Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Breaking Down Barriers to Healthy Love with Stefanos Sifandos

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

What is healthy love, and what can stand in the way of achieving it?  Transformational relationship coach Stefanos Sifandos is joining me for this week’s Language of Love Conversation to discuss the characteristics of healthy love and the five barriers that can stand in the way. He also shares his own journey from childhood trauma to struggling in relationships and the turning points in his life that led to healing.  In this episode, we dive into: The turning point in Stef’s life that led to healing The 5 Blocks to Love  When to throw in the towel in love  Divine femininity vs divine masculinity The qualities of a healthy relationship Stefanos Sifandos and his wife run a Breathwork for the Feminine event every month, but he also has a variety of coaching options for those looking to take that first step toward opening their heart to love. You can also follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to stay up-to-date on his work!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. And that way, my goal is to awaken your mind, body, and soul. It's time to become fluent in the language of love. Stephanos Sifandos is a transformational relationship coach who has worked with thousands of people from all over the world. elite special forces, Olympic gold medalists, high-performing CEOs, entrepreneurs, champion

fighters, couples, individuals, and has so much wisdom to share. I have followed him for a long time, enjoying the wisdom and the work that he does around doing what I love to do, helping you learn to love and be loved better. So I'm so excited because in this conversation, we're going to dive into what Stephanos or Steph as he likes to call himself or be called, what he considers the five major blocks to love, as well as the healing modalities that he has found most helpful in addressing those wounds that really create those blocks, as well as what is the definition of healthy love and how do you know when to throw in the towel? We're going to be getting into all of that in this episode of The Language of Love. Steph, I'm so happy to talk to you and so grateful

that I get to share you with my peeps and the wisdom. I've been following you for a long time on social media. I love all the wisdom. I'm very aligned with a lot of your teaching, and I'm so excited to dig in with you a little bit around divine masculine, divine feminine, healing, the blocks to love, all of that. But let's start just with your story, because I think that's a big part of what makes you and your teaching so rich and compelling. You kind of come to this quite honestly. Can you share some of your story? Yeah, sure. You know, I always, when I'm asked this question, I always wonder what parts of one story would be relevant to your audience. And so I'd put it back to you just for a moment and say, which specific parts would you like to hear more

about? Oh boy. I think really all of us struggle with pain and trauma. Many of us have struggled with addictions. I think you didn't start off as a healer, right? You were, I'm not sure what you were doing before you started doing this, but I know that you've had a lot of trauma in your life. So I want to hear about that. And also one of the things that we talk about a lot in this show and that i find myself consistently talking about in my own life and as i'm counseling others when we do our sessions and things like that is that almost always our deepest pain is underneath our deepest purpose and out of that pain very often with healing comes our greatest purpose and so maybe that's what's underneath the question that i'm asking you if that helps direct it yeah

well i've been in i don't consider myself a healer person but i've been in the personal transformation personal growth space for about 22 years in a formal way I'm 40 years old so I guess you could say I've been doing this for all my adult life yeah I wasn't doing anything different really before this you know our jobs here and then along the way I own different businesses in different industries and still do but really the personal transformation education space has been a big part of my life for a very long time and really what influenced me in moving towards that were my own life experiences growing up as a child, my own pain. I grew up in a very violent, volatile household, physical abuse, emotional abuse, great disparity between my

parents, a lot of confusion and uncertainty. It was very difficult for me as a child growing up. I felt very unsafe and not connected and relationships were just very difficult for me. I was very shy, very withdrawn, very withheld as a child, as a teenager as well. and that all started to change as I grew as I became healthier I was overweight as a kid as well when I started losing that weight and you know hormones started kicking in I started to become attracted to females and and just as I started to grow more and more I started coming out of that but I never really dealt with my trauma I never really dealt with my pain and so it leaked out in relationships in abrasive ways in patient ways I was cheating on my partners I

was dishonest i wasn't present you know i was emotionally abusive and i was attracting partners that were at some level not all partners but some similar to that as well and i was really recreating the circumstances that were familiar to me of my childhood because i didn't know any better and i didn't know or want to or was able to or willing to really look at my stuff and really until i did nothing really changed my life and i kept cycling through despair and disconnection and dishonesty, and disappointment, and desperation, and all the Ds, right? So it was tough in that sense. And I was attempting, as I mentioned earlier, I was in the personal transformation. I am in the personal transformation space. I was attempting to help myself by helping

others without realizing it. I think that's a mistake most practitioners, coaches, service make. And you can do, I mean, believe me, we both know lots of transformational teachers and healers who are not at all doing what they're preaching or not able to or and it's usually with good intentions it's not like they're setting off to like manipulate people or pretend they're something they're not it's usually in an effort to heal ourselves right that we're learning things and then we're teaching others but i agree that there's only so far you can take it that work if you're not really willing to do the work yourself eventually it falls flat is what i like to call spirituality or transformation light you can get that like first wave of people that

you can teach but anyone who wants to take it deeper you can't really meet them there because you haven't gone deeper so what was the turning point for you that really called on you to go deeper into your healing relationships a particular relationship where there was a breakup in that relationship and she you know i wasn't even proactive in really sharing with her where i was but she found out that I was cheating in that relationship. And that just became this cascade effect of deeper self-evaluation and self-exploration. And that was a really big catalyst for my own real internal, big internal pivot. Yeah. There was something I'm just remembering. I'm finding it now, what you wrote. You said, I think this is in sort of some of your

bio, but you say, I saw the look on my girlfriend's face at the time, the pain in her eyes, my interior flooded with shame and memories came flooding back. Undealt with trauma began to resurface and I felt myself spiraling. Her pain and my actions activated parts of me that had been hidden for so long. I mean, that's such a beautiful description of what I like to call an AFGE, another fucking growth experience, like one of those big moments, traumas, dramas. And it's not like you hadn't broken hearts before, but there was something about that moment that broke you you know and that experience I'm sure it was more than a moment that broke you open what was it that was was it just the right time and the right circumstances and it just kind of was a

catalyst for bringing up all these connections and memories for you yeah I think it was the right time I remember very distinctly speaking with a very close friend of mine he was it was literally a couple of weeks before that unraveled maybe days before that unraveled he didn't even know the half of all that's a saying he only knew a very very light portion of what i was doing i was hiding so much from everyone and he said man you can't keep living like this this isn't fair on your partner this isn't fair on you i mean do you really want to why are you with her if you're doing this and again he knew a very small portion of the actions that i were taking and i remember very clearly saying to him, I know, man, I need to stop this. And I want to stop this. And in fact,

I'm done with this. And I was in that moment, I said, I'm done with this. And all I knew was that I was not going to continue to be dishonest. And as it happens, days or a couple of weeks later, it unraveled itself. Yeah. And you were ready. You were ready to sort of claim authenticity and honesty, which of course requires that you go into the shadows, right? Which I guess is where it began for you of really diving into the healing, which it seems like informs a lot of your work today. I know you and I, I join you in this, are a huge fan of breath work as a form of trauma and release. So we're going to talk about that and some other things that I want to ask you about. But before we get into all of that, one of the things that I know you teach about and use as a construct to organize a lot of the transformational work you do is exploring the common blocks to love.

Can you share some of the most common blocks and how they show up in our relationship? Yeah, yeah. So there are a few, of course, but there are five often prominent blocks to love. And it's abandonment, commitment, intimacy, loss, and rejection. And so if we experience any of these or some of these growing up, particularly during our formative and developmental years, where our perception of the world, relationships, intimacy, love being safe or unsafe, closeness to being safe or unsafe, our values, where all of this is formed, you know, how we give and receive love, we'll often take these fears or these

blocks into our adult intimate relationships. And so, for example, if as a child, one of our parents left and there was a divorce, which so many families divorce these days, you're well over 50% or separate, then you may feel this sense of abandonment and you'll carry that fear, that hypervigilance into adult intimate relationships. And so you'll proceed with caution. You'll act from a place of desperation. Fear may be neediness to hang on so that person doesn't abandon you. You may not be yourself. You may wear masks. That's an example. You might sabotage, right? Like you kind of find something wrong with them or do something to sabotage before they can leave you yes and it appears as sabotage but it's

not really sabotage in the truest form it's more protection yeah and it comes off in the form of sabotage at some level some reality yes it's sabotage but yeah no but you're doing it to protect yourself from abandon yeah correct yeah they're the the five sort of big ones that i i identified and i did i produced a love block assessment as well to help you sort of get clear on what is prominent within your life, if any, and maybe you don't, maybe you have a healthy relationship to these potential blocks and fears and you don't have any of them that are prominent or they're not dormant in you, but it's good to know what is actually driving us underneath what's underneath. Yeah. And so let's just talk about it a little bit more just to give people a taste of

this. Obviously they can do the assessment and they can dig more into this, but we talked about abandonment. What does the commitment block look like? Yeah. The commitment block looks like where we we struggle to make commitment to anything or anyone including you know businesses mortgages living in one place staying you know rooted and grounded commitment is death for us it feels that way right we've been constricted that usually comes from so having a having a fear or holding a fear of of commitment usually comes go side by side with feeling restrained in the world. So not having access to freedom or fear of losing our freedom. And often in intimate relationship, we have this perception that we will get swallowed up. So we cannot commit to

that thing. We have to keep it at a distance. We have to keep the relationship at a distance. We have to keep the person at a distance. We have to keep how close we get to them at a distance as well. And so we refuse to commit. We refuse to move with certainty. Part of that could be because there was so much uncertainty in our own lives. Part of that could be promises were broken to us by our parents when dad said, hey, I'm going to play with you this Sunday, but ended up working all day. And that happens long enough. And often enough, that word doesn't mean anything to you. And so commitment isn't safe. Yeah. Or it comes with too much pain. Yeah. What's another block? Let's go through the other ones too.

Yeah, sure. So there's loss is another example. So loss is another block. Yeah. And that's pretty, I don't want to say straightforward, but loss and abandonment can somewhat, they can get blended sometimes, but loss is really that sudden loss of someone significant to you, right? And you carry this fear in adult intimate relationship. You'll carry this fear of what if I lose this person? So you'll either not date and you won't spend time with anyone and you won't be intimate because of the fear of loss is so strong. Or if you are in relationship, you cling on and you hold on, you have to be everywhere that they are and you have to know where they are and you have to know what they're doing. And it's not because you're trying to be controlling what you are,

but you're not trying to control them you're trying to control the circumstances so you avoid this fear of feeling or experiencing loss and the pain that brings okay good and the next one yeah and these are in no particular order by the way intimacy so intimacy is another one so for example when you were growing up getting close with someone maybe a friend at school or friends at school a friend's group you were teased you were humiliated you got close with a friend's group and then all of a sudden they all decided well we don't want you in the group anymore see you later getting close can be really scary and unsafe and so really with intimacy when we're talking about our adult relationships it's just we're not vulnerable we're not open we're

not showing ourselves we're not we're not exposing who we really are in the world we're scared to be seen and we're scared to be ourselves and that can also come from again being teased excessively being bullied perhaps you have a an attachment style that's disorganized which means my attachment style is disorganized so i grew up with love i had love and care in my family but i had a lot of violence as well it's very confusing that can disrupt one's nervous system where intimacy is unsafe closeness is unsafe and it's confusing and so now we have a fear of getting close because every time we would get close our experiences or my experience i'll speak for myself was when i would get close when I thought everything was okay, bang, it wasn't okay.

Get gobsmacked. Yeah. So you can't really predict or count on that kind of consistent care and safety. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And the last one that I speak to, and of course there are more, but rejection. Rejection is a really tough one because I'm of the belief that, and I'm not sure if rejection in its purest form actually exists. And what I mean by that when i say that is i think we come to life to relationships with our own predisposed ideas conscious and unconscious our own set of history or histories of how we see the world and what we value what we like and what we don't like what we are repelled by and what we are attracted to which is also informed by so much of our resolved and unresolved trauma our life experiences

so when we're saying no to something it may appear to be rejection against us but really it could be rejection against something that I am holding that appears familiar to that person, but it's not necessarily me, the core of who I am that's being rejected. It could just be an expression or an aspect of self or an action or a behavior, but that behavior is not me. That action is not always me. There are fine lines here to walk around this, but ultimately rejection is your self-worth has been diminished as a young person. Your ego has taken a hit. You've never been enough for those that you've looked up to, aka primary caregivers or parents.

You know, your true sense of self has been mocked, has been rejected. You've been teased for asking questions or exploring your sexuality or whatever it may be. Every time or often when you have gone into something new, you've moved into a curiosity, it's been shut down. You've been shut down as an individual. And so we want to avoid that like the plague as adults.

So we don't show our true selves. We wear many masks. We acquiesce. we're often people pleasers. So we want to make sure that persons maximize their interests and maximize ours and minimize as a result of that. We want to make sure that they're taken care of, usually at the expense of our own wellbeing. So rejection is tough as well. Yeah, they're all tough. And as you know, it all has to do with our upbringing. This is something that just comes up so often in my work and I think in all of our work is healing. It's not

that our parents were evil or bad or malintended, but they had their own. We have generational trauma. They had their own traumas. They have their own emotional limitations and emotional immaturity. And it wasn't that they didn't love us. In many cases, they just didn't have the capacity to love us, support us, accept us in the way we needed because of their own wounds. Right. But then it creates that legacy. And so... Discover Coffee Plus on Nespresso.com. I want to talk about what it looks like in the divine masculine and the divine feminine

as compared to sort of our usual understanding of masculine and feminine. And then some of your favorite ways, I know you're a huge fan, and I am too, of breath work, but some of that as well as some of the other ways that you have found to sort of successfully address these blocks and start to heal the wounds underneath them yeah so if i address the the modalities that can be used to address some of these blocks so i'm i guess i'm schooled and educated and practiced in many different modalities over the years i continue to study there's definitely so much to know and learn about the human body in its complete form and the human being but some of my go-to modalities are definitely you know modalities such as internal

family systems or inner child work, understanding the stages of development in developmental psychology, somatic work, breath work, working with the unconscious mind. I mean, somatic works are very loaded and robust modality to use, of course, but, you know, really just, you know, relational psychology as well. Neuropsychology is also important. I'm not, I'm not, I don't have a degree in neuropsychology, but, you know, leveraging principles of that, of those disciplines is really important and just really holding holding a very safe space for individuals often safety is the healing so if people most people that experience trauma have just felt unsafe in their environments so when we create safe spaces for each other and we do that in very slow ways

and we help people retrain their nervous systems to learn how to self-regulate at a physiological level you know the psychology and the emotionality and the spirituality of self unravels in more gentle ways that can be dealt with in more harmonious ways. That's how I work with no matter what the block is or what the issues are. Usually it's issues that are compounded. It's not just one, but multifaceted beings, multi-layered with multi-layered issues. They can be addressed in very slow methodical ways. Hey, don't forget to go to drlauraberman.com. You can find so much great information there and sign up for my newsletter. So you get weekly updates on how to love and be loved better. And also on my website, you can get my brand new ebook. You're

not crazy. You're just ascending. It's a practical guide to spiritual awakening that many of us are going through right now. And it's enough to make you feel crazy. So check it out. I'm here for you. Always helping you learn to love and be loved better. And so I know you work, do you work one on one with people or do you, I know you do a ton of stuff with groups. You also do one-on-one stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I've been doing one-on-one work since I was 18 in various forms and expressions. So I started off with hypnosis and basic counseling and NLPs. That's what I studied that before my actual degree in psychology and behavioral science and social psychology. But one-on-one work, I work with couples as well. And I do small groups, large groups,

virtual, in-person, et cetera. And you're married now. How long have you been married? over four years think about that and the two of you do groups together right you do these i know you do some is it breath work specifically for the divine feminine that you do with your wife or other stuff as well other stuff as well every month we have a live three-hour immersive here in austin and it's live streamed and recorded so physically live in person and live streamed and recorded and we do that every month as a three-hour immersive on relationship dynamics and And definitely somatics and breath work is a big part of that and release and just being in, you know, essentially being in sisterhood.

Yeah, I think that's a really powerful, I was watching something you posted the other day, I think it was, I don't remember when, about, which sort of struck me because I am estranged from, unfortunately, from my sister who has a very chaotic attachment style. Let's just leave it at that. But you were talking about the sister wound. I think you were talking about it more about women just with other women. It doesn't have to be your sibling per se. I mean, I have amazing, beautiful, and blessed to have amazing, wonderful sisters that aren't

my biological sisters, but that are my soul sisters. But I think that's something that isn't talked about enough, this whole idea, not necessarily with regard to siblings, although it can be, but this idea of the sister wound. And I was wondering if you could speak to that a little bit. Yeah, you know, trust is at the crux of this. To be honest, I think I reflect on this in a deeper way. At the epicenter of most wounds is trust or an inability to trust, or it's not safe to trust. And particularly the sister wound, when a woman is hurt by her mother or by literally her sisters, her female friends growing up, there's this projection that's then taken from that saying,

if my mother was untrustworthy and she's a woman then all women are untrustworthy and i have to pull back shut down be careful not be myself not be vulnerable wear masks etc right and it's more of an unconscious projection than anything else until we become aware of it of course right and so that wound per se stops us from being intimate and being close and as i mentioned earlier, it's an intimacy that great healing, deep healing takes place. It's in that intimacy that safety is created and new versions of ourselves come through. And so when you're working with groups, just so people understand what happens, maybe they want to come to one of your events or join at live streaming. When you're working with groups, when you talk about having a

safe container, it's not just, I know, and I've done this myself when I work with groups, there's a lot of encouragement to literally hold one another, to energetically hold one another, to be next to one another, to create space, to not have judgment. So what does that look like in action and an experience like that? How would you describe it? How would I describe what specifically? Yeah, like what happens at one of these monthly sessions, let's just say with one on healing the sister wound or the feminine wound, the mother wound? Yeah. Yeah. So each session is slightly different in terms of, I usually theme out each month. And so the month of December is grief. The month just passed was in November was

trust as an example. And then we work around those themes and integrate them into relationship dynamics. So where is grief stopping you from having the relationship that you want as an example, right? And so we work with that. So before we, you know, we ground in the space, we may do some movement, we may do some vocalization. There's this somatic work that's part of that. We then go into breakout groups and we'll do some experiential practices. Then we'll move into breath work and then we'll take sharing and live coaching and really integrate the whole experience. That's the general structure of the event or of the experience on a monthly basis. That works pretty well. Yeah, because you're sort of taking them out into the mind,

then into connection through experiential exercises and then into the body and then back to integrate it all. Let's talk about divine feminine and divine masculine. We hear that it's like pop psychology term everywhere, right? I want to get your definition of that. Yeah. I rock the cart for a bit. It's bullshit. Yeah. Go ahead. And I'll tell you why it's bullshit because it's polarized. And for the majority of people, I can't speak for every single person, but the culture around divine feminine, divine masculine is a polarized notion of perfection that doesn't exist. And you can't have the divine in this realm of duality.

You cannot have the divine without the shadow or the darkness, dark and light, right? And so what makes divine masculinity divine and divine femininity divine is the full embrace and the application of compassion and love to all parts of ourselves, including the parts that are ugly or unwanted or unseen or shadow-like or the ones that we detest and are repelled by. Can we bring that and embrace all of us? It would be very easy, it's convenient if I gave you a suitcase with $100 million tax-free and said, here you go, enjoy that.

You'd go, great, I'll enjoy it. I'll give it away. I'll do this with it. I'll go buy a car. I'll go on holiday, whatever the fuck you want to do with it. It doesn't matter, right? But you're going to enjoy it. but if i said here you go here's a suitcase full of pain you're gonna go i don't want that now

you shouldn't necessarily take that because it's not yours but here's the thing like we can't escape the spectrum of experience that we're going to have in life but we we do our best to reject the ones that are really uncomfortable and numb ourselves in the process and suppress and repress and so for something to be divine i think in this context it really all of it needs to be embraced not just the convenient parts. Yeah. And I agree with you a hundred percent. And it's something that is so scary for people to think about and do. And you're absolutely right. We'll do anything to avoid being with the pain when ironically it's being with the pain that really sets us free and helps us integrate and become whole. So shadow work, right? Obviously is a part of what you do

as well. Let's just flip it and talk about the ways in which we abandon ourselves in the feminine and in the masculine, because I do think that there are a lot of ways in which we kind of pop psychology out this whole concept of the feminine and masculine when the truth is we all have both feminine and some, you know, women can have a lot more masculine than feminine and women and men can have a lot more feminine and masculine. It's not that men are all masculine and women are all feminine. We have both inside us. But to me, it's, and I'm curious what you think when we run into trouble is when we get stuck either in avoiding the, you know, needing to be perfect and avoiding those darker, scarier, wounded parts of ourselves, or when we identify

and start creating these stories around what masculine and feminine looks like and start adopting that i even see this in the spiritual i mean you know i'm a divine masculine like my girlfriends and i kind of like you know have this joke about i'm a divine masculine man someone ever fucking says that to you if a man says i'm the embodiment of divine masculine yeah fuck away yeah exactly we're like ew not because we don't want someone who's the embodiment of the divine feminine but that like you don't trust that that self-proclamation but it happens right i think we're very quick see i'm of the the approach that we're a little too quick to look at masculine feminine polarity and dynamics and firstly i resonate with you so we're 100 masculine 100

feminine and every human being has that it's just two sides of the same coin so to speak but which we choose to activate at any given time will determine what energetic whether we're in and sometimes we'll be in a blend of both are willing to change between two but i think what what probably needs to come first before we start getting into masculine feminine expressions firstly number one human qualities first that's number one number two we've really got to look at our our inner child we've got to look at developmentally how we've formed ideas about the world of ourselves and relationships and that has often come from our years of in the womb to up to 10 or 12 years old and so that there becomes i think more important than looking at masculine

feminine practices or even masculine feminine polarity dynamics. When we tidy up our unresolved trauma, you would be so surprised how much greater connection, intimacy, magnetism there is in relationship. I agree with that 100%. Now, what about polarity? Because I do find that in a couple, in a sexual relationship, not that you stay in the same state, right? Sometimes you're going to be on one end of the continuum masculine feminine sometimes on the other but that when there is sexual attraction there is often a polarity where one of you is more in one and one of you is more in the other whether you're two women two men two non-binaries doesn't matter would you agree with that at some level that's an interesting almost an oxymoron because non-binary

saying there's no at some level is saying there's no opposites and so there's no opposites and there's no polarity that's a strange conceptually philosophically that's strange to me yeah to me it's not because they're talking about gender and gender expression where to me when we're talking about and maybe i need to clarify this when we're talking about the masculine and feminine it's not gender it's you know you're just talking about structure it's containment versus expression it's these sort of dualities of ways of being that sure you know what i mean yeah yeah no i I definitely resonate with that. That's the expression that we all hold. I don't want to say equally. I think we all have capacity for it. It's what we choose to activate within us

that determines what energetic that we're in. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And like, it's totally exclusive, you know, it's mutually gender and that are mutually exclusive to me. I work with a ton of lesbian couples. They're not connected. They're not, sorry. Well, they're not exclusive. That's right yes yes so yeah i'm interested in this so what do you think is the biggest or some of the biggest challenges or let's reverse it and make it in the positive what are some of the keys in your mind to really creating the deep sustaining connection that like healthy love i just did this event for and it was really cool it was a whole national thing online for kids in this organization called the Just Keep Living organization.

It's like a mental health organization that Matthew McConaughey started. And they do these afterschool kind of enrichment things once a month or once a week. And I was doing one on what's healthy love. And I thought, God, how great that I get to talk to a bunch of high schoolers about what healthy love looks like

and what the red flags for not so healthy love looks like. But how would you describe healthy love? We go back to what we were speaking to around being clear of vessels of truth and not living from our trauma. That is the fertile ground for healthy love to flourish because now we're not projecting. We're not judging harshly. We're not placing the responsibility of our wellbeing and our growth in the palms and the hands of others. We're really, we're taking responsibility for ourselves. We're able to regulate our nervous systems in conflict and difficulty. We're able, as a result of that, we're able to get curious and ask questions. As a result of that, we're

able to really listen and hear our partners. We may hold the belief that the relationship itself is a vehicle for growth and is a teacher for us both. And with that, we're not threatened by our partner when they behave in ways that isn't conducive to the longevity of the relationship, but rather we can pause, we can breathe, we can set healthy boundaries. Of course, we can make healthy requests. We're not demanding. There are many elements to healthy love. You know, there is healthy sexual connection to self and to other there's safety in the relationship to speak to and communicate to difficult things including needs and wants and desires and change of mind and you know asking big questions making big moves big life decisions together

there needs to be a i believe in healthy love a space for play and fun and joy and connection in that way there's a lightness there needs to be space for lightness as well and there needs to be a willingness to traverse the difficult and the murky and the dark and the challenging you know without abandoning yeah yeah yeah without you know succumbing to our own pain or our own our past traumas yeah beautiful new from nespresso blend wellness into your coffee routine with the coffee plus range infused with functional benefits choose the coffee you love with added b vitamins like coffee plus b12 to help support immune function and coffee plus b6 to keep your day moving or go with the flow and choose ginseng delight our new double espresso with ginseng

extract whatever lies ahead don't change your morning let your morning change you discover coffee plus on espresso.com and let me ask you the question that i get asked all the time and see your answer is when do you know that it's time to throw in the towel on a relationship Only the individual can know when it's time. And that will be influenced and impacted by so many variables and inputs, such as how deeply a person has worked with their own wounds of attachment and insecurity and so forth, and codependence. Because the more codependent someone is and insecure they are, they'll hang on to the relationship longer than needed. The right time to throw in the towel is when your values don't align anymore. One of you or both of

of you are unwilling to do the work. Your non-negotiables in relationship have been compromised. You've exhausted your options. You have made changes in this relationship like you never have in any other relationship, but things are still the same. The other person's not meeting you where you need to be met. You're unable or unwilling to meet them where they want to be met. You've grown. You feel you've taken all the lessons that you can from the relationship. Growth has stopped. They're probably pretty decent signs that it's time to throw in the towel. and how you do how you throw in the towel matters as well say more on that when well you can do it abrasively and abruptly you can do it being very rude you can do it from pain and trauma you can

do it with projection and judgment and hate or you can do it with love and compassion yeah and maturity would be the preferred way just so you guys are clear and then once you've done that right and you've been clear and i'll just tack on the back of that which some people need to get to I don't think we have to get to this place by any means, but at some point, if you're really scared and all those other things that Steph is talking about are happening, but you're stuck, eventually the pain of being in the situation gets greater than the fear of leaving it. And that often is the tipping point that makes the difference, right?

But once you leave, what would you say needs to be in place, whether it's a time frame or circumstances to try love again, because so often people, you know, that old stupid adage, the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else, right? So quickly, so many people rush. They're scared to be alone. They're dealing with their own rejection or abandonment traumas. Their biological clock is ticking. I mean, there's a million reasons why people do this.

But what would you say someone should be mindful of when they're thinking about, OK, I got out of this relationship? what are the steps to think about as I think about moving forward and seeking out a new one space is really important and identifying the stuff that didn't work in the relationship and identifying old patterns that were coming up and how you could have done better and spending some time applying healing to those patterns maybe working with someone working on yourself space from immersion into intimacy and novelty will give you an opportunity to work on yourself and refine some of those aspects that need, you know, growth and healing and change.

Yeah, I agree. And I think it's so important to take that time to really give yourself the space and time to not only heal, but to learn the lessons that you, because every relationship has so many lessons and so many sort of thorns that have been touched that we can excavate and explore for further healing. And then as I'm always telling them, the more you heal yourself, the more you are whole yourself, the better quality relationship you're attracted to and attract into your life. Because just like you were saying at the top of this interview when you were talking about your own life, Steph, you were saying that you were, the way I would phrase that is you were in your wounding before you really started doing your own healing work.

You were a frequency match for other wounded people to be in relationship with, right? That you're attracted to and attracting in people who are at the same level, more or less of emotional health as you are. Yeah. Yep. I very much resonate with that. And we will, we will attract from the place that we are living from. Simple as that. Yeah. Yeah. Your life is not what you do. It's what you are, right? Who you are, how you live internally as much as externally. Because as we've already said you can you can look quite fantabulous on the outside that doesn't necessarily translate to full health on the inside so true so so true so what else is important that you think we need to know from your wealth of wisdom that you want to share before we wind down if there's

anything else maybe we've touched on it all well i don't know if we touched on it all there's a big word all of it in one hour or less that's it plenty plenty more just to reiterate be willing to traverse the difficulty and not polarize life no not not that we want to have an addiction to the tough times and use that as a badge of honor to demonstrate our value and worth in the world more so just to not ignore the value that comes from the things that we tend to avoid in relationship and out of intimate relationship yeah that which you can't be with will definitely run your life that's for damn sure yeah and where can people learn more about your offerings your courses your events yeah thank you so my social media channels you know youtube instagram facebook

twitter etc at stefanos safandos and actually i think twitter's at stef safandos i don't give me enough characters um and then my website stefanos safandos.com okay and we'll make sure to put all of that in the show notes so you know how to spell it stefanos safandos yeah And then the breathwork event is stephanossophanos.com slash feminine. Feminine. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. For joining us and for sharing your wisdom and for all the wonderful work you're doing in the world. I'm looking forward to joining you in one of your breathwork journeys. That'd be amazing. I appreciate you, Laura.

Thanks for having me. I went to the doctor, said I'm crazy for your love. Wrote me a prescription, but there's no cure for crying. Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know, the same way you can skip an ad. I get it. I'm Siyaya and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned.

And today, I'm still figuring it out. Somehow, things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. Where some see heroes and others see egos, Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. A fad to some, the future of money to others.

We see crypto's trillion-dollar swings, the end of jobs, or the end of human struggle. We see the endless funds fueling the AI hype, while others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com.