Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 164 | keeping curiosity in marriage

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

In this episode, we had the honor of speaking with Barbara Grossman PhD and Michael Grossman MD who have guided more than 30,000 clients to successful marriages. To accompany their highly successful book, The Marriage Map, they hold classes to help couples enhance their relationship and satisfy cherished dreams. Find out more here! ▶ https://www.ocwellness.com/ https://www.instagram.com/drmichaelgrossman/ This episode is sponsored by Gortons Seafood ▶ See our challenge here! https://www.instagram.com/p/Csl8jwmpCMv/ Follow @gortonsseafood and vote on who had the better jump in the comments with #GortonsLightAsAirGiveaway tagged. We're picking 5 winners, and the grand prize winner will receive an assortment of Air Fried products, coupons, merchandise, and a gift card to try out a “light as air” activity (winner’s choice, up to $750 value!!). You guys, I'm telling you...Gorton's NEW Air Fried Fish Fillets and Butterfly Shrimp are so easy to make. They're already air fried for you, so all you have to do is cook them in the oven...no air fryer needed! Look out for the products at your local grocery store....GOOD LUCK!!! #GortonsPartner #GortonsAirFried #couples #marriage  https://www.gortons.com/ Follow My Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My Twitter ▶ http://www.twitter.com/ShawnJohnson Snapchat! ▶ @ShawneyJ Follow AndrewsTwitter ▶ http://www.twitter.com/AndrewDEast Follow My Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/AndrewDEast Snapchat! ▶ @AndrewDEast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to a couple things with Sean and Andrew. A podcast all about couples. And the things they go through. Today, we have Dr. Barbara and Dr. Michael Grossman. That's right. Let me just read you a little bit about these two because they're pretty impressive. So together, they have guided more than 30,000 clients to successful marriages. It's a company their highly successful book, which is called the marriage map. They hold classes to help couples enhance their relationship and satisfy charity. dreams. One of Ander Nye's most beneficial like things we ever did was pre-marital counseling. You know, we talk about marriage counseling a lot and we think it's really great to get their perspective on it as actually being the doctors behind the scene who are counseling. I thought was really cool. To give you a little bit of information on Dr. Barbara she has degrees in psychology and theology. She

majored in philosophy and psychology from NYU. you. She's a licensed individual marriage and family therapist. Her background integrates spiritual and psychological perspectives. And between her and Dr. Michael Grossman, they teach a highly acclaimed course on improving your marriage called Restoring Romantic Relationships. That's right. And Dr. Michael Grossman is a board certified family physician and a fellow of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. he's practiced this since 1978

and he specializes an anti-aging and regenerative medicine using bioidentical hormone replacement he's a graduate of NYU School of Medicine and just together they're really impressive here's one thing that struck me

as we were having their conversation they teach this course they have these books and someone challenged me recently to be as strategic in your marriage and invest as much in your marriage as you do your career or your hobbies or whatever you're into.

And I think it does get so easy over time to just kind of like have a wife there or have a spouse there that you're not really putting forethought into or taking initiative and investing and spending time with. And I think that was my big takeaway from our conversation here was that, gosh, you know, they've been doing this for decades. And the people that come to them and take their course are looking to invest in their marriage, which in and of itself is impressive. They give a lot of solid takeaways as to how to actively work on your marriage and your

relationship. Dr. Michael actually gives us some anti-aging tips as well, which is fascinating, and to hear their dynamic of how they've kind of taken his, like, anti-aging science and married it with her psychological science. It's been really interesting. He said there's definitely effects on happy marriages and unhappy marriages on your physical health. I had a lot of questions about the anti-aging because I know nothing about it. So that's a fun part of the conversation. But they're also big fans of dancing with the stars.

Yes, which we talked a lot about. And that's one of the things that they do together as a couple is do dancing competitions, which is pretty great. It made me want to do them. You out for it? No. Anyways, if you want to, babe, I'll do it with you. Without further ado, we have Dr. Barbara and Dr. Michael Grossman. Let's hit it. All right. Joining the show, we have the doctor Grossman, and by that, I mean, Dr. Michael Grossman and Dr. Barbara Grossman. They're both doctors. They both, I'm very excited to talk with each of you because I think together you bring a wonderful perspective, but you each have, I feel like, your areas of strength. And thank you for joining the show. Pleasure to be here. Nice to be with you. In reading both of your resumes, you guys are

probably the smartest people we've had on this show and way over qualified um between NYU Columbia and can I say multiple doctorates between both of you well Michael's an MD I'm a PhD I mean very impressive casual yeah so Dr. Barbara you specialize in the psychology and psychiatric side of medicine I'm I do I see individuals, couples, and families. I look to self problems, and ultimately, I intend, my intention is to grow people. Wonderful. And then Dr. Michael, are we correct in saying you work in anti-aging and regenerative medicine?

That is correct. I keep people young, and I repair people's injuries in natural ways, and I help women looking younger because they like looking younger. and uh man like it too home natural hormone replacement is like foundational to staying young after the age of 45 and then baseline question here i'm curious how long have you guys been married 50 years and how did you guys meet sorry we met in college um i usually say that we've had three different marriages So we got married. We were 20 and 21. Wow. And for 10 years, we had a great marriage that I love because we did whatever I thought was right. Barbara was very cooperative. And then as changed, she went back to graduate school.

They taught her to think for herself, have our own ideas. And then we had six years of wrestling with difficult issues between us. Barbara wanted things this way. I wanted things that. way and it was very difficult and and it took a long time for us to um learn the skills that we needed to make the marriage work when there's two independent people and so we had a lot of different mentors and people who helped us to grow and learn and then after that we gained these skills and that's what we teach to other people these skills that really make a huge difference do you ever miss the first 10 years of marriage dr michael do we ever miss it yeah um yeah whenever we have a disagreement why can't i just be right and do it my way yeah but no you know

um the love between us increases as time goes on but we have such different personalities such different needs and desires, but we have a lot of overlapping thing, but we have different personalities. And so, yeah, it's often a challenge. And Dr. Barbara, I'm curious, is that a good thing to each have different, you know, interests and desires and ambitions? Or, I mean, it's simpler if you had the same one, you know? Well, it's important to, it's important to be individuals. You know, every relationship needs stability, but also it needs the differences to keep things exciting. And so a little bit of mystery as well as stability is a good recipe for a relationship. And if you honor yourself and you follow your own spirit, it keeps the attraction going.

And we have, again, we have similarities. We have similarities and differences in our temperament, and we have similarities and differences in our interests. And, but we come together and we have a lot of overlap that keeps us bonded. But I find Michael very exciting because he's, he's so interesting. And he does so many great things. And a lot of those great things I can't do. So I respect him and admire him greatly. And that creates juice in a relationship.

And I think to some degree, I, you know, I'm that way for Michael. I do things that he can't do. And that keeps us, keeps the excitement and the chemistry going. Romantic relationship is a peculiar relationship. It's so different from any other one, parent-child, brother or sister, friendships. It's so different. Romantic relationship is like a fire.

You have to keep putting the wood on there and to keep oxygen flowing in, and it's just constantly needs that attention or else it goes out. Whereas these other relationships are kind of like the ocean. It just is there, it's quietly there. So if you don't see your brother and sister for a year or so, no big deal once as soon as you meet them, you're right back loving them and relating and so on. You can't do that in a romantic relationship.

You've got to constantly nurture it. So it's a different quality of relationship and it has that intensity because you have to have the differences. Without the differences, you would just, have two lawyers relating to each other in a business, which is okay, but there's no passion there. Dr. Michael, you were talking about your own personal relationship and how you said you feel like your marriage has gone through three different marriages within your 20 plus years. We've heard the same thing from a lot of different couples that we have interviewed and that we've

gotten feedback from of people change over time. And they go through these really hard periods of time where they aren't sure whether it's worth it to continue because they feel like they're married to someone new. So if you're talking about a fire and keeping it alive, how did you guys, within those six years of kind of relearning each other say to yourself, okay, this is supposed to, like this is how it's supposed to be? How do we work through it to make sure it lasts forever? That is a great question. It's a very, very big question. And it takes a variety of skills to work through these changing times. First, let's look at the changes that you refer to. So Dr. Barber is the expert, but I'm the one who popularizes all of her great work. So she wrote a PhD thesis on how people change and grow over. over a lifetime and there's many experts who have written books and done research and so on. But the basic understanding of the pattern is that every human being goes through changes. When you're a little baby, you're sucking on mother's breasts, you're totally involved with

mother. It's just you and mother. You cry and the milk comes in and you're happy. Get to be two years old. All of a sudden, mother doesn't do everything you want. They used to just cry. a mother would jump now you say no you can't do that you have to you know finish eating this or don't throw the the the food on the floor or whatever it is i mean you you make rules about it and so then as a two-year-old you're feeling more separate from mother from those things you really love then you get to be four six eight years old and you love being part of the family so once again you're feeling close to the things you love a little different than when you're six month old, but you love being part of the family when you're eight years old. What happens when

you're 13? You want your own space again. You know the right way everything should be. And what do you mean I can't go to that party? I want to go. So you're feeling more separate from the things you love. And that happens to everybody. You get to be in your 20s. You fall in love. And then you just love being part of this new relationship and you're feeling close you get to be 35 40 years old what happens you've had enough of all this family stuff you want your own thoughts you want your own career you want your own interests and you need space for yourself and for you the desires that's the time where it's very difficult in relationships way something right there's an inevitability with a man and a woman because as as men and women we don't have exactly the

same pattern. So if you get together at 20 and you're close and bonded, eventually there's a if you have children, there's a differentiation of roles. Women stay bonded and relationship oriented and connected and accommodating while a man, because he works outside the home, has to develop his independence and competence. And so you begin to be in a different place. And eventually, your children get to, you know, get to school age, there's more space for the woman. The woman catches up with that and grows her competence, gets involved in the world. Now, that sounds like a good thing that you're both in the same place, except that there's a possibility of two independent individual people looking for competence

and accomplishment can become, you know, get engaged in power struggle because they both are competent, they know they're right about their point of view. And so that's a very testy time for a relationship. And if you can, if you, if you have skills and you survive that, you move into a space where you're more integrated heart and mind. And that's where you cash in on your relationship. It's really much sweeter and lovelier, but that's a very hard time to get through. Most couples don't know how to do that.

That's why we see so much divorce in our society because we're a society that really emphasizes is competence and accomplishment, making money, and so forth. And so most of us get headed to power struggle and things break down. And so there's this 10, 15 plus year period that's very, very challenging. And most couples don't know how to get through it. And I think that's what I'm looking to speak to because you can get through it and enjoy the riches of the journey. And what it does is it grows you.

You don't have to start over and begin that cycle. again with someone else. But it also allows you to have a long-term relationship where you grow together and rich your life together. And the final icing on the cake is your children have two parents who love them and grow them up under the same roof together. And so not only does your family thrive, but the whole culture thrives. And that 15-year period is so tumultuous for most couples and I'm not sure therapists know how to get people through that frankly so that's why we're you know looking to be in public to let people know there is a way through it and it's worth it because the tension between the two of you and the challenges and conflicts that come up if you know

how to talk it through and work it through you both grow tremendously you become infinitely wiser people and more deeply loving people and just everybody wins so you're saying the power struggle phase is 10 to 15 years? No, the power struggle phase could as as short as it takes for you to learn skills. The transition period of six months to a year until you realize you're in trouble and find help is all is maximum necessary. But because people don't have the skills, it gets prolonged and it becomes torturous until people give up.

So how do we make it through? You have to learn how to, how to, you know, what I find is most couples do not know how to talk together and that what they do with conversation is, you know, just makes it worse. So, so what we teach when when we have different classes, the short version is we teach three secrets to falling in love forever. The first secret is what we told you about what happens over a lifetime. and your partner are going to go through changes whether you want it or not, who you are when you're 40 is different than who you are when you're 20. And if you recognize that that's not a personal thing, your partner is not behaving just because they want to be mean and cruel to you. They're doing that goes, that's their natural. That's what happens in life. We're changing,

we're changing. And so that's one secret to see the big picture. Don't expect a smooth ride and romantic relationship. It's not designed to be a smooth ride. It's designed to have that passion and intensity. You have security, but you also have to have mystery. So that's the first secret. So now the second secret that we teach is what Dr. Barbara referred to is how we listen to each other. So we teach a secret that we call listening without interrupting. You have to really listen to your partner. If, if when you're listening, you're planning what you're going to say, you're going to argue with them and say, okay, as soon as they stop talking, I'm going to tell them this, this, and this, and I'm going to win the argument. You're not really listening.

You have to really listen to them like you're trying to understand this person who's so different than you. How do they see the world? Why do they feel that way? How come they don't see it the way I see it. That's really listening to them trying to. Can I just interrupt real quick? I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Oh, you're funny. I'm that. I just had a heart attack. I'm kidding. I'm sorry. I didn't. That's very funny. That's good. Can I say so Michael's abstracting what we teach? But we actually put couples through through drills, how to do it. We hold their hand and teach them how to do it because to apply, it sounds so simple when Michael talks. But to apply it is hard. It takes a lot of self-discipline.

And we add another layer to that because a lot of what we feel strongly about in life comes from our childhoods. And we teach couples how to share what injuries, what perceptions of hurt they have from their childhood that makes what they want so important to them that they're willing to fight for it. And it creates a different partnership when you understand where these strong feelings come from from your partner and even from yourself, that they're not random, you know, aggravating positions, but it comes from deep feelings from the past. And so, and it creates

a partnership where you, you come to really give and receive from each other in a very beautiful way. Right. So for instance, Barbara has a history when she was two years old. She lost her natural father in a divorce and she really essentially never saw him again and so she has this fear that's sort of like irrational from my point of view and and she she wants to make sure if i go away that i call her and tell her i'm not dead yet i'm still alive you know i go i'm busy but now i understand now that she's not doing it to torture me or because she doesn't trust me She's doing because this is her fear from early childhood. So I understand that she asked nicely, please, no.

So then I understand it. It changes the whole interaction. And I have my own things from childhood. My mother would yell a lot. And I hate criticism. So Barbara has to be really, really, really sensitive to saying something that I could interpret as criticism, because then I might just fall apart emotionally.

So she's very sensitive to that. And that's just my stuff. So we all have different things. We teach couples how to identify what it is their sensitive spots are. So they can communicate what they need at those times. Really, it really creates a partnership around working together. Is it a fair expectation within marriage to assume, believe, or think that your spouse is capable of, healing from childhood traumas or things that you just talked about within your marriage?

Or is it an expectation of, I need to learn those and forever act accordingly because of them? I think you both have to collaborate in the process of healing. The person who has injuries has to be open to connecting the dots and understanding that it comes from the past. It doesn't come from your partner. and expressing yourself in a way that can be heard in a comfortably. And then the partner who is giving the new behavior, you know, you collaborate, you work together. It's not like your partner just heals you and you're passive.

But it's a true partnership where you're not just growing your lives externally, but you're growing internally by working together. And I would add that my job, is not to insist that Barbara heals her past. And until you heal the past, I don't want any discussion about it. No, my attitude is whatever I can do to make things easier for her,

that it makes her happy, I will try to do that. I don't always say yes. Sometimes I can't. Sometimes I have to negotiate. But I have to know that my job is to love her so much that she feels, taken care of and she has all these specific requests and make her happy and they don't make

sense to me and i have to accept that they may never make sense to me except i understand that's her journey of growing and developing and that's what happened when she was two those are not simple things to get over and that's my job is to accept her and love her as she is and when i can cooperate her request and i do that that's that's our job with her partner and it's reciprocated that's so powerful and you've mentioned the word mystery several times which I feel like could be applied to both like individual ambitions and what I want versus what you want but also kind of our individual wounds and like the mystery kind of behind that and it's it's kind of a double-edged sword because on the one hand it's that it's the mystery that can be so frustrating

where I'm like I don't understand this about you Sean but it's also the it's also the thrill of it as you mentioned earlier, where it's like, if you approach the mystery with the right perspective, it can be the best part about the relationship because you're dealing with another individual, which, you know, like parenting has shown me, it's a joy to watch someone pursue their own life and like let them stumble every now and then and, you know, let them figure it out. But I'm, my dumb joke earlier derailed us, Dr. Michael. So I think you're on your way to the third bullet point there after the no interruption.

Right. Okay. That's perfect timing because the third, the third secret is that don't expect that your partner will naturally and intuitively know what it is you desire because who you are now is different than who you were when you first met. And whatever their desires are, they have their desires and you have your desires. And so you have to learn the skill of making requests of each other. But it has to be nicely that you make a request. So you have to say, when you, when you talk to me, I want you to have a tone of voice that's gentle and soothing. And I want you to smile when you make a request. And I want you to feel, look like you're angry about whatever it is.

So that's what she has to do, what she makes a request to me. And that would make you really have to. That would make me really happy, yes. Thank you very much. Fine, I can do that. She must clean out the garage. She likes neatness. I said, all right, well, it's very important she asked nicely about that.

Is there not frustration that could be stemmed from that though? So say Sean asked me to request things off her and I smile and say to a nice tone. But then, you know, I fall back into my normal habits of requesting maybe offhandedly and I'm not looking at her in the eye. looking at her in the eye and I'm definitely not smiling and then she's like hey not only did you not honor my request you didn't even request it in the right way so how do you navigate that well you know if when your relationship is going well there's enough goodwill that you that your response can be said in a different way and so all you have to say is you know just like i said to michael would it really make you happy um instead of instead of um complaining that he's saying it in a rough way

you know again you want to you want to do as much as you can to accommodate the request that you know about so if you have a you know things are going well there's a certain um wealth of goodwill that can allow you to make that correction simply if there's not enough goodwill and that tone of voice or that um the choice of words feels edgy and and critical um you just ask for clarification one of you only one of you has to state you conscious for the relationship to stay on track. If you start reacting because you're sensitive, then you both go down. And that's, you know, then you have to repair it. And it's a much, it gets more complicated. What do you mean by stay conscious? You want to, you want to be conscious of what a positive cycle is, of creating a conversation that is, has a good outcome. And so if one of you is cranky and the other partner, is aware that they're cranky. The partner who's aware can keep it floating in a positive way,

even if it starts out cranky. If you're both cranky, you go down for the count and you have to resuscitate the relationship in the next bunch of hours or days because you've both lost with each other. You want to win with each other as much as possible. And that means listening. And if you don't like the request,

or say the request isn't a bad, is in a negative form or you don't like the request, you can, you can negotiate it. You can say, I'm happy to do that. Can you, is it possible? Can you really, it really work for me if you could say that in a positive way. You can recover if you're conscious. But if you're, if your energy is low or you feel cranky about other things and you react in a negative way, you're both negative and the relationship feels out of sorts until you, you know, wake up and rebuild it. cover it. Dr. Barbara, you alluded before the interview to men and women being different. And I feel like especially in a situation like that, naturally the response might be different. How do those

different, like what are those differences and how do people, how would you suggest people navigate them? So in the world in the world of being conscious, I don't think we're different. You know, each of us has the responsibility of being aware of the relationship and being aware of what one's goal is. and recovering from a negative moment, the differences I'm talking about is developmental. If you're a couple that have come together because you have great affinities and you're kind of in the same place when you start, what happens, I think I've already mentioned this, the partner who is the domestic partner, whether it's male or female, stays in a mentality of bonding and adaptability because that's what parenting is mothering is

about or parenting is about. It's being responsive to the needs of others. The partner who goes out in the world and has goals and has to take responsibility for creating a business or making a successful career, they become strategic and focused on accomplishing goals. And so you find that the partner who's domestic is in their right brain, they're in their heart, the partner whose career-oriented is in their head. And that's a collision course for a couple. Because those are different conversations, being in your heart and being in your head. And a couple leader needs to understand that. And if they're very, very mature and self-discipline, they can overcome that just out of self-discipline, but it's important for a couple to understand that the woman,

the domestic partner and the working partner needs to develop the opposite, the heart or the mind aspects so that their conversations can be integrated and balanced, heart and mind. And, you know, we do that by intention through growing people, through skills. Because once you integrate your heart and your mind, the world looks different to you. When you're living in your mind and you're being strategic and goal-oriented,

you have like half a pie. You don't realize it. If you're in your heart and you're bonding and accommodating to other people's needs, you're in a different half of the pie. And so it's much harder to bridge that gap. And couples feel that and they feel disconnected and it's a hard time for a couple.

And we're here to say, we're here to say you can grow through that and grow together um i feel like for the most part every couple we've gotten to interview that has has gotten through the hard times and had a successful quote unquote marriage has said similar things in a in a broad sense of marriage is very hard and relationships are very hard and you have to work through them and it takes work but i feel like the general um publicity that marriages and relationships get is if it's not easy then it's not meant to be and i feel like people shine such a light on divorce and you hear all of these people in the news saying well he just wasn't my person or she just wasn't my person or we were different people

why do you think that is and why do you think especially the up-and-coming generation is so hooked on this idea of if it's not easy between us, it must not be worth the effort. Right. Well, you know, I would say several things. One, the nature of marriage in today's world is different than it was 150 years ago. So marriage prior to 150 years ago, for a thousand years before that, very clearly defined roles between men and women. Women only started working in World War two when the men were off fighting. We needed someone to work in the factories. Women weren't working prior to that.

I mean, the vast majority of women before World War II, they weren't working. So now we have both men and women are working so that the quality of the marriage relationship is just very different. You didn't divorce 150 years ago because that wasn't done. Because you each had your thing. If your husband had a job,

the money home and the wife was taking care of the kids that's that was enough all the other stuff we're talking about icing on the cake you know that so now we want a lot more than that and we expect a lot more than that one of the things we write in our book is stories about fairy tales and and these fairy tales are either hundreds of years old or the one about psyche and eros Scyche and Cupid, few thousand years old. But they described this process. So the story in short between Psyche and Eros, Psyche was a goddess, she came back to Earth to become a human being.

And she was so beautiful and no one would marry her because she was so beautiful. Then a Cupid or Eros, as he's known in the Greek version, he was going to shoot an arrow into her and have her fall in love with a monster because that's what her mother, the goddess Aphrodite wanted. And he saw how beautiful she was and he actually scratched himself on his own arrow and he fell in love with you with the psyche. So here he is, he makes a deal with psych and says, I want to marry you. I want you to come live with me, but you can never see my face because I'm a god. He can the right. So you can only be with him at at nighttime when it was completely dark.

And she did that for some period of time. Isn't that just like a man who doesn't want to share his insides? Right. You can only see him in the dark. She loved being with him. They were in love, but she had a desire to look at him. So she came with a little light, a little candle and looked at him at night while he was sleeping and saw how beautiful he was. And he was so beautiful, it shocked her,

because she didn't know who she was. She dripped some of the oil on him. He woke up and he said, you cheated. And he got up and left and went back to his mother psyche. I mean, he went back to his mother, Aphrodite. So here she is all alone. And then she goes through this long process of trying to get back, asking everybody,

how do I get back with my lover? And she has to go through these trials, which takes so much of her to develop her personality, makes it very impossible things that she does. And she finally goes through the trials, and I won't go into the details. And then she can get back to be with her love. So the ancients knew that there is a journey

in relationship of growing. And then at the end, you see how Eros has to grow too. He has to separate from his mother and stand on his own two feet. And so each the man and the woman both have a journey of individuation and development. And that's part of the fruits of a good marriage. And that our society doesn't see that it's worth doing that is because we're myopic. We don't have a vision anymore.

And the purpose of life is to grow and develop oneself. There is an exception, though. If you're married to someone who's addicted to any kind of drug or substance, there is no growth. There's no possibility of growth because drugs, you know, sideline you from the growth process. Otherwise, your partnership has the potential to grow the distance. It's a matter of being committed to doing that. And hopefully, you know, the society will wake up that what we're doing for our children

in choosing the easy way out as though it's easy. It's really not easy. It's just very short-sighted. And what we can add is that the whole purpose of life is not that it be easy. easy you don't have children because you want an easy life you have children why do you want children for it's such a difficult process i mean you love them when they're one and two but to love them when they're 13 and 14 oh my goodness they're so problematic but but having children makes you grow so much and then when you see your children having children as we have seven grandchildren

the quality of love is so much more intense than what you could have imagined when you were 13 or 14. You feel this great love and you love your grandchildren and you see their potential and it's just not the whole process of life is designed to have you grow and develop and it's not designed to be a smooth ride. So you guys have obviously committed a lot of your life in several different ways to, to marriage, both in your personal life, having been married for 50 years, you've written a book, the marriage map, and together you've guided over 30,000 clients to successful marriages. We're speaking around the issue, but why is marriage worth it? Like, why? Well, do you want to stay in the consciousness of a 18-year-old?

you're old, your whole life? I do not. It's limited. It is what it is. It has its value, but it's limited. If you have a partner who knows you as almost as well as you know yourself and you have constant feedback, your partner is the one person in your life who, by circumstance and commitment, will tell you the truth.

Most people don't tell you the truth, but you get feedback like you can't get any place it's the best psychotherapy there is and so you have a you have a continuous self-improvement program over a lifetime to grow yourself and otherwise you're staying in the same place all the time doing the same old things and making the same mistakes and having the same results dude freaking preach doctor okay so here's my thing our culture there's like so many hype like life coaches motivational like self-improvement people where it's like yo wake up and you take an ice bath and then you go work out and then read my book and it'll be better. I'm like, no, that's not how you get better.

If you're married, bro, you're going to be, it's the best self-improvement class that there is. Because this chick doesn't let me get away with anything. I think that's because she believes in you and she wants great things through both of you. And that's the nature of, you know, being in love and being coupled. And, you know, and really a principle in life is to. tell the truth and learn how to tell the truth. So it's not mean. And, you know, you have a lifelong program.

It's phenomenal. In writing your book together, the marriage map, what was the biggest thing you learned about yourself? Because I feel like forever within marriage, you're constantly learning and growing. What did you guys learn about each other? Well, that book was written quite a while ago. We have a new book out called Ageless Love. So, well, I think we learned that particular book, I think we learned how well we can work together,

how much we enjoy thinking together. And that, you know, we are, we have overlapping goals in life. And one is to help sponsor this kind of development among our, our population so that we're we need to grow wisdom in our culture. We're seriously lacking wisdom. And so I would add that the Marriage Mac book, we talk very personally about our growth journey, Barbara and I. And we had to think out very, very much how that journey is reflected in the change.

and the changes that we talked about when you go close to those things you love and feeling more independent. And so I went through my understanding of what happened, how to write it down. And Barbara then went through her understanding and had to write it down. And it was a lot of interesting things like Barbara had a friend that she loved very, very much, and that was her best friend. And she passed away. Barbara must have been like 50 years old and something like that. maybe 55 something like that and and and she realized that after her best friend passed away then she had to rely on me to be her best friend and that that that took us to a deeper level of interacting with each other where then she relied on me to be her best friend and and to share

all the personal stuff and that pressed me to be able to share very personally and that's kind of thing we wrote down in this book the marriage map so that people people can see the map of marriage, what happens over a lifetime, and how each of you will change. And so that was a very personal thing that was very deep for us. It's important to reflect, you know, and part of being in the post-industrial age is that we have time to reflect. In a different era, there's, you know, there's less time. So we, you know, you want to share deeply with each other. I would love to hear more about Agus Love, specifically your newest book.

But maybe a good jumping off point would be. So Dr. Michael, you are in the anti-aging medicine world. Dr. Barbara, you have this deep training in marriage and family counseling. How do those two mesh? What's the correlation there? Well, I think the most important factor, and we go into it in some detail in the book, ageless love is that the research on longevity is very surprising. This is like a 70-plus-year-old study from Harvard on the longevity factors for men who went to Harvard and for men who grew up in the local poorer section of Boston. And what they found was that in both groups, the most important factor in longevity after the age of 50 is the quality of your personal

relationships wow my goodness so here you are if you're an anti-aging doctor and you're not working up with your patients to improve the quality of that personal relationship you're ignoring the big elephant in the room you've got to deal with that so i do all kind of things to keep people youthful by identical hormones all kinds of vitamins nutrients all kinds of things that are really critical for longevity. But you've got to also work on the quality of your personal relationships. Sell me on anti-aging. I'm curious. Why is that, why is that important to you? Like on the first glance, like, oh, anti-aging, okay. And then some people have the approach of like, when you get to be 45, 55, 65 years old, you're going to be really

interested in that. So the hormones change. for women it's very quick you're somewhere between 45 and 55 years old and you go into menopause within a period of a year your hormones drop dramatically less estrogen progesterone testosterone and many other hormones and and that drop creates poor sleeping irritability brain fog not sleeping good decreased libido less muscle stamina endurance you feel old It's all reversible with natural biological hormones. You feel 10 years younger quickly. I do it all the time.

Men are little different because for men, their testosterone doesn't drop dramatically. When you're 40 years old, it begins to drop, 50 less, 60 less, 70, much less. So it's a gradual drop for testosterone for men, but men will feel when they're 55, 65, they'll feel, oh, I feel old, I try to exercise, and I just can't build muscle, and I'm tired,

and my brain is not as clear, enthusiastic, and my libido is not functioning. That happens to men, and when we replace the testosterone from men, they live longer and healthier than if they do nothing, and they feel 10, 20 years younger. So this reflects your energy, your vitality, and your sexual function. You need all of that to have a hot relationship. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's such a important part of enjoying life. And to maintain mystery and passion in a romantic relationship, you need this youthfulness. Otherwise, it just becomes like a brother-sister relationship. How do you, too, after 50 years, you know the testosterone is very much physical there's also the you know the the mental alertness that you alluded to but from a relationship standpoint how do you cultivate this war of curiosity in each other after 50 years of knowing one another we have great hobbies together we're we're

competitive ballroom dancers we compete all over the country that's incredible and you know there's excitement about dancing in the ballroom and we have other hobbies together. We enjoy meditation and we have adventures with our grandchildren, our families. And Michael does so many exciting things. I'm so proud of him and I'm not part of that. I just watch him and I'm thrilled and excited about who he is. He's such a spectacular man. I press, I press Barbara to write books with me left by herself.

she would just sit and read and read and read writing is like oh my gosh it's got a got to really be right out there but i press her the right books if she doesn't write them i write them by myself and then she says this is terrible let me let me help you here and she helps me to write the book and so but that creates the mystery and passion because we're doing these things that we love doing um we have a dance show that we're going to perform um another month for our friends and family, and we talk about all the things we talk about here, but we do it with music and we dance to it, and we tell stories. So it's like a whole production. And so we have a lot of fun, and that creates that passion because we're not sitting and watching television.

When we give courses, at the end of the course, we bring our couples to the dance studio. We bring our dance coach and they have a lesson. What the thing about ballroom dancing, that's really fascinating is that it replicates the male and female roles. And it makes it juicy and exciting. So in ballroom, the man has to lead and take care of the direction. The woman has to follow the man and extend the movements and be the flower where the man's the stem. So both have to be strong and on your standing on feet, but you have different roles and you learn, you learn, okay, I got to let the man do timing and direction and I'm going to just float and extend all those movements. So each have your own

roles. And so it teaches you. And they're both dynamic. They're both dynamic roles. So no one's a slouch. No one's there. You're not a caboose on the train. You're both doing, you know, bringing all of your energy. But your roles are somewhat different. And it's, it's a, it's a juicy reminder that we're, we're a man and a woman. We're not just the same. Have you ever heard of the show Dancing with the Stars? Because I know someone who won it. Joey, if you know someone, we'd love to be on that show. You know, Sean has had pretty good success on that. All right.

So we're ready to go on the show. Okay. I'll let him know. I'll let him know. It's a phenomenal show. It was a lot of fun. Our dance production was, was choreographed by Jonathan Roberts. Oh, yeah.

Oh, my gosh. You know, he helped produce our message. Yeah, he was on my season as well. He's very sweet. He's a great guy. Nice. Okay, so I want to ask your personal advice on two subjects. One, talk. We're in the parenting phase, young kids.

We've got two and a half year old, 10-month-old. What advice do you have for us there? And then the second topic would be working with your spouse. But let's start with parenting. We have a course specifically about parenting, and we teach couples how to parent together, which means where your children, or young, but you need to come together and really define the rules. What's, what, what's really important? So your message is the same and you deliberate the same. So your children don't get a

better deal with either one of you. They don't learn to manipulate. And that you're, you know, you're consistent over time. And you shouldn't have more than, well, your kids are really young at, even when they're older, there shouldn't be more than 10 rules. And when they're older, a short list of chores. and everything that you want from your children is time-framed and there's accountability. So you show up and nothing happens in their world until they do what you want to do. And that's how you teach them how to be responsible, how to keep their word. And that's what keeps the two of you working together and not divided. You don't want your children making special deals with either one of you.

First of all, it's manipulative. And second of all, it divides you as a team. And I would add that it's very important to enforce the rules gently, but firmly, particularly when they're in the two-year age. Because by a time, therefore, they learn to remember and fight about things. It's much harder to correct bad behavior in a four or five-year-old who remembers that this is the way they want it. when you correct them when they're two, they don't even remember what happened when they're three. So you want to set the rules and boundaries when they're young and you both will sit together and just say, here's the rules for the household. We have bedtime. We have how they eat. This is when

they get their clothes. They have to pick them up and put them away and they have to handle the, you know, the cleanups. You teach them what it is. And it's just a just a thing and automatic thing. The kids do whatever you want they'll object a little bit but once they learn that they have to do it then then it happens it's automatic so you're doing great and and and you follow that advice we have a series of five um video courses that are like three three 20 minute videos with homework that we teach you about parenting and then we have four other things for a relationship And they cost like $37 for a course. And people can get them online.

They're really, really helpful. And they talk about these very practical things. Each course is designed to be practical for the couple. If you invest in making your rules and being consistent, you teach your kids, there's no point in resisting. It makes your life easier. It makes their life clear. And everyone wins.

Right. and arguing arguing is not allowed you never argue with your children once you argue with your children you get given away all your power and you you you don't argue with a fly you don't argue with an aunt you're in it's it's you're in control with your children you just set the rules nicely firmly say nevertheless This is the rule of the house. Nevertheless, bedtime is 8 a, 8 p.m. Yeah.

But mom, I want to stand. Nevertheless, bedtime is 8 p.m. Go to bed. And you stand firm with that, whether it's mom talking or dad talking. There's no better deal in the house. So you clearly have a long history of working together with the books, with the courses. How have you done so successfully? Well, we, you know, we faced the same challenges.

everybody faces. And we've learned out of our mistakes. We've learned, you know, I have two children and I, and they're wonderful, they're bright and they're charming. And when I was raising my children, it was really hard to say no. And so I've made every mistake possible. And I had to I had to learn to correct my mistakes. And it's humbling, but it's, you know, it has taught me that you can, out of good intentions and love, you can make life harder for everybody. So to answer your question about how do we work together? So we work together really well now because we know how not to work together.

So one way that we don't work together is to try to sit on the same computer and give someone advice. So only until Barbara asks me, oh, can you help me to do this? Then I come by and I fix her little thing because she likes to do things her way on the computer and whatever it is. And so she has her own business within the medical office that I run. She has her room. She's her patients. and I wish you would ask me for more advice, but sometimes she does,

because she runs the business the way she runs. I wouldn't run the business the way she runs it, but that's the way she runs it. So I just accept that. And we have to appreciate when you look at your partner and you see them from afar, Barbara is such a great counselor. She is incredibly good.

And it's so much fun to see her, in that role. And I say, wow, isn't that great? But I know in other roles where she's not the great counselor, where, you know, she's worried about losing something because she lost a father when she's two, and now she's gone into that role. And I just see the different pieces of her. And so, but just accepting each other. And then you can see how great they are in so many ways. And then, you know, there's other ways where they, you know, they have their stuff. So we have our separate domains. and we respect each other. And then we have projects.

We come together in, and we have different skills, and so we do different things that contribute to the projects. And we choose them, well, what excites us we do together, and what is separate, we do separately. And the balance is great. Last question from me, and then we can close. Dr. Barbara, not only are you a licensed therapist, but you also have a background in theology and religion.

I'm curious what the overlap is there. How are those integrated? Well, I enjoyed those years being in a seminary. My exploration into the foundation of our civilization, the ancient foundation of our civilization contains wisdom, that our secular society has largely forgotten, but even the stories, old stories of what it means to be, you know, what it means to grow and become a mature and wise person, they're embedded in all of our ancient stories. We call it religion, but it's really the repository of our culture's wisdom. And that gave me an orientation about what's important in life. And from there, there I saw the dynamics of relationships. It's so important to have healthy relationships.

That's, you know, much of our biblical heritage is about the quality of relationships, what works and what doesn't work. And so I feel like I have a kind of deep foundational knowledge about what life is from studying religion and historical reflections, whether it's the Greek tradition or the Hebrew tradition or the Christian tradition, it's all wisdom. And it helps me, it helps me understand

what's important and what's not. Wow. I think I grunted more in this episode because of all the good things that were said than in any other episode. So, so thank you for that. And as Dr. Michael and Dr. Barbara mentioned, they recently released another book called Agis Love. We'll link the information down below as well as other information about these two but i can't thank you guys enough for joining us um maybe we'll see on the ballroom floor and thank you for um i i can mention that um if people are interested in in and and looking up some of our courses ageless lovequiz dot com that will will get your listeners to a website and they could take a little quiz and see which which challenges are the most intense for them and then they will have opportunity

to see what practical skills they can learn by going on that ages lovequiz.com we'll have to go take that right now there you have at a just lovequiz.com thank you both for your time and look forward to hopefully future conversations be a pleasure really we wish you love thank you thank you thank you