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This is the art of charm.
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Learn everything you need to know to crush it in business, love, and life.
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Today we re talking with Linda Carroll.
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She wrote a book called Love Cycles, The Five Essential Stages of Lasting Love.
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I know, it doesn t sound like the usual title we would rock on the Art of Charm, but we re gonna talk about these different stages, the merge, doubt, denial, illusionment, decision, and wholehearted love, and I know you thought that was six, but doubt and denial are one.
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She s been a therapist for 35 years, and she s been married for 30 years, and trust me, when I say this one caught me by surprise.
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I first said no to this probably two or three times, and eventually,
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I actually spoke with her and she was spot on.
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We talk about how to handle some serious problems in your relationship before they crop up, why chemicals make us crazy, and how you fall in love with the quality of your lover but over time actually become annoyed by them, and of course
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the difference between couples who thrive and couples who dive.
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So enjoy this one with Linda Carroll, and welcome to The Art of Charm.
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I m Jordan Harbinger.
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The Art of Charm brings together the best thought leaders, teachers, and exceptional individuals to teach you how to be a top performer in life, love, and at work.
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Well, not in this case.
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You shouldn t be having sex at work.
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Imagine having experienced mentors teaching you their expertise, packing decades of research, testing, and tough lessons into a curriculum.
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We may not have all the answers, but we definitely have all the questions.
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Make sure to stay up to date with the Art of Charm and get some great stuff that we don t or can t share on the show by signing up at theartofcharm.com.
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We ll send you our Fundamentals Toolkit that covers topics like body language, nonverbal communication, persuasion, business networking, public speaking, negotiation, and a whole lot more.
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And I m doing regular videos and drills and exercises to help you move forward every single week.
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We ve also got our live programs running every week in Los Angeles, California.
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Guys come from all over the world, but shows that no matter where you are, you can make it here if you re committed to your own growth.
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Get in touch ASAP by phone or email me, jordanattheartofcharm.com.
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Get you some info now so you can plan ahead, and we ll see you here at the Art of Charm.
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Now, Linda Carroll.
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So Linda, tell us what you do in one sentence.
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I m a psychotherapist, a licensed psychotherapist in Oregon, and I also work all over the United States with couples.
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I m also a coach.
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I do love coaching and relationship coaching.
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Okay, and you ve got kind of a different model of romantic relationships.
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There s these five natural stages, and I d love to hear about that because most people kind of think honeymoon phase,
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reality phase, divorce phase, or whatever comes in after that.
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I d love to break this down, the five different ways that you have, and of course I want to challenge each one and figure out why they exist in the first place.
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Okay, I m happy to do that, but it s not unique.
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It is actually based on psychology, history, drama, theater, and biology.
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So it s based on a lot more than my life experience.
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It really comes out of all of the arts as we understand relationships.
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So the model starts with what I call the merge.
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That s the first stage.
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Not all cultures have that stage as a basis for marriage, but all cultures have that stage.
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And that s the stage where we meet somebody and our bodies react in a certain way and it s just like, wow.
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The oldest poem that we have in the world comes from a cave 4,000 years ago and it s about love, aching for love.
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I want my love.
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The cultural story we have is that s what love is.
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And as we learn more and more about the brain, we find out that that s not love.
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That s attraction.
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It s that first biological connection that says yes, but it s not even a basis for a relationship.
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Sometimes it s mediated by brain chemistry and
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changes in the hormones and the chemicals and it s a very powerful chemical cocktail which is why I wrote an article for a magazine I write on called Mind Body Green on why love makes us crazy because the chemicals that are in our brain when we feel that feeling are the chemicals of craziness.
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We have a huge, huge amount of a drug called norepinephrine downloaded into our body, into our brain chemistry, which is that chemical that makes us have longing and it makes us think about something all of the time.
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We can t eat or sleep.
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We have a reduction of a chemical called serotonin when we have a lot of dopamine, which is the kind of the gambling or the pleasure center.
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And then that takes away serotonin,
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which means that we have something like.
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many of your listeners will know, OCD, which is obsessive compulsive behavior.
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Isn t that like falling in love?
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How is OCD like falling in love?
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I guess I m unclear on that.
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Okay, OCD is like falling in love because it s all you think about.
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You don t need to eat, you don t need to sleep.
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You re possessed by this need or desire to be with this person.
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You know, you drive by their house, you look at their picture, and it s like you have
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the OCD directed at a human being rather than as a way of living where you have to empty ashtrays and clean closets, you re obsessed.
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Does that sound like the beginning stages of love?
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It might, yeah, this sort of infatuation phase where it s like, this is amazing, my life revolves around this, you know, that type of deal.
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Yeah, this is what, you re my other half, you re my soulmate.
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If we bring sex into it, one of the things that this first stage of relationship does is it s an aphrodisiac, so it enhances our sex drive.
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So you may have somebody who has always had a lower sex drive, but when they feel these feelings and when their chemistry changes, they re thinking about it all the time.
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So here we have the beginning of what often is a very big power struggle later on in the relationship, where you have one person with a high sex drive and a low, but when they have the merge, they re in that first romantic state, they are equally matched sexually.
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So person a with a low drive thinks at last i found someone who can turn me on and person b with a high six drive says at last i found someone who can keep up with me but then as you move into back into life and these chemicals start to wear off.
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you re back to your normal sex drive and that leads to a different road of trouble, which I can talk about later.
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That s the merge, the romantic love.
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The stage that our culture teaches us is what relationship is supposed to be at and to stay at.
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Right, lust, romance, attachment.
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spontaneous sex all the time, looking at the other person and loving every word that comes out of their mouth.
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And it s really nature s way of helping us find a mate to mate with to procreate with.
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But that doesn t mean those feelings that we have for somebody.
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They re not necessarily an indication we ve got the right person or a compatible person.
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They just mean that we are attracted to someone deeply.
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And I ll tell you something as a therapist and a person that s lived my own life a long time.
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For many people when they feel that initial attraction they should run the other way because they are attracted over and over again to the runaway bride to the hard to love guide to the bad boy, where the impossible woman part of that drive is not necessarily a sign that we should be with the person we feel that attraction to.
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that takes some self-work and some self-knowledge.
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Does that make sense to you?
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It does, yeah, it definitely does.
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And when we re in the merge, we ve got these three hooks, lust, romance, attachment.
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What happens after the chemicals wear off?
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First of all, how long does this stage last?
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And then what happens after the chemicals wear off in most cases?
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And of course, there are exceptions in many cases.
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These lead to different types of relationships, right?
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Right.
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The hooks of lust and romance and attachment.
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So the first question is, what happens when they wear off?
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People start calling me.
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Okay, yeah.
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They start trying to figure out what s happening.
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What types of relationships does this lead to then?
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Because some people just break up, right?
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Or some people cheat and some people are already in it for the long haul.
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I mean, how do these start to diverge and why do some diverge and go into the toilet and others end up in long, happy marriages?
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Well, that question is pretty simple.
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It s more complicated than that.
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You know, it depends, first of all, what circuit was activated.
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We have these three circuits that get activated when we are attracted to someone.
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One is lust.
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And if that s the only one, when the chemicals wear off, which is about three years, the first time you fall in love,
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and it has diminishing returns like any chemical so it s less and less and you know you see people sometimes every three months they re switching partners because they want the high and that with diminishing returns it doesn t last as long with each new person.
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And the second is romance and the third is healthy attachment.
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It depends on what stage of life you re at.
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If you re 18 years old or 22 years old and you just want to play and you re activated with the romance and the pleasure center star
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starts dimming, it s easy to look for someone else and get the high again.
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If you re at a certain stage in your life and you really are looking for a partner, a good partner to do life with, then you re maybe more willing to put in the time and you re looking for something else.
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And so I think that s the first question.
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I think the second question is how we re programmed.
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You know, if you don t have
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an ability to attach in a healthy way, you think that romantic feeling is what love is.
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And boy, does our culture pound it.
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You know, movies and songs and commercials about just about everything from Kleenex to cars, shows people in that first stage of love, which is great.
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And it s really fun.
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But it isn t really about what a wholehearted relationship is all about some of it, but not all of it.
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So it sounds like all the fun stuff happens in stage one.
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No, it doesn t.
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See, that s the trouble is thinking that.
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And because this is first of all, the whole five stages, they re a spiral.
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So you don t just go from one and then you re done with that.
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And then you sort of put on sweats and, you know, start living together, though there s lots of fun ahead.
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But first, there s some hard seasons.
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Sometimes, often.
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I think this is pretty true for most people, as I talk about this all over.
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It s not possible, it s just like a job, isn t it?
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Or a puppy.
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You know, we fall in love and it s all wonderful.
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This is my best job.
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This is the greatest puppy, and then what happens?
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We come in, the puppy has eaten our couch.
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So after these chemicals wear off, sounds like a lot of the fun stuff happens in the beginning, but of course, people still get married and procreate and have other chemicals kick in that keep them together.
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Yeah, that s right.
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So what are these loops that you speak about that set in after the chemicals wear off?
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So we move to the second stage, which often is called the power struggle, and the loops work like this.
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All of us have certain ways we re vulnerable.
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So let s look, and this isn t true for all people, but let s just look at what we know research says, that for most men, their primary vulnerability is feeling criticized or being seen as incompetent.
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What do you think it is for most women?
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Their primary vulnerability?
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Their looks?
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No.
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Connection.
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Feeling connected.
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being in a relationship.
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So you have two different vulnerabilities.
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And imagine that there s a loop.
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And at the top of the loop, there s a vulnerability towards feeling criticized, and a vulnerability towards disconnection.
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When we get upset, when we feel triggered, I call it, we do one of three things, we go to fight, freeze, or flee.
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Okay, so let s say that the guy whose primary
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trigger or difficulty is when he feels criticized, that his way of managing that is that he goes to flee, which looks like withdraw.
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And let s say he s with a woman whose primary trouble with other people where she s the most vulnerable is when she feels any kind of abandonment.
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What happens to her is that when she feels that she immediately goes to fight, but she doesn t hit, she criticizes, she just or she rolls her eyes in a certain way.
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So then you ve got this, these two people sitting here having a really good time.
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And then he picks up a book.
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And she says, what s wrong?
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And he says, nothing s wrong.
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Now she s feeling like he s left her.
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And she says, something s wrong.
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He says, nothing s wrong.
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I m reading my book.
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Can t you leave me alone?
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And she says, you always do this.
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You always do it.
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Everything s really good.
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And then you disappear.
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I mean, I know now why your last girlfriend said that you were so remote.
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Well, now he s feeling really criticized.
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He disappears even more.
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And she goes after him.
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and he withdraws and that s a loop.
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And it goes round and round and round.
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Does that make sense?
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It does, yeah.
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And there s actually kind of a funny meme about this on the internet that you ve probably seen where the guy s watching TV and the woman s looking straight at the camera and
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It shows what she s thinking, what he s thinking, and she s like, maybe there s something wrong.
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Maybe he doesn t like my food.
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Maybe he doesn t think I m pretty anymore.
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Maybe there s somebody at work.
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And then they show his thought bubble and it s, motorcycle won t start.
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No idea.
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Yes, that s right.
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There s a very funny Dave Barry column about that called Roger and Elaine, the long story.
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It s very, very funny to read.
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Exactly the same thing.
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I mean, we have, you know, there s cartoons about that.
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There s plays about that.
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It s sort of a classic thing.
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Now, people have other vulnerabilities, but those are the classic ones that happen.
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And what we re doing is we re really reading the other person who are each of those two people.
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What they re trying to do is they re trying to manage their anxiety.
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So she s actually feeling like he s disappearing.
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Where is he going to go?
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Does he care about me?
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And what comes out of her is criticism.
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But under that is she s feeling vulnerable.
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What the guy is feeling,
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is he s feeling vulnerable too.
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He s anxious because she s coming at him and she wants something.
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He doesn t know what to say, what to do.
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He just picked up a book and suddenly she s really angry.
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And so he does tries to manage his distress by going away, by backing off.
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And so you ve just got two people who are freaking each other out.
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And what I work with people, what I teach them to do is something different in that moment.
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That s how to get out of a loop.
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Yeah, well how do you get out of a loop?
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Because I feel like that loop swirls around and around until it goes flush for a lot of couples.
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Well, you have to one, you have to understand that it s a loop and that no one s wrong.
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That s number one.
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You know, we re just trying to each manage ourself.
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So nobody s bad here.
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And you have to have a language to talk about it.
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And people love the language of loops.
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You know, she is saying to herself, if she has an awareness,
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She s saying, wait a minute, he s just reading a book.
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This isn t against me.
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And he s saying to himself with his new awareness is, wait a minute, she s criticizing me because she s anxious that I m pulling away.
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And they do something which I call a counterintuitive move.
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The counterintuitive move.
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The intuitive move is to do what we ve always done.
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But imagine that they ve read my book and they ve listened to this program and lots of other programs you have on.
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And they understand how this works.
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So they have this wonderful time.
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He sits down, picks up his book.
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They have an awareness.
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And this is what s different.
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He may pick up his book and then look at her and say, sweetie, we had a great night.
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I just want a little downtime to read.
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That may be a little counterintuitive for him, but he s telling her now, I don t not care about you.
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I m just taking time out.
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Or she may say to him, I know you need some space and that s great.
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I just want to say, you know, how about if we come back together in an hour?
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Or there s some way that she then backs up her move that is intuitive is to go towards him.
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So her work is to learn to back off.
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Interesting so it comes down to not only better communication on behalf of both parties but communicating based on knowing that sometimes your gut instinct about what you think you need to do is wrong and I started doing this not this exact thing but similar thing with my girlfriend Jen who is kind of a running character on the show where
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she used to be like, what s wrong?
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And I would be like, nothing, God damn it.
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You know, cause not, maybe not that bad, but you know, I feel like I just need to be alone.
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I m burned out, had a long day of doing shows, talking with people, et cetera, on the phone and in person.
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And now I just say nothing.
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I just need some downtime and you know, we can watch a movie later, but right now I just need to like read or take a nap.
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And she goes, okay.
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And it s totally different now.
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She, she doesn t,
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Have to spend the next hour and a half or whatever thinking about why I met, did she do something, am I stewing about something when I really just want silence and I want to listen to some music or go biking by myself.
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It doesn t have any reflection on our relationship as a whole, it just means I need to zone out and that s it and that s all there is to it.
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It s like all humans are kind of still children, right?
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The other person s not talking to me.
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Couldn t be their issue, must have something to do with me.
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Right, that s right.
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And so first of all, you connect with her before you do it.
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It s like she s just wanting to know if you still care about her.
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Really, that s what s under it.
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And if you say, I care about you, but I ve got to have a little downtime, it s over.
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unless her need is really, really great.
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But you say, what can we do about it?
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Exactly what you re talking about to understand this and to be able to talk about what s going on under the defensive mechanism.
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And that s where the problem comes in.
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So you asked earlier about who goes on and who doesn t.
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One of the things that happens in the power struggle is this very thing we re talking about.
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And so one person wants to be with their friends.
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The other person feels abandoned.
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People who know how to talk about that before it becomes a big issue don t have to go down a really hard path.
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But for some people, their reaction
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to the very natural differences between us become the problem in the relationship.
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People come and they say to me, we need communication skills.
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And they both are very articulate.
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They each tell me what s going on in wonderful communication, language, nonverbals, everything.
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It s not communication skills that are the trouble.
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It s when they are under big stress with each other that the communication turns to a problem.
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It s communication under stress.
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It s different than communication skills.
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It s a whole different skill set.
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And, because when we re under stress, we have our arms up and we have our cross, and we just don t want any more bad feelings, so we re pushing away, or going towards in some desperate way.
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So, just to sort of hammer this point home, why is communication under stress different than just being a better communicator in general?
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because when we re into flight, freeze, or flee, we act differently.
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There s research, really interesting research, that when a woman says to a man, and of course I have to say it is different sometimes with people, it s the reverse, but usually when a woman says to a man, doesn t matter how she says it, if she says,
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Honey, we have to talk.
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His heartbeat goes up 10 beats per minute.
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If he says not now, her heartbeat goes up 10 beats per minute.
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Isn t that interesting?
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There are gender differences as we are getting clearer and clearer about.
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There s also myths that are not fair to men or women, but there are gender differences.
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And if you go back to the lion and the hunting,
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If you go back to the caveman, men s focuses needed to be different to survive than women s focuses.
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Women were all about checking in on everything, managing the fire and the babies and looking around for berries to eat.
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And the guy was out, what was he doing?
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Looking for a lion, total focus.
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If you just start looking at how evolution has changed the way our brains work over time, that we have very different styles as males and females.
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understanding that s something that you can do.
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I read a great article once about a couple leaving an intimate dinner, and they get to the parking lot and the woman is in this glow of, oh, this was so wonderful, you know, is this the one blah, blah, blah in her brain.
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And he is scanning the parking lot looking for danger, figuring out where the keys are.
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And this is a perfect place for a fight, isn t it?
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Because she feels and pull away.
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And if she interprets, he doesn t love me, he doesn t care about me, I did something to upset him.
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or he s interpreting, what is she clinging to me for?
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It s not conscious.
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It s unconscious, but it s happening.
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So this is kind of a primitive explanation.
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You know, we fall in love with certain qualities in our partner.
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And those very qualities are the ones that start to annoy us.
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Now, my husband fell in love with me because he said that I was so spontaneous.
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One of the qualities I loved about him in those early times was he was so predictable.
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If he said he d be there at four or five o clock, he was there.
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He did exactly what he said, and I love that quality.
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But then what happens is in the first third year of relationship, we re driving to go away for a weekend to this place called Bend, which is all about sun, but it s raining.
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And I say to him, you know what, it s raining, let s go to Portland, we ll get a hotel, we ll go to a movie, we ll have a great dinner.
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He says, wait a minute, we made a plan to go to Bend.
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I said, no, but it s raining, let s change the plan.
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No, we have a place and we ve made that plan.
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So then I say, you re so rigid, same quality, but a different way I see it now.
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And he says to me, you re so impulsive, same quality.
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And that happens with so many different qualities that we fall in love with something and then we get annoyed by it.
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And that s another part of the power struggle.
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Another part of the power struggle is that what we see in the beginning through the lens of all those chemicals is all the ways we fit.
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All the ways were alike.
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You had a dog named Spot, so did I. This is my favorite song.
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Oh my gosh, we re meant to be together.
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This was a great movie.
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SPEAKER_00
Oh, I loved that movie.
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But what happens is that evidence starts to disappear.
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And then we come up again in the next stage about ways that we re different.
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You know, everything is pretty glamorous in the first stage.
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My husband loves to camp and go to the woods.
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I always thought I didn t like that.
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I mean, I still think the Four Seasons is a hotel, but he s a total nature guy.
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So in the beginning, I did that with him.
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And he came shopping with me, which I love to do.
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And he went to hotels with me, which I love, and we both thought it was wonderful.
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But, you know, 10 years into our marriage, going to the woods to me still is a fight.
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It s just a fight fest with bugs and things I don t want to look at or know about.
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And for him, going to the city and getting a hotel is like he does it, but he suffers.
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We re back to the ways we were when we fall in love.
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Couch potatoes go skiing and skiers become dancers and we ll do anything because we re under this trance and it all feels delicious and new.
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But then we go back to our normal way of being in the world and we start fighting about that, feeling like we were set up or you re not who you said you were.
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And I didn t know you didn t like dogs.
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You know, those things are human and there s nothing wrong, but they come in.
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And again, the problem is not the differences.
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Here s a statistic that will blow your mind if you don t know it.
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If you look at couples on a continuum and you see couples who thrive and couples who die, they all have 10, at least 10, irresolvable issues.
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All of them.
2
10?
2
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10.
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10 issues are never gonna get better.
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That have just been persisting over time and festering?
2
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Yeah, and they re the same issues.
2
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What are they?
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What do you think they are?
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I don t know, the way people spend their money maybe?
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Money, sex, kids, vacation, how they pay attention to their bodies, housework, the same issues.
2
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But the difference between people who thrive or die in their relationships is how they manage the conflict.
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If they re fighting because one is trying to make the other like them, that is a disaster.
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If they re making each other wrong, that s a disaster.
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So how do they negotiate the inevitable differences?
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You first of all have to give up the disappointment that you re not with somebody who is exactly like you.
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And then you ve got to figure out what the skills are to manage differences that sometimes get painful.
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So that s another part of the power struggle.
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They re all human things, there s nothing wrong, but what we do when we approach the problem causes the problems that continue.
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Interesting, so it s basically you gotta nip this problem in the bud and start communicating about it, not while you re under stress, especially, otherwise it starts to grow and fester and stack up over time until you end up with
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the magic number 10 or whatever, and then that s what you ve seen in your results and in the studies where couples actually fail is there s just too much weight on the camel s back.
2
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That s right, and it s not about, they think it s about the problem of who wants to go sleep in the woods and who wants to go to a hotel.
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It s not about that, it s about how they manage.
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the problem.
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Usually we start by being angry or feeling disappointed.
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or feeling like somehow the other person is holding out on us.
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So one of the lessons because as you go through this relationship path, and you go through the cycle, there s so much you get can get for yourself.
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If you understand what the language and the roadmap is, you know, one of them is realizing that the other person is not you.
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And I call this the fight that people have over and over the the you re not me fight.
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You don t see the world like I do.
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You didn t like that movie.
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You don t like that friend.
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You don t think a good time is just lying on the couch.
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And we start to argue about it as though the other person is wrong rather than figuring out how to make a bridge between the two people and not making them bad or wrong.
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So it s the struggle and how we approach the struggle that really has a lot to do with who stays together and who doesn t.
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What about, let me ask you, for a friend of mine who s maybe getting married pretty soon, what happens when you get that doubt and denial, like, is this the right person?
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And you feel, occasionally, like, no matter how good this person is, this is natural and would happen, because it s about the fact that you re choosing, not about the fact that you re choosing that particular person.
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I actually saw this in a movie, I wish I could remember which one it is, but they re giving the vows, and it s like, I ve never had any doubt about you, you ve always been the one for me,
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It s so awful, isn t it, to hear that?
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I don t think so.
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but they re sure, why am I not sure?
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This is obviously very normal, and I know every guy that I ve talked to so far, and again, only guys or mostly guys that I ve talked to so far who are getting married, they re essentially in the same boat.
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They re like, I chose my wife, it wasn t because there were no other options and I couldn t date anyone else and et cetera, et cetera, they just, they picked on purpose, but yeah, up and until you re, and even after you re married, you re just like,
3
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Is this the right decision?
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Because it s such a massive decision that you should, well, that most people shoot to make only one time.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but you know what else?
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It s this idea we have that if you really love somebody, you never have doubt.
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I don t believe that.
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That s one of the myths that really hurt us, is I ve had people come to me in tears saying, I ve been married, or I ve been with this person for 25 years, but I have dreams about my college boyfriend and think about him all the time.
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Does that mean the marriage is over?
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No, it doesn t mean that at all.
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It means you re human.
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Don t try to contact him because that can make another mess.
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SPEAKER_01
But if we think, you know, sometimes we re bored with our partner.
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I mean, that s heresy to say.
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Sometimes we re annoyed.
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Sometimes we think, why did I do this?
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We have doubt.
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That does not mean there s anything wrong with the relationship.
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It just means you re in a November or December rainy day.
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SPEAKER_01
You know, relationships have seasons.
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And when we enter into the
3
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Winter season, we feel like something s wrong.
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Sometimes people bore each other.
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I don t want to hear that story you tell one more time or I m going to rip my hair out.
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That s not abnormal.
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It s normal to have that feeling.
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Now, if you have that feeling for 10 years and no other feeling, that s a problem.
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But those moments of doubt and being scared, I think they re real, they re appropriate, and they re the myths that we don t have them if we really love somebody are very damaging.
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But it s also interesting what you said.
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If we re looking at differences between males and females, you re talking about your friend saying, look, I made this decision.
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It seemed the right one.
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You were very rational in what you said.
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Now, I could imagine a woman hearing that and saying, you don t love me.
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Because what she might be feeling is, oh my god, I m with my soulmate.
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There was never anyone else.
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Because women love romance.
3
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Romance novels are not written for men.
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They are written for women.
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And because women want the connection.
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So it really fits together.
3
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So if a guy says to a woman on their wedding day, I think I made a really good decision here.
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She s going to flip out, say, you don t love me.
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For him, that s everything.
3
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He came to it sort of trembling, but said, OK, I m going to do this.
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This makes sense.
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But she could hear that as makes sense.
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What about your soul?
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What about your heart?
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And then they re off.
3
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And then it starts.
3
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What do you think?
3
SPEAKER_00
No, that s just kind of nuts because, you know, men think logically and women think emotionally, and if I said that to my girlfriend on our wedding day, I would think I was being romantic, and it would completely just come and bite me in the foot.
3
SPEAKER_01
So there it is, you re not me.
3
SPEAKER_01
How you approach this is different than me, but it doesn t mean you don t love me or care about me.
3
SPEAKER_01
But if we understand what the other person said, if I said that to my husband, if I said, you know, this was a good decision, I mean, you know, I had to think about it a long time,
3
SPEAKER_01
It would mean for me, because I am very emotional, I m very much about connection, it would mean for me that there was some trouble, that I really didn t feel much for him.
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SPEAKER_01
If he said it to me, it would mean nothing like that at all.
3
SPEAKER_01
It would just mean that he s thinking about that.
3
SPEAKER_01
He went to work this morning, I won t see him until tomorrow.
3
SPEAKER_01
I said, I m so sad I won t see you.
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SPEAKER_01
He said, where did I leave my briefcase?
3
SPEAKER_01
I said, no, but what about the sadness?
3
SPEAKER_01
We re not gonna see each other for two days.
3
SPEAKER_01
He said, sweetie, I ve gotta get to work.
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SPEAKER_01
I can t talk about that.
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SPEAKER_01
I know enough to know that it s not that he doesn t love me, it s just that I was in a moment of wanting special connection and he was focused on what he has to do.
3
SPEAKER_02
All right, back to the show.
3
SPEAKER_02
You know, it s funny, I completely have the same experience.
3
SPEAKER_02
I ll miss my girlfriend later when I m there in the hotel by myself, but beforehand, I m like, look, I m late.
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SPEAKER_02
What are you talking about?
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SPEAKER_02
Get out of the way.
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SPEAKER_01
And if she doesn t understand that that s a normal thing, she could say, what s wrong with the relationship?
3
SPEAKER_01
He doesn t care about me.
3
SPEAKER_02
Exactly, and I know there s further there s decision and wholehearted love, but I would love to get to the sexual stuff because that s what a lot of people are waiting for I m sure and it s also really interesting and Everybody s got problems with sex in the relationship even people who?
3
SPEAKER_02
Claim to not have problems with sex in the relationship.
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SPEAKER_02
They don t have problems because they did have problems and they fixed them but
3
SPEAKER_01
Usually that s right.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, we ve got to go through very quickly because this is where this is an interesting thing very quickly The decision is do we stay together?
3
SPEAKER_01
Do we work it out?
3
SPEAKER_01
Do we go do we go into parallel lives?
3
SPEAKER_01
And or do we split?
3
SPEAKER_01
And then you get to the wholehearted place.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well wholehearted love is about sizzling Great sex when you ve been together for 40 years.
3
SPEAKER_01
I just talked to someone today.
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SPEAKER_01
I had a skype person
3
SPEAKER_01
And the question that they had was, you know, we had this really hot relationship.
3
SPEAKER_01
We lived in different states and we ve moved in together.
3
SPEAKER_01
And now it s been six months and the sex is practically gone.
3
SPEAKER_01
Six months.
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SPEAKER_01
I asked her, I said, what are you wearing right now?
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SPEAKER_01
She said, I m wearing sweats.
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SPEAKER_01
I said, OK.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I said, what are you going to do tonight?
3
SPEAKER_01
She said, I don t know.
3
SPEAKER_01
He ll come home.
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SPEAKER_01
He ll be tired.
3
SPEAKER_01
We ll figure out something to eat and we ll probably watch something on television.
3
SPEAKER_01
I said, do you want good sex?
3
SPEAKER_01
Then you ve got to do some things that make it happen.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because one of the things that we want when we are let s just talk about this in a little different way is that looking for a life partner who is going to be predictable and stable and who we think we know
3
SPEAKER_01
may be a great thing for stability in a relationship, but it is not a great thing for sex.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it s not pushing my variety switches or any other switches.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s exactly right.
3
SPEAKER_01
And if you want to have a good sexual relationship, you ve got to be creative in what to do and how to do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because sweats may be practical, but they are not sexy.
3
SPEAKER_02
Jason likes sweats, he says they re easy to remove.
3
SPEAKER_02
They re easy, so that works.
3
SPEAKER_02
I mentioned this sort of tongue-in-cheek that we gotta get to the sexual stuff, but honestly, this is super important because we can have all this communication stuff down pat.
3
SPEAKER_02
You re so right.
3
SPEAKER_02
But then we re just the Flanders next door if we re not gonna handle the sexual part, and it s all a farce.
3
SPEAKER_02
It s all a facade.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, not only that, there used to be an old view in my field of marriage and family therapy.
3
SPEAKER_01
There used to be the view that you had to work everything out to have good sex.
3
SPEAKER_01
But that s not true.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re never going to work everything out.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s one thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
Sex, you know, one time my husband and I were teaching a class on sexuality.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it was a weekend and I was in menopause and we were both just sort of flat sexually.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we said, what are we going to do?
3
SPEAKER_01
We ve got to liven our own life up.
3
SPEAKER_01
We re going to get up in front of people and talk about this.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we ve been together forever.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it was just like, oh, you know, I mean, how are we going to talk about this?
3
SPEAKER_01
we are both sort of feeling so frozen.
3
SPEAKER_01
So we went out and we had this idea and we went to a restaurant and we pretended we didn t know each other.
3
SPEAKER_01
We got really dressed up, we looked great.
3
SPEAKER_01
He went up to the bar, I sat at a table and had a glass of wine and he came over and he said, are you alone?
3
SPEAKER_01
And I said, well, no, I m waiting for someone.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he said, well, can I sit with you for a minute?
3
SPEAKER_01
And we started this conversation.
3
SPEAKER_01
He said at the table, honest to God, this is true.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ve known this guy for 40 years.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was suddenly I m trying to impress him.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m thinking,
4
SPEAKER_00
Did I wear the right thing?
4
SPEAKER_00
How s my hair?
4
SPEAKER_00
Do I still have lipstick on?
4
SPEAKER_00
And we re having this whole engaging conversation, even though the whole thing was really a setup in terms of us playing it out, it became real.
4
SPEAKER_00
That night just changed our whole dynamic sexually.
4
SPEAKER_00
because we saw each other in this new way.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think that, you know, I m always encouraging couples to, if the sex life is feeling, if it s dying or dead or boring, perfunctory, you know, once a week or whatever happens.
4
SPEAKER_00
Great word.
4
SPEAKER_00
Great word.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
Perfunctory sex.
4
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t mean that you don t love each other.
4
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t mean that something s wrong.
4
SPEAKER_00
It means that you need to have a new adventure.
4
SPEAKER_00
Part of the wholehearted place is you want to bring every rich thing in that relationship you can get.
4
SPEAKER_00
And the first time, you didn t have to work for it.
4
SPEAKER_00
You just looked in each other s eyes, you know, you threw your clothes off at the doorway or in front of the house, wherever it was.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it was this natural, spontaneous thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
When you ve been together a while, you ve got to work at it a little.
4
SPEAKER_00
You ve got to do some things that are turn-ons.
4
SPEAKER_00
And you know what turns me on may be really different than what turns my partner on.
4
SPEAKER_00
There are two problems couples have with sex most of all.
4
SPEAKER_00
One is not talking about it in a way that isn t blaming.
4
SPEAKER_00
to be able to talk about it.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a natural thing that it comes and it goes and it stops and it slows down.
4
SPEAKER_00
How do we get it going again?
4
SPEAKER_00
And the second is desire discrepancy, which is a huge problem, huge.
4
SPEAKER_00
And what that means is that, remember I talked at the beginning about the person who had low libido but fell in love and it was really high.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then their partner had high libido and they met perfectly sexually.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then when the chemicals wear off, the person with low libido goes back to their normal way of being.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then instead of, because people don t understand this, the guy thinks,
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, if she loved me, she d be turned on.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I m sick of being pushed away all the time.
4
SPEAKER_00
And the woman thinks, if he brought me flowers, if he talked to me more about his feelings, I d get turned on.
4
SPEAKER_00
And what they re doing is they re actually trying to understand something through the wrong lens.
4
SPEAKER_01
Right, through the wrong lens.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s funny, because that type of talk would not turn me on at all.
4
SPEAKER_01
No, that s right.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s the opposite of what turns me on.
4
SPEAKER_00
No, it s gonna kill it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s gonna absolutely kill it.
4
SPEAKER_01
That is a boner killer.
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And people can have different libidos and have great sex, but you have to be able to understand.
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First of all, you can t make it a power struggle.
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It can be like, I have a low libido and you think about it all the time.
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Neither of us are wrong, but let s figure out how we can have a relationship together where we can just pleasure each other, where we can make this into something that s an adventure, that s fun, and not make each other wrong.
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And you can get it going again.
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You know, think about sex.
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There s three parts that I talk about when I talk about this in front of audiences.
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There s desire, there s arousal, and there s orgasm.
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We are focused on both desire and orgasm in this culture.
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You know, how great is the orgasm?
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How turned on are you?
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But the part that doesn t get too much attention is arousal.
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Here s something that is, I think, true for the majority of people, not everybody, because nothing s true for everybody, you can have very low desire, and you can get aroused.
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But it s not just through desire that you get aroused, like what we did, you know, doing a role play, that suddenly, I became aroused, even though my, my desire was sort of in the tank, it suddenly appeared.
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if we depend on desire to get there.
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to get turned on and we don t have it, then we think we can t get there.
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But there s all kinds of ways that we can get excited.
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Guys hate to do work and arousal takes work.
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I think that s part of the problem that maybe we re facing.
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And even staging the beginning, like where your husband kind of picked you up at that restaurant a little bit, that s sort of the easy work, right?
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But I think to do that on a regular basis, that sounds exhausting to a lot of people.
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No, but it started, this was when we were in our 50s.
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So that s probably not your audience.
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So that s not your audience.
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I mean, this is so for younger people, but I think it s still some kind of work, but it can be fun work.
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What is going to turn you on?
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Have the conversation.
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And the other thing has to do with orgasm, which is like, we re really stuck on that.
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But you know, what happens down the road, I shouldn t say this on your program, because I know you have a younger audience, but you know, it all stops working all the time, the way it does when you re younger, but you can have a great sex life.
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I m going to tell you something that s going to shock you is that
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Statistics say that people over 65 report the best sex lives.
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Isn t that amazing?
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Yeah, that s surprising.
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Or it doesn t always work.
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Now, what do you think of that?
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Yeah, I mean, I kinda wanna see the data there, but I also kinda don t.
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No, it s okay.
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It s good.
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It s because you re not so into performance.
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I mean, not everybody, of course, gets there and a lot of people just let it go.
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And that s really sad.
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At any age of life, you can have a dynamic sex life.
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You just have to come about it through different doorways and not be afraid to talk about it.
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Here s another problem that happens is that you ve got two people and they re in their 30s or their late 20s and they get married.
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They have kids and one of those chemicals that s in the chemical cocktail when we fall in love is called oxytocin.
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That s the cuddle chemical and it s all directed towards each other.
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What happens when the baby comes?
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What do you think happens to the woman s oxytocin?
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Goes to the baby.
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Goes to the baby.
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The guy s still standing there.
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His is going to her.
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He still wants to touch and make love and be and play and she is looking at the baby.
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And this is a place where people get really stuck.
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And first of all is understanding it.
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There s nothing wrong.
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There s nothing wrong with our sex life.
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This is nature s way of making sure the baby gets fed.
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And second is, okay, what are we going to do about it?
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And that takes a lot of goodwill, but it s not like suffering work.
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It s fun work to think about how to play.
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Let s figure out how to bring play back into this relationship.
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Because isn t that what good sex is?
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It s a lot of play and sensuality and, you know, ways of turning each other on besides the big O.
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Isn t it about sort of looks and flirting?
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And I often suggest to people, they think about what they did in the beginning, and they start doing it again.
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And it s amazing what can happen when you act as though it can happen.
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Right, you act as if this is something that you re really desiring in the moment, and that sort of, you kind of trick the mind and the body follows.
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That s part of it, but it s also part of it in that first stage, we want to give each other pleasure.
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You know, we want to pleasure the other person.
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That s part of what feels so good is being a generous person yourself.
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And so how can you do that if your libido is low, but your partner s is high, and you re not into resentment and blame?
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then how can i give you pleasure in a way that s gonna just surprise you and blow your mind and you can do that both ways and it may not be the same kind of pleasure but it s like it just it is asking us that stage asks us to be more creative
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and to be more generous.
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And you know, there was a study done from the University of Virginia.
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A lot of people have this project where they wanted to know the most important quality in a relationship that thrived.
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They thought it would be sex, good sex.
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What they found was that it was actually generosity.
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It was a big article in the Times and a book came out of it.
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It was generosity.
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And if you think about sex, good sex is about generosity, isn t it?
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I mean, you can have great sex that it s all about yourself.
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But I think that that the more generous you can be in pleasuring each other, the longer that s going to go.
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If it s all about one person getting their pleasure, it s not going to last a long time.
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So a person who is not interested can be generous and how they continue to give pleasure to the partner.
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A person who is really interested can be generous and how they take some of the pressure off.
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and understand where their partner s coming from.
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If two people are doing that, you can have a lot of rich sex.
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If just one is doing it, you re gonna have a lot of resentment.
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Leave us with this bit of practical wisdom.
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I know I m opening up a giant can of worms here.
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How do we start even talking about sex in an established relationship without making a huge mess?
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That is a really good question.
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You talk about it when you re not mad, when you re not upset,
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and you do it carefully.
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You talk about it, not from the sense of, I m not getting what I want, but from the sense of, you know, I loved those years when we couldn t get enough of each other and I miss you.
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and I understand how much good we have.
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I mean, you don t want to alienate your partner and say, you know, this is really a drag.
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As soon as you say that, it s over.
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You don t want to do that.
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So you talk about it in a way that is saying, I really want to bring back some of those early feelings.
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And you could even, if you were willing to really stretch, you could say, what is it you re not getting?
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And that s an invitation to a conversation rather than I want you to be different, which how does that go over?
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How well does that work?
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great, right?
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Yeah, no.
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You start by saying, I heard a really interesting conversation on the radio about how the number one problem couples have about sex is talking about it.
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And I think that s so interesting because we ve always talked about so much, but do you feel like we talk about it well enough?
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Invite the person into a conversation about how they re feeling about it.
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That s the first thing that I d say about that conversation.
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rather than saying, I want to have a conversation about sex.
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Because you re really saying, I want to have a conversation about how I m getting resentful because you re not delivering what I want.
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And that doesn t go well.
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But the invitation often can.
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And look at some of the TED Talks.
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There are fabulous TED Talks about sex.
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Esther Perel is out of this world.
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Oh, yeah.
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We ve had her on.
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She s a good friend of mine.
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I love her.
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She s wonderful, you know.
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Watch TED Talks.
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A lot of my clients are doing that, watching TED Talks together anyway, because they re so great.
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But you know, she calls it, doesn t she?
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And watch that together and then talk about it.
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Read some books.
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But you have to have the conversation that is inviting it, but invite it with generosity, not with what you want to have happen.
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Linda Carroll, thank you so much.
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We ll, of course, link to your website and Love Cycles in the show notes.
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Really appreciate your time and your candor, and I m sure that you are expecting many more sex puns than I made, so I hope I didn t disappoint you there either.
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You were great.
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Thank you.
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It was wonderful.
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Thank you so much.
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Thank you.
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Great job.
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This is a good episode.
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Like I said, she comes out of left field, because originally you re like, oh, I m going to talk about sex with somebody that reminds me of my mom.
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And then you realize that it s not your mom.
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It s actually Courtney Love s mom, true story.
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But she knows what she s talking about, big time.
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I mean, some of this stuff is almost cliche by this point, like communicate better.
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But she breaks it down so well, and she shows us how to do it in a way that s not going to make somebody else implode or explode.
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And also that a lot of the fears we have inside relationships are totally normal and furthermore, totally manageable.
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So I m pretty proud of this episode, Jason, and I m especially proud of the fact that I didn t make nearly as many bad sex puns as would be expected.
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I know, we were talking on the back channel, I m like, don t do it, man, don t do it, don t do it, don t do it, and you didn t, I m proud of you.
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I didn t, I held my ground, I stood my ground, I did not go back to fifth grade Jordan mode.
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If you enjoyed this one, don t forget to thank Linda on Twitter, we ll have that linked in the show notes as well as the other resources and of course her book mentioned on the show.
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You can tap our album art in most mobile podcast players to see the show notes right on your phone.
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I m also on Twitter at The Art of Charm if you want to engage with me there, I m pretty responsive.
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for some reason, much to Jenny s chagrin.
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Bootcamp details for our live programs also at bootcamp.theartofcharm.com.
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Get in touch, we ll get you info, we ll get you here.
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Subscribe on iTunes, write us a nice review, we ll love you forever.
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Special thanks to both the Jasons and to Fogarty for their help in production of the Art of Charm podcast.
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Go ahead and tell your friends, because the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to someone else, either in person or shared on the web.
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Now have a great week, and leave everything and everyone better than you found them.
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Thanks for listening to the Art of Charm.
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Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and more at theartofcharmpodcast.com.