Let’s Talk Love Podcast Season 2 Episode #1 with John Gray | Transcript

22.09.08

This transcript is from the Let’s Talk Love Podcast, available in our Podcast Feed.

Robin Ducharme | Today we're sharing a very insightful conversation with world-renowned author, speaker, and relationship expert, Dr. John Gray. We talk about his new book Beyond Mars and Venus, which delves into the science of male and female hormones, how biologically, we relate differently, and how stress affects us in different ways. John gives practical tools for communicating more effectively. We talk about loving again after loss and heartbreak. John is always a pleasure to talk to, and I hope you enjoy it too. Welcome to the Let's Talk Love podcast, where we flip the script on outdated narratives and cliches about love and relationships. I'm your host, Robin Ducharme, founder of Real Love Ready. This podcast is for anyone who wants to be better at love, regardless of relationship status. We'll talk about the intimate connections in our lives and the challenges and complexities inherent in those partnerships. Through our no holds barred interviews with global experts we will gain insight about ourselves and learn new skills to improve our relationships. Because when we learn to love better, we make the world a better place. Are you ready for open and honest conversations about love? Let's get started.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to this very special episode of Let's Talk Love. I am so excited to welcome our guest today, John Gray. And I know that your name is synonymous in people's households with your very, very famous book that I grew up hearing my mom and then my stepmom talking about and this is such an incredible honor John to have you. Thank you for joining, thank you for joining us.

John Gray | [laughs] Thank you so much.

Robin Ducharme | For those that don't know you, which I don't think there is anybody listening that doesn't, I will introduce you, you are the author of one of the most well-known trusted relationship books of all time, selling over 15 million copies, and read by over 100 million people worldwide. I love that that's a great number. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, and you've helped men and women better understand and respect their differences in both personal and professional relationships. And you really have pioneered this approach that combines specific communication techniques with healthy nutritional choices that create the brain and body chemistry, for lasting health, happiness, and romance. So today, we're gonna dive into all the science behind it too, which, that's your newest book, I learned so much about our hormones and how they play such an integral part of the stress we have in our lives, and up and down and also how we relate. So this was really good work. John, thank you for being with us.

John Gray | I'm happy to be with you. And I'm really happy to be talking with you because you read the book, not everybody's read. Most people have read men are from Mars, Women are from Venus it gets it's been around for quite a while. But beyond Mars and Venus is the book you're referring to about all the science and the hormones. It's just so helpful.

Robin | Well, the first question I did want to ask you is more of a personal question. And well, I mean, this is all quite personal because I know you're very open in your book about sharing your stories about Bonnie your wife and you openly talk about just your life in general, which I think is beautiful. So what in your life right now is giving you the greatest joy? And what is one of your challenges that you're facing right now?

John | Okay, well challenges my wife died four years ago of cancer. And that was, it took a year to watch her die taking care of her. And it was a deep, deep love affair, but it was done termite dramatic when she passed. Yeah. I've been about two years healing and I became a better person. You know, I think that when people go through the grieving process in a deep, deep love affair of 34 years we met 40 years ago. It was heart wrenching, a broken heart, wanting to die the going through all of that coming through it. Having helped me come through as I went back automatically, you know, you have the demons come out at night when you're sleeping. Like if only I'd said this, if only you had done that. You kind of feel like if I had been a better husband, even though she said I was A plus. Maybe she wouldn't have died. It's just an irrational thought. But it comes up in the night, used to. And so I would reflect on every problem every challenge we ever had, and see how I could have been a better husband and committed myself to being that. So now what's really wonderful in my life is I feel really great. I feel more loving than I've ever been in my life and my life has always been about love. And I have a new girlfriend. And the challenge with that is she's I've been teaching in China for 10 years. So she's one of the, she also teaches relationships in China.

Robin | Wow!

John | She's quite famous there. And we, she's my girlfriend now and but she lives in China and comes here and I go there. So, that's fun.

Robin | Yeah. Wow. But it's also a challenge, long-distance relationships are not easy.

John | Yeah, they're not easy. And yet I think they free us to make sure that we don't get too dependent on our partners for everything. And that's kind of a challenge for everybody. You know, one of my basic messages is that when you have this deep love, you can get so dependent on your partner feel great that we neglect all the other aspects of our life. And then the next thing in response to your question was yesterday, I got a new dog. So I'm taking care of a baby dog.

Robin | That's wonderful. We have a dog too and he just gives so much energy to our house and so much love. It's just the best. Well, that's wonderful. So you wrote Men are from Venus, Women Are From Mars in 1992.

John No that's Men Are From Mars.

Robin | Oh, I'm sorry, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. I got the planets mixed up [laughs]. 1992. And most recently, the updated version is Beyond Mars and Venus. And you say the world has changed drastically in the past 25 years with significant implications for our relationships. So I have two questions around this. What was the main motivation for you writing the update beyond Mars and Venus? And also, what are some ways things have changed in the last 25 years for men and women in relationships? I mean, a lot, but I'd love for you to just review that with us.

John | Well, the new book is new skills. The insights about how men and women are different, we've been that different, forever. Yeah, and yet, those differences are not commonly shown up in our relationships, when something which I call role reversal takes place. Role reversal is where women relate more to being from Mars, and they say their husbands relate to being from Venus, so literally a flip. And I saw this, even when I wrote Men are from Mars 25 years ago, in long term relationships where the passion went away. Usually, in order to find compromise and peace in a relationship, couples who didn't have these relationship skills of how to communicate effectively. They get in arguments, and the arguments become like minefields, that you just sort of avoid, avoid, avoid and acquiesce and accept. And usually, then the passion goes away in relationships. And when that happens, what's also going on as men are taking on more the Venus qualities, women are taking on more than male quality, Martian qualities, we'll put it that way. So but now, that's a very common reality. In that case, it was the result of long term right marriages where the passion had gone away. Now it's very common because of a shift that has taken place. It began, it really began around after World War Two where the world became safer. Were more secure, women could be more independent men could follow their dreams. You know, I'm a child of the 60s after Woodstock, I remember crashing and listening to music from Blind Faith, which was, do what you like, do what you like. And that was never the rule for men. And I grew up I grew up in Texas. And so we were demonstrating for peace and having free love and having fun. And we're sort of leaving the responsible side of us, which I'll call the male side, we all have a male side, we all have a female side. And when people say that, then why are you pointing it out? Well, what happens is that the male side of us is primarily when we're doing activities that are more impersonal, goal oriented, which have to do with sacrifice, overcoming challenges, and making money, most of those behaviors stimulate the hormone testosterone. Now a man needs to make at least 10 times more testosterone and feel romantic feelings towards his partner, about 20 times more testosterone than a woman. So basically, when we see that when men are stressed, they're either depressed or they're angry or they're irritable or they're passive or they're procrastinating. Any of those symptoms I just mentioned, always go along with low testosterone in men. They don't go along with low testosterone in women. For women, their symptoms of feeling overwhelmed and stress, dissatisfied, minefield with complaints, you know, your mind, I got to do this, I still have to do that. That feeling of not enough time, not enough support, not enough money and not enough this this this, this feeling of not enough tends to be directly related to cortisol being produced in her body, stress hormones, and it's simultaneously in general terms her estrogen levels are low. For a woman to feel romantic just to be generally a woman who's happy, her estrogen levels will be about 10 times higher than a man's. And to feel romantic in an intimate relationship, the estrogen needs to go double that to 20 times higher than the average man. So these are amazing things to help us in this world of gender neutrality to get a little clarity that, yes, well, my soul is both masculine and feminine. Well, I can go to my female side, I can go to my male side, if I go to my female side, which is loving and happy and having fun and enjoying those are some of the qualities of estrogen when I'm over there, if I forsake my male side, then I have trouble. Anytime a man has any addictive problem he's too far on his female side. Whenever a woman is overwhelmed and stressed, feeling too much to do, can't relax, can't enjoy sex, can't feel making love. She's too far on her male side, he's making more testosterone during the day, then the estrogen side. And this all comes from really some basic understanding, we now have hormonal differences between men and women.

Robin | Mhmm. That made me think of two things. Number one, for instance, would be like a woman who has just had a baby, right. And she's taking care of her child for you know, all day every day breastfeeding, and it's just like, all of this. Is this not estrogen, estrogen, estrogen?

John | Well, it's estrogen and not enough. It's also testosterone, okay? When a woman when you have a baby, you're responsible for someone, you know, a mother is not just making estrogen all the time. She's the CEO of the house. But it's a different kind of testosterone she's producing is, she's producing testosterone. Whenever you're doing things for others, you're solving problem solving problems, that's testosterone production. But when you're a mother, you're solving problems taking care of others making sacrifices, which normally is, is testosterone-producing, and very good for men to do also good for women to do as long as they're not neglecting their female side. But in the nurturing activity, you're doing both masculine and feminine, because you're giving from unconditional love. You're not raising your child to make money, you're not raising your child, because that's something you have to do to make enough money in life to support your family. No, you're doing it out of unconditional love. And that's a very balanced hormone of both both your feminine and your masculine side. But what's missing today for the woman that does stay at home is something that women need, which is to feel the support of others. Being alone with your kids all day has never been done in history. You always had a community, you had a tribe, you had other mothers around your children were playing with other children, you weren't just one child at home, you're taking care of and trying to entertain. That's for most women, that's a nightmare, which is why they love having a job. They love to get away because they're not designed to do that either. When I was done in the Amazon, I saw all the mothers helping each other. They're all there, they're breastfeeding their kids, and they're making meals and they're cleaning up and doing all these domestic type jobs, which is really too limiting for most women today, they want to express more of their soul. I see this all on the positive side is is an evolution of rising above the more primitive levels of us based on roles, it used to be man had the role of providing women had the role of nurturing and taking care of the home. And that became too restrictive for the consciousness of the new world we're living in there has been a shift in the consciousness where I as a man want to enjoy my life more. And I want to be there for peace. And I want love is one of the most important things for me, except money, I had to make money. So I can support a partner who can feel more at ease and comfortable. Like she doesn't have to feel the pressures of doing everything herself. And so that's also why my relationship is so wonderful, you know, my partner doesn't have to work as hard. She just does what she likes to work. But she does what she loves to do. Same thing with my wife, Bonnie, she was an accountant as well. But she didn't have to work hours beyond what she wanted to work. Because when you do things that you want to do if you're a woman you're producing, you're making a hormone called progesterone, which is very important for part of her menstrual cycle. And, and even at that time, from ovulation to her period, she needs to be making more progesterone than estrogen, but she still needs to be making estrogen, and on the other side of the cycle from her period to ovulation, that's where our estrogen levels have to begin ascending. And then those five days before ovulation, that's when she feels and her body requires a higher level of estrogen for her to feel balanced, and that estrogen is feeling the need for support. And if that need for support is not there, then her stress level will be higher even if her estrogen levels are going higher. So it's a little complicated but simply put, practically I try to give a little science and a practical thing. If you want to go on a date the best time is in the four or five days before ovulation. That's when she needs it the most.

Robin | [laughs] Don't date any other days, other than those four or five days before you’re ovulating,

John | That's the most important thing. And the thing about that is plan it a week in advance because the part of the growth of estrogen for women is the anticipation of special times. And so if you're going to, you know, have a date, and most men don't realize this, and they'll say to their wives on Friday night, what do you want to do tonight, you know, is, it should be, let's discuss what we're going to do next weekend. So it gives the discussion a chance to see what she would like. And again, when you understand the whole Mars-Venus idea of gender differences based on hormones, you realize that a romantic date is primarily what she would like to do, not what he wants to do. It's a very important thing. Now, they can do things he wants to do but a romantic date is where she feels I can depend on someone to do everything for me. That's your big estrogen producer. And for a man testosterone goes up when he feels Oh, I'm successful and making you happier.

Robin | Yes. I have to take care of you.

John | And make you happier. Yeah, you know, some of the happiest moments in my marriage with Bonnie is when I brought her somewhere. And she thought that was just fantastic. You know, we go to the Grand Canyon, and she's loving the Grand Canyon, and I'm taking credit for it. Yes, it's my Grand Canyon. You know I take her to what was it that

Robin | but the fact that she didn't have to plan anything and you, I think that is such a gift that you can give your partner like you said if you're if you're in a male-female relationship, or even if you just want to be taken care of, sometimes you don't want to have to do all the planning.

John | Yes you want to be taken care of sometimes, and some men say I want to be taken care of sometimes, and that's going to cause their estrogen levels to go really high. And not necessarily what they need. But if a man is not stressed, and he's very happy, he doesn't get irritable, he doesn't get passive, he doesn't procrastinate he has high self-esteem, then he can go over to his female side and say Okay, you take care of me tonight. Usually, that happens in the bedroom. [laughs]

Robin | Yeah.

John | You know, it's fun to do a role reversal, conscious role reversal in the bedroom. Because actually, the hormones do shift when you're making love. For women, when her estrogen levels go really high because she feels he's taking the time, he's honoring her, it's special. There's, there's a lot of physical, just touch, in the beginning, particularly not rushed, that produces the hormone oxytocin, as the safety hormone, no pressure on her to perform or to have an orgasm or anything just to be together and express love, that oxytocin then opens a door for her estrogen levels to double, which is necessary for her to have an orgasm or to just fully enjoy herself to feel the love increasing, I'm a real big fan of using sex which can be so so primitive and such a low-level thing like an animal, to bring consciousness into it and use the sexual pleasure to create love. The, that's when men can feel the most love is, it's when women can open up the most too because think about it, you've opened your mind, you've opened your heart, now you feel like opening your body. I mean, that's an open state. And he has to be prepared, and she has to feel safe, and men have to respect her. And for a man, he often doesn't have a woman's body. So he doesn't understand those necessities. I was talking to a woman the other day, and one of my counseling sessions and I told her basically, sometimes you might need 20 to 30 minutes of a gentle loving massage before you can open up. And because she goes she was a woman never experienced orgasm. And then she said, thats all I needed, and I opened up, it was amazing. Like one little tip, her husbands, you know, a five to 10 minute guy, you know, in and out and we're done. And there's just no way she's going to be able to generate the hormonal levels for her to go to a higher state of feeling the love that they both felt when they fell in love. The thing is, when people fall in love, there's an extra hormone that doesn't last and that's called dopamine. Dopamine is produced from newness, novel, challenge, new skin, you know, basically, that's an automatic thing that's a primitive reaction inside of us that the dopamine levels will go up due to the newness, automatic. And what that will do for men is raise testosterone, so they can feel a strong sexual attraction for her, and will also raise estrogen in her that she can feel a strong sexual attraction to him, which is pretty much dependent upon him his attention for a while building up her estrogen very high. And the biology shows that when women's estrogen levels rise really high, then their testosterone levels will go up. So they go to their male side, but they're very grounded in their female. If you put that same woman in an office where she had didn't even like the job that she had to do in order to make money. She's making testosterone there. She's on her male side, but she's not on her female side. If she's loving her job and enjoying serving people and so forth, then she's making estrogen and testosterone at the same time, which is really a beautiful thing. That's something that we can all find. Even if we don't have the perfect job, the perfect situation between a man and a woman having, making love, knowing how to do it, and how much to do it.

Robin | Yeah. So in the book, you do talk a lot about stress, and we all have stress in our lives, right? We can't really, you can't really avoid it in a lot of ways. But I'm wondering what are ways that we can manage our stress and not so much manage it? But how can be as a partner, how can we help our partners with their stress? Because that does affect like you said, our hormone levels?

John | Well, let me give them mega the meta-view first. You have to sort of know the map. And then I have practical techniques for everything. And if I just said, the practical technique, people will go, Well, why does she get that and he doesn't. You really have to understand this is a very gender-specific insight that nobody teaches because it's almost not, it's politically incorrect to talk about gender, somehow, I'm free to do it. Because I wrote that wrote the book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, and a lot of people love that book. So the big picture there is stress levels, we're all we all have levels of stress. And that means the outer world, we say is stressful because it's, it's how we react to the outer world that we call stress. It's a stress hormone. It's called adrenaline. And then when adrenaline is not short term, then adrenaline stays in your body for a while, a few hours, then it will turn into cortisol, and then cortisol will stay there for days. So it doesn't go away that quickly. Adrenaline does. That's why if you're a little stressed, you can go for a run, you can have a conversation, particularly when women are a little stressed if they can talk about their emotions and feelings that will convert their adrenaline back into dopamine. And that's a good balance. Men can actually use your physical body and go for a run, or do something constructive, go solve some problems, put forth some effort, oil for her, whatever it might be, that will lower his stress levels, just the anticipation of I'm doing something to produce something productive with meaning will convert adrenaline back into healthy dopamine, which motivates him. But once it's in the cortisol stage, that's where you'll see big hormonal differences between men and women. When a man's in a cortisol state, his testosterone is going lower and lower, and his estrogen is going higher and higher. So translation, he will feel grumpy or irritable or inflexible or very defensive, or even aggressive. Most people associate aggression and men with high testosterone. But actually, when a man has high testosterone, he's cool, calm and collected and doesn't get angry at all. He's not afraid, either. It's when his estrogen is too high that he gets defensive. And that can happen very quickly. You know, I can be cool, calm and collected, listening to my wife complain about something for three minutes. And suddenly, I feel like this is unfair. I'm being judged or criticized or not being appreciated. And just that thought in my mind, will actually push estrogen up and push testosterone down. And that's where men become aggressive. They say, their tone of voice changes. But the key there is, whether you're a man or a woman, once you have cortisol, you don't access pure love. You can't feel your love, you might say, I'm mad at you, because I love you. But you did love them. But once you're mad at them, you're not loving.

That's what we have to realize is that we love our partners. But when we're doing some of these misbehaviors, like raising your voice, anytime you raise your voice at your partner, you're in a stress state. Maybe not everybody like you grew up in Italy, they tend to just sort of express love very loud, but at a certain point it escalates. It's very primitive to raise your voice to communicate. Why because, as soon as you raise your voice are telling the person you're not listening to me. And you know the person's listening to you, and you're saying you're not listening to me, it's rather frustrating for that person. And if you're having sex with that person, meaning you're in a sexual relationship, you have, you have more activated mirror cells, these mirror cells really cause us to duplicate whatever our partner is putting on us. He has a complaint about you, you have a complaint about him. And usually, it does look, it looks when we are under stress. Men will tend to go into a detached emotional state at the early stages. And then it becomes very emotional at the higher levels of stress for men. Whereas for women, they have eight times more blood flow to the emotional part of the brain under little stress. But when it's a big stress and she feels I have no support now she'll go straight over the testosterone land. And because I have to defend myself after protecting myself, you'd become your own soldier so that so women greatly misinterpret when men sort of detaching men will detach to mull it over and think about a problem. Maybe she is thinking what do you think Hey, what's going on, I want to know what you're feeling because he's pulling away. And that creates a panic for her quite often because when she's really upset, she'll pull away. Under moderate stress, she just has emotional reactions, little, you know, I'm frustrated about this, or I'm angry about that, but it will quickly rise and fall, men don't realize it will quickly rise and fall. Because when men get emotional, they have to solve the problem, make the problem, emotions go away, they have to be right, they get all defensive, really out of balance. And this is all literally, our, our attitude, and our thoughts affect our emotions, our behaviors affect our, I'm sorry to say, our, certainly our thoughts affect our emotions, but our thoughts, attitudes, behaviors, and what relationship that what we're, the relationship we're having in that moment, will affect our hormone production. For example, just be clear about that when a woman comes into my office and she's having problems in a relationship. Immediately her estrogen levels go up. If she was going to work to a job she didn't like or felt overwhelmed with her estrogen levels are going down. So see, that's a relationship.

Robin | Yeah. So she, she's in here, I just want to understand this. So she's in your office, and she is working to she really she's making an effort and conscious effort to work on her relationship with something very important to her. And she's like, Okay, well, this is so her estrogen levels are high, because she's working from this relationship.

John | Well her estrogen levels are not going high, just because she's working to make a relationship. But that's, that's a small part of it, actually, she's going to someone she feels will help her. And prove her relationship, as opposed to I have to do it all myself. I'm gonna go to somebody that I trust, who's going to guide me and support me. And then but she doesn't know. And one of the reasons I'm a famous relationship counselor is I'd never give advice to women unless I'm giving a talk. But if they come to me for counseling, first thing I'm gonna do is get them to talk for at least 20 to 30 minutes. And so she feels heard, just that I could send her out in my office, and she would feel better and happy. But then I give her advice on how she can be accountable to solve the problem in a relationship and not just complain about it. Yes, many. And I say this, many people go to therapists, many women, 90% of the people go to therapists or women. They go often, and the therapist is trained to just simply tell me more, and what else? And how do you feel about that? Where do you think that came from? And so basically, they're pretty much just complaining the whole time, about their partner.

Robin | Yes, that's not good therapy. I've talked to a lot of therapists where that's the situation. And that doesn't help me. I don't need somebody just to be my sounding board. I need tools, and strategies to fix things.

John | But the key exactly. But the key is to really let those tools come in, which is, you know, to be accountable. First, her stress levels need to come down to hear it otherwise, she'll just defend against the tools to be able to really let something in you need to feel heard first, particularly for women and somewhat from men, but women when they feel heard, so I know how to ask questions. And I'll say the husbands that are listening right now or men. There's a simple, simple question. Now I have more finesse as a therapist for 50 years. But the questions are, and this is very important that every time you talk to your wife is use these phrases, she won't get tired of them, which is, well, honey, tell me more about that. And help me understand that better. And when she seems like she's done talking, you say what else? Just listen, talk less, and listen. And women ask less questions of him and share more from your side. You see, when a woman does so many women today, when they're on their male side, they don't even feel their need to talk about their feelings. Now, back when I wrote Men are from Mars, Women were not as stressed. And they were not as far on their male side. So they still felt I have I need to talk and is my husband listening or not? That was the major thing of the 90s when I wrote that book, is that men don't listen, men don't listen. Now women will say that, but it's not a major, major issue for them. And what it is they don't even they don't realize that just getting help around the house. Okay. Certainly, that's wonderful. That's support. But that's not enough. What a woman from my experience in helping women is she needs to feel safe to find the part of her underneath her which is her feminine, vulnerable self, which is he's pushing away by being in a sense, compensating by not looking at my feelings, which could make me feel better. So the brain will go into well I'll try to solve the problem. So she's busy trying to solve all the problems in the relationship in her life and get her husband to do this and get him to do that. And what's so amazing is men will do so much more for women when women are more feminine. Okay, that's, that's what we need. If you look at statistics, if a man gets a divorce, he's married three years later, and it has nothing to do with whether he loved his wife. Sometimes women think what am I cheap liver? He just goes into another relationship. And women can go on average about nine years. And most of the time, they don't get married again, a large number don't. And it's because women can find love in many, many places they can love their children, they can love their pets, they can love their garden, they can love the planet, they can live their causes, they can feel love, and we all as a soul want to feel love. But for man, the primary place where we open our hearts to feel pure love is through a committed monogamous relationship, a woman who loves us who we adore, and you make love. And when you make love, it's what the Word says it's not just sex, we use sex to make love. See we men are because we're more testosterone oriented. Our ability to feel is limited when compared to a woman, estrogen women have, on average, 10 to 20 times more estrogen, that's a feeling hormone allows you to feel what's going on inside, men with their muscle mass the testosterone is making the muscle mass the more muscle mass they have, generally speaking, unless their estrogen starts surging, they don't have a lot of access to their feelings. So in the newness of a relationship, and sexual attraction is there. It's pleasure and through men, when they feel pleasure, it opens the door for them to get in touch with their emotions and their feelings. Then they can feel the love in their heart for their partner. And as a woman, high estrogen opens a man up that we know we need sex, we go for sex, we go for sex because that's when a woman is welcoming. It opens our heart and opens her heart even more too.

Robin | Yeah it's an access point. It's an activity that allows you to open up.

John | Yeah, it allows men to feel the love in their hearts, they can love I don't want to say men are not loving. Men learn loving behaviors. There's even some authors who've written books called Love is not a feeling it's a behavior and, and certainly when you're feeling love behaviors come out. And you can remember those behaviors. But actually, feeling love is what you get to experience particularly for men making love and it allows a woman to go to higher levels of making love than she could do on her own. And the same thing for men doing it on your own doesn't do anything except sap this soul energy of who you are, you'll see this, this challenge today, which is every year, men's testosterone levels at all ages are going down 1% 1% 1% This is not normal. This is the world we're living in now with this. One of the reasons for it is our confusion about well, it's the freedom to choose freedom is wonderful, but it gets us you have to look at the consequences of it.

Robin | The grass is always greener, or there's endless choices.

John | Yes, yeah. If suddenly you have freedom. I was, I just went on a cruise in the Mediterranean and I had freedom. I said to myself, Okay, for seven days, I'm in the Mediterranean, I'm having gelato. Okay, so I gave myself the freedom to come home, I said, No, you don't have that freedom, John, because that put off two extra pounds on my belly, you know, a lot of weight on my belly. And that's okay, I said, I'll do it there. But then I have to look at the consequences of the choices I make because we're free. So with this greater freedom, we have women choosing to be independent. And that's wonderful. Except sometimes it keeps them from coming back to their female side. And the female side is the part of us and I don't want people to misunderstand this, we all have two parts. One is our independent part. And the others are dependent part. Right now I'm dependent on you to have this interview, you're dependent on me, dependence is not a bad word. Okay. So when a woman is depending on a man for love, and the relationship ends, she can actually turn to her gardening, her children, her pets, and all these other things that she's dependent on to find that love. And that's good. Men generally depend on themselves primarily, if he has self esteem, self esteem for a man is he'd be able to feel more independent, then his testosterone rises up. And that creates a longing to come back to his female side. And that's what sex is, sex is actually he's going into her. But he has to be on his male side strong has to be hard in order to go into her soft land, that you have both together, you have hard and soft, you have masculine and feminine. And we all have these sides. And it's easy for people to think, Oh, you're saying I can't be independent as a woman? No, you can be independent, amazing. But if you're not finding love in your life, or you're stressed a lot, many times or every time I found helping a woman come back to behaviors and conversations and attitudes that will generate more estrogen will very quickly lower her stress levels and she's able to see the world through another set of glasses. Okay, it's really the glasses that we're wearing. And ironically, I'm not in some idealistic we should all be positive all the time. I think we should behave in a positive way to the best of our ability, Forgive our mistakes and learn from them and grow from them, however, we have this prefrontal cortex in our brain. And researchers have found that when blood flows primarily to the left side, you're optimistic. And when blood flows primarily to the right side, you're pessimistic. And we're supposed to do both things, we're supposed to be able to see the problems and then be optimistic about solving them. See, we're supposed to see the emptiness. And then we have the right side this optimistic how we're going to build the emptiness that's the left and the right side. And when we're experiencing elevated cortisol levels, primarily, we have a 10-time bias, to go to looking at the problems rather than being optimistic.

Robin | I think that makes perfect sense. When you're under stress, you're looking at all the negatives, you're like, oh, boy, you can't, you cannot see that the forest for the trees in there.

John | And there's so many wonderful, stress reducing techniques. And all I'm doing is looking at it through the lens of the quality of our relationships, how are we responding in our relationships? And what hormones are those producing? Because one of the most powerful factors to adjust our hormone production is, are we more feminine in this relationship with my work with my children with my husband, what you know, our mark, are more masculine. And when nothing wrong with a woman being on her masculine side, as long as she can be aware, what are the signs I'm out of balance? And the most common one is I'm overwhelmed. And the second one is your mind is looping into complaints. Quietly, you think he didn't do this. And you didn't do that. When is he going to do this. And, you know, this tends to be the symptom of elevated cortisol levels. And, and when you got to science, again, everything's not just black and white, because another symptom of the same things we're talking about could also be low cortisol levels, which is called adrenal burnout. Okay, so you can, while you're still rather healthy, you're going to have high cortisol levels, but a certain point of chronic over many, many years of just being chronically stressed, then you get adrenal burnout. And that's the reason why women go through the difficult menopause time in their life, during menopause doesn't have to have all these bad symptoms, sleeplessness, divorce, anger, you know, and other things when it comes to sex. And those problems are there because her body stops making estrogen when she starts going into menopause from her ovaries. But her adrenal gland will pick up speed, it won't make as much but it'll make just what you need. But if you've been stressed out before that now you have adrenal fatigue, your adrenal gland won't make enough estrogen. And you'll tend to have hot flashes and depression and sex, you know, there's dryness and so forth, vaginal pain, and so forth. All these things

Robin | How can a woman prevent that from happening, then?

John | Well, one of the best things, and I used to have a whole blog, I mean, I have a whole book on wellness, which is good herbs and all things for that. But there's practical techniques, women can go online and look for Kegel exercises for the vagina. And that's in the place of not having a husband who's doing it for you. If you have the right kind of regular sex, that will increase the whole lining of the vagina which stimulates estrogen, there's nothing that stimulates estrogen more than making love. And that's it and nothing that stimulates testosterone more than making love. And the problem is, people don't know how to make love today, and they don't know how much time to spend making love. I'll just say briefly, and I have a class at marsvenus.com on sex, you get the basics. I've written this book, Mars, Venus in the bedroom, which every couple should read. It's not even R rated. It's really sweet. Just teaching men we mentioned at the top of the show, but teaching men how much time women need and their experience and to get rid of goal oriented sex and what men need. You know, most people don't have conversations like this with their partner, they just do what nature tells you to do. And usually that's going to make you a monkey. [laughs] And so here's here's a simple thing that's not in this book. So I have to mention it because I couldn't say it in the book because I didn't have any research to back it up. But when couples have sex once a week, what will happen, as opposed to twice a week is if you go for six days, and you're a man without ejaculating. I mean, you had sex Saturday night and then you have sex then again on Saturday again, you went seven days, six days, no masturbation, no ejaculation, no climax. But you wait. On the seventh day his testosterone will increase 50% The way it was when he fell in love. Every couple says how do we bring back those feelings? I just say are you having sex twice a week? Three times a week? Oh, yes, we have great sex. Well, it's gonna go away soon. This is the research shows if you just have sex twice a week, or he masturbates on one of the other days. Just if he releases an ejaculation. He doesn't wait for about six days or seven days something in that range. If he waits, then his testosterone levels will be 50% higher. Afterwards, it will go back down to baseline. But baseline over time will increase and I don't have I don't have the actual now that that's scientific that's been tested. That's everything. And we need to popularize that theory because or that study, because if you go online and you look at masturbation and porn, lower your testosterone levels, they say there's no evidence. Well, that's because these kids who are now addicted to porn 20 years ago, a 20 year old, had 20% higher testosterone than a 20 year old today, we are on a decline, everybody is on a decline. And I won't say it's only this, but we know that they can't even do studies at universities, comparing men who've done porn who don't do porn because everybody does for it, they're all masturbating. And now there's this whole new education system they're trying to throw in there. I've seen the clips of it, they're teaching children they should masturbate, and we shouldn't shame people for masturbating. But for 1000s of years, people have known when you masturbate, you lose your you're missing out on mental growth, heart growth, and developmental stages. And we can see even in our sex life right there, if you just have ejaculation once a week, your testosterone will at least go up 50% Then when you're making love you need that extra bump to make it special, instead of just routine. And over the long run, I'm 70 years old practices for 40 years, and my testosterone levels all the time are 50% higher than they were as a young man. So we don't have to be on a descending climb.

Robin | There's things you can do to increase over time.

John | It's just not be greedy. You know, ejaculation. is an addiction. It's an addiction. And here's what's interesting. If you do want to free of the addiction and you're not married, then just don't masturbate and don't do porn. Because what if you make love to someone who loves you and you love them. The Italians did this study, which showed that for men, it produces prolactin, and prolactin is a female hormone we know about for breastfeeding. But for a man what prolactin does its function is that it it lowers the need to ejaculate. Okay, so basically it decreases your desire to have sex until about six or seven days. So you're not, this is nature telling you once you make a baby with a woman, you want to stay with her. It's the monogamy hormone. I'm completely monogamous because, you know, this is what pure love is when you're monogamous. You're building a bond that grows and grows and grows. You know, I was married before I was married to Bonnie. For I was with a woman for four years. I tried to marry Bonnie by the way she wouldn't marry me when I was younger.

Robin | The timing wasn't right.

John | Yeah the timing really wasn't right. But anyway, the other woman, nice woman, we had a marriage and then at a certain point, she fell in love with another man, which was devastating for me. And, and we broke up. But what happened is we built a bond. And once she was having sex with another man, it rips that bond. That's why it's so painful when partners have affairs, and then also causes craziness. When you feel all that pain, you don't know where it's coming from if it's secret. So I'm a big, big believer in teaching men don't cheat, don't cheat. What you're going to have is she's going to be in fight or flight all the time. So our mind is going to go to 10 times more negative bias. And she doesn't know why she feels that way should have brain has to figure out why am I feeling threatened. And so it's looking behind every bush. Well the kitchen’s a mess, or this is he left his shoes on the floor, your brain would just go looking for signs that he doesn't love me, because it takes time to heal that bond. I mean, you can heal it. I'm also in the favor when somebody cheats. I bring them in the counseling I say, you know, if you were in a relationship did you would it be going on now if you didn't cheat? And they said yes. I say okay. Well, now we need to heal that that's a wound that can be healed if you have the proper understanding. But when people just go, Oh, my partner had an afair, I'm ending this relationship. Sometimes they're just using that as an excuse to leave a relationship that wasn't working anyway. And yet, once again, why not learn how to make that relationship work, particularly if you have children. So there are a lot of options and choices that people don't have because they don't understand how to heal a wound. Particularly if you're just sitting there going, Oh, because he did that. It means he doesn't love me. He never loved me. And that's not what it means. It means he's irresponsible with his sex energy. That's what it means. And you can overcome these things with good communication and knowledge and so forth and heal, as opposed to saying in a marriage where it's not healed, I would never recommend that either. There's a, Bonnie and I went to the Galapagos I just finished the story. There was a funny t shirt. And you know in the Galapagos Islands, the turtles live to 100 years old or some do. There's this old guy and he says, Honey, the affair was 92 years ago, can you just let it go. [both laugh]

Robin | I like that.

John | We need to be able to heal our hearts. And a lot of us just don't have the methodology to do that and more and more knowledge is coming in. But I'll just lean against therapy again for a moment, as opposed to other types of Rational-Emotive therapy, for example, they at least know how to process emotions, as opposed to just let somebody talk, you know, people just talk and talk and go nowhere. For me, I teach people whenever there's a wound, like, say, You're angry about something, feel the emotion, and then go to another emotion, disappointment or sadness. And then always underneath that, feel the fear and the anxiousness and see where that comes from. It's never just about your partner, there's something in your past, and then eventually get to feeling responsible for how you contribute to the problem. Until you go through those four levels, then you practice getting in touch with what you're grateful for, what you're happy about, and feel the love in your heart and feel proud of yourself. You know, we always have to balance the negative with the positive, it's like use the left part of brain and the right part of the brain. It's this is something I do on a daily basis, I look for it, just the act of see if I can feel the negative emotions that are sort of tucked down inside of me, then and bring them to awareness that awakens the positive emotions, that those negative emotions were suppressing. So an example of this is when I got my big screen TV, because the way I hooked it up, whenever I would fast forward it, the whole screen went black. And I did this I just said, Well, I guess that's the price you pay when you have a big screen TV, right? And so it's like real bothering, but I learned to adjust and accept it. And then I re hooked up my equipment. And it stopped doing that. That made me so happy. I mean, literally for a month, I was just so happy, fast forwarding and seeing it. Because a lot of our joy comes from the relief we feel when something bad goes away. All right. So that's a it's like when you have a big problem and you find out oh, it didn't happen, or Oh, it got fixed, you feel so happy. Because all that negativity was just pushing down your happiness. And now it comes up. And most of us don't realize that all day all the time, we're focused on what's going on outside of us, whatever. And we don't just take a few minutes to focus on, there's always some frustration you're feeling in your life. And anytime there's frustration, there's a disappointment, you can't be frustrated unless there was some expectation that didn't get met. And that can't be a problem unless it generates some, unless there's some concern or fear underneath it. And that's actually not really a problem unless you're feeling some regret or some embarrassment that I didn't do it right. And I want to do it this way. So it's making an awareness of what's going on inside of you. And that's for me as a man very helpful to be in this really positive state all the time. But for a woman, she could do it five to 10 times more to produce estrogen, because what she's doing there, she's producing estrogen. Now I can produce that estrogen because I got such high testosterone. Most men and this is a natural evolution that happens as we age, naturally, women's estrogen levels will tend to go down a bit, and their testosterone will tend to go up. And for men, naturally, their estrogen levels will start to rise. But unless they feel confident, successful in their marriages, their testosterone will be really low. And then when they get in their 50s 55, they'll have half the testosterone on average of what it was when he was a young man and he feels the need to retire. He that need to retire that people feel men feel, is basically their testosterone levels are very low. Often my friends at my age, none of them get erections and, and you know, I say hey, why you do this and enjoy sex? Oh, I've done it. I'm not there anymore. Why do I need that anymore? I got Yeah, if you don't have testosterone that you're feeling is like, Oh, I don't care. We don't have sex anymore. I remember watching the view and one of the pretty girls there. They were saying she was saying I had the perfect husband and they said, Tell us more. He says, oh, you know, I get up at three o'clock to come here in the morning. But I don't see my kids at all. But he takes care of them. He cleans the house, he makes dinner. He's like, he's like the perfect wife. And they all went Wow, you're so lucky. And what's your sex life like? And she laughs and says we stopped having sex years ago. [laughs]

Robin | Wow. This is something that is probably all too common. Like you just said, John, you said you're like a lot of your friends that are your age. They're in these long, long marriages and they're not having sex anymore. It's just like, Well, I mean, he may feel that way because like you said he's may he may have his testosterone levels have dropped and he doesn't have that urge.

John | It's always men who say that they don't want sex.

Robin | No so what? So they're living too much in their feminine and they're not..?

John | No, it's their sexual practice.

Robin | Okay, you're going back to the sexual practice.

John | These were alpha men. So they were having lots of sex with their partners. And what happened is, if you have more than sex once a week what's happening is your body's not going to sustain that 50% higher. And for women, their wives also are often not interested in sex at all, either. And that's also explained by this simple concept of too much sex means that over time, his testosterone levels, they never make it to that 50% level that it used to be in the beginning. And so that 50% higher level says to her, how much he loves her, his attention, his focus, his patience, his enjoyment, his tenderness, all of that comes from high testosterone. And so he responds to it by going to a higher level of estrogen. And then when he comes back the next time, and it's not nearly that much testosterone, then her body doesn't have the same response. But so women over time, they're just not getting the response. And there's a conditioned response as well because men, when they have sex, they ejaculate, and that causes their, it causes their tendency to withdraw, okay, so she opens up fully peak level of estrogen going up, and that's bonding, and then he just pulls away, that's the guy turning away. And that's a little, little reaction inside, and your body kind of goes, Oh, I opened up and he closed down and he does it again, I opened up, he closed down, you get a conditioned response, which is why open up if he's going to close down. But if there's something called counter conditioning, is if he opens up, and if you open up and he closed it, he pulls away, but he comes back with a lot to give, then you get counter conditioning.

Robin | Look at things from a different perspective, like you said, which is counter conditions, in your brain. Then you're not reacting from such a fear place.

John | And conditioning. See, sex is completely ruled by the unconscious mind. And so conditioning works is, you know, even like having an argument or fight in your bedroom, never have an argument or fight in your bedroom. That's the conditioning, which is in this room, I'm not safe. And for women, everything about sexual arousal, and to be able to be multi-orgasmic and really enjoy more love during sex, as opposed to just, it all has to do a feeling safe, and no pressure. And attentiveness, kind of like when I was on the cruise. You know, there were 50 people, 60 people and 150 crew members, all taking watching us all the time filling our drinks during this whole thing. And I just said you're gonna have the best sex on this cruise because women feel supported somebody is making your bed every day they're cleaning the floor, everything looked like a new hotel room. Amazing attentiveness. And men can just understand, this doesn't have to be a big deal. But for many men doing anything after a while is a big deal because their testosterone levels are not boosting in her presence. See he also has, if he's ejaculating all the time, his testosterone is now no longer gonna go up 50% in her presence, it will go up 50% If you're going on a cruise, you're going to a hotel or you go to a concert, you go to you do something spectacular. You can't do something spectacular every week.

Robin | Do something novel, like you said.

John | Yeah, yeah, novel. And that's a good thing. That's a basic thing for therapists to teach people. But beyond that is just try learning how to not be addicted to sex. Don't be so greedy. There are other ways to show your love.

Robin | We have a few community questions, John, that I wanted to make sure we covered.

John | Yeah, we'll go to that.

Robin | The first one is about what is the best way to support your partner when they're dealing with a lot of stress outside of your relationship? And they're oming home and bringing that stress into, you know, obviously, they're stressed. And so they're coming from work. And you're like, Okay, how can I help you? I know you've got a lot of stress here, but you bring it into our relationship, right?

John | Absolutely. One of the biggest problems there is to answer that question I have to know. Is it a man coming home with stress? Or is it a woman coming home with stress?

Robin | I know that whoever submitted this question, it was a woman who submitted the question and she's talking about her male partner.

John | The first thing and I'm assuming she hasn't read the basics in Men Are From Mars, I have a wonderful in-depth exploration of men and their cave. If a man is stressed, you need to ignore him. No, put no pressure on him at all. You simply say to him, honey, I know you're stressed, do what you need to do. But first, give me a big hug and remind me that you love me. I know you think I should know but I like to hear it. Just like we like to have sex, it feels good. It feels good to me just to hear you love me. So I want you to find me first. Give me a big hug. And then don't You don't have to talk to me not then ignore me go do what you need to do. Maybe 30 minutes later, an hour later, depending on the stress level. I'll ask for a little help. And you can help me with something. He might say oh, what is it you need help with? You say oh, I'll let you know then.

Robin | This is good.

John | And it's the man and by the way when he when you're ready to when he seems to be going to the bathroom. He's been in there 30 minutes to an hour. Then you just say oh honey, when you get a chance I need your help. And he'll say well, what is it? Well when you have time and never pressured him at that time, but you said verbatim who is going to be okay, what is it? What is it? I can do it now? So Oh good. It only takes 10 minutes to say, Okay, so you've committed the time to it, then you basically say, I just had a difficult day today and I want to share my emotions. Just talk about my day. And you don't, I prefer you do nothing. Just look at me and ask the question, help me understand that better tell me more. That's all I need you to do just look at me and say nothing, don't fix me or anything. Because really, I feel great. But I just want to, there are things going on inside of me, and I want to vent them for a few minutes. And it's not about you. It's about kids, or it's about work or whatever. And that's very easy for him to listen to. Because what will happen is, and He'll interrupt you many times to fix it is oh, don't worry about this. So that's not a big deal. Or why do you have to talk about that, you basically tell everything up front, I don't need you to say anything, I just need to share what's going on in my day, he might go, why? If he hasn't read my book, I explain all this. But then why you can say, you know, I've been away from you all day, I just like to feel more connected to you by letting you know what I'm going through. If you want to talk you can, but actually, I just need to share this with you. What you're doing there is helping him come back to his female side, the part of him that loves you after he's taken time alone. When a man takes time alone, that is the best stress reducer for him. As opposed to the feeling he's in trouble for spending time alone, or you need him to do something for you. Because he's, you haven't seen him all day, or you complain we never talked anymore, you know, this is all your stuff comes up. Because you're expecting him to be like a girlfriend coming home and talking about the relationship and whatever. And that's not what he's about. He's about rebuilding his testosterone. But if you kind of think back to the ancients what they would do teach men to meditate to forget their problems. And that's what men typically they do when you start talking. He says they'll just forget it, don't worry about it don't make. But that's what he needs to do for himself. You don't have to tell him to do that. But today, there's another challenge, which could be the case with this man who's coming home from a lot of stress. He could be more on his female side, because there's a lot of push to get men on their female side today. And she may be contributing to that because he comes home and he goes to his cave. And she says what happened today? And what are you feeling and let's talk about it. That's one thing and that's a mistake. Or the other mistake is he comes on he starts talking about all the things that are bothering him. So what she has to do is out female him, okay, he's got this female side coming home, you have to out female and just not put a lot of don't ask any questions don't show a lot of interest. Basically, when he said and never say to him, how did you feel none of this therapy bullshit.

Excuse the language, but basically, not how did you feel not try to be empathetic actually be a little detached, and don't give energy to it. It's like my new little puppy. When she jumps up, I just turn around, every time I turn around, she would just sit. This is you know, bear for the second day of having her she learned to sit right away. Because if I'm pushing her down, I'm giving attention to what she's doing, as opposed to just turn away. And she'll immediately sit and wait for me to turn back. It's amazing. giving attention to a whiny husband will just make him more whiny. That could be the case, there's sometimes the man who's in his cave, he's just, he needs to be there. But he doesn't come out. All right. That's why you have to ask for help that will pull them out. And that gives you a chance to say Oh, I feel so much better because I need to just talk about my day, a structured way to talk about the day I reviewed before but explore what you were frustrated about. Today I was so frustrated. You know, I had to fix the copy machine and blah, blah, blah. And I was disappointed because I thought I was gonna get this and somebody else got it. It was a bummer. And I was concerned I was coming home I was late. I wondered if all if I got the carrots that I get the mashed potatoes and making dinner, what am I gonna do? Just go through the emotions of frustration, disappointment, and concern. And I was so embarrassed if you can use that one. It's amazing blood goes right to your front brain. That's why people turn red. These are suppressed emotions and normally you just go, why would he want to listen to that? He doesn't. But what he does want is to make you happy. So you just say 10 minutes, any man can do 10 minutes, share, talk a little bit about what's going on your day, and just say, you don't have to say anything. But often men will, particularly when they're stressed, they'll be immediately bored, and they can't focus. That's why I tell you to use the phrases I was I got frustrated, they can connect with that. If you start telling stories they can't connect with that is not high stimulation enough for them when they're stressed. So use emotion I was so frustrated and why was there frustrated? And then he might say in the beginning, Oh, you shouldn't be frustrated about that. You say no, I'm not really I just want to express my feelings. And I feel so much better. Gotta get in touch with what I feel I want to feel alive. You know, teach him a little bit about this and teach yourself how to do it. So you do that for a few minutes. And then you also say what I'm grateful for what I'm happy about and what I love. And I love you for listening to me. I'm so lucky I can come home and talk to you. And I'm proud of myself because I did this in this in this. So he gets to watch you go from negative emotion to positive emotion without any interference from him. This trains him to stop trying to change you from negative to positive and see that you can do it yourself.

Robin | Love that. One more community question.

John | And don't feel guilty that if he's whining and complaining or don't feel guilty by not feeding it, you're feeding a bad habit and he will by out female-ing him by sharing your feelings and he listens, that actually will lower his stress. Whenever a man is supportive of a woman, his stress levels first will go down, his testosterone will go up. But first, he needs to rebuild his testosterone for it to go up. Sort of an empty tank. And that's what he does in his cave is nonpersonal activities.

Robin | Yeah. So at the beginning of our conversation, you shared about your loss of your wife, Bonnie of so many years, and my condolences and I'm also so happy that you opened your heart and you're in love again. We have a community question from somebody that saying she's a woman in her 60s that lost her husband, who she loved dearly. She would like to know how she can love again, that was a simple question. How do I love again? What's your best advice for her on how to start?

John | Wow. Kind of maybe that's the book title. How to love again. I had a book title, it was how to say goodbye. That was my first thought.

Robin | Well, I know in your book, you do talk about grieving and the ways you do that. But I have to say I love what you've shared, John. About I've heard you say this before about how, after your grieving process, you really felt like your heart grew like your heart, your heart is bigger. And I just thought that is so beautiful. So I just want to hear you answer the question about how do you love again?

John | Okay, well, I just want to amplify what you just said first, which is I tell my partner that you are so lucky, you're getting a transformed man, you see, nothing makes you dig deeper into your feelings than loss. Because it forces you to feel these emotions that we typically don't ever look at the feeling the fear of abandonment, the fear of being alone, the fear of being judged, the disappointment, the sadness, you know, my whole life was we're gonna live a long, healthy life together, I love her family, my life is perfect. And then crash cancer came, though it was devastating. And that's a disappointment. So it's deep sadness, feeling the pain of sadness. And even though the pain the sometimes it's hard to say I feel hurt, because usually people associate hurt with blame, and nobody to blame here. But you can feel pain, then you're not blaming somebody is so I just would feel so much pain, and then explore my deep level fear that what am I afraid of, for me, it was the fear the pain will never go away. And I'll never be happy again. Because that's what you feel. So you go through these emotions, you have to go through waves of them, and give yourself permission on the other side of the wave to experience happiness, and then come back to the wave. But one of the challenges, if you know imagine a week after my partner died, and somebody says How are you feeling? Well, I feel great today. Because I just cried for 20 minutes or something. Yeah, you can't say that. I have a group that I take vacations with. And before we, at the beginning of the vacation, I said let's all get together, I want to share the death like a funeral with my friends. Another one. And they describe the whole process of her dying, and they could see how much in pain I was and so forth. And then I had permission to have fun with them as well. Because we have the left and the right parts of the brain and people who don't get over grief, you put them in an MRI, they're addicted to grieving, okay, you have to always go to the negative and then give yourself permission to go to the positive. But it's hard to give yourself permission to go to the positive. Because now look at the way the brain looks at it says I'm in pain. Because I love her so much. If I didn't you know, I see on the news, that somebody's love dies, I don't feel the same pain, right? I feel pain because I love her so much. I cherish her. She's the most important person in my life. And now she's gone. That's the pain. So I feel pain because I love her. So then my brain will go with and you can't be happy. If you're happy and you don't feel pain. That must mean you didn't love her that much. Do you see how that gets in the way?

Robin | Yeah. You know, your mind just plays tricks on you.

John | It's just human nature to not give yourself permission. Because if I go out and I say oh, I'm happy, I'm in love and everything. Well, how could you love someone, you lost your wife, I go, actually, I can love more because I lost my wife because I felt that deep pain inside and processed those feelings and it didn't happen overnight. It was and everybody has different waves of their attachment. And the one other thing that's really important for people to understand about the loss of a loved one. It's Freud explained this. He didn't have the practical tools, but he explained it he called it a need integrate. The way the emotional brain works is I need love, Bonnie gives me love, then suddenly, I no longer need love, I need Bonnie, the brain attaches itself to the source of that love. And so if she dies, then you're literally like a child going, I'm abandoned, and I have no love, I can't get love, I'll never get love again. For me, it was more, I'll never feel happy again, I'll be so sad all the time. Even though intellectually I knew. I knew. This is the process you go through because I didn't my dad was found dead in the trunk of his car and to grieve that on my honeymoon with Bonnie, somebody robbed him. Another one was, you know, my mother died by mistake, you know, that was a problem that didn't have to happen. My brother committed suicide. So I've been through a lot of grieving I also my first marriage, she fell in love with another man which was really traumatic. But, you know, I became a professional. But losing a loved one was the biggest on my list of all those. And even though I was so good at it, it still was painful. It's a hard time. But with learning how to talk about your feelings, articulate your feelings, sharing your feelings, your friends will get tired of you doing that. So you need to talk to a therapist, generally, they won't get tired. And you have to go over it again. And again. And again. Cry, cry, cry and be happy, cry and be happy, cry and be happy.

Robin | You know, I love how and I really appreciate what you're saying right now, John, about this is a practice. Yes, you can, you have to go to those motions of pain, deep, deep, deep sorrow, and then go back to the happy find the joy. And it's like a wave I really, that is just beautiful because you have to have that balance.

John | Another thing is there's, there's an old saying, when you fall off the horse, you put the child back on the horse right away, don't get caught in not being in a relationship again. Just don't feel the pressure that it has to be the relationship or a perfect relationship. And since it's a woman, let a man enjoy doing things for you. And even when you're not ready to have sex again, or whatever, that's fine, just let him know, it's, you know, hey, I'm recovering from a loss. But I know many marriages have started from one person losing a spouse and another one losing a spouse and they come together, they often have empathy and an openness to saying yes, I know you still love that person. And I'm open to receiving love with you. But to remember, to heal, the heart is getting the love that will heal the wound. It's literally a tear is a physical tear. And what happens is not just psychological, it's an emotional tear inside of you just can't see the big bruises. And the way those get healed is with time, along with the need for love. You have to now reach out and start getting love and start getting love. And then your brain starts to go, oh, I can get love. And I'm not just dependent on my partner to get that love. And that's very important that you reach out to get love. It starts in support groups, a lot of churches and different people have great support groups for this. But really, you got to be in a group where people can go from positive to negative to seeing the positive.

Robin | Finding the joy. Well, I'll tell you what, John, this conversation was pure joy. And I am so so glad that you joined us today. I learned so much that I always do through your books and from listening to you. And I'm like when I hang up and we are done editing this podcast, I have to listen to it over and over again to integrate all this. It's a lot to understand. But your book does give a lot of tools like simple tools, right?

John | Oh, yes. Over and over the concept is there and then you have practical tools that are logical if you have the bigger picture.

Robin | Yeah. Well, thank you, John. And I just I'm giving you a big virtual hug for you. We'll see you on the IG Live next.

John | Thank you.

Robin | Thank you for joining us.

Robin | Please visit realloveready.com to become a member of our community. Submit your relationship questions for our podcast experts. At reallovereadypodcast@gmail.com We read everything you send. Be sure to rate and review this podcast. Your feedback helps us get you the relationship advice and guidance you need. The Real Love Ready Podcast is recorded and edited by Maia Anstey. Transcriptions by otter.ai and edited by Maia Anstey. We at Real Love Ready, acknowledge and express gratitude for the Coast Salish people, the stewards of the land on which we work and play, and encourage everyone listening to take a moment to acknowledge and express gratitude for those that have stewarded and continue to steward the land that you live on as well.

Transcription by https://otter.ai & edited by Maia Anstey