Kelly talks to psychologist, author and Ted X speaker, Joli Hamilton about how to get the relationship you want. She addresses trust, jealousy, triggers and owning your side of the street. They also discuss tips for singles on what to do between relationships to make sure your next one is what you want and need.
Website: jolihamilton.com
Socials: @phoenixjoli
Book: Project Relationship https://bit.ly/JoliBook
Podcast: https://bit.ly/JoliPodcast
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's Bobby Bones. Appreciate you listening to The Bobby
Bones Show podcast. I wanted to share an episode of
one of our podcasts from the Nashville Podcast Network. In
this episode of The Velvet's Edge, Kelly talks to psychologist,
author and ted X speaker Jolie Hamilton about how to
get the relationship that you want. Some psychoanalysis stuff here.
I think you'll like it. They talk about trust and
jealousy and triggers, owning your side of the street, not
(00:22):
just romantic but even a friendship. They also discuss tips
on what to do between relationships if you are bouncing
from one to the next, if you're not married yet
or engaged yet, or maybe you're gonna try it again.
All that's here. Subscribe to this podcast if you like
it on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcast to search out The Velvet's Edge. Hope you like it.
A little dabble here here's the show. Okay, Well, it's February,
(00:47):
which obviously is easily known as the month of love,
so I felt like relationships would be a really good
topic to kind of approach in different different aspects of
relationships this month is what I'm focusing on above a such.
So I wanted to talk to you a lot about
relationships as we have them now, especially if you are
(01:09):
an entrepreneur, which is what you kind of specialize in,
and I don't. I've never thought of it in these
terms of just how would being an entrepreneur affect my
whole life or my dating relationships, my partnerships. And I
was doing a lot of research with the stuff that
you've researched, and I thought about it. I'm like, of
course it does, Like that just makes total sense. So
(01:30):
a lot of the relationship work that you do is
just around the dynamic of a woman who is also
an entrepreneur. So can you tell us what are some
of the things that you see people bumping up against
in these situations? Oh? Yeah, absolutely. So I approach relationship
work as being like it is whole life work, right,
(01:51):
Your relationships impact everything. But I've also been an entrepreneur
my whole life. I've only ever worked for other people
a tiny little smidgeon and I think that that informed
how I approach my relationships. And what I mean is
when people have an entrepreneurial attitude, so you don't have
to be like in a startup or you know, a
(02:11):
one woman show, to be entrepreneurial. Entrepreneur comes from the
French to manage, right, like people who are doing their
own thing, And that's a lot of us. I think
people who are out there getting stuff done, making a life,
whether they're piecing it together from a bunch of different
jobs or a bunch of different ideas, that they're just
like glomming together into a career. Those people, they know
(02:35):
that they're in the driver's seat of their life, right.
So people who approach their life that way in their career, well,
sadly they don't always translate that skill into their home life,
into their love life. In fact, some of the people
I know who have struggled the most when they're dating
or trying to settle into a nice long term relationship,
(02:55):
they can really thrive in they're so smart and they're
so brilli and so able to like knock things out
of the park in business. And then they just make
these same mistakes over and over again. And so I
wanted to approach this problem and say, let's transfer the skills.
You know, entrepreneurs are good at tolerating risk and communicating
(03:19):
in hard situations and learning how to diversify what they're doing.
Those are transferable to our relationships. But we have to
think about it that way. So that was where the
idea for this came, and I just started walking down
that road. Why doesn't that translate out? That's interesting to
think about it that way, because if you go to
work every day, especially if you own your own business,
(03:40):
every day is different. You're approaching different problems, you are
met with different risk, like you said, and there's a
lot to navigate and you kind of have to just
roll with the punches. It's a lot about finding solutions,
you know, and not focusing on the problem. Why aren't
we just naturally doing that in our relationships Because Freud
(04:01):
was wrong about a lot of things, but he wasn't
wrong about everything. Okay, you got one thing right, and
that is that our early life impacts how we walk
around in the world. Right. So I'm not a Freudian.
I kind of loosely follow my Jungian training, but I
know that as bright and shiny as I am when
(04:23):
I am in a boardroom or I am working on
a new deal, when I'm at home and I'm dealing
with a tough situation with my lover, it is so
much more natural to my body, Like it feels right
in my body to act out the patterns that I
saw early in life. So my primary caregiver's relationships or
(04:45):
whoever I was witnessing, like you know, most of us,
it's our parents, but it might be anybody who forms
that core idea of what it means to love each other.
And then chips and we look to be loved in
those same ways our bodies do, like we look for
it with our like most unconscious self looks for these
(05:08):
patterns that weren't necessarily helpful. How many of us were
raised in a household where we could truly say our
parents just they just did love well. They were communicative
and gentle with each other and supportive. Like parents make mistakes.
I'm a parent. I have seven kids. I screw up.
They're going to have to go out in the world
and figure out how to deal with the wounds that
(05:31):
I've left them. Each generation has that right. So this
burden that we bear, it shows up in love so
much more than it shows up in business because in
business we we like put on our let's engage our
prefrontal cortex. I show up and I try to apply
myself in this very structured way. But then the body
(05:54):
can't stay that way all the time. So we want
to come home and we want to come into this
secure space. Or we can make mistakes and we can
bump up against each other and out lots of vouches happen,
and then we get stuck in a pattern. We just
repeat it over and over. And that's where I feel
like we always have the opportunity to interrupt our habits
(06:15):
and patterns, but first we have to notice that that's
what's running the show. Right. So while you may put
your armor on and go to work and operated one way,
when you come home, you do want to let your
guard down and you do sort of want to relax
into stuff. But that may also look like bringing in
the baggage from your past. I never thought about it
that way. Yeah, yeah, and you know, we want to
(06:37):
There are a lot of ways to have relationship and
choosing what I call actually there's this great scholar has
a wonderful word, soteriological. A soteriological relationship is one that
is like salvational. It's an individuating relationship, it's spiritual, it's
deeply connecting it. It helps you draw yourself forward. I'm
(06:59):
like your unique life path. I think most people want
that kind of relationship, but it's not what we it's
not what we ask for day to day, day to day. Instead,
we worry about whether the trash got taken out, whether
the kids need to get to nursery school. We were
worried about whether there's food on the table, and we
(07:21):
don't attend to these like the souls call to be
in these like big, juicy relationships. So it's about as
much as anything, we have to make a decision to
invest in our relationships. It's not an easy one necessarily.
I'm laughing and smiling so much because I cannot wait
(07:44):
to make my boyfriend listen to this podcast do anything
about me. I mean, this is what you just described
is how I live my life. And I don't know
if it's because a failed relationships passed or if it's
a part of just my personality or maybe the combination
of both. But I'm almost I have to almost focus
on not being so hyper vigilant in avoiding the problem
(08:06):
that you know, like I'll overthink it before it even happens.
I'm trying to learn some something that's not actually even happening. Yes, so,
and in my head, the only way for me to
not bring in the stuff from my childhood or stuff
from other relationships is to do therapy together. And so
that's been a very very big thing for me in
(08:27):
my adult relationships. And I was reading something that you
said though, where you're like, yeah, but if you have
a resistant partner, this doesn't mean you have to just
drag them to therapy to have the kind of relationship
that we're talking about. But how else, how else do
you do it? I don't know. I think that is
a really okay. First off, I applaud your like including
therapy because I am pro therapy. I think it's awesome,
(08:50):
and I know from my own experience. I mean, I
spent six years in joint Jungian analysis with my current
primary partner, and that makes all the difference absolutely. But
I have also been in relationships and I've witnessed lots
of people in relationships where that partner is resistant, and
(09:11):
the poll to therapy just winds up becoming a point,
like a stuck point where now we can't do anything
because all we argue about is whether we're going to
go to therapy or not, or I go and then
I resent you and now I have something to be
mad at you about. That isn't actually the problem, right,
So if that is part of the relationship, I like
(09:33):
to think of it two ways. If everything is healthy
from the perspective of, like there's no overt abuse going on,
there's no covert coercive abuse going on, and both parties
are committed to the idea of the relationship, like we
want this relationship. If those boxes are all checked, another
option is to seek out a coach. A coach doesn't
(09:56):
necessarily therapize, Like a coach may actually your feet to
the fire and say, y'all committed to this kind of relationship.
So we're gon, we're gonna set some goals and we're
going to actually work through some processes that are designed
to get you to where you want to go. That's
a very different space to hold than therapeutic space, where
we're validating feelings. We're staying with whatever the slowest pace
(10:20):
is in the room, we stay at that pace. They're
just two different ways of approaching the process. So some
people who are resistant to therapy aren't resistant to the
idea of like, hey, actually we're okay, we just need
a little coaching to be better. And then if you
still have resistance, some people are really cut out for
self managing these situations. And that's what self help books
(10:42):
were invented for, you know. I mean, I think they
got kind of a bad rap in like the nineties,
like everybody was turning to self help books. But sometimes
all you need is a few good ideas to really
turn the corner in a relationship. So I gain about it.
In a relation to a business or an entrepreneurhip, we
do these things every day. I know for me, I'm
(11:04):
constantly doing research about you know, other ways I can
grow my business or trying to create a better business plan,
Like I'm putting in the work at work to grow that,
And so why wouldn't I do that within my relationship
as well, even doing the research or seeking outside help
counsel anything like that. Like I do love the idea
(11:24):
that you said. It just takes the same mindset that
we would bring to a business. Absolutely, So I ran
across the gym. I've owned twelve businesses. It's been a
journey through all sorts of things. But for a while
I owned I was lead trainer for across it. And
when I was doing that, I knew that I constantly
(11:46):
had to adapt to the changing circumstances, Like that was
a really volatile business to be in. And at the
same time, I was in a relationship that was struggling,
like big time struggling, like needed therapy, did therapy with
snailing all over the place. It was really really hard,
and yet we were really in love. And it was
(12:06):
when I realized that I needed to apply my full
the full power of my decision making processes and all
of those things. When I started applying that and said
I'm gonna study relationships out of that disaster. By all accounts,
we should have ended in a flaming pile, and instead
(12:27):
we're super happily married, and like I discussed myself with
how happy we are, so like it is possible to
just put in the effort to change the habits and
focus on a different set of things, because we get
caught up in focusing on, like, you know, two or
three things, and often they're not the real source of
(12:48):
the trouble in our relationships. And then something else I'm
hearing in that too, is I love. I just love
equating this to business because I think that's a lot
easier for people to not get so emotionally volatile when
I think about you know, like it doesn't feel so
personal maybe, but it just in thinking about In my
partner's defense, he's very good at trying to find the
(13:11):
thing that he can hear me on that is a
one tangible thing that he could change that he know
that he knows means so much to me, even if
he thinks it's stupid, he can hear it and go, Okay,
I know that this is super important to Kelly, and
so I'm going to try day by day to make
this a part of my practice or whatever it is.
And that's what we do for our coworkers, right, Or
(13:31):
if you're a buy you do to all the employees
is you listen, because that's how business grows and it's
not it's a dictatorship and that never works out. It
never works out. Yeah, absolutely, So that would be one
tip to me, would be just because everyone wants to
just be heard, right, And I think partnerships a lot
of times that is the one place where we just
get a little set in our ways and we're just like, no,
(13:52):
I can't hear that, or do we take it personal
or anything, or we can't hear it the way that
it's being presented and we get caught in. I need
it to be presented in a very specific way or
I will reject. Right. So, if he's going out of
his way to you know, to show up and do
something that you know is important, if you can actually
just see that and see that he may not do
(14:14):
it the exact way that you were hoping for, but
if you can acknowledge first that he showed up and
then he's trying and he's doing and then over time
ask for tweaks. That is, you know, the arc of
a change, of a transformation, right, we want change so instantaneously.
(14:35):
These are long story arcs. You know we're talking about
If you want to be a lifetime partner, you could
be talking about anywhere from you know, ten to fifty
years together, right, So allow it to be a process.
And you're going to have many different relationships. You're going
to be married lots of times in that merriage, right
in different in these evolutions of you. So just letting
(14:57):
him grow the pace that he is and show up
for you as he can today, that's powerful. It's powerful
for you too, So That's so true, because you're exactly right.
When I actually see him taking the steps, even if
it's not what I would or how I would do,
it is basically the way that my brain works. It
(15:18):
means so much to me to watch him try. Yeah,
so if I can focus on that part of it
instead of like, oh, well we did it, but like
I wanted it this way, Stiff, you know, wait, right?
Why it's so interesting the thing about change I do.
I just want it right overnight, I set I wanted this,
this is how I need it, so do it that
way or whatever. But that kind of defeats the purpose
and starts a whole other argument. Right, it's when we
(15:41):
it's so easy to get caught in our desire for control. Right.
We don't control the world, and we just don't. So
we wink up every day and there's an awareness in
us that we don't control the world, and that awareness
is terrifying to our inner self. Right, so we try,
we reach and we look for ways that we can control.
(16:02):
And it's not like we're overtly walking around saying I'm
going to control these things. In fact, it doesn't feel
like we're trying to control anything but control gives us
a sense that we have some say in how this
thing called reality, how we interact with it. So yeah,
it feels good to say I want it done this way,
(16:23):
and yet in fact we want variety, we want novelty,
We want our partner to be different from us. I
don't want to be married to myself. That does not
sound good, so I want him to be different. But
I also wanted to do it my way. Is that
really true? So I use that question. I check myself,
is it true that I want him to do it
exactly my way? And if I've really let that sink in,
(16:47):
then I remember that in fact he's actually gentler than
I am. He's slower paced, which drives me bonkers. But
it also means that there's this like calm wave, like
oh wait, I love those things. So let go of
the control a little little bit and allow yourself to
be part of this world that, unfortunately we'll cause some damage,
will cause some ouch. It's not easy to be alive, right,
(17:10):
that's someone lastic on the podcast that it's not easy
to be human. It's just not not an easy one.
I love thinking about control, equating that to safety. I
don't think I really put those two together. But I
do the same thing. I think, if I can get
it this way or fit it in this box, get
everyone to do what I need them to do, especially
at home, then I'm safe. And that's just not it's
(17:32):
a false sense of security, for sure. It is. Yeah.
We we love the idea of permanent, immutable safety. Yes,
I mean, which feels like sure, that's natural. And so
maturity is coming to understand that we actually can be flexible,
resilient and have the capacity to allow ourselves to bend
(17:56):
and to change and then and then adapt to that change.
And I mean there are big structural things that are
going to hurt us and you know, big things that
need change in this world. So if we if we're
always worried about trying to control the infantasmal little bits
of our life, I don't think we can apply that
(18:17):
energy like to to the bigger world change we actually
want to see, and that's you know, huge scale, business scale,
and like our family, like sometimes I think if I
if I control everything and get it the way I want, honestly,
I couldn't do anything else. It would be it would
be a full time job just to make sure that
(18:38):
the spoons are lined up right. Well. Also, when you
were just saying that, I was thinking, well, how boring
would that be? I know, board and probably create some
new drama because that's just what I do. So yes, yeah,
because the poll between wanting security and wanting novel real
esther Parrel talks about that them that paradox, right, we
(18:58):
want both and that's not just for sex, that's everything
we want this pull yeah subconscious. So okay, if people
are listening and you know, we're talking about a relationship
and making or working on the relationship that you're already in,
that you're currently in. And so if people are listening
and they're unfulfilled in their relationship and they're doing that
(19:19):
back and forth of like yeah, but you know X,
Y and Z, and I don't know if this is
something that could change over time, And how do you
know when it's too much to keep doing the work
and to keep trusting that over time the baby steps
are going to add up to be something that works
versus it's just time to get out of this relationship
(19:40):
and go This is the hardest question that I get,
and I think that it is I take a breath
breath with it when someone asks me personally if they
should stay or go, I always feel the immense responsibility
that comes with them, even having asked the question, even
though I'm going to say, of course, I can't make
(20:01):
that decision for you, right, But I take a breath
with it because in truth, I don't think it matters.
I think that what matters is that you decide for
yourself yes or no, that you stop staying on the
fence and that in between space, and that you either
commit and you get in. You're both feet in or
you're both feet out. That liminal space is of limited use.
(20:25):
Liminal space means we're in the in between, and it
can be transformative. But if you stay there too long,
all you're doing is hedging your bets. You're not in
the relationship and therefore you're not going to be showing
up with your full self. And whatever your partner's doing,
those baby steps or whatever, they may not even really
touch you. So I say it's not so much whether
(20:46):
you stay or go, but that you decide one way
or the other, and then you decide to work on
your side of the street. You decide to get in
and do your work, because if you change, you're part
of a system. You change, the system will change. So
that doesn't mean you should stay. If somebody's being abusive, coercive,
or you just decide you don't like them anymore, leave,
(21:08):
that's fine. I am. I am no fan of staying
just for staying sake. In fact, I think that we
give far too much weight to the idea of longevity
being the measure of a perfect relationship. I know plenty
of people who've been married for fifty years, but don't
hold hands at their at fifty at the anniversary party.
That is not what I'm shooting for. What I'm shooting
for is I'm all in. I'm showing up, and I'm
(21:31):
here not just for my growth but my partner's growth
and vice versa. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I think,
to me, I notice it's such a difference in my
life when I'm in a relationship with dating relationship or
a romantic relationship and when I'm not. And my life
actually a lot of times when I'm on my own
seems a little less chaopic, you know, it seems it
seems just I don't know, there doesn't seem to be
(21:54):
as much that I'm bumping up against. However, what I've
learned now is I always pick a partner who's going
mirror the exact thing that I need to work on
in my life. And yeah, you know, as frustrating as
it can be, sometimes I have to remind myself of
that because if I'm bumping up against something or my
partner's bumping up against something, to me, it's no mistake
(22:14):
that we are exactly the people that we are in
the relationship that we're in, because it only allows healing
if you really are willing to do the work exactly
you just name you named it. It's we pull ourselves
into these situations. We get ourselves into these situations where
we have the opportunity to grow. Whether we whether we
(22:35):
decide to or not, that's another that's another question. You know,
we do have to decide to. And if you find
yourself having landed in a relationship or landed in like
the tenth relationship in a row, where the same kind
of dynamic is happening, then that's the time to take
yourself to therapy. That's not about the relationship. Get yourself
to therapy and start from there, because just taking a
(22:57):
year off even and doing intense therapy with enough time
like all the time that you right now relate to
a person and spend like trying to make it work.
If you worked on yourself that way, how much different
would your life feel? And I mean that was an
invaluable time for me to like the time when I
focused on, oh, I have to change my patterns. I
(23:21):
grew up in a terribly dysfunctional household, which meant I
was terribly dysfunctional in my first marriage. It really didn't
matter what he was doing. It mattered that I finally
decided to try over, try again with myself. Yeah, oh,
I love that trying it with yourself. And I also
think that it's it's not one or the other, you know.
(23:42):
I think that it's like you said, it depends on
maybe the time or the place you are in your life.
I've done a lot of my own individual work, so
much so that I used to be like, why am
I not fixed yet? You know, like this is just
like this is I'm done with that, right, Like I've
done enough therapy, I've done enough intensives, done enough whatever.
And again it would be bumping up against myself in
(24:04):
these relationships and my therapist. Actually, you know, I'd say
like why am I still in this place where I was.
She's like, this is not the same place. Yes, deeper place,
and this is the layer that you would not have
been able to get to if you hadn't done all
that work. But maybe there's still some wounding that needs
to be healed. Yeah. Yeah, I love the image of
the spiral for that if because we always come back
(24:27):
sticky spot, It's going to be in the same spot
in the spiral, but we come back to it at
a deeper layer. We never step in the same river twice,
you know. Harro Clytis said that like four thousand years ago,
and we really don't. We're not just recapitulating. We may
be recapitulating stuff from our childhood, but we're not just
doing that. If we're doing that while also bringing ourselves
(24:49):
to new layers of awareness, then these new ways that
we're not showing up for ourselves or were, or we're
letting ourselves down like really like out of integrity with
our If you bring awareness to that, that's the opportunity
for growth right there. Even just becoming aware like I
can't believe I'm doing this for the tenth time. Yeah,
(25:10):
so frustrating that pit in my stomach. You hit a
chord with me with that for sure. Yeah. Yeah, you
can't just stop behaviors, right Like, I mean, you cannot
will yourself to stop something, and I have tried. Yeah,
there's certain things that I get triggered, and if I'm
not aware of the trigger or where it's coming from,
I cannot stop right right, It's not gonna stop. So
(25:33):
people talk about wanting to cure things like jealousy or
something like. That's something that's like an over and over
again problem for them. They want to cure it. So
I studied union psychology, and the reason I'm so glad
I did is this so young psychology is pretty old.
We're you know, we're going back to early twentieth century
(25:53):
for most of his writings, and in there he talked
about complexes, and a complex is agreed concept. It's it's
just this idea that there's this like spot, this sticky
spot in your soul or your being or your mind,
however you want to think of it. It's a sticky
spot that collects It's like really easy for it to
(26:13):
collect up more energy. So over a course of a lifetime,
it gets more and more stuff happening to it. So
jealousy maybe becomes a sticking point for you or or
your or your father, the way you relate to your father,
the father complex, or the way you relate to um,
somebody who always lets you down. Right, So we get
(26:33):
these sticky spots and we keep collecting this energy around him.
That complex just stays with us exactly like you said,
it just it just cannot be thought out of. We
can't think our way out of it. So instead Young
talked about you don't get rid of them, because that's
actually your life force. If you tried to get rid
of it, you would actually be like it's it's a
(26:56):
psychological death. You'd be you'd be like taking out your
your libido, your energy. So instead, we want to learn
to dance with that complex, how to how we want
to get to know it better and better, so that
when we circle back around and we're like, oh, we're
here again, we're like, Okay, I know how to dance
with this. I'm gonna I'm gonna move with it, and
we're gonna let it happen in a new way because
(27:18):
just because we're triggered, we don't have to respond in
the same way we always have. Right, you can identify
what's happening, and then do something different because what's being hit.
So you mentioned a couple of different ways to kind
of turn your trajectory around. So it's you know, maybe
there's people listening who aren't even in a relationship at
all right now, and they're taking the break that you
(27:39):
mentioned and they're working on themselves. How do you not
make the same mistakes the second you start dating again
and you're really wanting to find another relationship, but you
want to do it differently, right, Okay, two things are
really really important. The first is that when you're doing so,
when you're taking your time off, or you're or you're
in between, and we're in the midst of some time
(28:01):
that's tough to date, Actually take that time off. Don't
spend all the time that you're that you're not dating.
Don't spend it looking at dating sites and thinking about that.
Really turn the mirror, like look inside. Take the time.
Actually take the time, do the therapy, do the homework,
read the books, do all the things. Then when you're
(28:24):
ready to start again, get an accountability partner, like pull
in a friend somebody who has seen you make the
same mistakes over and over again. Somebody that you can trust,
because often we do have great friends there and they
do see these things, or maybe we have a sister
or whatever, ask them to help you see what you
(28:44):
can't see. We so often pit our friendships against our partners,
and this is part of why, because our friends have
a little bit of distance from it. They know us
a little bit, and they're like, you're doing it again.
And if we would just believe ourselves, if we just
believe our friends and say, oh I am okay, so
(29:04):
we can get an accountability partner on and just like
debrief the date, but not from the this went bad,
this went good? But from how did I show up
at that date? Was I people pleasing? Was I trying
to perform? Was I like laughing at jokes that weren't
funny because I was trying to lean into the relationship
or I'm inventing a relationship that hasn't even started yet.
(29:25):
Because those are all really common moves, especially for women.
They're really really common moves. Yeah, so call yourself out
by just having that, you know, a fifteen minute chat
after a date, like, uh, I did it again, So
I'm not actually showing up the way I want to
cool I'm gonna take a breather, I'm gonna I'm gonna
(29:45):
do another worksheet. I'm gonna like check in with myself,
you know, turn to my higher guidance, whatever tools you're using,
there's lots and lots of them, and then I'll try again.
So you're just bringing awareness to it. But that accountability,
the external accountability, helps you make it real because we
will just trick ourselves inside, like we form these little
(30:06):
diads inside of us and we're like, oh, no, you
totally got this. It's totally fine. This is going to
be different this time. Yeah, don't believe. I don't believe that. Well. Also,
I think it that involves because I was thinking, oh,
that's a great idea to have an accountability partner, and
I was thinking of myself in that situation. I think
(30:27):
it would involve a lot of letting go of the
shame of I'm doing this again, because to me, I'm
a perfectionist. I want to do you know, I want
to say I learned that lesson, I'm done with it.
And instead, sometimes if I'm doing something again, I want
to hide for my friends because I don't want to
be called out because I'm embarrassed that I can't, Like
(30:47):
we were talking about just stop of behavior. Yes, So
the reason I I say somebody you trust is because
this is shamework. This is the way that we get
out of the stories from our childhood is to actually
come face to face with our shame and address it,
address it the same way we would a small child.
(31:09):
We have to go through a process with ourselves. You know.
The whole concept of like inner child work is you know,
it's so it can feel so gooey, right and like,
oh goodness, I'm gonna have to go there. Yeah, for
parts of it, you really do have to be as
tender with yourself as you would with a three year old. Right,
So if you have if you have no idea that
(31:32):
you feel shame, you probably have so much shame that
it's piled to the ceilings. Right. We all have our
shame spots. So yeah, allowing that this is a way
to actually I think this is the best way I've
ever deepened my friendships too. So while we're talking about
dating and romance, all of the stuff that I write
about in the book and all the stuff that you
(31:53):
do to have a conscious relationship, do that with your friends.
So if you're not ready to date again, how about
a conscious friendship. How about really deciding to have the
hard conversations, lean into the awkward moments, expose these parts
of ourselves that feel really tender and scary, and try
that first before we worry about whether we can find
(32:16):
somebody who's supposed to be our lifelong partner and somebody
who's great in bed and they look just the way
we want, and they're going to co parent with us perfectly,
and they're going to do all the things friends. I
have a mentor who says when she kind of isn't
she's you know, I think she's seventies. So she's had
a lot of experience with bumping up against herself, and
(32:39):
she has a funny way of just kind of pulling
herself out of the shame when she does something, or
she'll be triggered and she's starting to do a behavior again,
she notices it. Now, that's the blessing of having life experience,
and she says, she just says herself, up, I'm doing
that again, giggling at herself in a gentle way, and
it releases the shame and it's just like, oh, I
(33:01):
don't like how that feels. So I'm not going to
do it that way. I know that from experience, you know,
but not going into the place of judging ourselves for
doing certain things again or getting in certain mindsets again
those tapes that play over. Yeah again, that is a
wonderful tip because I mean, laughter is the only way
to deal with the messiest emotions, like really gentle laughter,
(33:22):
Like oh yeah, you got to have a sense of
humor to be flexible and resilient, you really do. So
that's a wonderful way to approach. Yeah, the way that
can feel. If anyone thinks that inner child work is
not real, take out a picture of yourself as a child,
and for me doing that kind of thing in therapy,
and you literally all look at a picture of myself
(33:43):
as a seven year old or something and starts sobbing.
So something is real, you know. I mean, oh yeah,
you're connecting to something that I just think we all
try to push down and not deal with because it
can be very painful. Yeah, and it works with our
partners too. So recently, my father passed away, and so
I was pulling pictures out of the house and I
(34:05):
found this old picture of myself. I'm little and I
stuck it on the fridge, and I noticed that my
partner would stop and look at it, and so we
put a picture of him up too, And I thought, oh, yeah,
the acknowledgement that inside of us lives this little person.
And so I actually with all my I have seventeenagers,
so there's a lot of hormone and a lot of
(34:27):
stuff going on in this house. I changed all of
their like their text faces, I changed them back to
their baby faces, just to remind myself, like, okay, that
text was coming from a place where they aren't totally
feeling safe and secure. How would I respond when they
were five? Chill out and be nice. I love that
idea with the partner. I'm actually gonna do that. Yeah,
(34:50):
it's it's so helpful. Yeah, when you think of them
as that child, I mean, it's so hard to just
I just want to hug him and love on him.
Of what you know, And so I think that we
can always remember that part of our partners. That would
be such a good way to have more empathy and
grace with each other. That's the word empathy and grace. Absolutely, yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah,
(35:11):
Well you kind of touched on jealousy earlier. And I
was telling you earlier that I watched your TEDx talk
about jealousy, and I find it fascinating because this is
definitely something I struggled with in my life. I was
cheated on in a major way in an engagement, and
so it's you know, I've really had to do a
lot of work around those insecurities in my relationships that
have been after that. And again, it's one of those
(35:33):
things it doesn't just go away. And I know, for me,
I've always felt very that that was just maybe me
in a box of a person who was cheated on
that deals with jealousy. Now, but you say, the jealousy
is a very normal thing and a very normal part
of a relationship. So why what about so I studied jealousy.
(35:55):
I have studied jealousy full time for a decade, and
jealousy is entirely typical, entirely human, and the person who
doesn't experience jealousy is by far the rare case. Like
by far, so jealousy is. Let's define it first, real quick.
(36:18):
Jealousy is the real or imagined fear of an interruption
of the love bond, right, And it's important that it's
real or imaginary. It doesn't matter whether something's literally happening
or we just think something's happening. Jealousy can pop up
anytime we think that or feel that there could be
a separation between us and our object of desire, who
(36:40):
we love and we want, and that is rooted right
in our primal brain. It's right from our very first
interactions with our primary caregiver. Right, we are helpless. We
are in a state of complete love from the point
of I am entirely dependent on you. And if mom
or dad or whoever is caring for us can't come
(37:03):
in that second, there's an interruption, and that is a
survival level problem. Right, So baby's crying survival level interruption problem.
Baby doesn't know whether they're going to come back. Right.
That self still exists in us, and so when we
imagine or experience that disruption of the love bond, we
(37:25):
are right back to survival brain. Jealousy is this complicated mess,
and it brings anger and fear and sadness and shame
and grief, and these are big, gloppy emotions and they're
all stuck together and we have to deal with them.
But we often deal with them just like, oh, it's
it's jealousy. It's just jealousy just comes before jealousy all
(37:46):
the time. Like just no, not just jealousy. It's huge
and it is normal. I actually love that idea too,
because or framing it that way, because the just jealousy
thing or like that person is just a super jealous person.
Like it's not as simple as a personality trait or something.
What I heard a lot, and maybe this is because
(38:08):
of the own work I'm doing right now, attach attachment.
What I heard a lot in that is, you know,
the fear of abandonment and just kind of those security
things that we so strive for. It, especially in a
love relationship, because you're the most vulnerable I think you
can be in that position. And so the panic that
comes with that is that what causes jealousy. Yeah, So
(38:29):
most of us attempt, whether we succeed or not, we try,
we attempt to transfer our attachment bond to our partner
later in life, right, and so that the transfer of
that attachment bond over to our partner, depending on how
successful it is, you know, whether we actually are able
to so, because there are those people who stay completely
(38:50):
attached to someone who's not their partner, or stay really
in the pockets of their parents. But once that transfer happens, well,
now it is a survivor of all instinct that kicks
in that says I have to have I to I
have to hold I have to close everything around this
and keep it safe. We can hold a relationship really
(39:12):
gently and be in a trusting state only when when
our nervous system is calm, when we're able to self regulate,
when we are conscious of the triggers that are going
to pop up for us, and when we've established through
an incremental building of trust, you know, in order to
we often place all the focus of jealousy on what
(39:34):
the other person is doing. But what if we stepped
away from that and just said, what can what do
I trust that person to do? Where am I in
this relationship? Because we often rush. It's just like this
instant thing like we're we're either dating and it's super
casual or boom, we're in a relationship and now I'm
supposed to trust you completely, You're supposed to trust me completely.
(39:56):
We and we're supposedly we agree on a set of rules.
Most people never have the conversation to establish what the
actual parameters of their relationship agreement is and so now
you're just essentially walking a tight rope blindfolded and hoping
it works out. I don't recommend it. Well, that's such
(40:18):
a good point about establishing the rules because I know,
for me within a relationship, if we can't I don't
want to call them ground rules, but set the boundaries
around certain conversations or certain situations. I never can get
that calm in my nervous system that you're talking about.
So no matter what's actually happening, my body is telling
(40:40):
me no, no, no no, no, no no no, you're not safe.
You're not safe because we've never set up you know
what the guidelines are, and although they may change over time,
and I think that's something I'm learning too, is boundaries,
you know, change and they're fluid and all of these things.
But like setting the ground the foundational conversation of this
is what I want, This is my goal, This is
(41:01):
the conscious part of our decision of this relationship is
so integral for me feeling safe. Yes, absolutely, And there's
no shame in saying the word ground rules. Like when
you're talking about setting up a relationship would be what
would be more normal than walking into a new job
and saying, okay, so what's expected of me? You want?
(41:22):
Who wants a job with no job description? That would
be horrible. I've had those. They're terrible. I And as
a business owner, I always have to define the parameters
for everybody I'm working with, right and when there aren't
clear parameters, there's no repercussion that I can actually put
in place, and there's no way for them to know
when they're succeeding either. So it's really an unfair place
(41:44):
to start a relationship from. And when people are practicing monogamy,
often they just rely on the idea that there's this
cultural norm that like, I've had a lot of conversations
that start off with me saying, so, what's your monogamy agreement?
And the person says to me, well, you know the rules.
I'm like, well, but what are the rules? Tell me?
Just tell me more about the rules, and they'll tell
(42:05):
me a little bit about the rules, and I say,
so when did you talk about these? So like I
mean he knows, Like, okay, so let's go back to
ground zero and talk our way through this. Because explicit
communication isn't just about making rules that make you feel safe.
It's actually about being vulnerable and asking for what you want,
which is how you can get what you want. Cannot
(42:27):
ever feel secure and safe if you're just trusting that
someone has read your mind and will deliver it to you. Right,
And also, what are you actually even trusting that? I
guess you're saying, but like to me, now that I've
gotten order, had been through bad relationships or you know,
cheating relationships with a trust was broke, and I probably
(42:49):
was just thinking, oh, we know, we do think the same. Yeah,
we have the same boundaries within a relationship. Now I'm
understanding how important those conversations are. Just we're establishing even
just communication between the two of you so that you know, okay,
when he leaves this house, we have said this thing,
(43:10):
and if that isn't how this goes, that is a
boundary violation to our relationship, right, right, Because that's what
cheating is. People talk about cheating as if we have
some definition of it. We don't not really we you know,
like lots of people think cheating is sex with another
part another person, or flirting with another person. Cheating is
(43:30):
the breaking of any relationship agreement. Right, So I'm I'm ethically. Notice,
so for me to lie about a relationship and keep
it a secret, that would be the violation, not the connection. Right.
So if we think about that, then how about if
we reframe what relationships are all together and just say,
(43:53):
your relationship doesn't just depend on the agreements. Your relationship
is the agreements. It is them. So start by having
a relationship where we establish and this could go for
your friendships too, establish what the ground rules are, and
with that you can establish. So how will we to negotiate,
(44:13):
how will we come to a new conclusion. So in
my marriage, we re up every three years. We have
a whole month long conversation that happens every three years
where we really get into it. We talk about finances
and sex and religion and politics and all the stuff,
just to make sure that we still both want to
be in this. And I have a friendship that I'm
actually doing something similar with, like just actually saying, like
(44:34):
at the outset when I was super nervous about this friendship,
I'm like, the one thing I need is to know
that you won't just withdraw your friendship, that you'll just
tell me that you're withdrawing, And if you could please
just give me like a half an hour conversation where
you just say why if you could commit to that now,
then I could commit to being more vulnerable with you,
(44:56):
and so we carefully built trust. I would of having, like,
what an awkward thing, like I was sitting at dinner
with just a friend and I had that conversation, and
that's the groundwork. The rules can all be built out
of those little awkward conversations. Yeah, so what would you say?
Because I feel I know that this is a generalization,
(45:18):
but I know amongst my relationships with my girlfriends, we
are very open about this kind of stuff or insecurities
and voluntality and all of that stuff, and it seems
a little more difficult for men. So I'm imagining that
in most relationships as conversations could be difficult, and especially
if you know, we don't even have to put it
in a men and women things say one partner's wanting
(45:39):
to have those conversations and the other partner's like, we
don't even talk about this, and they're uncomfortable. What would
you say? How do you approach a situation like that?
Does that mean the relationship can't work? Or is that
just one of these tough things to navigate between two
different mentalities. I think a lot has to go into
this because first off, we need to take the whole
(45:59):
context in two questions. So if you've been in a
relationship for like twenty years and all of a sudden,
I want to be super vulnerable and I want to
start this process and my partner's like what that was? We?
Whoa where did this even come from? Let's take that
into account that we tend to have a lot of
inertia in our relationships. We just want them to kind
of continue the way they've been. So springing this on
(46:21):
someone and saying this is how I want our relationship
to be and then being mad if they're not immediately
on board. That's a lot versus say at the get go,
you know you're in the first ten dates, say and
you're like, so this is where I'm headed. This is
actually what I'm looking for, And if somebody is resistant there, yeah,
that's a big red flag for me. I would say
(46:42):
they don't actually want the same type of relationship. It
would be like having a different orientation, Like you could
have a relationship with two different orientations, but is it
going to satisfy everything that you want? Think carefully about
whether it will. You can definitely make a relationship with
any person, no matter how much disagree with them, but
you do have to think about whether you're actually still
(47:04):
going to be in integrity with yourself. Wow. Yeah, yeah,
that's really good. But that's why it's so important to
do this early on, Like, yeah, because that's where a
lot I think a lot of resentment probably comes from too.
Within relationships. Definitely, definitely. I mean I built a whole,
a whole marriage. I was, you know, with somebody for
seventeen years, and we were married for thirteen and when
(47:26):
I wanted to renegotiate, there was no process in place
for a renegotiation, so it broke us completely. But in
the partnership I'm in now, renegotiation is built in so
we and we both know how that happens, and we
know what happens if it escalates. We know what our
next step will be like if if if talks break down,
(47:48):
what will we do next? You know, if we can't
resolve it. And having that in place means that I
feel the safest I've ever felt, and I didn't even
know that was possible. In fact, at one point I
would speak pretty loudly about the fact that I wasn't
sure that security was even a thing we should talk
about in relationships, because I had been so hurt that
I thought, screw that, there's just no such thing as
(48:11):
security in relationships. It's not anymore. On No, it's not.
I now know that that's not true, but I had
to come to know it in myself, like deep in
my body that it was going to take like a
whole rewiring. And it's taken eleven years to feel really
truly secure in this relationship. That is, it's a long
(48:33):
story arc overnight. We said that earlier. Yeah, yeah, that's
always a good reminder for me because I want everything
right now. That's it exactly. Well, you have a book out.
It's called Project Relationship, The Entrepreneur's Action Plan for passionate
sustainable Love. Yeah, tell us about the book. So I
(48:56):
wrote the book because, well, for two reasons. One, a
friend of mine was going through like just bad relationship
after bad relationship, recognized it and was asking me a
lot of questions and I had I had thoughts and answers.
So I started thinking, oh, I should collect these, and
then I realized, you have seven teenagers they're all gonna
have relationships stuff, and I'm a little morbid. I was,
(49:18):
so I got this middle of the night terror one
night that I would die and I wouldn't have like
left the many instructions. My feet hit the floor four
fifteen that morning, I ran to my keyboard and I
started typing, and all of this just sort of came
out in a month. It was just like out because
my way isn't the right way. But I learned this
(49:39):
stuff the hard way. I made every mistake, I walked
down every hard road and dead end. So I wrote
it down and I tried to simplify it. It's not
like this long, beefy memoir of like my tales of woe.
I'm sure I'll write those at some point, but some
of them are just such a hot mess. They're hysterical.
But this is like the distill. Like I wanted a
(50:01):
book that even so my kids will probably not want
to turn to this book, but theoretically that they could
just pop open and say, like, I can't figure out
what boundaries even mean, and it's you know, twelve pages
of big type and three clear action steps to take
to make a difference. I wanted something that you could
like actually make a change today in your relationship. And
(50:25):
I focused on entrepreneurial attitudes for the reason we said
at the beginning, because I think that that's actually the
wave of the future. We are all entrepreneurial at this point.
There's there's sort of no way out of that. Yeah,
So I wrote the book in the hopes that we
would all just have like a quick guide and then
there are deeper dives you can do. You know, I'm
(50:45):
working on a course right now and I work with
people one to one and it's great. But not everybody's
ready for that. Not everybody's at that spot where they're like, Okay,
I'm ready to go all the way in. Sometimes a
book is just what you need to, like jog you
a little further, just oh yeah, a little further. Yeah, Well,
you guys can find that book. I'm going to put
the link in the description of the bio of this
podcast that people can find a book easily. Where else
(51:08):
can people find you if they have more questions, if
they're interested in doing more work, where can they find you? Yeah,
so you can find me at Jolie Hamilton dot com.
That's Joli And then Hamilton's like the musical nice and easy,
and you can find my socials there. I'm on Instagram
and clubhouse as at doctor Jolie Hamilton, so I'm easy
to find and I'm always happy to hear from people.
(51:30):
You know, don't feel bad about reaching out. I like
to hear from people. So yeah, hit my DMS, no problem, amazing. Well,
I also appreciate you being here. I'm gonna go ahead
and write down a lot of this stuff because I
think that I can apply it to my own life,
and I know everyone this is just the common denominator
that I think we all struggle with, bump up against
just relationships. So no matter what kind of relationship it is,
(51:54):
I think it's one thing we all have in common
with we can constantly be learning and growing and so
I really I appreciate you sharing your knowledge with us.
Thanks so much for having me, Kelly. I really appreciate it.
It's nice to meet you, and thank you guys so
much for listening
Hey, it's Bobby Bones. Appreciate you listening to The Bobby
Bones Show podcast. I wanted to share an episode of
one of our podcasts from the Nashville Podcast Network. In
this episode of The Velvet's Edge, Kelly talks to psychologist,
author and ted X speaker Jolie Hamilton about how to
get the relationship that you want. Some psychoanalysis stuff here.
I think you'll like it. They talk about trust and
jealousy and triggers, owning your side of the street, not
(00:22):
just romantic but even a friendship. They also discuss tips
on what to do between relationships if you are bouncing
from one to the next, if you're not married yet
or engaged yet, or maybe you're gonna try it again.
All that's here. Subscribe to this podcast if you like
it on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcast to search out The Velvet's Edge. Hope you like it.
A little dabble here here's the show. Okay, Well, it's February,
(00:47):
which obviously is easily known as the month of love,
so I felt like relationships would be a really good
topic to kind of approach in different different aspects of
relationships this month is what I'm focusing on above a such.
So I wanted to talk to you a lot about
relationships as we have them now, especially if you are
(01:09):
an entrepreneur, which is what you kind of specialize in,
and I don't. I've never thought of it in these
terms of just how would being an entrepreneur affect my
whole life or my dating relationships, my partnerships. And I
was doing a lot of research with the stuff that
you've researched, and I thought about it. I'm like, of
course it does, Like that just makes total sense. So
(01:30):
a lot of the relationship work that you do is
just around the dynamic of a woman who is also
an entrepreneur. So can you tell us what are some
of the things that you see people bumping up against
in these situations? Oh? Yeah, absolutely. So I approach relationship
work as being like it is whole life work, right,
(01:51):
Your relationships impact everything. But I've also been an entrepreneur
my whole life. I've only ever worked for other people
a tiny little smidgeon and I think that that informed
how I approach my relationships. And what I mean is
when people have an entrepreneurial attitude, so you don't have
to be like in a startup or you know, a
(02:11):
one woman show, to be entrepreneurial. Entrepreneur comes from the
French to manage, right, like people who are doing their
own thing, And that's a lot of us. I think
people who are out there getting stuff done, making a life,
whether they're piecing it together from a bunch of different
jobs or a bunch of different ideas, that they're just
like glomming together into a career. Those people, they know
(02:35):
that they're in the driver's seat of their life, right.
So people who approach their life that way in their career, well,
sadly they don't always translate that skill into their home life,
into their love life. In fact, some of the people
I know who have struggled the most when they're dating
or trying to settle into a nice long term relationship,
(02:55):
they can really thrive in they're so smart and they're
so brilli and so able to like knock things out
of the park in business. And then they just make
these same mistakes over and over again. And so I
wanted to approach this problem and say, let's transfer the skills.
You know, entrepreneurs are good at tolerating risk and communicating
(03:19):
in hard situations and learning how to diversify what they're doing.
Those are transferable to our relationships. But we have to
think about it that way. So that was where the
idea for this came, and I just started walking down
that road. Why doesn't that translate out? That's interesting to
think about it that way, because if you go to
work every day, especially if you own your own business,
(03:40):
every day is different. You're approaching different problems, you are
met with different risk, like you said, and there's a
lot to navigate and you kind of have to just
roll with the punches. It's a lot about finding solutions,
you know, and not focusing on the problem. Why aren't
we just naturally doing that in our relationships Because Freud
(04:01):
was wrong about a lot of things, but he wasn't
wrong about everything. Okay, you got one thing right, and
that is that our early life impacts how we walk
around in the world. Right. So I'm not a Freudian.
I kind of loosely follow my Jungian training, but I
know that as bright and shiny as I am when
(04:23):
I am in a boardroom or I am working on
a new deal, when I'm at home and I'm dealing
with a tough situation with my lover, it is so
much more natural to my body, Like it feels right
in my body to act out the patterns that I
saw early in life. So my primary caregiver's relationships or
(04:45):
whoever I was witnessing, like you know, most of us,
it's our parents, but it might be anybody who forms
that core idea of what it means to love each other.
And then chips and we look to be loved in
those same ways our bodies do, like we look for
it with our like most unconscious self looks for these
(05:08):
patterns that weren't necessarily helpful. How many of us were
raised in a household where we could truly say our
parents just they just did love well. They were communicative
and gentle with each other and supportive. Like parents make mistakes.
I'm a parent. I have seven kids. I screw up.
They're going to have to go out in the world
and figure out how to deal with the wounds that
(05:31):
I've left them. Each generation has that right. So this
burden that we bear, it shows up in love so
much more than it shows up in business because in
business we we like put on our let's engage our
prefrontal cortex. I show up and I try to apply
myself in this very structured way. But then the body
(05:54):
can't stay that way all the time. So we want
to come home and we want to come into this
secure space. Or we can make mistakes and we can
bump up against each other and out lots of vouches happen,
and then we get stuck in a pattern. We just
repeat it over and over. And that's where I feel
like we always have the opportunity to interrupt our habits
(06:15):
and patterns, but first we have to notice that that's
what's running the show. Right. So while you may put
your armor on and go to work and operated one way,
when you come home, you do want to let your
guard down and you do sort of want to relax
into stuff. But that may also look like bringing in
the baggage from your past. I never thought about it
that way. Yeah, yeah, and you know, we want to
(06:37):
There are a lot of ways to have relationship and
choosing what I call actually there's this great scholar has
a wonderful word, soteriological. A soteriological relationship is one that
is like salvational. It's an individuating relationship, it's spiritual, it's
deeply connecting it. It helps you draw yourself forward. I'm
(06:59):
like your unique life path. I think most people want
that kind of relationship, but it's not what we it's
not what we ask for day to day, day to day. Instead,
we worry about whether the trash got taken out, whether
the kids need to get to nursery school. We were
worried about whether there's food on the table, and we
(07:21):
don't attend to these like the souls call to be
in these like big, juicy relationships. So it's about as
much as anything, we have to make a decision to
invest in our relationships. It's not an easy one necessarily.
I'm laughing and smiling so much because I cannot wait
(07:44):
to make my boyfriend listen to this podcast do anything
about me. I mean, this is what you just described
is how I live my life. And I don't know
if it's because a failed relationships passed or if it's
a part of just my personality or maybe the combination
of both. But I'm almost I have to almost focus
on not being so hyper vigilant in avoiding the problem
(08:06):
that you know, like I'll overthink it before it even happens.
I'm trying to learn some something that's not actually even happening. Yes, so,
and in my head, the only way for me to
not bring in the stuff from my childhood or stuff
from other relationships is to do therapy together. And so
that's been a very very big thing for me in
(08:27):
my adult relationships. And I was reading something that you
said though, where you're like, yeah, but if you have
a resistant partner, this doesn't mean you have to just
drag them to therapy to have the kind of relationship
that we're talking about. But how else, how else do
you do it? I don't know. I think that is
a really okay. First off, I applaud your like including
therapy because I am pro therapy. I think it's awesome,
(08:50):
and I know from my own experience. I mean, I
spent six years in joint Jungian analysis with my current
primary partner, and that makes all the difference absolutely. But
I have also been in relationships and I've witnessed lots
of people in relationships where that partner is resistant, and
(09:11):
the poll to therapy just winds up becoming a point,
like a stuck point where now we can't do anything
because all we argue about is whether we're going to
go to therapy or not, or I go and then
I resent you and now I have something to be
mad at you about. That isn't actually the problem, right,
So if that is part of the relationship, I like
(09:33):
to think of it two ways. If everything is healthy
from the perspective of, like there's no overt abuse going on,
there's no covert coercive abuse going on, and both parties
are committed to the idea of the relationship, like we
want this relationship. If those boxes are all checked, another
option is to seek out a coach. A coach doesn't
(09:56):
necessarily therapize, Like a coach may actually your feet to
the fire and say, y'all committed to this kind of relationship.
So we're gon, we're gonna set some goals and we're
going to actually work through some processes that are designed
to get you to where you want to go. That's
a very different space to hold than therapeutic space, where
we're validating feelings. We're staying with whatever the slowest pace
(10:20):
is in the room, we stay at that pace. They're
just two different ways of approaching the process. So some
people who are resistant to therapy aren't resistant to the
idea of like, hey, actually we're okay, we just need
a little coaching to be better. And then if you
still have resistance, some people are really cut out for
self managing these situations. And that's what self help books
(10:42):
were invented for, you know. I mean, I think they
got kind of a bad rap in like the nineties,
like everybody was turning to self help books. But sometimes
all you need is a few good ideas to really
turn the corner in a relationship. So I gain about it.
In a relation to a business or an entrepreneurhip, we
do these things every day. I know for me, I'm
(11:04):
constantly doing research about you know, other ways I can
grow my business or trying to create a better business plan,
Like I'm putting in the work at work to grow that,
And so why wouldn't I do that within my relationship
as well, even doing the research or seeking outside help
counsel anything like that. Like I do love the idea
(11:24):
that you said. It just takes the same mindset that
we would bring to a business. Absolutely, So I ran
across the gym. I've owned twelve businesses. It's been a
journey through all sorts of things. But for a while
I owned I was lead trainer for across it. And
when I was doing that, I knew that I constantly
(11:46):
had to adapt to the changing circumstances, Like that was
a really volatile business to be in. And at the
same time, I was in a relationship that was struggling,
like big time struggling, like needed therapy, did therapy with
snailing all over the place. It was really really hard,
and yet we were really in love. And it was
(12:06):
when I realized that I needed to apply my full
the full power of my decision making processes and all
of those things. When I started applying that and said
I'm gonna study relationships out of that disaster. By all accounts,
we should have ended in a flaming pile, and instead
(12:27):
we're super happily married, and like I discussed myself with
how happy we are, so like it is possible to
just put in the effort to change the habits and
focus on a different set of things, because we get
caught up in focusing on, like, you know, two or
three things, and often they're not the real source of
(12:48):
the trouble in our relationships. And then something else I'm
hearing in that too, is I love. I just love
equating this to business because I think that's a lot
easier for people to not get so emotionally volatile when
I think about you know, like it doesn't feel so
personal maybe, but it just in thinking about In my
partner's defense, he's very good at trying to find the
(13:11):
thing that he can hear me on that is a
one tangible thing that he could change that he know
that he knows means so much to me, even if
he thinks it's stupid, he can hear it and go, Okay,
I know that this is super important to Kelly, and
so I'm going to try day by day to make
this a part of my practice or whatever it is.
And that's what we do for our coworkers, right, Or
(13:31):
if you're a buy you do to all the employees
is you listen, because that's how business grows and it's
not it's a dictatorship and that never works out. It
never works out. Yeah, absolutely, So that would be one
tip to me, would be just because everyone wants to
just be heard, right, And I think partnerships a lot
of times that is the one place where we just
get a little set in our ways and we're just like, no,
(13:52):
I can't hear that, or do we take it personal
or anything, or we can't hear it the way that
it's being presented and we get caught in. I need
it to be presented in a very specific way or
I will reject. Right. So, if he's going out of
his way to you know, to show up and do
something that you know is important, if you can actually
just see that and see that he may not do
(14:14):
it the exact way that you were hoping for, but
if you can acknowledge first that he showed up and
then he's trying and he's doing and then over time
ask for tweaks. That is, you know, the arc of
a change, of a transformation, right, we want change so instantaneously.
(14:35):
These are long story arcs. You know we're talking about
If you want to be a lifetime partner, you could
be talking about anywhere from you know, ten to fifty
years together, right, So allow it to be a process.
And you're going to have many different relationships. You're going
to be married lots of times in that merriage, right
in different in these evolutions of you. So just letting
(14:57):
him grow the pace that he is and show up
for you as he can today, that's powerful. It's powerful
for you too, So That's so true, because you're exactly right.
When I actually see him taking the steps, even if
it's not what I would or how I would do,
it is basically the way that my brain works. It
(15:18):
means so much to me to watch him try. Yeah,
so if I can focus on that part of it
instead of like, oh, well we did it, but like
I wanted it this way, Stiff, you know, wait, right?
Why it's so interesting the thing about change I do.
I just want it right overnight, I set I wanted this,
this is how I need it, so do it that
way or whatever. But that kind of defeats the purpose
and starts a whole other argument. Right, it's when we
(15:41):
it's so easy to get caught in our desire for control. Right.
We don't control the world, and we just don't. So
we wink up every day and there's an awareness in
us that we don't control the world, and that awareness
is terrifying to our inner self. Right, so we try,
we reach and we look for ways that we can control.
(16:02):
And it's not like we're overtly walking around saying I'm
going to control these things. In fact, it doesn't feel
like we're trying to control anything but control gives us
a sense that we have some say in how this
thing called reality, how we interact with it. So yeah,
it feels good to say I want it done this way,
(16:23):
and yet in fact we want variety, we want novelty,
We want our partner to be different from us. I
don't want to be married to myself. That does not
sound good, so I want him to be different. But
I also wanted to do it my way. Is that
really true? So I use that question. I check myself,
is it true that I want him to do it
exactly my way? And if I've really let that sink in,
(16:47):
then I remember that in fact he's actually gentler than
I am. He's slower paced, which drives me bonkers. But
it also means that there's this like calm wave, like
oh wait, I love those things. So let go of
the control a little little bit and allow yourself to
be part of this world that, unfortunately we'll cause some damage,
will cause some ouch. It's not easy to be alive, right,
(17:10):
that's someone lastic on the podcast that it's not easy
to be human. It's just not not an easy one.
I love thinking about control, equating that to safety. I
don't think I really put those two together. But I
do the same thing. I think, if I can get
it this way or fit it in this box, get
everyone to do what I need them to do, especially
at home, then I'm safe. And that's just not it's
(17:32):
a false sense of security, for sure. It is. Yeah.
We we love the idea of permanent, immutable safety. Yes,
I mean, which feels like sure, that's natural. And so
maturity is coming to understand that we actually can be flexible,
resilient and have the capacity to allow ourselves to bend
(17:56):
and to change and then and then adapt to that change.
And I mean there are big structural things that are
going to hurt us and you know, big things that
need change in this world. So if we if we're
always worried about trying to control the infantasmal little bits
of our life, I don't think we can apply that
(18:17):
energy like to to the bigger world change we actually
want to see, and that's you know, huge scale, business scale,
and like our family, like sometimes I think if I
if I control everything and get it the way I want, honestly,
I couldn't do anything else. It would be it would
be a full time job just to make sure that
(18:38):
the spoons are lined up right. Well. Also, when you
were just saying that, I was thinking, well, how boring
would that be? I know, board and probably create some
new drama because that's just what I do. So yes, yeah,
because the poll between wanting security and wanting novel real
esther Parrel talks about that them that paradox, right, we
(18:58):
want both and that's not just for sex, that's everything
we want this pull yeah subconscious. So okay, if people
are listening and you know, we're talking about a relationship
and making or working on the relationship that you're already in,
that you're currently in. And so if people are listening
and they're unfulfilled in their relationship and they're doing that
(19:19):
back and forth of like yeah, but you know X,
Y and Z, and I don't know if this is
something that could change over time, And how do you
know when it's too much to keep doing the work
and to keep trusting that over time the baby steps
are going to add up to be something that works
versus it's just time to get out of this relationship
(19:40):
and go This is the hardest question that I get,
and I think that it is I take a breath
breath with it when someone asks me personally if they
should stay or go, I always feel the immense responsibility
that comes with them, even having asked the question, even
though I'm going to say, of course, I can't make
(20:01):
that decision for you, right, But I take a breath
with it because in truth, I don't think it matters.
I think that what matters is that you decide for
yourself yes or no, that you stop staying on the
fence and that in between space, and that you either
commit and you get in. You're both feet in or
you're both feet out. That liminal space is of limited use.
(20:25):
Liminal space means we're in the in between, and it
can be transformative. But if you stay there too long,
all you're doing is hedging your bets. You're not in
the relationship and therefore you're not going to be showing
up with your full self. And whatever your partner's doing,
those baby steps or whatever, they may not even really
touch you. So I say it's not so much whether
(20:46):
you stay or go, but that you decide one way
or the other, and then you decide to work on
your side of the street. You decide to get in
and do your work, because if you change, you're part
of a system. You change, the system will change. So
that doesn't mean you should stay. If somebody's being abusive, coercive,
or you just decide you don't like them anymore, leave,
(21:08):
that's fine. I am. I am no fan of staying
just for staying sake. In fact, I think that we
give far too much weight to the idea of longevity
being the measure of a perfect relationship. I know plenty
of people who've been married for fifty years, but don't
hold hands at their at fifty at the anniversary party.
That is not what I'm shooting for. What I'm shooting
for is I'm all in. I'm showing up, and I'm
(21:31):
here not just for my growth but my partner's growth
and vice versa. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I think,
to me, I notice it's such a difference in my
life when I'm in a relationship with dating relationship or
a romantic relationship and when I'm not. And my life
actually a lot of times when I'm on my own
seems a little less chaopic, you know, it seems it
seems just I don't know, there doesn't seem to be
(21:54):
as much that I'm bumping up against. However, what I've
learned now is I always pick a partner who's going
mirror the exact thing that I need to work on
in my life. And yeah, you know, as frustrating as
it can be, sometimes I have to remind myself of
that because if I'm bumping up against something or my
partner's bumping up against something, to me, it's no mistake
(22:14):
that we are exactly the people that we are in
the relationship that we're in, because it only allows healing
if you really are willing to do the work exactly
you just name you named it. It's we pull ourselves
into these situations. We get ourselves into these situations where
we have the opportunity to grow. Whether we whether we
(22:35):
decide to or not, that's another that's another question. You know,
we do have to decide to. And if you find
yourself having landed in a relationship or landed in like
the tenth relationship in a row, where the same kind
of dynamic is happening, then that's the time to take
yourself to therapy. That's not about the relationship. Get yourself
to therapy and start from there, because just taking a
(22:57):
year off even and doing intense therapy with enough time
like all the time that you right now relate to
a person and spend like trying to make it work.
If you worked on yourself that way, how much different
would your life feel? And I mean that was an
invaluable time for me to like the time when I
focused on, oh, I have to change my patterns. I
(23:21):
grew up in a terribly dysfunctional household, which meant I
was terribly dysfunctional in my first marriage. It really didn't
matter what he was doing. It mattered that I finally
decided to try over, try again with myself. Yeah, oh,
I love that trying it with yourself. And I also
think that it's it's not one or the other, you know.
(23:42):
I think that it's like you said, it depends on
maybe the time or the place you are in your life.
I've done a lot of my own individual work, so
much so that I used to be like, why am
I not fixed yet? You know, like this is just
like this is I'm done with that, right, Like I've
done enough therapy, I've done enough intensives, done enough whatever.
And again it would be bumping up against myself in
(24:04):
these relationships and my therapist. Actually, you know, I'd say
like why am I still in this place where I was.
She's like, this is not the same place. Yes, deeper place,
and this is the layer that you would not have
been able to get to if you hadn't done all
that work. But maybe there's still some wounding that needs
to be healed. Yeah. Yeah, I love the image of
the spiral for that if because we always come back
(24:27):
sticky spot, It's going to be in the same spot
in the spiral, but we come back to it at
a deeper layer. We never step in the same river twice,
you know. Harro Clytis said that like four thousand years ago,
and we really don't. We're not just recapitulating. We may
be recapitulating stuff from our childhood, but we're not just
doing that. If we're doing that while also bringing ourselves
(24:49):
to new layers of awareness, then these new ways that
we're not showing up for ourselves or were, or we're
letting ourselves down like really like out of integrity with
our If you bring awareness to that, that's the opportunity
for growth right there. Even just becoming aware like I
can't believe I'm doing this for the tenth time. Yeah,
(25:10):
so frustrating that pit in my stomach. You hit a
chord with me with that for sure. Yeah. Yeah, you
can't just stop behaviors, right Like, I mean, you cannot
will yourself to stop something, and I have tried. Yeah,
there's certain things that I get triggered, and if I'm
not aware of the trigger or where it's coming from,
I cannot stop right right, It's not gonna stop. So
(25:33):
people talk about wanting to cure things like jealousy or
something like. That's something that's like an over and over
again problem for them. They want to cure it. So
I studied union psychology, and the reason I'm so glad
I did is this so young psychology is pretty old.
We're you know, we're going back to early twentieth century
(25:53):
for most of his writings, and in there he talked
about complexes, and a complex is agreed concept. It's it's
just this idea that there's this like spot, this sticky
spot in your soul or your being or your mind,
however you want to think of it. It's a sticky
spot that collects It's like really easy for it to
(26:13):
collect up more energy. So over a course of a lifetime,
it gets more and more stuff happening to it. So
jealousy maybe becomes a sticking point for you or or
your or your father, the way you relate to your father,
the father complex, or the way you relate to um,
somebody who always lets you down. Right, So we get
(26:33):
these sticky spots and we keep collecting this energy around him.
That complex just stays with us exactly like you said,
it just it just cannot be thought out of. We
can't think our way out of it. So instead Young
talked about you don't get rid of them, because that's
actually your life force. If you tried to get rid
of it, you would actually be like it's it's a
(26:56):
psychological death. You'd be you'd be like taking out your
your libido, your energy. So instead, we want to learn
to dance with that complex, how to how we want
to get to know it better and better, so that
when we circle back around and we're like, oh, we're
here again, we're like, Okay, I know how to dance
with this. I'm gonna I'm gonna move with it, and
we're gonna let it happen in a new way because
(27:18):
just because we're triggered, we don't have to respond in
the same way we always have. Right, you can identify
what's happening, and then do something different because what's being hit.
So you mentioned a couple of different ways to kind
of turn your trajectory around. So it's you know, maybe
there's people listening who aren't even in a relationship at
all right now, and they're taking the break that you
(27:39):
mentioned and they're working on themselves. How do you not
make the same mistakes the second you start dating again
and you're really wanting to find another relationship, but you
want to do it differently, right, Okay, two things are
really really important. The first is that when you're doing so,
when you're taking your time off, or you're or you're
in between, and we're in the midst of some time
(28:01):
that's tough to date, Actually take that time off. Don't
spend all the time that you're that you're not dating.
Don't spend it looking at dating sites and thinking about that.
Really turn the mirror, like look inside. Take the time.
Actually take the time, do the therapy, do the homework,
read the books, do all the things. Then when you're
(28:24):
ready to start again, get an accountability partner, like pull
in a friend somebody who has seen you make the
same mistakes over and over again. Somebody that you can trust,
because often we do have great friends there and they
do see these things, or maybe we have a sister
or whatever, ask them to help you see what you
(28:44):
can't see. We so often pit our friendships against our partners,
and this is part of why, because our friends have
a little bit of distance from it. They know us
a little bit, and they're like, you're doing it again.
And if we would just believe ourselves, if we just
believe our friends and say, oh I am okay, so
(29:04):
we can get an accountability partner on and just like
debrief the date, but not from the this went bad,
this went good? But from how did I show up
at that date? Was I people pleasing? Was I trying
to perform? Was I like laughing at jokes that weren't
funny because I was trying to lean into the relationship
or I'm inventing a relationship that hasn't even started yet.
(29:25):
Because those are all really common moves, especially for women.
They're really really common moves. Yeah, so call yourself out
by just having that, you know, a fifteen minute chat
after a date, like, uh, I did it again, So
I'm not actually showing up the way I want to
cool I'm gonna take a breather, I'm gonna I'm gonna
(29:45):
do another worksheet. I'm gonna like check in with myself,
you know, turn to my higher guidance, whatever tools you're using,
there's lots and lots of them, and then I'll try again.
So you're just bringing awareness to it. But that accountability,
the external accountability, helps you make it real because we
will just trick ourselves inside, like we form these little
(30:06):
diads inside of us and we're like, oh, no, you
totally got this. It's totally fine. This is going to
be different this time. Yeah, don't believe. I don't believe that. Well. Also,
I think it that involves because I was thinking, oh,
that's a great idea to have an accountability partner, and
I was thinking of myself in that situation. I think
(30:27):
it would involve a lot of letting go of the
shame of I'm doing this again, because to me, I'm
a perfectionist. I want to do you know, I want
to say I learned that lesson, I'm done with it.
And instead, sometimes if I'm doing something again, I want
to hide for my friends because I don't want to
be called out because I'm embarrassed that I can't, Like
(30:47):
we were talking about just stop of behavior. Yes, So
the reason I I say somebody you trust is because
this is shamework. This is the way that we get
out of the stories from our childhood is to actually
come face to face with our shame and address it,
address it the same way we would a small child.
(31:09):
We have to go through a process with ourselves. You know.
The whole concept of like inner child work is you know,
it's so it can feel so gooey, right and like,
oh goodness, I'm gonna have to go there. Yeah, for
parts of it, you really do have to be as
tender with yourself as you would with a three year old. Right,
So if you have if you have no idea that
(31:32):
you feel shame, you probably have so much shame that
it's piled to the ceilings. Right. We all have our
shame spots. So yeah, allowing that this is a way
to actually I think this is the best way I've
ever deepened my friendships too. So while we're talking about
dating and romance, all of the stuff that I write
about in the book and all the stuff that you
(31:53):
do to have a conscious relationship, do that with your friends.
So if you're not ready to date again, how about
a conscious friendship. How about really deciding to have the
hard conversations, lean into the awkward moments, expose these parts
of ourselves that feel really tender and scary, and try
that first before we worry about whether we can find
(32:16):
somebody who's supposed to be our lifelong partner and somebody
who's great in bed and they look just the way
we want, and they're going to co parent with us perfectly,
and they're going to do all the things friends. I
have a mentor who says when she kind of isn't
she's you know, I think she's seventies. So she's had
a lot of experience with bumping up against herself, and
(32:39):
she has a funny way of just kind of pulling
herself out of the shame when she does something, or
she'll be triggered and she's starting to do a behavior again,
she notices it. Now, that's the blessing of having life experience,
and she says, she just says herself, up, I'm doing
that again, giggling at herself in a gentle way, and
it releases the shame and it's just like, oh, I
(33:01):
don't like how that feels. So I'm not going to
do it that way. I know that from experience, you know,
but not going into the place of judging ourselves for
doing certain things again or getting in certain mindsets again
those tapes that play over. Yeah again, that is a
wonderful tip because I mean, laughter is the only way
to deal with the messiest emotions, like really gentle laughter,
(33:22):
Like oh yeah, you got to have a sense of
humor to be flexible and resilient, you really do. So
that's a wonderful way to approach. Yeah, the way that
can feel. If anyone thinks that inner child work is
not real, take out a picture of yourself as a child,
and for me doing that kind of thing in therapy,
and you literally all look at a picture of myself
(33:43):
as a seven year old or something and starts sobbing.
So something is real, you know. I mean, oh yeah,
you're connecting to something that I just think we all
try to push down and not deal with because it
can be very painful. Yeah, and it works with our
partners too. So recently, my father passed away, and so
I was pulling pictures out of the house and I
(34:05):
found this old picture of myself. I'm little and I
stuck it on the fridge, and I noticed that my
partner would stop and look at it, and so we
put a picture of him up too, And I thought, oh, yeah,
the acknowledgement that inside of us lives this little person.
And so I actually with all my I have seventeenagers,
so there's a lot of hormone and a lot of
(34:27):
stuff going on in this house. I changed all of
their like their text faces, I changed them back to
their baby faces, just to remind myself, like, okay, that
text was coming from a place where they aren't totally
feeling safe and secure. How would I respond when they
were five? Chill out and be nice. I love that
idea with the partner. I'm actually gonna do that. Yeah,
(34:50):
it's it's so helpful. Yeah, when you think of them
as that child, I mean, it's so hard to just
I just want to hug him and love on him.
Of what you know, And so I think that we
can always remember that part of our partners. That would
be such a good way to have more empathy and
grace with each other. That's the word empathy and grace. Absolutely, yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah,
(35:11):
Well you kind of touched on jealousy earlier. And I
was telling you earlier that I watched your TEDx talk
about jealousy, and I find it fascinating because this is
definitely something I struggled with in my life. I was
cheated on in a major way in an engagement, and
so it's you know, I've really had to do a
lot of work around those insecurities in my relationships that
have been after that. And again, it's one of those
(35:33):
things it doesn't just go away. And I know, for me,
I've always felt very that that was just maybe me
in a box of a person who was cheated on
that deals with jealousy. Now, but you say, the jealousy
is a very normal thing and a very normal part
of a relationship. So why what about so I studied jealousy.
(35:55):
I have studied jealousy full time for a decade, and
jealousy is entirely typical, entirely human, and the person who
doesn't experience jealousy is by far the rare case. Like
by far, so jealousy is. Let's define it first, real quick.
(36:18):
Jealousy is the real or imagined fear of an interruption
of the love bond, right, And it's important that it's
real or imaginary. It doesn't matter whether something's literally happening
or we just think something's happening. Jealousy can pop up
anytime we think that or feel that there could be
a separation between us and our object of desire, who
(36:40):
we love and we want, and that is rooted right
in our primal brain. It's right from our very first
interactions with our primary caregiver. Right, we are helpless. We
are in a state of complete love from the point
of I am entirely dependent on you. And if mom
or dad or whoever is caring for us can't come
(37:03):
in that second, there's an interruption, and that is a
survival level problem. Right, So baby's crying survival level interruption problem.
Baby doesn't know whether they're going to come back. Right.
That self still exists in us, and so when we
imagine or experience that disruption of the love bond, we
(37:25):
are right back to survival brain. Jealousy is this complicated mess,
and it brings anger and fear and sadness and shame
and grief, and these are big, gloppy emotions and they're
all stuck together and we have to deal with them.
But we often deal with them just like, oh, it's
it's jealousy. It's just jealousy just comes before jealousy all
(37:46):
the time. Like just no, not just jealousy. It's huge
and it is normal. I actually love that idea too,
because or framing it that way, because the just jealousy
thing or like that person is just a super jealous person.
Like it's not as simple as a personality trait or something.
What I heard a lot, and maybe this is because
(38:08):
of the own work I'm doing right now, attach attachment.
What I heard a lot in that is, you know,
the fear of abandonment and just kind of those security
things that we so strive for. It, especially in a
love relationship, because you're the most vulnerable I think you
can be in that position. And so the panic that
comes with that is that what causes jealousy. Yeah, So
(38:29):
most of us attempt, whether we succeed or not, we try,
we attempt to transfer our attachment bond to our partner
later in life, right, and so that the transfer of
that attachment bond over to our partner, depending on how
successful it is, you know, whether we actually are able
to so, because there are those people who stay completely
(38:50):
attached to someone who's not their partner, or stay really
in the pockets of their parents. But once that transfer happens, well,
now it is a survivor of all instinct that kicks
in that says I have to have I to I
have to hold I have to close everything around this
and keep it safe. We can hold a relationship really
(39:12):
gently and be in a trusting state only when when
our nervous system is calm, when we're able to self regulate,
when we are conscious of the triggers that are going
to pop up for us, and when we've established through
an incremental building of trust, you know, in order to
we often place all the focus of jealousy on what
(39:34):
the other person is doing. But what if we stepped
away from that and just said, what can what do
I trust that person to do? Where am I in
this relationship? Because we often rush. It's just like this
instant thing like we're we're either dating and it's super
casual or boom, we're in a relationship and now I'm
supposed to trust you completely, You're supposed to trust me completely.
(39:56):
We and we're supposedly we agree on a set of rules.
Most people never have the conversation to establish what the
actual parameters of their relationship agreement is and so now
you're just essentially walking a tight rope blindfolded and hoping
it works out. I don't recommend it. Well, that's such
(40:18):
a good point about establishing the rules because I know,
for me within a relationship, if we can't I don't
want to call them ground rules, but set the boundaries
around certain conversations or certain situations. I never can get
that calm in my nervous system that you're talking about.
So no matter what's actually happening, my body is telling
(40:40):
me no, no, no no, no, no no no, you're not safe.
You're not safe because we've never set up you know
what the guidelines are, and although they may change over time,
and I think that's something I'm learning too, is boundaries,
you know, change and they're fluid and all of these things.
But like setting the ground the foundational conversation of this
is what I want, This is my goal, This is
(41:01):
the conscious part of our decision of this relationship is
so integral for me feeling safe. Yes, absolutely, And there's
no shame in saying the word ground rules. Like when
you're talking about setting up a relationship would be what
would be more normal than walking into a new job
and saying, okay, so what's expected of me? You want?
(41:22):
Who wants a job with no job description? That would
be horrible. I've had those. They're terrible. I And as
a business owner, I always have to define the parameters
for everybody I'm working with, right and when there aren't
clear parameters, there's no repercussion that I can actually put
in place, and there's no way for them to know
when they're succeeding either. So it's really an unfair place
(41:44):
to start a relationship from. And when people are practicing monogamy,
often they just rely on the idea that there's this
cultural norm that like, I've had a lot of conversations
that start off with me saying, so, what's your monogamy agreement?
And the person says to me, well, you know the rules.
I'm like, well, but what are the rules? Tell me?
Just tell me more about the rules, and they'll tell
(42:05):
me a little bit about the rules, and I say,
so when did you talk about these? So like I
mean he knows, Like, okay, so let's go back to
ground zero and talk our way through this. Because explicit
communication isn't just about making rules that make you feel safe.
It's actually about being vulnerable and asking for what you want,
which is how you can get what you want. Cannot
(42:27):
ever feel secure and safe if you're just trusting that
someone has read your mind and will deliver it to you. Right,
And also, what are you actually even trusting that? I
guess you're saying, but like to me, now that I've
gotten order, had been through bad relationships or you know,
cheating relationships with a trust was broke, and I probably
(42:49):
was just thinking, oh, we know, we do think the same. Yeah,
we have the same boundaries within a relationship. Now I'm
understanding how important those conversations are. Just we're establishing even
just communication between the two of you so that you know, okay,
when he leaves this house, we have said this thing,
(43:10):
and if that isn't how this goes, that is a
boundary violation to our relationship, right, right, Because that's what
cheating is. People talk about cheating as if we have
some definition of it. We don't not really we you know,
like lots of people think cheating is sex with another
part another person, or flirting with another person. Cheating is
(43:30):
the breaking of any relationship agreement. Right, So I'm I'm ethically. Notice,
so for me to lie about a relationship and keep
it a secret, that would be the violation, not the connection. Right.
So if we think about that, then how about if
we reframe what relationships are all together and just say,
(43:53):
your relationship doesn't just depend on the agreements. Your relationship
is the agreements. It is them. So start by having
a relationship where we establish and this could go for
your friendships too, establish what the ground rules are, and
with that you can establish. So how will we to negotiate,
(44:13):
how will we come to a new conclusion. So in
my marriage, we re up every three years. We have
a whole month long conversation that happens every three years
where we really get into it. We talk about finances
and sex and religion and politics and all the stuff,
just to make sure that we still both want to
be in this. And I have a friendship that I'm
actually doing something similar with, like just actually saying, like
(44:34):
at the outset when I was super nervous about this friendship,
I'm like, the one thing I need is to know
that you won't just withdraw your friendship, that you'll just
tell me that you're withdrawing, And if you could please
just give me like a half an hour conversation where
you just say why if you could commit to that now,
then I could commit to being more vulnerable with you,
(44:56):
and so we carefully built trust. I would of having, like,
what an awkward thing, like I was sitting at dinner
with just a friend and I had that conversation, and
that's the groundwork. The rules can all be built out
of those little awkward conversations. Yeah, so what would you say?
Because I feel I know that this is a generalization,
(45:18):
but I know amongst my relationships with my girlfriends, we
are very open about this kind of stuff or insecurities
and voluntality and all of that stuff, and it seems
a little more difficult for men. So I'm imagining that
in most relationships as conversations could be difficult, and especially
if you know, we don't even have to put it
in a men and women things say one partner's wanting
(45:39):
to have those conversations and the other partner's like, we
don't even talk about this, and they're uncomfortable. What would
you say? How do you approach a situation like that?
Does that mean the relationship can't work? Or is that
just one of these tough things to navigate between two
different mentalities. I think a lot has to go into
this because first off, we need to take the whole
(45:59):
context in two questions. So if you've been in a
relationship for like twenty years and all of a sudden,
I want to be super vulnerable and I want to
start this process and my partner's like what that was? We?
Whoa where did this even come from? Let's take that
into account that we tend to have a lot of
inertia in our relationships. We just want them to kind
of continue the way they've been. So springing this on
(46:21):
someone and saying this is how I want our relationship
to be and then being mad if they're not immediately
on board. That's a lot versus say at the get go,
you know you're in the first ten dates, say and
you're like, so this is where I'm headed. This is
actually what I'm looking for, And if somebody is resistant there, yeah,
that's a big red flag for me. I would say
(46:42):
they don't actually want the same type of relationship. It
would be like having a different orientation, Like you could
have a relationship with two different orientations, but is it
going to satisfy everything that you want? Think carefully about
whether it will. You can definitely make a relationship with
any person, no matter how much disagree with them, but
you do have to think about whether you're actually still
(47:04):
going to be in integrity with yourself. Wow. Yeah, yeah,
that's really good. But that's why it's so important to
do this early on, Like, yeah, because that's where a
lot I think a lot of resentment probably comes from too.
Within relationships. Definitely, definitely. I mean I built a whole,
a whole marriage. I was, you know, with somebody for
seventeen years, and we were married for thirteen and when
(47:26):
I wanted to renegotiate, there was no process in place
for a renegotiation, so it broke us completely. But in
the partnership I'm in now, renegotiation is built in so
we and we both know how that happens, and we
know what happens if it escalates. We know what our
next step will be like if if if talks break down,
(47:48):
what will we do next? You know, if we can't
resolve it. And having that in place means that I
feel the safest I've ever felt, and I didn't even
know that was possible. In fact, at one point I
would speak pretty loudly about the fact that I wasn't
sure that security was even a thing we should talk
about in relationships, because I had been so hurt that
I thought, screw that, there's just no such thing as
(48:11):
security in relationships. It's not anymore. On No, it's not.
I now know that that's not true, but I had
to come to know it in myself, like deep in
my body that it was going to take like a
whole rewiring. And it's taken eleven years to feel really
truly secure in this relationship. That is, it's a long
(48:33):
story arc overnight. We said that earlier. Yeah, yeah, that's
always a good reminder for me because I want everything
right now. That's it exactly. Well, you have a book out.
It's called Project Relationship, The Entrepreneur's Action Plan for passionate
sustainable Love. Yeah, tell us about the book. So I
(48:56):
wrote the book because, well, for two reasons. One, a
friend of mine was going through like just bad relationship
after bad relationship, recognized it and was asking me a
lot of questions and I had I had thoughts and answers.
So I started thinking, oh, I should collect these, and
then I realized, you have seven teenagers they're all gonna
have relationships stuff, and I'm a little morbid. I was,
(49:18):
so I got this middle of the night terror one
night that I would die and I wouldn't have like
left the many instructions. My feet hit the floor four
fifteen that morning, I ran to my keyboard and I
started typing, and all of this just sort of came
out in a month. It was just like out because
my way isn't the right way. But I learned this
(49:39):
stuff the hard way. I made every mistake, I walked
down every hard road and dead end. So I wrote
it down and I tried to simplify it. It's not
like this long, beefy memoir of like my tales of woe.
I'm sure I'll write those at some point, but some
of them are just such a hot mess. They're hysterical.
But this is like the distill. Like I wanted a
(50:01):
book that even so my kids will probably not want
to turn to this book, but theoretically that they could
just pop open and say, like, I can't figure out
what boundaries even mean, and it's you know, twelve pages
of big type and three clear action steps to take
to make a difference. I wanted something that you could
like actually make a change today in your relationship. And
(50:25):
I focused on entrepreneurial attitudes for the reason we said
at the beginning, because I think that that's actually the
wave of the future. We are all entrepreneurial at this point.
There's there's sort of no way out of that. Yeah,
So I wrote the book in the hopes that we
would all just have like a quick guide and then
there are deeper dives you can do. You know, I'm
(50:45):
working on a course right now and I work with
people one to one and it's great. But not everybody's
ready for that. Not everybody's at that spot where they're like, Okay,
I'm ready to go all the way in. Sometimes a
book is just what you need to, like jog you
a little further, just oh yeah, a little further. Yeah, Well,
you guys can find that book. I'm going to put
the link in the description of the bio of this
podcast that people can find a book easily. Where else
(51:08):
can people find you if they have more questions, if
they're interested in doing more work, where can they find you? Yeah,
so you can find me at Jolie Hamilton dot com.
That's Joli And then Hamilton's like the musical nice and easy,
and you can find my socials there. I'm on Instagram
and clubhouse as at doctor Jolie Hamilton, so I'm easy
to find and I'm always happy to hear from people.
(51:30):
You know, don't feel bad about reaching out. I like
to hear from people. So yeah, hit my DMS, no problem, amazing. Well,
I also appreciate you being here. I'm gonna go ahead
and write down a lot of this stuff because I
think that I can apply it to my own life,
and I know everyone this is just the common denominator
that I think we all struggle with, bump up against
just relationships. So no matter what kind of relationship it is,
(51:54):
I think it's one thing we all have in common
with we can constantly be learning and growing and so
I really I appreciate you sharing your knowledge with us.
Thanks so much for having me, Kelly. I really appreciate it.
It's nice to meet you, and thank you guys so
much for listening
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