81. The 7 Bridges of a Solid Relationship with Yourself

What if the most important relationship you’ll ever have… is the one you have with yourself?

In this episode, we break down The 7 Bridges of a Solid Relationship With Yourself—starting with self-attraction and moving through vulnerability, intimacy, and becoming your own safe haven. If your relationship with yourself isn’t solid, nothing else will be.

This is your blueprint for self-love, confidence, emotional availability, and deep inner connection.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:12

This is the Cliteral Truth.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

The podcast where we sit around naked and talk about sex, dating, and relationships.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Alright, so Ryan and I are half colds, but welcome to the podcast. We have well, I think it's kind of a brilliant idea. It was mine. It was brilliant.

SPEAKER_04 0:38

Because as soon as you started talking about it, I could like I'm like, oh, I got so many places I want to go with this.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

I had this epiphany. If you're a fan of our uh Seven Bridges of a Solid Relationship series or framework, episode three is the OG. And then we go kind of every three or four episodes, and we have an entire episode on each of the seven bridges.

SPEAKER_03 1:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

And we often refer to the seven bridges. If you're any kind of listener of ours, some some kind of consistent listener, then you've probably caught bridges and are. Yeah, we're always referring to it. Okay, so we're always referring to you guys, the the epiphany of a lifetime. The seven bridges of a personal relationship.

SPEAKER_04 1:25

Which is really where it all starts. I mean yourself. We you know, we we talk about you gotta be that to to attract that.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:33

And but we've never explicitly had an episode on this.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

No, it was really cool to this just came to me. Well, and I'll tell you, because we did a uh an episode, did a recent episode about how you are your first sexual partner. You you are the first person you have a sexual relationship with, or that's ideal. And from there, uh, you know, so I'm thinking of bridge five, sexual compatibility, and I'm thinking about a little bit of bridge one, that second step of uh sexual attraction, and then I just kind of kept going with it. I was like, holy shit, like the whole framework can be applied to your relationship with yourself.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

Yeah, huh?

SPEAKER_01 2:21

I I started having all these questions come up, like, how's your attraction to yourself? Are you attracted to yourself? Right.

SPEAKER_04 2:31

And then I thought so many people aren't.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

I know.

SPEAKER_04 2:34

So many people have you know body image issues, they feel like they've got a weak personality, they're they're highly introverted.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Self-hate, self-loathing, yeah, whatever. They're always down on themselves or imposter syndrome, almost they don't like this physical thing they would change if they could. Yeah, I don't yeah, we've got the three steps of attraction physical, sexual, and personal, and all three of them can be applied to yourself, including people are like, what do you mean, sexual? We just had an episode about your your own sexual relationship with yourself, right? And how important that is.

SPEAKER_04 3:14

Yeah, you're your first partner. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Yeah, and so all three of these steps apply, and you can ask yourself, okay, am I physically attracted to myself? And if I'm not, because honestly, you're like, well, how who cares? Like my partner is the one who needs to be attracted to me and this and that, but I'm telling you, it's just gonna make for a much happier, better life. Yeah if you can cross the seven bridges with yourself.

SPEAKER_04 3:40

Well, right. Because one of the things that uh I've you know, in having conversations or coaching people, so many times they are not considering their attraction to themselves, they're only trying to make themselves attractive to somebody else. And I I had this conversation with somebody once who was like, yeah, if I lose this amount of weight, then this person's gonna love me, or whoever the fictitious partner in the future is. I gotta be this ideal. And I'm like, well, if you don't do it for yourself, it's not gonna stick.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Right. It never will.

SPEAKER_04 4:14

It's not, because you're doing it for somebody else. You're not doing it for your own your own health, your own life, your own joy, your own personal attraction to yourself, it just won't stick. I mean, I I don't know anybody who can do that if they're if they're always doing it for somebody else. It's people pleasing on a grand scale.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

So it's safe to say that crossing the bridge of attraction by yourself, like for it for yourself, that's going to produce a lot of authenticity.

SPEAKER_04 4:40

Oh, it is. And you're gonna be so much more attractive regardless of your your athletic build or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Right. If you're attracted to yourself, what are the chances that other people are gonna be just drawn to you, right? They're gonna be attracted to you like magnetism.

SPEAKER_03 4:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

So you ask yourself, how's how's your attraction to yourself physically, sexually, and personally?

SPEAKER_04 5:06

Yeah. Because you can Do you like who you are as a person?

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Th these aren't things that are really set. You can change a lot of a lot of these things. All right. There are some physical aspects like your height or the sound of your voice, right, you know, that you may not be able to to change, but there's a lot that you can. And I I like this question.

SPEAKER_04 5:25

Do you and you can impact that in different ways too? Even those things, there are things you can do to impact it, you know. But but I mean my maybe not your height, but I mean you could well, I always go back to your voice thing because I mean I'm sounding very nasally now, but I used to be a lot more nasally, but I got some help, I got some coaching on my voice, and it's different than it was, and it's changed my life, it's changed the way people interact with me. I noticed it right away, you know. So there are still some things. Don't give up on some of those things. Now, you know, if it's your hype.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Think out of the box.

SPEAKER_04 5:59

Yeah, but think of what are all the possibilities I could do with this.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

So here's a question. Do you think you're hot?

SPEAKER_04 6:06

Absolutely. Oh, this is a question for them. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

I'm asking the listeners to consider this question of of let's simplify it. You're like, oh my god, we're talking about physical and sexual and personal and the bridge, and I'm overwhelmed, and and and there are I like getting into the nitty-gritty, but here's just a simple question. Do you think you're you're s do you think you're hot? Do you turn yourself on? You know, do you like yourself? So I can ask you a question for each of the steps.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Physical. Do you like looking at yourself in the mirror? Or do you Do you think you're hot? Do you do a little, you know, before you leave the house, you're strutting in front of the mirror, like, yep, okay, let's go. Do you turn yourself on? Yeah. Step two, uh, sexual attraction. Do you like yourself? Are you good company for yourself? You know?

SPEAKER_04 6:59

I know I am because you always give me a hard time for talking about talking to myself.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 7:04

Guys.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Oh man. I think I had the And then I'm like, oh, what are you saying? Like it like it's something cooler. Like, no, it's not. He's just giving himself instructions in the kitchen, putting away the groceries or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 7:18

I'm like, and it's weird. I should put that in my dating profile. I talked to I talked to myself, but I'm good company. Something like that.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Are you though? Like, so boring. Anyways, okay. Have you taken those three steps of attraction with yourself? What can you do if you haven't? Think about this. Take notes, guys. Like, physically, if you're not crossing that bridge with yourself, because this comes down to confidence too. Let's say there's something physically about yourself that you don't like. Okay? If you're not crossing the bridge of uh taking the first step physical, right? Someone else, let's say they do, that's not going to be the root of your confidence, though. You can't rely on somebody else wholly to buoy you up enough to accept yourself in this in this thing, right? You need to either make peace with this thing or you need to make a change and so that you're more confident in this whatever it is. You don't I I think that you don't want to rely on somebody else for your validation. For your attraction. Yeah, exactly. To validate your attraction.

SPEAKER_03 8:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

You want to have that yourself and then go out into the world, and whoever agrees with you know is going to match with you or is gonna come is gonna be drawn to you.

SPEAKER_04 8:47

Yeah, like for me, I've never liked how long my toes are. So I mean I could adjust for that and never take my f my shoes off on a date, you know. Or I could embrace it and say, well, I could, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Or you could get a toe reduction.

SPEAKER_04 9:01

Or I could just embrace it like my dad used to say, you could perch on a wire like a bird with those toes. Now you're all curious to see my toes.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

No, they're not that applicable. But anyway, so the question, what can you do if if you're not crossing the bridge of attraction yourself? Let's so bridge two, bias for communication. How's your bias for communication with yourself? Do you avoid I mean we're not talking about talking about yourself? Yeah. Do you avoid having the conversation in your head, in your fucking head with yourself?

SPEAKER_04 9:37

But about real things, not just about putting away the groceries and cupboard or what.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

How do you talk to yourself?

SPEAKER_04 9:44

Because that's a my talking to myself is all surface shit, you know.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

So it's all surface shit. It's so boring, it's so yeah. How do you talk to yourself? Are you kind to yourself? Are you kind of a bitch to yourself? Like like what tone are you using? And and I think that's important.

SPEAKER_04 10:02

Reminds me of a book that I think Emily have talked about before called The Inner Game of Tennis. And you see this theme in lots of different books, but the inner game of tennis, it's not a book about tennis, it's a book about the voice in your head. The voice that berates you. The one that usually comes out. Like if you're doing some I mean, if you're into sports, like you're swinging a bat. You miss you miss, and you you verbally that voice one that he calls it, self-one or voice one, I don't remember, but he he talks about it. That's the that's the one you give actual voice to where you say, You idiot. You were late on that swing, or whatever, you know. And and but that's the voice we listen to. So when you talk about bias for communication, how do you whether you verbalize it or think it, are you berating yourself? Or are you right?

SPEAKER_01 10:48

And I mean there's there's some nuance here between taking some responsibility and but you can do it in a kind way. You can say, hmm, I was a little bit late there, I can I can do better next time. Right. Whatever it is. There's a there's a kinder way. Yes, you know, and of course no name calling, but Yeah, yeah, but that's the that's the point.

SPEAKER_04 11:07

Quiet that voice, you know, if you hear that, it's like that's not helping you.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Right.

SPEAKER_04 11:11

It's not. I mean what good does that ever do you? But it's so natural for us to do that.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Alright, bridge three. Do you allow your emotions? So we talk about in a partnership being available for other people to share their emotions with you and being able to open up to other people and share your emotions with them, and that's when you cross bridge three emotional availability. But what about with yourself? Are you able to allow your own emotions and and deal with them?

SPEAKER_04 11:45

Yeah. And this is a thing, like the thing that comes to my mind is crying in a movie. I used to hide that so much, but I do it all the time.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Now, when you're alone or when you're with other people?

SPEAKER_04 11:56

Well, I wouldn't I wouldn't hide it from myself though. You're right. Okay. I was okay with that. But I used to hide that.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

That's a whole other right. That's a whole other nuance.

SPEAKER_04 12:06

But if I have it with myself first of all and embrace that, then I'm okay. Again, this is this is testing for safe haven with other people.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

You know what I do? Here's the thing. What this has nothing to do with what we're talking about. Well, I mean, it's just kind of funny. This is just a trick for if you're if you're out there and you're like, oh man, I cry and like I I hate watching movies with people because I know I'm gonna cry or whatever. So I cry in just about every movie that there's a a s possibility that there may be tears, I will cry.

SPEAKER_04 12:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Any I mean, I'll probably cry in Tommy Boy at the the same part where it's dead, you know, like any inkling of a chance of crying, and I'm crying. So what I do, if I'm watching a movie with people and I I'm gonna cry. I and and it could be the same movie I've seen 20 times. I'm gonna cry exactly at every part that I normally cry at.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Right? I just take a box of tissues and bring it with me, kind of just already telling them, so I don't it doesn't have to happen, I don't have to try to hide it, and I don't have to explain myself or act embarrassed.

SPEAKER_04 13:13

Like I just take something in my eye, you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

And when the before the movie even starts, I take the tissues and sit on the couch so everybody knows I am going to cry. Like I'm planning on crying. This happens, you know, this is a thing, and I'm not ashamed of it, you know. Yeah. Kind of thing.

SPEAKER_04 13:29

But yeah, and in that personal relationship with yourself, you're embracing that so it gets easier to bring that to box of tissues because it's that you're embracing who you are, this is who I am. And the side benefit of this is you kind of test for if you got a safe haven with somebody else. Right. If they s if they're trying to say get you to stop crying or they get uncomfortable with you crying at a movie, not your person.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

How do you handle your own emotions? Yeah. Do you accept them? Do you let them flow freely? Do you shut them down? Do you ignore them? That's that's important in terms of bridge three. And then you mention safe haven. Are you safe with yourself? Or are you a bully to your are you a bully to yourself? Are you safe with those emotions? Or go back to bridge two. Are you safe with what you're telling yourself or the things that you're saying?

unknown 14:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

What are your reactions? Are you shutting things down? Are you laughing at yourself, scoffing at yourself? Are you dismissing or discounting?

SPEAKER_04 14:33

Are you accepting and letting go of things where you maybe have thought in the past you don't measure up, but you're great with kind of who you are, you know?

SPEAKER_01 14:42

You have got to be the safest person for yourself.

SPEAKER_03 14:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Don't I mean there's gonna be people out there that are also safe for you. That's great. What if there's not? I mean, you've got to be your safe person and your person where you can fully bring your emotions, and your person where you can say anything and everything, you know? You've got that bias for communication. And so are you accepting of your sexuality, your kinks, your preferences, your sexual style or personality, if you will, your identity? And are you accepting of your frequency? Some of the so we're we're moving on to bridge five here. Some of these words are sexual compatibility. Yeah, some of these words are the steps on that bridge. So one being frequency, how often do you want sex? Two being activity, what do you want to do in the bedroom? What and and what do you want to use to enhance your experience?

SPEAKER_03 15:48

And three-and are you okay with doing that? You know, you're not shaming yourself out of oh, it's a sex toy. I don't know about that.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

And three, style, kind of your sexual personality and identity, kind of your vibe, if you will.

SPEAKER_04 16:05

Yeah, and I like to digging into that because sexual compatibility with yourself, you know, people will be like, well, I don't know, is that my the size of my hand to my no, it's much deeper than that. So we do want to think about these steps on the bridge.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

It's more of accepting your sexuality. Right. Um accepting your frequency, your activity, your style, and everything underneath there. If you and we we talked about having a sexual identity and in a another episode and how important that is before you bring it to a partnership, so you're not deferring to someone else and you don't even know who you are sexually and all of that. And you're kind of this chameleon.

SPEAKER_04 16:55

Taking what you get.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:57

And you just you just again it's a people pleasing.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Yeah, when you step back away from anyone, do you know who you are sexually? And that's what we have that episode that that we wanted to have about that. We're talking about, you know, yeah, it's like the bridge is called sexual compatibility, so it'd be referring to you and someone else. But I liken it.

SPEAKER_04 17:20

It is you and yourself.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

I likened it in, yeah, not necessarily are you compatible with yourself, but if are you honest with yourself and are are you accepting of yourself in your sexuality?

SPEAKER_04 17:30

Yeah, and really when you think about that, if you're not, you're not compatible with yourself.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Well, and you're not gonna be compatible with anyone else.

SPEAKER_04 17:37

No, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

So, so yeah, that's the question. Do you allow yourself intimate moments when you're alone? So here, this question we're moving to bridge six. So bridge six, intimacy. Those cry in the movie moments.

SPEAKER_04 17:51

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Do you allow vulnerability?

SPEAKER_04 17:55

Do you have a way to way in place to express your your innermost thoughts and feelings? Like, I journal. I've got volume upon volume of j journals, and I journal just about every morning to start my day. I don't always have something I want to write about until I start writing, and then it's like, oh wow, there's this led to a whole bunch of stuff. That's probably my chief place of being intimate with myself.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

We need to kind of talk about like people might be listening and what is intimacy? And the pr one of the problems with this is that people use this word for sex and it's not sex. No. And we are That was the last bridge we just talked about. We're stupid in doing that because it totally robs intimacy for what it actually is.

SPEAKER_04 18:41

Right. And which is knowing deeply and being deeply known.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

And having this kind of warm closeness. So back to the question: do you allow yourself intimate moments when you're alone with yourself? That could be having an emotional reaction to a movie or a book and crying. It could be a yes, a journaling where you know yourself on a deeper level. It could be you are experiencing uh experimenting with a a substance or having a journey, you could be in nature. There there's several different ways that you could know yourself on a deeper level. Are you allowing those moments to happen and yourself to come out?

SPEAKER_04 19:30

And this goes this typically will lead to growth mindset stuff. Because that's where you're gonna grow as you look deeply at who you are and how you the lens you look at life through and the experiences you have in life. Seven bridges itself was was that. It was me going deep with myself to say, oh, all these failed relationships, I'm a common denominator. Does that mean I was the problem in all the the whole problem? No, but it was the only thing that I could do anything with, so it was like, well, now what do I do with that?

SPEAKER_01 20:02

How do you better yourself if you're surface level with yourself?

SPEAKER_04 20:06

You don't.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Like there's a lot of people who are surface level with others. I guess being a deep person and being deep with others, I I have a hard time with surface level kind of anything. Right. You know? But I do think that I I'm not saying my way is the best way, but I do think that you can't be surface level with yourself. Right. I mean, my god, like how do you know yourself deeply? If you don't know yourself deeply, why what the fuck are you even doing?

SPEAKER_04 20:34

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

Like, why are you here?

SPEAKER_04 20:35

Yeah, and I think a lot of people a lot of people don't. They avoid knowing themselves.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

And and I think I don't know this just to find out what they're gonna find or face face traumas that are there.

SPEAKER_04 20:46

Maybe, but uh but I mean I I don't know this because I haven't looked up any data on it, but I would think there's a strong correlation between people who don't know themselves at a deep level and whether or not they're just gonna cope with life or they're gonna be growth-minded. Whether they're gonna say, Well, this is just the way it is, this is just the way I am, and the world needs to change for me.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Okay, you know, as opposed to, oh, if I go deep on this, I do have some responsibility, or I've got some trauma I can heal, or I have this thing I want to overcome, or I'm going to do some work and and do that, you know.

SPEAKER_04 21:20

I think if you don't go deep with yourself, if you don't get intimate with yourself, you tend to think this is just how life is. Well adjust to me, world.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

This leads me to bridge seven. So interesting you say that because it makes me think of how secure are you in yourself and who you are. And this makes sense. You if if you haven't crossed the bridge of intimacy with yourself, how secure are you really going to be?

SPEAKER_04 21:50

You can't get to secure.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

If you don't know yourself deeply, if you don't allow yourself uh to that that that deepness to come out, How secure are you in yourself?

SPEAKER_04 22:02

Yeah, I don't think you can be. I I really don't. You don't know yourself.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:07

And so, how do you get to that security? How do you even trust yourself? How do you trust your thoughts? How do you trust your actions?

SPEAKER_01 22:13

So the amazing thing about this episode is that the seven bridges really work for your personal relationship with yourself and a partner. And you can see how if you cross the seven bridges by yourself first personally, you're gonna be in so much better a position to cross them with a partner. Because here's the thing the seven bridges it's a framework for having a successful, solid, awesome relationship with someone else, right? And and you assume that the two people are in love.

SPEAKER_03 22:49

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

And a lot of that stems from step three on attraction, person personal attraction. You gotta like the person, you know, be attracted to them as a person. But the question is, are you in love with yourself? If you're listening, what what's your answer to that? An honest, I'm not? Or maybe it's like absolutely I love myself. I've done a lot of work to get here to where I am. Maybe it was a long road, but maybe there's some people that are in the middle, like, mmm, I love certain parts of myself.

SPEAKER_04 23:21

I'm a work in progress. That love for me is a work in progress or something.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Right.

SPEAKER_04 23:25

But keep making progress.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

And what has if if you said yes, what has made you love yourself? And I want to say that again, it's the personal work you've done. It's that it's the growth mindset, the resilience, the learning, the emotional intelligence that you've developed for that person, it's keep doing that work. I I don't really believe that and no one's done you're never done. You're never done with that. Like because I I'm in love with myself and I'm constantly trying to open my mind to different places and learn and and grow and continue to develop. I I don't want to be done right now, even though I I love where I'm at.

SPEAKER_04 24:07

And this yeah, this reminds me of something else I just want to throw in here. Again, uh it's a YouTube video about everybody needs a coach, and there's this Dr. Atul Gawande. He he does this TED talk, and he's there's like a two-minute version of this portion out on YouTube, and he says, You can look at your personal development in a couple of ways. That's uh the traditional way, you go to college, you get a degree, and you go out and make your way in the world. Or you can look at it from the position of sports, where they say, you're never done. You're never done developing. Get coaching and and assistance, and you do your self-work all through your life to get better and better and better. And it turns out that's a much better process than somebody who says, Oh, I'm I've got this eminence-based knowledge, I'm a highly educated person, and now I don't need to worry about learning anything else for the rest of my life. Or and he's he tells the story about he thought it was absurd to get a coach. He's a successful surgeon, and and he's so but he decided to get one of his former teachers from medical school to come in and and just observe him. And he thought, you know, he he thought the surgery would went great, that he that this observer would have this coach would have nothing to add. Turned out he had a whole page densely packed with notes of just little things, and he's like, oh wow. In a nutshell, he said, it helped him realize just how important that continual growth is. And this is what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

And and the best people in their fields, they are learners, they are studyers, they are continually learning and digging. If you're not in love with yourself, yeah, if if you know you're like, mmm, I can't exactly say yes, or it's a daily or weekly struggle, you have a little more work to do than others then. But what you can do is use the seven bridges to kind of figure out where could you what bridges are weak? Where is there erosion? Where do you need to kind of spend some time with the tools and patch things up a bit for yourself. In this podcast, we often use the terms women and men when discussing relationships and sexual dynamics. However, we want to acknowledge that not all women have vulvas and not all vulva owners identify as women. Similarly, not all men have penises, and not all penis owners identify as men. Our podcast welcomes individuals and couples of all orientations and identities. We aim for inclusivity, but fully acknowledge that our attempts will never be perfect. We are learning and adopting new language as humankind and our world evolves.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

Hey, just a heads up.