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not all divorces or all breakups are synonymous with failure the longing for love for intimacy for connection doesn’t really go away so we know that 50 percent of marriage is in divorce right and and people don’t want to get divorced so why why did couples struggle like that and and what do they do wrong when trying to sort of fix conflicts in relationship well let me suggest maybe something first i would like us to imagine that not all divorces or all breakups are synonymous with failure when people have lived together for 20 30 years 15 whatever when people have buried parents together build homes together raise children together dealt with economic adversity together they have done a lot of what marriage or companionship or companionate coupled them is about i think it’s unfair and inaccurate and shame inducing to think that the only marker of success or the main marker of success is longevity in this case you know some stories end because life changes because people have fundamentally different needs because there is a loss and they cannot overcome the grief together you know there are lots of reasons of why people divorce that doesn’t mean it was a failed relationship yeah that said so this is the first thing i diverse means it’s the end but sometimes it’s the end of something that was limited maybe but still very good yeah i feel like that i feel like that was my last relationship that it was really this incredible gift and incredibly beautiful and perfect for both of us and what it was and had a chapter that needed to be written but then it was over right the next thing is that divorce rate increase when women have greater economic independence that’s a very important thing you know in the soviet union 97 of divorces were initiated by women because there was economic equality everybody earned the same one dollar and so we were together for all the other emotional reasons and if those needs were not being met then there was no reason for her to wash his laundry right by definition divorce is off is initiated more often by women and the divorce rate goes up when women have an alternative that is a very important social factor to include in what we otherwise look more as relational factors social and economic factors and but that means that the reasons for staying together become more emotional yeah they become more about connection communication intimacy sharing thriving together and that when that disappears then the sense is for what now i would add to the conversation about divorce today is that you know it used to be that people divorced if they were really unhappy today people will divorce if they think that they can be happier and the happiness mandate is at the heart also of this you know is this good enough can it be better or the midlife question is this it will this be the next 25 years more of the same is there more life yeah so all of that are part of the modern questions of divorce which are very different from what it used to be totally and i think you know um i think people are are more willing to jump out of things that aren’t working uh there’s less reasons to stay together like you said and um and i think a lot of people try counseling and personally uh you know i’ve had a lot of success in my life and my career and business and in so many ways uh but relationships have been my holy grail i’ve had three marriages multiple relationships i just can’t figure it out you know i was thinking about you know who i know has really healthy great relationships who i know is fulfilled and happy and satisfied who i know is like you know really alive and vibrant in their relationship and it’s a source of happiness instead of stress or struggle and honestly i have a list but it’s a very short list of people and and you know your work really is is uh talks about how you know yes relationships can be a great source of happiness and fulfillment but they’re also a source of stress so why are relationships so freaking hard but you know the thing that that you also said is you’ve had three marriages and many relationships but you also have other relationships with friends with your children with siblings you know and in that sense um i would say that friendships family relationships haven’t really changed that much parent-children relationships have changed but there is one relationship that has really undergone an extreme makeover and that is our romantic relationships we expect more from them than we ever have it’s an unprecedented set of expectations that we bring to modern love and that makes it much more complicated than the particular expectations that we used to have for long-term basically generally marital relationships and and those things that we expect are a lot we want people to be our best friend our lover our mother our our you know our companion our work partner you know right and we want companionship look marriage or romantic relationship well they were not called romantic relationships that’s the first thing is that they were quite separate marriage was primarily a financial arrangement it was a companionship for life that gave you a family succession and social status we still want all those things too but now i also want you to be my intimate partner my erotic partner my trusted confidant my passionate lover all all in one and we live twice as long let’s really add that since you are a longevity person you live twice as long and so we are asking one person basically to give us what once an entire village used to provide and we even have gone a step further you know the thing that many many people talk about today is the partner as a soul mate and that’s a very new concept and one and only basically used to be god now we want it to be a person and we basically bring to this romantic love expectations for ecstasy and meaning and transcendence and wholeness things that people used to look for in the realm of the divine as the union analyst robert johnson says and then i want you to help me become the best version of myself it’s like love as an identity project and you know elijah has a beautiful image it’s a tall order for a party of two it’s a new olympus and as he subscribes when people climb a mountain the view at the top of the mountain is spectacular but the air is also thinner and not everybody can reach the top those who reach the top have an amazing view better than all relationships in history but so many people don’t get there why because this is part of your question you know why has this been so hard for me our childhood is often you know uh a few things that were done really really beautifully and riot well and then people who got either too much of something or too little of something right too much attention too much intrusion too much impermeation of boundaries or not enough attention neglect abandonment aloneness too much or too little basically is really what we can often summarize at some of the challenges of our childhood and we bring those developmental traumas into our adult love and really mark this is probably the most interesting thing people can sit in my office and say i don’t have these issues with anybody else and i have long lasting friends and colleagues and students and mentors and i always say there’s only two relationships that mirror each other and that is the one that you had with your original parental figures the ones who took care of you and the ones that you encounter in your romantic life that’s where the antichamber the resonance in box is right there and that’s where all the juicy stuff is right where you learn about yourself and where you discover the parts yourself that may have more darkness that you like or that are actually capable of great love i mean all of it is sort of in that crucible of relationship that shows up and it seems like the pressures of expectation on relationships today are so high you know like you said to be soulmate lover partner or confidant you know just grocery shopper dishwasher you know bed maker or whatever it is and it takes us out of the sort of the story of actually how do we navigate this because because the needs that i have for the person with whom i want to renovate a house are not necessarily the same as what i want with the person with whom i raise children i’m not necessarily the same as the person with whom i would like to experience erotic intimacy and not necessarily the same with whom i want to travel are not necessarily and basically we have a model in which we really do expect that we can do all of those things and navigate these roles and flexibly move from one to the other from the mundane to the sublime from desire to love from security to freedom from togetherness to individuality from connection to independence and that all of this should seamlessly be you know handled by two people and that is a challenge relationships are complex social systems really they do and they involve a lot of complicated things you know about how we manage expectations how we communicate how we establish trust how we feel safe to be open and vulnerable how we apologize and take responsibility for the bad stuff we do and how we straddle some of these contradictory needs and emotions in one social relational system that is really the challenge but we don’t give up we are tenacious we you’re still looking for love you’re still here i’m like i gotta figure out why i keep doing this and then you know just kind of figure it out yes that is true and you have said that before too but many of us continue to hope that we will have that relationship i mean the the longing for love for intimacy for connection doesn’t really go away we may defend against it we may say i’m taking a break i’m being chased for a year i’m not doing anything i’m not dating but the need doesn’t disappear it just is on hold yeah and now we often pick partners that um are reflections of our unconscious challenges that we haven’t really thought of or worked through or dealt with and it seems like that’s where a lot of us bump up against so we’re picking people based on matching some type of dysfunction in us that it all comes out and and i wonder how you see that in relationships how you deal with that with your clients i was presenting you know uh an episode of of uh where should we begin this morning to a group of students and uh it was a really what i look for so much in that choice that you describe is what is the invisible complementarity right here is this one person and basically she is lives with a chorus of people that speak to her speak through her her mother her brother her grandmother i mean there’s all these people for every decision she makes she has a greek chorus literally giving her input and she finds this man who basically at 13 lost his mother and father at the same time to through various issues of health and mental health and and divorce etc and he is all alone you know with no needs supposedly meeting a woman who has plenty of needs and never questions them and it’s a perfect match until it is not until it is not right um and she you know is very happy that he doesn’t say much because she has already enough people talking in her head all the time you have all these ways in which i seek you out sometimes for the very things that you’re trying to get away from yeah and i can give you a few other steps to the dance of who chooses who chooses who for what at its best you kind of can say we reenact those things we replay we get this resonance so that we can finally work through some of these things and at other times you kind of say you know you were deprived and you systematically put yourself with people who are not particularly generous yeah and you love generosity i think that’s something i would say to you you are a fundamentally generous person and you often find yourself with people who um are more more in a scarcity mentality and at first you are loving these people because you love to give to them and then at some point you wonder and what about me yeah i mean yeah or the expectations get sort of endless and it’s impossible to fulfill them because you can’t ever fulfill that for somebody else and they’re looking at you for all these things and instead of being self-contained they will often be looking to you for their fulfillment their happiness their meeting their expectations and that seems like a recipe for disaster uh but in the beginning it’s great because you think i can do it and i am honored that you think i can do it and i love the fact that i can actually succeed at it that makes me feel so good that i can give you what you need and then slowly it becomes you know you need too much i don’t get much myself do i really want to be in that room you know how much is love caregiver and at what point you know and so this is that you know the very things that are initially attractive often become the source of conflict later that’s interesting but i think one of the challenges that i think for relationships is that there’s a lack of ability for couples and people in general to have you know conscious communication that’s not violent that that allows each person to share what their experience is without conflict and and that simple skill of communication is not something we learn and i think that’s where a lot of relations break down and you want me to refund this yeah sure yeah i want to know what you think because uh that’s my perspective but it may not be true so here’s the thing you do counseling and so you find that you work with people and trying to actually help them talk and communicate and you see the challenges that people have in hearing and learning what each other are feeling or wanting or thinking or needing so you know i do couples therapy i have a real predilection for working with couples because i find it one of the most fascinating relational systems that we have at this moment this a couple can really induce bliss and hell in a level that is amazing so do families for that matter and i work with families as well here’s the thing it used to be that when people came to couples therapy they came actually for their children they didn’t come to couples therapy they came and slowly we would identify that there was something maybe in the relationship that also was at the was interacting with the challenges that the child was having couples therapy really became a discipline of its own in the center that it is today when the expectations around intimate relationships uh began to rise the more we expect from the couple and the more we need couples therapy to help us with those expectations when the couple was not the central unit of the family but because the family was more important than the couple and people stayed together for the family yeah today not the children and not the family it really will keep people together they may keep them a few more years but ultimately what keeps people together is the quality of the relationship between the two people yeah right so therefore couples therapy becomes a much more uh sought after practice i don’t just do communication you know i was thinking and i i was editing another podcast session and it’s an incredible session it’s the first session of season five that i’m producing now and they come in and he says you know we are both people who like things to be done who like to do things our way and i said that’s okay that’s interesting but what is what i’m hearing also is that you are two people who like other people to do things your way yeah and that’s what they meant right so then i asked you know on what how did you learn you know to say yes and how did you learn to say no and he begins to tell me a whole story of um of of how basically he his father would continuously um belittle him uh lecture to him be contemptuous it you know we would start with the conversation son and then what followed was often you know berating him for all the things that he wasn’t doing right and living up to expectations and she grows up with a drug addicted mother father who commits suicide and she is the adult in the house from that little tree she raises her two children they say to me at one point we fight about everything we don’t communicate and i say i don’t think you fight about everything at all actually i think you’re fighting about the same thing all the time the moment he experiences you are saying to him you’re incompetent you’re not doing it well you’re not doing it right he is in that original wound of him of his and the moment he says you’re not going to tell me what to do you know i’m doing it i’m i’m out of here and he goes for a break you think i’m once again all alone with all the responsibilities and the four children on my shoulders and i will always be alone and i will never have anybody by my side and you fight about that original wound that’s what every argument is actually about it’s the same story over and over you know and that was so illuminating for them that it wasn’t about the chore chart that they had she had made and it wasn’t about the kids and it wasn’t about he spared it was about you know i don’t want to be inadequate and i don’t want to be alone those were the themes that each one was really and then we started to work so that becomes different than just communicating how do you say things nicer yeah yeah and how do you how do you get people to kind of move past those really primordial conditionings of childhood that’s that’s the 64 000 question yes i think the most important thing is that you teach people two things or you when i say teach means you you help them see two things you help them separate the past from the present the fact that this brings back vividly the experience of back then doesn’t mean that it is actually what used to happen back then the past and the present sometimes feel like they come together into one but they are not and the second thing is that you then say at seven you were helpless at seven you couldn’t respond at seven you couldn’t just leave the house and say this is dangerous for me to be here um you you you know um whereas now you are an adult and you have choices so and then you go and you basically help them first of all through the body to separate the past from the present in this moment i get that tension like i want to start fighting like this man was a master of defiance you know but he got all his confidence through defiance which means that it was pseudo-confident and when she would actually say go ahead and do things i’m with you i support you then he would start to talk about all his doubts he was always sure only when he was in opposition when he was in a fight and he knew what he wanted but when he had somebody who was actually loving and giving then he didn’t know what to do with himself and you go through the body and you track the feeling because a feeling is also embodied you know then you articulate the experience and then you know what i really did with them i really had a lot of fun they had a lot of fun i said lay down flat on the floor and then i said now continue the do argument know that you can’t fight when you’re lying flat yeah or where if you take your clothes off i think that’s another thing i’ve heard from couples everybody take their clothes off it’s hard to have a fight you know it’s like we are meant to fight in straight up position like you know yeah so then it opened up a completely different and it went from the fighting to the africa behind the fighting which is often the fear of loss which is often will you believe me which will you be there for me etc and then you go deeper deeper deeper and that takes some time that’s so beautiful you know esther you’ve you’ve been at the front seat of literally probably hundreds if not thousands of relationships in ways that most people don’t ever have insight into by simply the virtue of your job just like i’ve seen so many people who’ve been sick you’ve seen so many people who’ve had relationship challenges so in that in that perspective looking you know back after decades of doing this you know what is what do you define as the success of relationships day-to-day like what are the keys to a successful relationship and what are the things that really destroy relationships yeah i i i will start with what destroys and i’m taking notes of taking notes i would really refer to the work of john gottman and john and julie gottman here on what destroys them you know they have a wonderful way of kind of separating between the masters and the disasters and they talk about the four horses of apocalypse yeah um and basically what will kill relationships is chronic criticism defensiveness stonewalling and the killer of them all is contempt because contempt and this we know also in large-scale traumas is contempt is the dehumanizing contempt is whatever you feel or think is irrelevant and doesn’t matter you don’t even reach me so that those those four horses of apocalypse i think kind of summarize things well and once you have a lot of things defensiveness criticism defensiveness and stonewalling basically shutting and shutting down right you’re shutting people out yes yes and contempt which is basically the you know um shame is under shame is one side and contempt content shame is contempt for oneself and contempt for the other it goes in both directions yeah i think when when i once wanted to write a paper i wanted to write a paper about what are creative couples because we talk about lasting couples we talk about stable couples but we rarely talk about what is creative couples or what you may include in successful couples and what was fascinating is what you said before the majority of people when i said do you know couples who have a spark couples who inspire you and i and people would on occasion come up with one maybe two often none it was really scary to them because if i said can you come up with entrepreneurs with artists with writers with intellectuals people have lists of people that inspire of course but here is everybody wanting to be in a relationship and not many people you know uh can think about yeah i like that i want to do this i never wrote the people the paper because what people ended up saying seemed rather banal to me as in that’s i know that but then i have been sitting on this thing for years thinking actually maybe it’s not that known what they said was this and that was very interesting this is not in order one is admiration admiration for your partner it’s not respect it’s different admiration always implies a level of idealization is i look up to you i i admire you for who you are as a person as a human being more than just in your role as a partner as a parent as a you know well so that was one big one two the relationship is basically a foundation with wings uh meaning there’s a solid anchor of trust and that solid anchor of trust interacts with the ability to take risks in the in life and in the relationship and to be playful it’s what i often have looked at the combination between the integration between our need for security and safety and predictability and reliability and our need for change and novelty and exploration and discovery these two fundamental human needs um i think that the the best relationships have of nice balance between what is togetherness and what is separateness they have people have their own lives but before i even continue i think the best thing to say is this there is no one-size-fits-all it’s all yeah yeah i can’t tell you one it’s like you with health it’s not like you have a sense in health that it’s an interaction of different parts of course but if it is more of this or more of that you know some couples have venn diagrams that are completely overlapping they do everything together they spend all their time together and it works beautifully yeah and some other very creative and couples are much more differentiated and actually they have a strong core but with big individual lives you know separate so no there is no one-size-fits-all i really would love that to be actually my opening line to your question before i even say what makes for success people who feel free in a relationship that makes for success for sure people who feel oppressed or under surveillance or who have to constantly lie or hide or you know don’t not say what they bought or what this you know that kind of stuff those are major differences that i would add to the to the to the gottman list you know it’s a a degree of autonomy matched with a deep sense of belonging these two together is a beautiful dance it’s beautiful but i think there’s some really practical ways that you talk about for people to achieve whatever it is their best relationship is right boundaries routines rituals you know what are the kinds of things that you help people establish within the relationship to build that foundation that structure because it’s not something we know automatically it’s not something we we actually are taught how do you help people build those structures in those relationships that help them get to that so it’s very interesting this couple that i was mentioning before where he kind of walled himself off with no needs because he was all alone and there was nobody who could help him anyway and she is like permeated by all these voices i thought that i had done a rather limited session with them i really thought um i didn’t really reach them i didn’t really go underneath the noise etc and then i get a letter to them [Music] that you never know you know you never know about how much some of the tiny things that i did that i thought were almost slightly you know they were not basically i would say it’s one thing to say how about you tell ester about this versus shutting your partner up and talking for them of course you want to to bring something up but you also want to let them tell their own story yeah how about when you have a problem or a question about sex or about children you don’t first go to your mother and grandmother but you also go first to your partner yeah and you set the boundary with all the people from your family so that you can create a more sacred space with your partner the boundary is not always inside the relationship it’s between the relationship and the outside world how about you are able to make a request that isn’t a protest so say what you need rather than what the other person is or is not doing just make a request and stick to that and adding up these things basically they write to me three weeks later and say there’s been a fundamental shift we haven’t had a single fight i was able to no longer go and talk to my mother about everything he feels much more open to me because i’m much less critical with him and i appreciate his openness and that makes me more fond of him and that makes him more asexual with me and more expressive of his desire for me and it becomes the opposite of the escalation in the negative direction is now a kind of escalating yeah the going up in the positive direction that’s the work yeah it’s so powerful it’s so powerful one of the things that you’ve learned after decades of working with couples and relationships that that are sort of nuggets of wisdom that you would lead people with about that could help them with relationships that they may be struggling with you know what are the things that people should anchor to and of course there’s your book made in captivity and the state of affairs and your podcasts uh and all that which is great people should dive into that and your ted talks but i’m just wondering if you can kind of distill down you know what you’ve really learned the first thing i would say and i think i have really really learned it from you know the millions of people that listen to where should we begin is that you’re not alone these days on the one hand we have unprecedented expectations of our couples lives but at the same time we are also in a machine of fake news on social media so people curate and posture and filter and you kind of don’t know where is the truth you know when people lived in the village you he you heard the fights of the neighbors and you heard the frolics of the neighbors now your best friends can come and tell you that they’re breaking up and you never saw it coming yeah right nobody tells you the truth about what goes on in the couple’s relationships and yet and then your left thinking desire everybody is great right they’re doing great and we are alone with our problems and so i think really where should we begin showed me that when you listen deeply to the stories of others you see yourself in front of your own mirror and you don’t feel as alone and you get the tools for the conversations that you want to have i think that’s the first thing i really realized that this is a unit that doesn’t talk friends talk to friends couples often talk to nobody about what’s really going on they may be struggling with infidelity they may be struggling with infertility they may be struggling with bipolarity and mental health issues they may be struggling with unresolved grief they may be struggling with economic hardships with unemployment with addictions and they won’t talk about it to anybody because they have to present themselves a certain way and it breaks my heart sometimes to see how alone people are with some of these major major challenges so that’s the first thing i’ve really learned is to make sure that that’s part of the game too is to give people a tool to make hard conversations less difficult the second thing that i have really learned is this couple that i was describing where i thought oh my god this is you know they really came in to say we need you to tell us are we broken are we beyond repair and uh and i thought at the end of the session i thought i don’t know where this is going and i have been so many times surprised by people where i think there’s not much left here and then when you change one thing like this woman she stopped trying to change him and she went ahead and took responsibility for her contribution and she changed a few things about her own behavior and it just unleashed a cascade of changes for the pos for the better and that is a real important piece sometimes it looks like everything is over is interconnected and it’s like impossible heap of of of nuisance and yet if you make one shift it has the power because systems are interdependent parts to activate everything else that’s the second thing that is very important the third thing is that there is a big difference between what you feel inside and how what you experience inside affects the people around you you may be depressed and feel weak and hopeless and helpless and anedonic but when you are in relationship with those who love you you often wield all the power yeah because you activate everybody around you to try to make you feel better to give you advice to try to lift you up and in the end they feel defeated and deflated like you so power doesn’t always come from the top down power off comes from the bottom up from places that are not nearly that obvious i think we really don’t understand enough the complex you know interplay of power dynamics in relationships if you want to change the other change yourself and maybe the last thing i would say is beyond most issues that people argue about there generally are three themes control and power care and closeness and respect and recognition whose priorities matter who has the power here can i trust you do you have my back yeah and do you value me yeah those are huge these are these are the three major themes that many many couples basically struggle about but it comes in the forms of talks about sex and money and family and yeah but that’s not the issue it’s not the issue it’s the emotional crucible in which those issues play off yeah so it’s the story under the story is essentially what you’re talking about yeah what is really going on here that i don’t see that is not being said what are they really fighting about like the couple where she fights about being alone and he fights about being inadequate that’s you know caring closeness and power and control yeah incredible you you’ve created a really fun during cove but a really fun game that i love to do and share with everybody and i think it’s just so fantastic and you know we’ve had all the stresses of quarantine isolation lack of travel our social circles are shrinking sometimes we need the most and our relationships are often you know challenged um but you you created this card game which just sort of came out of this isolation lockdown and it’s a way for all of us to reconnect and i just love it because it’s like sometimes you know it’s heavy talking about relationships and love and lurking stuff out and it’s like a lot but you created a fun playful way to enter into the space of intimacy and connection and relatedness that i think is just so beautiful so uh by the way everybody the game is called where should we begin the game and just go to estherprosdforall.com where should we begin the game with dashes in between each word uh and and you’ll find it and it’s it’s just valuable so tell us a little bit what inspired it and and what it is and maybe we can play a little bit with it yes love to um let me show you the box so you have a sense of what it looked like you know i literally one day as i was working in the middle of the pandemic experiencing my own sense of isolation my my constant need to be in a vid in a state of vigilance in risk assessment rather than risk taking and lacking intimacy with my close circle i just thought i can’t only you know talk about these things in in therapy or even in the podcast in the most heavy way you know that is permeated by this pandemic fear and i said one day i’m i’m talking about the importance of celebrating even at times like this and about the importance of self-care and about taking care of others and well-being and joy in the midst of tragedy you know and i did think about myself um it was there was a very personal connection as a child of two parents who were holocaust survivors and spent years in concentration camps in germany i i had heard a lot about lockdown and not two months or 15 months of lockdown but years and i remember my mother always saying to me honey there is laughter in hell you don’t survive otherwise on occasion you have got to be able to look at the absurdity and the tragedy of your life and just you know become develop power over it and mastery over it through humor through play and it stayed with me and so and one day i just said i want to create a game i don’t just want to talk about the experience of playfulness and remaining curious you know i want people to have the experience i felt that during the pandemic we lost touch with the erotic right the erotic is serendipity spontaneity improvisation curiosity everything that you go outside to discover you had to suddenly be much more shielded from and i thought i can create a game on the inside that people can play together i really will create an antidote to the seriousness and the heaviness of the moment it came out that at this moment there was the perfect timing that it became connected to this to the social reentry and to the anxiety of the re-entry and so the connecting and the reconnecting is even more timely i wanted it to be a game of stories because like my podcast where should we begin i believe that stories are the way we make sense of our lives stories are bridges to how we connect with people and so it’s not just conversation starters and it’s not just um you know icebreakers it’s really storytelling that can be done between strangers on a first date between co-workers or between or between best friends basically and it has made explain it to you actually three components three parts so it has the play cards which are really fun to hold in hand the play cards and play cards really have a whole variety you know a text message i fantasize receiving the best prank i’ve ever pulled off it is hard for me to say no to i’m surprised i’m still alive after an important object i have lost in my family my role is uh the most unexpected compliment i’ve ever received a friendship i need to end i mean i just took the first 10. it’s incredible so it’s a way for people to get intimate with each other and talk about things that they normally talk about and build deeper relationships with each other you know i had a dear friend this week we were playing together and you know the there is prompt cards so these blue cards are the prom cards and they say some share something that’s changed your world view from your teenage point of view that you would never tell your mother that is taboo that that you would never tell your coworkers and so she gets a card and it says share something cringe-worthy and the next thing she receives is so all the people the players submit a story card to the storyteller and the storyteller gets to choose between the cards that were submitted including one that they choose themselves and on occasion peer pressure is done with those little tokens in which i put a token on your card because i wanted her to tell the card a person i unintentionally hurt that is cringeworthy you combine the story yeah yeah and she proceeds to tell us about this dear friend um and and basically she introduced that person to another friend and just said this friend is very rich very fat and very kind and sends it to the person in question and you know everybody’s going cringe by accident send it to him by accident oh no oh no you know so it’s multiple variations it’s a multitude because you never get the same prompt cards with the stories the prompt cards give you the lens the vantage point to which to tell the story and um and the stories are just mind-blowing mind-blowing stories that i’ve been hearing i’ve been playing non-stop people i’ve never met and people that uh i i knew very well and during the pandemic it was all virtual so i couldn’t hold the cards everything was on the screen you know that is the big transition is to finally actually have it as an object in your hands so can you actually um play this online as well as in person well that’s what we and i are gonna try to do right okay all right let’s do it let’s do it let’s do it so you know uh for example let’s say that i give you the prompt card um share something that you’ve never told anyone okay and i would put in front of you different story cards right one that you would pick so this is different from the way we play normally you can play it in the committed version with all the rules and you can play it in the casual version where you just make up your own rules because the stories are the stories yeah so a rule that you secretly love to break a rule that i secretly love to break or my most irrational fear or i can’t believe i got away with you want me to answer all three or just one no you pick one of them share something you’ve never told anyone a rule i secretly love to break my most irrational fear i can’t believe i got away with gosh there’s so many things in there i get to pick one um what did i really get away with what is my most irrational fear um or something that you can’t believe you got away with you’ve done so many mischievous things um what if i can’t believe i got away with um no you don’t have to pick that one you pick whichever one you want i think uh my most irrational fear might be might be um like a fear of sharks i’m like i definitely get freaked out in the ocean i control it but i’m always like spinning in my head about being attacked by a shark quickly when i was in hawaii all winter and there were like three or four shark attacks and i was like you know just feeling and maybe it’s not irrational but it definitely it’s probably not the likelihood of getting bit by shark is pretty low so i think i i kind of over over uh reaction what’s the image what’s the gory image what’s the image this image is like you know shark coming and biting my leg off and just being bleeding all over just like all the images i’ve seen of shark attacks and oceans i think it was because of jaws when i was like 13 i saw jaws and it just ruined me for life right right right so that’s a big one but it doesn’t stop you it doesn’t stop me but it no it doesn’t stop me but i i definitely feel anxious and stressed um and what did i not get what did i get away with that i i don’t care who i got away with uh i do the things i do that i love so much yeah like i can’t i can’t believe i actually get paid for doing what i do and and like actually you know get to have this blessed life that i did i mean i just it’s like how do i get away with being so blessed it’s like you know i i kind of try to receive it but i’m like wow like i i feel so blessed to have because i see people struggle with finding the meaning of life and being physically healthy and having meaningful you know relationships with their community and having you know just goodness in their life and i i just like can’t believe i get all the magic that i get like i just i’m like so so it’s i think it’s you know someone said it’s a reflection of how much you give in the world but i i don’t know i just i always feel like over a bunch i was just gonna say the same thing i was gonna say the same thing i mean you are you are fundamentally a life lover yeah you know and you laugh you love to live life at its fullest and you give in that way but you don’t feel that you’re giving because you feel that you receive well you give yeah which by the way are two very very important verbs that i work with in my work with couples a lot give and receive yes well there’s seven key verbs you know since i speak many languages what you were saying before i i’ve always really enjoyed looking at love as a vocabulary and a language and what are the key verbs that you need to be able to conjugate so that you can start to speak that language in every language there are a few basic verbs that become the structure of the language so in relationships it is to ask how do you feel about asking can you ask do you feel comfortable asking do you feel deserving of asking and therefore deserving of receiving because you asked do you never ask because you don’t want to owe do you never ask because you don’t know what you need i mean the whole exploration of the verb to ask do you enjoy giving do you find that you give in order to acquit yourself of a debt do you feel that you give in order to then be able to ask you know do you feel enriched by the giving do you feel depleted by it you calculate how much you give you know what is your experience of giving do you feel that you were given to what is your experience around receiving and you can use these verbs in the relational sense or even in the sexual sense right in my work around sexuality i use the same verbs how do you feel about receiving does it feel good does it feel deserving does it feel too passive too weak too at the mercy of too dependent to something or does it actually really you know feel like filling you up etc so to ask to give to receive to take um you know like little children it’s mine it’s mine might not seem like a good one no to take it so it is also a way of saying i you know i don’t need to just never eat because i feel like other people are more hungry i can take a piece it’s fine there is enough for everybody i don’t stand out i don’t i’m not greedy i’m not too much taking is a very important verb and certainly sexually taking is an important verb as well to share to imagine to play to want and to refuse because if you can’t say no you don’t really have a good experience of knowing how to say yes and so these verbs really kind of are they’re neutral they’re rich they’re deep everybody can interpret them in their own way they’re a fantastic set of conversations they’re all included in the cards but not like this but they are part of the questions that and the stories that are involved in the card game so beautiful and i think you know the the the ability for us to be present to listen to drop in has been so usurped by our crazy modern lives and technology and i think that’s the beauty of covet for me personally was to sort of witness how much i was in a fast-forward way of living that wasn’t allowing me to drop into the present in myself in relationships even in my work in the way that i wanted to and so you know having this game which is just so fun and easy and interesting it’s sort of let me read you a few other questions yeah it takes us out of all that busy doing crazy stuff and drops us into relational i mean i’ve sat in groups mark you know of six to eight people where one round literally took two hours i mean it’s just gripping stories uh and often people don’t even know what they’re gonna tell they start like you yeah i don’t know nothing that’s difficult and then suddenly the story presents itself you know a game is a container playing is the creation of a space in which people get permission to explore to be curious to ask questions to open up to divulge under the guise of the game and so it’s a fantastic container for creativity um for imagination for surprise and um the storytelling is the oldest thing people do when they come together they tell stories so one guy last week he got a card gutsy was the prompt and then he got the question gutsy and then the prompt was something i need to work harder now that was the story card so basically you get everybody to submit your story cards and you get to choose one of them unless people put tokens in which they begin to put peer pressure and so he picked the one that said i have to work harder at and the next thing he starts to tell us is about how he’s always been a conflict avoidant and he always you know makes everything look like it’s fine everything is fine and and then what what that led him to and it was just like we had never met this person we were a few people who had never met this person and i’m telling you don’t bother asking what do you do the guy runs a mega company of you know this and that and the other it’s irrelevant this gave you an entry into this person’s story their life yeah there’s and it was like wow and that’s the effect that you really want you leave and you remember exactly what people have told you i think i think that’s so such a key point because i think most people are not really great at inquiry and curiosity and asking questions and relationships and what i find is when i meet someone if i just start to ask them questions and i start to ask their story and and pull it out of them and people are just so happy to share and they never get asked and it’s such a powerful tool for building connection relationship intimacy and it’s what your cards do which is what i love especially now you know people come to work and somebody says so how was the pandemic for you [Laughter] excuse me and you know do i want to answer i want to say something but at what level what can i say how interested are you really so to create these questions that are basically containers they have they provide a frame so that you can then improvise and be spontaneous so you get just about the right amount of both you know you get rules and then you get everything once you follow the rules you get this whole expansive space where you can ask loads of questions that are relevant in this moment you know one of the things that is keeping me up at night yeah well you know it’s interesting you know what i found in my relationships is like when i take the time when we drop in and really get to the deeper layers of conversation of what’s underneath in our stories and sharing it’s really powerful and i i didn’t do these cards but i did another set with my wife and it was just such a beautiful way for us to learn about each other to understand what moves us and motivates us and what lifts us up what scares us what inspires us and i think uh you know we don’t really have many of those opportunities in life and it’s just such a beautiful it’s like such a beautiful invitation that you’ve created so we have the safe version for work so that you can take out all the cards that have a pink triangle which are the ones that are for the date and for the sex so yes it you can so that it it has its multiple um settings where you can play um and what are the questions that are suitable here and maybe not suitable there so it’s done for you so you don’t have to constantly worry and fret can i ask this is this too personal is this okay you know you you get the permission because you’ve picked the colors that you’re gonna be playing with but yes curiosity active listening asking for more my favorite question in therapy but also in the game is tell me more tell me more yeah that’s the that’s the joke of the therapist though it’s like tell me more what do you think about that tell me more yeah there’s always more yeah do you want to know my secrets for living a long and happy and healthy life well all you have to do is check out my weekly newsletter mark’s picks where i share my favorite tips for health longevity well-being and lots more check it out and the link below thank you so much for everything you do and inspiring so many and helping people navigate a very tough landscape which is much harder than disease honestly i think you do as much harder than what i do to interconnect relational health and physical health i mean we didn’t even touch on that how much these two are related you know stress at home domestic violence the pressures of caretaking go directly into your body yeah right i mean that’s uh that’s a whole other subject but we have cursors sometimes well the interesting thing about that just to finish is that women tend to live longer when they’re alone and men tend to live longer when they’re in marriages and relationships i don’t know what that says about dynamics of relationship maybe you don’t serve women as well as men sometimes that’s an old old set of research you know that that the quality of life of a woman emotionally speaking is often diminished when she’s in a marriage and the quality of health of a man in a relationship is increased and that has to do with the dynamics of power and caregiving and responsibility or what we call emotional labor for sure so much more things we could talk about but uh thank you [Music] hey youtube if you like this video you’re gonna love the next one click on it to check it out today if if someone’s listening their depression anxiety mental health issues what are the ways of eating that actually cause a problem and then when we’ll get into one of the ways of eating that actually can fix the problem yeah then we’ll get into the sun that’s a great question …