Hey everyone, this is Lewis Howes and I am so excited to invite you to the summit of Greatness 2024 happening at the iconic Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. This is more than just an event. It's a powerful experience designed to ignite your passion, boost your growth, and connect you with a community of other inspiring achievers. Join us Friday, September 13 and Saturday, September 14 for two days packed with inspiration and transformation from some of the most incredible speakers on the planet. Don't miss out on this chance to elevate your life, unlock your potential, and be part of something truly special. Make sure to get your tickets right now and step into greatness with us at the summit of Greatness 2024. Head over is your partner trusted you and the relationship enough to bring this to you and to have this conversation with you. And it takes some bravery. It's not easy, but it takes some bravery to say, say, well, they're trusting me with this information, and it's interesting information. It's actually, if I can get past my ego, this is valuable information.It's an insight. Yeah.Yeah. And this, if I. If I can start to be brave, which will require me to break my own patterns, because if they really want to, they want me to show up like this in the bedroom, I'm going to have to get a little uncomfortable because I've been showing up in my comfort zone for the last ten years. I have to. I'm going to have to grow here. I'm going to have to, like, bring a different energy. That takes bravery, and it takes a growth mindset. It really does. And if we don't have those two things, then when someone brings something to us, we're going to get defensive or shame them or judge them for it. And then, of course, you're creating, then you're really hurting the relationship.But, you know, in my personal experience, when clients do come to me when they have had some level of betrayal, I always ask, what was your relationship like before the marriage? What happened before the relationship got serious? And 99% of the time, the person showed them that they have the capability to have two simultaneous connections at the same time. They either stole that person from an lacking in self compassion?I would say they're lacking in self accountability. I really think it's because if they.Had more compassion for themselves, they would get to a point where they would no longer want to tolerate that. Because if you have true compassion for yourself, you don't put yourself in harm's way. I would say the step that you're removing or saying is not important or is even wrong is actually the thing that's been missing all along, that that person knows.Sometimes the compassion can lead them into thinking, I know I'm so wounded, I can't be alone. I know I'm like, this person has always been alone. I can't grow up homeless. That compassion for themselves has made them understand how needy they can be. And sometimes we want to shift that compassion to, okay, action. I understand this is all the reasons. But excessive self compassion can lead to people.I think that's incomplete. Self compassion. Self compassion is. I understand why I am the way I am. I can view myself holistically, even on my worst days, and contextually within everything I've ever been through. And instead of taking all of these things that I do wrong in life, my regrets, my shame, my insecurities, and using them to actually hurt myself, which is what staying in an abusive or toxic relationship is I'm going to have true compassion for myself, which is I'm going to accept these parts of myself, and I'm going to make it my mission to give myself a better life instead of thinking that I deserve this punishment or that I deserve this kind of treatment or that this is all about. I think it's about deserving.It's not about deserving.Oh, that's all I'm worthy of. Self compassion is. Is both accepting yourself holistically and then also accepting the responsibility for taking care of yourself. You know, so that I see there's, there's, to me, there's nothing. The kind of thing you're talking about still isn't true self compassion.Mm hmm. It's more self understanding, is what I'm trying to say. What am I missing?This. What you're saying is if someone is, you're saying I'm excusing myself, treating myself horribly and someone else treating myself horribly because of what I've been through.But compassion without responsibility leads to stagnation.I think compassion leads to responsibility, perhaps in the way.Yeah, maybe I'm misunderstood what true self compassion means, but I genuinely think what will ignite me personally, and I can't speak for everybody, and also, even sometimes when I speak to clients and my focus is, okay, forgive yourself for this behavior. You've grown up like this. This is, you're homeless sometimes, or you had abusive parents. You forgive yourself for accepting the abuse. But now what? And then the now what parts is, does that mean for the rest of your life you're going to accept this now yourself? Your childhood is your self compassionate for it. Your adulthood is your self selection. So your adult life has to be moving from that compassionate state to that.Accountable state they always live in. Hand. In hand, though, we're going to need self compassion forever, 100,000 more times, I'm going to make so many more mistakes, and there are going to be so many. My instinct is self tyranny, not self tyranny. If you want to say that's, like responsibility, it made me miserable for half my life, is constantly thinking that I'm. I know I need to go out and I need to do this, and I need to take responsibility for this and so on, and never offering myself self compassion. Self compassion is something I need a thousand times a day, and I give myself twice a week if I'm not careful. So I'm going to need that many more times. And that, allied with taking accountability, is an unbelievably potent combination. But the accountability without the compassion is a mandate for self tyranny.Would you imagine that taking accountability and making better choices is Ben process with the person they're dating to see if they really are setting themselves up for a healthy, conscious relationship?Obviously no relationship being perfect, and it might have some ups and downs, but setting yourself up to the best possible chance for happiness in a relationship. What are three things that a person should do on their own or starting that dating process before getting getting committed?Firstly, you would ask yourself, am I going to punish this person for wounds that they didn't create? Is there any chance that I am going to use this person as a punching bag? Or all the opposite where I use them as an escalation of status? Am I using this person in any way, shape or form to heal wounds that occurred before their existence? Maybe I was hurt in my childhood or hurt by a previous partner. Am I using this person in any way to fix that? Or maybe I suffered from low self esteem and I'm using this person's appearance or their bravado to help me regain some as a shortcut to status. Is there any way I'm doing this to this person? If I am doing this to this person, then there is no way that this relationship will work or withstand this test of time. So I need to be honest about that to myself.That's number one.That's number one. The second thing is, can I commit to being honest about my needs with them and be open to receive what their needs are from me? Am I open to have those conversations? If I'm going to simply communicate my needs and not listen to theirs, or simply listen to their needs and not meet my needs own? The relationship is going to feel incredibly heavy on one direction, so it's going to eventually break down. And the final thing is, how am I going to behave if worst case scenario happens? And what I mean by that is if tomorrow we were to get divorced. Or if tomorrow we had to go be co parents rather than actual loving parents, are we going to treat each other with respect and compassion and do what's best for each other? Or in those moments, are we going to become enemies? If you think that you're marrying somebody that has the potential to become your enemy when things go wrong, do not marry them. It's better to marry somebody that you can successfully divorce than marry somebody where you ignore that. And what I mean by that is, if worst case scenario happened, then you know that Martha would be a good person.Worst case scenario is she put the kids needs first. You'd probably get to see them every weekend. It would be no pulling, like years and years of stealing everything you got from each other. Her worst case scenario is still manageable. She's still reasonable. But if you're marrying somebody, that if worst case scenario happened, my entire life would be a death sentence. Don't do it. Wow.Okay. Okay. So just to recap that, even I.Forgot what I said.You know, and Matthew's got to come up with three new things.Well, this is cheating.So the first thing was, don't get into a relationship where you're going to heal or fix something from your past that you haven't already processed and done the healing work already, or you haven't built the self esteem that you're trying to gain from the other person. They would add maybe, but not doing it to fix the second one is being honest about your needs. And if they can accept your needs and vice versa. Yeah, really ask them, what else are you going to need? What do you think you might need? Is sex important? What about this?What about, like, what would cause you to divorce me? What caused you to cheat on me?Those are all vulnerable questions that most people are willing to ask. And so I think having the vulnerable questions about needs, wants, desires early on. And the third is, how will I behave? Or what's the worst case scenario? They will behave. And it's an interesting thing you said that, because one of the. I mean, all the relationships I was in previously, again, I don't want to say none of them were bad people or anything like that, but the reason, one of the main reasons why I never felt I couldn't marry any of them was because I didn't feel like if we broke up, they would be able to, like, handle things peacefully.Yes. Reasonably.Reasonably, yeah.Right. Can they just be reasonable people reasonable?Or are they gonna overreact about everything?You know, are they gonna hold that in them forever and use that I'm.Gonna suffer the rest of my life.Yeah.You know, so I think those are three great things. And what about you, Matthew? Three things that someone should do before they commit to a long term relationship.What did I write down? There's a. I think. I think really assessing whether the connection you have with this person is built on fundamentals. It's not just built on attraction or, you know, I just love having sex with this person, or I feel like. Like, you know, it's so exciting. It's. David Brooks said, marriage is a 50 year conversation. Who can you have a conversation with for that long? You know, do you feel like this person is someone you can see yourself having a conversation with for that long? I would say accepting. Trying to do some of the work, perhaps not all, but trying to do some of the work of accepting yourself before you get. Get there. Taking the things that you feel most shamed about, the things that you beat yourself up about, the things that you. If you weren't careful, you would take them into the relationship and constantly use them as reasons to not feel good enough. Because it's baggage is only baggage if it's baggage to you. If it's not baggage to. To you, if it's like you own it. Like, this is my history, this is my life. I have made peace with it.I have made peace with who I am today and how I got here and the lessons I've taken from it all, then when you communicate that to someone else, you're going to be communicating it from a place of strength and abundance and acceptance. But it's a much harder struggle. It's not impossible, because one of the most beautiful things about a relationship is someone can help you accept yourself by the way that they love you. And that's a great sign of an amazing relationship. But if we can take a little of that work off their shoulders and do some of it for ourselves before we get there, it means that they won't have to convince us that holistically, you know, we are this great package. We'll already believe it ourselves.Wow.Go through some hard times together if can. I mean, I'm not suggesting we engineer them, but, you know, there's, I think, giving yourself the time, if you can, to experience some things together. You know, I think one of the dangers is that we have made a lot of decisions about who someone is and how great they are for us and how great we are for them in very few contexts of having known them. You know, we've done six months of night dinners and we think we'd be great together. Well, what about when one of you gets sick? What about when you have a family member who is very demanding and you're having to navigate how to deal with this demanding family member and, you know, figure that out with your partner at the same time who's, you know, frustrated by this family member of yours? What about when, you know, one of you is going through a very busy chapter at work and it's stressful and you're not able to give as much? Who are you in those difficult moments? That gives you a chance to evaluate the team. Not the romance, not the attraction.Evaluate the team and you only know who the team is when there are tough things for the team to go through. And I think, lastly, just be someone who's got into the habit of having challenging conversations in life. Your life improves in direct proportion to the number of hard conversations you're willing to have.I agree.And everything that you, I know you subscribe to about asking difficult questions and what you've been talking about is really about being willing to have hard conversations, which is something a lot of people really, really avoid because they're afraid of losing a person. But you have to be more afraid of someone making you unhappy than you are of losing them, losing yourself. Wow.I've got a ton more questions to ask, but I want to wrap it up here. I would add to this just three things that came up for me as one, getting clear on the vision of the relationship you want to have and making sure that vision aligns with the other person. So really communicating hard conversations, expressing values. Do we want kids? How are family involved? Are we going to see family all the time? All these different things? So, getting clear on the vision of a relationship you would like to have, although that might evolve and change over time. Time, but doing the best you can and communicating that vision to the person and making sure it aligns. And then I would say number two and three is. Number two is fully accepting yourself. Kind of like all of you. The back history, the stuff you've done, bad or wrong or whatever it might be, the things you've been through, accepting who you are and feeling that love and acceptance, and then fully accepting the person that you're choosing to be with. Because I think a lot of people choose someone and then they don't accept them later for all their behaviors, their beliefs, their way of actions, their thoughts, but you chose them.So choose to accept them. Before entering a long term, committed relationship, you know, make sure you have standards and boundaries in place but you're choosing them. So make sure you accept them before you enter that long term relationship.Don't think you're going to be a different person on the other side of what the vows.And if you have to have a new set of boundaries after marriage, you didn't accept them for what they truly were, right?Exactly. Exactly. So that would be what I'd add there. I would love people's response to what opened up what was interesting for them, what spoke to them the most in the comments below. So leave a comment letting us know the biggest takeaway and what you want to hear. More from Sadia Khan Saadia psychology.com and the Sadia psychology on Instagram as well. You've got online coaching, you do live streams, you've got Patreon, YouTube, all this different content online. People can check you out, a lot of interesting stuff and perspective. We got Matthew Hussey, New York time bestselling author in the last week. Congratulations. Your new book, Love Life, how to raise your standards, find your person and live happily no matter what. Matthew Hussie.com for all your content. But the newsletter is the threerelationships.com as well. Well, and we'll have everything linked up below for for these two incredible relationship experts and coaches. Is there any final thought you'd like to say on entering a relationship with for this conversation? Anything you'd like to add to finalize this point here? We'll let you go. Matthew first and then Sadia. Wrap it up.No, this has been fun.I feel like I spent what difficult conversations look like really well, I was.Going to say say. I think if anything, it's a fun and lively example of, you know, what healthy disagreement looks like and I wish there was more of it in the world.Yeah, I really enjoyed that. Thank you.I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewishows. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life. Then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox. Over@greatness.com newsletter and if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

is your partner trusted you and the relationship enough to bring this to you and to have this conversation with you. And it takes some bravery. It's not easy, but it takes some bravery to say, say, well, they're trusting me with this information, and it's interesting information. It's actually, if I can get past my ego, this is valuable information.

It's an insight. Yeah.

Yeah. And this, if I. If I can start to be brave, which will require me to break my own patterns, because if they really want to, they want me to show up like this in the bedroom, I'm going to have to get a little uncomfortable because I've been showing up in my comfort zone for the last ten years. I have to. I'm going to have to grow here. I'm going to have to, like, bring a different energy. That takes bravery, and it takes a growth mindset. It really does. And if we don't have those two things, then when someone brings something to us, we're going to get defensive or shame them or judge them for it. And then, of course, you're creating, then you're really hurting the relationship.

But, you know, in my personal experience, when clients do come to me when they have had some level of betrayal, I always ask, what was your relationship like before the marriage? What happened before the relationship got serious? And 99% of the time, the person showed them that they have the capability to have two simultaneous connections at the same time. They either stole that person from an lacking in self compassion?I would say they're lacking in self accountability. I really think it's because if they.Had more compassion for themselves, they would get to a point where they would no longer want to tolerate that. Because if you have true compassion for yourself, you don't put yourself in harm's way. I would say the step that you're removing or saying is not important or is even wrong is actually the thing that's been missing all along, that that person knows.Sometimes the compassion can lead them into thinking, I know I'm so wounded, I can't be alone. I know I'm like, this person has always been alone. I can't grow up homeless. That compassion for themselves has made them understand how needy they can be. And sometimes we want to shift that compassion to, okay, action. I understand this is all the reasons. But excessive self compassion can lead to people.I think that's incomplete. Self compassion. Self compassion is. I understand why I am the way I am. I can view myself holistically, even on my worst days, and contextually within everything I've ever been through. And instead of taking all of these things that I do wrong in life, my regrets, my shame, my insecurities, and using them to actually hurt myself, which is what staying in an abusive or toxic relationship is I'm going to have true compassion for myself, which is I'm going to accept these parts of myself, and I'm going to make it my mission to give myself a better life instead of thinking that I deserve this punishment or that I deserve this kind of treatment or that this is all about. I think it's about deserving.It's not about deserving.Oh, that's all I'm worthy of. Self compassion is. Is both accepting yourself holistically and then also accepting the responsibility for taking care of yourself. You know, so that I see there's, there's, to me, there's nothing. The kind of thing you're talking about still isn't true self compassion.Mm hmm. It's more self understanding, is what I'm trying to say. What am I missing?This. What you're saying is if someone is, you're saying I'm excusing myself, treating myself horribly and someone else treating myself horribly because of what I've been through.But compassion without responsibility leads to stagnation.I think compassion leads to responsibility, perhaps in the way.Yeah, maybe I'm misunderstood what true self compassion means, but I genuinely think what will ignite me personally, and I can't speak for everybody, and also, even sometimes when I speak to clients and my focus is, okay, forgive yourself for this behavior. You've grown up like this. This is, you're homeless sometimes, or you had abusive parents. You forgive yourself for accepting the abuse. But now what? And then the now what parts is, does that mean for the rest of your life you're going to accept this now yourself? Your childhood is your self compassionate for it. Your adulthood is your self selection. So your adult life has to be moving from that compassionate state to that.Accountable state they always live in. Hand. In hand, though, we're going to need self compassion forever, 100,000 more times, I'm going to make so many more mistakes, and there are going to be so many. My instinct is self tyranny, not self tyranny. If you want to say that's, like responsibility, it made me miserable for half my life, is constantly thinking that I'm. I know I need to go out and I need to do this, and I need to take responsibility for this and so on, and never offering myself self compassion. Self compassion is something I need a thousand times a day, and I give myself twice a week if I'm not careful. So I'm going to need that many more times. And that, allied with taking accountability, is an unbelievably potent combination. But the accountability without the compassion is a mandate for self tyranny.Would you imagine that taking accountability and making better choices is Ben process with the person they're dating to see if they really are setting themselves up for a healthy, conscious relationship?Obviously no relationship being perfect, and it might have some ups and downs, but setting yourself up to the best possible chance for happiness in a relationship. What are three things that a person should do on their own or starting that dating process before getting getting committed?Firstly, you would ask yourself, am I going to punish this person for wounds that they didn't create? Is there any chance that I am going to use this person as a punching bag? Or all the opposite where I use them as an escalation of status? Am I using this person in any way, shape or form to heal wounds that occurred before their existence? Maybe I was hurt in my childhood or hurt by a previous partner. Am I using this person in any way to fix that? Or maybe I suffered from low self esteem and I'm using this person's appearance or their bravado to help me regain some as a shortcut to status. Is there any way I'm doing this to this person? If I am doing this to this person, then there is no way that this relationship will work or withstand this test of time. So I need to be honest about that to myself.That's number one.That's number one. The second thing is, can I commit to being honest about my needs with them and be open to receive what their needs are from me? Am I open to have those conversations? If I'm going to simply communicate my needs and not listen to theirs, or simply listen to their needs and not meet my needs own? The relationship is going to feel incredibly heavy on one direction, so it's going to eventually break down. And the final thing is, how am I going to behave if worst case scenario happens? And what I mean by that is if tomorrow we were to get divorced. Or if tomorrow we had to go be co parents rather than actual loving parents, are we going to treat each other with respect and compassion and do what's best for each other? Or in those moments, are we going to become enemies? If you think that you're marrying somebody that has the potential to become your enemy when things go wrong, do not marry them. It's better to marry somebody that you can successfully divorce than marry somebody where you ignore that. And what I mean by that is, if worst case scenario happened, then you know that Martha would be a good person.Worst case scenario is she put the kids needs first. You'd probably get to see them every weekend. It would be no pulling, like years and years of stealing everything you got from each other. Her worst case scenario is still manageable. She's still reasonable. But if you're marrying somebody, that if worst case scenario happened, my entire life would be a death sentence. Don't do it. Wow.Okay. Okay. So just to recap that, even I.Forgot what I said.You know, and Matthew's got to come up with three new things.Well, this is cheating.So the first thing was, don't get into a relationship where you're going to heal or fix something from your past that you haven't already processed and done the healing work already, or you haven't built the self esteem that you're trying to gain from the other person. They would add maybe, but not doing it to fix the second one is being honest about your needs. And if they can accept your needs and vice versa. Yeah, really ask them, what else are you going to need? What do you think you might need? Is sex important? What about this?What about, like, what would cause you to divorce me? What caused you to cheat on me?Those are all vulnerable questions that most people are willing to ask. And so I think having the vulnerable questions about needs, wants, desires early on. And the third is, how will I behave? Or what's the worst case scenario? They will behave. And it's an interesting thing you said that, because one of the. I mean, all the relationships I was in previously, again, I don't want to say none of them were bad people or anything like that, but the reason, one of the main reasons why I never felt I couldn't marry any of them was because I didn't feel like if we broke up, they would be able to, like, handle things peacefully.Yes. Reasonably.Reasonably, yeah.Right. Can they just be reasonable people reasonable?Or are they gonna overreact about everything?You know, are they gonna hold that in them forever and use that I'm.Gonna suffer the rest of my life.Yeah.You know, so I think those are three great things. And what about you, Matthew? Three things that someone should do before they commit to a long term relationship.What did I write down? There's a. I think. I think really assessing whether the connection you have with this person is built on fundamentals. It's not just built on attraction or, you know, I just love having sex with this person, or I feel like. Like, you know, it's so exciting. It's. David Brooks said, marriage is a 50 year conversation. Who can you have a conversation with for that long? You know, do you feel like this person is someone you can see yourself having a conversation with for that long? I would say accepting. Trying to do some of the work, perhaps not all, but trying to do some of the work of accepting yourself before you get. Get there. Taking the things that you feel most shamed about, the things that you beat yourself up about, the things that you. If you weren't careful, you would take them into the relationship and constantly use them as reasons to not feel good enough. Because it's baggage is only baggage if it's baggage to you. If it's not baggage to. To you, if it's like you own it. Like, this is my history, this is my life. I have made peace with it.I have made peace with who I am today and how I got here and the lessons I've taken from it all, then when you communicate that to someone else, you're going to be communicating it from a place of strength and abundance and acceptance. But it's a much harder struggle. It's not impossible, because one of the most beautiful things about a relationship is someone can help you accept yourself by the way that they love you. And that's a great sign of an amazing relationship. But if we can take a little of that work off their shoulders and do some of it for ourselves before we get there, it means that they won't have to convince us that holistically, you know, we are this great package. We'll already believe it ourselves.Wow.Go through some hard times together if can. I mean, I'm not suggesting we engineer them, but, you know, there's, I think, giving yourself the time, if you can, to experience some things together. You know, I think one of the dangers is that we have made a lot of decisions about who someone is and how great they are for us and how great we are for them in very few contexts of having known them. You know, we've done six months of night dinners and we think we'd be great together. Well, what about when one of you gets sick? What about when you have a family member who is very demanding and you're having to navigate how to deal with this demanding family member and, you know, figure that out with your partner at the same time who's, you know, frustrated by this family member of yours? What about when, you know, one of you is going through a very busy chapter at work and it's stressful and you're not able to give as much? Who are you in those difficult moments? That gives you a chance to evaluate the team. Not the romance, not the attraction.Evaluate the team and you only know who the team is when there are tough things for the team to go through. And I think, lastly, just be someone who's got into the habit of having challenging conversations in life. Your life improves in direct proportion to the number of hard conversations you're willing to have.I agree.And everything that you, I know you subscribe to about asking difficult questions and what you've been talking about is really about being willing to have hard conversations, which is something a lot of people really, really avoid because they're afraid of losing a person. But you have to be more afraid of someone making you unhappy than you are of losing them, losing yourself. Wow.I've got a ton more questions to ask, but I want to wrap it up here. I would add to this just three things that came up for me as one, getting clear on the vision of the relationship you want to have and making sure that vision aligns with the other person. So really communicating hard conversations, expressing values. Do we want kids? How are family involved? Are we going to see family all the time? All these different things? So, getting clear on the vision of a relationship you would like to have, although that might evolve and change over time. Time, but doing the best you can and communicating that vision to the person and making sure it aligns. And then I would say number two and three is. Number two is fully accepting yourself. Kind of like all of you. The back history, the stuff you've done, bad or wrong or whatever it might be, the things you've been through, accepting who you are and feeling that love and acceptance, and then fully accepting the person that you're choosing to be with. Because I think a lot of people choose someone and then they don't accept them later for all their behaviors, their beliefs, their way of actions, their thoughts, but you chose them.So choose to accept them. Before entering a long term, committed relationship, you know, make sure you have standards and boundaries in place but you're choosing them. So make sure you accept them before you enter that long term relationship.Don't think you're going to be a different person on the other side of what the vows.And if you have to have a new set of boundaries after marriage, you didn't accept them for what they truly were, right?Exactly. Exactly. So that would be what I'd add there. I would love people's response to what opened up what was interesting for them, what spoke to them the most in the comments below. So leave a comment letting us know the biggest takeaway and what you want to hear. More from Sadia Khan Saadia psychology.com and the Sadia psychology on Instagram as well. You've got online coaching, you do live streams, you've got Patreon, YouTube, all this different content online. People can check you out, a lot of interesting stuff and perspective. We got Matthew Hussey, New York time bestselling author in the last week. Congratulations. Your new book, Love Life, how to raise your standards, find your person and live happily no matter what. Matthew Hussie.com for all your content. But the newsletter is the threerelationships.com as well. Well, and we'll have everything linked up below for for these two incredible relationship experts and coaches. Is there any final thought you'd like to say on entering a relationship with for this conversation? Anything you'd like to add to finalize this point here? We'll let you go. Matthew first and then Sadia. Wrap it up.No, this has been fun.I feel like I spent what difficult conversations look like really well, I was.Going to say say. I think if anything, it's a fun and lively example of, you know, what healthy disagreement looks like and I wish there was more of it in the world.Yeah, I really enjoyed that. Thank you.I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewishows. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life. Then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox. Over@greatness.com newsletter and if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

lacking in self compassion?

I would say they're lacking in self accountability. I really think it's because if they.

Had more compassion for themselves, they would get to a point where they would no longer want to tolerate that. Because if you have true compassion for yourself, you don't put yourself in harm's way. I would say the step that you're removing or saying is not important or is even wrong is actually the thing that's been missing all along, that that person knows.

Sometimes the compassion can lead them into thinking, I know I'm so wounded, I can't be alone. I know I'm like, this person has always been alone. I can't grow up homeless. That compassion for themselves has made them understand how needy they can be. And sometimes we want to shift that compassion to, okay, action. I understand this is all the reasons. But excessive self compassion can lead to people.

I think that's incomplete. Self compassion. Self compassion is. I understand why I am the way I am. I can view myself holistically, even on my worst days, and contextually within everything I've ever been through. And instead of taking all of these things that I do wrong in life, my regrets, my shame, my insecurities, and using them to actually hurt myself, which is what staying in an abusive or toxic relationship is I'm going to have true compassion for myself, which is I'm going to accept these parts of myself, and I'm going to make it my mission to give myself a better life instead of thinking that I deserve this punishment or that I deserve this kind of treatment or that this is all about. I think it's about deserving.

It's not about deserving.

Oh, that's all I'm worthy of. Self compassion is. Is both accepting yourself holistically and then also accepting the responsibility for taking care of yourself. You know, so that I see there's, there's, to me, there's nothing. The kind of thing you're talking about still isn't true self compassion.

Mm hmm. It's more self understanding, is what I'm trying to say. What am I missing?

This. What you're saying is if someone is, you're saying I'm excusing myself, treating myself horribly and someone else treating myself horribly because of what I've been through.

But compassion without responsibility leads to stagnation.

I think compassion leads to responsibility, perhaps in the way.

Yeah, maybe I'm misunderstood what true self compassion means, but I genuinely think what will ignite me personally, and I can't speak for everybody, and also, even sometimes when I speak to clients and my focus is, okay, forgive yourself for this behavior. You've grown up like this. This is, you're homeless sometimes, or you had abusive parents. You forgive yourself for accepting the abuse. But now what? And then the now what parts is, does that mean for the rest of your life you're going to accept this now yourself? Your childhood is your self compassionate for it. Your adulthood is your self selection. So your adult life has to be moving from that compassionate state to that.

Accountable state they always live in. Hand. In hand, though, we're going to need self compassion forever, 100,000 more times, I'm going to make so many more mistakes, and there are going to be so many. My instinct is self tyranny, not self tyranny. If you want to say that's, like responsibility, it made me miserable for half my life, is constantly thinking that I'm. I know I need to go out and I need to do this, and I need to take responsibility for this and so on, and never offering myself self compassion. Self compassion is something I need a thousand times a day, and I give myself twice a week if I'm not careful. So I'm going to need that many more times. And that, allied with taking accountability, is an unbelievably potent combination. But the accountability without the compassion is a mandate for self tyranny.

Would you imagine that taking accountability and making better choices is Ben process with the person they're dating to see if they really are setting themselves up for a healthy, conscious relationship?Obviously no relationship being perfect, and it might have some ups and downs, but setting yourself up to the best possible chance for happiness in a relationship. What are three things that a person should do on their own or starting that dating process before getting getting committed?Firstly, you would ask yourself, am I going to punish this person for wounds that they didn't create? Is there any chance that I am going to use this person as a punching bag? Or all the opposite where I use them as an escalation of status? Am I using this person in any way, shape or form to heal wounds that occurred before their existence? Maybe I was hurt in my childhood or hurt by a previous partner. Am I using this person in any way to fix that? Or maybe I suffered from low self esteem and I'm using this person's appearance or their bravado to help me regain some as a shortcut to status. Is there any way I'm doing this to this person? If I am doing this to this person, then there is no way that this relationship will work or withstand this test of time. So I need to be honest about that to myself.That's number one.That's number one. The second thing is, can I commit to being honest about my needs with them and be open to receive what their needs are from me? Am I open to have those conversations? If I'm going to simply communicate my needs and not listen to theirs, or simply listen to their needs and not meet my needs own? The relationship is going to feel incredibly heavy on one direction, so it's going to eventually break down. And the final thing is, how am I going to behave if worst case scenario happens? And what I mean by that is if tomorrow we were to get divorced. Or if tomorrow we had to go be co parents rather than actual loving parents, are we going to treat each other with respect and compassion and do what's best for each other? Or in those moments, are we going to become enemies? If you think that you're marrying somebody that has the potential to become your enemy when things go wrong, do not marry them. It's better to marry somebody that you can successfully divorce than marry somebody where you ignore that. And what I mean by that is, if worst case scenario happened, then you know that Martha would be a good person.Worst case scenario is she put the kids needs first. You'd probably get to see them every weekend. It would be no pulling, like years and years of stealing everything you got from each other. Her worst case scenario is still manageable. She's still reasonable. But if you're marrying somebody, that if worst case scenario happened, my entire life would be a death sentence. Don't do it. Wow.Okay. Okay. So just to recap that, even I.Forgot what I said.You know, and Matthew's got to come up with three new things.Well, this is cheating.So the first thing was, don't get into a relationship where you're going to heal or fix something from your past that you haven't already processed and done the healing work already, or you haven't built the self esteem that you're trying to gain from the other person. They would add maybe, but not doing it to fix the second one is being honest about your needs. And if they can accept your needs and vice versa. Yeah, really ask them, what else are you going to need? What do you think you might need? Is sex important? What about this?What about, like, what would cause you to divorce me? What caused you to cheat on me?Those are all vulnerable questions that most people are willing to ask. And so I think having the vulnerable questions about needs, wants, desires early on. And the third is, how will I behave? Or what's the worst case scenario? They will behave. And it's an interesting thing you said that, because one of the. I mean, all the relationships I was in previously, again, I don't want to say none of them were bad people or anything like that, but the reason, one of the main reasons why I never felt I couldn't marry any of them was because I didn't feel like if we broke up, they would be able to, like, handle things peacefully.Yes. Reasonably.Reasonably, yeah.Right. Can they just be reasonable people reasonable?Or are they gonna overreact about everything?You know, are they gonna hold that in them forever and use that I'm.Gonna suffer the rest of my life.Yeah.You know, so I think those are three great things. And what about you, Matthew? Three things that someone should do before they commit to a long term relationship.What did I write down? There's a. I think. I think really assessing whether the connection you have with this person is built on fundamentals. It's not just built on attraction or, you know, I just love having sex with this person, or I feel like. Like, you know, it's so exciting. It's. David Brooks said, marriage is a 50 year conversation. Who can you have a conversation with for that long? You know, do you feel like this person is someone you can see yourself having a conversation with for that long? I would say accepting. Trying to do some of the work, perhaps not all, but trying to do some of the work of accepting yourself before you get. Get there. Taking the things that you feel most shamed about, the things that you beat yourself up about, the things that you. If you weren't careful, you would take them into the relationship and constantly use them as reasons to not feel good enough. Because it's baggage is only baggage if it's baggage to you. If it's not baggage to. To you, if it's like you own it. Like, this is my history, this is my life. I have made peace with it.I have made peace with who I am today and how I got here and the lessons I've taken from it all, then when you communicate that to someone else, you're going to be communicating it from a place of strength and abundance and acceptance. But it's a much harder struggle. It's not impossible, because one of the most beautiful things about a relationship is someone can help you accept yourself by the way that they love you. And that's a great sign of an amazing relationship. But if we can take a little of that work off their shoulders and do some of it for ourselves before we get there, it means that they won't have to convince us that holistically, you know, we are this great package. We'll already believe it ourselves.Wow.Go through some hard times together if can. I mean, I'm not suggesting we engineer them, but, you know, there's, I think, giving yourself the time, if you can, to experience some things together. You know, I think one of the dangers is that we have made a lot of decisions about who someone is and how great they are for us and how great we are for them in very few contexts of having known them. You know, we've done six months of night dinners and we think we'd be great together. Well, what about when one of you gets sick? What about when you have a family member who is very demanding and you're having to navigate how to deal with this demanding family member and, you know, figure that out with your partner at the same time who's, you know, frustrated by this family member of yours? What about when, you know, one of you is going through a very busy chapter at work and it's stressful and you're not able to give as much? Who are you in those difficult moments? That gives you a chance to evaluate the team. Not the romance, not the attraction.Evaluate the team and you only know who the team is when there are tough things for the team to go through. And I think, lastly, just be someone who's got into the habit of having challenging conversations in life. Your life improves in direct proportion to the number of hard conversations you're willing to have.I agree.And everything that you, I know you subscribe to about asking difficult questions and what you've been talking about is really about being willing to have hard conversations, which is something a lot of people really, really avoid because they're afraid of losing a person. But you have to be more afraid of someone making you unhappy than you are of losing them, losing yourself. Wow.I've got a ton more questions to ask, but I want to wrap it up here. I would add to this just three things that came up for me as one, getting clear on the vision of the relationship you want to have and making sure that vision aligns with the other person. So really communicating hard conversations, expressing values. Do we want kids? How are family involved? Are we going to see family all the time? All these different things? So, getting clear on the vision of a relationship you would like to have, although that might evolve and change over time. Time, but doing the best you can and communicating that vision to the person and making sure it aligns. And then I would say number two and three is. Number two is fully accepting yourself. Kind of like all of you. The back history, the stuff you've done, bad or wrong or whatever it might be, the things you've been through, accepting who you are and feeling that love and acceptance, and then fully accepting the person that you're choosing to be with. Because I think a lot of people choose someone and then they don't accept them later for all their behaviors, their beliefs, their way of actions, their thoughts, but you chose them.So choose to accept them. Before entering a long term, committed relationship, you know, make sure you have standards and boundaries in place but you're choosing them. So make sure you accept them before you enter that long term relationship.Don't think you're going to be a different person on the other side of what the vows.And if you have to have a new set of boundaries after marriage, you didn't accept them for what they truly were, right?Exactly. Exactly. So that would be what I'd add there. I would love people's response to what opened up what was interesting for them, what spoke to them the most in the comments below. So leave a comment letting us know the biggest takeaway and what you want to hear. More from Sadia Khan Saadia psychology.com and the Sadia psychology on Instagram as well. You've got online coaching, you do live streams, you've got Patreon, YouTube, all this different content online. People can check you out, a lot of interesting stuff and perspective. We got Matthew Hussey, New York time bestselling author in the last week. Congratulations. Your new book, Love Life, how to raise your standards, find your person and live happily no matter what. Matthew Hussie.com for all your content. But the newsletter is the threerelationships.com as well. Well, and we'll have everything linked up below for for these two incredible relationship experts and coaches. Is there any final thought you'd like to say on entering a relationship with for this conversation? Anything you'd like to add to finalize this point here? We'll let you go. Matthew first and then Sadia. Wrap it up.No, this has been fun.I feel like I spent what difficult conversations look like really well, I was.Going to say say. I think if anything, it's a fun and lively example of, you know, what healthy disagreement looks like and I wish there was more of it in the world.Yeah, I really enjoyed that. Thank you.I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewishows. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life. Then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox. Over@greatness.com newsletter and if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

process with the person they're dating to see if they really are setting themselves up for a healthy, conscious relationship?

Obviously no relationship being perfect, and it might have some ups and downs, but setting yourself up to the best possible chance for happiness in a relationship. What are three things that a person should do on their own or starting that dating process before getting getting committed?

Firstly, you would ask yourself, am I going to punish this person for wounds that they didn't create? Is there any chance that I am going to use this person as a punching bag? Or all the opposite where I use them as an escalation of status? Am I using this person in any way, shape or form to heal wounds that occurred before their existence? Maybe I was hurt in my childhood or hurt by a previous partner. Am I using this person in any way to fix that? Or maybe I suffered from low self esteem and I'm using this person's appearance or their bravado to help me regain some as a shortcut to status. Is there any way I'm doing this to this person? If I am doing this to this person, then there is no way that this relationship will work or withstand this test of time. So I need to be honest about that to myself.

That's number one.

That's number one. The second thing is, can I commit to being honest about my needs with them and be open to receive what their needs are from me? Am I open to have those conversations? If I'm going to simply communicate my needs and not listen to theirs, or simply listen to their needs and not meet my needs own? The relationship is going to feel incredibly heavy on one direction, so it's going to eventually break down. And the final thing is, how am I going to behave if worst case scenario happens? And what I mean by that is if tomorrow we were to get divorced. Or if tomorrow we had to go be co parents rather than actual loving parents, are we going to treat each other with respect and compassion and do what's best for each other? Or in those moments, are we going to become enemies? If you think that you're marrying somebody that has the potential to become your enemy when things go wrong, do not marry them. It's better to marry somebody that you can successfully divorce than marry somebody where you ignore that. And what I mean by that is, if worst case scenario happened, then you know that Martha would be a good person.

Worst case scenario is she put the kids needs first. You'd probably get to see them every weekend. It would be no pulling, like years and years of stealing everything you got from each other. Her worst case scenario is still manageable. She's still reasonable. But if you're marrying somebody, that if worst case scenario happened, my entire life would be a death sentence. Don't do it. Wow.

Okay. Okay. So just to recap that, even I.

Forgot what I said.

You know, and Matthew's got to come up with three new things.

Well, this is cheating.

So the first thing was, don't get into a relationship where you're going to heal or fix something from your past that you haven't already processed and done the healing work already, or you haven't built the self esteem that you're trying to gain from the other person. They would add maybe, but not doing it to fix the second one is being honest about your needs. And if they can accept your needs and vice versa. Yeah, really ask them, what else are you going to need? What do you think you might need? Is sex important? What about this?

What about, like, what would cause you to divorce me? What caused you to cheat on me?

Those are all vulnerable questions that most people are willing to ask. And so I think having the vulnerable questions about needs, wants, desires early on. And the third is, how will I behave? Or what's the worst case scenario? They will behave. And it's an interesting thing you said that, because one of the. I mean, all the relationships I was in previously, again, I don't want to say none of them were bad people or anything like that, but the reason, one of the main reasons why I never felt I couldn't marry any of them was because I didn't feel like if we broke up, they would be able to, like, handle things peacefully.

Yes. Reasonably.

Reasonably, yeah.

Right. Can they just be reasonable people reasonable?

Or are they gonna overreact about everything?

You know, are they gonna hold that in them forever and use that I'm.

Gonna suffer the rest of my life.

Yeah.

You know, so I think those are three great things. And what about you, Matthew? Three things that someone should do before they commit to a long term relationship.

What did I write down? There's a. I think. I think really assessing whether the connection you have with this person is built on fundamentals. It's not just built on attraction or, you know, I just love having sex with this person, or I feel like. Like, you know, it's so exciting. It's. David Brooks said, marriage is a 50 year conversation. Who can you have a conversation with for that long? You know, do you feel like this person is someone you can see yourself having a conversation with for that long? I would say accepting. Trying to do some of the work, perhaps not all, but trying to do some of the work of accepting yourself before you get. Get there. Taking the things that you feel most shamed about, the things that you beat yourself up about, the things that you. If you weren't careful, you would take them into the relationship and constantly use them as reasons to not feel good enough. Because it's baggage is only baggage if it's baggage to you. If it's not baggage to. To you, if it's like you own it. Like, this is my history, this is my life. I have made peace with it.

I have made peace with who I am today and how I got here and the lessons I've taken from it all, then when you communicate that to someone else, you're going to be communicating it from a place of strength and abundance and acceptance. But it's a much harder struggle. It's not impossible, because one of the most beautiful things about a relationship is someone can help you accept yourself by the way that they love you. And that's a great sign of an amazing relationship. But if we can take a little of that work off their shoulders and do some of it for ourselves before we get there, it means that they won't have to convince us that holistically, you know, we are this great package. We'll already believe it ourselves.

Wow.

Go through some hard times together if can. I mean, I'm not suggesting we engineer them, but, you know, there's, I think, giving yourself the time, if you can, to experience some things together. You know, I think one of the dangers is that we have made a lot of decisions about who someone is and how great they are for us and how great we are for them in very few contexts of having known them. You know, we've done six months of night dinners and we think we'd be great together. Well, what about when one of you gets sick? What about when you have a family member who is very demanding and you're having to navigate how to deal with this demanding family member and, you know, figure that out with your partner at the same time who's, you know, frustrated by this family member of yours? What about when, you know, one of you is going through a very busy chapter at work and it's stressful and you're not able to give as much? Who are you in those difficult moments? That gives you a chance to evaluate the team. Not the romance, not the attraction.

Evaluate the team and you only know who the team is when there are tough things for the team to go through. And I think, lastly, just be someone who's got into the habit of having challenging conversations in life. Your life improves in direct proportion to the number of hard conversations you're willing to have.

I agree.

And everything that you, I know you subscribe to about asking difficult questions and what you've been talking about is really about being willing to have hard conversations, which is something a lot of people really, really avoid because they're afraid of losing a person. But you have to be more afraid of someone making you unhappy than you are of losing them, losing yourself. Wow.

I've got a ton more questions to ask, but I want to wrap it up here. I would add to this just three things that came up for me as one, getting clear on the vision of the relationship you want to have and making sure that vision aligns with the other person. So really communicating hard conversations, expressing values. Do we want kids? How are family involved? Are we going to see family all the time? All these different things? So, getting clear on the vision of a relationship you would like to have, although that might evolve and change over time. Time, but doing the best you can and communicating that vision to the person and making sure it aligns. And then I would say number two and three is. Number two is fully accepting yourself. Kind of like all of you. The back history, the stuff you've done, bad or wrong or whatever it might be, the things you've been through, accepting who you are and feeling that love and acceptance, and then fully accepting the person that you're choosing to be with. Because I think a lot of people choose someone and then they don't accept them later for all their behaviors, their beliefs, their way of actions, their thoughts, but you chose them.

So choose to accept them. Before entering a long term, committed relationship, you know, make sure you have standards and boundaries in place but you're choosing them. So make sure you accept them before you enter that long term relationship.

Don't think you're going to be a different person on the other side of what the vows.

And if you have to have a new set of boundaries after marriage, you didn't accept them for what they truly were, right?

Exactly. Exactly. So that would be what I'd add there. I would love people's response to what opened up what was interesting for them, what spoke to them the most in the comments below. So leave a comment letting us know the biggest takeaway and what you want to hear. More from Sadia Khan Saadia psychology.com and the Sadia psychology on Instagram as well. You've got online coaching, you do live streams, you've got Patreon, YouTube, all this different content online. People can check you out, a lot of interesting stuff and perspective. We got Matthew Hussey, New York time bestselling author in the last week. Congratulations. Your new book, Love Life, how to raise your standards, find your person and live happily no matter what. Matthew Hussie.com for all your content. But the newsletter is the threerelationships.com as well. Well, and we'll have everything linked up below for for these two incredible relationship experts and coaches. Is there any final thought you'd like to say on entering a relationship with for this conversation? Anything you'd like to add to finalize this point here? We'll let you go. Matthew first and then Sadia. Wrap it up.

No, this has been fun.

I feel like I spent what difficult conversations look like really well, I was.

Going to say say. I think if anything, it's a fun and lively example of, you know, what healthy disagreement looks like and I wish there was more of it in the world.

Yeah, I really enjoyed that. Thank you.

I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewishows. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life. Then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox. Over@greatness.com newsletter and if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.