256 - Something Personal - Where I've Been and Where We're Going
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Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Relationship Alive. I'm your host, Neil Satin, and it's been a while. It's been a long time, in fact, almost two and a half years. Now, back two and a half years ago, when I knew that I needed a break, I just thought I was going to be gone for like a month or two. And I had taken short breaks, and I was like, I'm going to be gone for a month or two.

before. So I really didn't intend to take quite the break that I did. And yet, the deeper I got into my time off, the more I realized that I had a lot of thinking to do. I had been doing the podcast for years at this point. And

over 250 episodes, lots of interviews, lots of books read, lots of experience, both in my own life and with hundreds of clients that I was coaching. And it was time to take a step back to think about what I was doing. Why was I even doing the Relationship Alive podcast anymore? And on top of that, if I were going to keep doing it,

What was I going to do to make it special or keep it special? Not that it wasn't special before, but I don't know about you, but for me, like do the same thing long enough and it starts to feel a little routine, a little boring. And I didn't want this work to become routine or boring. So I took time off, a lot of time off.

And first, I want to just say, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I took that long period of time off without talking to you first, or at least talking to you once it became clear what was going to happen, which was that it was going to be an extended period away to reflect on what I was doing.

Looking back on it, I wish I had published an episode just to be like, hey, this is what's going on with me. I need a lot of time to regroup, think, grieve, process, like all that stuff. There was a lot going on in the world, right? And I don't know. I just think my own standard would have been to talk directly to you and let you know what was going on. And so I feel a little...

sheepish for not having modeled really the best approach to communicating with you that I could have.

I really appreciated hearing from the people who wrote to me. So if that was you, thank you so much for writing and just making sure everything was cool. And, you know, there was a lot going on, but overall, the trajectory has been up. Things have been good. I just did have a lot of internal work to do. And I want to tell you about some of that today. And I will be sharing more with you as...

As the podcast continues because it is continuing that's part of why I'm here is to let you know Hey, we're back and not only are we back? We have some great interviews and we have some great new things that we're gonna try and see what works because I want this to be an enriching fun experience for you too and

I kind of think it'll be cool to experiment together a little bit and see what feels right. You'll find out more about what I'm talking about soon enough. But for the time being, I just want to let you know, hey, I'm back. And I'm sorry for not having been more clear about what was happening. Thank you for sticking with me.

If you donate to the podcast and kept your donations going during that time, thank you so much. That was so helpful for keeping the lights on here at Relationship Alive headquarters while I was going through that deep dive.

And I think it's important for all of us, if you can, to take some time off. I was still coaching people and I was working on my writing. So I had things happening that were bringing in income, just to be clear. And, you know, it's been edgy for me to not be producing episodes during this whole time. So I'm noticing that I feel...

Relieved to be back here too and I have some great stuff to share with you I've at this point I have about I don't know 12 or 14 episodes Kind of in the bank that I'm that are interviews that I'm really excited to share with you some return visits from people and And some new guests that I think you'll be really excited about and

Yeah, I want to take a minute to just share with you at least one piece of what I uncovered during my time away, because it actually has a big impact on what we're doing here together. It actually goes way back. It goes way back to when I was young, when I was super young. This will all make sense in a minute.

When I was young, everything felt great in my family. Like I had a pretty good young childhood. And when I say young, I'm talking like zero to five, let's say. And it's not that it got bad after that. It did sort of in some ways. But my early childhood set the stage for

life feeling really good. And on some level, I probably have that period of my life to thank for the way that I'm pretty solidly rooted in feeling good about life, feeling pretty optimistic. Even when things are going pretty bad, I usually am pretty good at finding something positive to focus on. So that feels like a strength of mine.

I think I shared in an episode long ago that I realized that at times that defaulting to optimism, that's not always a strength. Sometimes that gets in the way of...

facing something challenging, something that is actually just pretty shitty. And in those moments, it doesn't always help to be optimistic in the moment. But generally, I'm rooted in a place that feels pretty good about life and that trusts life. And I try to bring that into the show. And I try to bring that into the coaching work that I do with people. Because in general, I have faith that

If we stick with who we are and we get more and more clear on our strengths and our gifts and what we have to offer, while at the same time trying to uncover our blind spots, trying to improve, trying to grow, that generally life has the chance anyway of being pretty good. Yeah, that's how I feel a lot of the time. And

Then later, let's just say, you know, around when I turned well in my teenage years, so like 11 to 13, I guess that's more my tween age years.

Things started to get a little rockier in my family and I couldn't put my finger on what it was, but there was a lot of conflict going on. And my struggles to be more of an independent person, you know, as I grew into my teenage years and that, that time in our lives is a lot about kind of staking out who you are in life and, and trying things out and often failing the ideal person.

parental structure in a moment like that, I think, is to experience a situation where your independence is blessed, is fostered, and where when you inevitably screw up, you're met with love.

And that requires parents who are super stable emotionally, who are aware of the stress in their lives and handling it on their own instead of just, you know, leaking it out onto everyone else. Yeah, it's not absolutely required, but certainly helpful if there's like kind of a fabric of stability that's in your life.

But there was a lot of conflicts going on in my family. And when I would try to assert my individuality, suddenly my parents who had always said, oh, you're, you know, you're capable of great things in your life. I was lucky in that way.

But suddenly, when I was trying to do those great things, I was met with a lot of resistance. They didn't like my decisions. Even if I chose to wear my good shoes on a rainy day, I remember this huge fight I got in with my mother, like a screaming match because I was wearing my shoes instead of, I don't know, what I was supposed to wear, galoshes or something? I was in eighth grade. There was no way I was going to school in rubber boots.

Would probably been the smart thing to do, but I wasn't going to do that. No, not at, not at 13. I'd left my rubber boots back in the past. Anyhow,

I'm going to talk more about this in future episodes, but around the time when I was 14, I found out I was actually away from home and I called back to see how everyone was doing. I was on a trip with friends and it turned out that my mother had been admitted to the hospital because she was suicidal.

And yeah, trigger warning. Um, we're going to be talking about some, some big stuff on, on this show. And, you know, that's a, that kind of thing doesn't just happen out of nowhere. It looking back on it, it makes sense why things were getting more and more challenging because this stuff had been going on with my mother, um, you know, all, all along as it turns out, um,

I do want to let you know that my mother is still alive. So, but she went through some pretty dark times that we're going to end up talking about here.

Because it's important. I think there are a lot of us, whether we have some sort of mental illness that we're dealing with, or if it's not us who's touched by it, then so often we are touched by it by other people in our lives. I think, you know, if we were all sitting in a room and I had a show of hands of how many people know someone who's depressed or depressed,

If you either know someone who's depressed or you yourself are depressed, raise your hand. I think almost everyone would probably raise their hand. But back then, this was the mid to late 80s, there was a lot less awareness of these sorts of issues. And so I had no idea what was going on. And then it just sort of happened all of a sudden.

And my life went into, it turned into chaos, really, is what it felt like. I want to share more about that with you as we go. But here's why it's important now. As I sat with all the work that I had done here on the podcast, and as I sat with how it felt to

to have a relationship fail, very public relationship fail, especially when I'm supposed to be here with some sort of expertise about how to make these things work. And I'm having conversations with the world's experts on how to make relationships work. And then my very own relationship failed. I really had to sit with that and what it felt like and how I could sit here with you and be in integrity.

Because that's super important to me, to be here and to be authentic with you, with what's real. One thing, just to be perfectly clear, that has become evident to me with all the conversations that I've had is that no one who's in relationship has a perfect relationship. There are no relationships that are free of tension or stress or conflict.

What separates the amazing relationships from the less than amazing relationships is the degree to which we're resilient in the face of reality, right? It's the degree to which you can be imperfect, where you can be stressed out or be angry or make mistakes and recover from that.

Sometimes that's really hard, right? Because the mistakes that we make, the traumas that we cause each other, sometimes those represent points of no return, no matter how hard you try. Other times, and probably the majority of the time, those things, if you have the skills, can be overcome, can make you stronger in your relationship.

But you've got to have the skills. And there are some core elements that your relationship probably needs to have. And fortunately, during this time that I've been away, I've been thinking a lot about that. And so I look forward in the episodes to come. I look forward to sharing more with you about what's really required. And if certain things are missing,

Like that might mean that you're doomed. Like what are those things, right? That's really helpful to know because we can spend a lot of energy struggling and struggling in a relationship that might at its core be destined to fail. In truth, I want to get away from that whole paradigm of success and failure in relationship. One thing that I realized is that

over the course of the early, you know, 250 something episodes of Relationship Alive, I was privileging the idea that the kind of relationship we're looking for is one where you stay together. And I mean, if we're being honest, staying together, if things are going well, that's pretty great. That's pretty great.

And splitting up can cause a lot of pain and anguish and trauma and sadness, and it can be really hard to recover from, but definitely shouldn't be avoided at all costs. So I think this question of like whether or not a relationship succeeds or fails is

really becomes more about like, what are you learning? How are you growing? And are you able to navigate whatever is happening successfully? And to me, successfully means to do it with sort of the least amount of damage, the most amount of kindness that you can muster up in a given moment. Yeah. And even then we might fail. We might fail. Fail meaning fail.

we might cause some pain, we might experience some pain. And pain's hard, pain sucks. We don't want that, of course, but sometimes experiencing the pain is actually ultimately gonna lead you to a better place. I call that success. I had to go through a lot of pain when my first marriage ended. And in fact, that pain was what led me

to starting the podcast. That pain plus getting back to what I was telling you before. So my mother was hospitalized with mental illness and things started to fall apart in my family. And oh, by the way, did I mention that my father, who's now retired, he was a clinical psychologist. So I had a dad who's a psychologist, a mom who's falling apart,

Then my dad was falling apart because it's a lot. There was a lot going on. And then their marriage fell apart. And I was an idealistic teenager. So in my mind, you know, this was a huge betrayal from both of them. Like, I didn't understand why my mother would want to not be here anymore. That seemed like a huge betrayal to me and my sister and everyone around us. Like, we needed her. We needed a mom.

And when my dad ultimately decided to ask for a divorce from my mother, that crushed me. Looking back on it, I understand it. I really understand it. But at the time, I was like, you're betraying us. You're betraying the family that I had relied on as like a source of stability. And at that point in time, I felt like all I really had was myself.

And I started constructing family, right? I pulled in friends. Some of those friends I'm still tight with today because we became family for each other. I found substitute parents in mentors, teachers, both in high school and college and beyond who were there to step in when my parents couldn't or wouldn't for whatever reason. And so this podcast started

was actually born out of pain. It was born out of the pain of my first marriage ending, the pain of my experience of having my family fall apart, and the memory of how perfect things once were for me in my life. And sure, like I have memories like that I can picture in my mind, but it was really more like a visceral sense of everything being okay.

Everything is perfect. I just wanted on some level to get back to that feeling. And I figured that with the right amount of knowledge, with the right amount of skills, that maybe I had a chance to not only do that for myself, but to help others, to help you do that too. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think, I think, you know, we did that, right? Like there's a lot of good stuff on those 255 episodes that came before this one, lots of good stuff. And I created a communication course, lots of good stuff. My former partner and I, we created a relationship course, lots of good stuff.

These things are really important. And I've spent a lot of time kind of extracting what was truly good about those things. And I'm looking forward in future episodes and future courses in really distilling that for you in a way that my hope is going to be really useful for you and the people in your lives as well. Because as a side note, like the world where it stands today, April 25th,

There's a lot of challenge, a lot of challenges going on here, a lot of polarization, a lot of anger, a lot of disconnection. And I really wanna renew this mission of coming back full force

to talk about what's really required to get along, not just with your beloved spouse or partner that you have if you're not married but you're in a relationship or partners if you're in a polyamorous relationship, but also how we get along with ourselves, how we handle our inner conflicts and resolve those, super important.

and also how you can bring that into your relationships with your coworkers, with your boss, with your employees, with your family, with the people that you just meet randomly, your kids, your kids' teachers,

your exes, like how do you navigate that in the ways that are most likely to lead to better outcomes, to more kindness, more compassion, more understanding, and at least a little less pain?

I don't think pain is avoidable. I don't. But we can maybe minimize it so that it doesn't, it's not like steering us throughout our days, either steering us because we're feeling brutalized and just getting through, or we're like trying to avoid pain as much as possible. And so we're avoiding hard decisions or hard conversations. Yeah, let's not do that. Let's find ways to really lean in

in ways that feel solid, right? Like where you feel solid and where the people that you're interacting with get that even if what you're talking about is something challenging or painful, that they're actually connecting with the real you. That's super important. So without thinking about it too much though, and just kind of launching into the journey of the podcast, I think

that at least part of me was fueled by this idea that we could get back to the garden, right? Back to that state of blissful, oh, everything's perfect. And in my time away, I've realized that that's not possible.

So to the extent that that desire to have things be perfect again, that if only you had the right skills, the right information, the right everything, that you would just feel like blissed out because life is so good. Yeah, that was bullshit. And to the extent that that impacted our journey together, I'm sorry about that too. I mean, if I had known, I wouldn't have done it, but I didn't know. So I did it.

So the point is not to get to that place of perfection at all. And the point isn't to prevent you from having to end a shitty relationship. If there's a chance that the relationship that you're in can get to a place where it feels vibrant and alive...

Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. But if after getting the skills, after being supported in asking for more and learning how to really deal with what is, what is real, what's real inside you, what's real with the person or persons that you're with and like,

Working in that reality, if you find out that it's not actually right for you, that the balance of pain to joy, like there's way too much pain and not quite enough joy.

It's kind of funny because I'm like if you're watching me on YouTube like joy like the pain I'm making these scales with my hand and when the pain weighs you down the joy goes up But joy is kind of this uplifting experience. So that's kind of kind of funny It's like if you have a lot of joy Anyway, it's beside the point. The point is if you're in a situation where it just ain't working like

Let's talk for real about how to move beyond that.

and let's change the paradigm so that it is truly okay. Obviously, we as a society have gotten more and more comfortable with splitting up, breaking up, divorcing. It's happening all the time, right? I don't know that we've gotten that much better at doing it in ways that don't cause a lot of trauma. And so I think it's natural to want to avoid it at all costs. And

As I was mentioning, I think the subtext of the questions that I've asked a lot in the past on this show is like, let's avoid that at all costs. But the reality is that avoiding it at all costs is probably not the healthiest choice for you or for our partners to make. Maybe it's better to say, let's avoid it unless it's required.

And then the question becomes like, how do we know if it's required or not? Yeah, I look back on the family, my family of origin and who my parents are now as people. And I can't imagine them being together, even though I do for sure have like a young part of me that misses what that felt like to be in a family.

But that was ancient history now. I turned 50 just a couple months ago. And yeah, it was a cause for a lot of reflection along with the time that I had off. It was all leading up to being 50. Anyway, looking back on it, yeah, I realized that that was probably what needed to happen. It was probably what needed to happen for my mother to find her way to wellness. And it took a while. Yeah.

But I think she got there. And it was probably what my father needed to maintain his sanity in a really challenging situation. Recently, I was having a conversation with my dad. And I think I've talked about on the show that he and I aren't as close as I would like to be, at least from my perspective.

But I do love him and care about him. And we were talking and he just had a birthday as well. And he offered for the first time that if there was anything I wanted to talk to him about, any questions that I had, that he was open to having that conversation. Those conversations with him. Well, that was huge to hear. I haven't taken him up on that offer yet because I've really been

I guess to go with the theme here I've been sitting with, like, well, what does that mean? What do I want to talk to him about? He had a heart attack last year, so I better have those conversations soon because, you know, who knows how long any of us are going to be around. That's something we'll talk more about on a future episode, too. But needless to say, turning 50 has...

brought with it its share of existential questioning. Why am I here? What am I meant to do in this life? And what would I really regret not doing? So what I'm planning for Relationship Alive is going to include a bit more of the alive. It's going to include a bit more of the things I just would love to do and would love to share with you that are about

the joy of being alive, how to cherish just how utterly amazing and fascinating life is. There's going to be some of that in the show coming up. And also, I think I've shared, yeah, I've shared on the show that I write music and I play music. It's something I've done my whole life. And one of the things I realized is that I would really regret

not giving time and energy to taking the songs that I write and bringing them to the world. So I have a commitment to do that now. In fact, I'm like seven or eight songs into an album right now, which I'll be sharing with you at some point. How did I get off on this tangent? Oh, right. Because

I think my father, he needed, and I intend to ask him to get more clarity on what was motivating him at that time. But my guess is that he just needed that. Like he needed some space so that he could steady the ship because the ship was like being tossed and turned. The tiny ship was tossed. It was, we were tossed all over the map. And, uh,

Yeah. So looking back on it, I get it. He had to do that. And looking back for myself, like, just so you know, I'm in, I'm in a great, amazing partnership now. And I look forward to sharing more with you about that. But I remember when my first marriage was looking like it might not work. I remember holding on so tight because tightly because I,

I didn't want to experience the kind of pain that I had experienced when my family had fallen apart growing up. And I didn't want my kids to experience that pain either. And I was holding on so tight and trying everything. And I'm going to have so many stories to share with you on the podcast. I hope you're looking forward to it as much as I am.

Because I think there's a lot to learn from these failures, right? From the ways these things didn't work out. I tried and tried. And then in that marriage, after so much agony, so much trying, when we finally had the conversation about, you know, hey, maybe we should think about separating. It was like this miraculously stress-free, easeful, amazing conversation. Yeah.

Now, granted, things haven't always been in the time since. Things haven't been completely peachy in my relationship with my ex, my first ex. And the process of divorcing was painful. But when I look at where I am now in life, where I feel like

I've got the skills and yeah, the skills mostly that I learned through this podcast and through a lot of practice and also the benefit of right choice. And that's something that we are definitely going to talk more about on the show. Right choice, right partnership, because on some level we are who we are and we're

You know, we choose who we choose and those people that we choose, they are who they are too. And sometimes who they are and who we are, it just at its core can't quite work. It's really helpful to figure out as best as you can how to know that, how to know if you're dealing with an unsolvable problem just in terms of like who you are and who the other person is.

So we're definitely going to cover that here on the show. But without the capacity, the resilience, and the skills that I've developed from having gone through the pain and where that led to the podcast, and then the challenges that I was having in my relationship that became a marriage that became my second divorce over the course of the podcast, again, learned so much.

So that now things actually do feel pretty good. But it's not a return to paradise. It's not. Because paradise, for one thing, was never real anyway. What I felt when I was three years old, that was just a feeling that had nothing to do with what was really going on.

And so being driven by trying to replicate that feeling, that's a recipe for just being dissatisfied, I think. Yeah, it's not a return to paradise, but things are pretty great. That doesn't mean they're always great. You know, sometimes we have to have hard conversations. Sometimes things are challenging. Sometimes things feel amazing. Other times things are hard because that's what life is really like.

That's what relationships are really like. And I really want me and my partner, Margo, I want us to last forever. Feels like we could. And I know that Margo is committed to that vision too. And we're not both just committed to the vision. We're also committed to...

leaning in to the skills that are required, either that we already have or that we still need to develop in order for that to happen. Because when you want to be together forever, there's a lot at stake and you have to grow. You have to be willing to shift and change and listen to each other, even as much as you have to be willing to accept each other as you are in the moment. So all of that comes together

And it feels pretty great, but I'm learning a lot in the process because it's not just about the skills and the commitment and the vision. It's also about who we are and what each of us innately brings to the situation.

And fortunately, this is a situation where what we innately bring feels at its core pretty good. And there's a huge difference between experiencing a situation that at its core works versus experiencing a situation that at its core doesn't.

is full of challenges and struggles. The beauty of having been in a situation that at its core didn't quite work is that a lot of really good conversations and know-how, particularly here on Relationship Alive, they happened because of that, because of the struggles. So I'm grateful and I'm glad that it ended.

so that I could be in this better place. And so that from this better place, we could keep the conversation going. We can keep the conversation going. I have a lot to share with you that I'm really excited about. And my intention is to do it from this place of being as real as possible. And I'll just be honest with you, it's not always going to look pretty.

But that's reality, right? We can't always look our best, you know? We can't always be perfect. Sometimes we're just human. I mean, all the time, we're just human.

As I've said before on the show, I do believe that we are doing our best at any given moment. And I think it's important to be able to develop our capacity to accept that because by far some of the most potent paralyzing forces that we ever have to deal with, our guilt, our shame, yeah, those things can really grip you and keep you stuck.

I think that was, for me, part of, I found myself there in sort of the middle of this sabbatical, you know, where I was like, wow, I feel really stuck. And I had uncovered a lot of stuff and then I really needed to face it and deal with it. Thank you so much for your patience with me. I really appreciate your still being here. And I'm really looking forward to continuing this journey together.

and sharing more of myself with you, finding out more about you and the things that are most important to you and trying to solve those problems, those challenges and celebrate the joys here on Relationship Alive together. I'm really looking forward to that and this wouldn't be possible without you. So thank you for being here and joining me

and embracing a willingness to not be perfect, but in not being perfect, being perfect. I don't know, there must be a word, right? That means something like perfect in your imperfectness, 'cause I think that's what I'm after. It's just appreciating what is, like appreciating the strengths that you have

and also appreciating the ways that you are fallible and meeting those moments with a certain degree of humility, with grace, self-compassion. And when others do that, having compassion for them as well.

Those are some of the core skills that I was thinking about earlier and that we're going to be talking about more on the show here. Because it really does come down to some simple things that are about showing up in the world authentically, being inspired, inspiring other people, and being willing to receive what the world offers you

While at the same time, just because you're receiving it, whether it's from the world at large or from your partner or whatever, like you receive it, but you can still, you still have control over how you receive it, right? You have control over the ways that you make boundaries to keep yourself safe while at the same time still staying connected to other people. That's like the biggest magic trick in the world, right? Like how do I stay okay

with whatever's happening? How do I show up for you with whatever is happening? And how do we do that dance and make choices that ultimately favor the greater good for both of us? It may be with us together, maybe with us going our separate ways,

But can we do that from a place of acceptance and grace and appreciation and just cherishing the richness that life has to offer? So that's the journey that I'm looking forward to with you. Thank you for being back here with me on Relationship Alive.

If you're listening to me, then you should know that I'm actually starting to do video for YouTube, for my YouTube channel. So you can watch me on YouTube if you're not already watching me. And yeah, let's do this. And I'm really looking forward to this journey together. Okay, more soon. And until then, take care, stay connected, and I'll see you soon. ♪

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