October 7, 2025 • 40 mins
What if the fastest way to heal your relationship is to change the environment of your mind? Larry Bilotta joins us to unpack a counterintuitive truth: a marriage can pivot when even one person moves from fear to love. Not as a platitude—but as daily, trainable energy you carry into every moment. Larry’s story runs through 27 hard years before he fell in love with his wife by first learning to like himself. He shows how a simple writing practice, clear self-inquiry, and two personal word lists—fear on one side, love on the other—can rewire choices, tone, and presence.
You’ll hear practical steps to shift your state—writing to make meaning, building love-word lists that you actually feel, and learning to admire love more than fear so behavior changes naturally. We also talk about the role of spiritual foundations in holding these practices together under stress, and why “childhood makes marriage” is a powerful lens for understanding both friction and repair. If you’re a man wondering whether you can lead change on your own, Larry’s insights, including the 21 signs you’re losing her heart and his book “This Is Not the Woman I Married,” will give you direction and hope.
If this conversation helps you, share it with someone who needs it, hit follow, and leave a rating or review—then tell us: which love word will you practice today?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
Welcome to the Straight from the Sort of Mouth
podcast, where I talk about sexand dating.
Hello, Tamara here.
Welcome to the show.
Today's guest is Larry Ballotta.
He specializes in relationships,marriage, mindset, and midlife
crisis.
We'll be talking abouttransforming loveless
relationships and saving yoursanity.
(00:20):
Thanks for joining me, Larry.
SPEAKER_00 (00:22):
Thanks, Sarah.
SPEAKER_01 (00:24):
Yeah, things as we talked about this is good for
the men this time.
SPEAKER_00 (00:28):
So this is good for the men.
SPEAKER_01 (00:31):
Yeah, for sure, stay tuned if you're a guy.
And I always think it's good tolearn about the other side too.
So as a woman, yeah.
So but yeah, so I think thebiggest thing when I read about
your bio was that youtransformed your own own
marriage and you did it byyourself, meaning you didn't
have to both do something aboutit.
You you kind of took the reins.
So uh if you want to just shareabout that or how you even
(00:53):
discovered so so so picture thatum that when they impeached Rich
Richard Nixon that year, theyimpeached Rich Richard Nixon.
SPEAKER_00 (01:02):
That's the year I married Marsha.
And the year I married Marsha, Idiscovered that, whoa, this is a
big, immovable rock.
This is a woman that's verypowerful and very determined,
and she's gonna get her way nomatter what.
And so I'm this soft-heartedman.
I was raised by soft-heartedpeople, and she's a really big
(01:24):
fighter.
And so as very determined, avery strong woman, uh, and she's
the strongest in her family, andas the strongest woman in her
family, uh, everybody comes toher for advice.
You know, I should have I shouldhave seen that.
But in my 20s, I couldn't knowthings like that.
Right?
But she's a very strong person.
As a very strong person, therewas no wiggle room, there was no
(01:45):
place where she could like giveup her ideas and stop being this
way, stop thinking that way.
Uh, and what she wanted was shewhat she wanted.
And and she couldn't reallycommunicate it, so she she would
yell it, she would scream it,right?
And as a very strong person, shebecame an immovable rock that I
(02:05):
started to realize well, this isnot gonna move.
This this is gonna be somethingthat I can't uh change.
And and remember, I'm programmedto stay married and miserable.
She's programmed to stay marriedand miserable.
That program is built ineverything we do, and so we
think about choices and freedomsand options.
(02:27):
The the program comes back andsays, stay married, stay
miserable.
And so that's why we stayed.
We stayed because the programbuilt us that way.
And so we're staying and uh andwe're fighting, and so uh I
started to realize I had tolearn about myself.
Because did I know anythingabout myself?
No, because my parents didn'tteach me anything about myself,
(02:48):
teach me like self-awareness andunderstanding of yourself and uh
not reading self-help books orthose kinds of things.
I didn't know any of that,right?
Uh I think my father had thepower of positive thinking when
I was like 10 years old.
I think, I think that's the onlyself-help book I ever saw.
Uh, but then I didn't know whatto do with it, right?
(03:10):
So I I couldn't read it andunderstand it.
Uh so I find myself in thismarriage with this really strong
woman, and I start had to startto discover what is happening to
me.
Why am I thinking this way?
And I had to, uh in essence, Iwas writing on yellow legal
pants trying to find out who Iwas.
And so this is like uh what'sthe the year they impeached
(03:33):
Richard Dixon?
Is that 1974?
Yeah, that's so it it goes itgoes year after year, 74, 75,
76, right?
It's a long, long, sloppy, messyprocess.
Uh, because she is strong and Iam not.
And as I'm trying to discover uhwhat I am, I I go through what I
(03:54):
call 27 years of marriage madein hell.
And why was that at MarriageMade in Hell?
Because for 27 years, I waslearning.
And when you're learning, you'renot sharp, you're not cool,
you're not doing super goodthings, you just are making
messes and discovering things,and then, oh yeah, I'm not gonna
do that again, right?
You're doing that kind of thing.
And so that's just 27 years.
(04:16):
And so winding down to that lastyear, that 27th year, uh, I
think the big revelation is I Ifinally realized I could like
myself, I could love myself.
And that was new for me, reallynew.
And as I started to love myself,I could love her.
And so that's why I say I had 27years of a marriage made in
(04:39):
hell, and the 27th year I fellin love with my wife.
Why did I fall in love with it?
Because I fell in love withmyself.
I started to really like myself,which is a very, very different
feeling.
And and when I think startthinking and looking back, I'm
thinking, how did you even dothat?
How did you even discover that?
Well, there was no one thing.
There is no one thing, like uhthe big thing was you can't say
(05:02):
that because it's a long, longtime.
And because it's so long, somany things happen, so many
realizations and and conclusionshappen uh that you can't really
pick anything out.
Uh but all I know is that I feltgood about myself for really the
first time in my life.
And when I really knew who Iwas, I started to treat her
(05:23):
differently.
Now I wasn't trying to treat herdifferently, I just just kind of
naturally did.
I treat her, I tried, I I wouldtreat her better, I would listen
to her and and just I kind ofcould sense what she what she
needed from me.
And so I was able to do more ofthat.
(05:43):
And prior to that, I couldn't domore of that.
Uh, because I, you know, there'sa little phenomena we know about
uh called the little voiceinside your head.
And when the little voice insideyour head is talking to you,
everything's wrong and and andeverything's bad, and and you
can't know anything, you can'tcan't realize anything uh
because the little voice in yourhead is talking to you and
(06:04):
telling you these terriblethings.
So uh when I got to the 27thyear, that's when I started to
realize that this is different.
This is really different, andit's different not because I
made something happen, it'sbecause I evolved into loving
myself, and I evolved intoloving her.
(06:25):
And I wish I could say ithappened overnight.
I wish I could, but I can't saythat.
Um, but there's a lot to be saidfor writing to yourself.
Because when you write toyourself, what happens is you
write a sentence and then youcan ask yourself a question, and
then you can write anothersentence and ask about what that
(06:45):
means, right?
So that was a really big thingis learning what things meant.
Uh and when you think aboutmeaning, meaning is a big deal
in your life.
When you realize what somethingmeans to you, especially if you
can spell it out in words, uh,writing forces you to do that,
forces you to really say, well,what happened and why did I do
it?
And so you end up discoveringthings on the paper.
(07:08):
And the other nice thing aboutthe paper is it doesn't go away,
it stays there, right?
Whereas thinking is electric,it's just coming and going and
changing all the time.
And so writing is a really biguh thing that uh like I I've
I've I've done it for years, anduh so when I talk to people
about what really pulls you outof the the stuff you're in,
(07:32):
because you when you're whenyou're raised in a chaos
childhood, uh what I call chaoskids, uh you have chaos in your
subconscious mind.
And so if we see thesubconscious, it's a big vat.
And the big vat is this bigplace where there's all kinds of
thoughts that happened in yourchildhood.
And thoughts and feelings andemotions are all down there.
(07:53):
And then at the top of this,there's a little jar.
That little jar is yourconscious mind, and the
conscious mind uh suddenly getsthoughts from the subconscious,
and suddenly you're you're nowaware of something, and maybe
you you have an urge to dosomething.
What's that urge coming from?
It's coming from thesubconscious, it's coming from
(08:14):
the subconscious to theconscious, and now you're aware
of it, and now you actually wantit.
And why do you want it?
Because that's the way you werebuilt, that's the way you were
raised, that's the messages inyour childhood.
And so um one of the things thatuh that that helped me a lot is
start realizing that, you know,we talk about negative thoughts
as a bad thing, uh, positivethoughts are a good thing, and
(08:38):
we talk about that in generalterms that, you know, that's
well, that's a good thing.
Oh, that's a right, that's a badthing.
And we make that comparison allthe time.
Um so what I started to do isstart to realize that um when
we're talking about fear,everything under the category of
fear is a bad word.
(08:58):
It's a negative, negative word.
So if we if we went to theinternet and we entered in
Google uh negative words, you'dget all kinds of lists of really
bad words.
Anxiety, doubt, fear, hatred,right, bitterness, all the
negative things that are therein the world.
And I started to think aboutthat that list, I said, there's
(09:20):
there's like a thousand wordsthat are negative.
A thousand words.
Like we can't handle a thousandwords.
And so what I did, I started tomake a list of fear words that I
could pick, hand pick out, and Isaid hand picked 25.
And so the handpicked 25 wordsis the world of fear.
And so when we read the world offear as a list, it starts to
(09:41):
feel like, wow, that feels sobad.
That just like, ooh, that'sterrible.
And I started to realize in myearly years, I was living in
fear.
I was living in fear because notbecause the words were here, but
because the energies of fearwere here.
The energies are here.
So, like, let's let's uh let melet me uh let me say this in a
(10:05):
way that uh uh is simple enoughto to understand.
If we if we made the two listsside by side, they would look
like this.
Okay.
So two lists.
So the words of love, the worldof fear, world of fear and world
of love.
And so when you have this done,what happens is you remember
(10:26):
these are words that youhandpick that fits you.
That's why nobody can give youthis list, because it doesn't
matter, it doesn't mean anythingto you.
But when you handpick thesefears, these sphere words, and
you handpick these love words,they are all relevant to you.
And so when I glance back andforth, the the overall overall
impression I get is I don't wantto be here, I want to be there.
(10:47):
I don't want to be here, I don'twant to be there.
Oh, I don't want to be here, Ido want to be there, right?
And so what happens is you startadmiring love, and you start
really not having an interest infear.
And so when you don't have aninterest in fear and you have an
interest in love, the more youscan this day after day, week
after week, the more you startrealizing I'm really drawn to
(11:10):
love.
I'm drawn to love words.
The love words make me feelgood, they make me feel
positive, they give me moreenergy.
And so now I have something thatis like a physical
representation of energy.
And so uh at the world of fearat the top of the list, I have
crazy.
Now, why do I have crazy there?
Because years ago, I used to saythat word a lot.
(11:33):
Like, oh, that's crazy.
Oh, you're crazy.
That's the craziest thing I everheard.
I used to say it a lot, and sopeople would sometimes call me
out why are you always sayingcrazy?
And so when they asked that, Iwas like, Do I say that?
I didn't even know I was sayingit.
I didn't even know.
That's what happens when you getdeep into fear, you don't
(11:54):
actually know what you're doingor why you're doing it.
So when you've got that list offear and you've got that list of
love, uh people don't make alist like that.
They don't make these two listsand they don't put them side by
side, ever.
So the lists have never been,fear and love have never been
together on the same page.
(12:15):
Ever.
So once you finally put fear andlove uh on a on a list and you
can read them and you can scanback and forth, uh, you're gonna
start finding that yourdecisions in life start moving
towards the the energy of love.
And so when I say uh love, I'mtalking about words like uh
positive, uh confidence, joy,kindness, right?
(12:37):
These are these are words oflove.
But what are they really?
They're not just a word.
If you look up the word and thensay synonyms, I wouldn't need
the synonyms for this, you canfind like uh four or five, six
words that are like that word.
And what are those?
Those are synonyms.
And so if we take those synonymsand surround the main word, what
(12:58):
we're doing is we're saying wehave an energy around that word.
So there's an energy aroundconfidence, there's an energy
around kindness, there's anenergy around thoughtful,
there's an energy aroundforgiveness.
That energy is the energy you'reliving in when you have the
word, when you're feeling theword, you're feeling the energy.
And now you start to think,well, what did I do before?
(13:22):
Well, I was in fear, I was inmean, I was in never, I was in
rotten, I was in scared, I wasin all these terrible words that
are so destructive.
But what was I in?
I was in the energy of thosewords, the energy of like a
ball, a three-dimensional ballof energy.
That three-dimensional ball ofenergy is what you're actually
living in.
And it does things to you.
(13:43):
You don't even comprehend whatit does to you, but it does a
lot of destructive things.
Well, likewise in the fear inthe love list, uh, there's a lot
of really positive energy there.
And that when you're steppinginto word after word after word,
you step into uh like a let'scall it a pool of energy.
That pool of energy is likegratitude, is a pool of energy.
And when you step into the poolof energy of gratitude, you like
(14:07):
soak in it, and it affects you,it makes you feel things.
And so when you go from the poolof gratitude to the cool pool of
uh friendship, let's say, nowyou're in a different energy.
But it's also really good.
And so that's how what the whenyou go down the list, you're not
just going down on an item.
It's not an item, it's a world,a world of energy.
(14:29):
And that's what the synonymsrepresent.
But the synonyms represent thecomplete ball of energy of that
word.
And so that's why I mean uh whenI talk about the the list, it's
not like a check off of the listkind of list.
It's a list that you literallylive in the energy of it.
And when you live in the energyof it, you feel it and you feel
it better and better and better.
And as you start to do that, youstart to change the way you
(14:51):
decide on things.
You start to change the way youfeel about things, you start to
change your opinion on things.
It's all because you're movingfrom fear to love.
And that's really really that'sthat's uh and I I'm explaining
something that I had I ended upuh explaining much later.
Uh, but I started to see that uhthat 27 years is really what I
(15:14):
was doing.
I was leaving fear and I wasmoving love.
And when I when I literallymoved enough, I started to feel
really good about myself.
And so that's where my marriagebegan to change its direction.
unknown (15:28):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (15:29):
Because otherwise it was too destructive.
SPEAKER_01 (15:31):
Yeah.
And then like you said, justmoving towards love created how
you react how you would reactand be with her, and I'm sure
she reciprocated more.
SPEAKER_00 (15:40):
Well, because she feels she feels what I feel,
right?
And she feels she she feels thatfeeling, and it feels safer, it
feels lighter, it feels happier,it feels uh there's no no need
to be guarded.
And so when there were moremoments like that, the
relationship was better.
So that's how a person starts tochange.
(16:02):
It takes one.
Why does it take one?
It takes one because one personbecomes the changer of the
environment, the environment oftheir mind.
And that's really what I wasdoing in the story.
I was changing the environmentof my mind.
And uh I wasn't I was doing thatby by moving into these very
positive energies so I couldstart to live in them and feel
(16:22):
them.
Uh and that's a really feelingis a really big part of the
whole emotional makeup ofpeople.
Because when I talk to people inmy course, that one of their
biggest struggles is theirbiggest struggle says, stop
being so negative.
Why do you feel so negative?
I feel so negative because I'mstill dwelling in the in the in
the world of fear.
unknown (16:40):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (16:42):
So I have a uh a story I tell, an analogy I tell.
And the analogy is uh I call itthe cruise ship.
And the reason I call it thecruise ship is because in the
analogy you become a cruiseship.
And as a cruise ship, you findyou don't know it, but you have
a rat on your ship that youdon't know is there.
And then the person you marry isanother ship, and they have a
(17:05):
rat they don't know is there.
Now these two ships have tworats, and the two rats have
radios, and they're sendingmessages back and forth called
against energy.
The against energy is so strongit's separating the ships.
And so when the ships areseparating, they don't know why
they're separating because theydon't know the rats are doing
the work.
So your ship goes to a seminar,and you find out you might have
(17:26):
a rat.
So you go through trouble tofind the rat and get it off the
ship.
Now we got two ships, but thistime we've got only one rat.
Though the rat that's on hership is still pushing, but
there's no rat on your ship topush back.
And when there's no rat on yourship to push back, that means
the separation slows down.
And that's that's a reallyimportant idea when we start to
(17:47):
think about uh what is the ratin the analogy.
The rat is the pain of yourchildhood.
And so uh I have the scale of 10to 0, and 10 is the purpose, a
place where you're raised inpurpose.
Zero is a place where you'reraised in chaos.
And so when you're you're you'reabandoned, you're abused, you're
neglected, the more of that youhave, the lower you go.
(18:10):
Right?
So up at the top, it's greatparents who are raising you and
they're showing you how whatlove looks like.
And so now you have all that inyour subconscious mind.
And life becomes pretty easy foryou, right?
Because you have goodinstructions, right?
And so uh on that scale, it goesfrom purpose down to the middle,
which is the I call the TwilightZone 765.
(18:31):
And that's where the parentsdon't raise you, you raise
yourself because you don't know,you don't know anything because
they're not teaching youanything.
And so when you grow up there,you've got to figure everything
out on your own, right?
And then from five to zero, thatbecomes chaos where abandonment,
you're abandoned, you're abused,you're neglected, and all of
that makes for a really troubledsubconscious mind.
(18:54):
And that's what causes marriagesto be so hard.
I was just talking to uh uh anattorney who has a podcast, and
the podcast is about marriageand and uh and the legal
process.
Like a, oh, heart and law.
That's what she was doing, heartand law.
And so I'm thinking, how do howdo we get heart and law to come
(19:17):
together?
Because it doesn't even seemconnected, right?
Like, but that's what happens inmarriage in marriage.
In marriage, that the marriagegoes into a divorce court and
now it's in law.
And it's it's like it becomesvery like rigid because all this
emotion from the chaos kid is inthe courtroom and in the
documents and all these terriblethings that are happening in
(19:40):
there.
And so uh she was talking aboutthe idea of reconciliation.
Uh, because what isreconciliation like?
How can anybody actually dothat?
How can they possibly reconcilewhen they've been living in fear
year after year after year?
They've not been in love,they've been in fear, and they
don't even know what fear is,they actually don't recognize it
(20:00):
as fear.
SPEAKER_01 (20:01):
Yeah, they just think it's their normal.
SPEAKER_00 (20:03):
Well, well, they actually have ways to bill it as
something is re really uh thatmakes it makes them look
attractive and smart and clever.
Uh, but they're still living infear.
Um and so when you think aboutall the ideas of of meanness and
uh and fear and uh uh unfair andupset and and angry and arrogant
(20:25):
and and bad and critical anddangerous, all these ideas are
energies that people live in.
And when they live in them, theythey seek somehow to be right.
So here you are living in fear,but now you gotta be right.
And now you gotta fight to beright.
That makes you even lessattractive, right?
Because you're fighting to beright while you're living in
(20:46):
fear.
SPEAKER_01 (20:47):
Yeah.
Even you talking like that andusing those words is like kind
of making me feel that badenergy.
Exactly, right.
I was I'm actually likethinking, okay, now what can we
do about it and like how to howto go the other way?
Like I know you work with peopleto help them see this and like
fix their relationships.
Is this a good time to talkabout more of the like how to oh
(21:08):
how to get out of that?
I know you said learn aboutyourself and go into love, but
what else do you teach or how doyou teach it?
I know you said you have a bookas well.
SPEAKER_00 (21:18):
So um, so the uh um in this in this book there's a
uh a chapter uh that's uhdealing with the the signs, uh
the 21 signs of uh of uh losingher heart.
And the reason it's early in thebook uh is if if you don't know
(21:38):
you you've lost your heart, ifyou're not aware of it, you have
to be told in a book what it is.
And so the 21 signs you'relosing your heart are signs that
are like uh pretty graphic andpretty pretty unattractive.
Because now this is you as a manlosing your wife's heart, which
(21:59):
you thought you had, and thenyou took for granted.
And the reason he does that isbecause he literally becomes his
father, he turns into his dad.
So what happens with his dad?
Well, his dad could have losthis wife's heart, and the son
wouldn't know it.
And so the son the son doesn'tsee it, and so now it becomes a
(22:22):
a a uh well, Jesus all kinds ofversions of relationships, but
the but the marriage is amarriage where they endure each
other, uh a marriage where theyuh are angry at each other,
where they yell, where theycriticize, they blame, they
pick, uh they have people haveall kinds of relationships.
(22:42):
And and remember, when they'regetting older, it becomes even
less attractive to to have thosethose things happen.
But uh people are talking abouttheir mother and father, the
that the people that raise them,right?
So what you want is a prettypositive person, a pretty
positive father and a prettypositive mother that has a sense
of beh a sense of humor, uh, andthey have the ability to talk to
(23:06):
each other.
That's a really greatrelationship.
Because if you grow up in that,you grow up in a flexible, more
open, less critical environment.
And that's really what everybodywants.
They want to live uh in a placeuh where I call this the kid
standard.
The kid standard is mom, I wantyou and dad to like each other,
(23:27):
and then I want you and dad tomake me feel important.
That's the kid standard, right?
Just like each other and treatme important or make me feel
important.
If you just do that, I'll turnout okay, you know.
SPEAKER_01 (23:38):
Yeah.
And what is the you mentionedthe book, what is the name of
it, sir?
On the audio.
SPEAKER_00 (23:43):
So this this is the book.
The book is this is not thewoman I married.
Uh so this book is for men.
This is not the woman I married.
And and why?
Because the men who call me,they say this line.
Oh, this is not the woman Imarried.
Why is it not the woman Imarried?
Because the woman you married isa chaos kid.
(24:05):
She she grew up in abandonment,abuse, neglect, some version of
that.
And she has that stored in hersubconscious.
And so when she gets to be uh30, 40 years old, that's the
time when it comes out.
That's the midlife.
That's the time when it arrives.
And so that midlife crisis is acrisis because what was in there
(24:28):
in the beginning from childhoodis now coming out.
And what does it do?
What does it do?
It affects the personality.
It makes the personality intowhat you were born into.
So whatever those values aredown there, uh like lying,
stealing, survival,justification, distortion,
manipulation, right?
(24:48):
All those things are in there.
They're all waiting for the needto come out and and just be
taken over.
Right?
So how does it happen?
Well, it happens usually frombig events like the death of a
father or death of a mother.
That's a big event that couldtrigger the the midlife crisis.
Uh or the father or the mothergets sick, uh and it becomes
(25:12):
like a a terminal situation thatthey can't can't handle.
And then they uh a big move,that's a another thing, a big
move that, you know, especiallywhen a woman leaves the place
she grew up and goes to someplace that he wants to go, and
now she knows nobody.
She knows nobody, now she's likereally unsettled and she's not
(25:33):
feeling safe.
So that's a place for a midlifecrisis to happen.
Uh another favorite place iscalled uh the home improvement.
A home improvement is a placewhere a lot of stress takes
place.
Uh in fact, a lot of people whotell me that they were uh
they're in these these midlifecrisis situations, uh, there's
(25:53):
always a home being renovated ora home being bought or a home
being rebuilt.
Something with a home, right?
Why is that?
Well, that's a huge thing onpeople's lives.
Their home isn't it's part oftheir identity.
And so when the home getsinvolved, uh and I've heard this
so many times, the guys tell me,and we just finished our house,
(26:15):
and it's a beautiful house, andit's a show place, and and now
she does this, right?
So he's he's all frustratedbecause the home is involved at
this physical building.
So a renovation could be a verystressful thing that could
ignite the midlife crisis.
Um, but while we're on thismidlife crisis idea, I think
(26:37):
it's really important to pointout uh what is a bucker, a
B-U-C-K-E-R, a bucker.
A bucker like this comes fromthe bucking bronco idea.
Uh the bucking bronco throws offthe rider.
And so, what is a bucker?
A bucker is throwing off theparents' messages, trying to
throw them off.
(26:58):
And so they what happens is abucker creates three steps.
And the three steps they and bythe way, they're doing this like
four or five, six times a day.
They're going through thesethree steps.
Step number one is stop.
I'm not doing that.
Now, what happened there?
Well, the subconscious came upwith an idea.
An idea that dad would come upwith, or a damn mom would come
(27:19):
up with, right?
And that they said, stop, I'mnot doing it.
So that's the first resistance.
The second one is I'm doing thisinstead.
I'm gonna do this instead.
So now they borrow a value fromprobably the person they
married.
A value they don't have.
They're borrowing it, right?
So they they borrow borrow uh athing called consistency, or
(27:39):
they borrow kindness, or theyborrow listening, or they borrow
some really good trait.
And so they borrow it and theythen they the third step is they
act out the trait.
So they didn't just borrow it,they borrow the idea.
They act it out as if they hadit.
Okay, so now we're talking aboutwho?
We're talking about the peoplein the midlife crisis.
(28:00):
Who are those people?
They're they're lawyers, they'redoctors, they're scientists,
they're entertainers, they'rethey're athletes, they're
they're all these people thathave extremely successful lives.
Uh what are they doing though?
In their private life, they'reliving like buckers.
And they're fighting this one,two, three, one, two, three over
(28:20):
and over again.
Well, you can see what they'redoing.
They're fighting theirsubconscious mind.
Because the subconscious mind iscoming up with the ideas and
they say, Stop, I'm not doingthat.
Then they deny it and they say,I'm doing this instead, and then
they act it out.
Well, those three steps areexhausting.
They're exhausting.
It's very hard to be a bucker,it's very hard to be a person
who's having to go through thethree-step process.
(28:42):
The other thing I want to pointout is that every single person
that I talk to, by the way,they're called stayers.
The people I talk to are calledstayers, and they talk about
levers.
That's the person they marry.
They leave the marriage.
So when they talk about the uhlevers, they they they say, uh,
he just snapped.
He just snapped.
He was so wonderful and he justsnapped, and that's how it
(29:05):
sounds.
He was so wonderful.
Why?
Because he's borrowing valuesover and over again.
Values he doesn't own.
What what what's he doing?
He's literally pacing the valueon top of this subconscious mess
of chaos.
And so, what are the buckers?
Their buckers are chaos kids wholiterally fight in their
(29:27):
subconscious mind.
It's a hard, hard life to live.
And uh uh buckers uh as a as agroup uh are are not able to
keep up their lives becausethey're fighting that that mind.
And because they're fightingthat mind, they can't keep up
the life, they can't staymarried, they can't keep
(29:48):
consistently following throughbecause they're under that
pressure, and then when thefinal final thing comes a bit
death or a move or whatever thebig trigger is, uh they're gonna
snap.
And when they snap a scary thinghappens.
Uh this person becomes uh andand I see this in in as I I
teach about midlife crisis uhwhat the people who are staying
(30:12):
tell me about these people whoare leaving these buckers is
that their eyes become I don'twant to say black they don't
become black they become darkertheir eyes become somehow to the
person who knows them become notlike their eyes like in and they
(30:32):
can't even describe it theycan't picture it they say like
the eye becomes like a diamond.
No the eyes it's not like thatright it's just that the person
who who loved them seessomething that they never saw in
their face before.
But it's in the eyes.
And what the eyes when the eyesgo dark they can see that
(30:52):
there's like some kind ofcreature that's taking them
over.
And they they talk about that.
They talk about the monsterthat's taking them over.
But that that's the life ofbuckers and chaos kids.
But but all that is to say uh inthe in the environment of a of a
of a a person who's a bucker achaos kid who collapses into a
(31:14):
midlife crisis what does astayer do?
A stayer can decide I can changemy mind.
I can change what I believe Ican change what I think I can
change what I imagine.
And what you believe what youthink and what you imagine
that's energy.
And as you change energyeverything starts to change.
(31:35):
And so that's something that youcan't actually tell people that
because they you know they mighthear something like this from me
and think boy I would like tochange that about what I think
what I imagine or what Ibelieve.
But it is not easy.
It's not easy because you haveto have a foundation under you
to really change what you thinkwhat you imagine what you
(31:57):
believe and that becomes veryvery difficult if you don't have
training.
So that's what what I'm doingevery day I'm I'm training
people and how to change whatthey're what they're doing in
their mind.
Change their mind change theworld.
SPEAKER_01 (32:11):
Yeah and how can people reach you or what how can
they find you to work with youor learn about you and what
you're meant to do.
SPEAKER_00 (32:18):
So so the the the program is our end you can save
thismarriage dot com uh and thenyou could also go to
larrybilana.com or there's a lotof videos there of ideas that I
talk about uh and those are alluh things that uh you know you
get you get enough of this uhidea you know could people hear
(32:38):
from me they hear chaos kids uhand they never heard of a chaos
kid before they don't know whatit is and so if you want to get
familiar with chaos kids you cango to Larryballada.com and start
to watch videos and startlearning about chaos kids and
and marriage and and whathappens with intimacy and how it
disappears because the chaoscomes for them and then it's
(33:00):
kind of it's it's not it's nottoo late.
And so we have pinballs and wehave environment changers.
And pinballs are people whoreact to everything and react
emotionally all the time and ina bad way.
Environment changers are busychanging the environment of
their mind and because theychange the environment of their
(33:20):
mind they're not pinballs.
And so they they have a chanceto to literally change anything
but pinballs can't changeanything.
Pinballs are fixed in the lifeof reaction.
Environment changers can changethe environment of their minds
and that's going to change a lotof things for them.
SPEAKER_01 (33:37):
Yeah and I know that they talk about the fixed and
growth mindset it sounds likethe pinballers are fixed mindset
people.
SPEAKER_00 (33:46):
Well well yeah because they they've live
they're living in fear and inliving in fear they think fear
is giving them safety andbecause they think fear is
giving them safety and they'venever heard anything else like
fear is making me feel safe yeahit does but it doesn't give you
safety it literally gives you as uh a a temporary feeling of
safety which then comes to be areal punishing effect later on
(34:10):
and it's so it's got like a alittle reward and then a really
big long side effect that that'sthe the whole problem of fear.
Fear does that to people yeahand I was gonna say um how would
you kind of summarize or wrapthis up just uh our closing
thoughts so I I I was having aan argument with my daughter
(34:32):
because uh she she I I wassaying childhood makes marriage
I was saying childhood makesmarriage and childhood makes
marriage what she and she'ssaying why would you say that
nobody understands that nobodyunderstands and you've got to
have a long explanation aboutwhy childhood makes marriage and
so what I'm trying to say isthat childhood once you marry
(34:54):
you marry a family and when youmarry that family you're
marrying that childhood andyou're marrying all the
characters in the family and soif there's alcohol if there's
drugs if there's immorality ifthere's all kinds of distortions
of all kinds you're gonna gethave that in your life and then
when you have kids with yourchaos kid you're gonna have that
(35:14):
in your kids' life and so nowyou're gonna be if you if you've
got a really good morality andyou're the person you marry does
not have a really good moralityyou're literally in two separate
worlds and now you can't youhave no way to to to meld them
until you get to that love sideleave fear and go to love.
The reason I talk about fear andlove so much is because that's
(35:36):
the great dividing line whichdivides people from fear people
and love people.
And love people are you knowthere's not a lot of them it's
really hard to find people whoactually live uh on the on the
energy of love they just theyjust like it's a thing they they
just adopt it they adopt it theytake it on and it feels very
(35:57):
comfortable for them and theywouldn't consider anything else
but when you're living in loveyou're not judging you're not
criticizing you're not doingyou're not you're not doing all
the things that are fearrequires and fear requires a lot
yeah a lot of bad stuff.
Yeah no I mean so childhoodmakes marriage is what what I'm
trying to say.
SPEAKER_01 (36:15):
Yeah and I like the idea um obviously you said it
works going towards love I canjust see where if you look at a
list of both sides and youremind yourself of the love side
when you're making decisions orthings and when you you like you
said when writing it down is themore important part.
I can see having a list andwhenever you're reacting look at
the list and be like yes let medo the right thing or the
(36:36):
positive thing or the lovething.
SPEAKER_00 (36:38):
Because you're you're gonna end up doing
eventually what you admire.
And when you realize you admirelove and you don't admire fear
it's like makes everythingclearer in life and so
everything now becomes like uhwhere's the love in this where's
the fear in this uh oh yeahthere's the fear in this I don't
want that I want love and so nowthat now I'm I'm literally using
(37:02):
words to try to explain this uhbut it's something that happens
instantly when you start totrain yourself to leave fear and
move to love.
Yeah and it becomes somethingthat becomes easier to do.
For sure.
Because it's just a feeling youfeel it.
For sure.
SPEAKER_01 (37:16):
Yeah I've I've definitely heard things like
this and I but maybe likeslightly different way so I I
definitely like the way you putit and I'm going to leave it
there unless you have one morething to like like a closing
comment kind of thing um theother thing is uh everybody's
got a spirituality in their lifeuh you've got uh Jewish a Jewish
(37:43):
Buddhist uh a Buddhist ChristianCatholic uh like something you
have something in your life somesome foundation some set of
ideas that you got in thebeginning and that's your
foundation and uh and I foundthat people who don't have a
spiritual foundation don't havethe ability to hold on to these
(38:05):
ideas and apply them but thepeople who have a spiritual
foundation somehow have they'vegot the ability to assemble
everything into a system thatthey can start to live in.
SPEAKER_00 (38:17):
But if you don't have that spiritual foundation
it doesn't hold together.
And that becomes very difficultwhen people have no spiritual
foundation.
So I've had faithful say to meum no I was raised uh with no
really no religion at all and uhmy mother and father they they
just they just didn't believe inanything right so that's that's
(38:41):
having a child with no spiritualfoundation and so if you want to
get a low a life of improvementyou got to get really determined
to get a life of improvementwhen you have that background.
But then somebody who says Igrew up in uh listening to uh
sermons uh Christian sermons Igrew up listening to Catholic
(39:02):
sermons I grew up listening toright well that's the fountain
spiritual foundation they haveand it didn't matter that they
don't remember one single thingthat doesn't matter what matters
is that everything they heardgot in and it all somehow stayed
and because that stayed that'syour spiritual foundation and
we've got it it's gonna help youa lot to learn these ideas about
(39:24):
love.
SPEAKER_01 (39:25):
Yeah I can definitely see that yeah all
right well thank you very muchfor all of these concepts and
ideas to save a lovelessmarriage and turn everything
around and your own life youknow being in love and having a
spiritual foundation I candefinitely see the benefits
though thank you very much forbeing all right and if you love
(39:48):
this episode be sure to tellyour friends about it and rate
it as well all right thankseveryone
Welcome to the Straight from the Sort of Mouth
podcast, where I talk about sexand dating.
Hello, Tamara here.
Welcome to the show.
Today's guest is Larry Ballotta.
He specializes in relationships,marriage, mindset, and midlife
crisis.
We'll be talking abouttransforming loveless
relationships and saving yoursanity.
(00:20):
Thanks for joining me, Larry.
SPEAKER_00 (00:22):
Thanks, Sarah.
SPEAKER_01 (00:24):
Yeah, things as we talked about this is good for
the men this time.
SPEAKER_00 (00:28):
So this is good for the men.
SPEAKER_01 (00:31):
Yeah, for sure, stay tuned if you're a guy.
And I always think it's good tolearn about the other side too.
So as a woman, yeah.
So but yeah, so I think thebiggest thing when I read about
your bio was that youtransformed your own own
marriage and you did it byyourself, meaning you didn't
have to both do something aboutit.
You you kind of took the reins.
So uh if you want to just shareabout that or how you even
(00:53):
discovered so so so picture thatum that when they impeached Rich
Richard Nixon that year, theyimpeached Rich Richard Nixon.
SPEAKER_00 (01:02):
That's the year I married Marsha.
And the year I married Marsha, Idiscovered that, whoa, this is a
big, immovable rock.
This is a woman that's verypowerful and very determined,
and she's gonna get her way nomatter what.
And so I'm this soft-heartedman.
I was raised by soft-heartedpeople, and she's a really big
(01:24):
fighter.
And so as very determined, avery strong woman, uh, and she's
the strongest in her family, andas the strongest woman in her
family, uh, everybody comes toher for advice.
You know, I should have I shouldhave seen that.
But in my 20s, I couldn't knowthings like that.
Right?
But she's a very strong person.
As a very strong person, therewas no wiggle room, there was no
(01:45):
place where she could like giveup her ideas and stop being this
way, stop thinking that way.
Uh, and what she wanted was shewhat she wanted.
And and she couldn't reallycommunicate it, so she she would
yell it, she would scream it,right?
And as a very strong person, shebecame an immovable rock that I
(02:05):
started to realize well, this isnot gonna move.
This this is gonna be somethingthat I can't uh change.
And and remember, I'm programmedto stay married and miserable.
She's programmed to stay marriedand miserable.
That program is built ineverything we do, and so we
think about choices and freedomsand options.
(02:27):
The the program comes back andsays, stay married, stay
miserable.
And so that's why we stayed.
We stayed because the programbuilt us that way.
And so we're staying and uh andwe're fighting, and so uh I
started to realize I had tolearn about myself.
Because did I know anythingabout myself?
No, because my parents didn'tteach me anything about myself,
(02:48):
teach me like self-awareness andunderstanding of yourself and uh
not reading self-help books orthose kinds of things.
I didn't know any of that,right?
Uh I think my father had thepower of positive thinking when
I was like 10 years old.
I think, I think that's the onlyself-help book I ever saw.
Uh, but then I didn't know whatto do with it, right?
(03:10):
So I I couldn't read it andunderstand it.
Uh so I find myself in thismarriage with this really strong
woman, and I start had to startto discover what is happening to
me.
Why am I thinking this way?
And I had to, uh in essence, Iwas writing on yellow legal
pants trying to find out who Iwas.
And so this is like uh what'sthe the year they impeached
(03:33):
Richard Dixon?
Is that 1974?
Yeah, that's so it it goes itgoes year after year, 74, 75,
76, right?
It's a long, long, sloppy, messyprocess.
Uh, because she is strong and Iam not.
And as I'm trying to discover uhwhat I am, I I go through what I
(03:54):
call 27 years of marriage madein hell.
And why was that at MarriageMade in Hell?
Because for 27 years, I waslearning.
And when you're learning, you'renot sharp, you're not cool,
you're not doing super goodthings, you just are making
messes and discovering things,and then, oh yeah, I'm not gonna
do that again, right?
You're doing that kind of thing.
And so that's just 27 years.
(04:16):
And so winding down to that lastyear, that 27th year, uh, I
think the big revelation is I Ifinally realized I could like
myself, I could love myself.
And that was new for me, reallynew.
And as I started to love myself,I could love her.
And so that's why I say I had 27years of a marriage made in
(04:39):
hell, and the 27th year I fellin love with my wife.
Why did I fall in love with it?
Because I fell in love withmyself.
I started to really like myself,which is a very, very different
feeling.
And and when I think startthinking and looking back, I'm
thinking, how did you even dothat?
How did you even discover that?
Well, there was no one thing.
There is no one thing, like uhthe big thing was you can't say
(05:02):
that because it's a long, longtime.
And because it's so long, somany things happen, so many
realizations and and conclusionshappen uh that you can't really
pick anything out.
Uh but all I know is that I feltgood about myself for really the
first time in my life.
And when I really knew who Iwas, I started to treat her
(05:23):
differently.
Now I wasn't trying to treat herdifferently, I just just kind of
naturally did.
I treat her, I tried, I I wouldtreat her better, I would listen
to her and and just I kind ofcould sense what she what she
needed from me.
And so I was able to do more ofthat.
(05:43):
And prior to that, I couldn't domore of that.
Uh, because I, you know, there'sa little phenomena we know about
uh called the little voiceinside your head.
And when the little voice insideyour head is talking to you,
everything's wrong and and andeverything's bad, and and you
can't know anything, you can'tcan't realize anything uh
because the little voice in yourhead is talking to you and
(06:04):
telling you these terriblethings.
So uh when I got to the 27thyear, that's when I started to
realize that this is different.
This is really different, andit's different not because I
made something happen, it'sbecause I evolved into loving
myself, and I evolved intoloving her.
(06:25):
And I wish I could say ithappened overnight.
I wish I could, but I can't saythat.
Um, but there's a lot to be saidfor writing to yourself.
Because when you write toyourself, what happens is you
write a sentence and then youcan ask yourself a question, and
then you can write anothersentence and ask about what that
(06:45):
means, right?
So that was a really big thingis learning what things meant.
Uh and when you think aboutmeaning, meaning is a big deal
in your life.
When you realize what somethingmeans to you, especially if you
can spell it out in words, uh,writing forces you to do that,
forces you to really say, well,what happened and why did I do
it?
And so you end up discoveringthings on the paper.
(07:08):
And the other nice thing aboutthe paper is it doesn't go away,
it stays there, right?
Whereas thinking is electric,it's just coming and going and
changing all the time.
And so writing is a really biguh thing that uh like I I've
I've I've done it for years, anduh so when I talk to people
about what really pulls you outof the the stuff you're in,
(07:32):
because you when you're whenyou're raised in a chaos
childhood, uh what I call chaoskids, uh you have chaos in your
subconscious mind.
And so if we see thesubconscious, it's a big vat.
And the big vat is this bigplace where there's all kinds of
thoughts that happened in yourchildhood.
And thoughts and feelings andemotions are all down there.
(07:53):
And then at the top of this,there's a little jar.
That little jar is yourconscious mind, and the
conscious mind uh suddenly getsthoughts from the subconscious,
and suddenly you're you're nowaware of something, and maybe
you you have an urge to dosomething.
What's that urge coming from?
It's coming from thesubconscious, it's coming from
(08:14):
the subconscious to theconscious, and now you're aware
of it, and now you actually wantit.
And why do you want it?
Because that's the way you werebuilt, that's the way you were
raised, that's the messages inyour childhood.
And so um one of the things thatuh that that helped me a lot is
start realizing that, you know,we talk about negative thoughts
as a bad thing, uh, positivethoughts are a good thing, and
(08:38):
we talk about that in generalterms that, you know, that's
well, that's a good thing.
Oh, that's a right, that's a badthing.
And we make that comparison allthe time.
Um so what I started to do isstart to realize that um when
we're talking about fear,everything under the category of
fear is a bad word.
(08:58):
It's a negative, negative word.
So if we if we went to theinternet and we entered in
Google uh negative words, you'dget all kinds of lists of really
bad words.
Anxiety, doubt, fear, hatred,right, bitterness, all the
negative things that are therein the world.
And I started to think aboutthat that list, I said, there's
(09:20):
there's like a thousand wordsthat are negative.
A thousand words.
Like we can't handle a thousandwords.
And so what I did, I started tomake a list of fear words that I
could pick, hand pick out, and Isaid hand picked 25.
And so the handpicked 25 wordsis the world of fear.
And so when we read the world offear as a list, it starts to
(09:41):
feel like, wow, that feels sobad.
That just like, ooh, that'sterrible.
And I started to realize in myearly years, I was living in
fear.
I was living in fear because notbecause the words were here, but
because the energies of fearwere here.
The energies are here.
So, like, let's let's uh let melet me uh let me say this in a
(10:05):
way that uh uh is simple enoughto to understand.
If we if we made the two listsside by side, they would look
like this.
Okay.
So two lists.
So the words of love, the worldof fear, world of fear and world
of love.
And so when you have this done,what happens is you remember
(10:26):
these are words that youhandpick that fits you.
That's why nobody can give youthis list, because it doesn't
matter, it doesn't mean anythingto you.
But when you handpick thesefears, these sphere words, and
you handpick these love words,they are all relevant to you.
And so when I glance back andforth, the the overall overall
impression I get is I don't wantto be here, I want to be there.
(10:47):
I don't want to be here, I don'twant to be there.
Oh, I don't want to be here, Ido want to be there, right?
And so what happens is you startadmiring love, and you start
really not having an interest infear.
And so when you don't have aninterest in fear and you have an
interest in love, the more youscan this day after day, week
after week, the more you startrealizing I'm really drawn to
(11:10):
love.
I'm drawn to love words.
The love words make me feelgood, they make me feel
positive, they give me moreenergy.
And so now I have something thatis like a physical
representation of energy.
And so uh at the world of fearat the top of the list, I have
crazy.
Now, why do I have crazy there?
Because years ago, I used to saythat word a lot.
(11:33):
Like, oh, that's crazy.
Oh, you're crazy.
That's the craziest thing I everheard.
I used to say it a lot, and sopeople would sometimes call me
out why are you always sayingcrazy?
And so when they asked that, Iwas like, Do I say that?
I didn't even know I was sayingit.
I didn't even know.
That's what happens when you getdeep into fear, you don't
(11:54):
actually know what you're doingor why you're doing it.
So when you've got that list offear and you've got that list of
love, uh people don't make alist like that.
They don't make these two listsand they don't put them side by
side, ever.
So the lists have never been,fear and love have never been
together on the same page.
(12:15):
Ever.
So once you finally put fear andlove uh on a on a list and you
can read them and you can scanback and forth, uh, you're gonna
start finding that yourdecisions in life start moving
towards the the energy of love.
And so when I say uh love, I'mtalking about words like uh
positive, uh confidence, joy,kindness, right?
(12:37):
These are these are words oflove.
But what are they really?
They're not just a word.
If you look up the word and thensay synonyms, I wouldn't need
the synonyms for this, you canfind like uh four or five, six
words that are like that word.
And what are those?
Those are synonyms.
And so if we take those synonymsand surround the main word, what
(12:58):
we're doing is we're saying wehave an energy around that word.
So there's an energy aroundconfidence, there's an energy
around kindness, there's anenergy around thoughtful,
there's an energy aroundforgiveness.
That energy is the energy you'reliving in when you have the
word, when you're feeling theword, you're feeling the energy.
And now you start to think,well, what did I do before?
(13:22):
Well, I was in fear, I was inmean, I was in never, I was in
rotten, I was in scared, I wasin all these terrible words that
are so destructive.
But what was I in?
I was in the energy of thosewords, the energy of like a
ball, a three-dimensional ballof energy.
That three-dimensional ball ofenergy is what you're actually
living in.
And it does things to you.
(13:43):
You don't even comprehend whatit does to you, but it does a
lot of destructive things.
Well, likewise in the fear inthe love list, uh, there's a lot
of really positive energy there.
And that when you're steppinginto word after word after word,
you step into uh like a let'scall it a pool of energy.
That pool of energy is likegratitude, is a pool of energy.
And when you step into the poolof energy of gratitude, you like
(14:07):
soak in it, and it affects you,it makes you feel things.
And so when you go from the poolof gratitude to the cool pool of
uh friendship, let's say, nowyou're in a different energy.
But it's also really good.
And so that's how what the whenyou go down the list, you're not
just going down on an item.
It's not an item, it's a world,a world of energy.
(14:29):
And that's what the synonymsrepresent.
But the synonyms represent thecomplete ball of energy of that
word.
And so that's why I mean uh whenI talk about the the list, it's
not like a check off of the listkind of list.
It's a list that you literallylive in the energy of it.
And when you live in the energyof it, you feel it and you feel
it better and better and better.
And as you start to do that, youstart to change the way you
(14:51):
decide on things.
You start to change the way youfeel about things, you start to
change your opinion on things.
It's all because you're movingfrom fear to love.
And that's really really that'sthat's uh and I I'm explaining
something that I had I ended upuh explaining much later.
Uh, but I started to see that uhthat 27 years is really what I
(15:14):
was doing.
I was leaving fear and I wasmoving love.
And when I when I literallymoved enough, I started to feel
really good about myself.
And so that's where my marriagebegan to change its direction.
unknown (15:28):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (15:29):
Because otherwise it was too destructive.
SPEAKER_01 (15:31):
Yeah.
And then like you said, justmoving towards love created how
you react how you would reactand be with her, and I'm sure
she reciprocated more.
SPEAKER_00 (15:40):
Well, because she feels she feels what I feel,
right?
And she feels she she feels thatfeeling, and it feels safer, it
feels lighter, it feels happier,it feels uh there's no no need
to be guarded.
And so when there were moremoments like that, the
relationship was better.
So that's how a person starts tochange.
(16:02):
It takes one.
Why does it take one?
It takes one because one personbecomes the changer of the
environment, the environment oftheir mind.
And that's really what I wasdoing in the story.
I was changing the environmentof my mind.
And uh I wasn't I was doing thatby by moving into these very
positive energies so I couldstart to live in them and feel
(16:22):
them.
Uh and that's a really feelingis a really big part of the
whole emotional makeup ofpeople.
Because when I talk to people inmy course, that one of their
biggest struggles is theirbiggest struggle says, stop
being so negative.
Why do you feel so negative?
I feel so negative because I'mstill dwelling in the in the in
the world of fear.
unknown (16:40):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (16:42):
So I have a uh a story I tell, an analogy I tell.
And the analogy is uh I call itthe cruise ship.
And the reason I call it thecruise ship is because in the
analogy you become a cruiseship.
And as a cruise ship, you findyou don't know it, but you have
a rat on your ship that youdon't know is there.
And then the person you marry isanother ship, and they have a
(17:05):
rat they don't know is there.
Now these two ships have tworats, and the two rats have
radios, and they're sendingmessages back and forth called
against energy.
The against energy is so strongit's separating the ships.
And so when the ships areseparating, they don't know why
they're separating because theydon't know the rats are doing
the work.
So your ship goes to a seminar,and you find out you might have
(17:26):
a rat.
So you go through trouble tofind the rat and get it off the
ship.
Now we got two ships, but thistime we've got only one rat.
Though the rat that's on hership is still pushing, but
there's no rat on your ship topush back.
And when there's no rat on yourship to push back, that means
the separation slows down.
And that's that's a reallyimportant idea when we start to
(17:47):
think about uh what is the ratin the analogy.
The rat is the pain of yourchildhood.
And so uh I have the scale of 10to 0, and 10 is the purpose, a
place where you're raised inpurpose.
Zero is a place where you'reraised in chaos.
And so when you're you're you'reabandoned, you're abused, you're
neglected, the more of that youhave, the lower you go.
(18:10):
Right?
So up at the top, it's greatparents who are raising you and
they're showing you how whatlove looks like.
And so now you have all that inyour subconscious mind.
And life becomes pretty easy foryou, right?
Because you have goodinstructions, right?
And so uh on that scale, it goesfrom purpose down to the middle,
which is the I call the TwilightZone 765.
(18:31):
And that's where the parentsdon't raise you, you raise
yourself because you don't know,you don't know anything because
they're not teaching youanything.
And so when you grow up there,you've got to figure everything
out on your own, right?
And then from five to zero, thatbecomes chaos where abandonment,
you're abandoned, you're abused,you're neglected, and all of
that makes for a really troubledsubconscious mind.
(18:54):
And that's what causes marriagesto be so hard.
I was just talking to uh uh anattorney who has a podcast, and
the podcast is about marriageand and uh and the legal
process.
Like a, oh, heart and law.
That's what she was doing, heartand law.
And so I'm thinking, how do howdo we get heart and law to come
(19:17):
together?
Because it doesn't even seemconnected, right?
Like, but that's what happens inmarriage in marriage.
In marriage, that the marriagegoes into a divorce court and
now it's in law.
And it's it's like it becomesvery like rigid because all this
emotion from the chaos kid is inthe courtroom and in the
documents and all these terriblethings that are happening in
(19:40):
there.
And so uh she was talking aboutthe idea of reconciliation.
Uh, because what isreconciliation like?
How can anybody actually dothat?
How can they possibly reconcilewhen they've been living in fear
year after year after year?
They've not been in love,they've been in fear, and they
don't even know what fear is,they actually don't recognize it
(20:00):
as fear.
SPEAKER_01 (20:01):
Yeah, they just think it's their normal.
SPEAKER_00 (20:03):
Well, well, they actually have ways to bill it as
something is re really uh thatmakes it makes them look
attractive and smart and clever.
Uh, but they're still living infear.
Um and so when you think aboutall the ideas of of meanness and
uh and fear and uh uh unfair andupset and and angry and arrogant
(20:25):
and and bad and critical anddangerous, all these ideas are
energies that people live in.
And when they live in them, theythey seek somehow to be right.
So here you are living in fear,but now you gotta be right.
And now you gotta fight to beright.
That makes you even lessattractive, right?
Because you're fighting to beright while you're living in
(20:46):
fear.
SPEAKER_01 (20:47):
Yeah.
Even you talking like that andusing those words is like kind
of making me feel that badenergy.
Exactly, right.
I was I'm actually likethinking, okay, now what can we
do about it and like how to howto go the other way?
Like I know you work with peopleto help them see this and like
fix their relationships.
Is this a good time to talkabout more of the like how to oh
(21:08):
how to get out of that?
I know you said learn aboutyourself and go into love, but
what else do you teach or how doyou teach it?
I know you said you have a bookas well.
SPEAKER_00 (21:18):
So um, so the uh um in this in this book there's a
uh a chapter uh that's uhdealing with the the signs, uh
the 21 signs of uh of uh losingher heart.
And the reason it's early in thebook uh is if if you don't know
(21:38):
you you've lost your heart, ifyou're not aware of it, you have
to be told in a book what it is.
And so the 21 signs you'relosing your heart are signs that
are like uh pretty graphic andpretty pretty unattractive.
Because now this is you as a manlosing your wife's heart, which
(21:59):
you thought you had, and thenyou took for granted.
And the reason he does that isbecause he literally becomes his
father, he turns into his dad.
So what happens with his dad?
Well, his dad could have losthis wife's heart, and the son
wouldn't know it.
And so the son the son doesn'tsee it, and so now it becomes a
(22:22):
a a uh well, Jesus all kinds ofversions of relationships, but
the but the marriage is amarriage where they endure each
other, uh a marriage where theyuh are angry at each other,
where they yell, where theycriticize, they blame, they
pick, uh they have people haveall kinds of relationships.
(22:42):
And and remember, when they'regetting older, it becomes even
less attractive to to have thosethose things happen.
But uh people are talking abouttheir mother and father, the
that the people that raise them,right?
So what you want is a prettypositive person, a pretty
positive father and a prettypositive mother that has a sense
of beh a sense of humor, uh, andthey have the ability to talk to
(23:06):
each other.
That's a really greatrelationship.
Because if you grow up in that,you grow up in a flexible, more
open, less critical environment.
And that's really what everybodywants.
They want to live uh in a placeuh where I call this the kid
standard.
The kid standard is mom, I wantyou and dad to like each other,
(23:27):
and then I want you and dad tomake me feel important.
That's the kid standard, right?
Just like each other and treatme important or make me feel
important.
If you just do that, I'll turnout okay, you know.
SPEAKER_01 (23:38):
Yeah.
And what is the you mentionedthe book, what is the name of
it, sir?
On the audio.
SPEAKER_00 (23:43):
So this this is the book.
The book is this is not thewoman I married.
Uh so this book is for men.
This is not the woman I married.
And and why?
Because the men who call me,they say this line.
Oh, this is not the woman Imarried.
Why is it not the woman Imarried?
Because the woman you married isa chaos kid.
(24:05):
She she grew up in abandonment,abuse, neglect, some version of
that.
And she has that stored in hersubconscious.
And so when she gets to be uh30, 40 years old, that's the
time when it comes out.
That's the midlife.
That's the time when it arrives.
And so that midlife crisis is acrisis because what was in there
(24:28):
in the beginning from childhoodis now coming out.
And what does it do?
What does it do?
It affects the personality.
It makes the personality intowhat you were born into.
So whatever those values aredown there, uh like lying,
stealing, survival,justification, distortion,
manipulation, right?
(24:48):
All those things are in there.
They're all waiting for the needto come out and and just be
taken over.
Right?
So how does it happen?
Well, it happens usually frombig events like the death of a
father or death of a mother.
That's a big event that couldtrigger the the midlife crisis.
Uh or the father or the mothergets sick, uh and it becomes
(25:12):
like a a terminal situation thatthey can't can't handle.
And then they uh a big move,that's a another thing, a big
move that, you know, especiallywhen a woman leaves the place
she grew up and goes to someplace that he wants to go, and
now she knows nobody.
She knows nobody, now she's likereally unsettled and she's not
(25:33):
feeling safe.
So that's a place for a midlifecrisis to happen.
Uh another favorite place iscalled uh the home improvement.
A home improvement is a placewhere a lot of stress takes
place.
Uh in fact, a lot of people whotell me that they were uh
they're in these these midlifecrisis situations, uh, there's
(25:53):
always a home being renovated ora home being bought or a home
being rebuilt.
Something with a home, right?
Why is that?
Well, that's a huge thing onpeople's lives.
Their home isn't it's part oftheir identity.
And so when the home getsinvolved, uh and I've heard this
so many times, the guys tell me,and we just finished our house,
(26:15):
and it's a beautiful house, andit's a show place, and and now
she does this, right?
So he's he's all frustratedbecause the home is involved at
this physical building.
So a renovation could be a verystressful thing that could
ignite the midlife crisis.
Um, but while we're on thismidlife crisis idea, I think
(26:37):
it's really important to pointout uh what is a bucker, a
B-U-C-K-E-R, a bucker.
A bucker like this comes fromthe bucking bronco idea.
Uh the bucking bronco throws offthe rider.
And so, what is a bucker?
A bucker is throwing off theparents' messages, trying to
throw them off.
(26:58):
And so they what happens is abucker creates three steps.
And the three steps they and bythe way, they're doing this like
four or five, six times a day.
They're going through thesethree steps.
Step number one is stop.
I'm not doing that.
Now, what happened there?
Well, the subconscious came upwith an idea.
An idea that dad would come upwith, or a damn mom would come
(27:19):
up with, right?
And that they said, stop, I'mnot doing it.
So that's the first resistance.
The second one is I'm doing thisinstead.
I'm gonna do this instead.
So now they borrow a value fromprobably the person they
married.
A value they don't have.
They're borrowing it, right?
So they they borrow borrow uh athing called consistency, or
(27:39):
they borrow kindness, or theyborrow listening, or they borrow
some really good trait.
And so they borrow it and theythen they the third step is they
act out the trait.
So they didn't just borrow it,they borrow the idea.
They act it out as if they hadit.
Okay, so now we're talking aboutwho?
We're talking about the peoplein the midlife crisis.
(28:00):
Who are those people?
They're they're lawyers, they'redoctors, they're scientists,
they're entertainers, they'rethey're athletes, they're
they're all these people thathave extremely successful lives.
Uh what are they doing though?
In their private life, they'reliving like buckers.
And they're fighting this one,two, three, one, two, three over
(28:20):
and over again.
Well, you can see what they'redoing.
They're fighting theirsubconscious mind.
Because the subconscious mind iscoming up with the ideas and
they say, Stop, I'm not doingthat.
Then they deny it and they say,I'm doing this instead, and then
they act it out.
Well, those three steps areexhausting.
They're exhausting.
It's very hard to be a bucker,it's very hard to be a person
who's having to go through thethree-step process.
(28:42):
The other thing I want to pointout is that every single person
that I talk to, by the way,they're called stayers.
The people I talk to are calledstayers, and they talk about
levers.
That's the person they marry.
They leave the marriage.
So when they talk about the uhlevers, they they they say, uh,
he just snapped.
He just snapped.
He was so wonderful and he justsnapped, and that's how it
(29:05):
sounds.
He was so wonderful.
Why?
Because he's borrowing valuesover and over again.
Values he doesn't own.
What what what's he doing?
He's literally pacing the valueon top of this subconscious mess
of chaos.
And so, what are the buckers?
Their buckers are chaos kids wholiterally fight in their
(29:27):
subconscious mind.
It's a hard, hard life to live.
And uh uh buckers uh as a as agroup uh are are not able to
keep up their lives becausethey're fighting that that mind.
And because they're fightingthat mind, they can't keep up
the life, they can't staymarried, they can't keep
(29:48):
consistently following throughbecause they're under that
pressure, and then when thefinal final thing comes a bit
death or a move or whatever thebig trigger is, uh they're gonna
snap.
And when they snap a scary thinghappens.
Uh this person becomes uh andand I see this in in as I I
teach about midlife crisis uhwhat the people who are staying
(30:12):
tell me about these people whoare leaving these buckers is
that their eyes become I don'twant to say black they don't
become black they become darkertheir eyes become somehow to the
person who knows them become notlike their eyes like in and they
(30:32):
can't even describe it theycan't picture it they say like
the eye becomes like a diamond.
No the eyes it's not like thatright it's just that the person
who who loved them seessomething that they never saw in
their face before.
But it's in the eyes.
And what the eyes when the eyesgo dark they can see that
(30:52):
there's like some kind ofcreature that's taking them
over.
And they they talk about that.
They talk about the monsterthat's taking them over.
But that that's the life ofbuckers and chaos kids.
But but all that is to say uh inthe in the environment of a of a
of a a person who's a bucker achaos kid who collapses into a
(31:14):
midlife crisis what does astayer do?
A stayer can decide I can changemy mind.
I can change what I believe Ican change what I think I can
change what I imagine.
And what you believe what youthink and what you imagine
that's energy.
And as you change energyeverything starts to change.
(31:35):
And so that's something that youcan't actually tell people that
because they you know they mighthear something like this from me
and think boy I would like tochange that about what I think
what I imagine or what Ibelieve.
But it is not easy.
It's not easy because you haveto have a foundation under you
to really change what you thinkwhat you imagine what you
(31:57):
believe and that becomes veryvery difficult if you don't have
training.
So that's what what I'm doingevery day I'm I'm training
people and how to change whatthey're what they're doing in
their mind.
Change their mind change theworld.
SPEAKER_01 (32:11):
Yeah and how can people reach you or what how can
they find you to work with youor learn about you and what
you're meant to do.
SPEAKER_00 (32:18):
So so the the the program is our end you can save
thismarriage dot com uh and thenyou could also go to
larrybilana.com or there's a lotof videos there of ideas that I
talk about uh and those are alluh things that uh you know you
get you get enough of this uhidea you know could people hear
(32:38):
from me they hear chaos kids uhand they never heard of a chaos
kid before they don't know whatit is and so if you want to get
familiar with chaos kids you cango to Larryballada.com and start
to watch videos and startlearning about chaos kids and
and marriage and and whathappens with intimacy and how it
disappears because the chaoscomes for them and then it's
(33:00):
kind of it's it's not it's nottoo late.
And so we have pinballs and wehave environment changers.
And pinballs are people whoreact to everything and react
emotionally all the time and ina bad way.
Environment changers are busychanging the environment of
their mind and because theychange the environment of their
(33:20):
mind they're not pinballs.
And so they they have a chanceto to literally change anything
but pinballs can't changeanything.
Pinballs are fixed in the lifeof reaction.
Environment changers can changethe environment of their minds
and that's going to change a lotof things for them.
SPEAKER_01 (33:37):
Yeah and I know that they talk about the fixed and
growth mindset it sounds likethe pinballers are fixed mindset
people.
SPEAKER_00 (33:46):
Well well yeah because they they've live
they're living in fear and inliving in fear they think fear
is giving them safety andbecause they think fear is
giving them safety and they'venever heard anything else like
fear is making me feel safe yeahit does but it doesn't give you
safety it literally gives you as uh a a temporary feeling of
safety which then comes to be areal punishing effect later on
(34:10):
and it's so it's got like a alittle reward and then a really
big long side effect that that'sthe the whole problem of fear.
Fear does that to people yeahand I was gonna say um how would
you kind of summarize or wrapthis up just uh our closing
thoughts so I I I was having aan argument with my daughter
(34:32):
because uh she she I I wassaying childhood makes marriage
I was saying childhood makesmarriage and childhood makes
marriage what she and she'ssaying why would you say that
nobody understands that nobodyunderstands and you've got to
have a long explanation aboutwhy childhood makes marriage and
so what I'm trying to say isthat childhood once you marry
(34:54):
you marry a family and when youmarry that family you're
marrying that childhood andyou're marrying all the
characters in the family and soif there's alcohol if there's
drugs if there's immorality ifthere's all kinds of distortions
of all kinds you're gonna gethave that in your life and then
when you have kids with yourchaos kid you're gonna have that
(35:14):
in your kids' life and so nowyou're gonna be if you if you've
got a really good morality andyou're the person you marry does
not have a really good moralityyou're literally in two separate
worlds and now you can't youhave no way to to to meld them
until you get to that love sideleave fear and go to love.
The reason I talk about fear andlove so much is because that's
(35:36):
the great dividing line whichdivides people from fear people
and love people.
And love people are you knowthere's not a lot of them it's
really hard to find people whoactually live uh on the on the
energy of love they just theyjust like it's a thing they they
just adopt it they adopt it theytake it on and it feels very
(35:57):
comfortable for them and theywouldn't consider anything else
but when you're living in loveyou're not judging you're not
criticizing you're not doingyou're not you're not doing all
the things that are fearrequires and fear requires a lot
yeah a lot of bad stuff.
Yeah no I mean so childhoodmakes marriage is what what I'm
trying to say.
SPEAKER_01 (36:15):
Yeah and I like the idea um obviously you said it
works going towards love I canjust see where if you look at a
list of both sides and youremind yourself of the love side
when you're making decisions orthings and when you you like you
said when writing it down is themore important part.
I can see having a list andwhenever you're reacting look at
the list and be like yes let medo the right thing or the
(36:36):
positive thing or the lovething.
SPEAKER_00 (36:38):
Because you're you're gonna end up doing
eventually what you admire.
And when you realize you admirelove and you don't admire fear
it's like makes everythingclearer in life and so
everything now becomes like uhwhere's the love in this where's
the fear in this uh oh yeahthere's the fear in this I don't
want that I want love and so nowthat now I'm I'm literally using
(37:02):
words to try to explain this uhbut it's something that happens
instantly when you start totrain yourself to leave fear and
move to love.
Yeah and it becomes somethingthat becomes easier to do.
For sure.
Because it's just a feeling youfeel it.
For sure.
SPEAKER_01 (37:16):
Yeah I've I've definitely heard things like
this and I but maybe likeslightly different way so I I
definitely like the way you putit and I'm going to leave it
there unless you have one morething to like like a closing
comment kind of thing um theother thing is uh everybody's
got a spirituality in their lifeuh you've got uh Jewish a Jewish
(37:43):
Buddhist uh a Buddhist ChristianCatholic uh like something you
have something in your life somesome foundation some set of
ideas that you got in thebeginning and that's your
foundation and uh and I foundthat people who don't have a
spiritual foundation don't havethe ability to hold on to these
(38:05):
ideas and apply them but thepeople who have a spiritual
foundation somehow have they'vegot the ability to assemble
everything into a system thatthey can start to live in.
SPEAKER_00 (38:17):
But if you don't have that spiritual foundation
it doesn't hold together.
And that becomes very difficultwhen people have no spiritual
foundation.
So I've had faithful say to meum no I was raised uh with no
really no religion at all and uhmy mother and father they they
just they just didn't believe inanything right so that's that's
(38:41):
having a child with no spiritualfoundation and so if you want to
get a low a life of improvementyou got to get really determined
to get a life of improvementwhen you have that background.
But then somebody who says Igrew up in uh listening to uh
sermons uh Christian sermons Igrew up listening to Catholic
(39:02):
sermons I grew up listening toright well that's the fountain
spiritual foundation they haveand it didn't matter that they
don't remember one single thingthat doesn't matter what matters
is that everything they heardgot in and it all somehow stayed
and because that stayed that'syour spiritual foundation and
we've got it it's gonna help youa lot to learn these ideas about
(39:24):
love.
SPEAKER_01 (39:25):
Yeah I can definitely see that yeah all
right well thank you very muchfor all of these concepts and
ideas to save a lovelessmarriage and turn everything
around and your own life youknow being in love and having a
spiritual foundation I candefinitely see the benefits
though thank you very much forbeing all right and if you love
(39:48):
this episode be sure to tellyour friends about it and rate
it as well all right thankseveryone
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