91. Content Compatibility: What It Reveals About Your Relationship

You find a post that makes you laugh, a podcast that changes your perspective, or a book you can't stop thinking about. Who's the first person you want to share it with?

In this episode, we explore Content Compatibility. We discuss why some partners become our favorite person to share life with (including our digital life), why others leave us feeling unseen, and what it means when you constantly find yourself taking your excitement somewhere else.

If you've ever wondered whether your partner truly gets you, this conversation might reveal more than you think.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 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. Alright, this is kind of a niche episode, we realize, but I still think it's really important, actually, in terms of getting into relationships or or dating and you're you're meeting people that you might, you know, partner with. We're talking about having content consumer commonality. You're like, what does that mean? Sharing, you know, we our world is so media-based now, everybody's into what what are they consuming in terms of reels, podcasts, audiobooks, TV shows, movies, all these things that are found, you know, it kind of digitally, digital content. What do you have in common? I I think in this way is really actually a a big part of the commonality you have with your partner.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

In a more general way, it kind of begs the question, what are the things you connect on?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Yeah, and you could have hobbies that are not found in the digital world, like rock climbing or snow skiing or whatever. You can have those those kinds of hobbies that you connect on. And if you do, you will likely have this digital content consumer commonality, more likely. But man, it's like sometimes, you know, we're in the grind of our day. That's what she said. We're working, we're working it. We're we're doing our work, whatever. We we maybe meet at the end of the day. And what have you said to your partner like lately? What interesting thing have you said anything interesting to your partner lately? And what are you usually saying to them when you're like, hey, I listened to this podcast on the way home about XYZ?

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Or did you see this new TV show coming out? I'm really interested because of blah blah blah. It's kind of sad. Like, if you don't have that, I've I've been in a relationship where I don't really have that. What is there to talk about, you know, kind of thing. Oh, yeah. These these things spawn deeper conversations about life, beliefs, politics, except you know, human rights. And so I do think it's not just a bunch of fluff and entertainment. These things are that can add a lot of interest to your relationships.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Yeah, the other side of this is that do you ever have a time when you're coming back at the end of the day and you're excited about something and you're like, well, yeah, but I can't really talk to my partner about that.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

He's not gonna care.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

He's not gonna care. She's not gonna understand, she's not gonna get this, she's not gonna be excited. Right. That's a dangerous place to be, honestly. Because it it grows. It it it's a wedge that starts to come between you because you're you make the assumption they're not excited about what you're excited about. So you could either be making that assumption or it might actually be true. I mean, it might be after a while of being together, you're finding, oh, I don't I I this isn't something I can share.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Well, or you got together without that, like going back to bridge one. I'm really interested in this thing, he doesn't give a fuck. That sucks.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Because who then you're like, well, I I can talk to my sister about this, or I can talk to my best my my friend about this, or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

If you have to outsource your passion outsource your passions to somebody else other than your partner, yeah. That's a problem.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Ideally, your partner is your best friend, but how often do we get into relationships where that's not the case? And you have to ask yourself five whys, okay, why did I get into this relationship? It wasn't because he or she or they were my best friend, was it because of family uh tradition? Was it and and expectations? Was it because of financially this makes sense, it's so much easier? Was it because of some kind of scarcity mode of like, well, if I don't have kids soon, I do I can't is it because of sex? Like ask yourself why did I get into this relationship? And if honestly, like I know we're I I idealists, but like if it isn't because this is my best friend who gets me, who I'm lit up whenever I'm around. Like, if it's not that what are you doing it for? That's not great.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Like I always say, everything comes back to the seven bridges, and this is bridge one, where we talk about physical attraction, sexual attraction, and personal attraction. And it typically, if I believe, if you found that you're in this situation where you're wondering, how did I get here? We don't have anything in common, you jumped over that step three of personal attraction way back in the beginning. And so that's why we drill home over and over again the seven bridges. It really works, it's kind of magical if you take the steps. But what we find too, and we've coached this before, where people are like bought into it to begin with, and then they lose sight of what they're doing because they panic. They're like, oh, I've got this person I'm dating, it's it's exciting, things are working out, we have physical and sexual attraction, personal, uh not so much, or they wouldn't won't ever admit that.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

And then they go in to try to go farther down the road, but they don't because they've they pushed it, they pushed the finish line up too far. They they pulled well, they pulled the finish line back because it's like we didn't even get through bridge one, and now I'm committed to this person. I'm in a committed, monogamous relationship, exclusive relationship, or whatever, and I haven't done all the work to really realize whether or not this person's gonna work for me. And so then you get down the road and you don't have this content consumer compatibility because you don't you have that getting to the end of the day. I had this big exciting thing happen. I can't go home and share it with my partner because she just is not interested in what I'm doing. Yeah, that's a problem.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

The funny thing about bridge one getting into bridge two with personal attraction being step three of bridge one, if you don't have that, because you go to bridge two bias for communication, and usually we're talking about the hard, difficult things of relationships that you have to be able to talk about. Right. And a lot of couples just don't talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

You know, we we are usually talking about, but what about this kind of stuff? What about the fun stuff? What about the the stuff, oh my god, I just listened to the funniest podcast.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

I can't wait to tell you about it.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Yeah, and I can't wait to tell you about it. What about uh, you know, oh my god, I just read the best book, you've gotta read it, you know, whatever it is, yeah, right, like that you've discovered out there in the digital world, or a Facebook post that you you're like, I gotta read this to you. If you passed over, if you don't really have, you didn't really take a strong step three on bridge one of that personal attraction, not only can you not talk about the difficult, hard stuff of relationships, you don't really talk about the fun stuff either because you're not compatible with personal attraction. You're not you don't have the same interests and hobbies and you're not into the same things, you know. And then I always say opposites attract, and I call bullshit. I I may say opposites attract, but that doesn't mean they should be together. Right. Who gives a fuck if opposites attract? How well is that working out in your relationship? Yeah. Never worked out for me. And honestly, now I'm in a relationship where we have all of this and we're more alike than than opposite by far.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Oh, we are for sure.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

And that's working out a hundred times better for me. So I call bullshit on opposites attract. Like attraction is not the the end-all be-all of the that's a very uh minus you know, small percentage of the seven of the seven bridges that you need to actually have a compatible relationship. Yeah. But the the hard the funny part is is that okay, you're not gonna be able to talk about the hard stuff on bridge two if you don't finish crossing bridge one and and have that personal attraction step. But you're also not gonna have any fun. No, you're not. And you're not gonna share this stuff with your partner because you don't have the same interests and hobbies typically if you don't take that third step.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

It's gonna feel really hollow if you find that every night you're coming home and saying, Well, I can't share this, but you want to share it, so then you're trying to find somebody else to share it with. And you do, as a friend, as sister, a brother, whatever. And but but then what you end up doing is you end up having more intimate moments with people who aren't your partner. Sure. You know, and that's that's kind of sad.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

That is very sad.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

That's not what we're about, anyway. That's not what we're gonna coach you, that's not what we're gonna teach you. We're f we feel like you you just can't outsource to your life partner, to your best friend, if they're your best friend. You wouldn't want to outsource any of this stuff to anybody else.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

I feel like like committed relationships where you're not best friends.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

And you know, some people are like, oh, well, they became my best friend, you know, in time. That took decades.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

Right. Uh but I wonder if that's really true.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

And I don't I don't know if that's really true. And sometimes it's true by default because they don't have any other friends.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

But I don't know if that's really true either. But if it is, kudos to you, but I wouldn't want to do it that way. Like, oh, well, it we weren't, but then we became like okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

And the the other thing I want to be careful of, too, with what I just said, is you don't want to have to outsource your your passions and your happiness to other people. But it's okay to do that, but if it's if it's the default to go to somebody else because you can't do it with your partner, that's gonna indicate it's some sort of compatibility issue. If you can't wait to share it with your partner and then you just want to share it with everybody else too, that's that's great. Sure. And that's really healthy.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

But so you don't have to exclude the others to be best friends with your partner. Right. But if you are excluding your partner because they're not your best friend and you have to go somewhere else, that's the problem. That's sad.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

I've been there.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

It's it's not a happy place to be. I think that if your partner, I want to say, isn't your best friend, those relationships almost feel more like arrangements to me.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Mm-hmm. Yeah. You have you have an arrangement where for something forficiency for some reason. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

But man, it it I for myself being where I was in a relationship like that, I refused to partner again unless this person was my bestest friend. Yeah. I I just was like, I don't want to partner if it's just an arrangement.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

I only want to partner with someone who is my best friend.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

And that's where I was too. Same thing, and that's why I had the seven bridges, is because I knew I had to cross those with with an individual to find that best friend that I could go on deep in all those levels with.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

If you're in a partnership, ask yourself, do I have the this kind of commonality? Because it's a it's a major part of our world now. Do I share the audiobooks or the books I'm reading? Do we watch TV shows together and then talk about how exciting it is? Do we share movies? Do I tell my can I can I wait to tell my partner about this podcast I just listened to? Because I know they're gonna find that interesting too. Yeah. Ask yourself, do you have that in your relationship? And if you're dating, it's something to think about.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

Pay attention as you as you go along and you're, you know, you've been on several dates. Is this a person that you can't wait to tell about, you know, that that Facebook post you saw or share that meme with, whatever it was, in this way? If not, you might want to, I mean, hopefully you've listened to the Seven Bridges of a Solid Relationship episode three, number three, and really paying attention to especially that third step on bridge one. Yeah, personal personal attraction. How much of that is is there? Because we're usually interested in people that we have, we have a lot in common with this person. We're interested in the same things, we can talk about the same things. I always tell people, you know, when you're dating, think of this potential partner, think of meeting go back to when you were a kid, think of when you were in sixth grade or fourth grade or whatever, and the school year's beginning or whatever, and and think about your childhood best friend or one of them, you know? How that happened, how that happened naturally, because you just found that we're interested in the same we got put together in some kind of form or fashion. We were in the same class or we got put in the same PE group or whatever it is, and then hey, we found out we're both interested in this thing, right? And then we found out, oh, we're more we're interested in this, right? Like you want it to be that natural and almost that that childlike when it comes to the personal attraction aspect. Take the sex out of it, take the physical, take, take all the hard stuff out of it, really kind of just try to separate that personal attraction with just deromance it, I guess. Like desexualize it and just is this just a person, I don't care what their sex or gender is, that you would click with, that you would be best friends with if all of that other stuff just went away. I think that's the purest way to think about personal attraction, though. And that's what you want in your relationship, in your partnership. 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_01 15:55

Hey, just a heads up.