KLK con Healthy Relationships

Eva i Yokaira. We're back with another episode and I am super excited. So today

We're gonna talk about healthy relationship. Last season we talked about how to break up with a with a friend, how to break up with bad relationships. Today we're gonna talk about romantic relationships. how to s how to salvage them when it's worth it to fight for them. But we can do this alone. I am happy to announce Our next guest, a leadership trainer, the founder of Ark of Change, a transformational speaker, an artist, educator, organizer, and the most important thing.

Our three G personal therapy A doctor. Abel Cano. Welcome Abel. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm excited to be here, y'all. We're excited to have you and have this cool conversation with you. So let's go right in. We're gonna go right in. Yeah, what are we drinking? Because everybody's drink looks really nice. Limon, un poquito de tequila, y señores pongan un poco de sparkling water, low calorie.

Healthy and yummy. It gets you lit. I got some bacardi, I got some baccardi and orange juice. I'm trying to keep it tropical today, you know what I'm saying? Let's go. I'm keeping it on the tropical vibe too. I got here a little tiki cup. And it has some Don Julio, some y some dragon fruit juice, un poco de triple sec, un poquito de simple syrup, y mira, estamos bien. I hope Don Julio sponsors us because I'm into Don Julio right now. It's a mix, is uh

It's a tequila margarita makes so ya tu sabes. I didn't know y'all. I know, I was gonna say that. Cocktail hour with three G. That's it. We have a new book. We need to do that. Coming soon. Okay, so let's we're gonna, Abel, we're gonna start real quick, right to the point. We have our first question for you. How would you define what is a healthy relationship?

Woo. Man, that's a crazy that's a big question. I know. That's a big question. All right, so I think we should work together on this one. But what I'll start by saying is that sometimes we think relationships we've been taught by like The Disney channel, shout out Aladdin, shout out the Lion King, Nala symbol. Let's go. Right. But we've been taught that like.

Uh healthy relationships should be healthy like uh effortless. You know, we should just kind of flow with it. There should be no bumps in the road. People should magically understand and intuit everything that you desire personally without ever having a conversation about it. But what I think a healthy relationship is not about never having problems, right? I think problems are a sign of life. The only time you don't have problems in your life is when you're dead.

So, if you have a problem in your relationship, I think the most important part is not whether they come up, but how you problem solve, you know, and if we could develop one, the capacity to actually listen and lean in and have hard conversations and really try to understand each other to overcome those challenges when they come up. I think you're gonna be in great shape. And I think the second part is a real willingness

To show up and meet the needs of your partner the way that they want them to be met. You know, like a lot of us have maybe heard about love languages, right? I think that's what I think. We know the other person's language and refuse to speak it. We like now we Spanish speakers. We ain't speaking French. You know, but like, hey, it's important if somebody likes quality time or physical touch or acts of service.

If you really care and we're really invested, we'll make the effort to actually speak the language of the person we're with. So I think, you know, healthy relationships start with the intention of you know, meeting each other's needs, showing up for each other consistently and really tackling problems in the healthiest way we can as they come up. Because we're growing together, you know, the whole time. It's not about finding perfect people, but about healing together, I think.

Yes, Abel, go off. Yes. I love that. I love that you said that it is like a learning, uh, a learning process. We need to learn how to like go. love each other we need to commit To being able to learn how we like to be loved and also how the person that we're with uh wants to be loved. I've always heard the concept of the five love languages, and I recently just picked it up.

Um, mind you, not even in a relationship, but I was like, Loca, let's not repeat the same mistakes. And I was reading that book that I one learned mine, mine is physical touch, to no one's surprise because you soy bien cariñosa with like my friends and stuff. E but I was realizing that I was loving my partners or even my friends.

in the way that I like to receive it. And that's not necessarily how they like to receive it. So you know, so I it is important to know how the person that you're with likes to receive love because it makes a difference. I I second that. I I mean that question in itself, what is a healthy relationship? I think comes with A healthy relationship, Avelin, you mentioned the Aladen, Disney Channel, Nickelodeon. Now let's move to Instagram, Twitter. A healthy relationship, mi amor?

It's different these days. A healthy relationship in the in social media is like twin flames. There's no problems. There's nothing. You come together and not and everything else disappears. And it's like, so who's paying the bills? How you guys dividing the bills? Who's paying for what? Quien tá cocinando? Quem no va a cocinar? And that in social media, I think it's idolized in a way.

that literally for me is very hard to say like what is a healthy relationship because I'm constantly and this is coming from a very honest place. I'm bombarded every single day with what A healthy relationship should look like and what I think is a healthy relationship at home. So, Mira, I I wanna be in this conversation today because yo quiero saber qué lo que

No, that's true. Like And if this happened to you, you're just minding your business in Instagram and you see these pictures of this perfect couple having dinner, the neighbor fight, everything, they take pictures of the best moment. And then you start questioning, hold on. I'm having a tough time right now in my relationship. Is this normal? Is this not normal? Am I on the right track?

Because every we only show the best part of our lives and the best part of our partners. And then we hide all the truth behind healthy relationships and behind love. Behind love, there's a a lot of hard moments. and abel you did mention the love language and you didn't mention about love and commitment how do you think one we can learn to love the other person in their love in their love language and to not quit when things get hard. Yes, the first time it gets hard, salí corriendo.

Wow, what a question. The first thing that comes to mind for me is about No, and this is gonna this gonna sound like a little tangent, but it I tr promise you it's not. It's not you know. See, when we are in a relationship with another person and we are moving through life, you know, going to work. trying to be with family, you know, trying to just show up every single day. And we start to notice that our our gas tank is empty. You know, we start feeling more and more depleted, right?

And when you're in a happy place, no matter who comes at you or what comes at you, you feel like you could take it on, you got everything at tape. But when your gas tank is on E, right? Like many of us, let's, you know, let's let's not talk about 2020. You know, we just had a whole year, right? But like when you're in a place, where you feel like you're putting more out into the world than you're receiving, no matter whether the problem is big or small, when it comes at you.

it it can frustrate us, it can send us off over the edge. You know what I mean? And when our partners come at us with their needs or with their desire to be spoken to in their language. It takes a certain amount of energy for us to be able to meet that need, right? And what for us to do that for them, when we're not doing it for ourselves. Makes it almost impossible, right? And we might not even know why. I think, I think for me, speaking for myself, sometimes this has happened to me.

And I've really like completely skipped over the fact that I'm not meeting my own needs. I'm not meditating. I'm not exercising. I'm not eating healthy. I'm not doing the things that I know make me feel better. And so it's easy to kind of like, you know, get upset or get frustrated or whatever. But I think I think being able to truly meet another person's need uh starts with being able to pour into ourselves.

Right. And being able to know that we love we can love ourselves deeply. And what that means to me is really about reminding ourselves that our partner is not responsible for our our our happiness. This is the point that I'm trying to get to. They're not responsible for making us happy. They're not responsible for making us healthy. You know what I'm saying? They're not responsible for knowing every little crevice of our spirit that needs to get filled every second of the day.

What they're responsible for is filling their own cup and we're responsible for filling our cup. And we can complement each other. Um, but I think that there are at least three levels of relationship. There's um, you know, independence. And that's what you see all the time. Yellow, you know, I'm doing my own thing. I'm killing the game. I got my bag. Don't you worry about me. There's codependence, which is like

If you in a bad mood, I'm in a bad mood. If you are doing something different, I'm doing something different, right? Like they're re whatever they're doing. We have an immediate and instant reaction to it. As opposed to being in our own body, making our own decisions, having our own agency. But then there's interdependence, which I think is like the

you know, kind of like the holy grail. It's what we all aspire to. It's like a secure grounded relationship where I can fill my cup, you can fill yours, and together we make something magical. And I think the the sad part is that so often we never get to that. You know, we spend all our time pretending that we care the least, right? We mentioned Instagram.

pretending that we don't really like love or need each other. And because of that, we never get to the whole like adventurous part that could be interdependence where we actually build a life together or build a a a boss empire together because we're so busy doing all this other stuff.

So yeah, I think it starts with filling our own cup and then also being willing to fill someone else's. When it's hard here. Our brain is designed to protect us. You know, we're constantly on the lookout for what might hurt us, harm us, right? Or kind of like uh you know prehistoric brain is like, oh shit, that's a that's like a fucking tiger over there. It might eat me. So let me let me run, right? Let me fight, flight, or freeze. So oftentimes when something is hard here, we look over there.

So my question is, is the grass really greener on the other side? Mel, kita preguntarong algo. A mí fue a mí se fue la conexión aquí, aquí la conexión está baja. Te preguntaron si la gran matama verde allí. But I mean no fucking Eva. Let me I mean, let me tell you my my my personal I think journey with um relationships uh speaks to this a lot. I I'm definitely not your quote unquote um like ride or die.

I don't think I've ever, like, cuando la vagina se ha puesto dura, yo, I say, have a good day, sir. Um, it's been real, it's been fun, but not very fun. I have a track record for that and I am literally working on that very hard every single day. Um, because I do f I see the value in staying in situations where Tu sabe, you can grow and you can learn. So, yeah, from my perspective, is the grass really greener on the other side? Yes, from my perspective.

Yes, because in your typical standards, I'm not your typical ride or die. I don't stay for the hard times. Or not even for the hard times. I don't stay for the parts that I don't consider worth my time. And I've has I have found that the grass can be greener on the other side. Yes, we're keeping it a whole bug. Like to be honest. Is very difficult. Yeah, Balkis not gonna keep pa tal sugar coating shit or hablar pila de mielda. Like she's keeping it real.

I feel I think I'm not gonna do. But what I love book is because I learned this from you. I feel like I've been on the on like the complete other side where I'm way too ride or die. And that shit has put me in situations where I'm like, why am I here? I should have asked where we were going and why are we dying? Like these are the questions I should have asked.

And I didn't. So I saw myself in situations and in relationships where I stayed far too long than what I should have because I wanted to be the ride or die. Because that's what you're taught as a woman. You need to be more submissive. See the hombre está passando por algo, it's your responsibility to, you know, you help him through that.

Yo, it is not my job to be your therapist. It is not my job to be your doctor. It is not my job to be your coach. Go on! Do that. I need to be able to do that shit for myself. You need to and then back to your point, Abel, about filling your cup. Like, yo, if I'm over here trying to be great, I need you to be great too or work on being great so that when we come together.

No estamos passando la milikinienta. You know when someone take the words out of your mouth like you too in chok. No, but I think you know what? I'm gonna bring a balanced perspective. I had to learn with time. I'm I'm in a relationship of six years now. In six year relationship you have a lot of ups and then you have a lot of down downs because you have to event like reinvent yourself.

million times and learn from the other person. But I think that all of you said something that Mike, my fiance, told me three years ago. He said to me, I can make you happy. I can I c I if you're not happy, I I can't make you happy.

And he said we have to learn how to be independently together. I never understood that. How to be independently together. I was like, no, in my mind, we work together, we do things together. You have to make me happy. And After a year, growth twenty five, twenty six, I was like okay, I I I

I look back and I was like, Now I get it. I have my own I have the my hobbies. I have the things that I like. I have my friends. You have yours. And then we decide to as independent people be together and spend time together. But if I didn't learn that at that moment, I was gonna easily go into with this very bad, unhealthy relationship. Yeah, it's it's crazy, you know, because Yogaida, what you were mentioning is almost like you're in a relationship, it's unfolding, you wanna be there, right?

asking what we are, right? Like what are we? That whole convers the DTR that define the relationship conversation. Right. When that comes up and how it comes up in these days is a whole ass thing. If you know

And I'm also hearing, um, you know, Eva, you're talking about like being whole together, right? And so I would submit the grass is really greener where you water it. You may have heard that before. That's not it's not the first time it's ever been said, right? But but really, like, really think about that. Like, I would actually offer this philosophy. Any person that you meet in your life could potentially be a long-term partner.

You actually did what it took to make that work. Now, the thing that gets in the way is that, or the thing that's important to consider is that we all have different values. We have different priorities in our lives. We have different goals. And sometimes when our values conflict too like greatly, right? They're too different. It just makes sense not to continue investing in something you know.

uh isn't gonna work or when you're not going in the same direction. But is it possible? Of course it is. I once had a sociology professor that changed the game for all of us, right? I love it when professors go off script. I went to UMass Boston. I'm in sociology one oh one and the teacher, instead of going over the syllabus, said I want to ask you a question.

All of you here, I want to ask you, if you could marry someone that you're deeply in love with, but not compatible with, or somebody you're deeply compatible with or not in love with, who would you choose? Of course, all of us, you know, again raised on the Disney Channel. He asked us. And uh I w I wanna say ninety eight percent of us raised our hand for passionate

Love. We would marry the person we're deeply in love with. And when he looked at us, he said, all of you who raise your hands for love, your relationships are gonna fail. Because he said love has a shelf life of two years. And what what sustains your relationship between the two year mark is compatibility. In other words. You should expect

to fall in and out of love with any partner that you ever have. And the only thing that keeps you going for a lifetime, when we see those people who are like Lady in the Tramp eating one spaghetti, kissing in the middle, and we're like, I want that. The only thing that makes that work is that they continue investing over time. And if we're not willing to do that, we might as well pack it up. So what you're saying is that sometimes love is not enough.

Love is very important, but love comes with investment. It comes with showing up. It comes with work. And I say this as a recovering perfectionist. I also re like resonated deeply with the idea that like

I'm gonna have all my stuff together before I get into a relationship, right? Like I I need to, I need to keep working on me and I don't, you know, I want to do my own thing. Like I've also been in that space where I've not wanted to enter a relationship because I didn't feel ready for it. Part of the challenge is that.

The spiritual purpose of relationships, in my opinion, is to help us grow and to help us learn and to help us become more. And relationships actually emphasize the most important quality of human life, which is human emotion. Well, we're in a relationship, it magnifies our joy and our passion and our desire to do things in the world. And I felt like I wasn't ready for that many times.

But the reality is that when you're alone, there's certain things that the light doesn't get shown on when you're by yourself. Right. When people are like, I'm gonna do me and I feel great and I love it by myself, it's because there's no one in your life to shine a mirror.

on the things that you're not doing or the ways that you're not showing up for yourself or the ways that you're not really working on yourself, right? It's only when you get into a relationship where somebody's like, why you keep cutting me off like that? Or why you keep doing this or that? Or why aren't you working on your goals this way? Or why do you keep hanging up on me when things get hard? When that person becomes a mirror.

to you, that's when we get uncomfortable. And it's not really about that other person, you know, the four agreements, that book, don't take things personally. It's really about our relationship to ourselves. And when they shine that mirror, that when they show us that mirror, it gets uncomfortable and we did.

And it's not really that we saw them, it's that we saw us and didn't like what we saw. And I've been in that position many times and I wonder what that means, right? I wonder what that is an invitation to do. I'm sorry. Um I am shook to my core. right now. Um anybody listening to this right now? Should one take a shot and two just sit on what Abel just said. For like yo necessito a moment of silence for this because I feel like

There's no other way to come back from that. No, seriously. I know we keep it real here, so I'm gonna keep it real. I am like Completely reflecting of my life. Like I can even continue I can't even talk or ask the next question because I'm just like Dios mío pero What is all this knowledge that I didn't know? When you're like how many times have I seen myself in the mirror?

And then attempted to shatter the mirror because I didn't like what I saw. So we said that we need more than love, right? We need more than love. We need we need more than than just that spark to make sure the relationship who works. How do you get a relationship back on track?

After things start going south. You know that things are not going well. Love is there, but Dios mío, love is getting hard. Love is, you know, love is waking up and he's not smelling good when he wakes up. No, love is farting now. Love is stressing me out. how do you get back on track of it what do you do If I can respond to something you just said before we go on to the next question. Yeah, yeah. I think what you're saying is really important.

My longest relationship was six years. And after that breakup, I didn't feel ready to get into the next one. And I waited some time, worked on myself, tried to heal from it, and realized that the only way I could truly heal was to try again and see where I was at, you know? And I started dating someone after that who ended up

Coming into my life completely by surprise, I went to a concert with my dad that I was planning to take my ex to. And he and I were standing there and, you know, ran into a group of people and there we connected. And she was so present, powerful, bold, you know, uh, completely herself. And she became a mirror to me in a real way. It was really, really striking. And I realized, unfortunately, after a couple of months that um I wasn't ready.

And I wondered to myself, was that all right? Did I do something wrong? Um, did I hurt somebody that I think is marvelous? And I think the difference is in organizing when I teach people about storytelling, public narrative, uh community organizing, actually getting people out there to try to take action to change the world. We talk a lot about the difference between um you know, manipulation and authenticity.

You know, and people sometimes wonder if I'm trying to tell my story about my life and where I'm going and what it means to me, is that authentic or am I manipulating people? And the difference that I learned from my mentor, Marshall Gaines, he organized uh for 20 years with Cesar Chavez during the farm workers movement in uh in California. What he said to me is the differences between being transparent and opaque. In other words, if you were transparent about your intentions from the start.

And you tell someone, here's where I'm going and this is what I want, and you are able to build a relationship on that foundation, that is not manipulation, that's honesty. But if you're opaque about your intentions but you have a hidden agenda from the beginning, And you continue to do things that will, you know, will kind of like inspire affection and open them up and you're doing it to get something That's been opaque.

And that's actually manipulating people, right? When you go to a car dealership, for example, you walk in and you know that the salesman wants to get a commission by selling you that shitty Toyota or whatever. Maybe it's a great Toyota. Who knows? But you know when you go on a car dealership.

They're going to try to sell you something and your relationship is rooted on that transparent negotiation. But sometimes in modern relationships and romantic love, you meet someone and you don't know what they want. And sometimes we don't know what we want.

And when we're not clear about that, it can be really challenging. And so what I realized was that It was okay actually that I gave myself permission to love or to try to love because I was transparent from the day we met that I was just out of a breakup and working on recovery. And she understood that. We together decided. as as a unit that we would try it out.

And every step of the way we had check ins and at the end I was able to c like have a conversation with her and say, Here's where I'm at. And she said, I understand, here's where I'm at. And I said, Okay, well, what do we want to do? And we decided together. And I think in that way I left that relationship brief as it was, feeling like we had been honest, we had connected, and that moment, however long, was worthwhile. And I think that's what

It took work. It wasn't easy to show up in that way. But I'm glad that I did. And I haven't always shown up that way, but I aspired to. And so I think that that's part of what helps our relationships be a little healthier. Avel, I really appreciate you being honest and giving a very personal and vulnerable uh perspective on like your experience because now it's like opening me up to wanna do the same. So

Currently I am dating. I remember uh during New Year's, I wrote down what I wanted out of the new year, like, you know, try to manifest what you want for this new year, your goals for this new year. And I'm a very spiritual person. And I went into the ocean because I was I happened to be in the Dominican Republic during that time. And I asked God to allow me to be able to receive love.

I didn't know if I was ready, but I wanted to be at a point where I can open up to be able to receive authentic love. I didn't want to continue to show my representative to people whenever I was dating. So I noticed that when I was dating, I was having a lot of like surface level, superficial conversations. And it wasn't going anywhere because it wasn't feeding me. It wasn't, it didn't really align with

Who I am and who I want to become. And this now is the first time where I'm like talking to a friend of mine that I have and I Another thing that I did for the new year was the girls and I, we connected and we talked about, yo, what are some things that you see in me that I need to work on? And they kept it a buck with me and they told me, yo, you need to work on opening up. You don't open up enough.

you think that you do because you know you always have something to say. But when it comes down to it, you're not really saying anything that's like personal. Um so now that I'm talking to this, to this person. I decided to just I first had the conversation with myself. And I said to myself, Do I want to open up? And what what do I get out of?

really expressing how I feel and where I'm at right now. And I had told them straight up, I was like, listen, these are, this is the ugly side. This is the bad side. I know that you've seen a lot of like the pretty side, the exciting side. Um, but if you really want this to go somewhere, then I'm gonna need you to know the things that I'm struggling with. And that was by far probably the best conversation that I've ever had with him.

Because it allowed me to realize that just because I don't have everything together, just because I don't have everything figured out, doesn't mean that I shouldn't, that I'm not deserving of love or that I'm not deserving to be in a committed and a healthy relationship. So for me, it was defining what ready meant. It ready doesn't mean having it all together. Ready doesn't mean, you know, being perfect. Ready doesn't mean You know, that you're gonna get everything right. For me, ready is

Ready to be authentic, ready to be yourself, ready to be honest about where you are. And it I mean, it's going well. I don't mean to like jinx it or whatever, but like whether it goes any like whether the relationship continues or not, I'm proud of where I am because moving forward, that's who I wanna continue to be. I wanna open up to my friends. I wanna open up to the people that I'm dating. And I just wanna be who the fuck I am and accept I want to accept the bad side, the You know

crazy side. So yeah. The side that is not on Instagram. The side that is not on Instagram.

I hope those of you out there listening are clapping for Jokaida right now. That's a really powerful intention and a powerful share. Let's give that some love, y'all. I don't care if you're in your car by yourself. You better be clapping. Let's go. I in life, you know, we often have these associations to things.

that aren't real. I was in uh again, y'all have probably guessed by now my my major was sociology and minor communications. Shout out UMass. Um the sociology of of uh, you know, criminal justice, we talked a little bit about the p the pleasure pain principle. This idea that human beings will do more to avoid pain than we will to experience pleasure. And if we decide that the experience of a relationship will be more painful than pleasurable, we're gonna avoid it at all costs.

And so sometimes our past experience plays out over and over again on repeat, Groundhall's Day. because we keep thinking the next one's gonna be like the last one and the last one hurt so I'm gonna avoid this next one because we've never really dealt with the one before, with the hurt from the past. And so Yeah. Really being able to interrogate those associations and those belief systems about are relationships all bad? Or did I make some choices that led to a hurt feeling?

That won't necessarily happen again if I choose differently this time. Let me tell you that's why I only date Dominican men. Um, and it's my comfort zone. Wait, what? Okay. Wait, what do you think? Yo, what? Hold on. Yo repeat. Todo el mundo parece valle, se dejen la sola. I said what I said, fam. Why? Why you only date Dominican men? I only date Dominican men because one

I feel like we shared a lot of values. We talked about how that's very important in our relationship. So it's a comfort to know that your partner understands you at a deeper level from the beginning. I can bring my whole self as a Spanglish speaking girl. Yo puedo as yo puedo bring everything that I know about my culture and it's not gonna be foreign. Um and also on the topic of emotionally unavailable, no hay más nada más sexy. que un dominicano que no está en ti.

Like, yo. I'm blown away right now, man. Emotionally unavailable Dominicans. Take the cake. You mastered it. Dominican men mastered what emotionally unavailable men should do. They should actually do a course on it. Yo I'm blown away right now. I can't believe it. Velgiss is only dating Dominican man. As a Dominican man, shout out, Republica. Let's go. And I I'm gonna just drop this one time. Like, we faithful, we're loyal.

DJ Khaled gave a shout out. That's what he was talking about. He's talking about us as a culture. Uh yeah. But there was a moment in the relationship where I was learning from his culture and he was learning from my culture. And I think that was the coolest thing ever. It was hard because other people made it hard for me, not because we made it hard for each other.

the judgment of the outside. My Dominicans friends just having those comments of like why are you dating uh uh un blanco o un gringo? maybe his friends will I I don't know, he would never tell me that but maybe his friends were like, Porque why he's dating a Dominican, like I don't get it, she's too loud or she loves that music or I don't get that music.'Cause uh we're you know, we love music. We i it is different.

But other people made it harder. We didn't. Internally I think it was a great learning experience for both of us. comiendo chicharrong, mango. He was talking to my parents about que bueno estaba el mofongo. Um then I was learning about the feast of the seven fishes with with which is like something from the Italian culture. And that was cool to experience other culture and to in and and to live through it. I can really relate to what you're talking about around

outside people really putting pressure on your relationship. Right. It's not really that you don't get each other. It's that other people don't get how you're working. And I've definitely had the experience of a long term relationship. I'm Dominican. I was dating a Vietnamese woman where Her parents came from a culture from you know, another country where

um, accepting us was challenging. And I'm not suggesting that all families are like this or that all Dominican or Vietnamese families are gonna feel this way. Um, but in my view, I felt like we shared a lot. Just like you as a Dominican dating and Italian felt like you share a lot. Um, but it was kind of hard. And I think in a lot of ways, the fact that their her parents couldn't really get it, right? They couldn't really understand or accept that this was happening.

We can keep talking for hours. I'm like I'm ready to keep asking you more questions, but I know we only have a limited amount of time today. So I wanna I want us to wrap up the episode with Abel giving us some tips and best practices to have a healthy relationship. The first thing that comes to mind for me is when there's conflict. We tend to go up what we call the ladder of inference. And I'm sure y'all have all experienced this, right?

Somebody does something and then all of a sudden our brain populates with all the reasons they did that and why we mad at them. Um this ladder of inference is this idea that we're jumping up The number of assumptions in a given second. The brain takes in eleven million pieces of information every second. And because of that, our reticular activating system has to focus on something and exclude the rest.

And our brain is designed to protect us from pain. And so naturally as human beings, we focus more on the negative than we do on the positive. And so in relationships, when a lot of information is coming at us, we have this tendency to focus on what went wrong. rather than what went right. And so naturally we give ourselves more

positive assumptions or more positive explanations than we do for other people. And when a challenge happens or something negative happens, we tend to jump up the the ladder of assumptions around what that meant, right? Like you and your partner disagree. you asked them to do something they didn't follow through. You thought they were gonna show off, they came late, whatever it might be, the assumption tends to be they don't care about me. They don't love me. We're not meant to be.

Is it possible that there's another meaning? Is it possible that there's something else available for us to really focus on? So fixing our focus and saying, you know what? I'm gonna assume this person really cares. So let me inquire instead of assume. What happened? What came up for you?

Why did this go this way when I was hoping it would go that way? Let's ask these questions and let's have real conversations with each other. And when we do that, let's focus on empathy and non-violent communication. Instead of you did this because you're a dick, let's be like, hey, you know. I was a non violence, please. Let's not wake up and choose violence fans. Let's wake up and be like, yo.

This happened and I'm curious about why. You know, what was coming up for you? Seek to understand before being understood because in an argument, whenever somebody tries to tell you how you feel, we shut down. Right. And the same is true for the other person. So let's try to understand like hey, here's how I felt in the moment using eye language.

Uh, how did you feel? Let's empathize with their position first. Let's seek to express our own. And as we begin to do that more and more, I think that we'll have more opportunity and availability s to speak their love language. And to speak their apology language, if y'all ever heard of that, right? The way we apologize really matters too. So I think the more that we allow ourselves to be seen and to open up and to speak our truths and to be vulnerable.

the more we're going to be available for love. And I'll just close with this statement that the extent to which we protect ourselves from being hurt is also the degree to which we protect ourselves from receiving love. And I think it's really important to open that door so we can get as much love as we want and as we need. Abel, thank you so much for joining us. We have to be here. We had an incredible time. uh learning from you and just sharing our thoughts as well.

And I obviously wanna give our listeners the opportunity to connect with you as well. So where can they find you? Where can they reach out to you? You can find me at AbelArcano on Instagram.com. Uh A B E L R C A N O. Shout out to y'all, man. Three golpe all day. But before you leave, make sure to subscribe.

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