March 4, 2024 • 39 mins
Fairy tales and Hollywood rom coms have taught us to expect perfection from a soul mate, but sex and relationships therapist Todd Baratz says we need to be more comfortable with the idea that a "good enough" partner will do.
Todd once bought into this perfection myth - wanting a boyfriend to meet all his needs without even being told. These expectations helped end the relationship. Now Todd (author of How to Love Someone Without Losing Your Mind) says we need to accept that our loved ones will be just as flawed and human as we are.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Todd Barretts knew exactly how his boyfriend should be
treating him. The right standards were very clear. They'd been
set out in all the fairy tales and Hollywood rom
coms that he'd grown up with.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I had certain expectations for how he should be treating me.
I was thinking, well, he should just be asking me
how my day was. He should just be doing these things.
And the reality is that it's a much more complicated
dynamic than that.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Many of us share this kind of naive view of relationships.
We expect near perfection from our romantic partners and assume
that accepting anything less would be settling. We want a
soulmate who understands us, a rock who supports us in
all we do, a therapist who heals us when we're hurt,
and a lover who fulfills all our desires and makes
us feel incredibly attractive.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
These rules, these lists, they're infiltrating our relationships from day
one to These are things that we've internalized, and they
become indistinguishable from our voice compared to our culture's voice.
They just feel like absolute truths.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
The eventual collapse of Todd's ten year relationship was a
wake up call. Todd had been demanding way too much
from his boyfriend. It was more than any real person
could reasonably deliver, So Todd decided to recalibrate in his
future relationships. Sure he'd be thrilled if he met the
perfect partner, but he'd also be okay with a kind,
yet fallible and flawed human. He was ready to find
(01:38):
a partner who is simply good enough. But Todd says
this isn't just a personal decision, it's advice he wants
us all to consider. You see Todd Barrett's as a
sex and relationships therapist. He's also the author of How
to Love Someone Without Losing Your Mind. In his practice,
Todd sees countless couples tearing themselves and their relationships apart
thanks to impossibly high expectations. So in this final episode
(02:01):
of our season, Looking at Happiness and Love, we'll explore
how so many of us ended up becoming way too
demanding about what a partner should be, as well as
unwilling to accept the inevitable flaws that come with being human.
We'll also hear Todd's advice for finding not the perfect relationship,
but one that's just good enough Forget the fairy tale
and get real. That's the subtitle of Todd's new book.
(02:24):
In it, he makes the observation that we spend more
time as children learning to do long division than we
do learning to identify our emotions. The lack of social
and relational guidance in our culture is outrageous at best,
Todd explains, and harmful to survival at worst. Without the
right guidance, a lot of powerful ideas have bubbled up
to fill this void, romance, novels, TV shows, rom coms,
(02:47):
and now social media, and Todd says that these ideas
often create problems. All those listicles and memes convince us
we need to find a perfect partner and that we
ought to reject anyone with any potential flaw or defect.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
The reality is that people don't have so many places
to go for relationship advice. You know, we primarily get
our relationship advice implicitly from our family and culture of origin. Oftentimes,
as I said, it's implicit. It's not like this is
how healthy relationships work. It's observational learning. It's experiential and emotional.
In school, we get absolutely no education. We don't get
(03:21):
good sex ed. We don't get relational ad it, we
don't get an emotional ad we don't get a human head.
But what's so interesting about the Instagram stuff, social media,
TikTok is that is actually the only places that people,
at least culturally in this moment, that we get information.
And that's the beginning of the problem. And you know,
some of the content's great, just like any TV film,
(03:42):
any kind of media. Some of it is good, some
of it is bad. But the biggest thing for me
that I would want people to really slow down with
how they're consuming the content and think deeper about it.
There is no nuance, there's no complexity. Often sometimes the
posts are literally black and white. We're looking at information
that's really lacking their context that gives life to information.
(04:07):
It's empty information really, and nothing can really be applied
without fully understanding the context, especially the therapeutic information and
psycho education that we are now seeing all of our
social media.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
So, in my own kind of glimpses at what's going
on on TikTok and Instagram, my sense is that a
lot of the language that people used to talk about
relationship seems to be really clinicalized. But clinicalized in this
way that maybe people are like getting wrong, you know,
So I'm thinking about terms like codependency and narcissism and gaslighting.
Is this something that you've noticed. Are there's spots where
some of these kind of online therapists might not be
(04:42):
getting exactly the clinical context, right?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah? I mean all of posts are marketing. So it's information,
but it's marketing. It's coming from a place that I
want you to read my content so you can subscribe
to my channel, and so I can monetize it in
one way or another. I mean, that's really what it is.
I mean, and that's fine. We live this is the
world we live in. But words like narcissism and toxic
gas lighter and toxic thiss and red flag and situationship
(05:07):
then even trauma, these words are trending, and so people
are often using these words to get people's interest, and
so oftentimes what happens is that things get really watered down.
And that's what we're saying is that, you know, these
terms are being watered down to apply to literally anything
at this point, any bad behavior, any sign of dependence.
(05:28):
And to me, what it does is that it increases
people's anxiety because it keeps us on alert, and it
keeps us hyper vigilant to be looking out for certain
signs certain behavior, as opposed to better understanding ourselves. So
I think that yes, we might want to know some
of these terms, but the most important thing we can
do in our relationships and in our lives is not
diagnosed somebody is not look out for the top ten
(05:50):
red flags of a narcissist or if your person is toxic,
but to better understand ourselves. The content is training us
more to understand and analyze someone else's shitty behavior than
our own, and that's a problem.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
It also really changes the standards that we bring to
kind of relationship shopping. Right, If we're kind of looking
for all these red flags, it seems like we see
our job as kind of trying to suss out these
red flags in a way that probably makes the entire
dating landscape seem kind of terrifying. I mean, is this
something you've experienced with the people that you talk to
and that you work with as clients.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
This shapes the entire experience of how we think about
even someone on an app, we have anything that you know,
I see individuals and I see couples with the individuals.
It's mostly is this person that I'm dating going to
be the wrong person for me? Are they going to
hurt me? And then most of the couples that I'm seeing,
you know, they have some kind of fear that they're
with the wrong person. So these expectations are literally physiologically
(06:44):
shaping the way we react and prime ourselves to experience
connection or rather what it is is really disconnection because
the more we are focused on the top ten lists
of what to look for, the less present we are,
and the less present we are, the less capable we
are of connecting. And the less capable we are being vulnerable,
and the less capable we are being vulnerable, the more
long we're going to feel.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
And so how do we get in this position? Because
it seems like this is kind of something that seems
to be pretty new and like modern love, it seems
like we've kind of gone like really capitalist when it
comes to kind of thinking about love and thinking about dating,
Like how did we get here?
Speaker 2 (07:18):
People have a variety of different theories, you know, going
from we're now really really independent and we stress independence
and we don't necessarily have to focus on marriage for survival.
I mean, there's a whole historical basis for where love
is today, which is something I talk about in my book.
I interviewed my mom about love and what it was
like growing up for her, and for her it was
(07:39):
just get married by twenty one, have kids very soon.
She's like, red flags, What is that toxic? What is
that narcissism? She kind of had an idea, but it
wasn't part of the relational discourse, whereas now it is.
And I think it's a good thing. I mean, I
don't think this is bad, but it's something that's full
(08:00):
of meaning that we need to understand better. So we're
not just on autopilot expecting certain things and discounting our
role in all of the dynamics we exist in.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
So it seems like on top of of these kind
of new expectations we have for our partners, you know,
we're kind of worried about red flags and trying to
sess them out. At the same time, it doesn't seem
like our same high standards have been applied to like
our own behavior and kind of the way that we
bring ourselves to relationships. It seems like if anything like
those expectations have gone down, is that the sense you
get from kind of talking to your clients and engaging
(08:29):
with some of this work.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Well, what's interesting about that is that people have high
expectations of themselves and they're really really hard on themselves,
But when it comes to relational dynamics, most people are
particularly disconnected from that in terms of, you know, we
want a partner who will do certain things for us,
and in that focus, we fail to realize that how
we interact with them will determine whether or not they
(08:52):
do the things that we think they should be doing
for us. The interesting is that people want to put
in the work, but oftentimes people myself can feel so
convinced that it's not us. And people are resistant to
understanding the role that they play in relationships because it
touches upon a very vulnerable and scary place that we're limited,
that we have issues ourselves, that we are difficult to
(09:15):
be with, and that we play a role, a very
big role in our lives. But many of us default
to this place where we just want our partner to
rescue us and to do these certain things for us
to make us feel valued and validated. And there's another
trending word that drives me crazy. Validation. You know, we
expect our partners not to be their job without again
understanding the role we play. So people really want to
work hard, but they don't want to work hard unless
(09:37):
they think their partner is working hard in a similar
or same way. And they definitely don't want to work
hard if they think their.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Partner is to blame, which most people do.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Which most people do.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
So you've really argued that we need to unlearn some
of these rules that we've been getting from modern love,
that the act of unlearning these rules and coming up
with new ones can help us do better. And one
of the rules you talked about is this idea that
we really need our partners to change. When we look
at relationships, I think there's this idea like, oh, if
only my partner could do X, Y and Z, or
if only this person you know, I just started dating,
(10:06):
would you do this sort of thing and everything would
be better? Talk about why our partner's changing isn't necessarily
the best answer to our relationship woes.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
One. I mean, it's a prison. If we say that
someone else needs to do something in order for us
to be happy, that's a pretty scary, powerless place to be.
And that's the parallel to childhood, you know, where we
needed our parents to do something specific for us and
that was the reality in order for us to be happy.
But adult partnership is a completely different ballgame than early
childhood attachment. You know, when we're responding to our partners
(10:37):
not doing something for us, we're responding to our dynamic
that we are integral into, shaping and creating and eliciting
the reaction from our partner that we want them to
be doing. But it's a big piece of the book,
which is I say, you know, in many other therapists
and people say, you know, change yourself first, you know,
stop trying to get your partner to change, and work
on changing yourself. And most people hate that because they're
(10:58):
like in the self righteous place of I didn't do this,
they should be doing this. I deserve, I'm entitled to whatever.
It can be really hard to think except and understand
that if we can make change that can have an
impact on a relationship, that we actually have more power
in our adult partnerships than our reflexes might be telling us.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
And so one of the forms of that change that
you really advocate is that we need to look back
at our past to really understand where our current tendencies
are coming from. You've argued that we need to explore
our emotional ghosts. So what are emotional ghosts and why
do we need to explore them so much?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Emotional ghosts are basically any historical experience that was traumatic, hard, challenging,
whatever that's left to mark, that's left a wound that's
been a big part of your story. A lot of
our needs and relationships come from never receiving those needs
due to trauma and neglect, abandonment, to lack of nourishment
from parents, etc. And their emotional ghosts, and they're with us,
(11:55):
and those are the things that will come to shape
our relational dynamics as adults, like literally will shape them.
And it's important to become aware of that because oftentimes
what gets mixed up and our own emotional ghosts is
again that my partner is doing this when it's usually both,
it's usually some version of our attachment trauma, our earlier
experiences in our family of origin. These emotional ghosts, these triggers, wounds,
(12:18):
et cetera that are coming up in the president of
a dynamic that feels very similar to what we grew
up with. That doesn't mean our partner is in doing
something they usually are, but the power with which we
respond is coming from these earlier scary ghosts.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
I know this is something that you navigated with your
relationship with Alex. Would you talk a lot about in
your practice and in your book. So maybe first off,
who is Alex and where are some spots where in
that relationship these emotional ghosts came up?
Speaker 2 (12:45):
A relationship ended about like six years ago, which is wild.
We were together for ten years. You know, huge learning
experience in my life, but like it was really hard
for me to acknowledge, even though my therapist was saying, Todd,
this is about you know your father. But even when
being told about this, I was like, no, Elks should
be doing this. He's limited in this way. While you know,
I was convinced, and on the one hand, I wasn't
(13:06):
wrong with the way that I was seeing in the
perspective that I was or that I had of him
was based on my earlier experiences. Now I know that,
you know, I had wanted him to do certain things
that I actually didn't need him to do in terms
of the emotional caretaking that I was expecting. And you know,
these are things that I could have done of my
own as an adult in.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Our quest to sort of figure out our emotional ghosts.
You actually have a practical suggestion that I found quite striking,
which is that we need to dig into the past
a little bit more, and that might really involve talking
to the people who often make up the situations that
cause our emotional ghosts aamely, our parents. So talk to
me about this advice and what you did in your
situation and why it can be so powerful for kind
(13:45):
of digging up those things that are from the past
that might be affecting us so.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Much a big part of our story. We can't fully
know it without fully knowing our parents and our history
and our generational stories and our ancestors and as much
as information as we can possibly get. So what I
did was I interviewed my mom. I asked and my dad.
I asked them both a lot of questions about what
love was like, what dating was like, what growing up
was like, what their parents were like, what their relationships
(14:10):
were like, you know. And what I found was that,
you know, a lot of their experiences paralleled what I
went through with them in terms of maybe some of
the neglect that I felt and I was neglected by
my parents, and then when I talk to them about
their story, the neglect that they experienced and weren't even
able to acknowledge. And then when I asked about their
parents and their grandparents, I mean, it was literal war
(14:31):
and death. So oftentimes our stories have real, real intergenerational basis,
and we can't fully understand ourselves and our relationships without
fully understanding that. The challenge with some of these interviews
and interactions with their parents is they don't want to
talk about it. Sometimes I push a lot of my
clients to do this and they say they do and
their parents will only talk about the positive relationships they
(14:54):
had despite their parents having a lot of emotional problems.
So the challenge with some of these generational traumas is
they've been kept inter repts and sometimes if we ask
our parents, they may also continue to do that. But
it's really important and I would really encourage anyone if
their parent is still alive, their grandparents is still alive,
(15:14):
to write out a set of questions and it's not
an interrogation, it's not therapy, it's an interview, and to
ask questions about you know, what was love like for you?
What was independence like for you? What was affection like
for you? What were the expectations you had? Were your
parents present, did they have a drinking problem, did they
do drugs? Did anybody die? Were there any relational breaks
early on? You know all of this stuff because you
(15:36):
can really learn a lot about yourself, and you can
humanize your parents, which is a really big piece of
this story, because as we talk and learn about our
own early traumas with our parents, we can often view
them as our perpetrators, which sometimes they are, or as
the people who didn't give us this thing and who
deeply hurt us, and all of that, which can be true.
But the other side of that story is that they're
human beings who had very very deep stories just like ours,
(15:59):
and experienced challenges and or the way they are for
a reason, and so if we can understand that reason,
it really can help to humanize them and connect with
them as a human being rather than this person who
mistreated us when we were ten or fifteen or didn't
give us what they should have given us. I really
encourage people to do it.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
So understanding our own stories and those of our parents
and grandparents can be an important first step in finding
greater stability in our romantic relationships, but Todd says there
are also some narratives that we need to better understand
and challenge, specifically our persistent myths about fairy tale romance.
We'll hear more after a quick break. Sex and relationship
(16:45):
therapist Todd Barrett's sees many clients who began their idea
of romance as kids from reading the usual Happily Ever
After fairy tales. Todd writes in his book, people date
with the goal of finding their perfect match, the one
we all want somewhat special, but our ideas of the
one can get kind of extreme. The one has to
be one hundred percent emotionally available, stable, healed through years
(17:08):
of past therapy, and able to communicate. They've got to
be motivated, funny, growth oriented, and mature. They've got to
have a good job and impeccable taste. Gotta love travel
and dogs, plus be in shape, oh, and a foodie,
and have no imperfections or red flags whatsoever, just chemistry,
connection and love it for a site. Oddly enough, in
(17:28):
his youth, Todd felt a bit detached from these expectations.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Growing up gay in the nineties. You know, the idea
of the one and being with someone forever wasn't really
on my radar.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
But after the painful end of his ten year relationship,
Todd unhappily found himself back in the dating pool and
searching for that perfect meat.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
It'd be so great to just find one person to
be done with it, and you know, not to have
to worry that that ever again. But the reality is
that relationships are ending. People get divorced. This is the thing,
and it's normal and it's okay. I do see that
as kind of the biggest problem and the biggest part
of the fairy tale that we need to let go
is the idea of happily ever after, the one where
(18:09):
everything is just going to work. It doesn't exist, It
really doesn't, and it really ends up just adding anxiety
to dates and to our relationships.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
So let's start with the idea of how we can
overcome this idea of the one. You had this lovely
practical suggestion that I've heard you mentioned before, which is
that we need to sort of switch what we're doing
in the search for the one You're Rather than getting
all anxious, we need to get a little bit more curious.
What do you mean by getting curious?
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Curious about who the other person is, curious about who
we are when we're with them. I try to reframe
dating not in terms of who we can find, more
so what we can find out taking it one singular date, experience,
conversation at a time. You know, the power of being
present might sound cliche, but it's really important, especially when
it comes to relationships and getting to know somebody. If
your mind is are they going to satisfy me in
(18:56):
twenty years? If your mind is there on day two,
you're not going to be seeing them as who they are.
You're not going to be learning about them, and you're
not giving yourself the opportunity to let them get to
know you. But this is what we grew up with.
This is what we see in movies. You know that
people are together forever, and there are certain things to
look for that may not fit that criteria.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
You had this term that I love normal marital hate
that you talk about. You get an example with your
dog that I love.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Oh, that is Terry real. It was a quote of
Terry Reel's book Us Normal Marital Hate. Great line. Everyone
is intolerable to an extent, everyone is going to disappoint us.
Everyone is going to annoy us. I talk about my dog,
and even my dog who's so cute. Her name is Ellie.
She's a kavapoo and all she wants to do is cuddle,
but she's really annoying sometimes and sometimes I just want
(19:39):
her to leave me alone. And our partner, no matter
how cute and sweet they are, they're going to get
on our nerves. They're going to disappoint us. Happily ever
after just you know, unfortunately, it's not a thing, and
it's a really big disappointment. And the challenges is really
learning how to embrace our partner's limitations and honor them
and understand them as a human being without seeing those limitations, disappointments,
(20:02):
frustrations as a way to understand them as a whole.
Everyone is a little disappointing, including myself.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
You talk times about this idea of the good enough
relationship or the good enough marriage. What do you mean
by good enough here? And how can we find that?
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yeah? People hate that. Whenever I post about that on Instagram,
people come for me. But yeah, something that's good enough
I mean, And this applies to practically everything in our life.
I'm looking for a house now, and I'm like, but
I want this and this, and meanwhile, I live in
New York City and nothing is going to be what
I want it to be. But we're talking about relationships
so good enough meaning, you know, we don't need one
(20:36):
hundred percent. We don't need our partners to be perfect.
We need them to be there for us most of
the time. We need a relationship that's good enough. And
good enough includes limitations, problems, fights, conflicts. That doesn't mean
an unhealthy relationship. It doesn't mean an abusive relationship. It
just means a relationship that's mostly satisfying. Part of the
fairy tale is that we will find a relationship that's
(20:57):
fully satisfying, that doesn't require work, and that you're entitled
to a love that dot dot dot. You know, I
see so many means like that. The reality is is
no one's really entitled to anything when it comes to
love in that sense, because it's hard work. We can't
just sit there and have these things appear. We have
to do the work. And part of that work is
tolerance and forgiveness and forgiving ourselves and forgiving our partners.
(21:19):
And it's really, really hard and can be disappointing.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
It's so interesting that you get pushed back for this
idea of the good enough relationship. And it kind of
makes sense given how much we push people these days
never to settle. But my sense is like this is
also a new thing about modern love that we're so
obsessed with not settling. This isn't the way our parents
dealt with it, right, I mean, like.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
I was telling you with my mother in her interview,
she settled, and you know, she chose somebody that was
extremely abusive, but because culturally, you know, as a woman
in the fifties, she was told to stay, told to
get married, and told to settle no matter what, for
a sense of security and because family was the most
important thing. And so I do think that this pendulum
(21:57):
having swung to the exact opposite direction of never settle,
is due to you know, a lot of intergenerational trauma
where we've come from parents or grandparents or histories where
people were really hurt and we're told to settle because
that was the cultural narrative. Settle down. You know, that's
what people were told. And now you know, the pendulum
is from the other direction. And I'm not suggesting that
it's wrong. I'm just suggesting that we should take that
(22:19):
pendulum and put it a little bit in the middle.
You know, the only way we learn about ourselves in
relationships is by being in them. And so if we're
constantly waiting for this perfect person, one they don't exist,
but two we don't get the opportunity to one have
a relationship, experience attachment and love, but to really learn
about what it is that we want in the first place.
So what I think is more important is for people
to settle down, but not to settle down for a
(22:40):
shitty relationship, but to settle down with somebody that's good
enough and to see what you can develop and to
see what the connection is like, and to see what
happens when you have conflict and to work through that.
And also what's important is to end a relationship. I
do believe that having the experience of being able to
have a relational ending at least once in your life
is a very important experience to have in terms of
personal growth, self awareness, and development, at least for me
(23:03):
and a lot of my clients. A big, big problem
with the fairy tale relationship is when it comes to endings.
Relational endings. So people think they should last forever, and
when they don't, they failed, They blame their partner, they
blame themselves. People often don't think about creation laws. When
people do get to the end of a relationship, they
think it should just feel like a hiccup or a sneeze,
and then they decide to end it. When the reality
(23:24):
of relational endings is so much further from what we
see in a rom com and what we see in
some of these expectations on Instagram, you know, in terms,
cut them out, go on a trip, get back to yourself,
be single on purpose, get to know yourself better. That's
the model for relational endings that we see. We celebrate
love and we totally avoid the topic of any kind
(23:45):
of relational ending, including pain, ambivalence, regret, years of hard work,
and tears. You know, we often think about a relational
ending as on this day, I decided I wanted to
end my relationship, and then next week I'm going to
go on a vacation by myself. I'm going to do yoga,
and then I'm not going to start dating for another
three to six months until I'm healed, and then I'm
going to start dating again. And I'm going to look
(24:05):
for someone who fits these criteria with no red flags.
Like my top it gets and it is nothing like that.
You know, when I ended my relationship, it was a
horror show. You know, no one prepares us for what
it's like when you think about yourself as someone who's
a wee, and even the language is different. So, you know,
I think the fairy tale about the way relationships begin,
the way that they feel, and the way that they
end infiltrated the way we experience and expect love to feel.
(24:28):
It's a real challenge because it just creates more shame,
more anxiety, more confusion, and in that space prevents us
from fully understanding ourselves, which is really what we need
in the beginning, middle, and end of a relationship. It's
self understanding, self compassion, empathy. So the fairy tale I
see as this kind of black or white portrait of love,
and it doesn't fit whether we're talking about the beginning, middle,
(24:49):
or end of a relationship.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
And this gets to another rule that I think we
need to unlearn, which is this idea of manifesting. You know,
when I look on Instagram and TikTok, I think there's
this idea that like I'm just going to manifest the
perfect relationship as if it doesn't require any work at all.
Talk about why we need to overcome this idea of manifesting.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Manifestation plays a really big role for a lot of people,
and it's I don't want to say it's worked for them,
because I don't know what work means. I do believe though,
that you know, one piece of manifestation is the energy
we put out is the energy we get back. I
do believe in that, and that gets back to change
yourself and you change a relationship. You know, if we
are putting energy out with our partner that is non
critical and warm and kind and empathic, we're likely to
(25:29):
receive a similar response. But in terms of just magically
manifesting a partner, you know, that's not something that I
think can happen through inaction or just thought. Like I
had a friend ones tell me to like clear out
a closet and like make space for my partner. Know,
it's like, I don't know if that's going to necessarily
do it. I need to go on dates and like
put effort into meeting and growing a connection. But relationships
(25:53):
take work, not manifestation. Relationships are built over a long
period of time, and that requires patient's effort, tolerance forgiveness,
all the stuff I was just saying.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
One of the key observations in Todd's book is this,
as our expectations for love have soored to unprecedented heights,
Todd our commitment to doing the necessary work to sustain
that love has plummeted. So after the break, we'll unpack
the facet of love never mentioned in fairy tales, all
the work it requires. The Happiness Lab will be right back.
(26:30):
As a therapist, Todd Barrett sees clients who are deeply
unhappy with their relationships, but many of those clients are
also either unwilling to do the work needed to fix
things with their partner or feel like it's just not
their job to do the necessary repairs. It's a self
sabotaging mindset that Todd knows only too well from his
ten year relationship with his ex Alex.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
There was a dynamic with Alex and I wear I'm
in the therapist that I was waiting for him to
bring certain things up. I was waiting for him to
do certain things before I took any action. And if
I was upset about something, I would just do in
frustration and disappointment, or I would spiral and feel sad
and alone, as opposed to engage and as opposed to
verbalizing myself, as opposed to really taking an active role
(27:12):
in the relationship. Basically, I was going silent. I was retreating,
and I was withdrawing, which is something I did as
a kid, something I learned to do with my father
and my family, and the role I was actually encouraged
to take on as a child, which was to be
quiet when I was upset, when I was hurt, no
matter what, be quiet. And I was doing the same
thing with Alex. The difference was is I was doing
(27:33):
it in response to Alex not taking care of me
in a certain way, him not fulfilling my needs in
a certain way. Instead of me saying, hey, you know,
could you do this, I would go quiet. And so
that's the dynamic, and the reaction of me not taking
up space caused him to take up more space and
overlook me more, which made me feel more alone, which
was the same loneliness I experienced as a kid. And
(27:55):
so I was playing a huge role in creating a
dynamic that contributed to my own lack of satisfaction and misery.
And so that's not to say that Alex wasn't doing
certain things and he could have done other things, but
it is just to say that this was the role
I was playing and shaping my relationship and it wasn't
working for me. And you know, the same thing came
up last night with me and my new partner.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Can you unpack like what came like? What was the
situation that came up a little bit?
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yeah, I you know, it was something similar to I
wanted to be asked questions about something specific or to
have more interest be expressed. But I still you know,
as a therapist, I tend to default to the space
of asking questions, of not taking up space of listening,
or just shutting down, Like if someone doesn't ask me,
I shut down instead of just start talking. And I
(28:40):
shut down because I get disappointed. And this is a
common thing that I see often in the couples with
my friends, is that people are wanting interest to be expressed,
but they're not willing to express themselves. And so this
is what you know, in terms of change yourself, change
your relationship, as I attempt to try and change myself here,
I'm hoping that it'll create a different dynamic in terms
(29:01):
of I will take up more space and therefore I
will receive more space.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
And another part of kind of understanding yourself to understand
the relationship, To understand this kind of co created dynamic
is to really dig into something that might be very painful,
which is your triggers, and so explain what a trigger
is and why understanding them for yourself can be so
powerful for relationships.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
When you're feeling something really powerful, like if it makes
you feel really sad or really disappointed, or to a
point where you shut down, you can be sure that
you're being triggered. Triggers are any kind of stimulus that
pulls out some kind of emotional reaction, and sometimes it
is just about the present, but oftentimes it's about both
the past and the present, and so the past being
these earlier wounds from our family of origin and culture,
(29:43):
and so they're really important to become aware of because
it deepens the story and it often will help us
elicit a better reaction from our partners when instead of
blaming them and criticizing them for not fulfilling or need,
we can understand first why we're feeling so intense to
have that need fulfilled, and where those responses come from,
and we can approach them much much better from a
place not of desperation, not of entitlement, not of objectifying
(30:05):
them to be our need fulfilling machine, but as a
human being with experience, those that have contributed to why
we want what we want.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Sometimes our triggers wind up making us behave in ways
that don't necessarily make sense for our current partners. You
told a story about this with Alex when you had
a little bit of a fender bender in Alex's car.
Curious if you'll share that story.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
I completely wrecked his car, and I was petrified. I
was so afraid he was going to scream at me,
reject me, leave me, like I thought. I was in
big trouble. I'm the least handy person, like I literally
can't fix anything. But I was freaked out so much
that I went to the auto store and I bought
car parts and I started to try to fix the car.
He came out and he found me and he's like,
(30:46):
what are you doing. I know you can't do this.
I don't care. Really, it's not a big deal. And
it was really reparative for me to know that I
could make a mistake, I could even damage his car
and I could still receive love and it wouldn't get punished.
And so these are moments that are extremely reparative with
our partners. And it was a sweet moment and it
was hot, But our triggers can bring out the opportunity
(31:10):
to really work through something powerful. And this is how,
you know, we hear people say we heal in the
context of our adult relationships, and this is how we
do it. We can relearn that we can make a mistake,
we can be ourselves, and we can still be loved.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
The sort of sensitivity to our own set of triggers
means that we might need to extend the same courtesy
to our partners too. We might need to recognize that
they have triggers and sometimes when they're responding kind of
really intensely, it might not be about us. It might
be about something that happened in the past. So talk
about how we can kind of navigate our partner's triggers
and do that a little bit better.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
It's really hard, and I call this emotional karate or
mission impossible. You know, we're all a little narcissistic, and
we all do think that things are everything is about us,
and if our partner is going to act in a
certain way, it has certain implications on who we are
or what they think about us. But we really have
to become a bit more curious when we see our
partners struggling, getting really angry, feeling really sad, looking really withdrawn.
(32:06):
We all have a tendency to feel, why are they
doing this to me? Why are they in this mood?
I don't like it? So we view our partner, their behavior,
their thoughts, their feelings, their reactions through a lens of
what they're doing to us or how it relates to us,
as opposed to how it relates to them. So it's
really important and helpful to get into the habit of empathy.
Is everything okay? What's happening? Where does this come from?
(32:27):
Do you have an idea about why you're feeling so
upset right now? So it's really important to first go
a place of curiosity rather than blame, criticism, contempt. I
did this with Alex. He would get into a bad
mood and instead of just asking is everything okay? I
would get annoyed. I'd be like this is annoying. I
don't want to be with someone who's in a bad mood,
or I would feel threatened if he raised his voice
(32:48):
not to me, but like we're driving and he was
having road rage, which sure it's not pleasant, but like
it had nothing to do with me, but I made
it about me, and I was like, this is unpleasant
for me, as opposed to, you know, letting him be
a human being who has his own histories, who has
his own anxieties, his own triggers, and trying to understand.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
That the understanding. Also, it seems like you needed to
ask Alex about what was going on, You needed to
get curious, but also to maybe have a hard conversation
that involved him delving into his past. And so how
can we normalize this idea that conversations aren't always easy
and fun, that sometimes they're hard, and that can actually
be healing in the long run.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Yeah, I mean also that fighting isn't necessarily bad. Conflict
isn't bad. Again, you know, conflict for all of us
is a trigger. Though it's how you do the conflict
that really makes a difference. And it's really making sure
that one that we can have the conversations that feel hard,
but they don't have to involve scary, screaming, yelling things
(33:48):
that are unsafe. You can insert humor, touch, eye contact,
caring expressions, caring responses. It can be fighty. That's okay too.
Don't get into the contempt and the name calling and
the screaming and the real means stuff. But if we
don't have these conversations, it will lead to future resentment,
it will lead to disconnection. It will really back to
(34:09):
your relationships. So it's just kind of one of those
things you have to do, like going to the dentist,
which sorry dentists, but no one wants to go.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
As we talk about unlearning all of these rules, I'm
cognizant that you're both the therapist and the expert on this,
but also someone who yourself is dating and engaging your relationships.
Has unlearning all of these rules helped you out too.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
I have friends that you know, when we first met,
they thought I was a therapist and had it all
figured out and didn't experience challenge. And my traumas remain.
They don't go away. No one's trauma goes away. I've
learned to understand my traumas and understanding my traumas and
expanding my conscious awareness of who I am has helped
me better understand what happens for me in relational dynamics.
(34:49):
I'm better at understanding it. I'm better at not just
reacting right away or sending that text message that I
might have sent that was really not helpful to send.
But in terms of understanding my trauma, there's no cure
for that, like I was saying, And so, you know,
this is part of life that often gets missed in Instagram,
is that part of it is feeling pain, part of
it is feeling happy. In one you know, there's an
(35:10):
entire spectrum of emotion, just like there's an entire spectrum
of weather. And while all of this information insight has
been crucial and helpful and really help me de escalate
the anxiety and panic I can feel at times with
the partner, it still comes up, but I think from
a much calmer place than I used to. But the
end of a relationship part I think is particularly important
(35:30):
because the amount of people that I get questions from
how do I know when to end it? You know,
questions like that. You know they're so complicated. That's really
helpful to think about not just dating, not just you know,
love in general while we're in it, or conflict or
reasonable disappointment, but also you know the idea that relationships
do in fact end, and they don't end in this
fairy tale kind of period at the end of a
(35:50):
sentence kind of a way. Sometimes greed goes on forever.
It's hard, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
So what's some of your best advice for somebody who's
ended a relationship. How can they give themselves some grace
and self compassion to navigate that ending.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind
is stop evaluating yourself for your partner. All of that
is resistance to just feeling our pain. Relational endings are
incredibly painful, incredibly painful, and evaluating it looking back, thinking
about our ex spiraling about one thing or another. It's
just resistance to pain. And the best thing that people
(36:23):
can do when they're going through a relational ending is grieve,
let themselves feel their emotions, to let themselves be where
they are. If it's you know, like I was saying,
I've ended my relationship in three years later, is still
having nightmares, nightmares about my ex with these goods, you know,
these things, they follow us and there's meaning behind it.
So stop evaluating yourself let yourself feel things, which is
(36:44):
so hard to do and not the response that people want.
They want a top ten list of like these are
the things you do, be with friends, do this, which
you can. But the reality is to get through a
breakup and heartbreak requires tolerance and courage and patience and self.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Awareness and so any tips on how to make that
hard decision about whether a relationship needs some work and
will continue on versus it's over and you should give.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Up on it? Question so much, when do I know?
When do I leave? What I usually tell people, and
this is it's so counterintuitive, but I tell them to
work on it. Go to couples counseling. If you're at
this place, that doesn't mean that you're going to repair
your relationship. But I truly don't think that people are
really equipped at times to fully know how to move forward,
which is why they're feeling so confused and so having
(37:30):
someone to help you and your partner work through this
because it's a couple's issue. Relational learnings are a couple's issue,
even if only one person is initiating it. That can
be really helpful of course, not everybody is access to
or even wants to go because they're feeling so hopeless,
which fine, but even still, sometimes you know, if you're
not there to pull the trigger, which most people are not,
(37:50):
it can take years sometimes of ambivalence and confusion. Is
still to work through it as best as you can
with your partner. It's often through those steps that you're
going to get more information about what it's like to
work through your disappointments with them, what it's like to
bring up that conversation of I'm thinking about ending this
relationship and to see how they respond and to have
a conversation about it. Sometimes people do have some light
(38:10):
bulb that goes off most of the time that when
I'm seeing a client. In my own experience with Alex,
it's really confusing because these are people at times who've
been with for years that we deeply, deeply love, and
it's not just a matter of they're terrible, I don't
want to be with them anymore. And sometimes even when
they are terrible and you don't want to be with
them and even still be difficult because of your life's context.
So I mean, the direct advice is to try and
(38:32):
work through it and to go to counseling to get help.
We didn't do that, me and Alex and I really
actually do regret not doing that, not because I think
we would have still been together, but I think it
really would have been helpful to work through the ending together.
And I think that's often a very scary step to
take again because of helplessness, and it feels counterintuitive, but
it's one really helpful way to approach an ending.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Speaking of endings, we've now come full circle with our
short season on Happiness and Love. We've talked about happier dating,
happier long term love, happier arguing and repair, and finally
now happier breakups. But hopefully you won't be thinking of
ditching us for someone else. Because The Happiness Life has
many new shows in store. We'll soon be celebrating World
Happiness Day with a few special episodes and some very
(39:16):
special guests.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
The Twitter fans guys are out there like all day
for like weeks. It's insane. They're like risking their lives.
They're losing twenty pounds, their butts, sore, their back. I mean,
it's just like incredible, like what they go through the
whole thing is just nut.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
It's just nuts.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
But before that, I'll take you on a strange happiness journey,
high high up in the sky. I would work your back.
If you listen to Jagger's cockpit recordings, his fear is
very obvious and his relief is palpable.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
I can't very much. Before I got
Speaker 1 (39:47):
About, he knew he was in troubled right, that's still
to come on the Happiness Lab with me, Doctor Laurie
Santos
Pushkin. Todd Barretts knew exactly how his boyfriend should be
treating him. The right standards were very clear. They'd been
set out in all the fairy tales and Hollywood rom
coms that he'd grown up with.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I had certain expectations for how he should be treating me.
I was thinking, well, he should just be asking me
how my day was. He should just be doing these things.
And the reality is that it's a much more complicated
dynamic than that.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Many of us share this kind of naive view of relationships.
We expect near perfection from our romantic partners and assume
that accepting anything less would be settling. We want a
soulmate who understands us, a rock who supports us in
all we do, a therapist who heals us when we're hurt,
and a lover who fulfills all our desires and makes
us feel incredibly attractive.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
These rules, these lists, they're infiltrating our relationships from day
one to These are things that we've internalized, and they
become indistinguishable from our voice compared to our culture's voice.
They just feel like absolute truths.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
The eventual collapse of Todd's ten year relationship was a
wake up call. Todd had been demanding way too much
from his boyfriend. It was more than any real person
could reasonably deliver, So Todd decided to recalibrate in his
future relationships. Sure he'd be thrilled if he met the
perfect partner, but he'd also be okay with a kind,
yet fallible and flawed human. He was ready to find
(01:38):
a partner who is simply good enough. But Todd says
this isn't just a personal decision, it's advice he wants
us all to consider. You see Todd Barrett's as a
sex and relationships therapist. He's also the author of How
to Love Someone Without Losing Your Mind. In his practice,
Todd sees countless couples tearing themselves and their relationships apart
thanks to impossibly high expectations. So in this final episode
(02:01):
of our season, Looking at Happiness and Love, we'll explore
how so many of us ended up becoming way too
demanding about what a partner should be, as well as
unwilling to accept the inevitable flaws that come with being human.
We'll also hear Todd's advice for finding not the perfect relationship,
but one that's just good enough Forget the fairy tale
and get real. That's the subtitle of Todd's new book.
(02:24):
In it, he makes the observation that we spend more
time as children learning to do long division than we
do learning to identify our emotions. The lack of social
and relational guidance in our culture is outrageous at best,
Todd explains, and harmful to survival at worst. Without the
right guidance, a lot of powerful ideas have bubbled up
to fill this void, romance, novels, TV shows, rom coms,
(02:47):
and now social media, and Todd says that these ideas
often create problems. All those listicles and memes convince us
we need to find a perfect partner and that we
ought to reject anyone with any potential flaw or defect.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
The reality is that people don't have so many places
to go for relationship advice. You know, we primarily get
our relationship advice implicitly from our family and culture of origin. Oftentimes,
as I said, it's implicit. It's not like this is
how healthy relationships work. It's observational learning. It's experiential and emotional.
In school, we get absolutely no education. We don't get
(03:21):
good sex ed. We don't get relational ad it, we
don't get an emotional ad we don't get a human head.
But what's so interesting about the Instagram stuff, social media,
TikTok is that is actually the only places that people,
at least culturally in this moment, that we get information.
And that's the beginning of the problem. And you know,
some of the content's great, just like any TV film,
(03:42):
any kind of media. Some of it is good, some
of it is bad. But the biggest thing for me
that I would want people to really slow down with
how they're consuming the content and think deeper about it.
There is no nuance, there's no complexity. Often sometimes the
posts are literally black and white. We're looking at information
that's really lacking their context that gives life to information.
(04:07):
It's empty information really, and nothing can really be applied
without fully understanding the context, especially the therapeutic information and
psycho education that we are now seeing all of our
social media.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
So, in my own kind of glimpses at what's going
on on TikTok and Instagram, my sense is that a
lot of the language that people used to talk about
relationship seems to be really clinicalized. But clinicalized in this
way that maybe people are like getting wrong, you know,
So I'm thinking about terms like codependency and narcissism and gaslighting.
Is this something that you've noticed. Are there's spots where
some of these kind of online therapists might not be
(04:42):
getting exactly the clinical context, right?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah? I mean all of posts are marketing. So it's information,
but it's marketing. It's coming from a place that I
want you to read my content so you can subscribe
to my channel, and so I can monetize it in
one way or another. I mean, that's really what it is.
I mean, and that's fine. We live this is the
world we live in. But words like narcissism and toxic
gas lighter and toxic thiss and red flag and situationship
(05:07):
then even trauma, these words are trending, and so people
are often using these words to get people's interest, and
so oftentimes what happens is that things get really watered down.
And that's what we're saying is that, you know, these
terms are being watered down to apply to literally anything
at this point, any bad behavior, any sign of dependence.
(05:28):
And to me, what it does is that it increases
people's anxiety because it keeps us on alert, and it
keeps us hyper vigilant to be looking out for certain
signs certain behavior, as opposed to better understanding ourselves. So
I think that yes, we might want to know some
of these terms, but the most important thing we can
do in our relationships and in our lives is not
diagnosed somebody is not look out for the top ten
(05:50):
red flags of a narcissist or if your person is toxic,
but to better understand ourselves. The content is training us
more to understand and analyze someone else's shitty behavior than
our own, and that's a problem.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
It also really changes the standards that we bring to
kind of relationship shopping. Right, If we're kind of looking
for all these red flags, it seems like we see
our job as kind of trying to suss out these
red flags in a way that probably makes the entire
dating landscape seem kind of terrifying. I mean, is this
something you've experienced with the people that you talk to
and that you work with as clients.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
This shapes the entire experience of how we think about
even someone on an app, we have anything that you know,
I see individuals and I see couples with the individuals.
It's mostly is this person that I'm dating going to
be the wrong person for me? Are they going to
hurt me? And then most of the couples that I'm seeing,
you know, they have some kind of fear that they're
with the wrong person. So these expectations are literally physiologically
(06:44):
shaping the way we react and prime ourselves to experience
connection or rather what it is is really disconnection because
the more we are focused on the top ten lists
of what to look for, the less present we are,
and the less present we are, the less capable we
are of connecting. And the less capable we are being vulnerable,
and the less capable we are being vulnerable, the more
long we're going to feel.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
And so how do we get in this position? Because
it seems like this is kind of something that seems
to be pretty new and like modern love, it seems
like we've kind of gone like really capitalist when it
comes to kind of thinking about love and thinking about dating,
Like how did we get here?
Speaker 2 (07:18):
People have a variety of different theories, you know, going
from we're now really really independent and we stress independence
and we don't necessarily have to focus on marriage for survival.
I mean, there's a whole historical basis for where love
is today, which is something I talk about in my book.
I interviewed my mom about love and what it was
like growing up for her, and for her it was
(07:39):
just get married by twenty one, have kids very soon.
She's like, red flags, What is that toxic? What is
that narcissism? She kind of had an idea, but it
wasn't part of the relational discourse, whereas now it is.
And I think it's a good thing. I mean, I
don't think this is bad, but it's something that's full
(08:00):
of meaning that we need to understand better. So we're
not just on autopilot expecting certain things and discounting our
role in all of the dynamics we exist in.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
So it seems like on top of of these kind
of new expectations we have for our partners, you know,
we're kind of worried about red flags and trying to
sess them out. At the same time, it doesn't seem
like our same high standards have been applied to like
our own behavior and kind of the way that we
bring ourselves to relationships. It seems like if anything like
those expectations have gone down, is that the sense you
get from kind of talking to your clients and engaging
(08:29):
with some of this work.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Well, what's interesting about that is that people have high
expectations of themselves and they're really really hard on themselves,
But when it comes to relational dynamics, most people are
particularly disconnected from that in terms of, you know, we
want a partner who will do certain things for us,
and in that focus, we fail to realize that how
we interact with them will determine whether or not they
(08:52):
do the things that we think they should be doing
for us. The interesting is that people want to put
in the work, but oftentimes people myself can feel so
convinced that it's not us. And people are resistant to
understanding the role that they play in relationships because it
touches upon a very vulnerable and scary place that we're limited,
that we have issues ourselves, that we are difficult to
(09:15):
be with, and that we play a role, a very
big role in our lives. But many of us default
to this place where we just want our partner to
rescue us and to do these certain things for us
to make us feel valued and validated. And there's another
trending word that drives me crazy. Validation. You know, we
expect our partners not to be their job without again
understanding the role we play. So people really want to
work hard, but they don't want to work hard unless
(09:37):
they think their partner is working hard in a similar
or same way. And they definitely don't want to work
hard if they think their.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Partner is to blame, which most people do.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Which most people do.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
So you've really argued that we need to unlearn some
of these rules that we've been getting from modern love,
that the act of unlearning these rules and coming up
with new ones can help us do better. And one
of the rules you talked about is this idea that
we really need our partners to change. When we look
at relationships, I think there's this idea like, oh, if
only my partner could do X, Y and Z, or
if only this person you know, I just started dating,
(10:06):
would you do this sort of thing and everything would
be better? Talk about why our partner's changing isn't necessarily
the best answer to our relationship woes.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
One. I mean, it's a prison. If we say that
someone else needs to do something in order for us
to be happy, that's a pretty scary, powerless place to be.
And that's the parallel to childhood, you know, where we
needed our parents to do something specific for us and
that was the reality in order for us to be happy.
But adult partnership is a completely different ballgame than early
childhood attachment. You know, when we're responding to our partners
(10:37):
not doing something for us, we're responding to our dynamic
that we are integral into, shaping and creating and eliciting
the reaction from our partner that we want them to
be doing. But it's a big piece of the book,
which is I say, you know, in many other therapists
and people say, you know, change yourself first, you know,
stop trying to get your partner to change, and work
on changing yourself. And most people hate that because they're
(10:58):
like in the self righteous place of I didn't do this,
they should be doing this. I deserve, I'm entitled to whatever.
It can be really hard to think except and understand
that if we can make change that can have an
impact on a relationship, that we actually have more power
in our adult partnerships than our reflexes might be telling us.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
And so one of the forms of that change that
you really advocate is that we need to look back
at our past to really understand where our current tendencies
are coming from. You've argued that we need to explore
our emotional ghosts. So what are emotional ghosts and why
do we need to explore them so much?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Emotional ghosts are basically any historical experience that was traumatic, hard, challenging,
whatever that's left to mark, that's left a wound that's
been a big part of your story. A lot of
our needs and relationships come from never receiving those needs
due to trauma and neglect, abandonment, to lack of nourishment
from parents, etc. And their emotional ghosts, and they're with us,
(11:55):
and those are the things that will come to shape
our relational dynamics as adults, like literally will shape them.
And it's important to become aware of that because oftentimes
what gets mixed up and our own emotional ghosts is
again that my partner is doing this when it's usually both,
it's usually some version of our attachment trauma, our earlier
experiences in our family of origin. These emotional ghosts, these triggers, wounds,
(12:18):
et cetera that are coming up in the president of
a dynamic that feels very similar to what we grew
up with. That doesn't mean our partner is in doing
something they usually are, but the power with which we
respond is coming from these earlier scary ghosts.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
I know this is something that you navigated with your
relationship with Alex. Would you talk a lot about in
your practice and in your book. So maybe first off,
who is Alex and where are some spots where in
that relationship these emotional ghosts came up?
Speaker 2 (12:45):
A relationship ended about like six years ago, which is wild.
We were together for ten years. You know, huge learning
experience in my life, but like it was really hard
for me to acknowledge, even though my therapist was saying, Todd,
this is about you know your father. But even when
being told about this, I was like, no, Elks should
be doing this. He's limited in this way. While you know,
I was convinced, and on the one hand, I wasn't
(13:06):
wrong with the way that I was seeing in the
perspective that I was or that I had of him
was based on my earlier experiences. Now I know that,
you know, I had wanted him to do certain things
that I actually didn't need him to do in terms
of the emotional caretaking that I was expecting. And you know,
these are things that I could have done of my
own as an adult in.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Our quest to sort of figure out our emotional ghosts.
You actually have a practical suggestion that I found quite striking,
which is that we need to dig into the past
a little bit more, and that might really involve talking
to the people who often make up the situations that
cause our emotional ghosts aamely, our parents. So talk to
me about this advice and what you did in your
situation and why it can be so powerful for kind
(13:45):
of digging up those things that are from the past
that might be affecting us so.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Much a big part of our story. We can't fully
know it without fully knowing our parents and our history
and our generational stories and our ancestors and as much
as information as we can possibly get. So what I
did was I interviewed my mom. I asked and my dad.
I asked them both a lot of questions about what
love was like, what dating was like, what growing up
was like, what their parents were like, what their relationships
(14:10):
were like, you know. And what I found was that,
you know, a lot of their experiences paralleled what I
went through with them in terms of maybe some of
the neglect that I felt and I was neglected by
my parents, and then when I talk to them about
their story, the neglect that they experienced and weren't even
able to acknowledge. And then when I asked about their
parents and their grandparents, I mean, it was literal war
(14:31):
and death. So oftentimes our stories have real, real intergenerational basis,
and we can't fully understand ourselves and our relationships without
fully understanding that. The challenge with some of these interviews
and interactions with their parents is they don't want to
talk about it. Sometimes I push a lot of my
clients to do this and they say they do and
their parents will only talk about the positive relationships they
(14:54):
had despite their parents having a lot of emotional problems.
So the challenge with some of these generational traumas is
they've been kept inter repts and sometimes if we ask
our parents, they may also continue to do that. But
it's really important and I would really encourage anyone if
their parent is still alive, their grandparents is still alive,
(15:14):
to write out a set of questions and it's not
an interrogation, it's not therapy, it's an interview, and to
ask questions about you know, what was love like for you?
What was independence like for you? What was affection like
for you? What were the expectations you had? Were your
parents present, did they have a drinking problem, did they
do drugs? Did anybody die? Were there any relational breaks
early on? You know all of this stuff because you
(15:36):
can really learn a lot about yourself, and you can
humanize your parents, which is a really big piece of
this story, because as we talk and learn about our
own early traumas with our parents, we can often view
them as our perpetrators, which sometimes they are, or as
the people who didn't give us this thing and who
deeply hurt us, and all of that, which can be true.
But the other side of that story is that they're
human beings who had very very deep stories just like ours,
(15:59):
and experienced challenges and or the way they are for
a reason, and so if we can understand that reason,
it really can help to humanize them and connect with
them as a human being rather than this person who
mistreated us when we were ten or fifteen or didn't
give us what they should have given us. I really
encourage people to do it.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
So understanding our own stories and those of our parents
and grandparents can be an important first step in finding
greater stability in our romantic relationships, but Todd says there
are also some narratives that we need to better understand
and challenge, specifically our persistent myths about fairy tale romance.
We'll hear more after a quick break. Sex and relationship
(16:45):
therapist Todd Barrett's sees many clients who began their idea
of romance as kids from reading the usual Happily Ever
After fairy tales. Todd writes in his book, people date
with the goal of finding their perfect match, the one
we all want somewhat special, but our ideas of the
one can get kind of extreme. The one has to
be one hundred percent emotionally available, stable, healed through years
(17:08):
of past therapy, and able to communicate. They've got to
be motivated, funny, growth oriented, and mature. They've got to
have a good job and impeccable taste. Gotta love travel
and dogs, plus be in shape, oh, and a foodie,
and have no imperfections or red flags whatsoever, just chemistry,
connection and love it for a site. Oddly enough, in
(17:28):
his youth, Todd felt a bit detached from these expectations.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Growing up gay in the nineties. You know, the idea
of the one and being with someone forever wasn't really
on my radar.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
But after the painful end of his ten year relationship,
Todd unhappily found himself back in the dating pool and
searching for that perfect meat.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
It'd be so great to just find one person to
be done with it, and you know, not to have
to worry that that ever again. But the reality is
that relationships are ending. People get divorced. This is the thing,
and it's normal and it's okay. I do see that
as kind of the biggest problem and the biggest part
of the fairy tale that we need to let go
is the idea of happily ever after, the one where
(18:09):
everything is just going to work. It doesn't exist, It
really doesn't, and it really ends up just adding anxiety
to dates and to our relationships.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
So let's start with the idea of how we can
overcome this idea of the one. You had this lovely
practical suggestion that I've heard you mentioned before, which is
that we need to sort of switch what we're doing
in the search for the one You're Rather than getting
all anxious, we need to get a little bit more curious.
What do you mean by getting curious?
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Curious about who the other person is, curious about who
we are when we're with them. I try to reframe
dating not in terms of who we can find, more
so what we can find out taking it one singular date, experience,
conversation at a time. You know, the power of being
present might sound cliche, but it's really important, especially when
it comes to relationships and getting to know somebody. If
your mind is are they going to satisfy me in
(18:56):
twenty years? If your mind is there on day two,
you're not going to be seeing them as who they are.
You're not going to be learning about them, and you're
not giving yourself the opportunity to let them get to
know you. But this is what we grew up with.
This is what we see in movies. You know that
people are together forever, and there are certain things to
look for that may not fit that criteria.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
You had this term that I love normal marital hate
that you talk about. You get an example with your
dog that I love.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Oh, that is Terry real. It was a quote of
Terry Reel's book Us Normal Marital Hate. Great line. Everyone
is intolerable to an extent, everyone is going to disappoint us.
Everyone is going to annoy us. I talk about my dog,
and even my dog who's so cute. Her name is Ellie.
She's a kavapoo and all she wants to do is cuddle,
but she's really annoying sometimes and sometimes I just want
(19:39):
her to leave me alone. And our partner, no matter
how cute and sweet they are, they're going to get
on our nerves. They're going to disappoint us. Happily ever
after just you know, unfortunately, it's not a thing, and
it's a really big disappointment. And the challenges is really
learning how to embrace our partner's limitations and honor them
and understand them as a human being without seeing those limitations, disappointments,
(20:02):
frustrations as a way to understand them as a whole.
Everyone is a little disappointing, including myself.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
You talk times about this idea of the good enough
relationship or the good enough marriage. What do you mean
by good enough here? And how can we find that?
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yeah? People hate that. Whenever I post about that on Instagram,
people come for me. But yeah, something that's good enough
I mean, And this applies to practically everything in our life.
I'm looking for a house now, and I'm like, but
I want this and this, and meanwhile, I live in
New York City and nothing is going to be what
I want it to be. But we're talking about relationships
so good enough meaning, you know, we don't need one
(20:36):
hundred percent. We don't need our partners to be perfect.
We need them to be there for us most of
the time. We need a relationship that's good enough. And
good enough includes limitations, problems, fights, conflicts. That doesn't mean
an unhealthy relationship. It doesn't mean an abusive relationship. It
just means a relationship that's mostly satisfying. Part of the
fairy tale is that we will find a relationship that's
(20:57):
fully satisfying, that doesn't require work, and that you're entitled
to a love that dot dot dot. You know, I
see so many means like that. The reality is is
no one's really entitled to anything when it comes to
love in that sense, because it's hard work. We can't
just sit there and have these things appear. We have
to do the work. And part of that work is
tolerance and forgiveness and forgiving ourselves and forgiving our partners.
(21:19):
And it's really, really hard and can be disappointing.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
It's so interesting that you get pushed back for this
idea of the good enough relationship. And it kind of
makes sense given how much we push people these days
never to settle. But my sense is like this is
also a new thing about modern love that we're so
obsessed with not settling. This isn't the way our parents
dealt with it, right, I mean, like.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
I was telling you with my mother in her interview,
she settled, and you know, she chose somebody that was
extremely abusive, but because culturally, you know, as a woman
in the fifties, she was told to stay, told to
get married, and told to settle no matter what, for
a sense of security and because family was the most
important thing. And so I do think that this pendulum
(21:57):
having swung to the exact opposite direction of never settle,
is due to you know, a lot of intergenerational trauma
where we've come from parents or grandparents or histories where
people were really hurt and we're told to settle because
that was the cultural narrative. Settle down. You know, that's
what people were told. And now you know, the pendulum
is from the other direction. And I'm not suggesting that
it's wrong. I'm just suggesting that we should take that
(22:19):
pendulum and put it a little bit in the middle.
You know, the only way we learn about ourselves in
relationships is by being in them. And so if we're
constantly waiting for this perfect person, one they don't exist,
but two we don't get the opportunity to one have
a relationship, experience attachment and love, but to really learn
about what it is that we want in the first place.
So what I think is more important is for people
to settle down, but not to settle down for a
(22:40):
shitty relationship, but to settle down with somebody that's good
enough and to see what you can develop and to
see what the connection is like, and to see what
happens when you have conflict and to work through that.
And also what's important is to end a relationship. I
do believe that having the experience of being able to
have a relational ending at least once in your life
is a very important experience to have in terms of
personal growth, self awareness, and development, at least for me
(23:03):
and a lot of my clients. A big, big problem
with the fairy tale relationship is when it comes to endings.
Relational endings. So people think they should last forever, and
when they don't, they failed, They blame their partner, they
blame themselves. People often don't think about creation laws. When
people do get to the end of a relationship, they
think it should just feel like a hiccup or a sneeze,
and then they decide to end it. When the reality
(23:24):
of relational endings is so much further from what we
see in a rom com and what we see in
some of these expectations on Instagram, you know, in terms,
cut them out, go on a trip, get back to yourself,
be single on purpose, get to know yourself better. That's
the model for relational endings that we see. We celebrate
love and we totally avoid the topic of any kind
(23:45):
of relational ending, including pain, ambivalence, regret, years of hard work,
and tears. You know, we often think about a relational
ending as on this day, I decided I wanted to
end my relationship, and then next week I'm going to
go on a vacation by myself. I'm going to do yoga,
and then I'm not going to start dating for another
three to six months until I'm healed, and then I'm
going to start dating again. And I'm going to look
(24:05):
for someone who fits these criteria with no red flags.
Like my top it gets and it is nothing like that.
You know, when I ended my relationship, it was a
horror show. You know, no one prepares us for what
it's like when you think about yourself as someone who's
a wee, and even the language is different. So, you know,
I think the fairy tale about the way relationships begin,
the way that they feel, and the way that they
end infiltrated the way we experience and expect love to feel.
(24:28):
It's a real challenge because it just creates more shame,
more anxiety, more confusion, and in that space prevents us
from fully understanding ourselves, which is really what we need
in the beginning, middle, and end of a relationship. It's
self understanding, self compassion, empathy. So the fairy tale I
see as this kind of black or white portrait of love,
and it doesn't fit whether we're talking about the beginning, middle,
(24:49):
or end of a relationship.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
And this gets to another rule that I think we
need to unlearn, which is this idea of manifesting. You know,
when I look on Instagram and TikTok, I think there's
this idea that like I'm just going to manifest the
perfect relationship as if it doesn't require any work at all.
Talk about why we need to overcome this idea of manifesting.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Manifestation plays a really big role for a lot of people,
and it's I don't want to say it's worked for them,
because I don't know what work means. I do believe though,
that you know, one piece of manifestation is the energy
we put out is the energy we get back. I
do believe in that, and that gets back to change
yourself and you change a relationship. You know, if we
are putting energy out with our partner that is non
critical and warm and kind and empathic, we're likely to
(25:29):
receive a similar response. But in terms of just magically
manifesting a partner, you know, that's not something that I
think can happen through inaction or just thought. Like I
had a friend ones tell me to like clear out
a closet and like make space for my partner. Know,
it's like, I don't know if that's going to necessarily
do it. I need to go on dates and like
put effort into meeting and growing a connection. But relationships
(25:53):
take work, not manifestation. Relationships are built over a long
period of time, and that requires patient's effort, tolerance forgiveness,
all the stuff I was just saying.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
One of the key observations in Todd's book is this,
as our expectations for love have soored to unprecedented heights,
Todd our commitment to doing the necessary work to sustain
that love has plummeted. So after the break, we'll unpack
the facet of love never mentioned in fairy tales, all
the work it requires. The Happiness Lab will be right back.
(26:30):
As a therapist, Todd Barrett sees clients who are deeply
unhappy with their relationships, but many of those clients are
also either unwilling to do the work needed to fix
things with their partner or feel like it's just not
their job to do the necessary repairs. It's a self
sabotaging mindset that Todd knows only too well from his
ten year relationship with his ex Alex.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
There was a dynamic with Alex and I wear I'm
in the therapist that I was waiting for him to
bring certain things up. I was waiting for him to
do certain things before I took any action. And if
I was upset about something, I would just do in
frustration and disappointment, or I would spiral and feel sad
and alone, as opposed to engage and as opposed to
verbalizing myself, as opposed to really taking an active role
(27:12):
in the relationship. Basically, I was going silent. I was retreating,
and I was withdrawing, which is something I did as
a kid, something I learned to do with my father
and my family, and the role I was actually encouraged
to take on as a child, which was to be
quiet when I was upset, when I was hurt, no
matter what, be quiet. And I was doing the same
thing with Alex. The difference was is I was doing
(27:33):
it in response to Alex not taking care of me
in a certain way, him not fulfilling my needs in
a certain way. Instead of me saying, hey, you know,
could you do this, I would go quiet. And so
that's the dynamic, and the reaction of me not taking
up space caused him to take up more space and
overlook me more, which made me feel more alone, which
was the same loneliness I experienced as a kid. And
(27:55):
so I was playing a huge role in creating a
dynamic that contributed to my own lack of satisfaction and misery.
And so that's not to say that Alex wasn't doing
certain things and he could have done other things, but
it is just to say that this was the role
I was playing and shaping my relationship and it wasn't
working for me. And you know, the same thing came
up last night with me and my new partner.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Can you unpack like what came like? What was the
situation that came up a little bit?
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yeah, I you know, it was something similar to I
wanted to be asked questions about something specific or to
have more interest be expressed. But I still you know,
as a therapist, I tend to default to the space
of asking questions, of not taking up space of listening,
or just shutting down, Like if someone doesn't ask me,
I shut down instead of just start talking. And I
(28:40):
shut down because I get disappointed. And this is a
common thing that I see often in the couples with
my friends, is that people are wanting interest to be expressed,
but they're not willing to express themselves. And so this
is what you know, in terms of change yourself, change
your relationship, as I attempt to try and change myself here,
I'm hoping that it'll create a different dynamic in terms
(29:01):
of I will take up more space and therefore I
will receive more space.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
And another part of kind of understanding yourself to understand
the relationship, To understand this kind of co created dynamic
is to really dig into something that might be very painful,
which is your triggers, and so explain what a trigger
is and why understanding them for yourself can be so
powerful for relationships.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
When you're feeling something really powerful, like if it makes
you feel really sad or really disappointed, or to a
point where you shut down, you can be sure that
you're being triggered. Triggers are any kind of stimulus that
pulls out some kind of emotional reaction, and sometimes it
is just about the present, but oftentimes it's about both
the past and the present, and so the past being
these earlier wounds from our family of origin and culture,
(29:43):
and so they're really important to become aware of because
it deepens the story and it often will help us
elicit a better reaction from our partners when instead of
blaming them and criticizing them for not fulfilling or need,
we can understand first why we're feeling so intense to
have that need fulfilled, and where those responses come from,
and we can approach them much much better from a
place not of desperation, not of entitlement, not of objectifying
(30:05):
them to be our need fulfilling machine, but as a
human being with experience, those that have contributed to why
we want what we want.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Sometimes our triggers wind up making us behave in ways
that don't necessarily make sense for our current partners. You
told a story about this with Alex when you had
a little bit of a fender bender in Alex's car.
Curious if you'll share that story.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
I completely wrecked his car, and I was petrified. I
was so afraid he was going to scream at me,
reject me, leave me, like I thought. I was in
big trouble. I'm the least handy person, like I literally
can't fix anything. But I was freaked out so much
that I went to the auto store and I bought
car parts and I started to try to fix the car.
He came out and he found me and he's like,
(30:46):
what are you doing. I know you can't do this.
I don't care. Really, it's not a big deal. And
it was really reparative for me to know that I
could make a mistake, I could even damage his car
and I could still receive love and it wouldn't get punished.
And so these are moments that are extremely reparative with
our partners. And it was a sweet moment and it
was hot, But our triggers can bring out the opportunity
(31:10):
to really work through something powerful. And this is how,
you know, we hear people say we heal in the
context of our adult relationships, and this is how we
do it. We can relearn that we can make a mistake,
we can be ourselves, and we can still be loved.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
The sort of sensitivity to our own set of triggers
means that we might need to extend the same courtesy
to our partners too. We might need to recognize that
they have triggers and sometimes when they're responding kind of
really intensely, it might not be about us. It might
be about something that happened in the past. So talk
about how we can kind of navigate our partner's triggers
and do that a little bit better.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
It's really hard, and I call this emotional karate or
mission impossible. You know, we're all a little narcissistic, and
we all do think that things are everything is about us,
and if our partner is going to act in a
certain way, it has certain implications on who we are
or what they think about us. But we really have
to become a bit more curious when we see our
partners struggling, getting really angry, feeling really sad, looking really withdrawn.
(32:06):
We all have a tendency to feel, why are they
doing this to me? Why are they in this mood?
I don't like it? So we view our partner, their behavior,
their thoughts, their feelings, their reactions through a lens of
what they're doing to us or how it relates to us,
as opposed to how it relates to them. So it's
really important and helpful to get into the habit of empathy.
Is everything okay? What's happening? Where does this come from?
(32:27):
Do you have an idea about why you're feeling so
upset right now? So it's really important to first go
a place of curiosity rather than blame, criticism, contempt. I
did this with Alex. He would get into a bad
mood and instead of just asking is everything okay? I
would get annoyed. I'd be like this is annoying. I
don't want to be with someone who's in a bad mood,
or I would feel threatened if he raised his voice
(32:48):
not to me, but like we're driving and he was
having road rage, which sure it's not pleasant, but like
it had nothing to do with me, but I made
it about me, and I was like, this is unpleasant
for me, as opposed to, you know, letting him be
a human being who has his own histories, who has
his own anxieties, his own triggers, and trying to understand.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
That the understanding. Also, it seems like you needed to
ask Alex about what was going on, You needed to
get curious, but also to maybe have a hard conversation
that involved him delving into his past. And so how
can we normalize this idea that conversations aren't always easy
and fun, that sometimes they're hard, and that can actually
be healing in the long run.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Yeah, I mean also that fighting isn't necessarily bad. Conflict
isn't bad. Again, you know, conflict for all of us
is a trigger. Though it's how you do the conflict
that really makes a difference. And it's really making sure
that one that we can have the conversations that feel hard,
but they don't have to involve scary, screaming, yelling things
(33:48):
that are unsafe. You can insert humor, touch, eye contact,
caring expressions, caring responses. It can be fighty. That's okay too.
Don't get into the contempt and the name calling and
the screaming and the real means stuff. But if we
don't have these conversations, it will lead to future resentment,
it will lead to disconnection. It will really back to
(34:09):
your relationships. So it's just kind of one of those
things you have to do, like going to the dentist,
which sorry dentists, but no one wants to go.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
As we talk about unlearning all of these rules, I'm
cognizant that you're both the therapist and the expert on this,
but also someone who yourself is dating and engaging your relationships.
Has unlearning all of these rules helped you out too.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
I have friends that you know, when we first met,
they thought I was a therapist and had it all
figured out and didn't experience challenge. And my traumas remain.
They don't go away. No one's trauma goes away. I've
learned to understand my traumas and understanding my traumas and
expanding my conscious awareness of who I am has helped
me better understand what happens for me in relational dynamics.
(34:49):
I'm better at understanding it. I'm better at not just
reacting right away or sending that text message that I
might have sent that was really not helpful to send.
But in terms of understanding my trauma, there's no cure
for that, like I was saying, And so, you know,
this is part of life that often gets missed in Instagram,
is that part of it is feeling pain, part of
it is feeling happy. In one you know, there's an
(35:10):
entire spectrum of emotion, just like there's an entire spectrum
of weather. And while all of this information insight has
been crucial and helpful and really help me de escalate
the anxiety and panic I can feel at times with
the partner, it still comes up, but I think from
a much calmer place than I used to. But the
end of a relationship part I think is particularly important
(35:30):
because the amount of people that I get questions from
how do I know when to end it? You know,
questions like that. You know they're so complicated. That's really
helpful to think about not just dating, not just you know,
love in general while we're in it, or conflict or
reasonable disappointment, but also you know the idea that relationships
do in fact end, and they don't end in this
fairy tale kind of period at the end of a
(35:50):
sentence kind of a way. Sometimes greed goes on forever.
It's hard, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
So what's some of your best advice for somebody who's
ended a relationship. How can they give themselves some grace
and self compassion to navigate that ending.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind
is stop evaluating yourself for your partner. All of that
is resistance to just feeling our pain. Relational endings are
incredibly painful, incredibly painful, and evaluating it looking back, thinking
about our ex spiraling about one thing or another. It's
just resistance to pain. And the best thing that people
(36:23):
can do when they're going through a relational ending is grieve,
let themselves feel their emotions, to let themselves be where
they are. If it's you know, like I was saying,
I've ended my relationship in three years later, is still
having nightmares, nightmares about my ex with these goods, you know,
these things, they follow us and there's meaning behind it.
So stop evaluating yourself let yourself feel things, which is
(36:44):
so hard to do and not the response that people want.
They want a top ten list of like these are
the things you do, be with friends, do this, which
you can. But the reality is to get through a
breakup and heartbreak requires tolerance and courage and patience and self.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Awareness and so any tips on how to make that
hard decision about whether a relationship needs some work and
will continue on versus it's over and you should give.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Up on it? Question so much, when do I know?
When do I leave? What I usually tell people, and
this is it's so counterintuitive, but I tell them to
work on it. Go to couples counseling. If you're at
this place, that doesn't mean that you're going to repair
your relationship. But I truly don't think that people are
really equipped at times to fully know how to move forward,
which is why they're feeling so confused and so having
(37:30):
someone to help you and your partner work through this
because it's a couple's issue. Relational learnings are a couple's issue,
even if only one person is initiating it. That can
be really helpful of course, not everybody is access to
or even wants to go because they're feeling so hopeless,
which fine, but even still, sometimes you know, if you're
not there to pull the trigger, which most people are not,
(37:50):
it can take years sometimes of ambivalence and confusion. Is
still to work through it as best as you can
with your partner. It's often through those steps that you're
going to get more information about what it's like to
work through your disappointments with them, what it's like to
bring up that conversation of I'm thinking about ending this
relationship and to see how they respond and to have
a conversation about it. Sometimes people do have some light
(38:10):
bulb that goes off most of the time that when
I'm seeing a client. In my own experience with Alex,
it's really confusing because these are people at times who've
been with for years that we deeply, deeply love, and
it's not just a matter of they're terrible, I don't
want to be with them anymore. And sometimes even when
they are terrible and you don't want to be with
them and even still be difficult because of your life's context.
So I mean, the direct advice is to try and
(38:32):
work through it and to go to counseling to get help.
We didn't do that, me and Alex and I really
actually do regret not doing that, not because I think
we would have still been together, but I think it
really would have been helpful to work through the ending together.
And I think that's often a very scary step to
take again because of helplessness, and it feels counterintuitive, but
it's one really helpful way to approach an ending.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Speaking of endings, we've now come full circle with our
short season on Happiness and Love. We've talked about happier dating,
happier long term love, happier arguing and repair, and finally
now happier breakups. But hopefully you won't be thinking of
ditching us for someone else. Because The Happiness Life has
many new shows in store. We'll soon be celebrating World
Happiness Day with a few special episodes and some very
(39:16):
special guests.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
The Twitter fans guys are out there like all day
for like weeks. It's insane. They're like risking their lives.
They're losing twenty pounds, their butts, sore, their back. I mean,
it's just like incredible, like what they go through the
whole thing is just nut.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
It's just nuts.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
But before that, I'll take you on a strange happiness journey,
high high up in the sky. I would work your back.
If you listen to Jagger's cockpit recordings, his fear is
very obvious and his relief is palpable.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
I can't very much. Before I got
Speaker 1 (39:47):
About, he knew he was in troubled right, that's still
to come on the Happiness Lab with me, Doctor Laurie
Santos
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