Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Reaching New Heights in Intimacy

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

In this Language of Love Session, I’m excited to catch up with Marla and Ken, a couple who turned their love story around and are now absolutely glowing. Having embraced Quantum Love, they’re reaching new heights in intimacy. They both share how the guidance and homework I gave them helped create a nurturing, affectionate space between them, and deeply transformed their connection. We get into all the tips and tools that work. It’s amazing how these small, thoughtful gestures can make such a significant difference! Here is what we explore:  How to cultivate emotional connection for greater  intimacy in relationships How to stop external stressors from sabotaging your love life Easy tips to improve communication with your partner The role of compassion and understanding as relationship game-changers How to explore personal histories with generosity  If you missed previous episodes, now’s the perfect time to catch up and get the full picture of Marla and Ken’s inspiring journey.  Remember to check out my complimentary course on Quantum Sex! Unlock new levels of sexual response and experience a transformation like never before. Head to my website for all the details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman, and for the last 30 years, I've been helping people learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Sessions. This is where I get to work with you one-on-one, on air. You, my listeners, my goal in these sessions is to empower you to enjoy better relationships, both with others and with yourself, and to help you embrace how precious and sacred your body, your love life, and your sexuality really is. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. Marla and Ken are back. What's up, my friends?

We got lots of good news for you, Dr. Laura. Good news. I like good news. Tell me what's going on. Well, we've been extremely connected and we have been having lots of fun and not like, I will say we, we listened to some quantum love and actually we listened in the car and then we listened a little this morning. and i really feel like we've just been extremely connected and that everything that you've helped us learn just sort of started to gel i'm speaking for myself i'm less reactive i'm more tuned into ken i'm more appreciative of ken and i think that comes has been coming across because we've had this lovely spacious place where we've met it's not we're not grumpy we're not stressed it's just been we've been laughing and just having fun so i guess it was about two weeks ago yeah we were

just exploring as far as my homework with the toys i have not done very well i've only done it once but other things happened we we were just fooling around and kissing and hugging and And next thing you know, flipped one in there. It was so bashful, so silly. And I had an orgasm, a couple. And you had a couple of orgasms. Wow. Yeah.

There's no, I know he's the man. Go Kenny, go. Good to know we still have it. Yeah, of course we do. And so I take it that the erectile function was functioning and that, yes, she's nodding enthusiastically, yes. Okay, good. And so what, well, let me hear from you, Kenny, before I ask a million questions. Or is there anything else you wanted to add, Marla, before I hear?

No, I'm good. Okay. Anything to add to Marla's summary? Not really. I mean, I kind of come at it from a slightly different way of describing it. But I think it's the same thing. I think that from my perspective, and I agree with everything that Marla said, by the way, that she's just been more of Marla, which is just to be very demonstrative, very affectionate, very there with me all the time. And I think we just kind of lost our way just a little bit.

And I've been more deliberate with the things that I'm doing and saying and trying to check myself and not get agitated about absolutely frigging nothing. And, you know, while I think that that doesn't carry over, it does. And to the whole point about quantum love and energy and things like that, maybe that's the connecting the dots for me in some minor way. that, you know, if you're going to get pissed off and if you think you're going to come home a half an hour later and not carry some of that crap with you, you're out of your frigging mind. And I think that that, that Marla's put up with that for a fairly long time. And I'm trying to be more conscious, more deliberate in how I carry myself and in external things, not letting them get to me, checking myself and almost smiling and laughing at them. I told, I told Marla this

story i went to to a doctor and i leave the doctor's office and he's got these you know half flight of stairs you're gonna like 10 steps you gotta go turn the corner and go down the other 10 steps so i leave the doctor and you know they're they're always late and they're you know whatever so i finally get out of there i go good let me get out of here do what i gotta do which believe me was absolutely nothing but it was still stuff right and um can't let anything get in the way of kenny's stuff so i go down the half flight of stairs i turn the corner and up there's this there's this older guy with a walker making his way up the steps and his wife was you know behind him so he didn't fall and my immediate reaction is you gotta be fucking kidding me but then i

oh right i i got yeah i got things to do right and then the smarter version of me said this poor guy. And so, you know, I moved over, I asked him if he needed help and he got to the top of the stairs and then his wife like went in front of him for some strange reason. So I got behind him as he made his way up the stairs. And, you know, I just had a laugh because there's no reason in the world why I should have had my initial reaction, but you know, I am who I am, but at least I checked myself, did the right thing and just had a good laugh to myself about what an asshole i am and this way i didn't carry that with me the rest of the day and so i'm trying to you know be more of the person i know i am but there's this this overarching time obsessed

retard that i can be and i'm trying to like push that out yeah i love that well you know what i talk about in quantum love is the difference between being in home frequency which is what you moved into when you were like, look, look at this poor guy. I've got my whole body. I've got my limbs. I have so, you know, you weren't maybe conscious of all this, but I have so much to be grateful for. What am I stressing out for? Let me just be in a higher frequency state. Right. But that's kind of a shifting out of what we call fixed managing control mode, which is what I call ego frequency versus home frequency, which is kind of that quantum love zone where the magic starts to happen. And so that's exactly what you're talking about. Our tendency, listen, this was

mine and is still mine. I'm a recovering type A myself. So my tendency is to fix, manage and control everything. I am, you know, it's much easier now, the more you practice, the more automatic it becomes. But that's what was at play when you were like, I got places, you know, let me control this guy on the walker and I can't control him. And we're not doing that consciously, But something is in the way, a person, a situation, a traffic light, whatever, that is impeding our ability to fix, manage, and control, which is what makes us feel safe historically, right? And it's not really conscious. So what you're describing to me is that you're starting to notice, and awareness is like 60% to 70% of the gain. That's what I said.

You said that, Deborah? Yeah, I said, Kelly, way to go. Awareness, acceptance, action, go. As soon as you notice it, obviously this is going to rock on a walker. If it's some jerk who's acting out in the grocery store line, you may not be as empathetic and it'll be harder to shift, but you're going to learn how to shift. And what you're also describing is being responsible for the energy we bring into the room. So what you're realizing is that, A, if I shift out of this kind of fixed managed control mode in this moment behind the guy on the walker or whatever slowing me down, I am kind of clearing up my own energetic field. So when I go on about my day, not only am I going to possibly impact Marla, but everyone else who I come into contact with. But even if that doesn't happen, I'm just going to mention this for you and for anyone else listening. Let's say maybe not with the guy on the walker, but let's say you had an appointment and there was some idiot who didn't know how to drive on the road and was making everything slow and caused a traffic jam.

and then you miss the light. And then it was one thing after another. And you're just like in a crap, you're just annoyed and things got messed up and you're not necessarily, maybe you're on your way home. You're not necessarily automatically shifting, right? Before you come into the house, just sit in the car for a minute and ground yourself as I teach you to do with that ground, you know, take those deep breaths in through the top of your head, calm your nervous system down, think about something you can be grateful for, like move your system into a place of like shedding that low frequency stuff before you go into the house. I mean, I used to do this before I went into the room with my teenagers. I still do. Or before I go into the room with

my husband, if I've been having, I'm always trying to clean up my energy because as soon as I realized what you're realizing now, wow, Marla responds much differently to me when I'm doing this without me necessarily saying a word, then it kind of reinforces it. And it just becomes, and I think we all, it's not just you, Marla needs to do it too. Maybe she has more practice and tendency as a people pleaser to move into those happier places, but we don't. Me? That's the gift of your people pleasing shadow, right? I have one of those too, that we want to make everybody happy around us and like us. So we tend to be more upbeat and positive by nature. But so that's the main thing is the awareness. And what I love about

what you're saying is that so much about what we talked about historically with the erections and the low desire and the lack of affection and the squabbling and the, and all of that, a lot of it has started to shift as you start to kind of clean up your energy with each other. And also, like you said, Kenny, getting a little more conscious about reaching out to Marla. I'll ask you if you need those reminders anymore to go and give her a hug or something. And Marla being more conscious about reaching out to you in a way that feels good and appreciative and positive so that the two of you are feeding each other right right are you still getting the reminders to hug her are you still i was doing very good i would give myself maybe a b plus or

an a minus over the last month or so marla was in denver for the last week so the reminders were weren't there but we talked every day and wrote in touch and i picked marla up the airport yesterday so well obviously i hugged her when i saw her and got in the car and all that and we had a really nice evening so i think we took oh i think we took care of the hugging in other ways kenny was a romantic machine yesterday he picked me up at the airport with a a little cooler bag with turkey lettuce wraps i have to show you this it's so cute i just have to show you okay so i love these little italian jars so i like store things in them so in one jar he had a little cocktail and another jar he had ice and then he brought the bigger jar for the glass how

sweet is that yeah me so i was like honey it was just so like you had lettuce wraps and cocktails waiting for you when you got into the car yeah well it was funny right because marla's flight came in around four so i left the house around three so i set my phone for like 2 30 ish so i walk the dogs. I wanted Maeve to do her thing in case Marla and I were going to stay out for a little bit, which was my plan, but I didn't know if Marla was going to be tired. So I took care of Maeve and I said,

I've got to make something for Marla to eat. So I did the turkey wraps and then I go, let me get a cocktail ready. Let me throw a piece of fruit in there. Oh yeah, the fruit. And we're Whippet fans. So, you know, when you get to the end

of a can of whipped cream, you inhale, you know, it goes back to high school he didn't have to share that but there you go i thought i knew almost everything about it it was such a small town goofball thing the only thing better than being with marla is being with marla with a little buzz on so so so we had lunch we had the fruit we had the drink we had the whippet so we had we had a really good time then on the way home we went to a nice park and you know grinch connecticut we walked around a little bit and lots of traffic and he didn't get upset lots of traffic lots of traffic then we went out

to eat had a nice dinner and uh it was great oh and then and then when we got home you know it was like it was prime day of deals while i was gone so i came home to all these things my vice and i'm unpacking and i said kenny this was like such a special night thank you so much like the attention and all the things like it just felt so nice and so amazing thank you I said and would you like to meet me I said I have some cramming homework to do would you like to meet me tonight so we did we did and it was late it was on the late side oh and I bought new jammies while I was away and they're kind of cute they're kind of sexy so he's like so I tried on a pair of shoes that got delivered with the jammies and he's like that's such a cute outfit it was pajamas

pajamas and high heels can go a long way yeah and it did so so once again we did it again ah so this was the second time and were you able to reach orgasm this time yes yeah marla what do you think that's about because you were having difficulty well we took all your advice i went to the compounding pharmacist. I got the cream. I've been using it religiously. It's estradiol and testosterone. So estrogen for the lubrication and the... Yeah. And I also have an estring. Estring. Yeah. The little... That delivers local. I've also just been listening. Like I really missed our girls. And I said, Kenny, I just want to go to Denver and be with the girls. I miss them. and I'm, if I don't, if I don't go, I'm going to sit here and just wish I'd been there. So

went out there and I've just been like really consciously, I think, taking better care of myself. So you have more energy is what you're saying. You're, you're, you're filling your tank more. It's a huge part of desire and arousal that I think in particular, women don't always understand. I know you and I have talked about this, but once again, just for people just tuning in that when a woman is, and it tends to affect women more than men, maybe because we tend to give our energy to everyone else more. So not that men don't do it too, but we tend to put ourselves last on the proverbial totem pole. And so we only have a certain reservoir of energy. And if you aren't filling that reservoir in whatever way fills you. And one of the biggest things for

women, I find time and time again, that fills the tank is spending quality time, especially if you're still actively a mother. And in those years is spending time with other women away from your role as mother or wife or whatever, and, or at any point, and especially in the empty nest to do whatever it is, including spending time with our adult children that fills us up, that energizes us that makes us that puts that fuels the tank so we need that energy that energy if it's not if we don't have a full or something in the reservoir that energy is needed for sexual arousal and interest so sounds like you're saying is that you kind of filled your tank and you were feeling a deep connection to kenny yes and an appreciation really i think i lost the

art of appreciating him yeah yeah I don't think so but I just think that and I'm not minimizing how Marla feels I never felt that from Marla but that said to the extent that Marla felt that way I think a lot of it had to do with me being a bit distant as as well and you know this last month we just got back to being Kenny and Marla which has you know for the most part of our 38 years together 39 years has really been effortless and every time we hit a bump in the road and i mean like a big bump not this little shit but you know we realize how how challenging you know life can be and you know things do happen and things do get in the way but for the most part we've been able to get through things fairly easily so when we when we hit one of these real bumps in the road

they really take a while at least for me you know like say like you know what the f is going on around here like it used to be so freaking easy and now this is not and you know these last six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve months whatever it may be i don't think there's any more than that but it might be going back a year or so you know i've gone from being just really jammed up finally you know coming out of that environment and being the person that i know i am and kind of used to be just a little freer a little easier a little little more fun not getting jammed up with nonsense and you know i think that coupled with you know marla also working on herself you know we kind of went from being here to being there now we're coming back you know to

here again and it's really a nice place to be it's a beautiful and honest without without i mean you've been i'm gonna get emotional now but like you've just been an angel in our lives really no truly you really we talk about you a lot you know you challenged us in a non-parental non-teaching non-lecturing you know way you know you're just offering sound advice and sometimes in such a soft way that's almost easy to ignore because you're not beating us up but you know when you think about it at least when i think about it i'll speak for me and process it yeah it really does make sense you know what she's saying and you know it was hard on you i was gonna say i like i never felt that i think you were just enough like yeah yeah because if she

if she were any softer you would have just been like i know you you really obviously you're so amazing at what you did but you really like there's i've been in therapy a lot i've dragged kenny in and out so many times but nobody has ever been able to like get in there yeah you know like you so i really it's really been magical well you know and again for me you didn't diagnose me you didn't pigeonhole me you didn't give me a pass either you know you held me accountable and you said you know it happens you know you go through this so you normalized it yeah you normalized it and gave us a path to follow that as much as i'd like to say it didn't make sense i don't ever have to talk to you again it did make sense so i couldn't what could i do except

listen and eventually you know it kind of kicked in and uh you know i think we we had a terrific month we really did and we had visitors we had you know all the normal things it wasn't like we were just alone with nothing going on and kenny was very involved like i've learned also to just say like kenny i i i need a little more support in this particular situation like you know can you just be in this space with me instead of just expecting him to read my mind and getting pissy after so that's your awareness and half the battle right there and as i said to you guys from the beginning, it's really obvious. I think what you were saying before is right, Kenny, that you guys have this long history of deep abiding love and connection and commitment. And like every

single couple in the universe, you know, go through your bumps in the road. So you had so many resources to fuel you through this as far as my perspective went. And I think I said this to you numerous times that these things can be fixed. The hard part is when couples really have drifted apart so much or maybe never had the connection or the love or the desire to reconnect and that we have to actually get them to that point before we can even do with them what we've been doing together over the past several months. So I'm so happy for you guys. I'm so grateful that you were willing to open your hearts and minds to what I was offering. And I'm so proud of you because you've really done it and you've been doing it. And sometimes you've faulted a little

bit on your homework, but who hasn't? And you did it, which I'm excited for. I'm excited for you because now you have a toolkit and you have some strategies. And the main thing is, it's like with dieting or at least for me because my weight's always yo-yoing like once i lose the weight i'm like okay now let's go eat some ice cream and cake three meals a day and so the key is in keeping the relationship hygiene going right that's a great way of saying it yeah that's a great way of saying yeah and i'd like to think that that will be hard to do not that it doesn't require work yeah it's not hard it's just requires attention and exactly because that that that's our baseline and some somewhere along the way we lost it i lost it for sure so it really shouldn't be that hard to get

back to it we just needed some help and now that we're back to it it's a very familiar place and a really nice freaking place to be so you know now that we're back on course it shouldn't be that challenging to maintain that. But take nothing for granted. Anything good requires work. And what we have is special. And neither one of us have any interest in letting it go or slip away. So it requires attention. And we're more than happy to do that. Hey, it's Dr. Laura Berman. I've been a sex, love, and relationship therapist for over 30 years. And the main question I always get asked is how the heck do we spice it up in a long-term monogamous relationship? Well, if you want to take your love life, your sex life to the next level,

whether you're in a relationship or not, check out my free course on quantum sex. It's going to teach you how to take your sexual response to the next level, capable of full body orgasms, how to use sex magic to manifest your dreams, and how to connect on an even deeper level sexually with your partner. Just go to drlauraberman.com and you'll find it right there on the homepage, the Quantum Sex free course. Check it out and let me know what you think. kenny was googling something he's like i think dr laura has like a three-day something rather he was doing some googling on you while i was away which is so great i do intensive retreats i think that's what you're talking about so i i do individual

retreats with couples i sometimes do group retreats but people can be weird about group retreats. So I do these kind of individualized three days retreat, three day retreats. Wow. And come and take a deep dive. That would be great. Yeah, that might be something that we pursue. We can talk to you offline about that. That would be awesome. Anytime. And I'm here for you guys if you ever need a booster. I mean, I feel like you're ready

to fly. You don't really need me for this anymore. I mean, I'm certainly happy to go deeper with you on a retreat and or if over time because you know it's just like with anything else most of the people that I work with intermittently will come back for boosters I call it for sure no for sure I'm like they're going through something or they fall off they take their hands off the wheel accidentally again and they're oh shit we're in the cornfields again and if you so you I'm here So if you ever need a reboot or a booster. Absolutely. Absolutely.

The one thing I was talking to Kenny about this morning was we were talking about time, you know, and how he just, it just chases him and it's a part of him. And it's always been a part of him. It's part of his career. It's part of growing up in New York City and the Bronx, keeping safe, all those things. And the word excavation came up and I said, you know, Kenny, like every therapist that you've ever gone to i've always been like that bug in his ear like well talk to him about your obsession with time which is none of my business but it affects me it affects me how he how he

processes time so what i was saying this morning was like kenny loves music so i said imagine just making the goal for time not to be like the loudest instrument that you hear like in the symphony that is your day that's beautiful yes i love that resonated that was So that's just my lay person thing. No, I think that's beautiful. And the time obsession is for all the reasons you said. And it also was something that by focusing on that and kind of making that a priority or a primary note, it was a big part of Kenny's success probably in business.

A hundred percent. But now you're creating a different life in retirement where you want there to be lots of ideally, I mean, that's one of the gifts of retirement is that you can have time be softer in your life because there's no major deadline to meet. There's no major thing that's going to be a crisis if you don't accomplish it by X hour or you don't get to the grocery store by this time or whatever. We can easily apply that pressure on ourselves to stuff that doesn't matter anymore in the same way, because if we miss a deadline 99% of the time, at least in retirement, unless it's a health deadline or a relationship issue, it doesn't really matter. So it can be fun to play

with that idea with no particular goal in mind and just get curious about how it feels inside your body and what extra room gets made in your consciousness and in your energy when you kind of lift some of the pressure you put on yourself and the world around you around time or anything, but in your case, time. So, I mean, I can imagine that the way it affects you, Marla, is not just energetically, which Kenny is already attending to. So even if he was caught up in time before he comes into the room with you, he's going to shift. But my guess is it also affects your day to day life together because he's kind of being a little with time or a little pushy with time or worried about time. So, so just, you know, I think playing with it and maybe gently calling

him to consciousness, not necessarily 20 times a day where you're like driving him crazy. But, you know, one of the things I find helpful in these kinds of situations is to come up with like a code word action. So like whenever I'm getting in a place, I tend to be really blamey when I'm stressed so like my husband and i just you know we've created a signal where he just raises his finger and in the air and kind of wags it and that is giving me the message instead of him being like you're being blamey he just kind of lovingly ways raises and sometimes i still want to like kick his ass when he does it if i'm really in a triggered place but we've agreed and i know it's coming from a place of love and so i check myself right that's a great idea yeah to the old you know

start to sleep oh yeah but we don't do it we don't do it but that's a really good idea because like ken is very like to this morning with great example he's like yeah i'm gonna go down and you know do my ab workout and i'm like oh i want to ride that discipline let me know when you're gonna do it but i kind of tweaked my back while i was away so i was in the sauna blanket and i fell asleep in the sauna blanket when he came upstairs all sweaty i'm like and that originally I would have been blaming and said I asked you if I could ride your blah blah blah but I didn't even think that I was just like my body was not in a place of of working out it was in a it needed some restoration I did a lot of movement in Denver I did a lot of I tweaked my back what

it doesn't matter but I need to be clearer when I want that want some of his time loveliness to rub off on me exactly i'm i used to say i'm timeline and i'm not that's it's that is not fair for me to say about myself because if i were time blind i wouldn't show up anywhere i would always be late and not be effective and that's just not true i am compared to ken like we're you know we're over here ken arrives 15 minutes early i arrive on time or one minute late or maybe three maybe five that's never more than five lately i'm working on it it's it's a it's thing it's a it's a thing like I'm always like well I could get this one more thing done before I go I know I'm the same way but what you're saying is that even the parts of his time focus

that there may be aspects of his time value or whatever we're going to call it is time tick that are gifts and that you and that actually can be additive to your life and to your relationship There are also times when it adds pressure or too much rigidity or taking away from spontaneity or causing anxiety in you. And so when you make that hand motion, whatever it's going to be, or that signal or that word, that code word, whatever you're going to choose, that's just an invitation to Kenny. Like that means I'm feeling this is too much time pressure right now. maybe this, this is an invitation to consider whether this time, the time tick is really needed right here, right now, or can you loosen it? That's nice. That's good. That's gentle. Kenny, whether you want to loosen it or not. So I would only use that if it's,

if it's feeling constrictive or destructive or not serving in some way, you, the situation, as far as you're concerned, obviously he may feel differently, which is loud, but it at least is an invitation that's all it is it's not it's good i like that i like that let's play around with that to some degree but not as um when what did we do we you know we used to say like i'm on your side or like with you know like if i was getting edgy with you you're getting edgy oh yeah yeah yeah and or we you know do the whole circus away we went to a circus away show one of the things they did was like this and it just really it just cracked us up so we used to do that for a while when something like this would happen so you know we can we can get back

because it's fun it's cute well now we're in a space that we can i think we were a little too blocked to do it before and you under and there's a flow between the two of you and so these things are a lot easier to do i remember my parents this is many years ago they've both been gone for many years but they had this signal where they would just say i think it was from saturday night live but they would just say simmer as in like simmer it down like if one of them was too agitated or angry or like the other one would just go simmer and signal i can't imagine that that would piss me that would piss me off big time but simmer would not be the word i'm at work so i was with a guy i'm you know when i get activated i'm i'm not a people pleaser let me tell you and he used

to just look at me and say soft touch and that was very effective because then i realized i was in my marliness of war mode you know warrior princess mode so soft touch is good but that's good for you to say to me but i need we'll come up with something for me a time tick awareness time tick awareness and if there's any like literature or books you can recommend so that i can understand it more and be more sensitive to it. Yeah. Well, I can't, I'll think about it. I don't think there's a book per se, but I think the way that you can be more empathetic is that the two things, one thing I already mentioned that there are shadow sides to every gift and the time tick for him has been a tremendous gift that has served him in his career and in his life. I mean, it's been a huge

part of his success, time management, deadlines, all of that. So, without that time tick, he probably wouldn't have been able to do his job and had his career so effectively. So, from that standpoint, there's some gratitude for the time tick, but of course, with those gifts, it can have a, every gift has a shadow side, and the shadow side is that he can get too rigid with time or too focused on time and lose track of what's important. And so, then the second thing is just the compassion because the reason he has the gift in the first place, any gift we have pretty much, unless we were born with it, like some talent for singing or something else, like most of our gifts like this one developed out of pain, ironically, like just like with intuition.

I have, I've always had like kind of almost psychic intuition, but I know that that developed in me because I needed to be hyper aware to keep myself safe in my family. And if I wasn't hyper attuned to what everyone was thinking and feeling as a little girl, I could be gobsmacked with some scary stuff. And so it's familiar. Yeah. Most of our gifts grow out of pain. And so that's where the compassion also for Kenny comes in because something somewhere along the way, and we could dig in and you could probably talk about it and see, but my guess is as a little guy, he, for whatever reason, created, figured out that if he could be really on top of things and really taking care of things and not letting anything build up and doing everything ahead of time and getting

everything done, that he would either stay safe or he would get approval or he would avoid punishment or pain. So there's some, there's usually a wound underneath the gift. And for me, that opens up the door for compassion rather than annoyance when the shadow side of that gift surfaces beautiful i get it so little boy kenny needed to have the time i knew you would circle back to excavation somehow i thought we finished this session without going on i had to i had to arla's an excavator i'm just you know what it is too and it's not even it's not like i want to cause any pain i really care deeply and want to understand it i know exactly where my intuition came from in my i'm always taking the temperature of the of the room the car everywhere in this i

very similar to you and i'm grateful for it because it keeps me you know it keeps me and my loved ones really safe and entertained sometimes so but when I talked to Kenny he's like ah the best childhood ever it was like great and and I I believe that I believe that that's his belief set but I also would love to like really understand where the the time thing came from I just I so that I can grow my compassion for him like what you just said like I find that and I kind of know Kenny sort of well now, he does not want to go there. And it would, I could go there with him if he wanted. I mean, we'd have to do like a separate session and I can go all the way into his childhood. And what I will find almost always, and what we would find almost always,

there's big T trauma and little T trauma, right? And it has to do, so big T traumas, you were, had the shit kicked out of you every time you were late, or when you didn't hand a paper in in time, you got the ruler in your Catholic school or whatever. It could be something like that. Or it could be positive reinforcement that the main time he got approval and excitement from his parents was when he showed those signs of, you know, he real or maybe he just figured out on his own. Oh, you know, if I get things done this one time, I accidentally got something done early and everybody did a jig and was so excited. Oh, I want more of that. So I'm going to do it again. I'm going to do it again. And then it gets more and more approval and kudos. And it just

becomes part of your operating system. But on a certain level, because if you weren't a compassionate person, Marla, I would spell out the reason you need to be compassionate. But I don't buy that the reason you want to know is so that you can be compassionate. I think you already can be compassionate just knowing that there was wounds or insecurity underneath it that led to it. You know him well enough to know, but I think most people, especially men will say, I mean, this is my joke with Nick Cannon, you know, Nick Cannon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he calls me his therapist, but I'm not, I'm his, I jokingly call myself his love minister, but he's a good friend. I know. It took me like five years to get him to acknowledge that he has abandonment issues.

Like he was just like, he would describe these things to me that happened to him in childhood. And he's like, but that, you know, that wasn't, that wasn't beaten. That wasn't, you know, they always came back eventually. Like that wasn't, I could do that with Kenny, but I don't know. And if he wants to, I will, but I don't know that we need to, because I think he's so practical that he can train himself with your help to just for his own aliveness in retirement to ease off the time tick. and you can already be compassionate knowing without needing to know the specifics

that this gift comes from some sort of wound or some sort of deep desire to avoid a wound that there's this sweet little boy part of him that is driving the time tick and so when he's in the time tick if you could just see that sweet little boy he was looking for love afraid he wasn't going to get love and approval, then that's all the compassion you really need because you're error on the side of compassion already. That's the kind of person you are. So it's up to you guys, Kenny. If you want to set, if you want to go on an excavation and or Marla convinces you, I'm

game. But otherwise, you were going to say something. Yeah, I was just going to say a couple of really quick things just for the record. I always keep this, by the way. Go get Kenny. Yeah. So when he gets mad at me, he can look at me. And when I get mad at him, I'm like, very good.

You know, Marla knows but needs to hear it from me that she is always very compassionate and understanding about my scheduling, my timing. And often will say, why don't you take a break? Do you really need to do that now? Now, you know, Marla always tries to help me dial it back a little bit, always. So I don't think Marla needs to up her game in that regard. I appreciate what you're saying, believe me. But you need to know that you always do that.

Okay. From my perspective. Right, no, but you're talking about from her perspective so that she's more understanding of your time tick. Yeah, maybe I'm just damn curious. Maybe I just really want to, maybe that's the fucking truth. I really have no desire to excavate this issue. Nick, I mean Ken.

And not, I think, I can be honest with myself about not because I'm afraid of, you know, going back in time and trying to figure this thing out. i often view these discussions as yeah i could as much and i'm thinking about this as you're talking you know to us about it and there's not a unless i went to hypnosis you know went to hypnotic therapy whatever it might be called i can tell you that consciously you and i can talk from today tomorrow. And I can assure you that consciously there is nothing that has happened in my childhood that has given rise to this time tick. I think it's kind of a chicken and egg thing. And I talked to Marla about this from time to time. I don't know if I'm time obsessed because my career has turned me into that type of person, or I've just always been that person,

which has allowed me to be good at what I did. I don't know. I don't know that I really freaking care i just know that there's this little mini time monster in me and i want to correct and i don't really give a crap if it if the genesis of it is when i was 5 7 10 15 or 20 or 30 or 40 it's friggin there well the time monster is not hard to tame if you do it with compassion and you both and you want to tame it and one of two things will happen either it will get tamed or you will find that you have a lot of resistance to taming it and that you're not able to tame it and if that happens then we should circle back and excavate fair enough fair enough and i think i'm in the former camp it took me a while to get there but i think i'm there so i will work with

that framework yes and if that blows up then maybe we can and to be really really very honest when there were times sexually in our relationship that were cyclical. And I often would say to Kenny, did something happen to you when you were little? Like, are you okay? Because he's such a nice, gentle, tender man. And I guess it's not curiosity. I love him and respect him too much for that. It's a deep seated concern. It's none of my business, but it affects me. So, well, so there's two ways to go about it. I'm the same way. I mean, obviously I want to excavate everything. But in general, generally speaking, I don't mean to generalize to all men, that is the last thing the guys want to do. I think in general, trying to keep the excavation

to those things that are repetitively places where you are just committed to being stuck and the strategies just will not and cannot work. Or if there's a real curiosity there, which there really is. Otherwise, in these cases, often the why really serves us when we're really trying to change behavior and we're stuck with trying to do so. The rest of the time, frankly, why is the booby prize? It doesn't really matter why unless it helps you get unstuck or helps you understand yourself better. You want to understand yourself better in that way. Kenny doesn't want to. welcome to 90% of the men I meet and a lot of the women I meet. So I don't think I get why you're curious, Marla. I would be, I am curious, you know, I'm always curious, but I don't think

it's necessary. And I think you can infer that while there were no major traumas, there probably were things that happened to him that maybe were very subtle, but like I was saying, he adapted to them so quickly and found success there. So it just kind of kept feeding. Either way, I don't think it's necessary for you to find compassion or for the behavior to change. And maybe over time, he'll feel differently if your curiosity is still there. But otherwise, you're just going to have to take him at his word that his childhood was perfection i'm like i'm like 99.999 of the rest of us you stand alone ken i i i can tell you with total honesty i believe you no i think you i had a terrific childhood i think you did too and i did too except for the times that i was

the other things were happening but i believe you that you had that in your and i think that's wonderful i don't think we need to make him not feel like he had to make oh no no no i don't want to do that i don't want to so if we don't need if we don't need to debunk if we don't need to debunk his fantasy then why are we going my autobiography chapter 15 everything was fine into Marla and Dr. Laura. I'll continue to toss it around with my lovely wife, but I have no complaints.

I support you. I support you in that, Kenny. And I even wrote down Dr. Laura's quote. It doesn't matter why unless it helps you get unstuck. Isn't that what she said? I think that's very wise. So this is for my own.

She's doing that for herself and also to keep in her bag. in case you stay stuck. Yeah, that's fair. No, I mean, you know. And Marla's been patient. You know, I retired about a year and a half ago. And at the 21, yeah, two and a half years ago.

It's 2024. Yeah, okay. I lost a year somewhere. And Marla's been patient. But I think, I feel that I'm making progress. And Marla's been very patient with that process in that regard. So I agree. I've never been a big believer in the why.

I just care about the end result quite honestly. I can't believe how much therapy you paid for for me and you don't care about the what. We could have a house in Malibu. I think it would be so cool to renew our vows with you. I think that would be so cool at 40 years, which is not, is it next year? Two years.

Two years. But when you are ready, let me know and I will do my best to make it happen. That would be fun. that'd be so cool it'd be a lot of fun but so it just in in recap because i'm you know very student oriented so we're gonna keep the hug every day the keep basically all the good tools yeah everything we've been doing you're gonna keep doing and it's just part of your life this is just maintenance yes and then you're gonna yeah you're just gonna keep going with what

you're doing and what is working you're gonna keep exploring quantum love you're gonna keep working with, taking responsibility for your own energy and what you're bringing into the room and how you're approaching each other. And, you know, if you need support along the way, you're going to let me know. But I think you guys have done phenomenally well and you're on your way and you don't really need me anymore for the time, hopefully ever, but at least for the time. We're going to miss you. We graduated. Graduating, yeah.

i told ken i was gonna put his name on the presidential ballot last night i'm like you're such a good guy you need i said that to my husband because i don't do and i said i think i'm gonna put your name in because i don't want to vote for either of them 100 i'll vote for your hubby but we can't we can't i don't even know how to begin to thank you it's just been it's really been like a surreal dream because I've just read and followed and listened to you for so long. It's just been like, pinch us. This is really happening. You really helped us get back on course. You really did. I'm so grateful I could. And you guys did all the work. You were a really good student. Thank you. Well, we needed help. So thank you. Yeah, you really are. You're just a blessing.

Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for opening your hearts and your minds and your relationship and your shirts and everything else. I need to climb inside there and help you out. Well, you're in there for good now. Thank you. Thanks, Donna. Thank you so much. All right, be well.

Keep us posted, okay? Absolutely. We will. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. me a prescription but there is no

cure for cry