458: When Expectations Are Not Met

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This self-paced journey is perfect for turning up the heat, having some fun together and revolutionizing your intimacy and communication. In this course, you'll learn from 15 different psychologists and therapists, the strategies that marriage therapists teach their clients. Some of these strategies include how to eliminate and help for old habits, develop mindful awareness, to help improve stress management, learning healthy and successful communication tools, creating a deeper and more intimate bond, and strengthening your couple, microculture, and future together. Don't just settle for an average relationship, make it amazing. For our listeners only, we're offering a special $100 off the course. Visit sparkmyrelationship.com/unlock to unlock your discount today. There's a 30-day money back guarantee, so there's really no reason not to give it a try. Visit sparkmyrelationship.com/unlock for $100 off our online course. [MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, guys. Thanks so much for tuning in to today's show, where I welcome Talia Bambola. And Talia is a licensed psychotherapist. She holds a master's degree in clinical psychology with an emphasis in marriage and family therapy. And she has won Newport Beach's best therapist three years in a row. And today, Talia and I talk about what to do when our partner isn't what we expected. This could come out in a lot of different ways, but one of them is in those first few years of getting to know someone and being a partnership, we definitely tend to idealize our partners. And then we're confronted with the fact that they are human and they are going to disappoint us. And this can be quite hard to navigate when we are confronted with this. And then we also lose sight of the idea that we also are not perfect from the other side of things that's important to remember. And Talia and I talk about how to navigate this and a lot more. We dive into how to set realistic expectations and how to ask for what we want and what we need and how to communicate that in a relationship. I really enjoyed this conversation with Talia. I know you guys will too. Thank you for tuning in and joy the show. [MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, Talia. Thanks so much for joining me on the show today. Thank you for having me. I've been looking forward to this. Today we're going to talk about what to do, how we can navigate when our partner is not what we expected. And in our pre-show, I asked you about this and you gave a great explanation of how you encounter this with your clients. So I thought we could start by having you share what goes on when our partner isn't what we expected. Yes. So the definition that I like to give the clients that I work with. So I work as a therapist and I practice from a psychoanalytic, psychodynamic lens, which is essentially looking at how your childhood affected you and then the way that impacts your adulthood. When we look at our romantic relationships, staring at our partner, I'm sure we've all experienced that at some point or another of like, who is this? Like that's not what my dream version of you does. Silly, silly you, just go back to being what I imagined you to be. There's a gap between what we expect and dream and hope are ideal archetype partner to be girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife. It doesn't necessarily matter about the heteronormativity of things. It really is about who do you expect a partner to be in your life? And do you have space to close that gap with who they really are? And that desire, that hope and expectation stems from our childhood template, whether we liked it or not. It also stems from media, what examples were we given of what partner should and shouldn't do. And it stems deeply from our subiton conscious that we have these desires for fulfillment, for attunement, for somebody to finally understand us in all the ways we've never been understood. That part especially stems from our infant child relationship where we had no choice but to try to try to get our needs met and hopefully our parents cared and attuned to try to decipher, oh, that means hungry. That means I need a new diaper. That means I'm too hot or too cold. We take that-- it's called an omniscient knowing where it's like, I don't even have to ask, which so many partners like, well, I don't even want to have to ask. You should just know that comes from when we're babies. And our parent was like, they don't even have to ask. I just know that that's their cry. We carry that with us into adulthood. And when our partner isn't what we expected, i.e., they fall short of something they never consciously agreed to do, we have certain reactions to that in a relationship. It doesn't mean a relationship needs to end. It's more about how do you navigate when the person isn't what you expected. Thank you for that explanation. And I want to dive into navigating that. But first, I want to just touch on one of the things you said is feeling like we shouldn't have to ask or tell our partner to do the thing that we want them to do. And another version of that that I've encountered-- and I'm curious on your take and the origins-- it's like a version of that where it's like, I can have a conversation about what it is that I want. But then once I've told you, well, now you're doing it because I told you, and not because you really want to. It doesn't mean as much. Right. I'm not saying that that's how we should be looking at it. But I'm saying that's a thing that I've seen come up. Can you talk a little bit about navigating that and maybe where that sentiment comes from if someone is feeling like, well, I'm going to tell you. But now if you do it, you're just doing it because I told you-- I told you to do it. You didn't think to do it. You didn't read my mind. So that piece stems from a similar place, i.e. our childhood and our upbringing. When you look at your family relationship, so if you don't have an ideal family, go with me on a journey for a moment that you have somewhat of a functional ideal family in which you, more often than not, are getting along and try to meet each other's needs. With or without having to ask, we'll put that aside for a moment. When you look at how long you've been in a relationship with different kinds of relationship, but when you look at how long you've been in a relationship with your family, how old are you? How many years were your parents together before you were born? You can kind of do the math. You've been in a relationship with them for, let's say, 20, 30, 40 years. You've reached enough pattern recognition with that long of a systemic relationship. You probably don't have to ask. It doesn't mean you never had to ask. It means that the amount of time it's been since you had to ask is so long you kind of forget that you ever had to. And it becomes second nature. You put that next to a relationship that's just starting out. Years one to five even. They don't even compare. It's a five, one to five year relationship versus a 30 to 40 year relationship. We can't have the same expectation of somebody who doesn't know us for the same amount of time. It hasn't had the same amount of opportunity to be asked or to even meet those needs. And the reason why we lovingly try to put that person we've just met in the same box as a person who's known us for our whole life is because love and closeness and intimacy in the non-sexual sense, meaning truly closeness, feels similar. No one is going to either love you or trigger you the way that your romantic partner does. It's the second closest relationship to your family system, unfamily of origin. Again, caveat for anything dysfunctional or abusive. That's put aside. If you had a somewhat functional healthy family system, your brain will almost synonymize. Oh, well, this person makes me feel the same way that this family does. They must know me just the same, not so. After a certain amount of years, we can safely say, I shouldn't have to ask because I've asked so many times. You've known me for how long had I ever wanted this other thing. There is a certain threshold that we reach, but in the beginning, they're connected from that reason of, they make me feel the same love that I did growing up. They must know me the same way the people in my upbringing. Let's talk about those one through five years and that's likely going to be when we are most confronted with this idea that our partner is not what we expected. How can we think about those first incidents or confrontations when our idealized image of our partner is shattered? How can we think about that from a healthy perspective and then talk about just navigating those things? And when we might need to think about the idea that that relationship might not be good for us? Yes, so when we're looking at the or not what I expected in analytic terms is called projective identification. So imagine you are one of those big screens that gets pulled down that a projector gets you know, shined on both you and the partner are going to see each other in that way. Meaning you're a screen for me to project on to I'm a screen for you to project on to and in those years one to two that idealization phase we we're doing that to each other we project our hopes our dreams our fantasies onto our significant other. And we also project what we didn't like from childhood so if my dad was on his phone all the time and that caused a rupture anytime I see my partner on their phone I may project on to them how I felt as a child as a way in my adulthood to finally master what I couldn't when I was a kid I didn't have the strength I didn't have the you know brute force the age to what have you on my side. So here's the perfect example that I can just project that on to my partner and have the reaction that belongs to the parent that I should address that with on to them and again the phone is just one of those examples I work with many couples where you start to notice the things that were cute in the beginning when you idealize them now drive you absolutely up a wall it's a pet peeve now it's not like that quirky fun thing they do you're like I'm going to shave your eyebrow off in the middle of the night if you store again it's not funny anymore so you notice that idealization starts to go. Away and they might not match the projection or that hope then and typically from years 2 to 3 of a relationship you start to notice that's where the mask comes off you're starting to see more of who they really are you're trying to see if they will really fit in your life you might start to have some conflicts ideally that you resolve them you start to adjust with them not being you're not that limerance anymore where the sun shines out their eyes and hormonally you're like oh my god they can do not. That has quelled around 18 months and then we have that more committed relationship where we're looking at them and going could I make this work not do I have to make this work could I really make this work for myself and could they make this work for themselves and this is where the projections of your own fears and your own insecurities and unresolved problems are starting to come up not just the hopes and dreams it's more of the deeper seated concerns a tribute and blame or responsibility where it probably doesn't belong on to your partner and you're part of the world. It doesn't belong on to your partner is another piece of this and if the partner doesn't match you where you want to be matched or if they don't help you clean up that former family of origin projection this is where you start to accuse them of you're not in this anymore you're not being loving you're you're being distant and that's not necessarily the case it's that your partner right when we're doing this projection hot potato they have the option to internalize the projection and then act as the person that you're accusing them of being or they have the option to just pull their screen up and be like that's not my stuff that's on you that really sounds like that's something to work out with your dad or your mom obviously don't work that way and they they don't participate in the identification they give it back to you and then you have to sit with it and go oh that is my own stuff to work through once if you can get through that part of the really relationship yours three to five that's where you have the patterns being established project of identification becomes more pronounced because you're falling into familiar roles if you haven't done the conscious work to decide what is a wife what is a husband what is a partner what's a role of a child and that's separate from what you grew up with that's where you might fall into those older patterns and that's usually where we see couples break up in those first five years because the level of expectation that they have differs so greatly from truly what they're wanting but they're not doing a conscious work to get what they want instead of fall into what they don't want a lot of relationship that do actually have a good prognosis end up foreclosing very quickly and then unfortunately backwards we see the unhealthy or toxic relationships last because if we grew up in a family system where that was modeled our brain is like no but we should not like them and we should be the couple that should have gotten divorced and is unhealthy but we're together 40 years it's like there's no badge there's no award for dysfunction of 40 years like I'd rather I'd rather a child grow up and see two successful 10 year relationships with two different people than one very dysfunctional 40 year relationship but you have to bring in culture and generational beliefs that get cast upon us you know don't get divorced or you have to get divorced and I noticed that when I work with people who come from I don't like to call it a broken family who come from families who had a rupture and maybe the repair was with another person it wasn't with the original partner that they either are like my parents got divorced so I'll be damned if I ever get married or they are like my parents got divorced I never want that I want to dedicate my life to figure out how to prevent that and they have a different outlook on marriage so it can go either way they feel that they're going to be doomed to repeat what they were shown or they feel like they have the empowerment to prevent it from coming true in their own life. 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That's nocd.com. You mentioned consciously asking or getting what you want out of the relationship. Can you talk about how we can do that, some things that we can think about to take a conscious approach? Yeah, definitely. So, when we're looking at making our wants and needs more available to be met in a relationship, that starts with doing our own inner work. And this doesn't have to wait till you're in a relationship. In fact, it's better to get a jump on this before you're either seriously committed in that, you know, those multi-year relationships, or you found a one or the one depending on your philosophy. That are separate from being activated, meaning like there's no person in your mind's eye that you're comparing this ideal partner to. What are your ideals? What are your dreams and your hopes? We'll just go right to it. If you had the perfect partner, it's never going to happen. Spoiler alert. But if you had the perfect partner, who would they do, or who would they be, what would they do, how would they present, and on the opposite, what would they never do, what would they never make you feel? And then you get a map, like kind of get a psychological map of yourself, and then do the list again and go realistically, what am I really wanting in a relationship? What do I want to give? What do I want to get? What am I hoping to receive? What do I want to provide? And on the opposite, what am I unwilling to give? What am I unwilling to put up with? Which means to interact with and still have that conscious desire to be with the person. We often mix that up with tolerating. Tolerating is to interact with and still have respect for tolerance, but we mix that up with like I'm putting up with this, putting up with is truly the definition that we feel of like this again, come up with those lists, and then you'll have a different lens consciously which you see partners through. You won't be going on dates or relating. If you're in a relationship, you can still do this. You won't be doing it through that fantasy lens, and that well, they didn't do what my dream lover would do, punish. They didn't do what my dream lover would do with hold. Whatever our internal urges and defense mechanisms are, don't come out as much. They come out, but not as much because we're consciously going, "Oh, it's not just you. I want this from any partner." And you look at your history and go, "Why have I settled for partners who have never given me this?" And then ideally you go to your own therapy or you're in a work and realize, "Oh, that's because it was either modeled to me or I was told along the way. I'll never be good enough or internalized along the way. I'll never be able to find somebody who's stable or emotional or what have you because I'm too much or I'm dramatic." So going in and analyzing the narratives you have about yourself and the narratives you have about a dream partner or relationship and a realistic partner in relationship helps you to make these things more conscious. And you can actually be in a real relationship with a person in front of you rather than punitively acting in a way that your partner has no clue what they've done wrong and spoiler alert, you have no clue what they've done wrong either. It just feels like you need to make them into somebody that they're not. And then finally, you can breathe. Can you talk a little bit about realistic expectations in a relationship because I think having a relationship advice podcast and just being interested in relationships, my Instagram algorithm is filled with all these therapists and these great quotes and everything. And I feel like there's a bit of a distorted idea about how great our partner is going to be and make us feel and can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah, so expectations are something that you should do without me having to ask. And if you look at the definition of that next to realistic expectations, they're not congruent because realistically, you will have to ask and communicate for what you want and need. And like I said, over time, pattern recognition will allow you to not have to ask. So the realistic expectation, again, that definition of like, well, you should know how to do it without me having to ask you either find somebody who was raised in a similar way, principles, morals, values, what have you. And they have the same quote unquote common sense that you do. So if a friend was not feeling well growing up and you saw one or both parents drop soup and crackers off at their door, your internalized version of common sense when someone sick is, you drop soup off. It's just what you do, right? That's the quote that I hear in all my couples. If you don't partner with somebody who also sees someone sick and goes, that's just what you do. Maybe that's just what you do is ignore them and maybe send a text or reach out after a week, you're going to fight with each other because you're looking at them and going you're dumb, why don't you have common sense? They're going to probably be looking at you in the same way of like, why don't you have common sense is not all that common. It's not grown in the same garden. So you have to, you have to either, again, pick a partner who has already from the starting line, very similar principles and common sense to you or if you're wanting those realistic expectations to be met, learning your own wants and needs. And then that's the first step. And learning how to communicate them in a way that your partner feels incentivized to meet it, not that they're only doing it to avoid punishment. No one's motivated to get to zero. If the only motivation to get out of debt was that you would just be at zero, but you can never make money, most people will be like, screw that, I'm going to stay in debt. Like, there's no motivation, I'm not going to win. So you have to word how can you meet my want and need in a way that it also benefits you either by getting more of what you want or avoiding what you don't like. So nagging often comes up in relationships. I'm sure it's come up with some of the people that have been on this podcast, at least from episode that I listened to, it gets touched on. Nagging either comes from a place of, I saw this model that's how to get a need met. My parent was passive aggressive. They never learned directly to ask for what they wanted. So I expect that is the tool I'm going to use to get my needs met. When in reality, sometimes nagging isn't nagging. It's you made an agreement with me. I told you what I expected. You agreed to what I expected. We have like a kind of a handshake agreement. And then I give you two weeks a month if I'm generous. I'm not seeing what you agreed to do or not do. I'm going to follow up with you. So it's not nagging. It's following up on a deal just like you would in business. If you've made an agreement with somebody or you paid for a service and they're not doing the service, you'd be like, we have a contract. What's going on here? So starting to reframe a realistic expectation, you will have to probably ask more than once until it becomes a pattern. You'll have to ask in a way that incentivizes the person to give you what you want or need. And you have to understand, which is the whole core of the projective identification part. You're not what I expected. Unlike your parent when you're a baby and your mom especially, you don't even know you're a separate self from her at minimum for the first three months. But really, we don't see your approach meant until like the year three, infancy mentally, is about years to, you know, two and a half to three. And then the child can go out in the world and be like, I'm my own self, but I can come back and get the refueling I need for my parent. And then slowly, but surely the amount of distance and space they take up is more and more. That's where their individuation occurs and they'll still ideally come back again, barring any dysfunction. In our romantic relationships, it's almost the inverse. It's like, you are mine. You are my beloved. You have no life other than loving me because it feels so good to have that connection in the beginning. We don't expect them to like want to have their own life. And a lot of us aren't taught how to have a successful, healthy romantic relationship and maintain our autonomy and independence or the other. Women are especially sold that at least for making progress in that culture that, you know, you find this love. And then ideally the typical family is then you have kids and you don't have a hobby or a life or a job. And then maybe once the kids are old enough, then you can go back to work or just find like a side thing. So there's also again, cultural lessons that we have to take into account of what are realistic expectations. Talk about that in the beginning. If we are to have kids who's going to go to work, who's going to stay home, what do we want that to look like better to have that discussed? And even if it doesn't go according to plan, you could at least have some argument that you at least tried rather than being like, well, I just expected that you would know. And then your partner's like, well, I expected that you would know that I was going to go, who's going to watch our imaginary kids? Before we continue on, we're going to take a short break to tell you about our sponsors. This is so valuable and really the foundation of being in a successful relationship is understanding what it is that we want out of it and then being able to communicate that, not assuming our partner's going to read our mind or just because I was raised a certain way that they're going to do that thing. And that's like on a daily minute by minute basis that's coming out. And that's how we relate better. I want to touch on the motivation for our partner to meet our needs. Could you give us a specific example of what that might look like? So we often word needs in a way that our partner doesn't understand it's coming from us. So we project onto inanimate objects that they have needs. And we ask for your support. in directly. So women, especially instead of saying, could you please shut the window? We'll be like, "Oh, it's a little chilly in here." And women will hear that and go, "Oh, I should shut the window and get her a blanket." And men are like, "Yeah, it is." And we're like, "Get off the couch and shut. " Well, like, motioning with our eyes, like, shut the window. But in their brain, they're like, "No, you just made a statement. You made an observational statement about the current temperature of this room where, again, reading between the lines, women are like, "You should know what that means." Now, again, over time, if you've developed some sort of code word with your partner that anytime you say, it's a little chilly, they should shut the window and you let them know, "When I say that, that's your cue to get up and shut the window, reasonable expectation. When I say it, they will shut the window." Knowing how to ask for a need to be met, nobody wants to have needs. We think it makes us vulnerable and back in cave men times event death. If you were too vulnerable, you die. That part of us primarily still lives inside of us, so we don't want to be too needy and we don't want to have needs because that's a weakness and weakness equals, again, but I will perish. My whole family line will die because I am cold, but it's essentially where our brain goes. Learning how to be specific and saying what you need or what you're projecting the needs onto and being able to say, "I need you to shut the window. I need you to take the trash out. I need you to pick up the kids." Rather than, again, these observational statements, school ends at 250. Thumbs up. I can't tell you how many partners I've worked with. I'm a parent also where they go back and forth and they're like, "You didn't ask." The partner is like, "Yes, I did. I told you, they told you when school ended. You didn't say you needed to pick me up. Don't you just know how to do that?" They get in this fight because I don't want to have to ask. I don't want to have to admit vulnerability is really what that's sometimes code for. I want you to just know. I want you to share in what society is now calling the mental load with me. It's unrealistic to expect any partner to know what needs to be done unless it's been asked or trained. That's where every couple gets to have those discussions of, "I need this. I would like it done by this time." Is there some time constraint involved? What do you need or want from me for that to happen? Could you give me a reminder? We're not talking about weaponized incompetence where one partner always, I'm putting that in quotes, has to give the other direction. If it's our need, if it's our perceived need or want, it is in part on us to at least initiate the reminder for our partner. I can give the example of growing up in your family. My mom did this. When she loved the dishwasher, of course, there was a right way and a wrong way to load it. So none of us ever wanted to load it because she'd redo it anyway. Talk about your efforts being totally futile. What's the point of taking 30 minutes to do it if you're going to redo it? It'd be nice if somebody even put the sponges in the dishwasher before it would start. Again, observational statement. We'd be like, "Yeah, it would be nice." Next morning, why did nobody put the sponges in the dishwasher? Well, you didn't ask. Yes, I did. I said it would be nice. So I grew up in part that being my template. So I knew personally how annoying it was. Simply ask to be done. You have to be clear about it's my want and need. This is coming for me. I want you to shut the window in what it represents for me. This is the incentive it represents for me. Is that I'm at there and that you want to tend to me and nurture me, which makes me feel close to you. And when I feel close to you, I want to whatever the internet with you, I want to cuddle you. I want to be physically intimate with you. So then your partner understands, "Oh, it's not just about the window." It rarely is about the actual thing we're asking. It's more so about what we are asking represents in terms of how we matter to our partner, if we matter to them, and how much we matter. Not everybody is built this way. Obviously, there's differences in partners. There's also some gender differences in translation of tasks and items and desires. It's up to us to narrate that for our partner and share and not again saying it in a way of criticism. Well, when you don't do this, this is how I feel. Then your partner is going to be like, "Okay, but what do you want me to do instead?" Unbelievable. Now I have to tell you what I actually want instead. We could cut all of that out by just jumping right to there, leading exactly with what we want and what it would mean to us if it gets done, rather than, "Here's what's going to happen if you don't," which again, most of us were parented by punishment, not by this positive parenting encouragement and reward. It was "Speak when spoken to. Do what I ask you to do." If you have any questions, don't. We're like, "Okay, thanks." I love these examples. A lot of what you're saying are related to tasks. One of the things I'm thinking about is also to apply that to just how it feels good to be loved and related to. If it feels really good to be just hugged when you're in the kitchen and share that with your partner, identify that with yourself, or maybe your partner just does it occasionally, positively reinforce that, say, "Hey, I really love when you just give me a hug at the end of a long day." It feels really good and it makes me feel super loved. I find it's not our default. We're not taught to do this. It really just can lead to more relationship fulfillment, more love. You're just going to feel better. It's really a skill that you have to cultivate, just even as I'm saying this. I'm like, "It's a good reminder to constantly be doing that." Obviously, you don't want it to be passive-aggressive. You don't want it to be overbearing or controlling or anything like that, but just to positively reinforce or it's just like, "Hey, I really love and appreciate when you pick up the kids from soccer practice. I know that's not the most fun thing to do and thank you for that." That gratitude, that acknowledgement, that practice is so important to a thriving relationship, I feel. When we're looking at what we want more of in our relationship is on the other side of us asking for it. What we appreciate, meaning it grows, and it's human condition, like this is why Yelp exists, when our expectations are extremely exceeded. Five stars. This is the best meal ever. I want this if I ever had to go to prison as my last meal. One star. This was garbage. How could this chef call themselves a chef? You're doing it out of this was great or this was terrible. Most people don't talk about like three stars. Those were okay tacos. Might probably go again. So we have this inner balance of what we like. We shouldn't have to appreciate because again, that common sense thing, oh, they just know that this is great idea. I have to say thank you for it. Look at us. This twinning mirror, like they already know me. We only point out the one stars of like, this is garbage. Why would you do this? And your partners like, okay, but look at all the other nice things I did for you. And we're like, don't try to distract what this we get in these conflicts that are in those senses unnecessary. They're not getting to the point. So if you appreciate what you want more of, I'm not saying don't ever bring up what you don't like. There's a place for that. I'm saying separate from that. Everything that your partner does that you like say thank you. And people are probably like, that's so patronizing that I'm not saying go in and be like, who's a good boy for doing the dishes? Like don't do that. But just be like, thanks for doing the dishes. Thanks for making the bed. Thanks for picking up the kids. Just thanks for behavior. It's how your relationships start to change when that appreciation comes up. Totally. It's such a valuable practice that, yeah, again, this is just a great reminder to leave some three star reviews daily. But it's so true. I love the fact that my girlfriend and I reinforce it. But she says, you know, she's like thank you. And it's just she's, when the first time I was like, hey, I really love that you always say thank you and you acknowledge she didn't even really even notice she was doing that and kind of wrote it off. And I'm like, no, but that's important. And I appreciate that. So this is a great reminder for myself and for our listeners, Talia, I really appreciate today's conversation. Before we wrap up, can you tell our listeners where they can find you online? And if there's anything you want to leave them with and then we'll say goodbye. Yeah. So my main platform I'm the most active on is Instagram. So it's just at my first and last name, Talia Bambola. I'm working slowly on, I used to have a media manager who helped me with TikTok and like YouTube. I'm trying to get it on those platforms, but I'm having a five month old like my whole world is hers. So I'm like, I'll get to it eventually, which is still true. So I'm most active on Instagram. And if people want more of kind of this dialogue, I have my own podcast that they can find through that page if they're curious to listen to more of these topics. I also teach a relationship class where we dive really in depth to a lot of these concepts of we touch on them today, but like the how, why it happens and how to get out of it. That's on my Instagram, the little link in bio. I would say that would probably be what I would leave listeners with. And I try to do a weekly Q&A. Obviously, I can't cover everything in whatever 90 seconds the Instagram limit is. But I try my best to answer the questions of the people. So I'm happy to give any other information that I have that would be of use to your listeners. We will have those links in our show notes and on our website. And thanks for taking the time to come on the show. Thank you guys so much for tuning into today's episode. As always, all the links to the guest as well as any of their recommendations will be in the show notes page. You can find the link to that in the episode description or by going to iDoPodcast.com. Click on the podcast tab up at the top and you will have access to all the episodes that we've ever done. There are over 300 of them. And while you're on our website, if you haven't checked out our free 14-day happy couple challenge, we really hope you do. It's a free email challenge that we send to you. It's 14 days of fun, easy, doable challenges to help strengthen and improve your relationship. And if you're looking for something that provides a little more help with working on your relationship, whether it's improving intimacy or communication with your partner or just bringing the spark back, we would love for you guys to check out our online course, Spark My Relationship. We're offering $100 off to all of our listeners. If you go to sparkmyrelationship.com/unlock, we've worked with over 15 psychologists and therapists to create the real life tools and strategies that they are teaching their clients. So we wanted to give them to you. With a self-paced online course that can be done in as little as a month or up to three months. You can really decide how much or how little you want to do with your partner or maybe just yourself. So we hope you guys check that out. It's sparkmyrelationship.com/unlock. Have a great day. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)