Next Level Romance Part 1 – Ep. 99

Hollywood stories and fairy-tale relationships profoundly fill our lives that we don’t want to hear anything contrary to those beliefs. Are you one of the few who has begun to question the standard narratives around a romance? If so, this episode is for you! Join Dr. Jade on this episode of the Next Level Human Podcast as he unfolds the honest truth behind romance and relationships, making us understand why the quality of our relationships is not a result of finding the right person but rather, being the right person ourselves. Learn why you should develop a relationship with yourself before finding your partner, take ownership of your actions, the attachment theory and its implications, getting over breakups, and creating the right love box in yourself to hold your compatibility ideas and wisdom. Feel it, Edit your love story, Eliminate the old one entirely, Exercise for your wellness, Live a different Life (FEEEL) and inch a little closer to having the next level romance this valentine’s month!

Related Links:

• https://drjade.com/next-level-romance
• Visit CuredNutrition.com and use the checkout code NEXTLEVEL to save 10% on the best CBD and natural adaptogen supplements such as ZEN for your best night's sleep.
• Visit com/nextlevel to learn more about the gut-friendly 100% grass fed beef sticks and save 15%!  

Connect with Dr. Jade Teta

Website: www.jadeteta.com

Instagram: @jadeteta

Podcast Intro: [00:14] welcome to the Next Level Human Podcast. As a human, you have a job to do. In fact, you have four jobs; to earn and manage money, to attain and maintain health and fitness, to build and sustain personal relationships, to find meaning and make a difference. None of these jobs are taught in school and that is what this podcast is designed to do. To educate us all on living our most fulfilled lives through the mastery of these four jobs. I'm your host, Dr. Jade Teta and I believe we are here living this life for three reasons and three reasons only; to learn, to teach and to love. In this podcast, I will be learning, teaching, and loving right along with you. I'm grateful to have your company; here is to our next level.

Episode Intro: [01:18] what's going on everybody, welcome to today's show, the audio quality might be a little different on this show. Just before I get ready to do this, my normal headset sort of fell apart so I'm doing this with the traditional Mac headset, and we'll see if it works out okay. Hopefully, the quality doesn't bother you too much. This episode is going to be a two part episode. It is the month of February which means Valentine's Day and every Valentine's Day I launch my romance program called Next Level Romance and all of you listening, I'm going to give a discount for that particular program. I'll go ahead and give you the link now. It's https://drjade.com/next-level-romance. So drjade.com/next-level-romance that will give you 50% off this program. Now I'm going to go ahead and say right up front that many of you, most of you, I would say the vast majority of you are not going to like this particular podcast or this series of podcasts. In fact, I fully anticipate for most of you to not get through this because you will be put off by it. And I'm not just saying that, you know, I actually really mean that. And the reason why is because when we talk about romance and relationships, we are essentially talking about deep seated seed stories that people really do not want to question. So this idea of my person, and soul mates, and twin flames and all the sort of magical thinking and fairy tale talk and Hollywood, you know, stories around love permeates our culture, but more importantly, permeates us so deeply, that we simply do not want to hear anything else that might go contrary to our beliefs about romance and relationships. This is critical. So I understand that and I fully, you know, appreciate and value, your, your sort of independent thoughts about not completing this. And so feel free to shut this off at any time.

[03:56] However, I am doing this because there are a minority of you listening to this, who have already begun to question the standard narratives around romance and for those of you who have been questioning this and starting to look beyond sort of the traditional romantic constructs, you have been almost escaping the matrix in a sense and that can be a very lonely place when you start to see things different than the rest of culture. And this particular episode is for you; for that little tiny minority that really is hungry to really get to what I would call the more honest truth about romance and relationships. And so for those of you who fall into that category, the Next Level Human Romance program is definitely for you and this series of podcasts is for you. Now, if you're someone who is open minded and you just want to kind of hang out because you're like, Oh my gosh, Jade, I don't know what you're going to say here, then rest assured, you're going to find plenty of information that's going to be useful for you in your traditional narratives around romance. And let me just go ahead and take some of the mystique out of this I'm not talking in this particular series on alternative relationships like polyamory and things like that. That's not really what this is about. What I'm talking about is the general constructs of how we think about how we engage in and how we go about being in romantic relationships.

[05:38] and so let's get started with this. And I'm going to, I'm going to sort of start off with a hook and the hook goes like this. It goes, the quality of your relationships are not a result of finding the right person, they are a result of being the right person. So let me say that one more time, because this is a very different construct in what most people think about when they think about romance, most people believe that it is really about finding somebody you are compatible with and that when you find this person you're compatible with, you basically live happily ever after, especially in the Hollywood fairy tale stories. What I'm essentially saying here is that the quality of your relationships are not a result of finding that right person, but are rather a result of you being the right person, being your best self. In other words, to find a next level romance, you need to be a next level human. And so what if the whole point of romantic relationships was not to find someone to share your life with, but rather to help you grow to a place where you would be happy and fulfilled, whether you chose to be with someone or not. So the story you've been telling yourself about relationships may not be serving you. I would argue that for most of us who've struggled in relationships, the stories that we've been living around, and the beliefs that we've had around relationships are not serving us. Relationships should not be about completing each other; they really should be about growing each other. And if you're starting to vibe with this already, then you definitely need to listen to this series of podcasts. If you're not, then by all means, you can go ahead and shut this off but I think what we have to realize as humans is that most of us are stuck in stories about romance that are keeping us stuck rather than growing us. We all know what this is like we have friends we know family members who are in destructive relationships, get out of destructive relationships, go back into the same kind of relationships, and repeat these romantic patterns again, and again and again and rather than them growing and being better people, they are degraded by it. So this podcast is going to be a series about helping those of you who want to learn this new way of seeing and being in relationships. You know, this, this is a very different way to think about this. And so look, I'm going to tell you right now that most of you listening to this are not going to vibe with me, just like I said before, you're not going to like it because it will blow up your stories.

[08:18] so what do I mean by that? Stories, you have grown to love stories about that you sort of put your whole life around, like I'm supposed to meet this special person and live happily ever after and have kids and grow old and you know, in the very sort of, you know, notebook, Hollywood movie type of thing, you know, die with my person arms wrapped around them. And then many of us are figuring out that that is a very silly thing to sort of believe in. It's almost like believing in Santa Claus, for some of us. That this is not reality for the vast majority of people. So like I said, most people would rather not deal with the reality of this. They would not want to think about relationships in this way but look, I can promise you this, if you listen to this, I think it will serve you at some point in your life. So if you're one of these people who is sort of like Jade, I don't know that I'm vibing with this where you're going with this relationship stuff I think it's going to serve you eventually your life because regardless of what you might think sooner or later, your entire view of romance and relationships will blow up, you will cheat or they will cheat, you will lose the loving feeling or they will, the passion and excitement will wear off or one or more of you; you'll be stuck with the reality that you should have been cultivating a relationship with yourself first, and not trying to outsource your purpose and sense of worth to someone else. So I'm going to take you through an entire education. We're going to go through breakups, meeting and dating and then in part two, which it depends on where part two will be on this because breakups is going to be a big piece of this but so we may just get through the general sort of frameworks here and the breakup part and then go through meetings and dating and in part two, we're definitely going to get into relationships and making love last and that kind of thing. So really, this is really an idea of changing this sort of belief system that someone completes me to moving towards a belief system of someone grows me instead. That we don't complete each other and bromance we grow each other and then perhaps the whole point of romance in the first place in relationships, is to learn and grow and get better. And so I'll start with a little bit of sort of my story.

[10:47] so when I was going through my divorce, and I had an affair, I went through a divorce, me and my ex-wife, Jill, are still best friends to this day but I remember we put off the divorce for a long time. And when we finally had the divorce, we sat down with a lawyer together, sign a thing, and then went out to dinner together to celebrate. To celebrate our love to celebrate our relationship and Jill said to me during this dinner, after we sort of toasted and just kind of laughed and said, congratulations to on our divorce, and we were kind of laughing, she said, You know, it's funny that people see our relationship as a failure. She goes, because I see it as a complete success. I am a better person, far and away a better person having been in this love relationship with you. And both of us started to tear up. And I basically said the same thing. I said, I am also a better person, I'm more honest, I'm more capable of love, I'm kinder and more generous, I get it. Part of the reason we came to that conclusion is because we each regardless of what we're going through in the difficult times and the hurt, we each stood by each other helped each other grow and helped each other get better as individual human beings. And so it really makes you question what a relationship success looks like.

[12:19] Now, I want to also tell you a couple other things, because some of you are probably thinking, if you're under operating under the old narrative, you're going Jade, why the hell should I listen to you about relationships? You were married, had an affair and got divorced. I would never want to listen to somebody about relationships like you. And so here's the way to think about this. There are three types of experts and I'm stealing this from Brendon Burchard. There are researchers, role models and results getters, right? So the role models would be people like you know, that have successful relationships. So if you want to meet women or men, then maybe you want to talk to someone who's really good at meeting a lot of women and men. If you want to have marry your high school sweetheart, and be married to that person to the end of your life, maybe you want to listen to that person. That's a role model right? Now, there's also researchers, researchers or people who read the science, study the books, pay attention to all the nuances and all the information out there in the world on romances, the different types of romance, the different theories like attachment theory, and you know, the, the psychological constructs that help us connect and meet people and all of this kind of stuff. So researchers are really head down knows in the books, PhDs, people who are reading the actual research. And then there are the results getters. These are the people who work with individuals and help them have better relationships. These are the people that help people get over breakups. These are the people that help people find new relationships. These are the people that help people who may have fractured relationships and may end up splitting up stay together. So when you think about me, here's how I look at it is that I look at it like I if I want to know everything there is to know about romance and relationships I don't want somebody who met somebody right out of high school, you know, a child 17-18, early 20s got married, had kids, lived this standard cultural construct, and has been in a marriage for 4050 plus years. I'm not interested in that. I want to know the people who've dated a ton of individuals who've had plenty of sexual experiences, who have been in long term relationships like marriage, has also been through difficult stuff like betrayal has cheated and been cheated on. Has dated in their 20s dated in their 30s had a marriage, dated in their 40s and I also want someone who understands the research and has done that’s the sort of, sort of in person helping other people manage their relationships. So that's actually who I am, I have been studying relationships since my first breakup at 20. I did couples counseling, I have every life coaching cert that you can imagine and mainly have specialized in romantic type of relationships and romantic problems. I have also had all of these experiences, been cheated on been, you know, been the cheater, been married, gone through divorce, dated in my 20s, dated in my 40s, I have been sort of all these places and so I come at this from a very research oriented point of view, with also a ton of personal experience and then even more hours clinically, helping other people manage all aspects of relationships. And so this is what you're getting from me. So you can decide, again, whether you want to continue listening or not but this is what I'm going to bring. And what I found in this experience, and all these sorts of things is that ultimately, when I was trying to outsource my happiness, my fulfillment to another human being a romantic partner, what ended up happening is I ended up lost, confused, not able to really understand where I began and where someone else began. And I was not effective in life, unless I was in a relationship. This is something that I sought to change. And it is something that I have found makes me far better in a relationship now. I am more capable of loving, I am also way more honest, and I am very clear on who I am and therefore I can recognize the perfect partner for me when they show up. And so this is my story. But I also want to talk a little bit about your story before we really get into this because I also know because I've been through all of this stuff inside of relationships, and also done all this research for years and years and years and done couples counseling, I know the problems that come up in relationships, and I know the stories that you are likely telling yourself or have told yourself, because this stuff, by the way, is not taught in school. The bottom line is you've learned most of what you know about romance from watching your dysfunctional parents. Certainly, certainly, if all of us had to go just on how our parents had relationships, how functional can we say those relationships were? And how do we even know that they too, because I can tell you, one of the things you may or may not know I cannot tell you how many people I have sat in couples counseling with or sat in counseling sessions with one on one without their other significant other there and learned how unfaithful they have been, or how they don't really love being with their wife or husband, and how they're out of a sense of obligation, or a sense of really not wanting to be alone and they don't really have a whole sense of fulfillment, and they've cheated and they've been cheated on and they've gone through all this stuff. So it's funny, because I come I came to see this is like, wow, this is happening all over the place and so very rarely will you find an actual couple, who has met, stayed together, live happily ever after and not had difficulty and turmoil. And if you do find those couples and example, surprisingly enough are my parents. What you will ask them when my parents were at their 50th wedding anniversary, when I asked my father actually I didn't ask him my friend Danny asked him actually my ex brother in law now one of my closest friends, Danny says so Jim, he's talking to my dad. He says, Jim, what's the, what's the secret to staying together? And my father said, you know, Danny, in the end, it really comes down to two people that are growing apart, but also growing together. He goes me and my wife were just lucky enough to have enough core values and enough interest that we grew together and we kept growing together. And we grew as better individuals at the same time. And so our growth was on a trajectory and a path that grew us both. So in a sense my parents had next a next level relationship. However, I will tell you, I suspect that there were things going on in that relationship that many people would not say is a typical, you know, effective, appropriate, you know, Hollywood type of relationship.

[20:13] and so, I think that this really comes down to personal growth anyway. What, how is a relationship growing you, not the idea that a relationship is completing you. So I know what your stories are, they come from how your parents had relationships, they come from your first insecure immature romantic encounters in high school and college. Right? They come from talking to your friends who don't know much better than you maybe if you're lucky, maybe you're one of these people who've read books, like on attachment theory, and have read books like on the five love languages and, you know, this is a slightly better education but for most of us, most of our seed stories, those beliefs that we have created around romance at a time when we were largely unconscious, six years and younger, came around Disney fairy tales, you know, Rapunzel, and Beauty and the Beast, and Snow White, and all of these things, these are where our constructs around romance have come from. And then as we get older, we get into this, you know, Hollywood RomComs and you know, these Hollywood, romantic comedies have, you know, spiritual twin flames and soulmates and all of this kind of stuff. In fact, Jerry Maguire, which was a movie that many of you may not have seen, but in my generation, it was a popular movie in the late 90s. Go watch it, because it's an interesting movie and a funny movie but the Jerry Maguire Syndrome is what I call it. In that movie, at the end of the movie, after he's been estranged from his wife for a little while and realizing that, you know, he needs to figure things out, he busts into the room as the final climax of the movie and his wife is in a woman's support group and he says, I miss you, you complete me and of course, she gushes and grabs him, and they kiss and they all everyone lives happily ever after, in true Hollywood fashion. And if you think about that, that is how most of you and me too, so I don't want to seem like I'm being patronizing or lecturing but that's how most of us grew up thinking about romance. Well, I'm telling you now that the alternate way of viewing this, if you want to open your mind is that it is not you complete me, it is you grow me. The quality of your relationships, your romantic relationships can never ever exceed the quality of the relationship you have with yourself. And so that must come first.

[22:58] so let's get into how do we do this, then? How do we begin to cultivate a quality relationship with ourselves so that we are recognized by our next level romantic partner, and we can recognize our next level human partner? Well, the first place to start is in our breakups and the stories we wrote about men and women, and romantic partners from these painful stories. Now, let me just say something here, because I know it's going to come up, and I apologize about this, but I am a heterosexual male and so most of everything that I have read and study this is about heterosexual relationships. There is very unfortunately, I am fascinated by homosexual relationships and other types of relationships but unfortunately, there is not a lot of data or research on this yet, and hopefully that will change but if you're listening to this and wondering, what I am talking about here, I am specifically talking about male female heterosexual normative relationships in that regard. I don't I can't speak from experience, I can't speak from the research, nor can I speak from the role model counseling, I've only had very few counseling sessions matter of fact, I can count them on one hand, the amount of homosexual relationships I have counseled in. Which makes sense these people were friends of mine, so they kind of sought me out or they were friends of friends, because I normally wouldn't be the person that these individuals would seek out because of sort of my background. So as you're listening to this, realize I'm talking about male female heterosexual relationships, simply because that's the research that I read all day every day. That is my personal experience, and that is the vast amount of couples and individuals that I have worked with. Now, when we talk about breakups I oftentimes talk about pain being a path to purpose, and suffering being a source of deep learning. What oftentimes happen is some of our deepest pain that we have comes around romantic relationships and that is because romantic relationships are the singular, most interesting and important and impactful relationships we will ever have in our life. They are simultaneously a lover, a parent, a best friend, a mentor, and our comic relief, right. This is basically what a romantic relationship is like and you may find this funny, but this is not just me, giving you a framework, this is me actually going through the research and actually seeing what our romantic relationships really made of. This is what they're really made of, they are simultaneously what we are seeking in a romantic relationship is a best friend, a lover, a parent figure, and someone that we can sort of laugh and learn with. Someone who can grow us that mentor, figure and inspire us that mentor, figure, motivate us keep, keep us on track and someone we can laugh with and enjoy life with this is what a romantic relationship is like. And so when we get rejected in romance, it is like all at once being told, you are not a good lover, I don't love you as a child, you are not someone worthy of teaching or learning from, I don't find you funny or useful in that way. It is rejection on multiple fronts; it is essentially saying, I don't think you are worthwhile at all. So it's like our parents saying they don't love us. It's our lover saying they don't love us. It's our mentor saying we suck. Right? It's, you know, someone's saying they don't find this funny, they don't find this interesting. It can be devastating.

[27:16] now, the importance of this, though, and this is where the new sort of way of looking at you grow me is so important, I want you to think about you being at your lowest. In other times in your life, maybe it was an illness, maybe it had to do with money, maybe it had to do with losing somebody you loved to death and illness in the family. Maybe it was your own illness. Think about any diff maybe was just difficulty in college or high school or being picked on or being bullied or, you know, any of these experiences. Whenever you've had an experience that pushes you to rock bottom or knocks you down there is an opportunity in that and your ability to see that opportunity has everything to do with the type of human you will be. In fact, research tells us that success as a human being is not based on IQ, or social intelligence, or emotional intelligence it is built primarily on your ability to see fear, failures and setbacks, as learning opportunities. The ability to get your ass kicked, to get knocked down, and to get back up, learn the lessons and be a better person as a result of that. And so think about this for a minute in the construct of romantic relationships. How many people do you know and be honest with yourself and be honest with some of your exes? How many people do you know that after they go through a breakup, do the work required, look within themselves and say I need to be better versus people looking, either ignoring it and just pushing it aside and saying I'm not or blaming the partner that was a toxic human or that was this and that, or blaming, complaining, whimpering and whining or putting it out there? Right? It's this it's this analogy I like to use all of the time when we injure ourselves physically. Right. And I'll just go ahead and give you an analogy. Some of you may have heard this, but it's a powerful anecdote to illustrate this. When we injure ourselves physically, the natural reaction is to look at the wound, inspect it, make sure what does it need? Does it need stitches? Is it bleeding too much do I need to go to the doctor can I take care of here myself? We clean it, we tend to it, we baby it and pamper it for a period of time and then as a result of that injury, we normally will be more careful next time we're in that same situation right maybe if it's an injury from a car accident, we are more careful about driving we are more defensive we're more aware if it's the fact that we cut our fingers when we were cutting vegetables. We are more careful with the knife. We maybe take some courses that help us understand how to be a better cook, or to, you know our chopping skills to upgrade our chopping skills. We take care, we learn the lessons, and then we're more aware. But when we are emotionally wounded like as in a breakup, we don't handle like that. Instead, what we do is we oftentimes do one of three things, first thing we might do is stick the wound in someone else's face, and yell and scream ow, ow, ow as if it's the other person or other people's job, to soothe our own pain. I know you know, people that you've seen like this, that are always angry, always pointing the finger, always playing the victim role, always acting as if their pain is the most important pain in the room, not realizing that their pain is neither unique or special that we humans have had the same kind of pain, all of us throughout millennia, since the dawn of man, there have been humans who have had your same type of pain, you're not unique in that and a lot of people don't understand that. So the first way we deal with emotional pain is try to hurl it on other onto other, people blame other people, act as if we're special, act as if we should be getting special treatment because we've been hurt and someone else is responsible for that pain. We all know this in romantic relationships, right? How many people do you know who are still trying to punish their ex, because their ex decided to grow in a different direction? Instead of realizing that this hurts, but I need to also grow myself. Now the other way that we oftentimes will do this is we don't blame and complain. But instead, we'll whimper and whine. So we'll just stare at our wound, watch ourselves bleed all over the place and, you know, whimper and whine and just sob and just feel bad for ourselves. That's another way we do it. A third way we do it is we just ignore it completely. We pretend that we're not bleeding, that we're not in pain, that we're just fine that we're impervious. In fact, in the analogy of cutting your finger, this would be like sticking your hand behind your back and deciding as a result of that wound, I'm never going to use that hand again nor will I use that arm, I just don't need it. This is what we do in romantic breakups and psychological wounds. It's asinine when you think about it.

[32:20] Now if you're going to begin to work on being a next level human and have a next level relationship and romance, the first thing you need to do is go back and look at those old wounds. Look at those old scars, realize that those scars, whether they whether it was done to you whether you are a true victim or not, you must take full ownership of the lessons that that taught you. How were you being as a human being that led that to happen? This is what is known as Extreme Ownership because some people have been through horrific things, sexual abuse, mental emotional abuse in relationships and this is the part where I said you're not some of you are absolutely going to despise me and want to just jump through the this recording and strangle me when I say that regardless of what has happened to you and who has done what to you, it is ultimately on you to fix it because you are the only one who possibly can. And even deeper, if we're going to take Extreme Ownership, then we have to say what was I doing that led to this? Even if at the very worst, or the very least I can look and see somehow I picked a human being who was capable of being this cruel and hurtful to me. Why didn't I figure that out? In the worst case why did I stay in a relationship for so long that I knew was not good for me? And then of course, even more important, which most people never do is how was I being a base level or culture level human in this relationship? What was my part in it?

[34:10] the reason we have to do this is because we are the only ones who can. If you were a member of this relationship, then you have some level of culpability in that relationship and the only reason that that is important is because remember what we said, the quality of your romantic relationships can never exceed the quality of the relationship you have with yourself. So if you're going to have a next level human relationship with self, you need to understand yourself better than you ever have and in order to do that, you have to go look at the deep wounds and deep pains of your life, especially around romantic relationships and own them and fix them and begin to heal from them so that you can begin to grow. If you have a broken leg and you do not let it heal appropriately, you will never walk the same again. Same thing here, if you have an emotional wound as a result of a romantic breakup or hurt, you will never be able to have the same level of self-assuredness and quality relationship ever again. I have in recent years dated, dated plenty and what I have noticed is that I have plenty, plenty of dysfunctions. But what I have noticed that's maybe different about me than some of the women that I'm dating is that many of them unfortunately, for me, because these are just incredibly wonderful women and for them, many of them have not completely gotten over the wounds of past breakups and so they will oftentimes project their hurts and distrust onto me, especially given my history of past transgressions and my past self, right. And so this is what I mean, what happens if you don't heal from these things, you will never be able to actually be in a relationship the way you want because what you'll be doing is you'll be relying on your romantic partner to always make you feel worthy, and always make you feel safe, and always make you feel like you're number one, and that they're never gonna cheat on you but we all know that people can tell you whatever they want, right, and they can even do whatever they want but if you don't feel that on the inside, you will create that reality. We all know what it's like to be in a relationship and be so needy, and so insecure and so questioning, we've been this most of us, and we've also had people we've been in romantic relationship, most of us who are this way, right and we know that when someone is like that they will that will blow up the relationship no matter how strong it is. And also consider this when we talk about breakups. Consider this, that the very reason because I remember I remember being in the relationship where I had an affair with my wife, this this woman who I fell in love with at the time, and was just crazy about and was so needy, so incredibly dysfunctional with her during that time. Think about it. Now, I needed I believe I needed that experience, I had never been that kind of needy person in a relationship. It grew me. It helped me see very clearly some of my own insecurities and some of the ways I was trying to outsource my relationship and also woke me up to why my marriage was why didn't do well in my marriage either and what happened there. It woke me up to a ton. So a lot of us think back at our exes, and we go what a pain in the ass that person was or how dysfunctional that person was. Instead, you should say, what did I learn from that? Because if we give grace in the law of charity, we will find all of us have been incredibly needy and dysfunctional in relationships before and all of us have had someone incredibly needy in relationships before. And what I would say is these breakups that it is on us, both of those are our fault, in a sense. If you're really going to own this, and I really mean that and it's simply because if we own it and make it our fault, then and only then can we begin to learn from it if we blame other people we can.

[38:20] and so the first step to a next level relationship is being a next level human and part of being a next level human is this idea of if it is in my sphere of awareness, and I want it to change, then it is on me. My pain is mine, I must own it, I must learn from it, I must grow and get better from it and then I can go out and be better in the world, including in my romantic relationships. And so instead of looking back in hurt, or in anger at the pain in the ass exes that you've had, or the dates that you've had, what I do is I look back and say what an amazing group of people that I have had the pleasure of being in romance with and especially lately, I've met some of in the last several years of, you know, my sort of late 40s I've met some of the best, most beautiful women that I could ever imagine. These are not women I could have ever imagined being with in my younger years, just incredibly beautiful, incredibly brilliant next Level human beings. These are pretty much every woman I have dated, since you know sort of understanding this. These women are amazing. That doesn't mean that they didn't have dysfunctions, and I didn't have dysfunctions but it strikes me the quality of the romantic relationships I have now are well above and beyond. At the same time the quality I have with the relationship with myself means I don't hold on to it. I don't get hurt as much when I'm rejected, nor do I have any trepidations about being honest, in my rejection. I do what I need to do for Jade and I'm honest about it, and I learn what I can learn and then I move on and I just hold these people in a very beautiful space, because I feel lucky to have experienced them, and learn from them.

[40:20] so let's get into some of the beginnings of how you began to do this. The first thing that we humans want to do in romantic relationships is we want to adequately and accurately tell the stories of who we have been in relationships, we want to go back and look at the seed stories. What are you believing that is just not serving you? Things like, I'm a hopeless romantic. That is a story. If you say it out loud, that is a story and think about what that story means; do you want to be involved with a hopeless romantic? Right? Do you want to be in that? That that is a person with no backbone, that is a person who believes love conquers all. That is a person who believes as long as they have the right person in their life, they don't need to do anything else. That's the only job that matters, right? You got four jobs as a human, you got finances, you got personal relationships, including romantic relationships, you've got your health and fitness, and you've got your purpose and meaning. Hopeless romantics and people who are so overly enamored with romance think that finding the right person is all that is required to live a fulfilled life and they normally try to outsource or share there, their other three jobs. And I can tell you one thing I have learned, and I'm sure most of you would agree and not argue with me at all, is that those four jobs are 100%, yours, you cannot outsource them and if you do, they will begin to fall apart. This is what ends up happening when you believe things like hopeless romantic, or soulmates or twin flames or, you know, God brought us together forever and we're, you know, meant to be, you know, one union and all of this kind of stuff. Now, this is not saying anything wrong with the idea of looking at another person and saying that this individual can make me more whole but the issue there is, is that you're the one that has to do that job, they can't do it for you. You cannot outsource your completeness to another person, they can certainly grow you help grow you and teach you things that you need to do yourself to grow. And so the first thing you need to do is begin to look at these past relationships and begin to change these stories around being the hopeless romantic, or soulmates, or any of these kinds of things because what that essentially says is those stories are more powerful than you can possibly believe and so you will degrade yourself and hold yourself back. Imagine if you really truly believe that the person you're with is your soulmate yet they are emotionally physically abusive to you. Imagine if you believe God put you together yet they are emotionally physically abusive to you, or as a result of being with them you never realize your purpose and meaning your children suffer your health and fitness suffers and it gets you sick. How is that serving you as a human who is serving other people? Here's what I believe doesn't mean you have to believe with me. But I believe yes, I do believe in soulmates. I believe you have many. In fact, I believe if you if you extend that to sort of the concept of a God they love, which is a religious concept, a lot of Christians will sort of understand this is that every human is your potential soulmate, not just your romantic partner. I have certainly I have certainly had many, if I look back now quote soulmates and so we need to address these stories that we're telling and upgrade them a little bit.

[43:55] Now, here's one thing I know about you and I know about a lot of people, there are a significant number of people who lie down at night with their husband or their wife or the person they're dating or by themselves and there is somebody in their brain. There is someone who occupies their sex brain, their romantic brain, and that someone may or may not be the person they are currently with. Let me say that again, because I know you all will get the truth of this. Every single human I know lays down at night most of us if we're prodded, there is some human, somebody who occupies our sexual, romantic, desirous brain. Unfortunately, many times that person is not necessarily the person you are married to or dating and this is part of the problem. This is where things start to break down, because here's what I want you to understand. Here's another idea of breaking stories apart. What is the first thing your friend, girlfriend, boyfriend or whatever? And I don't mean romantic, but like just a friend? What is the first thing they would say to you when they're going through the pangs of heartbreak and rejection? What's the first thing that said? I'll never meet someone like that again. Right? Isn't that the first thing that someone says and thinks and isn't that the whole point of laying down next to the person you're dating your husband or wife, but then thinking about someone else who you lost previously? That story too, needs to be broken because here's the truth, you are right, you will never meet someone like that, again, you know why? Because you are not that person who was with that person and you will never be that person again. In other words, how many times and by the way, I've had this happen multiple times where there was someone who just stuck in my head romantically, I just, I would revisit them sexually in my brain, I would think about hanging out with them and all the amazing times we had, and the warm and the beauty of it all, and all of this, and years would pass and then when I became single again, after my marriage, I reconnected with some of these individuals and lo and behold, almost none of them lived up to the hype that was in my head. It didn't mean that they and I'm sure I didn't live up to the height that was in their head and it didn't mean that they're not wonderful, beautiful, incredible humans, what it meant is, I am no longer that human that dated them back then. And the idea is, if I was that human, who dated them back then how, what a tragic tragedy that would be that I have not grown at all or, or even worse, that I'm less of a human, I'm more angry and, and more or less able to love and, you know, bitter, and all of those things. But instead, all of those people, I am unique and this is the whole point here about getting over these people and thinking about them. The first thing you need to do is go back and rewrite the stories. The story that this person is meant for you is wrong. The only person who is meant for you is your next level better human self. That's the person who is meant for you. The only person you are meant to complete is to complete it within yourself and maybe marriage even in that sense, is really first about marriage of the masculine and feminine within yourself before you can go and help someone else do that or grow with someone else. If you are going to teach you first have to learn. How many people have we dated and maybe where this as well who've never actually learned how to be in a relationship? I can tell you this right now being in my 40s, being out in LA I've often dated younger and one of the things I can say it's not it's a generalization because some of these younger women were more mature than me in some ways but as a gross generalization, most of these younger women did not know how to be in a relationship. They certainly hadn't learned yet. So what can they then teach? Remember, we humans must learn teach, and then we can love and so if you've never learned the sort of lessons that you needed from these past relationships, you can't actually teach and if you can't teach, you can't be in love with someone because the in love part comes with two people teaching and growing together. And so but if you're not learning the lessons from your past relationships, or trying to dismantle these old stories that aren't serving you, it's keeping you from yourself.

[48:40] alright, let's get into for the next little bit of time here before I end this, how do you get over then romantic hurts? Well, the first thing you need to do is question all your stories. I have my good friend who also does some of this work, who I've worked with him and he's worked with me and we've had many, many conversations about romance. He has a saying and I think it's a fantastic thing. So I'll give him credit here. Shout out to Mike Xera on this one but he says you know, it's not love at first sight like people think it's love at first story. Right? So we have the seed story, we have this box, this this type that we grow up in and what research tells us that is that our first relationship, the first type, and this is kind of a scary sort of slimy sort of weird way to think about it but most of us, if we're heterosexual in our romantic inclinations, most of us our first romantic partners will either resemble our opposite sex partner physically, or they won't or there'll be the exact opposite depending on the quality of that relationship. So for example, for me, my mother is fair skin, blue eyes dark hair. I had a wonderful relationship with my mom. Growing up in my first romantic encounters, I was always attracted to dark haired, light eyed, fair skinned Women, Mediterranean type skin, you know, dark sort of women mom, my mother is Portuguese and you might be like, good. That's like incest. That's gross. This is attachment theory. Now if I had a shitty relationship with my mom, I might go after, you know, Brown Eyed, you know, blonde women but then once I start having relationships, my first major relationship in high school was with a blonde of beautiful, blonde, blonde, blue eyed blonde, woman, or girl, and all of a sudden, she got dropped into my love box,. I've often had many women that I've been romantic with, say, several of them say to me, you know, I never even considered a bald guy but now I tend to look at bald men after being with you. This is talking to women who are my exes and friends of mine and it's because bald men got put in their love box. Maybe previously, they you know, their dad had long hair or their first boyfriend had long hair, or maybe the first guy, you know, they watched on Baywatch or something like that was a long haired blonde surfer and so that's who they like, you know, maybe you know, tall, dark and handsome, maybe their, you know, their high school crush played volleyball but the point is, we have this box that I call it the love box that we put all these things in. These things that we think we're attracted to or not attracted to and this becomes our reality until we add something to it and so part of redrawing your stories means this idea of breaking all these patterns. This is why these, these sort of turning these clichés on their head is important. It's not love at first sight. It's love at first story, it's love at the box that you have that box that you've created, that says this is what love is supposed to be like, this is what love is supposed to look like, this is what he or she is supposed to look like, be like, smell like, act like, all these things and then when this person does not show up that way, you feel disconnected and destroyed, when really what you should be doing is creating a next level human box of yourself. This is the human I want to be. This is what I want to do in the world. This is how I'm going to master my four jobs. This is the romantic partner I will be these are the things I will tolerate and won't tolerate. Here are my boundaries. Here's my honor code. Here's what I stand for. Here's what I don't stand for. Those are the boxes we should be creating in relationships, not the box of this type. Because what you imagine these two stories one story is I go through life one after the other one after the other looking for this particular type that is in my box that I've been writing since I was three years old and didn't even know what the hell I was doing in relationships versus here's now I'm an adult, I've had plenty of experience and wisdom and now I've created a new box of who I want to be and now what happens is I can let someone walk into that box, I can go now, with that box, just like with my love type box that I created when I was younger with my next level human box, I can look out in the world and say she or he looks a lot like how I want to be as a human being. Not he or she looks a lot like my fairy tale, Hollywood, Disney stories that I wrote when I was a kid or I wrote coming up and many, many of us, myself included, by the way, it's so ingrained in us that it still comes up live our relationships in that way. So we must rewrite these boxes.

[53:26] that is the first thing it's not you complete me. It's you grow me. It's not one soulmate, its many soulmates. There's no such thing as a twin flame. There is no such thing as love at first sight. It's love it for a story. If I change my story, I change the type of people that come into my life. We must dismantle and rewrite all of these things. There's not one person I can love, there's potentially many people I could love, right? This is what I mean by rewriting the story. Now that doesn't mean that these deep seated stories, by the way, are not in you and don't cause pain. But the reason I'm harping on the stories romantically is that it is the stories that you tell yourself that create the pain that you are feeling. And so what you want to do is rewrite those stories. And so, as we finish up here on this first part of this series, next time we'll get into dating and meeting people and long term relationships. I'm going to teach you the feel acronym. This is how you get over romantic loss. And you also need to do this with all of your past romantic partners because rest assured, even if you are married, many of you are even if you were dating many of you listening to this have that person who sticks in the back of your head who hurt you, who disrupted your whole concept of self and self-worth and you've allowed that to keep you stuck and that is why perhaps your relationship is not the type of relationship that you grow me type of relationship that you want. So the acronym is FEEL. F-E-E-L, feel right. First of all, when we are emotionally wound, we have got to feel what we are feeling and the way we feel what we are feeling in psychology research, the best way to do that is to just simply feel it and name it. If I am feeling sad, I say, I am so sad, I miss her. If I am feeling angry, I am so angry that they did this to me. If I am feeling worthless, I say I feel so insecure and worthless as a result of what happened to me. If I'm feeling unsafe and sad, I say I'm feeling so unsafe. Once we do that, once we begin to name that, what am I feeling and why? At that point, we can bet then go back and say where have I felt this before? And you might find out that oh, my God, I felt the same sense of angst and lack of safety when I was young, and my father left the family,. I felt this same distrust when, when I was a kid, and my mom's moods were so volatile. I felt the same, the same kind of pain when this person broke up with me or this happened. So once we name it, and give it sort of texture and sort of, you know, build ourselves this context, we can at that point in time, begin to look for past hurts, past ways we felt this and then from there, that's the F the feel it. Then from there, we can get into the first E which is edited. At that point, we can then begin to edit the story. And the way we edit the story is to literally take out a journal write down exactly what has happened in all the times in your life where you have felt this exact same way, but most particularly in this past relationship, and get up right up to the present moment and at that point, you edit the story, just like you're writing the Hollywood Story, except instead of writing a happily ever after story for two people, you write a happily ever after story for one person you. You write and as a result of this pain, I became more kind more generous, I did this I became strong, I do this and you write out into the future, who you will become as a result of the pain you felt in that past relationship. This is the story edit, you write it down. It's best done physically. Pencil to paper or pen to paper, ink to paper. So you have this write exactly what happened and then right as a result, how you have grown gotten better become your next level self and this is where you get to go out into the future, and write the plot and the climax and the finish the happily ever after story for you. At that point, the next E is eliminate. At that point, you eliminate the old story completely and if this is someone who keeps you around and tries to you know, keep you emotionally involved, you eliminate some of these people, sometimes they are not toxic people you're continuing to engage with them is toxic. So you're the toxic person, this is Extreme Ownership again, so you eliminate them, you get rid of them. So first you feel what you're feeling, then you edit the story and then you eliminate that particular story from your life including perhaps that particular person. The other, E by the way, is just a stopgap. It's basically to say that when you are in pain for those who are in acute pain of a romantic breakup, it is exercise, movement and exercise, intense exercise, yoga, walking, any of that changes the brain in a way that allows you to lift depression and anxiety and so you really need, this why some people get in fantastic shape. You know, we oftentimes joke about the breakup diet. Exercise is one of the most profound things to regulate your mood to make you feel capable, to make you feel worthy, it boosts self-esteem, it helps the anxiety and helps depression. So it's feel it, edit it, eliminate it, exercise and the last one is live a different life. This is where you start to go I am no longer going to live from this love box. I'm no longer going to live these ridiculous stories about you complete me and soul mates and twin flames and all this kind of stuff. I'm going to essentially live, you grow me and if you're going to grow me and teach me and help me learn and we can fall in love and be two complete individuals who are growing each other then I need to become a complete individual myself and so I will live a new life. I will live into that life.

[60:02] alright, I'm going to end there. We will pick up next time. Don't forget, this is a two part series. Next Level Human Romance Program. It's called Next Level Romance. Drjade.com/next-level-romance use the code nextlevel you will get 50% off and I will see you at the next episode. Thanks for hanging out with me and I look forward to the next one with you. [60:46]