So were to hear people well like if you guys broke up, like we're fucked.
Yeah, that's right.
It was like their own dreams and fantasies and hopes and Disney movies.
You know.
I was like, great, that's good for you that it's coming up. We're just living out of fear you have. But hopefully you can witness how we've walked through this to see that there's actually nothing to be afraid of because love's not on the line.
Hello, and welcome to separate bathrooms. We would like to acknowledge the Gadigle people of the Eora Nation, the traditional custodians of this land, and pay our respects to the elders, both past and present. My name's Cam Dado and I'm Ali Daddo. We've got a wonderful guest.
Yes, it's early morning in Australia as we are recording this.
But I'm not eating any breakfast and no protein and I'm a little big word because I want to be on my game today.
And we also had a bit of a late night, which is not the norm for us. We went to see an incredible band last night, Sons of the East. Yet if you've never seen Sons of the East. Look them up, go see them by their albums. Absolutely fantastic, joyful, so much fun.
I was standing behind at Ali and Body, our youngest daughter while these guys were doing their thing up on stage and they're bouncing up and down, the arms in the air. Body's singing, and it was just like, and it's packed, it's a great vibe. It was super Fununs of the East.
Well, look, many years ago when I first jumped on Instagram for some reason or another, there was an account that I actually stumbled across, and it was called Create the Love. It was run by a fellow still run by a fellow called Mark Groves, and I remember he was this very wild eyed, earnest and blunt swearing Canadian with really really great information. He was just very point
blank and so enjoyable. CAM started following him as well, and that gave us a lot of great conversations around relationship.
Yes, so cut to seven and a half years later, Mark Starr has risen to great heights. He now has millions of followers, he's got his own podcast, he's a keynote speaker, and he's written a book with his wife about codependent patterns and how to change them. He's also a new dad.
He describes himself as a human connection specialist, and as we mentioned, he is the founder of Create the Love and he also hosts the Mark Groves podcast.
The book he wrote with Kylie mcbeeth, who also happens to be his wife and mother of their child, is called Liberated Love. Release codependent Patterns and create the love you desire. We are so happy to have Mark Groves with us today. Grab a notebook. We have some questions you might want to remember the answers too. Let's welcome into the bathroom Mark Groves. Hey, Mark, thank you for your time.
Hey, I'm so excited to be here.
Where are you?
I'm in Vancouver or Canada?
Oh?
We love Vancouver. We spent well, Actually Cam spent more time than I did. He worked there for a while, but I would travel from LA to go visit him. And as we always say, we were hair's breadth away from moving there because we fell in love with it so much.
Did you grow up in Canada?
I did. I grew up in Calgary, big scar country. You don't hear as much. We were a hair's breath away from moving to Calgary. You don't hear that as much.
Yeah, that's true.
So how did a Calgary boy get into being a human connection expert?
How did that come about?
Wow?
You know, like childhood wise, I was pretty blessed in that my father actually would talk to me a lot about my relational experiences. We would often sit in the living room and talk about my relational woes and we'd
talk about human behavior. And I feel really blessed that he was very he was very much modeling that it was see to be emotional and communicate about emotional things, and he was the one who was like my mom still was curious, but my father was really curious about my experience and wanted to be there for me in that and my first year of university, I started in a career in sales. Like I just worked at an electronics store. So career is a strong term for that,
but it was like the forty year old Virgin. Have you ever seen that movie?
Yeah?
Absolutely, like total electronics store. I sold extended warranties, but I was like obsessed with understanding how to get people to buy something right, to change their behavior to sell the extended warranty. And then when in university, I was really obsessed with understanding that from a marketing perspective, and my favorite classes in university, although it wasn't my major, were actually classes in psychology. And then I started a
career in pharmaceutical sales. My father did heart research, so he connected me into that world, and so my real interest in human behavior began from a manipulative perspective. It was like how do I get people to change their choices? And it was when I was in my late twenties I went through an engagement ending and I remember thinking to myself one how did I get so disconnected from myself? Like how did I end up walking down this path that I didn't really actually want on a conscious level.
And the person I was engaged to, she was incredible, so that made it hard, like why did I not want to be engaged to somebody who's really a great choice by everything on the checklist? And I also thought to myself, why am I so good at talking about everything about my feelings? Like there's a there's a skill I have and so it's not a skill set issue, there's actually something more going on. And when my engagement ended, I thought, why do I feel so connected to myself?
Like I finally have honored myself and chosen something for me. And at the same time, when I feel most connected to myself, I feel most judged and shamed by the not everyone around me, but a lot of people around me. Why do I feel like a failure when I actually feel like a success? Like it was this strange, opposing, energetic force that was going on, and it made me
want to deeply understand marriage and relationships. And I grew up Catholic, and I chose my way out of a story that I was taught to live, which was you get married by your mid late twenties, which is probably now early mid thirties in the story, and then you have kids by you know, shortly thereafter, and then you
stay together and you stay in love. And I noticed when I ended my engagement, I was like, wait, there's a lot of people who aren't happy, and holy shit, there's a lot of divorces I haven't noticed because of
my biases. And now my bias was everyone's unhappy. They just don't know it yet, you know so, but no. It reminds me of the Louis c. K bit where he said, you know, marriage is great and if you want to get married, great, but then get divorced, because divorced is the best experience ever, you know, because he's now been divorced and he said that the joke, he says, and.
Divorce is forever.
So I've felt myself really just noticing that I wanted to really understand what separated real masterful people in relationships and love, like what made them different and what made the people who stay together and hate each other? Why does that happen? And then what made it so people didn't believe in love anymore and actually avoided relationship under the guise of independence, which is obviously not a judgment,
just like often is true. And you know, I would hear someone say I never want to get married, and I realized, well, marriage isn't actually the cause of divorce, you know, although it's exactly like without it, you don't get it. Yeah, but it's like dysfunctional relationships or misligned
relationships or what lead to divorce. So it's like, regardless of whether we choose to get married or not, if we're going to enter any form of relating, why don't we be active in deciding what that looks like, what it feels like and stop just inheriting the patterns relationally. And I started to notice in my writing about what I was learning, because that's really what started to happen, was I was writing, and I was using writing as
an opportunity. I would say, it was like a way to excise my shame, you know about poor choices aren't made. And so what I would do is just talk about the mistake I made or the thing I learned, and in hopes that other people would learn from that and maybe,
you know, see more of their own humanity. And it started to do really well, and then I started to speak at conferences, started a podcast, and everything just really I just had immersed myself so deeply in it that it was just like this and continues to be just this really deep passionate obsession with like how do I continue to deepen my mastery? And can we all actually practice unconditional love which is not the same as unconditional tolerance? And how do we hold that bar for one another?
And so yeah, that's that's how a boy from Calgary came to be.
Yeah, fantastic of all the bars, and your Instagram was how we found you.
Ali actually told me about.
It many years ago.
Yeah, I don't know how I stumbled upon it. I was saying in the open it. What immediately struck me is that you weren't you weren't just giving advice. You were talking about what you had learned. You said it in such a bold and honest way, with lots of swear words that I was immediately captivated. I was like, this is great, Like this guy's real, Like this guy's really honest and just calling bookshit on himself.
And then it was like, Cam, check this out.
And then that sparked conversation with us, and so yeah, And that was when you were just a mere one hundred thousand followers or so on Instagram.
And I look at you now, so.
I appreciate that.
So, mate, what is you've got create the love? Can you give us an idea? What is the most surprising thing you've learnt about love?
You know, early in my exploration of all of this, although in hindsight I can see that it was obvious, you know, when you look back and you're like, should have figured that out? Then that would have been helpful? Is that to me? Like love is just telling the truth, Like love is being with what's real. And you know, when my wife and I we've been together now going on nine years. But in our first relationship we were together four years and then we broke up, and then
we were apart for nine ten months. But what we realized in the coming back together and even actually in the departing, what was so beautiful about the departing. It was like there was just we were coming to the reality that we just couldn't make this work to you know, intentional loving caring people, as that saying goes like, love is sometimes not enough. You know, you have a timing thing, you have wounds that are bumping up against each other
that you don't know the way through. And we realized that when we made telling each other the truth ahead of needing to stay together, we were actually free. Like then our choice was now free to be made. And the argument I make to people today a lot is if you don't have access to and know, if you don't have access to discernment about what you want to create in your relationship or your life in general, then you're yes is actually not real, it's not authentic. So
your choice has always come with small print. And so for me, I'd say the greatest thing I've learned is that, like all of my relationships, when we put truth ahead of everything, and of course there's subjective and objective truth, but that there's the space for the subjectivity within the objectivity. So there is that I'm actually curious about what comes
up for my partner. One of the rules for principles of liberated love that my wife and I talk about is if something's coming up for one of us, it's coming up for both of us. We just might not know it yet. Interesting, So there's like a wisdom in the trigger themen, in what's in the resistance, and that's really served us well because instead of orienting to that from like what's wrong with me that this is coming up for me and it's not coming up for you,
Instead we're like, well, what's right with you? That this is coming forward, and let's just get curious about it, even if that makes me defensive, even if that makes it's like, oh, well, especially if it makes me defensive, you know, because there's always some truth in these things.
Yeah, yeah, understanding why the defensiveness is coming up. I actually remember when you broke up with your now beautiful wife.
Highie al ways been stalking you.
No, I've just been watching and I remember that feeling great, and I remember that feeling of like, oh no, like the expert's broken up.
You know, I'm sure many many, many people.
And then it was really exciting when you got back together, hence marriage, and now you've got a beautiful little one. Did it keep you more accountable in any way? Or is it more challenging doing that publicly? Did you think that changed the experience at all by being that honest on a social media platform?
Well, I think for me it might be different than my wife's experience. Is certainly the challenge of I'm teaching relationship and my relationships ending that comes up, of course, because it gets projected on you too. You know, when I was single and I started teaching relationship, people would say to me, well, why would we listen to you your single, to which I would say, well, you don't
have to, And that's the beautiful thing. And the other part is that's also operating under the premise that people in relationships are good at them and people who aren't aren't, you know, so that your relationship status is indicative of your success, which I would say is maybe a marker
of it, but certainly not the truth. But the second thing is that I had always lived my challenge is pretty out loud, So there was like, to me, it was like the way that Kylie and I navigated our ending was so filled with such love and reverence that I would say deep in my relationship with the people who followed my work, and they also got to witness
that you didn't have to choose sides. You didn't have to like there was a way that love could exist when the relationship changes its shape or what the structure of the relationship is. And so it was definitely challenging because you don't want because what happens a lot, you know, as I would hear people, well like if you guys broke up.
Like we're fucking yeah, like we really like, why can't you just work it out? Everything can work out, Like it was like their own dreams and fantasies and hopes and Disney movies.
We're resting on our relationship. And you know, I was like, great, that's good for you that it's coming up, because you know, we're just living out a fear you have. But hopefully you can witness how we've walked through this to see that there's actually nothing to be afraid of because love's not on the line. And I would say that that actually set us up to come back together. You know, unknowingly.
You've credited your relationship with your wife and had a child. How as having the child, has it changed your relationship with Carley?
Yeah, I mean realistically, you know, you guys have kids, you know, the you go from being a couple to being a family, and so there's a true transformation that happens.
The one thing that I think has been really powerful is noticing how important being a couple and staying a couple is, like, is that you are each other's priority first, and also navigating the complexities of like shit, I thought I was a really good communicator till I got really tired, you know, and so realizing that I remember stand Tech and saying to me, he's a famous psychologist. He said to me, well, everything that comes up when you have a kid is things that they were not resolved before.
They're just amplified by And I was like, oh, okay, I mean I can I can get down with that, Like this is just the gym. I'm just in the This is more of the things that I need to learn. And so my wife and I were very transparent about each other's process and that like we're dealing with postpartum hormones and we're dealing with all the complexities of having a child that we don't know what the hell we're doing,
you know. And I think it also brought up like how important community is and how little we're often supported or we've built systems in order to support mother and father and child. So yeah, it definitely changed our relationship, but in a way it's deepened it a lot.
Is a boy or girl a boy jasper and how old's jasper? He's thirteen months And the sleep tap profession is absolutely part of it, and how to get the thoughts together when you've been up ale not changing dapas.
I've ben lucky though, like Kylie has been mainly co sleeping and one night I got back from a trip and she was like, I got back pretty late and I was tired, and I said, hey, can I I'm going to sleep on my own in this other bed right now, but I'll sleep with you tomorrow night. I'm co sleeping with him. I was always like kind of afraid I was going to bump them or because you know,
if you wake them, you're in trouble. Yeah. She The next day, I go to Sata like I'm building up the courage to say, like, hey, I had a pretty good sleep last night, Like what do you think about me staying in a different bed? And she's she says to me when I get into the room, Hey, you know, Jasper and I slept pretty good last night, and like, what do you think about like? And I was like, I mean, if you really need me to, I could
do that. I could stay in that other room. So the sleeping has actually not been too bad.
I got to say that. She's like, we've only just figured this out.
We've been married for thirty two years, by the way, so we've been through many seasons of marriage.
They're out of the house now, except for our ten year old, who seems to be more out of the house than not in the house now. And I don't know, fellas get older, I'm gonna throw old fellows under the bus here. The old snoring wants it comes in and you trial lots of things I haven't done. The sleepet machine. I'm going to draw the line of that. But it's become a bit of a you know, well, honey, you sleep in that room and I'll sleep in this journal.
Yeah, I'll and then all of a sudden everyone's sleeping good.
Yeah, and then you're happy.
Then I love it.
It's really important.
Well, I also think that we don't like if you don't make it mean things like of like comparing it to quote unquote traditional Yeah, it's like and you have the space for us right now. This is the setup that works best for me to be able to show up in my brain work and like for her to show up and him get and so we like take turns during the day taking care of him and relieve her if she needs of course needs an app or something, and we have support. So yeah, it's sleeping in separate beds.
I hear that a lot about couples. Now, Actually that's it. I have a friend who's getting married and it's their second marriage. They both have sons who are in their late teens, and they're living separate places and they're getting married at the end of the month. And he was saying to me, well, we're not getting in the same place like I have. My wife has no interest in living with three men.
Yeah.
I was laughing about it. Yes, look I get it. It works.
White change much and that's right. This is the thing that I have struggled with so much. My mum and dad have been together sixty three years and they still sleep in the same bed. They live in a two bedroom cottage. They're very happy. Yes, they have the typical things that go on in a relationship. That's been my
example of relationship is my mum and dad. So when things have changed in our relationship and evolved, like say, honey, can you sleep in the other room so I can sleep, I've really railed against it, and I've struggled with it, and you know, I've had my moments of real stress and this is not why it should be. And other times I'm very accepting of it. Here's a question for you. How do you differentiate between healthy compromise and sacrificing of needs in relationship? How do you solve that?
Such a good question, because I would argue that the majority of people sacrifice their needs in service of a relationship, thinking it's romantic, you know, they think it's the altruistic thing to do. But that's called self abandonment, and that's codependency,
you know. And in our book Liberated Love, we define codependency as any relational dynamic where we source safety from something or someone at the cost of our own needs, our own sense of self and overall well being, and really the keywords there at the expense of And so what I would say the difference is is that compromise is in service of the greater needs of the relationship. So what we're giving up, we recognize is actually in
service of the expansion of the relationship and the connection. Now, the catch to this is that self sacrifice or self abandonment would probably be accompanied with resentment, So you would know that because sometimes we don't know that we're giving up something really important to us till it shows up after And that's actually the value of emotion and resentment is one hundred percent of the time because you are
prioritizing something or someone over you. So resentment is always a great indicator where you're violating your own values, your
own boundaries, your own needs. The key I will say that really healthy couples do when compromise is negotiated by one or both people to meet one person's need or one person's need more than the other, is that the relationship holds space for the loss that it actually can hold the grief because a lot of the times the other partner might feel a sense of guilt for being prioritized or for asking of this thing, and so they actually, because of the guilt and the shame they have, they
actually can't hold space for the loss and the processing the other person wants to have. So that the container of the relationship holds both people's experiences and it's prioritizing the growth of the relationship and compromise. Also can say like, let's try this. I'm a little afraid of this, but can we check back in because it might not be
what I want, it might be different. And that way, you're you're realizing that the connection, as you guys have experienced over thirty two years, you're not the same people you were thirty two years ago. You know, I'm not the same person I was last week. Just to keep things interesting for my wife, I like, you know.
Yep, you do an Irish accent and you know call yourself petty.
I think it's all she cannot stand when I do it like this. It's funny. I was like, babe, think about it, like so many people like you get to date so many dude, right, and you're with one dude, like this My German one really.
Gets you're on different pages on that one. Well, when she goes to menopause and she becomes a completely different woman, then you'll get to be married to someone else as well, So it'll be fair play.
We'll bring comedic relief there you go, bring.
You'll need it.
Speaking of humor and having fun, is that a key to sort of maintaining emotional intimacy when there is challenges in the relationship or is there Is it just simply again about being honest and communication.
No, Like, I mean, I think we don't want to remove the joy that is required between connections, right, And I think a lot about the research of long distance relationships how they're often more successful or more satisfying, and it's because you're constantly on adventures. You know, you're still curious about each other, but you're actually sharing curious adventures
of the world. If we just brought that insatiable desire for the exploration of mystery into our relationships, we'd all benefit from what we often shame or think is not a great relational structure. With that said, yeah, humor, I mean, in the research, humor is one of the best ways to resolve or dissolve tension and conflict. I think the key is, and you know I'm formally guilty of this, is using humor as a way to deflect vulnerability or
to deflect responsibility. So you know where satire or sarcasm is being used in a way that's that's passive and actually trying to get out of discomfort myself and my own vulnerability. So you know, I think humor was used a lot by me as a kid, you know, where I felt uncomfortable in class or something. I became the quote unquote class clown. So I think a lot of the things we do, which I'm naming one survival strategy that we might have using humor, perfectionism could be another one.
And these are really things that we call our personality, but they're adaptive strategies. And these adaptive strategy I believe are really over developed skill sets, you know, because hypervigilance, people pleasing caretaking. These are often skills that make people really good at being a nurse or a doctor, or a coach, or a therapist or a dietitian. So they're
graded intuiting other people's needs. But when it's still correlated to our self worth and when it's still correlated to trying to prevent ourselves from experiencing fear, a lack of safety, a disconnection, vulnerability, openness right, because not just bad triggers, but good triggers. The vulnerability can be a trigger because
we don't trust it. So when we take these over developed strategies that we use for survival and we actually stop sourcing worth from them, because if I'm someone who caretakes people and I charge money for that, but I still need you to need me, I'm going to have a hard time creating the type of education or structure in our relationship that you're going to be free eventually.
Yep.
And so that's why not to say that there isn't a need for consistent intervention with something, but eventually someone should need to grow away from the requirement for something, right like once you've learned the thing and integrated the thing. So I say all that because like when actually seen as the genius, it is through the over development is actually brilliant. But you look at like stand up comics, often there are people who have some of you know,
the most like shadow experiences. It can be a way to not be with hard feelings.
I don't know about how it is in Canada, but it's certainly in Australia. I think it's the most popular show is a show called Married at First Sight.
Yeah, I know that show.
Yeah, it's it's crazy concept.
That's the most popular I think it is.
It's like, yeah, you know, and people become stars from it today. And one of the big clickbity things in it which they tend to go to is the word cheating. And it seems such a big thing today. I hear about a lot where couples are falling out of love because of a lack of trust. Do you have strategies to rebuild trust in a relationship.
Well, in the context of infidelity, but I think we could speak about any violation of just any betrayal. Infidelity is certainly a tough one because, you know, the first thing I always say to a couple, which is always contextual, but it's like the cheater's not the villain, you know, like we have to as soon as we make them the villain, then there's no opportunity for them to repair
or come back or even step towards the shame. Now, if someone's hearing me say that, that could be triggering for them because they could be very much betrayed and villainized by someone who's cheating. I get it. Also, the reason people cheat is so complex because sometimes someone can leave a relationship within the relationship, and the relationship is
so void of any intimacy and connection. Sometimes unconsciously we want someone to cheat so that we can leave them, and then when they do it, we get to act really offended, and then we want to work it out. I mean, the human nature is just so fucked up the things that we like we do unconsciously we want to break up with that one they break up with us, and now we want them like it's just the wildest thing, right, But what an opportunity to play out our wounds and heel.
So I say all that because the healing of betrayal. What I will say in my own experience and what I know to be true but I'm open to be wrong about it, is that every external betrayal is preceded by an internal betrayal. As in, like, when you finally get to this and we're going to just actually like add a caveat here, We're not talking about narcissistic, sociopathic, manipulative,
gas lighting, chronic cheating people. I would argue that they are not really it's not possible to repair with them unless they're doing their own deep work with a psychologist or a psychiatrist. There's no possible repair when both people are not in the compair. One is performative and the other is authentic, and no possible relationship can exist with
one performing another authentic. So the betrayal itself when both people are ready to actually move through it that recognition that usually you bypassed or dishonored or ignored a feeling before that required you to betray yourself that then led to the betrayal of the relationship. Does that make sense yep. So what I see with that is like, maybe you didn't speak up. Maybe you tolerated a behavior that wasn't okay.
Maybe you were starting to not honor your own values, your own needs and instead of actually and you agreed to relational circumstances that weren't something you actually wanted. I say all this because, like I remember, I was dating this woman in university. I was super in love with her. She got a scholarship to go to a different school in the United States for sports, and we agreed that we could see other people. We'd just tell each other.
I didn't want to do that, but I agreed to that. Yeah, And then five months later she's coming back home to visit with a guy who's a friend of hers, who she's you know, having a quote unquote affair with, cheating on you with. But that is the exact circumstance you end up in when you agree to something you shouldn't have agreed to. You violated your own values, your own needs, your own wants. So if we can actually see where the early betrayals are, we can start to take responsibility
for our side too. And what has to also be created in the space of repairing any sort of betrayal and of gain, as we were mentioning, not just something to do with infidelity, is that there has to be a toning. There has to be a toning for what the violation of the relationship, the injury to the relationship. And when we're actually saying we're going to work through this, the person who is, let's say, the victim of those circumstances gets to say what actually they need in order
to rebuild trust. And the thing is is that the other person, let's say I need access to your phone, I need you to end this relationship. I need to see the message. I want to talk to them. Like, we can have all types of requests and they're all valid.
The other person gets to say no, And if they say no and it doesn't align for you, then you have to be willing to walk away because trust can't be rebuilt unless the requests you're making can be actually resolved or negotiated right in a way that feels good for us. If for someone who bypasses our own needs and our own wants, I would argue that that might still occur in the repair process. So it's like, can we use the pain of the betrayal to actually stand
in what we truly desire and stop abandoning ourselves? Like that's what I see so often in those circumstances and a lot of the times within betrayal. And I know it's such a complex conversation about cheating, but it's like both people forgot about the relationship long ago, the intimacy
within the relationship. Sometimes people cheat the relationships because it's like burning a bridge they don't want to go back to, right, Like sometimes people cheat because they feel like they want more attention in the relationship, and they're not getting it there, they're not feeling hurt. Again, none of it is validating the choice to betray because that is, you know, that's
what always here. You always have another choice other than cheating. Sure, but if society shames leaving relationships and the only way you unconsciously know how to leave it is to cheap because you know society will then support the leaving of you, then that becomes unconsciously your only option. Now obviously it's not consciously you're only option. But if your community is going to exile you, if you leave somebody and that feels too painful to do by choice, then you might
just burn it all down. Yeah again into human nature.
And it is so interesting because it gets so many people's hackles out. Yeah, because I guess you took pretty much anyone they've had an experience of being betrayed.
It's a trauma, you know, being betrayed as a trauma.
I mean, look, I guess that's like anything, isn't it. Because the trauma of childhood, the experiences of your life leading into that relationship, is pretty much always going to play a part in how you relate to the other person anyway, you're pretty much not that you're guaranteed to have a relationship that's messed up, but of course that's going to interplay with how you relate to your significant other.
Yeah, especially if like if your community or your parent or parents didn't model how to work through trauma and how to work through the experience you had, you know, because of course there are people who go through tremendous traumas who can completely chanes through life and have really healthy relationships. So it's really like, can we hold the space as a community or a family for what someone
has been through? Like, look at how many families are don't talk about dad's alcoholism, don't talk about mom's infidelity, don't talk about the uncle who touches who had touched people. We organize our systems around not pointing to the truth. So everyone's adaptive strategy is to keep the system alive so no one points at the elephant in the room. And then you finally have the black sheep of the family who's like, hey, what about this thing, And they're like, yay,
we don't do that. You're going to have to go Yeah, And that's why I think, like the black sheep of the family often are the people who are actually inviting the healing of the family. Yeah and so yeah, like, if we don't confront what's unconfronted, we will confront it in our adult relationships.
Okay, Mark, So how does the black sheep make the difference with the people that do not want to accept what they're especially in taught families. Like someone's throwing a grenade in a taught family, right, and the victim becomes the you're the one who missed.
This up rather than the victim keeping it quiet.
What the betrayal is becomes the.
Victim's fault or can they be reparation from them?
Well, first, let me just give the context to that, no matter what I say, will never be enough to like actually acknowledge the pain of that type of eruptor especially when a family has not been orienting around reality and the truth and so we're like, we're the family that never fights, but then you realize that there's something operating underneath the system of the family. So just the
pain of the rupture just needs to be acknowledged. Now, with that said, I'll say that it depends on what the definition of healing is because What we often do is when the system's been disrupted, and this could be in a romantic relationship, I can all of a sudden say, hey, I miss you. I feel like we take each other for granted. That's reality that I'm pointing to that we haven't talked about in ten years, and there's been a ton of build up of resentment, and we don't communicate,
we don't have intimacy anymore. So I'm like the black sheep of our relationship. I'm bringing forward the thing our system has been orienting around not talking about, through busyness and other jobs and kids and whatever it might be. So I'm actually saying, in service of this relationship and in service of love, I'm interested in actually building something with you that oscillates around these values respect, honesty, curiosity,
and a mutual desire for growth. Right, So, if I'm bringing forward a truth to a family that causes disruption in the family, what the system does is it attacks the person changing the system because now everyone has to get out of their functional role in the system. So what it then shakes everyone's system because they're like, oh fuck, I haven't resolved this in my current adult relationships, I do this in my adult relationships. My whole life is
about taking care of everybody else. This is what we do. Now, you're forcing them to look at everything in their life that's like that. Now for the person who's going through like we had a really tight family and now I'm the problem. I'm the one who's caused all of this.
That could be because we're someone who doesn't have the past deed to hold, which is what I would say is like externalized shame, right, because you have the shame from the family saying you're the one causing all of this, even though you've pointed to a truth.
Right.
So if we can actually hold and find community outside of our family that can hold us in the transition, that will be the most important part. Because what's happening is the systems around us are starting to reorganize around what we're offering to them, which is, hey, there's another way. We're going to have to go through some growing pains to get there, and we're going to have to actually
start to confront some things we've all been avoiding. But if you're on board, I'm on board, and I stand for love and I stand for truth, and this is what this looks like. And if you speak to me that way, I'm going to have to hang up the phone. But when you're ready, I'm here for you. If you're ready to have this conversation in a loving and safeway that might not be available on a phone, but that could be available through email. And if you say to someone like just think about if you were to say
to anybody relationally, I love you. I'm committed to respectful dialogue. I'm committed to creating something really beautiful within us. I'm committed to healing together, and I'm committed to doing that in a way that honors both of us. And I'm commimitted to creating a shared space that's safe for us to do that. What does that look like for you? What does that look like for me? Are you in now?
Most people would be like, oh shit, I'm like praying for a relationship like that, Like I wish someone would say that to me. So imagine if I bring that to any dialogue where there is challenges, frustrations, s ruptures. If someone says no to that, it's their lack of capacity to the old repair. But if I could just say, like this is the standard I'm holding, I'm not asking anyone to get a small shrink be in their adaptive strategy. I'm actually asking them to heal and to come forward
and be committed to love. That's being committed to truth, right, and so that is an offer that the system then will have to orient around again. Now here's the hard human behavior pain of this is, like, you have the like, but this is my biological family, and like I need to be a member of them so that I'm safe. That's why it's so important that we have to have an other community that's able to say to us, you're not crazy. What you're standing for is actually so important.
We got you, We're not going anywhere, and we love you even more for what you stand for. Like you are actually a testament to healing. You are a testament to love. And I know it might not feel like that right now, but what do you need from us to help support you as you hold change? Like what gets in the way of a human hold changing is their nervous system's capacity.
To hold change.
That comes with everything. So the way that we increase our capacity to hold change is to have community. If you could just know that when you need somebody, you can call them or they'll come over, or they'll stand at your side when you're about to collapse your boundary or take some bullshit that you just know that you
have someone on your side. What will happen is you'll start to orient around health and healthy relating, and then you'll realize that the standard you've set for yourself, you're not actually going to compromise anymore. Everything comes back to do you have access to choice? And there's a saying that the opposite of trauma is choice because traumas are unexpected things generally that happen to us that we don't have like, it's unexpected. So if there's a betrayal that happens,
I find out about it, it's unexpected. It comes out of nowhere. I get broken up with it comes out of nowhere. Often what I'll try to do is double down on things I can control. I'll become that could spark eating disorders, that could spark addiction, that could spark fitness obsessions because or religious obsessions, because all of a sudden, we want to control the things we can control and
try to predict life. We're trying to Carolyn Ma says this great saying that our traumas and our wounds are trying to control the pace at which life unfolds, so we try to move at the pace of the wound. Yeah, and I think that's just such a brilliant way of seeing how this stuff can occur. So all that that was very long answered, dear question.
It's a great answer, though.
Yeah, I'm glad we're recording others i'd be writing it down just to change.
Topic ever so slightly.
What's your take on how technology and social media in modern relationships affect them and is there boundaries that couples should have to establish their continued connection. I guess to each other, I mean other than just put the fucking phone down, which is often what we say to each other. Well, not quite as mean as that, but no, I hear you. I'm railing against it enormously at the moment. And I was listening to a Brene Brown podcast and I came home to cam.
And I was like, that's it.
I realize how angry I actually get when someone picks up the phone when I'm in conversation with them, and I sort of like I would put it aside and keep talking, but internally I am like combusting because I just feel like someone's gone, You're not important, I don't care what you got to say, and I'm out of here, and it's like it's the third person in the relationship that I don't want to see.
Sorry, that was just my spiel on it. All right, I'm done.
No, No, I think it's I think it's great. I think it's great, and I think it really is pointing to a really important value that you're coming to your awareness of like how important it is and how you know. I don't know if it's something that's recent or like maybe it's a childhood thing, like this sense ofivity to being important, the sensitivity to feeling like maybe you weren't attended to in the way that you felt like it
was required. So there's a hypersensitivity to it, which is not minimizing the true need for it, right, But that like your hypervigilance is because you know that this is the canarian the coal mine, Like this is the thing that leads to the experience of disconnection and not valuing each other. And then what happens when we don't value each other We lose one another or connections dissipate, and is like really the message people send when they're on
a conversation and they're like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is this experience of there is possibly something more exciting or interesting happening right now here, and what's happening here? In the research, when a phone is faced down on a table, people are less vulnerable, So we know that's true. And that doesn't even take research. Like people understand that there's like a pole that's constantly happening. Is there's something exciting as someone need me? Is there a compliment here?
Is there new news that will give me a flood of endorphins? Is is there more rage available to me? Is there more disagreement? Is there more ideological fuel for the fire? How mad is everyone at Trump today? You know, like all these kinds of stuff, And so, yeah, I think that technology has been beautiful. I met my wife on Instagram. I built so much of my business through technology, So I think like it needs to have constant growth and more profits. So the only way to make more
profit and more growth is to extract more attention. So you insert things like a doom scroll. You insert algorithms that don't give you the content you say you want, they give you the content you're Amigdala wants. So when someone says to me, can you have a healthy relationship with social media? What does that look like? I would say right now, what I think is Drew might change is that it's actually not designed for you to have a healthy relationship with it. It's actually not the purpose of it.
I think from a somatic nervous system perspective, there's something that's going on with it that is not even the canary and the coal mine anymore. It is now the miners die, and it is the pervasive anxiety, and it's that. So yeah, that's I don't know that there is, but I'm living the question.
Last question, I just want you to have a little chat about your beautiful book that you've written with your wife, Liberated Love, release codependent patterns, and create the love you desire.
Can you just tell us more about that?
Ah Man, Well, the book was so incredible to write with my wife. It was hard to write. It was good preparation for having a kid, you know, because you have two creative worlds coming together, two ways of language, two lenses to everything, creating this separate thing. It's like a kid, except the kid has a feedback loop. Now, the book, like really is about one the journey everyone you know, we believe is necessary for everyone to walk in terms of understanding what shapes why they do what
they do in relationship. Here's the frameworks like attachment and how that shows up in the nervous system. But then how do you change, Like what are the actual steps you can take to actually change the way you relate? And we overarch a bit of our story from relationship one point zero, we call it the Sacred Pause, which is our breakup, and then relationship two point zero, and really what we're speaking to in all of these is like, what is your current whether you're single, dating, or in
a relationship. You're married, you're not sure you want to stay together, or you're not sure you can find your person? What are the behaviors you currently have? Let's take a second regroup. What do we want to create? How do we create that? And what's possible for relationship when we create that? And you know, I have no word. I've not just written the book. I've done the book like I've worked I've worked the steps. It sounds like right
like I've done everything within the book. And so I know that if you read the book and you do everything that's in the book. You can completely change your
relationships in your life. And really the core premise of liberated love is having this fierce dedication to truth, this honoring of each other's path as your own first, and then there's this deep sense of positive respect and regard and reverence for your partner that that is actually operating at the baseline that the things that come up for you relationally are needing to come up because they need to be resolved to go to the next level relationally,
whether that's together or not, it still requires being confronted. And if we see the challenges we have relationally as material that needs to be worked with, that's such a different way of orienting to it instead of being ashamed of it or like mad at it, or able to be like, ah, what is this asking of me? Like what's required of me to move through this? And that's such a different way to orient a relationship.
It's beautiful. Mike, thank you for your time and your generosity with us and our listener today. It's been amazing. I we'll go on record, and so we could have gone for another hour, ye you know, maybe we'll do a part two down the road. Would you do that of course. Of course. Yeah, it's been fun. We might put this out. Two questions for any of our listeners because this has been really great in the way you explain things is very simple.
One, I love you, I appreciate you guys. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, thanks so much.
Mark, I'm fool.
There was so much good information in there.
There was Wow.
Yeah, I'm going to and this will be one to keep on listening back on for me.
So yeah, a couple listeners.
Yeah, he's got just a beautiful way of delivering it as well, because it's I just much prefer you know, I say this all the time. I want to listen to someone who's lived it. That's who I want to listen to. I want to listen to someone who's lived it, who struggled whose challenge and has made their way through and out the other side, and they can look back and go, yeah, I remember when I was like that. I remember when I messed that up, and this is what I learned from it, this is what I'm going
to share with you. That's that that makes listening to someone so much easier for me.
I'm actually looking back at my notes that I wrote and it's like I'm going to have to listen back to the recording. I've just got just got words written down. But one way the word that I have for him.
Is golf is not golf, okay.
But it's something to do with golf, which is authentic, you know, and if you swing like your authentic swing, you will do well. Now, he's just an authentic guy. And I love the way he brought himself pretty much what you were saying, he brings himself to it rather than speaking from theory. Yeah, yeah, that's right, it's lived. I love the bit when he said people who won't say no when they say yes, they're not actually telling the truth.
Well, it's also that first the first signal that you get is as soon as you're feeling resentful, you know that you've said yes when you should have said no.
That that too is also.
A great little marker to go yep, okay. I thought I was okay with this, I'm not okay with this. I've given something up here.
That was a powerful moment. When the resentment is there, you feel that pain, yes, and you're going, oh, okay, that's a red flag. Yes, lots to take notice of.
And look, you can find mark on his website. He's got his book with his wife, and we've mentioned before Liberated Love. His podcast is available, so there is ways to access mark and we'd love to have him back on, so maybe we'll do part two.
Thanks honey, thank you too, Thanks for listening.