foreign spirituality with a Twist um we are in the midst of doing this series of episodes on relationships relationships structures uh it's a thing we've been wanting to do for a long time kind of been a little bit of a slow build up to it uh in that it's been something we've both been giving a lot of thought to it's been the funny one for me Daniel because I've been going through and I've been talking to tons of people about this which I don't always I mean I ask people's opinions about things a lot of times when I'm prepping episodes but this has been different well you know you know what they say about opinions Eric well I mean but for this I think you need to like get around a rounded view sure you know lots of different folks so I it's really funny I've been talking to my 83 year old mom about these episodes which has been really fun because my mom's like I always had kind of a feisty personality and uh she likes to talk about controversial things and things that are challenging and so we were actually going through like the family history a lot talking about the relationships we're like even in our family background which goes back to some of the things we've been talking about too the idea you can trace things back through your family and what people yeah yeah and uh they're very Lively conversations I have a 10 year old son and he sometimes is like in the other room going what the hell could they be talking about because it's getting really like we're going he only hears one side but obviously there's two sides of this conversation and it's like it's going with some juice to it not in a bad way but in a good way Indiana she's an 83 year old lady so it keeps her mind going you know so she's always like you know happy to have these conversations I think it almost takes her back in the time machine thinking about when she was younger and the kind of questions she was wrestling with and she said some interesting things I also talked to uh uh one Ryan davaport who's supposed to be a guest on here at some point soon he's kind of our consultant Anthropologist and I talked a lot about the anthropology of these things in conversations you need an anthropology consultant everyone needs one well I mean for the [...] we talk about we probably really do need one yeah well we have two Mary Kay oh yeah Mary Kay too yeah we have our multiple anthropology but I'm just saying just in life in general you should have an anthropology consultant at your behest you have to be completely honest I think it would be a good job you know that like you know if you ever had with Ryan if you wanted to ever be like okay I'm not even going to be your acupuncture herbalist I'll be your anthropology consultant and I'll tell you how your culture is influencing you but then he'd steal that [...] podcast it would yeah don't don't Eric so now we got that we got that we're trying to get that racket yeah but it's kind of interesting because I talked with him a lot about it he has more sort of crossing the t's and dotting the eyes kind of a thing because he has to be anthropologically proper or we can just be more uh okay here's some anthropology and here's our thoughts on it you know but he has to be more professional I guess sure yeah so whatever but and so it's been an interesting one talking with different people I I really wanted to see what different folks think about this and how this is affected their lives because that's one of the main things about this I think the reason why this is such an important set of episodes at least you know from my point of view and I think yours too was like there's probably very few things are going to affect your life as much as like who you form your dominant relationships with sure they're really going to affect you and I don't know if people think about that you know I don't know if they really think about it through that way but you know if we're kind of trying to Advocate a more conscious deliberate thoughtful challenging way of living this is like something you have to think about right because your partner is going to affect you a lot and you're probably going to become more and more like your partner as your life goes along right no my partner becomes like me you're the force that's pulling in yeah yeah gravitational For Better or Worse For Better or Worse I won't comment on that I'll let that roll yeah that's okay sometimes you gotta let it roll you know yeah um and you can like have discussions after this thing is aired let's see who's influencing who right yeah that's always the mystery of of like relationship though who's affecting who and how right yeah okay so we had done a lot of stuff on this and we had really talked a lot about like think repression yeah that was one of our main subject matters and it was interesting because one of the people I was talking to was really asking about this you know you know what what am I supposed to do am I just supposed to repress things psychologically I was like yeah you know so a lot of it has to do with like how you deal with repression like what do you do with the different feelings sure which picks us up to where we were in our little outline I wanted to do this a little bit more because obviously if you look at this in Freud he's talking a lot about like sexuality when people have a lot of sexual feelings for people who are you know maybe outside of their monogamous partnership yeah right and everyone's got to learn how to deal with that he's a very darwinian dude so he thinks in kind of our joinian way so he's going to emphasize the sexual but we can also look at the idea that it's very natural for people to have all kinds of feelings for other people that are not just sexual sure and we'll talk about more of this as we go along through these episodes but I was reminded of like I have we're gonna have like people from the Chicago polyamory community on because I know people from that world and um I was having an interesting conversation where like the degree of sometimes how people have to repress stuff is interesting because it was this poly couple I know and they had a friend over who wasn't from that world and um the woman in the poly couple looked out the window and there were some relatively hot guy doing some construction work in the street out the window and she said uh oh wow look at look at cutie out there this work and you know her partner my the other poly person one of the other people I know who hopefully will be a guest with us looked out the window and was just like oh yeah yeah good looking dude and whatever you know and uh this friend of theirs just went oh my God I can't believe you two can talk that way with one another if I commented on even though I found another man who's a stranger incidentally attractive it would like blow up into this huge argument you know so it's just interesting to see the degree to which people have to like you know have to keep those things inside of themselves it's a very real thing you know for a lot of folks have to do that just holding stuff inside and holding stuff inside it's the reality of this right push it down that's the culture push it down shove it inside push it down way down okay close the box here or something put a way down put the chain on it drop it in the bottom of the ocean yeah yeah um completely Titanic it so yeah but that's how she that's obviously like how people feel that way yeah so in this repression thing it's going to be kind of a range of things and I just wanted to point it out it can be even small incidental things like that it's not a huge deal obviously right but it is something where you realize people kind of are aware of like okay I really couldn't even talk about that in front of my primary partner or something perforated sexuality and then as we go along we're also going to have conversations of what it means when it's like kind of beyond the sexuality part where it's like more deeply emotional and things that we probably would call love right that people have to repress in some way or another so that's kind of Freud's take-home message on that um on the biology of it though you know it is interesting and I wanted to share something from like Christopher Ryan who's the guy who wrote sex of dawn and um so blessed to death and he has just a little bit of research about it he's a pretty good source I didn't totally fact check him on it but yeah he's usually pretty good done the research that he presents and just as a practical thing there is a there's a very you know deep thing in this repression thing and I think for two of us mackley I thought it was an interesting one to bring up two Daniel which is that there's research on testosterone levels and they haven't done it in like I guess from the research that was written it wasn't in you know female subjects it was just in male subjects but there's this kind of showing that testosterone levels for people who are in long-term you know monogamous Partnerships will just fall and fall and so they just kind of like sink and sink and sink and if you take that same person and they get out and they're in a new relationship well then those levels just bounce back to where they were so it's not even like a biological decline so much as it is just the system seems to just change when someone's just with the same partner the testosterone kind of like Falls away and I don't know what that is again in female subjects he doesn't go into that I suppose you could speculate it's probably something similar happening and we'll talk about estroparel in a little bit because she has feelings um she's a relationship therapist pretty famous person we're going to share a little bit of her stuff later on but she talks about specifically from the point of view of you know women in long-term relationships and you know what you do about that um how do you keep those relationships Dynamic and you know but um yeah apparently this is just a biological finding where testosterone just Falls and if someone either you know starts having uh you know uh you know in a fair quote-unquote because that's in someone's relationship that way it'll bounce back up or if someone divorces and starts finding new partners it'll bounce back up again so it seems to be some kind of biological thing around this you know just this relationship structure which is yeah guess what we were trying to talk about what happens in a relationship structure and then kind of what you do about and uh for me I couldn't help thinking about like in Chicago if you like go to check with the score of the White Sox or the Bears or something you listen to like sports radio things that are kind of more focused on a male audience right I'm just in a car or something you get this whole thing about like Low T like everywhere they're just talking about low t low t low T it's kind of like a little advertising Mantra little centers around Chicago you have your testosterone we'll boost it for you we'll boost it for you you know I'm talking about all the negative consequences of this where I mean part of it is just seems to be related back you know to what Christopher Ryan is sharing to like the impacts of just this kind of structure of way of living life it just has this impact so I couldn't help but notice that and in our world I couldn't help thinking about like kidney Young you know and the Chinese medical idea of uh kind of the Constitutional uh fire and use the word Yang of the body you know just being affected by this and how many people seem to show declines of kidney young which will change if you don't know the Chinese Miracle part and obviously have listeners who don't it'll change things in like what you call like Urology like how the kidneys and the bladder start working you might find you know people have to urinate more they might have to like urinate more at night uh there might be sort of like more fluid metabolism issues where people start putting on kind of water weight right so that can be a factor in things like this and then things have to do with sexuality like libido that falls and maybe impacts on you know even things like erectile dysfunction things like that you know if the testosterone is going to fall it's going to have an impact and so I couldn't help thinking about when I heard that from Christopher Ryan I was like this is interesting because you know from a medical perspective this is a lot of what's being talked about now in men's health you know and I again we can speculate on women's health too but just the idea of like erectile dysfunction Low T these are like constant things that are just being presented to me I'm wondering though if like the result you know it's hard to sort of pull this apart you know I know we're just making a correlation you're not necessarily saying causation but he's definitely saying that there's a causation involved well but then I could argue that like the part inherently in a long-term relationship is increased responsibility you know you have bills with the person you may have some rent or some mortgage or something like that that's associated with somebody which means that you're inherently having some job that you have to return to on a regular basis so it's routinization over a long period of time and two the you know one of the core I guess tenets of the show is to try to get people to do things that they have passion doing in their life and the repetitive nature of existence is such that like passion is sort of drummed out over a longer period of time just a little bit chipped away over and over and over again and something new like being in a new related having a new thing that's the whole point it's just a way in which this declines you know just in the absence of something new sure yeah yeah so I decided into rutinization I agree with you yeah and I don't think like you know obviously for the way we're talking about this you know it wouldn't be like uh you know uh find a lady across the street and start like uh hooking up with her or you know divorce your divorce and leave your family no that's not what we're talking about it's more like okay this is a part of the reality of what happens right right and you have to try to figure out okay what do I do about this yeah yeah so not to be I mean it's you know part of what we're trying to do is we're trying to be honest right sure yeah yeah in an honest way yeah so it is a routinization thing I think Esther perel that we'll get to she really talks a lot about what you're talking about that ends up being rutinized and maybe one of the ways you could see that this could get better is to unrootinize things yeah yeah yeah but it is like a problem I think in the Christopher Ryan's like now this is the speculative part for sure is something like when you have two people he goes back to the kind of like biological roots or something with the idea that when you have two people together for a long period of time like that the body starts kind of thinking about that person more like a sibling or something like it stops thinking about them as a reproductive partner and starts like transitioning and there's some speculation in the book like that's what stops people from you know like incest and things you know the the the desire for that person isn't there you know in a non-familial relative or something yeah like it starts a transition to the fact it starts to create feelings that are much more like sibling-like or something like that some of these newer teachers on um masculinity talk about this one guy that I've only listened to a little bit by him his name is David data I think he wrote oh yeah I think I've heard of him yeah yeah and so one of the things he talks about is polarity you know the importance in maintaining polarity between masculine and males and females or people in a partnership will just call it that you know regardless yeah Pharrell has a feeling about that too but yeah go ahead yeah yeah and so I I definitely understand that and then if I'm thinking about it even more from like a yogic perspective um if if people are you know because like traditionally we were before we started recording we were talking about Kama Sutra and in the practice of Kama Sutra or sexual Tantra if we will you know the people sleep in separate rooms actually and then they come together usually around the full moon or the new moon and they totally are engaged in like you know sex sex-athon for those few days and then go back to their respective things and one of the things at least you know my teacher Andre mentioned to us he's like sleeping together is a prolongation of sex it's an intermingling of your auras and so that you're having this kind of like togetherness even if you're not quote unquote together like you know we have our auras that are around our bodies sort of electromagnetic field for those who don't believe in a quote unquote Aura right but that when that is not re-established the magnetism because we are electromagnetic beings the the magnetism between you and the other being never really gets recharged it's always sort of there you know like it's always sort of intertwined constantly and then when you entertain intertwine your lives and you bring in routinization and then traffic and all the other stuff it's totally logical at least in my mind that the lack of polarity the lack of magnetization would be you know I guess an um an answer to all of these it's kind of like you get like a constant kind of low-grade charge but you don't get the surges of charge that you get you know when you experience the person the new or something like yes yeah I met uh this lady within this poly world we become friends you know been out to dinner or something you know and uh she doesn't live with her partner they never have they live in the same neighborhood and she was sort of talking about that idea you know she has and I don't know if she's really even Polly or not I don't know so I don't know however she identifies for herself but whatever so she lives kind of in this separate place she lives in kind of like a communal living thing in Chicago which is kind of interesting she's kind of an outside the box person I always like people who are a little bit different so she sort of lives in this kind of like Urban commune setting where she has one space and they sort of share other spaces together and I thought that's interesting you know um and she's done some other interesting things with her life you know like uh backpacking around the world and stuff I like people who do interesting things anyway so we were talking about this whole thing and she was just saying yeah we don't live together and I think a little bit is that you know and then she was talking about you know the excitement of seeing you know her partner you know because they're not around each other all the time yeah so there is an excitement and she was kind of describing to me there's a build up with that and they in that sense they kind of solved it in a very like bigger way even of just like even living separate which you know most people aren't going to do that but no it does have that thing to it you know you kind of change the routinization and you change that kind of like the energetic Dynamics and like the chi sense The Prana sense yeah between two people you know so that's something worthwhile thinking about esperel talks about this kind of stuff too but to me I think it was just important just like yeah there's a there's a biological reality of this too you know and really what you're talking about is losing like potentially young yeah and when you look at like all the issues that you hear around like Men's Health now or all around these issues of like the testosterone and sexuality problems right that could be related back to these followings of these testosterone levels and it's kind of framed as if it's just like a biological thing but you know in a way an inevitability of biology or something right yeah yeah offer a medical solution but this is much more like I go back from a psych background this is behaviorism this is how you know like psychologically psychology behaviors of how Behavior affects the biology of the body right and you know you put people in certain situations and the internal biology within that person will change so it's just something to be aware of you know and you know if we go to our Chinese medical part it might be just like okay let's give you there's a Chinese herb called horny goat weed that's right let's try to just boost up the Yang of the body which is probably going to be boosting the testosterone you know you give Chinese herbs and these ornamental levels change so it's just the awareness of those kinds of things that you might actually have to do this because as a consequence of this particular Behavior or pattern this is just one of the things that tends to happen but it's going to have an impact on your whole body not just you know how are you going to feel in your libido something it's going to affect your weight it's going to affect you know Urology and it's going to affect all kinds of stuff in the body because it's just you know it has a bigger impact Beyond just the sexuality part of it right right so I think from the medical point of view when I heard that I was like oh that's interesting you know like how many people do you think you diagnose Daniel in your thing where you're going well people are putting on weight and it's not just the digestive system working it's this underlying young of the body it's declining right and people are putting on water weight that's the way I felt about weight gain did you feel the same way about this lots of times yeah and people will you know they'll talk about it from like um being inundated with stress right and so they'll talk about it from a western perspective generally like an increase in cortisol right so this stress hormone then causes the body to kind of slow down its fluid metabolism its caloric metabolism and in this way I think even though cortisol is like a we call like a young hormone meaning it helps to wake you up in the morning it does its thing eventually like it becomes detrimental to the system and so it has these sort of negative effects on the body that look like a deficiency of one's fire an efficiency of young and if you're trying to cook over time it almost makes more Yin that's the weird part about it right right that's what I was gonna say over time if you're trying to put it more again if you're trying to cook a pot of stew and you don't have enough fire it just ends up being cold and sitting there and in our bodies being cold and sitting there looks like we just grow uh horizontally you know we're not definitely not growing vertically anymore you know yeah we hear a vertical Max mostly and it's there's only one place to go only one place to go out yeah so anyways for me I just I wanted to share it because it's like a very it's a very biological reality thing here right so if you're thinking about this in your own life you know you start thinking okay well it's partially my psychology and it's partially you know however gonna handle my emotions and how I'm going to have my sexuality and what they want to do to make my partnership work and then it's also this thing of like it's having a biological impact too that I think you just have to be aware of but the word the word that you said that's important is that how am I going to make my partnership work and that word should probably be underlined because it's work actually and I think that's part of the issue is that like people don't actually work they don't often work on themselves but then even in the case of not working on yourselves they don't work on the relationship you know it's just sort of like well we fell in love and now we're in this thing and here we go like that's you know and only you you from my experience and I could be totally wrong people usually only find times to work on things is when they're bad which is like the worst time to work on a [...] because you don't have the actual skills to do it because you haven't been working on it when they were good well it's kind of like you already waiting for this the structure to be collapsing and then you start doing something about it right right right yeah you could have just driven some Nails in and done some stuff earlier but now the whole side of the house is fine that's right how are you gonna do yeah exactly you don't know how to hang drywall and that's what you need to do right now you know yeah yeah otherwise that while the whole wall is coming down that's right yeah um but anyways I mean I don't want to like uh you know again I'm coming to this with a realistic attitude and like part of it's clinical you know and I don't want to like softball the implications of this it's not a it's not it's a it's a real thing with real impacts so something we should be aware of right um the only thing I had in like in this little section for me was you know about the emotional aspect of this then right so if right is talking about sexuality a lot but there's a lot of like sort of emotional repression and people looking out to get kind of emotional contact for people too so there's an emotional longing aspect of this and uh you know these things are really taboo culture wise and it's like I did talk about this with our resident Anthropologist our Anthropologist on retainer yes very cheap retainer uh um just the whole idea of like you know I'd like to have monsters talk about what why are things taboo but obviously there's you know taboo about the sexuality aspect because it's a mononormative culture right but you know even the emotional part is very difficult and there's probably emotional needs that people are gonna have to be a lot of times repressing too and when you talk with people honestly about it obviously that's happening so um we're going to Advocate to the idea that you have to go back with a I guess a refreshed attitude of like engagement right but it's not like this isn't a thing and I think even in the culture I I don't know how this is for our International listenership but in America they have the concept of emotional infidelity too where people can be emotionally Unfaithful by the idea that they have too much of an emotional connection with someone that's threatening to their partner or something like that yeah that's because uh this culture was founded by puritanicals and uh anything against the way is Naughty and has to be flogged you know it's interesting like talking with Ryan about because he went to the same place well he thought for a second he was like well it's a pure technical culture you know and so I don't know maybe we'll get some email from someone who listens to this thing from Copenhagen or something and they'll say something different I don't know yes if you're from Copenhagen I think we have a good listenership in Germany so but wherever anyway it doesn't matter you can email us at gin and Tantra gmail.com or leave a comment in a YouTube video whatever we want to know I'm actually legit curious to see but the American culture this is like potentially a really serious taboo and that led to a conversation with Ryan about like taboo a little bit which I'd like to do with him coming on we talked for a long time about it and he was like well you know when you have a taboo it implies something dangerous you know like the culture doesn't like it because it's threatening so when you actually have because you know I put already put the word taboo in the notes and then he and I were talking and we started talking about taboo and it was like oh yeah yeah for some reason this is really threatening and it's threatening usually Beyond like the individual level it's threatening on some level that's more transcended it's culturally threatening for some reason like it's really important for some reason culturally that you know things be a certain way we're talking about relationships it could be other things too yeah culture has an idea of how things are supposed to be and when things are threatening in taboo there's something that's being challenged you know so I guess we'll speculate more on this on as these relationships go forward but I thought you know that's an interesting kind of a point and I did ask him you know what do you think about this idea like things in a culture are connected you know the way the relationships are are tied into the way the work award goes into the economic World goes which probably ties into the way the political world goes it's not like these things are isolated or something and he said a really interesting thing he said yeah when you're going from the anthropological perspective you kind of go in with the attitude that no matter what part you look at the culture it's holographic you're kind of seeing the whole thing you know so no matter what part you're targeting you're probably getting some information about everything by looking at that one part so anyways so for some reason these things are taboo so I don't know what do you think about the emotional infidelity whole concept um emotional instrumentality you know listen I think it would be naive to think that people don't have desires outside of their primary relationship partnership right and that doesn't matter what that looks like you know I'm assuming it's with a human if you're in love with a teddy bear like whatever you know or your car that's different but let's just say it's with the human from arguments real materialistic culture you're in love with your car you're in love with your right your uh big screen TV Nursery so let's talk about human relationships it's interesting because you bring it up but like how many dudes do you know who are like gonna buy a car because they want to buy some [...] fancy ass car supplementing something they want this fancy ass car right I mean it's real I mean it is a throwaway line that's still real it's very real and so like we had this I had a conversation with somebody um and their spouse ended up um being unfaithful and had this relationship and a long story short like he was hoping that the other person who the spouse had the relationship with would eventually apologize to him for sort of breaking his family apart and while on one hand I could totally understand that that you want you know and the person fortunately or unfortunately is still in the life of the of the former spouse and of the child so um you know it is what it is right person just kind of like uh Brad Pitt Angelina Jolie left yeah yeah yeah exactly Jennifer Aniston is that her name there you go there you go so we were kind of like and you know he has definitely some feelings around it which he's certainly entitled to his feelings of wanting some retribution Justice whatever okay fine well he was sharing this you know in a group with a group of us and everybody's response was why well who who owes who owes you anything and and my point was that I said you don't know what your former partner was sharing with him the story that she was telling him and because of that you don't know what he his perception of your situation was and there was a guy there who was a smart guy a psychiatrist said she would have replaced that with another person with alcohol with Pharmaceuticals or with work or with things but something would have filled that Gap and so when we're talking about these things I think all of those things are absolutely part of the society and part in parcel why commercialization um and Wholesale in general of everything is so popular because it is filling the void of all the things that we are unwilling to look at and therefore we take our attention outwards and fill it with stuff that we could purchase because it's a hell of a lot easier and certainly a lot more rewarding to buy something that's not going to talk back to you you know so I think going back to your question about you're muted though Eric it's also culturally approved and culturally approved it's a culturally approved way of filling in gaps it's essentially a culture if you get to like the like the the gist of what Freud is trying to say which was the start of the conversation is this is a this is a culturally okay way of sublimating correct and to sublimate into material objects yes right and the culture is probably designed to have you do that yeah on some level right that's the structure of the culture and to tell your fun your unrealized or unfulfilled aspects of who you are and sublimate them out into material objects and so then to your question about the emotional infidelity I mean what how what where is the line is the line regular texting is the line sharing your life is the line sharing difficulties is the line sharing positives is the line sharing work is the line sharing poetry I mean where where is the line right I should say that for myself like we'll talk about our own attitude towards these things in a separate episode we weren't going to do it here we just wanted to talk about stuff but I don't believe in this thing yeah no I I there's a thing called emotional infidelity but the culture believes in it for sure the culture believes it for sure yeah and and I don't why do you think that is though why is that like what's the taboo there because at some point people believe that it's going to leave to lead to something physical or something it's a gateway drug or something that's the reason why they're like oh God oh God no no you can't you know like it's it's you know and look on some level if you're you know if you based on your level of responsibility and the commitments that you've made to people yeah you're you're breaking that commitment for so for sure and that if it's not consciously accepted by both parties then it's unfair we're playing two different games now and we cannot play two different games because that's not what we signed up for if you signed up for that then by all means do your thing and so I think this idea we'll get to our feelings about this later on like most people don't know what the [...] they're signing up for at all time no so I we'll continue on the episodes I I promised myself that I'm Gonna Save my personal impressions for later on at the road I have to say honest about this I don't think people go into these things with any sense of what the [...] they're doing at all not to be amazed you know for the most part I mean I have I'm fortunate to have a lot of very close friends and what you know what's the difference what's emotional intimacy with my male friend versus emotional intimacy with my female friend I mean what what is what does that even look like you know so like you can have a friend who's a dude and he could tell you about his tough days and his you know hard times with his wife and crying your shoulder but if a woman was to do that well someone would say oh Eric how dare you does your your wife approve of this thing well why is it why is it bad when it's a woman but acceptable when it's a man yeah yeah yeah well you're right because there's a threat of some other level of like abundance yeah yeah all right so well yeah obviously and it's funny because Freud wrote books where he just had like taboo and the title of the book you know that's Taboo it's that Voodoo it's double taboo not only you like now you're even throwing it in our face Freud yeah leave us alone yeah come on like you know be a little bit more psychologically crafty so all right so anyways that's just some of the stuff that we wanted to do there just with the idea there's going to have to be a certain amount of repression that's going to have a certain amount of consequence a lot of Americans are really lonely so you know there's a lot of loneliness and people probably not only repressing sexual needs and romantic needs but just emotionally it's just in general it's yeah it's the and then that leads to somatitization and damage to the body and kind of damage to the spirit it's a lack of connection you know it's a lack of connection to love it's a lack of connection to Source it's a lack of connection to Healing because if you know love heals everything and you don't have it then you are going to be in a place of needing it all the time and those wounds are going to Fester without a doubt that's a whole like it's the whole repression problem it doesn't go away no right so so what's the conclusion as we kind of wrap it in you know to like okay so if we accept the idea that there's going to be a certain amount of repression and like talk to different people about this and they're like yeah okay you know if you that's okay right if you value the relationship and you value the person uh and I definitely talk to people you know as I was doing my little my little homework on this my little sort of individual clinical research project on it you talk to people like yeah well you know you can get honest answers from people they're like yeah okay I know I have feelings for other people probably I have feelings for other you know uh uh you know there's difficulties in this but you know I value this relationship I value this person this is what this person needs yeah who you are and so holy respect that right you know that's the decision that you make so the only thing I guess for our thing would be to be aware of this right you have to be aware that this is a thing and there's probably like part of what Freud is saying is going to have to be the kind of a sublimation aspect yeah where you have to take some of this energy recognizing yourself don't just repress it repress it repress it that's kind of the whole the things that are unconscious will come back to bite you you don't want that right you don't want the unconscious things stewing because they don't go away from what you were saying Daniel they just stew and stew and stew right and they probably get bigger and bigger as they stew so you have to come up with some kind of outlet for this and in general it's kind of like the idea is in this psychological framework this way of understanding things sublimation that you go through and you direct these energies someplace else so you come up with you know other emotional Outlets you come up with other ways of directing your you know maybe aspects of your sexual feelings someplace else or something you just figure out how to do that so it doesn't kind of like stew inside of you and I think a lot of this in in this part of the world and we're going to do something where we talk about Carl Jung and he's probably even stronger on this but I think the idea is still there that some of this might be in things that are creativity some of this might be things that you put into your spiritual and meditative life some of this might be things that you put in other places you don't let the energy just stew inside of you you recognize it for what it is and you come up with other ways of directing it in ways that are positive and probably a lot of that has to do with creativity so you know keep a journal and write we'd be like Carl Jung's advice or you know throw it in some art and you know paint some pictures even if you're not a painter [...] it paint some pictures you know or even if you're not a writer write some [...] down or even if you're not thinking of yourself in that way come up with outlets for these things because it'll help you take up these emotions and direct them into more healthy ways it's funny you have like a kind of a personal anecdote with this with my dad I don't know everything that was going on in my dad when I was a teenager there was a lot you know obviously get kind of a troubled background tales for another time and um uh and he had a difficult relationship with my mom so okay um but I saw that he was like having all of this for my even my teenage eyes I can see okay this dude has issues he needs some Outlet I just remember thinking he needs an outlet and I can remember I remember there were old black and white pictures of him even from back when he was in the Army back in the day you know he was like down at Fort Bragg or something like that you know part of like the reserves or whatever he went off to do his training as all the fellows were doing within his age range or something and uh yeah Daniel's doing the March right so there were pictures of him down there and uh but there were things where he was like he was holding his thumb out with a paintbrush and stuff like you could tell he was painting and there were these old photos he looked really happy in the photos you know it was him with a paintbrush and a canvas you know in a palette and you know he just looked happy in a way where I was like I don't I don't think I've seen my dad maybe he's happy like that now I don't ever see it so I was like I went out and I had uh one of my best friends was really a good artist you know we were teenagers but he was good you know and I thought okay he'll be my advice person on this and I went out for Christmas and I didn't have you know you're you're a teenage kid you have that much money but I actually dropped a decent sum of money on this so I went out and I bought him uh you know like uh canvases I bought him paints I bought him a palette I bought him you know uh you know the kind of things that hold the canvases let me forget the name for those things but anyways we bought easels I bought them all this stuff and he opened it up on Christmas and he you know my dad being my dad he looked and I was like what the [...] is this what am I supposed to do with this [...] no interest But as time went on he just started to do it and um and he you come back down the weekend he'd be there and he had these canvases up and if they were pretty rough at first you know I remember when he first started doing stuff that looked halfway decent he was like oh this actually looks like something he hung out on the wall it was like he liked to paint things from nature will inner Taoist in him so he was paying the water hitting the rocks or he'd love he loved trees he'd be painting the trees out in the fields and stuff he started going out like taking pictures of trees that he loved you know and it became like a big thing in his life and it went on for like years and years like for the rest of his life he just painted away and it was his outlet for his emotions whatever those combinations were whatever that was inside which I don't even know if I fully saw the full extent of what it was I'm sure some of it had to do with my mom some of it had to do with things at work whatever it was in him you know that was all of this no other emotional outlet for him he just did this thing and the next thing that he was doing uh art shows he was selling his paintings as he got better and better he'd got into a community of artists and he had people to talk about his painting with and so his sense of community expanded and um so anyways it was a bizarre kind of inspiration for me I was like maybe 16 years old or something I was like this dude needs an outlet you know he just needs an outlet and it's funny because later on when they read Carl Jung Carlton was like yeah people need Outlets they need ways of doing this and um my dad passed away in 2007 and we had you know some kind of you had those close conversations you know when someone's facing their own mortality and uh and he did bring this up again and he said yeah there were times where he said you know for me as his son I saw things that were true about him or things that he needed that other people didn't see that he said he was very thankful about that and he was really talking about probably this part of his life that I recognize like okay this guy's all torn up inside in his own emotions right and his own repressions he needs some outlet for this and I just saw that you know yeah and it was interesting thing because I talked to my mom about not exactly just about this though we do talk about this part of his life and we she she and I have talked about even him finding this artistic part of himself and this was like the most corporate [...] dude in the world that's the reason I mean it's been good to share the story it's hard to have someone more corporate than my dad but that was in the midst of like the most corporate part of America and he wasn't thinking of himself as an artist no you know whatever that part of his personality was that was something that he left far behind but then he rediscovered so you know it doesn't have to be something that you even think you might not even know you have that part of you or you might not even know you still have that part of you for something from your past but as I was talking with my mom she said this really interesting thing she said you know you need to be able to find these parts of yourself inside because you need to be able to cope with your life and she said something like that and I thought that's very astute Mommy 83 year old mommy coming through Mommy she came through with it and I was like yeah there's right about that she used the word cope and I was like yeah that's sublimation yeah that's how you learn how to cope with these parts of the reality of life right you know so anyways it's a tale I wanted to share about sublimation I think in a deep way I know how you feel about this with patients and things but you know people don't always know they have these parts of themselves no but that's what we didn't know but again his immediate reaction was what the what the hell is this all right giving me this and I dropped a lot of money on it and his uh his response was less than enthusiastic but in the end huge part of his life and yeah we have like he painted like hundreds and hundreds of canvases it was just became like a thing where he would just be there just like painting away put the easel up on the weekend it might spend a whole Saturday just churning out canvases and it was just waiting you know sublimate essentially so anyways we got something more about supplement sublimation I wanted to share that story no I wasn't I'm inspired though um my brother who never listens to this so I could say it because I know he's not going to hear it much sounds like sounds like you're dead in a certain way you know like a very corporate very kind of just family focused but got stuff inside you know yeah for sure and when we were younger he never had any training but he was a very good artist like he'd sketch people's faces no training he could just do it you know and I'm his birthday is coming up and I am uh looking right now I'm gonna buy him a sketch maybe that'll help him and then uh I won't have to Ram his head in the ground trying to open his mind up a little bit tough love or artistic love yeah uh yeah yes I think it's like a funny thing I think again we'll do stuff on Jung because we're going to talk about Jung's attitude towards relationships too yeah but um you know basically you know he did say like you have to people have to find these creative parts of themselves so they know how to sublimate so they can deal with their emotions yeah it helps you cope with your life okay the other part was the part that I think you just brought up Daniel just in your spontaneous way of like I I put it as optimization you know what do you do to optimize things there's certain challenges and no matter we're going to talk about different ways of like relationship structures no matter what there's going to be challenges right there's going to be challenges in life for sure yeah um so the person I wanted to reference here was like Esther perel is a real famous kind of relationship psychologist and um probably known to some of the audience maybe I know if you're familiar with her at all Daniel no okay she's like pretty well-known person and she has this book called mating captivity um by the way [Laughter] they'll repressing well that's another way to express yourself right get a little adventurous well she probably she would say she'd probably agree with you right uh so but she basically talks about the idea of like what are the challenges of being in long-term relationships like this yeah and how do you keep how do you keep the things kind of vibrant and alive and she says yeah you're going to have to put in Korea of work in that way so no matter what you have to show some creativity whether it's your whether it's in your partner or with yourself or maybe both right but she raises a lot of the same points I think that we were kind of hitting on earlier in this book so if this is something that you're curious about you know we're talking about the subject matter you want to read something a little bit more meaning in captivity and I guess I you know I had I had I listened to books more than I have time to read them I did listen to the whole thing from like a clinical point of view because I'm interested in clinical stuff we're clinicians um but I you know I did I was going to listen to it part of it again and I just didn't have the time to do it but I can kind of summarize some of the major points with this where she was just saying that the structure itself is very static right and so if you look at it in terms of like Chinese thought Taoist thought it's very Yin it's very static and it gets very Yin in its stability and what you were using like routinization or something Daniel right become like a very static thing so you need to come up with ways to add more young and more dynamism yeah it's interesting problem of life because people need stability they need nourishment they need the qualities that are Yin sure right like you need those things it's not like those things don't have value they do but on the other hand you know things can get very very Yin they can be very very static talking with our resident Anthropologist right Davenport he was talking about this aspect too you know that there's like a kind of a a a static problem there's a lack of dynamism problem however you want to phrase it exactly sure so he was just talking about I think just looking at just okay so what is what does this mean culturally like what are the ups and downs of this cultural framework and it's very Yin it's very static and it's static over time you know and uh but that can be too much of a thing that's necessary you need nourishment you need stability but it can be too much of that and it was kind of interesting because it led to this kind of thing where he was talking about static-ness and it led to kind of a conversation about needs when you have a partner and they're addressing their needs you don't always want them to change because if they change they might not meet your needs in the same way and that was an interesting twist in the conversation I wasn't expecting to get to but as he and I were talking I went yeah that is an interesting question because there is a needs thing mm-hmm and then there's almost uh maybe a bit of a pressure to keep the same version of that person right because that's the person that meets their partner's needs you know I wasn't expecting to go that place but I thought that was pretty interesting you know it sounds like a a kind of a negative form of unconscious attachment you know in a way of keeping somebody in the same place so that they can serve you you know and maybe again it's not conscious but I don't think it's necessarily like I don't even know if necessarily meant to be a dark thing I think just more like people have needs and they get these relationships based on the needs are met right and there's a fear if that person changes then they won't meet the needs in the same way but you obviously are putting out the dark side of it right if it's really dark then you're trying to stifle the other person potentially right yeah it might not even be conscious though yeah yeah I think that's true you know as I'm saying like it might not be coming from a place of oh I'm gonna put my thumb on this person you know yeah yeah I think that's true but like that's why people are resistant to change because it might not be what they had anticipated or what they expected well we were talking about like in a way I think so I think he was saying it from the point of view of like everything has to change and grow and develop think I think we're going to stay the same so the expectation that this person is going to stay the same person isn't very realistic no you know and I was like okay that's realistic what what he was saying um and then I also was thinking well you know there's also that needs problem you know part of what brings people together is it makes them commit in these long-term ways I think well this person's gonna be a person who's going to meet these needs in me but that my person might change those needs might not be met anymore and that's probably scary and intimidating for people whether that's conscious or unconscious do you agree with that what I'm saying there Danielle yeah I hadn't thought about it that way but I thought well that's interesting like it kind of grew naturally out of the conversation that's okay that's an interesting point you know I wasn't thinking about it exactly in those words it's kind of something you know but I had never said it out loud exactly sure you and I've had conversations about um you know even what it's like to go through like psychospiritual changes and that's challenging for partners sometimes you know yes but they're like this person's changing you know it's a little scary right it is because you develop a you know a Vibe together and the other person can be fearful that that that that change might not just meet their needs but then they might they might not meet your needs you know the other way around you know what I'm saying and then that could lead to the dissolution of the Partnership if you look at it one way or you know if you look at it in a different way you know it's like well it's time to level up like both people have to like grow and and change in order to be able to be supportive one another going forward it takes dynamism from both sides yeah yeah yeah it's a kind of funny thing like we you know like the first time I did one of my longer Zen Retreats and we probably talked about this before on the podcast I can't remember probably was a long time ago but uh they had warned me you're gonna see people in your life and you're gonna freak their [...] out and I didn't take it too seriously I was just kind of like okay I mean you're telling me this that seems like an exaggeration but they were like no it's really going to be a thing you have to be really aware of this so they were kind of like being alive emphasis on that idea like the minute you leave this Retreat and you see someone you know is especially if it's a significant other something important in your life just realize that you're going to be different to them and it's going to be scared of them and to be honest I didn't fully believe it but I held it in my mind okay there might be okay they're telling me this they're more experienced than me but did I really believe it no not really not ex not really inside of me and then I went out and I was being met by you know my partner of the time she was there in the car waiting for me as I was leaving the retreat supportive person um you know uh but I got in the car opened the door and I was remembering what they were saying so I think I just said something like hi baby and I just you know like said something I thought it was being really nice at least that was my conscious intention and she like almost developed Whiplash like whipping her head back and she kind of like almost hit her head on the the car door on the driver's side she was like you know like ricocheted back like who the [...] is this guy and I was like oh my God this is real what they're saying like just me getting in the car I look different to them you know and uh you know it's it's a strong thing so you know like people can adjust but it's probably more shocking than what you realize when you change sure I saw like old childhood friends too after all of my kind of I did Zen really seriously for a number of years like three years you know very serious that was like the main focus of my life and I saw people that I hadn't like childhood friends and they were like well you're just not the same person anymore I was like yeah it's just different so there it does it does create that weird psychospiritual problem too people have to learn how to grow with each other somehow you know all right so that was part of the writing conversation you got anything more on that one or no you know um I I did I was meditating before I came on the before we started recording which I didn't mention earlier but um I and I try not to hold on to things that why that occur while I'm in there you know despite Robert Thurman's contradicting advice you know yeah sometimes he's like hold on to those epiphanies let him go you know no one is like you know yeah and and what came to me was um I don't know if I could word it right because it's sort of like Loosely In My Memory but something along the lines of like uh you will not be the same person when you reach the Mountaintop or the person that you think you are now will not be the same person when you reach the top I mean it sort of has to be true right yeah yeah otherwise you'd already be there then you're not you're going to change some something else you know some core is going to be who you are but you're not going to be that same person it's going to have to change yeah in this case I think it's going to change anyways we're all going to change yeah inevitably but I think in this case you're trying to change in some ways that you think is very uh good you know it means you're not gonna be the same dude you were before the same lady you were before you're going to change right yeah same person you were before Where You Are okay so there was this whole question also in Esther perel of like what you were bringing up Daniel the counterproductive closeness you know she has that same recognition that you're talking about from your uh contract with his teacher Andre too that there's a need for space he was talking literally like the need for space like maybe don't sleep in the same bed you know but like you know there's a need for space in lots of other ways and people get so ameshed into the the um the concerns of life and the practicalities and the media and then just are all on top of one another all the time that you don't have that tension that builds yeah so that's very interesting she made that exact point too that there's a kind of a counterproductive element of closeness you know and she thought that's probably even true for like I want to know every single thing about you maybe you can't know every single thing about another person even you know uh so even in some ways of course emotional closeness is an aphrodisiac too but you know there's a way in which you know even you know the idea that you're gonna be constantly in other someone else's sort of emotional space or something you might need space you know to keep tension between people so I think that's that's an interesting and maybe slightly controversial point in her either what do you obviously you're saying that you had that advice from other people too and you think about that issue I thought that one was a little bit interesting I mean maybe counterintuitive you know you feel like the solution to it is to get closer but she was saying you know sometimes when you get closer you kind of lose the tension and the Mystery of the other person you need to keep some mystery and polarity there and so what do you think about that and now yeah let's let's kick it around and if we can let's you know because we probably got about seven or eight more minutes remaining um okay so I'll finish the rest of these things real quick too but yeah if you want we gotta do all of it real quick and you'll give like the summary of all of it I'll just summarize this throughout I was looking for a little bit more like solution you know because we're presenting these ideas and these are all solutions she's saying you have to go through and you go forth and create more dietism you have to create more space to create more polarity she said something really interesting about you know she's writing a lot of times for like more of a female audience so she talked about the idea of the loss of story so she made the point that like especially for uh women a lot of the sexuality romance and context stuff is there so women appreciate the context of the story of the relationship probably more so or something it's the point that she makes you know which is you know like kind of an obvious point but like one that was worthwhile saying and so she says a lot of women get bored in relationships much faster than men which might seem Connor and like intuitive or something or counter to The Stereotype but she's like no basically probably it's the women who get bored faster you know than men do and uh because there's this context element there's another sexology person named Emily nagowski who talks about this too talking about women's sexuality she has this book called come as you are it's a pun um uh but you know the whole book is on you know um sort of women's health and sexuality it's a good book and you know she talks about this element too that the research seems to show that there's a context element you know for how women feel about relationships and sexuality and uh if you lose that that story element if you lose the dynamism of the relationship going someplace so you have to come up with kind of a story for where the relationship is going to engage both Partners right and um true for everybody but probably really true for women which again it goes against myth and they make this point in the Christopher Ryan thing I was talking about earlier always talking about the testosterone part I think there's a kind of a myth in the culture that women are more designed for monogamy but that's not really true right you know like no one's especially designed for anything probably right yeah go through when you're going to be in the relationships that you get into in the way that they are um but the myth that women are intrinsically more wire for this no that's where I was like No And I've talked with other women about this too I want to have Anna grimon who's another person in the Chinese medical world but is specifically doing things for women in terms of women's health sexuality and so on and she's like yeah you know this is something you have to acknowledge that uh it's not obvious that anyone's wired for anything right but so the whole idea of creating kind of like more story make sure that you keep re-engaging the relationship and keep rewriting the story you know all those British novels and when people get married the story just ends you know because all the drama is before that right Pride and Prejudice and all those rom-coms everything it just ends when the couple gets together but you know the story has to keep writing itself which means you have to keep coming up for the idea of like what is this thing between us and let's keep telling a tale of like what it is that's one of her points there too right keep Reinventing what you think the story is and then people will be more engaged moving forward and it's kind of being creative again to create a story for who you are sure you know yeah what do you think I mean I typically like probably three levels of solution you need creativity well you were saying you need to work so you need to work but it's also working in very particular ways is her advice right to create dynamism make sure that the things don't get too Yin even though you need a certain amount of nourishment and stability there's danger of too much in so make sure you stick dynamism in there if there's too much of this counterproductive closeness you probably have to stop that and you have to keep Reinventing what you think the relationship is to keep the keep the thing Dynamic and moving right there has to be a story right those rom-coms those old Jane Austen novels they have a story of the couple coming together right but the story has to continue on you need something to keep that going and her point is especially for women they really need to feel that there's some dynamism of the story going forward otherwise it's they'll lose interest essentially right now I think that the the question I have it's in my mind because I'm thinking of I'm thinking of somebody in when I post this episode I'm going to send it to them which I don't normally do but I will and I think that the question that is worth talking about for the next five minutes or so is how do you How would how would you imagine that we can approach or someone can approach their partner with these things you know with this idea and and you know try and get buy-in without making the other person feel bad you know or try and come at it from a place of like you know moving forward as opposed to rebuilding a bridge you know we talked earlier about how like people will do work in their relationship when it's like at the bottom but this kind of stuff is not bottom work actually no this is ongoing this is this is the this is the way that you keep maintenance going right yeah this is the work this is the daily routine right yeah yeah well I mean we'll talk about our own life and our own problems and wherever we want to at some point these are kind of not my problems exactly because I'm not in exactly this I mean I think it's something where if you're individually proactive on this maybe you don't even have to get buy-in from a partner that's what I was gonna say if you start doing stuff it'll probably just change because you'll start be putting different energy in right there's another one and I'll talk about maybe more up the road but they bring up this thing they call like the heart model which is a way of thinking about you know how you try to optimize relationship stuff I didn't include it in these notes I thought it was something we'd get to later on but you want to be here so you want to be present for the other person but not in a way that's counterproductive maybe not just in the way like we're making plans we're doing this you have to be there for the person in the way where it's not just the routine of the day or something that's the routinization problem you're talking about right Daniel you get to have moments when you're there for the person where you're just kind of there for them not there for them while you're solving some other life problem or something like what we're going to do about you know the fact that the garage needs to be re-shingled whatever it is you know like to be there for them in another way you have to like Express enthusiastic engagement with them you know you have to try to attune to their emotional state like there's advice you can give about this and probably if you just start working on it from your own side right yeah so maybe you don't have to do that does that make sense to you no that's that's what that's kind of my experience if you just initiate from your own side probably you'll have an impact that's what I was going to say right yeah there's one person in particular who who you know I'm going to send this to and this is who I'm I'm literally viewing him in my mind thinking of his relationship and some of these conversations that him and I him and I have had as of late on this topic and how to how to do this uh which is why I wanted to have this part so that we can yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and I know high note synchronistically on a high note there you go right yes yeah yeah so I think that yeah my own sense of this is and you know if the person doesn't respond they don't respond okay yeah I mean you know but you did your due diligence and so I think these are things that you could just decide on your own sure you know you still have to be there for the person and the Practical problems that people need you know but the idea is what like you kind of go and you realize okay so if we're smothering each other let me figure out ways of creating space where we can get some more of this Dynamic tension in our relationship if you want to follow the extra parole advice sure or you know maybe start thinking okay who who who are we now and what's the next part of this story between us and I can just start infusing that into the relationship and that probably will affect people yeah let's start to feel like oh yeah we do have a story together right yeah what's the roomy thing like write your own myth or something but now you're writing a myth that you share with another person yeah no I think that's right yeah I mean yeah okay yeah sorry in my notes I have it uh co-creating a continuous story or co-creating yeah you know but it's continuous it's not reflective it's actually it's it's proactive not reactive yeah so you can see you can predict project into the future and see where things are going yes you know what the funny other thing that came up with this relationship stuff for me too and I don't think Esther perel uses this language to be honest I think a lot of people more in the poly world use this language but they say like everyone has their own love language love language yeah no and so I'm not sure all kinds of people use it I think I just heard it there being dropped more yeah yeah so maybe that's something to figure out too for that person because that will be part of what will make the story meaningful for them yeah it's also kind of maybe how you give the kind of closeness that the person needs so their needs feel like they're met and taken care of right so then you can move on to other things even right like if you have someone who has a real practical love language they might be most affected by the fact that you like you know clean up the house or something you know and that might be the thing that really means a lot to them you know and then they'll be happy with you and then there's space you know for them to go forward because they're not feeling like the thing that they needed to be met wasn't met or something correct you know what I mean or maybe someone else needs to have like uh you know a little gift or something or maybe you just drop them a text every morning saying you love them in some interesting way or you know if you start incorporating these tiny things in your life you know maybe people will respond maybe they won't but you can do that from your own side you don't even have to wait for the other person and then you see you know how they respond right you know what Eric I think uh next week or whenever we start this whenever we end up doing the next episode um I I'll go over the I had like a like a 90-minute lecture about how to do how to practice Kama Sutra from Andre when I met with him in February that goes oh yeah yeah all this stuff so we maybe could start with this um because it's fun but um anyways any last party shots because we have to uh yeah we gotta call it right you gotta get out of here yeah it's okay so I think we did this we did this Justice for the things that we needed to talk about right yeah I didn't do the whole Hearts thing and you got the Kama Sutra stuff to talk about so we'll see what that fits in and we'll just drop it in where it fits right Drop It Like It's Hot it is hot Grandma Sue trap all right so okay cool yeah we'll figure out a step up thanks Daniel sounds good to me well uh as always always Eric thank you so much for you know coming hanging on chatting doing the thing uh three years strong three years long as I like to say you know we don't measure we don't measure in in uh distance we measure in time um anyways and I want to say thank you to our audience for for listening and for sharing hint hint hint if you uh like the work that we're doing you know please feel free to like comment subscribe leave a review on Apple reviews or on the YouTube uh share it to people who you think might like it share it with people who you think might hate it because that ultimately is even more fun for us turning naysayers into uh activists right yes yes yes but feel free to leave us at inversion feel free to leave us an email at gin and Tantra gmail.com or like I said uh comment on the YouTube or on Instagram at Jin and Tantra and for Eric this is Daniel we'll catch you guys in the next one peace