On Purpose with Jay Shetty - 4 Phases of Love We Go Through in Our Lifetime & How to Attract the Love and Relationships You Desire

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

Today, I am going to share with you another snippet from my latest book, 8 Rules of Love. This time, we will talk about the definition of love.  Rule #3: Define Love Before You Think It, Feel It, Or Say It - in this chapter we break down the different phases of love and dating, the pitfalls that often lead to breakups, and the steps we can take to be more present in the relationship and form deep connections with the other person. You can order my new book 8 RULES OF LOVE at 8rulesoflove.com or at a retail store near you. You can also get the chance to see me live on my first ever world tour. This is a 90 minute interactive show where I will take you on a journey of finding, keeping and even letting go of love. Head to jayshettytour.com and find out if I'll be in a city near you. Thank you so much for all your support - I hope to see you soon.    Key Takeaways: 00:00 Intro 03:02 Rule #3: Define love before you think it, feel it, or say it  09:39 The Four Phases of Love - We rarely elaborate when we tell other people we love them 14:03 Phase 1 - Attraction - In phase one, we feel a spark of intrigue, interest and attraction 20:14 The Three Date Rule - Three dates usually provide enough time to determine compatibility 31:35 Phase 2 - Dreams - We strive to dismantle false expectations and focus on realistic expectations 32:11 False Expectations - We often have a checklist of the qualities our partners should have 35:52 Rhythms and Routines - Instead of chasing the dream of what might be, spend time to get to know the other person 43:31 Phase 3 - Struggle and Growth - Confronting differences and disappointments and putting in the effort to resolve them 48:18 Phase 4 - Trust - The growth that you go through together builds into trust Like this show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps! Post a screenshot of you listening on Instagram & tag us so we can thank you personally! Want to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The One You Feed explores how to build a fulfilling life admits the challenges we face. We share manageable steps to living with more joy and less fear through guidance on emotional resilience, transformational habits, and personal growth. I'm your host, Eric Zimmer, and I speak with experts ranging from psychologists to spiritual teachers offering powerful lessons to apply daily. Create the life you want now. Listen to the one you feed on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Danny Shapiro, host of Family Secrets.

It's hard to believe we're entering our eighth season, and yet we're constantly discovering new secrets. The variety of them continues to be astonishing. I can't wait to share ten incredible stories with you, stories of tenacity, resilience, and the profoundly necessary excavation of long-held family secrets. Listen to season eight of Family Secrets on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on I Heart. I'm going

to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions like, can we create new senses for humans? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Intercosmos with David Eagleman on the IHR radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Relationships are masterfully designed to annoy us, but that's not why you're in a relationship. Bringing awareness to your relationship is uncomfortable. We expect love to flow naturally, but this

is extremely rare and often it means that we're not taking on the tougher issues. We need to make mistakes, identify what we need to change and work on doing better. This is where we grow as individuals and together. Hey everyone, I'm so excited because we're going to be adding a really special offering onto the back of my solo episodes on Fridays. It's my short daily series on calm, the daily J. And let me tell you, it's unlike anything else I'm doing. It's part story telling, part mindfulness, with a wide range of unique, actionable insights, and it's also the only place you can meditate with me each and every day. I absolutely love all the wisdom we're sharing, all the lives we're changing, and whether you want to improve your

mindset, your habits, or your relationships, whether you want to work on developing more focus, presence or equanimity, building a daily J routine just 7 minutes every day can make a huge impact. So make sure to check out the session at the end of the podcast and then subscribe to COM for your daily dose of the daily J. Go to COM.com forward slash J for 40% off your membership today. This week we're talking about your relationships and how to create the most meaningful connections with the people that matter to you.

Of course, if you want to listen to the daily J every day, you can go subscribe to calm. So go to calm.com forward slash J for 40% off your membership today. Welcome back to on purpose. This is your safe space. This is your place of comfort, of discomfort, of self-work and self-care. Where that space that gives you both. And you know that because you turn up every day, every week. And I'm so grateful to you. I honestly am so deeply grateful to you for all your love and all your support. And to reciprocate with you. Today I'm giving you the third chapter of my audiobook, the third rule of my new book, Eight Rules of Love, absolutely free. So today's episode is called Define Love Before You Think It, Feel It, or Say It.

And inside this book and this audiobook chapter, I'm going to teach you how to come up with your own definition of love, how to redefine love so that you don't get misled again, so that someone doesn't get to manipulate you again, so that someone doesn't pretend to give you a relationship and a partnership when actually what they want is ownership. How often is someone pretended to care for you when really they were trying to control you? How many times have you felt someone pretending to care for you when really they were trying to control you? How many times have you felt someone pretending to be affectionate when actually they were just trying to be assertive?

And so I hope that this episode helps you. I hope it helps your friends. And for those of you that don't already have the book, even though so many of you do already, head over to 8rulesoflove.com, order the audiobook, order the hard copy if you want to hear it, my voice, the audiobook isn't my voice. I know some of you like reading and listening at the same time, but you're going to love this episode. Part 2. Compatibility. Learning to Love Others The second ashram, Grehastha, is the stage of life when we extend our love to others while still loving ourselves.

This stage introduces the challenges of learning to understand, appreciate and cooperate with another mind, another set of values and another set of likes and dislikes on a daily basis. Here we explore the challenges of karma maytry, loving others. Rule 3. Define love before you think it, feel it, or say it. My boyfriend told me he loved me, and a week later he fully ghosted me. I told my partner I loved her, she said thank you. I was dating a girl for several weeks, when I told her I thought I was starting to fall in love with her, she said she needed more space. We've been together for three years and we say I love you before bed. Same time every night, I'm not sure it means anything anymore.

We say I love you, or wait for the right time to say it, or hope someone will say to us, but there is no universal agreement as to what it means. For some it means. For some it means, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. For some people, saying I love you means, I want to spend the night with you. Between those two intentions are infinite others, and some of us say it without any particular intention because in that moment we just feel something we interpret as love. This leaves a lot of room for confusion, miscommunication, and false expectations. writer Samantha Taylor says, the first time I told my now husband I loved him,

we were spending one of those long nights on the phone early in our dating relationship, back when people actually talked on the phone. To learious with sleepiness, I told him that I wanted to tell him I loved him but didn't want to scare him off. Don't worry, he told me. Saying I love you isn't a big deal to me. I love my mom, I love my friends, I love you too. Great, he broad, low pressure and not particularly romantic. She adds, Fortunately, he must have grown to love me in a romantic way because we've been married for almost 10 years. We say I love you in so many different contexts, with family, and friends, and lovers, that it doesn't

indicate anything but the presence of some sort of affection. And yet we have expectations based on what we assume it means to the other person. I love you, doesn't include commitment. It doesn't promise you want to have children together. It doesn't guarantee that you'll put any effort into making a relationship work. It's a beautiful star, but not a substitute for many other meaningful conversations. A survey showed that men are quicker to say, I love you than women, taking an average of 88 days. A whopping 39% of them declared their love within the first month.

Women take an average of 134 days and 23% of them declared their love in month one. It's hard to imagine that people who feel love within weeks actually live up to what their partners think that statement means. You may feel like you know someone because you've spent time with them and you like their personality, but you may not know their dreams, their values, their priorities, the things that matter to them. You think you know their heart, the things that matter to them. You think you know their heart, but you just know their mind.

Love takes time. I'm not saying you need to understand someone fully before you fall in love. We're always learning new things about our partner, but too often we leap to love based on a very small amount of information. In any other area of your life, it's very unlikely that you make a big decision based on such a small amount of information. Love is not black and white. You either love someone or you don't, and there's only one way to do it. Some people renew their vows every 10 years, either to recommit to love or to express how their love has evolved. Some people

have long distance love. Some people are friends with benefits. Some people get divorced, but they find a way to parent together peacefully and comfortably. Recently, a guy came up to me at a wedding and told me he just got out of a long relationship. He said, we love each other, but leaving each other was the best way to carry on loving each other. That's love too. To discount the many forms of love is to miss many beautiful possibilities. Understanding the nuances allows you to define and honor the love you have with the person you're with. As soon as we say, I love you, we're going to have to live up to those words not by our definition, but by the definition of the person we love.

On the flip side, when we accept someone else's love, we have to realize that they aren't using our definition of love. Before we decide that we're in love, before we tell another person we love them, and before we determine what it means when they say those words to us, we must consider how we define love. What do we expect love to feel like? How do we know we love someone? How do we know if they love us?

The only way to avoid miscommunication is to talk about love using far more than those three words. This rule will help us figure out what we mean when we say, I love you, what it may or may not mean when our partner says it, and how to find a meaning we can share. The four phases of love. When we tell each other we love each other, we rarely elaborate, unless it's to add a romantic flourish like so much or to the moon and back. It's pretty black and white, we either declare our love or we haven't. We don't leave much room for variation or degrees of love.

But we can take some cues in the practice of love from the Bhakti tradition and 8th century movement in Hinduism. Bhakti describes the journey of falling in love with the Divine in stages. The first stage is Shraddha, where we have the spark of faith that makes us take interest in the Divine. Notice how even when we're talking about connecting with the Divine, there's a preliminary desire, curiosity and hope drive us to engage. This leads us to the next stage, Sadhu Sangha, desiring to associate with spiritually advanced persons. Here we find a spiritual teacher guide mentor who can help us develop our practice.

After that is Bajna Kriya, where we perform devotional acts like attending services and praying. As our devotion gets deeper, we become free from all material attachments, anartha nivrithi, achieve steadiness, nishtha, in self-realization, and find enthusiasm, Ruchi, for serving the Divine. This taste leads us to further attachment which is called Bava. This is the preliminary stage of pure love of the Divine. Then finally, we reach pure love for the Divine.

Prem. This is the supreme stage of life, where we have attained the highest form of a divine loving relationship, unbound by awe and reverence or any kind of hierarchy. Because the Bukti stages of love describe an intimate, direct relationship between a person and their God, they can apply in many ways to how we love each other. So I decided to bring the model down to earth and reinterpret it for the practice of understanding and loving another person. When it comes to love, we expect that we'll know when we know. But our experiences of love can be different at different times. The four phases of love I'm about to describe can all look like love and feel like love,

and they are all part of the journey of love. How do you know if you're in love with someone? Love isn't being called every day or having your chair pulled out for you or feeling warm and fuzzy when you see someone. Love isn't a purely romantic fairy tale and it isn't pragmatically checking qualities of a list. Looking at these phases helps us understand love differently, define love for ourselves, and better articulate our feelings of love.

At the same time, seeing the levels of love helps us understand why our partner might have a different concept of love than we do. Knowing what phase you're in helps orient you for progress to the next phase, and when you can't see yourself getting to the next phase, then you might enjoy it for a while, but you know that it's not sustainable. We might not progress in exactly this order, and the rest of this book will show you how we cycle back through the phases. This is a cycle we will repeat not just with one partner, but with pretty much everyone who plays an important role in our lives.

This is the practice of love. 1. Attraction 2. Dreams 3. Struggle and Growth 4. Trust 2. Dreams 3. Struggle and growth

4. Trust Phase 1 Attraction In phase 1, we feel a spark of intrigue, interest and attraction. This makes us want to figure out if someone is worth our time and effort. Researchers describe what we call love as three distinct drives in the brain. Lost, attraction and attachment. When we move from lust to attraction, we're taking the generalized desire to connect with someone and focusing it on a specific person. The brain chemicals involved in lust differ from those that produce attraction.

Lust is governed more by testosterone and estrogen, whereas attraction includes dopamine, the reward chemical, and norepinephrine, the brain's version of adrenaline, which when combined with dopamine can generate that feeling of euphoria around the target of our attraction. Additionally, levels of the feel-good hormone serotonin actually drop in this phase, which contributes to our feelings of anxiety and passion in the early stages of attraction. We have an exciting surge of hope and belief that someone could be the right person for us. We feel intrigue and interest.

We swipe right. Love often starts with this thrilling hint of possibility. It means, you intrigue me. I want more. Chemistry like this feels amazing, but we should be careful not to think that chemistry is the only way love begins or that it is the entirety of love. Time helps you understand whether what you're feeling is truly love. Think about what it's like when you place an order for a chair on a website. It looks good online, if it's beautifully into a room pictured on your favorite home store site. But when it arrives, it isn't comfortable to sit on. In attraction, we observe people for how they appear, but we don't understand what it's

like to have a relationship with them. I used to know this guy who came up to me every month and told me he had fallen in love with another girl. Someone he'd bumped into or met on Instagram. For a week, he'd be completely infatuated. And then a few weeks later, it would be someone else. In the attraction phase, we have glimpses of love that show us its beauty. Lingering in the attraction phase is pleasurable. With new people, we've carefully exposed what we want them to see, our best features.

There are few arguments, expectations and disappointments. We can sustain the fantasy of a perfect match, but it takes a deeper connection to go beyond phase one. to go beyond Phase 1. Science supports the idea that having deeper connections bodes well for relationships. Professor Matthias Mel at the University of Arizona in Tucson and his team studied whether the conversations we have affect our well-being. Specifically, they were looking at the difference between small talk and having deep meaningful discussions. They had 79 participants wear recorders for 4 days while they went about their daily lives. The devices were designed to record snippets of ambient sound, netting about

300 recordings per participant over the four days. The researchers then listened to the recordings and noted when the participants were alone or talking with others, and when their conversation was superficial, what do you have there? Popcorn, yummy, or deep? She fell in love with your dad? So did they get divorced soon after? The researchers also assessed participants' well-being through a series of statements, such as, I see myself as someone who is happy, satisfied with life.

They found that higher rates of well-being were associated more with people who had deep conversations than those who made more small talk. Going deep isn't a technique, it can only be a genuine experience that leads to a true connection. But we can examine our own willingness to open up and be vulnerable with people as we build trust with them. Social scientists say that vulnerability leads to reciprocal escalating self-disclosure. What this means is that over time a couple begins to reveal vulnerabilities to each other. That's the self-disclosure. Sharing parts of yourself doesn't mean bearing your

whole soul all at once. I am Yannla and on my podcast, the R-Spot, we're having inspirational, educational, and sometimes difficult and challenging conversations about relationships. They may not have the capacity to give you what you need. And insisting means that you are abusing yourself now. You human! That means that you're crazy as hell, just like the rest of us. When a relationship breaks down, I take copious notes and I want to share them with you. Anybody with two eyes and a brain knows that too much Alfredo sauce is just no good for you, but if you're going to eat it, they're not going to stop you.

So he's going to continue to give you the Alfredo sauce and put it even on your grits if you don't stop him. Listen to the R-Spot on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. This is what it sounds like inside the box-par. I'm journalist and I'm Morton in my podcast City of the Rails. I plung into the dark world of America's railroads, searching for my daughter Ruby, who ran off to hop train. I'm just like stuck on this train, not now where I'm gonna end up, and I jump!

Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters, living outside society, off the grid and on the edge. I was in love with a lifestyle and the freedom this community. No one understands who we truly are. The Rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood, history, and the thing we call the American Dream. It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die, or you could have this incredible rebirth and really understand who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for

us in the city of the rails. Listen to city of the rails on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts or cityoftherails.com. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save your retirement? Well, you're not alone if you haven't made progress yet, roughly four in five New Year's resolutions fail within the first month or two.

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Our show is Choc Full of the Personal Finance Knowledge that you need with guidance three times a week, and we talk about debt payoff, if let's say you've had a particularly spend thrift holiday season. We also talk about building up your savings, intelligent investing, and growing your income. No matter where you are on your financial journey, how do money's got your back? Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them achieve their financial goals. Ensure that your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to how to money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. Sometimes, when we are caught up in the moment, we're tempted to do that. But if we gradually unveil our personalities, values, and goals, we start to see if there is a connection. Letting yourself be vulnerable with this intention keeps you feeling protected, like you aren't exposed too much, too fast, to a person you can't trust. If it all goes well, you reveal increasingly intimate facets of yourself at a pace where you feel comfortable. That's where the escalating comes in.

And the disclosure is a gift that you give back and forth to each other. That's reciprocal. It is with reciprocal escalating self-disclosure that we start to truly know a person. The three-day rule. In my experience working with clients, three dates usually provide enough time to determine if you and another person would be a good match. These three dates don't have to be your first three dates, and you don't have to do them one after another. You can spread them out. Sometimes it's nice to just see a movie.

In these dates, you'll focus on three areas, whether you like their personality, whether you respect their values, and whether you would like to help them achieve their goals. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to suggest focusing on these qualities sequentially, one per date, but you'll probably be uncovering some aspect of each dimension during each date. First, we start with personality because it's the easiest thing to spot, understand, and connect with. In their personality, you'll see how their past has shaped them. Second, you'll explore their values,

which define who they are today. And third, you'll try to recognize their goals, which encapsulate what they want in the future. Day one. Do you have fun together? Do you enjoy each other's company? Does conversation flow? What makes you comfortable, and what makes you uncomfortable? The first day is to find out if you really enjoy each other's

personalities. To do so, you need to shift between small talk and deep talk. The topics we gravitate toward, favorite movies or vacation plans, don't help us know people deeply. Instead, you can start to ask questions that inspire both of you to reveal more personal details, including your quirks and imperfections. Remember, we share vulnerabilities gradually, as we get to know and trust each other, so on this date, your focus is to see if you enjoy and appreciate their personality. Try to learn something new about them or see a side of them you haven't seen. Here are some like questions you can ask on date 1. You'll see that they are questions about taste and preferences.

They tread in areas where most people are comfortable, but they create the possibility to show real passions. When you ask someone what the best meal they ever had was, the question isn't just about food. It opens up a bigger conversation about where and when they had the food and what made it special. If you ask what they wish they knew more about, you find out about their curiosities and unfulfilled interests. If you hit on a strong interest like tasting movies or books, you can dig deeper into why

they like what they like and find out how introspective they are. Even if you think you know your partner well, the answers might surprise you. What's something you love to do? Do you have a favourite place? Is there a book or movie you've read or seen more than once? What is occupying your thoughts most at the moment? What something you wish you knew more about? What's the best meal you've ever had? This isn't an interview. Every conversation has two sides, and one aspect of your partner's personality these questions will reveal is whether they're curious about you. Do they ask for your own responses to these questions and dig deeper when they turn the conversation to you. Try this.

Prepare for date 1. Take the questions I suggested you ask your date and write out your own answers to them. What's something you love to do? Do you have a favorite place? Is there a book or movie you've read or seen more than once? What is occupying your thoughts most at the moment? What something you wish you knew more about? What's the best meal you've ever had? Once you have your answers, ask yourself what they might tell a person about you.

Do these questions bring up some of your strong interests? Do they give you a chance to reveal important aspects of your personality? If not, are there other questions that would? Add those questions to the list you bring to your next date. Date 2 Your date 2 could come after any number of dates spent dancing or going to the museums or talking casually over dinner, but knowing that you enjoy the same movies or like the same cuisine doesn't really tell you if your values are compatible. Gently encourage your date to share meaningful stories and details about their life.

Take turns with these questions and make sure again that it's not an interview. In fact, if they hesitate over a question, you might say, I know it's a hard question, I'll go first. Your answers can reveal your own values. If the question is who's the most fascinating person you've ever met, don't just give a name. Say what interested you about the person, what you learned from them, or what you would ask them if you could meet them again.

If you're telling a story about something you've done that's out of character, then tell them what's in character for you, why you hold that value, and what made you diverge from it. If they're not immediately open, that's okay. Escalating self-disclosure is a slow build. Sometimes when we're ready to share, we think it's the right time for them to open up as well. But people do this at their own pace, in their own time. Ask questions and listen carefully to the response to gauge if the person is hesitant. Give them openings to change the subject, asking, is this too heavy a topic? Or would you

rather not go here right now? Not only do we want to avoid grilling our date, we also don't want to over share. Taking up all the oxygen in the room with unsolicited, deeply personal stories will only make the person feel overwhelmed. Your ability to be vulnerable and open will help them be vulnerable and to share what feels comfortable at this stage. Here are some uncommon questions you can try out on date two that will help you learn what they find interesting, how they deal with challenges, what they value, how they tolerate risk, and how they make decisions. Who's the most fascinating person you've ever met?

What's the most out of character thing you've ever done or would like to do? Have you ever had a big plot twist in your life? If you won the lottery, what would you spend the money on? What's the most spontaneous thing you've ever done? What is a tough thing you dealt with in your past? What makes you proud? What would you do if you had enough money to not need a job? Notice how all these questions approach deeper issues without pressure or intensity. You're not asking the worst moment of someone's

life or what their darkest secret is. These questions are framed to learn about the other person, but in a playful way. Don't treat your opinions as if they're better than your partners. They're just different viewpoints that emerge from different backgrounds, different experiences, different upbringing. Date three. Date three should occur when it feels natural to share some of your ideas for the future. Just as you don't need to share the same values,

you don't need to share the same values, you don't need to have the same goals. One of you might have your whole life mapped out and the other might still be exploring what gives their life meaning. On date 3, you can try out some deeper questions. I'll share some here. Do you have a dream you'd like to fulfill one day, a job, a trip and a accomplishment? What would you like to change about your life? If you could meet anyone, who would it be? Is there a single moment or experience that changed your life? Is there someone you consider to be your greatest teacher?

Using the information you glean on these three dates, you can determine if you like a person's personality, respect their values, and want to help them pursue their goals. Notice the verbs I chose here. You don't have to have the same personality so long as you enjoy each other. You don't have to share their values so long as you respect them. Their goals don't even have to be things you want or enjoy, but are you interested in having these aspects of who they are and who they want to be as part of your day-to-day life and coming to pass near or alongside you? Certain goals, like robbing a bank, should be deal-breakers. It might be that you like them so much that you'd be excited to help them with anything, within reason that

they want to pursue. Or if their goal is to eradicate homelessness in Los Angeles, such a noble goal might in itself make them more attractive. Attraction leads to dreams. When our attraction to a person continues over time, we start to fantasize about the relationship that could develop. What adventures we could have with this person, what our life together would look like. We find ourselves in phase two. Phase two, dreams. In the second phase of love, many of us move fast.

Our attraction to this person tells us that they might match our dreams. But our dreams can cloud our vision of the other person and our own needs. In this phase, we strive to dismantle false expectations and focus on designing, building and nurturing a strong relationship based on realistic expectations rather than intoxicating dreams. False Expectations In this phase of love, we often have in mind a checklist of the qualities our partners should have. we often have in mind a checklist of the qualities our partners should have. Sometimes these are very specific and or tied to the opulences.

Successful, owns a home, likes to watch basketball, is a certain age or a certain level of fitness, is ready to get married in the next year. Psychologist Lisa Feistone says, these unrealistic expectations are exaggerated by technology. Online dating sites can promote the overwhelming notion that there are endless choices in the world, leaving some of us to get stuck in a cycle of perpetual searching or what one team of researchers called, Relationshopping? We may unintentionally find ourselves seeking perfection or one person who can fill every imaginable criterion we've created in our mind or in our profile. This list making can turn dreams into requirements.

Any potential partner will come with a past, challenges, and possibly trauma just as you do. You simply won't find someone who ticks every box on your checklist. It's okay for different people to fill the different needs on your checklist. Research shows that the happiest people have multiple close relationships, so whether we're coupled or single, we shouldn't look to any one person to meet all our needs. John Cacciopo, a neuroscientist who resets love and affection told the New York Times, one of the secrets to a good relationship is being attracted to someone out of choice rather than out of need. We might also hope that our partner wants the same things in life that we do, the same standard of living, the same family structure, the same likes and dislikes, the same friends, the same notions of how money should be saved and spent,

The same notions of how money should be saved and spent, the same plans for the future, in terms of how hard we will work, how successful we will be, where we will live, how we will handle unexpected challenges, and how frequently we will make changes. Even if we don't say this, or even think it, we subconsciously believe that we must share the same values and goals to be in love. When one person wants to spend Sunday with their family and the other wants to play golf, or he wants to meet her friends, but she's not ready, they can rashly take it as a sign that they're not meant to be. Or, later in a relationship, if they don't want to move when we do, we

might take it to mean that they don't love us. And if they don't want to get married when we do, we think it's the end. It's also not uncommon in this phase to expect our partners to read our minds, to understand as soon as we speak and to agree with us. We expect them to channel our emotions and desires, to select the gift we crave, to intuit how we want to celebrate our birthday, what we want for dinner tonight, how much attention we want, how much space we need. But creating something together is better than wanting the same thing. How you handle your differences is more important than finding your similarities. In Phase 2, we ground our dreams in reality by establishing rhythms and routines that create the space to nurture the relationship slowly and carefully.

Rhythm's and routines. Instead of chasing the dream of what it might be to live happily ever after with this person, spend time getting to know them, building your connection. Dreams are an illusion. Reality is far more interesting. In corporate settings where systems are strong, I urge leaders to incorporate sentiment in order to soften the rigidity of organization and process. And in relationships where sentiment is strong, I embed systems to help bring structure and order to the emotional landscape.

Rhythms and routines help us maintain a steady pace that lets us get to know each other gradually and genuinely. We acknowledge that we are both looking for a long-term relationship and hoping this is it. When we establish rhythms and routines together, instead of trying to meet false expectations, our relationship is grounded in how much time will spend together and how we'll spend it. We don't have to wonder when the person we're interested in will call us next. We don't play games like waiting a certain number of days before returning their call.

We also start to set healthy boundaries while observing how our partner responds to them. Boundaries can be physical, some people choose to take their time becoming sexually intimate, and they can also relate to time and emotions. A small survey conducted by high-touch communications ink found that after work hours,

most people expected friends, family and romantic partners to respond to a text within 5 minutes. But when it came to work hours, they gave friends and family an hour but still expected a romantic partner to respond within 5 minutes. I've learned to give Radi around 5 days with a reminder. Clinical psychologist Seth Meyers advises new couples to exercise caution. In psychology today he writes that lots of physical interaction right away heightens emotions and can color how you see the other person. Looking at them through rose-colored glasses could make you overlook red flags that would

be more apparent or concerning if you weren't under the influence of the bonding chemicals we release as a result of physical contact, especially sex. Plus, you're forcing emotional intimacy with someone you barely know, and as Myers points out, if you don't really know the person eliciting those intense emotional reactions, you may put yourself at risk. If the person is kind and good, and wants the same things as you, there's no problem. If the person doesn't have the same relationship goals as you, you may end up feeling lonely and betrayed. He recommends that for at least the first month, you see one another no more than once a week, and if things are going well,

then you can slowly dial up the frequency of your dates. Not too long ago, in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, this explorer stumbled upon something that would change his life. I saw it and I saw, oh wow, this is a very unusual situation. It was cacao. The tree that gives us chocolate. But this cacao was unlike anything experts had seen. Poor tasted. I've never wanted us to have a gun fight.

I mean, you saw the stacks of cash in our office. Chocolate sort of forms this vortex. It sucks you in. It's like I can be the queen of wild chocolate. You're all lost. It was madness. It was a game changer. People quit their jobs. They left their lives behind,

so they could search for more of this stuff. I wanted to tell their stories, so I followed them deep into the jungle, and it wasn't always pretty. Basically, this like disgruntled guy and his family surrounded the building armed with machetes. And we've heard all sorts of things that, you know, somebody got shot over this.

Sometimes I think, all, all this for a damn bar of chocolate. Listen to obsessions, wild chocolate, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast A good way to learn about a place is to talk to the people that live there There's just this sexy vibe and Montreal this pulse this energy But what's been seen is a very snotty city people calls Bose Angelus New Orleans is a town that never forgets its past. A great way to get to know a place is to get invited to a dinner party.

Hi, I'm Brendan Francis Newtom and not lost as my new travel podcast where a friend and I go places, see the sights, and try to finagle our way into a dinner party. We're kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party. It doesn't always work out. I would love that, but I have like a Cholala who is aggressive towards strangers.

I love the dogs. We learn about the places we're visiting, yes, but we also learn about ourselves. I don't spend as much time thinking about how I'm going to die alone when I'm traveling. But I get to travel with someone I love. Oh, see, I love you too. And also, we get to eat as much as we can. I love you too. My ex a lot of therapy goes behind that. You're so white, I love it. So we get to eat as much as we can.

Listen to not lost on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities,

like, does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or can we create new senses for humans? Or what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Intercosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your reality. Listen to Intercosmos with David Eagelman on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. When you encounter a new potential friend, for example, you probably don't rush to see that friend several times per week after you first meet Myas writes. Why should the guidelines for starting a romantic relationship be so different?

The time and space we spend apart and haunts us the time we spend together. We want to find a balance among time together, time alone, time with our own friends and time with collective friends. In a week, you might decide to spend one night alone, three nights together, two nights with friends that you both know, and one night with your own friends. This gives you time together, time to decompress, time to experience other people's energy together, and time to decompress in a different way with your own friends. When you do this, you should tell your partner why it's important to you to structure your

time this way. Meal-y saying, I need alone time, leaves them wondering what they've done wrong. While saying, I need alone time because I'm stressed out, gives them a chance to be supportive and understanding. The schedule I just shared is an example, but it gives you an idea of how to think about your own. Try this. Set a schedule.

Together, work out how often you talk, message and see each other. Find an easy rhythm and healthy ratio that works for both of you. Decide how you want to divvy up your free time. Not every week has to be the same, but when you have a sense of how you're going to spend your time, you don't feel that you're in a competition with other interests. Nights by yourself. Nights together. Nights with mutual friends or family.

Nights with your own friends. Instead of setting rhythms and routines, we often worry or wonder where the relationship is going or complain to our friends about it. We're afraid to have conversations with a partner because we don't want to put pressure on them or to be perceived as needy. But conversations about what feels right to both of you at this point are entirely appropriate. When you have these conversations, the other person may not respond the way you hoped. Their pace and commitment may be different from yours.

This doesn't mean the relationship is doomed. It means you can proceed with more clarity. And if these topics scare someone off, you haven't made a mistake. You've saved yourself the weeks and months you might otherwise have spent waiting for the relationship to play out. Instead of wondering why they never call, do this. Set a time to connect rather than leaving it up to hope or chance. Instead of thinking they're too busy for you, discuss how busy slash available you are

in the upcoming week. Instead of thinking they're moving too quickly, tell them you'd like to move at a slower pace but it doesn't mean you're not interested. Instead of thinking they're moving too slowly, tell them you want to make sure you've got the same aspirations. Instead of worrying because they haven't introduced you to their family or friends, learn about their closest relationships by asking questions and finding out who is important to them and why.

Instead of wondering if they're seeing other people, ask them if they want to be exclusive and hear them out. In these conversations, you may not always like what you learn. If the person doesn't react or respond in the way you wanted, it doesn't mean this relationship won't work. It means you can move forward in one direction or another with clarity. Phase 3. Struggle and Growth

We are meant to fall in love, be in love and stay in love. But we can't do any of that if we expect every day to be Valentine's Day. Trouble is inevitable. It comes when, as a couple, we inevitably discover the various ways in which we aren't aligned. In phase three, we confront those differences and disappointments, and figure out if we want to put in the effort that resolving or living with them requires. When I was among, as you might imagine, we did a lot of self-reflection, and at one point my teacher asked a group of us to rate how much we were struggling with our minds on a scale of 1 to 10. Our work was intense, and we all gave ourselves pretty high struggle ratings.

gave ourselves pretty high struggle ratings. Then he said, well, imagine if there were two minds trying to get along. Two different people from different households with their own beliefs, values, expectations and dreams. There is no way this experiment can run smoothly. Love means that you value your partner enough to confront difficult areas. Relationships are masterfully designed to annoy us. It's easier on your own when there's nobody around to question you or bear witness to your flaws, but that's not why you're in a relationship. Bringing awareness to your relationship is uncomfortable. Many couples bump up against an opportunity for realization and feel it as a burden. We expect love to flow naturally,

but this is extremely rare, and often it means that we're not taking on the tougher issues. We need to make mistakes, identify what we need to change, and work on doing better. This is where we grow as individuals and together. Many of these challenges are simple and domestic. For example, in my house growing up, we ate dinner, had dessert, hung out, and talked for a while, then cleaned up. In Rady's house, they ate dinner, cleaned up, had dessert, and only when everything was all done, would they relax into conversation. When we first started entertaining as a couple, after dinner, Rady would clean up on her own,

and I felt guilty that I wasn't helping. I always said that I'd clean a bit later and I meant it, but she was locked into the ritual from her upbringing and I was locked into mine. Someone might say they'll clean up later and their partner might believe they're just being lazy, but more often differences like this originate in backgrounds, cultures and habits. The small hurdles are issues like she's snores. He's always late. They would rather watch TV when I want to go to a museum. I can't stand her best friend.

He wants to spend every holiday at his parents' home. They have three cats and I'm allergic. And they may be bigger hurdles like he has massive student debt. She has a temper that scares me. We have a long distance relationship and neither of us wants to move. She doesn't want to have children and I do. Disagreements large and small may challenge your confidence in your bond. You may feel, I thought I loved you, but in that situation, there are three routes you can take. Two of them lead to important realizations. You can leave the relationship, in which case you realize this person doesn't suit your priorities.

You can work through the issue together and grow, in which case you realize you're feeling positive enough about your bond to evolve together. Or you can stay together without changing anything, in which case you don't realize anything. I advise you not to make the third choice. This phase is very important when it comes to defining love, because you either realize that something is a deal breaker for you, or that you're willing to go through the growth that facing the issue involves. And if it's the latter, you will come through the experience with a stronger, more resilient love. We will discuss relationship challenges like these in more depth in rules 5 and 6.

Phase 4 Trust After we've overcome a challenge together, we grow. We learn to tolerate, adjust and adapt. The growth that we do together builds into trust. Evaluating the breadth and depth of your trust for someone is a way of understanding and defining your love in the fourth and highest phase. Sometimes, we assume trust is binary. Either we trust someone or we don't. But trust increases gradually through

actions, thoughts and words. We shouldn't trust someone instantly just because they're kind to us. We give them our trust because little by little, day after day, we have shared more of ourselves and seen what they do with our honesty. All of the earlier phases build on one another to get us here. Trust begins with ourselves. We need to be trustworthy. This means aligning what we think, say, and do. When we think something, we express it.

And then we carry through with the idea. This means we can trust ourselves. So if I feel like I need a night to myself, I communicate that to my partner, and then I take the time. I feel the benefit of the gift I've given myself, and I trust myself to take good care of myself. My partner sees me following through on my ideas, observes the results and recognizes my trustworthiness. Then I do the same for my partner. I follow through on my promises to them.

I show them that I'm trustworthy and in doing so inspire them to respond with an equal level of trust. We trust people more when they make us feel safe, when they make healthy decisions, when we feel like they conduct their life based on values that we agree with. To evaluate the depth and breadth of your trust for your partner, consider these three aspects, physical trust, mental trust and emotional trust. Physical trust is when you feel safe and cared for in their presence. They want to be with you, their present and attentive and being around them feels good. Mental trust is when you trust their

mind, their ideas, their thoughtfulness. You may not agree with every decision they make, but you trust the way they make decisions. Emotional trust is when you trust their values and who they are as a human. Do they treat you well? Are they supportive? Do you trust how they behave not just with you but with the other people in their life from close friends to a waiter? It's okay if you don't have absolute trust for your partner across this spectrum and they can make mistakes that challenge your trust. When you identify weak spots, consider how significant the weakness is. How does it affect you?

If you don't trust them in areas that are important to you, you can give your partner grace and maintain trust by sharing honestly around the issues. It's impossible to have trust if there is dishonesty, secrets or gaslighting. Trust builds very slowly and needs to be nurtured and sustained. Think of it as growing by percentage points. Each time someone thinks, says, and does the same thing, trust grows by one percentage point. In the beginning you trust them to speak the truth about whom they're with and what they're doing and what they think. Each time they do, trust grows another point. Then as we ask them to understand our emotions and they listen, the points add up. When we share our faults, trust grows further.

But trust fluctuates. If they fail to understand us, or they mislead us, or they betray us, our level of trust sinks and needs to be rebuilt. When we overcome a challenge together, trust grows again. We begin to trust them with our plans and dreams, and finally, we trust them enough to share our trauma with them. When our trust is high, we feel a love that is physically and emotionally safe and secure. Our partner becomes the person we turn to with good news and bad news, knowing that they'll be on our side and by our side helping us to weather challenges and celebrate successes. Try this, Daily Trust.

One of my favourite ways to show trust every day is to notice and recognise when someone follows through on a promise. Often we reward people with thanks and gratitude when they surprise us with a nice gesture. Your partner prepares a delicious dinner that you didn't expect and you heap on the gratitude. We do the same when they do something that they rarely do. But trust comes with quiet reliability. What about the partner who makes dinner for us regularly? We should show our appreciation for the efforts that they make daily. The more you reward it, the more they'll repeat it.

And we build their trust in us the same way by showing up. This week make an effort to thank your partner for the effort and energy they consistently bring to your partnership. Be specific. Instead of saying thanks for listening, you can say, I know I always come home and unload my emotions from work on you. I really appreciate how you listen and give me helpful advice. Love brings us through all of these phases over and over again. We never stop deepening our faith in each other.

We endlessly find our attraction renewed. We work to remove impurities. Love means that we're happy to go through this cycle together. Now the dreams that you had in phase 2 are real. They may be different, they're probably better than anything you dared to dream. Instead of fantasizing in your head, you can try out new dreams together. Try this. Build realistic dreams together. Establish your monthly check-in.

Commit an hour every month to talk about your relationship. This gives you an opportunity to reaffirm what's working and redirect what's not working. Identify a highlight. What are you grateful for? This helps you both know what's going well. Identify a challenge. What are you struggling with? This helps you see what needs work. Find something to work toward together this coming month. It could be a date night, a birthday celebration, a trip, a plan to redo a room in the home. You can look through a website to research a vacation you want to take. This way you're building your dreams together.

Together you're working on how you want your relationship to look and feel. To experience all that relationships have to offer means facing the challenges and rewards of every stage of love. Sometimes people jump from relationship to relationship because they're trying to avoid the challenges that love requires. You could date someone new every three months and have a lot of fun, but there is no growth in the cycle of just flirting, hooking up, and ditching. It is this ongoing growth and understanding that helps us sustain the fun of love, the connection of love, the trust of love, the reward of love. If we

never commit, we'll never get to love. Once in a place of trust and commitment, you and your partner reveal yourselves to each other, and share more of yourselves than you allow anyone else to see. This exchange puts you in a unique position. We don't usually think of relationships in terms of learning and teaching, but that is exactly what we will explore in the next chapter. How to learn from and teach our partner. Thank you so much for listening to today. I really hope that I was able to help you define love. And I really hope that this episode brought joy into your life. I hope it brought some clarity into your life.

And now as you move forward and redefine love, I hope it brings more of your definition of love into your life. If you don't already have the hard copy of my book or the audio book, head over right now to eightrulesoflove.com, I can't wait for you to read and hear the rest. I once heard that more than 100 million love songs have been recorded. And while I have no idea if that number is accurate, it kind of makes sense.

We're obsessed with love. We seek it, we celebrate it. When we lose it, we're devastated. And when we're in love, we feel like there's nothing else in the world. So if love is all you need, then why do good things often go wrong? Today, we're going to make sense of that. The next seven minutes are about you, your relationships, and thinking of love as a verb. I'm Jay Shetty. welcome to the daily J.

I know your heart's probably all a flatter, but let's start as usual with our deep inhaling and exhaling, stretching up on the inhale and sinking down on the exhale, And being present in this moment. Beautiful. Let's dive in. When I first met my wife Radhi, I knew she was pretty special. She was kind and loving towards everyone and just had this genuinely happy spirit. As we started dating, like most new relationships, we were both extra considerate, extra thoughtful. We went above and beyond to exhibit our interest in each other. I planned special dates, got her special gifts. I would drop anything for a chance to show how much she meant to me. Even before I had truly fallen in love with her, I acted as if she was the most important

thing in my universe, and rather reciprocated completely. Then we evolved into a committed relationship, and things changed a bit. We sat all into a comfortable routine, spending more time together, but less energy on each other. Maybe the date nights were a little less unique. Maybe I didn't always go above and beyond. I loved Rady, but in reality I demonstrated it less. My effort wasn't the same.

That behavior is so common, isn't it? And it's made me think how the idea of love is misunderstood and misused in the modern world. We tend to treat love like a noun, a thing, something we possess, something we achieve. You can hear it in the language we use to discuss it, like I worked hard to win her love. As if you're at a carnival and you finally knock down all the milk cans and you get to take home a plush tidai monkey monkey which will sit on a shelf as a

reminder of your accomplishment. Or we view it as an emotion we feel and one we expect to feel forever. When you say I'm in love, it's like you're physically floating in a pool or something and you get to chill there for eternity. But I like to think of love as a verb, an action you do. Love does not merely exist. You don't have it and you don't just feel it. Love is doing. Love is behaving. Love is constant

creation moment by moment, day after day. It's listening with compassion and attention. It's jumping to help, even if you're busy. It's trying a new recipe instead of something you always make. Most of all, it's unselfish, prioritizing someone else and keeping their best interests in mind. So if you love someone, show it, even more than you do when you're trying to win their affection. That's now what I try to do with Rady. I put in the effort to love her actively, instead of letting love be a routine or something I take for granted. And as our time today winds down, let's reflect a bit on love, starting with our moment of meditation. So get comfortable wherever you are, embracing tranquility. Now, I'd like you to bring it back to calm, balance, ease, Now, become aware of your natural breathing pattern.

Don't force or pressure your breath. Just focus on how it feels to breathe in and out. Whatever your experiencing is normal, try not to judge back to the breath. Now let's open this up. Bring to mind someone you love and it could be anyone you care about, not just a romantic partner. Reflect on how you demonstrate your care and affection. How could you treat love as more of a verb? Think of an action you could do today.

I love taking this ride with you every day and I'm so grateful that you keep joining. I'll see you again tomorrow. I am Yomla Van Zant and I'll be your host for The R-Spot. Each week listeners will call me live to discuss their relationship issues. Nothing will tear a relationship down faster than two people with no vision. Because you all are just floppin' around like fish out of water. Mommy, daddy, your ex, I'll be talking about those things and so much more. Check out the R-Spot on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to

podcasts. The therapy for Black Girls Podcasts is your space to explore mental health, personal development, and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, and I can't wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday. Listen to the therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Take good care. Hi, I'm Brendan Francis Nuneum.

I'm a journalist, a wanderer, and a bit of a bon vivant, but mostly a human just trying to figure out what it's all about. And not lost is my new podcast about all those things. It's a travel show where each week I go with a friend to a new place, and to really understand it, try to get invited to a local's house for dinner, where kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party, it doesn't always work out. Ooh, I have to get back to you.

Listen to not lost on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.