She Cheated On Me and Thats Not All - Dr. Aria | E56

Key Takeaways

You've made a great decision. And I say this as impartially as I possibly can, but this podcast is it's really the reason why I started the Diary of a CEO. It's to hear these kinds of stories from these kinds of people. And I've got to be honest with you, I spent about a year asking this person to come on this podcast and have a conversation with me. Today's guest is Dr. Ari, and he's been on the podcast once before. He's a a world-renowned high performance coach, and he works with some of the world's most accomplished athletes, actors, and everyone in between as they try and reach a mindset state that is conducive with success, with happiness, and with overall fulfillment. But he's not here to talk about that today. He's here to talk about something very, very different, something uncomfortable, something unimaginable. So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett and this is the Diver CEO. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. [Music] Sometimes in life, you have these unbelievable, somewhat cruel coincidences that occur that it's hard to make sense of. And last time you came on this podcast, I would define it as for me anyway a pretty cruel coincidence because we had a conversation um to do with life generally and and success and the mindset and psychology and all the things that you're an expert on. And for whatever reason that day, I decided that I wanted to spend 30 minutes talking about marriage, cheating, love, and asking you these um very personal questions about monogamy, which I've never done before with any guest ever. And which I really had no place or reason to ask you more than anyone else. And it just feels to me for what we're going to talk about in part today that that was a bit of a cruel coincidence. And you know, one of the questions I asked you was, um, do you believe in monogamy? And then I asked you, can you love someone and cheat on them? And when I listened to that podcast back, I now noticed um, why you laughed? Because it wasn't You laughed. Yeah. And it wasn't a normal laugh. It was like a real belly laugh, right? Like a bit of a nervous belly laugh. Yeah. After we came off air on that podcast, you told me something. Mhm. And uh it even gives me goosebumps now thinking about what you said and it gave the whole team in the room who overheard our conversation goosebumps as well. So after our 30-minute conversation about marriage and monogamy and cheating and love, what did you say to me? Showed you a story. Yeah. And that was uh about 2 weeks earlier. I'd been traveling back from London home and I got out of the train station and my wife picked me up and we got into the car and we had planned to go and have brunch at my favorite little spot. They do amazing Corvos Rancho sauce. I was very excited and she said, "Let's go straight home. I've made sandwiches and she doesn't make great sandwiches." So I said, "No, no, I think the branch is a better option." And she said, "No, there's something that I need to tell you." And I said, "Is it bad?" And she said, "Yes." And I said, "Is it about the marriage?" And she said, "Yes." And then we began to drive back and I had this sinking feeling in me. And we're we drove for about 5 minutes in silence. And then I went to put my hand on her lap and she said, "Don't don't touch me cuz you won't want to after I've told you what's happened." And that's whenever it dropped. And I remember that 10-minute drive back home then felt like an eternity. I was just looking out the window and we got home. We got into the house into the kitchen and I was standing by the kitchen table, hands rested on it and I said, "What's happened?" And she said, "I've been having an affair with a man from work." And I remember just tears began to stream. I I didn't move, completely motionless. Tears began to stream. And then she said, "And that's not all." And she said, "I'm pregnant with this child. And in that moment, I felt like I lost a lot. You know, I'd lost my wife. I'd lost life we created. I'd lost uh the dog, our home, her my parents-in-law, her family, everything that I'd really held dear. If someone said, "What makes a meaningful life?" I would have described these things. And it felt like they just been snatched away. It just came crumbling down like a house of cards. And then fast forward two weeks and Steve decides to ask and I remember because the first thing No, no, it was fascinating cuz the first thing you asked was, "You're married, right?" And I did this high pitch laugh and I go, "Yes." And then and then the conversation flowed on and and it's themes I'd really thought about. Can you love someone and cheat on them? Does monogamy exist? Is it natural? Are we set up to live a life where we're in one relationship with one person only? And so over the past 18 months, it's been a process. And some of these themes have been very real to me. I just as I reflect on that conversation and when I played it back um after you told me, so we come off air, we stood next to the table and the microphones and you you explained to me what's happened. I'm for the first time in my life completely speechless. And the thing that blew me away even more so than what you had said to me was your ability to be so calm and rational and objective in the answers you gave. And even when I listen back now, although there was that laugh, which was a bit of an indication, um, you were able to speak about someone betraying you or being deceitful with a level of calmness and apparent um, emotional uh, sort of restraint that I I just admired so much from someone that was right in the middle of the emotional hurricane and had just been victim of that act. And um you said there you know about the topic of monogamy. How did that change your opinion and and and also the subsequent 18 months of processing on the topic of monogamy? Um, so as a quick aside, I like that analogy and we touched upon it briefly about the hurricane and and it's funny actually because a friend of mine showed me a book about a week ago and it was different personality profiles depending on the day that you'd been born on. And whenever we looked mine up, there's a little meditation at the end, uh, a summary and it said, "The stillest part of the hurricane is its center." And that essentially has been uh a philosophy that's guided my life where sometimes there's a storm and it's horrendous and it's raging. But if you can cultivate that sense of stillness and calmness and clarity deep within you, no matter what life throws at you, you will be okay. Because the second part of whenever I was told that news and and the tears were were streaming and I felt that sense of loss and overwhelming sadness. It was a remarkable moment where in that instant and I can only describe it as a whisper. I heard a whisper within me as if it was resonating from a heart that all will be well. Four words all will be well. All will be well. And I knew even then I knew whenever you know there's tumultuous emotion I knew everything's going to be okay. I will get through this. I'm going to have to walk through the desert and I'm going to have to endure a horrific amount on an emotional level but it's all going to be fine. How did you know that? I think it's something that I've cultivated over over 105 years and that's why I do what I do now because I want to help other people to be able to reach that stage and and it began on a journey of um Buddhist exploration and understanding the nature of life and I came to this realization that life involves suffering. There's no promise that it's going to be happy golucky and really pleasant all the time. really horrific things happen in life. And on one level, there's no way that we can ever rationally explain it away. Sometimes bad things happen, but it doesn't end there. It It's a bit like that line that someone once said to me, whenever you're suffering, don't ask God, why am I suffering? Ask God, where are you taking me? And so I've I've developed this ability to begin to view my life as though it's happening to someone else, as though the experiences, the thoughts, the emotions are are something that I can I can almost take it back on and have perspective. And I can see it and I can feel it. But I know that my thoughts, that isn't just who I am. My emotions isn't just who I am. That's a temporary experience. and and throughout my life, no matter what has happened, even whenever it's been brutal, it's often shifted me in a new trajectory and there's been a new meaningful life ahead of me. And I and I knew even then, she's going to be okay. She'll be okay. It's going to be a tough road for her too, but she'll be okay. And it's going to be a tough road for me, too, but I will be okay. Anger. So many people in that situation whether rightly or wrongly just because of the way that they are would have reacted with anger. And for some reason you were both calm in telling me you're calm now. And this remarkable thing which I I think I I struggled to understand a little bit is one of your first concerns was her well-being. Mhm. Versus your own. Mhm. Mhm. Why? Because I loved her and I was in the practice of of placing her emotional well-being and her happiness on the same level as mine, if not sometimes first and foremostly, but at least on on equal playing field. And and I was just so in that habit. And that was the toughest thing to let go of. the thing that I still struggle with today and and I'm still it's the one part that I realized the other day that I still had a fear of upsetting her or of her not being okay. And so that's something which just just really developed and and was so ingrained. And it's interesting on on the point of anger. If you'd said like your wife partner for 10 years, married for five, has an affair, and is pregnant with another man's child, how will you react? I would have said anger. I would I'd be furious, but it wasn't there. At least not initially. It was this overwhelming sense of sadness. It was just that sense of loss of knowing that again that she's potentially done something that she might regret for a long time. And I don't want anyone to go through that experience where they feel like they've [ __ ] up hugely even if the the future is positive in that moment. My sense is there will be regret or at least shame. And so it was a sadness because that was connected to the loss, the sense of loss of losing things that I held dear. Feels like you're living outside your body a little bit. I guess that's what self-awareness is or at least emotional awareness is because you're being able to see that situation which is utterly horrific for anyone. Yeah. Um from as you say from like a bird's eye view as if you've like Yeah. looking down on it. And that's allowing you not to just feel your own emotions but to feel empathy towards theirs. Yeah. And I think I think that's the path in my eyes that's the path to enlightenment. And I'm not saying that I am enlightened, but I think we're all on that path and we're all progressing through it. And for me, that's what awareness is. It's being able to experience internally your thoughts and your emotions and externally what's happened as if it's happening to someone else. You're like holding them out in front of you and analyzing them, right? So like, but if you're not holding them out in front of you and it's happening within you, then you are just almost like a passenger on a roller coaster. Totally. Whereas holding them out in front of you kind of makes you the the conductor or the roller coaster or at least uh able to yeah understand and if you can understand then you can address and then you can overcome. Totally. I love it. Whenever you're holding it really close to you you're fused with it. Anything that happens instantly will will provoke a reaction whether or not it's emotional or behavioral. But when you hold it in front of you there's a bit more space. Now you still experience it. I'm not going to lie to you. It was a brutal couple of months. I cried every day uh for maybe 3 months for hours hours. I I would I would walk and I'd process what happened and if you want we can talk about that at some point um about my process of moving through it. But yes, it was I'm not going to say it wasn't um emotionally painful, but I wasn't defined by that pain. That was just a part that I was experiencing. Let's talk about that. So a lot of people experience grief in many forms and this somewhat feels like this the central emotion you described it as a loss. It feels like a form of grief. What was your process for moving from you know finding out that it had happened to to where you are today where you're you know you've quote unquote processed it I imagine as much as you might have been able to at this stage. Yeah. Some you know what was your process? So where I think people often um catch themsel in a in a counterproduct productive cycle is whenever they try and avoid experiencing what they're experiencing. They try and shun it, lock it away, put it in a box, disconnect from it, deny it, and they just focus on the future and where I am going. And they might try and rationalize it. Uh this happened because of X or because of Y. And then they try and forge ahead. And I think it comes back to bite them at some point. The simplest truth is that we can only ever experience one moment at a time. And I remind myself of that. I don't need to think about right now the financial separation, the divorce, what it means about friends or family or or will I meet someone again or how long will it be or what will my life look like or where am I going to live? So many different factors that could be overwhelming. I just decided to deal with one moment at a time. All I need to do is deal with this one moment and what is this one moment bringing me and accepting and welcoming. It sounds strange but welcoming whatever comes up. And so whatever emotion came up, I didn't try and push it away or shunt it or deny it or negate it. I let it I let it sit and that's why I cried so much because it was so much sadness. Did you write down the emotions you were experiencing? So I didn't write down the emotions but what I did in the next step is so the first step was awareness and accepting whatever emotions I felt and and a lot and seeing that they come and then they go you know that there'd be moments where I'd be laughing with my brother and then crying a minute later and then talking about something else. The second step was reminding myself of reality because I was so ingrained in in an internal model of what life looked like. I have uh strong stable marriage in which my partner subconsciously uh you know implicitly I believe is faithful. We're meant to be together. We're going to be together for the next 50, 60 years until one of us dies. Uh, we're going to have children together. That was my internal model. And I had to rip it apart. I had to take it down. I had to dismantle it. And I had to remind myself of the reality of the situation. I had to I had to accept it. I had to accept it's over. It's not going to change. There's no going back. the final nail is in the coffin and you need to take that on board. And I'd also write any so I'd write down reminders of of what had happened. And I also wrote down any insights I had about the situation that I could remind myself of. And I wrote down how I wanted to handle this process. Um I can actually read a few out if you want. Please. I've got um so I I I literally would just write them down on my phone. Um and so afterwards I I began to split them up into different sections. Mhm. But this one was for the process. Hold yourself to the highest standard. Choose actions that you can be proud of. How you get through this process is more important than how quickly you get through this process. Cuz for me it was important that I still lived with personal integrity, that I didn't I wasn't warped or changed or um consumed with vengeance or acted in ways that was out of spite or out of emotion. I wanted to be able to look back on this in 12 months, 18 months time and still feel good about it, have a clear conscience, still be able to put my head down and feel as though I handled that to the best of my ability. With God, you can get through this. You can become stronger, wiser, more caring, more compassionate, and more loving. And that's another theme that actually the deepest moments of suffering can actually be opportunities for growth. Even if you don't want it, there's something there that that you can learn and can can grow from. You don't need anything from her anymore. Um and there and then different reminders. You have nothing to feel bad about. You aren't responsible. You have nothing to feel guilty about. Nothing. Because there were moments where my mind would almost begin to in a way play a trick on me and begin to try and create reasons um to feel bad or to try and create shame. And at those times while I would accept what came up, I decided not to pursue that line of thinking because that didn't fit. Whenever I was calm and clear, this came to me. And so I'd write down whatever came to me. Whenever I was in a place of wisdom, then when the emotion hit and I'm not seeing clearly and I've got on a clouded lens, this little baby became my best friend cuz I'd go back to it and I'd remind myself and then it would it would reshift my mental paradigm. I have this um before, please do keep your phone open because I want to hear the rest of this. Okay. But I have this um analogy I make in moments where I experience a very similar thing that I'm going to tell you one example. Yeah. It's It's the closest I can come to resonating with what your experience is. I was dating this girl and I broke up with her and three days later I find out that she's had sex with someone else, right? And I can only The way that I described it was I'm flying on this plane and I'm the pilot and then suddenly when I find when I when I look down and hear the news that she's just slept with somebody somebody else. Yeah, it was like terrorists stormed the cockpit and they chucked the the [ __ ] rational pilot out and they were threatening to crash the whole [ __ ] thing. And my whole objective as the pilot is to get back into the cockpit before they crash this plane into the side of a mountain because if they crash the plane, I'm [ __ ] And so what I wanted to do was lose my integrity. I wanted to crash the plane. I wanted to get her back, take revenge, tell her she's a this, this, and a this, and a this, and a this. And it was this because I've got to a place of where I'm able to hold situations out in front of me a little bit more than I ever was, you know, in the past. I was at war with myself. Yeah. It was the terrorists on one end telling me to crash the plane and the pilot saying, "You've been here before. You know, you just need to keep the plane in the air until you and and I and I'm so I'm going for a run. I'm like, "Steve, go to the gym. Go for a run. Clear your head." I'm at the gym. The terrorists that And I'm like, "I'm going to finish. I'm going to finish. They're back in." And then I come back and back in. Yeah. Yeah. And the crazy conclusion to all of this was my friend called me and said a few things to me about um why she did what she did. My friend said to me, "Remember Steve, you rejected her. She really, really, really likes you. And she's done this as a way to make herself feel better for the rejection that you gave her." And it sounds like such a pathetic thing to say, but what it made me realize in that moment was much of the reason why the terrorists had stormed the cockpit was my ego was bruised. And the thing that coached those terrorists out the cockpit was my friend massaging my ego again and and letting me know that some of those stories we sometimes tell ourselves when we get rejected about why we got rejected. Yeah. Weren't true. It's not because you're not enough. Mhm. It's it's in fact because of something you've done. And that was the reason why I managed to take control of the cockpit. I did nothing. I didn't punish her in any way. Didn't even mention it. And it was and so yeah um but please two two things come to me there uh one is this uh emotion of anger so fascinatingly 95% of the emotion for me was sadness 5% was anger and the anger struck early on it was the first night and I remember I my brother had come over and and was staying with me and I woke up in the middle of the night the night of that day that she told me and it was like My body was burning. I I haven't experienced anger like that before. It was It was almost like I was a flame. I was uh just infused with rage. And I began and I really feel for my brother having to witness this, but I was just moving up and down shouting as loudly as I could, "My wife, my house, my wife, my house." And for 5 minutes it was like a supernova. It just was just seething. And then it burnt out and I cried and I fell asleep and and the next day and then the anger didn't really come much. It would come now and again. But what I realized was the anger was intimately attached to my ego. The anger came whenever I was attached to my ego. And I'm very fortunate that I'm able to detach from my ego the majority of the time. But when I didn't, that's when it hurt because it came about my wife. As if I own her. As if there's ownership. As if it's a part of me. I don't own her. She's free. My house. I don't even own the house. The mortgage company did. You know, but as soon as we link it to ourselves and make it about us, Yeah. then it it's it's a place of vulnerability because you're getting inflicted. It's like getting stabbed in the heart. You feel that, but it's an illusion because we are not our ego. You know, we can see our ego and have a relationship to our ego, but once we're fused with it, we're in trouble. And the other part of it is that because I don't want to come across like a saint like I didn't have dark thoughts or, you know, I wasn't angry and I just handled it with grace the entire time. But I operate from a principle that the mind has a mind of its own. And I think we talked about it last time. But essentially, your mind will populate your head with thoughts automatically. You're not asking for them. It'll just come up with judges, evaluations, assessments, predictions about the future, past memories, imagine scenarios. You know, if I said, "Okay, Steve, don't think about anything right now. Just for 10 seconds, have a complete blank mind, and I'm going to say a word, but don't think about anything." Okay. So, we'll just do it now. Don't think about a thing. Mhm. Birthday. Okay. Right. So, even though you were attempting not to think about anything, your mind came up with it automatically. And from my perspective, we are not our thoughts. We have thoughts. Our mind comes up with thoughts but that's not me. I am the observer of the thought. Now why is that important? Because my mind would come up with really brutal thoughts. What thoughts? Like torturing the guy. Really? Yeah. Getting in a car, finding him in the back of the van and doing this elaborate elaborate of of of what I would do to him. Absolutely. Because my mind was thinking about about seeking vengeance. Justice. Just justice. And it was like a Hollywood movie and somehow no one found out and I went back along my day, you know, and so yes, you can have those or whenever I was in deep pain, the thought of ending my life popped into my head. I didn't have any intent. I wasn't making any plans. I didn't want to kill myself. But my mind wanted a way out of the pain. It was suffering and it wanted an end to it. And what is one option? Killing yourself. And so when I've got a different relationship though with these thoughts, when I think about torturing someone or I think or when my mind comes up with a thought of torturing someone or my mind comes up with a thought of taking my life, there's no judgment. I don't think, oh, that means I must want to do it, or that means that I will do it, or that means I'm a bad person, or that means that I'm evil. It just means my mind, I think, what is my mind trying to do? It's it's trying to solve a solution and it's probably struggling to cope and it's trying to find a way to make me feel better. M Neo on this podcast who who came on this podcast talked about how the mind is actually you know people think we're in the search of pleasure but the mind is programmed to avoid discomfort we're constantly in trying to seek you know avoid it and that's why we procrastinate because we've got a big project which is we might not feel competent to complete or you know we're a bit there's a feeling of discomfort around it so we go and wash the dishes or do the hoovering um on the on the you mentioned wanting to torture this man I know right so like a moment of the mind having my minded Steve, you didn't want to. Your mind wanted to. I'm a peaceloving kind of guy. I just But I wanted to know how do you feel about him? So, it's really interesting. I um this stage the the process went awareness and acceptance uh how I wanted to handle the process and then at some point I realized I needed to find forgiveness. I'm quite a simple person and I don't I don't like having a lot of uh items or objects or physical possessions and I don't like having a lot of emotional baggage either. I want to travel light, you know. I want to travel so lightly I could pass through the eye of a needle, so to speak. And the weight of anger or resentment or the feelings of betrayal were weighing me down and I wanted to forgive her and I wanted to forgive him. And honestly, you could view it as ultimately selfish because it's not going to impact their life, but it's going to make mine a lot easier. And during lockdown, I was in California and I was lucky because in Santa Barbara where I was staying, the mayor didn't close the beaches because there's a lot of families there. And he said, "As long as you uh socially distance, it's fine." And I'd run along the beach. And I had this process where I would say out loud, I would imagine her and I would say, "I forgive you. I'm sending you my love. and I wish you all the best for the future. And I processed so much by that at that point because I've been able to understand and see her situation and in my mind I I have an idea of how it was created and why it unfolded. And so there was compassion there and I was able to reach that really relatively quickly. That that was easy. The hard part was with him because I didn't know him. I didn't know his personality, his background, who he was. He could be a great friend and an excellent son or uh potentially a very loving partner, but all I knew about him was that he was prepared to take certain actions. And so whenever I tried it with him and I'd say, "I forgive you." It was like there was a knot and a wimpse and I'd like and I would say and I'm sending you my love and I'm like and I wish you all the best for the future. You're still imagining pulling up in that van and jumping out and blindfolding him dragging him sticking something up his butt and how do you like me now? Uh, and so but I would just notice that I don't do you know there's tension there and and actually I will say this was a year after I'd heard the news. So I didn't try and do this initially. I think it would have been uh premature to have attempted this whenever I wasn't in a space where I had a lot more clarity and and groundedness and and and process the emotion. The emotion wasn't being clouded at this point. Now was what am I holding on to? And for a matter of weeks, five, six weeks, I was running two, three times a week. And I would just try that try that process. And then one day it was it was remarkable. I was running along. And I said, "I forgive you." And there was nothing. And then I said, "And I'm sending you my love." And I felt easy. And I said, "And I wish you all the best for the future." And I could tell that I meant it for them. or their baby, you know, for them together as a family. And I felt at peace and it's a bit like that saying, my yoke is easy, my burden is light. Now, genuinely, it sounds strange, but I don't really feel anything for them. It's almost as if, you know, if you came to me and said, um, I've got a friend called Mike and he's going through a really difficult time. he was involved in a really complicated emotional relationship. Um, would you mind sending out positive thoughts to him and saying a prayer for him? I'd say sure. Like, he hasn't ever done anything to me. I don't have any connection with him. No problem. It's almost that sort of relationship now where they're just other people on their journey. And I had that shared history with with my wife, which I look upon fondly, particularly the first eight years. We had a wonderful marriage for a long time, but there's no emotional tinge. There's it's like an emotional umbilical cord. I'm imagining it as like it's a letting go. Yeah. It's a letting go. And so that was that was a part that for me because I think there comes a time where you have to say, okay, I process it. I've processed it. How long do I want to hold on to it for now? And that's becomes my own choice. Do I want to carry this and let it define me or do I want to finally let it go and see it float down the river? And I think you know even you're someone that has a remarkable ability to practice like self-awareness and you know you have that sort of like emotional awareness as well. And it's good to hear, I think, for everybody listening to this that even your process to from finding it out to, you know, being emotionally unattached to the matter to the point that you can forgive both of them wasn't linear at all. It was up, it was down, it was up, it was down, and it was long. And I think people sometimes um think that their experience of rejection or deceit or you know um any of these things is uniquely bad because their process to recovery per se isn't linear and it's long and it feels like the more I've talked about this topic and the more people I've met and you know from hearing your experiences that in fact is the only way out and I actually think realizing that that's the only way out will make your process out of that deceit or betrayal feel normal and natural and okay and therefore acceptable and and I think that's a a really important point that you've made through the story you've told. Absolutely. And each person's journey will be unique and there will be peaks and troughs and it'll wax and wayne. And I'm very aware that it's possible that my journey happened over a relatively short period of time because of my history and my background as a psychologist as a high performance expert. This is the area that I deal with. It's what developing emotional resilience. It's how do you help people to cope with high stakes environments when they've lost a sense of balance in their life? When they're struggling in their relationships whenever they experience something in life which throws them how do you get back up? This is what I've been trained to do for 15 years. Isn't it weird that life sent you this challenge when you think about your experience? Isn't it there must be a part of you that cuz I think I would I would think to myself life is testing me to see if I can deal with the worst and still maintain the values and principles that I espouse like it it sounds this will sound really odd uh but I almost felt at times I thought in a way I'm so lucky because I'm so lucky that I am where I am when this happened. If this had happened 10 years ago, I would have been in a vastly different space, right? Because I struggled 10 years to cope with what life gave me on an emotional level and I would react out of the emotion. So I'd experience it and then I would just react and essentially that's when we make terrible decisions. Oh, you crash the plane. How we crash the plane. If you look at NASA um astronauts, they prepare for uh the sequence of events leading up to launch and they run through that over a hundred times from putting on the kit to traveling down uh to the launch space to what could go wrong and they rehearse it and they run it through. And it's a way of being able to stay calm whenever there is uncertainty or turbulence or danger or threat because that's whenever that's the person you really want to be whenever there's an emergency like we talked about in the podcast. You want to be the person that still has an air, a pocket, a space of clarity that isn't affected. So that even though you're experiencing all these emotions on a very physical level, deep down, you're still grounded. You can take it. And so from where I was, I did feel as though I'm fortunate that life has thrown at me something that in my mind was one of the worst things that I could experience. There's lots of worst things without a shadow of a doubt, but it was a big one. Um, and find a way to move through. And incredibly it's informed even even my work because in the last year again whether it's coincidence or not I don't know the number of clients I've been working with on relationship issues has gone up exponentially and it's issues centered on a loss of connection a loss of intimacy betrayal confusion. How do you how do you stay true to who you are in a relationship with someone else where you feel like there's a shift or you wake up one day and you're in a space where you don't know how you got there where you become like best friends living together rather than the passionate lovers you were 10 years ago. You talked there a second about the calm that astronauts are trained to develop and how crucial that is to making good decisions. I I I saw this quote the other day and it said when emotions go go up intellect comes down and um I was thinking about just then as you said that I was thinking what are the factors that make somebody not calm and then I thought and I kind of answered myself I thought okay so it's we talked about the ego playing a big role and so I guess my conclusion there is the people who will struggle to maintain their calm in situations like that that are so personally associated are those with the lowest self-esteem and the most fragile ego and it feels feels like the work that you've described that you've done over the last 10 years is really like building your self-esteem and really in some respects a separation from ego. Um, yeah, you've nailed it. One, we know on a neuro level, so we know from neuroiming studies that when we experience emotion, the preffrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for judgment, decision- making, impulse control, planning, goes offline. it shuts down. So we don't have access to that creativity, the wisdom that we have usually. And again, absolutely I think the journey for me the journey of of life involves developing a robust sense of self. A sense of self that is unshakable, that is immovable, that still experiences life and the whole gamut of emotions and and the beauty and loveliness of life and also the darkness and the destruction of life, but isn't impacted on an essential level by it. And I think that's the journey and that's the journey that I work on with clients. No matter what the outwardly symptoms are, could be weight gain, it could be relationship dysfunction, it could be struggling to experience that sense of contentment or fulfillment in life even though I have everything that life says I should have. It could be feeling like I'm I'm lacking or I'm just not doing enough or I'm not being enough. But it all comes back to that stronger sense of self. and this um you know horrific experience what has it done to your opinion of monogamy because I'm sure I'm guessing from what you've said the way that you planned your life ahead you thought when you you know when you went walked down the aisle and you said those words till death do us part you then planned the next 60 years of your life and how your life was going to pan out and when you said those words at the end of the at the altar you were totally convinced Yeah, totally convinced that this person was the the person your soulmate. Um, how do you feel about all of those concepts now like soulmate and monogamy and till death do us part? The experience led me to a position where I began to question my deepest assumptions about monogamy, about marriage, about lifelong relationships. And in the same way I began to take a step back and reflect and contemplate I became very aware that there is a social script for relationships and it generally goes the conventional model is boy meets girl. It's not even boy meets boy or girl meets girl. There's a first date, a first kiss, uh a period of courting. At some point um there will be sex meeting the parents hopefully not at the same time eventually [ __ ] relationship becomes uh exclusive and then engagement marriage children till death do its part and I realize that that is a social construction it's a conventional model based on assumptions that monogamy is natural that marriage is a human universal and that any structure other than the nuclear one is aberant. And so then I began to think okay well what are the different what are the different elements. So on the one hand we can take and we touch upon it briefly uh a evolutionary perspective and we are apes. It's not just that we've descended from apes. We are apes. So we're one of the five homo sapiens are one of the five surviving species of great apes along with orangutangs, bonobos, gorillas and and chimpanzees. And yet at some point we separated from that psychologically. And actually the fine print that distinguishes humans from other great apes has been described by primatologists as wholly inadequate. It's it it's a fabrication. And at some stage we began to see ourselves as special and unique and above nature and exempt from our primal history because we descended from hypersexual ancestors. So if the homo lineage has been around for 2 million years, modern humans have been around for 200,000 years and about 10,000 years ago, there was a shift in going from hunter gatherers to settled communities be because of the advent of agriculture. Now up until 10,000 years ago, the data now suggests that we actually lived by fiercely egalitarian principles. Everything was shared. Food, shelter, water, child care, and even sexual partners. Casual sexuality was the norm for our prehistoric ancestors. For 95% of the collective experience of our lineage, that is what we experienced. And it wasn't it wasn't based on meaningless random relationships. They were relationships that reinforced uh a social pattern that that we needed to survive. It minimized our risk and it reinforced social ties. But then with the advent of agriculture, we began to settle. We had then we had land, we had uh domesticated animals and for the first time private property came into play and suddenly there was a change and there's even a change in the status of women because when we look at it the human female up until that point was on was on an equal playing field. They were as responsible for the hunting and the cooking and making decisions about where they were going to settle. And then it changed and the female became the property of the man, something that he had to maintain and keep. And actually the reason that property came into play is because we weren't moving. So it did matter what happened to our resources. We were accumulating and biological paternity for the first time became crucial. And so on a on a natural evolutionary level, monogamy didn't exist. We didn't live in long-term monogous relationships. Then we bring in marriage. And if we fast forward about 5 a half thousand years in about 2,350 BC and in Mesopotamia we had the first marriage between the union between a man and a woman. And over the next few hundred years it spread the ancient Romans, Greeks, Hebrews, they began to adopt this widespread practice. But marriage had a diff had a very different meaning across the ages. In the um fifth century with Anglosaxons, it was about securing trade ties. It was a diplomatic tool. In the 11th century, marriage was about financial, economic and political advantage. uh and as early as the 12th, religion be became involved and and Roman Catholicism tied it to sacrament and it to being a sacred experience related to experiencing God. Then about 500 years ago, Thomas Cranmer came up with the modern-day marital vows that we read out today. And he was the architecture of uh English Protestantism. And then up until 1858, divorce was rare. Marriage was something which was lifelong and it wasn't really questioned. But then it became a legal process that you could apply to do. And it was still still relatively uncommon because it was expensive and women had to prove aggravated adultery, bestiality, sodomy, cruelty. And then the divorce gates really opened up in 1969 with the divorce reform act and marital breakdown could be could then be cited. So whenever we begin to take a different lens and and we see the journey that it's taken and then we ask well where are we today? Since 1975 there's been a drop in marriages by about 30%. More people are now opting to cohabit than they are to get married. Divorce statistics in England and Wales are at 42%. You could arguably say that the system is collapsing, that it is beginning to crumble. And then I would even take a cultural lens and if I'm talking too much just no I fascinating jump super fascinating. So culturally um so the Spanish word esposes means wife and handcuffs. We joke about the wife being the ball and chain. Uh a friend got married got married got engaged last week and the talk amongst the boys was this is the beginning of the end of your sex life. Yeah, but women don't fare any better. You know, 43% of American women report sexual dysfunction. Viagra sales are increasing every year. They're just record highs year upon year. Porn is through the [ __ ] roof. Not that I would know. Yeah, a friend told me. Yeah. Um, the porn industry takes in about 57 to$undred billion dollars worldwide. A US report showed that Americans spend more at strip clubs than they do at Broadway, off Broadway, nonprofit and regional theaters, the ballet, jazz, and the opera collectively. We look at the church and there have been hundreds of Roman Catholic priests admitting to thousands of sex crimes. In 2008, they paid out $436 million to victims of sexual abuse. A fifth were under the age of five. And these aren't that's not to mention the forgotten victims. And we have to ask ourself, one, how did we get here? Two, how was that story constructed? And three, is marriage giving us what we want? And is it realistic and is it feasible? So number three. So where am I with that? Yeah. Yeah. I'm still touring. I'll be totally honest with you. I can say it. I can imagine. Okay. So I can imagine on the one hand I can imagine being in a relationship with with a woman and and being with that one woman for the rest of my life. I can also imagine being with someone in a relationship and having more than one sexual partner. But but if if it was flipped around and someone asked me, "Would you want your partners to be with other men?" I'd say, "Hell no." Of course. Like it just seems Yeah. it that is not something cuz I'm so strongly programmed against that even though that's potentially the biological heritage. I can't imagine being with someone who's with with other people. I wouldn't want to be in that situation. And I'm aware of the acute hypocrisy contained within it. Yeah, I think everyone feels the same way to some degree. I think people that tell you otherwise are probably talking [ __ ] because they're playing defense against not wanting to happen to them to some degree, right? Um, it's I think it's an ideal situation for yourself, but not for the person you're with from your perspective. I read this book a long time ago called The Mystery Method um by one of the world's number one pickup artist. And I don't know if this is true, but what he was saying was men are programmed in a way that seeks um the woman to be faithful for them because the risk the evolutionary risk was if I impregnate you as my wife um or no, if I if I'm committed to you as my wife and then you are you cheat on me and get pregnant with someone else's child, I will then spend my resources, my energy, my time raising someone else's um child and then my genetics won't pass on that person's will. And essentially, if you think about it from an evolutionary perspective, I then wouldn't have existed if I didn't have that concern about making sure my sperm was the one that reached the egg. I So, you think about it from an evolutionary perspective, you wouldn't exist if your ancestors hadn't done a brilliant job of making sure their sperm hit the egg. Mhm. And one of the ways of doing that was making sure it wasn't another guy sperm hitting the egg by being territorial, by being whatever. And on the other side, from the woman's perspective, the book talks about how, you know, if a woman got 8 months pregnant um tens of thousands of years ago, she can no longer hunt and gather for herself. So really, she has to find a partner that isn't going to abscond, that isn't going to bounce, especially once they've had sex. And so the book kind of talks about some of the the reasons why, you know, in society we typically think women are more in search of a relationship and are trying to, you know, get a guy more than men are typically. Um, is because from an evolution perspective, they would have died on the savannah in Africa or whatever if if the guy had sex with them, impregnated them at a time when we didn't have birth control, got them 8 months pregnant, and then bounced. Yeah. and and I don't know how true that is, but it's something that I've believed because I've read this book for some time. So that's the dominant traditional understanding of human sexuality because whenever you look at other species, yes, it's about essentially an aggressive alpha male than uh being with a uh female and knowing that their offspring is being continued through that lineage. There's an alternative which has come out more recently where uh I know there's a paper published in science in 2015 that actually showed that what separated humans from other great apes was our social organization. Yeah. About 10,000 years ago we started living next to water and in camps. Exactly. Yeah. So and then we were a tribe essentially. I've read about that. And up until that point though, it's very possible that we had uh multiple sexual partners but biological paternity was less of a concern because our structure was such that so what we found out now is we didn't used to live with our close relatives. We actually created social ties with other individuals. And so we're set up in such a way that the focus wasn't ever on individual survival. It was on group survival, group identity, group welfare. And the reason is it's the group that keeps you alive anyway. And so it's very possible that then there was a shift which happened actually with this advent of private property because that's whenever paternity would matter. Because there's some huntergatherer communities that believe when multiple men have sex with a female that it's to collectively because you have to think where does our understanding of the sperm and the embryo come from. That's very recent. It's a very recent biological understanding. Our ancestors wouldn't have known that. And there are some beliefs where collectively the men contribute to the production of the child that actually it's almost like an amalgamation of the different men then creates that child and that child becomes part of the group as opposed to that one person's child. And this is the thing just to like challenge that thinking. Say that there was one man in the group that was slightly better at making sure he was the one that inseminated the female. Yeah. He his genes would pass on his his genetics would pass on as being slightly better for whatever reason at inseminating a woman. And uh therefore in the next round of you know the next generation he would have a slight advantage potent that that the kid of that man would have a slight genetic predisposition for being good at that which would increase the probability that it would pass on again and again and again. And it seems like that that those genetics and that ability to be good at inseminating, whether it's through being territorial or being stronger or being more persuasive or being more, you know, more of a peacock um through generations over the space of a million years from the chimps, that would create a scenario where we are programmed to be through our psychology and our behavior and our peacocking good at, you know, Yeah. at winning. Yeah. Even through slightly more malicious methods or Yeah. And then there's also the social conditioning and the ideas of of marriage, of monogamy, of romanticism, of what that means. And and I think what I've really come particularly through my work with clients is seeing that where people find themselves in trouble is when there's inshment. Whenever there's too much when there's too much closeness when actually the identity of one person is submerged with the identity of the other and there's no space. Did that happen to you in your marriage where you became more like her. It's incredible that you ask that. I have a little announcement to make. And if you're watching this on YouTube, you might have seen a little clue as to what I'm about to say. When we brought this podcast back and we decided that we were going to do it every single week on Monday, we also d