Girls Gotta Eat - What You Need to Know About Someone Before Committing feat. Lewis Howes

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

We are joined by author/podcaster/former pro athlete Lewis Howes to discuss trauma when it comes to dating, therapy, sex, and more. We dive into why we attract people with trauma, being on a healing journey while you're dating, the difference between coaching your partner and empowering them, the role of therapy in a relationship, holding off on sex when you first start dating someone, the problem with men not opening up, and the three things you need to know about someone before you enter into a relationship with them. Before Lewis join us, we're discussing the #1 rule of car shopping as a woman, the evolution of girls trips over time, and (another) LA move update. Enjoy! Follow Lewis on Instagram @lewishowes, check out The School of Greatness podcast, and order his new book The Greatness Mindset. Follow us @girlsgottaeatpodcast, Ashley @ashhess, and Rayna @rayna.greenberg. Visit our website for tour dates, merchandise, and more. Shop Vibes Only. Thank you to our partners this week: HelloFresh: Get 60% off + free shipping at hellofresh.com/gge60 and use code GGE60. Buffy: Get $20 off your order at buffy.co and enter promo code GGE. Blueland: Get 15% off your first order at blueland.com/gge. Babbel: Get up to 55% off your subscription at babbel.com/gge. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before you enter a committed relationship, like really asked the questions. I asked the craziest questions, so did she, before we got actually committed, and actually removed the sexual component from the dating experience, which I'd never done before. Interesting. of girls got to eat. Welcome back. Big week. If you're watching, we're wearing the merch for the city. I really went deep on the merch today. The best sweatshirt, which I have that sweatshirt, but I have it in New York. So I feel like we need to wear them together and be like how it started, how it's going. I'm wearing a hat. I bought an airport. I love it.

Amazing. And it is my moving week. Oh, my God. Ash. So the sixth today. And then if you're listening, and then the 10th Friday is when I'm moving to my new house. We are L.A. president. And then you just locked in your house.

Yeah, I was crying in the car. I'm a little teary-eyed. I'm just, I'm really excited. I feel like you and I have a lot on our plates. This has been a lot to juggle, the Airbns and moving and finding a new place and doing We get a car, which we're going to talk about, and also work and our tour and this wedding. You also do officiate the wedding, which happened last weekend, we'll talk about it later. But it's just, I mean, it's a lot.

Every day, I just have to remind myself, like, the people around you are smart. You have a support system. It's going to be okay. Take it a moment at a time. Even the house is on fire at all times. So I think I will be signing my lease today. If anything falls through, I'll let you guys know. But I think we're both residents now.

So we're wearing the march. We live here. All right. We'll continue this conversation. As of now, we are like, like, back from this whirlwind trip, which was a wedding in Jamaica, Bobby and Izzy. I officiated it. I mean, we're doing this day before we leave, so it all goes according to plan.

Allegedly, allegedly, I'm officiating it. And even though they're very obviously already married, I haven't seen people be that outright with, we already been married. We're married. Have fun coming down to this party. When you said that to me, like, washed over me. I have never seen someone so publicly be like, we're married. I had a call with them about the officiating and was like, can I bring this up?

Can I talk about how I'm just up here for show? You're like a show pony. You're like a Halloween free. Very already married. Yes. And it's funny because I am an ordained minister. Yes. So whatever.

Don't even use me for my ordainment, my credentials. But no. And then we were going to go to Miami. And we always love to go to Miami in like March this time of year or so. and then the shows. I'm assuming they were all incredible. Anything crazy. We'll talk about it next week. Yeah. Thank you guys for coming. The shows have been really, really fun, and we'll see you in Sacramento for our first Sacramento show ever in a couple weeks. And then we are going to Milwaukee and Minneapolis, and we basically have to fly to Milwaukee a day early. That's why I was Googling last night,

what to do in Milwaukee. Ashley sent me as Market. She's like, you're just going to spend all your time with this market. I love a market. I know. I'm going to have some cheese curds and some beer and you'll be at the market. I'll be the market. Well, I'm excited to what Milwaukee's all about. Isn't it in bridesmaids? That's where they lived. I have no clue. I randomly know that. I think that you're right. I'm always curious where a movie or TV show is supposed to take place. I always want to know. So I'm pretty sure they were in Milwaukee. But doesn't she like travel back and forth to Dougie's house in Chicago?

Can I make this up? Tessa, can you look this up? Milwaukee in Chicago? Dougie lives in Chicago. Click memory. Can I tell you what I thought of? I posted this on my Instagram. It's a picture of you and I at the Drew Barrymore show looking at each other and really speaking to each other without any words. And I thought of the speech, Helen's speech. And she goes, I feel like we can communicate with just a look. That is one of my favorite scenes of any movie ever where they like keep getting back up there. And then she like fakes Spanish and she's like, oh la, halloa say, hello.

She should be using Babel. Yeah. That was a scene that you were. watching, you're like, this is unbelievable. Like, how hard are they going to go? How much more? I know. I wonder how much is improvised. I don't know people get through scenes like that and they don't just, like, fall on the floor. Kristen Wigg is like the best.

I love that movie. I know. Well, we have such a great episode today. We're so excited about this guest. Rain has been trying to get him for a while. 6-4. I have been trying to get him for a while. But he's wonderful and has his very serious girlfriend and I respect their relationship.

I'm not going to make it weird. But yeah, we've wanted to have him. for a while. We've had all of his cronies on the show. We've had Matthew Hussey and Jay Shetty and Andrew Huberman. And I've seen him do those shows and them do his. And we've always just thought he was so well-spoken and wonderful. And he focuses a lot on trauma. And so we're going to talk about that with him today in his new book. Okay. Yeah. So I want to talk about this. Last night, we had a girl's dinner in which it was the four of us, me, you, Kate and Anushka. And we're like the core four, the LA squad. And we really came in hot with an agenda. We had the things we had to

discussed. We had to play on our entire spring and summer. And I left that dinner feeling like I left a productive business meeting. I felt like we just figured out the company's fiscal year or something. Like, I just felt like we got a lot done. Yes. We plan Coachella, your birthday, your move, Beyonce. Yeah. Yeah, we spend a lot of many concert tickets. But I'm excited. It's one of those times where I'm just like, I think about not doing these experiences. And I'm just like, this is what we work so hard for and so Yolo and I'm really excited for our first Coachella together. And it's so, like, we drive there. It's so easy. Like, it's, it used to just be, I mean, I don't care that much about the lineup. I'm just excited to go with all of our friends. But it just kind of seemed

more difficult in the past, you know, fly to wherever, drive to the desert. I don't know. So it was just, we just get to, like, road trip it. But I just have been thinking a lot about how vacations and even specifically girls trips evolve over time. This is not like a hot take. We get older, we make more money, we evolve. Our taste change. You have less energy. You have less energy. It just, I keep thinking about this with my college girlfriends who I said I went on a trip

with them last week. But like the way we used to rage, like these were my spring break friends. Like, we are in this beautiful house in La Jolla. We're going to nice dinners. Then we're coming home. We're all gathering on on the couch, having wine, catching up. Like my favorite thing to do. Like we're still having wine and catching up and laughing and playing who would you

rather with all of our exes and all that stuff. But like we used to be six girls to a hampton. And just three people would sleep in like a queen bed. Just chugging neon green drinks. It's like who can get on the bar and show their titties fast enough. Like I remember going to our first spring break, most of us all together in Key West. We were sophomores. And literally, I'm not kidding when I say six girls in a Hampton Inn hotel room.

Of course. Every trip I took. And that's why I was like sleeping out. I was like, I got to sleep somewhere else every night. That's why you're fucking dudes. That's what I met. I met that guy, the one that got away. But it just, it's so funny when you have, especially friend groups that long.

where you're like, way back in the day, we were just different people. And then even just planning these trips, like we're looking at like a Cabo trip. And I'm like, the one thing that will stay the same though in Cabo is Squid Row. You're going there at 18 and you're going there at 48. No matter what.

Our age. I will say, I feel like I've really waited people out. I have been 48 since I was 18. And I said this on the episode we did about like trips this summer that like I used to feel so much anxiety about going on big girls. because, like, I was never the person that wanted to be at the club until four in the morning. I like to be home at one.

I'm done. I don't like to be so fucked up. I'm staggering around. I'm slurring. Like, I can't hang. I'm not fun like that. It scares me. I don't like it.

And I have been a huge pussy about everything since I was 18. And finally, everybody has caught up. I'm so happy. All I've ever wanted was, like, a nice house and just like a chill dinner. And we just drink one. Everybody goes to bed at a reasonable hour. That's all I've ever wanted. it was to be 48. I was born 48.

Guys, we're not 48. I can't stress it up. I was just saying 18 to 48. We're definitely closer to the 38 range. But I... 28, right? Yeah, no, I'm totally like 27. Excited for this summer to turn 30. Yes, 30, 30, 30. Oh, my God. I'm forever 33. We know that. That's how I identify. But it's just funny because I feel your pain because I can't relate at all. No, you can't.

The harder, the better. We're blacking out before we go out. The more dudes I can find. the craziest stories I can come back with. Like, as much cheap alcohol, we can chug as many shots as we can rip. As much as, you know, I can pull my titties out. Like, it just is... Many comocasasas as you could funnel down your throat. You just really open it up so you can deep throat, like, strangers, dicks later. Like, I remember we would sometimes stop in Miami on the way to spring break if we went to, like, the Bahamas, or even when we went to Key West.

And one time we stopped in Miami, we were in Coconut Grove, which has changed a lot. And there was this dive bar called Sandbar. And it was Alex's, my good friends, 21st. Her birthday was in March, so it always kind of kicked off spring break. And we went to this bar. We both got kicked out. I think one of us was puky and one of us was just acting insane. And my cousin, Scott, who, like, is from my family in Miami, he was like, I've never seen

anyone get kicked out of there ever. They don't kick people out of that bar. That is the diviest, dirtiest, most debauchrous bar. And you girls got kicked out. That is so crazy. It's a badge of honor. To be like the most fucked up of the people that are there to just get blacked out and Fuck.

How do you even be that person? How do you get to the top level? I think I showed you a picture. One of the girls was looking through a scrapbook, and it's a picture of me passed out in a bush. I think I just fell. I wasn't like lost, but I had one shoe off, Abercrombie jeans skirt up around my waist. Yeah. Von Dutch hat.

Von Dutch hat. That is so funny. Anyway. See, you can hang. That was never me. I've been waiting everybody else to stop being like that. I was never the mom. Like, I was never like, you know me.

me. I'm the most go with the flow. Like, even if I have to be miserable, I'll fucking do it. But like, I have really waited you all out. So, listen, I support you if you want to take a nap in a bush with a Von Dutch hat. I do. It's your birthday. You go big. Okay. Cars. I've been meaning to discuss this with you. I'm very excited. So I've never owned a car, ever. I don't know anything about it. My dad bought me a Chevy Cavalier when I was in college. So I had like a little, like, shitty car. But I'm shopping for my first car and you said something to me, and I was like, how true is this? I was like, I was like, I'm. I'm looking for cars and you were like, don't tell any man you're looking for a car.

Don't tell any man you're looking to buy a car unless you want to be smothered, unless you want them to be a permanent fixture in your life. Men are obsessed with buying cars. They think they're so good at it. They could have never bought a car in their life. They don't even know how to change a tire. And they think they're going to roll in. They're going to pick out the perfect car.

They're going to wheel and deal. They're going to leave you there with the car of your dreams. you're going to be forever indebted to them. They love it. I feel like telling a guy, I'm looking to buy a car casually. Do you want to help? It's like telling a girl, I have the hottest gossip. We have to meet in person.

Can you go to brunch? Like, we have a carnal desire. Like, I swear, and I'm not saying, like, every guy. It's every guy. Like, I can't believe how right you were. You and I, like, did this Valentine's Day show. I was dropping you off at your car. And I just, like, casually was like, I'm going to look into cars.

And you were like, do not tell a man that you are looking for a car. And I was like, I don't even know what she's talking about because I have never bought a car. I'm not part of the culture. I mean, your dad knows so much about cars. Your brother, you guys are like a car family. Like your job is always to identify the Uber. I know nothing about cars. So I do need to be manslaughter into a little bit.

Totally. I don't know anything about this. It's a huge first purchase for me. So I had no idea like how much of a thing this was. So I decided on Saturday that I was going to go car shopping. I was like, I have a whole day. I'm by myself. I just go test drive some cars.

I don't know anything about it. So I texted Jeremy and I said, I'm thinking about going to test drive this car. I just wanted some feedback. He called me. I can't tell you how crazy this is. This has been my best friend for seven years. He has never called me. Not one phone call in seven years.

I have called him like three other times in extreme duress. This is the only time. We talked on the phone for 45 minutes. He was saying all kinds of words like financing, leasing. And I was asking him all these questions about like, what does this mean? What does this mean? He's like giving me a list of stuff. He could not disseminate the information fast enough.

He was choking on it as it was coming out of his mouth. And Jeremy's a New Yorker. Never. He owed an out of car. What did I say? They never have had to own it. They can't change a tire. And they are going to blanket you in unsolicited advice.

Oh, you cannot escape it. Once you start, you can't stop that train. It's bananas. Then I texted Rob. No. Well, okay. Because I was thinking like, my dad, my brother, Rob, like, those are people that are absolutely going to be involved in my carbine journey,

but those are also people that I feel comfortable being like, I got it from here, I'm an adult, I've really appreciated you getting me to this point, I'm going to take it from here. So if you have a guy in your life and you don't feel comfortable saying, I'll take it from here, thank you, don't talk to them about your car buying journey. I texted Rob, I came to this dealership to look at some cars. This guy has said 19 words to me. I don't understand any of them.

Rob said, immediately, I will be in L.A. after this wedding. I will take you car shopping, we will handle it. No, it's also... Immediately. They love it. Like, they love it. And I love that. You know, like, Kate has been like, Jay, we'll do whatever you need.

He'll take you car shopping. He'll do this. Like, they want to be involved. I mean, they want to be helpful, but they really get off on it. I mean, to the point, he goes, you should test drive a Porsche. There's a Mercedes dealership down the street. You should stop there, too, and drive that, too. He's listing up dealerships I should go to.

He's so into it. I talked to another guy that we are friends with, and I'm telling him this weekend, what kind of car I wanted to buy. And he's like, I don't really see you in that kind of car. And he was like, I feel like it's really sexy when a girl's in like a smaller car. And he's pulling up sports cars these things that I should get. Like, everybody has so much of an opinion. It's insane.

I know. You tell a woman that you're buying a car and they're just like, cool, let me know what you're thinking. Women have no follow-up questions. I'm interested. I mean, my dad is that's his whole personality is cars. No, he has a lot of other things going for him. But Matt and my dad, car people, I've always been super into cars. I mean, I had my same car, my Xtera, like,

since college. And then I was going to buy a car and my dad and I went around and we went to a few different dealerships. And so talked to a bunch of different people. I mean, I've been to so many car dealerships in my life. But then I never ended up doing it. I was like, I'll just keep the Xtera. So that was when I was in Atlanta. And then I obviously moved to New York, didn't need a car. The Xtera somehow kept running. And so now I'm at a place where I want to buy a car. And it's funny, though, like, even this guy, like, I barely know, you know, like a guy who's like DMs me and stuff. And like, we met him one time at a show in person, but he, like, works for Tesla, so he's just, like, get a Tesla and do this and do that.

I was like, I'm not getting a Tesla for the record. I'm not doing it. Stop telling me to buy Tesla. People here buy a Tesla. I'm not doing it. I don't like Elon Musk. I'm sure they're great. Everybody has one.

I would be that bitch that can't come because I didn't charge my car. I know gas prices are high. I'm going to pay him. I cannot be held accountable to charge my car. Yeah, you never said that you wanted a Tesla. Rob's like, go test drop a Porsche. A Porsche? I'm not buying a Porsche.

He's like, just go do it because he wants you just like think about it. Like, men love to talk about this so much. I had no idea. I had no idea this was a thing. Like, I've never had so many men disseminate so much information. Like, our other friends talking about, like, what am I going to wear to go, like, drive these cars? I will say, if you're interested in a guy, you want to talk to him, you want to spend the afternoon with him, tell him you want to buy a car. 100%.

He might not like you. He might just want to go car shopping. But if you feel like you want an inn, this is your. you're in. This is such. And if a guy doesn't bite, I would question his manhood. Yeah.

Or he really hates you. Or he really has the ick on you. This is such a way. Like, if you really, if you're like, does this guy have any interest in me? Say I'm thinking about going car shopping.

If he says a hard no, you guys, forget it. That guy's never going to fuck you. He can't stand you. This has just been like the funniest journey. Like, there have been so many men

that just are dying to talk. Wardrobe. What am I going to Where to buy the car. Well, I've been thinking about my look for my first. Bought a car pick. You already have? No, I'm just been thinking about how the pick's going to look, like the keys.

You're planning like, oh, that's so cute. No, I think it's like the opposite, honestly. Like, you see so many guys with, like, car selfies and you're like, oh, it is like really hot. I'm going to be me. When you see a girl do it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Isn't it? Like, I think, like, women don't do it a lot.

It's not like they're trying to flex because they think more guys are going to date them because they have money. It's the opposite. Well, we'll keep you guys posted. I know what I want. I'm probably going to get it, but I don't want to put it out there because just I'll be getting on solicited advice. I don't need it. I'm going to have it bought so no one can say a shit to me because people have such strong opinions. I mean, I grew up my whole life. My dad, I mean, he owned an auto parts supplier for foreign cars. So he was so anti-American cars. He thought they were shit. And then he started to come around and he was like American companies do make good trucks. I mean, he has an F-150. Matt has a RAM, not to be confused with Dodge because Dodge and Ram split up. not the same company. I found that out from Ashley's family. And so it's just like all the things my dad said to me my whole life are like ingrained in my brain from cars. You know, like, then I thought all American cars were terrible. And then I had to kind of like shift my mindset. You know, it's just funny how like the stuff your parents tell you becomes fact. Yeah, I won't drink a Coke. I'll never let a Coke inside of my body. It's diet Coke only. And absolutely not Pepsi. It's just like, that's what my dad

told me when I was four. And that's just like how I've lived my whole life. What? It was just too, just we don't drink Coke in this family. We drink Diet. Diet Coke. Oh. We just, we only drink diet. Absolutely not Pepsi. But my dad was just like, it's gross. And I was like, sure. And that's how I lived my life, my whole life. I'm wondering if I should ask your dad about this or absolutely not. Please ask my dad anything about cars. I mean, that's your guy. And he's not going to blow you up. You know, he's not going to give you a bunch of unsolicited advice. He'll just like shoot you straight. But he's just, I mean, my dad's like a car collector and he goes in phases. You know, he had this like land rover phase. He bought all these old like land rovers and fixed him up and resold them. And right now he's in this like really cool M. convertible and he's had this really old Porsche 9-11 that he redid when we were in high school. And so he's just, he's the guy. I mean, it is the type of advice. It is solicited advice. I do want it.

It's such a big purchase and I've never done it. And like, I really did realize how far Adam Lai League I was when I was at the dealership because he was like, well, we have these hybrid models, we sports packages. I mean, everything he said to me, I had no idea what he meant. Right. Because that's what like Rob and my dad and Matt would like, you know, I know what kind of car I want, but I don't know exactly which package to get. And Rob's so good at knowing, like, the same type of cars that, like, they all make them the same place.

They just kind of come off the line and they're different. You know, like, this one's going to be speedier. This one's going to be this. This one's going to be that. And, you know, don't get me started on fucking cars that are the exact same car. And then people just slap a name on it, like, Lexus. I mean, it's pretty crazy to me. Yeah.

That's a Camry. I mean, I'm driving a Ford Edge right now. I'm like, I really love it. And I mean, that's the same as a Jeep Compass. They're like the same size. And I love those cars. And, like, I pulled up next to, like, a love. luxury SUV, and I was like, this is the same car. And I love the interior of my car. I love it.

Yeah. I love the navigation system. Maybe I'll just buy the Fort Edge. I love a Fort Edge. People would always ask me, like, what's your dream car if you have, like, fuck you money, you know? And I'm like, it is the most obnoxious Lambo you've ever seen. It's bright purple. The butterfly doors come up. Like, I just think that's my true calling. Or it's like something really, like, I don't want something like too big. I don't like a gas guzzler, but that's what it would be. It would be like something a rapper is going to drive. I think that's so cool that like our vibes are so different.

You want this like very hot, sexy girl car. You want like, fuck you money car. I want a refurbished Bronco. God, I think it's so cute to think about us driving on the street next to each other and like your like hot-ass sports car. And like, I mean, don't get me wrong. Refurbished Broncos for like $250,000 cars. Like they're really, it's like fuck you money cars and I'm obsessed with them.

Listen, if anybody owns like a refurbished Bronco dealership once, to gift it to me, I'll take it. Well, that's your beach car. I mean, again, fuck you money. I obviously have something like that for Dewey, but like I drove my a Lamborghini back in Atlanta. I did this car event at the Atlanta Motor Speedway and drove a Lambo around the tracks. And I was like, one day. Do you love it? It was the best day of my life. Like, I was like, I was born to do this. What color are you going to get? I don't know. I mean, you know, I just like, love red. But it's probably going to be something custom. Like, what if it's pink? What if it, okay, hear me out, Ombre.

It's going to be a girl's going to eat. Rapped. Hot pink. Can you get a hot pink Lambo? That would be so hot. I think a red lady, a woman in a red lambo is so sexy. There's also those car.

I don't know what we're talking about this. Hear me out, Rana. Car clubs. You should belong to one of those. But hear me out. Not that sexy to get climb out of. Yeah. Your Pikachu.

You've got to climb up out of it. It's not that sexy. You're too tall to get out of it. Like, this is just pussy's out. Yeah, do you remember all those photos of those girls in like the early 2000? Harris and Praternity and Lucy Low Hand. Well, when we got out of the car, Drew Barrymore, there was those paparazzi's outside and our publicists rushed over to make sure my pussy wasn't out. You guys, that was so funny.

We got out of the car and I looked so bad and Ashley was like dressed for the show and no one took paparazzi photos of me. And she stopped. And they're... Well, my... So it's on my Instagram and they did... change the caption to say who I was, but when that paparazzi guy first posted it, he goes, does anyone know who this is?

It was really humbling to walk out of the Jubair and then to see that caption. It's fine, though. Like, someone tagged me and then he was so nice. I asked him if I could post the photo. It was just funny. Who is this? I wish he was pretty funny.

He was like, I've no idea this is. I'm going to post it anyway. Well, he was doing that for a lot of people, but no one even assumed I was anybody. Right now. You were in like, like, leggings and your half zip. Yeah.

You guys don't wear half-sips anymore. Can you imagine your paparazzi photo and your quarter zip? It's part of you forever until the-performance, please. Okay. Okay. All right, guys, we are so excited for our guests today. He is a New York Times best-selling offer. He is a New York Times best-selling author.

I never fuck this up. I seriously am like, nervous. You're nervous? What are you nervous about? I'm not nervous. I feel great. She's going to mess it up the whole time. She's going to be messing up all.

Don't terrifies me. Okay. You're too tall. And like this stays in. You are. He is a New York Times bestselling author, lifestyle entrepreneur, high performance business coach and a keynote speaker. He's also 6'4.

I don't know why that's not in your bio. He was recognized by Barack Obama as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs in the country. I never mess up. You guys. You know I'm so good at this normally. He is a contributing writer for entrepreneur. He has been featured. featured in the New York Times, Forbes Men's Health.

So many others, he hosts a top top podcast, The School of Greatness. It is over 300 million downloads. And his book, The Greatness Mindset, comes out tomorrow. Please welcome to the show, Lewis House. Thank you, ladies. Appreciate it. It's not going to be here. The Barack got me.

Like, I hear Barack and someone's intro, I'm like, oh, my gosh. Now I'm turned on and nervous. I said, 6'4 and I got wet. I said, Barry, you got wet. You've been here for five minutes. So thank you. Welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me.

So excited to be. you guys. Yeah, us too. And welcome to LA. Thank you so much. Thank you. I'm excited. A little journey ahead. So you have a book coming out. You have done so much. Talk to us about your background. Who are you? What's the book? Oh, man. I'm a loving, passionate, wise man. Okay. That's what I like to start with. I love that. I think a lot of people ask, what do you do? And I think they should ask, who are you? So I'm glad you asked that. You said, who are you? I'm a loving, passionate, wise man. And I have a background in sports. I've played, you know, professional football. I was an All-American athlete and then transferred into business after an injury. So I got injured playing football, got in the business for many years. And then eventually 10 years

ago started a journey, a journey of healing. Because for a long time, I was driven to succeed and win at all costs. But it was coming from a wound, a trauma wound. And it hurt me in relationships, intimate relationships. It hurt me in business. It hurt me just personally. So that's kind of been the journey. The last 10 years, I've been doing interviews of some of the top of you. people in the word about how to be great. What is greatness? What does it even mean? And how to just figure out this human existence. So that's a little bit about me. Okay. I was reading your book and you like started your journey of greatness and coaching people how to build their LinkedIn's. Originally I was doing like social media marketing back in my 2007,

eight, nine. Well, let's talk about the journey. You know, like if somebody, we want to talk about can somebody who doesn't come from a lot of trauma date somebody who does and can you guys meet in the middle and somebody who comes from a lot of trauma, how do you heal enough to even know, am I able to be in a relationship and pick better people? I'll give an example. There was a girl I dated many years ago, I don't know, 12 years ago, 13 years ago, who was the sweetest, kindest girl. I can't say that about every relationship I've been in, but with her, like, I can't say anything bad. She was amazing. But she was very wounded about a skin condition she had. So kind of like a psoriasis type of skin condition, but it would kind of flare up on her whole body, on her face sometimes and on her back

and like on her arms. It would kind of come and go. And she was really insecure about it. It took her confidence away from her and she didn't know how to overcome that fear of like, I'm not beautiful, I'm not pretty. I was like, you're beautiful either way. You know, you're pretty either way. And after a year and a half of being with her, it just, it caused her to shrink her confidence so much that it just became hard to connect with her in more ways. And for me, and for me, and for me, I think trying to connect with someone who's got a trauma and you're trying to work with them, you either have to fully accept this is who they are, or you've got to say, all right, are you willing to do some therapy? Because I don't think you should be coaching your partner.

I don't think that's a healthy dynamic. I think you should be empowering, supporting, elevating. But when you date a guy to fix him or you date a girl to fix her, I just don't think that is a healthy way to connect. And that's what I did and I repeated that pattern where I met women and I wanted to help. them or coach them or fix them and it never worked and they probably were attracted to me in certain reasons for my wounds as well. So what I did differently now, because I made a lot of mistakes in my past. What I did differently now was I entered my relationship with Martha, my girlfriend. And I said, I would love for us to start the relationship in therapy so that we both are

constantly, Raina's giving me to look like that's crazy. You feel like you're in a healthy relationship. Well, because I had been in multiple relationships for the last 15 years, that ended poorly. That left me with a lot of stress, a lot of pain, suffering, sadness, up and down, no stability, right? And it just sucked the energy away from my dreams, my mission, my health. It was just pulling me. And I take full responsibility because I chose these partnerships. I stayed in them when I could have left at any time. But I lacked the courage to really get out of them sooner because I was afraid. I was insecure. I was afraid. and, you know, I didn't want to hurt people.

So that was my wound. But entering a relationship where we both agreed, like, yeah, let's do this together. And she was all for it. It has been a beautiful experience of harmony in the relationship that I didn't even think was possible. I didn't even think it was available. I didn't think it was possible. And it doesn't mean, like, I don't have stuff to work on a shoes and have stuff

to work on. We both do. And we're both committed to working out together. I think when one person maybe has. less trauma or less trauma responses in a relationship, less triggered, less reactive in a relationship than the other partner, where an outside event always triggers them to react or shut down or scream or whatever. It's really hard to show up for that person without feeling like you're getting walked all over, without feeling like you're not finding an equal match who's at least

working on themselves on their own pace. If someone's completely resistant to that, I just think it's hard to do it on your own. So that's why I think first, before you enter a committed relationship, like really asked the questions. I asked the craziest questions, so did she, before we got actually committed, and actually removed, you know, the sexual component from the dating experience, which I'd never done before. Interesting. So I spent three months, we committed together like, hey, we're not going to go there sexually. Okay. Doesn't mean we didn't kiss and, you know, hugging all that stuff. But before, it always happened within like the first, you know, a couple weeks or whatever, Jamie.

You're saying like the first hour for you, this is when it's happened, right? Not with everybody. Well, see what the vibe is, you know. Yeah, exactly. You never know. But I decided to remove that, which allowed me to have like a clear awareness, clarity. Yeah. Because when you connect with someone sexually, you are just blind.

You were just just, just, what my friend Stefan speaks says, like an orgasm with a woman is like the sex drug. I mean, it's like the God drug is what it is. You feel like you're closer to God when you have an orgasm with the partner. You feel like it's the closest feeling to God you could probably have, right, with that kind of like explosion of sexual chemistry. And if it feels amazing when you're with that guy or a girl or whatever, and you don't get to know them, you don't get to know their values, their vision, their lifestyle, you don't really get to understand their past and their trauma

and if they've healed or worked on their past, then you're just going to keep having fun and connecting but not truly being like a spiritual connection type of vibe as well. So we decided to do it completely differently. It was a beautiful experiment that has worked out. I have a couple questions. Yes. So you said you started in therapy.

Are you saying like a couple therapists or you're just both an individual therapy? I was doing individual before then because I was like, all right, I kept making the same mistakes of like getting into relationships that weren't working. I'm the common denominator. Right. So there must be something with me that is not choosing or picking right or a friend. afraid to speak up or abandoning myself when these girls are screaming at me when they don't get what they want or whatever it is. And I'm giving in. So I had to learn how to heal that trauma

that was causing me to like, people please all these women that I was dating in the past. And so I was already seeing the benefits of feeling peace in my heart by having healed the wounds from the past. And so when I met Martha, she was already doing it on her own individually as well, which made me really excited because the three relationships I'd been in before, which were all one to four years before that for the previous 10 to 12 years. When things would get challenging in a relationship, I would say, hey, let's do like couples therapy. And none of the women would want to go.

And I always thought like, what, you know, what man offers to go to couples therapy with their partner and says, I want to figure this out. I want to work on this. I want to look on the mirror and say, what am I doing? I can improve on. But I want you to as well. None of them would go with me. So what was the response?

When you said, I want to go to therapy, what was the opposition? She was like, that's amazing, let's do it. And I go, really? Because I thought no one woman would do this, you know? And so that made me feel more safe and like, okay, at least we can work on stuff. I mean, the last partners. Oh, the last person? I think some people are thinking, like, I would love to go to couples therapy with somebody.

I'd love them to volunteer. So why did your last partner's not with that? Well, I think I attracted a lot of narcissists that, you know, when you're a narcissist, you don't think anything's off with you. Okay. And they don't want to do the work. I was like, listen, I'm not perfect. You know, I make mistakes.

and I got room to grow, but let me get a third party, not you screaming at me, telling me what to do. Let's go, like, share the whole story and have someone who can have common sense, not some crazy reaction based on a trauma, say, hey, guys, here's what you can work on, Lewis, and here's what you can work on, and here's how you can communicate differently together. So that, the three relationships I was in before, none of them wanted to go. And it was just exhausted. Because if you want to improve and grow, and you say, hey, listen, I got stuff to work on, but let's work on it together. Totally. It's a tough thing.

And so I never understood, like, why would women not want their man to go and making the offer? Right. So what advice do you give to people that do want to go to therapy with their partner and their partner refuses? Well, here's the thing. It's just like we're at an impact? Well, here's the thing. This is why I think it's really hard when you're in the relationship, which you've already

chosen and accepted someone. So I kind of created some guidelines for myself from the relationship I'm in now. I said, listen, before I get into another relationship, I need to be on the healing journey. I can't just enter a relationship. Now, if I'm in a single season and I just want to have fun, that's a different story, right? Yeah. But I think when you're ready to commit or look to be open to committing to someone, right? I just said to myself, I think it's impossible to do that unless you're in the healing journey.

You can do it, but I think there's going to be more stress and struggle in the process. And for me, step two was making sure that you're at full alignment of your values, vision, and lifestyle. So me and Martha, we created exercises together. where I would have us essentially journal together, but not seeing it, what are our values and really writing them down, not just saying, oh, I value this and then have the other person say, oh, I value the same thing, but actually write them down what the values are and see, are we in alignment? So different things like that and saying, here is my vision. She asked me one day after like six weeks of dating before we were committed.

She gave me the old, Lewis, what's your priorities question? I don't know if you guys have ever asked this to guys you've dated or interested in. in long-term dating, what's your priorities in life? And I told her, are you sure you want to hear the truth? Because what I'm going to tell you, you're probably going to run away. And I said, I'm going to say something that I've said in the past that most women did not like to hear, but it was the truth for me. My number one priority will never be you if we're in a committed relationship.

And no woman wants to hear, they're not the number one priority. I don't know if anyone listening is agreeing with this, but I'm assuming no woman likes to hear that their man doesn't make them the number of our priority. But I said, let me give you context. My number one priority is my health so that I have energy and then I'm aware and I can show up for you. But if I don't feel good, if I'm not taking care of my health and I'm not mentally, physically, and spiritually in a healthy state, then I'm not going to be good for you. And my number two priority isn't going to be the relationship either. And no woman wants to hear that they're not number two.

I just think in general people don't want to hear off the bat. You're not the priority. This is, you know, definitely need the context. I love that. You got to get the context. And I said, listen. I mean, Ashley and I agree. Girls got to eat always the priority.

I'm like health, work, Azul. My palatine. My family. Well, here's the thing. Well, here's the thing. And so I said, you know, number two, at least from my perspective, number seven of your man, I said, listen, number two is going to be my mission. You know, for me, I need to have a purpose and a mission.

I think a man without a mission is a dangerous man. I think a man without like something he's working on daily. I don't care if it's a big or small, but just something he's coming. made it to and dedicated to. If you're just like, oh, I'm just going to be lazy and distracted by a bunch of stuff, you're not going to be attracted to me. Get off your butt and go do the work. I mean, say less. Nothing makes me less attracted to you. Right. They will ensure less blow jobs from May. If you have a like a lazy man around, right? I can relate. Yeah. So here's the thing. So I said my mission will be number two. But all of this is in context. Like my health is a high

priority and you don't pull me away from my health. If you don't pull me away from my mission, you're going to feel like number one. Yeah. You're going to feel like the greatest. Love this. You're going to feel like I'm the most present, loving man you've ever been with daily, consistently. I'm going to show up for you. I'm going to give you everything you want. And we're going to create a beautiful relationship together. But you can't pull me away from my health or my time at the gym or what I need to do, going to my therapy, working on myself, going to retreats, whatever I want to do. You can't pull me away from that. And you can't pull me away from my work. my mission. Because for me, it's more than a job. It's a mission. And if you're pulling me away

from something that I feel like I'm supposed to do in this world, then you're not helping me. And we should be empowering and lifting each other up. And I said, when this happens, I'm going to give you what you want. You're going to feel like, number one, I'm going to be present with you, connected with you. I'm going to be a great listener. I'm not going to be distracted, all that. And she feels like she is number one because she understands that she is a top priority, but it's just making sure I have these other things as well. This speaks to my soul so much. So much.

Like, I can't relate more. I've never heard it stated like this. I feel this on such a deep level, and it's so true. And it's not that, like, first, gym, then work, then you. Like, that's not at all. But, like, my health is my number one priority. I just had never really heard it said like this. And, like, if you explain all that to a partner and they don't hear you on it,

they're probably not the right match because it really makes total sense. And it's not an insult. Well, wounded women are going to see this and say, wait, I'm not the number one priority. And they're going to say, I need you to make me number one. Exactly. What do you mean? I'm not going to be the number one. Again, it's not that you're not number one. You're going to feel like number one as long as my one and two are taken care of in my life. That doesn't mean I'm spending eight hours at the gym and I'm never going to see you. It just means I got to make sure those things are taken care of. If you are overextended every day, if you are exhausted, if you don't take care of yourself, Ashley, are you going to show up and be a good partner for your man?

Yeah. We've talked about this before. like earlier in the year when I was saying that I really do want a partner where my friend who did my psychic reading and my cards and everything was just like you have to energetically make space for that because you feel really full like you're overflowing in like a good way but you're like full like how are you going to make that space this is true and my girlfriend did something because she does three or four movies a year she's a star actor she writes her movies she produces them she's she's a machine she's got two podcasts one with a partner and one on her own she's nonstop But before she met me, she created the space in her life.

You know, she can tell it better than me and I don't want to speak for her. But essentially, she created a space in life where with her therapist, she said, you need to get your own new environment, get your own new home, your own space for you. And what type of man do you want? She was like, I want a big guy, like a tall guy, right? Six-four guy. What type of bed do you have? She's like, I got a queen.

She goes, do you want a queen for a man? You need to create a king-sized bed. She's tiny. She's like, you know, 5-1, 5-2. too. She's tiny. She's like, you need to get a king-sized bed and create the environment and the space for the man you want in your life. You need to pull back on some time so you can have space so he can enter and you can go out together and you get to know each other. You can travel on the weekends. But if you're booked seven days a week, a man is not going to enter your life

with you not having time for him. Yeah. And so if you want a king, get a king-sized bed. That bedroom is so small. I'm stressing out. Are you stressing out with the bedroom? No, I'm upset. I wish this didn't come up. I knew you were going to say that. Well, you said it right before I said it. You said that, but it's like, it's creating the environment for the exact man you want to enter. I want a kingbed. I'm saying the bedroom is too small and I'm about to cancel this lease. Go get in the house. Okay, you said something that I want to circle back to that like really spoke to me so much because I have dated people. I don't come from extreme trauma. I'm not going to pretend that I do. I'm very much like, Ashley, I have a safety

not. I have a great family. They're wonderful. I've had bad things happen in my life, but I would never identify having trauma. I attract people with trauma. That's a trauma response. But I think what you said was really interesting because you're talking about how like you told your partner, I need to work on me, I need to fix me, and I need you to give me space to do that. And no one's ever really said that to me.

Like somebody that comes from extreme trauma does need to work on themselves. They do need to take space. They don't need to allow somebody else to fix them. They don't need to lean on somebody else to fix them. Like what you said was like, I am showing up a trauma and I need you to like give me enough space to work on that basically. Well, I had done a lot of the healing work before I met my girlfriend where I felt peace in my heart. And before I didn't always feel peace in my heart.

I felt stress. I felt tightness in my chest, clenching in my throat, like someone was strangling sometimes in relationships. But you didn't go into this relationship thinking like, now I'm done with therapy and she can fix this and help us. You said this is what I need. This is the boundary. So step one for me was, okay, healing must occur first and there must be a journey of healing. And the healing journey never ends. And even if you didn't have big T traumas in your life,

doesn't mean the little T traumas cause you to attract men with trauma. And those are little T traumas that we just get to address. It doesn't mean there's something wrong or bad with us, anything like that. It just means, okay, the results I've been getting haven't been getting me what I ultimately want. So I just got to take a look at how I'm showing up and why I'm attracting certain men with trauma. Again, not good and bad, right and wrong. It's just what are the results I'm getting? And what's the vision that I want for the relationship?

So I had a dream 10 years ago about the vision of being with a girl like Martha 10 years ago. I had this dream, but I wasn't willing to fully heal certain things. So step one was healing. Then it was getting super clear on my values, vision, and lifestyle and saying, this is who I am. You guys are going to be touring and traveling. You guys have a business. You guys are successful two powerhouse women coming together and making a big impact. So being clear on that.

And can a man support that and be okay? with that. If he's a busy man, he might be like, cool, that's awesome. Like, go do your thing. I got my thing. I understood that Martha's going to be traveling six weeks at a time doing movies. I'm okay with that because I'm busy as well. But I also had to go into the relationship with total 100% acceptance of who she was. And I don't think women accept the men they're dating. If you truly ask yourselves, everyone listening and watching, you accept the idea of who he is and the potential, but sometimes if he's not showing up with an expectation that you have, doing certain things, being a certain way, acting a certain way,

then there's a trying to change your man or an upset or a this. I'm not saying every woman does this, but I've seen this happen a lot. And I think that's when the relationship struggle when either person tries to change the other one. So I spent months dating her without the sexual intimacy, getting clear on values, vision, lifestyle. both agreeing to individual and couples therapy, which may be a lot, but I was like, I want peace and harmony. I want to constantly go up and down in relationships.

I want peace. Otherwise, I'd rather be single. You can deal with chaos being single. And then I told her, before we got committed, like in a committed relationship, I said, listen, there's nothing you can do that can make me upset of you. And this is what I mean. I said, I know you're an actress. She's done kissing scenes before.

She's done all these different stuff. She's traveling. I know her personality. And I say, I fully accept you. I'm not going to change you. As long as we make agreements on what works for us and what doesn't work for us. And we get aligned to these agreements through a third party when there's a frustration or a letdown, be who you want to be.

But I want you to accept me for who I am. That means don't change my drive. Don't tell me you need to see more time of me. Don't tell me I need to stop doing something. I'm going to be touring. I'm going to be traveling. There's going to be women around me. You have to accept this is who I am.

And no, we have agreements and alignment on our values, vision, and lifestyle. And by getting clear on these things before the sexual intimacy, before the exclusivity and the commitment, it just allowed me to see, is she a potential good match? And for her to see me, am I a potential good match for her? And I never did it that way before. I did it every other way. I was just like, oh, I like you. We like going to the same dinner. We like, you know, we're attracted to each other sexually.

it's fun. We're having fun, traveling around the city, whatever. Cool. There's this chemical bond, but it wasn't a spiritual connection. And I think that's where we got to get to if we want a harmonious, peaceful, loving, fulfilling relationship. We're like very team, like do whatever you want. Yeah, of course. And you can sleep with somebody the day you meet them and have a long, healthy, fulfilling life together. Anything can happen. Sure. But I really do like that. And I was actually just listening to Jay Shetty's podcast about the same thing where what happens to you chemically when you have sex. And you feel the oxytocin and the love hormones and you actually are blinded to your true

feelings without sex. And so I have not done it. I would say it's interesting because like the most serious relationship I was ever in, we randomly waited because of him. And I wonder how much that actually played into it. Interesting. You know, three weeks, which is long for me. You know, like we started dating pretty hot and have you really liked each other.

And it was, you know, maybe it was even a. month. You're still hanging out a lot. You just hadn't done that yet. Yeah. And so I wonder, that's great. Yeah. It's not for everybody, but like if you keep running into what you were running into, why not try something different? You have to try something different. But I really want to go back to something so I don't forget and talk about this bigger picture with you and your trauma and whoever's listening, who has trauma. And when you said attracting from a wound, is that the phrase you used? Yes, attracting from a wound. Yeah. Talk about that being. It doesn't need to be a big trauma wound. It can be like, you just modeled your parents doing the same thing over and over. And it wasn't the

healthiest model of how they showed affection or love or treated each other. It doesn't mean you didn't have a good childhood. It could have just been like, okay, I saw my mom, kind of always being passive aggressive to my dad and my dad giving in. So, okay, I'm going to try to find a man to fix my dad who is like that and try to fix him to stop being that. But now I'm going to do the same thing. It doesn't mean you're like a horrible person or like it's this chaotic relationship. No, no, I just want to define it what it means. Yeah, yeah. Tracking from a wound. How you see it or you know, how you know you're doing it, I guess. I think it's more relatable to everybody because not everybody comes from trauma.

Of course. And I don't, but I clearly attract a certain type of thing into my life. Yeah, yeah. But a wound could be anything big or small. You know, like, couldn't it be that like, you know, when I grew up, I just didn't feel attractive or pretty or like I could get a boyfriend and all my friends did. And so. That's a wound.

Yeah, like that plays into how you see yourself forever. 100%. Until you change the meaning behind that memory and those memories of years where you told yourself like, oh, I'm not attractive or I'm whatever. That was years of you telling yourself that story. That became a thought over and over that became a belief inside of you, that you've tried to overcome it or try to mask it in some ways. And again, it's not right or wrong, good or bad.

It's just, is it effective in creating the love, the relationship, the harmony, the peace that you want, the experience of a beautiful relationship you want? And it's just being aware of it and asking yourself, does that message and meaning that I gave myself for so long served me today in my relationships. If it doesn't serve me, it's about going back and owning the past and creating new meaning,

creating a new story around that meaning and asking yourself, well, how can I create a new meaning where it was a beautiful thing that's helping me today, attract from a different place? So that's what I'm talking about there. What I did is I went back to every memory in my past.

This is not fun. This is not exciting. This is not easy, but it has given me peace because I rewrote stories from my past. On my phone, I used to have a couple years ago, I used to have a photo of my five-year-old self on my screensaver.

Not as a narcissistic thing to do to stare at my younger self, but as a way to, like, coach my younger self. I'm getting weird here. That's cool with you guys. No, I dated somebody that used to do this. It came from a lot of trauma. And coaching my five-year-old self

and giving myself the wounded self inside of me, the care, the thought, the attention, support that he needed back then that he never got that i just kept like saying okay let me get bigger faster stronger let me just not think about it let me just put in the back whatever or let me say mean things to myself and just act like i'm fine in the world when i wasn't so it was a way to create a new meaning around kind of the psychological wound that i had at five that i had at 11 that i had at 17 and i did this over many months at different stages of my past and i'm telling you i've never felt this much peace in my life. Never felt this much peace and calm in my life. It was always like kind of about

off and on pain and like a tension in my chest and kind of little anxiety and I couldn't sleep that well at night. And depending on when I was in a relationship or when I was not in a relationship, it would kind of come and go. And it all tied to just holding on the memories that didn't support me that caused me to feel anxious and stressed. And by committing and just like going all in on owning the past, it has given me a lot of peace and freedom. And it's a lot of peace and freedom. And it's a lot of allows me to see clearly in my relationship and have the courage to speak up, hey, this is not what I want to do. This is what I want to do. And really doing that from the beginning, whereas before, I used to not fully speak up what I wanted if it was upsetting the person I was dating. If they were

upset, I'd be like, okay, I'm going to pull back. Okay. And now it's like, no, here's everything of who I am. This is what I want. This is what I'm creating my life. Not in a negative way, but this is what I'm about. Do you align on money, relationships, kids, families? Those are the things that are going to determine whether you have a happy relationship. I was seeking on people that I thought I could help when I looked back on it. And I wasn't even conscious of it. This is the thing. It wasn't like I was, oh, I'm going to go and help someone. It was more just I was connected to them. I felt sexually attracted to them. And later I found out almost all them had an abandonment from their fathers. They all had like their father wasn't in their life

and they were insecure. And I was insecure, but I thought I was less insecure than them. So I was like, well, maybe I can help them become less insecure. But you can't really coach your partner into overcoming something. You can empower, you can support, you can celebrate, you can see them. But when we are coaching them, it kind of means like, okay, we're above them. We're better than them. And that's not totally accepting them. So again, it's different from coaching and empowering and celebrating.

It's a bad dynamic. And we've talked about that before, feeling like you have to do all these things for your partner. I mean, it's important to, like, lead a horse to water. Right, exactly. What is your feelings on someone who has a bunch of deep trauma and someone who really doesn't? I think that's hard to date someone like that. You're not setting yourself up for success. It doesn't mean you can't love each other and you can't make it work in some ways. But again, I'm talking about what is going to be the most effective type of relationship.

Not what you can still make it work. It just might be a lot more work. I just dealt with this and Raina has as well. Like I felt like I couldn't relate and I went to therapy to try to. It was hard for you. I went to therapy to try to understand him more. You know, because it was kind of beyond my comprehension of like his triggers and Yes.

A really traumatic upbringing and all those things that I just can't relate to it all. So that's, you know, it's just started to come out with me. I think sometimes when people really get into a loving partnership, their old wounds and all their stuff comes up, you know, where it may have not before. What was it within you that wanted to be in that relationship from the first place? Just really falling for each other. Like, I don't really like ratt off the reasons why I fell in love with him. But we really loved each other, you know, like we really had something special, but then it just became really volatile.

So if it's volatile, I don't think that's conscious love. I don't mean you don't care about someone. It doesn't mean you don't love them and appreciate them and like them a lot. My goal is conscious love, conscious relationship, where you, volatility should not be in a relationship in my mind. That's not healthy. That means when someone is reactive, like if something happens out in the street, that is, non-physical threatening. If there's a physical threat to your life or your safety, react, scream, defend yourself, like, do whatever you've got to do. But if it's a psychological reaction

or an emotional reaction based on something you just don't like or someone's cutting you off or someone says something nasty to you and your nervous system is so triggered that you react, there's typically a wound there. Someone's pushing a button inside of your emotions that's causing you to react and be volatile. I know because that was this way many, many, many years. And it's constant journey of like addressing it and seeing it in yourself when that happens. That was another agreement I said. I go, there will never be screaming in our relationship. Yeah.

This is not acceptable because I had so many women that would scream at me at the top of their lungs because I didn't give them something they wanted or they thought I was doing something or whatever and they were wounded so they would just scream. And I was just like, I cannot live like that. That's not healthy. We can disagree. We can argue. We can not be on the same page, but we can do it in a conscious way.

we can have a conversation. For me, it's like, I'm talking about conscious relationship, which is just because you love someone, doesn't mean they're a great life partner for you. Absolutely. Doesn't mean you can't still love them and care about them. I don't want to, like, misquote you or misunderstand you either. Let's take my relationship out of it and let's just take someone that comes from a lot of trauma, that it's just they are super reactive, they are super triggered, they haven't worked through it

all the way. We're not saying they're unlovable or they can't love. I don't think you should be in that relationship. I don't think you should get in a relationship. So I did want to, let's say they're single. You know, you're just, you know that you have a lot of trauma. Like, how do we speak to people who know they have a lot of trauma, but they maybe just started on their healing journey?

Like, is there any sort of scale or way to know that you are ready to be in a relationship or, you know, the people are like, I shouldn't have to wait to find love because I'm all fucked up, you know. I agree with you. I think as long as you're committed to growing and healing at the same time, then cool. But if you're unable to, if you abandoning, if you abandoning yourself, like I'm not a perfect person. I still have room to grow and heal. It's not like I've figured it all out. I'm just in the I got therapy session tonight every two weeks. I commit to it. And things are great. I feel love.

I feel peaceful. I feel harmony. But it's like going to the gym. I want to prevent it in the future. I want to stay in that space. Got it. Yeah. So for me, it's making sure that if you can't say 100% honestly who you are, what you want, what your values are. And if you can't not abandon yourself in conversations, Like if you feel like I have to give in or say something to this guy because otherwise he's got to run away. If you're afraid of that, then you shouldn't have been in a relationship in my mind. You should be courageously to be able to say, this is who I am. This is all my past at some point. You don't have to reveal everything in the first day, but be comfortable and accept your past and be like, this is where I'm heading.

This is my vision. Like early on, Martha was like, hey, listen, I'm going to have a conversation with you. We were hanging out for like, I don't know, three to four weeks. She said, do you want to be married and do you want to have kids? And she was like, I'm not sure if you do. And if not, then we shouldn't date anymore because I don't want to waste my time and energy. And she was really sad before she asked me the question because she was like, I really like you. Like, I really like you.

I have feelings for you. This has been an amazing month. But I want to know, is this in your future? And I remember telling her, I was going, listen, I've never felt comfortable with the idea of really marriage or kids in my past. It's not that I didn't want it. I just didn't feel safe in a relationship. So I'm going to tell you the truth that, yes, I do, but I need to feel really safe. I need to feel like there's a great foundation.

I need to feel all these things before I can commit to this. So I can't just tell you yes right now 100%. But if things go away I want them to in this style, then 100% I'm in. And I do want that. You know, before I would have been like, oh, yeah, I think I do. You know, I would just giving in because I didn't have the courage to end something that could have been good. But now it's just like, if this doesn't work, you're not the right fit for me. And that's sad.

But I want to be happy. I want you to be happy. And I wish you the best. I think you just got really good at drawing boundaries and being clear on like, what is it yes? What is a no? And what is it maybe? But you can go if maybe is not enough for you. And I think that that's also fine to tell people.

And Ashley and I talk about that all the time with friends of ours that are with people that maybe don't want to have kids. Don't be with those people. You just, but I mean, you can be with anybody as long as you understand what the landscape looks like and what the boundaries are. And it sounds like you just didn't walk into this relationship looking for somebody to fix you. No. No. You ultimately actually said, I'm going to fix me. You've got to give me some space to keep doing that. And then you'll enjoy this more. Yeah, just don't pull me away from the journey. And again, healing is a not a destination as a journey. And we all have room to heal on something, you know, small or big. And being in a partnership with someone who's like, I want to do the

journey on my own, just whatever day-to-day life, stress, work, whatever it is, just to like process this stuff. But most men don't take the time to process anything, most men. And when I go into a room of a big audience and ask men and women this, I'll say women, raise your hand if once a week you get together with at least one girlfriend, if not a handful of girlfriends over lunch, or you call your mom or your sister, and you talk about your insecurities, your, I don't know, body challenges, your relationship challenges, your fears, your concerns. And almost every woman in the room, and hundreds of women will raise their hand once a week. And I go, keep your hands up if you do this every day. And kind of every girl laughs. Yeah, like, I'm talking to a girlfriend or mom or someone.

Every day almost. Is that you guys? I get my hand back. I'm texting. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Pretty much than how you guys do it probably every day with each other. Like what's going on and relationships and dating. Ah, my fears, right? And I go, okay, for the men in the room, raise your hand if you talk once a month with one male friend about your insecurities, about your challenges, about your mental health stuff, about your body issues, about relationship issues, one male friend. And out of hundreds of men, maybe two will raise their hand. They're usually sitting next to each other. And I go, are you guys part of like a required church group that does this once a month? And they kind of laugh. They're like, yes. Small group. Yeah. They do it. And I go,

and they do it once a month and like a safe kind of like church men's group. Right. And I go, okay, men, raise your hand if you do this once a year, no hands go up, except for those couple of men. And I go, ladies, what would I feel like if you never spoke about your insecurities, your fears, your traumas, your doubt, your body issues, whatever might be in your life where you only got to do it once a month for an hour? How would you feel? They're like, gosh, I would be so stressed all the time. I'd be, I would go crazy.

And I go, what if you didn't get to do it once a year or ever? And the women are like, I'd probably kill myself, kind of joking. But I'm like, well, no wonder men commit a lot of suicide. I had two friends die in the last couple months in their 40s. Sorry. And it's, you know, it's everyone's responsibility to process the stuff that's going on and to share and to, like, have community. But it's just harder for men to open up based on society and based on like being shamed. We don't crash out and we have a problem with men, with anger and, you know, all these things.

Like, I'm not apologizing for it. I'm like, it is a huge problem. Like, we talk about kind of men being in crisis in this way and it affects everybody affects the whole environment. So it's crazy because that's why sometimes like, Rayne and I talk about sometimes when a woman is with a man and he's like dumping all over her. And she's like he's oversharing. What is going on here? I'm not his therapist. I'm like, he hasn't talked to anybody. Nobody else talked to. We probably feel safe and comfortable for the first time in his life. Or he just needs somebody to talk to. Like we're saying when it can feel

really early where we're like he is desperate to share something. And it's almost sad because you're like, you've got to find some people in your life to share this. Most men won't open up with each other. Right. Unless you leave the friend group or you start having a one vulnerable conversation and the guy's going to be like, what are you a little, little wuss? What are you talking about, man? Shut up.

Let's drink a beer. So it's like it's hard to leave a friend group that you've known for years that maybe isn't open to that and you're finally like, want to start doing some of that. It's hard if your family hasn't been open to that with those conversations with you. And it's just, again, I'm not saying there's anything's okay with the reactions of how men respond when they don't share involuntably, but it's just challenging sometimes. Yeah, societally, I don't think we like, we don't celebrate it. And I'm not a male apologist. You know, they're not sure, sure, sure, sure.

They should take care of themselves. But I don't think we make fun of it. It's like, it's hilarious to think about that even happening, a bunch of men sitting around over a bottle of wine and being like, oh, man, got some body issues. I feel fat this week, you know? Yeah, but, you know, everyone's got some insecurities for fear. Yeah, of course. I think we're seeing it more. I think guys talk a lot more about.

We're starting to more and more. But I don't think, here's the thing, I just know from experience when I entered relationships without being in the healing journey. I'm not saying like perfection, healed. Without being on the journey and without having consistent

accountability and support. I'm not saying every week, but just something once a month, once every two months, you go and have support where you talk about, ah, this is working, this isn't working. I just think it's harder.

I'm not saying you can't make it happen. I'm not saying it's not the right person for you. It could be. I just think it's a lot harder and it could lead to more volatility up and down. And I want a healthy, beautiful relationship and a healthy, beautiful life. And I know, based on my past, that when my intimate relationship is up and down, my life is a lot harder. And so I just want to live in harmony the best way possible. And I think you shouldn't enter a relationship unless you are saying, okay, I know.

I got stuff I want to work on. So let me start the process of working on it. Then what's getting the relationship? But if you're like, well, I don't want to address it first. Let's just, it just feels good to be around you. It just feels good to like sleep with you. And like, I'm just so connected. And we love each other now because we're having fun together.

Okay, you still got to face your past at some point. So six months a year into the relationship, when it starts going up and down because you haven't faced it, then you got problems. And that's all I'm saying. It doesn't mean you don't mean you don't love this guy. It doesn't mean you don't want the best for these guys or these girls. or whatever might be, but it just makes it harder in the relationship.

Yeah. That's what it is. I think that, you know, I know a lot about Asha's last relationship. And for me, the people that I've been in relationships with that have come from some really extreme trauma, it just feels like we're not starting in the same place when we're having an argument. And this is a person that's coming from a place where they've never felt safe and I've always felt safe.

And so we're not speaking the same language. And I dated somebody who I was really in love with who came from some really terrible stuff. And it just felt like every fight, like we just weren't hearing each other at all. And I didn't know how to like even explain. I would say to him like, I hear you and he'd be like, no, you fucking don't. And not like that. But, you know, it was tough.

And I don't think the answer is always like, just don't date these people because he was in therapy. And he was trying to work on himself for a long time. I think he was a really emotionally intelligent person. But maybe I was not the right fit perhaps. I think you were not the right foot for other reasons, not that. Right. I think that we had all those factors not been there. Yes, if lifestyle goals weren't aligned, I would have...

Were your values aligned? Were your vision aligned? And was your lifestyle aligned? If not, you can love and connect... But what I'm saying to you is I would have had to suggest going to therapy, at least in the short term, to just understand each other. Well, here's the thing. Love is not enough.

You need alignment on values, vision, and lifestyle. Right. You need agreements in order to have a healthy long-term, fulfilling relationship. It doesn't mean love can connect you and bond you and have... fun together. You can have that, but I'm just talking about long-term, healthy relationship. You need values, vision, and lifestyle in alignment. It doesn't have to be perfect, but you have to be going in the same direction. Yeah. And you have to agree on certain things. Like for me, screaming, raising voices is an agreement. It's just a non-negotiable. It doesn't mean if you do it once in a year because

you're overwhelmed and stress, it's over. There's flexibility in every agreement, but it's like, hey, we're both agreeing to this and we have a third party who's been a witness. So there's someone holding us accountable to a healthy, loving relationship. So there's a lot of people that I connected with, but we had opposite values, vision, and lifestyle, or most of it was off. And it never worked. And so it's just hard. It doesn't mean you can't love the guy, like the guy, miss the guy, you know, want to

hook up with the guy, all these things. But I'm just speaking about healthy long-term relationship. Yeah, I'm speaking to people also that, like, are aligned, and they're just like, I feel like I'm trying to support this person and I don't really. Now, if you're in alignment, if you've had, and again, I personally, I've met people that have, like, you know, slept together and gotten married the next month and they're together for 20 years. But I just think it's rare, right? It's like, it's hard. And they got lucky on values, vision, and lifestyle. But I just think if you want to have those conversations before you chemically bond with the God drug, essentially, and get blinded by it.

So you can be like, okay, let's have these conversations. Are we in alignment? And if not, okay, we're just going to have fun. But it doesn't mean it's going to be a good relationship. I have a question for you. Yes. You guys are in individual therapy and then a couple's therapist. Do you see that forever?

Is the therapist the third person in the relationship forever? Let me ask you a question. It all depends on what I want. So do you want to be fit and healthy and like good looking for forever? I mean, I get the correlation. Do you want that? I get the fitness correlation. about I just ask that from someone who's like, do I do this forever?

And so I want to hear you speak to it because I'm not saying it's bad or bad or not. I don't think the couples. But yeah, I'm going to work out forever. Exactly. Because you want to prevent certain things. You want to stay healthy. You want to live a longer life. You want to look good.

You want to be attractive. You want to feel confident. For me, I have a coach in almost every area of my life. Because as an athlete, did you guys play sports growing up or no? I mean, poorly. I was a cheerleader. Yeah. My brother was an athlete.

Yeah. He's the athlete in the family. As an athlete. He's bigger than you. There you go. As an athlete, I could not have accomplished my athletic goals without great coaches. It's just wanting to happen. I could have trained as hard as I wanted to, but you need that feedback from someone to help guide you. So I have a business coach, I have a nutrition coach, fitness coach, just someone guiding me. It doesn't mean every week I'm working with certain people. It's just having that feedback. So I think having some support and accountability, if you want a long-term healthy anything, relationship, body, mindset, business, it's good to have supports that can look like anything. It can just be like, okay, we've got some friends who are married that we meet with once every three months that we just ask questions to. It can be a therapist. It can be a coach.

But I think having someone who's modeling what you want being in your life, being able to talk to, connect with. I like having structure and having like coaching sessions every couple weeks for me to just make sure my emotions are being processed. That I'm clearing the energy in my nervous system, that I'm calm, that I'm able to take on the life's stress. It addresses calmly in a good way that I can see clearly that I don't get overwhelmed. So for me, it just helps me perform better in life, in my business, in my relationship. For the couple's therapy, I just think it's important. Again, we go like once every six or eight weeks or something, you know. So it's not like every week we're going together.

Well, I didn't know. And so these are things I want to clarify because sometimes people hear this. And they're, A, money, right? And B, they're like, is the therapist the third party of this relationship? We see them every week for the rest of eternity. stocking up everything to wait for the session every week. But I like what you're saying about just being committed to healing, like how that looks for you.

Growing together. Yeah. That's what I think. And even that doesn't mean it's going to be a successful relationship. It just means I think it has better chances of being more harmonious, loving, kind, generous with each other. Because when she does her own work, like with her own therapist, and she comes back to me and she like, man, I just got, I feel better about this.

this and this, just in her life. I'm like, okay, cool, you're in a great energetic state. And I'm like, I'm proud of you. Like, we're working on stuff together. It's awesome. No one's, no one's perfect. And I'm not expecting her to be and she's not expecting me to be. But we're still improving. We got a lot of demands in life. You guys have so much going on. Multiple businesses, tours, millions of people every day watching, listening to you, different relationships. Like, there's a lot of stuff happening. Now you're in L.A. You're just moving. You've got the pressures of the industry, all this different stuff that's happening at once, it's nice to be able to have support. It doesn't have to be a therapist or a coach,

but you have each other and you can talk to each other. I like that you said, I even have friends that you feel inspired by their relationship. I think that's like a nice thing because not everybody can afford therapy, but, you know, I do get together with my girlfriends all the time and just vent and it helps you to realize things aren't as big of a deal as I think they are, or I should think they're a bigger deal than I do and things like that. And even that helps me a lot. Or the show, or your show. Like, we're so lucky, like the resources. You know, like we've here every day, married, couples, like, Liz of the show helps them. And not necessarily from just Raina and I's advice, but the guests that we have on the show, like, you really get a lot of valuable information

from free podcasts, like ours, like yours, like J's, like whoever it may be. And you can really come away from that hour feeling reset and rejuvenated in your relationship. Yeah. So whatever it is, whatever support you can access, you know, if you have the funds to hire a coach once every few months, cool. Yeah. There's a couple of married couples here in LA that I'm like, I just lean on. You know, I just try to hang out with them and be around. They've been married for 30 years.

They're happy. They're still like have sex. They like love their lives. They love each other. And I'm like, okay, well, there's something here too. Be around it is nice. Yeah. It's so funny.

Actually, I have a couple friends whose marriages, I think, are just the best. And I was out with them on Sunday. And I was sitting next to a friend of mine who's single. And he was like, I don't know if there's like anything out there. Am I going to find it? And I was like, you're sitting across from two people that like, have done it. You know, it's inspiring to see it, at least. It does make you feel like it's possible.

Yeah. And, you know, Martha's parents have been married for 40 years. They dance. They sing together. They, like, hold hand. I'm like, that's incredible. That's not minor, yeah. It's a beautiful experience.

Whatever. How did this happen? I feel so rare. And my parents did not have that. They were together, but they didn't love each other. They loved us kids, but they didn't show affection. They didn't model love in a healthy way. They modeled, like, you know, passive aggressive energy.

really well. They modeled like screaming and slamming doors really well. They modeled those types of things. So I was like always kind of triggered, but I attracted women who would do those things to me, who would give me the cold shoulder for a day if I didn't say something they wanted me to say, who would scream at me. And I would just, okay, I would give in because I was trying to fix that. I was trying to fix the wound from my childhood by repeating it unconsciously. I wasn't even aware. But that's your model for partnership then. And that's why I had to heal. That's why I had to heal and unwind it and say, what is my vision of the relationship that I want? So we have a shared relationship vision. We have shared values and we have a shared lifestyle. It doesn't mean it's 100% the same.

It's aligned. Well, I like that you talk about like figuring that out a little bit before you start like having sex with somebody. I will go on a crazy sex journey. I mean, I shouldn't have sex to sexual people. Like, and I think it does cloud things for me. I mean, wait a couple months. And then you can have all the sex you want with a person. You know what I mean? I gave me like two weeks. Wait a couple months with the guy, and then you can have all the sex you want with him. Yeah, yeah. To see if he's healthy.

It's going to be your person you have forever. But what you were saying about when you meet somebody and you're like, you can't like, and you're like, that's my person. You don't fucking know anything about them. This happened twice to me. And I was like, this is the best person ever. And like, imagine I started having sex with those people. Forget it.

You don't know it. My life would have been over. Podcast would be over. You don't, you know, yeah, because then you lose all your energy. You put it all into that person and you're like just wrapping around this perfect idea of who they are without actually knowing them. And if someone says to you, like, I love you within the first couple days, run. Oh, my God.

Run. Or I see you as my wife or I want to be you. No. I want to have babies with you. You're like, I get it. But I'm like, I get it. You should. You want to blow job.

But they shouldn't say that in the first few days. And they don't know you. They don't know you. They don't know. That's a trauma wound, you know, a chemical spot of life. And you should ask why. Right. What do you mean?

What do you love? You don't know anything. You don't know anything about me. So I don't want you, you don't need to share Martha's personal business. But, I mean, it definitely sounds like you guys had different upbringings, you know, where she is this like family sounds similar to mine. And, you know, we don't need to share on her trauma. But, like, it sounds like she might have a little less of the new in that area,

like with the way you were brought up and the relationship you saw in terms of your parents. So, and that does work for you guys, obviously. But I think because I was on the healing journey, she was like, okay. Totally. I know you have a lot of stuff in your past. And I accept you for it. And I'm proud of you for being on a healing journey. and you're constantly growing

and I've been doing this for 10 years healing. A million percent. Because I've got my show and I bring on therapists like you guys and I'm constantly learning and growing. And so she sees that and she's like, oh, that's awesome. But if I wasn't willing to be like in a growing journey,

she probably wouldn't be attracted to me. She might be like, oh, he's a, you know, whatever, a handsome guy that's fucked up. Yeah, who's got his stuff. I'm not into him. Like, cool, he looks nice, but it's not my life partner. But you had a wall of people like that

where you're just like, if they're not going to fix themselves, do I just have to accept the product that's in front of me and how long can I do that? You know, that's not fair. If you choose the person, then you're accepting the person. I think it's unfair when a partner knows about their past and doesn't accept them. But he says, I want to commit to you, but I don't accept this things about you. You need to change this.

I don't think that's fair. I don't think you should be in that relationship. I think you should say, hey, listen, for me, I want to be in a healthy relationship. This is my value, vision, and lifestyle. if you don't align with this, that sucks and it's, you know, I don't like that, but are you open to growing on your own? Not because of me, but on your own. I think that's when it could work and be a little bit better. But again, you could also not sleep with someone for a year, get married and do all these things and it not work out. Totally. You know what I mean? It's not like it's no guarantees.

There's not like the end all, like waiting. I just think it helps you more. Yeah, if you start at the same place in life. Yeah. I think so. And I think like life happens. There's challenges. There's adversity, like where you got to face. And how you all respond to it is going to help the relationship or hurt it. All right. Well, I'm going to get a king bed and squeeze it in that little fucking room. Do it. And manifest and make space.

I can't believe it. I think you should break the sleeves. You can come over. We also don't need the man to come over to your place all the time. But having the bed. It's just, you're right. Someone else said this to me. And so it's been reinforced.

No, I love this house. I'm obsessed with it. No, it's great. Put the king in there. So that you can come for a couple nights, but you're going to be going to his place. Yeah. More often, too.

It's just a room with a bed. Sorry, you go at the doorway, you just dive into the bed. This room is just for fucking. So welcome. Everywhere you go in the room, it's just bed. You just roll over.

Well, this is great. I know that people are going to really want more of you and your insights. So tell everybody where they can find your book and your podcast and everything. I mean, yeah, school of greatness show. We got to have you guys on some time

in the future for sure and talk about. I mean, I'm going to be grilling you guys like hard on this stuff. I love that. Yeah, school greatness. I have a lot of therapists and neuroscientists on about like kind of the healing journey and the greatness mindset book, which is all about really owning your past so you can have

a powerful future. So they can get the book anywhere, the greatness mindset, book anywhere online or Barnes & Noble. Out tomorrow. Pre-order it today. Yeah. Okay. Well, thanks for being here. Appreciate you, ladies.

Thanks so much. Yes. And I'll take us out. You guys, Girls Gotta Eat.com. Girls Got a podcast on Instagram. Girls Got a podcast on TikTok. I don't want to forget that. I am Ash Hess, Raina isbrain.

Dot Greenberg, Vibesonly.com and Vibes Only on Instagram. And subscribe to the YouTube, share it with a friend. And we'll see you next week. Have a good week, guys. Bye.