Relationships: Healthy Perspectives Outside the Norm

Jake: 0:45

Hey Frank, how's it going, man? Welcome to a Sunday morning and the unbecoming Vladipus podcast.

Frank: 0:52

Thanks, man, welcome yourself. It's going, it's busy and it seems like it's going to be that way for a while, um, potentially forever.

Jake: 1:07

We talked about this last week, I think.

Frank: 1:09

Yeah.

Jake: 1:10

Uh, something about the finite game is fixing one problem.

Frank: 1:16

To uh, to to get another one as a reward, as a gift? Yeah, a reward or something, right, yeah, yeah, I find that I can get lost in thought about anything easily. Um, so, you know you could. If you'd take the thread of, like my life is too busy, I could spend my energy on that as an idea which is just crazy.

Frank: 1:47

Or I can say I need to do this important thing and shift my focus to that Absolutely. Um the it's, you know. It's sort of like existential questions or something. Is your life too busy, sure?

Jake: 2:02

What the who?

Frank: 2:03

cares, my life is too busy, like. I acknowledge it as a belief and I take that as my um motto. What am I going to do about it? What difference does it make to have that as sort of foundational knowledge? Sure, sure.

Jake: 2:22

I mean, there's probably different types of too busy. I think I I mean, I know the type of too busy you're talking about. There was a time geez, probably 10 years ago now when, when I was 10 years ago now when I had that same belief and the result was, every time something else got added to my calendar, it was pure dread. I mean, it was like you want to go see our family this weekend? That was going to be the only two hours I had to myself. It was miserable. Yeah, Um, there's probably, though, like a too busy that is analytical, or you know, I'm I'm analyzing my situation and I'm like, wow, I have said yes to way too many things, and maybe I should say no to some things.

Jake: 3:07

Yeah, Depending on like what sort of energy they give you, or if they spark joy, as it were.

Frank: 3:15

Yeah, yeah, Well, there's a big dirt, like I always say, shdewy things, cool, and so the sort of inverse of that is, if you find yourself repetitively doing things that you don't think are cool, you should stop doing those. Sure, but there's a repetitiveness like I um, enjoy and want to be this thing, but I'm not it yet and I'm on the way, or something.

Frank: 3:45

So like on the, way isn't always easy, so you may not enjoy it, but it's like building something. No doubt that's still worth doing, I think. But you have to see the bigger picture. But if you're like just every, week this thing keeps happening. It's no part of my bigger picture and I hate it. Then those are the things you stop doing. Yeah, I heard something.

Jake: 4:11

Uh, the concept was essentially if I fight um hard or I work with a person.

Jake: 4:14

That's not a good person. I'm not going to be a good person If I fight um hard or I work extremely hard, I overwork myself to get the thing that I want to achieve. What I'm teaching my subconscious is that I have to work even harder to maintain it. Once I do achieve it, like it was achieved through um extreme sacrifice and so it's going to take extreme sacrifice to keep it. And then there's sort of the inverse of that, which is if I, you know, obviously I can still work hard, but if I don't feel like I have to fight for the thing that I want and I sort of allow those things to come into my life, um, and I just walk toward them, which in this, uh, situation, the, the analog, would be enjoying the process, like not feeling like it's a fight, instead just like accepting the work as it is. Then when I get there, I'm like actually present enough to enjoy it and experience it. Yeah, um, I think that mindset shift is huge.

Frank: 5:28

Where'd you hear about this, do you?

Jake: 5:30

know it was some sort of Instagram video and I think they were talking about relationships. It was like, if I feel like I have to change myself to get someone to accept me, then I'm going to spend the entire time I'm in that relationship pretending to be someone else, like fighting to keep it, fighting to be the person they want. But if I am myself just naturally flowing, that's going to filter out a lot of people until someone is like oh, I want you, I want the you that I see right now, and I'm just sort of allowing that to come to me, and now I don't have to spend the rest of my life pretending to be something. I'm not. That sort of thing. Yeah, that same law applies here.

Frank: 6:12

Yeah, there's a. There's been this sort of conversation on Twitter about like relationship dynamics, dating and marriage.

Jake: 6:20

Okay.

Frank: 6:21

Um, I mean probably most people aren't exposed to it. It's like very rare. It's like in eGramm fives that talking about um, the meta, on meta of relationships, but super niche. Yeah, so I don't think most people would be like oh, I saw that on Twitter too.

Jake: 6:39

You did. The algorithm is feeding me this.

Frank: 6:43

But yeah, this there's. There's this idea like basically in marriage and dating it's sort of presupposed in society or something like that it's forever, the relationship will be forever, um, until it's not. And we can't, we shouldn't even entertain the idea that the can't part might happen someday, until it's time.

Jake: 7:07

Yeah.

Frank: 7:08

Um and how much more um real the relationship might be if the like on day one you're like yeah we could do this. Uh, unless I find someone that's like 15% better, um, you know, if they're 15% better of a match for me than you, then we'll move on.

Frank: 7:27

Um yeah, do you agree? And they're like, no, it should be 30% better. And you're like I can 25, you know like yeah, yeah, this, this contract is there in relationships. It may not be better. It may be like if you become a drug addict, I'm leaving Sure.

Jake: 7:46

Like whatever.

Frank: 7:46

That thing is in the background for everyone, but almost no one talks about it like in real terms. Sure, um, and I just think it would be better if they did yeah, yeah, then sort of like I have a partner and that's the normal societal thing to do and I sort of hate it, like I hate parts of it or whatever there.

Frank: 8:07

I think there are a lot of people having this experience, like I hate this part of this relationship, but I can't talk about it because on balance, it's a good partner or whatever. Should we talk about it?

Jake: 8:18

Yeah, yes, 100%. I mean this is, um, what young would have called the shadow aspect of the relationship. It is the thing you're not allowed to talk about. It is the unacceptable thing. Yeah, and in my relationship, if you know, it has been very important to us to be like hey, I find that person very attractive. It's because, like the conversation or the narrative around it is, once I'm in a relationship, I've never seen a beautiful person again in my life. They stopped existing, actually after I saw you. Right, the premise is so laughable, is so like inconceivable, that we all know it to be false. Yeah, but we don't talk about it and I don't know. It's a very important part of my relationship that we talk about those things.

Jake: 9:16

It's like talk about them, embrace them. It's part of who you are. It doesn't mean that there is a threat here. If anything, it's a diffusion of that threat.

Frank: 9:28

Definitely yeah, and I said it wrong. I mean, I said it the way that Twitter said it.

Frank: 9:32

But I think it's not even inclusive of everything, which is like I may change as a person and you may not change with me, sure, or there's all these factors in life that may change and so this may not be a good fit anymore, or maybe it becomes a better fit, but just like, let's sign on the line and we're committed for life and we'll pretend like there aren't any other factors until it hurts too much to bear and then we're out. That's sort of the marriage standard. Yes, it is.

Jake: 10:12

And it's hard for me to talk about. I feel in some way as though my perspective is the most valid, and I also feel as though it is invalidated in some way, because, as someone who's been divorced, I have a bias or an incentive to want to justify it. So I have the perspective that gives insight because I've been there, but it's also like I do benefit from being able to justify it. So for me, though, I've been having these conversations just around, I guess, optics of what it looks like to move from a marriage into a separate relationship. I've been talking to my ex-wife about this, and we continue to have a great relationship, but it's like, hey, you don't think I'm making a bad decision, right? And it's like, no, I don't think you're making a bad decision at all.

Jake: 11:18

If it was that one person was at fault and the other person was the victim, then that marriage ended in a bad way. But if we come to the conclusion where we equally just say, to some degree, either we were never the right people for each other or it came to a place where we no longer were correct for each other, I'm actually so freaking proud of us to stand up to the social pressure of staying together, acknowledging the reality of the situation and saying, hey, I love you enough to release you as the person you are today to get what you need today. I think that's essential in any relationship. That said, I also think that a healthy relationship acknowledges from the beginning that a person is a process, that things are going to change and that I'm going to love a different version of you 10 years from now than I am loving today.

Frank: 12:15

Yeah, yeah, and I didn't cover some of the important aspects of this.

Frank: 12:20

All the individuals are individuals and they have their own sort of what's important, and sometimes having some sort of sense of forever is very important to someone, and so I wouldn't say it's super important to me, although maybe it is somewhere in there, but it doesn't feel like I'm more opposed to commitment than seeking it for validation or something Sure, but not on hate it, but there are people who that's really important. So it's like if that's really important, that should be just a part of the conversation. I think, sure, like it's really important for me to feel like this is going to last forever. Do you think that's realistic for you or whatever? That seems like it's a problem and for some people, I think you can find a match that, yeah, they're both like yeah, absolutely, let's do this forever, no matter what, even if it sucks, we'll stay together forever. I mean, maybe there are people who want that commitment, like that Sure, but there's a whole lot more people just buying into it because it's common, than people who chose it on those terms.

Jake: 13:37

Completely, I agree. I think that and I don't want to invalidate the forever people there are people who want that, and so I'm not saying that there aren't people who really want it. For that reason, I do think, though, that the human need that we're really seeking is a certain unconditionality. I want to know that on my darkest day, you're not going to walk away because it's uncomfortable. I need some sort of security in that way. I heard Simon Sinek the other day said that the best quote about love or definition of love that he had heard was giving someone else the ability to completely destroy you and trusting that they won't use it.

Frank: 14:43

Yeah.

Jake: 14:44

And I think that's what it is. It's like I want to be vulnerable, I want to show you my darkest parts and I want to know that you're still going to be there.

Frank: 14:52

Yeah, I think that's inherent in actually talking about it, though, at least for me, I would rather know I will leave you. If there's someone 40% better, you should probably play the game, so you stay good and I don't want to do that to you. But it's just real terms or whatever. I think I would want that it feels a little harder when you think about it as you, as the victim side of it or something. But I don't know. It just seems like it's better to say it the way it really might happen.

Jake: 15:30

Completely. I think there's something also implicit there, though. It's that if you're finding someone that's 40% better or whatever, it's probably because you've been changing for quite a while. If you're with a partner where it felt like this is the best thing, then you probably had a compliance of 90% or something. It was like we're really really good for each other, we're really complimentary, and then, over the course of five years, either you're growing together in one direction or the two of you start to deviate and get further and further apart.

Jake: 16:14

And when you find someone else that is a better match by 40%, it's probably because the relationship hasn't really been aligned for a while. And so I guess my point is is like I think when you're completely compliant and I'll say it like this saying yes to one thing is saying no to everything else. So when you're completely complimentary to each other, your eyes are just focused on that person. You don't really see other options. Even if there's one. If I'm 90% matched and there's a 92% match right next to me, I'm probably not going to see them. So if I'm looking other places and I do see the better match, it's likely a sign that there's been something underlying for a while.

Frank: 17:06

Yeah, yeah. Well, you can have your main need be met by someone Like whatever it is. It used to be this crisis thing that I had to have met, and so I was getting it met by this relationship and that was plenty. But as you become more sort of integrated with all the parts of yourself, you're, like I found like way more healthy ways to meet that need, and so all the areas where this isn't sort of lining up with my blueprint are way more obvious now.

Jake: 17:43

Yes.

Frank: 17:45

And so it's exactly what you're saying. I'm just saying it in more details.

Jake: 17:51

Yeah, yeah, and it's weird. I mean, if you want to invalidate my position even more, my Instagram algorithm has sent me two things over the last two weeks, and one of them was hey, treat marriage like you treat pancakes. It's OK to throw out the first one. The other one said something like the key to happiness is getting married young so you can be divorced and happy in your 30s. So this is not typical stuff. This was actually like.

Jake: 18:20

I remember the two things because they're kind of outliers, but what I think this is pointing to is the thing that we started by talking about, which is like there is social pressure that oftentimes we do things because we feel like we're supposed to or it's what everyone else is doing.

Jake: 18:40

It's been fed to us in a certain vocabulary. This is what love looks like, this is what a healthy relationship does, and it's been modeled for us. For me, if I had to really boil it down, I got married for the first time Do entirely to social expectations, and what you just said was like when I started to integrate the pieces of myself and realize what I actually wanted, the most painful thing was realizing that I wasn't actually the agent who did that. I obviously carried out the actions, but I wasn't doing what I thought was cool. I was doing what I thought it was supposed to do and if you find yourself in that situation, there's some work to do. I'm not saying you can't maintain that relationship, but it's probably going to be a renewal of that vow as the person you are today, if you look nothing like the person you were when you made it to begin with, definitely.

Frank: 19:51

Yeah.

Jake: 19:54

It's an interesting one. I think it's funny to funny I don't know if that's the right word, but um, you know humans well, everything, everything is really based on being adapted to your environment. If you look at marriage across the world from an anthropological perspective, like it's really based on survival of the species, like how are we going to merge ourselves in a social group that sort of ensures the proliferation of our species for generations? And that's why marriage looks different. Sometimes it's one man and four women and sometimes it's four women and one Wait, no, I said that backwards Four men and one woman.

Jake: 20:43

But my point here is that if you look at our specific, like Western society, you see that you know we married off and that vow was so important because maybe we went off to the American frontier and there was no one else for 20 months and that family unit had to stick together, and maybe the man was an alcoholic and beat his wife, but it was like, well, if I go out I'm probably going to freeze to death over there. You know it was advantageous to maintain that and slowly, over time, as our society grew and became a little bit more affluent, it became more possible from a survival standpoint to ask those questions and then slowly, over the last hundred years or so, the questions got asked more often. The result was divorced more often, it became de-stigmatized in the culture more often, and now we find ourselves at this moment in time where we're able to ask these questions shame free, and you know this conversation is a product of that.

Jake: 21:49

It's sort of dealing with wow, I got all this stuff in front of me. What do we do with this? What is the right thing to do or the best thing.

Frank: 21:57

Yeah, yeah, I've always sort of not bought into like societal authority on mass. You know, like parking today I just barely had enough societal and it was an afterthought to be like I almost parked in. A probation officer only reserved spot or something.

Jake: 22:30

Yeah, it's Sunday morning, right? Yeah, and I had no idea that it was reserved for that. Sure.

Frank: 22:39

I do know that usually has a probation car in it, okay, but I didn't think. You know, I've never parked there because there's always a car there. So I started to pull in the spot and I'm like, oh, shouldn't do this, someone will come give me a ticket, probably, maybe not, who knows, but there's a hundred other spots, yeah.

Frank: 22:59

So I'll switch, but yeah, so it's always in the background. I'm not. I've never been the kind of person who's like, oh, I could never have been there. Oh, I could never park there. I'm totally fine parking there. The ticket would be an annoyance, but nothing more. I wouldn't feel shame about this. I wouldn't feel heartbroken that I committed a crime or something. There are people who would.

Jake: 23:24

Yeah, you're probably talking to one Really Well, I mean a previous version of me. Yeah, I would be like oh no, that's not even an option.

Frank: 23:31

Yeah, I had divorced a bunch of people who were sort of leaders in my community talking to me about how I had given up on this commitment or something and like what about the people? And I remember considering shame for a minute, Like should.

Frank: 23:48

I feel, and I felt embarrassed, for sure. But yeah, I don't think I ever felt like a shame from it really. I sort of just felt like embarrassed, Like I should have known more than I knew or something like that. I don't know that I ever valued it in this context and so we shouldn't have it. Yeah, I mean I hate that it's a should statement, but also like why, do you feel shame? Why would you Right?

Jake: 24:24

Yeah, well, I mean, it's funny. The shame is really what keeps society going to be. It's called pro pro. Social shame is what it's called, and this is shame that's used for the benefit of social groups.

Jake: 24:44

Okay, so it's like hey it's really disgusting that you're smoking in here to the one guy who's smoking. And you know, hopefully at some point we get to a place where we don't have smoking in our hotels and restaurants and stuff like that. Yeah, it's used all the time and we don't even realize it. It's just ingrained in our culture and either you align with the social norm or you deviate. And what do they call you? They call you a deviant or, oh, that person's kind of a weirdo, and I mean from a survival standpoint.

Jake: 25:18

Once again, we associate this with life or death at some sort of biological level. If I'm not part of my social group, I'm going to get cast out, ostracized. Maybe I don't get to eat whenever the hunters bring in the meat next time, right. So there's, there's something here that binds us to this desire to be, to be social, and if we don't act like the group, depending on how lenient the group is, we could get cast out of it. So, like this isn't personally directed at you, I think we all have different thresholds for how much we feel that shame. Mine was great and I think you know, looking back on it, it's totally associated with how much shame my own mother felt and how lenient she was on herself.

Jake: 26:07

And therefore, how lenient she was on me. I got swiftly reprimanded as soon as I did anything that was deviant, and I think about that. Now she tells me, geez, 15, 16 years later, that me as a 14 year old was the only reason that she ever left my dad. She had so much sort of moral associations with divorce in the Christian community, what the Bible says. My dad didn't, you know like beat her so she didn't feel like she could leave and she stayed in this situation that was terrible for herself and her kids for a decade or longer, and you know we inherited that sort of trauma as a result. And even now, after my divorce and this is probably why I felt it, because she talks about it constantly she has a hard time accepting the decisions that I've made. Now I don't care. Like, I'm completely fine, I'm like Mom, this is my life, like you know, live your own.

Jake: 27:22

but it's so weird for her. She has a hard time seeing that I'm dating someone else now. She has a hard time accepting that person. She's just very awkward around them and it's all based in this morality and shame piece from her social group.

Frank: 27:39

Yeah, I mean I'm sure you're right that like just whatever happened with that area in your development probably matters. I mean mine, like my parents got divorced basically as a result of me leaving the relationship.

Jake: 27:54

Really, I didn't know that.

Frank: 27:56

Yeah, I was tired of being beat and so I just said I'm moving, I'm leaving this relationship, I'm leaving this family and my mom's like you know, you're too young, you can't live by yourself, or whatever, and I'm like I'll figure it out, it's fine. I mean, if you want to stay in this, like hell, you can, I'm not going to. And she decided to leave him as a result of that, which, like took off. I mean just the like sort of way the tree grew up was not one where I was like is my mom doing the right thing at all? Like it was really irrelevant to me what she did. And so, because it was relevant and I saw it happen, I'm like, oh, that's probably totally fine to do sometimes, I mean, especially in given the situation. Yeah, so that's like the value of that decision for me is like around approximately that. You know, like if it happens, it happens. No one should stay in hell, that's for sure.

Jake: 29:02

So yeah, I think it was probably the extremity of my parents situation that made it feel justifiable and so I wasn't in a situation, you know, where it was drug addiction and you know cheating and stuff like that. So it didn't feel extreme enough to me Right, and it took a while for my threshold beeper to start going off Definitely. Yeah.

Frank: 29:29

Yeah Well, I mean mine didn't feel extreme to almost anyone except me, like I'm in the police and domestic violence shelters and stuff seem not like it, but no one in my family seemed to be bothered by it.

Jake: 29:44

Really, she only pulled a gun on you one time. Come on man, yeah, all right.

Frank: 29:54

So I don't know what any of this means, but yeah, someone.

Jake: 29:59

Well, it is interesting. I mean I think you are bringing up a really good point and it's that it's sort of the other side of this coin, the stigmas decreasing around divorce. It's like essentially elucidating this whole situation around the fact that relationships don't have to last a lifetime for them still to be very valuable to who you are. And I guess that opens up the opportunity for this conversation about, like well, what is the value of a long term, lifelong relationship? I think there is one. I mean no question about it, definitely. But what does that look like? What does it look like when you do have the option?

Jake: 30:57

Elizabeth and I have been talking about this. We actually love it. We love the tension that it builds to know that that person is kind of like could just go off with someone else at any point. It like keeps it alive and exciting and a little scary and like that's. That's the element of dating that I think you kind of get rid of in marriage, because the safety doesn't allow the danger, which is a lot of the fun. We do it in a safe way. You know that still has that security, but it's there, it's an element that's there.

Frank: 31:35

Yeah, that's legit though. Yeah, I like it.

Jake: 31:38

I think of it like a death meditation for living, Like when you picture yourself losing everything. It makes you appreciate what you have right now. There's something about marriage that is a form of death. It takes away the potential of losing it and again, that's great in so many ways. It creates security. You can align your missions and you can build something together Amazing.

Frank: 32:02

Yeah.

Jake: 32:03

No discounting that, but it does have a cost, right, every benefit has a cost and I think one of them is this remembering constantly that it could go away, and I find life in that, definitely yeah.

Frank: 32:19

It keeps you. I mean, a game with like real consequences has some more. I don't know, you know it's not this, but it's kind of like if you play football on a field where out of bounds falls off the earth, yeah. You know like the game's a little more interesting.

Jake: 32:43

It is. It is. That's what it is Exactly. We've kind of taken that, that sort of penalty, out of the picture. I think that the other element of this is when you are sort of vetting a potential partner, I really struggle with trust. I struggle with trusting that that person is as interested in evolution and change and becoming as I am Sure, and so a person could tell me that they are a perfect match for who I am today. That's not enough for me. It really is not. When I see the ways they respond to hard situations do they turn toward them or do they turn away from them? That for me is like the litmus test for a companion yeah, oh, you turn toward it. Oh, you choose to move into it. You choose to transform as a result of what's going on around you. You choose to me life. That's what allows me to trust my partner and it's like, hey, you're not going to be the same person in five years, but if you were the type of person who changes in that way, I think we're pretty compatible.

Frank: 34:04

Right, yeah, that's a legit test. Yeah, what do you call that?

Jake: 34:10

I don't know, but it's. That's my problem, that's Jake's whole problem is that I have this library of concepts that have no name.

Frank: 34:21

Yeah, Jaco talks about it, I think I think I've heard Jaco talk about it as taking on life with a forward lean. I think this is his. I actually don't even know that it's him, but it's a forward lean.

Jake: 34:33

Okay.

Frank: 34:34

Like you can walk through life like about to back away from something, or you can walk through life going into the next thing, and this energy that you bring with you affects how the things go. Yeah, physically, sure, but also mentally. I mean, fives have a tendency to back away, so that's why I care. So I remember this so much as a highlight of whoever talked about it. I'm sorry, jaco, if it wasn't you or Jaco's proxy. Yeah, I apologize for giving Jaco credit for your work. I think it's okay. Yeah, it's something like that, right.

Jake: 35:19

Sure, I mean something I've heard. Jacoze is like when bad things happen, I say good.

Frank: 35:24

Yeah, that's like a similar thing.

Jake: 35:25

Yeah, you know it's like this is an opportunity. I'm pushing into it, I'm not leaning away from it. I mean sure there's the fight or flight mechanism, like it's important sometimes to choose flight. That's okay.

Frank: 35:39

Yeah.

Jake: 35:40

But what's your disposition? What's your default? Is it to take it on? Is it to avoid it? Is it to make it to ignore it? Like what is it?

Frank: 35:51

Yeah, yeah. So I think the reason I wanted to talk about this was that throughout my life I've had I don't even say this without a sound like a dick thing to say, but whatever I suppose that it's true that I have high intelligence, so oftentimes in my relationships there's a dynamic of intelligence that is hard to bridge, and I've had many different relationships in which the other person was like you're so much better than me, or something like that, and it's a very difficult dynamic to deal with, and so I've always not known what to do with that and I've tried all kinds of approaches Throughout the relationships in my life where because it's first of all, it's not true Right I maybe have greater intelligence but I'm not better because of it.

Frank: 36:52

That's one dynamic of a person, and so that you know, whatever great intelligence, why are my socks on the bathroom floor? Like I'm not capable of picking, I can't remember it, like it's not in my mind, because my mind is always doing some intelligence dance or figuring out some problem or some. As a human, I'm not better because I have higher intelligence or something.

Jake: 37:20

Sure.

Frank: 37:20

I do think that I missed a. I missed it on this point a lot. That's what I really mean is when someone says that the conversation should be like okay, so what are you suggesting? Should you leave? Should I leave? Should I find someone better? Is there a chance that you're better in all these ways and together it's we're better for each other? Seeing this conversation on Twitter, I was like man, I missed this a lot, like this is a big area that I just sort of like denial was my approach or something. Yes, because it's so uncomfortable. I suppose it's probably like similar to me being like you know, I don't know, going to someone who's super fit and being like I'm trying to get more fit and they're just like I'm way easier for me than it is for you.

Jake: 38:18

I don't know what to tell you. There's so much meat here, though I think that oftentimes we synonymize the word intelligence with intellectual IQ. Yeah, and we live in a society that highly prioritizes that. It's far more profitable than emotional IQ, yeah, but I just said a term that everybody has heard before Emotional IQ is just as important to being a holistic human as intellectual IQ, and I've struggled with similar things. I'm a highly intellectual person, right, and I suppose to some degree I'm very quick-minded. I'm usually pretty good at putting words to the ideas around it, too, and, as a result, the relationships that I've been in, if the other party isn't as capable of stringing words together to talk about what they want to, it's that gap that is on bridge that you're talking about, yeah, and so I just, sort of by default, win the conversation, which shouldn't even be a concept, but it was for so long.

Frank: 39:33

Sure.

Jake: 39:34

And so it left the other person feeling depleted and wanting and it left a power struggle in the relationship. It wasn't equal.

Frank: 39:43

Yeah, I apologize for any role I played in the development of those characteristics.

Jake: 39:48

Well, yeah.

Frank: 39:50

No, I see it. As a young person, the most defining characteristic I can look back on my history is that I would not be wrong. Like I will change the argument before I'm wrong, we will shift it to something different, and I know you did the same thing Sure.

Jake: 40:10

I did, I did man and like. Here's an analogy you can relate to. It's like looking at the world through one eye and you're missing the other one. You're missing the depth of what's actually going on if you only prioritize that one form of intellect. And I think that it took me being wrong, a hard, hard wrong that hurt people that I love for me to realize how important it was to look through both eyes.

Jake: 40:45

And so I guess for me, when I've encountered that same dynamic in the current relationship that I have, I usually point to the other types of intelligence and I also point to how blind my own emphasis on intellectualizing things has made me in the past. And it's like, yeah, I mean, I appreciate that that's cool and everything, Just so you know, it's not everything and you're not dumb because of this. Like to my ex-wife. She had to point out to me that I was miserable in our relationship, I could not see it at all. She had to say, hey, by the way, you're sad. Like what are you talking about? I was an idiot, right? So that's an interesting dynamic, to be certain.

Frank: 41:37

And definitely yeah, yeah, and I mean I sometimes even think about it.

Frank: 41:44

I could certainly a part of my sort of blueprint for a relationship partner or something that that person is like way more pro-social than me, Because I don't hat Like, I always have the ability, I have tons of empathy ability, but it doesn't always get into my vision if that makes sense. So you know, having people, having someone in my life who is sort of attuned to the emotional state of others, is huge for me. It's like exactly what you're talking about, because I don't have that. Well, I'm trying to think of a good example of this but, like, essentially I'm a pretty good executor, I'm pretty good at sort of knowing what needs done, but having someone who's like, hey, it seems like you're putting a lot of pressure on him to get his new website done and it seems like he's really stressed, you may just want to tell him he's doing a good job right now, or something like to someone who owns a business who I'm trying to help grow or something, and I'm like, oh, okay, that's way.

Frank: 42:58

Yeah, that's true. You know, my standard for pressure is way different than his.

Jake: 43:03

Yeah, I feel like.

Frank: 43:04

I'm doing nothing on pressuring, but you know, for someone who's growing a new business and and it's growing very rapidly, yeah, just we need to do these. You know, get these three things done is huge stress for them because they're also having to do their business every day, which keeps growing. So just having someone in the mix who's like aware of that type of stuff, it's not always obvious to me.

Jake: 43:28

I love that. I saw something else recently about relationships and it said one of the signs that you are in a healthy and, just like you know, nurtured relationship is that you start taking on the sort of like vocal or speech patterns of the other person. Yeah, it's a sign that to some degree, the boundaries where you end in the other person begins have started to dissolve and you see that person as an extension of yourself, and the inverse of that as well. And I think that the empathy piece is something I've seen in myself as well, in that same way like I'm starting to adopt the ways of looking at the world that the other person has and seeing them so valuably, and they've started to adopt some of the I don't know intellectual frameworks for deciphering the world and analyzing it that I have. And that's a very interesting thing. It's not a speech pattern, but I think it's the same dynamic.

Jake: 44:34

Yeah, yeah I agree Together becoming sort of more holistic and balanced. Well, yeah that's.

Frank: 44:40

I mean we were in St Charles the other day and when in this like new bakery that was starting up and we were talking about their business and whatever, and I mean I was in no frame of my mind thinking about sales. It's just not really a default way, I think, at all. Oh, brandy said do you have a website? And they're like, no, we're working on it. I can't figure out DNS, and I don't like whatever. And so we walked out of there and I'm like I should probably give them a card. She's like yeah, that's why I brought it up. And I'm like, oh, thanks for being in New York. I would have just let them complain about their website and been like why don't they fix it?

Jake: 45:28

Yeah, yeah.

Frank: 45:29

Yeah, that stuff's pretty cool when you get like your attributes add together to something that's better than you buy yourself.

Jake: 45:39

I agree there's that was one of the things you said to me a couple years ago is like man. I can't remember the words, you probably have them better than I do, but it was like you will become a better version of yourself with another person, and it's true. I mean just the amount of sort of sacrifice and evolution that is required to compliment and compensate and compromise for another person, as long as you're not like, giving up who you are is actually a very positive thing, Right.

Frank: 46:16

Yeah, yeah, and you can talk about like and sometimes the person is in a right match and that's okay, find one that is. But talking about those things gets you to the truth faster and that's really what I sort of value and why this whole conversation was important to me. But I think so too. I don't think that was the planned conversation, jake, but it's. It's sprung out of somewhere.

Jake: 46:44

Absolutely. I think it came out of a certain salient thing in your life right now.

Frank: 46:50

Right.

Jake: 46:50

That's cool Did.

Frank: 46:53

Okay.

Jake: 46:54

So yeah, there you go, tupys, don't. Don't go jump into a relationship because you feel like it's the right thing to do you, because you feel like it's going to complete you, but if you, already know who you are and it sounds like a cool thing tell the truth tell the truth, truth and that.

Frank: 47:12

TROF right truth.

Jake: 47:17

This was worth Jake I think that was a word with Frank actually.

Frank: 47:23

All right, thanks, tupys, bye.