00:00:03
Speaker 1: No one has all the answers, but when we ask the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths, closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist Danielle Robe, and each week, my guests and I come together to challenge the status quo and our own ways of thinking by daring to ask.
00:00:25
Speaker 2: What if, why not?
00:00:28
Speaker 1: And who says?
00:00:30
Speaker 2: So?
00:00:30
Speaker 1: Come curious, dig deep, and join the conversation. It's time to question everything. About five years ago, I read an article that was ten years old, published in twenty sixteen in The New York Times by Alan de Baton. It was called why You Will Marry the Wrong Person. I was obsessed with it. I'm still obsessed with it because at first the title feels insane, cynical, almost offense right, But the deeper idea underneath it totally captivated me. It's actually oddly liberating. The article asked the question, what if the biggest change in your relationship isn't finding the right person. What if it's understanding the person doing the choosing. So the author or the writer de Baton argues that there is no perfect person waiting to complete us. We are all imperfect evolving humans, carrying our own histories and wounds and expectations and blind spots into our relationships. The people we love don't just meet who we are today, they meet every version of us that is still unfolding. But here's the part he doesn't fully answer in the piece. Why do we keep choosing the same kinds of relationships over and over again? Why do some people feel impossible to get over? Why do we stay too long? And why do we know our patterns and still repeat them? And that's where today's guest comes in. Vienna Ferryon is one of the most sought after licensed marriage and family therapists in the country. She's also the best selling author of The Origins of You. Her work begins with a provocative idea, Your relationships didn't start when you met your partner. They started in your childhood, long before you knew who you would love. You were learning what love feels like, what conflict feels like, what safety feels like, what belonging feels like, and what you would possibly mistake for connection.
00:02:26
Speaker 2: When attachment is at risk, we will trade authenticity every single time.
00:02:33
Speaker 1: Vienna says that almost all of us are carrying one of five origin wounds worthiness, belonging, prioritization, trust or safety. And until we understand those wounds, we keep recreating them. She says, if you have any unwonted patterns in your life today, your past is running the show.
00:02:52
Speaker 2: If it is hysterical, it's historical.
00:02:56
Speaker 1: I love that quote. If it's hysterical, it's historical. So in this conversation, we talk about why we mistake the familiar for the right person, how to tell the difference between chemistry and conditioning, the questions that the healthiest couples ask each other that most of us avoid, and whether relationships can truly recover from betrayal. She also shares the one and only sign that you are in a healthy relationship. So today we're asking are we choosing our relationships or are our wounds choosing them?
00:03:27
Speaker 2: For us?
00:03:28
Speaker 1: It's time to question everything with Vienna Ferion Vienna true or false? Everybody will marry the wrong person.
00:03:43
Speaker 2: I have to go with false on that.
00:03:45
Speaker 1: Okay, say more, well, I feel like I married the right person.
00:03:52
Speaker 2: So if I look at my own life, I feel like I have to say no to that. And then I also, obviously work with so many couple and individuals in relationships and know their stories so intimately. And I think it probably depends how we're defining right and wrong. Yeah, so maybe we'll get into that. But it's not that right is easy, you know. It's not that right is without conflict or without hardship or trials and tribulations. And I've said this before, there is no one other than Connor who I want to go through the hard with.
00:04:33
Speaker 1: That's what I hear from so many people that are happily partnered. Although that article says that we don't really seek happiness, we seek familiarity. Do you agree with that? Yeah?
00:04:42
Speaker 2: I think unconsciously we're seeking familiarity and it's the good, it's the not so good. And then the way that we participate with it is that we either do a path of repetition or we do a path of opposition. And and until we start to do some of this healing work and awareness work, Yeah, then I think it's probably true to say that we're dating, we're partnering with people who are going to contribute and participate in the rewounding of us.
00:05:15
Speaker 1: So are we picking our partners based on love?
00:05:20
Speaker 2: I think both, and I think both, and I think it depends where you are in your awareness journey. You know, initially when we connect with someone, it's not based on love, right, like those first I really think that love is about knowing someone deeply, So that early butterfly stage, the honeymoon stage, the stage that lasts, you know, I think at most I think they say eighteen months somewhere around there. Sure we see the hard sometimes in the early parts, but a lot of people don't, right, Some couples do. Some couples face hardship right away, but many couples don't see the hardship or experience the hardship until later. And we don't know a person until we've really seen all parts of them, many parts of them, And it's hard for that to happen right out of the gate. Doesn't mean that it can't, right, But I think when you look at your average relationship across the board, most people are not going through hard or having their partner be fully revealed to them for a while. I remember, actually when I was dating Connor, it was before we got engaged, when we got into our first conflict. Don't know what it was about, but this part of me that came forward was this woman who was doubling down, tripling down, quadrupling down, needing to be right, needed to prove my point. And I remember having this moment where it's just like ooh, right, like this part of me is being revealed. He had not seen this part of me before writing that part of me had been set aside. I'd talk to right because we want to show up in this way we're likable and lovable. And you know, I still at that time, I think, wanted to be easy going and I wore the cool girl persona for a long time. And I remember this moment that really stands out to me, where this part of me that felt so unbecoming and was worried that he was going to not want to be in the relationship anymore because this part had come forward. It was like him seeing me through that moment felt really like there was a shift that took place there. And even though we don't have to get into the whole story, I tell the story a lot on shows, but I think the point that I want to make about this was that there was a data point that got exchanged in that moment where this part of myself that I was judgmental love or critical of, ashamed of, was revealed, and in it, this person across from me was able to walk alongside of me and not run away from it, or not criticize it or not reject it, was able to get curious about that part, to understand that we make sense with context if we're willing to dig, and not that context excuses behavior, but relationally, we're going to need to excavate some things and not expect each other to be quote unquote perfect and show up in this perfectly packaged way. And so that moment felt like a moment where a pivot took place of Oh, I revealed this part and it didn't scare you away. It was something that you actually came closer to learning more about and understanding more about, and that really shifted something for me.
00:08:48
Speaker 1: Would you say that that part of you was coming from a wound?
00:08:51
Speaker 2: For sure?
00:08:52
Speaker 1: So so much of your work has to do with these five wounds. I kind of want to give everybody the roadmap before we really dig in. You say that almost everyone is walking around with one of these five? Will you share with those five?
00:09:05
Speaker 2: Are sure one of them, many of them, sometimes all five of them? So just to neutralize, right, so you don't have to be one. You don't have to be one. I think we will have a dominant one or two. I have a worthiness wound and a safety wound, and a trust one will creep in there. Sometimes the five are worthiness, belonging, prioritization, trust, and safety. And yeah, in that example, my safety wound was activated. And I'll give you a little context so that it makes sense. I don't know what Connor and I were fighting about, but my assumption is that we disagreed on something because I needed to be right in that moment. I needed to show him and prove to him that he was wrong and I needed to really prove my point and get that across. And he actually had surrendered at some point in the conflict where he's like, Okay, I get it. I understand. I didn't stop, and I needed to be right because being right was safety for me. I grew up if my parents went through a nine year divorce process started when I was in first grade. There was a lot of chaos and high conflict, paranoia, gaslighting, manipulation, psychological abuse that was happening, and I was the observer of it. I'm an only child, and I just you know, was watching it back and forth back and forth, and the manipulation, gaslighting, psychological abuse was towards my mom. And as a little girl watching this go down, how I made sense of it was that if you are right, which my dad was masterful at being right, if you are right, then you are safe, and if you're not right, then you are not safe. Because I saw what that did to my mom. I saw what it looked like to not be able to prove your point, to not be able to explain yourself, to not be able to track all the details and not miss a beat. I saw what it did. And so from my little human position, I had decided really early on that being right, improving your point was where safety resided, and not being able to do that was the absence of safety. So fast forward into romantic relationships, and here's this moment again. I can't I have no clue what we're fighting about, but here's this moment where there is a disagreement. My guess is there's a disagreement about something specific, right, some detail, and automatically right, my nervous system that's constantly scanning for every data point that's being exchanged here picks up on Wait, you're trying to tell me something that is not true, where you're trying to disagree with something that I saw happen, and so now I need to go into a place of self protection.
00:11:37
Speaker 1: And nine year old Vienna shows up.
00:11:40
Speaker 2: That's right.
00:11:41
Speaker 1: So I have this thing I do when I'm in relationship with somebody, and it's only when we're in like true relationship. I keep a child, like a children's photo of them on my phone in their contact so when they call me, it's the five, six, seven year old version of them. And I do it because when I am so frustrated or angry, I remind myself that that's the person showing up, and then I'm a little bit kinder. But I do think it's very interesting that we all bring our like nine year old selves to the equation constantly.
00:12:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, these younger when we have ruptures around the wounding or traumas that we experience, or these fragmented parts of us, you know that it happens, there's a fragmentation that happens, and so this younger part of ourselves will show up.
00:12:26
Speaker 1: You know.
00:12:26
Speaker 2: When I don't encourage you to ask your partner this in a heated moment, but I very lovingly and compassionately inquire with you the listener, when you think about these moments where you become super activated and you go into this space a fight flight, freeze or fawn, how old you feel, you know, when I am really triggered, when I'm activated, when I am no longer anchored and grounded in my place, I don't feel like a forty year old woman.
00:12:57
Speaker 1: No, I feel like I'm in fifth grade.
00:12:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I'm either a ten or even younger than that. Right, It's like these really younger parts that are trying to figure out how to you know, navigate this moment. And it's not this wise anchored adult self who's in the room. And so I love that you keep that younger picture and it's a reminder and not an excuse, but a reminder that, yeah, these these younger experiences are present with us in this moment, right, because if there is a big activation that's happening, as they often say, if it is hysterical, it's historical. Yeah, that's a great saying. Yeah.
00:13:39
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you how you can figure out what your wound is, but I was on your website and you have this amazing quiz that you can take it's like five minutes long, and it tells you what your dominant wound is. Your mind came up as worthiness. What you're saying is your dominant one.
00:13:53
Speaker 2: So one of them.
00:13:54
Speaker 1: So how does a worthiness wound in particular show up in dating a relationship?
00:13:58
Speaker 2: Totally? Okay, So to all my perfectionist pleasers performers out there, you know this is one because a worthiness wound often originates because there were conditions to love or connection or presence. So think straight a's or performing well on the field, getting the hat trick or becoming being the comic relief in the family in order to get connection, validation, attention, praise, et cetera. You know, a lot of times there are conditions to our love. I need you to be X, y and Z in order to get me as your parent or as your caretaker, to be connected or loving or present with you. And so yeah, fast forward. It still shows up a lot of times in that way. So, oh gosh, in the dating space, the worthiness wound, I think it blends sometimes into other wounds too. But this idea of needing to be perfect, whatever that means to you, but needing to be perfect in order to be chosen needing to be XYZ fill in the blank with whatever it is. But it's a lot of abandoning what is actually true for us. It's not believing that we are put it simply right, It's like that we're not worthy or valuable without needing to fill some role of perfection, of pleasing, of performing for the other person. And yeah, it's a quick way to move really far away from yourself.
00:15:31
Speaker 1: I think that for time's sake, trust and safety. I can kind of imagine how that shows up. How does belonging show up?
00:15:39
Speaker 2: So my work starts at looking at the family of origin. So I'm well aware that we have society and media and school and teachers and coaches, all of that, friends, friends' parents that will influence and shape some of this as well. But I look at the family of origin. That's the lens through which I see all of us to begin. And so when I look at the family of origin and the belonging wound, a lot of families have this mantra almost of this is who we are, you know, this is who we are, this is what we believe, this is how we operate in the world. And so you either you need to be like us or else. So a lot of times the black sheep of the family will experience this, and I love there's Gobormante talks about how authenticity and attachment are our two lifelines as little humans in the world, but when attachment is at risk, we will trade authenticity every single time as children because you must, right, we have to. We need a home, we need food, we need some type of connection, and so we don't know how to tolerate being who we are at the risk of losing someone else, especially a family member, right at the beginning. And sometimes we'll see a rebellion take place at some point, but early early on, if you have to choose between attachment, quote unquote attachment or authenticity, you're going to choose attachment each time.
00:17:35
Speaker 1: Which wound creates the most loneliness?
00:17:38
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a great question. I have never thought about it that way before. I think they must all probably have really brush up against that in their own ways. I think about a trust wound where you're constantly waiting for something to go wrong, for a lie, for deceit, for betrayal to happen. You're expecting that somewhere, and how lonely that must be. I think about a prioritization wound and how you feel deprioritized where the most important people in your life are choosing something other than you chronically, and how lonely that must feel. I think about worthiness and belonging and how when you are trading who you are to try to fit in or to try to be accepted and loved and valued, that to even get that but it's not actually you that that must feel lonely to you, know, like all of them, I think will make a really good case for being quite lonely. Yeah, I really do. I think all of them in their own way. And the thing about wounds is that it's how each person internalizes the experience. So it's not that, oh, if you had let's say your father abandoned you, that doesn't slot you into a worthiness wound automatically, right, It's like how you experience that thing. So for one person, that experience might slot into a worthiness wound, and the narrative might be I am not worthy because you left and you didn't think I was good enough to stick around. For somebody else, that might slot in as a trust wound. The most important people in my life will leave me and abandon me, and I can't trust those people to stay. So when I think about it through that lens, I think, okay, yeah, it's how does this experience make each individual person feel lonely? My guess would be.
00:19:43
Speaker 1: All of them? Yeah, yeah, you said something earlier about you had a great phrase. You either are opposing or what is repeating? So opposing or repeating? And it made me think. My mom always says when I'm dating, don't look at the guy, just wipe him over and look at his father, which is triggering for me. But I get what she's saying, and you righte that some of us become our parents and others become the exact opposite of our parents. How do we choose? How does that happen?
00:20:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think lovingly to your mom, I don't know that I would fully agree with it, because it really depends on the person's journey from there. You know, if we look at our parents and then just assume that we are simply the extension of them, or that we'll get a look into our future by looking at them, I think it falls short and doesn't give us enough credit for the work that many people do. Okay, we all know the path of repetition it's sort of the oh, my father was an alcoholic and now I have dated Now I'm dating an alcoholic. Or maybe it's not even apples to apples, like my father was an alcoholic, and now I'm dating somebody who is a work centric, right, and so I'm still deprioritized or I still don't feel worthy in this relationship. But I'll give an example of the path of opposition when it comes to conflicts. For example, So maybe you grow up in your family and it's high conflict, and conflict is scary. Maybe there's even abuse, but it's not a it's it's high tempers. You are like, I do not want to be around this. This is scary to my nervous system. I don't like it at all. So you move through life and somewhere along the way you decide, I'm never going to do that again. You know, I don't. I don't want to engage in conflict that way. That's that's not a good way to be. And so you swing that pendulum, and now you move through life not engaging in conflict. Right now from the outside looking in, that might objectively look much better to the outside world. You started in a place that was dangerous. That was not Oh gosh, high conflict, high tempers, really scary, And now you don't have conflict. This amazing, Okay, great, Except if we get a little more curious and we start to peel back some of those layers, what we maybe see here is that this person who it doesn't enter into conflict anymore and has a fairly peaceful life is never getting a chance to say what they need to say. They're never getting a chance to be expressed. They are fearful of what is attached to their story and experience of what conflict is. So they've swung the pendulum to say I want to move through life this way because this way seems safer and better. And arguably maybe it is safer. But is it, Betters, Has it moved you to a place where you feel healthy, where you feel like you get to say what you need to say and have that be something that is heard and understood. It skips over something really important. The path of integration is something I talk about in the book, and I want people to be aware of the ways in which they do swing the pendulum. Oh my gosh, I never want that. I'll never be like that. I'll never recreate that, and then we work so hard to do the opposite because we think the opposite is better than the thing that hurt us or harmed us in the first place. But if you walk through life and relationship with sort of those horse blinders around you around your eyes, I think we often lead ourselves just to a new position that isn't exactly what we want either. Because we all know that communication is vital in relationships. We all know that to be authentically expressed in relationship is important. We know that the healing part of this is not the avoidance of hard conversations. It's the ability to have a hard conversation and to trust the other person across from you is able to hear it and hold it and get curious with it and meet you in that moment. That is what is healing. What is healing is not sidestepping it and avoiding it at all costs and creating a life where you never touch the hot coal. Right, It's that, Oh, I'm not going to touch the hot coal with my hand, but I have these tools that help me get close to this thing. It's hot, it's hard, right, it's a little scary, but I'm going to show myself. We are going to show each other how to do this differently than we had been taught or than we had experienced previously.
00:24:26
Speaker 1: But are you saying that that's opposition or repetition?
00:24:31
Speaker 2: The path of integration is the goal?
00:24:34
Speaker 1: Is that hits me either? Right?
00:24:36
Speaker 2: Yeah? So repetition blindly right, is not what we want unless it's something that's healthy, right, right, And then opposition is also not what we want.
00:24:46
Speaker 1: It's integration. Yeah. Yeah, So how do you know if you're choosing someone out of familiarity or out of this is actually right for me?
00:24:55
Speaker 2: I don't think you know it right away? How fun right? But it's I remember I first started dating Connor, and right at the beginning, I was like, this is either going to absolutely rewound me or it's going to be the beautiful love story that I want. And I don't know what it is. And I think one of the things about dating that that is important for people to hear is that it's not about actually knowing right out of the gates. Now, there might be some things that are really easy to spot, right, Okay, fine, but love and relationships are intricate and they're complex, and we don't always know all of the things that we need to know right away. And so my goal post for you is not about never entering into something that might be a pattern but you're not quite sure. It's about being aware and when you know, then having the capacity to exit. You understand what I.
00:25:54
Speaker 1: Mean, not staying in it? Yes, yes, okay, Can I ask you a question about this? I stay too long. It's a thing that I've ben working on. However, I see a lot of and I know you do too, like a lot of really awesome women who are aware of their patterns, aware of many of the things that they are wounded by, and still continue to make choices that aren't necessarily integrated. I kind of put myself in that pile.
00:26:25
Speaker 2: What is that There's a difference between knowing versus showing yourself a new way and being able to tolerate it. In our minds, we can connect all of the dots, we can have all the light bulb moments. We can know what the pattern is, we can know where it came from. We might even laugh over a coffee about the fact that I've dated my father or my mother for so many times. Right, we might find comedy in it at times. The difference is about showing yourself how to choose differently and to tolerate the consequence of that. And when I say the consequence of that, what I mean is to tolerate the relationship ending, or to tolerate not being chosen, to tolerate setting a boundary when you normally wouldn't, to tolerate what happens when you choose not to be in a relationship than just being in one, because you have identified that being in one is better than being alone. It's the consequence of the things that we know we ought to be doing. That part is so hard for us to tolerate. Now, when we do those things and follow through on them and experience whatever that consequence is, then we are showing ourselves that we can do it. And that's what expands our ability to move from knowing to showing.
00:27:51
Speaker 1: I like that, I like that better than doing. One line from your book really stayed with me. Right. More likely than not, your past is running the show, and if you're not conscious of it, you're likely suffering from it. A lot of your clients come in saying that I know therapists love talking about childhood, but I don't want like I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about this problem. I'm going to put my mom on blast. She won't go to therapy because she's like, I don't need to go through my whole childhood. Why are we so resistant to the idea that our past is shaping us.
00:28:22
Speaker 2: I don't think we like to feel out of control, you know. I think this idea that something from decades ago somehow has control over us is not a fun idea for us to swallow. I also think that we're afraid of what the excavation might do. What will I find if I start to dig. I think we have narratives around being grateful, and it confuses the idea that looking at your childhood means that you're ungrateful or you're going to place blame instead of just having respect or gratitude for what they do. To do is something that moves us away from them. I think we have generational shifts. So my parents were better than their parents were to them, so I don't have a right to say much. We have wound comparison where people say so and so story is so much worse than mine, So I don't have a right to you know, acknowledge or claim anything and I like to move people away from that. It is not a competition. You know, your wounds are not in competition with somebody else's. This is about acknowledging what your experience was, and back to that quote, understanding how it is running the show, because it is running the show. If you have any unwanted patterns in your life current day, it's running the show.
00:29:44
Speaker 1: If you are good, Wait to say that again.
00:29:46
Speaker 2: If you have any unwanted patterns in your life today, it's running the show.
00:29:51
Speaker 1: That's good.
00:29:52
Speaker 2: It's true if your life is peaceful and great.
00:29:57
Speaker 1: But if there's anything where you have an outsize reaction, or you are frustrated that you're doing the same thing over and over again and it's not working, your past is running this.
00:30:05
Speaker 2: I keep dating the same types of people, even though I know better. I can't set the boundary, even though I promised I would.
00:30:11
Speaker 1: I'm people pleasing even though it doesn't feel good.
00:30:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, right, those unwonted patterns. The arrow is pointing back to origin wounds that need our attention.
00:30:34
Speaker 1: Okay, so in the article that I love, I don't even know how to pronounce his name, Elaine de Bouton. I think he wrote that the standard question on an early dinner date should be and how are you crazy? With respect to this man, because I love this article. I hate that question, so I want to ask you yours is your question? Which wound am I? And which one are you?
00:30:58
Speaker 2: I don't know that that would be my record mandation on a first date. Ever. I think sometimes we jump into the vulnerability space really early on, and you and I actually had a conversation about this off air, off camera before, where this idea of sort of that forced vulnerability really early on before something is earned, is a little strange, and I think.
00:31:24
Speaker 1: You could tell them why could We'll give them something to hold on too, So it's like a concrete idea. So years ago, I went on a date with this guy who had this like forced intimacy. He was saying these things to me that made me feel like he was like so into it, and I was like, you don't even know me, Like what are you into? So it felt weird. It didn't it didn't settle, right, Yeah, so sorry.
00:31:47
Speaker 2: But that's it, right, It's like this forced intimacy, this forced vulnerability. I think there is a light and fun and kind of playful way to get to know each other and to really tight trait that experience. It's little bits of vulnerability, little bits of intimacy, to see how that feels and how it's received. And maybe you talk a little bit about your family, but not the wounding from your childhood. Maybe something that's just about how you spend your holidays together, or you know, what summer activity you do right, something that lets you into what your world looks like without it being the darkest, deepest depths of your soul. Because I do think that that's it's it's probably a bit too soon.
00:32:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, Although I think some people as they get older, they're like, I just want to let you know, Like here's my bag, here's you know, here's what I don't even like that word, but here's what's on the table.
00:32:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm with you. Yeah, and SETI wins the race. I know people who just want to get to the point. But also it still takes a little bit to get to that place where it's actually safe to do that, because where I started around, the definition of being able to love someone right is to know them well deeply. And it's like I want to be loved by you. I'm going to let you know me right away. But knowing someone is not because you just give them the facts of your life and the details of your story. Knowing someone is through hours, time spent experience together. And so yeah, I think we can give high level stuff, but ultimately you're just placing your whole story on somebody's plate. Who's like, I don't even know if I want to hold this yet. I'm not sure I'm ready for that. So yes, but look, I think that question is funny, and I'm sure he meant I assume he meant it as a just tell me you know what's you're crazy and what are your wounds? And look, there's certain things that have been so normalized in our culture over time, like what's your attachment style or what's your love language? I actually think that that has become a question that people are willing to ask an answer on a first date.
00:34:11
Speaker 1: Wait, can I talk to you about this? I went on a date where someone asked me that, and I thought it was really an invasive question. Well, there you have it, but here's why, and tell me if you think I'm wrong. I'm so open to feedback. Always he asked me the question. First of all, I felt like he had gone to his therapist and was like, what questions should I ask on a date? And then was repeating them. However, he asked it, and I was like, I don't want to tell someone on a first date that one of my love languages is physical touch, Like, it's not an invitation for that. I don't want you to think I'm like overly Sexualizedly it just came with all this baggage, and so I actually was like, I don't want to answer that.
00:34:44
Speaker 2: Sure, I'm glad that you set that boundary. I do think a lot of these questions are just again, like I'm saying things that need to be earned over a load bit of time. And I think that those first dates should be fun and playful and yes, of course like oh here's where I grew up and those types. If you're curious, you will extract so much from a person without it being intrusive.
00:35:12
Speaker 1: I think people don't like small talk, but I think you small talks you can earn big talk. Yeah, what are the signs that you are dating or married to an emotionally immature person?
00:35:24
Speaker 2: Oh, this topic. I think there's a lot of immaturity in the world, and it's our job and look I'm going to flip that question too, because I also want people to think about it within themselves as well. We all have some immaturity to us, and hopefully we also have some maturity as well. But I don't want us to only think about if I'm dating somebody who is emotionally immature. I want you to also think about the ways in which your immaturity comes to the table.
00:35:56
Speaker 1: That's a great point, Okay.
00:35:57
Speaker 2: I again, I am always looking at things relationally, and if our spotlight is on the other person and we're not looking at it within ourselves, we are skipping over something really important there, Okay. Emotional maturity is about being able to see your part, see their part, discern the difference. Immaturity goes to a place of defensiveness. It goes on the attack a lot of times. It's sort of this manipulative language of Okay, well, then I guess I'm the worst fill in the blank, mother, father, partner, child, et cetera. Right, So, when we go to these places that feel a little bit charged with some drama and manipulation, that we've lost the thread. We struggle with emotional maturity because we struggle with shame. We struggle with emotional maturity because we can't hold in both hands. We can't hold in both hands our humans and our compassion and grace. So when your feedback to me cues some type of threat, I have failed, I am a letdown, I am unworthy, I am imperfect whatever it is, and those things, there's an association with what that means. Then I move into a state of self protection, defensiveness. Maybe I criticize you, well, you know what you did last week that sucked. You're not so perfect, are you right? Like moves into that place, or it moves into the drama that I was talking about, or it gives the explanation. All of those things are emotional immaturity. I cannot hold your emotional experience while holding mine.
00:37:42
Speaker 1: I had a very outsized reaction. I was angry, which is not a feeling I have very often. A few weeks ago and I called my therapist to do like a quote unquote emergency session. She walked me through this exercise. I'd never done this before, and I closed my eyes and she asked me a few questions, and she said, whose voice is in your head? And it was my dad's voice, And it was basically The idea was that like I'm not allowed to feel pain or weakness, like we are strong, and I was experiencing shame and that was the reaction. It wasn't anger, it wasn't all these other things, and it was just it kind of like blew the lid off for me because I realized, like, oh, this is the shame is the underlying thing for all of it, like all the wounding, all the anything you're feeling, like the thing below it is usually shame and it's somebody's voice.
00:38:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, and it's I think when we start healing those wounds and doing work around it, what happens is that the shame can start to dissipate, yes, and maturity starts to build.
00:38:51
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:38:51
Speaker 2: And so when someone now tells me that I have hurt them or they didn't like something that I did, when my husband does that, I don't have to go into a state of self protection, just.
00:39:06
Speaker 1: Like sit with the discomfort.
00:39:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, oh, okay, yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't you know, like I hear you. I get it. I it's the availability to understanding the person the door. The door opens, it's like the sea really parts because I don't have to protect myself anymore.
00:39:30
Speaker 1: You write that a major red flag is when someone consistently overreacts and blows things out of proportion. Why is that a red flag?
00:39:38
Speaker 2: By a red flag? Just something that arrow that points to the wounding, Because the big reaction is letting us know that something historical is present. Yeah, always, something historical is there. You know. It's like, and the big reaction might be appropriate for that moment. Somebody might have crossed a really significant boundar three of yours. There might be something that is really threatening about this moment. So it's not to say don't have the reaction. Yeah, whatever is there is there, but let that be an arrow for curiosity. Yeah, don't just leave it there.
00:40:15
Speaker 1: One of the things I love from your work is your feedback framework. And you say, healthy couples ask questions that most couples avoid. Do you know them off the top of your head?
00:40:24
Speaker 2: Oh, gosh, I have you there.
00:40:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd love for you to say these. Oh yeah, there's such good questions and there's things there we forget to ask them.
00:40:36
Speaker 2: What's something you've been telling me is important to you that I keep missing or overlooking?
00:40:42
Speaker 1: Yeah?
00:40:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are so important. What's something you need from me that I struggle to give. What's something you feel I haven't fully accepted about you? Why is it so hard to give? Oh, that's a that's a you question, right? The last one, how do we get better at giving and receiving? In what way? The last one in what ways can I love you better? In what ways can I love you better? And look, of course these questions need to go both ways. A lot of times you have one partner who's asking these questions or thinking about these things and the other person isn't. But for beautiful, thriving relationships, when you have both people asking these questions and really being willing to receive the feedback like that, the feedback isn't the thing again that you're like, oh, self protection? Oh the way something I keep missing that you're telling me as important? Is this, Like, oh, I want to be able to talk about my relationship with my parents, and you're like, but I don't want to hear about your parents. That's not going to go very far, right, it's being able to receive. We can ask questions all we want, We can ask them left right center. If you don't have the capacity to receive the answer, the needle will not move, you know, well said, and so you have to do your own individual work. Yeah, so that whatever the feedback is is not something that you have to disconnect from in some way that you can stay present with what that feedback is. That is the thing that helps relationships thrive and helps you thrive as a human.
00:42:18
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about some reality shows because I think one of the reasons we love what reality TV, particularly dating shows, is we see so many of our romantic patterns play out in real time. So love is Blind and Love Island are the two big ones right now, And it seems like one person's ready for a real partnership and the other is still operating from a place of insecurity, avoidance ego, maybe a wound. Why do you think that scenario in particular, where one person is ready and one person is not continues to play out on screen.
00:42:50
Speaker 2: Well, I do think you're right that it's we're seeing the mirror of our own lives and our own experiences. But here's the thing. If you're actually ready then and you find only realize what I was saying before, that the other person isn't, then your readiness has to meet that moment, which says, then we're not the right match, and I'm not going to keep trying and trying and trying and trying and trying and trying at the cost and expense of myself, right, And so it's the I know better, I know what I ought to do. I'm ready, but you're not ready until your readiness can meet that moment and you can pivot towards what is aligned for you, like the extension of what you're healing is saying, if that makes sense.
00:43:35
Speaker 1: Do you watch any of these shows?
00:43:36
Speaker 2: I have? We don't know that I'm current, but I have watched.
00:43:41
Speaker 1: Both, which makes you I roll the most.
00:43:43
Speaker 2: I love them? You do, I do? I love them. I appreciate watching those shows and anything relational I think is interesting to me. Now some of it is, you know, sometimes you're cheering for someone, sometimes you're cringing on the photo sofa and you can see it so clearly. But I appreciate people, you know, some of them. I'm sure they're doing it for different motives. But the people who.
00:44:12
Speaker 1: Are not for the right reasons, for reasons exactly do you think they like play out these sort of like toxic patterns or they're just reflecting current dating culture.
00:44:22
Speaker 2: I think it's just reflecting dating cultures. I'm sure the people who are choosing who's on, you know, they're going for that probably. Yeah, Like I wonder what the casting is like for the show. We have friends of mine and I have joked about throwing myself into the ring and saying that they need a therapist on these shows to actually try to support they do.
00:44:46
Speaker 1: They need a therapist in the news to like take all the news on CNNA and like harness it with people, and they need a therapist on these reality.
00:44:57
Speaker 2: Shows, you know who does. I've been on to Black Girls in a Rose and they do a lot of therapists on the show to break down what's going on, and I love their material.
00:45:10
Speaker 1: What would you say to parents who want to model healthy relationships for their kids in their house.
00:45:14
Speaker 2: Keep doing your own work. You're not going to be perfect. Ever, obviously we've heard that so many times before. A lot of times parents especially now are saying, you know, I don't want to pass this pain or I don't want to screw up my kids, and you know, most people will say, well, you will screw up your kids, and there's no way to avoid that. But I think it's about getting to that place where you continue to do your own work, You continue to do your own excavation. You are mature enough as a parent to be able to receive their feedback. You're able to see your humanness and your and hold the compassion and grace and accountability, ownership, responsibility. You're willing to apologize that, You're willing to do all of those things to be relational with them. Those are the things that model it and then relationally partner to partner. It's like, yeah, you are their model. You are the person I always say to people of the clients of mine who have children, like, your kids are going to be on some therapist's sofa twenty five years from twenty years from now, thirty years from now. What do you want them to say about their childhood? Oh? You know, what are they going to say about their childhood? And that can be a confronting question, right, that can be a really confronting question. But what needs to shift in order for what you want them to say to be what they say?
00:46:36
Speaker 1: That's a great question. What needs to shift? That's very cool. So the article says we will marry the wrong person. I feel like listening to you. That's not true. We meet people who hopefully help us pay attention to and heal our wounds.
00:46:53
Speaker 2: That's right, And it doesn't always happen that way. You know, a lot of times we are in partnership where we're not doing doing any work, and so it probably does feel quote unquote wrong. But I think that relationships, you know, we've heard this before. Partnership and children our greatest teachers, our greatest mirrors, And if you have people who are willing to roll up their sleeves, then something really beautiful can happen from that space. Yeah, if you're with somebody long enough, you know, life is hard. There are a lot of challenges. It's not a walk in the park. It's not it's not that honeymoon phase for a very long time. Different chapters of life will have you face lots of different things. And as I said before, choosing someone who you're willing to go through the hard with, I think is one of the great indicators for good success in a relationship.
00:47:46
Speaker 1: And choosing someone you're willing to go through hard.
00:47:48
Speaker 2: With the good, the easy, the fun, the light, the traveling together, all of that. Of course, I wish that upon everyone. I hope that you have fun with the person you choose. I want you, guys to belly laugh. I want you to enjoy traveling together. I want you to light each other up. I want you to support each other's dreams. Great. You are going to face hardship and you need to be able to go through the heart together and come out the other side. One of my favorite definitions of secure healthy relationship is from a colleague, Douy Freeman, and he says, secure healthy partnership is about going through hard times, remaining in contact, and coming out the other side.
00:48:26
Speaker 1: Okay, what is one question that every listener should ask themselves tonight about the family that they came from and the love they're trying to build.
00:48:37
Speaker 2: I'm not even going to preface it. What did you need most in your childhood that you didn't get? Wow, and let yourself rattle around with it and do your best not.
00:48:50
Speaker 1: To say it's a good one.
00:48:52
Speaker 2: It was great, it was amazing. I didn't need they did so well. Just name it. What did you need most that you didn't get? No explanation, no caveat, no nothing. Just say a sentence, put a period at the end, and then sit with it and pause with it, and notice the sensations in your body as I see in yours, and just notice what happens there. Be willing if you have it, you know, and look. Some people might not be ready to answer that question. Part of this is about capacity. Part of this is about being able to tolerate whatever the answer is right that like, I can actually sit with the answer.
00:49:30
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:49:30
Speaker 2: But if you answer that question honestly, if you get to a point where you can answer that question, obviously it's going to honestly, it is going to point you to some really beautiful work, you will see that answer showing up in your relationships present day.
00:50:00
Speaker 1: Should you marry the best sex of your life? No? A celebrity couple most likely to make it Timothy shallow May and Kylie are Travis and Courtney.
00:50:13
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you're like, I don't care. I don't care to make it. I'm gonna go Kylie and Timothy. If I had to choose one.
00:50:23
Speaker 1: Spinning the block aka revisiting a relationship, is it wise or a waste of time?
00:50:27
Speaker 2: Usually a waste of time. The second chances are just patterns. If there's been no growth in healing.
00:50:37
Speaker 1: That's a word Okay, what do the healthiest couples understand that everybody else misses.
00:50:44
Speaker 2: Gratitude appreciation constantly? I know, it seems basic. We forget about it, gratitude appreciation, acknowledgment, having the conversations, not letting things go on and on and on when you're upset about them, name it. There's something called the low negativity threshold in couples research. Gotman's research about how the healthiest couples they have a low negativity threshold. It means that the amount of negativity that rises within the relationship is before they say something about it is low and not high. The healthiest couples have a low one. So we don't just put kick it down the curb. We don't just brush it off our shoulder. When something upsets you, it bothers you. You're upset by something, you say it, you name it, you squash it, you move on from it, so that you're not harboring things, so that resentment is not building and growing.
00:51:33
Speaker 1: Okay, last ones. Female proposals bolder backwards?
00:51:38
Speaker 2: I mean, do you? But I'd want to know what the reason is behind it, Like what's yeah, what's driving this? Because sometimes you know, is it performative. Is it coming from a like? What is driving it? It feels important to answer.
00:51:56
Speaker 1: That's a good question. What's something every woman should try once whatever first comes to your mind?
00:52:05
Speaker 2: What is something going for their dreams?
00:52:11
Speaker 1: A book you read that changed your life, something you think everybody should read?
00:52:16
Speaker 2: Awareness.
00:52:17
Speaker 1: I've never heard of it. It's a great book, Okay.
00:52:19
Speaker 2: And I will revisit it over and over and over again. Yeah.
00:52:23
Speaker 1: And the question everything question from the card game that I pulled was what is something about you that sounds made up but is one hundred percent true?
00:52:33
Speaker 2: Oh? I played the violin at Whinney Houston's wedding.
00:52:37
Speaker 1: I'm sorry at her wedding to Bobby.
00:52:41
Speaker 2: Brown not made up? I know it's a good one.
00:52:45
Speaker 1: That's a really good one.
00:52:47
Speaker 2: It's a good one.
00:52:47
Speaker 1: Like if you said that during True Truths and a Lie, I think you for sure made that up.
00:52:51
Speaker 2: That I so out there right?
00:52:53
Speaker 1: Was it a good wedding?
00:52:55
Speaker 2: Yeah? I was so young, but it was a very beautiful wedding for the part so that I got to be.
00:53:01
Speaker 1: Therefore, Vienna, You're amazing, Thank you.
00:53:04
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
00:53:11
Speaker 1: Okay, you know what time it is. Today's a good day to have a good day. I'll see you next week.
Speaker 1: No one has all the answers, but when we ask the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths, closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist Danielle Robe, and each week, my guests and I come together to challenge the status quo and our own ways of thinking by daring to ask.
00:00:25
Speaker 2: What if, why not?
00:00:28
Speaker 1: And who says?
00:00:30
Speaker 2: So?
00:00:30
Speaker 1: Come curious, dig deep, and join the conversation. It's time to question everything. About five years ago, I read an article that was ten years old, published in twenty sixteen in The New York Times by Alan de Baton. It was called why You Will Marry the Wrong Person. I was obsessed with it. I'm still obsessed with it because at first the title feels insane, cynical, almost offense right, But the deeper idea underneath it totally captivated me. It's actually oddly liberating. The article asked the question, what if the biggest change in your relationship isn't finding the right person. What if it's understanding the person doing the choosing. So the author or the writer de Baton argues that there is no perfect person waiting to complete us. We are all imperfect evolving humans, carrying our own histories and wounds and expectations and blind spots into our relationships. The people we love don't just meet who we are today, they meet every version of us that is still unfolding. But here's the part he doesn't fully answer in the piece. Why do we keep choosing the same kinds of relationships over and over again? Why do some people feel impossible to get over? Why do we stay too long? And why do we know our patterns and still repeat them? And that's where today's guest comes in. Vienna Ferryon is one of the most sought after licensed marriage and family therapists in the country. She's also the best selling author of The Origins of You. Her work begins with a provocative idea, Your relationships didn't start when you met your partner. They started in your childhood, long before you knew who you would love. You were learning what love feels like, what conflict feels like, what safety feels like, what belonging feels like, and what you would possibly mistake for connection.
00:02:26
Speaker 2: When attachment is at risk, we will trade authenticity every single time.
00:02:33
Speaker 1: Vienna says that almost all of us are carrying one of five origin wounds worthiness, belonging, prioritization, trust or safety. And until we understand those wounds, we keep recreating them. She says, if you have any unwonted patterns in your life today, your past is running the show.
00:02:52
Speaker 2: If it is hysterical, it's historical.
00:02:56
Speaker 1: I love that quote. If it's hysterical, it's historical. So in this conversation, we talk about why we mistake the familiar for the right person, how to tell the difference between chemistry and conditioning, the questions that the healthiest couples ask each other that most of us avoid, and whether relationships can truly recover from betrayal. She also shares the one and only sign that you are in a healthy relationship. So today we're asking are we choosing our relationships or are our wounds choosing them?
00:03:27
Speaker 2: For us?
00:03:28
Speaker 1: It's time to question everything with Vienna Ferion Vienna true or false? Everybody will marry the wrong person.
00:03:43
Speaker 2: I have to go with false on that.
00:03:45
Speaker 1: Okay, say more, well, I feel like I married the right person.
00:03:52
Speaker 2: So if I look at my own life, I feel like I have to say no to that. And then I also, obviously work with so many couple and individuals in relationships and know their stories so intimately. And I think it probably depends how we're defining right and wrong. Yeah, so maybe we'll get into that. But it's not that right is easy, you know. It's not that right is without conflict or without hardship or trials and tribulations. And I've said this before, there is no one other than Connor who I want to go through the hard with.
00:04:33
Speaker 1: That's what I hear from so many people that are happily partnered. Although that article says that we don't really seek happiness, we seek familiarity. Do you agree with that? Yeah?
00:04:42
Speaker 2: I think unconsciously we're seeking familiarity and it's the good, it's the not so good. And then the way that we participate with it is that we either do a path of repetition or we do a path of opposition. And and until we start to do some of this healing work and awareness work, Yeah, then I think it's probably true to say that we're dating, we're partnering with people who are going to contribute and participate in the rewounding of us.
00:05:15
Speaker 1: So are we picking our partners based on love?
00:05:20
Speaker 2: I think both, and I think both, and I think it depends where you are in your awareness journey. You know, initially when we connect with someone, it's not based on love, right, like those first I really think that love is about knowing someone deeply, So that early butterfly stage, the honeymoon stage, the stage that lasts, you know, I think at most I think they say eighteen months somewhere around there. Sure we see the hard sometimes in the early parts, but a lot of people don't, right, Some couples do. Some couples face hardship right away, but many couples don't see the hardship or experience the hardship until later. And we don't know a person until we've really seen all parts of them, many parts of them, And it's hard for that to happen right out of the gate. Doesn't mean that it can't, right, But I think when you look at your average relationship across the board, most people are not going through hard or having their partner be fully revealed to them for a while. I remember, actually when I was dating Connor, it was before we got engaged, when we got into our first conflict. Don't know what it was about, but this part of me that came forward was this woman who was doubling down, tripling down, quadrupling down, needing to be right, needed to prove my point. And I remember having this moment where it's just like ooh, right, like this part of me is being revealed. He had not seen this part of me before writing that part of me had been set aside. I'd talk to right because we want to show up in this way we're likable and lovable. And you know, I still at that time, I think, wanted to be easy going and I wore the cool girl persona for a long time. And I remember this moment that really stands out to me, where this part of me that felt so unbecoming and was worried that he was going to not want to be in the relationship anymore because this part had come forward. It was like him seeing me through that moment felt really like there was a shift that took place there. And even though we don't have to get into the whole story, I tell the story a lot on shows, but I think the point that I want to make about this was that there was a data point that got exchanged in that moment where this part of myself that I was judgmental love or critical of, ashamed of, was revealed, and in it, this person across from me was able to walk alongside of me and not run away from it, or not criticize it or not reject it, was able to get curious about that part, to understand that we make sense with context if we're willing to dig, and not that context excuses behavior, but relationally, we're going to need to excavate some things and not expect each other to be quote unquote perfect and show up in this perfectly packaged way. And so that moment felt like a moment where a pivot took place of Oh, I revealed this part and it didn't scare you away. It was something that you actually came closer to learning more about and understanding more about, and that really shifted something for me.
00:08:48
Speaker 1: Would you say that that part of you was coming from a wound?
00:08:51
Speaker 2: For sure?
00:08:52
Speaker 1: So so much of your work has to do with these five wounds. I kind of want to give everybody the roadmap before we really dig in. You say that almost everyone is walking around with one of these five? Will you share with those five?
00:09:05
Speaker 2: Are sure one of them, many of them, sometimes all five of them? So just to neutralize, right, so you don't have to be one. You don't have to be one. I think we will have a dominant one or two. I have a worthiness wound and a safety wound, and a trust one will creep in there. Sometimes the five are worthiness, belonging, prioritization, trust, and safety. And yeah, in that example, my safety wound was activated. And I'll give you a little context so that it makes sense. I don't know what Connor and I were fighting about, but my assumption is that we disagreed on something because I needed to be right in that moment. I needed to show him and prove to him that he was wrong and I needed to really prove my point and get that across. And he actually had surrendered at some point in the conflict where he's like, Okay, I get it. I understand. I didn't stop, and I needed to be right because being right was safety for me. I grew up if my parents went through a nine year divorce process started when I was in first grade. There was a lot of chaos and high conflict, paranoia, gaslighting, manipulation, psychological abuse that was happening, and I was the observer of it. I'm an only child, and I just you know, was watching it back and forth back and forth, and the manipulation, gaslighting, psychological abuse was towards my mom. And as a little girl watching this go down, how I made sense of it was that if you are right, which my dad was masterful at being right, if you are right, then you are safe, and if you're not right, then you are not safe. Because I saw what that did to my mom. I saw what it looked like to not be able to prove your point, to not be able to explain yourself, to not be able to track all the details and not miss a beat. I saw what it did. And so from my little human position, I had decided really early on that being right, improving your point was where safety resided, and not being able to do that was the absence of safety. So fast forward into romantic relationships, and here's this moment again. I can't I have no clue what we're fighting about, but here's this moment where there is a disagreement. My guess is there's a disagreement about something specific, right, some detail, and automatically right, my nervous system that's constantly scanning for every data point that's being exchanged here picks up on Wait, you're trying to tell me something that is not true, where you're trying to disagree with something that I saw happen, and so now I need to go into a place of self protection.
00:11:37
Speaker 1: And nine year old Vienna shows up.
00:11:40
Speaker 2: That's right.
00:11:41
Speaker 1: So I have this thing I do when I'm in relationship with somebody, and it's only when we're in like true relationship. I keep a child, like a children's photo of them on my phone in their contact so when they call me, it's the five, six, seven year old version of them. And I do it because when I am so frustrated or angry, I remind myself that that's the person showing up, and then I'm a little bit kinder. But I do think it's very interesting that we all bring our like nine year old selves to the equation constantly.
00:12:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, these younger when we have ruptures around the wounding or traumas that we experience, or these fragmented parts of us, you know that it happens, there's a fragmentation that happens, and so this younger part of ourselves will show up.
00:12:26
Speaker 1: You know.
00:12:26
Speaker 2: When I don't encourage you to ask your partner this in a heated moment, but I very lovingly and compassionately inquire with you the listener, when you think about these moments where you become super activated and you go into this space a fight flight, freeze or fawn, how old you feel, you know, when I am really triggered, when I'm activated, when I am no longer anchored and grounded in my place, I don't feel like a forty year old woman.
00:12:57
Speaker 1: No, I feel like I'm in fifth grade.
00:12:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I'm either a ten or even younger than that. Right, It's like these really younger parts that are trying to figure out how to you know, navigate this moment. And it's not this wise anchored adult self who's in the room. And so I love that you keep that younger picture and it's a reminder and not an excuse, but a reminder that, yeah, these these younger experiences are present with us in this moment, right, because if there is a big activation that's happening, as they often say, if it is hysterical, it's historical. Yeah, that's a great saying. Yeah.
00:13:39
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you how you can figure out what your wound is, but I was on your website and you have this amazing quiz that you can take it's like five minutes long, and it tells you what your dominant wound is. Your mind came up as worthiness. What you're saying is your dominant one.
00:13:53
Speaker 2: So one of them.
00:13:54
Speaker 1: So how does a worthiness wound in particular show up in dating a relationship?
00:13:58
Speaker 2: Totally? Okay, So to all my perfectionist pleasers performers out there, you know this is one because a worthiness wound often originates because there were conditions to love or connection or presence. So think straight a's or performing well on the field, getting the hat trick or becoming being the comic relief in the family in order to get connection, validation, attention, praise, et cetera. You know, a lot of times there are conditions to our love. I need you to be X, y and Z in order to get me as your parent or as your caretaker, to be connected or loving or present with you. And so yeah, fast forward. It still shows up a lot of times in that way. So, oh gosh, in the dating space, the worthiness wound, I think it blends sometimes into other wounds too. But this idea of needing to be perfect, whatever that means to you, but needing to be perfect in order to be chosen needing to be XYZ fill in the blank with whatever it is. But it's a lot of abandoning what is actually true for us. It's not believing that we are put it simply right, It's like that we're not worthy or valuable without needing to fill some role of perfection, of pleasing, of performing for the other person. And yeah, it's a quick way to move really far away from yourself.
00:15:31
Speaker 1: I think that for time's sake, trust and safety. I can kind of imagine how that shows up. How does belonging show up?
00:15:39
Speaker 2: So my work starts at looking at the family of origin. So I'm well aware that we have society and media and school and teachers and coaches, all of that, friends, friends' parents that will influence and shape some of this as well. But I look at the family of origin. That's the lens through which I see all of us to begin. And so when I look at the family of origin and the belonging wound, a lot of families have this mantra almost of this is who we are, you know, this is who we are, this is what we believe, this is how we operate in the world. And so you either you need to be like us or else. So a lot of times the black sheep of the family will experience this, and I love there's Gobormante talks about how authenticity and attachment are our two lifelines as little humans in the world, but when attachment is at risk, we will trade authenticity every single time as children because you must, right, we have to. We need a home, we need food, we need some type of connection, and so we don't know how to tolerate being who we are at the risk of losing someone else, especially a family member, right at the beginning. And sometimes we'll see a rebellion take place at some point, but early early on, if you have to choose between attachment, quote unquote attachment or authenticity, you're going to choose attachment each time.
00:17:35
Speaker 1: Which wound creates the most loneliness?
00:17:38
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a great question. I have never thought about it that way before. I think they must all probably have really brush up against that in their own ways. I think about a trust wound where you're constantly waiting for something to go wrong, for a lie, for deceit, for betrayal to happen. You're expecting that somewhere, and how lonely that must be. I think about a prioritization wound and how you feel deprioritized where the most important people in your life are choosing something other than you chronically, and how lonely that must feel. I think about worthiness and belonging and how when you are trading who you are to try to fit in or to try to be accepted and loved and valued, that to even get that but it's not actually you that that must feel lonely to you, know, like all of them, I think will make a really good case for being quite lonely. Yeah, I really do. I think all of them in their own way. And the thing about wounds is that it's how each person internalizes the experience. So it's not that, oh, if you had let's say your father abandoned you, that doesn't slot you into a worthiness wound automatically, right, It's like how you experience that thing. So for one person, that experience might slot into a worthiness wound, and the narrative might be I am not worthy because you left and you didn't think I was good enough to stick around. For somebody else, that might slot in as a trust wound. The most important people in my life will leave me and abandon me, and I can't trust those people to stay. So when I think about it through that lens, I think, okay, yeah, it's how does this experience make each individual person feel lonely? My guess would be.
00:19:43
Speaker 1: All of them? Yeah, yeah, you said something earlier about you had a great phrase. You either are opposing or what is repeating? So opposing or repeating? And it made me think. My mom always says when I'm dating, don't look at the guy, just wipe him over and look at his father, which is triggering for me. But I get what she's saying, and you righte that some of us become our parents and others become the exact opposite of our parents. How do we choose? How does that happen?
00:20:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think lovingly to your mom, I don't know that I would fully agree with it, because it really depends on the person's journey from there. You know, if we look at our parents and then just assume that we are simply the extension of them, or that we'll get a look into our future by looking at them, I think it falls short and doesn't give us enough credit for the work that many people do. Okay, we all know the path of repetition it's sort of the oh, my father was an alcoholic and now I have dated Now I'm dating an alcoholic. Or maybe it's not even apples to apples, like my father was an alcoholic, and now I'm dating somebody who is a work centric, right, and so I'm still deprioritized or I still don't feel worthy in this relationship. But I'll give an example of the path of opposition when it comes to conflicts. For example, So maybe you grow up in your family and it's high conflict, and conflict is scary. Maybe there's even abuse, but it's not a it's it's high tempers. You are like, I do not want to be around this. This is scary to my nervous system. I don't like it at all. So you move through life and somewhere along the way you decide, I'm never going to do that again. You know, I don't. I don't want to engage in conflict that way. That's that's not a good way to be. And so you swing that pendulum, and now you move through life not engaging in conflict. Right now from the outside looking in, that might objectively look much better to the outside world. You started in a place that was dangerous. That was not Oh gosh, high conflict, high tempers, really scary, And now you don't have conflict. This amazing, Okay, great, Except if we get a little more curious and we start to peel back some of those layers, what we maybe see here is that this person who it doesn't enter into conflict anymore and has a fairly peaceful life is never getting a chance to say what they need to say. They're never getting a chance to be expressed. They are fearful of what is attached to their story and experience of what conflict is. So they've swung the pendulum to say I want to move through life this way because this way seems safer and better. And arguably maybe it is safer. But is it, Betters, Has it moved you to a place where you feel healthy, where you feel like you get to say what you need to say and have that be something that is heard and understood. It skips over something really important. The path of integration is something I talk about in the book, and I want people to be aware of the ways in which they do swing the pendulum. Oh my gosh, I never want that. I'll never be like that. I'll never recreate that, and then we work so hard to do the opposite because we think the opposite is better than the thing that hurt us or harmed us in the first place. But if you walk through life and relationship with sort of those horse blinders around you around your eyes, I think we often lead ourselves just to a new position that isn't exactly what we want either. Because we all know that communication is vital in relationships. We all know that to be authentically expressed in relationship is important. We know that the healing part of this is not the avoidance of hard conversations. It's the ability to have a hard conversation and to trust the other person across from you is able to hear it and hold it and get curious with it and meet you in that moment. That is what is healing. What is healing is not sidestepping it and avoiding it at all costs and creating a life where you never touch the hot coal. Right, It's that, Oh, I'm not going to touch the hot coal with my hand, but I have these tools that help me get close to this thing. It's hot, it's hard, right, it's a little scary, but I'm going to show myself. We are going to show each other how to do this differently than we had been taught or than we had experienced previously.
00:24:26
Speaker 1: But are you saying that that's opposition or repetition?
00:24:31
Speaker 2: The path of integration is the goal?
00:24:34
Speaker 1: Is that hits me either? Right?
00:24:36
Speaker 2: Yeah? So repetition blindly right, is not what we want unless it's something that's healthy, right, right, And then opposition is also not what we want.
00:24:46
Speaker 1: It's integration. Yeah. Yeah, So how do you know if you're choosing someone out of familiarity or out of this is actually right for me?
00:24:55
Speaker 2: I don't think you know it right away? How fun right? But it's I remember I first started dating Connor, and right at the beginning, I was like, this is either going to absolutely rewound me or it's going to be the beautiful love story that I want. And I don't know what it is. And I think one of the things about dating that that is important for people to hear is that it's not about actually knowing right out of the gates. Now, there might be some things that are really easy to spot, right, Okay, fine, but love and relationships are intricate and they're complex, and we don't always know all of the things that we need to know right away. And so my goal post for you is not about never entering into something that might be a pattern but you're not quite sure. It's about being aware and when you know, then having the capacity to exit. You understand what I.
00:25:54
Speaker 1: Mean, not staying in it? Yes, yes, okay, Can I ask you a question about this? I stay too long. It's a thing that I've ben working on. However, I see a lot of and I know you do too, like a lot of really awesome women who are aware of their patterns, aware of many of the things that they are wounded by, and still continue to make choices that aren't necessarily integrated. I kind of put myself in that pile.
00:26:25
Speaker 2: What is that There's a difference between knowing versus showing yourself a new way and being able to tolerate it. In our minds, we can connect all of the dots, we can have all the light bulb moments. We can know what the pattern is, we can know where it came from. We might even laugh over a coffee about the fact that I've dated my father or my mother for so many times. Right, we might find comedy in it at times. The difference is about showing yourself how to choose differently and to tolerate the consequence of that. And when I say the consequence of that, what I mean is to tolerate the relationship ending, or to tolerate not being chosen, to tolerate setting a boundary when you normally wouldn't, to tolerate what happens when you choose not to be in a relationship than just being in one, because you have identified that being in one is better than being alone. It's the consequence of the things that we know we ought to be doing. That part is so hard for us to tolerate. Now, when we do those things and follow through on them and experience whatever that consequence is, then we are showing ourselves that we can do it. And that's what expands our ability to move from knowing to showing.
00:27:51
Speaker 1: I like that, I like that better than doing. One line from your book really stayed with me. Right. More likely than not, your past is running the show, and if you're not conscious of it, you're likely suffering from it. A lot of your clients come in saying that I know therapists love talking about childhood, but I don't want like I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about this problem. I'm going to put my mom on blast. She won't go to therapy because she's like, I don't need to go through my whole childhood. Why are we so resistant to the idea that our past is shaping us.
00:28:22
Speaker 2: I don't think we like to feel out of control, you know. I think this idea that something from decades ago somehow has control over us is not a fun idea for us to swallow. I also think that we're afraid of what the excavation might do. What will I find if I start to dig. I think we have narratives around being grateful, and it confuses the idea that looking at your childhood means that you're ungrateful or you're going to place blame instead of just having respect or gratitude for what they do. To do is something that moves us away from them. I think we have generational shifts. So my parents were better than their parents were to them, so I don't have a right to say much. We have wound comparison where people say so and so story is so much worse than mine, So I don't have a right to you know, acknowledge or claim anything and I like to move people away from that. It is not a competition. You know, your wounds are not in competition with somebody else's. This is about acknowledging what your experience was, and back to that quote, understanding how it is running the show, because it is running the show. If you have any unwanted patterns in your life current day, it's running the show.
00:29:44
Speaker 1: If you are good, Wait to say that again.
00:29:46
Speaker 2: If you have any unwanted patterns in your life today, it's running the show.
00:29:51
Speaker 1: That's good.
00:29:52
Speaker 2: It's true if your life is peaceful and great.
00:29:57
Speaker 1: But if there's anything where you have an outsize reaction, or you are frustrated that you're doing the same thing over and over again and it's not working, your past is running this.
00:30:05
Speaker 2: I keep dating the same types of people, even though I know better. I can't set the boundary, even though I promised I would.
00:30:11
Speaker 1: I'm people pleasing even though it doesn't feel good.
00:30:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, right, those unwonted patterns. The arrow is pointing back to origin wounds that need our attention.
00:30:34
Speaker 1: Okay, so in the article that I love, I don't even know how to pronounce his name, Elaine de Bouton. I think he wrote that the standard question on an early dinner date should be and how are you crazy? With respect to this man, because I love this article. I hate that question, so I want to ask you yours is your question? Which wound am I? And which one are you?
00:30:58
Speaker 2: I don't know that that would be my record mandation on a first date. Ever. I think sometimes we jump into the vulnerability space really early on, and you and I actually had a conversation about this off air, off camera before, where this idea of sort of that forced vulnerability really early on before something is earned, is a little strange, and I think.
00:31:24
Speaker 1: You could tell them why could We'll give them something to hold on too, So it's like a concrete idea. So years ago, I went on a date with this guy who had this like forced intimacy. He was saying these things to me that made me feel like he was like so into it, and I was like, you don't even know me, Like what are you into? So it felt weird. It didn't it didn't settle, right, Yeah, so sorry.
00:31:47
Speaker 2: But that's it, right, It's like this forced intimacy, this forced vulnerability. I think there is a light and fun and kind of playful way to get to know each other and to really tight trait that experience. It's little bits of vulnerability, little bits of intimacy, to see how that feels and how it's received. And maybe you talk a little bit about your family, but not the wounding from your childhood. Maybe something that's just about how you spend your holidays together, or you know, what summer activity you do right, something that lets you into what your world looks like without it being the darkest, deepest depths of your soul. Because I do think that that's it's it's probably a bit too soon.
00:32:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, Although I think some people as they get older, they're like, I just want to let you know, Like here's my bag, here's you know, here's what I don't even like that word, but here's what's on the table.
00:32:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm with you. Yeah, and SETI wins the race. I know people who just want to get to the point. But also it still takes a little bit to get to that place where it's actually safe to do that, because where I started around, the definition of being able to love someone right is to know them well deeply. And it's like I want to be loved by you. I'm going to let you know me right away. But knowing someone is not because you just give them the facts of your life and the details of your story. Knowing someone is through hours, time spent experience together. And so yeah, I think we can give high level stuff, but ultimately you're just placing your whole story on somebody's plate. Who's like, I don't even know if I want to hold this yet. I'm not sure I'm ready for that. So yes, but look, I think that question is funny, and I'm sure he meant I assume he meant it as a just tell me you know what's you're crazy and what are your wounds? And look, there's certain things that have been so normalized in our culture over time, like what's your attachment style or what's your love language? I actually think that that has become a question that people are willing to ask an answer on a first date.
00:34:11
Speaker 1: Wait, can I talk to you about this? I went on a date where someone asked me that, and I thought it was really an invasive question. Well, there you have it, but here's why, and tell me if you think I'm wrong. I'm so open to feedback. Always he asked me the question. First of all, I felt like he had gone to his therapist and was like, what questions should I ask on a date? And then was repeating them. However, he asked it, and I was like, I don't want to tell someone on a first date that one of my love languages is physical touch, Like, it's not an invitation for that. I don't want you to think I'm like overly Sexualizedly it just came with all this baggage, and so I actually was like, I don't want to answer that.
00:34:44
Speaker 2: Sure, I'm glad that you set that boundary. I do think a lot of these questions are just again, like I'm saying things that need to be earned over a load bit of time. And I think that those first dates should be fun and playful and yes, of course like oh here's where I grew up and those types. If you're curious, you will extract so much from a person without it being intrusive.
00:35:12
Speaker 1: I think people don't like small talk, but I think you small talks you can earn big talk. Yeah, what are the signs that you are dating or married to an emotionally immature person?
00:35:24
Speaker 2: Oh, this topic. I think there's a lot of immaturity in the world, and it's our job and look I'm going to flip that question too, because I also want people to think about it within themselves as well. We all have some immaturity to us, and hopefully we also have some maturity as well. But I don't want us to only think about if I'm dating somebody who is emotionally immature. I want you to also think about the ways in which your immaturity comes to the table.
00:35:56
Speaker 1: That's a great point, Okay.
00:35:57
Speaker 2: I again, I am always looking at things relationally, and if our spotlight is on the other person and we're not looking at it within ourselves, we are skipping over something really important there, Okay. Emotional maturity is about being able to see your part, see their part, discern the difference. Immaturity goes to a place of defensiveness. It goes on the attack a lot of times. It's sort of this manipulative language of Okay, well, then I guess I'm the worst fill in the blank, mother, father, partner, child, et cetera. Right, So, when we go to these places that feel a little bit charged with some drama and manipulation, that we've lost the thread. We struggle with emotional maturity because we struggle with shame. We struggle with emotional maturity because we can't hold in both hands. We can't hold in both hands our humans and our compassion and grace. So when your feedback to me cues some type of threat, I have failed, I am a letdown, I am unworthy, I am imperfect whatever it is, and those things, there's an association with what that means. Then I move into a state of self protection, defensiveness. Maybe I criticize you, well, you know what you did last week that sucked. You're not so perfect, are you right? Like moves into that place, or it moves into the drama that I was talking about, or it gives the explanation. All of those things are emotional immaturity. I cannot hold your emotional experience while holding mine.
00:37:42
Speaker 1: I had a very outsized reaction. I was angry, which is not a feeling I have very often. A few weeks ago and I called my therapist to do like a quote unquote emergency session. She walked me through this exercise. I'd never done this before, and I closed my eyes and she asked me a few questions, and she said, whose voice is in your head? And it was my dad's voice, And it was basically The idea was that like I'm not allowed to feel pain or weakness, like we are strong, and I was experiencing shame and that was the reaction. It wasn't anger, it wasn't all these other things, and it was just it kind of like blew the lid off for me because I realized, like, oh, this is the shame is the underlying thing for all of it, like all the wounding, all the anything you're feeling, like the thing below it is usually shame and it's somebody's voice.
00:38:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, and it's I think when we start healing those wounds and doing work around it, what happens is that the shame can start to dissipate, yes, and maturity starts to build.
00:38:51
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:38:51
Speaker 2: And so when someone now tells me that I have hurt them or they didn't like something that I did, when my husband does that, I don't have to go into a state of self protection, just.
00:39:06
Speaker 1: Like sit with the discomfort.
00:39:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, oh, okay, yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't you know, like I hear you. I get it. I it's the availability to understanding the person the door. The door opens, it's like the sea really parts because I don't have to protect myself anymore.
00:39:30
Speaker 1: You write that a major red flag is when someone consistently overreacts and blows things out of proportion. Why is that a red flag?
00:39:38
Speaker 2: By a red flag? Just something that arrow that points to the wounding, Because the big reaction is letting us know that something historical is present. Yeah, always, something historical is there. You know. It's like, and the big reaction might be appropriate for that moment. Somebody might have crossed a really significant boundar three of yours. There might be something that is really threatening about this moment. So it's not to say don't have the reaction. Yeah, whatever is there is there, but let that be an arrow for curiosity. Yeah, don't just leave it there.
00:40:15
Speaker 1: One of the things I love from your work is your feedback framework. And you say, healthy couples ask questions that most couples avoid. Do you know them off the top of your head?
00:40:24
Speaker 2: Oh, gosh, I have you there.
00:40:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd love for you to say these. Oh yeah, there's such good questions and there's things there we forget to ask them.
00:40:36
Speaker 2: What's something you've been telling me is important to you that I keep missing or overlooking?
00:40:42
Speaker 1: Yeah?
00:40:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are so important. What's something you need from me that I struggle to give. What's something you feel I haven't fully accepted about you? Why is it so hard to give? Oh, that's a that's a you question, right? The last one, how do we get better at giving and receiving? In what way? The last one in what ways can I love you better? In what ways can I love you better? And look, of course these questions need to go both ways. A lot of times you have one partner who's asking these questions or thinking about these things and the other person isn't. But for beautiful, thriving relationships, when you have both people asking these questions and really being willing to receive the feedback like that, the feedback isn't the thing again that you're like, oh, self protection? Oh the way something I keep missing that you're telling me as important? Is this, Like, oh, I want to be able to talk about my relationship with my parents, and you're like, but I don't want to hear about your parents. That's not going to go very far, right, it's being able to receive. We can ask questions all we want, We can ask them left right center. If you don't have the capacity to receive the answer, the needle will not move, you know, well said, and so you have to do your own individual work. Yeah, so that whatever the feedback is is not something that you have to disconnect from in some way that you can stay present with what that feedback is. That is the thing that helps relationships thrive and helps you thrive as a human.
00:42:18
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about some reality shows because I think one of the reasons we love what reality TV, particularly dating shows, is we see so many of our romantic patterns play out in real time. So love is Blind and Love Island are the two big ones right now, And it seems like one person's ready for a real partnership and the other is still operating from a place of insecurity, avoidance ego, maybe a wound. Why do you think that scenario in particular, where one person is ready and one person is not continues to play out on screen.
00:42:50
Speaker 2: Well, I do think you're right that it's we're seeing the mirror of our own lives and our own experiences. But here's the thing. If you're actually ready then and you find only realize what I was saying before, that the other person isn't, then your readiness has to meet that moment, which says, then we're not the right match, and I'm not going to keep trying and trying and trying and trying and trying and trying at the cost and expense of myself, right, And so it's the I know better, I know what I ought to do. I'm ready, but you're not ready until your readiness can meet that moment and you can pivot towards what is aligned for you, like the extension of what you're healing is saying, if that makes sense.
00:43:35
Speaker 1: Do you watch any of these shows?
00:43:36
Speaker 2: I have? We don't know that I'm current, but I have watched.
00:43:41
Speaker 1: Both, which makes you I roll the most.
00:43:43
Speaker 2: I love them? You do, I do? I love them. I appreciate watching those shows and anything relational I think is interesting to me. Now some of it is, you know, sometimes you're cheering for someone, sometimes you're cringing on the photo sofa and you can see it so clearly. But I appreciate people, you know, some of them. I'm sure they're doing it for different motives. But the people who.
00:44:12
Speaker 1: Are not for the right reasons, for reasons exactly do you think they like play out these sort of like toxic patterns or they're just reflecting current dating culture.
00:44:22
Speaker 2: I think it's just reflecting dating cultures. I'm sure the people who are choosing who's on, you know, they're going for that probably. Yeah, Like I wonder what the casting is like for the show. We have friends of mine and I have joked about throwing myself into the ring and saying that they need a therapist on these shows to actually try to support they do.
00:44:46
Speaker 1: They need a therapist in the news to like take all the news on CNNA and like harness it with people, and they need a therapist on these reality.
00:44:57
Speaker 2: Shows, you know who does. I've been on to Black Girls in a Rose and they do a lot of therapists on the show to break down what's going on, and I love their material.
00:45:10
Speaker 1: What would you say to parents who want to model healthy relationships for their kids in their house.
00:45:14
Speaker 2: Keep doing your own work. You're not going to be perfect. Ever, obviously we've heard that so many times before. A lot of times parents especially now are saying, you know, I don't want to pass this pain or I don't want to screw up my kids, and you know, most people will say, well, you will screw up your kids, and there's no way to avoid that. But I think it's about getting to that place where you continue to do your own work, You continue to do your own excavation. You are mature enough as a parent to be able to receive their feedback. You're able to see your humanness and your and hold the compassion and grace and accountability, ownership, responsibility. You're willing to apologize that, You're willing to do all of those things to be relational with them. Those are the things that model it and then relationally partner to partner. It's like, yeah, you are their model. You are the person I always say to people of the clients of mine who have children, like, your kids are going to be on some therapist's sofa twenty five years from twenty years from now, thirty years from now. What do you want them to say about their childhood? Oh? You know, what are they going to say about their childhood? And that can be a confronting question, right, that can be a really confronting question. But what needs to shift in order for what you want them to say to be what they say?
00:46:36
Speaker 1: That's a great question. What needs to shift? That's very cool. So the article says we will marry the wrong person. I feel like listening to you. That's not true. We meet people who hopefully help us pay attention to and heal our wounds.
00:46:53
Speaker 2: That's right, And it doesn't always happen that way. You know, a lot of times we are in partnership where we're not doing doing any work, and so it probably does feel quote unquote wrong. But I think that relationships, you know, we've heard this before. Partnership and children our greatest teachers, our greatest mirrors, And if you have people who are willing to roll up their sleeves, then something really beautiful can happen from that space. Yeah, if you're with somebody long enough, you know, life is hard. There are a lot of challenges. It's not a walk in the park. It's not it's not that honeymoon phase for a very long time. Different chapters of life will have you face lots of different things. And as I said before, choosing someone who you're willing to go through the hard with, I think is one of the great indicators for good success in a relationship.
00:47:46
Speaker 1: And choosing someone you're willing to go through hard.
00:47:48
Speaker 2: With the good, the easy, the fun, the light, the traveling together, all of that. Of course, I wish that upon everyone. I hope that you have fun with the person you choose. I want you, guys to belly laugh. I want you to enjoy traveling together. I want you to light each other up. I want you to support each other's dreams. Great. You are going to face hardship and you need to be able to go through the heart together and come out the other side. One of my favorite definitions of secure healthy relationship is from a colleague, Douy Freeman, and he says, secure healthy partnership is about going through hard times, remaining in contact, and coming out the other side.
00:48:26
Speaker 1: Okay, what is one question that every listener should ask themselves tonight about the family that they came from and the love they're trying to build.
00:48:37
Speaker 2: I'm not even going to preface it. What did you need most in your childhood that you didn't get? Wow, and let yourself rattle around with it and do your best not.
00:48:50
Speaker 1: To say it's a good one.
00:48:52
Speaker 2: It was great, it was amazing. I didn't need they did so well. Just name it. What did you need most that you didn't get? No explanation, no caveat, no nothing. Just say a sentence, put a period at the end, and then sit with it and pause with it, and notice the sensations in your body as I see in yours, and just notice what happens there. Be willing if you have it, you know, and look. Some people might not be ready to answer that question. Part of this is about capacity. Part of this is about being able to tolerate whatever the answer is right that like, I can actually sit with the answer.
00:49:30
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:49:30
Speaker 2: But if you answer that question honestly, if you get to a point where you can answer that question, obviously it's going to honestly, it is going to point you to some really beautiful work, you will see that answer showing up in your relationships present day.
00:50:00
Speaker 1: Should you marry the best sex of your life? No? A celebrity couple most likely to make it Timothy shallow May and Kylie are Travis and Courtney.
00:50:13
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you're like, I don't care. I don't care to make it. I'm gonna go Kylie and Timothy. If I had to choose one.
00:50:23
Speaker 1: Spinning the block aka revisiting a relationship, is it wise or a waste of time?
00:50:27
Speaker 2: Usually a waste of time. The second chances are just patterns. If there's been no growth in healing.
00:50:37
Speaker 1: That's a word Okay, what do the healthiest couples understand that everybody else misses.
00:50:44
Speaker 2: Gratitude appreciation constantly? I know, it seems basic. We forget about it, gratitude appreciation, acknowledgment, having the conversations, not letting things go on and on and on when you're upset about them, name it. There's something called the low negativity threshold in couples research. Gotman's research about how the healthiest couples they have a low negativity threshold. It means that the amount of negativity that rises within the relationship is before they say something about it is low and not high. The healthiest couples have a low one. So we don't just put kick it down the curb. We don't just brush it off our shoulder. When something upsets you, it bothers you. You're upset by something, you say it, you name it, you squash it, you move on from it, so that you're not harboring things, so that resentment is not building and growing.
00:51:33
Speaker 1: Okay, last ones. Female proposals bolder backwards?
00:51:38
Speaker 2: I mean, do you? But I'd want to know what the reason is behind it, Like what's yeah, what's driving this? Because sometimes you know, is it performative. Is it coming from a like? What is driving it? It feels important to answer.
00:51:56
Speaker 1: That's a good question. What's something every woman should try once whatever first comes to your mind?
00:52:05
Speaker 2: What is something going for their dreams?
00:52:11
Speaker 1: A book you read that changed your life, something you think everybody should read?
00:52:16
Speaker 2: Awareness.
00:52:17
Speaker 1: I've never heard of it. It's a great book, Okay.
00:52:19
Speaker 2: And I will revisit it over and over and over again. Yeah.
00:52:23
Speaker 1: And the question everything question from the card game that I pulled was what is something about you that sounds made up but is one hundred percent true?
00:52:33
Speaker 2: Oh? I played the violin at Whinney Houston's wedding.
00:52:37
Speaker 1: I'm sorry at her wedding to Bobby.
00:52:41
Speaker 2: Brown not made up? I know it's a good one.
00:52:45
Speaker 1: That's a really good one.
00:52:47
Speaker 2: It's a good one.
00:52:47
Speaker 1: Like if you said that during True Truths and a Lie, I think you for sure made that up.
00:52:51
Speaker 2: That I so out there right?
00:52:53
Speaker 1: Was it a good wedding?
00:52:55
Speaker 2: Yeah? I was so young, but it was a very beautiful wedding for the part so that I got to be.
00:53:01
Speaker 1: Therefore, Vienna, You're amazing, Thank you.
00:53:04
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
00:53:11
Speaker 1: Okay, you know what time it is. Today's a good day to have a good day. I'll see you next week.
