point around the idea that I was creating stability, creating financial independence, creating a life where I had time to devote to a family to kids so that when we had them, we could really go into parenting from, uh, from a strong position.
Yeah.
And that was what we both kind of thought was in the cards for us.
But at the same time I knew you had your tubes burned.
Like, something had to happen in order for us to be able to to make our own children.
And just because I'm sure we'll get comment like, yes, we know IVF is a thing, and we know adoption is a thing.
Those just didn't feel right to us.
Right.
When we really considered them that wasn't where we wanted to go.
So we tried the route of making this work naturally, it didn't work.
And because those were, that's what we felt comfortable doing.
That was when that didn't work, that not only ended our ability to have kids together, but because I was committed to you, and I I entered into this relationship knowing that this was a possibility.
So, It's not like it was a surprise to me.
Right.
But so that also meant that ended my opportunity to be a father.
Something I had spent a lot of my life kind of organizing my life to be able do.
So that is kind of the backstory to what you were about to bring up, which was after that, I brought something to you.
Yeah.
And, you know, I really felt slept in the face by, um, the news that we got.
I mean, it took me a while.
It still it still hits both of us sometimes.
Like, it still gets emotional for me too.
It does.
But what you brought forth of that was very profound to me.
And it was our relationship has to be about something.
Now that we're not having kids, it has to be about something.
And I was like, Wow.
I've never thought about that before.
Early was all I knew.
Up until that point, like, my kids needed me.
I was a mom.
And a lot of my identity was wrapped up in that And so we had a lot of conversation about what does that really mean? And before we go too far down what that was, that realization for me was projecting forward because it point, like, we're in our early thirties when Yeah.
When we like, this becomes final for us.
And if we live a normal life expectancy, we've got another 40, 50 years beyond that.
And if that 40 or 50 years wasn't going to be spent raising children and then being with grandchildren and doing like the whole big family thing, then I could see very easily the relationship going down the road of just becoming another friendship.
Right.
And I'd had that once before, and that wasn't what I was looking for.
Right.
But I also knew that whatever it was that I was gonna have, I was gonna have it with you.
And that's when we really started to look at And I really started to go into what is it that lets you have this have your cake and eat it too, to have the love and the depth and the intimacy that we had, but to get back that fire that spice from the new relationship.
How do you do that without being in a brand new relationship? Yeah.
So I remember a period of time where you started shifting things for yourself, especially for our relationship financially, kind of starting to dream new things, which is partly where the the camper and traveling thing evolved from.
Um, but I do remember you kind of recognizing your own um, need to get yourself into, um, shape in life, not just physical shape.
Do you wanna elaborate on what that was just a little bit? Yeah.
Because this rocked my own, like, projections and plans that I had made my life.
And I was really challenged around the whole idea of legacy.
That was something that I talked a lot about after that, because that was I felt this pressure that if I wasn't gonna be a father, if I wasn't going to be able to raise children that would learn from me and carry on something of me into the future.
I had this I felt this pressure.
It was like I had to figure out how I was going to impact the world.
And it was through starting to look at that con- at that idea of legacy, that I realized that my legacy was going to have to come from the way that I lived my life.
Not just from reproducing.
And that started with the fact that the way that I living my life had me fat and tired and emotionally drained and just kind of wiped out.
And that that was the beginning of the beginning of the beginning of me starting to uh, pull my own life into order and, uh, kick my own ass, not just in the gym, but in, in lots of different ways, internally.
I've been trying to smoke out who it is that I am.
Who am I really? And so eventually, you know, that led to me I came across Esther Pirell's bookmading in captivity, and that was a big like eye opener for me.
Somebody else out there is thinking about this.
And I don't necessarily agree with all of the conclusions that she comes to in that book, but I agree with a lot of them.
And but the most valuable thing for me in reading that book was But it it is possible.
People out there do it which, you know, that book's subtitle is something like, can you want what you already have? So I know at one point, we went through that book together.
Yeah.
And that kind of started us down the path of how do we figure out for ourselves how we keep all of the good parts of this, ditch the stuff that's kind of gone backwards, and then recapture some of the from the beginning.
Yeah.
And I do know that an essential part of our relationship even before, but still is now and then some, um, just even more elaborate and intention around date nights.
It is one area of our lives where you always took the lead and you created fun nights, like, I don't know.
They they just created spark for us.
It was like I was able to be more of myself getting out of the maw mode, the mundane, aspects of the cleaning and the responsibility and just enjoy each other.
And probably the most important part of that was getting you out of the physical space of the home.
Yeah.
And out of the physical location of where we lived, which was very close to where you've always lived, which is very close to where you grew up, which is very close to like all of everything.
And so I would take you other places.
Yeah.
Even if it was just a half an hour or 45 minutes away, some other little town that you'd never been to, or to a place that you'd never been.
Yeah.
It was a lot of novelty.
I mean, introduced me to so many new things in life.
And we would do hotel stays, and that was fun to get out of the regular routine and spice it up and do different things.
I I I think that's a very, very important element to keep going for any relationship is to date each other.
And so this is all pre dumb sub.
Yep.
Still by several years Mhmm.
That we're talking about here.
And I don't know exactly when this particular phrase came up for us, but it was really something that drove me, which is this idea of I want to see how good this relationship can be.
Because when I really got down to it.
My statement to you that this relationship has to be about something.
What it came to me that it needed to be about was seeing how good this relationship could be.
How much passion can we have for each other? How much fun can we have? How much pleasure can we enjoy together? Like, how good can this be? How how much love can we experience? How much of all of the best things of life can we have together? And that was what I started to pour myself more and more into, was into you and into us, and into seeing what it what could I do if I really poured everything into into this container, into this relationship.
Yeah.
And you know, where I really feel it started shifting, I I still feel it shifting every day.
But, um, like, better and better and better.
Like, literally, every day.
And but at the beginning, I didn't feel that so much.
What it, like, really took for me was facing a lot of the pain and traumas from my past and really going back into the depths of feeling the feelings that I hadn't felt.
And, you know, so for a while, I was pretty absorbed in that.
And I know, you know, we've talked about patients before you really had to lean into waiting, maybe hoping Yeah.
I had to have hope, but I'd like to talk a little bit about how we got to that point of realizing that all that stuff was there.
Because What happens, and what happened with us, and we see it happen with people all the time, for people who listen to this podcast, our full time job is this infinite devotion business that we run.
And so we coach people.
We teach courses.
We work with people in groups.
And over the last few years of doing this is our full time career, we've worked with 100100 of different people in different respects.
And it's it's not just, I'll say I say that because it's a similar it's a very similar story for a lot of people that when you start trying to make things better, this thing rises up, that's, like, saying to you, why isn't it already good enough? Like, shouldn't I be enough and good enough the way I am? Why do why do I need to be any different? So when you have like one person wanting to improve a relationship, that can activate a resistance in the other person if they if they absorb or receive that desire for improvement as a statement that you're not good enough.
Like, I want things better can feel to you like you're not good enough.
Yeah.
I definitely can relate to that at, at moments in our past despite wanting life to be better.
But I didn't know what I experienced now.
So, you know, now I recognize how active our ego in our unconscious, subconscious, mind really is.
And I heard a statement along the way.
I I don't remember where this came from, that maybe it was Joe Dispens uh, but most people are living 95% of their day from their subconscious.
Think it would be.
Living out old patterns.
Right.
And so what I've had to face down over and over.
Is surrendering to the I don't fucking know how to break this old pattern.
Because it's all I know.
And if that's not humbling, like, I don't know what is, but Yeah.
It it really required um, a lot of turning the mirror on myself and differentiating between you saying, I wanna make our lives great.
And not hearing that through the lens of you're not good enough.
You suck.
You're not worthy.
Like, recognizing that those are not the same thing.
Yeah.
And that's that goes in both directions too, because you would come to me and tell me things that you would want and my reaction would be defensiveness.
I'm already doing that, or I'm doing the best I can, or can't you see how much I already do? And you're you're telling me what you need in order for you to have more to give to me.
And if I get defensive with that, that is telling you that I'm not willing to put in the effort to be better, I'm expecting, like, I want you to be better, but I'm not gonna change because I'm already good enough.
That's, just wear that hole.
I'm not good enough or you expect too much from me.
Or, you know, it's just never gonna be enough.
And that and that's what it would feel like to me sometimes where no matter how much I would pour into you, no matter how much effort I would put into making trying to make this relationship better.
And when I would feel it just not moving, or you kind of digging your heels in, it would it felt like there was never gonna be enough that I could do.
I never gave up.
But it was really hard to have patience sometimes.
Oh, I believe it.
And I don't know if this would have made a difference.
Because I know I I read how to do the work by Doctor Nicole Lepara, I read a few other books, who knows even what that was, and I was actively seeking to be better.
But what I still did not know then along the way was kind of what I already shared was how active that ego is at keeping me the same.
And I've heard it said, like, keeps you in a familiar place.
It keeps you in a safe space.
What feels right to me is it tries to keep you the same.
And so what the same is for me is really looking back at little dots.
Keeping me the same as little dawn in all of these belief systems that I have formulated over the years.
And now I'm trying to live as an adult with this defensive childlike mind.
You're wrong, and I'm right.
Mhmm.
And you know what? Sometimes I was right and you were wrong.
Yep.
But what it really, really helped us do I think one important aspect of all relationships too is the ability to relate and communicate.
And so what we got really good at was dropping our defenses.
I'm not saying I was very good at I wasn't at times either.
Because I know, I know when that, that ego flares up.
I, I know that and I've experienced it and it doesn't feel very good.
Um, but the ability to put our defensives down and actually communicate in a way that's effective, to be able to get into each other's experience in a way that we just didn't know how to do before.
So that you can lead us through it versus just feel like we're fighting a never ending battle because You say this.
I say that.
You're not hearing me.
I can't understand.
That's a really good time for me to pause for a second here and share that a lot of what we're talking about here is just one little piece of what we talk about in rapture.
Yes.
So rapture, if you are listening to this podcast, raptures a course that we teach.
We teach it once a year so far.
In starting in January, so this begins January 28th, 2024.
And we teach this over a 3 month period.
And we go into we try to share everything that we've learned about how to live the relationship that we live together? What have we learned? And how have we gone about it? We spent 3 months just downloading information that we've learned from ourselves, learned through working with other people, working on ourselves as individuals and working on our relationship together.
So the that course is available on our website, and it's linked in all the show notes for this podcast.
So if you're listening to this and it's not yet January 28th, 2024, you can go look into joining us in this course if there's seats left.
But if it's after that or when this course fills up, you can get yourself on the wait list for the next round of it too.
And it's, it always turns out to be a life changing thing for people who are in this.
We've seen some really magical things happen for people.
You know, I thought last year was fun and it was really fun to hear the testimonies of what people's experiences were, but I I feel really excited to dive into this again because, wow, I think I think the last year of my life, our lives together, has been one of the most profound in my life changes, in my deepening into submission and surrender, and really emboting it again in a way I didn't know was possible.
So I'm I'm really excited to share that again this year? So when we start trying to go into improving a relationship bringing all of that passion, excitement, or more, because in my crazy little world of what I believe is possible.
I think that when you have all of the love and the intimacy and the closeness and the safety, of a long term committed relationship that the sex and the passion, the intensity should be able to get better with time.
Absolutely.
But that doesn't play out that way in a lot of cases because of all of the ego related stuff that you were talking about a couple minutes ago.
Yeah.
I sure didn't learn anything about that in school.
Nobody does.
But one of the things that's been really important for us in recapturing all of that early intensity has been that we've both been committed to showing up.
And doing what it takes to make that real for ourselves inside of ourselves again.
And that requires being willing to, like, confront that ego.
Mhmm.
Being willing to confront all of the the preconceived notions about what is marriage, how is it supposed to work, what's supposed to be okay and not okay, And just even the bigger picture, like societal beliefs of what, what we've absorbed, what we've seen, what how different it can feel to live the way that we live in our marriage when people probably look at us when we're out dancing and listening to music, and we're all over each other, like, a couple of teenagers.
Hell, yeah.
And, yeah, Donna's mis PDA for all of our listeners.
This girl loves her her PDA, um, and I do too.
But I think she especially loves always has.
Mhmm.
But people probably, through- through their preconceived notions, think, Oh, they must be, like, new together.
We we've gotten asked before.
How long have you guys been together? Like, 12, 13, 14, now closer to 15 together years? And they're like, oh, really.
It probably shocked them.
Mhmm.
So being willing to admit that I might need to be different, and you being willing to admit that you might need to actually change some shit.
Is it's challenging because it's hard to admit that you're wrong.
Yeah.
And, you know, I just kinda had this connection here of maybe this is where this came from for me, but I don't feel like I've, um, more I don't typically play the victim in life.
And maybe that is one of the benefits of the responsibility that I was, like, honed in on from early life.
So Chuck went up for that.
Yay.
But I really I I really always tried to say, what is my part in this? But still, there were times that I would fall for that ego of being like, well, if he would only do this or if he would only make me feel safer, or if he would only be more trustworthy.
Like, there were times when I really had to sit with? Am I blaming for the purpose of not trying to Um, uh, I don't know how I wanna say that.
Just take some sort of responsibility Like, where where am I deflecting and blaming? Because it's really easy to do.
There is no room, and I would, I would say zero room.
If you want to have um, your relationship be as powerful as, as it possibly can be.
There is no room for finger pointing.
There's no room for blaming.
There's no room for resentment.
At all.
It has to be all of that has to go away.
Because we see this with people who come to us to work with us sometimes.
And it's like one person pointing fingers at the other one he does this.
She does that.
He does this.
She does that.
And they're both essentially saying, well, when he's different, I'll be different.
And he's saying, well, she's different, I'll be different.
And then nothing happens anywhere because they're both waiting for each other to go first.
And that's something we've had to master.
I think we've always been pretty good at it.
This is something I think we just have kind of naturally been good at is people is being willing to look for our own side in things, sometimes to a fault in both of our parts.
I was just gonna say that.
Sometimes it was hard to, like it was I questioned myself in in the conversations, and I I only know there were only a few times where I'm like, I feel really right about this one.
And sometimes it was like, we would just set the conversation side and come back.
And there were a few times where you came back and you're like, um, yeah, I need to bring this up again.
And, essentially, you were saying without saying, you were right, and I'd be like, I was.
Like, it's not winning anything.
It's just like, oh, okay.
Like, what I was experiencing was actually, like, true.
You and I both have had moments where we've had to swallow our pride.
Yeah.
And be willing to eat our words and say, you know what? I'm wrong.
But I know from my side, I think you would probably say the same, but from my side as a man where most of the women in my life up until I got my own shit sorted out.
You included have essentially it's felt like I've been being bossed around by women my whole life.
And so, for me to experience you telling me that I actually wasn't wrong, felt really profound.
I bet.
Even though you weren't actually walking around telling me I was wrong a lot.
No.
It's just the stories attached.
Right.
Because that's how I believed.
That's what I thought you were doing, and so I saw it through that lens.
Like, I would see you as telling me what to do disapproving of me telling, like, almost feeling like you're covertly kind of trying to manipulate or control me to do what you want, which is really just you trying to do what feels comfortable getting me to go along with what feels comfortable to you, but it felt really disempowering to me.
And so I had to number 1, I had to realize for myself.
That's not actually what was going on.
I was creating that by looking for it.
But 2, it helped me to trust that when you would come to me and say, like, and take ownership for when you actually were wrong.
Because that happened very few times for the first 8 years of our relationship.
It usually felt like I was the one coming and saying I was wrong.
Just to try to smooth things over.
To be honest, I don't really remember what that was all like.
I was living in a subconscious survival mode.
And didn't really have my head above water.
So where we find ourselves now is at a point where we're both really committed to this.
Seeing how good we can how good can this get? How great can this relationship be? Like how much ownership can I take over anything that I can take ownership over to make it better? And you have your own version of what what is that for you? What is it like for you to play your part in seeing how good this can be between us.
Now that looks a lot different because, you know, what we had been talking about was working, like, I had to spend a good amount of time working through the past wounds and traumas because that is the lens that I was experiencing life through.
So, you know, month after month, life would feel better and better.
But it wasn't until I don't know.
I lose track of time.
So it it was this year, I would say it that way, where I truly felt like I got to a point of I don't even like to use the word buzzwords, but I don't know how to go around them.
Like, the deeper in body the soul connection.
And when I've been able to I mean, I've had some really, really full experiences where my intuition, which I think is a interesting word now.
I would maybe describe it differently, um, in a spiritual sense.
And having that aligned with the truth that you would bring to me, being able to receive that, like, getting to that point where I feel like I am ready to fully drop my defenses.
In the ego.
Like, bring it on.
Call me out on my bullshit because I know I would like to say it won't happen in? I'm human.
Right? Um, and so if and when it happens again, call me out on it because what I have experienced through you, through all of this, is being led to a deeper, more meaningful, more passionate experience of life.
And what I've been able to touch that over and over and over again, the phrase how good can this get? Allow myself to dream, to desire more, and to really embrace, embody that desire for myself, not just because you said it, but truly in embody that desire for me is I will follow you anywhere.
Like, yes.
I want more life.
I want more pleasure.
I want more fun.
All of it.
And so now for me, it, it looks like How big can I let my desires and my dreams get? And so that's that's where I need to pull off the control more and more.
Like, where have I kept that for myself thinking, oh, life is good.
I'm content.
I'm peace at peace.
Accepting that, but also wanting more.
That's where To me, the meaning of submission.
Comes into play.
Because submission is such a small thing when it's just me busting you around when it's just the dumb telling the sub what to do.
Yeah.
Kind of more like role play, maybe you're in a theater.
It can be fun.
It can be exciting.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
But to me, what I've always sought out of having you as my submissive is bringing you to a place where you feel safe enough, where you feel enough trust where you have your, you're able to let your guard down, your walls down, your resistance down to the point where you would say something to me like what you just did, that you'll follow me anywhere.
Because now we're 1.
Like, we're operating as 1 unit where I am deciding for us and we're going together and you, you become the feeling experience of the places that I take you, and I become the one who leads you into what I see as right.
And we're not I've said this to you for years.
We're not separate.
But I sense you just in the way that you shared what you did here, really understanding that on a new level that we're not there's nothing separate about us.
The interesting thing is I probably would have said that.
I have almost no doubt in me that I would have said that before, but it would have come with yeah, but did you think about, or, well, what about, like, with all the butts? And now I can be like, Yep.
I know it might feel terrifying to the part of me that isn't used to expansion in that way, but I'm here for it because I know I can experience more And the only thing that holds me back is fear.
And you said this on a on an episode a few back.
I think it was maybe number 14 where I asked you how often has fear been right? No.
Her? Never.
It's given you things to look out for.
It's shown you places that you could go looking for why the fear was there in the first place.
Challenges within yourself that you could work on and let go of.
Right.
But it hasn't actually protected you from anything bad happening.
No.
And this is, like, this isn't much different discussion around, like, I'm not walking into a dark alleyway where I see men dressed in black where all of a sudden I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't feel safe here.
Not the same kind of fear.
I'm talking about the internal experience and what I've come to understand in my life experience of um, falling for the ego versus pushing the edges of how good life can how good can this life get? And I'll just give one more rapture commercial here because that is a piece of what that whole course is about.
Again, is teaching you what you need to know, to know, like, where to go looking for these things.
What is it that that a person can work on for themselves to help drop some of those walls and some of that resistance that might be It might feel like fear, but it's really keeping you from living a great life.
It's keeping you small.
Yeah.
And I don't think I really shared.
I started sharing something before about something I wish someone else could have said to me, but I maybe went of even heard it in my past is how how fear plays out in so many ways.
And Well, I guess I I did share just what that ego is designed to do is to keep you in a in that, um, comfortable place.
Most people fear is the the most motivating thing that we experience as humans.
That's why advertisers, political ads, they all love to use fear.
It's not like, Hey, this would be great.
It's this terrible thing's gonna happen if you don't do this.
That's a that's the most highly motivating thing for us, and it's used against us all the time, but we use it against ourselves just as powerfully.
Yeah.
And but we have a whole episode on fear back a few episodes ago here that people can go listen to if they want to dig more into that, but I would say even in the last month since we recorded that episode, we've we've had our own growth and understanding around what fear is and, and how it plays out in our lives.
What else would you say has had to change for you? To shift from the way that you used to live into being able to pursue seeing how good you can make.
This relationship and this love.
It I wouldn't say it.
Is exactly changing, but I guess you could see it through that lens.
It really goes back to fear and the ego.
And when I got to the point where I'm like, You know what? I am really sick of falling for the ego.
I'm just so done.
It it's not about you being right and I'm being wrong, but it the words feel accurate.
Like, you have been right all along.
What what you have seen in me that it what you have been able to Look at my past experiences of life because, you know, we've talked about everything and anything.
Um, there's nothing hidden.
And when you've been able to help me um, shift my perspective on things that I judged myself for and shamed myself for and like you've brought this new, lens in looking at them and seeing how they actually happened for me.
I didn't see what they were at the time.
But your ability to Gosh, this is just really hard to put into words.
Your ability to see me has become so debt on that I can't deny what you see in me anymore.
And so I guess answering your question of what had had to change It would be thinking I know best for myself at all.
Because all I've ever done is live small.
By my ego, and partly live her other people.
I would say the other part of that that's been really powerful, but I've witnessed being really powerful in you.
Is the amount of acceptance of you that I've always had.
I've seen Well, let's say it this way, when if you can't accept yourself in whatever is real for you, then you are actively rejecting the truth in favor of the comfortable.
Mhmm.
And because I'm not inside of your inner experience and getting tangled up in a web of, of old beliefs and getting tangled up in the web of self protection and all the stuff that goes on inside of any person.
I've been able to sit over here and witness you and see what makes you come alive.
And just accepting you unconditionally, especially in the areas where you've rejected yourself.
Yes.
Absolutely.
You being the mirror of unconditional love and acceptance of me has never gone unnoticed and has been a necessary part of me truly coming to that place of love and acceptance for myself.
And again, I'm human.
I can feel like, yes, I love myself today.
And then the next day, it's like, I don't go that far.
But but just starting to look for the flaws.
Because you never had any trouble accepting the things about yourself that weren't actually you.
Gosh.
No, I didn't.
That's and that's really what I'm getting at here is because you would accept what was not really you, but what you had conditioned yourself to believe was you, you would defend those parts.
You would stand up for yourself in those parts.
You would show up for yourself there.
But at the same time, you were actively denying, and disapproving of yourself for the parts of you that would actually make you come the most alive.
That would make you feel the most vibrant.
Yeah.
I don't think you've ever said it to me that way before, but why do I feel the depth of that.
And so as I looked at you and I saw all these things you approve of about yourself, are the things that just leave you flat line energetically? Yeah.
And all of the things you disapprove of about, not all of, but the things that make you come the most alive, you had all of this judgment for yourself.
And so for me to bring acceptance and to show love to those parts of yourself that you rejected.
Has allowed you to start to accept the parts of yourself that make you come alive, which lets you experience them rather than push them away.
Yeah.
Because you can't really experience them.
If every time you look at them, you go, ugh.
That part of me is gross.
No.
I experienced a lot of cognitive dissonance in my system.
So long story longer to finish my point here, for you to be able to bring for you to be able to come to this relationship and actively work to make it as good as it can be, you've had to learn to be able to look at those parts of yourself that make you come the most alive, that let you bring the most of yourself.
Into this relationship, to be able to at least look at them without shutting them off and pushing them away as bad.
Yes.
And for those of you listening and not watching this, I've been nodding my ass the whole time.
Absolutely.
Yes.
100%.
Because then you can look at those.
You can see them, and you can engage with them.
And then I can speak to you about those parts of your life that I see make you come the most alive that you reject that you'd reject for yourself And now you can actively engage in working with me because you can be okay with you.
You can love you for all of who you are, not just for who you thought you were supposed to be.
And that's let- that's allowed you to bring more of yourself to me.
And that's what's been really special for me.
Yeah.
I have always felt like relationships were part of the meaning of life.
And I didn't really know what that meant, but it was like the most meaningful thing I had ever experienced, even in the average.
Relationships.
There's always been something in me.
And so, you know, I am I am just truly, truly thankful that you brought forth what you did out of the the heartbreak that we had before.
You know, life happens for you.
And when you look at it at in that lens, so we weren't meant to have our own children to other.
But what we've been able to create an experience together and I feel like it's only beginning has been a better life than I ever knew was possible.
And I'm truly, truly excited for where all of life can take us beyond and and just being able to work with other people and share the sharing the magic of love, what love and devotion can bring to life between 2 people who wanna embrace how good can this get? Desiring more.
I'm truly thankful for all of what you've brought to our relationship.
These conversations just seem to keep getting better and deeper and more fun.
And, you know, with several months now of recording this podcast, it's been fun hearing stories from people that listen to these episodes and share with us how they land and how they impact their lives too.
So to wrap this up, I want to just encourage our listeners to reach out to us, share with us how how these conversations impact you in, in your life.
You can leave comments on our YouTube version of the podcast reach out to us through Instagram, whatever it is, but we love to hear from you.
And if you have questions for us, that you'd like to hear us talk about or topics you'd like to hear us talk about, please always send those to us because as much as we love having these conversations, we know we think about things in a certain way, and people that listen are gonna have questions for us that we might not even consider.
And if you have the question or you have the, the curiosity someone else out there does too.
And that gives us a chance to see things from a different perspective.
So please always reach out to us.
We are happy to hear from you, and we love hearing how these conversations land for you, but also how we can give even more.
Well, thank you for the conversation today.
That was fun.
It was a great time.
Happy New Year.
You as well, sir
