Know Thyself - E41 - Stefanos Sifandos: How to find THE ONE & Have the Best Sex EVER

Episode Date: April 11, 2023

Relationship coach Stefanos Sifandos explains how to uplevel your relationships and create epic love. He dives deep into the damage that porn does to us, our societal distortions around love, and playing 'the dating game'. He explains his own journey of overcoming childhood trauma and a sex addiction, and why he believes that deliberate celibacy healed his relationship to the feminine.  He also shares his advice for how to find 'the one' and build a loving partnership, giving his tools for how to fight, defining agreements, and making love last past the honeymoon phase.      SPONSOR: https://www.mudwtr.com/knowthyself Code: KNOWTHYSELF for 15% off (Currently only ships to US & Canada)   ___________ Timecodes: 0:00 Intro 2:09 Creating Safe Spaces to Feel 8:26 Finding “The One” 11:59 Relationships as a Mirror 20:08 Stefanos Journey to Love 25:45 'Toxic' Masculinity 34:20 Porn’s Damage 44:28 Learn How to Fight 56:54 Have Better Sex 1:02:43 Attraction to Inner Beauty 1:07:04 Defining Agreements in Relationship 1:10:17 Choosing Celibacy  1:23:26 Men’s & Women’s Groups 1:33:20 Conclusion   ___________   Stefanos Sifandos:    With over 15 years of experience in the personal development space, Stefanos is a trained educator, Behavioural Scientist and relationships expert with an extensive background in Psychology, Philosophy and Ecology. He is passionate about and committed to leading people to closer to their highest potential and to each other. Stefanos’ philosophy merges the best of Eastern and Western methodologies to promote spiritual balance and empower people in life and love. From trauma release to navigating the murky waters of modern masculinity, to helping women understand the men in their lives, he helps people escape negative patterns and cultivate a positive sense of self. Stefanos has worked with thousands of men and women from all walks of life; special forces soldiers, Olympic gold medalists, elite world champion fighters, and everyday people have relied on him to restructure and reframe their relationships with themselves, their past, their trauma, their potential and their loved ones.   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stefanossifandos/ Website: https://stefanossifandos.com   ___________   Know Thyself Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ Website: https://www.knowthyself.one Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4wglCWTJeWQC0exBalgKg   Listen to all episodes on Audio:  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FSiemtvZrWesGtO2MqTZ4?si=d389c8dee8fa4026 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-thyself/id1633725927     André Duqum Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/   Meraki Media https://merakimedia.com https://www.instagram.com/merakimedia/

What do most people do? Gets too difficult. Wasn't like this at the beginning? Sex was great before. Now we're having it once every three months. Fuck this. I'm going to another relationship. We leave too soon.

And for me, this is where the real work begins. I personally have been to some very, very dark places within my own psyche, within my own soul. It was a love compulsion, sex compulsion, sex addiction. I was running for myself completely. I tried to stay fucking emotional. I don't think I would have been able to have my daughter if I hadn't done that deeper work. The more you demonstrate discipline from seeking excessive pleasure, the more attractive you are. And that builds trust ultimately.

I often say the greater the pain that we're harboring, whether we know it or not, the greater the pleasure we require to mitigate that pain. And pornography, food, adrenaline, making a ton of money, being successful, fame is very distracted from the pain that we don't want to feel. Here's the paradox. Feel the pain and you'll move through it. You'll close the loop and you'll be a different person. Hello, beautiful humans. Welcome back to the Know They Self podcast for every single week. We get the honor and the privilege to sit down with a beautiful mind and open heart and somebody who can help us know ourselves, me included. I enjoy this journey for myself first and foremost so much. If you come to this podcast,

you want to become the most healthy, liberated, authentically expressed version of yourself. And my job is to introduce you to tools, individuals, conversations, people that can help you do just that. My guest today is an incredible relationship coach. His mission is to help individuals reach the fullness of their potentiality and discover what it means to authentically relate and have a deep understanding of conscious dynamics within partnership, but also in relation to all life. And just getting to meet him as he came over about 30 minutes ago, I can feel how people would feel safe in his presence because he feels like a very integrated.

individual and that's something that you can pick up on if you're sensitive to to be attuned to that. And so without further ado, my guest, Stephanos, Sifandos. Andre, thank you for having me, man. Pleasure to be here. My pleasure, man. How do you, in your words, give the framework of the work that you do with people? What is the framework and understanding of how you invite people into this conscious relating and work with couples and individuals? How would you break that down? Yeah, I ask people to, well, I get curious and as a result of myself getting curious about their lives and where they're at, it hopefully, intelligently, prompts them to also be curious about their lives.

And I ask them questions around the relationship to the things that matter most of them. And so is that their past, is that the relationship to their parents, their relationship to trauma, if they have any? Because, you know, those intense experiences can really shape who we become, as do the, deeply pleasurable experiences that we have during life as well. Our relationship to our values, to our future dreams, our relationships to the people in our lives that really matter most. And I ask people to look at all those areas of their lives and are they satisfied? Are they connected to those practices? Do they want more? Are they saying what they truly want to

say or is there so much that is unspoken that is left in those relationships that compounds over time that builds resentment and creates distance. And so really, you know, when we're moving through life, it's not too difficult to realize I'm not exactly where I want to be because we notice patterns that come up. We engage in habits that are unhealthy. We know somewhere in us, we know that we're doing things that we shouldn't be doing that is in alignment with who we want to become. And so giving permission to people, not that I'm the permission king by any means, but you mentioned

safety earlier is, is creating a safe space for people to actually explore that without self-judgment, without critique from external forces and other people, because most of us, I won't say most of us. Some of us, myself included, have experienced a great deal of judgment and critique. And what that does to our nervous systems, what that does to our organism as a whole, our psychology, is it retracts us in life. And therefore, we're not really being in our truth, in relationship or even out of relationship. And so creating a safe space for people to delve into the areas of their lives that need changing, but that can be very daunting, is a safe place to start.

Yeah, it's beautiful, man. First discovering who we are is really important before we, and oftentimes it comes by virtue of relating right through the mirrors of our life. We can actually start to know ourselves more. But what's really fascinating is understanding relationship in general as the wide umbrella, and not just romantic partnership, but how we relate to all things, how we relate to addiction, how we relate to stimulus in general, and with all the phenomena of life through all of our five senses, what do you feel like is a really important understanding to discover first about the place in which from we're relating? Because a lot of times people think that if they want a healthy

relationship, or if they want to find the right partner, or if they want the right business, they have to go find it instead of reconciling what's in the way of it internally first. And so, yeah, is there anything that you want to speak to about how we can get better clarity and develop clarity within ourselves to first to have that kind of self-nosis? And then we can go relate from the world in a different energetic completely. It's a great question. It's a question I don't think many of us ask because we don't know where to start. So you've eloquently created a starting point.

And so I'll elaborate and go a little deeper to what I perceive to be a great place for us to start as humans. So when we look at early childhood development, we look at our formative years and how our views of the world and our views of ourselves and our relationship to things that matter most to us like love and intimacy and connection and the need to be seen and belongingness and all those good things, how those experiences over time shape us, it can be a really empowering place to start. many of us have given our power away lost our power our power is being taken from us our self-esteem our self-worth has been taken from us some of us experience all kinds of different abuse we experience an environment that is maybe volatile or violent or even just alone we feel

alone or we're critiqued or we're judged or we're not seen for who we truly are we have to wear masks to feel psychologically socially safe in the world and so if we can start there and not necessarily by ourselves because we're relational beings, right? Now, that doesn't mean that our path doesn't consist of solitude. I'm a firm believer that our path needs to be, our life's path needs to be a combination of being in our own space in solitude without other human intervention and interaction, ideally in nature, and then also being in the presence of other humans. But the caveat to that is being in the presence of other humans that are non-judgmental,

that are compassionate and that have the tolerance and the patience and the empathy and the love to stay with us. In other words, they've worked through their own shit. They are not triggered by the stuff that you're bringing, the big emotions that you're bringing. Maybe it's anger, maybe it's resentment, maybe it's deep sadness, maybe it's a jealousy, maybe it's this attitude of not being seen and because of that you've developed a compensatory strategy of false bravado, whatever it may be, right? that they can hold that and gently keep bringing you back to regulation, nervous system regulation, but also psycho-emotional regulation.

And when we experience that, for most of us the first time ever, that we're actually met for who we are, and we can be these quote-unquote ugly versions of ourselves and still be respected, still be met, still be loved. That is deeply empowering. So I say, let's start there, but let's start in a very safe way, not by yourself, because it can be too overwhelming if we start to revisit these experiences. so that we can equilibrate them and make them whole again if we do that by ourselves. It can feel like we are lost in the maze.

Yeah, I think it's a beautiful desire and wanting to get to the place to where you can have a partner or relationships where you can be witnessed in your core of vulnerabilities and still be accepted, still be loved, and have that safe presence not be wavered. A lot of people are under the illusion that they want to find the one. They want to find the one that's going to complete them, right, and to fill that hole. how do you for people that want to have a divine union create a harmonious relationship but it seems a little bit like a far off dream how do you support people and gaining the proper perspective of how to attract the partner of the of their dreams yeah find the one within yourself you know get comfortable

with you and it's not about you know love yourself fully so that others can love you that's part of it and i'm an advocate of that and it's far deeper than that it really is equilibrating and working with any unresolved, unconscious trauma and wounds that we carry and fears that we carry that we unconsciously, unknowingly project and bring into relationship. So an example of that could be this. Let's just, I'll use myself in as example, myself and my wife. So let's just say my wife makes a request of me and she does. She'll often make requests of me and I don't mean that in a facetious way. Like as a part in partnership, she'll say, hey, can you support me with this or hey, I have a request around this? Sometimes if I'm in a place,

of maybe overwhelm that triggers old aspects of myself, so I'm literally regressing in my nervous system, I will see that request as a demand. I will view it in that moment as a demand. My experience with being demanded of was very intense growing up. I experienced my father and my mother demanding a lot of me physically and emotionally. I almost became this caretaker for my mother's emotions and even my father's emotions, managing those emotions and managing the dynamic between them from a very young age, probably from the age of around five or six when my younger brother was born, again, that's a story I told myself, but that story shaped who I was, who I became. And so if I'm in an unequilibrated place, I'm unsteady within myself, I'll see

that as a demand. I'll react to that demand. I won't meet it as a request. I won't meet it with curiosity. I'll meet it with, I don't want to say violence is a very strong word, but it's not that I'm going to meet it with physical violence, but I'll meet it with asternness, with rigidity. I'll see it as a threat. And now what I do, I react. Now, I become big in my energy because as an adult and as a teenager, I learned to become big because I was so meek and passive as a child. And I wanted to be big to get my power back and be in control.

I will revert back to these old patterns that are very familiar to my brain and to my body. And so what I do is I resist the request. Now, what does that do to Christine? That, unless she can hold that and see in the moment, which sometimes she does an exceptional exceptional job of doing. She sees in the moment that I'm being reactive, her reactivity will be triggered. Her wounds will be triggered. Now we've got two wounded people colliding. And it's no longer about a simple request. It's about survival. I don't know if that answers your question. No, it's a beautiful direction though to keep going down because like I said, it's great to discover

yourself in solitude and find silence in nature and see who you are. But a lot of our growth does come from the reality of a mirror in partnership where you can see somebody in those the friction that's created it's like the energy and heat that's created from that friction allows us to know ourselves and to deal with our shit because other time you know without having the container of a loving partnership it's like these these core wounds are how else are we're going to really have the motivation or desire to even want to deal with them when somebody that you love is on the line the relationship is just an incredible catalyst for us to actually want to integrate these of ourselves. And so from that place, and especially in romantic partnerships, how important do you feel

like it is to view the other person as a mirror and to understand that they are here to reflect back to us what we haven't reconciled within? Very important, man. I think it's paramount in any intimate relationship, even friendship, especially if the friendship is very close. There are some Greek philosophers that would say that platonic friendship is even more important than the relationship of Iros or romantic partnership. And for various reasons, but I can see how that carries so much value and weight. And so to go back to your question, that mirroring effect and knowing that your partner is there to support you on your journey and vice versa, it needs to be reciprocal.

Otherwise, if it's one way, it doesn't really work, is paramount to growing in the relationship. So let me break down why I feel growth is important. And also the reason that we maybe come together, one of the core primary reasons we come together. So for me, growth is a primary directive of being human. We're here to grow and expand out of old versions of ourselves into new versions of ourselves. Physiologically, psychologically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, all of it, right? One of the ways that we do that is what you mentioned earlier is being met in challenge and intensity and being in the fire, but how we repair in that fire and the consciousness that we bring, the awareness that we bring to those situations

very much matters to if and how we grow. The other thing is that we attract certain relationships in our lives, especially those that carry a great deal of weight, those that are very important, as opportunities to redo similar relationships or primary relationships that we experienced growing up that feel unresolved or feel threatening to our nervous systems. Example, if you, I work with, I mean, I work with men and women and couples,

but I work with a lot of women that have a collective masculine wound. And let's just use the wound of abandonment, where they feel they have been abandoned by the first man in their lives, their father. And so as an adult, unknowingly to them, they will attract men that are maybe physically and or emotionally unavailable. That gives the sense of abandonment. They're not doing that because they're worthless, or they think they're worthless. I mean, there could be a belief that supports that.

moves into that. But really what's happening there is there's an opportunity to be different with that. To literally close the loop on the trauma bond that's being created internally, physically. So we're out of activated sympathetic nervous system response and we're able to be with it in a more calm, balanced way, which means our self-worth has to increase, which means we have to learn how to say no to the things that no longer serve us, so we're not on repeat. That level of consciousness sometimes takes time and I'm of the I guess belief or understanding or observation that where we are as a collective humanity in our collective consciousness we're not quite ready to make massive change without massive hurt and so what I mean by that is that we almost have to be

dragged across rock bottom sharp jagged rocks I know I was that was my story or part of my life before we can say you know what enough's enough I'm out I'll got to change I'm And not taking the path of suicide because it's not my judgment isn't that that's a bad path or that's a weak path. It's just that's not necessarily. Maybe in the long term, sure, that's a path to growth. But in this lifetime, it's not simply because you're ending physical life. And so I'm talking about that real necessity to change.

And what we do is as we mature and as we grow and as we learn and as we expand and as we love deeper because they're all terms that are synonymous with each other. We're able to make those decisions with greater clarity. faster with greater efficacy and with less damage. And that's important to our nervous systems and to other people as well to help them grow. So beautiful. It reminds me of this thing. I actually, sometimes when I go to bed, I'll wake up like 30 minutes later and like start

writing something down because I don't know. Just downloads come at weird times. Yeah, I get that. Hello, Familia. Quick break from the episode. We'll be right back. I wanted to let you know that in our desire to expand this show moving forward, we are going to be bringing in key select partnerships that are in alignment and integrity, brands that I know you can trust that I personally use and love, and I think that you will as well.

We have a whole team behind the scenes here. I know they sell if that make the show possible and it's not cheap to do so. So thank you for supporting myself and the show to expand more of what it can possibly be, bigger guess, better production, and much more to come. A quick share from today's sponsor. I'm a warm beverage kind of guy. I like my tea. cacao and other products like from our sponsor today, Mudwater. Mudwater is a coffee alternative with adaptogenic mushrooms and Ayurvedic herbs. With only a fraction of the caffeine as a cup of coffee, you get the energy without the jitters or crash. Their original blend has chai and cacao, mushrooms like Lions mane to support focus, and chaga and rashi to support your immune system. I personally also love to use the rest blend as a part of my nighttime ritual. It has no caffeine and ingredients like aschaganda and chamomile to help you chill out. I add a little bit of honey and coconut creamer and boom, you are in business.

Everything is 100% organic, non-GMO, gluten-free, vegan, and delicioso. I love what this company stands for, how they believe in creating healthy minds, through healthy habits, and how they donate monthly to mental health causes. To try them out, you can go to mudwhtr.com slash know thyself and use code know thyself for 15% off. and they'll even throw in a free rechargeable frother. As always, everything is linked down in the description below. Back to the episode. But I wrote this thing.

The first part of it is we come into this human experience to break free of inner constraints that were placed on ourselves by ourselves for ourselves. And it's what you're speaking to in this dynamic of maybe we chose the father wound because we needed to reconcile that to become a more liberated version of ourselves. I can hear, especially a lot of the women that are listening. to this right now that maybe have that abandonment issue that have gone through challenging father relationship dynamics it's quite common especially in modern society

what is the first place you would you know recommend a woman or a man that also has that that wound to begin to heal that right because it's like we can be constrained by things that are we're not aware of we have these wounds or these vulnerabilities that are outside of the realm of what we possibly you can even comprehend. And so how do you start to gain awareness on that and move through it energetically? Any wound we carry generally is accompanied by shame. And shame is quite restricting in our bodies. And so we hide as a result of feeling shame.

We wear masks. We pretend to be someone that we're not. We pretend to be happy when we're really sad. We say yes to going on a second date when we don't, you know, don't really feel safe enough. but we don't want to let that person down or where we fear being abandoned or let go again or I've got to go on another date with a new person

and start all this over again. So we do things that don't really align with our truth. And so one of the first things, I mentioned relational beings, we're relational beings, when the first things that we can do is find safe harbors of truth and safe mirrors that are compassionate, non-judgmental,

and empathetic that can mirror back to us, call us forward, challenge us in healthy ways, but also love on us when we're sharing that pain that we're carrying, so we're not carrying it completely alone. Now, for some people, they need to carry it alone, for whatever reason, there's various reasons for that, for a period of time,

but at some point they're going to have to unload that pain. And to do that in very safe spaces is the starting point for rewriting the story of our lives around whatever the pain point or the wound or the fear is that we're carrying, that's stopping us from living a full life. Yeah, it's like, we'll probably need experience some like rock bottom moment or where the pain and suffering becomes unbearable to where

we're actually motivated to make that change. And I know for you, you've had many moments of your own personal story. Is there something you like to share? Because for somebody that's come to this place that I feel at least with an integration and supporting so many people on a deep level, the branches go high to the degree the roots go deep. Because you've had so many firsthand challenging experiences within yourself and relationship dynamics, you are able to support people in such a wide full spectrum. Tell us a little bit about some of those difficult moments in your personal journey before we dive deeper. Yeah. So, you know, I used to in a previous life, this laugh, but a previous life, I used to own CrossFit gyms. And, you know, CrossFit,

if any of you are familiar with CrossFit, it's quite an intense practice, an intense physical practice. And I would say, and I was also a competitor as well, and I would say to my clients, I will never take you where I haven't been. I won't teach you how to school. I don't teach you how to squat if I don't understand and can execute proper squat mechanics as well, giving you an example, right? And at the same time, I was also in the areas of psychological services and counseling and in this personal development space as well, whilst I also own CrossFit gyms. Really, I saw the mind-body connection as something very sacred and almost inseparable

at some level, right? And so now it's the same thing. I personally have been to some very, very dark places within my own psyche and within my soul. Most of those have been in familiar states of consciousness, i.e. without plant medicine. And I'm an advocate of plant medicine. I'm very open with that. I'm definitely an advocate of plant medicine. I utilize it as a technology and a tool to expand and enhance consciousness, to explore, to sometimes unearth things that are within me that I can't quite reach after efforts of being in familiar states of consciousness, whether it's meditation or breathwork

or trauma release practices or whatever it may be, right? But most of these very dark places, I expose myself to purposely and deliberately in familiar states of consciousness because I knew that I just had to stop running from myself. And at that time, I saw any external substance ingested as still a way to run from myself at that time, many years ago. And what became the catalyst for that deeper exploration,

for the, really for the first time in my life, was a relationship that ended, but the way that it ended was what prompted me to explore myself. And she found out in that relationship that I didn't even tell her. I didn't even have the courage to tell her that I was unfaithful in that relationship. I had broken agreements in that relationship. I was cheating. I was sleeping with other women. I was seeing other women visiting prostitutes.

I was just, it was a love compulsion, sex compulsion, sex addiction. I was running from myself completely. and seeing what my actions had done and watching the pain in her, it brought up a lot of repressed and suppressed trauma and pain in me. And I came face to face with that for the first time in my life and a lot of shame as well. And for the first time in my life, I didn't want to run from it anymore. I didn't want to hide, you know, through my accolades and my status and my wealth or the accumulation of that or, you know, my physical aptitude.

or, you know, the amount of women I could sleep with. I just, you know, or sex or peak pleasurable experiences to distract me. I just wanted to stop. I just didn't want that anymore. And that's when I went within. And the commitment I made to myself, and I've shared this a lot, is I gave myself three options. Well, there was one option, actually, and that was to continue to go deep.

And there were three outcomes that would come from that. Suicide or death, one in the same. Mental asylum. or I'm going to get through this. That's it. There was no other options. And getting through it would mean getting through it in a way that I would no longer perceive myself to be damaged.

I would not be broken as a result because that would put me in the second category of mental asylum. And I would then maybe be able to support others in their journey. And I knew that wherever I was and for whatever reason, some of it was because I was very stubborn. I also have an extreme person. that I would go to the darkest depths within my own psyche, within my own soul,

and traverse that in ways I'd never have before to be able, it's the hero's journey, right? To be able to come through that and out of that and be able to retell that story. But not in words, through embodiment, where people could feel that I was changed, could feel that I had come from something that was disingenuous, that was fractured, that was broken, that was all the things.

And now there was a wholeness there. There's a result of that they could feel safe and trust. And I knew if I could do that and be that, be that, then I would start to feel safe within myself and safe enough to continue to explore. So beautiful, man. Like, in those moments where you are, you're in the shit. Like, you're like suffering, you're crying. You're, it's a really difficult experience in that moment to be human.

You know, now looking back, connecting the dots, you see how needed it was, right? You know you needed to go to the depths of hell so you could reach the heights of heaven. And now you're able to really support people in such a profound way. And for men that are experiencing infidelity, they're experiencing parts of themselves that they're ashamed of, they're in a relationship where they're, they're not willing to share with their partner, the parts and actions that they've been doing behind the scenes. Where does an individual start when they first have the awareness and they acknowledge that there's parts of them that are not in alignment? They're not living in integrity.

For you, I know you support a lot of individuals with this journey. What is your view on toxic masculinity? That word. I know it's used very often. I want to go into masculine, feminine dynamics and energies and how they work within us. But for individuals that are maybe more in the embodiment of the toxic side, this toxic scale of that. or dealing with a man who is embodying that, how to shed some light on that and then we can go from there.

Well, that man that is in unhealthy behavior needs to be witnessed in the presence of other men, familiar faces that his nervous system and his psychology can resonate with and recognize and be met again, I don't want to be on repeat, but to be met again with non-judgment. Now, that doesn't mean that that man's not going to call him forward,

or those men are not going to call him forward and ask him to be the man that he truly wants to be and to practice being in his healthy masculine, whatever that means to him and whatever the collective decide as a group, as a clan, as a tribe, that means for them as well. But men need to be witnessed by other men. There's a reason why there's sister circles. There's a reason why there's men's groups. The reason is because it's tapping to something deeply ancestral in the way that we've evolved, in the way that our nervous systems have evolved in the presence of other men.

We have to remember that many, many moons ago, hundreds of thousands of years ago, millions of years ago, as we were homoids roaming the earth. When we were in small groups, the value we brought to that group determined the survivability of that group. And if the prime directive, or one of the prime director of the physical brain is to continue to survive, then the value we bought, the integrity that we bought, the commitment that we bought, these virtues and values, that were developed from hardship in a very volatile environment still at some level

apply to this very comfortable world we live in for most of us, not for all of us, the Western world. But again, there's so much poverty, there's so much disparity and despair even in the Western world, like just here in Los Angeles. I mean, you know, hashtag Skid Row. I mean, we live in intense times as well, but we also live in very, in times of surplus, too. Probably another conversation, but I'll come back to that. So we need to be witnessed by the men. In the conversation of toxic masculinity, how it is used in today's world, or the common understanding of toxic masculinity to me is very limiting. It's limiting to all of humanity because there is a school of thought or a premise that

says all masculinity or the expression of masculinity, aka men, are toxic. Firstly, masculinity and femininity are energetic expressions that result. within every human being. It's just the duality to understand the world. We create contrast to create a richness in learning. We can use other terms. Michaela Bohm uses go and flow energies, B and do energies, active, passive, yin, young, like there's other ways to describe these energetics, these polarities that exist within us. Not only for sexual attraction, which basically you know, sustains our species, but also for the way that we interact with each other. For me, if masculinity exists, then toxic femininity exists. It just means that there are healthy ways of being

that are more sustainable than others and desirable, and there are unhealthy ways of being, that are not as sustainable as the healthy ways of being. And every human being has the capacity to do that. I will even go, here's masculine feminine, put that aside for a second, go deeper. What informs the masculine feminine? Usually it's unresolved, repressed, suppressed, wounds, trauma, experiences we've had, beliefs about ourselves that are limiting, you know, our mindset that is fractured, our hearts that feel broken, the fragility of our egos and our emotional selves that feed into these masculine feminine polarities that cause us to behave in hyper-protective and defensive ways. We are better than that as humans, but if we're not

shown that and if our shame and our pain is not met with grace, we'll keep hiding that shame and it will keep leaking out in unhealthy ways, in reactive ways, in deceitful ways in our relationships. So like we spoke to earlier, like oftentimes they come up in relationships, right? Because the container allows for that to exist. So what are some of the primary, I guess, wounds that you find when working with Menon specifically, I know and I first hand running my own men's group and being parts of different circles where it's so needed and so healthy and so productive and effective to have men who can see each other in the depth of their wounds to hold that space and to transmute the energies and alchemize that

from denser to lighter energies. But being in partnership and in being in relation to others, what are some of the core primary wounds that you see within men that are expressed? One of the things that I'm learning very deeply from the years that I've been in men's groups is to be engaged in healthy conflict without violence, whether it's emotional or verbal violence or even physical violence. It's very, very easy, not for all men, but for most men, to just go to physical violence or to just be big and loud

or to the opposite, to run and hide, right? And so what I'm learning in my men's groups is that I can be disagreeable to someone and it doesn't need to end up in intense conflict. That is a skill that carries over a true intimate relationship because we're experiencing the experience of not constantly needing to feel threatened. So one of the biggest things that men face, one of the biggest issues that men face is

rejection and a fear of rejection. So let me unpack this a little bit. So little boys, little girls, we're physiologically different. Males and females hormonally a little different, right? maybe a little or a lot, that's irrelevant, but we're different. Okay. So when we're younger and our limbic system is activated as boys, well, firstly, we have heightened and raised testosterone and cortisol.

What that does is it, as little boys, makes us less resilient than little girls, that makes us less robust, it compromises our immune systems, and at some level it makes us, quote-unquote, less intelligent, right? temporarily. It also challenges us to, it's challenging for us to emotionally regulate. And so when our limbic system is activated, we feel threatened. What the next parts of our brain that are activated are the physical parts of our brain, the parts that are responsible for physical movement, whereas in little girls, it's the verbal centres of their brains that is activated. So if these, if this understanding is not held by the caretakers, and little boys,

we'll just speak about little boys from it, and not nurtured in a specific way and almost taught, shown, told, nurtured in how to emote and express, they lose themselves and they miss out a crucial aspect of development. What that does is when they're moving to the real world, real world meaning outside their immediate family dynamic, they start to hide parts of themselves. that lends itself to not feeling safe in an environment. And so a compensatory strategy needs to take place. And so one of the reasons we hide is because we don't feel safe in being ourselves because what if that thing that is me is rejected?

And over time, that causes us to hide more and compensate either by playing really small, running away or by being really loud and big. But they're all masks that we wear. tracking so far making sense not you that's not tracking me i'm just making sure that i'm making sense what i'm explaining things so that rejection piece is huge now uh not to make pornography the enemy um and pornography reinforces that sense of rejection in terms of intimacy and sexuality because what it does is it says hey you can have a peak experience with whoever you want no one's going to comment on the size or the aesthetics of your genitalia no one's going to say no to you

the woman's always going to have an orgasm and be pleasureed you're going to have pleasure you don't have to face rejection you don't have to be told no you're not attractive or no i don't want you to buy me a drink or you don't have to spend all the money and do all this porn's free do you think so now all these centers of the brain are being activated these dopamine centers right And it's really, really easy to just go to pornography. Now, what that does, I'm using that as an example, it's not the big old end of it. Use that as an example.

But what it does is it reinforces the fact that we're not resilient. Because here's the thing, when you go out and you're introduced to people and you take the chance to maybe ask a person out or say, hey, I find you interesting. Would you like to get a coffee or would you like to go to dinner or whatever? And you don't give that person the opportunity to say no, you miss out the opportunity to build greater self-worth from a healthy place. Of course it can come from an unhealthy place too.

Like you can develop spite and resentment and all that, but we don't want to go there. But we miss out that opportunity to be more resilient and increase our self-worth and look at it from a place of, oh, what's the opportunity here for me? How can I grow from this if we just play it really easy? That makes sense? Yeah. And the coping mechanisms and behavioral adaptations could be a full spectrum of things.

pornography is a, I feel like a fairly common one because there is an unsettled, I guess, dysregulated nervous system where you need pleasure to reconcile the pain that you're not facing, the pain of self and being okay in your own presence. And that can have so many different ripple effects and expressions. But how does somebody, for example, that has a porn addiction or they're in relationship and they're watching it and they're not telling their partner, or maybe there's an interesting dynamic there. How does one move through that? Yeah, often with difficulty.

And it's very much connected to the shame piece as well. And so I often say the greater the pain that we're harboring, whether we know it or not, the greater the pleasure we require to mitigate that pain and distract us from feeling the pain that we don't want to feel. And pornography, food, adrenaline, making a ton of money, being successful, fame, the pursuit of that. Because dopamine's an anticipatory hormone.

Forget about the actualization of the thing. just the pursuit of it is very distracting from the pain that we don't want to feel. But here's the paradox. Feel the pain and you'll move through it. You'll close the loop and you'll be a different person. You create that spaciousness. So we come back to that quote unquote porn addiction or sex addiction is we've got to get to the root of that. And when we dig underneath that, what is often the case, not to reduce or to simplify, quote unquote, porn addiction or love addiction or love compulsion,

but often what is at the root of that is intimacy issues, lack of low self-worth, sorry, lack of self-worth, so low self-worth, harboring deep, deep shame. And it could be, you know, unresolved experiences. Maybe it's sexual abuse that you've experienced. Maybe it's physical abuse. Maybe it's emotional abuse. Maybe it's a sense of isolation.

I can't trust anyone. Intimacy is not safe, but it's safe when I'm by myself. It's safe in this with my computer screen and myself and my own being. but to be seen by someone else that hasn't been safe in the past. You know, dad would criticize me or mom would not accept who I am or demand a lot of me. I am projecting that my partner is going to do the same, so I'll just hide. So we have to take, like, you know, the first step to healing is really bringing that thing out that we are carrying in silence, not to the world, that can be a little overwhelming,

but to at least one other person that can help us carry that load. Yeah. Yeah, because then it's like when we think it's all of our own shit and we have to figure out all on our own, it becomes a daunting task that is usually going to be pushed off to some day in the future, one day when. We need to know that we're not alone. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And it can get so heavy and like the path of self-actualization and reaching our full potential and knowing ourselves, like it can get a little over-serious sometimes. and when we're carrying that load alone, it's just a heavy task. Yeah, and then big terms as well, man, like reaching our highest potential. And they're terms that I use as well.

And I'm an advocate of and even self-actualization. They're very, very big terms for most people. Not because people are ignorant or stupid, because people are holding so much pain. I think what is probably even more important is it's like, what's the next step? Yeah. Like, what's the next thing that I can do? Okay, so I watch porn and I masturbate to porn three times a day. Can I just cut that back down?

and two times a day and observe what happens. Can I maybe seek a counselor or join, you know, a sex anonymous group or one little step that breaks a habit that helps you see aspects of yourself that you couldn't see before. But the thing is, we need to be willing and wanting. There's this gap that happens. People say, well, how do you do the thing? But you've got to be aware of the thing before you can take a step. Totally.

And some people are just not aware of their pain. They just think it's part of their lives. they can't see the forest through the trees. Something needs to happen. To me, that something is immense discomfort that is a wake-up core. It's that rock-bottom moment that has them say, oh, shit, I'm addicted to pornography. Well, shit, I don't like being rejected, therefore I keep my mouth shut and don't say the thing that I want to say. So no one, I don't open myself up to being told no or a different opinion or whatever.

we need that, I think we need that rock bottom moment. I don't think that's, we're going to be like that for the rest of our existence, but we need it in this state of consciousness. Totally. You could be a people pleaser and like just be coasting in the slightly uncomfortable comfort zone of that and be in that zone for a while, but until something from life, the universe smacks you with a cosmic two by four, to wake you up to realize that you've been living a slightly shittier version of yourself

that is possible, then it's just necessary. I feel like oftentimes it just boils down to, like you said, getting awareness of what the root is, which is a task of itself, and then fully feeling it. Like fully, you have to fully feel it to be able to transmute it, right? And would have been off the top, like a couple of the most powerful modalities to actually get into that space to actually feel that. I know you spoke to plant medicines, but are there others? Yeah, for me, breathwork literally saved my life. I mean, I was on the, I was, on the, I, I've been on the verge of suicide many times, and this one particular time, I just felt so hopeless.

And I knew, though, at the same time, I had a little ways to go in terms of the depth and despair to be able to slingshot out of it. But I was just tired, man, I was exhausted. I just, not just physically, but I was emotionally, spiritually exhausted. I was just at my tether. And a friend of mine said, hey, there's this amazing practitioner. She does breathworks many years ago. breathwork and she's here visiting from, I think it was Sweden or something, some, some European

country, I can't remember which one. And you got to try it. And I said, yeah, I mean, I'm sort of familiar with breathwork man, but yeah, okay, I'll do it, whatever. Like, I'll do anything at this point. So I hadn't given up, but I was close. Change my life, man. It changed my life. I mean, I released stuff from that. I had DMT experience like no other. Like a DMT release like no other. I went to the beach after that particular session. And, you know, have you ever done DMT?

No. Not exogenous. Yeah. So it's like duality collapses, at least for me. Right. And so after this breath works session, I don't know how I got to. the beach. It was only a few minute drive, but I don't know how I got there. And I was sitting on the

beach. And all of a sudden, the ocean was where the sky was and the sky was where the ocean was, at least that's how it looked. So it's a very, very deep, profound experience. But what happened is a result of me allowing myself to just really let go and breathe and be in, and be witnessed by this woman and be in her guidance and a nurturing presence, I was able to release such deep, trapped, repressed emotion that just was stuck. And I couldn't access it by myself. And I couldn't access it in other conventional or even slightly unconventional methodologies that I'd utilized as well.

Even with the inner child work and the family constellation work, I just couldn't get it. And I needed to breathe in this way and access this through the somatic body. And that's when I just, that was a big turning point for me. And I started to gain just a slither of hope. And I immersed myself in breath practice. It's beautiful. You just gave yourself some space from being the identity that is the person who's suffering

to like slightly having some separation and watching the version of you that was going through it. And that's a powerful shift, man. I want to keep going into some relationship dynamics because I feel like you provide a lot of really expansive insight into this whole topic. For being in a relationship years on end or decades, you realize the importance of how it is to properly address anytime there's conflict. Like having that healthy relationship to conflict. It's inevitable, right? There's going to be things that come up within relationship dynamics and how we approach it.

And having frameworks and values and shared expressions of how we're going to go into things as a partner is so important. So in the pursuit of authentic relating and having a conscious relationship, developing a divine union, where we can have dynamics that are harmonious. And it's not me versus you, but us versus our neuroses, you know, and having kind of a teamwork aspect. somebody who's been married for a while and understands this very well and supports people, how important is it to learn how to fight? Oh, it's everything.

I mean, when it comes to healing and it comes to creating wholeness, experiences of wholeness in our lives, macro and micro moments of that, the deep healing is in two places, in the presence of others, in the safe presence of others, and in the repair of the conflict. So what stems from the repair of the conflict is how quickly you can repair, how you cannot be triggered and activated and reactive

in that moment where your partner is sharing, and vice versa, of course, right? Your ability to be curious in that conflict, so ask questions, your ability to not project your pain. and so again, come back to asking questions to get really clear, your ability to listen, heart and ear, like really, really listen, your ability to create space so that you can repeat back what you're really hearing that person say, to reinforce the truth that they're sharing,

however they're expressing it, and to ask, is there more? These are, I mean, if I was to use two modalities, it would be combining Imago dialogue with NVC, nonviolent communication. Those two modalities combined. What was the first one? Imago dialogue. Okay, I'm not familiar with. Harville Hendricks, old school, OG, probably in his 80s, keeping the love you find, creating the love you find. There are a couple of books.

Those are the two really big books. And he speaks a lot to this dialogue, this one. way of communicating. So essentially it's listening. So listening with empathy. It is then repeating back what you heard and asking, is that accurate? Is there more? Is there anything else you'd like to share? Then it is empathizing or rather intellectually not agreeing with, but an example would be once you have repeated back what they've said, in your words and theirs, you would then empathize from a cognitive place

and say, I hear your need to be seen. You'd use language such as, I imagine that what you're sharing right now must be very difficult for you, given that this reminds you of the experience you had when you were six years old. Yeah, it's like honoring their reality.

100%. And then the next thing, part to that is that but it's more feeling-based language where I feel that you are sad. And I feel your sadness. Not not, and it's not a codependent feeling, but it's an acknowledgement. And that's base in, in essence, that's the Imago dialogue. It's very simple. Are you familiar with NVC?

Yes, a little bit more. Yeah. So NVC, super simple, observation request, sorry, observation, feeling, request, need, four steps. What's the observation? What are the facts? If there was a video camera here, which there are many here right now, what is the video camera picking up? You've got a black shirt on,

got a necklace around your neck, you're sitting in a cross-legged position, like, they're the facts, right? What am I feeling? I'm making it about me, my eye language, right? I'm not making it about you, or you did this and I felt that. No, no.

Really taking responsibility for what we're feeling. What's my need in the situation, and what's my request of you? Now, you didn't have to make the request. You didn't have to say, you don't have to say, yes, I'll do that. You may not want to. So we go back and forth in dialogue. But it's called nonviolent communication because it's not about coming from reactivity.

It's about really feeling and hearing each other. When we're able, and I want to put my hand up here, I do not do this well all the time. Sometimes my wife and I get it, we do it right. We do it really well. The other night we had a conflict. We did it really well. We both got heated. Well, she doesn't really get heated.

I get heated. I got heated, but not to the point where it was overbearing where she shut down. So I was tempering my heat and I was being mindful and conscious of her and I was really communicated with, and look at the beginning when you have these types of conversations and you use these frameworks, it feels a little robotic. It feels a little, for lack of a better term, fake. Yeah. However, if you stay with it, it becomes more natural and organic and your ability to listen

and hear and still be expressed yourself, it increases tremendously. very powerful techniques. It's beautiful. I think it's so needed to start to incorporate that and to allow it, once it's matured and it's an actual expression of how you want to relate, that's when it'll feel normal or feel more natural. For individuals that, like, the thing is that you've got to get at is to like relinquish the inner need to be right.

Like you want to win instead of actually learn from the experience of the dynamics, right? And so do you have an example of moving through some of these stages where like a conflict came up within maybe your partnership or somebody else is that you've helped them through because I think it's helpful to also frame it in like real time experience. Yeah. So, you know, my wife and I ask each other and ourselves two questions. Do you want to be right or do you want to be love? And what would love do now?

So if you just ask that question like in conflict, what genuinely what would love do now? And maybe love would be a stand for the truth that is being expressed. But how would love then express that truth? But would love express it with violence and resentment and anger and rage or would love express it in a different way? But we have to get really honest with ourselves and most people don't want to be really honest with themselves. I know there are many times I don't want to be honest with myself because my ego doesn't want

to be wrong. Yeah. And so to answer your question around conflict, right? Yeah, if there's an example also, that particular is to come. Yeah. where this need to be right. Well, I often have this need to be right because... Drawing the club.

And I own that because I felt I was made so wrong as a kid. And so my compensatory strategy was to argue very well and be very loud. Not as a child, not even as a teenager, but towards my later teens in adulthood where I started becoming bigger and stronger and I just became more aggressive and was fighting every week. and drinking alcohol and doing all those things that many young men in Australian culture will do to prove their manhood, that's their right of passage. You get me started on ineffective rights of passage in the Western world.

You may want to get me started on that later. But, you know, it became that for me. And so it became a habit to need to be right because I felt so threatened. Every time someone disagreed with me, every time someone said, no, that's not true for me. I made that an attack on me personally because I hadn't gotten over and I hadn't resolved the pain that I experienced as a young boy growing up being made to be wrong, being reprimanded all the time just for dropping a spoon on the floor, being screamed at for not finishing my food

or, you know, by my father, like this intense, intense family life growing up and never really having a voice. So when I got some power back, I wanted my voice. So how that translates into relationship is sometimes when I'm in overwhelm or I'm not regulated in my nervous system, I'm in this reactive posture. So everything feels like a threat to me. And as a result of that, I often feel shame. So I withdraw, but then after a while, it's insidious pattern. Then after a while, to compensate for the shame that I feel, I get very angry. So now, or I need to be right because that's one of the ways that I express my anger. I express control of the world.

So now no matter what the fuck you say, I'm just going to be against it, even if I agree with it. I'm going to find something that I can disagree with in that just to have conflict so that I can win or at least attempt to win so I can feel in control. Now, that's not me in my adult, 40-year-old self here and now. That is my nervous system regressing. So that's an example. And I'll do that with my wife.

where I will then criticize her and I will make judgments on her. Like I will say to her, I, yeah, see, like you're a glass half empty person. I'm a glass half full person. So I'm trying to elevate myself and belittle her. That's not appropriate in conflict. And it's not appropriate in intimate relationship or any meaningful relationship. And I'm coming from my reactive self.

Now, over the years, I mean, I said that to her the other day, actually, literally the other days. This isn't like a 10 years ago thing or five years ago, I think. I said it to the other day, and I also am able to apologize and take ownership in real time and say, look, I'm sorry I said that. Here's what's actually happening and what's underneath that. And you don't deserve me saying that to you. So please accept my apology.

And I'm doing my best to be aware of that pattern as it comes up. That's beautiful, man. And it's like you said, it's a practice. It's a process, something that you continually get awareness on. And the more that you do, the better you get at it. or at least the better your ability to spot your own bullshit and see when it's your own stuff, when it is all our own stuff. And, you know, it's great to have the desire to want to do this, but also it takes two to tango,

right? You need a partner that's willing and has this desire, this fire for inner self-transformation and taking ownership. That's one of my core values, especially going into a romantic partnership of something that I just absolutely need because you're not going to find, you know, if you want to try to go out and find the next mother teresa you know good luck i'm sure she had her own shit um but you know it's more so about instead of finding somebody who's in this absolute place of wholeness that they have the desire to take ownership and to to to take responsibility for their own process

and to like want to have this conscious relationship and like that desire allows the space to be created to actually grow in the presence of each other and have real intimacy yeah yeah you're right it really does take two to tango. It's so important. So everything that I'm saying, it really does need to be reciprocated for it to be maximally effective. Otherwise, you know, we have a saying in Australia, you're pushing shit uphill. And it becomes very difficult if only one person is very willing and the other isn't.

Like yourself, both my wife and I value growth as one of our highest values in relationship. And so immediately there's an orientation towards coming back to repair, coming back to how can we grow from this, coming back to what's my role in this. But we both have to be doing that. And I'll be honest, sometimes she'll do it more than me and I will do it more than her. And that can be frustrating, but we have to stay the line. And we have to have that. We have to apply that compassion to our partners, but to ourselves as well. And also at the same time, and this is a tricksy piece, right?

I say trixie because I like Lord of the Rings, so it's a Lord of the Rings. reference. But it's a tricky piece, right, where can we hold the line of compassion for our partners and the situation whilst still honoring our own truth and doing that in this very eloquent way? Usually it's pretty messy for most of us. But again, practice. The more we practice, the more we have our own personal practice of how we just move through the world, outside of any relationship to anyone, just our own personal way of being, right? That can reinforce this ability to remain in the quote unquote fight long enough to extract the value and grow and move on to the next thing, whatever the next thing may be.

Another pathway of people I'm sure would love to get clarity on is especially being in partnership for a long period of time. A lot of people struggle with sex. So let's talk about it because the reality is there is the novel experience of 18 months of oxytocin when you first have that immediate attraction, right? And then there's the evolved version of true intimacy and being with another on multiple planes, not just physical. But for individuals that are struggling, having harmonious love and having that fire stay alive within the relationship, how do you support people where it feels dead? It doesn't feel as exciting, not as interesting. There's maybe one person that wants it more than the other. There's one person that wants to do it more frequently than the other.

and how do you support individuals from that regard? So yeah, such a complex topic, man. You know, in my own personal experience, there have always been ebbs and flows in sexual attraction and sexual frequency and I guess the quality of the sexual experience, which is a subjective measure, I guess. You know, everyone would rate quality and quantity in different ways.

But I think really a starting point is what is underneath the desire for sex and what is underneath the non-desire for sex, right? And what is driving those individuals? So let's pull back for a moment. You mentioned, you know, the limerence phase of the honeymoon period essentially, right? And at some point that usually, for the vast majority of us, wears off. So the novelty and the novelty in variety, it dwindles. and so now our pathways for attraction begin to shift.

And for me, this is where the real work begins. Because if you're just valuing sexual intimacy, then you're probably going to want a new partner, right? Or you're going to want to create novelty within that partnership, which can be difficult for people to do. So an example of that is role play. Another example is introducing other partners. Another example is being in different physical environments

and activating our sexual creative energy because sexual energy isn't just the act of sex, you know, penetration, giving and receiving, it is also creative energy. It's also personal expression. It's also personality, right? So there's all those things that you can do, yes, but really what happens is the deeper intimacy practices begin.

And so once that limerence phase has dwindled and we're no longer preoccupied and obsessed with all these sex hormones moving through our bodies and that the priority is now off the sex and it's living, it's cohabitating together, whether you're living in the same physical space or not, but it's living in each other's lives in different ways. You're starting to see now a less polarized view of the person.

You're starting to see more of who they are. You're starting to see more of their ugly parts. Yeah, not just the best version of themselves that they've presented to you. That's right, and that you have done to them. And not necessarily intentionally, right? It's sort of like this natural, byproduct, it's part of it. But can you love those parts? Because when you start to begin to love those parts that seem ugly or don't seem attractive

or that are difficult to be with and you start to bring them into your existence and say, how is this serving me? What does this remind me of? Quality questions lead to quality outcomes in our lives. How can I grow from this? What can I heal from this? What am I learning? What can I give?

And can I learn to love those parts? What do I need to love within myself to love those parts of my partner? Now you may come to a conclusion where for you, those parts are unlovable. Then you're at a different crossroads, right? But can you put the time and the intention into loving those parts? And you're both doing this at the same time. Because now you're creating novelty. You're creating variety in the relationship again because you're seeing each other

through very different lenses. But you've got to do that in a work. And ultimately, that's in a child work, that's trauma work. That is habitual patterning work like it's breaking old patterns of relating. because now the relationship may, is like, God damn you remind me of my mother. Well, who's the common denominator in that? You, because that's your partner and that's your mother,

and you're in the center of that. But is she your mother? She's not your mother. So she's behaving in a certain way that reminds you of your mother. What are you doing to enable that? What are you being to enact that in her? Now, you can't be responsible for what she does,

but you can be responsible. Always say our greatest locus of control is within ourselves. Even that is debatable. right, what we really have control over. But it's easier for me to control or master my own inner faculties than it is yours, unless I'm a master hypnotist or whatever, which I'm not. So you get what I'm saying? So let me start with me.

Well, I'm the common denominator in this. Let me start with me. Now, if we're both doing that, if we both have an agreement and a commitment to both doing that, you can see that growth can accelerate very quickly. And it becomes less about the conversation of sex. That comes back in harmony and joy and excitement. excitement and novelty as you start to heal this stuff that comes up. But what do most people do? It gets too difficult. I wasn't like this at the beginning. Sex was great before. Now we're

having it once every three months. Fuck this. I'm going to another relationship. We leave too soon. Now, I'm not saying that those with that relationship shouldn't end, but can it end with you extracting, both of you extracting a lot of growth from that? So you take that into the next phase of your life. Right. Otherwise, you just go on too often times and you can work out, right? There's a saying you can work out one thing with a thousand people or a thousand things with one person. There's relationships that maybe there's just like a sole contract where it completes after a certain amount of time. But more often than not, we're given the opportunity to deepen. And instead of just using it as a as a point to escape and go on to something else, something that's

more attractive, we need to wake up to see like to evolve our level of attraction and what we're attracted to because if we're operating within a smaller identity where we just find the physical is what gets us turned on, not just physically, but like multidimentially, mind, body, spirit, all of it. How important is it to develop attraction to and cultivate that attraction to the inner qualities of somebody? I can see the emotional depth that you have, how you care, your heart, you know, your creativity. And a lot of these things can allow us to be turned on energetically and not just physically. And I feel like that allows for a more wholesome, integrated approach to attraction having longevity

instead of three years down the road it's like I'm just going to be attracted to a younger, hotter version of someone else especially if you want to be and have a long lasting relationship where you're 20, 30, 40 years I'm sure it's just an incredible test to developing the attraction

of what you value in another person that can allow sex to be part of intimacy in a larger umbrella. Yeah. Yeah, I go back to that understanding of seeing that person through a different lens. And, you know, part of that is that sapio-sexual approach where you're really attracted to the inner workings of their mind,

their being, the layers of self that comes through that is more intangible than the physical tangible, right? And I also don't want to shame individuals that have a strong physical attraction to someone as well because that is part of attraction. But for me, there's, I guess there's, two fundamental pathways. There's the fertiliser that is driven by, I guess, our genome. There's fertilization driven sex and then there's bonding behavior. So we need the polarity or

the attraction to procreate and extend the life essence of our species, but we're also social beings. And so we need, there are hormonal profiles that change and shift and mirror each other in the socialization of being together. And so I really, it's not the thing that you value the most that's most important. It's what's the come from of that thing. So let me explain that. So if you're talking about, let's just look at monogamy and broad brush strokes non-monogamy for a moment, right? And you want to be in a monogamous relationship. There's nothing wrong or right about that. It's a choice. But what's underneath your choices is it social constructs constructs and conditioning? Is it familial conditioning?

Does it come from a real healthy place within yourself where you've given this a lot of thought and you've felt into it? And you prefer to be in a container where it's just you and one person you're going at depth and this is how you define depth? Was it coming because is it coming from a place of where you're scared that other people may think that if you're with multiple people, then you're going to be X, Y and Z, right? And vice versa for a non-monogamous container as well. So anything that we do in life, I like to take the approach of, great, this is what I like, this is my value, what's my come from, or what am I come from?

Because it's usually not just one, we're multifaceted beings, as you mentioned earlier, right? So it's usually pluralized. What are my come from? And are the majority of my come froms coming from an integrated, grounded, healthy place? And the ones that are not, can I work with them and observe what happens? Does my yearning or desire change? Does my need for this thing shift? and if it doesn't, let me go back to it.

This deeper level of self-analysis is not something that I have been doing, you know, since the beginning of my time. It's something that has cultivated over time, and the more I do it, the more and the more I sit with myself in this deeper reflection and feel, not just think, but feel, the easier I'm able to make decisions that are more genuine to who I truly am, not to external pressures or previous conditioning or someone else's voice that has been imprinted in my own mind.

It's powerful. It's a powerful understanding because it's like the evolution of it and you're continually given the opportunity to deepen and have awareness and shed light on what are the things coming from, those come from. So that's beautiful, man. And what I want to go into next is, you know, it's, it's beautiful to have and have the attractions. And I wanted to first go into, it's natural to have those attractions, even in partnership, right, where you're attracted to another beautiful individual. How do you deal with that?

How do you communicate that? How do you navigate that in a relationship where you're committed to somebody? You're devoted to a partnership. But attraction is natural and to not shame it, but to just call it, call it for what it is, right? Because there's the attraction, and that might be on the. physical and then there's also the internal of like what I'm committed to a family a person and so is there anything you want to speak to with that yeah yeah proactive agreements so just really being proactive the simplicity of it is is again what we talked about before about men fearing rejection but people fearing

rejection if we bring an idea or a thought to someone we're scared that that may not be met in the way that we want it to be met so we have to cultivate enough self-worth and do that in a work that when we bring an idea to someone that may be quote unquote rejected, which is a whole can of worms in and of itself, because I am of the belief and the understanding that really people aren't rejecting us. They're rejecting a notion or an idea that they have a relationship with from a historical context that they perceive is represented in us, but it's not really us that they're rejecting. That was a side note.

So proactive agreements. Proactive agreements means, okay, so we're in this committed relationship. We're both clear we want to be in this relationship. We're also aware, we happen to be aware that we're also going to be attracted physically, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, excuse me, to other human beings. How do we want to go about sharing that? You may come to the conclusion of like, keep it to yourself, whatever. I don't care.

Or, hey, if you are attracted to someone, tell me about it. I want to hear the fantasy about it because that maybe helps them become even more sexually active to each other. So, hey, if you see a woman that you really are attracted to, bring that home to me tonight. Let's play that out. Let's roll play that. Whatever. You know what I'm saying? You're just proactive agreements.

Have those mature conversations. And here's the thing, man, the more difficult conversations you have in your partnership or in your intimate relationships, actually, this is a really beautiful thing. The more closeness and intimacy you're creating through that challenge, especially if you can repair from it, especially if you can move through it and keep. being together in healthy ways. When you give that freedom to your partner to like be the full expression and have their attractions or whatever, that security and safety that provides somebody actually

creates so much more intimacy. And oftentimes we fear the expression of saying, I'm attracted to this person or whatever. But it's really the clinging that makes us resist, right? So it's like what you don't make space for then becomes the barrier and resistance for intimacy. So I think it's ideal to come to a place. place where you're in partnership where both people can safely express whatever it is, literally the full spectrum, whatever it is, and know that it's not going to mean anything about how much I still love you or, you know, that we're still here. And that space, that freedom that you provide is just

such a beautiful place to get to. For you on your own path, and, you know, I've gone through periods as well, how important is it to have those times where you are single, you find solitude, perhaps you go into celibacy because until you have those periods where you fully can you know two degree right we're always oblivious to what we're unaware of by the nature of it but to to really be in our own energy like you spoke to earlier it's important to be with individuals in community in partnership but then also be alone ideally in nature and have those moments where your energy comes back into yourself and it's not so scattered and you can have you know develop that clarity so how important is that to have for at least certain periods of your life, whether it's a year or a couple of years

or sporadic. For me on my own personal journey, having periods where I've gone intentionally celibate, I'm going to reserve my energy, not share it with somebody physically like that. And the potency that you carry as an individual who's conscious, I feel like is just so impactful for them becoming a magnet to authentic connections that are meant for you. Life changing for me. Deliberate celibacy. distancing myself from the feminine and females and that feminine energetic, being in my own space, no masturbation, no pornography. I mean, I stopped pornography quite a few years ago, but, you know, no dating, no,

well, not no desire, because the desire was there, though, but no execution on the desire to be in the energetic interchange of, potential sex or potential intimacy and the deliberate practice of that for me has been life-changing, especially because of my relationship to women and the feminine, right? And the actions I used to take and the way that I would be with women and the way that I would treat women and, you know, really objectify women is what I mean when I say treat women, right? And be deceitful in relationship, so much, so deceitful in relationship, where so many masks and live in my shadows and live double and triple lives. And so the deliberate practice of really distancing myself from that,

it allowed me to have this deeper reverence and appreciation for the feminine. That doesn't mean that I don't, I'm a heterosexual man, I'm attracted to women, that doesn't mean that I don't find women physically attractive anymore. Absolutely I do. I'm going to go back to the come from, right? But the place that it comes from within me now is very different to what it was, because previously it was how can I have sex with this person. Yeah, so compulsive. That's it. What I need to say?

Who don't need to be? What are the things I need to do? Yeah, I'll be myself, but I'm still going to manipulate a little bit. I'm still going to say the things that I think they want to hear. And it's like not even you doing it. It's just the thing doing it because it's so automatic. That's right. So I needed to create space and distance from that thing to really see myself and the

desperation, the neediness and the insecurities and then have to deal with the shadows of that. Like have to come face to face with my low self-worth. and my masks and my insecurity and my shame and my body shame and all the stuff that I was compensating for and deal with it. Well, I didn't have to deal with it, but I wanted to. I wanted to. I chose to. And then as I came out of that deliberately, my relationship with dating, with women,

with sexual intimacy, with sharing my truth, being honest, not, not pretending, completely shifted. And it shifted the quality of the women that I was attracting as well, because I was a different person. I'm not saying that the women that I was attracting previously were not high quality women. It's that I was attracting more truth and alignment in my life with who I actually was, not the masks that I was wearing. But the most important thing, man, I really need to repeat this, especially for, I feel I need to repeat this for men, is that your relationship to the feminine changes where you'll see them and feel them very differently. And the reverence that I was able to

cultivate very naturally, it really shifted the way I related to my own inner feminine as well, right? And the way that I even saw myself too, because we're talking about reflections earlier in mirrors. And that was just very profound for me and very healing, man, very, very healing. And honestly, it's, you know, I tried to say something like an emotional. Not there's anything wrong with getting emotional. I don't think I would have been able to have my daughter

if I hadn't done that deeper work, you know, because she needs a male figure in her life. Man, I love her so much, bro. Oh, so beautiful, man. She needs a male figure in her life that is safe and sees the world through a lens of greater excellence of greater equity and comes less from shadow. And I'm not the top of person that always wanted kids.

It's only until five years ago that I came to the conclusion and I arrived in an embodied way like, I think I'm open to children. Only five years ago. Up until then, I was a fucking hard no on children because of my upbringing and because of what my parents would say and what I'd see them do. And when my wife was pregnant, I prayed every day to not have a boy because I thought that I would be really hard on him like my father wasn't me. And so I wanted a girl, I prayed for a girl, I prayed for a girl, and then I got a girl.

And then now months, she's nearly one years old. Months into our journey, now I'm very open to having a boy because I see how I am with my baby girl. I'm not perfect. I can tell you, I'm not per-I'm still impatient sometimes, not with her, just with myself. She's perfection, but, you know, I'm opening more and more because of these experiences So what I'm saying is I share all this to say that that proactive, deliberate practice of celibacy, it shifted the way I witness women collectively and individually.

It was just very profound for me. So beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing, man. That shift and who you are, what became available to you on the other side of giving yourself that time and space is now the possibility, you know, of having a loving family. in a daughter and like that paradigm switch of women and feminine energies being something we need to conquer versus something to fully honor and to nourish and to cherish man it's it's like the more beautiful aspects of life like they both inherently intrinsically need each other but the feminine within us and then also externalized in a daughter or the women in your life like we all come from

we all come from others you know and we're so disconnected from our own feelings at times and especially as men that like have that shame around it and we spoke to earlier that's like difficult to actually express what we're holding on to but and we fear it but not only just realizing that we just need to feel it to let it go it is as simple as that at some level I will say one more thing man to the the practice of the deliberate practice of celibacy I did some of my best creative work during that period yeah man like I was on fire because I had space I wasn't in this incessant pursuit and hunt right and I had space to think and feel and be with and do and execute and I was I

developed this acuity around what my purpose was what my purposes were in life and I was able to take action on that which in turn as a man in the world makes you more attractive to other people full stop makes you more magnetic anyway so so the power of that was you know I like to see it as just be patient and wait. Don't eat the cookie because you know that experiment like if you have the cookie now, you can have the cookie, but if you wait 10 minutes, you'll get three cookies. Wait six months, wait a year. See what, you know, what fruits are bared from your practice. Yeah. And that was what I got from that. So powerful, man. And just even that framework of delayed gratification is so, so valuable. It's like for me, I infuse that framework into anything I do.

It's like if there's something that I want to put off to the future, whether it's as little as doing the dishes or getting into the coal plunge, which is more visceral and a painful experience or, you know, even bigger things in my life. Like, I will always try to do the hard thing first. Because if I push it off into the future, I'm going to, I'm going to dilute the energy in which I do that thing. And that life force energy that was so channeled into attraction and the hunt and, you know, the sexual desires, bringing that back in also for me in those periods, man, it's like you also, you got to fill that space with something, right? you just try to sit at home all day and just like instead of, you know, masturbating or watching porn or, you know, swiping left or right on Twitter and having that be the expression of your sexual energy, if you just sit at home all day, it's going to be running in your mind. Like you need to put it into something. You need to have a passion, a creative thing where you can channel that energy. And I truly believe that like our sexual energy is our life force, our creative energy. And we can funnel that, transmute that into a creation externally. And that's when it gets really fun.

man because you can i have you have created some really beautiful things by virtue of harnessing that energy putting it into something um that we want to create and bring forth you know from the unmanifest into the manifest so it's beautiful man um anybody that's listening to this right now if you've been considering that if you've been thinking about it if you're in a place in your life right now where you want to explore that to give yourself two months three months six months and to explore and see what happens, you know, because a lot can become available. Oh, man. So much.

And it's almost, you know, telling people what can become available is almost fruitless. Just do the thing. Totally. And experience it yourself. Yeah. It's so small into the actual thing, you know, it's like meaningless, you know, just the words. But they are pointing to something that if you do experience yourself is absolutely profound. Yeah.

And maybe here's something to entice the men around this. as well. The more you demonstrate discipline and restraint from seeking excessive pleasure, the more attractive you are, particularly in heterosexual relationships, or any relationship, right, where you're not desperately pursuing. That can be deeply revered and respected by the person that, you're pursuing because they're seeing that, oh, this person isn't just interested in one thing. They have capacity, willpower, discipline, acuity, patience to get to know me, to also be in the

space of, I don't need you, I want you, and I'll pursue and we'll dance this dance in a healthier way. Yeah. And that builds trust ultimately. Totally. And like the bees will come when the flower blossoms. when we harness that energy of power, confidence, presence, which people are attracted to and maybe are picking up on an unconscious level, right? For whatever reason, if you go into a space where you

see somebody that has been going, you know, has been celibate or has been harnessing their energy inwards, there is a pull there because somebody that's harnessed their energy. And like I said, maybe you don't pick it up consciously, but you do feel it. And it's something that is a felt experience. And from that place, I'm sure the best opportunities, the best connections have come to you in your life. And as they have for me, when I have really harness that energy, you become like a magnet. Instead of chasing and grasping, you just allow and you be a conduit for the universe for things to be magnetized towards you. And it's a more masterful, effortless way to go about living in this experience of life. Yes, deeply masterful. And that's, I think we also fear being masterful because it

comes with tremendous responsibility. For sure. And I don't think we're taught, most of us are not taught, how to be with that power and that responsibility. But here's the thing. Surround yourself with people that see you and people that will call you forward and people that have skills that are different to yours and keep practicing being in your power and trust in yourself and you will learn very quickly more often than not how to be with that

responsibility and it won't be so daunting and overwhelming. So, so beautiful, man. so powerful. And it's a practice to come back to. And like we spoke to, it's for periods of life. You know, it's not a forever thing, but something that just gives us a deeper understanding and awareness of the contrast of what can become available to us in this whole experience of life. Yeah. So earlier in this conversation, we briefly brought up about rites of passage, you know, and how important it is that, well, the realization that we've really lost them to a big degree, both for men and for women, collectively in society, we just, we don't have them.

I've been in spaces where it's, you know, 200 men in a, in a, you know, a fight dome where we have this expression of healthy aggression and like move through that energy in our primal essence, but then also holding space for each other to fully release the emotional depth of which we've never shared. And I know by being in partnership and is surrounded by a bunch of beautiful queens and goddesses that they have their women circles and their full moon ceremonies. And it's so great because it allows us to be held within our. our own polarities and the energies of masculine and feminine dynamics. How important do you feel like it is, especially going into partnership, but just as an individual, having a human experience that we have our same gender kind of meetings and then we can come back together in more wholeness? Yeah, I think what really creates distinction there is, is that men and women are different. And that's okay. It's okay that we're biologically different. It's okay that we're,

a little bit hormonally different, that we're culturally different. And we can celebrate these differences in healthy ways. We don't have to demonize our differences. And so the value of doing individual work or men's work and women's work, it carries a lot of potential for us then coming together. Because when we look at where we are in the world today, there's probably a reality that exists that we could say women are a little more advanced in the relating aspect of things,

in the way that they emote, the way that they understand themselves, psycho-emotionally, socially, and so forth. That's not to say men are less than. It means that they're a little underdeveloped in that area, right? And so men coming together and maturing in that way so that they can meet women in this space and women doing their deeper work

so that they can understand men from even a more deeper space, space and then us coming together in very specific environments and containers to begin with so that it can really be held and be safe. That's probably a good starting point. Now, I don't know how long men have to be doing their men's work to then be ready to come into those containers and vice versa. I don't know. Well, here's another thing.

So it's not just one way street here. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to interview you. I'm going to ask you a question. question now. Seriously. Do you think women, in general, it's a generalization, do you think women can hold the power and the rage that the masculine holds inside of them?

You're speaking generally or can a single woman hold the rage? Generally speaking, the collective feminine, can the collective feminine, can females, generally speaking, as a collective, hold that in very intense rage, the violence that men carry? my first thought is when I tune into feminine energy and feel like the capacity in which guy and mother earth and how it represents through women can inherently hold and transmute anything yes but not to the degree in which men can be witnessed to that and hold that I agree so as we're saying men need to develop more emotional acuity not women need to but it would serve that, because here's been my personal experience.

My personal experience and the thousands of men that I've worked with and taken men through different leadership programs and different rights of passage as well is that when I have been met by a woman or by women with non-judgment and compassion, it has been one of the greatest healing things in my life. Like one of the greatest healing experiences I've ever had that breathwork practitioner

she was a female so many of the practitioners that I've worked with they haven't all been female but so many of them have and it's been deeply nurturing and healing and they were able to witness and hold all of me not just the convenient parts but even the parts that were maybe really scary and intense to me and to the outside world

and so do women need to hold that? No no one needs to do anything Would it serve humanity as a whole If we could develop greater aptitude in that area? Yes. Have women held a lot for a very long time? Yes, I believe so.

Have the collective feminine energetic And the value of the feminine essence and expression Has that been repressed and suppressed? Has that been pushed down? I think so for a very long time. So what I'm speaking to here is doing deeper healing work. I don't think we're fully ready yet as a collective to be coming into co-ed spaces.

I believe some groups of people are absolutely. We see it. We're seeing it now. Particularly in California, in other areas of the US and even other areas of the world. And some people are definitely ready for that. But I'm speaking from a general collective space.

Not quite yet. That's why it's so important to be in those familiar spaces. And we speak about rites of passage. Excuse me. We're speaking about men that have not been taken through rights of passage. they have not been inducted into manhood they are still boys living in adult men bodies

females have a very distinct clear right of passage into womanhood it's their menstrual cycle boys don't have that so we need we have to rely on cultural rights of passage for me a principle of healthy living is being proactive and deliberate If you're not proactive and deliberate, you're reactive. You're a victim to life. We have to take our boys through proactive rites of passage. I think we can really lean into the ancients here,

the ancient wisdom and ancient teachings cross-culturally. Now, given not all cross-cultural, ancient indigenous practices are great when it comes to rite of passage or some really horrific, painful rites of passage. And I don't know if they're necessarily applicable in this world. However, in the world we live in today, however the principles, I believe are applicable. Challenge being one of them. I mean, I can go through some pretty deep detail, what some cultures would do when boys are transitioning from boys to manhood.

Like, it's almost death. It's torture. Like, by definition, it's physical torture. I don't know if that's quite, that extent is quite necessary, but that's probably another conversation. However, we lack that. So now, you know, oh, we get our driver's license when we're 16 or 17. we go to college, we're allowed to drink alcohol at 21. In Australia it's 18.

And these are our rights of passage. Weak. Yeah. Passive, weak. Yeah. That is not signify manhood. That does not symbolize becoming a man. Yeah.

Maturing into our humanhood, into our manhood. Yeah. We need more. Yeah. And we need to be directed by elders. Not elders. Elders. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We can become elderly and not become an elder. you know we need healthy develop strong masculine leadership just do and it's something that we're lacking desperately on this planet you know it's it's tragic and so first off thank you for being on the path of integration to be a leader for safe spaces for men in particular as well because there's this narrative going on that we need to get rid of men you know because we're so familiarized with the toxic wounded version that is not in a healthy place of leadership.

But when you experience a man who's integrated and in leadership, it creates safety and assurance. And that's needed in times that are uncertain. And we get to create those spaces. And there's thankfully, we're so connected online. And there's a beautiful amount of safe spaces that are popping up all over for these men groups, for these collective coming together is of hundreds of guys at times where he can have and choose a right of passage. It's never too late to decide who you want to be. True. And it's never too late for a right of passage.

And I think we have multiple rights of passages in our lives. I think probably there's one boyhood to manhood right of passage, but you can have that at any time. You can be inducted into that space at any time. You need to want to. You need to be surrounded by the quote unquote right people. And you need to be able to release what no longer serves you and release that the, the pain and the wounds and the trauma and the immaturity that's often attached to those past

versions of ourselves, those boyhood versions of ourselves. For sure, which doesn't obviously stop right as we get into our 20s. Like there's parts of ourselves still here sitting in this moment in my 20s or your 40s. I'm 40. Okay. That are still, still want to express as a boy, you know, and we get to make space for that and to honor that and to not bypass it and to not sweep it under the rug and just, you know, to claim that we are. We are. are still on the path and that there's parts of us we still need to integrate. And that's a beautiful acknowledgement. You young buck in your 20s, wow.

I mean, I love being 40, but man, how old are you exactly? 26. Man, what was I doing when I was 26? Not in a good place. Thought I was when I wasn't. Yeah. Cudos to you. Thank you, man.

Appreciate it. This whole podcast has been very nutrient dense, very nourishing. so many levels and I think gives a lot of context to a lot of very important topics. How we relate to all of life around us and especially the deep romantic, intimate connections are some of those most important, valuable things in our life that we go through and experience. There are our biggest catalyst, the biggest mirrors. And I think we shed a lot of awareness how important it is to discover the place in which from we're relating, to go into dynamic relationships and learn how to argue how to handle conflict healthy, how important it is to integrate the masculine and feminine

energies, both within men and women separately and collectively. A lot of really juicy topics here, man. So first of all, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for doing the work. Thank you for coming on the show. Before we wrap up, for people that want more, Stephanos, where can they find you? How can they be connected with you? Everything will be linked down in the description as well. Thank you, man. I appreciate that. Social media at Stephanos Safandos and my website, Stephanosufandos.com. and all the information is there with respect to what I do in the world and the services I offer. Wonderful, man. Your name is one of the most fun to say. Thank you. I'm glad you can say it.

Yeah, Stefanos Vandos. It's like, but it's just fun. Amazing, good. Is there any last message or anything else in your heart that you want to share with the audience before we tune out? Yeah, slow down. Just not so much slow down life from an external perspective, although that can be very useful. But slow down the need to be somewhere or be someone. Just slow down, pause and observe. I often, I won't do it here because getting up will be awkward, I guess. But I will often stand and I'll physically take a step back.

And I'll pause and I'll breathe slow and I'll do my best to think slow. And if I'm in an agitated position or I'm feeling tension, or I'm confused, or I'm having a big emotion. Not to bypass that emotion. I'm not about that. I'm someone that dives in. Sure, sometimes I'll bypass. We all do that, but that's never my intention.

Not to bypass, just to pause for a moment, to really reflect on what's going on. And we can do that in intimate relationship. We can do that with ourselves. It's a particularly useful tool for men to slow the fuck down. We live in such a fast-paced society that the faster we move, the more value we perceive to have in the world, which I don't think there's a direct correlation to that.

It's a perception that's probably false. So just slow down. And when we slow down, we're able to see the world in ourselves and our lovers, in our relationships, and the things that matter most to us, and the pain that we experience in our lives from a very different place. And what accompanies that is willingness. the application attribute of willingness,

willing to have the hard conversation, willing to do something different, to play the opposite game, so to speak, than what you're accustomed to, willing to explore the chasms of your own being, willing to love at depths and be vulnerable and roar and open and practice new ways of being. If we're talking to men,

to practice a new kind of masculinity that you're not accustomed to. maybe you're not accustomed to strengthening your body go strengthen your body challenge your body we develop confidence and acuity and self-awareness from that physical challenge it's it's in our ancestry if you're a woman and you fear being seen in relationship where are the spaces in your life where you can have a bigger voice than you've had let's practice what we're not accustomed to what we fear and what we often run from and and and develop develop range, be willing to develop range in our expression the way that we see ourselves.

I guess that's what I would leave the audience with. Powerful invitation. So thank you so much. I think that perspective shift of zooming out, taking a step back, slowing down, becoming aware of the direction we're going, not just the speed in which we're going in our direction is incredibly important. So thank you for doing the work. Thank you for coming on the show.

Hope to run it back someday in the future. And for everybody that's been tuning in to this episode of the Know That Self Podcast I love you and I hope to meet you in the flesh one day. Thanks for coming on this journey with us. Hit the subscribe button and join the family

if you haven't already. Everything where you can find Stephanos will be linked down in the description below. Let us know what your thoughts were about this episode. Any insights, uploads, downloads in the description

in the comments, drop it below. And until next time, I'll catch you on the next one. Blessings.