There’s a power to the applied concept of being nice. We are often so sharp with our tongues with other people and ourselves. Rob gives some specific views on how to get really clear and learn to be nice – by telling the truth without anger. Discover how to master the art of being nice, how to communicate, and how to be more integrated with your partner. Learn how to get comfortable with true silence which is a beautiful, intimate, tender, anti-masculine thing to ask for. After all, despite all its hurts and compromises, love is love is love.
We do a show on the topics that I care about: communication, relationship, intimacy and how to be more and feel more and agree more with your life and have more fun and get more nookie. This show is around the concept of being nice, power often so sharp in our tones and with other people and ourselves. I give you some specific views on how to get clear and learn to be nice, telling the truth without anger. We then headed back to San Francisco for my friend, Mark, who basically takes over the show and we rattle around being nice and how to communicate and how to be more integrated with your partner. If you like the show and feel it, please send a little loving of your own to PayPal.me/KandellConsulting. Enjoy the show.
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We talk about the issues that matter. How to have better relationships, communication, intimacy, better sex, better life, how to stop whining, how to stop listening to people whine and how stop whining in your head. Everything can be learned from this show. It is a life-changer. You all have to do a bunch of work after the show, granted, and I don’t know everything to be honest, but at the same time I’ve been through this life quite a bit. I’ve had sixteen years of teaching, coaching, lecturing and thinking about myself, which is a long ass time. Do you think about yourself? Do you think about yourself as you want to be? Are you thinking about yourself as you think you should be? Is it a positive vibe? Is it a negative vibe? The question is, do you authentically think about yourself or do you have a projection on top of your projection about your projection? That’s a deep thought. What do we think about?
This show is about ways to clear the cobwebs, how to have more of this. We do a rant then we do a little coaching. I have my buddy, Mark, coming on the line and we’re going to clear his life up a little bit or fuck it up a little bit more. Same thing, we’re an equal opportunity implorer here. We like to create problems as much as we like to solve them. That is a fun part. The topic of this show is this concept of being nice or in the verb and the action be nice, which I think are two very different things. There’s being nice, which is to me a feminine receptive pulling in. Then there’s be nice to be nice, which is putting out of energy. That is something we’re going to talk about.
Being nice is telling the truth without anger. Click To TweetWe’re going to start off with a viewpoint that I was taught about by a teacher. The teacher said, “Being nice is telling the truth without anger.” What that means is basically that you’re willing to actually communicate what’s on the inside, but you don’t imbue it with your own bullshit. That’s the nicest thing you can do. The nicest thing you can do in this world is to reveal yourself to another human being. I’ll tell you a personal story. Morgan loves my personal stories. She doesn’t love them as much as when it’s about her and I, but that’s part of the problem, my love. Anyway, we’re lying in bed. Last time we had a very intimate night. I’m walking to the commons, hand in hand talking about our future. It was super sweet. It was super connected. Morgan is a ridiculously food genius. She knows something about everything. I go to reach for some food and her face crinkles and it’s like, “I shouldn’t eat that Doritos chip.” She’s very smart in that rate. She’s smart and she uses me, I’m used. The woman uses me as her test crash dummy.
That’s what I do. I am the proud recipient to be the test crash dummy. She was like, “I think you should give up legumes, night shades and something else.” I don’t even know what that is. I don’t even know what that means but I’m like, “I’m in. I’ll start on Monday.” Her face crinkled and then she started teasing me and she’s like, “You want to wait until Monday?” “My parents are coming. I want to not think about.” We have this little debate and there’s a little part of me that got little stung. It was like a little jab in the chest. I sat there and laid in bed and I was like, “I could let this go. I don’t have to talk about this. I could let this pass. I have a commitment to being nice to Morgan. I have a commitment to telling the truth to Morgan.”
Then we have the truth about telling it without anger, which is sometimes easier said than done, not that I was angry at all last night. That was a little sore spot and I said that interchange didn’t feel good. On the interchange I said, “When this happened, this is what happened for me. This is where it closed now. This is where I felt judgment and this is where I felt disapproval.” I know that’s my own bullshit, but still it’s like in the human interaction, our ability to honestly communicate with each other is important.
We talked about it. It didn’t quite get resolved last time. It gets resolved. We had some good nookie, everything is in better shape. The point is that willingness to reveal yourself, and most of us don’t do that with our partner. Notice every show is the same fucking thing. It’s to reveal yourself. Be true. Let what’s inside out. Don’t be afraid to throw yourself into the fire every time and time again. Because that’s the only way you’re going to get to know someone, is if you’re actually willing to tell them the truth. I was thinking about that. I was trying to figure out the show. It’s like being nice. Here’s another specific example of being nice and this is what the show is evolved around and what I want to dig into. Morgan and I went on a little journey. For those in the know we had a little journey, it was good times and we’re floating through the ethers and connected, connecting deeply intimate and it’s must have been 2:30 in the morning and we’re letting to this other couple that had been glammed together for most of the journey. We’ve met them before the journey. They were very nice and then it was pretty obvious that they wanted to have their own little love bubble. That was cool.
We’re lying there and maybe ten feet away at the most or five feet way at this point. I hear, attuned to hear the whine in their communication and the circle that got stuck. It’s like it’s a small world after. They got stuck in that loop of whining to each other. I could tell intimacy was here but they were on different levels. It’s like they were not at the same level of communication. It annoyed the shit out of me because I could tell there was love being stopped. It was like loving interruptus. It was like coitus interruptus. It’s like when you’re about to have sex and the kid knocks on the door or your power starts to burn down. You’ve got to handle the kid, you’ve got to handle a fire, but still there was some good coitus about to happen.
That was happening to this fine couple sitting next to us that they were having this argument and there was a loop and it wasn’t like a two-minute loop. It was like a 25-minute loop and back and forth. It was awful, the whine. It was the worst dog whistle ever in my ears because I know what the fuck is going on. Do you ever get stuck into a fight when you’re in a car? Car fights are probably the worst things ever. I had dated someone about a million years ago. We always go into car fights. We would drive places to escape the cult and then we would end up in the car. We’d ended up in the car in the driveway arguing for an extra 40 minutes stuck in these little seats, stuck in this car. It was so awful. The couple is in the car laying at the end of the journey.
Power of Being Nice: To tell the truth without anger, that is the greatest skill you can give to yourself, give to your partner.
I told Morgan, “Should I do something?” She’s like, “I don’t know. If you want to do something.” I’m like, “I think we should do something.” Then we wait another five minutes or hopefully they come to their senses. It’s getting worse. I’m like, “Do you guys need any help? Do you want us to jump in?” Morgan’s like, “He’s a relationship coach.” They turned faster than lightning. There was no hesitation. There were like, “Yes, we could use some assistance. Thank you.” Basically we listened to them, talked to them. Morgan is a fine coach by the way, a fine nutritionist. A beauty and a fine coach if you ever want to find out. We tag team that for it must have been an hour and a half. The point is that the guy talked in this uber masculine tone and not like the powerful presence masculine, like the dominating annoying tone. It wasn’t his fault, that’s how he was trained. I could feel that he was missing the mark time and time again because of his communication. Because he wasn’t being nice in his communication, he was actually being an asshole.
I was listening to his tone. I didn’t want to give the details of it, “When she does this, this is what it is.” This demanding an egotistical, misogynistic tone. Every time he said that she withered away. I could actually feel her deflating. I could feel her like a dying on the inside. I said to him, “I hear what the message is behind what you’re trying to say. I hear the love. I get it. I know how much you love her and how much you care about her but your communication is horrible.” They both laughed. It’s good because when you say shit like that, when you tell the truth without anger, those are risks that they might attached to the work. They felt my intention behind it, it was so much better. I was like, “You’ve got to slow down. You’ve got to soften. You’ve got to get on the same team as her because right now you’re acting like this dominating male. In that she’s not receiving a word. In fact, your love is being blocked by your communication.” We’re on a journey. They were very receptive, thank God. We kept working them and it kept coming back to the communication. Here’s the thing on the flip side for the woman, and that’s where the show got inspired. The woman had a lot of viewpoints. She wasn’t telling. There were a lot of viewpoints in there that she was not admitting. She was keeping them inside.
I gave him my viewpoint that in society we have a gaggle of angry women and dumb guys. Here’s the caveat, before I go and get myself into any more trouble, it’s no one’s fault. It’s not the fault of women who are angry. It’s not your fault that guys are dumb. This is the way society is. Let’s call a spade a spade and get down to it. Angry women, dumb guys. The angrier women get, the less truth they tell and the dumber guys get and they do the things they do, the angrier women. It’s an awful downward spiral of angry women and dumb guys. I said, “The best thing you can do to un-dumb him is to tell him one simple fucking truth. One little truth, because he’s dying for it. He’s dying. He doesn’t want to be dumb and he certainly doesn’t want you to be angry.” What happened is in that journey, she said a little bit more and it wasn’t like a big truth. I don’t remember what it was, but it was a little bit. The clouds part and a little light shine down from the heavens and God points His laser beam of light down. That’s what it was like.
All of a sudden, they went from these two people that are whiny, bickering to think about making out. I was very successful that they had transitioned from whine to, “How you doing? I’m good.” The point is, I’m trying to get across is that the concept of being nice. Nice doesn’t mean that you get rolled over. It doesn’t mean that you have. Being nice is saying, “I don’t appreciate the way you’re talking to me. I don’t appreciate the way you’re looking at me.” It’s telling those little truths. With anger and what that means is you have to tell things in the moment. I have to say things in the moment to Morgan or it’s going to build up in my own mind. Do you ever have a truth that you weren’t telling your partner, “I’ll tell her later?” This minute little thing grows into this big, moldy, fungi guy. You open your refrigerator after not being there for a month and you’ve got mold science experiments. That’s what happens to our truth on the inside. When we have these little things, these little baby innocent things all of a sudden turn into these ugly putrid dragons like a walking dead after two years.
My point is your ability to be nice. To tell the truth without anger, that is the greatest skill you can give to yourself, give to your partner. I’m going to say one more thing, and Mark says he’s ready because I’m more looking forward to this. I once had a very good coaching session with Mark. The thing is be nice to yourself. Be nice to yourself. Our internal dialogue is horrific most of the time. What happened is we beat the shit out of our own psyches time and time again. It’s like, be nice to yourself. Tell the truth or anger. “Maybe I shouldn’t have had that double scoop of Häagen-Dazs with whip cream and hot fudge cookies.” “Maybe we shouldn’t have gone out with that person because we’re feeling lonely and pathetic about ourselves.” “Maybe I should tell my mom that she can pop by at any point without telling me.”
Get a team with yourself because in getting in that connection with yourself, that's where the change happens. Click To TweetTell these little truths but say it like that instead of, “You fucking asshole. You fucking lazy shit. I can’t believe you had that ice cream again. You’re no good. You’re ugly. You’re never going to amount to anything. No wonder girls don’t like you because you’re lazy. No good.” Be nice, change the tone. Get a team with yourself because in getting in that connection with yourself, that’s where the change happens. That’s where the change occurs. If you’re not willing to be nice with yourself and practice with others, but definitely always learned to turn that back to yourself, so you can have that rich fulfilling life. Life is challenging, life is hard and life is getting harder.
I heard this viewpoint that everyone thinks life’s getting easier with these fucking phones, but it’s not. It’s actually getting harder. Life is getting harder. It’s getting harder because there’s more opportunity to be bored, more disconnected. Anytime you’re lonely. What did I do when I was fifteen or sixteen years old? I had my Walkman. I had those but they’re not the same as these phones. This is like instant addiction into anti-awareness of your loneliness because you can see, “Did someone email me? Did someone text me? Did someone Facebook me? Did someone IM me? Did someone like my picture on Instagram?” It’s like an instant of the ability to go in to the phone.
I think it’s getting harder. I think it’s time to turn up that niceness, be nice to yourself, be willing to be soothing. If you catch a friend or catch a couple not being nice to each other, say to him and say it in a nice way, “You guys feel a little stuck. Can I be of assistance? Do you have another ear?” Also the flip of that, if you have a friend like Morgan’s got a friend that is stealing your energy left and right say, ” I think you need to go off and figure this out by yourself. I’m not helping you anymore.” Be nice. Tell the truth without anger. Be willing to be soft, be willing to listen. In that, there’s so much possibility for growth. That my friends is the rant.
Live Coaching
How can I most be of service to you?
There’s this shadow or thing that I do that is about I want to be nice, but that’s because I want to get what I want, which is to be emotionally safe in a situation. That comes out of feeling fearful about the stability of connection with women.
Can I ask you a question? Nice or tricky?
No, it’s not tricky. It’s difficult to navigate. That’s what I meant by tricky because my motivation is good. I want to take care of basically. It’s easier sometimes to hide behind that. Then tell the little truth you’re talking about. Because being authentic has this confronting thing about it. You’re enjoying a meal together. You finally got some peace in the moment of your busy lives. You don’t want to change the energy in the room because you want that calm. That calm safety can become a mask or a shadow if you don’t speak your truth.
Let’s not even say can and will. That’s the fucking awfulness of it. It’s like we worked so hard for the detente, for that sweet energy but then if it doesn’t ring true, then you know it. It’s like you know something’s starting to smell bad. You know that there’s something amiss. You’re nice, you connected and you’re connected because you’re of abandonment. You’re nice to be connected. You’re connected to avoid abandonment and pain and doing so, you withhold.
Not necessarily, but you can. You tell yourself, you sell yourself on the idea of keeping the peace or whatever label you give it, which gives you the outright. What’s counterintuitive as if you actually speak that truth that you’re saying you get something else, that’s why you’re there in the first place.
Here’s my viewpoint. When you don’t sell that person, you’re withholding and withholding is lying. My version of your story is I want to be nice to be connected. I’m connected to avoid a conflict and abandonment and then I withhold and then I lie, and then I put on a mask and then I have a relationship that I don’t believe in.
Worse, the whole point is of that action that you described is you want to try to control the outcome. You want to maintain and stay in the situation that’s so sweet. That’s how you end up selling yourself. That’s what sales job is like you. The trick is to say, “I want ice cream tonight.” If you’re in a vegan household, there are a million ways it can show up for you.
Are you in a Vegan household?
Two of the people I live with are Vegan, yes.
How do they feel about ice cream in the house there?
They’re totally casual with it. It’s not how they feel about it. I still feel this two tumescence and guilt about the fact that I should. I shouldn’t have the ice cream.
Let’s eliminate shit from our vocabulary, please. Everyone raise your right hand, “I am eliminating should from our vocabulary, because should doesn’t even exist. It’s not even real. Should is I want to because I don’t want to feel guilty later or sad later.” We should do a show on should. Go ahead, I apologize.
I want to try and be a little bit more open and get a little bit more personal without outing anybody or revealing anything. Sometimes it’s hard to be sitting across from someone you spend a lot of time with and who you deeply connected with and say, “I need you to be quiet and not talk for a little while so that I can process.” That’s a powerful tool, the time of quiet. Sometimes it’s felt as if it’s a disconnect or a pullback. Oftentimes we aren’t able to say it in a way that you said a nice way, a graceful way is another way to put it, so that the person who’s receiving it doesn’t feel the disconnect but feels the personal reveal of, “I need time to process this, I’m pissed and I need a minute.” That’s a powerful statement.
Let’s call this woman Alice. Is she calling? That would be cool. Is it her?
It’s one of those 800 advertisement numbers that started showing up.
I saved your life. You have given away money. Let’s call this woman Alice. You’re in relationship with Alice. You have methods of being and ways of being that you have fear. If you reveal that she’ll disconnect, especially in the heat of a moment and not even a big moment, you have feelings. Here’s the thing. Have you ever created an agreement and alliance outside those moments around these particular topics? Does that make sense what I’m asking?
Yes, it does make sense, not as many categories I actually have that I shouldn’t be working on like have one or two that I’ve talked about, but there’s a bunch more I should.
It’s the most underutilized tool that people do not use. You are a dynamic human being. Who you are today is going to be very different from who you are tomorrow. Thank God. Thank God for your expansion and if you’re ecstatic, she’d be like, “He’s so boring. I’m leaving.” Your dynamic nature is actually what is part of your attractiveness and part of your power. We don’t make agreements on how to best relate with each other. We hold it up to some faith and some belief that somehow, they’re going to intuitively read our minds to think, “He wants me to be quiet.” That doesn’t happen. I was telling the story about me and Morgan last night. It comes down to the fact that Morgan is like, “I’m going to do this. I’m going to do it.”
When I come up with a concept often in my mastermind I need, “I’m going to start that in four days because I’m going to think about it. I’m going to plan. I’m going to come up with my backup plan. I’m going to come up with my resources. I’m going to research what it was like. You don’t eat it by accident. I’m going to think about substitutes. I’m going to come up with a backup strategy, number seven. I’m going to listen my friends for the anti-lagoon time frame.” I have this whole project plan that I implement. That’s going to take four days, Morgan’s like three, two, one. Click.
When she was being a little dogmatic and a little pushy, she’s like, “Start now.” In my head started. I was like, “No. I need a little time to plan.” In that there was a basic conflict of how we do things. The bottom line is we’ve talked about it and now she fully understands that this is something I need. Your request for silence is a beautiful, intimate, tender, anti-masculine thing to ask for. All you have to do is out of the situation create agreement with Alice to ensure that you can even say that, “Alice, sometimes we’re talking and I have this desire to slow down so I can absorb or catch up or feel my anger. How do you want me to ask for that moment of silence?” That’s it. That’s all you’ve got to do. You’re showing respect. You’re showing caring, you’re showing foresight. You’re showing connection. That is the most intimate thing you can do. Why don’t you do it?
Power of Being Nice: Silence is a beautiful, intimate, tender, anti-masculine thing to ask for.
Think of it this way, I’m afraid of how I’ll be perceived. I was describing it earlier. That’s the underlying fear that feeds the desire to be so nice about not disturbing people with what you need or whatever. To have the conversation you talked about having taken another layer of vulnerability and willingness to understand myself. I’ve actually done this like you asked me, do I have agreements? Actually have a couple, but what I said was I need about four or five more, so having the agreement conversation is yet another layer of intimacy that happen for that silence to occur. As men we don’t necessarily get together and talk about the tools for that. We’re good with tools and some are the tools are being willing to be seen and that comes from knowing yourself. There’s a saying that says, “Get the beam out of your own eye before you look at the moat in another person’s eye.” We often defend ourselves and not reveal ourselves by going, “You, you, you.” We make up that thing in our head about them, it’s not them. There’s a way to defend against revealing this thing we don’t want to reveal that we need or that is fearful for us.
Men also have the no pain, no gain. I can bear it. I have such strong gonads and intestinal fortitude that I can handle your feminine, yippieness and nonstop talking.
I would submit that one of the most stage places to find new masculine is oddly Clint Eastwood movies and there’s one every which way but loose where he plays like an aging conservative who is reading Cosmo and an effort to understand his feminine side. In a way it’s super camp, but it’s Clint Eastwood and he’s still very healthy masculine man at that time and to see him sort of sardonically poking fun at it gives us as men a chance to laugh at it, but when you think about it and actually go where he’s laughing, being about going, the reward that you get there is the thing we don’t talk about in our culture very much at all. We don’t give men a map of where to get to it. You’re talking about asking for what you need. That’s certainly an area where I’ve been shadowed because of my history. I had this relationship with my mom where I was always like, “Mom, more mom.” She was always hard to get.
That I compensated and wanting to control the situation by learning to give up my wants and try to match tuned to their wants, which became a relationship because they did marry with themselves and unless you’re in love with a narcissist, it doesn’t work. Fortunately, the people I most care about are narcissists. They’re actually keep me pretty well challenged. Sitting down and having that agreement conversation is a great tool and I know how and I will be. I think I’m going to invite my friend to a date. That’s a casual conversation about our relationship so that she can sit down and know that we’re going to talk about a relationship. I’m going to offer her some time set settings. “How about we limit it to 45 minutes? Then at that we’ll move on and we’ll go make dinner. We’ll go watch a movie.”
She’ll get the message. I’m laying it out there for you so that you have this thing to use as a frame. Setting that time limit helps because no one can get overwhelmed. The car example you gave earlier. The person is trapped in the car and they’re an easy target for one thing and it’s like usually when one of the partners brings it up in the car, there’s like sabotaging because they’ve got you in a cage. They’re going to point the finger at you or whatever. That’s not great relationship technique right off the bat and no matter how you feel in your anger. Learning to frame it in terms of what it is you need as opposed to what they’re supposed to do is the way to transform it into something relatable and then they get to say what’s reasonable for them to do or not.
I’m betting Alice wants to know everything about you because you’re interesting. When you withhold these parts of yourself, you’re actually doing her a disservice and dishonoring the relationship. I’m not saying this is an easy thing to do, but all parts of you are interesting, even the gooey sticky shadowy stuff that’s actually sometimes the most interesting thing. My shadow is fascinating and Morgan shadow is fascinating. Every time she says, “I will not say the things you tell them to walk last night.” I got excited because I was like, “How would you feel if I did this?” I was like, “I would be thrilled as long as you told me about it.” There’s this way we dishonor each other because we are so scared and disapproving of our own insights. You are beautiful man.
How each of us finds our way to understanding and forgiving ourselves is a different process. Depending on the frame you come from, it’s going to be harder for someone who suffers from guilt or someone from suffers from Catholic guilt or whatever. The ideas and relationships you have with self-recrimination. That part of us serves us when it’s our conscience. When it becomes a kind of mantra, it’s like a poisonous mantra. The toltecs call it a mitote. It’s where your brain goes over and over and over and you become obsessed with this sort of picture that you created and the situation you’re in. The only way to get out of that is to go in and work with what’s real for you.
The truth is a powerful thing. Owning it is the best way to be in your masculine power. Click To TweetThe truth is a powerful thing. Owning it is the best way to be in your masculine power, there’s nothing better. You’ll know it because you’ll feel something in your belly that we call anxiousness or fear or butterflies or whatever. That’s how you know that’s the direction to go. Don’t go crashing in there like a bull with, “I’m going to have a few shots of Tequila and tell it to her straight.” That’s not the answer. Invite by the person in your life to sit down and that container. It’s only has to be twenty minutes or 30 minutes. Whatever you think is right is a great mechanism because everybody can get out and relax and then you can agree to talk some more if you want.
I love speaking the truth.
I feel women most feel safe when women come up to me and say things like, “Is there something you want to talk to me about? I’d love to hear from you.” Invitation can be offered on both sides and you know what it’s like to be invited versus cornered.
It’s hard. That’s not easy unless you have something related to talk about that can be very difficult for men at the same time because you have to go slow too. It’s being invited but being invited at the pristine level of connection. “I’ve noticed you felt a little sad recently. Is there something I can help you with?” It’s teamwork. It’s to go give her credit where credit’s due. John Wildland does this exceptionally well. He says, “Be a team with your partner. Tell a woman, “This would feel good to do this together.” There’s a connection that I admire the way he talks about. He has influenced my own mind. It’s how do you get on the same team with your partner, we’re connected and supporting each other.
I think let’s talk about the moment and again. Let’s get back into now. When you’re pissed, you don’t want to set up a meeting later with over candlelight to talk about. It’s gone. Deal with the rise in your body. I heard this lecture by Pema Chödrön and that’s called Shenpa. They talk about in the Buddhist context, but again it’s that guilt mechanism. It’s like you put out some comparative analysis against some standard you’re saying that the eye is supposed to be like. Then you sell yourself out at trial and convict yourself with whatever the label is. You then are afraid to reveal that label to her because you’re afraid what she’s going to do with it and that’s the control of the outcome spot. When you know you’re in it because you want a result ahead of time. It doesn’t exist like that and you go in blind like a good bet. If you’re nice, if you have grace, you’re actually looking inward to reveal yourself instead of try to get the other person to do something or take action on your behalf.
I statements are the key to that. It’s simply using I statements. She says something off the cuff that pisses you off, like you feel that fire down to your groin. You have this iron rod of hate and anger in your system. It might be her, but it might be your mom, it could be your history, whatever. You have to do something and so you don’t have disagreement.
Even if you don’t have an agreement in place you can go, “Stop, I’m getting pissed and that’s not what I want.” I don’t know. I can say it however I want.
Even saying stop or that masculine force is going to knock the communications cute. It’s got to be soft. It’s got to be like, “Stop. I’m having a feeling.” You can walk her step by step, take away the masculine force in nature that we all have and go tender. Turn up the tender muscle loud to number eleven, turn it loud.
That’s good. I’ve got that. The difference between how I related it to you and how you were coaching you gave me on that. How to grab that in the moment when the whole response that’s happening, the capillary response and then adrenal response and all that?
“You can tell I’m having an adrenal response. I’m having an anger response. Can we sit for a second?” Do some pushups, do something, do whatever. If you go with force, women are to withdraw. I woke up to a withdrawn woman. It was sucked in some of those space movies where there’s a hole and all the air got sucked out. It’s your mastery to be able to say, “Wait a minute. I need to rest for a second, to stop for a second.” I’m not saying this is easy, I’m actually saying this is hard. I’m totally in agreement with you and your ability to go soft. We’ll have this communication fly. Be nice.
It’s a practice every day. You get to try a little bit better at recognizing that you have a willing partner. There’s nothing as more precious. Whatever the other aspects of the relationship, with your family as well as your lovers.
Most women would like to tussle. They like to get in there and get their tussle. Honor that. It sounds like you have a willing partner to which I’m happy to hear.
Every day I wake up and I’m aware of what’s happening and I make the most of it. I show up. Even when you’ve got a good story about your life or something that’s been good for a while, it’s good to pay attention to where the shadow shows up for you and where you aren’t willing to own it about yourself. I’m the hardest on myself. If I’m doing that, she’s probably got some of that going on and whatever her hot button issues are too. That gentleness that you talk about, that’s a great practice and it’s hard. If you end up like me, where you raise your voice to get a moment, forgive yourself for that too in that second and start again. “I didn’t mean to shout. I’m sorry. Maybe we need to take a minute or I’m, I can be calm now. Is there something you want to say?” Be willing to listen and then be willing to be heard.
At that moment after you’ve both had a flush, it might be the time to give the invitation, “If you want to talk about it more, let’s do it like Tuesday for half an hour. If something comes up for you, I’m available.” That willingness, that’s what we call social grace or the grease that turns the wheel in your love life. The tension is also important. There might be something that’s pushing a part of you for a reason that wants to see what’s there, reveal yourself when you feel it.
That’s all the time we have. Thanks for running the show with me. I appreciate it.
I appreciate your work in the world and all of the people who are tuned in. You are all the hope I have for humanity. We’re all out here. We’re going to get this thing done and move it forward.
Thank you. That’s it. Our next guest star is my buddy, Ray Doktor. He is someone I met when he was running a dating seminar and I was like, “Who is this guy running a dating seminar?” He’s been cool friend and peer. I’m not exactly sure what we’re going to talk about. He’s got some interesting points. He also is a new father. Maybe he’ll talk about that being a father to a son. He didn’t expect to have a child in his experience because his space is different but similar. Anyway, that’s our show. Thanks so much for tuning in. Go forth, be good to yourselves, be nice to yourselves, be nice to other human beings. Thanks so much, Mark, for being on the show. Go off, have some nookie. Get some good things going. As always, if you’d like to make a little donation to the show, help support the show, send us a little love at PayPal.me/KandellConsulting. Thank you. We’ll see you.
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