This is a re-air of a conversation I had with Tara on her podcast, Unblock Your BS. Thank you to Tara and her team for the permission to share it here in my feed.

I think this episode gives a lot more detail into my thoughts on a number of different topics — and into my own story as well.

Follow Tara at Unblock Your BS:

-Apple Podcasts

-Spotify

-Instagram

Connect with me:

- Instagram (@dave_lishansky)

-davelishansky.com

There's something just about everyone does in a relationship that feels totally innocent and fair, but which causes more harm to your connection than almost anything else. In this episode, we start with a couple stuck in a familiar pattern: he feels like he's carrying everything, and when she asks for one more small thing, he explodes. He's emotionally exhausted and doesn't know it. From there, we get to the one responsibility that determines whether you feel seen, heard, and loved in your relationship — what it asks of men and women both, and why everything changes when you decide to take it on.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Take the Reconnection Code assessment to find your disconnection pattern: https://your-reconnection-code.lovable.app
• Interested in coaching or joining a men's group? Email [email protected]
• Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dave_lishansky/

None of us come into relationships knowing how to love well, and the gap between not knowing and knowing feels existential when it's love on the line — which is exactly why tiny arguments blow up.

Drawing on Dr. Becky Kennedy's framing of resilience as tolerance for that gap, we get into why the best relationships aren't the ones without conflict — they're the ones where both people learn to sit in the hard stuff long enough to move forward as a team. 

If you've been convinced that struggling means something's broken, this one reframes what the struggle actually means.

Mentioned in this episode:

Dr. Becky on resilience: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DS27FyFCcus/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Take the free Reconnection Code assessment: https://your-reconnection-code.lovable.app

Follow along @dave_lishansky

New slots for women's relationship coaching are open — learn more by emailing: [email protected]

In this episode, we get into how the questions we often begin with when we start to do the work can lead us to dead ends, and how and why the mind hijacks your inner work by turning it into performance.

My guest Parm Bains is a brilliant coach. In this episode, he shares his own story about losing his father, his insights into getting free of the mind's traps, and what happens when we choose from a place of peace instead of fear.

The numbness you keep hitting isn't a malfunction. It's a strategy. You built it because it worked... and it's still doing its job.

Mentioned in this episode

• Connect with Parm: https://www.parmbains.com/ | Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/parmbainsflow/
• Take the free Reconnection Code assessment: https://your-reconnection-code.lovable.app
• More from Dave: davelishansky.com

Most of us were taught that great communication is the foundation of a great relationship. But that idea has a shadow side nobody talks about — and it's  making your fights longer, harder, and more damaging than they need to be.

In this episode, we name the hidden expectation that turns a solvable moment of frustration into a full-blown conflict: your need for justice. The belief that before you listen, before you soften, before you show up — she needs to earn it. That expectation is an escape hatch. And every time you take it, you miss the moment that could have changed everything.

Mentioned in this episode:

Find out how you show up in conflict — take the free Reconnection Code assessment: your-reconnection-code.lovable.app

Learn more about Dave's work: davelishansky.com

Connect on Instagram: @dave_lishansky

We've all heard the old story about the honeymoon phase — the spark fades, the attraction cools, and what's left is companionship if you're lucky. This episode flips that. What if the end of the honeymoon phase isn't a slide into boredom, but an invitation into the relationship you've actually been looking for all along?

We get into what keeps two people attracted and alive together long after the newness wears off — and why so much of it comes down to letting the struggle in your relationship change you, instead of quietly building the case against her in your head. We also sit with the harder side of this: what happens when you're the one being resented, and how much agency you still have in that moment. It comes back to being seen in your wholeness — fallible, human, still growing — and why that, not freshness, is the stuff of long-lasting love.

If conflict keeps spiraling out of nowhere, the free assessment below will help you find the pattern underneath it. Don't go it alone.

Mentioned in this episode

• Reconnection Code assessment (free, 3 minutes): https://your-reconnection-code.lovable.app
• Pain-Free Conflict workshop: https://painfreeconflict.lovable.app
• Instagram: @dave_lishansky

Most of us were never taught that being nice could be the problem. In this episode, we get underneath one of the most common — and most invisible — patterns men carry into their closest relationships: the nice guy default. Not cruelty, not neglect, but something harder to see. A performance of goodness that functions as armor, keeping real presence, real emotion, and real accountability safely out of reach.

Links:

Find your disconnection pattern — take the free Reconnection Code assessment: https://your-reconnection-code.lovable.app

Ready to go deeper? Join the Pain-Free Conflict workshop: https://painfreeconflict.lovable.app

Connect with Dave on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dave_lishansky/

The man you are isn't only defined by how you hold it together when your back is up against the wall. It's also defined by how you come back after you've failed — how you repair, take accountability, and make right with the people you've hurt. The man we measure ourselves against? He's in the process of becoming too. We all are.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Free 3-minute Reconnection Code assessment — find your disconnection pattern: https://your-reconnection-code.lovable.app

• Check out my updated website: https://www.davelishansky.com/

• Come say hi on Instagram: @dave_lishansky

This is the final episode in a five-part series on the patterns that quietly wreck our relationships from the inside.

This episode is about fawning. The pattern where we absorb, accommodate, and apologize our way through conflict — not out of genuine accountability, but out of a need to make the discomfort stop. In this episode we get into why so many men were conditioned to manage the emotions of the people around them instead of developing their own, what the difference between fawning and real accountability actually feels like from the inside, and what it takes to stay present in a hard moment without losing yourself in it.

Take the free 3-minute Reconnection Code assessment 

For deeper work: Pain-Free Conflict workshop 

Find me on Instagram: @dave_lishansky

There's a viral video that's been around for years — a woman with a literal nail in her forehead, her partner trying to point it out, her insisting it's not about the nail. A lot of men have felt deeply seen by it.

In this episode we get underneath why. Why the urge to fix runs so deep in us, what it's actually protecting us from, and why the woman we love so often goes cold the moment we try to help. We get into the unconscious belief most men carry about emotions — that they're inconvenient, inefficient, in the way — and we look at what becomes available when we stop trying to solve her feelings and learn to be with them instead. And for the men who feel like they've got their own emotions handled but hers are the real problem, there's a turn in here for you too.

If you want to know which patterns show up most for you in conflict, take the free 3-minute assessment linked below.

Take the free 3-minute assessment

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