Relationships are masterfully designed to annoy us, but that's not why you're in a relationship. Bringing awareness to your relationship is uncomfortable. We expect love to flow naturally, but this is extremely rare and often it means that we're not taking on the tougher issues. We need to make mistakes, identify what we need to change, and work on doing better.
This is where we grow as individuals and together. Hey everyone, I'm so excited because we're going to be adding a really special offering onto the back of my solo episodes on Fridays. It's my short daily series on Calm, The Daily Jay, and let me tell you, it's unlike anything else I'm doing. It's part storytelling, part mindfulness, with a wide range of unique, actionable insights, and it's also the only place you can meditate with me each and every day.
I absolutely love all the wisdom was sharing. All the lives were changed, and whether you want to improve your mindset, your habits, or your relationships, whether you want to work on developing more focus, presence or equanimity, building a daily Jay routine just seven minutes every day can make a huge impact, So make sure to check out the session at the end of the podcast, and then subscribe to Calm For your daily dose of the Daily Jay. Go to Calm dot com forward slash J for forty percent
off your membership today. This week we're talking about your relationships and how to create the most meaningful connections with the people that matter to you. Of course, if you want to listen to The Daily Jay every day, you can go subscribe to Calm. So go to Calm dot com, forward slash J for forty percent off your membership today. Welcome back to On Purpose. This is your safe space. This is your place of comfort, of discomfort, of self work and self care with that space that gives you both.
And you know that because you turn up every day every week and I'm so grateful to you. I honestly am so deeply grateful to you for all your love and all your support and to reciprocate with you today, I'm giving you the third chapter of my audiobook, the third rule of my new book Eight Rules of Love Absolutely Free. So today's episode is called define love before
you think it, feel it, or say it. And inside this book and this audiobook chapter, I'm going to teach you how to come up with your own definition of love, How to redefine love so that you don't get misled again, So that someone doesn't get to manipulate you again, So that someone doesn't pretend to give you a relationship and a partnership when actually what they want is ownership. How often has someone pretended to care for you when really
they were trying to control you? How many times have you felt someone pretending to be affectionate when actually they were just trying to be assertive? And so I hope that this episode helps you. I hope it helps your friends. And for those of you that don't already have the book, even though so many of you do already, head over to eight Rules of Love dot com. Order the audiobook, order the hard copy if you want to hear it
in my voice. The audiobook is in my voice. I know some of you like reading and listening at the same time, but you're going to love this episode. Part two Compatibility Learning to Love Others. The second arshroom Grihusta is the stage of life when we extend our love to others while still loving ourselves. This stage introduces the challenges of learning to understand, appreciate, and cooperate with another mind, another set of values, and another set of likes and
dislikes on a daily basis. Here we explore the challenges of karma. May three Loving others. Rule three, define love before you think it, feel it, or say it. My boyfriend told me he loved me, and a week later he fully ghosted me. I told my partner I loved her. She said, thank you. I was dating a girl for several weeks. When I told her, I thought I was starting to fall in love with her. She said she
needed more space. We've been together for three years and we say I love you before bed, same time every night. I'm not sure it means anything anymore. We say I love you, or wait for the right time to say it, or hope someone will say to us, but there is no universal agreement as to what it means. For some it means I want to spend the rest of my life with you. For some people, saying I you means I want to spend the night with you. Between those
two intentions are infinite. Others and some of us say it without any particular intention because in that moment, we just feel something we interpret as love. This leaves a lot of room for confusion. Miscommunication and false expectations. Writer Samantha Taylor says, the first time I told my now husband I loved him, we were spending one of those long nights on the phone early in our dating relationship, back when people actually talked on the phone, delirious with sleepiness.
I told him that I wanted to tell him I loved him, but didn't want to scare him off. Don't worry, he told me, Saying I love you isn't a big deal to me. I love my mom, I love my friends. I love you too great. He loved me like his mom, so romantic. He was telling her that his definition of I love you was different from hers, broad, low pressure, and not particularly romantic. She adds, Fortunately, he must have grown to love me in a romantic way, because we've
been married for almost ten years. We say I love you in so many different contexts with family and friends and lovers that it doesn't indicate anything but the presence of some sort of affection, and yet we have expectations based on what we assume it means to the other person. I love you doesn't include commitment, It doesn't promise you want to have children together. It doesn't guarantee that you'll
put any effort into making a relationship work. It's a beautiful start, not a substitute for many other meaningful conversations. A survey showed that men are quicker to say I Love you than women, taking an average of eighty eight days, a whopping thirty nine percent of them declare their love within the first month. Women take an average of one hundred and thirty four days, and twenty three percent of
them declare their love in month one. It's hard to imagine that people who feel love within weeks actually live up to what their partners think. That statement means. You may feel like you know someone because you've spent time with them and you like their personality, but you may not know their dreams, their values, their priorities, the things that matter to them. You think you know their heart,
but you just know their mind. Love takes time. I'm not saying you need to understand someone fully before you fall in love. We're always learning new things about our partner, but too often we leap to love based on a very small amount of information. In any other area of your life, it's very unlikely that you make a big decision based on such a small amount of information. Love is not black and white. You either love someone or you don't, and there's only one way to do it.
Some people renew their vows every ten years, either to recommit to love or to express how their love has evolved. Some people have long distance love. Some people are friends with benefits. Some people get divorced, but they find a way to parent together peacefully and comfortably. Recently, a guy came up to me at a wedding and told me he just got out of a long relationship. He said, we love each other, but leaving each other was the best way to carry on loving each other. That's love too.
To discount the many forms of love is to miss many beautiful possibilities. Understanding the nuances allows you to define and honor the love you have with the person you're with. As soon as we say I love you, we're going to have to live up to those words, not by our definition, but by the definition of the person we love.
On the flip side, when we accept someone else's love, we have to realize that they aren't using our definition of love before we decide that we're in love, before we tell another person we love them, and before we determine what it means when they say those words to us. We must consider how we define love. What do we expect love to feel like, How do we know we love someone? How do we know if they love us? The only way to avoid miscommunication is to talk about
love using far more than those three words. This rule will help us figure out what we mean when we say I love you, what it may or may not mean when our partner says it, and how to find a meaning. We can share the four phases of love. When we tell each other we love each other. We rarely elaborate, unless it's to add a romantic flourish like so Much or to the moon and back. It's pretty black and white. We've either declared our love or we haven't.
We don't leave much room for variation or degrees of love, but we can take some cues in the practice of love from the Bucket Tradition, an eighth century movement in Hinduism. Bugty describes the journey of falling in love with the divine in stages. The first stage is shudd there where we have the spark of faith that makes us take interest in the divine. Notice how even when we're talking about connecting with the divine. There's a preliminary desire. Curiosity
and hope drive us to engage. This leads us to the next stage Sadu sanga, desiring to associate with spiritually advanced persons. Here we find a spiritual teacher, guide, mentor who can help us develop our practice. After that is budget a career where we perform devotional acts like attending
services and praying. As our devotion gets deeper, we become free from all material attachments anarthanivrathy, achieve steadiness nista in self realization, and find enthusiasm roucci for serving the divine. This taste leads us to further attachment, which is called baba. This is the preliminary stage of pure love of the divine. Then finally we reach pure love for the Divine prayme.
This is the supreme stage of life, where we have attained the highest form of a divine loving relationship, unbound by or in reverence or any kind of hierarchy. Because the Buckti stages of love describe an intimate, direct relationship between a person and their God, they can apply in many ways to how we love each other. So I decided to bring the model down to earth and reinterpret it for the practice of understanding and loving another person.
When it comes to love, we expect that we'll know when we know, but our experiences of love can be different at different times. The four phases of love I'm about to describe can all look like love and feel like love, and they are all part of the journey of love. How do you know if you're in love with someone? Love isn't being called every day, or having your chair pulled out for you, or feeling warm and
fuzzy when you see someone. Love is in a purely romantic fairy tale, and it isn't pragmatically checking qualities off a list. Looking at these phases helps us understand love, differently define love for ourselves, and better articulate our feelings of love. At the same time, seeing the levels of love helps us understand why our partner might have a
different concept of love than we do. Knowing what phase you're in helps orient you for progress to the next phase, and when you can't see yourself getting to the next phase, then you might enjoy it for a while, but you know that it's not sustainable. We might not progress in exactly this order and the rest of this book will show you how we cycle back through the phases. This is a cycle we will repeat not just with one partner, but with pretty much everyone who plays an important role
in our lives. This is the practice of love one. Attraction, two dreams, three, struggle and growth four trust. Phase one attracts. In phase one, we feel a spark of intrigue, interest, and attraction. This makes us want to figure out if someone is worth our time and effort. Researchers describe what we call love as three distinct drives in the brain, lust, attraction, and attachment. When we move from lust to attraction, we're taking the generalized desire to connect with someone and focusing
it on a specific person. The brain chemicals involved in lust differ from those that produce attraction. Lust is governed more by testosterone and estrogen, whereas attraction includes dopamine, the reward chemical, and no A penephyrine, the brain's version of adrenaline, which when combined with dopamine, can generate that feeling of euphoria around the target of our attraction. Additionally, levels of the feel good hormone serotonin actually drop in this phase,
which contributes to our feelings of anxiety and passion. In the early stages of attraction, we have an exciting surge of hope and belief that someone could be the right person for us. We feel intrigue and interest. We swipe right. Love often starts with this thrilling hint of possibility. It means you intrigue me. I want more chemistry like this feels amazing. But we should be careful not to think that chemistry is the only way love begins, or that
it is the entirety of love. Time helps you understand whether what you're feeling is truly love. Think about what it's like when you place an order for a chair on a website. It looks good online if it's beautifully into a room pictured on your favorite home store site, but when it arrives, it isn't comfortable to sit on. In attraction, we observe people for how they appear, but we don't understand what it's like to have a relationship
with them. I used to know this guy who came up to me every month and told me he had fallen in love with another girl, someone he'd bumped into or met on Instagram. For a week, he'd be completely infatuated, and then a few weeks later it would be someone else. In the attraction phase, we have glimpses of love that show us its beauty. Lingering in the attraction phase is pleasurable with new people. We've carefully exposed what we want
them to see, our best features. There are few arguments, expectations, and disappointments. We can sustain the fantasy of a perfect match, but it takes a deeper connection to go beyond phase one. Science supports the idea that having deeper connections bodes well for relationships. Professor Matteis mel at the University of Arizona in Tucson and his team studied whether the conversations we
have affect our well being. Specifically, they were looking at the difference between small talk and having deep, meaningful discussions. They had seventy nine participants war recorders for four days while they went about their daily lives. The devices were designed to record snippets of ambient sound, netting about three
hundred recordings per participant over the four days. The researchers then listened to the recordings and noted when the participants were alone or talking with others, and when their conversation was superficial. What do you have there? Popcorn? Yummy? Or deep? She fell in love with your dad? So did they get divorced soon after? The researchers also assessed participants well being through a series of statements such as I see
myself as someone who is happy satisfied with life. They found that higher rates of well being were associated more with people who had deep conversations than those who made more small talk. Going deep isn't a technique. It can only be a genuine experience that leads to a true connection. But we can examine our own willingness to open up and be vulnerable with people as we build trust with them. Social scientists say that vulnerability leads to reciprocal escalating self disclosure.
What this means is that over time, a couple begins to reveal vulnerabilities to each other. That's the self disclosure. Sharing parts of yourself doesn't mean bearing your whole soul all at once. Sometimes when we are caught up in the moment, we're tempted to do that. But if we gradually unveil our personalities, values and goals, we start to
see if there is a connection. Letting yourself be vulnerable with this intention keeps you feeling protected, like you aren't exposed too much, too fast to a person you can't trust. If it all goes well, you reveal increasingly intimate facets of yourself at a pace where you feel comfortable. That's where the escalating comes in, and the disclosure is a gift that you give back and forth to each other. That's reciprocle. It is with reciprocal escalating self disclosure that
we start to truly know a person. The three date rule. In my experience working with clients, three dates usually provide enough time to determine if you and another person would be a good match. These three dates don't have to be your first three dates, and you don't have to do them one after another. You can spread them out.
Sometimes it's nice to just see a movie. In these dates, you'll focus on three areas whether you like their personality, whether you respect their values, and whether you would like to help them achieve their goals. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to suggest focusing on these qualities sequentially one per date, but you'll probably be uncovering some aspect of each dimension during each date. First, we start with personality because it's
the easiest thing to spot, understand, and connect with. In their personality, you'll see how their past has shaped them. Second, you'll explore their values, which define who they are today. And third you'll try to recognize their goals, which encapsulate what they want in the future. Date one do you have fun together? Do you enjoy each other's company? Does conversation flow? What makes you comfortable and what makes you uncomfortable? The first day is to find out if you really
enjoy each other's personalities. To do so, you need to shift between small talk and deep talk. The topics we gravitate toward favorite movies or vacation planes don't help us know people deeply. Instead, you can start to ask questions that inspire both of you to reveal more personal details, including your quirks and imperfections. Remember, we share vulnerabilities gradually as we get to know and trust each other. So on this date your focus is to see if you
enjoy and appreciate their personality. Try to learn something new about them or see a side of them you haven't seen. Here are some light questions you can ask on Date one. You'll see that they are questions about tastes and preferences. They tread in areas where most people are comfortable, but they create the possibility to show real passions. When you ask someone what the best meal they ever had was,
the question isn't just about food. It opens up a bigger conversation about where and when they had the food and what made it special. If you ask what they wish they knew more about, you find out about their curiosities and unfulfilled interests. If you hit on a strong interest, like taste in movies or books, you can dig deeper into why they like what they like and find out how introspective they are. Even if you think you know your partner well, the answers might surprise you. What's something
you love to do? Do you have a favorite place? Is there a book or movie you've read or seen more than once. What is occupying your thoughts most at the moment. What's something you wish you knew more about. What's the best meal you've ever had? This isn't an interview. Every conversation has two sides and one aspect of your partner's personality. These questions will reveal is whether they're curious
about you. Do they ask for your own responses to these questions and dig deeper when they turn the conversation to you. Try this prepare for date one. Take the questions I suggested you ask your date and write out your own answers to them. What's something you love to do? Do you have a favorite place? Is there a book or movie you've read or seen more than once? What is occupying your thoughts most at the moment. What's something you wish you knew more about. What's the best meal
you've ever had. Once you have your answers, ask yourself what they might tell a person about you. Do these questions bring up some of your strong interests. Do they give you a chance to reveal important aspects of your personality? If not, are there other questions that would add those questions to the list you bring to your next date?
Date two? Your date, too, could come after any number of dates spent dancing or going to the museums, or talking casually over dinner, But knowing that you enjoy the same movies or like the same cuisine doesn't really tell you if your values are compatible. Gently encourage your date to share meaningful stories and details about their life. Take turns with these questions and make sure again that it's
not an interview. In fact, if they hesitate over a question, you might say, I know it's a hard question, and I'll go first. Your answers can reveal your own values. If the question is who's the most fascinating person you've ever met, don't just give a name. Say what interested you about the person, what you learned from them, or what you would ask them if you could meet them again.
If you're telling a story about something you've done that's out of character, then tell them what's in character for you, why you hold that value, and what made you diverge from it. If they're not immediately open, that's okay. Escalating self disclosure is a slow build. Sometimes, when we're ready to share, we think it's the right time for them to open up as well. But people do this at their own pace, in their own time. Ask questions and
listen carefully to the response to gauge. If the person is hesitant, give them openings to change the subject, asking is this too heavy a topic or would you rather not go here right now? Not only do we want to avoid grilling our date, we also don't want to overshare, taking up all the oxygen in the room with unsolicited, deeply personal stories will only make the person feel overwhelmed.
Your ability to be vulnerable and open will help them be vulnerable and to share what feels comfortable at this stage. Here are some uncommon questions you can try out on date two that will help you learn what they find interesting, how they deal with challenges, what they value, how they tolerate risk, and how they make decisions. Who's the most fascinating person you've ever met. What's the most out of character thing you've ever done or would like to do?
Have you ever had a big plot twist in your life? If you won the lottery, what would you spend the money on. What's the most spontaneous thing you've ever done. What is a tough thing you dealt with in your past? What makes you proud? What would you do if you had enough money to not need a job. Notice how all these questions approach deeper issues without pressure or intensity. You're not asking the worst moment of someone's life or
what their darkest secret is. These questions are framed to learn about the other person, but in a playful way. Don't treat your opinions as if they're better than your partners. They're just different viewpoints that emerge from differents, different experiences, different upbringings. Date three. Date three should occur when it feels natural to share some of your ideas for the future. Just as you don't need to share the same values,
you don't need to have the same goals. One of you might have your whole life mapped out, and the other might still be exploring what gives their life meaning. On date three, you can try out some deeper questions. I'll share some here. Do you have a dream you'd like to fulfill one day, a job, a trip, an accomplishment. What would you like to change about your life if you could meet anyone, who would it be. Is there a single moment or experience that changed your life? Is
there someone you consider to be your greatest teacher? Using the information you glean on these three dates, you can determine if you like a person's personality, respect their values, and want to help them pursue their goals. Notice the verbs I chose here. You don't have to have the
same personality so long as you enjoy each other. You don't have to share their values so long as you respect them their goals don't even have to be things you want or enjoy, But are you interested in having these aspects of who they are and who they want to be as part of your day to day life and coming to pass near or alongside you. Certain goals
like robbing a bank should be deal breakers. It might be that you like them so much that you'd be excited to help them with anything within reason that they want to pursue, or if their goal is to eradicate homelessness in Los Angeles, such a noble goal might in
itself make them more attractive. Attraction leads to dreams. When our attraction to a person continues over time, we start to fantasize about the relationship that could develop, what adventures we could have with this person, what our life together would look like. We find ourselves in phase two Phase two dreams. In the second phase of love, many of
us move fast. Our attraction to this person tells us that they might match our dreams, but our dreams can cloud our vision of the other person and our own needs. In this phase, we strive to dismantle false expectations and focus on designing, building, and nurture a strong relationship based on realistic expectations rather than intoxicating dreams false expectations. In this phase of love, we often have in mind a
checklist of the qualities our partners should have. Sometimes these are very specific and or tied to the opulences successful owns a home, likes to watch basketball, is a certain age, or a certain level of fitness, is ready to get married in the next year. Psychologist Lisa Phirestone says these
unrealistic expectations are exaggerated by technology. Online dating sites can promote the overwhelming notion that there are endless choices in the world, leaving some of us to get stuck in a cycle of perpetual searching, or what one team of research is called relationshopping. We may unintentionally find out ourselves seeking perfection or one person who can fill every imaginable criterion we've created in our mind or on our profile.
This list making can turn dreams into requirements. Any potential partner will come with the past, challenges, and possibly trauma, just as you do. You simply won't find someone who ticks every box on your checklist. It's okay for different people to fill the different needs on your checklist. Research shows that the happiest people have multiple close relationships, so whether we're coupled or single, we shouldn't look to any
one person to meet all our needs. John Cacciopo, a neuroscientist who researchs love and affection, told The New York Times one of the secrets to a good relationship is being attracted to someone out of choice rather then out
of need. We might also hope that our partner wants the same things in life that we do, the same standard of living, the same family structure, the same likes and dislikes, the same friends, the same notions of how money should be saved and spent, the same plans for the future in terms of how hard we will work, how successful we will be, where we will live, how we will handle unexpected challenges, and how frequently we will
make changes. Even if we don't say this or even think it, we subconsciously believe that we must share the same values and goals to be in love. When one person wants to spend Sunday with their family and the other wants to play golf, or he wants to meet her friends but she's not ready, they can rashly take it as a sign that they're not meant to be
or later in a relationship. If they don't want to move when we do, we might take it to mean that they don't love us, And if they don't want to get married when we do, we think it's the end. It's also not uncommon in this phase to expect our partners to read our minds, to understand as soon as
we speak, and to agree with us. We expect them to channel our emotions and desires, to select the gift we crave, to intuit how we want to celebrate our birthday, what we want for dinner tonight, how much attention we want, how much space we need. But creating something together is better than wanting the same thing. How you handle your
differences is more important than finding your similarities. In phase two, we ground our dreams in reality by establishing rhythms and routines that create the space to nurture the relationship slowly and carefully. Rhythms and routines. Instead of chasing the dream of what it might be to live happily ever after with this person, spend time getting to know them, building
your connection. Dreams are an illusion. Reality is far more interesting in corporate settings, where systems are strong I urge leaders to incorporate sentiment in order to soften the rigidity of organization and process, and in relationships where sentiment is strong, I embed systems to help bring structure and order to the emotional landscape. Rhythms and routines help us maintain a steady pace that lets us get to know each other
gradually and genuinely. We acknowledge that we are both looking for a long term relationship and hoping this is it. When we establish rhythms and routines together, instead of trying to meet false expectations, our relationship is grounded in how much time we'll spend together and how we'll spend it. We don't have to wonder when the person we're interested in we'll call us next. We don't play games like waiting a certain number of days before returning their call.
We also start to set healthy boundaries while observing how our partner responds to them. Boundaries can be physical. Some people choose to take their time becoming sexually intimate, and
they can also relate to time and emotions. A small survey conducted by High Touch Communications, Inc. Found that after work hours, most people expected friends, family, and romantic partners to respond to a text within five minutes, but when it came to work hours, they gave friends and family an hour but still expected a romantic partner to respond within five minutes. I've learned to give RADI around five days with a reminder. Clinical psychologist Seth Meyers advises new
couples to exercise caution in psychology today. He writes that lots of physical interaction right away heightens emotions and can color how you see the other person. Looking at them through rose colored glasses could make you overlook red flags that would be more apparent or concerning if you weren't under the influence of the bonding chemicals we release as
a result of physical contact, especially sex. Plus, you're forcing emotional intimacy with someone you barely know, and, as Meyers points out, if you don't really know the person eliciting those intense emotional reactions, you may put yourself at risk. If the person is kind and good and wants the same things as you, there's no problem. If the person doesn't have the same relationlationship goals as you, you may
end up feeling lonely and betrayed. He recommends that for at least the first month you see one another no more than once a week, and if things are going well, then you can slowly dial up the frequency of your dates. When you encounter a new potential friend, for example, you probably don't rush to see that friend several times per week after you first meet mys rights. Why should the
guidelines for starting a romantic relationship be so different. The time and space we spend a part enhances the time we spend together. We want to find a balance among time together, time alone, time with our own friends, and time with collective friends. In a week, you might decide to spend one night alone, three nights together, two nights with friends that you both know, and one night with
your own friends. This it gives you time together, time to decompress, time to experience other people's energy together, and time to decompress in a different way with your own friends. When you do this, you should tell your partner why it's important to you to structure your time this way.
Merely saying I need a loone time leaves them wondering what they've done wrong, while saying I need a loone time because I'm stressed out gives them a chance to be supportive and understanding the schedule I just shared is an example, but it gives you an idea of how to think about your own. Try this. Set a schedule together, work out how often you talk, message, and see each other. Find an easy rhythm and healthy ratio that works for both of you. Decide how you want to divvy up
your free time. Not every week has to be the same, but when you have a sense of how you're going to spend your time, you don't feel that you're in a competition with other interests. Nights by yourself, nights together, nights with mutual friends, or family nights with your own friends. Instead of setting rhythms and routines, we often worry or wonder where the relationship is going, or complain to our
friends about it. We're afraid to have conversations with a partner because we don't want to put pressure on them or to be perceived as needy. But conversations about what feels right to both of you at this point are entirely appropriate. When you have these conversations, the other person may not respond the way you hoped. Their pace and commitment may be different from yours. This doesn't mean the relationship is doomed. It means you can proceed with more clarity.
And if these topics scare someone off, you haven't made a mistake. You've saved yourself the weeks and months you might otherwise have spent waiting for the relationship to play out. Instead of wondering why they never call. Do this set a time to connect rather than leaving it up to hope or chance. Instead of thinking they're too busy for you, discuss how busy slash available you are in the upcoming week.
Instead of thinking they're moving too quickly, tell them you'd like to move at a slower pace, but it doesn't mean you're not interested. Instead of thinking they're moving too slowly, tell them you want to make sure you've got the same aspirations instead of worrying because they haven't introduced you to their family or friends. Learn about their closest relationships by asking questions and finding out who is important to
them and why. Instead of wondering if they're seeing other people, ask them if they want to be exclusive, and hear them out. In these conversations, you may not always like what you learn. If the person doesn't react or respond in the way you wanted, it doesn't mean this relationship won't work. It means you can move forward in one direction or another with clarity. Phase three struggle and growth.
We are meant to fall in love, be in love, and stay in love, but we can't do any of that if we expect every day to be Valentine's Day. Trouble is inevitable. It comes when, as a couple we inevitably discover the various ways in which we aren't aligned. In Phase three, we confront those differences and disappoint ointments and figure out if we want to put in the
effort that resolving or living with them requires. When I was a monk, as you might imagine, we did a lot of self reflection, and at one point my teacher asked a group of us to rate how much we were struggling with our minds on a scale of one to ten. Our work was intense, and we all gave ourselves pretty high struggle ratings. Then he said, well, imagine if there were two minds trying to get along, two different people from different households, with their own beliefs, values, expectations,
and dreams. There is no way this experiment can run smoothly. Love means that you value your partner enough to confront difficult areas. Relationships are masterfully designed to annoy us. It's easier on your own when there's nobody around to question you or bear witness to your flaws, but that's not why you're in a relationship. Bringing awareness to your relationship is uncomfortable. Many couples bump up against an opportunity for
realization and feel it as a burden. We expect love to flow naturally, but this is extremely rare, and often it means that we're not taking on the tougher issues. We need to make mistakes, identify what we need to change, and work on doing better. This is where we grow as individuals and together. Many of these challenges are simple and domestic. For example, in my house growing up, we ate dinner, had dessert, hung out and talk for a while,
then cleaned up. In Radi's house, they ate dinner, cleaned up, had dessert, and only when everything was all done would they relax into conversation. When we first started entertaining as a couple, after dinner, rather would clean up on her own, and I felt guilty that I wasn't helping. I always said that I'd clean a bit later and I meant it, but she was locked into the ritual from her upbringing,
and I was locked into mine. Someone might say they'll clean up later, and their partner might believe they're just being lazy, But more often differences like this originate in backgrounds, cultures, and habits. The small hurdles are issues like she's snores, he's always late. They would rather watch TV when I want to go to a museum. I can't stand her best friend. He wants to spend every holiday at his parents' home. They have three cats and I'm allergic. And they may
be bigger hurdles, like he has massive student debt. She has a temper that scares me. We have a long distance relationship and neither of us wants to move. She doesn't want to have children and I do. Disagreements large and small may challenge your confidence in your bond. You may feel I thought I loved you. But in that situation, there are three routes you can take. Two of them
lead to important realizations. You can leave the relationship, in which case you realize this person doesn't suit your priorities. You can work through the issue together and grow, in which case you realize you're feeling positive enough about your bond to evolve together, or you can stay together without changing anything, in which case you don't realize anything. I
advise you not to make the third choice. This phase is very important when it comes to defining love, because you either realize that something is a deal breaker for you or that you are willing to go through the growth that facing the issue involves, and if it's the latter, you will come through the experience with a stronger, more resilient love. We will discuss relationship challenges like these in more depth in Rules five and six. Phase four Trust.
After we've overcome a challenge together, we grow. We learn to tolerate, adjust, and adapt. The growth that we do together builds into trust. Evaluating the breadth and depth of your trust for someone is a way of understanding and defining your love. In the fourth and highest phase, sometimes we assume trust is binary, either we trust someone or we don't, but trust increases gradually through actions, thoughts, and words. We shouldn't trust someone instantly just because they're kind to us.
We give them our trust because little by little, day after day, we have shared more of ourselves and seen what they do with our honesty. All of the earlier phases build on one another to get us here. Trust begins with ourselves. We need to be trustworthy. This means aligning what we think, say, and do. When we think something, we express it, and then we carry through with the idea. This means we can trust ourselves. So if I feel like I need a night to myself, I communicate that
to my partner and then I take the time. I feel the benefit of the gift I've given myself, and I trust myself to take good care of myself. My partner sees me following through on my ideas, observes the results, and recognizes my trustworthiness. Then I do the same for my partner. I follow through on my promises to them. I show them that I'm trustworthy and in doing so, inspire them to respond with an equal level of trust.
We trust people more when they make us feel safe, when they make healthy decisions, when we feel like they conduct their life based on values that we agree with. To evaluate the depth and breadth of your trust for your partner, consider these three aspects physical trust, mental trust, and emotional trust. Physical trust is when you feel safe and cared for in their presence. They want to be with you, their present and attentive, and being around them
feels good. Mental trust is when you trust their mind, their ideas, their thoughtfulness. You may not agree with every decision they make, but you trust the way they make decisions. Emotional trust is when you trust their values and who they are as a human. Do they treat you well? Are they supportive? Do you trust how they behave not just with you, but with the other people in their life,
from close friends to a waiter. It's okay if you don't have absolute trust for your partner across this spectrum, and they can make mistakes that challenge your trust. When you identify weak spots, consider how significant the weakness is. How does it affect you if you don't trust them in areas that are important to you. You can give your partner grace and maintain trust by sharing honestly around the issues. It's impossible to have trust if there is dishonesty, secrets,
or gaslighting. Trust builds very slowly and needs to be nurtured and sustained. Think of it growing by percentage points. Each time someone thinks, says, and does the same thing. Trust grows by one percentage point. In the beginning you trust them to speak the truth about whom they're with and what they're doing, and what they think. Each time they do, trust grows another point. Then, as we ask them to understand our emotions and they listen, the points
ad up. When we share our faults, trust grows further, but trust fluctuates. If they fail to understand us, or they mislead us, or they betray us, our level of trust sinks and needs to be rebuilt. When we overcome a challenge together, trust grows again. We begin to trust them with our plans and dreams, and finally, we trust them enough to share our trauma with them. When our trust is high, we feel a love that is physically
and emotionally safe and secure. Our partner becomes the person we turn to with good news and bad news, knowing that they'll be on our side and by our side, helping us to weather challenges and celebrate successes. Try this daily trust. One of my favorite ways to show trust every day is to notice and recognize when someone follows through on a promise. Often we reward people with thanks and gratitude when they surprise us with a nice gesture.
Your partner prepares a delicious dinner that you didn't expect, and you heap on the gratitude. We do the same when they do something that they rarely do. But trust comes with quiet reliability. What about the partner who makes dinner for us regularly? We should show our appreciation for the efforts that they make daily. The more you reward it, the more they'll repeat it, and we build their trust in us the same way by showing up this week. Make an effort to thank your partner for the effort
and energy they consistently bring to your partnership. Be specific. Instead of saying thanks for listening, you can say, I know I always come home and unload my emotions from work on you. I really appreciate how you listen and give me helpful advice. Love brings us through all of these phases over and over again. We never stop deepening our faith in each other. We endlessly find our attraction renewed. We work to remove impurities. Love means that we're happy
to go through this cycle together. Now, the dreams that you had in phase two are real. They may be different, they're probably better than anything you dared to dream. Instead of fantasizing in your head, you can try out new dreams together. Try this, build realistic dreams together. Establish your monthly check in. Commit an hour every month to talk about your relationship. This gives you an opportunity to reaffirm what's working and redirect what's not working. Identify a highlight.
What are you grateful for? This helps you both know what's going well. Identify a challenge. What are you struggling with? This helps you see what needs work. Find something to work toward together this coming month. It could be a date night, a birthday celebration, a trip, a plan to redo a room in the home. You can look through a website to research a vacation you want to take.
This way, you're building your dreams together together. You're working on how you want your relationship to look and feel. To experience all that relationships have to offer. Means facing the challenges and rewards of every stage of love. Sometimes people jump from relationship to relationship because they're trying to avoid the challenges that love requires. You could date someone new every three months and have a lot of fun, but there is no growth in the cycle of just flirting,
hooking up, and ditching. It is this ongoing growth and understanding that helps us sustain the fun of love, the connection of love, the trust of love, the reward of love. If we never commit, we'll never get to love. Once in a place of trust and commitment, you and your partner reveal yourselves to each other and share more of yourselves than you allow anyone else to see. This exchange
puts you in a unique position. We don't usually think of relationships in terms of learning and teaching, but that is exactly what we will explore in the next chapter, how to learn from and teach our partner. Thank you so much for listening to today. I really hope that I was able to help you define love, and I really hope that this episode brought joy into your life.
I hope it brought some clarity into your life, and now, as you move forward and redefine love, I hope it brings more of your definition of love into your life. If you don't already have the hard copy of my book or the audiobook, head over right now to eight Rules of Love dot Com. I can't wait for you to read and hear the rest. I once heard that more than one hundred million love songs have been recorded, and while I have no idea if that number is accurate.
It kind of makes sense. We're obsessed with love. We seek it, we celebrate it. When we lose it, we're devastated, and when we're in love, we feel like there's nothing else in the world. So if love is all you need, then why do good things often go wrong? Today we're going to make sense of that. The next seven minutes are about you, your relationships, and thinking of love as a verb. I'm Jay Shaddy. Welcome to the Daily Jay.
I know your heart's probably all a flutter, but let's start as usual with our deep centering breaths, inhaling and exhaling, stretching up on the inhale and sinking down on the exhale, allowing your mind to relax, and being present in this moment beautiful. Let's dive in. When I first met my wife Radi, I knew she was pretty special. She was kind and loving towards everyone, and just had this genuinely happy spirit. As we started dating, like most new relationships,
we were both extra considerate, extra thoughtful. We went above and beyond to exhibit our interest in each other. I planned special dates, got her special gifts. I would drop anything for a chance to show how much she meant to me. Even before I had truly fallen in love with her, I acted as if she was the most important thing in my universe, and rather reciprocated completely. Then we evolved into a committed relationship and things changed a bit.
We settled into a comfortable routine, spending more time together, but less energy on each other. Maybe the date nights were a little less unique. Maybe I didn't always go above and beyond. I loved RUDDI, but in reality I demonstrated it less. My effort wasn't the same. That behavior is so common, isn't it? And it's made me think how the idea of love is misunderstood and misused in the modern world. We tend to treat love like a noun,
a thing, something we possess, something we achieve. You can hear it in the language we use to discuss it, like I worked hard to win her love, as if you're at a carnival and you finally knock down all the milk cans and you get to take home a plush Ti DII monkey which will sit on a shelf as a reminder of your accomplishment. Or we view it as an emotion we feel and one we expect to feel forever. When you say I am in love, it's like you're physically floating in a pool or something and
you get to chill there for eternity. But I like to think of love as a verb, an action you do. Love does not merely exist. You don't have it and you don't just feel it. Love is doing. Love is behaving. Love is constant creation, moment by moment, day after day. It's listening with compassion and attention. It's jumping to help even if you're busy. It's trying a new recipe instead
of something you always make. Most of all, it's unselfish prioritizing someone else and keeping their best interests in mind. So if you love someone, show it even more than you do when you're trying to win their affection. That's now what I try to do with RADI. I put in the effort to love herly instead of letting love be a routine or something I take for granted. And as our time today winds down, let's reflect a bit on love, starting with our moment of meditation. So get
comfortable wherever you are, embracing tranquility. Now, I'd like you to bring your awareness to calm, balance, ease, stillness, and peace. Whenever your mind wanders, see if you can gently bring it back to calm, balance, ease, stillness, and peace. Now, become aware of your natural breathing pattern. Don't force or pressure your breath. Just focus on how it feels to breathe in and out. Whatever you're experiencing is normal. Try not to judge yourself or the moment. Have patience and
come back to the breath. Now, let's open this up. Bring to mind someone you love, and it can be anyone you care about, not just a romantic partner. Reflect on how you demonstrate your care and affection. How could you treat love as more of a verb. Think of an action you could do today. I love taking this ride with you every day, and I'm so grateful that you keep joining. I'll see you again tomorrow