Transcript of 3 Secrets To Building Deep & Meaningful Relationships

There are two big things happening at one time that I've never done before. I'm going on a book tour for my new book, Make Money Easy, and I'm doing a podcast tour at the same time. It is going to be big, and I'm going to seven cities in 10 days. Get your friends, get your family, bring everyone you know to these cities. I'm coming to Austin, Texas, New York, Boston. We're going to Nashville. Then we're going to Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco. Make sure to get your tickets right now. Go to luishouse. Com/tour. Again, bring everyone you know if you're looking to create more financial freedom and abundance in your life, and you want to see a massive guest live on the School of Greatness show. Get your tickets. I can't wait to see you there. I'm curious, what is the difference between toxic love and conscious love? Because I feel like a lot of people get into relationships based on a wound, and it causes toxic chemicals that might feel like love. But then they unwind after six months, a year, two years, and it feels like then it's not conscious love.

They got into it from a chemical romance, wounded, as opposed to conscious healing, integrating that into a relationship. What is the difference between toxic love and conscious love?

Toxic love is where both people are working independently to use the relationship to serve their own needs. That's toxic love. And conscious love is where both people independently take care of themselves so they can bring their best self to each other. Where this often goes wrong is that toxic love turns into a competition. Toxic The toxic love now is who's doing more for each other? Who gives more love to each other? Who does more work around the house? You turn the whole thing into a competition which is not teamwork. Conscious love is not saying you're the selfless one, it's you're making agreements. I think that's the mistake that love was constantly... Conscious love was always like, be selfless, love more than the other person, give more. That's not healthy either. What's healthy is we're actually going to create We're actually going to create agreements. We're actually going to create principles. We're going to create rules. The reason why I called the book 8 Rules of Love is my hope that it will inspire other couples to create their own list of rules in their own relationship. A conscious relationship is one that is built on a foundation of healthy agreements.

Toxic love is... It's interesting when you look at the word toxic as well.

Tell me.

Toxic love Which love is when your trauma is the oxygen for your relationship. If you think about the word, the idea that your trauma is what you're breathing into the relationship. Oh my gosh, that is so true. You're just breathing your trauma into the So you bring all your baggage, all your insecurities, and you're somehow expecting the other person to inhale it all and then figure out how to respond and react. Whereas a conscious relationship is saying that I have these things, I'm trying to heal them. I'm going to make my partner aware of what I'm healing because I'm not fully healed. And now that they're aware and I'm working on it, we can also work on it together. So I think we've also had this unhealthy idea of conscious love being, you're fully healed, and then you come, that's not a journey. It's a journey. But the thing about the journey is, are you working on yourself? Have you communicated to your partner what you're working on so that they can be aware? Thirdly, have you found a way to get support? I had a friend who's partner was addicted to porn. They came up to me and they were saying that their partner feels shameful and guilty and wants to work on it.

I said, You have two choices. You can either leave them because you don't believe them and this affects you negatively, which it was, or you can stay with them and support them through their journey because they want to change. It's not that you're forcing them to change.

They're honest about it. They're coming to you about it. They're vulnerable. Exactly.

They're vulnerable, they're open about it, they're honest about it. They're honest And what I found in that scenario was that that person was able to support their partner, and now they have a really healthy relationship. But the thing is that we can't also... A toxic relationship is also when you use someone's trauma against them. So someone's been vulnerable with you about what they're struggling with, and now you use it as ammunition in an argument to shoot them down. And so when people are vulnerable with you, when they're honest with you, when they're transparent with you, don't use that against them because basically, you're saying to them, Don't be honest with me. And I think that's this really interesting thing. We all say, I want someone who's honest. But then when someone says something honest that's uncomfortable, we say, No, I don't want your honesty, or I don't like that. And I think you push the other person away. Yes. So yes, if it's really... If they share something that's really not aligned with your values, of course, you can leave and move on. But chances are, if they're opening up about a journey they're on, it's worth giving It's giving it an opportunity to support them if they're serious about it.

I love your definition of toxic love versus conscious love. When I was hearing you say this, I was thinking that conscious love is also wanting to take emotional responsibility and accountability for emotions, as opposed to saying, You made me feel this way. You said this, you didn't do this, and it made me explode on you. It's having the emotional responsibility to manage it. If you aren't good at managing it, saying I take full accountability, and I'm working on that healing journey. I think that responsibility and accountability adds to the potential growth for conscious love.

I love that. That's such a great point. It's such a great question, too, because you also realize that we have so many flawed views of conscious love, too. Yes. People always think, Oh, toxic love, that's the worst. You could actually be doing pseudo-conscious love, and that's even worse sometimes.

What does that mean? A spiritual bypass to conscious love Yeah, or you're practicing it in a really superficial way.

It's conscious in the language and the way you talk about it, but you're doing unhealthy things. For example, you could think you're in conscious love, but you can't deal with someone's honesty. You think you're in conscious love, but you don't feel comfortable having uncomfortable conversations. You think, Oh, yeah, we just talk about good stuff and everything's positive. It's perfect all the time. Everything's perfect all the time. We never argue. Yeah, we never argue. It's like, Well, no, it's important to have uncomfortable conversations. I find that a lot of couples struggle with having these uncomfortable conversations. We didn't get into fight styles, but we get it whenever you want because that question was so good. That question was so good. Don't feel... I'm saying this as a friend now, off camera in the sense of like, This is so good, bro. This is an interview that I haven't done with anyone because it's not about the book and we're getting into it. It's like, Don't feel any pressure to go into the... The stuff we're talking about is amazing. Of course. Yeah, I'm just reiterating as a friend. Of course. Yeah, it's so good.

What were you going to say, though? You were saying something.

I was just saying that this superficial idea of conscious love becomes really practiced as a deeper love. We don't argue, but we avoid having uncomfortable conversations. Everything's always good, but I often go to sleep at night wondering what they're thinking. That's not conscious because it looks good. It's conscious because you're constantly working on it. I think we're so scared of accepting that something may need fixing because that means it's broken, but it's not broken. There's just parts to relook at.

Yes. What are the things that most people don't think are harmful to hurting, loving relationships that are actually the most harm. Not like he cheated or she lied to me or he's watching porn or whatever that is. But what What are actually the things that most people think that's not really that big a deal, that actually you do it year after year after year is a big deal breaker in ruining relationships. Maybe it's the little things, maybe it's whatever it might be.

Is there anything you can think of? There's a few things I can think of. I'd say there's four coming to mind right now. The first one, I'd say, is the idea of control. I think we're trying to control the other person, but it doesn't look like control. It looks like care. That's the interesting thing.

It's like manipulative.

Correct. Care. Yeah, exactly. So control in a relationship can often look like care, but deep down, you're doing it because you want to control the other person. You want to tell them what to wear. You want to tell them how to spend their money and how to invest it. You want to tell them how to live their life and which friends are good for them and which friends are bad for them. Now, it's different when that's a conversation from them to you and asking for your advice. But the best thing you can do as a coach, a partner, a guide, a friend, is to help someone understand what their goals are. We talk about this all the time. We don't project what I think is a worthy life or a worthy podcast or a worthy home onto what someone else wants because we all have different values. Controlling means, I don't want to understand your values and what you believe in, I'm going to project mine onto you because I think they're superior anyway.

And I feel more comfortable if that's the case.

It's very subtle. This is something you have to really monitor. I'll give an example of I've always been driven, or at least I've been driven for a lot of my adult life. One thing I had to be really careful for when I met Radhi was to not project my ambition and drive onto how she lived.

And hope if she does the same thing.

Correct. Because Radhi's this beautiful Joyful, abundant sun energy. Joyful, feminine, flowing. Flowing, and she's in flow. That's what makes her beautiful. That's what makes her attractive. It's what makes her special to me and to everyone else who knows her. If I try and contain that and try and direct it towards what I think it should be, I could potentially make her lose all of that. I've seen my role with Radhi as being more protecting and helping her protect that than exploiting it. I think it's so easy for us to think, Well, I'm driven and I'm ambitious and look what I've done, and so my partner should do that, too. It's like, Well, maybe they shouldn't. I remember I was speaking to a client. Actually, no, this was a friend. They weren't a client. I was speaking to a friend, and she was saying, Oh, you know my partner, he's lazy. He doesn't work hard. He doesn't have any ambition. And I said, Well, if you want someone who has ambition, is driven and works hard, then he's not your guy. That's basically all it's saying. She was saying, No, no, no, but he's really kind and loving and thoughtful.

I was like, Okay, well, which one do you want? If you want both, go out there and look for it, but chances are that's tough, too.

Or if he's driven, he may not have as much time for you.

That's what it was. That's exactly what she discovered, that she was like, I want someone who's driven and present. I was like, They can be present in the moment, but they're not going to have as much time available.

Or at least not during their season of being driven. Correct. Maybe in 20, 30 years, it'll change, but you can't expect it to change. Exactly. Okay, so that's number one, the idea of control. Yes.

The second one, which again is subtle, and that's why I love your quality of your question, because it's like, what do we miss or what do we not see is comparison. I think we do it without even knowing. I've heard couples literally say, Oh, did you see where they went for their anniversary trip. There's some passive messaging in there. It's true. You're passing it off like you're really happy for this person, but really, there's this part of you that's saying, We didn't do that, or, I wish we did that, or why don't you think of stuff like that? I think passive aggression in comparison. Comparison will make your partner feel… Comparison is the number one thing you can do to make your partner feel devalued and unlovable. There is nothing like comparing your partner to another person. Now, some people will say, I'm not comparing them. I'm just saying what someone else is doing.

But you're pointing out something that we're not doing, which makes me feel like I'm not enough.

Exactly. That is the bottom line.

That's it. You do that week after week, year after year. You're They're like, I'm never enough for this person. What do I need to do? So they start celebrating what we're doing, not what everyone else is doing.

Exactly. I think that comparing is so unhealthy. Yeah. Okay. Two more. I think complaining about your partner to your family and other people, it creates a loop. So if you complain about your partner to your family, then your family family is going to check in with you, and then you complain again, and then they check in with you. Now, I'm not saying you don't talk to your family about your partner, but there's a difference in saying, Hey, we're going through this, and we're going to therapy, and we're figuring this out, versus, He's so this, she sowed that, they sowed that. And I find that that complaining that we do, it also seeps into what we spot in our partner. We're now looking for them to confirm our complaint. If we just complained about our partner and said, Oh, they never do this, when we go home and they haven't washed the dishes, we're like, Oh, yeah, see, I was right. And now we're double triggered rather than talking to them and communicating and saying, Hey, when I come home from work and I see this, I'm triggered by X, Y, Z. Let's talk about this.

So complaining.

Yeah, and that goes back into your third agreement of love. Yeah. I love that.

The fourth and final one that comes to mind right now is this one's really tough because I had a friend who was going through this a lot. Whenever he was making progress in something, let's say he got a promotion, his partner would say to him, I don't know how they promote you. I never see you work.

Oh, my gosh. It was criticism.

Diminishing them. Diminishing them. So it's criticism. Diminishing them. It's like diminishing them about something that they've achieved or missed out on or Someone's saying, I didn't get that promotion. And you say, Well, yeah, I didn't really see you work for it. There's criticism either way. I think we do this because we want to be honest with our partners or we want to tell them the truth. We don't want to lie to them. Or most of the time, it's because we're hard on ourselves. We're criticizing ourselves for not achieving what we wanted, and now we project that criticism onto our partner for what they wanted. Criticism ends up making someone feel so far away from you. Criticism increases distance in a relationship. It pushes someone so far away because you've made them feel unworthy, unwanted, and not enough. Again, I'm not saying the opposite is praise your partner, tell them really nice things about themselves, but there's a way to communicate about certain challenges they're going through. It's not in the moment saying, Hey, I didn't get the job. Oh, yeah, well, better luck next time, or, Oh, it didn't quite work out. You might say, Well, people don't do this.

I promise you, what I'd love for everyone to do with this, I'm going to set a little challenge. If you're in a relationship, I want you to do an audit or account of how many of these you do every week about your partner. So just do it honestly. Honestly, for the next seven days, if you're in a relationship, think about how often you complain, compare, criticize, or try to control, and just keep a count. Now, you may get through the week and you only do one. That's amazing. I'm really, really happy. But if you're really self-aware and you're really questioning yourself, I'd find that even I do a few of these things constantly.

I think this is a beautiful audit, and probably a lot of people aren't even aware they're doing it. That's what it is. It's such a pattern and an unconscious your conscious reaction to seeing something. Even if you don't do it verbally, I would ask yourself to audit it internally. That's what I'm saying. Am I criticizing? Am I comparing? We're not even saying it. Maybe I keep the peace and I don't say what I really think, but are you thinking it?

Yeah, you're scrolling on social media.

Yeah. Am I comparing? Am I complaining in my mind? I wish she would do this. I wish she would do this. But without saying it, that's still creating this rumination inside of you. I love that audit. We are here talking about eight Rules of Love, how to find it, how to keep it, and how to let it go. If you guys haven't got a copy yet, make sure to get 10 copies right now. You mentioned this a little bit before about conscious love, having agreements, principles, boundaries, and rules, which I think is a great thing. Most people don't have that. They just have assumptions and expectations. That goes more into toxic love. A friend of mine, Ryan Holmes, told me this years ago when he got married. I was like, What has made this a healthy relationship for you? He was like, We created a, what did he call it? A family vision. We actually sat down and we created a family crest, like a sign, a symbol of what we wanted to mold together to build our family. Something like we used to do in England like 500 years ago. He said, Doing that allowed us to get clear on our principles, what we wanted to really step into, how we wanted to serve each other and our communities, our families in the world.

I thought that's cool. Is there anything that you have around building a relationship, motto, crest, vision? Is there anything you talk about around that?

Yeah, I talk a lot about how there's three things. You've got liking someone's personality, you've got respecting their values, and then you've got a commitment towards helping them get to their goals. That's my definition of love. My definition of love is when you like someone's personality, when you respect their values, and you're committed to helping them towards their goals, which means you have to know what your values are and theirs, and you have to know what your goals are and theirs. Someone asked me the other day, they're about to get married, and they said, Jay, what's your advice? I said, Do you know your partner's top three values? And they struggled.

They were like, I think so. Yeah, and they were sayingFriends and family.

Yeah, exactly. Very broad thing. I was like, What does that mean? What's the hierarchy? What's That's the order. Then I said, Well, do you know your partner's goals for the next 12 months? They struggled again. They were like, Oh, I don't know. They're just selling into a new job. I was thinking, if you don't know who your partner is and where they're going, then how are you meant to be their partner. To me, check-ins about these three things regularly and consistently give you a full vision of who your partner is and where they're headed.

That's so good. Liking their personality is what you said first, right? If you don't like someone's personality, you're going to spend 10,000 meals with them. You better enjoy their personality.

Exactly. That's the study that shows that to make someone, and me and you are great friends because of this, by this definition, too, and I've really thought about this. To make someone a casual friend, you should have spent 40 hours with them. 40 hours for a casual friend. If you consider someone a good friend, you have to spend 100 hours with them. If you consider someone a great friend, you should have spent 200 hours with them. We've definitely spent more than 200 hours together. But that's the question I would ask when you say, like their personality, can you spend 200 present hours together? Not just 200 hours watching TV or at the movies, present hours.

That's the like the person. With no distractions.

With no distractions.

It's just you and the other person I heard this, I think it was a year ago, about you're going to spend 10,000 meals with someone. That's nice. If you're with them forever. Can you sit across the table and have 10,000 meals and enjoy the meals for the most part? I love this liking personality, respecting values. I think with Martha, I got so clear on my values and communicating it effectively. She asked me early on, I've told you this before, she asked me early on, What are your priorities, Lewis, question? I don't know, maybe a month into dating. What are your real priorities in life? That's so good. That every man fears answering. I said, Do I step into courage here or do I shy back to keep it comfortable and not stir the boat? I remember saying, Well, I want to be very honest and authentic with you, but I don't know if you're going to like it, and I don't know if you're going to want to hang out in this way anymore. She was thinking, I'm going to say something horrible. I was like, Do you want me to be fully honest? She She came to me and said, Yes.

I said, Are you sure? Because I've been honest in the past and people don't like it. Are you sure? She said, Yes. Take a deep breath. I'm like, Okay, I got to have this courage. Because I just know that I I thought that she wouldn't like what I was about to say. I said, Okay, here are my three main values in order in life. Number one is I value my health, and that needs to be my top priority. Because if I'm sick, I can't do I can't do really anything. I need to take care of health first, and you need to support me in making sure that I use my energy to do that on a consistent basis. You can't pull me away from my health or healthy activities. You'll make me feel bad for going to the gym or whatever it is. Number one. Number two, priority number two is my purpose, my mission. In the season of life, the mission that I have right now, and that's being all in, focused on that and not feeling bad about it, not taking time away from it, not being resentful of it, any of those things.

That's priority number two. I was like, no woman wants to hear from their man or potential man that they're not their number one or number two priority. I said, then number three would be my relationship. If we're going to end up dating together, it would be us. I said, that doesn't mean you want to be like, I would never have time for you.

Yeah, I'm not going to choose the gym over here.

But I need to make sure those first two priorities are set in stone so that I can actually give to you more, so that I can be more present with you, so I can give you fully, abundantly, and we can do all the things you want to do. You're going to feel like number one, but you need to know that number one and two, I have to do these first. So good. You will feel like the most important person in the world. But if I don't feel healthy, if I'm being pulled away from my purpose on my mission, I'm not going to be good for you. So good. She looked at me, she goes, This is amazing.

I can imagine what to say.

She goes, That's amazing. I love this. I go, Really? Because I'm thinking like, I've experienced, and I've heard other people experience that, if you're not making your woman your number It's not a priority. If you don't put me first over everything, then it's a stressful experience. For me, that goes back into toxic love. It's not about you aren't my top priority. It's prioritizing health and purpose and service, whether you want to call it the same level or just above it, so that you have the energy to be present to your relationship. At least that's for me what I feel like a man needs to be in their relationship. They got to be on purpose. She told me, I love it because I've never been with a man who had a purpose. They always made me their purpose. After a while, it doesn't feel good. You're like, Go out and do the thing you want to do in life. I don't care if you want to serve two people a day, but go do something that you're excited about, not just make it about me. Give me your thoughts on this idea or this philosophy. If you think that's in alignment with 8 Rules of love, or if you think that I'm crazy, and I just got a lucky one who just accepts me for that.

I love it. It's really interesting you say you did that because inside my book, Eight Rules of Love, I actually talk about how I gave a client that same exercise. I asked them to rank their top three priorities in order, and I was coaching the couple. The man wrote, You, the kids, me, and she wrote, Me, the kids, you.

This is so funny, man.

He was so upset. Go ahead.

No, go ahead.

No, go ahead.

This is funny because I want to unpack this because I went to Caesar Milan, the dog whisper, and I took my team to do a full day leadership training, which you got to take your team one day.

So cool. I'm always scared Caesar is going to give me a dog. That's why I don't go. I know, right?

I'm so scared. He talks about the dynamics, at least in America, of married couples where if he asked most women what's the priorities in the relationship? It's mom, kids, dog, then the husband. This is what he says a lot of women say. It's like the husband is last because they get this unconditional love from the dog, but that's after the kids. Oh, my gosh. And then husband. He's like, We've got it all backwards. The parents need to be leading the pack together side by side. Yes. Right?

So anyways, I don't want toNo, I love that. That's a beautiful point.

You said he had one thing which was her, the kids, and then himself, and she had herself, the kids, and then the man.

Exactly.

So what happened from that dynamic What happens when you enter or are in a relationship like that?

Well, he was distraught and he was really upset because he was just like, How can I be third on your list? Even more than that, he was actually upset that she put herself first. That's what he was more upset about. He actually wasn't that upset about being third. He was more upset about, How are you first for yourself? How is it not the kids? You're not putting me first. How is it not the kids? Her response was similar to yours that, I want I don't want to be present, energized, and my best for you and the kids. I don't want to give my leftovers to you and the kids. And I often say this to people, if someone is emotionally and energetically dead, how can they keep you alive? It doesn't make any sense. And so what we have to understand is someone's not being selfish by focusing on themselves if they're doing it with a selfless spirit. That's the key. So you may meet a man who's not like Lewis and says, Yeah, I'm first for me. I'm first. They're only doing that because they think they're first. There's no, I'm going to take care of myself so I can be better for you.

That's the spirit That's what you're looking for. You're looking for someone who's selfish with a selfless spirit, not just someone who's selfish. There's a difference. It could sound like the same thing. It could even look like the same thing. You could meet someone who says, I'm dedicated to my purpose. I'm dedicated to who I am, but it's not anything to do with you. I think that's the difference. People who prioritize self-care in order to serve, that's the self-care we want in our lives. That's what I encourage in people, that you should always take care of yourself so you can take care of your partner, so you can take care of your kids. You're not just taking care of yourself just. It has to go somewhere.

Being lazy about everything else.

Exactly.

Speaking of priorities, I'm curious your thoughts on what is more triggering and harder to talk about in intimacy, which will lead to marriage. Is it around money or how to raise kids? Or are they equal on their triggering?

No, I'd actually say that... This is such a great question. I'd actually say that more of our trauma, because this is what's interesting, right? The honest answer is it depends on what your trauma is, but most people's trauma comes out more strongly in how to raise kids, because now it goes back to how they were raised and how they felt.

What they got, what they didn't get, how you were treated.

Exactly. I'd say that raising kids becomes a really tension-filled point for couples because both either think the way they were raised was great or both had bad experiences, and now they're repeating them with the kids, or a mix of both. And so I find that kids are also triggering because now you're getting to see who they love and who they respond to, who they listen to, who they like, who they connect with. Now, of course, kids don't have favorites, especially when they're young, they don't even know. But there definitely is that feeling from an insecure parent that, Oh, I do this all for them and they just want to hang out with you, or, You get the fun side of the kids and I have to deal with the stress. I'm not saying none of that's true. I'm just saying that I think raising kids triggers the most amount of trauma. I've seen that. It's natural because you are now looking at that kid with the lens of, what did I not get at that age and I want to give it to these kids. And even though that's a beautiful intention, it may not be ideal because you may overcompensate, you may struggle.

And what I've realized, generally, is that with any of this, we're all going to make mistakes, we're all going to get things wrong. But I think with our kids, we want to be perfect, and we want to get it perfect because we love them and we don't want to mess something up. Often it's that recognizing that loving them is more important than perfecting everything around them. And I feel that way with my parents. I feel my mom loved me so deeply and truly that despite all the imperfection of my upbringing, her love is what lives inside of me. That is something that no one's ever going to forget. Whereas sometimes you can set up the perfect environment around the kids, but if you don't fuel it with love, if you don't fill it with the oxygen of love, they're not going to grow up with that or remember that.

Why are so many people holding on to resentment of what someone did in a relationship in their past versus allowing them to find forgiveness and peace about it? Maybe not agreeing that it was okay what they did, but why do people hold on to resentment for so long or anger about a past?

I think it's because people are afraid it's going to happen to them again. When we have a traumatic event, big or small, in fact, you're always on the lookout for any signal in the environment, person or circumstance that's going to be the smallest cue that's going to say, I've done this before. I better get ready for it. We're in a constant state of bad news waiting for the worst case scenario. Let me just finish this. Yes. Okay. The question really was about self-love. The person who lives in resentment is making themselves unhappy. A person who's judging everybody else because they're judging themselves is making themselves unhappy. A person who's complaining, blaming, making excuses, feel sorry for themselves, they're making themselves unhappy. There's nobody doing that to them. You say it's your ex, okay, let's take your ex. Let's put him in a straight jacket, let's shoot him to the moon. Now what?

You're still holding on to it.

You're still thinking that way and feeling that way, and that person is no longer in your life. You're defined by that That story by that past event. The person is truly sincere and thinks there's something other than that emotion of resentment. What's on the other side of it? Am I willing to sit through it long enough? No matter how much the pain is or what my body does, I'm going to sit this one out. I'm going to work with my body and keep bringing it back into the present moment. It's like training that all. You keep doing it over and over again. You stay, you stay, you stay. I'm not getting up, I'm not eating, I'm not moving. We're going to keep lowering the volume. You keep reconditioning the body to a new mind. Sooner or later, it surrenders. It surrenders to a new mind. When that occurs, there's that liberation of energy and energy moves into the heart and you feel love for yourself. You feel a respect for yourself. You feel an honor for yourself. You took your power back. You You've built your field. Something feels right. When we look at the data of people who do this, and we see their scans, their brain scans, or we see their HRV measurements, and they get good at this.

We measure their oxytocin levels. Now, oxytocin is the love chemical. It's made in the pituitary gland. It is the love chemical causes us to bond, to connect, to unify. And When I showed the values of oxytocin levels with these people to scientists, they're sometimes 200 times above normal. Now, that's not a little love. That's a lot of love.

It's an explosion of love.

It's a lot of love. So Cetosine signals nitric oxide, and nitric oxide signals another chemical called endothelial-derived relaxing factor. That chemical causes the arteries in your heart and your lungs to literally open up and blood flows into your heart, and your heart is filled with energy, just like when it engorges the sexual organs. There's an engorgement of blood in there, and it activates it with energy, and there's a mind that's created. It's a consciousness. Now, this one opens up. It's a whole different consciousness. In fact, the research on oxytocin shows that the slightest elevation in oxytocin, it's impossible to hold a grudge. It's impossible. You say, Dude, I feel so good. I'm good. No, I'm I'm good. I'm really good. Now, that state means I don't want to feel anything else but this. So I am not going to compromise myself or my energy to a lower denominator just because of you. In fact, I'm really good around you. I'm really okay. I feel so good. I don't want to judge you because I don't want to lose this feeling. Then imagine being around a cat like that. Being around a person like that, that's really easy to be around because they're okay with themselves.

Themselves. When they're okay with themselves, they relate with people differently. In fact, they relate with them unconditionally. They just love them unconditionally, and that causes an attraction. It causes a bond. One of the things I learned last year and watching people in this work and week-long events, I do my best to pay really close attention. Looked out at an audience one day, and I looked out in the room. We just finished a walking meditation. Everybody sat down and I glanced around the room, and every Everybody had this radiant smile. I said to them, Hey, who's making you happy? By the way, who? Who's making you happy? There's nobody doing that to you. You're doing that to you. You're making yourself. You're not relying on anybody in your life to do that. Now, that is an attractive energy. That's the person who relates well with money. There's a relationship with money. They relate well with people. They're They're very giving, they're very caring, they want nothing in return. They're more present because that's who they're practicing being. And so there's a natural affinity, a natural attraction because the person is really present and they're really okay.

And something is different about them. Something is unique about them. So the relationship we have with people when we're in that state where we're really okay with ourselves, or we've made ourselves happy, we're really happy with ourselves, allows It allows us to love just about... We will find beauty through the lens of love in anything, and no one else sees it. Getting there is the overcoming process. That is what creates self-love. Now, to be very clear, I think many people, I think I'll include myself, we confuse pleasure with love, and it's not the same thing. What's the difference? Well, pleasure is doing something that makes you feel good, But it has nothing to do with love. Love has everything to do with something that you feel independent of pleasure. When you overcome yourself and you arrive at your goal, you reach your dream, you never give up on yourself. You had hard moments, you fell to your knees, you brushed yourself up, you got up, and you showed up again for yourself. It's amazing to watch this. I watch it a week long events. I watch people literally change in seven days, and they showed up when they said, I'm too tired.

I have a handicap. I have a disease. I don't understand how rough my path is. I'm in an attic. I was in jail. My mother was abusive. They showed up in spite of I'm too old, whatever that is. You keep showing up for yourself. You start feeling really worthy, really worthy to receive. And the universe only gives us what we think we're worthy of receiving. When you're in love, you're in a whole lot less lack. And if you're in a whole lot less lack, in a sense, you're moving closer to source. And that's a really good feeling. That's a really good feeling. So practice that every day. Practice that every day in your relationships with people, your relationship with your body, your relationship with money, your relationship with your phone, your relationship with your car, Your relationship with everything would be different. The overcoming process is the becoming process. You make yourself happy. You no longer need anybody to do that for you. You have a person in your life who is conscious that wants to make themselves happy and share their joy and their love with somebody, well, you have something really unique. It's really special.

Love is a very bonding chemical. It's a very bonding energy. If you look at oxytocin levels in mammals, you typically see it when the female has just given birth and she's grooming the offspring and she's touching it and licking it and nudging it and taking care of it. There's oxytocin levels are released through the limbic brain, through the midbrain. That's the bonding brain. They're smelling, they're connecting, and they're attracting one another. It's creating a connection A honeymoon stage relationship where there's a lot of intense connection, a lot of intimacy, releases oxytocin, creates monogamy, it creates a bond, it creates unity, it creates connection. So show the values to some of the scientists and some of my colleagues, and they see oxytocin levels 200 times. Normal, they're like, Dude, what are you doing?

What is going on?

Is it couples week? What is going on here? Now, I say the same thing. I say, Number one, I want people to fall in love with their future, just like they're following them with another person, because if they do, they're bonded to that future, just like they're bonded to another person. Secondly, if you truly, truly want to connect to pure love, to source, to singularity, to oneness, to wholeness, to the fertile void, to vacuum energy, whatever you want to call that, universal intelligence, that's pure consciousness, that's pure love. If you hit that moment where you hit connection, you will feel that arousal of love. It'll be profoundly memorable for you in It's not chemical, it's electric. It's very electric. So you get a few of those, it becomes you, and you become it.

And so your love for the divine, your love for the mystical, your love for the unseen, your love for source.

The love affair begins. It's like being in love. No one can tell you you're in love, you just know it. It gets really hard to miss a date. Imagine you go and connect every day and start your day from that place, that's a relationship. That's a relationship with the world that you're bringing. I think the overcoming process is part of it. I think it's practicing getting to that place. I think it's practicing opening our hearts more, moving out of survival, working with our bodies. In survival, it's not a time to love. It's not a time to communicate. So your relationship that's built on emotions other than love, there's going to be a limit to love. You got betrayed, someone else got betrayed. You get together, talk about your betrayal, work yourself up into a froth, feel the emotions, get emotional agreement, get a connection. You're connecting the same energy, the same emotion. Because you're sharing the same information, you're sharing the same memories, and you can relate with one another. That's a certain level of consciousness.

For all the people that you've seen have successful long-term relationships, what is the thing that you see them do extremely well versusOh. Yeah. They forgive each other. They forgive.

They forgive the emotion. Now, the emotion is going to keep you in the past, right? So they have to be able to forgive.

What happens if we don't forgive something that our partner or in a relationship does? If it hurts us or they said something or they did something, maybe it was really bad or just-We can't forgive you.

You'll never have love. The love that we withhold is the pain that we experience lifetime after lifetime. It's how it is.

Say it again.

The love that we withhold. That we withhold. Is the pain that we experience lifetime after lifetime. When we master our emotions, we master our creations. That's a creation. You have to overcome the memory and the emotion. When you do, you belong to the future instead of the past. Oh, man. Otherwise, well, that's a perfect explanation of karma. You live by that emotion. That emotion is going to drive a certain behavior and cause to think a certain way, and you're on the wheel. People are living the same lifetime every day. They're in cycles. They're living the same lifetime after a lifetime because they haven't overcome the emotion. No one's doing that to them. The soul can't go to the future. It can't go. It can't go if it's stuck in the emotion of the past. So the soul has to overcome the event by overcoming the emotion. Forget what happened. You'll never hear me say to anybody, Tell me your story. I will never say that. I would never do that to you. I would say, Overcome the emotion. And then the story ends. Because the memory without that emotional charge is the wisdom we get from the experience.

We never have to do it again. And now the soul says, Okay, I'm ready for the next adventure. Okay, so I was betrayed. Okay, I learned the lesson. I did this, I did that. Okay, I got it. But we discovered that when people analyze their life within some disturbing emotion, they make their brain worse 100% of the time. Holy cow. Because you're thinking in the past, the answer is not there. Overcome the emotion. Actually, thinking about it makes the brain worse. It drives them into higher states of arousal. Overcome the emotion, you have the answer to your own question. It's because it's not in the known. It's not in the past. You got to get beyond it. I say to people, when they ask me questions, just seven days, just cross the river, you're going to have the answers to your own questions. There's going to be no better life coach for you than you right over this. Then the person who shows up worthy in their life, person who's happy because they're making themselves happy, that's such an unknown for everybody that they've just left and showed back up in their life, who they usually complain with.

They're like, Oh, my God, this person's joined the Oh my God, this person seems way too happy, and they're happy without me. Really, it's just an energy that the person has broken out of the chains. They free themselves from the chains of the past. That doesn't mean that they don't get frustrated, don't get angry. They just don't waste their time staying there because living by that emotion will create a gap between the way things appear and the way things really are. If we respond during that period, we'll always say the same thing, Should I never said that. I should never done that. I should never sent that email or that text? You're You're altered in some way. Learning to shorten the refractory period of your emotional response is emotional intelligence. Getting really good at that then allows a person to show up differently. When people create the They're not doing their life they want, which happens a lot, why would they hold a grudge? Why would they do that? They trust. They're like, They free themselves and they free that person. Everybody's been betrayed. Everybody's been hurt. But if your life is wonderful, who cares?

That, whoa, I wasn't conscious, or whatever. Then now it's when your life isn't working, and it ain't working, and you're living by the same emotion, then that passes. You're going to keep it alive, but you're the only one keeping it alive. Where is it? Where is your past? Where is it? It's only there.

It's in a memory.

It's a memory. It's not here. Yeah, it's not here. Then people spend enormous amounts of time not even knowing, not even aware that they're living in that state and always predicting the default mode network in the brain is always predicting the next moment based on what it's learned in the past.

If you're holding a grudge of the past, it's going to predict that in the future.

You're just going to get ready for the next one.

You're recreating the past.

Your future is your past. Oh, man. Yeah. That's all the known. Getting a person to no longer live in the predictable future, where they're just habituated, where they get up and do things and they're on a program. Getting a person, that's the predictable future is the known. Familiar past is the known. Living by the emotion, remembering the event. If the familiar past is the known and the predictable future is the known, there's only one place where the unknown can be. That's the present moment. Getting a person to labor for the present moment liberates energy in the body, and that's when the person starts feeling more like themselves, and they don't feel as altered. You overcome the emotion of resentment. Just use this as an example. By sitting in the fire for a week and just facing off with it and just working with your body and retraining it to a new mind. I guarantee you that when you see your ex, you'll see a part of you you used to be that you no longer are, and you'll have nothing but compassion and love for her. You'll be like, Wow, I get it. I totally get it.

There's no longer the past anymore. You're not connected to it any longer. You free that person, and your relationship changes, and something shifts. She's seeing you differently because you're showing up differently. It's not anything you're saying, you're not lecturing them. They're just not showing up as the memory they had of and that allows them to be different. That's a great service.

Yes. You mentioned about survival mode. When we're in survival mode, we're feeling stressed. When we're feeling stressed, we're unable to feel that self-love, love for self.

When you're in stress, you're altered. You're altered. You're altered. You're an altered self.

You're not yourself. You're shaken. You're not feeling whole.

You've moved from love. Right.

When we enter a relationship from survival or stress, or lack of worthiness, or neediness. I need someone to make me feel more loved because I don't have it myself. What do we usually attract and create when we're attracting from neediness, survival, and a lack of wholeness?

Yeah, I think all of that lack, all of that separation, is separation from love. The problem is that we've just been conditioned into thinking that it comes from out there. It comes from that person, that drug, that circumstance, that thing, that object, that app, whatever it is. You're relying on your outer world to change your inner world. When things are good, you feel good. When things feel bad, you feel bad. So you're out of fact. You're not a cause in any way. So what if, though, you had a way to find that independent of your outer world? The data we have suggests it's absolutely possible. Now you're free. You're free. You don't need anybody or anything. You'll be a lot cooler to hang around with. Everybody will be like, Well, that's just... That would allow them... I know this. Your presence would allow them to move out of survival. They would open their heart a little bit more. They trust you a little bit more. They'd be more kind, they'd be more soft-spoken, less egocentric. Your presence would do that, and may not be the first time, but they would start figuring out like, wow, this guy is really different.

Something's different about him. That's just because you're present and you're giving them your attention without judgment. You see how hard it is to change. You've actually made that change because you've made that change and you see that you've made that change, but you see that in them, you're no longer judging them. You have compassion for them like, Dude, that's a tough one. It took me a long time to get over that, but you're not judging them. What's wrong with you? You're like, Oh, my God, I totally know what that's like. You've crossed that river. So of course, you would never offer them advice unless they asked you. You would probably give them a one-liner. People who heal in our work, so many times people in a state of desperation will say, What meditation did you do? And they laugh at them like, There's nothing to do with the meditation. It was just I changed. It was an arduous process. But they're telling a different story. They're telling the story of their future. They're not telling the story of their past, their ex, or their betrayer, or whoever that person is, they have no regrets about that.

Because why?

They wish them well.

They hope they're happy. It's not like they're even trying to forgive to be spiritual. People who try to forgive, I'm really going to try to forgive that. Working hard to forgive here. It's just not how that works. You are in love. You don't have to try to forgive. You just don't want to lose this feeling. You take your attention off that person. You're good. There's a lot of freedom in that. That's how people heal. They're building their own field. They're giving their body their energy back again. They're taking their power back in so many ways. Then there is community, a collective consciousness. I like great conversation. I like spirit of conversation. I like to be scientists or people in my life that I love. I like to engage in just what the limit is and let everybody take us on a journey to see how far we can go. I don't like to talk about things where there's pain or suffering or where there's ego. I don't really like that. That's a consciousness, and everybody's done it. But if you're truly on the path to evolution, you outgrow it. You outgrow complaining. You don't want to make yourself unhappy anymore.

You outgrow talking about yourself like you're better than anybody because if you do, you got to face off with that person tomorrow and overcome them tomorrow. After a while, you're like, Dude, just stop that so you don't have to deal with you like that anymore. You start outgrowing things that are just a side effect of your evolution. It's not like you have to try to do it. It's just the side effect of a change in consciousness, a change in energy, a change in awareness, a change in emotional state. In the heart, it is the selfless place. It's a selfless place. We give up from the heart. We care from the heart. We're kind in our heart. We're compassionate in our heart. We're inspired in our heart. We fall in love with our heart. We're grateful in our heart. I think people feel with every other part of their body but their heart. They just don't feel with it. Practice feeling with your heart. God, we have such great data. We put these monitors on people for 24 hours. I used to think primarily it was women that had these moments. Now we're seeing that men have them, too.

In fact, the men whose spouses take them or partners take them to an event and they really don't want to come, these guys are going to be fine. They have a really big moment. We see them in their meditation where you can these little blocks of five minutes and you see the heart just drop in the coherence and it's just beautiful. The line's beautiful. You can see this. It's very easy to see. You see this person sustaining it for 45 minutes during their meditation. You're like, All right, this person nailed it. They go to the next meditation, another 45 minutes again. Done it once, done it twice. This looks like this person is getting a skill. All of a sudden, they do it a third time, another 45 minutes, and then, lo and behold, those three meditations in one day, then they're in their room, and they're unpacking and getting ready for bed. They're still wearing the heart rate monitor. And While they're not in a meditation for one hour, while they're just unpacking, getting ready, there's an enormous amount of hard coherence is taking place for a whole hour. Why? Because just like a person who has a panic attack, who's embracing the worst case scenario in their mind every day and emotionally feeling the anxiety and the fear of that event actually occurred, that image of that emotion, that stimulus and response, that thought and feeling is condition the body to become the mind of anxiety.

The body has a panic attack with you or without you. Try as you may to control it with your conscious mind. You can't control your program it subconsciously, right? So is it possible to have a spontaneous love attack? That's what she had. She had one hour or her body went into ecstasy. You could see it. I said, what did it-A love attack. A love attack. I said to her, What did you do? She said, and I saw it, she got in bed and she laid down and rolled over and went to sleep. You see her about an hour and 10 minutes, perfect heart coherence, and just see it drop off to sleep. 1,300, 1,400 different chemicals are released to restore and repair the body. The love that you feel is the glue that creates connection on a cellular level, on a molecular level, on an atomic level, peel the atom all the way back right to the center of the nucleus, and you have nothing but energy. That energy is what's called low entropy. And low entropy is high order. And high order is high energy. And it's a lot of power. So as you move closer to that source of everything physical and material, we have such great data to show that people actually run into it.

When they do, their autonomic nervous system goes into these elevated states of high, high, high gamma brainwave patterns. Now, gamma is super consciousness. Gamma is very conscious, very aware. So the person's whole entire autonomic nervous system is processing hundreds of standard deviations of gamma outside of normal. That's not a little gamma. And it's so coherent. Now, the autonomic nervous system touches every single cell in the body, it controls and coordinates all those systems. Now, imagine stress is autonomic dysregulation, incoherence. This is autonomic regulation, but this is not a little regulation. This is an enormous amount of energy that's taking place in the brain. The autonomic nervous system is on fire, and every single cell in the body is getting touched by that frequency. That frequency is carrying information, and energy is informing matter, and that connection creates that feeling of pure love of exathy or bliss. And now the person takes a piece of it with them. They become more of it, and it becomes them. And so we measure their blood, and there's a lot of oxytocin. We measure their blood, and there's information in that blood that wasn't there before that heals cancer, that reverses Alzheimer's, that causes the viruses to not enter the cell.

I mean, that causes the microbiome that changes in a matter of days. So that interaction with that unifying field of energy that exists beyond our senses, whose signature is oneness, whose signature is wholeness, whose signature is pure love, means then that it lives within you and all around you. Then you'd be remembering who you are and where you came from, which is pure love, and it is the most familiar, unfamiliar feeling you ever have, and it's not chemical. It's electric. When you have that moment, many times, there's an upgrade that takes place in the body. There's a disease, now it's gone. There's the exema, it's gone. There's a myasthenia gravus, now it's gone. There's the Parkinson's, now it's gone. There's the blindness, now it's gone. There's energies in forming matter, and that enormous amount of regulation, high amounts of regulation, is raising the body in frequency. It's raising the body in light, and all disease is lowering in frequency. So the person is connecting to something way bigger than their senses, way something beyond their senses, and it's coming from within them. You only need one of those, and you're okay. From that point forward, and the way you see life.

Some fail, some illusion, some conditioning, some hypnosis is removed, and you're now way more relaxed in your heart and way more awake in your brain instead of unconscious, stressed out in a program.

When I think you're more awake in your heart and your brain, you start to attract more great opportunities, and you start to see, is this person in alignment with my type of-Resonating.

Resonating in that consciousness? Exactly. You'll be able to find your tribe. It'll be as obvious as anything. Exactly.

Whether you're looking for a partner or friends or a community or a place to work.

A business partner that you can trust. Exactly. You resonate and you feel that. The heart is a strong element in the creative process. If you have a coherent brain, then you're sending the signal out into the quantum field. That's the potential in the quantum field that you're selecting that already exists, and you got to have an intention. The more coherent the brain, the more the electrical signal takes place in the field. But if you want to create the experience, the synchronicity, the opportunity, you got to need a coherent heart. The heart is the magnetic field, and the magnetic field draws things to us. Now we don't have to go get it any longer because that's what we do in three-dimensional reality. All of a sudden, you start noticing, I didn't do anything. Well, I got the email, I got the phone call, I got the opportunities. I met this person, led to this. Wow, all of a sudden, I have this life. And so If you're going to believe in that future that you're imagining with all of your heart, it's got to be open and activated. Train people to get in that place. When they're in that place, they have wonderful relationships with everything and everybody because they're okay with themselves.

Yes.

What is the main thing you would recommend people work on themselves, whether in transition of relationships or in a relationship? Is there one thing that they could always be working on to improve themselves, to do better for other relationships?

If their entire story about the relationship that just ended is about what the other person did wrong to them, something is missing in the story. That doesn't mean that the other person may not have done things that were hurtful to them. But add to it, who were you in this relationship? Absolutely. What role did you play? What did you see that you didn't want to pay attention to? What things do you wish you had done differently? What pieces do you wish that your partner had seen and accepted from you differently? Where did you wish you would have said less and where did you wish you would have said more? What do you learn from this relationship? If when you say what you learn, it's just that I want to make sure that the next person is It gives me what I need. Or is less of this or more of that, who do you want to be in the next relationship?

How are you going to add value?

A relationship is a story of many people. It's not even a story just of two. Who was too involved in your relationship? Who was not involved enough? There's a cast of characters in a relationship. It's all those questions that you want to ask when you are in transition. What I think that's it. But they are both directions. If you find yourself with a spotlight only on the other person and you in a passive, receptive stance, you're missing a whole pan of the story. Yeah.

You're probably more of the problem of the relationship than them, if you're just focusing on them, probably.

A relationship is not about this person and that person. The relationship what happens in between. This is my view on relationship. It's not an essentialist view, this is this personality and that personality. It's the dynamic. You can have a dynamic with a certain partner. You've had dynamics with certain partners. Of course, it was just the right fit between the match and the ignition. You had enough inside of you to react with a certain, let's put, your jealousy. But you may meet another person who acts differently, and you may still have a little bit of that jealousy inside of you, but it doesn't get activated because this person is responding very differently to you. When you say, Where were you? They don't say, Why do you always have to ask me that question? They just say, I just want to do this. It's all good, darling. I'm right here. I've got you back. Then you don't go into your chest pain. This is very important to understand. We are not the same person with with different partners. We may have certain things that come out depending on what is being sent over to us. The relationship is a figure eight.

It's what I do that makes you do something that then makes you react to me a certain way that then draws that out of me, that draws that out of you, and each one actually creates the other. When you get that view of relationships, when you come out and you're in transition, you say to yourself, Let's say I was with someone who completely disconnected. Okay, they disconnected. Did I push them away? Are there ways in which I contributed sometimes to the disconnection? That is not self-blame. That is understanding the dynamic. You can take responsibility about things without blaming yourself, and you can hold the other person accountable without blaming them. It's not a blame dance, but it It is an understanding of what did I do that made you do what you then did to me than then made me? That's the relationship.

If someone's like, You know what? They listen to you, Esther, they really want to have an amazing relationship. They want to have a rich life knowing it's not going to be perfect, but they want to create beauty and adventure and play and go through life through the sadness and the adversities and all the things that happen in life. They're thinking to themselves, How much should I pour into myself for my dreams, my health, my friends and family? How much should I pour into the other person, into their life that I'm creating a partnership with? How much should I pour into the relationship itself? What would you say to that?

But you asked me, it's a different questions, right? What keeps a relationship alive is one question. How much do you invest in a relationship is a different question. I'm going to go to the one about what keeps it alive because it's part of, and I'm suddenly watching the box and thinking, it is what I'm mostly interested in because I work on eroticism. What keeps us alive? What keeps us hopeful? What keeps us engaged with possibility?

Not physically alive, but connected alive.

Physically connected to life. Life force, life energy. Why? Because I think everybody understands relationships that are not dead versus relationships that are alive. Teams that are not dead, companies versus companies that are alive. What is flourishing versus survival. Because it is part of my personal history, and I come from a background of survivors, of parents who were in concentration camps, and I wanted to understand how do people stay alive they spend five years in a concentration camp. That's why I got interested in eroticism. Sexuality is a piece of this, but sexuality is not eroticism. You can have sex every day and feel nothing. Eroticism is the poetry that accompanies it. It's the meaning we give to it. It's the story that's attached. Eroticism in a relationship is the quality of imagination, curiosity, playfulness, mystery, risk-taking, novelty that people bring to their relationship. Those are the things that I think bring life to a relationship. In the research of Eli Finkel, it means doing new things together, taking risks beyond your threshold, out of your comfort zone. Because if you do pleasant things that are familiar, it's cozy, it's friendship, it's love, but it's not exciting, it's not erotic, it's not necessarily desire.

It's calibrating your expectations. That means diversifying your intimate connections or your deep connections. For me, intimacy doesn't mean sexual either. It just means people that are important to you, that accompany you through the life stages and through the big events in life. These three things, expectations, calibrating expectations, diversifying your social connections, and taking risks and doing new things, is the research of Eli Finkl for thriving relationships. But then in that piece, I think play is essential. It's huge, right? Playfulness, it's huge. It is actually the quality of emotions that is the least talked about.

How often are you playing in your relationship?

All the time. Humor is essential. It's an essential solve and bomb in my relationship. I can in the middle of an argument, and then I start to laugh, and then I just get perspective, and we just ground ourselves back again. It's flirting, it's teasing, it's making fun of, it's that whole realm of We're not really serious, and we don't take ourselves that serious.

What happens when relationships are taking themselves very serious and they're not playing?

Look, I had a teacher who once said to me, If a couple comes to you for therapy, and there is absolutely zero humor left. It is diagnostic.

Really?

Now, is it true? Nobody has proven that scientifically. But what you know is that humor. If you listen to my podcast, if you listen to the sessions on Where Should We Begin? Or on How His Work, you'll see in the middle of talking about trauma, painful event, major fight, strife, I laugh with them. I manage to see if they can see themselves, if have a bit of distance, of perspective, if they understand sometimes the absurdity of the things that we get into, the things over which we fight, the way we do it. Even if it's just a glimmer, a smile on the side, on the corner, I know they know that I know that we know, and it creates that complicity, and it invites a new possibility.

Some people may be resisting the humor. They're like, they want to hold on to this seriousness.

Yes. If you want to hold on to righteousness, to I am right, to victimization, to I have the view that is the only view that matters, and only my perception and my experience is the truth, then you are in a polarized system that is rigid and unyielding. Humor and play is possibility. Possibility invites change. Change invites healing. Yes.

I want to ask you a few more I want us to play your game for a little bit. Over the last two years, was there anything that came up for you personally in your own inner world that you noticed, Oh, there's something... We talked about it, it created a lot of pressure for people if there were things that came out. Was there anything for you that you were like, There's something I still need to work on myself or need to continue the healing journey of that came out in the last couple of years with being at home and not doing things the way that you did? It used to be?

I will answer this in two ways, the way that I experienced the pandemic. In the beginning, right after I left you, I went back to New York and I went in lockdown. Basically, it was suddenly I got gripped with a bit of a panic, and primarily because I thought, I can't catch this thing. Because if I catch it, I am I was suddenly considered elderly. I'm past 60.

But you're 35. Yeah.

For the pandemic, it changed. It suddenly shifted overnight. I became elderly, and that meant I wasn't sure if we entered the hospital, me or Jack, that we will pass the triage. He's older than me. And I got really, really scared. I had a lot of post-traumatic stress symptoms that are very much connected to to my Holocaust and to my family experience. That sense that overnight, this whole life I have built could just disappear like this. It was irrational. I was terrified that Jack would die to the point, you wanted to know about humor in my relationship? We are in the middle of construction at the time, and the workers, and at that point, he comes to me and he says, I asked the workers to dig a hole in the garden. I said, Oh, yeah? Why? He said, So that when I die, you can just roll me right Oh my God.

Wow.

Talk about humor. But I cracked up because he showed me, Girl, you're gripped in fear. And I just started to laugh, and I just realized, No, he's not dead. Because I was ready to stop construction. I said, We're not making this.

No one can come here within a thousand yards of our area.

No, it's more like we will not survive. No way. When it's post-traumatic, it's trauma is the word. So I really was very, very scared. And his humor diffused it for me and just brought me back and said, We're continuing to build. We're going to live. We're going to survive. Don't worry, girl. So this was one, and it slowly entered into the long term of the pandemic and it dissolved. And that's when I understood this came out of that. I missed my friends, I missed my dinner parties, I missed intimacy, and I created a host of different group experiences, pods. I had a movie club on Zoom on three continents. I had a book club. I had a yoga group that met four times a week, still till now, that is over two continents. Wow, that's cool. I had a hiking group. I had a swimming group in the summer. And then one day I said, I need to play and I need to continue to have conversations where I learned something new. I was so freaking tired of talking about the pandemic all the time. Sure. And I said, I'm going to create a game, not having any idea of what this thing was going to become and what it represented.

I just thought, I want to do something creative. I want people to be able to talk about something that isn't just like when you're five, six months like this, in lockdown, you begin to have the same conversation. Of course. So I just thought, how am I going to make couples have fun, get energized, be curious about each other, talk about something else. And I thought we need to play because play is a container. Play gives you the possibility to take risks, to talk about things that you would otherwise not talk about because it's under the guise of play. Play allows you to ask questions that you would otherwise not ask, certainly not to your partner, because we get more shy with the people that we live with than with strangers sometimes.

Really?

Interesting. You're more daring to ask sometimes questions to strangers. That you're never going to see again. Or people you've just met than the person you I live with for decades on end.

That's interesting.

Play became very, very central. When you play, you still are able to lift yourself from the ground, and it means you can enter the world of imagination and where the rules are different. Every child at this moment around the Ukrainian crisis, you can see when kids are still able to play, it is the moments when they are not in hypervigilance. It is an essential survival skills. Yes. Underrated. From that place came...

That's great. Where should we begin? It's one of the key things in a relationship and in life, is what I'm hearing you say.

It's essential.

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