Love is not enough

0:00This podcast is supported by GoFundMe. My name is Veronica. We started our fundraiser for Mariah. She was a close friend in my heart, but she was also family. She was my sister-in-law. She unfortunately passed from a car accident, so it wasn't something that we were prepared for. Shortly after we got the news, I was put in charge of helping with the funeral arrangements and everything, and just looking at the overall cost, it didn't feel right for me to ask the family that's grieving for money. That's what made me go to GoFundMe, and it just became a network of people that were willing to come together to help. GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform trusted by over 200 million people. You really do miss out on the opportunity to help people if you don't ask. When you actually put your heart, your soul into it, and you're like, this is the reason I'm doing it, it helps a lot. Start your GoFundMe today at GoFundMe.com. GoFundMe.com. Meet the Red Bull DragmDerry Emergizer.

1:03It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Try them all only at McDonald's. This podcast is supported by GoFundMe. My name is Veronica. We started our fundraiser for Mariah. She was a close friend in my heart, but she was also family. She was my sister-in-law. She unfortunately passed from a car accident, so it wasn't something that we were prepared for. Shortly after we got the news, I was put in charge of helping with the funeral arrangements and everything, and just looking at the overall cost, it didn't feel right for me to ask the family that's grieving for money. That's what made me go to GoFundMe. And it just became a network of people that were willing to come together to help. GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform that was entrusted by over 200 million people. You really do miss out on the opportunity to help people if you don't ask. When you actually put your heart, your soul into it,

2:05and you're like, this is the reason I'm doing it, it helps a lot. Start your GoFundMe today at GoFundMe.com. That's GoFundMe.com. GoFundMe.com. Grandrising, everyone. Grandrising. Looking like we're going to have a slow morning today with only 26 people in here. I guess this is what happens when I do Patreon, only content. We've covered curiosity. We've covered compatibility. We've covered forgiveness, respect, boundaries, repair. At this point with the podcast and with the thoughts from the chair, I'm pretty sure that I've covered pretty much everything that I could cover. I'm going to approach today's episode a little bit different than what I've been doing. And this is one of the reasons why I'm doing this just for Patreon because it may not be good. We'll see. I titled this the difference between loving compatibility. But as I ran through the document and I was creating it this morning, I'm realizing it's not that this is more about love is not enough. This is about a lot of you guys finding yourselves in situations where you found something that

3:09you really enjoyed in the beginning and you became so enmeshed with something that you kind of put a whole lot of things aside and forgot who you were, forgot what you wanted, forgot about your dreams and you sacrifice and you give. And maybe they're the ones who sacrificed and give. But life didn't quite work out the way that you had hoped it worked out, right? This is going to speak to a whole lot of single people. This is going to speak to a whole lot of people who have been in their early dating phases. This is going to be great information for you guys. There will also be some shit in here for some of you who are married as well, which will lead into conversations that may impact your marriage positively or negatively. I don't know. I really do hope that you guys find value in this document. I'm going to just kind of jump into it. I don't have a whole lot of things to get into today. So I'm going to just do the thing. So if two people really love each other, can they figure it out? Do you guys think that that love is going to trump compatibility? Do you believe that simply being in love with somebody is enough to forego the dreams

4:12that you had in your life? Whether it be your retirement plan, the way that you live, kids, money, how important are these things to you? How important is your financial success? Does that matter? Does it matter at all? Right? Those are questions that people fail to ask in the beginning of things. You guys get to a point where you meet somebody. Regardless of how you meet them, the dates are going well. The conversation is nice. It's easy flowing. You feel good around this person. You guys decide to get physically intimate, little ears are still in the kitchen. And you find yourself now chemically involved with somebody, right? So you guys end up fucking, right? And maybe the sex is immaculate. Maybe it's the best sex that you've ever had. And then there starts to be issues in communication and issues in the way that you treat each other. And you find your relationship being more about the physical side than the emotionally intimate side. And now you're two and a half years in. Maybe you moved in together because things were really fun and exciting in the beginning. You find yourself in meshed in somebody else's life. And the things that you thought you were building together are not at all what you imagine

5:15because you didn't have the conversations you were dreaming. You were caught up in dopamine. You were caught up in oxytocin. You had a belief system that was never truly examined or discussed, right? And what do you do when you find yourself in those positions? And now five years has gone by and you're like, this is not the life I wanted for myself. Are you willing to continue to give up that life for the rest of your life to make somebody else happy? And if you do that, do you really think that you'll be able to be fulfilled when you look back on your deathbed? These things are not discussed enough. So I have some things that cover that need to be covered in the beginning phases of relationship, but they're things that you guys should still be discussing as you evolve in your relationships. Because as I said over and over again, who you were in your 20s or not who you are in your 40s, right? So if two people really love each other, can they figure it out? The answer to that is sometimes they won't.

6:16Sometimes the answer is actually no. Sometimes two people who love each other deeply treat each other well, have incredible chemistry, share years of history still want to have lives that they cannot have and coexist with another human being. That doesn't mean that they're not in love. It doesn't mean that there's not unconditional love there. It means that one person in this relationship is going to have to sacrifice their dreams, their wants, their desires. And what does that do to that person long term is simply being with that person going to be enough to sustain you for the rest of your life. If the answer is no and you can't peacefully coexist, does that mean the relationship was fake? Does it mean that somebody failed? Does it mean that one person is toxic, avoidant, narcissistic, emotionally unavailable or not doing the work? No. It just means that you guys had two very different life expectancies, right? And that does not write or wrong.

7:18Sometimes you're just not compatible. People fucking hate hearing that because compatibility is not a romantic discussion. It's not beauty in the beast. It's not he saves the girl. It's not any of that. It's the harsh reality that you wanted something very different for your life than what you are currently experiencing. And maybe you don't see a way to that. I'm realizing as I'm talking at this might sound pessimistic. I'm not being pessimistic. I am being, I want you guys to really think about the things that most people don't discuss. We created the courting check-ins for the courting questionnaire for a reason. Those questions are very important to your life, not just to your dating things. No love feels romantic. Chemistry feels romantic. Fighting for each other can feel romantic. We can overcome anything. Sounds fucking great in a novel or a movie or a song. Sometimes that's not how it works out though.

8:21Compatibility sounds like a spreadsheet, right? This is an Excel document. Kids, money, religion, sex, where we're going to live, how much we're going to work, whether we're going to drink or use drugs. How involved our families are going to be, what kind of life we're going to build. This is statistics, guys. This is us collecting data so that we can weigh our options and have a pros and cons list and figure out how we're going to approach this life that we are trying to build together. And a lot of you don't have the conversations. Those questions are also boring as fuck. They're not glamorous. They're not exciting. They're just things that we have to figure out logistically to live our life. You also have to realize that those are the roots of the tree of life that you're building. These things are the thing that's going to hold up the thing that you're building. And if you don't have those discussion, your roots are shallow. It's going to take us one good storm or one good rain and down it all falls, right? You can have the greatest connection in the world, the most incredible sex and still spend

9:2315 years fighting about the same fundamental differences because neither of you ever stopped to ask whether your life, whether the life that you want is compatible with the life that your partner wants. Love can answer how do I feel about you, but compatibility asks, can we build a life together without one of us having to betray ourselves to make it work and make no mistake. If your dream is 10 acres in the middle of the woods with 15 kids and chickens and the other person's dream is a boat or an apartment and fucking four nights out a week at restaurant and fine wine and all of that shit, one of you is sacrificing. That's not a compromise at that point. One of you is not going to get the life that you wanted to live out of that. These questions fucking matter, guys. It really think about that for a minute. You guys have a couple of dates. You fuck, you have a few fun outings. You start getting serious with someone without really knowing what their life goals are.

10:24When you find yourselves enmeshed with another human being that have totally different goals and aspirations in life, you're living with a broken heart because things are starting to fall apart. What are the biggest compatibility issues? I made a list that I think they are and they're not in any random order or like a consensual they're in a random order. They're not in list of greatest to worst. These are all things that I think that are really fucking important to talk about and should be talked about frequently, especially in the beginning of the relationship and then needs to be fine tuned as you go because you're going to grow and evolve. So the first one is money. Can you love somebody and absolutely hate the way that they handle money? Yeah. Love is love. That's not love. That's logistics, right? One person wants security, savings, retirement, investments and emergency fund. They feel safe when there's money in the bank.

11:25The other person says we could fucking die tomorrow. And if I got a million dollars in the bank, I didn't get to enjoy that money, right? They want trips, cars, restaurants, experiences, toys. They want to spend their entire life. They don't want to spend their entire life preparing for some future that they may never get or putting all of their money away forever, only for them to die. Their kids to inherit it and spend it in a month. Neither one of these philosophies is wrong or evil. This is a life preference. But those two people together without an agreement, you make them live together and watch what happens. One person experiences the other as reckless. The other experiences the person is controlling and you have two people that are unable to live the life that they want to live because they have two very different expectations of life. They can be madly in love with each other, but this is a massive compatibility issue. You can't live in a constant, a perpetual state of stress where one minute, one minute, everything is working the way that it wants in the next. Now we're worried about this and then what about this and what about this and like that

12:28constant fear of what if is fucking huge, right? It creates a lot of fucking problems and relationships. It's not just electric. It's Toyota Electric and during Toyota's easy choice sales event, going electric is easier than ever. Right now, save instantly on a new Toyota EV with special incentive programs for first time EV buyers and prior EV owners. Choose the sleek BZ, the adventurous BZ-Widland or the sporty CHR. But don't wait, these special savings won't last. We make it easy. Toyota, let's go places. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergeizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Try them all only at McDonald's. It's not just electric. It's Toyota Electric and during Toyota's easy choice sales event, going electric is easier than ever.

13:29Right now, save instantly on a new Toyota EV with special incentive programs for first time EV buyers and prior EV owners. Choose the sleek BZ, the adventurous BZ-Widland or the sporty CHR. But don't wait, these special savings won't last. We make it easy. Toyota, let's go places. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergeizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Try them all only at McDonald's. It's not just electric. It's Toyota Electric and during Toyota's easy choice sales event, going electric is easier than ever. Right now, save instantly on a new Toyota EV with special incentive programs for first time EV buyers and prior EV owners. Choose the sleek BZ, the adventurous BZ-Widland or the sporty CHR. But don't wait, these special savings won't last.

14:31We make it easy. Toyota, let's go places. If every purchase becomes symbolic, right, this is, you spend $300 on something. It's no longer a purchase. The symbolism behind the purchase is you don't care about our financial safety or you spend the $300 and you're enjoying the new thing and your person's like, you view that, I bought this thing and they start bitching about it and you view that as control, right? Like, there's not a common ground. Now you have an allowance. You get to spend out of your paycheck that allows you to spend 50 bucks on something. That $50 may not be enough to buy the thing that you want to buy and now you have to go ask for permission because if you don't ask for permission, there could be conflict like, do you see where I'm going with this? This could become a massive issue. It's no longer about savings anymore. It's about you won't let us enjoy life. Now money is carrying fear, freedom, control, security, childhood, poverty, status, success, anxiety and identity attached to it.

15:33You don't need identical financial personality. Sometimes these things can be worked out. However, it's more than likely always going to be a fight. Then what? You need enough shared values and agreed upon behavior that one person's lifestyle is not constantly terrifying or traumatizing the other or opening, reopening the traumas of others. When love does not magically solve a gambling problem hidden debt, chronic overspending financial secrecy or someone refusing to contribute, you can love someone and still realize I cannot build financial stability with this person. So what? Right. So what happens in this situation where money is super important to you and it's not important to the other, right? We get emails all the time about somebody who's ambitious that claims their person is a work list because they don't want to work more than a 30 hour work week. If they make enough money during that 30 hour work week to live in a level that they view as comfortable and the other person wants to build businesses and be a millionaire,

16:37if that's not important to the other person, which one of them are right or wrong, is there a right and wrong? I don't think there is. I think that this is lived life experience. This makes me happy. It may not make you happy. And if you do this and I have to come along, I may not be happy. So how do we find a balance in this thing? Money is a massive factor, guys. Finance is one of the leading causes of divorce. Like this is a big fucking deal that a lot of you guys aren't even willing to discuss. Like you talk about it once or twice a year, you don't have regular check ins about your finances. This shit's wild to me. So on the other side of this, what happens when you are both tight or both loose with money? What if you both want to save or both want to travel? What happens if you have enough financial security that all of your bills are paid on time and everything that's left is play money? These things absolutely matter. You can have a life that is very enjoyable for both of you or one where money is a point

17:39of contention and constant conflict. If you're somebody that wants to save and you find somebody that's also a tight wad, you guys can have a huge fucking savings and that security can bring peace to the relationship and it will be that money is never an issue. If you guys are somebody who wants to travel and live a luxurious life, whatever that looks like to you, you have to go do the things and spend the money to do it. Otherwise, you're going to be living in a dream state or a wish state, right? Like, there's also conversations about other things when it comes down to like depression, right? Like, you want to live this life, but you're not willing to work hard enough to live that life. That's a whole other discussion in itself, but like money matters, right? Somebody said, what does that say about how you view your kids? I don't understand what that was in reference to. I don't see anything in the chat talking about kids. What was that in reference to Katie? Because kids is actually the next thing going to let this sit for a minute. I'm very curious what that was in reference to. I feel like I missed something or maybe I said something and it doesn't make sense.

18:43I don't know. So the second part of this list is children. I think it was in reference to spending the inheritance. Well, okay. So let's talk about that. You said about how if one wants to spend all their money and not leave any to their kids because they'll spend it all in a month. And that said, and then you said, what does that say about how you view your kids? Why does that actually have to do anything with your kids and not about the life that you want to build for yourself? I am somebody who came from absolutely nothing. I built all of this with my own two hands, not just the podcast, but the multiple businesses that I've ran, the businesses that have failed, my struggles, my successes. I did all of that. That was me. I want my kids to understand those struggles. I don't want to give them freedom to just do whatever. You know that people who make generational wealth, they live their life very different than their kids do. Their kids not having to struggle for things, expecting everything to be handed to them. That gives them a very different mindset.

19:45In the perfect example I have of this, I was listening to a podcast where they were talking about yachts and they were talking about the captains who work on those yachts. And they were saying that the billionaire that owns the yacht that made his money treats the captain of the boat with dignity and respect. And they have a much deeper relationship of admiration with each other because they both understand what it is to work for living. There is when those kids of the billionaires take those yachts out, they treat the captain like shit and think that he is somehow beneath them because they have money and he's working. So there's a lot that goes into all of that. I want my kids to understand what it is to struggle. I want them to have to pay their own bills. I want them to grind and build the life that they want for themselves instead of expecting a fucking handout from anyone, including the government. So that's not a matter of how I view my kids. That's a matter of how I want them to understand what it is to go and get the things that you want in life instead of expecting someone to give it to you. It actually has absolutely zero to do with my kids and everything to do with my expectations

20:49of what it means to build a life for yourself. So just I mean, it's fine. Yeah, I don't, I wasn't like, that wasn't like a challenge to me. That was just something that I want you guys to think about. I have things in place for the kids. Pete, I'm, I'm 15 or 16 years older than my wife. So I'm going to get my Roth IRA in 15 years and it should cash out over a million. She'll get hers 15 years after me and it should cash out at two to three. You know, we're putting kids on payroll so that they are technically employees up to the amount before they have to pay taxes and all of that money is going to go into a Roth IRA for them. So by the time they retire, they will have a retirement fund assuming the United States and our currency exists at that point, which is a debatable thing all in itself. And that could totally be wasted money on my part. I don't fucking know. But until they turn 65, I don't even want them to know about that. Like I won't, they'll get a trust and in that trust will be their Roth IRA information.

21:50But I don't even want them to know that's a thing. I want them to hustle for their money. I want them to have a life that is, that requires them to take care of themselves. And if they are able to add into their own Roth IRA, that would be fucking gangster or 401k or whatever to set them up for retirement. That just means that they'll have extra. Maybe they'll open a business and create a simple Roth IRA for themselves. So instead of 7,000 a year, they can put in 17,000 a year. Who knows? But I think that these things, guys, I think that we do too much for our kids. I understand that like my generation didn't have enough done for us. And I think that the overcompensation with helicopter parenting and trying to make sure that our kids have everything that they need does a disservice. There's a level of if you want things in life, you can't expect other people to get it for you. I actually think that's why we have the issue with younger, the younger generation right now complaining about billionaires and wealth inequality. Like I have never in my life complained about a billionaire or a trillionaire or millionaires.

22:52Like I don't give a fuck about their money. I don't have their money. I know that we live in a country where I can create something that will allow me to make that money. And whether I'm capable of doing that or not says, you know, that's on its own. That speaks to ingenuity and hustle and luck. I get that. I also understand that 1% of the world's population controls the world. But I've done really well for myself and I've done it with nothing. So like I know that it's possible. I'm not a quitter or somebody that's going to get mad because somebody else is doing better than I am. I want to have conversations with that motherfucker to figure out what they did. I want to understand how their mind works because I know for a fact that it's possible for people to become 100 millionaires. I know that it's possible for people to become 100 billionaires. It's just a matter of perspective, I think, right? I'm going to move on. I'll come back to the chat later. I definitely realize that not going public definitely heard our numbers today. 51 people watching instead of 150 people. I don't like that.

23:53Anyways, part two of this is children. This is one of the hardest examples because there is no compromise when it comes to kids. One person wants children and the other doesn't, right? This is not, I'm sure this is not maybe later. One desperately wants to become a parent and the other one absolutely does not. What happens when one person caves to make the other person happy? The one who didn't want kids doesn't want to be home anymore. He doesn't want to do family outings. What happens when the noise is too much and they're becoming overstimulated? When the house is completely trashed? What happens when the parent who does want children has to do all of the work with the child because the one who didn't is not present because they didn't want fucking kids? Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergeizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so? Try them all only at McDonald's. It's not just electric.

24:53It's Toyota Electric and during Toyota's easy choice sales event, going electric is easier than ever. Right now, save instantly on a new Toyota EV with special incentive programs for first-time EV buyers and prior EV owners. Choose the sleek busy, the adventurous busy woodland or the sporty CHR. But don't wait, these special savings won't last. We make it easy. Toyota, let's go places. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergeizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so? Fire. Try them all only at McDonald's. It's not just electric. It's Toyota Electric and during Toyota's easy choice sales event, going electric is easier than ever. Right now, save instantly on a new Toyota EV with special incentive programs for first-time EV buyers and prior EV owners. Choose the sleek busy, the adventurous busy woodland or the sporty CHR.

25:59But don't wait, these special savings won't last. We make it easy. Toyota, let's go places. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergeizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so? Fire. Try them all only at McDonald's. Like this is a real honest conversation that needs to be had. You can't have half a child. You're either all in with your kid or you're not. And if you have somebody that doesn't want kids and you do it anyways, and this doesn't necessarily mean men. Some women out there will agree to have a child with a man and then have no emotional ties or connection to that child because they didn't want it. They did it to make their husband happy. So this is not a man or woman thing. This is some of y'all have dreams and aspirations. And when you cave to do those things, what happens on all of that? Who do you think is going to have resentment? Gabby, you missed the entire point of this with your comment.

27:02This is about making a choice to do the thing even though you don't want it for the other person. So I asked you guys, who do you think will have resentment and the answer to that is both? There's not going to be a who's right and who's wrong in this situation because you guys somebody has made a sacrifice that sacrifice will build resentment. One of you will get what you want and it won't be the way that you wanted it. And over time, that too will build resentment because there's going to be things that come along with it. And what exactly are you compromising on because this situation is not a half a child. Being a kid and hoping the person who never wanted children eventually enjoys it, right? Or not having children and hoping the person who always dreamed of being a parent doesn't fucking hate their partner at 48 years old because they realize now they can't love can not solve that problem. And I think sometimes people encourage people to stay in these relationships because everything else is really good.

28:02He's my best friend. I never loved anyone like I love her. I can't imagine starting over and real shit. That's not even a valid argument. I can't I can't imagine starting over is not I love statement. That's an I need statement. That's a I'm comfortable. That's a I don't want to do this all over again. That has absolutely nothing to do with love. That is more about stability and what if that's a whole last thing in itself. None of that creates a third option for I want one. I don't want one. Right? This parenthood is in deeply important to one person and deeply unwanted by the other. Someone is going to give up something massive. It's more than a dream. It's more than vacations guys. It's so much more kids are so fucking much. There's no compromise here. This is one of those situations that is purely sacrifice. Sacrifice is will eventually most likely become resentment. That resentment is going to poison the love that's there.

29:04It's going to destroy the marriage or the relationship. It's the exact thing that you were trying to protect all along by a green to do the thing to make the person happy. At that point, I ask again, who's going to have resentment and who's right or wrong in the situation? The same issue exists when both people want children but fundamentally disagree about parenting, religion, discipline, school, gender roles and where the kids will be raised. You add in other things like how involved the grandparents will be, what will happen when the child is struggling and now you have other issues that are going to arise from having the child. These conversations have to be laid out way before you get pregnant. Now I'm not saying that you need identical parenting styles. You don't. You guys can find compromises in those things but I also think that in some of these situations there's going to be sacrifices. You are going to have to build a shared philosophy or structure around all of this thing that makes both of you comfortable enough that you are not going to have conflict because

30:07of it. If you don't, you guys are going to end up with a 678 910 year old that's standing between two parents begging you not to fight over something that they view as their fault. That creates a whole lot of emotional turmoil. That's a conversation in itself but it's important to think about. How will you enforce the things that you disagree with? Will you enforce those things? Can you respect the other parents once and values if they go against your own? Guys real shit. Most of you can't do simple things like respecting each other's social media preferences. How are you going to respect the preferences and enforce the preferences of raising a child if you don't agree with those things? Who's right? Who's wrong? How does that work? Right? Okay. So the next one of these is religion.

31:08We get emails on all three of these all the time. Religion can be one of the deepest incompatibilities imaginable and I'm not saying that two people can't make this work because I believe they can. Depending on the religion, depending on how deep the faith is, the type of faith, right? Those questions matter so not all of them can make it work but in some cases maybe they can, right? I do believe also how it's practiced matters. I also believe that this could 100% destroy a relationship like and I don't mean kind of destroy it. I think these things can break up families. If your faith is personal, right? And you don't need your partner to share it. Maybe it's workable. But if your religion determines how you raise your children, what you eat, how you dress, where you spend your Sundays, how you understand marriage, sex, gender, divorce, holidays, community, what happens after death. Now we're not talking about whether one person likes a certain type of music versus the other. We're talking about the structure of reality as each person understands it.

32:12Again, difference is not automatically incompatibility. The question is whether the differences can coexist without one person constantly feeling like they are betraying themselves or their God. Think about the people that will be around you as well. If you are pagan in your partner's Christian, how were your Christian friends or family feel if they come over and see a pagan alter in your home, right? What's going to happen if your kids are going to Sunday service because you've agreed that you are going to allow your children to understand both religions and make a choice as they age and they want to have a sleep over and the parents come over to meet you guys, see that pagan alter and now the other children that are friends with your kids are not allowed at your house anymore because they view you as a demonic devil worshipper. Did would you have ever thought about that when you were having the discussion of difference of religion in your home? How is this going to impact your kids? Is it going to impact your kids? Are you going to allow your kids to choose a side?

33:14Are you going to trust that a six or a seven year old is going to be able to make that decision versus trying to appease the parent? These are conversations that a lot of you guys don't have. How much of that actually matters to you? That's a question in itself. Does the religious impact that you may have on your children because of their social life matter to you? Have you ever even considered that and now that you are considering it does that matter to you? How much does that matter to you? What does that look like? Is that going to be enough for you to end your relationship or your marriage over? Then you come to the other part of this guys. You can't marry somebody or date somebody and hope that you can wear them down to make them convert to your religion. That's not fair. Like you are now forcing somebody. You're removing their free will. And no matter what religion you believe in free will is a staple of all of them. So you trying to force your will on another person hoping that you can force them to change or that you can convince them or manipulate them to change is removing that free will.

34:16That's a problem in itself. So do not marry somebody assuming that their faith will become less important or that it will shift. Don't tell somebody that religion doesn't matter to you and then discover after the kids arrive that suddenly it matters a whole fucking lot, right? You need to believe you. I'm sorry. I believe what people tell you about the life that they want. Guys I understand that there are people out there who are Christian that do not follow doctrine. I understand that there are people out there like me who is a a a a Christ consciousness follower of Jesus, but I don't believe the Bible, right? I have my own what Christians would call fucked up skewed version of reality when it comes to the scripture. There are people out there who believe every word is is fucking gospel and it's from God written by man and there's never been intervention and the dinosaurs didn't exist. And like that's a thing. So like you can't have somebody that that's that deep into their faith.

35:21Real shit. Unless they've got some weird kink thing and they they are not you know waiting for marriage and they're just trying to smash that extreme Christian and that pagan probably isn't going to find themselves. But what happens if you do have a follower of Christ that is biblical and you do start dating them and you were pagan and you find out that they're starting to lean heavier into their faith. Is that going to create tension? Are you going to start to panic? Are you going to be worried that they're going to leave you over that? What happens if this is five six seven ten years into your relationship, right? This is a lot guys. This is a lot to process. It's a lot of things that a lot of y'all don't think about. Moving on, next one is sex. You can love someone and be sexually incompatible. However, I believe nowadays the way that people have sex, I think that this is less likely to be an issue with tender dates, smash and dash relationships. I think that a lot of people find out very quickly if they're sexually compatible. Usually before they have the discussions of retirement, money, religion and kids, I think sexual compatibility is super, super important.

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37:23For more information, visit James Hardy dot com slash hardy backer. What happens if the beginning of the relationship when the dopamine and the oxytocin was high and you were fucking every chance you got because you didn't live together and now you move in together and that stops. Is that a false expectation that was set out? Do you believe that you were catfish? There's a whole lot of questions that need to go in that. What happens if there's a hormonal change or financial stress or job stress becomes a factor or kids come into the picture, right? Like are you going to be able to maintain those expectations? A lot of questions that go into that too. What happens when one person needs physical touch and erotic connection to feel bonded in the other experience sexual expectation is pressure. One person wants monogamy and the other wants to an open relationship, right? One person has sexual interest or kinks and the other person wants absolutely nothing to do with it. One person wants affection constantly and the other doesn't like to be touched at all, right? I mean, you're just fucking conversations that have to be had because if you are going

38:25into a monogamous relationship and you guys are not compatible, these things are going to lead to infidelity. Whether it's emotional cheating, if it's watching thirst traps on Instagram, if it's porn, if it's lusting after other women, if it's emotional infidelity that becomes physical infidelity, like these things are going to happen because there is a base desire need that's not getting met. At some point, one person's needs not being met is going to make them look elsewhere for those things. It's I would be willing to say that that's going to happen 90% of the time, guys. I'm not saying that these situations can't work out when they happen either. I'm saying that we very, very, very fucking hard for both people involved if you try. We also have to stop acting as if every sexual mismatch can be fixed by communication or communicating harder. Some can, right? Some people are willing to make compromises in those compromises though.

39:28If you are somebody that wants your partner to be enthusiastic about the lustful experience and they're only doing it because they have the expectations that need to be met of you, there's not going to be enthusiasm. They're going to be doing it through a lens of a negativity bias because they're violating themselves for you. That creates an issue in itself. Sometimes people are willing to concede to make someone else happy, but that builds resentment and resentment will kill desire. Poor communication can also kill desire. Exhaustion, parenting, medication, hormones, body image, unresolved conflict, feeling unwanted, feeling pressured, and shitty sex can all affect desire. Those things are all worth working on, but sometimes two people genuinely have dramatically different sexual needs. When the conversation becomes less comfortable, can both people live with the compromise? Not tolerate it for six months. Live with it because now you're married and this is supposed to be the person that you

40:28spend the rest of your life with. If one person needs to become almost celibate to preserve the relationship or the other has to engage in sex, they genuinely do not want in order to keep the peace. We are creating a slew of other fucking issues here. Love does not make sexual incompatibility disappear and ignoring it certainly fucking won't either. Jennifer not said this is my biggest fear of becoming sexually incompatible. The older I get, the less I need it. So hormones happen. Ladies, you are going to experience that differently than men are and most men are not going to understand that change. There are things that you can do with your hormones and manipulate your hormones to correct that if that becomes a thing, but you need to find a doctor that understands hormones for that to become a thing. And that's if it even matters enough to you to do that. We also see a whole lot of things on the internet where women have been married for 20, 30 years.

41:28They're in their late 40s or early 50s and they become singles and they become promiscuous. And it's not that they didn't desire the act or want it. It was that they no longer wanted it with their person because it had become a chore or monotonous. And those are things that need to be explored and discussed as well. There's sometimes we see things on the internet where people have talked about how they repressed their wants and desires because their partner thought it was weird or everything became very vanilla after a couple of years. And that became problematic for them. So these conversations have to happen. There needs to be real conversations involved in all of this. So in real shit, these things are also going to evolve the way that you do the deed in your 20s is not going to be the way that you do it in your 50s. Most people evolve through these things. And it doesn't mean that sexual exploration needs to cease.

42:28It just means that you need to keep up with things as they change and understand that your wants and desires may shift. You guys, we hear you guys here. Let's talk about all the time. When you get tattooed, when you're older and you're more healed, they hurt more. Like your trauma, there's a very distinct pleasure, pain thing when it comes to sexual desire. And as you become more healed and you evolve in your life, that type of sex may not be an interest to you anymore because of it, right? It's no different than getting tattooed. Just things to think about. I'm not saying that like that's a definitive thing. It is just something to process. Moving on. Lifestyle. This one is kind of difficult because it doesn't happen in the beginning. You can have all of the plans and wants in the world and then somebody changes what they want for their lifestyle. And if you're 10 years in and you have this epiphany that what you thought you wanted does not appeal to you anymore. And the lifestyle starts to switch. This can become problematic as well, right? So when you're 25, you're in love.

43:29Everything feels easy because life has not become complicated yet. You are still both very young, trying to figure out who you want to be when you grow up. And then you do. Then one person decides that they now want a life of a homestead quiet to nakers, the other person wants nightlife. They want to be in the city. One person wants Sunday night dinners with the entire family. The other doesn't want family at their house at all because Sundays the only day off and they want to enjoy their peace. This was not a conversation that would have ever come up at 25 because you were both working meaningless jobs struggling to get by and like you didn't have any of the things that you have now in your reality has changed, right? These are things that also so matter. This is so this is the lifestyle change. And those are very different lives. One person loves social events. The other hates crowds. One wants friends over constantly. The other needs the house to be peaceful. One wants to travel every chance they get the other wants home routine and familiarity.

44:31One lives for adventure. The other finds adventure exhausting. You don't have to like the same things that would be boring. Compatibility is not a sameness, but eventually we have to ask ourselves whether our preferred lifestyle leaves enough room for both people to actually enjoy the life that they are trying to live. Guys, think about that for a minute. Are you willing to give up the life that you want for the life someone else does? If you say no, is it fair that you demand that of them, right? Because somebody has to give up of that thing. And then there's another side of this. What happens if you guys find compromise and the travel aspect is you can travel and go do the thing and your person that loves travel gets a travel partner and they're gone and they are telling you about all their travels and you're not interested and eventually they stop talking about it. You now have some sort of mild resentment because they're going on all these adventures

45:31and like you're realizing that you're not living life together and the person that's going on adventures is building resentment for you because they're living life with people other than their person and their building resentment. And now you find yourselves fighting over something that you both agreed on that you thought was going to be the solution to the problem and it wasn't the solution. Right? The solution was we want to find a way to both enjoy our life together, but you realize that you're living two different lives and your lived experience does not align, right? What happens then? If every vacation requires someone to lose, every weekend becomes a negotiation. Every social event creates resentment and one person's ideal life looks like the other person's personal hell. Love is not going to be enough to carry that weight. It will eventually turn into resentment and the relationship will carry that. How long do you think love will be enough to keep up the circus?

46:34How you guys feeling about this document? I feel like it's very doom and gloom. Next part of this is ambitious versus workless. We get emails constantly about this. We got one yesterday that we read on episode 50 of the podcast. This is how do I get my partner to do more? I want them to be as ambitious in me. I want them to manipulate them to keep up. I want them to want the things that I want. How do I make them do that? But they never word it that way. They never word it that way because they know that if they word it that way, it's control. They say things like how can I support them while they work on becoming ambitious? Well, if they're not already working on becoming ambitious, you're not supporting that. That's a dream. You're living on a opium. You want them to do the thing that you want them to do versus what they want them to do. That's control. That's removing free will. That's not a relationship that you should fucking be in. There's a difference between being workless, somebody that refuses to get a job ever and

47:37mooches off of other people and somebody that works enough to have the life that they're comfortable with. That's what they want out of life. Neither one of those ambitions because both of those are an ambition. Both of those will have its own definition of success. Neither one of those is wrong. That is a life choice. Right? This one causes a ton of relationship problems. Maybe one person is incredibly ambitious. They want to build something, start businesses. They work long hours. They take risks. They make money. They move. They grow. They push themselves. They're fucking disciplined. The other person genuinely doesn't give a fuck about any of that. They want enough. Enough money, enough work, enough house, enough success. They want it. And then they want to go fishing. They want to play video games. They want to have a beer. They want to go shoot pool. They want to kayak. They want a four wheel. They want to do whatever it is that actually makes them realize that they are a lot of people.

48:38They are living their life. Neither one of these situations is right. If you don't know how your partner defines success, you don't know if you're compatible with them or not. These conversations have to be had over and over and over again as life evolves. Right? For somebody like me who is ambitious and I don't believe in enough money. I don't believe in enough of anything other than stress. I can have enough stress. I can have too much of that, but I can't have too much money. I can't have too much free time either. Right? I have an expectation though. If I want to have a lot of money, I realize I don't get a lot of free time until I have a lot of money. So money is important. But how important is that? Is it more important than seeing the world? Is it more important than having sunsets on my wife with my wife on a catamaran and a fucking foreign sea? You know, listen to some fucking wild ass music from the 2000s.

49:39Is it, you know, where does that balance line? My idea of success and my wife's idea of success kind of aligns. And as we have evolved our ideas of success have shifted a little bit, but we have enough compatibility that we can have the 10 acres and my ambition has made it enough that if we want to travel, we can do that as long as there's somebody there to take care of the animals, right? So now we have a compromise that really works for us. I don't need to travel every month of the year. I can go a couple times a year and be totally content. And she wants to see the world too. So it works. I don't know if I want a bunch of animals though. And that could be a point of contention. If she wants a bunch of fainting goats and fucking dairy cows and shit like that's not on the in the cards for me. If that is our only life and we're never able to travel because I can see it and we get all these fucking animals and no one else can take care of them. I've given up my dreams, right? So success matters. This is one of those things that falls more into lifestyle than ambition versus workless. But it is something worth talking about. Our culture has this weird obsession with ambition right now and hustle mentality and grind,

50:47right? Make $100,000 a month. The amount of people that make that kind of money on the internet and brag about it, you guys are fucking liars. You're not making that kind of money. You know how hard it is to make $100,000 a month, $1.2 million a year. You're renting cars and pretending to be something you're not. The reality is is most people if they could make $10,000 a month, you're off to a pretty good start. So that's just not how these things work. Anyways, when this happens, you have that person that's ambitious and grinding and disciplined and they like to call themselves the growing partner. They're the ones who are obsessed with doing the thing and is that growth? Maybe, maybe that is financial dependency. Or financial comfort, stability, stability is what I'm looking for. Maybe that's financial stability. Maybe financial stability is not important. Maybe comfort is important. Maybe going to a kid's soccer game means more than making $100,000 a year to a parent. Which one of these parents is right and which one is wrong? The idea of what is important is not uniform, guys.

51:52You know, you also have to take into consideration that somebody like myself that is super fucking ambitious and wants to have all of these things. I want my vacations, but I also really fucking struggle to be on vacation. I, you know, we'll book a seven day hotel and after day three, I don't want to be there anymore. Like there's things that I could be doing at home that that would be a better use of my time than sitting here watching YouTube or, you know, fucking sitting on the back porch in nature where my wife is having the time of her fucking life because she needs that recharge. So like in that situation, neither one of us is wrong. If I never took a vacation and she never got to recharge, it creates problems. There's also a level of people who have like the workaholic mindset where they feel worthless if they're not providing or producing or don't have a purpose. So the person who wants a simpler life isn't necessarily lazy. Maybe they actually know what enough looks like. Maybe they, they have the life that they've always dreamed of.

52:52But this difference becomes a compatibility problem when one person's ambition repeatedly requires the other person to sacrifice. We have to move again. I need you to handle the kids because I'm building a new company. We can't take the vacation because work is too busy. We're going to invest our savings because this opportunity could change our life or in the other direction, why are you always working? Why do you need another goal? Why can't you just be happy with where we're at and with what we have? Maybe someone feels held back and someone else feels abandoned. You need to know whether the life that you're building requires a partner who wants to build it at a similar pace. That's where the compatibility comes in. Guys, if you're somebody that's starting a business where you know you want to own a business and you meet somebody that's living at home with their parents and they're working a minimum wage job at part time and they are struggling to buy gas, you're not compatible. Your ambition is going to overshadow their lack of desire to have things and you are going

53:54to feel like you are dragging them along, kicking and screaming and you are going to resent the fuck out of them because they are not contributing to the life that you're trying to build. If anything, they're going to benefit off of your hard work and labor while they have to do very minimal because that's the life that they already decided they wanted. Are you willing to parent and give that? That's a real conversation that needs to be had. It needs to be something that you need to meditate on because you are going to resent the fuck out of them for that. How does this work out? You have one person that is always grinding and striving for the next level and the other person who fucking hates work in all forms and wants to live their life. When I put it that way, this isn't workless. This is somebody that's doing enough to give them what they view as a good life. You can't be mad at them for doing the things that bring them joy. Just because it doesn't align with what you want doesn't mean that it's wrong. It just means that it's wrong for you.

54:54Knowing that way, does it change your opinion on workless people? Because again, my idea of somebody that's workless is somebody that just doesn't want to work that expects a handout. They want other people to give them charity so that they can get by doing as little as possible and have the best life they can possibly have. If these people are able to schmooze and manipulate their way into an ambition, ambitious person's life, it may not last forever. It could be three years. It could be 30 years. But during that time frame, they're going to live a dope fucking life and they're only going to have to listen to somebody nag when it's a problem. Make a couple promises lie about what they're going to do. And now you've got a manager subordinate situation where one person's living off the fruits of another person that becomes very problematic. The next part of this is substance use and addiction. I think this one gets minimized until it becomes a real fucking problem, guys. I think that most people don't think about these things unless they meet an addict or they've been an addict themselves. So one partner drinks occasionally, the other gets fucking trashed every weekend.

55:57One enjoys smoking weed. The other absolutely has or wants no drugs in the house whatsoever. One uses plant medicines with intention. The other sees all drug use as dangerous and immoral. One is sober. The other is still one's alcohol to be a part of their social life. These are not preferences when they affect the safety and stability of the household. You have every right to decide what substance is you put in your body. Your partner has every right to decide what kind of environment that they are willing to live in. You know, you bring addiction and it's really changed as the conversation quite a bit because you can't solve addiction by loving someone, right? That's not going to fix it. You cannot solve addiction by understanding what they're using. You can support their recovery though. If they choose to go into recovery and you can have compassion for what they're going through or the trauma that you can understand the escapism that started the addiction like these things can absolutely exist. But you can't love somebody into sobriety.

57:01That's removing their free will. They're going to do what their demons dictate they do until they decide to stand on their own. However, you still get boundaries, right? But what do you do when those boundaries become control? You telling somebody that they can't do something is control. You choosing not to live in that situation as a boundary. I understand that you want to drink and do these things. This is not how I want to live my life. I understand that you're a heroin addict and you're never going to kick this. I'm not going to live this way. You can leave. You have the free will to pack your shit and get out of the relationship to leave the home. You get to choose your life. If you stay with the people that are doing these things, that is your choice. Nobody's forcing you to be there. Regardless of maybe they'll die if I'm not here. That's a story that you tell yourself to justify your choice of stain. So understanding behavior does not mean volunteering to live that way, especially indefinitely.

58:06The other part of this is what if this is a porn conversation? What if what if the sex issues that we talked about earlier become something that leads to a need being unfulfilled and that person goes to the internet to fulfill that need and now the addiction is porn? You had a hand in that, right? That would be the argument. Did you? Because your lifestyle choices and the way that you decided to live, you put your needs or once above another person's or you didn't. And now there's resentment either way, there will be. So how do you handle that situation? What if the sex issues above ended in concession where one person who wanted it daily, but gets it once a month has given into base desires because they realize the only way that their needs will be met is if they take care of it themselves because they are still trying to honor the monogamous commitment that was made. And that's the lesser of two evils staring at their phone, double clicking their mouse or stroking their sausage versus talking to some fucking random person at work and sneaking

59:08out to hotels to fucking take care of that need because it's not being met otherwise, right? This becomes all a whole last thing in itself. Next one of this is where to live. It sounds like a stupid fucking thing. And I agree that it is until it isn't. And I put this one on here because we've talked quite a bit about where we want to live. And Peaches does not want to be in the desert. She has told me flat out that unless we have a mountain where she can have a greenhouse that works for her to be able to go and have her own little tropical oasis inside of that greenhouse, the desert is not an option for her. If we have a spring that allows us to have a little bit of foliage, maybe that would be a discussion, but like I have taken her desert stance as a hard no. I don't want to live in Florida. This is hard as fuck for me. I want to be in the mountains. She wants to be in the mountains. Now we have concession that we can work with. But you know, that comes down to cost of land. It's way fucking cheaper to live in the desert than it is to live in the mountains.

1:00:11So this isn't really a stupid argument. This is one of those things that eventually become lifestyle. But you know, if you, if we would have had this conversation in the beginning, Peaches and I would have had this conversation in the beginning at the time, I would have never imagined leaving Florida. Like I had just bought a big fucking house and property and like I was totally content here. My businesses are here. I believe that this was it. Now we're digital nomads. We can go work wherever the fuck we want to go work. I can tattoo wherever if I, if we lose the podcast like we both have trades, we can fall back on. And I have people in place now to run my business. So if we would have had this conversation in the beginning, it wouldn't have mattered. And as life has gone on, this would have been a lifestyle thing. So this is another, another thing, right? Anyways, one person wants to stay close to family. The other person wants to move across country. One wants to city, one wants to country. One person's career requires relocation. The other has built their entire support system where they are. And that's very important to them. We just read an email about this yesterday also.

1:01:15Couple spend 10 years saying we'll figure it out. And at some point, someone has to live somewhere. The location of your home affects your work, your friendships, your family relationships, your cost of living, your children, your hobbies, your community and your daily experiences. There are plenty of workable compromises here. But again, the compromise has to actually be livable in a way that both people can exist without resentment. If one person spends 20 years resenting the fact that they left everyone that they love so that their spouse can pursue a career, love does not erase that resentment. Maybe that sacrifice was actually worth making, right? Maybe they gave up all of that and the financial safety that they got from it negates that for them and the resentment's not there, right? Maybe that's the thing. Maybe it isn't. The problem is when couples never talk honestly about the price that they pay. What happens if things end? What if you're isolated because you moved?

1:02:15What if or what happens if you gave up all of your relationships to move and now you find yourself without any real life interactions and you are lonely and your phone does not give you enough connection from the people you in your past? Right? This could be a super big fucking problem. Now depression is setting in. You have one person that's working the career that they've always wanted, living the life that they've always wanted and you're sitting there going, I just gave up my life. I love this person and I love them to death. But like, is this what I want for the rest of my existence? Can you honestly say that you would live like that forever? Will it be forever? Is that a conversation has ever been had? The next one of these is family involvement. I guess this kind of makes sense to put this after the living situations. People don't just marry individuals. When you get married, you should be creating your new family. Your blood relatives become distant like they are your extended family as far as I'm concerned.

1:03:22But some of y'all don't live that way. Some of y'all can't imagine not having your parents up your ass or having that super close relationship that you have with your sister. My belief system is my belief system and it would be very foolish to believe that all of you believe the same thing. That doesn't mean that I'm right and you're wrong. It doesn't mean that you're right and I'm wrong. It means that we have different familial experiences. So you do marry into family systems. Maybe your family talks every day. Everybody has a key to everybody's house. Mom comes over whenever she wants. Does it knock? Mom, your siblings know everything that happens in your marriage. Every birthday holiday vacation and Sunday involve family dinners. To you, that's closeness. Your partner comes from a family where you only talk three times a year and you'll be lucky to see each other on holidays and absolutely under no circumstances. Does anyone ever fucking show up to the house unannounced? Nobody has a fucking key and you fucking call before you even think about that shit.

1:04:26Neither one of these are correct. This is a lived experience. You put those two people together and there has to be real conversations about how you're going to operate moving forward because people just showing up at your house unannounced could be a major point of contention. So again, neither one of these are a correct way to family but to your partner, it is because that's the way things have always been done. To you, it is because that's the way it's always been done. Now you have to establish your own family, your own home, your new family and home rules have to be in a greed upon structure. How often are we seeing the families who's getting the holidays can family drop by? What stays private inside our marriage? How much financial support are we willing to give to the people in our relationship? Because now we're bringing money into this conversation as well. What happens when a parent gets older and needs care? Are you willing to sacrifice that if you never thought about that? What if your plan was always to stick, fuck an aunt Nancy in a home and let her die there

1:05:30versus your partner going, I love she, my favorite aunt, she's come in here. Like, you guys never had that talk. Like these are things that need to be discussed throughout your marriage so that there needs to be planning and understanding around these things. How much influence do your parents or grandparents have over the way that you raise your child? Right? Do they get to spoil them? Do they get to overstep? Do they get to talk shit to your person? What are these things that you're okay with? What if your person's not okay with all of those things? What if grandma's not allowed to give cookies to little Timothy? And now there's a fight because you don't have a problem with it, but your partner does. Right? Like, this becomes especially dangerous when someone never actually separates psychologically from their family of origin. If you have somebody that is very codependent on the people that this could even speak to need, but we'll just say codependent. This is becoming one of those things where they expect the everybody to help with the

1:06:31baby, right? They expect to everyone to be involved in and giant baby showers and giant birthdays and cousins are coming over for sleepovers that last all fucking weekend. And your partner's totally cool with it because they love their nieces and nephews and you're driving your fucking self crazy because you didn't even really want kids. And now you got one because you can see it. And now you don't want to be home all weekend. And it's the only time that you have to recuperate from an 80 hour work week. This falls back to the family conversation. It falls back to the kid conversation. It falls back to the money situation, the lifestyle situation. You now have multiple incompatibilities that are stacking on top of each other because you didn't communicate properly where you didn't do enough due diligence in the beginning of a relationship to find out where you guys are going to land. Again, guys, I said this at the beginning. There's 60 something people here now are close to it. I can't see 68 people here now. So I know a lot of you miss this because we started. There was only 25 people here. This is not so much about marriage. This is more or married couples. This is more about single people and dating people.

1:07:33But this will apply to your marriage. So this does work across the board. But when I put this together, this was more about figuring out your compatibility before you fall in love. Every disagreement might get discussed with an in law, right? Are you prepared for that? What if every decision needs their dad's approval? Your spouse is constantly outnumbered by your family. This is not a mother-in-law or an in-law problem at this point. It's become a boundary problem. And it's most likely that you failed to set the boundaries before you got married. You guys never had that discussion. You just assume that life would go on the way that life has gone on versus preparing properly, right? If you're building a life with someone, the relationship needs enough separation from both families to become its own ecosystem. You are creating new traditions and new expectations. What if you're somebody that has a favorite spot, right? I'm that guy.

1:08:33I have my spot of the couch. And I used to tell people to get the fuck out of my spot. I was like that for a long time. It didn't matter. That's my spot. Move your ass. I had about 2015 years of my life where every time I asked somebody to move it created conflict. And I had to deal with the repercussions of asking somebody to get out of my seat. So after enough of those fights, I quit because I knew that I wasn't going to win that argument. So when somebody was in my seat, I would go somewhere else. I would leave the room. I would go watch TV in my bedroom. I would leave the house. I would fuck off because fuck me, right? Now what happens? You got somebody that's not comfortable being in their own house because somebody is encroached. And the needs and the wants of that other person means more than your comfort in your own home because that's rude, right? Well, it's rude that they know that that's my fucking seat and they intentionally sit in it, right? This is one of those things that has to be discussed, guys.

1:09:34You shouldn't be marrying people that put you third or fourth or fifth. All right. Next part of this is love can exist inside an incompatible relationship. It can exist. Love can exist. Love is not enough. Stop using love as evidence that you should stay. Love is evidence that you love someone. That's it. It doesn't tell you whether the relationship is healthy. It doesn't tell you whether you're compatible. It doesn't tell you whether they can meet your needs. It doesn't tell you whether they can that you can meet theirs. It doesn't tell you whether you want the same future or not. People stay in miserable relationship for years because they keep asking the wrong fucking questions. Do I love them? Yes. You've known that for 10 fucking years. But can you and have you actually built a life together that you both enjoy living?

1:10:35Can your values coexist? Can we solve our differences without one person constantly surrendering? Can both of us become who we're trying to become inside of the relationship? Do the compromises required by this relationship still allow both people to respect themselves? Those questions are hard as fuck because there's no romantic answers to this. These are... I have choices to make. You have choices to make about your fucking life and how you're going to live it. Do you love them? Probably. Are you in love with them? You could be madly in love with them. Is that enough? Are you willing to give up your retirement? Are you willing to give up the possibility of never having children if that's important to you? Are you willing to have children if you've definitively said you don't want fucking children? If you do have children, are you going to want to be home and be around those kids? Or are you doing it for your person? Are you going to want to change diapers when your partner has slept in 24 hours because the baby's colloquial and screaming at fucking crying and you low-key don't like the child?

1:11:41It happens. Y'all don't want to have that conversation because how dare you say, I don't love my kid. I didn't say that. I said you didn't like them. There's a difference between making sure that they're fed and supported and nurtured. There's another thing to have to be the one to step in and do all that shit even though you don't like children. Compatibility doesn't mean never compromising. I don't want people to hear this episode and turn every single difference into incompatibility. My husband likes golf and I don't work incompatible. I'm out. Slow the fuck down. Slow down Cheeto. Healthy relationships require accommodations. We do things that we don't love because we love the other person. We go to their family Christmas. We watch their TV shows even if we think they're fucking stupid. We spend money differently sometimes. We move. We compromise. That's part of partnership. The issue is scale and repetition. Fight Club said on a long enough timeline, the extinction rate of everything becomes zero.

1:12:43When I edit videos, I have a timeline and it's stretched all the way out and as I bring it down, it stretches the video out so I can see every gap. I can see the ums, the us, the long parts, the laughter, the spikes and audio. I can see all of that on the audio file as I scale in or out, I guess. Right? The more detached you come, the more you can start to see patterns. You can start to see repetition. You're able to view things very differently because you're not looking at it like this. So how much of yourself are you being asked to surrender? How much are they? How important is the difference? How often does the same conflicts occur? Is there a middle ground that's workable for the both of you to be content with? Does the agreement create some sort of peace or does somebody quietly hate it? And most importantly, is the compromise chosen freely or maintained through fear of losing

1:13:45the relationship? Guys, think about that for a minute. If you are in a relationship simply because you're giving up of yourself, you're giving up of all your wants, your joys, your desires, your loves, all of your passions or hobbies, the things that make you, you're fucking so smile because you're afraid of losing someone. You have already lost yourself in that. You have given up everything that makes you you. And in doing that, the person that loves you no longer views you in the same light that they did when they met you because you're not you anymore. You were every concession made. You were every miserable, resentful, contemptful, fuck you. I can't believe I have to give this up again, but I'm going to because I'm afraid that if I don't do this, you're going to leave me. Your relationship is going to fail either way at that point. I promise you guys, sometimes we say we worked it out.

1:14:48Sometimes that's not true. Sometimes you might have come to a good resolution that makes both people feel good about what was just discussed. Those are incredible fucking times to those are wins. Some of you have simply conceded that you are never going to get the things that bring you joy or make you happy, but you have become so dependent or co-dependent or enmeshed with another human being that you are so afraid of losing them or this lifestyle that you secretly hate because of this, right? So if you give in because you're terrified that they they're going to leave, that's not resolution that you quitting. It's giving up. It's understanding that somewhere along the line, you don't matter anymore, but you're too afraid to make a change in your life to find the things that are going to bring you joy because what if this is a mistake? What if I'll never find somebody like this again?

1:15:50What if I end up 50 and alone? What if I'm not really worthy of love? What if what if what if what if what if we tell ourselves so many things? Next part of this is chemistry is not compatibility either. You can have insane chemistry with someone who is terrible for the life that you want. The sex is fucking incredible. The conversation is effortless. You can't stop thinking about them. You feel alive around them. It is awesome. But what about all of the other things listed in this conversation? Because your relationship contains a lot more Tuesday mornings than passionate weekends. Chemistry gets you into the relationship. It allows you to truly live long-term in the relationship. And sometimes the strongest chemistry that we can experience is not evidence of compatibility at all. Sometimes it's familiarity. Sometimes the person activates something within us.

1:16:50Sometimes we're repeating old patterns. Unpredictability feels like passion because our nervous system is used to earning love. Do not confuse intensity with healthy. Next part of this is two good people can be wrong for each other. Guys, this might be hard for some of y'all. We desperately want someone to be the bad guy. We have to throw blame, shame, shade, ugly hatred. We have to like yourself as you're avoiding. You're a fucking narcissist. They didn't fight for us. We have to have that level of fuck you to justify the fact that the relationship is ending. It's easier to have a place to put your hurt than it is to accept the fact that you built something that was not sustainable long-term. Sometimes all those things are true, right? Sometimes you guys picked a villain. That could absolutely be a thing. But sometimes two good people can just realize that even though all of these things are incredible,

1:17:52the life that we want for ourselves is not compatible. And neither one of us are willing to give up these things. At that point, are you willing to separate amicably and be like, I love you to the ends of the earth, but love's not enough. I want these things and you want those things and I love you enough to not take those from you. But I love me enough to not allow you to take these from me either. How does that work? Are you willing to separate and still be amicable with that person and realize that this just isn't it? I don't view this as failure. I don't think that's failure. I think that on a degree, that's a level of maintaining your boundaries for a successful life that you have defined what that success looks like. Sometimes you guys build lives missing all of the markers in the beginning. Those roads, colored glasses made you miss all the red flags. You thought things were going to change. You had hope in whatever the case may be. And you just didn't have the important conversations and instead you focused on the wrong things.

1:18:58Pretending that those difference don't exist until you've accumulated 20 years of resentment is going to feel world shattering when you're in your 40s or 50s and go, I don't think I want this anymore. Make no mistake. This is not me talking about the women who are on the internet who had, who say I had the perfect fucking life, but I got bored in my relationship and divorced my husband. That's not what I'm talking about. Sometimes where you're at is not where you want to be and where you're going. It's not the destination you hope for. It's not the same thing. So the point of all of this is to figure this shit out before you get married. We spend an unbelievable amount of time discussing weddings and not enough time discussing our marriages. You guys will plan to the fucking napkin detail of your wedding situation, but don't have conversations about money, family sex, all the things listed in this document. You will spend years dreaming about that day, but what comes after it? You never put any real effort or thought into because it's not about the marriage.

1:20:01It's about the experience of the wedding. So you don't ask the uncomfortable questions. Do you want kids? Not maybe not someday. What do you actually want? How do you want to raise them? What role will religion have? How will we handle money? Who will handle the money? What happens if one of us earns more money? How do we combine finances? Do we combine the finances? What does cheating mean to you? Is it porn? Is it flirting? Is it watching thirst traps? Is it messaging an ex and then hiding it like in the email that we got yesterday? What does our sex life look like? How much does that matter to each of us? How often do you want to see your family? How important is your family to be in our life? Do you want to own a home or do you want to rent? Do you want to live in a van? How important are all of these three things on a scale of one to five? Where are we on on this? How much does your career matter? What does retirement look like? How do you feel about alcohol or drugs? What happens if a parent needs to live with us?

1:21:02What kind of lifestyle are we actively trying to build together? These questions are less sexy than learning each other's love languages. They're also a whole lot more useful. This is also not just listening to their answers and dreaming. You need to believe them when they tell you what they want. If somebody tells you that they never want children, do not marry them, expecting biology to change their mind or believing that you can somehow convince them that this is what's best for our life. There are people out there who have children to save marriages. Here I'll fucking stupid that sounds. That's a thing. If they tell you that monogamy doesn't make sense to them, listen. Listen to what they're saying. If they tell you that career will always be their highest priority, that making money is their idea of success.

1:22:05Listen to them. If they tell you they never want to leave their hometown and you've always dreamed of living somewhere else, they fucking told you. Stop marrying people based on potential and then be inferior when they remain exactly who the fuck they said they were. Guys, what if you're already married? Do not. Do not. Use this episode as a reason to get a divorce. It's not why I put this together. That is not what I want. I don't want you guys to hate each other because I pointed these things out. What I want from you is to do the fucking check-ins. I want you to stop at looking at every disagreement, every incompatibility, every minor nuanced thing that bothers you because you've been married for 15 years and you fucking currently hate your partner and there's resentment and contempt. I want you to stop looking at everything as an exit ramp when there's a disagreement.

1:23:10Start talking. Try to find compatibility again. Try to find common ground, try to find common sources, try to find things that you can both agree on to develop a new roadmap that's going to get you to a destination that makes both of you happy. Because real compatibility is not simple fucking negotiation. Sometimes it's going to take a lot more than that, right? I'm really worried that somebody's going to hear this episode and fucking get a divorce. I'm now flustered and that's not what we want to do with this podcast. That's not what we've set out to do in the beginning of this. That's not what started all of this. This entire thing for us has been about trying to help you guys find a love and a relationship and a compatibility that does not revolve around compromise, fear, resentment, contempt.

1:24:14We want you guys to be able to love the way that peaches and I love and to fucking have the relationship that we have because we have both lived in relationships where all of these things were super problematic and we both lived lives that we absolutely did not fucking want. That's why we started making TikToks. That's why we started the podcast. That's why we continue day after day to go live and to make content and to have a Patreon in the community and why we're trying to evolve this into more than just online content. We want you guys to have more. It's why we created the check-ins, the kids check-ins, the fucking courting questionnaires. That's why we created the shadow work documents. That's why we created a document about cutting people off so that you are informed. We want you to journal. We want you to meditate. We want you to pray. We want you to really think about the things that you're doing in your life and we want you to find solutions. Sometimes you guys write in and your situation so fucked up that we don't believe there is a solution other than separation that shit's going to happen. But you should be exhausting all other avenues before you make that decision.

1:25:21Real incompatibility should not be declared in the middle of resentment. Sometimes what looks like incompatibility is poor negotiation. Sometimes it's years of unspoken expectations. Sometimes it's a relationship that has become so damaged that every difference now feels like a snowball. Sometimes there's room to create a third option that neither person ever considered. That's a great time to write in the podcast because we may have an idea that you never thought of. Sometimes after honest conversations, counseling, behavioral changes, renegotiations and genuine effort, the fundamental differences are still so fucking prevalent that you have to address what now you have to consciously decide what you are willing to sacrifice or not. Then you have to have conversations, real conversations about every fucking minor detail about what's going to happen if there's a compromise or a concession or a sacrifice. It can't just be whatever makes you happy.

1:26:25Right? It can't just be whatever makes them happy. That's not unity. That's not a relationship. Every relationship will involve sacrifice. It will. It's whether the sacrifice allows you to remain whole after you make it. Maybe living near her family matters enough that you're willing to give up moving. Maybe having one child instead of three is the compromise that you both can genuinely be at peace with. Maybe you travel less than you imagined you would because your partner hates it and that is completely worth it to you. You still get to travel. It's just not as much that could be a compromise. That's partnership. Sometimes another person's needs and desires are going to matter more than your own. Sometimes that is what is required to maintain a union. The issue is where sacrifice becomes resentment. If you spend your life making sacrifices, you secretly believe your partner, Ojou, Ojou

1:27:30four, you're not sacrificing anymore. You are accumulating debt. One day you're going to try to collect on those debts. A Lannister always pays his debts. The last part of this is love is real. It just isn't everything. I don't want this document to diminish what love is or put a negative connotation on it or anything like that. Love is one of the most powerful things that we can experience. You guys want to see somebody do some amazing shit, break their heart or make them fall in love, watch them fall in love. Those two things, man. They create so many amazing songs and ballads and books and stories and great things happen through tragedy and through love. Heart breaking love are like fucking amazing catalysts because one hurts like you've never hurt before and the other one makes you feel like you've never felt before.

1:28:31It can motivate us to grow, forgive, sacrifice, repair, change and become better people. Love is not magic. It cannot turn an incompatible situation or incompatible values into compatible ones. It cannot negotiate a child into existence between somebody who wants one and somebody who doesn't. It cannot make addiction safe. It cannot make somebody desire a lifestyle that they fucking hate. It can't create sexual compatibility through guilt. It can't force someone to want your religion, your hometown, your ambition, your family culture or your version of the future. Sometimes love gives us the motivation to find a way through those differences. Sometimes love gives us enough courage to admit that there is not one. Both are acts of love. So if you're evaluating your relationships, stop asking, do we love each other and ask what are we fucking building together? Where are we going? What is the destination of this journey that we're taking together? What does your life look like five years from now if nothing changes?

1:29:35Can you continue this? The way that it is right now, if you are unhappy for the next 15 years of your life, do you believe that there's a change coming or are you living on hope? Are you willing to surrender and sacrifice that time if you believe that nothing's going to change? If so, why? Why? Why are you not chasing the things that bring you joy and fulfillment? Whose dream are you living? What are you asking your partner to give up? What are they asking you to give up? Can you make those sacrifices? Can either of you make those sacrifices without resentment? Are your differences negotiable or have you spent years trying to negotiate things only to realize they're not? You don't need somebody who agrees with you about everything. You don't need somebody that's identical to you. You need enough alignment on the things that determine the structure of your life that

1:30:41both of you can live inside of that life without fucking hating each other in the long run. Two people can love each other deeply and be wrong for each other. That's painful as fuck, but it's true. It's also a whole hell of a lot painful to acknowledge that now than to waste the next 20 years of your life and realize that you've missed out on everything that you wanted for yourself. Yeah. That's my document today. Rose Thorn said, I gave up writing poetry due to heartbreak and started writing dark lyrics for a band. A poetry and lyrics are the same thing. Then gave that up. Now I just don't write. You saying that you gave that up and you don't write like your heartbreak pushed you into that position where you gave up something that you really enjoyed. I believe that what you are doing goes against the creator. If you had a gift of speech, if you can sing, if you can write, if you can create, if you can sculpt, and that is something that you once had a passion for and you quit that

1:31:42because of whatever that was a gift given to you by the creator and you failing to do that, you are preventing humanity from experiencing the gift that was given to you. If God did that to us, we wouldn't have a planet. We wouldn't have love. We wouldn't have music. We wouldn't have all the things that we did if other people gave up on their passion of their creativity. I absolutely believe that that's a disservice to the creator. Shaline said, I used my writing for everything poetry, scream writing, journaling. It's a way to allow everything out love or despair. It's all important. It is. This may be a short one, guys. We don't have a whole lot of people in here. We didn't even hit a hundred people today. The breakdown from last night was really good. I'm pretty excited that Anne would like to hear more in just my two cents. We will be doing chapter two. Last night, we got off of here last night and I asked her, why did you not want to do that anymore? It was because of the conversations that were happening. It's not that she doesn't want to do the book. It's that there was a perceived negativity from me because of the conversation that we

1:32:44were having while doing the book. It wasn't a negativity. It was just conversation. We talked about it. She's absolutely going to do part two of it. It's not that she doesn't want to do the book. She thought I was being negative. I don't think I was being negative. I just think that there are important distinctions to be made from 1992 to 2026 because that 34-year difference is drastic for the way that men conduct themselves and the way women conduct themselves. I think that we have, if we were to try to operate off of Floyd's theories in the early 19th century, talk therapy was all talk. We didn't have psychotherapy or analytics. It was a very different understanding of human psychology. And I think that as we moved away from Freud and into young and into Adler, we have a very different understanding of the way the human mind works, but these conversations are important. So write the bad songs to get the words out otherwise. Otherwise, they'll keep you down. You always, you should just write to write.

1:33:44But if someone still won't talk about things after four days of space, their response is, I don't want to talk about it. That's avoidance. Call it what it is. At some point, this is either going to have to get resolved. Have you told them that this is not going to be swept under the rug? This is not something that we're going to forget about. You don't get to decide whether we have resolution to conflict or we don't have resolution to conflict. There's two of us here and we are going to need to come back to this. You don't get to let somebody else make life decisions for you. You don't get to make them talk either, right? If they're not willing to have the conversation and they are going to sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened, are you going to be okay with never having resolution? Boundaries say, we can absolutely take a break from this conversation, but we need to have a definitive timeline when we're coming back to it. You can even try to be aggressive with it and be like, look, it's been four days since we've had this conversation. We are going to return to it tomorrow night and we're going to finish the conversation and if they go, I don't want to do that.

1:34:44Now you have a bigger conversation on hand. Remember hearing about it when I was a kid and it was new, never read it, so glad to hear it from you all. And that was a good conversation too and relevant. You're not wrong about the changes. I agree with that. I also think there's a lot of things in that book that speak to the human experience that are very relevant still and understanding those things are fucking huge. Yes, I have in their responses, that's an all to made them. I said all of that to them. Do you view that? Okay, so do you view that as an ultimatum or do you view them avoiding the conversation as a way that you're in that you're going to accept that life? This is we are a team and we are supposed to be working together. Are you married, Nikki? Is this a relationship? Is this something that you've been with somebody for a long time? If you're a couple of months into a relationship with someone and they're treating you this way, move the fuck on with your life. You guys communication is everything.

1:35:47I have told you guys for five years now that you have got to effectively communicate, not communicating by choice is not communicating by choice. I'm not willing to have this conversation. So you're saying that you're not willing to talk to me about this. How are we going to ever fix this or move past this if you're not willing to talk about these things? Is that a life that you want to live? Are you willing to live for the rest of your life with someone who refuses to talk to you? Thank you for these thoughts from the chair. We have been processing so much from our previous relationships. It's been beneficial and healing to have these topics broken down and still be informationally dense. I'm glad that you found but find value in these things. The creator gave me special ability spiritual being an empath. I hate the word psychic, but along those lines talking to the beyond, et cetera. Since I was a child and that with that and the life coaching, I think that's what I'm supposed to do and not doing it would go against the creator.

1:36:50So when I hear somebody being a life coach, I would expect you to have your life together. I wouldn't want to go to a marriage counselor that has been divorced 15 times and is currently single and looking. When people do life coaching, you need to life coach on the things that you are set on, that you have very, very good experience with because you are going to be impacting another person's life off of your opinions and they are going to trust you off of the things that you say. So those are things that are important to think about. Life coaching is mentorship in general is one of those things that you need to be careful with, I think. That's why peaches and I will tell you guys, that's not our forte. Like we will stand our fucking lane. Thank you so much for this today. It's been super helpful. I just upgraded. Well, yeah, I'm glad you upgraded. Note by view, it is avoidance. No, not married. If you're just in a relationship, I think maybe you need to reevaluate your relationship.

1:37:54I'm not saying that you need to leave. I think that you need to have a conversation about how this is not an ultimate of that. You have expectations for your life, not for theirs. And you need a partner who is willing to communicate effectively and work through problems with you as a team. Them shutting down and refusing to communicate is not teamwork. It's isolation. It creates other issues like that's a problem in itself. Maybe you guys need to have a real heart to heart about what your expectations are in the relationship to find out how compatible you are. Maybe you're not compatible. Could be a whole lot of things. I'm not going to. There's a lot of things I'm not going to tolerate in my life. And I say it that way because it's not necessarily from a partner. I won't have a partner. Or you know, obviously I have peaches. That's not a thing anymore, but I would not in her and I had this conversation. I'm not going to be with somebody who values the weekend going out and getting drunk at the bar and fucking spending time with people intoxicated.

1:38:57It's not a life that I want for myself. I'm not willing to go to the bar every weekend and experience that. And if that's super important to you, that's not something I can change. I'm not trying to control another human being. Like you're going to have to make a decision on whether or not you want that more in your life than you want a relationship with someone like me. And maybe maybe my words does not there. Maybe maybe that's an ego thing. Could be a whole lot of things. But the reality of that is is my expectations of my life matter. I don't want to be with an alcoholic. I don't want to be with somebody who becomes verbally abusive when they get drunk or have to worry about you fucking somebody else or not coming home until three o'clock in the morning and smelling like cigarette smoke when you come to bed because they smoke at the bar, right? There's a whole lot of things that fall into that. That's a hard no for me. That doesn't mean that I would ever tell somebody else that they can't do that shit. I would just vacate the premises. Moving on. So if you realize that you are compatible, I have to say you've been together for six

1:39:57years and I've been told by licensed therapists that your trauma bonded, what are steps to take to move on? You are not, are not what does it say? You realize that you are not compatible. I have to say you've been together for six years and I've been told by licensed therapists that your trauma bonded. If you have a licensed therapist that you're seeing and they're telling you that your trauma bonded, why didn't they give you the steps necessary to figure out what to do next? There's so much to that question. How do you, I mean, if you know your trauma bonded and that's been a discussion with your therapist, that's something that should have been a discussion moving forward. I have no family and no friends. So there's no support system for me. I think it's, this is the reason that it makes it harder for me. I'm not saying it has poor me. It's just context. Like I said earlier, there's a whole lot of people are in relationships because they are comfortable. They don't have a way out or they don't believe they have a way out.

1:40:59So they accept things for what they are and they just stay. Nothing in life worth having is easy. If you are really unhappy and you are miserable and you are not safe living in your car is a whole lot better than living in a situation where you're being traumatized. If you don't have a car, you can find a homeless shelter. You can't find that. You can figure out something else. You start stash and money. You do what's necessary to make sure that you're okay. My sister-in-law keeps going back and forth with my brother about if she actually wants to be together. Acts like everything is fine and the next avoiding him altogether, I share the content. I don't know how to help. They've been together for 10 years, five year old and just bought a house she asked for and still wasn't enough. It sucks. It sucks for them. It sucks for both of them. It sucks for him because he's being treated like a yo-yo and it sucks for her because she's not happy and she's doing all kinds of other things to try to fulfill that gap or that void in their relationship when she's not happy.

1:42:01The real question is why aren't you happy? What in this relationship is not fulfilling the things that would bring you joy and purpose? Some people are with people that they don't love because they're comfortable. Like I said earlier, that's a very prevalent thing in today's society. The amount of people who need another human beings income to simply live in an apartment right now is insane. The financial situation in America is a lot. Our dollar has become so fucking devalued. It used to be that you could get a loaf of bread for a buck. Now it's like six dollars. I don't know if it's actually six bucks, but bread used to be really cheap. It's not anymore and that's a staple for poor people because it fills your stomach. I remember when you could get a fucking pack of ramen for 17 cents. You can't do that anymore. It's not 17 cents anymore. Our money doesn't have the weight that it once had. People are with each other out of necessity and comfort versus love and admiration and compatibility. These things once they happen, it's a whole lot harder to break apart and reclaim your

1:43:04life after you become enmeshed with another human being versus before. Why I said these things matter more to single people than it does to the people who are married. It's also why I'm saying that you guys don't need to get a divorce just because my document said you might be not compatible.