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Bryan Reeves: Choose Her Every Day or (Leave Her)
408 Plays3 years ago
Bryan Reeves, relationship ninja, with 30 Million Readers has released his second book, Choose Her Every Day or (Leave Her), comes on the show to talk about relationships. We go over a few of the essays in his new book, which includes 7 years of articles from his experiences, to help you learn how to improve your relationships.
In 2010, at age 36, while going through yet another agonizing breakup, Bryan had an epiphany: He knew nothing useful about how to do intimate relationship well. In that moment of painful realization he vowed to never suck at intimacy again. Thus began an extraordinary journey into the realms of love, sex, relationship. In summer 2015, with already legions of readers all over the world following his adventures, his essay “Choose Her Every Day (Or Leave Her)” went viral, exploding to over a million readers daily. This book (which includes that essay) is Bryan’s anthology of stories, insights, practical tools, and secrets (that should never be secrets!) to help guide you on your own journey to thriving in love and intimacy.
His Mission: To Serve the World one Awakened Man, one Illuminated Woman, one Thriving Relationship at a Time.
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Transcript
Introduction and Special Guest Appearance
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome to this week's episode of The Art of Authenticity. I'm Laura Ko, your host, and thank you guys so much for tuning in. I have Brian Reeves. Yep. If you've been listening for a long time, that name will sound familiar. He's been on twice. This is his third time. Check out the old episodes. If you'd like to learn more about some of the things we referenced in this episode, today, Brian is coming in to share his latest work.
Overview of Brian's Book on Relationships
00:00:50
Speaker
Choose her every day or leave her.
00:00:53
Speaker
a guide for your journey through the transformational fires of love and intimacy. Brian and I dive into what this is. It's seven years worth of works that he has put out to millions and millions and millions of people who follow him.
00:01:13
Speaker
If you haven't checked them out, brianreeves.com. And this book is filled with the stories, the insights, the practical tools, the secrets to helping you on your journey to a thriving relationship in love and intimacy. So you should check out this book. It is filled with just incredible insights over many, many years. Brian is a life and relationship insight ninja. He's just a great guy. I adore him.
Understanding Masculine and Feminine Energies
00:01:41
Speaker
I'm so grateful he came on.
00:01:43
Speaker
again, and I know you're going to enjoy this show filled with conversations around masculine, feminine energies, what it means to be an intimate relationship, why so many people struggle with intimacy, with love. We all want to know the answers. Tune in. Listen, let me know if you want more information, brianreaves.com. You can get the book. You can also see everything on my site, lauraco.com. Thanks again.
00:02:10
Speaker
Welcome to this week's episode of The Art of Authenticity. Thank you guys for joining us. I am so excited to have Brian Reeves back on the show. Hey, Brian, how's it going? Hi, Laura. It's going really well. I'm really happy to be here doing this with you again. I always love talking with you. I love having you on. This is our, I think our third round. I think it's our third, yes.
00:02:32
Speaker
So anybody who hasn't checked out the previous episodes, please go back. Listen, Brian's one of my absolute favorite people. He talks about masculine feminine energies. We're going to hit on that today, but the other episodes you went into some deep dives so people can check that out. Um, so Brian's coming out with his next book, uh,
00:02:55
Speaker
choose her every day or leave her. I love it. I love that title. It's such a provocative idea. We're going to get into that. We're going to jump into it. It's a bunch of essays over seven years, right?
00:03:08
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. And he's been building, if you haven't checked out his work, we'll have the information on his website available after the show and the show notes, but there's so many great pieces here, Brian. I like said before we jumped on, but I don't even know where to start. I feel like I'm not even doing justice, but I'm going to jump in, get as much information as I can out of you in the hour for the listeners.
00:03:35
Speaker
Yeah, but you guys should buy the book. Squeeze me, juice me, juice me. Just juice me. We're going to juice me for an hour. See what kind of juice we can get out. I'm in. I'm serious. I was like, oh, I want that one too. I don't know how many we can get through. But if I don't get through them all, you guys, you can check it out. They're small essays that he's released for the last seven years and they're just filled with gems. Thank you.
00:04:01
Speaker
I guess, Brian, the first thing I wanted to see if you would do quickly for the audience that isn't familiar with you, who hasn't seen your work, the masculine to feminine energy
Cultural Influences on Relationship Dynamics
00:04:11
Speaker
thing. I'm familiar, you've talked about it a lot, but maybe you could just do a quick overview what you mean by that so we can take liberties as we move forward.
00:04:21
Speaker
Yeah, good. I think that's an important disclaimer because I do talk a lot about masculine and feminine energies. And it's really important to me that people understand, by masculine, I don't mean man. And by feminine, I do not mean woman. When I was younger, I'm 46 now. And when I was in my mid-20s, I was just getting out of the military.
00:04:49
Speaker
At 26, I got out of the United States Air Force. I'd been a captain and I'd been in the military for basically 10 years and I was so disconnected from my body. I was just a head without a body basically. And I think this is something that a lot of men and women experience in our culture.
00:05:08
Speaker
But certainly if you go through, if you have a military kind of experience, it takes what culture does already, which is to disconnect us from what I would say is our feminine capacity, man or woman or non-binary, whatever it is, just our feminine capacity to feel, to be whatever is arising in the moment through our emotions, our feelings, to be connected to our bodies.
00:05:35
Speaker
Then I tried to do intimate relationship from that place. And Laura, it was a disaster. It was not just one disaster, but a series of disasters. Because you could say, one way you could say it, a frame, and this is the masculine feminine frame that I didn't, it was another 10 years before someone started pointing this out to me.
00:06:00
Speaker
that this even existed. But essentially, I was all head, no body trying to do intimacy with, in my case, I'm attracted to women, to do intimacy with women who tended to be very connected to their bodies,
00:06:18
Speaker
very expressive emotionally, whether that meant the capacity for anger, for joy, for
Personal Struggles and Societal Norms
00:06:26
Speaker
great empathy, great sadness, all of these feelings. But here I was so disconnected from that aspect of myself.
00:06:35
Speaker
that I rejected it in them as well. So I was choosing partners who showed up with a lot of feminine capacity and connection to their feminine energy because I needed it for myself. I was so disconnected from my own feminine capacity that naturally, in seeking wholeness,
00:06:58
Speaker
I would choose partners who would bring that into my experience. But because I was denying it in myself naturally, then unexamined, not really completely unconscious of what I was doing, I would deny it in them also. It was a shit show.
00:07:14
Speaker
It was a total shit show. When you say deny it in them, what does that mean in real life? Like just shut it down, tell them they're crazy. Yeah, exactly. Shut it down. You have no right to be angry. You have no right to be upset. You have no right to have big feelings. I remember I've worked with women in my coaching practice who've similarly have struggled with their emotionality.
00:07:40
Speaker
And I've heard stories of fathers, their fathers when they were young girls, like sitting at the dinner table and they would laugh and giggle and be expressive. And the father would get angry because they're laughing. They're expressing joy. He would get angry, get angry, tell him to stop, stop giggling, stop fucking giggling. Like telling a little girl, a little boy for that matter to stop, basically stop having emotions.
00:08:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I grew up like that. I had a father who would just, I mean, he would snap and go, stop that, stop that, stop that. And it was like, like nails on chalkboard to him. And then the grandkids came, my son and my brother's kids, stop, stop. And you just watch him get this really uncomfortable, right? With any displays that were louder or bigger.
00:08:29
Speaker
Not in control. That's right. So when I talk about masculine and feminine energies, I'm talking about first and foremost, the masculine and feminine energies in every individual human being and our relationship to them.
00:08:46
Speaker
and secondary then how we express that through relationship with another human being. As within, without. If we aren't comfortable with our feminine energy in our own bodies, how the hell are we going to be comfortable with the feminine energy emanating from the partner we choose?
00:09:09
Speaker
We're not right. So if we're not comfortable with the feelings arising within us, allowing ourselves to have the bigger emotions, allowing ourselves to laugh and sing and experience all the array of it. Then when the other person, it mirrors back our own discomfort.
00:09:23
Speaker
Exactly. We're going to want to shut that down. It doesn't, it won't feel safe even. Yeah. And so it's a real tragedy and it hurts everybody.
Societal Expectations and Intimacy Challenges
00:09:34
Speaker
Everybody suffers in that. You know, I feel sometimes like as men, especially when we've been set up to fail in intimacy, you know, this book, choose her every day or leave her, you know, there's about 60
00:09:49
Speaker
essays in this book that really take the reader through my own journey of first, I mean, the first chapter is, the title of it is, no one ever taught me how to be a man. Yeah.
00:10:03
Speaker
That's the first chapter. And in the first few paragraphs, what I'm also describing is how misogyny was cooked into my thinking as a child. And not just misogyny against women, but I mean misogyny against all things feminine, including my own body.
00:10:21
Speaker
including my own emotions. Boys don't cry. Don't be a pussy. Win at all costs. It doesn't matter what you feel. You get on that field and you chase that ball. Stupid ass ball. You chase that ball. I don't care if you have to break your head. You chase that ball like football. You pound your body, but you get that ball over the goddamn end zone line.
00:10:47
Speaker
I don't care who you have to hurt, including yourself. These are the messages that boys grow up with. And then somehow, we're supposed to do intimacy with another human being who actually
00:11:02
Speaker
you know, as our compliment is going to naturally want to express a lot of feelings and aliveness. And I mean, that's what relationship helps us experience is aliveness and vitality and joy and sadness, all the feels, but then we want to shut it down because it doesn't feel safe. I mean, again, we're set up to fail. It's a real tragedy.
00:11:26
Speaker
No, this just so resonates with me. My son was two or three years old and he had a freak out. We're sitting in my bathroom. And I just remember this visceral rising up in me that I had been taught, shut it down, shut it down. It's gotta stop. And I was like, uh-oh.
00:11:42
Speaker
can't do that, don't want to do that. This is before I got into all this work and worked on myself, but it was the beginning of it for me. I was like, wow, look at how uncomfortable I am that he's having a normative experience of like a three-year-old just screaming his head off. He's going to stop, but I don't need to stop him. Prematurely, I don't need to create a boundary around that expression. It's energy. It's going to move through
00:12:05
Speaker
Then he'll calm down and he needs love. He needs space. Right. Yeah, I know. It's it's it's rough. So thanks for doing that. And thanks for that beautiful explanation. You you've done this seven, you know, all these essays over all these years. Why now? Why release this book now explaining the title? What does this all mean to you at this particular moment?
00:12:31
Speaker
Yeah, this book is a capstone of the work that I've done professionally for the last seven or eight years and working with couples. But just personally, the work that I've done for the last 20 years, 25 years.
00:12:48
Speaker
This book is a capstone to that journey, to that body of work, if you will. I'm moving more in the direction now of working with men, really helping
Men's Personal Growth in Modern Society
00:12:59
Speaker
men. I think women are, in general,
00:13:04
Speaker
20 to 30, 20 to 50 years ahead of men when it comes to sort of personal growth and development, I think women are just, it's just, you've had to sort of the nature of the pendulum swinging away from oppression towards expression.
00:13:20
Speaker
But men, we haven't had to do this work. It's, you know, it's been our world largely for forever. And now through a lot of just the societal pressures, the societal change that's happening, more and more men are coming to the realization that we can't get away with our of our adolescent behavior like we used to. You know, the transparency of the Internet, the
00:13:45
Speaker
The fact that more and more women are stepping into leadership roles and are learning about boundaries and learning to self-care and women have more access to their own resources and their own influence. They don't need men. We aren't needed like we used to be needed.
00:14:03
Speaker
And so anyway, as more and more men are waking up and going, oh, shit, something's not working. I need help. I need support. I and other men are stepping more into the role of helping men find that support and do that work.
00:14:21
Speaker
And so this book is, it feels really good to have this book out there because all of these words, all of these stories that I tell in here and so many actual practices and tools and things people can do, language tools that they can use to communicate well, navigate conflict, even navigate jealousy, things like this.
00:14:45
Speaker
It's all in this book. And this is really, as I said, like a capstone. It's like my master work of the last seven to 20 years of my life that now that that's out, now I can move on and begin and really step powerfully into this next phase of my own journey, both as a coach and a teacher myself, but also just as a man, always evolving and learning and growing myself.
00:15:14
Speaker
Well, I've always appreciated you because I do think more men stepping up who are like you. I mean, whenever I describe you coming on the show, it's like he's a total dude, but he's like talking about feelings and the relationships and intimacy. And it's like, there's not a lot of people like that, right? Who are willing. There's men who have like a connection to themselves and their emotions and care about these things, but it's almost like,
00:15:39
Speaker
that's not cool to talk about in culture. So I love that you just fly forward with it and give other men the opportunity to get the space to talk about it within themselves. So thank you for that. And I am just a dude. I think I have a deep spirituality, a deep spiritual practice and
00:16:05
Speaker
but I'm also just a dude. I still struggle with emotions and I still feel that part of me that I'm watching a movie with my lady and I'm starting to get emotional and I can still see, I feel the part of me that tenses up that says, don't cry, it's not safe, it's not safe, don't do this, don't do this, don't let her see it. And it's still,
00:16:32
Speaker
I want to say effort, but the irony is it's a relaxing of effort to allow myself to feel that that is required. That I'm in the practice of and it ain't easy for me. I'm still growing, evolving, changing and big time.
00:16:52
Speaker
props, respect, appreciation to my partner, Sylvie, for being a partner with me on this journey because it's through her own mastery and her own practice of being emotional and allowing herself to cry almost daily that has helped me access those parts of me even more as well.
00:17:14
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I just want to say, I'd probably take a little liberty here in calling you a dude. I mean this, I say that with total respect. You've been a mentor to me. Your breadth of information is endless. The amount of work you've done for others within yourself. But what I just want to say to the audience, and I know you know this, but
00:17:38
Speaker
It's like the relatability of like a guy's guy like you I don't know that there's that many guys who who have the The
Transformational Fires in Relationships
00:17:48
Speaker
feeling that you know, you're in the military you're like living your life you're like speaking from a perspective I think of what a lot of men won't speak from and it's not trying to just stay in a spiritual realm all the time It's being grounded and real and this is how like you have sections about, you know pornography and like
00:18:06
Speaker
you know, all these different things. It's like really what's on a guy's mind. So that's what I mean by that. Yeah. So tell me about these sections before I jump into a handful of them that I want to, you know, just dive into with you, but I loved your section titles and I don't usually do this on people's books, but preparations, dancing with fire, transcending the fire. They're so beautiful. What inspired those to be? Yeah.
00:18:31
Speaker
You know, for many years I've been framing, I've been using this metaphor of relationship as a transformational fire. In a way it's kind of tragic that our intimate relationships have become for men especially, I think for women too in many ways, surely, but I think for men particularly,
00:18:54
Speaker
intimate relationships have become transformational fires within which the the adolescent Boy in us kind of the adolescent psychology that doesn't really serve us as adults Goes to die in a way so that the man the adult psychology can emerge you know, we don't have boyhood to manhood initiation rites of passage anymore and that's where
00:19:24
Speaker
A lot of that work should be done for men. I'm speaking specifically for men in particular. And when I say men, I don't mean heterosexual men. I just mean anyone who identifies as a man. We need to gather with other men and have wise elder men helping us find our way into a mature expression of our manhood.
00:19:53
Speaker
We don't have that. That doesn't really exist for the vast majority of men on the planet. So what happens is our intimate relationships become those transformational fires. It's not the right place for it, but that's where it happens these days, unfortunately.
00:20:13
Speaker
people who are in relationship to men who know what I'm talking about, who really feel that they have experienced the adolescent existence of many men. Yep. I recognize that. Wow. He was very, I loved him, but he was very childlike. He didn't want to take responsibility. He didn't want to be committed. He resisted relationship all the while, like all of these things that show up as
00:20:39
Speaker
He still wanted his freedom. He wanted so much space. He said he wanted to be here, but he clearly really didn't. He was checked out into pornography or his work or his hobbies or something. So you know what I'm talking about.
00:20:56
Speaker
So these chapter titles though, so coming back to that, so the transformational fires. Because looking back over my own life, I realized that that's exactly what my experience was. No one else was initiating me into manhood. So I chose women unconsciously. I chose intimate partners with whom
00:21:17
Speaker
I would burn. It would be so uncomfortable. Again, I would never have consciously chose that, but my soul needed that container for transformation.
00:21:32
Speaker
were no elder men stepping up to help. So women, I guess it's your job. Horrible, horrible, horrible. But that's the way of things. So this book, a guide, the subtitle is a guide for your journey through the transformational fires of love and intimacy. And as I was reflecting over all of these essays over many years, one of the great questions I had was, well, how do I organize this? Yeah. Because I don't just want to... It has to have an arc. There's an arc of a journey here.
00:22:02
Speaker
And I'm thinking of the reader and I want them to go on this arc of journey that I went on. And so I realized like this metaphor of the fire that there was, as I looked at my journey and I looked at all of these essays, I realized, wow, okay, so step one, I was preparing for it. I was preparing. There were a lot of things I was starting to wake up to.
00:22:26
Speaker
So, there were a lot of practices I started doing while I was single, before I met Sylvie, before I really was... It's so easy to study relationship, to think, oh, I'm going to make the best relationship ever next time I'm in one when you're not in it. It's so easy to be optimistic.
00:22:51
Speaker
Then you get into a relationship and that's part two, dancing in the fire. That's part two of the book and now I'm dancing in it. And I love the juxtaposition of dancing and fire because
00:23:08
Speaker
fires the hot, it burns. You don't want to dance in it. You want to get the hell out of it as fast as you can. And I think it's what a lot of us do. And when we get into intimate relationship a few months in, everything's great for the first couple of dates, first couple of weeks, if you're lucky, the first couple of months. And then the shit starts. Whoa, you didn't tell me this about you on the first date? Who the hell are you? Who am I choosing you?
00:23:35
Speaker
whoa, why am I so uncomfortable right now? Why am I wanting to run or why am I running? So that's when all the fear comes the fire. And I think a lot of us want to jump out of the fire because we don't want the transformation. We want to stay the same as we were before.
00:23:53
Speaker
So dancing in the fire in that whole whole second section is all about that. Okay. Now we're in it. Ooh, let's burn. Let's allow all of the stuff to arise. Here it is. Now we're cooking. And what does it mean to just be, be in it? Right. So in that second section, I have chapters like, um, Oh, here's one. Men need safe places to feel angry.
00:24:23
Speaker
I think for one of the great one of the first go to emotions for men is anger. Anger because there's power in it. Yeah. And and it's the only it's the only emotion that's really it's men have a we have a strange schizophrenia around anger because we know it's not tolerated like it's it's because it can be dangerous. We've only seen it used to destroy.
00:24:49
Speaker
But it's also the one emotion that we feel safe in, in a way. It's our go-to. We get control. Exactly. But what happens when we don't know what to do with it, we usually end up hurting the people we love the most.
00:25:07
Speaker
Right. So there's a there's a there's an essay in here about what we need, what we can do to express that anger in safe and safe and constructive ways. That's being in the fire, in the fire of our own anger. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like anger is not a problem. It's just how to use it in a way that doesn't harm the person you're with. Exactly. Express it without lashing it out towards somebody. Exactly. Or harming ourselves by just swallowing it and pretending it isn't there.
00:25:36
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, and then part three, just to... Yeah, go ahead. No, please. I'll just finish the part three transcending the fire. Now we're into the
00:25:53
Speaker
Oh, it's like now it's like, okay, we're in the fire. It's actually, oh, I kind of like it. It's kind of warm and toasty. I'm kind of like, okay. It's almost like I'm merging with the fire. I am the fire. You know, so we in this section, I'm talking about things about like being with jealousy.
00:26:13
Speaker
how to beat jealousy, not by making it go away, but by being with it. Talking about now how to navigate these... Here's one chapter titled, The One Misunderstanding That Routinely Ruins Relationships.
00:26:29
Speaker
That's one that I want to get to. I love that one. Oh, great, great. So that's how to navigate these differences that arise in almost every relationship that will never go away. So how do we navigate those? How do we transcend it? Not make it go away, but learn how to just really be with it.
00:26:51
Speaker
Beautiful, beautiful. Thanks for explaining that. I was reading them and I'm like, I know there was thought behind these because they're kind of deep and nice. You said something before, I just want to back up and then I'm going to move forward. But you said that there's this adolescent phase and there's no adult men helping take the adolescent phase into the
00:27:11
Speaker
Um, uh, more mature version of a man and you listed things real quick and I just want to come back to that because I think it's really important. Um, you know, you said things like, uh, freedom space bearing yourself in work, uh, saying you're committed, but you're not really committed. Why, why, I mean, those are our resistance resistance, right? Why are those part of the adolescent phase and where does that come from? You know, I,
00:27:41
Speaker
During the time of our election last year, I think we saw a lot of great examples of
00:27:48
Speaker
of men who wanted to save things, save the world, save the election, save democracy, save America, save whatever. And I was reflecting on that because clearly it wasn't, they weren't saving anything. They were just making things into a bigger shit show. And I remember there's something in adolescent boy psychology. There's an archetype of the hero.
00:28:17
Speaker
And the hero is an adolescent archetype, a masculine... Let's see, how do I say that? An adolescent archetype of masculine expression, the hero. And the hero is only concerned with saving something.
00:28:37
Speaker
And you'll see this a lot in relationships where a man may enter a relationship and he wants to save his partner by fixing her or him for that matter. He wants to save something, right? But see, a man in his mature adult psychology isn't concerned with saving so much as serving. An adult wants to serve.
00:29:06
Speaker
Because it's not about me anymore. The hero is all about me looking big. I want to be the one who saves. I want to be the one who catches the touchdown in the end zone at the end of the game. I want to be... Yeah, I remember when I was a boy, I would do this all the time, you know, being on a basketball court all by myself and I'd count down five, four, three, and I did the last... He hits the jumper at the last and he wins and the crowd goes wild. Like every boy has played that game in one form or another. He's the one that saves the day. Yeah.
00:29:35
Speaker
As adults, we're not worried about if I'm the one who saves. What we're focused on is how do I serve? How do I take responsibility for serving my community, for serving my family, for serving my partner, and myself too, not one or the other, but how do I serve the whole? And so when someone who hasn't made that transition, and that's just one example,
00:30:02
Speaker
of kind of the difference between adolescent and adult psychology. But when a man hasn't made that transition, and I find a lot of men, I think when men, the earliest it seems these days that men start to even be confronted with the limits of their adolescent thinking, adolescent psychology is in their late 30s.
00:30:28
Speaker
late 30s, right around the age of 40. There's something that happens and it's often an intimate relationship that isn't going the way they want it to. It's one they want to be in.
00:30:44
Speaker
but it's not going the way they want it to. And all of a sudden they're like, okay, what am I supposed to do now? That's when all of a sudden the beginning of, whoa, am I really ready to take responsibility for being in a relationship, take responsibility for, for example, for how my choices affect my partner. Yeah.
00:31:08
Speaker
in our adolescence, we don't wanna take any responsibility. That's like your feelings are your fault. Your feelings are your deal. I don't want any responsibility for it. Unless, unless Laura, I can save you from them. If I can fix you, if I can just say something and it makes you happy again, oh, then yeah, I'll do that all day long.
00:31:35
Speaker
But if I figure out, and we all do, that no matter what I say, I'm not going to be able to fix you, save you, make you happy, make everything good again, then I'm out. I don't want any responsibility because I don't know what to do with it. And that's kind of a mark of adolescent psychology in relationship. I'm only in if I can be the savior. If I can't, I'm not interested. It's too complicated.
00:32:06
Speaker
I'd rather, I'd rather just go figure out how to make money because that's way easier. Yeah. Or, you know, let me go on an adventure. Does that, does that make sense? A hundred percent. And I just sort of like thinking like, wow, we could probably talk about this for the full hour. Um, dude, why, why is intimacy so hard? Why, why?
00:32:28
Speaker
I mean, people say fear, right? Fear of love, fear of vulnerability, fear of commitment, fear of facing their internal feelings, fear, fear, fear, fear versus love. Like Marianne Williamson, right? You're in the path of fear, you're in the path of love. But intimacy, right?
00:32:44
Speaker
So many people struggle to get past and invested, involved, connected to themselves, to others. Why? Why is this so hard? I mean, we talked a little bit, I know, about it shutting down in our childhoods. We're not able to express our feelings. We're not able to connect to them. I'm sure that is a big piece of it.
00:33:08
Speaker
I guess I'm looking like you've written all of this, you've thought about it for so long. Like if you had to kind of have a coming to Jesus with what it is exactly, what's at the core of intimacy being such a challenge for so many couples? So about a year ago, maybe two years ago, I formulated a map for men called the Five Pillars of a Thriving Man.
00:33:37
Speaker
And those five pillars are purpose, intimacy, brotherhood, family, and spirituality.
00:33:51
Speaker
Now intimacy is interesting because it's one of those five pillars. And when people think of intimacy, naturally the first thing we think of is there's got to be someone else around to have intimacy. Intimacy is what I do with someone else. And I think that's the first flaw in our thinking. That's the first mistake we make. Not that that's not true, that we do intimacy with another
00:34:16
Speaker
But it doesn't begin there. Intimacy, as I formulated in this model, the five pillars of a thriving man is first it begins with intimacy with self.
Self-Intimacy and Emotional Awareness
00:34:28
Speaker
Intimacy with self. One of the things that we do in men's work when we meet in a group is we do a check-in, which is basically, how are you feeling? What are you feeling?
00:34:43
Speaker
almost without fail. Men, when they start doing that practice, they won't tell you what they're feeling. They'll tell you everything they're thinking. And by the way, a lot of women will do the same. How are you feeling? Well, I was really nervous for this session today. I had a really rough week. My boss was kind of a dick this week.
00:35:09
Speaker
There's very little talk of feeling in what I just said. A lot of story, a lot of intellectual rumination and storytelling in that.
00:35:19
Speaker
And so I think intimacy, I'll give you a great definition of intimacy. Brian, real quick for people, you gave that version and so that same person speaking up, what would it sound like if they spoke from feeling, right? Oh, yeah. Because there's some people out there that are like, well, I think that was feeling. What was wrong with that? Totally. Thank you. That's a great point. So checking in with what I'm feeling, I feel soreness in my shoulders.
00:35:49
Speaker
I feel hunger. I feel hunger in my belly. I feel sad. I feel tired. I feel angry.
00:36:01
Speaker
Another thing people will do when talking about this is I'm a little angry. I'm a little frustrated. You know, again, we'll minimize a feeling because, you know, we're measuring it rather than just I'm angry. Or see, likewise, I'm angry because. Yeah, I was just going to say. Yeah, the first thing we want to do is go, well, why are you angry? What's going on? And now we're now we've actually we're leaving the body.
00:36:31
Speaker
We're no longer being intimate with what's arising. I'll give you a great definition that one of my teachers gave to me years ago that was really, I mean, it's so simple, but it was profoundly, it altered my own experience of intimacy.
00:36:48
Speaker
His name is Steve James. And he said intimacy is simply feeling what is there to be felt and seeing what is there to be seen. To take that a little further, one thing he says is intimacy in this definition, it doesn't require consent.
00:37:08
Speaker
Because I'm not violating you. I'm not moving into your boundaries without your permission. I'm simply feeling what is there to be felt. If there's something that is there to be felt, I'm feeling it. If there's something there to be seen, I'm seeing it. So like, you know, when I shared earlier, my shoulders, I'm noticing there's tension in my shoulders. I'm noticing that I feel energized.
00:37:33
Speaker
And what's bizarre when I really get intimate with myself is I do feel energized, Laura, and I also feel tired at the same time. I feel both of these things. And Brian, it's so critical because for myself, at least, it's like that practice for me is curiosity without judgment, right? It's just an awareness without the awareness without thinking gives me the opportunity to be curious about my internal states like, oh,
00:38:01
Speaker
I'm wearing a blue and red shirt. I'm feeling a little tension in my chest. Interesting. Totally. Like, that's it. You don't need to narrate. Because the next thing we do is, oh, why? What is that? Oh, it's because so and so.
00:38:17
Speaker
or I have to do something about it, or that's bad. And we start to create a sense of right or wrong or judgment, or it shouldn't be, or it's somebody's fault or what have you. But there's always a problem around feelings. It's not just it is. Well, like you just said, our program is I have to do something about it.
00:38:40
Speaker
And now we're in the problem-solving mode, we're in fix-it mode, and that connection doesn't happen in fix-it mode. We're not connecting in fix-it mode. I'm always reminding couples that no good solutions come from a state of disconnection.
00:39:00
Speaker
And if we're not connecting and connection happens through a shared experience of through a felt experience, it doesn't happen. Not an intimacy. Um, between, again, I'm kind of in a masculine and feminine dance of intimacy. Connection happens through a flow of feeling between us. And if I'm trying to fix you because I can't feel anything because I'm in my story,
00:39:29
Speaker
And I'm just trying to give you solutions to what I think your problem is. Well, I mean, I think a lot of us have enough experience to know that doesn't ever go well. So again, just because I think so many people struggle with this. So you're sitting with your partner. Your partner says my shoulders are tense. My stomach feels a little pit. What does the other person do if they don't fix it? Cause that's like, that's the, that's that horrible discomfort that we all learned we needed to do something with or leave. Right. So or leave.
00:39:59
Speaker
Well, if I can't fix it, then this is really fucking awkward going back to my kid in the bathroom. So I just want to hold. So what's the solution for people who are new to this or haven't really thought about it? Your partner expresses whatever. I'm stressed. I feel anxious. I feel hungry. What's the next step? That's a great and massive question. That's the next non-step.
00:40:25
Speaker
I actually teach a whole practice around this. It's in my online course called the Conflict to Connection program that I did with my spouse, Sylvia. We teach this. Yeah, she's wonderful. Yeah.
00:40:43
Speaker
We teach this distinction as practice, but I'll give you the shorthand version of it right now. There's actually, to your point, I learned part of this from the School of Nonviolent Communication, that there are these ways we normally respond
00:41:04
Speaker
that are not connecting. They're just totally disconnecting. And I won't go into those. There's seven main ones that I won't go into those right now. Because I wanted to share with you what can be done instead. It's really simple. Not easy, but simple. It's acknowledge versus acknowledge. Yeah, you're sad. Just being with, you're sad. It's like,
00:41:35
Speaker
just I'm with you in it. If you're sad, if you're angry, okay. You're allowed to be angry. It's a way of saying you're allowed to be angry. It's okay that you're angry. Period. Notice you're allowed to be angry. Let's fix it.
00:41:53
Speaker
It's just, okay, you're angry. I'm here. I'm here with you. I'm with you in it. I get it. I understand. So acknowledge and reassure. So this two-step response is to just acknowledge. One of the things that we often get tripped up around, which is why we go into fix-it mode, is because we think acknowledging means agreeing with.
00:42:16
Speaker
And it doesn't. You can acknowledge your partner's feeling without necessarily agreeing with the cause of it. That's why also... Yeah, what if they're blaming you or it's coming towards you?
00:42:32
Speaker
Well, if there's a lot of blame going on in a relationship, I strongly encourage people to work with a therapist or a coach to help break that pattern because that's really hard to be with your partner's upset when they're blaming you for it.
00:42:48
Speaker
Okay. That's very challenging. Yeah. I wanted to make sure to say that because I don't want people to walk around thinking, Oh, they're angry and it's coming at me and they're blaming me for it. And that's okay. It's just like you said this earlier. So I think it's worth saying being angry is fine.
00:43:04
Speaker
Flaming other people or directing it at others is where the trouble happens. Yeah. That's exactly right. You know, when I, when I, in that one article that when I say in the book that I talked about men need safe places to feel angry, what I'm really pointing at is, is we need to learn how to express our anger sideways, not at our partners.
00:43:24
Speaker
I'm working with a man right now who in his anger, in his eruption of anger, he calls his partner names. That will destroy the relationship. But he's not going to just be able to suddenly turn off his anger. There's a lot of momentum going in that anger. So what we're working with him is how to express it sideways.
00:43:54
Speaker
Even if that looks like getting a doll or getting some kind of a toy or something that he can direct his anger at, when he notices that it's starting to come up at his woman, he can run to another room, he can take himself to another room and curse that doll to high heavens.
00:44:12
Speaker
One of my favorites is having citrus fruit around handy and going into the garage or going into the backyard or something and just taking citrus fruit and smashing it into the ground.
00:44:25
Speaker
It's so satisfying for me. That percussive smash of fruit on ground is so satisfying to my anger because anger is looking for a release. Anger is both protective. My partner just became a threat and now I'm angry. And if I come at you, obviously I'm only going to do damage.
00:44:49
Speaker
with that anger, whether it's verbal, physical, doesn't matter if I'm coming at you, it never serves. So that's the first step is learning how to go sideways with it. And there's all kinds of different tools and practices. But yeah, it's never okay to come at your partner with, but that's one of the skills that both men and women, we all need to learn. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for explaining that.
00:45:16
Speaker
All right, I got to talk to you about a couple of these stages of love. I like, I don't even know what to say, right? Like that's so fucking good. But you say the only way to a lasting fulfillment in relationship is by offering my love freely without expecting. And I'm like, dude, I think I'm almost 50. I think I finally almost got this. It's like taken me my whole life, right?
00:45:41
Speaker
I'm still working on it too. Oh my God. I mean, everybody thinks I give my love and then I get it back. Or what did you do with my love? Or how are you treating my love? And it's this whole weird relationship we have to the idea of love, right? So you talk about these three stages. I need you to love me. I will love myself. And then I am love itself, which is so beautiful. Can you speak a little bit to that and what that means to you?
00:46:08
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I first learned of a model like this from a teacher, David Data, who wrote the book, The Way of the Superior Man, many years ago. Now, I've come to learn that the model of codependence through to interdependence, this three-stage model exists throughout sort of psychology and relational dynamics work.
00:46:37
Speaker
What's been so eye-opening for me around these three stages is I can see how I can move through all three stages in less than 60 seconds. For example, my wounded, scared little survival-minded ego
00:46:56
Speaker
Anytime my partner says something that feels remotely threatening to me, that little part of me that's so terrified I'm going to die is the first one that comes online. That's the codependent part of me, this first stage codependent part that just doesn't want to be controlled, but also doesn't want to be abandoned.
00:47:20
Speaker
It's kind of a, you know, here we have another shit show. Oh my God. That's like the worst one, right? You're like, Oh my God, I feel controlled and Oh my God, don't leave me. And Oh my God, I want to control you. And it's just this horrible dance. And you think about it. That's also, I mean, that's a natural first stage of any human's evolution. As babies were born completely codependent on caretakers to, to continue showing up for us. Cause if they don't, we're dead. We will physically be dead.
00:47:50
Speaker
And we learn through the first five to 10 years of our life that, okay, I need to be a certain way or this person, they could leave me and I will die. I don't know how to take care of myself, literally. Most of us, we bring that into our adult relationships because again, we don't typically have
00:48:09
Speaker
A lot of our parents were also adolescent in an extended adolescence. And so they didn't really give us the tools on how to be healthy, functioning, emotionally integrated adults. So we take that codependence into our adult relationships. That's why, you know, the thought of breaking up with someone like in our twenties or thirties, it's like, Oh my God, I can't do this. I'm going to die if they leave me or if I leave, like it's like death. Yeah.
00:48:34
Speaker
And it is, to some degree, a sort of death. You're never going to see this person again. So I don't want to minimize that. It is a death of sorts. But the way our nervous systems react to it, it's very childlike in that I can't let go or I'll die. I can't be true to myself or I'll die. I can't speak out for what I really want or I'll die.
00:48:59
Speaker
And that's, for a lot of people, we maintain that orientation throughout our entire lives. Now, a lot of our culture, I think, leans in the direction of this stage two work of independence, becoming independent, doing boundaries work. That's the work of independence. Really finding out who am I? Who am I independent of another person?
00:49:25
Speaker
And I remember when I came out of my really difficult relationship before I met Sylvia, it was a five year relationship and it was extremely codependent. And I remember coming out of that thinking, I had this sort of, my battle cry was, no woman will ever again make me responsible for her happiness. And I won't ever again make a woman responsible for mine.
00:49:52
Speaker
That's the stage two battle cry. You know, I'm independent, you're independent. You take care of you, I'll take care of me. Right. It's a totally understandable evolutionary step out of codependence. But that doesn't make for a really rich relationship. No. No. And that's where this third stage work of interdependent work comes into play.
00:50:20
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, Laura, we could do it entire. We could talk for that for hours. We could do a whole episode on that. But this three stages model, which I write about in the book,
00:50:33
Speaker
I'm always, it helps me check in with where am I coming from right now? Am I in this wounded codependent child right now? And Laura, I go there regularly. I was there last night. Yeah, thanks for saying that. Like again, that's what I love about you. It's like so many people make it seem that we're supposed to evolve past these things. And it's not, it's like living with the realities of this human experience.
00:50:59
Speaker
but not getting trapped in them, right? That's it. Just not getting trapped. You know, learning to stay there for no more than 10, 15, 20 minutes. And then, okay, you know, having tools and practices to calm myself down, to soothe myself because my partner can't soothe me when she's also triggered in that moment and she's in her wounded codependent child. We can't soothe each other.
00:51:20
Speaker
And so many people come to each other in that state and that's when you get those banana fights because there's no adult in the room. There's no adult in the room. Yes, there's no adult in the room. It's just two kids battling it out and it doesn't go well.
00:51:38
Speaker
having tools. And again, in the book, I offer so many different tools and practices for, okay, bringing the adult back online so that I can then show up. I've learned, for example, or I have learned to... I've apologized in past relationships, but I would always apologize from the wounded child place. I would say, I'm sorry, because I know if I don't say I'm sorry, mommy's going to leave me. Right. Now, I've learned to apologize
00:52:07
Speaker
in that more third stage play, the integrated place of, okay, wow, I'm sorry, not because I'm afraid you're gonna leave me, but I'm sorry because I fucked up and I love you and I'm in and I'm here, I'm back, I'm here, the adult is here, I comfort you, I apologize for the way that I showed up and we can repair. The magic is in the repair. And so, this three stage model has really helped me.
00:52:37
Speaker
Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. Good intentions are mostly irrelevant when your partner is hurting. I was like, who has not? Everybody listening, come on. Who has not?
00:52:53
Speaker
been like, oh my God, but that was not my intention. It doesn't matter what you're saying because it wasn't my intention. It wasn't my intention. It wasn't my intention. I think I've spent innumerable hours of my life talking about my intentions. But the reality that I've come to is like, you're hurting, like you're hurting, I'm hurting, you're hurting and I'm hurting. So who,
00:53:17
Speaker
I don't know. Does it matter what the intention was when you're hurting? I mean, so talk to me about that. I mean, I think it's, it's a matter of timing because of course intentions matter. Yeah. But, and this goes back to the, that, that practice we were talking about earlier, the acknowledging and reassuring usually, and what I had said earlier about no good solutions come from a state of disconnection.
00:53:42
Speaker
usually when I'm trying to explain my intentions, it's because my partner's upset. And I think I have this delusion that if she just sees what I meant, you'll immediately get her upset. Immediately. Immediately. Why wouldn't she? Why wouldn't she? Of course, because I make perfect sense. Exactly. And when you see my sense, your whole thing will go away.
00:54:12
Speaker
Exactly. And that never happens that way. It never happens that way because we're disconnected in that moment. My partner's feeling disconnected. And here I am trying to bring her back into connection through some logical bypass of what's going on. She's upset. We'll bring it full circle. She's having a feminine expression experience of an emotion that's arising.
00:54:41
Speaker
And I'm trying to meet it with logic.
00:54:45
Speaker
with my logic, with perspective. It's not that I'm wrong, but what I'm doing is not connecting. It's just not connecting. And so, what was that chapter title? Your good intentions are mostly, in parentheses, mostly irrelevant when your partner is hurting.
The Importance of Acknowledging Feelings
00:55:08
Speaker
And it is mostly because until she
00:55:11
Speaker
feels validated in her upset until she hears me just say, you know what? I see that that hurt you. I see it. I see it. You're hurting. You're upset. You're angry. And look, this is much easier in a conversation like you and I are having right now than in the actual moment. I get that. That's why I say this stuff is simple, not easy. But it's
00:55:35
Speaker
Well, because you want to be right. Right. Right. I mean, in that moment, you don't want to just validate the person because you're so fixated on being right and like proving yourself. And, you know, there's a whole different mindset. What you said earlier, I just want to remind the audience of is so important in that moment is this idea of
00:55:55
Speaker
The person is hurting and you don't have to agree with what they're telling themselves, but you can't bypass it. Right. And that's a really profound detail, but it's kind of like everything's in there. I always feel like, well, if I agree with this, then they're just going to want to do this all the time. And it's setting up some weird, you know. Oh, totally. There's so much in this because because what I'm essentially doing, if I'm not
00:56:24
Speaker
validating, acknowledging her experience right there. And again, it's different from agreeing with, but if the conclusions are the reasons why it's happening, if I'm not validating it, essentially what I'm telling her is, you're crazy. You're crazy to be thinking what you're thinking. And that, so I have two of the distinctions I teach. I teach the sort of the core fears of the masculine and the feminine. The core fear of the masculine is I'm a fuck up. I did it, I did wrong.
00:56:53
Speaker
I did something wrong. Because masculine, as we could say, is our doing nature. And our feminine is our being nature. And to tell someone you're crazy, that is a vile, that is like stabbing the core feminine fear that I'm being, my being is wrong. Right. Shame. My being is just wrong.
00:57:24
Speaker
It's shame, it's utterly shaming to the feminine aspect of any person. And so when I'm just immediately meeting with logic, but see, there's the fear, this is the conundrum because I'm afraid I did something wrong and that's why you're angry. And I want to show you that I did not do anything wrong because my masculine, that core masculine doing nature of is like, oh shit, she thinks I did something wrong.
00:57:51
Speaker
Oh, no, no, no, I need to show you that I didn't do wrong. She's over here just thinking he thinks I'm crazy or she thinks I'm crazy. It's again, it's like we're not even having the same conversation. No, no. We're not even arguing over the same thing and that's why it's so maddening.
00:58:14
Speaker
Yeah. Once we start to see it now. OK, so it's not that my intentions don't matter because of course they matter because if I didn't have good intentions, my partner should leave me. Don't ever stay with someone who doesn't have good intentions. Yeah. Why do that? That's horrible. Right. But I generally believe in the vast majority of relational experience dynamics. Both people have the best of intentions. Nobody goes into a relationship thinking, I can't wait to fuck up this person's life.
00:58:44
Speaker
I'm sure that happens, but it's exceedingly rare. And I think on balance we all have good intentions, but this bypass of the feminine experience doesn't serve us. It just keeps us disconnected. Well, I mean, we could just go and go and go. If you were to pick a
00:59:05
Speaker
take away from this book, what's really in your heart that you want the audience to hear what you feel like, you know, all these hours of writing and thinking. And, um, you know, I was thinking about like, if you were raising a young boy today, or if you met a new couple, which I'm sure you do, um, what is it that you feel
00:59:28
Speaker
You'd like to leave people with in terms of these relational dynamics that, you know, we want love. We want to feel connected. We want the intimacy to ourselves. We want to feel safe. We want to feel we've upheld our boundaries. We want to feel respected. All these things people struggle with so much. What would you say in all of this that your words of wisdom, Brian?
00:59:56
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think there's a perpetual myth that relationships should just be easy. That when you meet the one, it should just work without you having to put in any work. Or there shouldn't be doubts or conflict or disagreements or even any significant discomfort.
01:00:16
Speaker
And it's a really damaging myth because it causes us men and women alike regularly to turn away from people, from relationships who could actually help us heal the deep wounds that continue to prevent us from truly thriving in life and in relationships.
01:00:37
Speaker
And this book is essentially a deep dive into what it looks like to go on that journey of really learning how to show up for the challenges of relationship. You know, I say if two people are being honest with each other, relationships gonna be challenging. It's only easy when you're lying to each other. And that's not my definition of easy, you know, pretending that everything is okay when it ain't.
01:01:05
Speaker
Right. Right. It catches up with you for sure. It catches up. It comes out sideways. Inauthentic. And when you leave the relationship, you realize, wow, I haven't been myself in a long time.
01:01:21
Speaker
Absolutely. And most people are just using what I call the wing it method of relationship. You know, we're just doing what our parents did or we're doing in something in reaction to what our parents did. And our parents, most of us, they didn't really give us good models of relationship to work with. So, you know, most of us, we need new insights. We need new skills, new practices, new understandings about ourselves and about each other. And that's ultimately what this book serves to help people attain.
01:01:52
Speaker
I love it. I love chatting with you. Thank you so much for coming on. Likewise, Laura. Yeah. If anybody wants to check out the book, you, where do they go? Tell us. So my website, brianreeves.com, slash book. I mean, you'll see it if you just go to my website, but it's Brian with a Y, Reeves, R-E-E-V-E-S.com, brianreeves.com, slash book.
01:02:17
Speaker
Even if you can order directly from me while I still have my own copies, but I've now gotten it on Amazon and Barnes and Nobles, and it's available around the world and different websites, but you can find it all on brianreeves.com slash book.
01:02:38
Speaker
And he has great courses with his beautiful partner who's also been on the show. You guys can check it out, Boundary Work. There's a long list. So thank you, Brian, for coming on. I just love chatting with you. And thank you, everybody who's been listening. You'll have the information on my website as well, loraco.com. And Laura, it's so easy to do this with you. So I so appreciate you. You're a wonderful host. And you ask great questions, and you make this so easy, and you have
01:03:07
Speaker
You're you've aptly named your podcast the art of authenticity. You because you you you you rocket to thank you. Thank you. Thanks for coming on.