hello and welcome to being well I'm Forest Tansen if you're new to the podcast thanks for joining us today and if you've listened before welcome back I've been looking forward to doing this episode for literally years I'm joined today by my wonderful partner and an associate therapist Elizabeth Ferrera thanks so much for doing this with me today babe I'm really glad that you're here yeah I am too and I'm glad we're sitting down having this conversation yeah so we wanted to talk about relationships today and we've wanted to do an episode like this forever in part because hello or in a relationship uh but also because people come to you to talk about a wide variety of issues you focus on sematic interventions and particularly on helping people with trauma a lot of trauma is relational in nature which means a lot of the time people are talking to you about their relationships either they current relationships past relationships or hey relationships that they want to create in the future and so I wanted to start by just running an idea by you that I've been thinking about a little bit exciting so I think that a lot of the time uh people are carrying around this myth that we perpetuate about relationships that a relationship solves your problems someday your Prince Will Come you will find the person who is going to deliver you from your circumstance whether your circumstance is a life circumstance or it's something going on inside of you that you don't like and hey when you meet that person everything will just click it'll be beautiful and we'll figure it out together in my experience it's almost exactly the opposite of that relationship ships reveal your problems even if they're with an incredible person uh I think that we both had a lot of problems that were revealed by our relationship even though we have a great relationship that I'm super happy with yeah no I I think you're spot on that you know when we're in relationship with another person they're able to witness us sometimes better than we can witness ourselves and I think to some degree the healthy impulse of a relationship is to reflect back to your partner hey like look at it you know yeah totally but in that natural kind of impulse we can do a lot of harm to each other and it can create a lot of conflict that actually challenges or threatens the attachment and so it's sort of like H well how do you hold up a compassionate mirror for your partner and make that reflection without being like you're a mess and you need to fix yourself and godamn it I'm so sick of this and I think that if somebody hears that they might naturally think something like well does that mean that I need to be a perfectly mentally healthy person before I get into a relationship and clearly that's not what we're saying here right I wasn't yeah I still am not so we're we're still working on that one yeah so but I think that you need to have enough selfawareness to be able to separate out whose problem is this that we're dealing with right now whose material is coming into the room right now is this my material is this your material or is this material that we have together based on the way that we're interacting inside of this relationship and I don't know if that self- awareness is like the number one relational scale that I would mention to people but it's on the very very short list I would say it's a pretty big one yeah um so yeah I'm with you and I want by no means what we're saying to contribute to that sort of myth that once you're healed which I have no idea what that word means anymore you know whatever that means like once you reach that unattainable thing that clearly you are not now that then you will be worthy of a relationship and I think every human being is innately worthy of being in a kind compassionate loving healthy relationship no matter where they are on their healing Journey so kind of within that just speaking back to that foundational ability to be self-aware and how I Define that is you there's a part of you that's able to observe what's happening while you are a participant in that action like can you kind of witness yourself are you able to hear the tone that's coming out of your mouth a lot of the time when we talk about self-awareness it's in the frame of you need to be aware of your own content and that is a really big part of it but sometimes you also need to be aware of when it's the other person's Conta yeah and so people can kind of air on either side here there are definitely people who get into a relationship or are just in an inter and we're using the word relationship really broadly here by the way this could be the relationship you have with your mom or with your partner or with your dog uh your dog yes or with your boss at work whatever it is like our issues can get exacerbated any kind of relationship so you might be in one of those one of those diads one of those relationships and start to feel some uncomfortable feelings inside some painful feelings in your stomach some weird feelings some weird feelings of anxiety some fears are starting to Bubble Up and you attribute those as problems that the other person is causing this person is causing my anxiety they're causing my fear they're causing my frustration so that's one kind of problem when in truth that issue is located in inside of you somewhere you have a a pattern around anxiety that's coming forward right now because of what's Happening inside of the relationship there're also plenty of people who feel those feelings and they go this is all me this is all me all the time when the truth is that there is something that's happening in the other person that is causing them to feel that way so either way is possible here and I'm wondering what you think helps people develop that discernment o well my first curiosity is what is it what is it like to explore the opposite so if someone comes in and is saying it's all my fault I'm the problem I keep blah blah blah it's like H are you also able to explore how maybe your partner might be contributing to this experience mhm and vice versa if someone comes in is really like blame me and maybe shame me to their partner and is like it's all their problem right you see okay well how much can we tolerate perhaps seeing if we can observe what the opposite is like like oh well what might you be bringing into the relationship what might you be coming in and not in a judgmental or shameful way but just to be authentically curious about it CU often when we're in relationship our parts start to play with each other you know thinking that and I come from the sense that the self is multi-dimensional made up of many parts very ify yeah yeah so if there is a point of tension or conflict do you go o or do you go ooh this might be an opportunity to learn more about myself yeah I think that stance of curiosity is a huge part of it like speaking personally um as you are very familiar with I I was I had a lot of view when I was a younger person and I still have a lot of view I am a view driven human being I have a perspective on the rights and the wrongs and uh all of the ways in which we we should or shouldn't be behaving yeah have that gift of Justice oh thank you that's a very sweet and kind way to put it so thank you Elizabeth um I I think that for a long time it might have had a Justice orientation but it was delivered in like really shitty wrapping paper yeah um and I had a lot of attachment to those views we talk about attachment to view a lot in Buddhism and I was just really wrapped up in those those stances and as time has gone on I've I've developed a little bit more more space in them it's still a tendency that I have and it's just like a part of who I am and I don't dislike that tendency but developing a little room around it has been immensely helpful for me as time has gone on yeah and so that idea of exploring the opposite you know you have to be open to the possibility that the opposite is true in order to explore it right and so that's just like a a really useful practice for life in general but definitely for a relationship side MH I know what's what's the what's the version of that for you so I have a part that can feel like my partner can't uh attune to me like can't can't give me what I need can't you know Divine from the wall like how I'm feeling you know can't read the room can't read the boness yeah and um and I think you know this definitely showed up in our relationship but it showed up in previous relationships that I had where I would feel very left out or I'm I'm a little shy for some reason today to say abandoned but it it was sort of like I took it as a clear signal of oh this person just isn't for me yeah like oh this is wrong this isn't going to work and it fed into to my own sort of limiting beliefs that I'm just a really complicated person that is never really going to find a healthy relationship because most of the time I don't really like anybody you know and that was coming from a resentment of having never felt met by someone that you know that no one could ever really enter my world and join me I was always the one joining out what helped you interrogate that well you're probably not going to like this that that's fine because because well I think you might be surprised by how on the same page we are here actually because I because I think that over time I certainly have become better at reading you interpreting what you need being sensitive and responsive like all of those normal good relationship and right but man I think the big change has been in you and in your accepting the good enough partner yeah put it a certain kind of way rather than the perfect partner that doesn't actually exist and it feels like you've gotten more okay over time with with me being 80% right and that being enough is that a fair is that a fair read I think so yeah you know I I'm feeling I'm feeling what you're putting down it's feeling true you know yeah I'm vied the right direction good job babe you're doing it um so to get back kind of like to your question and maybe working our way backwards I think what also helped with that too was that as you became less rigid on what was right and wrong totally it allowed me to Advocate more for what I actually needed because I no longer felt like I was going Jud I didn't feel like I was going to be told oh no Elizabeth that's not how you be that's not what you do and instead you started to go I believe you I believe what you're asking for and I will give it to you and that really allowed me to start to feel because now I was really getting what I needed that when it was you know the 80% there it was like you know close enough you know it gave us both Grace I feel right on um but I think what really helped me and this kind of hearkens back to that self-awareness piece was there was a certain point in our relationship you know the the great chaotic moment that was uh covid-19 and the pandemic when we moved in four years ago yeah and I was a mess I was not okay um my whole life flipped upside down everything that had been a part of my identity I felt was ripped out from under me and so there was a lot of me being pushed into a very tight condensed transformational process M and what honestly helped me was starting to view myself through that more psychospiritual lens and doing that shadow work piece of going why does it bother me so much when my partner says this or why am I becoming so inside of myself when X Y and Z come up and I thought well I can't change my partner I have no I have no power over that but what do I have the power over I can change myself MH and that was where I found my agency and it's also what drove me to look with more Force inside of myself and what I really realized were there were these abandoned wounded Parts wounded parts of me that I couldn't even attune to that I didn't like that I was like like I don't like that part and for a year I tried to just cut them out you know be like no but the little shits kept coming back and you know I'm still working on it but you know you learn to be more self-compassionate and then attune to those parts and then you don't feel like you're applying so much pressure on your partner to do something that you can't even do with yourself great answer super deep and thorough there's one piece of it that stood out to me and it was just a a comment you made in passing that we talk about all the time instead of our relationship but might be new to people listening or watching you said to paraphrase I can't change myself or I can't change my partner but I know I can change myself yeah and I smiled and nodded even though we are in a what I would describe as a very open-minded malleable receptive to the other person input um kind of relationship even so that's 100% the case like you cannot change the person that you're with and continuing to be with somebody off of the hope that they are going to change in the exact ways that you want them to change is kind of a full zent here that's kind of the Paradox if I take all of my psychic energy and I don't just mean in the wooy psychic but you know interal psychological processes if I take all of that and I externalize it on my partner trying to get you to change nothing is going to happen yeah because you're going to become defended you're going to have a part that goes I don't want to give her what she wants she's a whiny little H and so you know and then I'm meanna there's that conflict but if I come in with softness and I put my currency of vulnerability on the table and I go hey I am changing in these ways MH the kind of amazing thing that happens is that you change because we're in a system together and that can't that Force can't help but be channeled so it's sort of this in my you know weird and wonky neurodiverse brain kind of goes I mean that's kind of the way is I got to go first if I want you to change in a way I need to change in at first and then at least my experience is you end up changing in the ways that need or that I want totally and it's it's really easy there's there's no vulnerability in going to somebody and saying here are all the ways that you're doing it wrong yeah that is a zero on the zero to 100 scale of vulnerability that is a zero but going to somebody else and saying hey here's what I'm seeing inside of myself here are the things that I'm planning on doing about it and this is the result that I hope that we get out of it that is an infinitely more vulnerable position to PL yourself in and I think that's part of the reason that people don't do it as much is that it's you're just putting like so many more cards on the table you're so much more revealed with the other person and certainly early on in relationships you're basically meeting somebody's Ad Agency you know you're meeting their mask you're meeting their manager you're meeting um their their PR department the whole thing and then it takes a while to get down to those levels where more and more of the real parts of a person start to come online MH there are very few people on the planet who really enjoy being vulnerable I'm not one of them some people i' relatively small subset of people like being vulnerable because it draws attention their way and that creates uh interpersonal resources for them that they can use in a variety of different ways yeah but in a relationship if you wanted to be deep and meaningful and connected you kind of have a few options here you can either be authentic and vulnerable and face the pain of that you can and uh come to peace inside of yourself that the true you is never really going to be seen or met by your partner because you haven't expressed it to them clearly or you can just repress it and get really resentful and pissed off and you're kind of constantly frustrated that you're not being met in those ways that you wanted to be met or those um those ways that you were describing earlier but one of the hardest things is to actually tell people what you want yeah and isn't it interesting how we literally try every other Avenue other than being vulnerable because being vulnerable is painful it it sucks it's like look into my open wound and please love me you know that is a very vulnerable place to be and it can be at least in my experience I always have to move through the river of pain before I can be vulnerable every single time and I think that partly is due to the fact I have complex trauma um and I've had a lot of relational wounding but it's always there you know even if the reward at the end feels great it's like every single time you know here I go back in the boiling water again you know um but with that I think if you want to truly be intimate with a person you have to be vulnerable first and it never works if you're trying to make the other person vulnerable you know mhm um and it makes me think about somatically that kind of difference right like between penetrating energy and like spacious welcoming energy and I feel sometimes we can have a a charge right and I I hate to kind of use this word but I don't know what else to use it maybe you can find a different one but sort of that forced vulnerability know when someone it's very clearly like someone's trying to pull it out of you I know what you mean for sure yeah my system will immediately go no um but if someone is just kind of spacious and wide and just is vulnerable it's way easier for a system like mine to then soften and relax and kind of join in that vulnerability that way so some people aren't vulnerable in their relationships today because they've never had a good experience of vulnerability it's literally never gone well for them or like conflict has never gone well for them in the past it always led to an explosion it always created more of a problem it was never resolved in a way that felt good for the person so you know we're we're big we're big animals we're big dogs at the end of the day that gets programmed into us behaviorally I know that you do a lot of work with people um around complex PTSD and Trauma related issues many of which are relational name and I'm wondering what you've seen help people start to get enough space around those patterns where they can actually do something about them where they can essentially like learn a different way of being over time I feel it's about supporting the person to have a vulnerable relationship with themselves to be able to hold themselves being honest observing compassionate and you know in the room with me so to speak it's the therapist or the coach whatever role I'm taking on I it most of the time I feel like I'm just being there to witness but what I'm witnessing is someone perhaps for the first time dare to be truly vulnerable with themselves M and I feel just having someone witness that can be a real really powerful transformational force and sometimes we need a little bit of help getting there either by a reflection or a little bit of mirroring right but I feel that is what starts to help people is that they can soften in that vulnerability in the room with me in the room with themselves and it it's starts to build a a degree of presence in that kind of space so I don't like to say the window of Tolerance because I don't know that just sounds horrible I like to say window of presence right so you you're building Your Capacity to be vulnerable and then you get to practice kind of outside like what's it like you know don't dump all the treasure on one person all at once of course not you know like must you got to earn this um but something small like hey I would really like to spend more time with you MH or I like that too would you like to do this together like making little bids little little small things and for someone with trauma those aren't little small things those are really big things so I think you've transitioned us really well here into talking about practical stuff which which I love that never happened yeah I know I didn't yeah I know like that don't worry I'm still aware I didn't read it that way um that that just popped out I normally would trim that but that just popped out of me um no what what what I have meant was what I meant was that um that normally like I'm the very practical ABC person and you're more the sort of uh big spacious person so I splatter it out the wall I see what sakes yeah so so giving giving me a beautiful little practical transition I was like oh right there um and then of course and yeah and then I just immediately blew it up of course but hey what you GNA do so anyways so people most of um it's easy to have a great relationship when everyone's on the same page about everything y when everything's going super smooth when you want the same things when you need the same things all of that stuff that Rel relationship does not exist that is not a real relationship relationships are defined by how you manage conflict how you manage differences and one of the things you've said to me recently that I think it's just read on and stuck with me is that relationships are defined by whether or not you can disagree well yep like how skillful are you at identifying differences and being okay with them whatever okay looks like for you and your partner or you and the person that you're going through this with and um something that really stands out to me is something you just did which is when you were giving that kind of role-play depiction of what that how that person communicated they were quite specific about how much of what they needed they needed you said oh I would like this little thing from you this is it pretty specifically and I think that would be really great often when we complain or when we uh Express a need to use the language that's a little bit Kinder we do it in this big amorphous way mhm it's totally unbounded you just don't listen to me mhm that might be true but I can't do a lot with that information other than like try to be a better listener but I'm going to interpret that Through My Lens of what good listening means that could be very different from your lens of what good listening means so now all of a sudden we're in the world of having this definitional problem what does it mean to be a good good listener different people def find that in different ways right but you know what I can really act on Forest I want 5 minutes a day from you where you're just sitting next to me and you're only focused on me and I can just talk about whatever I need to talk about okay I can sign up for that five minutes a day it's not a lot of not a lot of pain point for Me Maybe it really serves my partner whatever it is that's a pretty pedantic example here yeah but it's a simple example of the kind of thing that often becomes a stumbling block for people and I think that cuz now we're getting also into wants and needs and it's really hard I think for most people to ask for what they want and ask for what they need yeah and we're so bad at it that that's how the resentments come in because we try to say it kind of in like in a roundabout way or we try to allude to it well you know only if you want to that kind of stuff and and we're not direct and we're not clear because the risk is if we are direct and we are clear you could say no yeah you could say wow that sounds really dumb or you know you could you could be nasty with it and I think that's the like underlying fear is well if I actually say it it's going to be rejected again and so I think that when we're in a relationship with a person who's trying someone who kind of in that scenario just described when you don't listen to me okay well you don't and you can kind of start to see they are trying their best they just were we missing each other there's a misattunement happening I don't know how to say what I actually need I keep trying to say it and you're trying to catch missed cuz it's very unclear what's kind of coming at you and I think things get a whole lot easier when instead of holding back because we're afraid of losing the attachment we risk putting things on the table so that we're not binding that energy to create a resentment and that's an incredible tester for a relationship y just bottom line can the person receive that from you right now or not and if they can't that that does not inherently mean that this just isn't going to work out if it's a romantic relationship it doesn't inherently mean that the person's never going to be the person you want them to be as a friend or as a as a parent as a kid you know whatever the relationship is but it does indicate that right now that part of you there's no space for it and so that need needs to be met in some other way in some other place yep if you want to keep on having this relationship with that person a phrase that Rick has that I really like this is my dad um is resizing the relationship with somebody else so we have a foundation that we know that we're solid on and then as we work walk out to the edge of the foundation we get onto shakier and shakier ground with the other person and there are some things that we know are a little unstable like ooh that's a little edgy like I'm not so comfortable there but over here we've gone there in the past and I'm I'm good there I'm confident that we can go there again and all the time we're doing that exploring process M and a really healthy thing to do is to keep on updating inside of ourselves where are we actually comfortable for a lot of people who are a little bit more anxious in their sensibility or they have a little bit of a harder time um maybe updating some of those earlier models of relationship that they have a lot of the reason that that anxiety is perpetuating is because you're not going through that process actively you're just kind of stuck in one moment where it was all unstable and you're having a really hard time internalizing the feeling of like oh that actually went okay and that's easier said than done uh particularly if you have a trauma history instead of relationships way easier said than done but still it's something that we can lean into actively as a process ask ourself just the question like hey when was the last time I thought about what was actually stable with this other person and really went back through the Rolodex of instances together and when huh what can I learn looking at this whole picture of interactions rather than focusing on any single one of them mhm I think that process of updating requires um connection because often those moments are moments when a part of us is felt wronged or abandoned or totally missed by our partner and so that moment in time can have an emotional trigger to it and I feel like those get cleared up in a relationship when the other person can hold space for the other person who's holding this to be like I need to lay this on the table that at that time when this happened it really hurt me you know and or being more direct you really hurt me when that happened yeah um and I feel like that dance also helps strengthen a relationship and this isn't just you know partnered relationships it can be friendships or whatever of that it's safe to be vulnerable with this person like I'm not making you responsible for my pain but I need you to at least witness it I need you to be able to kind of let it pass over you and through you and trust that you're not going to now hold it and resent me because I'm trying to move past this point and that's like another thing that sometimes can happen you know someone opens up and they're like you really did this and then the person's trying to be spacious and open but then they're like oh now I'm mad and like resentful and it's like okay how can we reach that compassionate place of I'm holding space for my partner what does my partner need from me in this moment and one of the kind of things I think is helpful is that often when we're in a moment of activation or high degree of like disagreement or stress we're not really 32-year-old Elizabeth and I I dare not say your age Forest but because I'm that old cuz I'm that in the ground I'm 36 it's okay I didn't know I didn't know if you named it oh no I'm I'm open about being ancient okay yeah a boomer no you're just an old millennial anyway my point is that often it is the little Elizabeth yeah and the little Forest yeah going at it yeah absolutely 100% And and something that you said there that I really want to pull out is what does my partner need from me right now yeah or how can I support my partner right now a really really really critical part of that that I kind of alluded to earlier but I just want to talk about a little directly right now is there is a huge gap between oh they said that they want to be soothed this is how I would want to be soothed so I'm going to do that for them because that's what soothing looks like versus actually thinking huh what does this person want maybe I should ask them how would you like to be soothed and they may or may not be able to answer that question if they can't answer it there might be a lot of different reasons for that and then you you kind of have to play The Guessing Game together but that's just a thing that I see people do over and over again that creates a lot of problems for them is that they try to soothe their partner by doing what would be soothing for them or they try to support their partner by doing what would be supportive for them when the truth is that you need to figure out what is actually supportive for you not like what would help me out in the same situation yeah and cuz I can't help myself MH that is extremely difficult for folks that have relational or developmental trauma because just speaking from my own experience I remember there would be times when you would kind of ask me that and it would feel horrible because inside I didn't know how to like tell you what I really needed and it felt very penetrative you know the like that like well what do you want you know like like okay what do you need I was like you know it's kind of scary you know the little Elizabeth in me was like you know I I gotta hurry up and find the right answer because this feels what if I give the wrong one and you know over time making small little bids and I think you you maybe have felt this but like that was really difficult for me in our relationship to actually tell you specific what I need yeah for sure and in many ways it still is but you know I just got to name it because this memory just keeps popping up but you know one time I was real in the soup of stuff and I was feeling really disregulated and just totally overwhelmed and when I get that way I seek isolation I I'm like because it's the only way I've ever known how to self sooth and and here's you know my loving partner clearly can see I'm not doing okay and wants to do that and I didn't have to ask you you just got up you grabbed the hairbrush and you started just brushing my hair and it was this click moment because that moment was achievable because of all the other moments of me pushing to really be vulnerable being like talking doesn't help me you know just immediately move into touch and you tracking that when you brush my hair it's a deeply soothing experience for me right and so that those moments I feel are only attainable because I did a lot of work to be able to reveal myself be vulnerable in that way to show you these are the elements of what actually soothes me and what helps me yeah that's the that's the magic part of that is that I was not this was not a moment of mind reading yeah this was a moment of AC crude experience with a person based on effective communication yep and the moments that end up looking like mind reading after many years of being in a relationship together and we've been in relationship for seven years there are many people listening to this who have been in relationships for much longer periods of time than that but like hey that's enough time to acome experience with each other and really learn about what um what doesn't doesn't make you feel better you know and so and that was the result of it it was a really beautiful moment I think it was you know meaningful for both of us in different kinds of ways because I got to feel like a dog with a job I got to feel like I did it good you know and that was like very satisfying for me I like feeling like I am capable and effective inside of my life and then me being able to tell you that's it mhm you know saying that that's exactly what I needed thank you so much giving that reassurance because that's also vulnerable too you know when you track your partner just want leave me alone and you're like with they like you know just slide in there so something I think that we should talk a little bit about here is that we're painting a picture of a certain kind of relationship yeah we have a specific relationship works well for us um we've uh definitely changed a lot of people over time and and some of that growth been a lot of that growth has been driven by the nature of our relationship but that's just us we're just two people and there are a lot of different ways to have a very happy very satisfying relationship and sometimes what can happen when you listen to like podcasts of people talking about their relationship is a lot of pedaling happens like this is the right way to do it and our kind of soft relational style may or may not be you and I think that that's totally fine um when I was prepping for this conversation I looked up a little bit the search CU I couldn't help myself from the gments on relationship Styles and they outlin these five different styles of relationships three are more healthy two are more unhealthy but something I just want to draw attention to the specifics of it aren't so important here but there are three different kinds of relationships that they put in the healthy category one of them is conflict avoiding another one is sort of more I forget what they call it but it's uh more relational what we're describing kind of like softer and more validating I don't think it actually might be validating but the the third one the third one's called like volatile yeah basically there's a lot of Engagement there's a lot of uh not necessarily arguing but uh conversations become debates very rapidly it's kind of what I do with my family yeah where where we just get into it we really like exploring an idea and like sometimes yeah we start arguing with each other but we're laughing the whole time we're having a grand old time as we're doing it but to somebody on the outside it might look like a debate y has broken I looked that way to you a little bit certainly still kind of does I would say oh yeah I I haven't gotten there yet I I'm sitting there going oh my God this feels horrible is this an like what's happening right now like this feels like an argument but everybody's laughing and this is I'm in The Uncanny Valley what's going on yeah but it it totally works for us and everyone's everyone's quite content as near as I can tell at least everyone's quite content with that way of being and there's a lot of positive Rapport a lot of positive emotion and there's not a lot of hostility or contempt or the other uh Salient negative emotions that the go governments highlight and I just want to pull that out to give an example of something that's a little bit different than what we've talked about so far but that can still really work for people right and if you think about it anger and passion are really close with each other and some couples really thrive on that energy but I think part of the reason why it thrives is that it's they're able to take that Force and go we're coming together to solve this problem we are a team and how do we fix this right we might have some debates going back and forth I might you know say something but like most of that tension and power is moving in force is moving towards this is the conflict how do we solve this conflict and that actually swws the couple closer together because they're taking maybe more natural attributes that they have and they're coming together to solve a problem M we're getting toward the end of the conversation toward the end of the episode and I would love to leave people with some very direct things here so if you're comfortable talking about it yeah what I would love is um one thing that you've think that you do very differently now than you did at the beginning of our relationship that's affected it in a positive way I have really set down my protection around pleasing I'm not as preoccupied with pleasing you or being nice I'm more leaning into compassion and kindness and kind of being okay if you're a little frumpy or upset you know sometimes sometimes the dogs got to cry it out yeah a little bit sometimes I'm just in mood yeah yeah um and and within that that requires me to attune to myself regulate myself and trust that this little moment is not a threat to our attachment it's not a threat to our relationship in fact it helps support the relationship because I'm giving you space I'm giving you room and I'm also showing you that I can hold rage I can hold your anger that I'm not a wimp I'm not a wisp that's going to like fall over yeah and when it's appropriate I'm going to call you in MH you know to be like hey like did you hear what that how that sounds you know or hey you want to try again totally yeah I think it's so interesting how you set up a a difference there between kindness and pleasing yeah cuz they can kind of feel like they're their Nextdoor neighbors to each other and do you want to take a second and kind of peel that apart a little bit Yeah so pleasing is I will put on the mask I will front the part that you like I will agree with you I will appease this part of you that's rolling in oh yes absolutely you're so right I'll be the one that falls on the sword right it's it's a little bit in that fawning kind of place but you know I'm trying to appease you I'm trying to move myself in a in a way or form myself in a way so that it's easier for me to be with you that's really the the context yeah but that's not kind you know cuz cuz something important may never be revealed because I'm doing all of this internal work for you what is Remer is allowing you to witness the impact that behavior has on me even if I don't like it or in other times me kind of going a little bit more firm or standing standing in to again hold up my end of the relationship to be like I'm going to be a mirror for you so that you get to look at thish I'm taking responsibility for my stuff but also yeah we're looking at you too and I think that doing that maybe counterintuitive has given me an experience of you as being more sturdy yeah and more I I don't feel like I need to be over regulated as much because I don't need to be as concerned about whether or not um I mean and you know look I think that part of it is my my disposition is not I'm not a very like explosive person or like that so we're talking about a yeah yeah I mean the very the range of of intensity here is like from a one to four by a large that's my big range right um but I can go there and be confident that it's not going to overwhelm you it's that you're going to be able to do that because sometimes we just need to express ourselves sometimes I'm just feeling pissy about something and I got to just get it out of my system and it's the getting out of the system that resolves the problem there's not an actual problem here there's just some energy that's built up in the system that needs to be released yep yeah and can your partner hold that with you like are we able to be with it together yeah one piece that I want to just say before we close is that I've really come to understand that love is a choice and it's not like you know I met you well you know I might I might break the veil here but it's not like I you know met you and immediately was like I am madly deeply in love with this person I mean you were pretty great from the start but it it was that I made a choice yeah I would choose to love you even if that meant at some point our relationship would end or whatever and I feel like that's what has really allowed me to experience such a nourishing relationship in the form that we have it was because I didn't fall into the Trap of like the princess in the high tower and these feelings are just going to come like it was an active practice to love you yeah and I think that's what makes a relationship special is that that's my agreement to you and every day I practice loving you yeah well for starters likewise and I think you're highlighting in some ways the um the conditional nature of relationships how that an active Choice you're making you can choose not to not to do that you know that's up to you that's up to everyone who's listening it's all okay you get to be at choice and that choice gives you Freedom it gives you fre it gives you freedom and it gives you control if you're just a prisoner to waiting around hoping that you suddenly feel that way one day that's embracing a lot of luck that's embracing a lot of random chance the more that we're able to kind of claim agency in life and take more responsibility for our outcomes the better those outcomes T to be I did want to also answer that question that I asked you earlier that uh way you've changed that has benefited the relationship definitely the first thing that I said early on in the episode about uh relaxing around rigidity huge one for sure um either tied for first place with that or maybe even in some ways more important uh but I think they kind of go hand in hand is i' I entally did not really Express wants and needs in the first half of our relationship um I when I did it was in a framework of I'm disappointed or bothered by what is not happening as opposed to what I would like if it did happen yeah and I think that's a big way that I've changed my communication around my WS that has been super beneficial for us it has also required way more um it's also been a long slow process and it's required a lot more vulnerability as we were talking about than than I've typically displayed inside of my relationships and I think it's one of the reasons that things have ended up going really well for us is because we've both become much more comfortable with that expression of what we want yep yeah no I agree and before I felt like I was in a dark room having to feel around man what does this man want what what does he need you know and then I'd be like is this it and you'd be like and I'm like yeah you know I was kind of lost in it and so it's been really refreshing because oh I can do that like yeah no problem you know I'd like to be a dog with a job dog with a job man dog with a job yeah I wonder how to how to close this this been like a really wide ranging conversation we've explored a lot of different things I felt really great about it just because I like talking with you about this sort of stuff I hope that people got some value out of it this is a uh we were a little bit fuzzier with the exact topic we just wanted to talk about relationships and what like we find helpful inside of them which maybe led to a slightly more slightly less like bullet pointy episode than normal if you like this kind of thing please let us know we'll definitely do more of it um or if you would like things that are formatted in a slightly tighter way more great please tell us that too is there anything that you want to just at the end here babe or anything you think we should talk about for 5 minutes I think one piece is that it's important that you like your partner yeah geez it's really difficult when you don't like them to open up part of what you're saying there I think that a lot of people they say I really love this person but you look at how they act and it doesn't seem like they like them that much they might love them but man do you actually enjoy being around them on a day to basis and it's just shocking how rare that is I think yeah yeah yeah I just think it's important that you like your partner that you like the person you are in a relationship with that life is too short in some ways to try to shift ourselves to be with people that fundamentally either we're incompatible or we just don't like each other very much and a piece of what you're saying I think is the like you like the person you are when you're in a relationship with that person y yeah do they make you feel small do they make you feel Grand and spacious do they make you feel smart do they make you feel dumb you know again to go back to the very beginning a lot of this is about self-awareness are you feeling these ways maybe these uh negative or painful ways because of something they're doing or because just being in a relationship is activating for you on some level there are a lot of fair answers to that question but if it truly is their behavior that's making you feel this way that's a big red flag yep you're so smart Elizabeth I just like talking with you about [Music] stuff wow I wasn't prepared for that that level of authenticity just kind of like by surpris at the end in there that's totally true and I think that part of the reason that um I don't want to do the like the thing people do at the end of podcasts with their partner where they just get very gushy about it and all of that it but but I just think that um that it's so great that we can have a conversation about this and one of the things that people often say that they really like about the podcast is one of their favorite Parts is just like getting to see me interact with my dad in the way that I do and because we have a great relationship and I hope that for for people out there who are you know maybe frustrated with their relationship life in different kinds of ways good relationships are out there you can be functional with another person it's not all just the the grimmest part of the social media underbelly and what they show you with relationships like you really can find ways of being in the world with another person that feel very rewarding to you [Music]