So this is going to be kind of a personal video and it's because it's about a breakup
and it's a breakup that happened a while ago but when I made the video on it,
I don't think that I was ready or had the perspective to share what I want to share
with you today and that's because I didn't know it
because at the time, I thought that we broke up because
she had one set of values, I had another — we wanted different things in our life —
and despite the fact that we loved each other, it just broke us.
But I realized that there was something else that sabotaged our relationship
without me even realizing it and it was something that I let happen
so I'm making this in the hopes that if this is you or has been you or could be you,
that you do better than I did and I want to start by kind of giving you some context
to this relationship so that you can see if it is for you because, truly, this is not a relationship advice for everyone —
it's really only for the people who relate to the stories that I'm about to tell.
And the context is that we had a very masculine and feminine dichotomous relationship
and what I mean by that, very simply, is that we had kind of an opposites-attract thing going on
and I see this in many relationships, though not all, where one person — the more masculine person —
tends to be more outwardly-focused, they tend to be more future-focused, and
they tend to have a more narrow range of emotions that they might experience on any given day.
And the person who is more feminine tends to have a wider range of emotions —
higher highs, lower lows — they tend to live more in the present moment
and they tend to be more focused on their social and familial connections.
This doesn't mean that you can't have bits of either person
but it just means that the masculine person tends to live most of the time here and the feminine person tends to live over here
and what happens when those two people meet is it can be awesome —
like, the sparks are incredible because they provide for each other
something that they don't often get
and I think for this woman that I dated — I provided, for her, a sense of groundedness perspective and —
I think I made her feel very safe.
For me, I got this wider range of emotions, I got to experience some of the most
intense feelings that I've ever gotten and it made me feel alive
in ways that I, quite frankly, hadn't up until that point.
So really, really, really good sparks but one of the things that I have noticed
and I noticed early in the relationship is that people who tend to be a bit more
feminine and a bit more emotionally-driven don't always communicate so directly
and what I mean is that the three layers of communication are not in sync
and those three layers are — what someone says, what someone wants, and what someone needs.
So a couple of examples, just a very basic stereotypical one —
a guy is about to go out on a Friday night.
His girlfriend is not happy about it for whatever reason and she doesn't look happy
and he says, "What's wrong?" and she says, "Don't worry about it. It's fine. Just go."
Now, what are these three layers of communication?
First, literally, what she says is, "Just go."
If you were to just go, you would probably be not in a very good place
because what she says and what she wants are not the same.
What she wants is for him to stay perhaps, right? And to spend that time with her.
But what she needs could be anything depending on the context of their relationship.
Maybe she needs him to say, "You know what? I've been totally neglecting you.
You're right. I'm going to go out tonight because I made plans but let's definitely do something tomorrow and I'm going to block off next weekend for you."
Maybe she needs him to say, "You know what?
You've kind of been really upset since you got in a fight with your friend. I think that this is something you need to work through on your own.
I'm going to go out but we can talk about it later," — it completely depends on the context of the relationship.
But the point that I am making here is that I do believe
that with the people that you love the most — your family, your friends,
and especially your intimate relationships — it is your job
to of course listen to what they say and to give them what they want
but, really, to deliver what they need.
And that is what we were able to do for one another at the beginning of this
relationship and because her three layers were sometimes out of sync,
I oftentimes had to feel what she needed
that was going on underneath what she was saying, right?
So for instance, maybe she was upset about something
and we were having a conversation; she said she wanted to talk about it.
And I noticed that as she was talking about it,
she was just getting more and more upset and it wasn't really helping her feel better.
At the time, I said, "Hey, hold on one sec. Just come over here."
I gave her a big hug, I'd crack a joke, she laughed and then she ,
she cried on me and 20 seconds later after she was done crying, she'd say,
"Thank you. I needed that," and then the next day, we could actually address the problem and talk about it and come up with solutions.
That's an example of listening not to what someone just said but what someone needs
and at the beginning of our relationship, we were both just able to cut through
and give the other one what they needed in such an intense way
and of course, there were plenty of times where what we said and what we needed were the same — in fact, most of the time.
But when they didn't match up, the other person just knew
and I, especially, feel like I had such a good grasp on her value system
on what ultimately was going to make her feel good and I was able to deliver it
in a way that made us really, really close.
So that went great for a long time but as the relationship progressed
and especially at the end, I lost sight of that and whereas before I just had this
gut feeling where I knew what to do — I knew she needed a hug,
I knew that she needed to talk, I know that she needed space,
I knew that she needed me to come be with her — whatever it was,
I couldn't feel it anymore.
And so I'd find myself in conversations that turn to arguments
and after 20 minutes I go, "How did we get here
and how come I don't know how to get us out of here?"
I don't know what she needs, I felt disconnected from her,
and it got so bad that I was, literally, even more frequently bumping into her
like I couldn't anticipate where she was going.
And I was trying to puzzle this all out in my brain,
"How did we go from feeling so in sync to just so disconnected?"
and I realized, it is something that happens all the time
and it's that I lost my masculine center.
And I know that sounds very hippie-dippie — very woo woo —
but what I mean by that is that
I got so scared that the relationship would end
and it meant so much to me because it created so many positive feelings in me
that I stopped doing the things that I needed to do to be this grounded person
and instead of really understanding what she needed at the time,
I started listening only to what she was saying because I just wanted to fix things; I wanted everything to be better so I just listened to what she said and I delivered
but I wasn't giving her what she needed.
And sometimes I wasn't even listening to what she says to be to be totally fair.
And I'm sorry. If she's been watching that, she would say I didn't listen to her the whole time.
But I did lose sight of what she needed
and what that meant is that over time, we slowly drew apart.
Now in order to fix this — because I'd lost my masculine core — I thought, "Oh, you know what I need to do? I need to grip this relationship tighter."
So towards the end, when things weren't going fantastic,
I planned three weeks for us to just stay together
and at this point, she even said — she knew — she's like, "Hey, I don't think that's a great idea," and I said, "No, no, no. We have to do this,"
but again, my gut, my intuition for telling us what we needed was completely off
because I was just living kind of in fear that this relationship would end.
So I planned three weeks, we spent them together, and while it started okay,
we both disconnected from — on my case my friends, and her case, primarily her family
and just spending so much time with each other, little things got blown tremendously out of proportion.
For instance, we're standing in line, we're about to get some food,
she's a little bit peevish because she hasn't eaten that day and she's just a little bit short with me;
early in the relationship, I would know, "That has nothing to do with me.
She's hungry. Let it go. She's going to be fine in three minutes when she eats," which is what happened.
But because I was scared that the relationship was going to end,
I was upset that she was upset, I got upset, and now even though she was fine
three minutes later, I was harboring a grudge and that grudge
lasted for hours and then created another argument that went into the evening.
That is what destroyed our relationship; it is me losing my masculine center.
And it's only having gotten this distance from the relationship that I realized
the things that I stopped doing — the practices and the habits that I need and, I think, probably a lot of guys might — to maintain that.
So I want to share with you now what those are because
if you lose that and you can't give the other person what they need,
you lose that intuitive sense that I do believe comes kind of inborn
when you really do click with someone and you understand their values,
it can end the relationship so there might be a female corollary to these things
or rather a feminine core — I don't know, that's not my experience — but I just want to share with you the three things that I did afterwards —
I wish that I have done earlier — but that you can potentially do if you find yourself in this kind of a situation.
The first one is absolutely create time for male bonding.
And it sounds so simple but I see so many guys who meet a girl
that they're crazy about and they just want to spend all their time together
and they begin to isolate themselves from their male friends; this is not a good idea.
I know it sounds romantic to be the only people in the world that you need
but that, for me and I think for many men who have the same kind of a core that I would say that I do,
is that you need to replenish that perspective.
And what was so interesting is that after we broke up and I did have more time
and I called my friends, they immediately, in conversation with them,
made me realize how lacking in perspective I'd be over this stupid argument
that we had about food in the fact that she was peevish.
I couldn't believe how I got so caught up in the moment and so upset.
They helped ground me.
They teased me, they poked fun at me, and it just made me feel more centered.
Unfortunately, when I didn't create time for that in the relationship, well,
that kind of messed things up.
The second one is that you need to keep the things
that attracted her to you in the first place.
And what I realized is that when a lot of people start relationships, they're flirtatious,
they're fun, they're challenging, they're dangerous and a little bit edgy.
And then as the relationship develops, it becomes so logistical.
"What do you want to do tonight? What movies would you like to watch? Do you want Italian?" "I don't want to,"
and it could be very loving but it loses that spark.
You need to, if you want to have that polarity, — one, create the time apart, I think is important, with your friends
and two, you need to flirt with the person that you're dating
and in order to do that, I do believe that you have to flirt with the world, right?
I spent so much time just worrying about this relationship that when I would interact
with someone in the world about this guy or a girl, I was so straightforward.
In the past, when I went into Chipotle or I talked to someone,
I always was messing around, I was having fun, I was cracking jokes,
and I was creating relationships but because I got so obsessed and so scared
that this relationship was going to end, I stopped flirting with the world.
Now I'm not saying flirting in the sense that it must be someone of the opposite sex;
it could be but it doesn't have to be.
You just need to mess around, be playful, be challenging, and be fun with people
out there and you bring that energy to your relationship, it makes it better; it keeps that spark going.
And third, and I believe this is the most important thing that I lost sight of,
is that you need a purpose that is bigger than the relationship.
And I know that this is controversial but I do believe that it is important for people that have a masculine center.
If you disagree, feel free to let me know in the comments.
In fact, I shouldn't say with such certainty that this is true of everybody;
this is true of me, maybe it's true of you.
But when I woke up in the morning, the most important thing for me
that had appeared in my life was making sure that this relationship didn't end.
And what that meant is that rather than treating this relationship as somewhere
where I want to just give positive emotions — where I was having an amazing day,
when I saw her, I was just ready to dump these amazing stories and emotions on her.
It was that I stopped really enjoying so many of the things in my life
that I used to enjoy and I went to her to make me feel loved and connected and peaceful —
that is a recipe for disaster.
I began treating the relationship like a well to be drawn from rather than a cup that I could fill up.
When I separated and I started to reconnect with the things that really matters
to me and I came back to Charisma on Command which I've been doing but really thinking about, honestly, trying to help more people
and thinking about that purpose and really dedicating myself to that,
all of these feelings that had, for awhile, only come from her —
these feelings of connection and love and doing the right thing and being significant, I started to feel that in myself.
And it let me spread that in a way that I didn't so
if you relate to this, what you need is a purpose that is bigger than your relationship
and I know it sounds romantic to have your relationship be the only thing
but what I have experienced is that in making sure that I'm doing something
for the world that contributes, that gives back, and that is good —
and that my relationship, of course, plays a part of it and she absolutely did help me create Charisma on Command in fact and she loved ot be a part of it
and in excluding her from that, I mean, what a dumb thought
but I did it because I was just like, "No, this relationship must work."
In losing that purpose, really, more than anything, I lost that masculine center.
I lost that drive to give to the world, I lost that drive to give back, and I became so obsessed with what I might lose.
If you do that, you stand to absolutely losing the relationship and so
I wanted to create this video not just as a confessional but because
I do think that I see a lot of people doing this and it is unfortunately very common
both for men and women that when they get into a relationship,
they lose themselves; I would say they lose their center.
So clearly, I'm speaking from a masculine perspective but there's absolutely a feminine perspective.
If my ex were to make this video, she could tell you about her experience
but you need to not just lose yourself in another person
and again, I don't mean to proclaim and I'm sorry for doing this
but it has been my experience that losing yourself and another person is not the way to have a healthy relationship.
You need to be your centered self with that person
and that is how you create an amazing relationship; you maintain
your relationship's, your life, your family, and your friends' purpose.
You incorporate that person into it but you don't lose sight of the things
that make you work independently of them because if you do,
not only you're screwing yourself but you're screwing the relationship.
So I hope that you have found this helpful and not to rambley
and perhaps self-indulgent if you will but I did want to make this because I think that it might help some people.
One last thing before I let you guys go is that we are so close to hiring our video editor, Andre.
He's been doing the YouTube videos for a long time and he's going to start,
and already has, creating content for Instagram
so if you want to follow a little bit more short form content, you can follow
@charismaoncommand on Instagram or if you want to follow me,
this is more pictures in my studio stuff that's going on in my life in California right now
so if you want to follow me, it's @charliehoupert on Instagram.
We'd love to see you guys on there because I am looking forward to creating
kind of different styles of content as I have reconnected with my purpose which is
just Charisma on Command right now; it touches my heart. I'm blushing.
But anyways, I love you guys.
Thank you so much for watching this video.
I hope you enjoyed it and I will see you in the next one.