WHOOP Podcast - The Ultimate Guide to Relationships, Sex, and Dating with Dr. Alexandra Solomon

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

On this week’s episode, WHOOP VP of Performance Science, Principal Scientist, Kristen Holmes is joined by Dr. Alexandra Solomon. A couples therapist, speaker, author, and professor, Dr. Solomon is passionate about translating cutting-edge research and clinical wisdom into practical tools people can use to bring awareness, curiosity, and authenticity to their relationships. Kristen and Alexandra will discuss the definition of relational self-awareness (3:40), tactics for the service archetype (9:25), approaching conversations to reimagine boundaries (13:18), the energy of love vs the energy of fear (16:53), getting back into the dating pool (24:12), being in a good state of mind for a first date (27:15), dating apps (33:20), learning about relationships and intimacy (36:55), the biggest problem in relationships (42:15), Alexandra’s latest book LOVE EVERY DAY (51:25), and sex in the dating world and in relationships (53:27).Resources:Dr. Alexandra's Website Dr. Solomon’s TED TalkSupport the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

What's up, folks? Welcome back to the Whoop Podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Whoop. And we're on a mission to unlock human performance. This week's episode, Whoop VP of Performance Science, our principal scientist, your favorite, Kristen Holmes, is joined by Dr. Alexandra Solomon, a couple's therapist, speaker, author, and professor.

Dr. Solomon is passionate about translating cutting-edge research and clinical wisdom into practical tools people can use to bring awareness, curiosity, and authenticity to their relationships. Dr. Solomon is an award-winning author of two books, Taking Sexy Back, and Loving Bravely, and her work has been featured in the Oprah Magazine, Vogue, The New York Times, and more. But today she is here to discuss her latest book that was just released, Love Every Day. Kristen and Alexandra discuss what it means to have relational self-awareness, having conversations about boundaries with yourself and others, steps to get back into dating after a relationship or difficult experience. She talks about the positives and negatives of being on dating apps.

What to look for in a potential partner on the first date? solving problems with your partner in a relationship, the teachings from her new book, Love Every Day. She talks about daily tips and micro practices you can do to be a better partner, and sex, sex in a relationship and in the dating world. She emphasizes the importance of knowing what is best for yourself and then communicating that to your partner. Thinking about joining whoop, you can now join for free.

Sign up for a free 30-day trial. Enjoy the full woo. Whoop experience, hardware, software, everything, and that is at whoop.com. If you have a question, what's answered on the podcast? Email us, podcast at whoop.com. Call us 508-443-4952, and we will answer your questions on a future episode. Without further ado, here are Kristen Holmes and Dr. Alexandra Solomon. Dr. Alexander Solomon is internationally recognized as one of today's most trusted

voices in the world of relationships. and her framework of a relational self-awareness has reached millions of people around the globe. She is on faculty in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Go Big Ten. It is a licensed clinical psychologist at the Family Institute at Northwestern University. Her hit podcast, which I recommend everyone check out, is called Reimagining Love. And that reaches tens of thousands of listeners around the world each week and it features high-profile guests from a variety of domains, therapy, academia, and pop culture. Dr. Solomon is an award-winning author of

two books, Taking Sexy Back and Loving Bravely, which was featured on the Today Show. And her newest book, which we'll talk a little bit about today, Love Every Day, just came out this month and we're just really excited to dig into all things, relationships. Dr. Solomon, welcome. Thank you, Kristen. I'm so happy to be here with you. I want to start off by defining this kind of concept, relational self-awareness, and just really unpack what exactly is its value. Why is it important? And how do we think about it in the context of our daily life? Wonderful. Yeah. So I've worn a lot of different hats in my career. Some of my time is spent being a couples therapist and individual therapist. Some of my time

is spent training therapists and teaching undergrad students about relationships. And some of my time has spent translating academic literature, clinical wisdom to the public domain. I love being a sort of public-facing relationship educator. But what I've realized is the through line between all those aspects of my career, as well as my status as a wife, long time, you know, in a long-time marriage. It's what I'm always doing is helping people, helping myself understand and unpack our relationship to relationships. So this idea that self-reflection, looking inward at what's going on inside of us, and intimacy, looking at what's happening in the space between us, are so bound up together. They're inseparable from each other.

But the challenge is, especially in an intimate relationship, it's so easy to get focused on what the other person is doing. It's so easy to get focused on. If you would just do less of this and more of this, we wouldn't have these problems. So the idea of relational self-awareness is that it's an ongoing commitment to becoming students of ourselves, students of our own reactivity, not in the service of blaming ourselves for our relationship problems, but in the service of always keeping ourselves in the ring, always keeping ourselves in the equation. So what I call the golden equation of love is my stuff plus your stuff equals our stuff, everything that happens in our intimate relationships. And we can bring relational self-awareness to our parenting, to our friendships, to our colleague relationships, but the heart of my work is really studying intimate relationships.

But everything is my stuff plus your stuff equals our stuff. It's the choreography. It's the dances. It's the patterns. It's the cycles. And so relational self-awareness is a set of tools and frameworks and perspectives that we can use to get to know ourselves better so that we can show up. more fully with more savvy around looking at the dynamics that are happening between ourselves and the

people that we love. Beautiful. What would you say are some of the foundational elements that enable relational self-awareness? So if we're kind of thinking about what are some of the things that I can control daily outside of my relationships that allow me to come into this kind of conversation, this choreography in a way that really enables me to kind of show up as my kind of fullest version. Yeah. You know, a lot of, a lot of my time is spent helping people understand their early experiences, the ways in which the past travels with us, looking at our families of origin, the family systems that we grew up in that I refer to as our original love classrooms. You know, when we're little, we're taking in all kinds of messages about

how to do relationships, you know, both in terms of how we are treated as well as what we observe. So a lot of the work is that kind of big picture understanding what's been passed on through our family tree and that lives inside of us, not, you know, I'm never here for throwing parents onto the bus. I am a parent myself. In fact, I'm a parent of emerging adults. So I'm in that chapter of needing to be accountable for the ways in which my kids have, you know, felt moments of misunderstanding or moments of frustration with me, you know, it's all of that. So it's not about throwing parents under the boss. But that's kind of the big picture work.

But I think what you're getting at, Kristen, is also what do we do each day? And so I think that kind of like big picture life review, studying the family that we grew up in, I think that sits alongside the daily practices around sleep and nutrition and movement and mindfulness and all of that because that does show up. very, very difficult to extend more grace to our intimate partner than we are extending to ourselves. I know that when I'm running on empty, when I am feeling self-critical, I know that I am more sensitive to my husband's words. I am more sensitive to hearing something that is probably neutral from his perspective, hearing it as a critique of myself, because I've been doing that

to myself. So I think there are both like those big ideas about looking at our family systems and then these smaller, more micro ideas of how are we caring for ourselves day by day? Because that does. The daily care of myself has a profound impact on my relationship. Yeah, there's a lot there. So we have a lot of, a lot of members on our platform are kind of service archetypes. And I think that, you know, they're kind of going down this journey where they know, gosh, I need to take care of myself, you know, for my patience or for, you know, just being able to do just a really hard job. So we've got a lot of shift workers on our platform. But I think with that archetype, you've got people who kind of see taking care of themselves as

a little selfish. It's just not, they're always extending first. But as a result, they end up, you know, their kind of capacity or their demands exceed their capacity. What would be just your recommendation on just how to, again, kind of think about this self? What might be some kind of tools or tactics or frameworks that you recommend for the kind of that person who's just, you know, really the service archetype? Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I guess we'll just go kind of right to the heart of it, which I think is, I think very often that service archetype is the growing. not version of what was a childhood survival strategy. Very often those of us, I think that those of us

who go into service professions like you're talking about were children and families who, you know, the way we call it, in the therapy world, we talk about parentified children, you know, children who grew up in system, family systems that were stressed. And so then, you know, we became the ones who sort of cared for the adults and we cared for the adults in the hope that if they were okay, then they could have a little more capacity to care for us. And because it became the way that we knew to be effective, right? For those of us who grew up as kind of the parentified child, the caregiver in our family system, it was our first way that we knew ourselves as being powerful, as being potent, as having agency was when we could help a parent feel better or take something

off of our parent's plate. And then we got the praise or the reward. of you're so good, you're so helpful. And so it became this kind of, you know, self-perpetuating cycle in a survival strategy because it kept the piece. Whatever role we take on in our family system growing up, the function is to keep the peace, to create some approximation of stability. And so that, you know, I'm saying us because this was certainly me and my family system, that then we grow up and we seek a profession where we are rewarded again for the care that

we're able to provide. And so I think one of the challenges is that so often our wounds and our gifts are next door neighbors, right? They're just right there on the same edge. And so anything that can lead to perfectionism. I mean, the same fuel for ambition and excellent caregiving becomes the same fuel of burnout and perfectionism and a need to be needed. Sort of like, who am I if there aren't people knocking at my door needing me, needing my care, needing my wisdom, needing my support, who am I then? So I think the deepest layer of the work is kind of getting into that core of what was, who did I have to be back then, and how do I offer comfort and empathy to little me who had to be

that way. And then grown up me gets to be this way. I get to step in and be helpful. But then I also get to step away and the stepping away and the rest and the, you know, sort of pleasure for the sake of pleasure. I get to have that. And that is restorative in the moment. And it also is extending love to the younger version of myself who never got to experience, you know, that idea of rest and not, you know, vigilantly looking around for what's the next shoe that's going to drop. You're talking about patterns, essentially. And, you know, if you're that person who's, you know, kind of grown up in a home where you kind of needed to keep the peace, you know, how do you, you know, that's your childhood version and you kind of carry that into the adult

version, at what point do you recognize that, all right, this is no longer serving me? Or, you know, at what point do you see that really start to impact relationships and what's the process of kind of backing out of that, you know, or, you know, how do you recreate a conversation and boundaries, you know, when you're, say, in a marriage for 15 years, you know, and this is just how you've always been. Yeah, how would you imagine approaching that conversation with yourself? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that's, I think that that is in some ways, The most beautiful thing about a long-term marriage is that we get to have front-row seats to each other's evolution, you know?

And I think for the vast majority of us, we go into our intimate partnerships with a whole bunch of unfinished business. You know, we tend to, I don't even, I mean, I think it's, you know, like this. I know, some people, you know, feel like we're drawn to people who are going to give us the chance to rework our old stuff. I don't even know. We don't even have to go there because it's enough to just. say we're going to bring our unfinished business into our marriages, our relationships, no matter

who our partner is. And so you're right, it may very well be the case that in year one of the marriage, I was hypervigilant around making sure that you had no need left unmet. I was really anchored around making sure that you were okay. But now as I'm starting to look at my family of origin, some of my patterns, you know, in year 10 of our relationship, I say to you, I don't know that this serves either one of us for me to be so focused on you, accommodating you, making sure. So I'm going to try some practices of stepping back, of speaking up a bit more. And so, you know, as I do that, it's going to shake the system. It's going to feel different for you. But if you can kind of stay curious about the price that I've paid for, you know,

all this caregiving that I've provided, what, in all the ways in which my, My vigilance around caring for you, perhaps has kept you from caring for yourself, has kept you from caring for me, that there's a way in which if I start to change my part of the dance, who do you get to be now? Right? I'm not abandoning you. I'm not betraying you. I'm not breaching our contract.

I'm saying there might be a different way of doing this that serves me better and that gives you a chance to show up in our relationship in ways that you can't possibly show up. if I'm doing everything for both of us. So I think it's that, I think so often, you know, this is the, as we grow and evolve, I think it can feel it is destabilizing, but it's also an opportunity. So I want couples to hold on to both facets of it. And it doesn't mean that we did it wrong in year one or we sucked in year one. It just means we're both growing and changing.

And what if? What if we try it this way? What if I don't accommodate? What if I say, I don't know yet? I don't know if I'm a yes or a no. Let me pause for a minute and really see because I know that my knee-jerk reaction is just to go along with whatever you want because that's how I've always been. But what if we slow down and I take a moment and really pause and really make sure that my yes is a yes? Can you talk about energy of love and the energy of fear?

because I think those seem like drivers here. Like if we have an energy of fear, we're much less likely to even acknowledge or consider our own needs inside a relationship. But if we're operating from an energy of love and trust, that's a totally different paradigm. So I'm just wondering kind of your take on that and kind of how do you foster or create this energy of trust and love and not just that knee jerk to kind of operate out of fear. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. This was something that I talked about in my TED talk is this idea that there's, you know, kind of two types of motivation, right, the two drivers, as you're saying, the energy of love, which is kind of trust in bounty, trust in enoughness, like really moving towards something versus the energy of fear, which is moving away from, like, you know, sort of trying to avoid a more dreaded outcome or fear and scarcity. One of the places this comes up, like I was thinking, I was working on this recently around when a couple goes through a breakup and there's a question of like, you know, should I be friends with my ex? And I think there are

times where like if the energy of fear is in the driver's seat, it might be like, I have to be friends with my ex because I'm worried they're not going to be okay unless we're friends or I have to be okay with my ex because I have to prove to everybody that I can handle it. That's the energy of fear, this like scarcity, this I have to avoid something that seems dreadful, my grief, their grief, other people's perceptions versus the energy of love, which may be, which may sound more like I choose to be friends with my ex because I really appreciate the place they have in my life and they are more to me than the role they play or the relationship status we have. So it's, I know that for me, the energy of fear kind of feels like tightness in my body.

When I'm choosing something from a place of fear, it feels tight, it feels urgent, it feels desperate. It feels like I have to otherwise X, Y, or Z is going to happen. When I'm in the energy of love, it feels like I get to, I want to. Like it feels really like I feel like my whole sternum kind of opening and easing. And it's like, I get to have this. I get to choose this. I get to try this. It kind of has the energy of, I don't know how it's going to go.

Like choice. Try it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that's, you know, it's kind of a big concept that helps us sort of anchor in a moment about what am I, what's, what's the driver in this moment? And you feel like a majority of time we can choose love. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I think that we can. I think that we can. I think there is, and it's difficult, when, you know, when there's, when a moment is charged from things from the past, it's difficult when things feel really pressure. It's difficult when we're exhausted and depleted and, you know, sort of our bodies are out of whack. It's difficult to feel like, I don't even know what the heck my body feels like, much less, you know, what I'm choosing. So, for sure. Nice. So, yeah, I think

there's like an element of agency and all this that is a skill, would you say? up to practice it's a practice right i i think it is and there's so many i think so many of us are on just autopilot from the way that we've been socialized from the families that we grow up in you know and so that that is there's like a peeling back of okay how do i move from the shoulds to the wants and i i you know it's like this i feel like in this conversation we're like toggling between like the big picture stuff and the micro stuff. I know that the work that you do is so much about, right? The really tight time frame of what's happening right now. And I love that. I love the idea of us having these like very tight feedback windows so that we can really start

to feel what does ease feel like in my body? What does love feel like in my body? How, what does it feel like when I'm moving out of ease into tension and fear. Because that's, you know, it's, that's the moment when we have to pause. Like in our, in a relationship, in a conversation with a couple, right? I am when I'm doing couples therapy. I'm tracking, you know, how much are they in an energy of love? How much is curiosity in the driver's seat? How much is empathy in the driver's seat? Versus when they shift into tension and fear. And I'm sure you'd have a way of looking at the physiology of that what what's spiking what's shifting you know and that that is and what the research shows is it's very it's very hard for a couple to notice when they've crossed over right because when we cross

over that urgency does feel like but we have to get this point across and you have to understand me and we have to figure this out right now and there's very little that has to get figured out right now and couples do so much better when they can recognize that they've crossed over and they're no longer seeing each other as on the same team and that the best thing to do is lovingly and mindfully say, I love you too much

to keep talking right now. I'm going to pause. I'm going to go get some water. I'm going to go put my feet in the grass and breathe for a little while, you know? I love that. Those are two excellent strategies, by the way. I know.

I feel like there's always this, I think we feel, like we always have to come to a resolution. Right. Right. Mm-hmm. And I think once we kind of let go of that, it opens up space, I think, for curiosity and love and trust and some of these more productive emotions.

Yeah. Well, especially because John Gottman's research has found that a full 69% of the things that couples have conflict about cannot be solved because they have to do with personality differences, different orientations to life, different worldviews. And certainly I'm thinking about something that my, our son is 20 and he and I, you know, had a, just a stressful conversation a few days ago. And I know in that conversation, I felt such urgency to figure something out that is absolutely not solvable. It is an ongoing tension that that in our, in our important relationships, we just continue to live with these ongoing sort of paradoxes and quandaries and

mysteries that are not going to be solved, but they can be handled with more grace, more savvy, more recognizing, aha, here we go again. Okay, I, you know, I love us too much to keep going. So I'm going to pause, step away, remember the bigger picture here and try to figure out if there's a different way of talking with you about this, but it is not going to be solved or done. It's going to be something we have to carry perhaps differently. Yeah. I heard you say once that dating is like collecting data. And of course, as someone who works with copious amounts of data, I love that little analogy. But yeah, tell us more about dating. I feel like it's, you know, there's a lot of challenges when a relationship ends, kind of starting back up. You know,

what do you see as kind of essential, you know, before starting to date again? I always feel like I heard you also say that, you know, you don't need to be perfectly healed before you start dating again. And I feel like that's like very much a lot of what is coming through on social media and just in kind of, you know, just things that that we hear that you kind of have to go through this journey of self-feeling. And if you're perfectly healed before you start dating again, I'd love to get your take on that. And just this concept of data collection. Yeah. Well, for somebody who spends a lot of time working with couples in long-term relationships, I'm equally as fascinated by the beginnings and endings of relationships.

I think they matter so much. And we are, you know, the bigger picture is that very few of us stay forever in our first love story. You know, lots of most of us are going to have several love stories. And so ending well and beginning well are just very, very, very important skills and skills that I don't think we spend. I know there's just not a lot of opportunities to learn about how do you end well, how do you integrate a loss, how do you know when you're ready to date again? How do you, you know, how do you begin again after a heartbreak, after a loss?

After just, after even your own behavior, right? Like I think so much there's, there are times that we behave in our relationships and ways that we are not proud of. So how do we forgive ourselves and then step back in? It's not, it's not always, you know, having been heartbroken at all. So as perhaps being the one who has behaved in a subpar way in a way that we don't love, how do we gently and lovingly kind of hold ourselves to account? And so, yes, and so what I love about, you know, and as somebody who's been 25 years in a marriage, I have not dated for a very, very long time, but I am here for the people who are dating because there's something uniquely challenging about modern dating and something where there is just a tremendous need for support and advocacy.

And, you know, you were making the point that a lot of what's out there, there's a lot of money to be made to say it bluntly, a lot of money to be made by selling people the five steps for. this or the five tricks or this or the way to get this, you know. And so I, for me, dating comes back again to relational self-awareness, which is viewing the process of dating as, as you said, data collection, a chance to learn about ourselves, a chance to watch ourselves in conversation, to notice how attraction feels inside of our bodies, to notice what a yes feels like, to notice what a no feels like to get curious about is my no truly based on I don't see this person as compatible with me or is my no based on a fear and what's the fear like a fear of stepping in a fear of becoming vulnerable a fear of trusting so there's a lot for people to be noticing

and attending to as they date and that they I think people are dating really deserve to have processes for for introspection, for looking inward, because there's a lot of noise. I think oftentimes people who are single have a whole audience of people who love them very much, you know, their families, their friends who want to hear all of the juicy details about their dating lives. Right. And then maybe express, you know, express strong opinions that are, you know, driven by their own perspectives, their own, yeah.

And so I want, I'm very invested in people who are dating, having processes for slowing down and noticing what's happening inside of themselves. Yeah. Gosh, I love that. That kind of interoception and that just somatic awareness. Like, you know, I think we're, I think it's so important to be connected to your body, you know. And I feel like that's also a skill, you know, and I think it's something you have to practice and you have to actually take time, it seems, to.

to remove yourself from the noise, from the phone, from, you know, to really think about how you feel and have your own point of view about your own life. Like I just feel like that's just not, yeah, it's not something that I think we create enough space for for ourselves. And as a result, we end up kind of getting into situations that might not be optimal. Yeah. What would be the kinds of things that you would want somebody to be paying? attention to like in the kind of in the moment but like let's say on a first date like what would be

the kind of like what would how would your like through your lens what would somebody be noticing or attending to that's happening inside of them as they go through for example a first date that would be a cue that huh this is interesting you may want to go for a second day versus it's just seeming like maybe step away yeah i mean i think that like baseline kind of like slight elevation and heart rate you know, would be expected that you're kind of, you've got this like nervousness, but this excitement. And I think you've said it so many times. I mean, I think you've said it five times in the span of our conversation, this notion of curiosity. You know, do you feel genuinely curious about this other person? And do you have this desire to listen? And do you want to kind of go to your phone?

Like, you know, like if you're kind of just able to really be fully present, I think that that's an awesome cue and kind of a filter. But I guess that's kind of what I'm saying is that I think that capacity for presence and attention is something that we're not great at. And I think that's a huge failing in a lot of relate, well, I'd love for you to tell me. I think that's a huge failing in a lot of relationships is this inability to just really be. present and attend to what's happening. So, and I think a lot of that is facilitated by, you know, just the little micro things that we're doing, you know, across the day, you know, are we getting this sufficient sleep and consistent sleep? Are we putting, you know, good things in our body? Are we, you know, managing our stress proactively throughout the day? Are we walking on the grass

in our bare feet, you know? I think, like, a lot of these little daily practices, like, are going to impact whether or not we kind of show up in this conversation with someone else in a way where we can actually be truly curious. So, yeah. I think that makes, like, I love what you're saying because it's not like, I think that somebody can't, like I'm imagining if somebody has been sort of going through the motions all day and, you know, sort of like a head, like a little floating head on a balloon string, you know, like sort of floating around, not connected, not grounded. And then they show up on their date and they feel kind of like bored, flat, disconnected, disengaged. And then the story they attach to that is this person isn't interesting.

This person isn't a good fit? There's a miss there, isn't there? I think so. Because the only thing that we can control is our side of the street, how we show up. And so I love that idea of grounding practices that start long before you've shown up for that day that become just part of how you live inside of your body because then you do know with greater certainty that when you show up for a date, you've controlled, you've controlled the one variable you can control, which is your own, like you've set your, you've set your compass in a really clear way. So that then the data that

comes in really is the data that emerges from the dynamic between the two of you and is therefore more trustworthy than the fact that. It's a cleaner data set. It's a clean, you know, we love the clean data set. We love a clean data set. We love a clean data set. We love controlling the variables control. Yeah. But I think that that's, I think that is so, like if I've, yeah, if I've been running around all day and negative self-talk and da-da-da-da, I'm going to show up on a date and I'm going to assume that person is as critical of me as I've been of me. You know, project that. Yeah. So I think that is just, I think that's such a vital, I think it's such a vital message. I think there's lots of connections that sort of die on the vine because.

because people are, I think showing up, you know, it's easy to show up on a date and either see it, either feel like it's an audition, like either I'm performing for you, or to feel like it's an interview, like I'm assessing the degree to which you are worthy of me. And the truth is a date is really a conversation. Like it's an interplay. It's sort of a back and forth to kind of feel out what's the love story here? What's the possible connection here? And it's for both people to show up with presence and curiosity to see what might be able to emerge here.

But I'm not, none of that is easy, right? Like we can, I think it's easy to, you know, talk about that. I think that it is true, it is real, what we're saying, and it is not at all easy. And it's not easy. I think that, you know, dating apps make it more difficult, right? This idea, there's sort of this whole overall vibe of, you know, just expendability and low accountability. And so I think, you know, people's, people's sense of feeling jaded and self-protective and a bit cynical. Like, those are real.

Like, those make sense. Those are not things that people, feelings that people are pulling out of thin air, you know. In your practice, do you find a lot of folks use kind of these dating apps to, is they pretty popular, I guess? Yes, for sure. Mm-hmm. For sure. Yes. They are, I mean, they're wildly.

They are wildly popular. and, you know, I try really hard to be neither, like, pro nor anti-dating apps, but the thing that I am really clear on is that they are a tool, like they are your tool for you to use. I think what's difficult is that when you look at the history of dating apps, like Tinder just turned 10 recently, like it's, and it's, you know, just going into it. Yeah. So we're not, it's not, it's not been that long in the history of humankind that people have used, you know, it's been, for, for generations, people have used intermediaries, right? There's always been a matchmaker in the village or, you know, want ads in a newspaper, but to seek love via an app is pretty radically different. You know,

it's an extension, it's both an extension of and a total, like, right-hand turn. There's no evolutionary roots there for us to. No, no. But also the fact that even the dating apps, what I've learned recently from some folks who study this is that it is, it is a business model now in a way that it wasn't in the beginning. I'm sure there's always been a profit-driven aspect of it, of course, but there's a way in which now dating apps have become gamified and what they're really selling or what they're really having you buy is your attention, right? So this idea of staying hungry, staying dissatisfied, coming back for more. So I think that's, I want people to at least know that so that then they've got that feeling of agency. Like, I am here to you.

use this app versus the other way around. The app is just a means to an end. You get in, you find a potential connection, and then you get out and you go and do the human to human thing of sitting across the table or going for a walk or going to a museum or whatever it is you're going to do. But you go, you get into the somatic, lived, embodied practice as soon as possible, for sure. That's such a, I think, important principle as we think about all sorts of sources of technology. You know, like you just, yeah, I think having before you go into it, like those apps can own you very, very quickly. They're designed to do just that. So you kind of have to go on with so much intention. I feel like that's what I hear you saying is that there's got to be this

really, you have to have a framework, you have to have an understanding of what it's doing to you, how you're going to use it. So you can just go in with just full awareness. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's right. We're talking about it in terms of dating app, but I think I've got some of those challenges around my own social media use. And, you know, for sure, that is a huge problem across the board for all of us right now to be, yeah, to just be understanding the impact of this very new way of living. This is not, you know, we're all kind of in the emerging stages of figuring out how do we want to interface with our technology. Yeah. I think on that note, you know, how do you feel like we're learning about relationships and intimacy, you know, just thinking about

how do you kind of see this? As we fast forward and we're in a relationship, how do you kind of resolve this tension of just kind of having your own virtual reality and spaces that you go to that are delivering huge amounts of value that are impacting your brain and your dopamine system and your award system and your motivation. And how do you think about that in your practice and just, you know, as a scientist and, yeah, a researcher? One of my really big a haas lately around this was, you know, I teach undergraduate students at Northwestern. And across the board in conversations with them, the message that they give is that they know, they know in their bones that they need time and space away from their phones and that there's a connection.

between having grown up because this, you know, college students today are obviously ones who have had smartphones, you know, from the beginning. There's been this like kind of just whatever. This generation of college students has for sure been with technology since the very beginning. And one of the connections that they, that they have been making lately in conversations with me is that they feel like they have a very low threshold, a very low frustration tolerance in relationships, that they will very quickly feel like this friend is annoying. I'm going to go find a different friend. This person I'm starting to date is bugging me.

I'm out. Like the first sign of trouble that there's not a lot of like kind of bandwidth or capacity to persist in a kind of frustrating or ambiguous relational dynamic. And I love that they can say that. I love that they get that. They can, that they're noticing themselves cutting and running sooner than they think they should. Because noticing it is the first step towards tweaking it, right? Like, we can't, nothing can be changed until it's been named and recognized.

So I love that connection, even as my heart breaks around it, right? Even as I feel kind of concern and worry about what's the impact of that, how do we, you know, how do we undo it? I love that they're noticing that there's a connection there because I do think that that helps. And then it is, then it is all that like relationship skill building stuff, bringing up to a friend. I didn't love it when you did that. I didn't love when you canceled plans. It's a really big trend, right, or just, you know, kind of consequence, I think of technology is it's really easy to bail on plans because everything kind of feels tenuous and tentative. And everyone knows that everyone's looking for what might be a better use of time, what might be a more enticing thing.

And so knowing that again, we can honor the commitments that we make. We can bring it up to our friends. I didn't like it when you didn't honor the commitment that you made. And that those become the micro practices for changing course, like witnessing ourselves being brave, witnessing ourselves being uncomfortable, bringing something up that's not easy to bring up. Like, those are the building blocks. Those are the little footholds that build on each other. Yeah. I think you kind of keep coming back to this like notion of self-awareness. You know, that just, that seems to be a thread. And I would say that that is, would you say that's one of the most important. building blocks of a healthy relationship?

100%. 100%. We turn our attention inward, not as some sort of like esoteric, like learning about ourselves for the sake of learning of learning. Not that there's anything wrong about learning about ourselves for the sake of learning by our ourselves, but we do it by turning our attention inward and noticing what our growing edges are, that's how we then challenge ourselves to do things a little bit differently.

And what research has shown is that when I do something a bit differently in our relationship, The change, my change, my commitment is really cemented when I have the chance to watch you respond to me differently. When I approach you, whatever, in a, you know, in a curious way instead of an accusatory way. When I try that, when I commit myself, I'm going to approach Kristen with this concern I have and I'm going to say, hey, Kristen, when you did X in situation Y, I felt Z. I'm going to try that skill of bringing things up in a really gentle way. what research is called a soft startup.

When I try that, that's a change that I made, right? I'm trying a soft startup with you. But my change is really cemented when I watch you, I watch your shoulders drop. I watch a little smile reach your face and you say, okay, tell me more. Like that's when my change is cemented because I feel so, I feel the effectiveness of my tweak, right? I made this change to try to be a bit gentler in bringing something up with you. and it's in watching you respond to me differently, that it's like, oh, this shit works. Yeah, I love that.

I can bring something, I can call for something different. You're less defensive than you otherwise would be. You know, you can hang in there a bit longer with me when I bring things up differently with you. And what would you say, you know, if you're in a relationship and kind of constantly having whether it's like a tension and, you know, maybe the other person's getting defensive, for example, and it's likely how I'm starting the conversation is the reason why that person's getting defensive. At what point, and I know there's a gazillion different ways you could take this, but what do you see

as being like kind of the biggest problem in trying to kind of solve an issue in a relationship? Is it how the conversation started? Like what do you think is kind of the root cause? of like not being able to come to a solution. Well, how it starts really, really does matter. How it starts matters. And I think that people can kind of have blinders on around that and not have enough awareness of how much the beginning matters,

how much the approach matter. I think that's very common. Like when somebody says, my partner is so defensive. My partner is just so defensive. The first question is talk to me about how you're bringing something up. Because the approach matters. Yeah. It's really hard because defensiveness sucks.

Defensiveness feels awful. It feels like you are just, I mean, you are. You're bumping up against a brick wall. So, and that is awful and it is painful. But until and unless, you have done some examination of how you are introducing a topic, I think that can feel challenging because that is, especially when it is a woman, frustrated with a defensive man, which is usually how this goes. it's very hard to ask her to hold up a mirror and check in with herself about how she's bringing

something up because she's like, great, you're asking me to do more emotional labor. Now, not only am I the one bringing up the issue and dealing with his defensiveness, but you're also asking me to be mindful of how I bring things up. So I, again, it's not easy. It's not fair. It's not right. But it is effective, right? Part of it, a lot of how the conversation goes. is how it starts, determines in part how it goes. And there are times when somebody absolutely might be doing the softest startup in the world, leading with curiosity, seeding the positive, being really gentle, and they're still going to get defensiveness from a partner.

And that is that now we have another problem on our hands, right? And so now the conversation becomes, you know, can you help me understand more about what blocks you from being able to have this feedback or how do how might you be able to hear this in a way like I can't I can't take my concern off the table right me taking my concern off the table doesn't help either of us because the concern is still going to be there whether or not you and I are talking about it but I want I want to talk about it in a way that you can hear so let's figure it out together is it if we're going for a walk it's easier to have the conversation You know, if we're like, what, like, how do we accept the, I think also couples setting, yeah.

Yeah, don't spend enough time kind of focusing on the context, the setting, time of day, you know, that all, all that stuff matters, you know. When I have more energy. Yeah, it's not a free-for-all. It's not like, just because I have something on my mind, I get to talk about it wherever, whenever, whenever, however, however. The context matters, the setting matters, the frame matters. Yeah. Where you're at, your circadian rhythm, you know, as someone who studies circadian rhythm. That's right.

Okay. Yeah. So where, so how do we do that? What's, what do you think? Like, what's the prime, how do you prime it? Like, what's the, one of the things that the data would say about the right timing, the right context. I would say probably like late afternoon when you're, you know, after that kind of little trow, like after lunch, you know, we typically feel a little bit more sleepier, you know, not quite as primed, I think, to have like a real big conversation. So I see we start to kind of get, you know, peak back up. Our temperature starts rising again around three o'clock. So I'd say three or four could be. be like a really good time. And then I would say definitely, you know, kind of in that morning timeframe where you're kind of really, obviously, you just have a nice big rest. So in theory, you're a bit more rested. You're kind of cognitively more primed, you know, between the hours of kind of nine and 11. So that would also be a really good time, I think, to have a conversation. I think a lot of times folks have it at night. And that's when, you know, most individuals are really depleted, right? They've spent the whole day, you know, working and grinding, getting

to kids to soccer and to hockey and to, you know, and you're trying to make sure everyone gets enough protein and, you know, they can, you know, and then finally you're like, okay, let's have a conversation. You're like, I don't even, I can't make sense. I just want to watch a show and go to sleep. I want to, yeah. So I think being mindful of timing, being time aware, I think is really important for these big conversations.

Okay. So I feel like I work a lot with couples on the value of like daytime dates, morning dates. You know, I think so often our dates. are like Saturday evening or evening. So I'm putting these two things together because now you're giving me, now you're giving me the science to back up what feels intuitive to me is this. I love the idea of a couple having like a brunch or a breakfast or a morning walk together and trying to have some relationship dialogue then. And the story often is like, I think we can, if we want to, we can find an excuse for any time of the day or any setting. Like we shouldn't talk now because we're getting along so well. We shouldn't talk now because we're not. getting along well. We shouldn't talk now because we're tired. We shouldn't talk now because we just woke up. So you can always find an excuse for avoiding relationship conversation. But I like this idea of, listen, we're going to have this really important conversation, just a piece of it, because most important conversations are ongoing and couples are going to be having them for decades.

But we're going to just dip in to this important conversation on our morning walk because Kristen's research has shown we're fresh, circadian rhythms are lined up, you know, rocking and roll in here and that there's like an intentionality and a care and a way of saying we're going to put the wind at our backs. We're going to stack the deck in our favor by being intentional about this. I love that. And I think, you know, we're, as I was telling you, a physiological monitoring tool. And we basically tell you kind of what your capacity is mentally, physically, emotionally. So we use metrics like heart rate variability and heart rate. And we have this beautiful algorithm that kind of synthesizes all this information and gives you kind of a

a daily marker of kind of how primed you are to take on the day. And I would go so far to say that, you know, if you have to have this really hard conversation, you want to make sure your partner isn't depleted, you know, that they don't have massive, you know, and maybe that makes it, there's never this great time. But I think kind of aligning physiology is important. You know, we kind of talked earlier about just this mirroring, right? Like what you bring to the conversation, the energy that you bring to the conversation, we've done a lot of research with Dr. Amy Edmondson looking at the relationship between psychological safety, which, as you know, is so important in relationships, but this is looking at workplace psychological safety,

but looking at sleep deprivation and leaders and the degree to which their direct reports feel psychologically safe. So the more sleep deprivation, the less psychologically safe, the direct reports felt. And of course, you know, psychological safety, you know, how can I bring my true self to this conversation to this relationship? Like how safe do I feel in this relationship? So trying to have a really hard conversation when your partner is carrying a lot of sleep debt or you're carrying a lot of sleep debt, it's going to be that much harder just because of what we emote. Like just even if I feel fine, I think I feel fine, like I'm going to hold my face completely different in the presence of sleep debt versus not. So it's, you know, I think, you know, when we consider just all the

context around healthy relationships, I think it kind of goes back to what we started in beginning is, are we taking care of ourselves first? Are we getting the sleep that we need? Are we eating healthy? Are we hydrating? Like, you know, just some of these like micro kind of little daily things that we can do to kind of set ourselves up to be able to navigate the challenges of being in relationships, And I mean, everything you just said is so counter in the best possible way, so counter to the highly romanticized sort of Disney-driven narrative that if we're right for each other, we should be able to have these conversations. We should be able to, you know, like if you were the one, then you should be able to talk to me no matter how you're, you know, all this kind of like mythology that gets going. And I really appreciate the way in which you are talking to us about, you know, the fact that if that, like, foundational stuff isn't there, how could it go well? How could we not? And we are, especially in intimate partnership, we're so sensitive to each other, right? I have times where I'm sitting with a couple. And to me, both of their faces seem, you know, neutral and open. But they know each other so darn well that, you know, when her eyebrow goes like this, you know, her wife knows long before I. do that shit's about to go sideways. You know what I mean? Like it's just like that those little

cues. And what you're saying is that those cues like things that things like sleep, of course dictate that. Even if you want to be present, you can't override your body or you can't override your body for very long. It's hard. Dr. Solomon, I'm so excited to talk about your book. Love Every Day. I want to finish this beautiful conversation with just tell us a little bit about the book and your kind of reasons for writing it. And what can people expect? Yeah. This is a really, this has been a really fun project for, for me. So this is my third book. And it's different. This is a daily book. It's 365 micro practices. So we've been talking a lot, you know, about sort of the micro, the daily, the small. And that that matters. You know, it's not always

about grand sweeping aha moments or large gestures. A lot of. Self-care and intimate partnership exists in the micro, in the granular, in the small. And so I wanted to create a book that really honored the kind of daily practices of self-care and of relational care. So this is a book of, you know, you can start it whenever, whatever day the book arrives in your hands, you open that to that page and you read the message and the lesson. There's very often micro practices, little sentences to write from, journal prompts. So it's every day you just get a little dose, a little reset, a little adjustment of something to kind of guide you in that day of how you want to show up for yourself and for your relationship. So it's a year's worth of relationship education and relational self-awareness tools and practices. And it's a really beautiful.

I'm so delighted with how beautiful the book is, how good it feels in one's hands. You know, this is hard. It's hard work. And so let's at least do our hard work in a beautiful way. I've seen the digital copy, but I cannot wait to get my hands on just the real thing. Let's talk a little bit about sex. So I want to talk about it from the context of someone who's dating and maybe who's been out of, you know, been in a relationship for a long time and is now kind of going into kind of this new world.

How does a person think about it in that context? And then, you know, just some of the challenges that folks face kind of as, you know, across the lifespan and across a longer-term relationship in terms of sex. And how important is it in a relationship? Yeah. I mean, it's a huge and beautiful and important question that we each get to ask ourselves throughout our whole lives, right? I think that the thing with sex is that it is certainly it's a behavior or it's a set of

behaviors is the thing that we do, you know, solo or with. a partner or with partners. And it also is a portal, a gateway into some of the most essential questions of who we are. So everything we've been talking about in this conversation plays out in the bedroom. You know, it's so that a sexual, any given sexual experience is so much more than just something that we do to get off or get our partner off. It is, you know, it's a practice. It becomes a practice. It becomes a way of asking and answering a whole set of questions of what do I mean to you? What do you mean to me? Am I okay? Are you okay? And it's something, you know, I think our culture, our culture is so messed up around sex and say it bluntly.

You know, it's either like taboo or titillations, like these extremes of don't or have to. And it's why I think so many of us need a journey of reclamation, of understanding what is my story of my sexuality because we are told so many different things from our culture about who we have to be or who we shouldn't be or in what context it's okay and what context it's sinful and all of this stuff and so there's a way that all of us need a chance to quiet the noise around us and really kind of tell our own story of our sexuality which is the story of our bodies it's a story of pleasure it's a story of permission it's a story of vulnerability. And when somebody is dating, things like, you know, the third date rule

that you should be having sex by the third date, all this stuff that is just such baloney. You know, I think people who are dating really deserve to have their sexuality be something that they get to explore when and how they want to. And that's hard because at least in the U.S., sex education is so completely inadequate. So none of us grow up knowing how to talk about sex. And so talking about sex with a new partner, it's really challenging. And so lots of us need tools and scripts and practices. So like how do I even start to talk to a new partner about sex?

But the key question is, how will, by what means will I know when I'm ready, when it's going to feel really good for me? You know, it's not about somebody else's definition of you should be having it by this point or not having it by this point. It really is by what, what are the cues inside of my own body? What am I feeling with this person where I know that I want to begin to layer in some erotic exploration? So those are some thoughts on something that we could talk about for six more hours.

I know, I know. It's such a fascinating topic. But yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think like sexual satisfaction, you know, there's so many components that facilitate that. Would you say, you know, I think kind of. of self-exploration. I think we'd kind of go back to, do you understand your own body? Do you

understand what feels good to you? Do you, I guess, what is your take on just the importance of self-exploration? Like, kind of thinking of it, like, as a single-player game for a little while, and you really, you know, like get comfortable with kind of who you are and, and, yeah, what feels good. So you can actually, you know, kind of be more responsive to cues and guide, you know, in intimate relationship. I guess I wonder, well, I just feel like that's so critical. And that's definitely not talked about in sexual education. But I feel like that is kind of really foundational. Like, you have to understand yourself in your own body. And yeah, so what's your take? How do you think, how do you help individuals and kind of couples think about that perspective? Well, it's, you know,

the place I was going to go first, as you were saying that, was around, was talking about the orgasm gap. And for women who have, especially for women who have sex with men or vulva-bodied people who have sex with, you know, penis-body people, there's an orgasm gap. The chances of her having an orgasm are so much smaller than the chances of him having an orgasm. And that has to do with, you know, penetrative sex being held above all other behaviors, you know, that is not the most. So in that way, self-exploitation for a vulva-body person, for a woman, it really is, right, understand how, first of all, what are my parts, right? So many of us don't even understand, like, what are clitoris is, where it is, what the function

this or, you know, what feels good, all of that. Do you have your little stuffed animal or stuffed little clitoris? Where is she's never far from me? She's over there. We are in video if you want to grab her. So people can see it. People need to see it. I think this is a public service announcement right now for all the folks on the call

who might not be aware of what this little thing is. Isn't it so? If I'm Etsy. There it is. Let's shout her out. The internal clitoris puppet, sex liberated. I'm going to be so pissed if Jack edits this out. No, don't edit it out, Jack.

Leave it in. Leave the clitoris in. Yeah. And I think that's, I love, I love how, I love the feminist sex, you know, sex toy companies like dame and there's some, you know, all these, like, wonderful dipsia is a new, like, erotic audio. Like, there's so many wonderful, like, sex tech and women founded, you know, like this, just sort of like this movement towards being.

unapologetic about women's pleasure is vital. And for those who've been socialized in the masculine, for men, for penis body people, they need that journey towards understanding their bodies just as much, potentially if not more, because especially younger men have grown up in an era of 24-7 access to porn. And I'm not, I am not anti-porn, but I am anti-porn as a sex education tool. And I am anti-the idea that the only way a man knows his own body is by masturbating to porn. So when I teach my college students, I am explicit about, like, having practices where you are just with your own, like eyes closed or eyes open, just your own imagination just really because you deserve it, not because porn is wrong, but just because

you deserve to notice how your body, to know your entire body as a receiver and giver of pleasure. It's so much more than just about your penis and what it's doing or not doing. It's about the entire embodied experience. So yes, your point. about self-exploration, self-knowledge, self-like, understanding how you track, like, that's the foundation than for building the kind of improvisational back and forth that is sex. And I think I would, I haven't done this research, to be clear, but I think there's probably a direct relationship between an underdeveloped imagination and the sexual pleasure of a partner. Sure.

I think there's a linear relationship there. That's right. Strong positive correlation. That's right. I think imagination is really important. And you can't really develop that if you're using all these external stimuli, you know, to kind of, yeah, facilitate that. Like, I think it's something that you have to, yeah, kind of practice and experience. And, yeah. And again, not from a moral, not from a moralistic, you know, standpoint, but just from a place of exactly as you're saying, just from a place of, like, deserving this. Like, you deserve to be able to tap into something that's as big and. wide as your own imagination, as your own curiosity, as your own capacity, for sure. Right. Well, you have just been an absolute dream to talk to. This is so much fun, and I cannot wait for your book to be out into the world. Thank you to Dr. Alexandra Solomon for joining the show to discuss her newest book, Love Every Day, and offering her insights on

relationships. If you enjoyed this episode of The Woo Podcast, please leave a rating or review. subscribe to the WooP podcast. You can check us out on social at Whoop at Will Ahmed. If you have a question you want to see answered on the podcast, email us, podcast at Whoop.com. Call us 508 443-4952 and we'll answer your questions on a future episode. If you're thinking about joining Whoop, you can visit our website, sign up for a 30-day free trial membership, and take the first step to unlocking your own best performance today. New members can use the code Will, W-I-L, to get a $60 credit on WOOP accessories. And that's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the WOOP podcast. As always, stay healthy and stay in the green.