Imagine that you and your partner are on a boat in the open ocean. Waves are coming and the wind is high. Rowing on your own, you're doomed. Rowing together in perfect sync, you can overcome multitudes. It's your job to keep the boat afloat. In this episode, we'll continue our discussion from the last one and recognize difference in the way we and our partners were raised. Then, we'll discover that we have to go against our grain to be effective. It's easy to tell our children to be respectful then yell at our partners when we are tired. But relationships are a bit like management. Through recognizing your partners strengths and encouraging them, you can bring out an amazing character that can significantly enrich your life. Everyone has an amazing story. We are all survivors of our bad days. What picture are you painting of your partner?

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In this episode, we'll delve deep-down into the cycle that often leads to divorce: happiness -> tension -> complaining -> criticism -> contempt -> defensiveness -> stonewalling (via flooding) -> isolation -> loneliness -> separation. We'll learn about healthy complaining vs unhealthy criticism, why it is necessary to complain sometimes, and gender differences. Men and women cannot expect to have similar interactions with their partners as they do with their friends. As we will see, they have very different physiological responses to emotion and complaints. Both need to be very conscious of how what they are doing is affecting their partner for they often DO NOT see it the way we intend them to. Catch yourself in this cycle early to prevent it from proceeding to the end, and do the opposite of it to bring you back to good times. It doesn't have to always be perfect, just aim for 5 good times for every bad.

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We'll start this episode wrapping up the cognitive neuroscience approach to understanding feelings from the last one. This will help us understand that we often see in others what we expect to. Looking for the good in others helps us find good, whereas focusing on bad will leave us seeing and experiencing bad from them. Then, we'll discover that suffering actually helps to create meaning, proposed by Viktor Frankl in "Man's Search for Meaning." By creating goals that form justifications for things that appear as suffering, those things no longer appear negative (such as doing housework).  Moreso, they leave us feeling "sculpted," for the most enjoyable things in life are always hard. Finally, we'll learn that we can't always control what we feel, but can control how we want to respond to it. We are often more anxious about the thought of feeling something than the feeling itself. This is because we feel like we always have to be in control. The truth is that it's okay to feel lonely and sad. By acknowledging feelings and seeing them for what they are - temporary normal occurrences - we can be closer to ourselves and our partners. And learn to let go, too.

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In this episode, we take a deep dive into the science of cognition. We'll learn about what determines the way we feel in situations. This consists of all the components of a situation, the weights we put on them, and the feelings associated with them. This understanding will examine the role of the stories we tell ourselves and the perception we have of our partners. We'll discover the importance of self-care and how this changes the components that enter a dynamic. Finally, we'll touch on trauma, learning, and genetics. This will help us: 1) better understand ourselves and our partners, 2) emphasize the need to discuss our wants, needs and expectations, and 3) feel more empowered to respond with excitement to change.

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In this episode, we dive deep-down into the neuro-anatomy of trauma (including PTSD) and how it affects our relationships (hint: it plays a huge role!). We'll discover that trauma is a brain glitch where memory cannot be scrubbed from emotion and integrated from one brain region to another. We'll explore some mechanics of how the brain works to better understand this process - including why we dream! If you think unresolved trauma doesn't affect you - you're in for a surprise. We all share soft-spots, and discovering them and our partners' can make it easier to feel comfortable together. Finally, well discover ways to heal from unresolved trauma including Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Cognitive Behavioural Therapies, and others such as growing a passion, sharing our story with friends, and learning to be more in touch with our bodies. Trauma is hard, but these tools can make it a bit easier to cope with. We don't have to hold the cup forever - how heavy that must make us feel.

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Today, it's easier than ever to ignore our feelings. A bit of stress? Reach for the cellphone. We feel down? Brush it off. The problem is that when you don't put out a fire, your whole house burns down. Neglected thoughts arise in the body. Yet we feel like we're not allowed to feel different from the perfection advertised around, which is especially exaggerated through social media. If our feelings don't deserve to be acknowledged, why should our brains believe we should? Numbing hurts our self-esteem. Choosing to feel and asking for help gives our partners the chance to be there for us. It prevents many problems. And it makes it easier for them to support us, leaving us able to carry our own stable self-esteem. Remember RAIN: Recognize, Acknowledge, Investigate, and Non-Identify. We can use what we learned about habits to make starting this new trend simpler. The hardest part is often always starting!

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We've learned so far that partnership is so important to building a healthy and strong relationship. But what is the difference between being a team and just being super needy and dependent? In this episode, we'll explore the concepts of independence, interdependence, and codependence in more detail. We'll discover how to strike the right balance between coming together to feel close yet not too close that we leave our partners feeling resentful to us or suffocated. Communicating our needs, wants and expectations, and working on self-care, can help us be more successful. Love is hard, but it doesn't have to be! See more at https://learnlove.ca

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In this exciting episode, we continue our discussion on feelings started in the last one. We'll discover that our feelings often glitch when we don't take proper care of ourselves. Many of us would rather eat better, sleep more, spend more time in nature, breathe deeply, and exercise more regularly, and our partners would like this too! We feel bad and take t his out on those close to us, which leaves them hurt and damages the friendship and safety between us. But as adults, we need to harness our ability to separate reactions from feelings - we feel like we want to lash out, but we can instead choose to go for a walk instead. Love is commitment in spite of feelings glitching sometimes! We must always stay committed to the friendship between us and guard it as if it is extremely valuable. For it may be the most rewarding and meaningful things we are ever so lucky to experience in our lives.

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In this episode, we wrap up everything that we learned so far about habits. We apply this specifically to our relationships. We delve deeper to understand how our environment affects our moods, how to set up habits to deal with conflict, and the effect of stress on our habit responses (hint: it encourages you to use them)! We'll discover how we can practice getting them working for us as our default no-think behaviour when conflict arises by practicing when times are safe, just like we would for an exam (it's fun!). Finally, we'll dive deep into feelings and notice that they often glitch. We'll realize that we can't always feel great, and that this is okay. By writing down how we feel and what we're doing at different times of the day, we can be scientists of our own minds and spot trends early on. See more at https://learnlove.ca!

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We’re stuck. We want to be good to our partners, but sometimes we just snap at them and don’t know why. We want to feel good, but we’re dissatisfied. The relationship is boring sometimes. Is this all there is in life! More of this, every day, week after week, year after year! Habits are like a double-edged sword. The more we do them, the more bored we get from doing them, and the more they stick. In this episode, we’ll learn how to discover cues that lead to our habitual responses, and how to change our responses by modifying the cues. We’ll learn the biggest cues of negative feelings and interactions with our partners, and how to establish an environment that encourages the most positive ones to thrive. This way, we'll prevent most fights, and learn to feel much better too. Feeling good is hard, but it doesn't have to be! See more at: https://LearnLove.ca

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