How To Find True Love (And Make It Last) | Mark Groves | Align Podcast #539
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Mark Rose, thank you for being here, man. I appreciate you making time. So excited. What can a man do to become more attractive to the right woman? And what does that question mean to the right woman? And how do we become more attractive for her? We're starting off hot and I like it.

yeah i don't do inch i don't do intros in the podcast a little more and just go right into the conversation i love it i love it i think it's interesting when i would have thought like what was the right woman or who was the right woman when i was

18, 20, 22. I didn't really have a lot of clarity on what that list looked like. I don't know if you're similar to me, but I didn't have class in school that said like, hey, you should really figure out what your values are and then you should live a life aligned with those values and that will bring you peace. And it will be the hardest thing you've ever done to experience the forces of relationship and society and expectations.

as a male, that could be true of women too, but I think especially for men being that's my framework, it'll be the hardest thing to stay aligned with those when you're celebrated for promiscuity, status, for whatever that might be. Musculature strength, not that any of those things aren't, you know, doesn't have value sometimes like in terms of musculature.

But even, and so knowing that was never taught to me, my, what I looked for in a woman tended to come more from people pleasing or like, can I save them? Can I take care of them? How do I be valuable? And I think because of the framing of what we talk about with men, you know, I used to think it was getting better, but I actually think it's getting worse.

is this concept of toxic masculinity. So I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and a lot of the conversation about men, of course, were on, at that point, the back end of one wave of feminism was that men are rapists and murderers and etc. And so I think when there's not a mature adult who's able to separate

what unintegrated trauma is or a lack of integration versus toxicity being a gender, you know, being what men are. I was really afraid of boundaries because I thought boundaries were being controlling. And so to the right quote unquote woman, which I think really, I heard someone say this the other day, Paul Czach. He was saying that if you knew what a soulmate was, you wouldn't want one.

And I really liked that. It was so good because I thought my wife is that exact. She's so exceptional at calling me forward into integrity and shining light on the things I don't see. So I think for the right person, the right woman, you will have to face parts of yourself that have been buried, that you are afraid to confront.

and all the ways that you run from yourself. And so I think what makes us attractive to that is to use your language is alignment, is to be aligned with one's integrity, one's values. And boundaries are sexy AF, man. Like when someone is willing to protect and stand in what they desire from life and who they are, that is a swagger that walks into a room

That if you add to that, which I don't think they're different, being an integrity with one's nourishment and one's movement practices and one's breath, I don't think there's anything more attractive. Would that go the same for a woman to a man? From a boundaries perspective, yeah, for sure.

Um, yeah, because when someone is unwilling to waver from deep core values, we can trust them. If someone is willing to say no to us, then we can trust them. Um, and so there is something that relaxes in the body when we know that someone's willing to tell us the truth, despite how it might impact our feelings. And that's, you know, really why the premise of

all of my work is that love is the truth. It's honoring the truth. And if you're willing to talk about the things that most couples don't talk about, if you're willing to bring forward the stuff that lives in the ether of connection, uh, what you can create together is using all of the material available to you. And I mean, there's, there's nothing that's not possible from that perspective. You recently went through, I don't know how recent it was, but you went through a, um,

experience ceremony whatever this term would be with MDMA and psilocybin I believe and you went into some parts work within that and you wrote I believe it was maybe a blog or an email I listened to your podcast and you you I believe you read the whole thing there was something that you wrote I actually tried to dictate what you said I'm going to say what you said this is about zero fucks mark

aspect of yourself and something that you said actually made me emotional. I didn't actually cry because I was at the gym, but I could have cried. It like struck something within me. And it says when you access, well, maybe you can clean this up. When you access him, he was, when you access him, he was angry that you stifled his expression, silenced him. And he said, if you would have, if you would have listened to me sooner and I,

in every moment of our life, it would have saved us both a lot of pain. I'm paraphrasing this. Give me a microphone and a seat at the table or I'll make you have to. If you don't, I will speak. It will not come out with grace. I think that there was something about, I didn't say exactly what you said. I was like literally talking it into my phone. But there's something about those inner subconscious aspects of ourselves that we do our damnedest to suppress

Why do we suppress those parts and what happens if we do suppress those parts and how do we begin giving them a voice in a safe way? Yeah, the suppression of the parts because it's not safe to be them, you know, and where I alluded to earlier that I thought boundaries were potentially being controlling, you know, the aspect of zero fucks mark, which is what I labeled this version of me. That's just like, I don't give a fuck. I don't care if this, what I'm about to say is going to burn things down.

And it was because I only let myself get there. There was another part that I called too many fucks, Mark, just cares too much about everyone's feelings. That part has been dominant the majority of my life. And that's really from my childhood and my mom being really overwhelmed when I was young. And so...

this is what we do, we can do, is I really enmeshed with her feelings. So if my mom's in chaos or overwhelmed, then our connection is not safe. So I'm going to do everything I can to soothe that. And then that becomes the framework of how we relate. I want to take care of her feelings. I want to make sure he's okay. And so we have this other aspect of us, of course, who's like,

When you get cheated on, when you get lied to, when, of course, the outcomes of your life, when you betray yourself, will always create external betrayals. It's just like inevitable because at the seed of the experience is betrayal of ourselves. And so that's when we access the part that's willing to burn the shit down, willing to do whatever. And bringing them back into our experience, you know, the way I saw it in that ceremony,

was that I had this sort of table of advisors with all these different parts. And that part, the zero fucks part, instead of like where too many fucks, I really had to bring down the level of microphone he was being given. I had to actually like raise the space that I was giving to this other part. And by doing that, you actually end up, because if you look when parts work,

Each part actually has its own nervous system. So when you go into a part, so if I'm in a conflict with my partner and I get defensive, I'm in a part and that part has its own vagal tone. And so when I start to access boundaries and self-expression and standing up for myself, which

Initially, it might look like having walls up, which is okay because if you've never had boundaries, you need walls first to delineate itself. So when you start expressing yourself, the younger part of you who's the over-functioner and the people pleaser relaxes. And so they go into regulation. And look, this is, I think, one of the most important aspects of recognizing the value of people pleasing is it means there's a hyper-attunement to the feelings and behaviors of others.

And so it makes us exceptional at trying to predict the world based on what we're essentially invading someone else's psychic space, trying to predict who they are, what they might feel, all trying to predict our environment.

When we start to put that part of us at rest, it becomes a superpower, a super attunement to the behaviors of others. But instead of it being something invasive, it becomes permissive, if that makes sense. Can you define parts work for someone that's not familiar with that and maybe how a person could potentially get involved in that within themselves? Yeah.

Yeah, so it's mainly based on the work from Richard Schwartz. He has a book called No Bad Parts. It's very like the ideas in the movies inside out, you know, that we have these different parts that are developed through our experience. I'm certainly not an expert in parts work, but my experience of it is that you develop these different parts based on the experiences you've had in your life. And when we go through things like trauma,

we end up getting stuck in developmental stages. We can get stuck in developmental stages. And so that person, like the people pleaser, we could live our whole lives like that.

Never orienting our life around ourselves and then we feel anxious we self-abandon you know We have all these emotions that are coming forward that society is quick to tell you that your anxiety and depression are evidence of some sort of genetic experience or that you have a chemical imbalance etc, but they're really just symptoms of Self-abandonment there are symptoms of not being fully expressed like I

Of course, you're going to have anxiety if you don't have access to your voice because you can't choose your life. So your future is being you're basically like feather in the wind and the wind is other people's needs, wants and desires and what society expects of you. So parts work to come back to the question is, yeah, really just these different aspects of ourselves that we develop to cope with our childhood, with our world.

And really it's about bringing organization to that and each part still having a voice because a lot of it can operate really unconsciously. Why is it so, it seems like what,

the right quote unquote right relationship, which, you know, every aspect of your life is the right aspect as it's leading to you to where you're going, which is there's, you mentioned another Ram Dass quote I like around that as well. Like every second of every day and every day of every week and every week of every year, you know, it's all a part of your evolutionary process towards awakening and

And that process sometimes can be very painful and sometimes very bumpy and sometimes very confusing, but it's actually all a part of it. And one of the things he said in that was that the moment in the subway is no more or less valuable than the moment in the cathedral. Like every aspect of your day is all a part of that progression. And relationships seem to be very illuminating

and the aspects of yourself where you are out of integrity or you are maybe fractured in some way within yourself or not integrated within yourself. Why is it so painful to not be in integrity within yourself? Well, at the core of not being in integrity with yourself is that when you ask the question, when it comes down to honoring my values,

and choosing myself versus prioritizing someone else. Do I got me? Like, do I have my own back? And when you are living out of integrity with your own values, the answer is no, you don't have your own back. And if you don't have your own back and you can't trust yourself, then you can't create a home within your own body. You'll try to seek that outside. You'll try to seek that in relationship. You'll try to move a lot. But at the core of all of that is really that you don't trust yourself.

And if you don't trust yourself, you're kind of fucked. That's really interesting. It's like you disassociate from yourself. You like leave your home. And then it like shows up in the pursuit. You're trying to find it somewhere. You know, it's like Francis Weller has this beautiful line where he says, you spend your life seeking a place of belonging, but at some point you have to become the place of welcome.

And I love that because it's like this orientation instead of being the child in search of something, you become the adult who creates it. You had an interesting kind of revelation that in relation to your relationship with social media and Instagram.

Particularly, one of the things that I've heard you say is that you're playing out childhood wounds on Instagram. I think that's very common. We're all doing it. It's like how do you do anything? It's how you do everything. Like your imprint from all of your ancestry and childhood and past and all that stuff. It's literally touching every aspect of your life if you're sensitive enough to see it and feel it. Can you share a little bit about that, your relationship to social media and Instagram? Yeah.

Dude, that was like such a, I feel like I've been in such a cocoon of transformation with that. So for the last four years, I've had a bit of a tumultuous relationship with social media. Now, granted, in that time, social media has changed a lot. The algorithms changed a lot, our way of creating, et cetera. Like Instagram went from being a follower forward content platform in that you saw the content of people you followed.

And it saw that TikTok was crushing it and was a content forward platform, which means it delivers you content that keeps you on the app. It doesn't prioritize who you follow. And when they did that, it completely changed the platform because now the platform is a place that's really about hooking into your emotions and your psyche because, you know, the more attention you give the platform, the more ad revenue they can make.

I heard a famous YouTuber say that they colonized all the land and now they're colonizing every second of your life. And I was just like, wow, that's fascinating because attention is money. Okay. If the conversations and beautiful things are occurring online and it's not about deleting all that because that is part of our world and maybe that's how we, I mean, I met my wife on Instagram, so there's a lot of value in that. I created a business on there. I've had a lot of beautiful conversations. We met through that.

So,

I think for me, this is true. And I think this is true for a lot of people that when we don't know how to relate to something, we reject it. And that's actually an important survival relational skill is to step away from, run from, escape something that we don't know how to access the word no and discernment to. And when we don't have access, and this is true of addictions, and that could be anything, when we don't have access to the word no, our consent to that thing

is filled with small print. And so I needed to leave Instagram. I was gonna delete it. And the only reason I didn't is I got thousands of messages being like, please leave it up. I've got your post saved. Like, why would you delete it? And I was like, all right, fine. And so I left it up and then I went on this journey. I didn't know what I was doing, but I needed to follow. Like my gut was like, you gotta go. And I know there's one thing to be true in my whole life is never argue with that deep, deep, deep call.

And it's been something I've honored the majority of my adult life, and it's served me well. And when I don't honor it, it serves me well. So I left.

And as I was in the process, I felt much lighter. I now had access to all these feelings and all this creativity that was being stifled by this relationship I had with a platform that if you really look at the core of the relationship and the dynamic is a very narcissistic relationship in that. Right. And so it's like you never know what's going to do well. Nothing is ever enough. I even find this funny. I talked to a friend of mine who works for Meta.

And she was like, yeah, you know, the algorithm likes this and that, but we don't really know. And I'm like, you fucking create the thing and you don't even know what it does or what it likes or what it doesn't. Like, I feel like you're all fucking with us. Like, this is all just like, we're not sure. It's seeming to like reels that are 15 seconds. It's like they know exactly what is extracting the most attention. But the mystery is part of what keeps us on our heels.

And then when it summed as well and some doesn't, what happens inevitably if we haven't healed worthiness wounds is we start to correlate the value of our self-expression to what the algorithm deems as good or bad. And so if we have a self-worth wound, social media is the best thing for you because it's going to exploit and extract that. And there are troll farms specifically designed to fuck with your wounds. And so...

I started to, I interviewed Steven Porges, the founder of Polyvagal Theory. And he was like, you know, Mark, you were never meant to be available to be at social risk 24 hours a day. Like your nervous system can't differentiate being in a village and having a conversation and going to bed. But there's a version of you that now lives 24 hours a day that especially in this wake of cancel culture,

is actually a great social risk, especially in the device of inability for us to even dialogue about anything. Your whole life could be dismantled while you're asleep. You could wake up to a barrage of all the necessary tropes that we just throw at people

And there'll be no way for you to socially actually get a platform to defend yourself because everyone's essentially guilty until nothing actually probably. And so I started to see like, how is that impacting us? How was that impacting me? And I also looked at like, how is blue light impacting hormone production?

my brain. And there's a thing called digital dementia that we start to develop dementia based on the interaction with blue light. And the other thing I started to notice was that there was a, I was talking to a friend of mine who's a relationship coach. His name is Mike Elliott. And he said to me, have you ever considered

That the thing you wanted most from your mother as a kid is the thing you wanted most from Instagram. And I was like, I was in an Uber with him when he was having this conversation with me. And this poor Uber driver is like these fucking guys. But I was just like, huh, that's interesting. And it made me really think about that a lot. I got home. I told my wife, hey, you can't believe what this fucking guy just said to me.

And my wife's like, yeah. I was like, what do you mean fucking yeah? Like, why don't you just say that to me then if it's so obvious? And she was like, so during COVID, I had a very different perspective on what was going on with my mom and the way things were being handled. And I was quite public about that on social media. And my wife said to me, have you ever considered that your mom's need for you to be

like to have a decision and a perspective that was aligned with her was not for you, but for her, that it was like the first time in your life, really clearly that there was a separation of you two. And so the same desire that you really wanted from social media to be validated in your perspective and to be affirmed, which obviously is impossible. It's the sit, you were just projecting what had not yet been resolved in your romantic or sorry, in your life with, with your wound, with your mom. And I was like,

And so that's where I started to see I was talking to a friend of mine who's a PhD in psych and she's a researcher. And I brought this idea like the thing you most wanted from a parent is usually the greatest complaint you have in social media. And she was like, OK, maybe I'll think about it. Like four days later, she's using Instagram. She's like.

I wish this wasn't so overwhelming and it was an easy place to be. And she was like, ah, I'm my mom. And so I think there's something there. I'm not, I haven't, I'm like working on like really navigating the theory of that and then how to walk people through it. I want to take a moment and share about something I have found to be pretty interesting technology to prevent and offset some of the negative effects of non-native EMS. Those...

tricky frequencies that we're getting exposed to with our cell phones and with our computers and Wi-Fi and 5G and all the different things, I find Leela Quantum Tech to be pretty interesting for this stuff. I am generally pretty suspicious of things that suggest mitigating EMF and things like, but what I like about Leela Quantum is they have a ton of research around it. Actually, we've also done a podcast with the founder of the company, so you can tune back and listen to that.

going to read off some of the research they have that i find interesting uh lila quantum's tech blocks can boost atp which is known as the energy currency in our bodies production by 20 to 29 percent associate professor at the university of tulsa dr robert sheaf performed

Super interesting. They have 59 studies done, which are third-party studies.

And I'm just very intrigued by this technology. I think that there's some interesting stuff here. I think it's worth checking out. I really like the necklace, the heel necklace they use. They also have blocks. They have clothing. They have a lot of really interesting stuff. And you can try it yourself. See what you think. See if you notice a difference. And you get 10% off by going to leelaq.com slash align. That's L-E-E-L-A-Q dot com slash align. It's just any relationship. Yeah. Yeah.

relationship that that has some hooks in you you know that has the potential to create reactivity it's just it's it's it's it's probably how you do anything is how you do everything it's just another uh fractal of that relationship is that true what i'm saying right now is it any relationship that can create reactivity reactivity within yourself will be tied back to

the way that you related as a young person, as a little person? - Yeah, I would say, I mean it could be an older trauma or wound, but I would say yeah, 100%. Any relationship with anything that is not you, of course you're in relationship with yourself, but anything that you're in relationship with on the external that has friction and a lack of choice and full self-expression is offering you material to differentiate. - What is reactivity?

And how can we track that in a way that is instructive towards a more integrated path in our lives? Because I feel like there's like, I heard somebody say one time, like never waste a trigger.

And so I think that there's another lens of things. It's like if you're getting pissed off, it actually is a really brilliant opportunity. And you could shift and reorient your life around of like, aha, like how exciting. Like I actually want to find those things because it means I'm getting closer to clarity. Yeah, I remember Jordan Peterson once saying that a trigger is an invitation to mastery. And I was like, ah, that's a really fascinating way of thinking about what normally we might feel shame about.

But we actually start to orient to it from a place of, okay, there's a hypersensitivity I have. And this basically my mind, my unconscious is mapping a dynamic and saying this dynamic is familiar and it might lead to this outcome. So in order to prevent that outcome, theoretically, I'm going to act this way.

But often the defensiveness, the over-pursuing, the avoidance, the shutting down, whatever it is, just recreates the same circumstances because the behaviors we observe when we're young

created those circumstances that we're afraid of. So I would say reactivity, at least to me, would be there's the one part of just understanding semantically what's going in your body when you feel flooded, overwhelmed, dysregulation, which we have to at least bring awareness to that of like, what does that even feel like in my body? So before we even get there, I think I would just ask someone, where and when do you have behaviors that are not productive and

relationally, like they're not actually contributing to the type of relationship you want to create, but they're also not aligned with your own values and who you want to be in this world. And those could be two separate things, but I would imagine they're most often correlated. And that's why you could use anything you're in relationship with, because I could say, when I feel some sense of activation, I then take a drug or smoke or do whatever, or use my phone.

There's actually something in the basis of the activating event that I need to deal with that is being resolved by this addiction. And, you know, there's that saying from Gabor Monte, the wrong question is why the addiction, the right question is why the pain. So anything that's a mood or state altering thing is because we don't like the state we're in. Now, that could be helpful. You know, if you're sad and all of a sudden you exercise, you could change your state. But are you changing the circumstances of your life that make you sad?

So I think reactivity is, yeah, really like a nervous system response if we're getting to the physiology of it. So what would the heuristics be for a person? They are experiencing a quote unquote trigger. They're feeling themselves, maybe blood pressure is rising, heart rate's going up, pissed. They're about to maybe say some things that they might regret in six hours or a week.

Uh, what would the recipe be for that person to actually turn that into a productive opportunity? I love that you use the word heuristic by the way. Um, well, the first there's the work you do in the moment and there's the work you do out of the moment to prepare you for in the moment, you know, and things like movement, breath work, meditation, they offer this opportunity for us to learn how to regulate our own system.

And when we're in the activating event, I mean, your prefrontal cortex is gone when you're in a reaction. And so you're not able to critically think. You might not even be open to the influence of the person you're in dialogue with. I think we see that especially a lot now. But in relationship, you need to see your partner differently.

as wise. You need to see them as from a place of respect. Now, if you can't do that, that's what you got to get to that place if it's even possible. If it's not possible, how do you create a relationship? But that there's shared agreements about

How are we going to do difference? How are we going to handle dialogue? How are we going to handle an argument where one of us or both of us gets activated? And so together you create agreements. And if someone needs to step away so they can process their thoughts, often they're in relationship with someone who needs resolution right away. So you have someone who's like, I need to know I'm safe and that this is okay. And so if someone says, I need to go process my thoughts and just take a second, I'll be back.

The way that that gets repaired is you make an agreement about how long they can take and the other person, it needs to be the one who comes back because there'll be people who'll be like, hey, I'm going to take some time and think about it. And then 10 years you're in therapy and now you're bringing it up, you know? So there needs to be agreements in the relationship on how to handle that. And what that is creating is a shared nervous system of the relationship. Yes.

So when one person knows and can access regulation, it can begin to model that regulation for both people and all families, all companies, all systems have a shared nervous system. And it generally oscillates around in a company, whoever's in a leadership position, in a relationship, someone might take a different, the leader might become different depending on the circumstances. But if we could be the one who

who is always seeking to anchor that then we're not seeking it in someone else because of course a lot of us go well why do i have to and it's like well if not you who

Would a shared relational nervous system fall to the most dysregulated system or rise to the most regulated system? And like if you draw the time horizon out weeks and months and years. The system always wants to move to regulation.

I mean, naturally, like any human system, right? We always want to move to a sense of stasis. If you think about the value of sympathetic activation, it's to activate you to get to a place where you can get regulated again. So yes, the system will, if someone can stay rooted in regulation and create boundaries, standards, and hold that center, the other system will have to orient around it or be gone.

And so that's the invitation. But co-regulation is such a beautiful thing because, you know, you can like be in eye gazing and one person be in breath and someone else be dysregulated, give them a hug. It's like true with kids. You know, they're dysregulated. They don't have their own nervous system or sorry, they don't know how to regulate their own nervous system until they're about three. So they need the adult to be able to model that. So the coding is in their system to get to that place. I don't think it's dissimilar for adults.

couple and it's easy to stay in a dysregulated state and fight about the same bullshit But as soon as someone says I'm gonna stand for something different the system now goes someone standing for something different Okay, I've been waiting for that. Okay, what's the process for a person to? reframe trigger reactivity

disorganization chaos freak out into an opportunity without relationship you're just in your car and you're having a meltdown and you reach out for your vaporizer or your nicotine pouch or you go you call a booty call you go to you know like whatever whatever your whatever your

whatever your regulating state mechanism is listen a booty bell is a great regulator what's the path forward man because you're just gonna keep running that same cycle until you don't well you know on your own it's interesting because you start to as i was saying the practice of of self is so important because it's like doing the reps when you get into the experience with another human

And so really building that skill set, that resilience to be in the state of difference. Most people have experienced, and this is probably true in so many aspects of our conversations these days, they experience as difference as dangerous where they've been framed that their different thought means danger. And the nervous system sees different as danger. So the nervous system, even if you're moving towards a productive behavior that's more relational,

it will often code it as like, nope, not going there. Like we're going to choose available people now, not interested because what lives next to desire, love, change is also unresolved pain. If you haven't walked towards that pain, you can't walk towards love. They're next door neighbors. So,

Moving in that state in your car. Can you say that again? If you haven't walked towards, can you say it one more time? If you haven't walked towards your pain and your suffering, then you can't walk towards love because what created your pain and your suffering was likely relationship.

And so you can't walk towards it because they're inseparable. They live next door to each other. And so your relationship patterns will show up in a way that might be like, oh, it's fate. I've not met. There's no good people in L.A. or New York. Insert city with incredibly large population where even if you're bad at math, you can't come up with that answer. And.

And so you start to create patterns that are really unconsciously about preventing you from walking towards availability and openness because unconsciously what you're really doing is saying, I don't know how to walk towards that without walking towards pain. And that's where the trigger actually informs you because the trigger is saying, if we're going to walk towards this, we're going to have to build a skill set that allows us to walk by the pain that we hurt. And so you shatter the upper limit of what you know is intimacy and depth.

So you could do that work in your car because if you get triggered in your car, you can actually, and I know you have a program on breath work, you can learn breath work and you can learn meditation. You can learn how to be present with yourself. One of the premises that my wife and I talk about in our book, Liberated Love, is this premise of taking a sacred pause.

So essentially, it's about pausing being in relationship and dating. And some people are like, I've been single for four years. I've been doing a sacred pause. I'm like, no, you definitely have not.

It's about this like intentional container like monks create, like Vipassanas, right? That's about actually allowing everything to come forward when you're not in relationship with whatever gender you want to hook up with. So it's like you actually say, I'm not going to source, I'm not going to text, I'm not going to sext, I'm not going to... And you start to notice where you try to create allure. You start to notice where you start, where you flex your buying power.

you start to notice all these little ways that you have basically anesthetized

The deeper work. It's like subdued. Yeah. It becomes revealed. And man, when I noticed, because the minimum sacred pause, I would say, you just got to do three months. Two months in is usually like the point where someone's like the perfect possible match covered in coconut oil shows up in your life. Who's like almost it. Like the perfect excuse to break your container and your agreements with yourself.

And I see that time and time again. Now I just tell people, expect that like the perfect reason to break your agreement will show up in your life. Oh, it's always, it's inevitable. So if you want the, the almost perfect match, Dalston baby oil or coconut oil or whichever oil of your choice. Yeah. Whatever you want to pause for two. That's the, that's the,

It's so true because there's something so attractive about someone who's like, I'm just going to, I got me. I mean, that's inevitably what they learn is that when faced with the choice between breaking their word with themselves and their agreements, they start to trust themselves. And if someone tries to get you to break an agreement with yourself, it's a massive red flag. Most people, if there's good connection, will say, I'll see you at the end of your three months.

What an impressive thing you're doing. Interesting. I'm going to say like playing in the dirt. Yeah. Yeah. Covered in. There's something I think. Yeah, there's some there's a lot of charge around that, like doing the naughty thing, doing the wrong thing, doing the bad thing. I tried to get my wife to break her container. Yeah. Put the boundary up pretty much with the intention of break that. I think the origin of kink is Catholicism and anything that has has. That's.

That's amazing. Castigated. Is castigated the right word? Like cast out. I don't think castigated is the right word. Is castigated, is that the right word? I don't know. Throw a word through. Thesaurus, that bad boy. But it's casting away and placing like the darkness and the bad that actually propagates or creates energy for the bad. It's like it's what it's like. It's the life force of it is actually casting the shadow.

It's interesting because when my wife was in her sacred pause when we were broken up, when we were dating, our relationship was done. We had come back together and communicated a few times. And when she came over to the house, we slept together. And I remember thinking, which I talk about in the book, but I remember thinking,

I've got her, like, I'm going to get her to break her container. So the shadow side of that, like... It's very validating to you. Yeah, like, I'm enough that she's going to dishonor herself. And then I started when she expressed to me how that felt, because she was like, ah, like, she had so much shame about the fracturing of her own agreement with herself. And I was like, yeah, and, like, there's this shadow side of me that, like, now I'm present to.

that wanted that on some level. And I'm like, was really feeling into if I was truly, if it's about me and me taking responsibility for me, then it's about really seeing that if I was in the essence of my own self, the last thing I would ever want for her to do is to break an agreement with herself. And if I could facilitate and support her in navigating that and actually be the supporter of her keeping her agreements,

That would be a much more beautiful way of relating to one another. And so it really brought forward. She went back into her container and extended it. And we didn't talk till the end of it. And I was like, yep.

Yeah, like that's right. Now I got to go sit with myself because I did it, you know. So I had some shame with that too. What would be the process for a person to be? I mean, you're sharing it now, but specifically a person that does have a tendency of seeking out consciously or unconsciously unavailable people.

How do we unwind that within an individual in an actual way? Well, the dark, the maybe deepest truth of pursuing unavailability is that it's just a reflection of your own unavailability. So, you know, it's recognizing that actually you're unavailable. And so it's showing up as these people who just got out of relationships. They want booty calls, friends with benefits, whatever it is. They're just not over their ex. They're still in contact with them. Like there's so much fucking...

There's all this evidence of why the world isn't fair and matching you with someone available, but on a deep level, you don't want availability because availability means vulnerability. And if you haven't built the skill set to walk towards what you're afraid of, because ultimately, if I say to someone, finish the sentence, when I love people, they forget it.

Some people will be like, they love me back. And I'm like, okay, let's go deeper. Because there is that when we finish that sentence, like when I love people, they, when I love people, I. And so for me, my previous way I finished those, when I love people, they betray me. They lie to me.

And when I love people, I abandon myself. Well, why the hell would I ever want to be in a monogamous long-term relationship when those are the unconscious outcomes that I'm constantly trying to avoid? It showed up as unavailability. But it was really like I hadn't processed the betrayals and I hadn't processed my self-abandonment. But if I was to really sit with all those parts of me, too many fucks mark,

I was like, okay, teach me. Teach me if you wanted to open up and have full access to your range of caring for others, what skill set would you need access to? And of course, zero fucks. Mark is like, you'd need me. Duh. I'm like, you need me. You need access to boundaries, self-expression, anger, rage. Because if you don't have access to those things, you can't protect yourself. You can't protect yourself. You can't open yourself. That's like your immune system. Yeah. And the way that shows up is you're either too open or too closed.

And so you need to find this balance. I think of it like a warrior and a lover. Like if you're too much lover, you'll just get destroyed. If you're too much warrior, you'll destroy and you won't let people in. So it's about this balance of not having no armor. You need some. It's about actually just curating what you allow, becoming the ultimate curator of the experiences and relationships and behaviors that you allow in your life.

How pertinent is it to be modeled through your parents a healthy relationship in order for you to be able to propagate a healthy relationship? I mean, in an ideal world, it's I mean, it's essential till, you know, but let's be honest, you know, when my friend Mark Wolin, who's has the book, It Didn't Start With You, Why It's Not Your Fault.

he asked three questions. Did your mother see you? Did she know you? And did she soothe you? And the majority of people will answer one of those, but very seldom will I hear someone answer all three. Yes, yes, yes. Almost, very seldom. Because what happens when you have an attuned mother, fathers are obviously important. And he said it so beautifully. He said,

A mother prepares the neural architecture of the child for the world.

and hands the child over to the father to take them into the world. Wow. Yeah. And of course, the standard response, because I get everyone's life experience is different, is I'll see moms and dads respond to that. And they go, well, I don't have a husband or a partner or their father's not around. I take them on adventures. Great. We're not denying the circumstances of life. But in an ideal world, having two parents is ideal. And he said, when a mother sees you,

you are separate from her. You are to be seen. You are something worthy of being witnessed. When she knows you, you are to be known. You have something to know that is separate from her. When she sues you, you have emotions that are yours that are validated through the soothing. So instead, in essence, what's happening is the mother is installing a self and affirming a self

But what happens is, is that, and so this is personal work. This is personal growth. This is adulting is when you have boundaries, when you discover what you value, what you care about in life, what your purpose is, whatever it is, and you build behaviors and boundaries around that, you install a self and that, that can be done. That's why you could have every childhood experience and

And that is still available to you. That's why like productive, amazing relationships. Would it be great to just be born into that knowledge? Yes. But humans also require stresses. We require experiences in life to grow us and shape us. And so I always say to people, no matter where you come from, it's available to you. Some of your work might be a little more challenging, but it's always available. And if you think about that, like to me, it's that simple.

What do you value? Is your life in alignment with it? If it's not, which I think we're always striving to maintain that level of integrity. And Ram Dass said that, I hope that I live with the integrity that the truths that live within me are the same as the truths that live outside of me. And when that's not true, I live a life of both love and fear.

And so I think it's just constantly striving that because you're never going to be 100% in integrity because you're always going to be learning. But can you honor what you know? And I think that's where most of us, till we don't, that's where most of us

Stop short of our potential because we don't integrate the things we've been through and that's why you can't walk towards love when pain that's been Uninvestigated lives there because you still haven't integrated the knowledge that then becomes wisdom that's available through everything you've been through I wonder sometimes can a person get so wrapped up in the stories of their own psychology and

and their history and their past and their traumas that they end up perpetuating

contraction and restraints and they place themselves into this like never-ending labyrinth of healing and there might be a situation where it's like if all of a sudden there was an alien attack we all collectively had an enemy to orient around be like okay cool everything's just figured out this is where do we have too much fucking time on our hands and we're like okay we got a process man you're like what if life was like became more pertinent like there was there was higher

There was something else that demanded our attention. Would suddenly just relationships just start working because it would be based around more of a place of like, oh, we actually need each other and we just work through this shit. Yeah, I think part of it, the obsession with the self is we want to try to figure out everything that is wrong with me or challenging about me so that I can minimize the possible experience of a relationship ending.

or minimize the possible experience of friction which i think there's probably a threshold that is necessary for actually co-creating exceptional relationships you know like you can't create an exceptional relationship with someone who doesn't take responsibility for themselves who isn't

doesn't keep their word in what they're committed to, who fractures or breaks the agreements of the relationship, who doesn't tell the truth. There's some pretty basic things that are necessary to co-create any relationship, that there's healthy boundaries, self-expression. If you think about it, the best relationships that handle the greatest differences, and this would be beautiful if it was modeled by people in political or media positions,

but the greatest thing is they're always preserving the relationship first so like if there's a difference between you and i the agreement we have is the way that we're going to walk through this difference is that there's a preservation that's the main intent preservation and a deepening of our relationship through this difference so

I have been thinking about what you're saying a lot recently because I was writing about this actually recently, this idea that what I think that therapists and coaches have, I wrote that they've colluded with the wounded because at the basis of what makes someone go into therapy or coaching,

Is the desire to help people. But you could say this about any dietetics, healthcare, probably personal training, like all these different spaces where we're trying to bring out the best in someone else. So usually at the core of that is a adaptive strategy to be hyper attuned to people and to like figure out what they want, help them do that. Right. So, yeah.

Until the interventionalist has freed themselves from the need to be needed, the client will never be free. And I think about this. If you orient personal growth from the place that something's wrong and you need to fix it, which I think is why most people start, that's great because it brought you to the well. But every time you try to learn something to fix something that's broken, you reinforce the idea that you're broken.

So instead, what needs to change is that when you experience the frictions of your life, they're just evidence of more possibility for you.

So they now become instead of like, oh, here I go again. It's like, here I go. Not again. I learned from it. What is a, we'll wrap up here soon. What are some of the, the, the recurrent things for you that have been like hard moles to whack in your relational potential whack-a-mole? Maybe you're beyond that. I don't know, but I can, I kind of can notice things pop up again. I'm like, there's that mother freaker again. I thought I had it. Yeah.

I got that one. We're done the same thing again. Right here. Well, listen, the moment I say, yeah, no, I'm good. I'm not in that wheelhouse. The universe is going to give me a slap upside that. So I'm deeply in the work always in that. I'm always like really mindful of, okay, what's,

What's holding me back and being invited to be expanded upon or harnessed? And for me, relationally, it's self-expression, like really standing in the truth of who I am, what I want. I'm blessed to have a partner who can acknowledge that and also participates in... Because for my wife to...

Her predisposition is to be more avoidant or like prioritize herself in times of stress. Mine is to prioritize other people in times of stress. So for her to take up space is not a challenge. But for her to create a shared space for me to take up space is because it's a challenge for me to do that.

And so we talk about that. And so that there's so much safety in that, you know, because then my system goes, I'm not crazy or I don't want too much or I'm not because that's my natural thought process is like, who am I to? And that because that's like the micro version, the macro version is like the full authentic self-expression of me in that relationship to social media.

no matter what. Like that I'm willing to stand in the truth of what I know, who I am, and it be at the potential cost of everything. And I now see that. Like I would be willing to lose anything to stand in integrity. I notice sometimes I've had experiences similar like that within myself of

kind of like quote unquote abandoning myself for another person and getting into the habit of that and just putting out an immense amount of energy towards that person and orienting much of my world around that person. And it seems altruistic. It seems like I'm, you know, a really great guy, a great boyfriend, you know, while you're putting so much energy into this person. But in fact, it's actually very avoidant of myself and very lazy in a lot of ways where it's like you actually aren't sacking up and leaning into the aspects within yourself because you're

You don't know how you don't feel resource to it's just it's just it's too much. And so you're going to kind of disassociate or abandon yourself or dissociate from or abandon yourself and just pour your energy into someone else. That's something that I've experienced within myself. Yeah, I know that feeling, too. And it's fascinating when you start to when you go into the OK, if I was to take full responsibility for that behavior.

then on a shadow level, that's highly manipulative. Totally manipulative. Right, yeah, same, because I have that part present in me.

And when I can actually bring that-- - How is it manipulative? - Because it's shape-shifting and actually not authentic, and it's in order to get something. - Get something. - Safety, security, whatever it might be. But that's the mind fuck of it, is that we think it's creating external safety, but what it's really creating is internal chaos. And so it will show up as anxiety,

or, you know, distraction, go to the whatever it is to distract. Because again, we're like really sensing the lack of alignment of us with us, right? Like that's really what you're feeling. I'm actually writing an article, I think it comes out today, but it's on, you don't have relationship anxiety, you have self abandonment anxiety. And so what is showing up is all these things

is really like, if you can't trust yourself, you're going to be anxiously attached. I was talking to this woman the other day. She's like, yeah, I have so much anxiety. I've worked with a somatic therapist for years and I just want to resolve it. And she's super self-aware, et cetera. And she tells me about her relationship circumstances, the guy's uncertain, not sure about the future, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like,

You don't have an anxious attachment style. You are in the exact circumstances that create anxiety. And so how do we connect you to reality?

And reorient the way you see anxiety as being some sort of issue that needs a somatic therapist. I was like, you could see all the somatics in the world. You could see every therapist. You could do cognitive. You could do IFS. You could do everything. But if you don't change your life, your anxiety is never going to go anywhere. You're just going to learn how to disassociate through techniques. But it's like no green juice, no breath work is ever going to save you from that.

But what it might bring you to is more presence to what's actually there, which ironically, she did breathwork actually, and then broke up with him. So there you go. It's a testimonial. It's interesting. I think becoming honest with the ways that we manipulate the world around us to get the things that we want, which ultimately at the core of what we desire is safety and love and connection.

And we can end up scheming these elaborate, highly nuanced, complex plots that seem super sweet, you know, maybe or maybe not. Or maybe they seem super gnarly and shadowy and terrible. But it's like ultimately what we're doing is we're manipulating the world. And it's not necessarily bad.

But I think coming into that awareness of like, oh, just asking the question, like how do I manipulate the situation or relationship or the world to get what I want? And maybe is it possible that I am not as like squeaky clean as I like to believe myself to be? And maybe you just running through that, maybe you actually,

And not being married to I'm not, not being married to I'm a bad guy or bad girl either, but just being willing to pose that question I think is very meaningful. It's everything. Because what happens in there is the sneaky shadow parts of you go, mm-hmm, you see me. Like I'm fucking. Right. I'm good. But what you, if you sat down with that part.

you would say to it, what is your positive intent? Because it has a positive intent. And so that allows it to be revealed. And then you can ask yourself, access something like the zero fucks version of you. What is a behavior that we could actually engage in that would get that need met without manipulation? And then that part, which is really a very young part would go,

Because we built a skill set. So if you think about it, if we're coming back to the idea that what lives next to love is pain, is that part that's overriding and manipulating is really trying to avoid something. So the positive intent is to never experience something again, whatever that is. So now that you've accessed a different skill, let's say it's self-expression and boundaries and standards, now that part goes,

We can walk towards what created it because now we've said, thank you for the pain I've had. It's made me develop this skill set. So now if I ever get into a similar circumstance, I have access to a skill set that will allow me to navigate it, whatever that might be, and also maybe walk past it.

So it's the integration that happens. And if you think about Mark Rowland's work, that's another installation of a self every time you do that. Last thing I'll say, and then I know that you actually have a thing. And I want to... Within that, I...

I think I'm ever since I did this damn darkness retreat a few years ago, I'm like, it's like cracked open some emotionality within me. I'll notice myself on the brink of like crying. Like right now I'm like, I'm thinking about those parts within myself or within past partners selves or, you know, anything and can feel into the ways that a person shows up and they show up in

you know, a way that's distasteful in some way. They're selfish or they're a narcissist, you know, whatever, which I really, the word that gets used way too much. Um, or they're all of the different things. Uh, in fact, it is just a small child hurt girl or boy that is desiring to be seen, desire and be cared for, desire and be loved.

And they learn just like in the thing that you mentioned of your no fucks, no fucks given mark. They learned that me doing this the way that, you know, I tried to do this in like a loving, vulnerable way and I was hurt. And I now learned that I need to choose another path to get the love that I desire. And if you can, yeah, if you can see that,

I think it comes into like Jesus, like Christ consciousness stuff. It opens up like compassion for all. And the person that you hate the most actually is your greatest teacher. And the person that, you know, is the most evil is actually the person that really deeply needs love more than anyone. And if you can start to reframe that a little bit, I think it's very healing for the self as well. Yeah, I think it's an awesome opportunity to recognize that you could be compassionate

for someone's experience and not tolerant of their behavior. Yeah. You don't need to invite them over to dinner. You don't need to pay the rent. You don't need to, you don't, you know, it's, it's, but you can send really truly do the work within your life, within yourself to project pure light and love in the least way possible. And like, and then like,

Yeah. Or most whatever, but like, like, like love, love, bless, and you know, good luck with your journey, but truly like nothing but love and light, like, like genuinely. And if a person is holding on to that part within themselves, which I'm experiencing this right now with two people, three people, I have this right now where I'm in process of like forgiving actively. And I'm aware, I'm conscious of any aspect of myself that holds onto anything, but forgiveness is literally just a toxic,

dis-ease that I'm just married to holding onto it in myself. And until I choose to release that, it's just a baggage that I will carry. And it will just make me a lesser version of myself. It's the only thing that it can do. I don't know if that's an absolute, that's the only thing, because you can use that as fuel to create

you know, it's, it's kind of like a toxic, like a retribution kind of, uh, I mean, Hey man, like show you like chip on my shoulder thing. So there's that as well. Usefulness to that. Sometimes, like I think to people, I'll say like, instead of getting a revenge body, like get a revenge. So like come so alive that, and so that might source the decide to be nourished and move your body in the right way to create,

But it does have to transfer from the place of I'm just using the energetic of the anger to change. I think the hard part with letting go that people have is there's an idea that letting go is a consent to what created the suffering. And often letting go of, let's say, a childhood experience or allowing ourselves to win and to be loved can feel like a betrayal to the system and to the trauma.

And so I think it's such a, but letting go is such a fascinating thing because have you ever heard the spoken word poem called Crowbirds and Mockingbars? In it, he says, forgiveness, I think it's a quote from a pastor, but it's forgiveness is for all those. Forgiveness is letting go of all hope for a better past.

And forgiveness is for everyone who deserves safe travel through my mind. And I always think of like, yeah, because like holding on who suffers, you know, it's like all mean people who are like, I got so devastated by that betrayal and breakup, of course. Sure.

And so like, I can never love again. I'm like, well, you show them now they're in Cancun drinking Mai Tai. It's like, they're not thinking the same way. It's also a lack of accountability and lack of responsibility, which is like one of my biggest allergens, which means there's probably something in there within myself to examine. Yeah. I'm the same as you because that's a big value of mine. So when other people violate that, I have to look like, am I in violation of my own?

Yeah. Yeah. But if you're, if you're in that, that, that place, if you can't forgive, there's probably a lack of accountability happening there as well. It's like, Oh, like how did I create this situation? Ultimately, if you wind it back enough, you know, if you've, you'll find that you could reframe things to be responsible for every aspect of your world. I think, um, is that true? I don't want to misspeak. Yeah. I mean, I think if you are able to move through it and like, see where you can't, there's stuff to do. There's work to do.

You know, it's like a Ram Dass says, people who trigger you are your guru in drag. Yeah. Uh, I appreciate you very much, man. Dude, same. I really enjoyed this conversation. The, so you have the book, liberate love that came out, it came out a little bit ago, right? It was like last year. Came out last year. Last

Last year, yeah. And what else, if people want to go deeper into your stuff? I'm such a big fan and just advocate and I just appreciate you very much. Is there any good place to point people if they want to go deeper into your world from here? Yeah, so I have a community called the Create the Love Community and in that has a breakup course. So that's to take the frictions and the experience of a relationship ending and using that as sort of retribution energy and

to become the most fully self-expressed loving version of yourself. I have a dating 101, which is healing the nervous system as you use dating as a healing process. And there's another program in there called Rediscover Your Wholeness. And that's all about really fully stepping into yourself and discovering what your values are. All the things we talked about, like really framing and exploring and auditing your life and then creating it from a place of integrity and alignment.

Dude, I so appreciate you. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate you very much. Thank you all for tuning in. That is it. That is all. I will see you next week. Hope you guys enjoyed that conversation. I want to invite you over to the Aligned Podcast YouTube channel if you want to see the quality of both of our skins IRL.

or as close to irl as you can on the internet with video and check it out subscribe leave comments love reading the comments over there and also if you have interest in improving the quality of your skin they did give us a discount code at one skin which was kind of them uh you go to one skin dot co slash align i believe you get 15 off your order which is pretty cool

So if you want to try it out and get yourself a discount, jump over to their one skin.co slash align. I appreciate y'all. That's it. That's all. I'll see you next week.