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In this bonus episode of The Possibility Podcast, enjoy my appearance on the All Together podcast from Life Science Labs.
In this interview with host Dina Sargeant, I talk about the possibly fading relevance of marriage, and what that might mean for committed relationships.
I’d love to hear what you think! Be sure to leave a comment with your own thoughts and questions!
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Transcript of The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz #138
MEL: Hello everybody and welcome to the Possibility Podcast. I’m your host Mel Schwartz. I practice psychotherapy, marriage counseling, and I am the author of the book The Possibility Principle, the companion to this podcast. I hope to be your thought provocateur and I’ll be introducing you to new ways of thinking and a new game plan for life.
DINA: Hey everyone and welcome to Altogether, the family science insights podcast produced by LMSL, the life management science labs. We are champions of life management science, providing structured insights informed by science and inspired by practice on key aspects of conscious living. Each week we bring you scientific and practical insights on each element with the expert knowledge of professionals in the field. I’m your host Dina Sargent. Let’s get started.
DINA: Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode. The marriage is a really tricky thing for a lot of people to really talk about as there are always different expectations on either side as to what their marriage is supposed to look like or what it can look like. Our guest today is here to talk about a new way of marriage can go and rethinking the idea of marriage. He is a psychotherapist, a two-time TEDx speaker, marriage counselor, and author. Please welcome Mel Schwartz. Thank you so much for joining me, Mel.
MEL: It’s my pleasure to be with you.
DINA: Now how did you get into wanting to be a marriage counselor and sort of helping guiding a lot of couples throughout their journey within a marriage?
MEL: Well, hold on to your seat for the answer.
DINA: I’m holding on.
MEL: I went to graduate school to learn my practice and my trade, not early in life. I was 40 years old. Upon graduating, I was going through a divorce in my life, which had a profound impact on me. I had two young children, and I realized that relationships, marriage, we start them with the best of intentions, feeling in love, cheerful, and optimistic. The fact that in the US, half of marriages end in divorce, what it is in Australia. But I wrote in my first book, the fact that half of marriages end in divorce, that’s not the issue. The real problem is that the majority of intact marriages, some years down the road, aren’tall that happy. In other words, the success rate of marriage and committed relationship needs to be about happiness, not just the barometer of divorce. So if only a small percentage of relationships and marriages thrive, it’s insane to keep playing by the same rules. If marriage were a corporation, it would be bankrupt. We’d never tolerate that failure in business. Why do we tolerate it in our lives? So that revelation prompted me to write my first book, which is called The Art of Intimacy, in which I said, the problem is that we receive no education in relationships or marriage. Unless you are fortunate enough to have parents who ideally model the role for us, then you know, we got no training. We just went into it. You have to pass a road test to get a driver’s license, but you don’t have to be educated and literate to engage in marriage and have children. We just stumble our way through. So there’s such a crushing weight of despair and the feeling of, I’ve done something wrong, you’ve done something wrong. In most cases, nobody’s done anything wrong. We just need to learn the lesson. So that’s what really motivated me to come to understand the intricacies of relationship and to be able to look at it and see how I can help people. That was my motivation.
DINA: It’s a big motivation because when you’re talking about the idea of divorce, it must come a lot to come to that state from two people really being in love and wanting to build a life together to end up being like, okay, this isn’t working. Instead of working it out, we’re just going to have to completely call it quits and end it and sort of go through that. There must be some really big issue. And I know there’s so many different reasons for divorce. I mean, one of the biggest reasons I know of is the financial parts of it where money is always a big problem, always a big thing that couples are always fighting over. So I’m excited today to talk about the different areas as to how we’re talking about rethinking marriage and how we’re trying to align ourselves to what makes us happy, but also what makes a better couple sort of align together.
MEL: Well, the first thought in that regard is if you meet at any point in life, but let’s suppose you meet and become a couple at 20 or 25 or 30 years of age or 35, the presumption is that we’re going to either continue to grow in a parallel path or both go to not grow and remain parallel. The system of marriage has to allow for change and growth. So if two people grow in parallel ways, then there’s a greater chance the relationship working out. But to evaluate that, to start with before marriage, we should be asking each other challenging questions, but we don’t. We put our best foot forward. If you think about putting your best foot forward makes no sense because you’re not putting your true self forward. It would make more sense to put your genuine, authentic self forward and find out how do you feel about me for who I really am, not who I’m pretending to be. Because that’s what’s going to be revealed months or years down the road.
DINA: That’s very true. And you sort of forget that when it comes to, I mean, when you talk about being young and in love, you sort of forget, okay, but this is the best part of each other. This is the best that we’re showing each other. When it comes to the worst, what’s going to happen, what the situation is going to be. So yes, I’d love to dive into that even further. But before we do, I’d love to get to know some of your interests and some of your recommendations as well, possibly by playing a little icebreaker that we like to call have you met Mel. So to start off with, do you have a favorite book that you could share with us?
MEL: Well, my favorite book is a book called Thought as a System, written by a late Nobel physicist, quantum physicist named David Bohm, B-O-H-M. And that book was very, very inspirational for me in understanding the nature of thought and how we think, which impacts everything.
DINA: Yeah, that’s really interesting. What especially about it have you really learned from reading that book?
MEL: Well, Bohm makes a distinction between thought and thinking. And he collaborated with Krishnamurti, the Indian philosopher in that regard too. Thought happens. We have thousands of thoughts a day. Most often we’re not aware of what they are. But when we are aware, the thought tricks us in that it’s telling us the truth about something. That’s called literal thought. And that’s why people have a hard time to change, because we keep having the same old literal thought. Thinking would sound like this. You know, when you asked me that question, I had a thought come up. Here’s what my thought was telling me. See the difference there? There’s a me having a thought. My thought is telling me something. That is thinking. The separation between thought and me. So I’m sovereign to my thought, not imprisoned by my thought. If the planet was taught this distinction and taught how to think and to see thought, we’d be living in a different world.
DINA: No, that is amazing. I never really thought of it like that, especially when it comes to—that’s an irony from that. But no, I love the idea of the fact.
MEL: So it was quantum physics that informed me. And my recent book was called The Possibility Principle, in which I go into great detail as to how to understand the nature of your thought, the ability—it’s like creating a muscle memory so that you can see the thought and then decide whether to go for it or not.
DINA: Wow. That’s an amazing distinction, actually. You never really think of it being that deep as well, to sort of separate you from your thoughts because you always think that you’re not, like you said, imprisoned by your thoughts. You’re sort of stuck in, okay, you’re deep in thought, but you’re not really—there’s other things that you can be thinking about at the same time, as well as that deep thought that you’re also having in your mind.
MEL: So a quote of mine from my book, all of reality exists in a state of potential. In a nanosecond, everything is possible. But in that nanosecond, if we keep having the same old thoughts, we never reach new possibilities.
DINA: This episode just got a whole lot more mind-blowing for me when talking about that idea, because it’s so far out the spectrum of, okay, I’m just having a single thought, or I’m just having a single moment where I’m sitting here and I’m wondering or I’m thinking. But there’s so many thoughts that you have in one day or in one moment that it depends on which thought that you want to be thinking about at the time that you’re thinking about it.
MEL: And thought and feeling work in tandem. So the moment you have a thought, that thought summons up the accompanying feeling. And that’s why we finally go into moods and swings of feeling up or feeling down, because thought provokes the accompanying feeling. Later on, we can talk about how this approach can help us navigate relationships in a much more healthy way. Even saying to your spouse, you know, I’ve got a feeling or I’ve got a thought, let me share with you what it is. They’re open and receptive, but instead you have the thought, you become the thought, you point a finger at them and you’re saying, you always do this or that. It goes nowhere.
DINA: That’s very true. And I think you knew exactly where I was going to lead on when it comes to going into the relationship part as well. So that’s great. Now, thank you so much for answering those questions. When it comes to family, I know that everyone has a very different definition, a different idea as to what family is. So either personally or professionally, do you have a definition for family that you could share with us?
MEL: Perhaps I can give you a description rather than a definition. The reason I say that is definitions are temporary. When I was a child, the definition of the solar system was that we had nine planets in our solar system. But that definition changed. We now have eight planets. So a fact suggests that something’s unchanging, that everything’s changing. New perception, new discovery. So I’m getting a little long winded as to why I’m saying it’s not a definition, it’s a description. I would say my description of family is not limited or confined to spouses and blood relatives and extended families. I think the dear, cherished friends with whom you have great affinity can not only be family, in some cases they can be closer family than even your nuclear family. So my description of family is those with whom I feel safe, loving, and loved.
DINA: No, that’s a good definition. I think we sort of forget that as well when it comes to what we feel about certain people, especially when it comes to relationships. We’re always really thinking about, okay, what’s the description that sort of creates a family? What’s the description that creates friends, different relationships that come about? And then when it comes to marriage as well, there’s that whole idea of, okay, they’re now family. They’re now people that you consider family. And they’re now people that you can trust as much as you trust a family. And I think it’s a, we can easily get into philosophical discussion about that because the whole idea of marriage and family and sort of now having a second family where it’s now your partner’s family also joining in is also another great discussion.
MEL: Certainly.
DINA: So some of the key challenges that a lot of couples face when sort of rethinking their approach to marriage, what are some of the big situations that can come up when they’re trying to figure out what defines a marriage or what sort of comes up within a marriage?
MEL: A number of years ago, I was attending the wedding of a relative, cousins, their children. One of their children was getting married and I watched them exchanging wedding vows, two young people, so in love. And I listened to all of these great thoughts about their splendid future together. But there was a naivety there. It’s very naive, which is, these are our hopes and aspirations, but what do we have to do day in and day out to achieve that and to have a love that can endure? Because a love, a marital love that endures is sadly the exception. It doesn’t have to be, but it is when we don’t learn the lessons we need to learn. So I think it’s absolutely essential that we become realistic. Say, if the goal is to continue to honor, value, love each other and to keep passion alive, it’s not going to happen simply of its own accord. In rare cases, it will. So to open up to realism whereby we need to understand how are we going to learn the things we have to learn. I think premarital counseling is an exceptional idea. I’ve had any number of couples come to work with me before they got married because they were already open and receptive to the idea that they needed to do a lot of learning to be able to succeed.
DINA: Yeah, no, that’s very true. And I think especially when it comes to, everyone sort of comes along into a couple with different baggage where it comes to the family is not there, is not together or where the parents are split up. There’s always comes the idea of, okay, their view on marriage is also going to be very different to their partners because there’s a lot more things that they feel can go wrong within a marriage. And there’s a lot of things that can really hold back from also wanting to talk about it. I mean, when you think about a couple, it’s two people who are coming together who are two different ideals, as much as they say that they’re the same, there’s still going to be two different ideas as to how they’re going to be thinking about marriage and how they’re going to be understanding what each other person is supposed to do, what the other person is supposed to react to, how they’re supposed to behave. And there’s always that challenge of, okay, are they going to react to situations in a similar way that I’m going to react to them? Are they going to, if issues come up when it comes to money or finances, for example, are they going to react in a way that, okay, let’s go solve the problem or are they going to go and blame the other person for the issue or blame each other for things? There’s a lot of things that come up within a marriage that we’re not really thinking about because like you said earlier, we are young and in love going into a union that is completely unprepared.
MEL: And there’s typically a replication of what you experienced in your own childhood and witnessed with your own parents. So that repetition complex or repetition compulsion continues unless we become mindful and aware. When parents have, when a married couple have issues around different parenting philosophies, typically what’s happening is the fault line is each person thinks that their children should be parented the way they were parented. That’s where the argument breaks down. So Ted and Helen have an argument about how to raise their son, Billy. Well, Ted thinks he should be raised the way Ted was raised. That’s not surprising. Early in a relationship, I would say probably well before marriage, I think it’s important to create a shared vision statement. A vision statement that’s not just the ideal but the practicals so that we can see if we have a reasonably shared vision, we have shared expectations, we should be talking to each other about children. What’s good parenting? How much discipline do you believe? What do you believe in? How do you feel about punishment? Do you believe in punishing a child? What does that look like? How do we express anger with one another? When I’m really upset with you, is it okay for me not to talk to you for two days? That’s the way I express my anger. That’s the way my dad did. I’m not yelling. What’s the issue? Well, she says, well, you’re not talking to me for two days. It’s controlling. Controlling? How can I control you? I’m not saying a word. You see all these things play out. We don’t truly know each other yet. So before the commitment of marriage, we should be having those challenging conversations with each other.
DINA: Yeah. So we were talking a little bit earlier about marriage counseling prior to going through marriage. What is the usual questions that sort of can come up when it comes to the preparation for marriage?
MEL: In marital counseling? In pre-marital counseling?
DINA: Yes.
MEL: Well, how do you feel one will ask the other? They may have conflicting ideas about how much time can we spend apart from each other? Can we take separate vacations with our friends? What’s the importance of our friends in our lives now that we’re married? Very often it’ll go to children. What age do we want to have children? Where do we want to live? What’s the quality of our life? But most fundamentally, what I will open up the couple to is how are you going to navigate your disagreements, your hurts, your wounds? The measure of a good relationship or a good marriage is not how good is it when it’s good. The true measure is how do we handle ourselves when we’re not feeling that good about each other? That’s the measure of a relationship. Can we still be communicative and respectful even though we’re upset or hurt or angry? That’s the litmus test.
DINA: So you’re talking a bit about a contract kind of idea as well or a statement as to how both sides will react to, okay, if we’re going to discipline a child, how are we going to be disciplining them? Are there benefits to sort of having that contract or that sort of prepared statement between the both of you in order to create less arguments throughout when that situation does come up?
MEL: Well, I don’t think contracts work because contracts are set in stone and they don’t change. A contract is written, signed, sealed, and delivered, but we’re human beings and hopefully we’re going to evolve and grow and mature and gain insights. So it needs to be more of a participatory understanding, which is right now, this is what I think and believe, this is what you think and believe, and if and when we change our perspectives, we’re going to have open discourse with each other because there are going to be times where we’re going to have to negotiate and compromise. We have to be realistic. But it’s really more about developing a philosophy for life, a philosophy for our marriage. The problem in life in general is we just go into life without a life philosophy, which is what is going to give us and be able to sustain happiness, fulfillment, meaning, purpose, joy. We aren’t taught this. We assume it’s going to happen from earning enough money, falling in love, and having two and a half children.
DINA: No, that’s very true.
MEL: That’s not the answer.
DINA: No, no. I think we sort of lose sight of that as well, especially when it comes to films and TV shows where they sort of show a marriage and they show the progression of that marriage in such a positive way where arguments rarely happen or if they do happen, they last probably, what, one episode and then they’re solved within that episode. And our idea of, okay, the marriage is the main thing, when you have married, you have kids, you deal with all those situations as you go along and nothing is a really big deal. But in real life, you sort of forget life does really hit you hard. You’re not going to be the TV show character that you sort of want to be within that.
MEL: Well, not only that, but the couple who was very much in love and passionate and have children, are in for a stark change in their lives. Their romance, hopefully, will still take a back seat and will still be a romance. But all too often, that doesn’t happen. It falls apart. So when I’m working with a couple, let’s say a middle-aged couple or a couple with young children and I ask, so how often do the two of you go out together, have dinner, meet friends, have a date night? And if they look at each other and they can’t remember, that’s where we start. You’re not honoring your relationship with each other, then what would you expect? There’s an expression that everyone’s heard of, which is passion dies. It doesn’t have to. I equate it to a fire in the fireplace. If you don’t stoke the logs, the fire goes out. If you don’t do anything to stoke the passion, the romance in the relationship, the romance is going to fade. The passion will wither. And that’s an important part of a relationship. When I say passion, I don’t simply mean sexual passion. I’m talking about that intense energy you have for each other. You have to nurture that throughout the marriage and through having children.
DINA: Yeah, and I think especially when everyone’s lives get busy as well, when you’re talking about two kids that are here, constantly having to work, both of them working nine to five jobs throughout the week, it’s hard to have that time for each other or to grow together in a sense that I still understand you and you still understand me. So when it comes to that, how can couples really cultivate that mindset for wanting to grow together and I think adapt to the new version of their lives, but still sort of be in that relationship?
MEL: So that’s an excellent question. I think that what gets in the way is too much routine and too much predictability. If you think about meeting and falling in love, it’s an adventure of uncertainty. Oscar Wilde wrote, uncertainty is the essence of romance. If that’s so, then predictability would be the death knell of romance and marriage in most cases becomes so predictable that you’re sleepwalking through it. So what do we do about that? We’ve learned to become curious. Instead of saying at the end of the workday, how was your day? Okay, how was yours? Okay, what conversation? So how can we say that differently? So tell me about your day. We have to ask new questions and someone shares an exchange, you say, how did you feel about that? What does that make you think? With curiosity, we evoke uncertainty and that’s not a dangerous uncertainty. It’s a sense of wonder. Falling in love is about a state of wonderment. Now the contract of marriage eviscerates that state of wonderment. That’s the problem. Use the word contract before the contract of marriage. In the US, I think currently there may be as many committed relationships unmarried living together as there are married couples. There’s a trend here in the States toward more and more committed relationship, but choosing not to marry, interestingly, and having children.
DINA: It’s a really interesting idea because when you talk about marriage, that’s usually the huge commitment between each other. But still a lot of couples are having, especially in this day and age, a lot of couples are committed to each other, but without legally binding or without the whole idea of marriage sort of being… Because I think the idea of marriage, and I think this is what this episode is based on today, is the fact that marriage adds that pressure to each other. It adds too much of a weight on to how we understand each other and how we understand relationships because, I mean, like we said, the divorce rate for marriage is really, really high. So when we think about that, if we have that idea of, okay, if we get married, there’s an idea that we could get divorced. What’s the point of getting married then if what we’re doing is working for us?
MEL: Well, I think the problem is around the term commitment. People get married and they’re committing to, I’ll love you forever and I’ll never cheat on you. Good luck. That doesn’t work out more often than it does. We’re committing to the wrong thing. We can’t commit to outcomes if we committed to the process, which is to achieve those goals. What’s the process we have to commit to? Two people have to continue to learn and grow. If they do and they’re committed to the process and learning what they have to, it might work out, right? But we can’t be static. Again, that’s why I’m saying it’s not a contract. Committing to the outcome makes no sense at all. Commit to the process. A marriage or a relationship, we call it the relationship or the marriage, but it’s about his relationship with himself, her relationship with herself, at least in the traditional marriage. It’s the two individuals. Their relationship with themselves, their family history, their hurts, their wounds, their traumas, and then we call it our relationship. But nothing is separate from anything. And so we need to approach it differently. And one of the things that gets in the way is the tendency, the default of right or wrong. Notice I’m working with a couple and they’re in steeped in great argument. Awesome. Time out. Would you rather be happy or would you rather be right? No, give me the correct answer. No, we’d rather be happy, but they go right back. Now if I need to be right, that means I have to make you wrong. How is that possibly going to work out? It can’t. See, it’s just the very way we think needs rethinking, right? There’s a rethinking for you, which is I have to move past right or wrong if I share instead how I feel. Now feelings aren’t right or wrong. So if I say to my spouse, I have to tell you how I’m feeling about something. I’m feeling ignored. I’m feeling not valued. And they say, well, how could you feel that way? I am doing this, not easy. Time out. You say you love me, then you need to care how I feel. So if we express our feelings and the other person learns to validate your feeling, which means they care how you feel, then we have the heart center of a relationship. But instead of doing that, we get into arguments about who’s right and who’s wrong, and both people get invalidated and devalued. That doesn’t work.
DINA: No, and I think we lose sight of that as well. Especially when you have a couple where the way that their parents fought were very much like you said that, you saying this, I’m saying this, and it’s never really getting resolved. And that’s the whole idea that creates the view on marriage, creates a whole view on relationships, is because we’re turned into how our parents react to marriage and react to arguments and all the yelling that can come about. How can a lot of couples deal with that and not aim to bring the echo of their own parents’ marriage into their relationship?
MEL: Well, I employ certain techniques. I developed a strategy. I call it the 5% rule. When you’re in a disagreement with each other, the natural instinct is to refute what the other person is saying and prove that you’re right and they’re wrong. We know that’s mutual suicide in the relationship. So what I propose is listen for something, arbitrarily some 5% to 10% of what they’re saying that you can agree with. Now instead of arguing or refuting the 90% you don’t agree with, surprisingly affirm the 5%. Validate 5% of what you heard. Now what does that do? That shifts the energy of the discourse, which is your partner now feels listened to partially. Now they’re in a position to take care of what you have to say. See a relationship is about energy. It’s not the things. If we’re feeling good about each other, everything navigates well. And when we fall into a state of being disconcerted, think about the word concert. In concert, like an orchestra, in harmony, relationships in concert works well. But it falls into disconcert, disconcert, disharmony, all the DIS words, when we break down into argumentation. So you say you love me, if you love me you have to care how I feel. So the method is to share feelings, not facts. Feelings speak to the heart. Facts never change the heart. Heart doesn’t change because of facts.
DINA: Yes, no, that’s very true. I think in another sense, for another example, how if one person in the relationship is very argumentative and can really say their piece, the other one doesn’t like arguing and always backs down whenever an argument comes in and just sort of agrees with the other person. Like we said earlier, those are two very different ideals and two different ways of communicating, sort of coming together. How can couples remain sort of in their individual thought, but still where one person, both people are being heard and the other person doesn’t feel like they have to back down in order to resolve a situation?
MEL: Well, the other person you’re referring to who has to back down, they probably learned that behavior from one of their parents. So that person would sound like perhaps they were codependent, passive, and their job is to make peace. Now when I work with a couple, I tend to see them individually as well for just that reason. If I can see two people and get to know them individually, their strengths and their struggles, and I can help them with those struggles, then they can show up in the relationship the right way. So the person who is passive and avoiding confrontation has a life issue. If I can assist them with that life issue, then they can start to input the marriage differently.
DINA: So how important is, especially when it comes to the two of them sort of communicating, how would you recommend sort of dealing, especially if you have to mediate, how would you sort of go about making sure that both individuals are heard in terms of their communication?
MEL: This is deeply complex and it would be inauthentic for me to give you a simple answer to a very complex process, but I’ll give you an idea of what it looks like. In other words, the answer is there’s no shortcut. I would be working with both of those people, the person who was aggressive and argumentative as to why they need to overpower the other person with their feelings and their thoughts and their need to be right. So it sounds overpowering. Would you care about what they think and what they feel? You say you love them, don’t you want to hear from them? So I would work to break their tendency to dominate and the other person who probably has a fear of being assertive and that’s why they’re passive. As we’re saying this, I am, I’ll acknowledge I’m thinking of the aggressive one as a man and the passive one as a woman. I’m stereotyping. Now of course, and it’s not always that way, but that’s why it’s important to unravel our own childhoods, our own experience of our own parents because those became normative. Whether we like them or not, it became our norm. So it’s complex. Complex doesn’t mean complicated. Complicated is hard. Complex means we have to look at it from a lot of different ways. Like a diamond has many facets, it’s complex. A relationship has an infinite amount of facets. Going back to the right or wrong argument, how conflict happens that way, the world as we know it with few exceptions oversimplifies. We break things down into right or wrong, yes or no. It’s called either or thinking, which came from Aristotle. When I am asked an either or question, I’ve trained my mind not to answer it because either or questions create two created false realities and you have to choose, but they’re not real.
DINA: Yeah, no, I think we sort of lose sight of that in a marriage as well. From what I’ve seen about marriages at least, there’s that whole idea of, okay, if I’m dealing with a situation, I’ve learned to deal with things on my own. And sort of I’ve learned to deal with, okay, if I’m having a bad day, I’ve personally learned how to deal with it on my own. However, when my partner comes into the conversation, it’s now like I’m having to find a way to communicate how I’m feeling that’s not just like, oh, I’m feeling upset, I’m feeling angry, I’ll be fine, let me deal with it. And that’s the way that I’m so used to dealing with things as I’ve grown up, sort of going through life on my own. But now with him, I’m forced to find ways to say, okay, I’m feeling a little bit more than just upset, but I don’t know how to describe it. And it’s a very interesting change of pace to deal with communicating. How would you go about sort of enhancing the communication aspect, especially if it’s a couple that’s been dealing with it for about 20 years or going 20 years into a marriage?
MEL: So growth, personal growth or relationship growth always comes somewhere beyond our comfort zone. So we avoid what’s outside the comfort zone. Yet we may do physical activities, we may work out, we may do a lot of things sports-wise, we allow ourselves to get uncomfortable, but we don’t do that in new growth. So when you were describing how you’re feeling and you deal with it on your own, it feels challenging to have to communicate it and look at the nuances. That’s where your growth lies. First of all, it’s being able to share with your partner how you feel. That is emotional intimacy. Now emotional intimacy is the ability of two people to let go of their guardedness and their privacy and to reasonably and in a healthy way, share their feelings with each other. That’s emotional intimacy, which leads to emotional intelligence, which is the whole heart of communication. I was working with a couple many years ago and they were having an argument that went like this. She said to her husband, you have no idea how to be intimate. He got very angry. I have no idea how to be intimate. All I want is intimacy, it’s you. I said, time out guys, I introduced the concept which I call shared meaning. Shared meaning is we’re arguing about this thing of intimacy and I don’t even know the two of you mean the same thing by the word. So you’re having an argument that makes no freaking sense. Now what do you each mean by intimacy? Well not surprisingly to me, he meant physical sexual intimacy. She meant emotional intimacy. We need to slow down. And remember I said to you before, curiosity. Curiosity is when you’re using a word to say, what’s that word mean to you? I want to make sure I’m tuned in and I’m getting what you’re saying. Words mean different things to each of us. That is emotional intimacy. That’s how I would proceed with it. Remember a relationship is either going to evolve and grow and flourish or just remain stable which is fine, no value judgment there, or degenerate. You have to choose the kind of relationship and the marriage that you want. The ideal of a relationship or marriage is to enhance your life. At least that would be my ideal. We have to be honest with ourselves and say, to enhance my life, I need to take on this thing about new insights, emotional intelligence, emotional intimacy. I have to be able to lay myself bare and not defend myself.
DINA: Yeah, no, that’s very true. And I think defining what different words mean to each person is I think is a really big tip that I’m so thankful that you shared that as well. Because when you talk about intimacy, my first thing is going into emotional intimacy and going into sharing thoughts and sharing feelings and communicating and dealing with situations together. And, you know, anyone who’s listening could have a whole different idea as to what intimacy is to them. It could be physical intimacy, it could be just holding hands or being expressive and things like that.
So everyone’s love language is always different as well when it comes to what their expectations are. So this slides on easily to the next part of the show, which is the practice and habit. Now what is a practice that you recommend for couples to navigate the process of rethinking their approach to marriage?
MEL: One question. You ask yourself or one another, the question is, how did I come to my beliefs? We all have beliefs, but somehow we don’t see those beliefs, they become the truth. So in negotiating a marriage successfully, instead of falling into that default of right and wrong, the truth, because that’s the barrier, let’s go back to a question about not agreeing around parenting, punishing a child, you’re in disagreement. You’re wrong, you shouldn’t do that. Don’t tell me I’m wrong, I know exactly what you should do. Time out. How did you come to the belief that that’s the right way to punish or not punish? How did you come to that belief? Well, everyone knows that. I don’t know that. How did you come to the belief? Well, that’s how my parents raised me. Oh, so if you had been my sibling in my family, you’d have a different belief because my parents raised me different. Now we’re at a starting point of a real conversation, a real communication. So I think that we take what we think is the truth that we do battle and argumentation and we turn it into a belief. So how did you come to that belief? Because beliefs don’t have to be weaponized. We weaponize the truth.
DINA: Yeah, no, that’s a very good point. So would you recommend that couples really sit down and just try to go about this prior to really being in that situation where they’re having to turn it into an argument or they’re forced to create an argument out of it?
MEL: Yeah, it’s the way to avoid the argument is in the words we choose. Remember what I explained before about thought?
DINA: Yeah. Right. Okay.
MEL: So we don’t see the thought and instead we exclaim, you’re wrong. It’s very different than I’m having a thought that I would do that differently than you let’s talk about it. We don’t see the thought. You’re wrong. You’re never right about that. You’re always wrong. When thought is running around wildly without ownership, good luck. So I think that’s the way to penetrate it. There are techniques where you share my feelings, my thoughts, but you have to use those extra words. You have to say, let me tell you how I feel about this or here’s a thought that I have about that. That is not adversarial or competitive or hostile, but we drop those words. We just go into you always, you never, I can’t. It gets lost in the communication.
DINA: So it becomes instead of a blame game, it becomes a debate between two people as to how their approaches are different.
MEL: Well what the goal is, it’s not to debate, it’s to understand. Can we still love and respect each other and understand that in some ways we have differing beliefs because we’re different people and we were raised differently. We come from different families and could we still value and love each other in light of that? It’s a reasonable question, isn’t it?
DINA: Yeah, no, that’s a very true question. When it comes to sort of talking about these situations beforehand, is there a certain time in the relationship that you should be talking about this? Should it be, I mean, listen to this now, a lot of couples will be listening and be like, okay, this probably is practice that we can do now within 20 years of them being married, but is there an ideal time that they should be doing this? Is it prior to being married? Is it after marriage? Or is there a certain extra time?
MEL: The ideal time is yesterday.
DINA: Okay. Okay, well, that’s a fun date night.
MEL: Do you see what I’m saying?
DINA: Yeah.
MEL: Sooner is better. I am still, after all these years of practicing marriage counseling, shocked about how much each person does to share with their partner, about thoughts and feelings, about hurts and wounds and resentments, and it goes unshared. So that requires emotional and verbal intimacy. So ask the managers as soon as possible, without delay. We only have today. The day you’re in this today, do it today. I don’t care if it’s you’re getting married next month, or you’ve been married for 20 years, do it today.
DINA: Okay. So it’d be a good date night activity for couples to really sit down and discuss their views on different situations.
MEL: Certainly. It would be alive. It would be real.
DINA: Yeah, no, that’s a very good point. I love that. I’m going to test that to my partner tonight and see what he thinks about that.
MEL: Okay, give it a shot.
DINA: Now this links us really well into the open mic section of the show. This gives you a chance to talk about anything that you are passionate about that we didn’t get into talking to today, or a place that you could also talk about any upcoming work that you’re wanting to share with us today. So in the last minute, I’d love to give you the floor and yeah, share what’s on your mind.
MEL: Well, I’m very influenced by what I call a different worldview. My last book, which I mentioned, is based upon a new philosophy of life and of relationships based on quantum physics. So I’ll just briefly share this, quantum physics reveals that reality is inseparable. It’s one seamless whole. There is no separation. We experience separation because it’s the illusion that we’re creating within ourselves. So in a relationship or in a marriage, if we’re operating from the illusion of separation, that is going to destroy the relationship. So my passion is that the goal is not to fix the marriage. The goal is to allow marriages and relationships to thrive. And to do that, we have to come into a sense of oneness. Oneness is if I can impart loving, kind energy to you, the energy of our relationship can shift. I can’t wait for you to do it first to me. Why wouldn’t I go first and do that? So it’s a whole new spirit, a whole new energy of relationship. We have to invest in love.
DINA: That’s a really great way of really looking at it. Because I think we sort of get so focused on the fact that we have to build something that we just, we lose track of the fact that we really have that step made. We already have that viewpoint of how we want to see each other and how often that we want to be around each other. But we’re just so focused on building something that we lose track of the present moment.
MEL: Think of it this way. If you want to build a house, you have to build the foundation first or the house will crumble. That’s what I’m getting at. We need to build the foundation first. Foundation is communication. Communication is the heartbeat of a relationship.
DINA: That is definitely my favorite metaphor when it comes to the house building and the foundation because I think I use that in so many different scenarios. So this is definitely one of them as well. So thank you so much Mel for coming on to the show today and for talking about the whole idea of rethinking marriage and also suggesting a great date night activity that couples can sort of take part in and talk about with one another and have that emotional connection that maybe some couples have lost sight of. So thank you so much for suggesting that today.
MEL: You’re very welcome. Thank you for having me.
DINA: Now if our audience would like to know a little bit more about you or maybe find some of the books that you’ve written, is there a place that I can send them to to find them?
MEL: Certainly best place is my website which contains everything and it’s my name melschwartz.com.
DINA: That’s perfect. I’ll have that down in the description down below for everyone who’s wanting to find out a little bit more and definitely go look at that book. I’m definitely going to look at the book that you suggested a little bit earlier because that sounds like a really interesting conversation about thought and sort of separating our minds from what we’re thinking about. So thank you again Mel for coming on to the show today and teaching us a whole lot of things that a lot of us have lost sight of when it comes to relationships.
MEL: Thank you for having me. It was a great conversation.
MEL: I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Possibility Podcast. I welcome your feedback on this and any episode. Please send me an email at mel at melschwartz.com or leave a comment in the show notes for this episode at melschwartz.com. If you like what you’re hearing, please take a moment to rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Your reviews really help boost the visibility for the show and it’s a great way for you to show your support. Finally, please make sure to subscribe to the Possibility Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and that way you’ll never miss an episode. Thanks again and please remember to always welcome uncertainty into your life and embrace new possibilities.
