five ways to find and keep the best relationship for you i'm dr trish lee cognitive neuroscientist
and sex addiction recovery coach today is my 20th wedding anniversary yes applause please
anybody who has been married for any amount of time but especially for 20 years plus you know
that marriage is not for the faint of heart i just got done reading will smith's book and in the end
the very end of the book he says the exact same thing being married is the most difficult thing in
the entire world but it's also the best learning lab also you can learn a truckload about yourself
about life and how to be the best version of yourself by being in a good marriage or
partnership so let's dig in number one is find and keep your true authentic self so so many people
don't bring that authentic version into a relationship they bring in a seemingly
shinier version or a false version of themselves now that's not your fault so many of us have to
all of us basically have to develop these masks to get through society and if you develop a mask
and you put it on and you keep it on too long you identify with that persona and when you do that
it's very difficult to build intimacy and to be vulnerable with your partner and to be
able to have a great relationship you have to be able to take that mask off when you get home and
you've heard me talk about dr jekyll and mr hyde in these videos before those are both masks those
are not the true authentic version of yourself dr jekyll is the side that you present to the world
mr hyde is the side that watches porn in the dark and underneath that is you real you little you
so think of yourself when you were young what did you love to do what lit your heart up what
made you jazzed up about getting out of bed in the morning do more of that in your life
and share those pieces with your partner so that you can have a real relationship okay which leads
us to number two support your partner and so if you and your partner are supporting each other
you will be able to be the true version of yourself and that will be celebrated not shamed
and we have to take shame out of the equation so of course we have to scoot porn out of the picture
because it creates and perpetuates shame but when it's out of the picture and you're your true self
that should be celebrated now note note to self is that celebrate does not mean fix
or fix for so you're not to fix your partner and your partner shouldn't be fixing you because guess
what you're perfect in every way there is nothing to fix once porn's out of the picture of course
there's nothing to fix you're whole you're healed if you figure out who you truly are and you go
into the world as that version on purpose in your work and your relationships and in your hobbies
there's nothing to fix so you don't need to be fixed and you don't have to have things fixed
for you either this is a true story my husband just i'm going to a retreat that he went to and
he just asked me if i had received the materials for before the retreat i'm not going for a few
months still and i said no i haven't gotten him yet and he whips out his phone he's about to
email the people and he goes what email address do you want them sent to and i i said i thought
it was funny i said have them sent to none of your effing business at gmail.com he's like oh you're
funny i'm like dude i got this i can handle this if i want those materials i'm absolutely capable
of getting those materials for myself so you don't have to fix your partner and you don't have to fix
things for them you support them in it so he could have said which he did later actually he said
i'd really love to talk with you about what you learned in that pre-program so maybe
you could get it soon so we could spend some time talking now i want to get those materials because
he and i talking about existential material is one of my favorite things to do now i'm inspired to do
it but he didn't have to fix that for me he can support me in that journey and it's going to make
a huge difference okay so support leads to balance balances you offset each other's quirks and
if you've heard me talk about the personality test the enneagram personality test before
different personality types really can accent and help encourage other personality types so i'm a
five my husband's an eight fives and eights are one of the perfect combinations or you know quote
unquote perfect combinations because eights are more in their body fives are more in their heads
and so my husband likes to play a lot in the world and i like to be in my head cerebrally playing
so what we do for each other is i pull him into his head more and he pulls me out into my body and
into the world more and it's a really beautiful combination of balance and when we first met you
know i'd work these really long days and then he would he would want to play and then what he would
do is he started working more and getting more on purpose in his work because i inspired him in that
direction and now we both work hard and play hard true story when we first met he literally
made a pro and con list about dating me the pros these are the pros that i'm smart that i'm funny
that i like physical intimacy yes that was on the list and it was phrased differently that i
like to party that was on the list because i do enjoy having a good time that i like to work out
because i've always liked to work out and exercise and nutrition's always been important to me
and then i'm like what was that the con list i was trying to think of this what was on the
con list the con list was he was coming out of a relationship where he had ended our relationship
and so he was kind of shell-shocked moving into another relationship looking for the cons and
some of those cons surrounded the initial idea of finding yourself and being willing to be that self
so he shows up in the relationship with me and i don't want to fix him i don't want to control
him i just want to have a good time with him and support him and so the cons were kind of
like i'm not sure if this is going to be like the old relationship if there are cons that
that surround control or that's around changing you those are things to communicate about
and communication is really really important and we've learned to be much better communicators
over the 20 years and of course now we co-parent a million children and we have businesses and we've
developed strategies to be able to communicate in healthier ways so that we can keep that balance
but moving on to the next one number four is honesty so being honest with each other is
really really important and that's scary that involves vulnerability and especially if you've
had a secret sex life of pornography consumption of masturbation or acting out in any other
sexual way being honest moving forward in your relationship makes it so that you clear the slate
and some of the people i work with they're amazed that once they become honest and they sometimes
they don't even tell everything of the past to their partner they just get honest moving forward
their partner changes because you can sense when people aren't telling you the whole story you can
sense when there's things that are happening on the down low or running in the background honesty
is the way to a beautiful relationship what we're talking about here is developing an interdependent
relationship and in my relationship we had to go to work on getting rid of some of the codependent
uh programming and codependent variables or patterns that we had that we learned from
our parents i didn't know that was a thing until i learned it was a thing and when i learned i'm like
dang i've got to unravel some of this and what it involved is digging into who we really are and
doing the things that we love and supporting each other that's the special sauce and when you do
that and when you can be vulnerable and honest you won't need porn because your life is gonna feel
so good to you radical honesty is the way out i just said it to my husband i got a text from my
ex if you're watching hello uh i got a text and i said to the hubs i'm like i've got to tell you
something i just got a text from this ex of mine and a person i haven't talked to in decades and
my husband tells me this is totally not acceptable by the way we will be talking about later
he tells me he was down in the photos and he found a picture of his old old girlfriend
from high school the one that he still thinks about the one that kind of got away you know
and he's like oh yeah well i found a picture of her like what are you talking about
that's not honesty you found that picture days ago i just got this text this very moment that's how
honesty works of course i didn't care and he was one-upping me on the honesty and but the point is
that i said you get an emotional twinge when you saw it guess what he said why would i when i have
the perfect woman in front of me good answer good answer hubs okay which moves us through to number
five what's this whole journey why do we even why do i care how do i make these videos why do
i want to talk to you about these variables i'll tell you why is because number five is love the
number one thing people want in this world is to give love and be loved in return that's from
moulin rouge i stole that line i have to tell you if you've seen moulin rouge so good you
gotta watch it but that is the truth we want to be loved and we want to be able to love other people
and if you're guarded if you're disengaged from your relationship if you're hiding things love
can't come through it's being blocked intimacy is your ability to share love in different ways
and there's physical intimacy that's what sex should be being physical touching your partner
being able to have experiential intimacy being able to share views being able to have spiritual
intimacy share all of yourself let all of it even the ugly parts let it be seen and appreciated
that's how you get to a place of love and in these videos i always say get on purpose in your life
purpose in your work in your relationships and your hobbies so this is our final thought today
what is the purpose in your relationship or in your relationships what is the purpose what is the
point what is the meaning if you're sucked into a porn habit it might partially be to get from your
partner to take and that is not a true purpose a true purpose is to give to the relationship
and when you're on purpose in your work you're giving your all to your work and then your work
goes and contributes to commit to your community to the world when you're on purpose in your
relationship you're giving you're supporting your partner your i'll tell you my purpose is
my purpose is to help my hubs become the best version of himself so he can be happy he can feel
loved he can give love and he can be at peace that is my purpose and we've gone through hard
times getting to that purpose we've gone through funny times creating that purpose we've been
through happy times it's not all been rainbows and unicorns but it's been amazing because we've been
able to learn from each other we've been able to give to each other we've been able to kick
the crap out of each other when we need it and get each other back online so that we can show
up in this world as our best version of ourselves and then the beautiful thing is we're able to pay
that forward to our parents in a new way because of the work we're doing together and absolutely
we've changed it for our children we're breaking those multi-generational patterns by parenting our
kids in a different way by being on the same team and learning to communicate be honest and show up
for as the best versions of ourselves all right so if you didn't appreciate the thumbnail of younger
me hopefully these words will ring true with you and if you want an amazing relationship that again
you have to work at and it's the most difficult thing in the world it is absolutely worth it so
i hope those points help you and as always control your brain or it'll control you