Behind the Scenes: Core Values and Themes of Safe to Love

On this special episode of Safe to Love, April and Chad sit down to share with our audience what beats at the heart of Safe to Love, from our mission statement, to our Core Values, as well as who our audience is and the different themes that we use to determine the topics we talk about. 

Special thanks to our dear friend Adira for coming from behind the camera to interview us for this episode! Adira was a core member of the Safe to Love family through the entire production and launch of Season 1 (and is still the editor for our Substack!), and without her we never would have gotten this dream to launch!

Speaking of Substack, if you are enjoying our show we would love it if you subscribed to us there, where you will find more stories of real love and other writings.

Subscribe to Safe to Love on Substack - https://substack.com/@safetolove

We are on a Mission to help the world believe in love again, and give YOU the courage to find it!

Values - we are always
1. Courageous
2. Compassionate
3.  Accountable
4. Authentic
5. Practical

Themes/Topics of the Safe to Love show
1. Safety
2. Courage
3. Communication
4. Intimacy
5. Relationships
6. Sex

If you're serious about ...

❤️ Work With Chad
Instagram |  @chadonlove

❤️  Work with April
Instagram |  @aprilbenincosa 

Welcome to Safe to Love! Subscribe for more great content and share this with someone who needs to hear it!

Website |   safetolove.org
YouTube |   @SafetoLoveShow
Facebook |  Safe-to-Love
Instagram |  @safetoloveshow
TikTok | @safetoloveshow

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Having a healthy, fulfilling relationship will change the world. Like, imagine a world where your parents loved each other and they taught you how to have healthy repair, and then you felt loved and nurtured in like in a hundred years. If everyone grew up in the safe home with good relationships, like how that would work.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

It is possible to experience excitement and safety in the same relationship.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Welcome to Safe to Love. We are on a mission to help the world believe in love again and give you the courage to find it. We are switching things up today. I'm Adira. I'm going to be your host so that we can get a peek behind the scenes of what the values of the podcast are. April, what does that mission statement mean to you?

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Oh, that mission statement took 40 years to embody. And when I first met Chad, I had just left my 15-year marriage. I didn't, I didn't know where I was going to live. Um, I had found out my mom had stage four cancer. And I was talking with him about something. He said, You're the most courageous person I've ever met. And I just started really leaning into that in myself, the courage that I, that he mirrored in me. And then with that courage, I just started doing all of these things. And I was like, I really want to do a podcast. And um, just after meeting him, like it gave me permission to have the courage to go for it. And so courage is one of my core values of my life and how I live my life. And it's actually how I've always lived my life. I just didn't really have an understanding of it until I had Chad mirror that back to me.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

So well, I look out into the world and see a world that has lost hope in a lot of things, um, but definitely in love and in finding a real true partnership. And so I believe that human beings are capable of tremendous acts of courage and resilience if they can believe in the possibility of that working out for them. But I know so many people and at times in my life, myself, that have just lost hope and don't believe that real love is possible and have let cynicism kind of take over their life. So the very first thing this podcast is meant to bring people is hope. Hope that they can believe that real love is possible and real love is possible for them. And then in order to go for it, they need tremendous acts of courage, right? The reality is that a lot of people have I've seen people try so many different tricks to try to outsmart and outthink the game of love, figure out a way to find a partner to engage in love without risking their heart, and it just doesn't work like that. You do not get to pursue anything in life worth having, let alone real love and partnership without being willing to risk pain and risk loss. And so, regardless of how well you do it or what we teach them, every single thing that you do in life, especially dating and love and romance and partnership, requires courage.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

That leads me into my next question for you, Chad. And what does courage mean to you as your first core value?

SPEAKER_02 3:17

Well, and it is the first core value for a reason, because it courage is required at every step of the way. You know, we've it's been uh it's been required of both of us continuously as we've had this dream of this podcast, and we have stepped into putting ourselves out there and putting it together and the ego mind and the doubt and the fear, these are just things that um we live in this body on this plane and we have them, right? And so the courage to be afraid and do it anyway, the courage to be afraid that people won't listen, or be afraid that no one will care, or that we won't get um guests that want to come on, or all these different things. We've had to embody that just to put this out there. And so, in order to teach that to people so that they can take that courage into their love life, um, we have to demonstrate it first.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Yeah, and courage really for me, having it be one of my core values of my life is I used to think that that I would just try to overcome my fear. And so I spent so many years trying to overcome my fear, and you know, you can't really have courage without fear and just understanding that you're gonna have that fear, especially in love. Like when I was divorced and falling in love with Chad, it like took a lot of courage to put my heart out there in a real way that could get broken. Like my heart could get broken, but I believed that it was worth it. I believed that there was, it was worth getting my heart broken, like the risk of getting my heart broken, but at the expense of like, not the expense, but like the opportunity and the dream of like finding the love of my life and then the courage to quit my job when I did hair for a long time. Like every act of courage that I've had in my life has gotten me to this point. And when I see others like the people I coach with step into courage to face their fears and to face their demons and love them, anyways, that's when their real life changes. So courage is like on the map of consciousness, it is where all action takes place. So it takes courage to take any kind of meaningful action in this world, whether it be love or relationships or leaving a relationship that doesn't serve you anymore, or starting a new podcast or something like that at all, is on the other side of courage.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

So do you guys have any specific examples of how courage showed up for you when you first started Safe to Love while navigating your new relationship?

SPEAKER_02 5:57

It's to be easier for me to think of examples where courage wasn't required in that process. But, you know, we uh first had to believe in love again. And I I we talk a lot about how we're hopeless romantics, and I am, and I've always wanted to believe in that, but I had to learn to believe in that at a different level, right? I had I had learned to believe in like the courage to get my heart broken and to keep things in the moment, and you know, talk about this idea that love is moments and and fleeting, but the courage to like believe that I could build something with someone, that I could invest my heart into a relationship and actually dream of a future, and that future in and that future right from the beginning not only involved um our love relationship, but also involved our mission, right? And you know, we're we're we're on a mission to change the world, right? Like, have you guys ever seen like a movie where somebody did something like that? Like, it's not for the faint of heart, right? And we're at this pivotal time in this world where never in my adult lifetime has more courage been required for just just to continue as a as a planet, right? And so we looked at that as you know, where does our which does our mission fit within the global mission of elevating all of humanity? And that is helping heal the wounds that keep us from the greatest source of strength and courage that we have, and that is um true devoted partnership.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it it involves risk. Like we, especially like for me specifically, the starting a podcast and a new relationship after ending a career of doing hair for 24 years and ending a 15-year marriage. Like for me, the courage was to not lose myself in a relationship. Like I had just barely started to get a hold of the the me. And now I'm like getting into a we again. And that was really scary because it had taken me so long to develop that sense of me enough to leave something that didn't serve me. But then also the risk of I'm gonna lose the love of my life and this career that I built, right? Like if they're like now they're tied in. So like it's double risk of that.

SPEAKER_02 8:32

Um risk at all.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's really kind of like, hey, I'm gonna, you know, the classic, I'm gonna burn everything to the ground and rebuild this like beautiful thing. And it's it's new and it's tender and it requires a lot of like delicacy. And so like the courage to slow down, the courage to, you know, feel the feelings that I haven't felt for a long time. Um, so that's how that shows up in because you know, how you do anything is how you do everything. So like when I show up a certain way in a relationship, that does kind of come into our business relationship.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

So it really is the classic all in. We're all in.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

There's no um backdoor.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Yeah, that actually leads me into the second value of compassion. And what does that look like for you guys?

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Yeah. Compassion is um something that's been so healing for me. We tend as humans to be really hard on ourselves, um, especially in this hustle capitalistic world where we're like, we need more, we need to do more, we need to be more in order to be loved. And um, this coaching program I took like completely changed my life. They do a compassionate self-forgiveness statement from the University of Santa Monica. And just like having this compassion for the parts of you that haven't ever felt safe to come out. Like that is, you know, the podcast was originally gonna be called safety first because a lot of safety is required for love, but also a lot of compassion for yourself, a lot of compassion for your partner, for these younger, less mature parts that have never felt safe to feel seen before. Those are gonna come out and they're really tender. And you need to work with them like you would a five-year-old. You need to be very compassionate. And um, compassion helps restore, you know, repair. It's like when you have compassion for the other person, like, oh, I understand why you are being like that given your history.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

Yeah, we used to have this phrase in in recovery, in 12-step recovery. If um, if you talk to me like I talk to me, I would kick your fucking ass. And I think that's the you know, and especially in the work that I've done in sponsoring people and now in my career coaching people, like everybody that I've ever met is way too hard on themselves. We are such beautiful creatures, such amazing beings, and we uh have been conditioned and programmed by a society um to elevate our weaknesses, to beat ourselves up, to to just tell ourselves how much we're failing and how awful we are, and just all these things. And before we can even begin to come into uh a partnership or relationship or just interact with people in the world, we have to we have to learn to take the courage to start being kind to ourselves. And you know, a great example of that is like um uh something that we do and that I get like a practice I give pretty much every client that I've ever had at some point, and that is to do three things that they're grateful to themselves for at night. And every single one is like, it is one of the hardest things in the world. It is go, I tell everybody right now, if you're watching this, like pause it, go in the mirror, and just say three things to yourself, three genuine kind things to yourself. It is, it is not something, it is not easy, even though it should be natural, because we have been programmed to this, to this idea that I need to constantly berate myself to improve myself. And the problem with that is that if you come into a relationship and you are not compassionate with yourself, you your capacity to be compassionate for another person is limited by that. And so it all has to begin with compassion for ourselves and then compassion for each other, the child within us, the wounds that we have, the trauma that we have. And it's not this sort of fake optimism or fake positivity. It's actually just objective reality that you are a lot, every single person hearing this, you are a lot better, kinder, more wonderful, pleasant person, all of the things than you think. Your self-image is skewed to the negative. It is not objective. And so we we start by just realizing that we're actually already okay, we're not broken.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

You mentioned um a gratitude practice with that value of compassion, which segues me into the next value of accountability. And how does accountability show up for you guys and what does it mean for you guys in starting safe to love?

SPEAKER_02 13:21

Well, I love that you tied that segue in because it's not one that I think a lot of people would think, but you're absolutely right. Um, in order to have accountability, and this is something that I say a lot, and I I firmly believe that accountability and judgment cannot exist in the same space. Um, true accountability is an objective view of ourselves. And when we take an objective view of ourselves, um, and you can use that you can talk about that as well as like the idea of humility, which to me means to look at ourselves as God sees us. And if you don't like the word God, then say, look at yourself as a parent would look at a child. We the judgment part of us kind of fades away and the compassion becomes easy. And once we recognize that I am a human being and I have flaws, but I also have strengths, and it it's so easy to shift into accountability to own our part in what we've done. And that is not only it's not just a lot of people think of accountability as just this idea of I did something wrong and I'm going to take accountability for it. Accountability is also the most empowering thing that we can do because as soon as I'm able to step out of judgment, then I'm able to step out a victim and I'm able to see that not only do I have a part to play in whatever it is that happened, but I also can see how I have the power to create something new going forward. And so, but that cannot happen without compassion. So you're absolutely right. That is a great segue.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

Yeah. And accountability is a key ingredient for building trust, which is you can't have a relationship if you can't trust someone, right? So when someone's not willing to be accountable or take accountability, then there is distrust. And then when you're also not willing to be accountable to yourself, then like accountable for using your words or speaking up for yourself, it builds resentment. Like for myself, when I'm like, I wanted to say something and I didn't say it, I get into resentment. And then my ego and my inner child like start to get like, oh, see, we never do this. And I'm not building trust with myself. And so when I step into accountability, which is hard to do sometimes, that's where the courage comes in and the compassion is, you know, being willing to not be right. Because sometimes we want to come from that, like wanting to be right, which creates defensiveness, which is not good for a pair. And so accountability is kind of the thing that gets you, it like just takes you up out of the mess and the chaos and like just takes you up here to objectively look at and be like, okay, what is mine? And without needing to be right, like what can I take accountability for? And that does what that does is it builds trust with ourselves, but also our partner.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Well, and I'd argue in one of the rare, like short Instagram real sound bites, that defensiveness is the number one offender of problems in relationships, and accountability is the best solution for it.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

In what ways has that accountability shown up in your business partnership and your romantic partnership as well?

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Um, when we first started, so I did hair for a long time, and then I bought five salons within five years. And um I really burnt myself out. I was working 80 hours a week, and um my nervous system has like, I'm still rebuilding trust with my nervous system to where I'm like, I don't want to work this much. I don't wanna like I'm just being so careful to fight for my, you know, thing not to be working 80 hours a week. And so when Chad and I first started this, you know, I my teenager, my angry teenager would be like, don't tell me what to do. And he's like, I'm your business partner and I'm not telling you what to do, but like we are co-owners and we need to do this together. And so that is an area that like he was able to talk with me about, and I was able to see in a way, not being defensive, not being, you know, like, I don't do that, you know, which I probably I might have done that for a couple of weeks, but then when he finally got in, um, that's where the compassion for your partner comes in. Uh, and once I was able to see that, I feel like I really was able to shift out of that. And I'm not perfect with it. I'm still like working through that with myself of showing up in a better way, but I think we both agree that I have shown up much better. So accountability for that um actually did like help our relationship personally and our business relationship.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

Yeah, and I too occasionally am prone to defensiveness. It has happened. Uh I the the the at the end of the day, like we're doing something we've never done before. And we are learning as we go. And you know, we originally were going to launch this thing right when we had the the dream of it, and then we decided to take a step back and really prepare for it and really put the time and effort into building something and doing it right. And that's um, but even so, there's no matter what we do, no matter how much you prepare for something, eventually you have to go out there and do it, and you're never gonna do it perfectly the first time. So there's a lot of accountability. Every single episode we've recorded, every single behind the scenes episode prep meeting we've had, the uh whole like the whole business part of it, managing money, managing schedules, managing different contractors, um every single thing of it has been this great learning experience, right? And so that's where that's where I say, like when I'm in judgment of myself, I'm not doing this right, I didn't do that well, then I'm shutting down any any ability to grow from it. But when we're able to kind of step into accountability and take every single thing that we do, every single time we record an episode, we sit afterward and think, that was great, and this is how we could do it better. And that's where accountability is so empowering, right? But it's it has to start with realizing that this expectation of perfection on ourselves is not actually leading us to improvement. And so it look, it's November 2025, and it on New Year's Eve, uh, I was an engineer and we hadn't even met, right? Like we everything that we're doing is new, and that's why coming back to courage again always comes back to courage to do something big. The courage is required to be like, I am going to make mistakes, I am going to screw it up. And that's exactly how it is in a relationship. How I handle that is going to determine whether I grow from that or whether it breaks me. And that's why accountability is such a key thing, because we are always going to have an opportunity to learn from everything that we do. And if we can, if we can approach that with a level of excitement, it's like, yes, how fun is that that every single time I do something, I get to learn how to do it better. Then we will always be growing and improving, never, never achieving perfection, but always moving towards a North Star of what we want to create.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

Your fourth value is authenticity, um, which builds on accountability because in order to be accountable, you have to be authentic. So, how does authenticity show up?

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Authenticity is something I've really struggled with, especially being in the beauty industry. And um, you know, we were on stage speaking at an event and I shared that my old boss used to just say, I don't care what your problems are or what's going on in your life, you leave it at the door and you put a smile on because it's not your your clients aren't paying to hear about your problems. And I didn't realize how much that and also just my childhood fawning response had um, I thought I was being so authentic because I was sharing a lot of vulnerable things. And I thought that that was me being authentic. And since I met Chad, he has really like pushed me out of my comfort zone in a big way of like the masks that I wear. And it's not to say that like when I show up on stage that I'm gonna be different than when I'm hanging out with my nieces or different when you know we're being silly in the house or something. But um, but being the conscious creator of like this role or this, you know, having this sense of people get a sense of me, like who is April? And and And I didn't realize that I was putting off this, like, April has April never has any problems. Like, even when I was going through my divorce, I remember and I was trying to build my clientele. And I was asking one of my friends, I was like, I refer so many people to so many people, and nobody's referring anybody to me. And she was like, Well, yeah, no one would ever think to help you. I was like, what? And she's like, no one would ever think that April needed help with anything. And that was just a really big realization that I was not being authentic of sharing my pains or sharing like my trials or things I was going through. I thought I just needed to put on this mask. And so the more that I'm uncovering that mask, it is definitely a lot of emotions. Um, but I feel more like myself and I feel more authentically me. And I'm still in the discovery of what that is.

SPEAKER_02 22:59

Or the show, it means we won't sell out.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

We will never sell out.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:05

And that is important to we like it's important to constantly reiterate to ourselves on a daily basis because in this world, this uh this is what's called the attention economy. The uh everything is about the algorithm and everything is about the trend, and everything is about what people want to hear. And we get to work within that because our message doesn't really do anybody any good if they don't hear it. But at the end of the day, we're not here to tell people what they want to hear. We're not going to tailor our message to whatever's popular or do or say whatever some other person got a thousand, ten thousand likes on, right? We're we're here to um lead. We're here to show the world the truth and show people what they need to hear and need to feel. And it's also a key value of how we show up and bring our personal life into the show because otherwise we wouldn't be able to help anybody, right? When I first went to, when I first went to rehab at the age of 20, I had had counselors, I had had police, I had had judges, I had had parents, uh, not my own parent, but other people's parents. Uh, plenty of people tell me, this is what you need to do, this is how you can have this life, you're, you're, you're killing yourself, blah, blah, blah, blah, it didn't mean anything to me. What meant something to me was the first time I went to a 12-step meeting and I heard someone share about experiences in active addiction and the pain and the humiliation and the sense of hopelessness. And I could feel that they had really experienced what I had felt and that they weren't there where I was at now, right? In order to give someone hope, we we don't get any hope from just an endless series of perfect Instagram relationships, right? We get hope from seeing that people struggle. People have the same problems that we have, people have the same challenges, people have the same fights over dishes or phones uh or um or big things like money and sex, and that they are able to still have deep and fulfilling relationships anyway, right? It it's so important that we, and we're not here to just trauma dump or just air all our dirty laundry, but it's so important that we stay authentic and vulnerable so that the audience can see and that and that we invite guests on and set that space for them as well, so that the audience can see that the uh both us and the couples that we bring on the show are not as different than them as they may feel, right? So that that's how that that initial sense of brokenness starts to kind of you kind of penetrate that and bring hope into it.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

What piece of advice would you give our audience um to show up authentically when they are experiencing discomfort in that?

SPEAKER_02 26:06

Trust me on this. The authentic version of you is way more interesting than the mask that you wear.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

Yeah, and I would say in order to show up authentically, like a piece of advice I would say is to come back to safety in your body. Because if we don't feel safe, if we have the fawning trauma response, it's not we don't feel safe to authentically say no, right? And so a lot of it comes back to the self and grounding the self and creating safety for the self to be authentic. So it like authenticity, yeah, the grounding part of that would be safety.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

It's a very good point, babe. And and and probably one that I have that I have to do a lot of work to remember, right? Because when we're not grounded in ourself, we're not we we're not being authentic when we're activating from our wounds, right? Our authentic self is not the trauma response, it's not the wounds, it's not the fight or flight response, right? Like that's part of our body, but our authentic being is who we are when we're centered within ourselves, when we're not in that survival state. And so it is absolutely vital. And that's also why so much of our show is going to also be about how to feel safe in our body. Because it's absolutely vital for us to show up authentically, for us to reconnect with our authentic self. And in order to do that, we have to step out of that survival state.

SPEAKER_00 27:29

Yeah, you guys have walked me through separate journeys that you guys have gone through that led you to creating this podcast and also meeting each other. Um, which leads me to our last value of practicality. What does practicality mean to the both of you?

SPEAKER_02 27:46

Um, it's really important that we remember that it's really important that we remember the mission. And the mission is to help people. And the mission is, and so it's really like it's honestly a lot of fun sharing stories. It's a lot of fun um interacting with our guests. Like we should just we have, we we do get to experience a lot of joy in this. And we also want to make sure that we remind ourselves every time that we record an episode and every time that we do everything that we do, that to come back to the mission and to come back to the people we can serve and make sure that we are also we're not just leaving people with kind of talking about the problem and giving them hope, but also giving them practical solutions for how to better achieve the authentic love and safety in their life that they want to experience.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Yeah, if something's not practical, it's just good information. And we are in an age of information, like over Lord. And so um, like I'm not naturally a practical person, but when things are broken down into like here's the one thing that you can do, then when I get into overwhelm, which is also sometimes a trauma response, like it's our younger part of ourselves just trying to protect ourselves. If I have a practical tool that's just like three breaths, okay. You're like three breaths away from calm. You know, like that's something I can put into my subconscious mind. So whenever I'm activated, I can just take three breaths. And if that doesn't work, I can just take three breaths more. Or, you know, when we're having a fight or repairing, like um, one thing that we heard from our friends that we interviewed is to just like hold hands and like stay connected, even if we're like, I don't want to look at you. But I love holding your hands still, you know, it's like that's something really practical that like all couples can take with them. So then when they're in repair, because when you are in that fight or fly response, your subconscious, your monkey mind takes over. And so if you have something that's like embodied, like easy, like a breath, holding a hand, making eye contact, like having a code word, something like, yeah, you know, even if you can't say a word, you're just like, stop, you know, I need I need a break. Like something like that. If you can just take one thing from every episode, which is the goals of our episode, is like, what's one thing you can take from here to like improve your relationship in your life that's practical and easy?

SPEAKER_00 30:21

Um in terms of your target audience, who is safe to love for?

SPEAKER_01 30:27

Um, safe to love is for anyone who feels broken, for anyone who has given up hope, who doesn't believe that the right person is out there, who feels that they're unlovable, who feels like they're too much and not enough at the same time, feels like they're too needy, um, and that they just don't believe that it's ever gonna happen for them.

SPEAKER_02 30:50

And it's also for people who feel like they're good, they're fine, everything's fine, but some part of them wants to explore something deeper, wants to have deeper intimacy with their partner, wants to have better sex with their partner, wants to, we will be talking about sex, wants to um sh learn how show up better in uh in their embodied self, anybody who recognizes that they don't always feel safe in their body, who recognizes that they sometimes pick a fight with their partner that uh they didn't mean to. Um kind of pretty much anybody that experiences love and fear and wants to learn how to lean more into love.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

That leads me to the overarching theme of the show, number one being safety and how to create safety in your body and in your relationships. Can you elaborate on that a little bit, April?

SPEAKER_01 31:51

Um doing a lot of somatic and inner child work, safety is, you know, we carry safety with us. If we don't feel safe in our body, we are gonna project out not having safety. So safety is like one of the core themes we will talk about because it's kind of at the like you need to feel enough safety to be courageous. You have to like have enough safety to feel authentic. And and you can't feel like practical to think if you're like in fight or flight, right? So a lot of it is just safety in the nervous system, because especially in partnership, like we're co-regulating all the time. So if he's not feeling safe and I'm not feeling safe, there's no one to co-regulate. Whereas like if he's not feeling safe, but I'm feeling really grounded and safe, we can co-regulate. So safety is just a really important part of having a healthy ecosystem to create a beautiful relationship.

SPEAKER_02 32:45

Yeah. And both elements of that are equally as important, right? It's equal it's important that we learn how to put ourselves in, choose safe partners, and create safe relationships. And it's just as important that we learn how to feel safe in our body when we are safe. And I've seen a lot of people that hit one or the other. They may be in a relationship where their partner is not good for them. They're in a relationship that they're not appreciated or they're just incompatible, or maybe they're even partner is abusive. And all of the breath work and the yoga retreats and the yoni sunning and um human design, the world isn't going, you cannot trick your body into thinking that it's safe when it is safe. But on the other side of that, there's a lot of people that are in relationships with partners who are safe, who are good for them. They who do have compatibility, but their nervous system is so stuck in their trauma that they don't feel safe in their body. And when we don't feel safe in our body, our instinct is to look out and say it's your fault. And so both of these practices of how we go about the process of dating and choosing our partners and showing up in relationships, but also the practice that we do in our own body to connect with our own body and let our and take the adult self of us and hold that child self and let it know that it's safe so that we can actually feel and experience the safety that we've created. Um, both of those things are vital in order to have an effective partnership.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

Yeah. Chad's favorite scene he says all the time is like, how are you not showing up as a safe partner? You know, like for you to be able to look at like, how am I not being a safe partner? Like, I can be creating safety in myself, but also sometimes like show up as an unsafe partner unconsciously, like because to him it might feel unsafe. And to me, and that might not make me feel unsafe. And so it's just also understanding like, how are you not showing up as a safe partner?

SPEAKER_02 34:47

Well, and I'd say that it's my favorite thing to say to clients and the audience. Um, I do I wouldn't recommend saying that to your partner all the time.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:57

Not that I haven't done that. I make sure that you're not a partner that I haven't done that too.

SPEAKER_00 35:02

I want to circle back to courage briefly, Chad, and ask you how you removed protective defenses because you did mention defensiveness when we spoke about safety just now.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

Yeah, and that's a challenge for someone like me who has experienced a lot of trauma in their life. And those the those parts of me are right there. And that's the greatest courage that you're gonna find, that you're gonna have to find, is to look inward, right? The courage to show up in a partner. This is why relationships are so challenging, because they're a mirror of the parts of ourselves that we don't want to look at. And so the greatest courage that we need to find is the courage to look at ourselves, look within, see what's really happening there, recognize where that part of us that is that did respond that way, why did I respond that way? Hold that part with compassion. Um and we have to take accountability. I'm not even intentionally going through all the values here. This is just kind of how they came to be, right? And then we have to take accountability. Like my trauma is my own, my wounds are my own. I get to meet them without judgment, but I also get to be accountable for how they hurt other people and how they hurt myself, right? And that's something that, you know, I had to struggle with for a long time because I would find that my wounds would sabotage a lot of relationships. And so there's times now that I have a partnership that is aligned, when those feelings come up that want to run away or want to shut down, the courage to stay in my body and be with those emotions is a constant practice. Because as soon as I run away from them, and running away, like running away doesn't just look like physically running away, right? Like the other what they call the freeze response is really just running away from myself. So I have to really find that courage every day when those difficult emotions come up and those trauma responses come up to get back into my body where that pain is, where that fear is, and sit with that. Because if I don't, then it will take over and it will run the show.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

Mm-hmm. That makes a lot of sense. Um I wanted to ask how safe to love will showcase effective mature communication. Could you elaborate on that for me, April?

SPEAKER_01 37:32

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it ends in our guests that we have. And then, you know, we have found, we've searched for the needle in the haystack to find a couple who's been married for a long time and still loves each other.

SPEAKER_02 37:47

And we found we've found quite a few.

SPEAKER_01 37:49

No, we've found we've actually found quite a few once you start looking for it. The reticular activating system turns on. But a big part of those stories that we want to share is, you know, a lot of the things that those couples share is the maturity that happens in their relationship. You know, they got married at 17 and then they kind of grew together or they started doing this or whatever have you. And then just in our conversations with each other, like we're gonna share a lot about our like our personal journeys of maturity. And then we have a lot of guests. Um, you know, we just had our guest Christy uh on. If you haven't watched it, super great episode where she talks about the archetypes and the archetypes of the queen, lover, warrior, magician, and then the the child archetypes, which is the saboteur, the victim, the prostitute, and the child. And so, like language, like that's not fair, that's child language. And, you know, we deep dive into that um in that episode. So I think it's something that will be a recurring theme with each episode.

SPEAKER_02 38:54

Yeah, communication is a is a theme, definitely will be a theme of our show. And I I think it ties mostly back to the value of practicality, right? Because ultimately we are talking about partnerships. We're talking about how we relate to each other and all of the chances for the signal to get twisted between my heart, my brain, my mouth, the air, your ears, your brain, your heart, like the the these are the these are things that we need real practical tools for. We need real guidance. We weren't really taught effective communication growing up. Most of us haven't been. If you had, then you know, give your parents a big thank you. And so, in order to even begin to do any of the work that we want to do, whether that be if we're single and we're out there looking for a partner and we're going through the process of dating or we're in a long-term relationship and we're going through the process of repair and deepening our relationship, we need to know how to better communicate with each other. Our our natural instincts to communication from what we've been conditioned, they tend to get in our way more often than not. So tools and methods and understanding our communication and how to improve it is going to be a huge core theme of the show because that's where people can really take a lot of practical uh advice from.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

Yeah, I love that. Um I'm curious to know how intimacy ties into your five values, um, especially authenticity.

SPEAKER_02 40:23

Yeah. Uh to me, intimacy, everybody everybody wants sex. Sex sells. If we just were a sex podcast, then probably we would be able to, I don't know. Fuck the algorithm though. Uh sex is a part of intimacy, right? And as a man, especially, this is where like my before I met April, I had started down the path of of intimacy coaching. Because what I've what I've observed is that we have this, we have this kind of trope in our society that women want intimacy, men want sex. So women trade intimacy or trade sex for intimacy, and men trade intimacy for sex in this just really disgusting transactional way that sexual relationships are presented. And it's just not true. And I will tell you something very interesting and poignant. Like last night, I was in a um, I have a virtual men's group that I'm a part of, and the topic of sex came up, and someone made a comment, and this is all just men, right? Someone made a comment, like, well, it you can go a while without sex. And literally everybody was like, it's not about sex, it's about and there's many very different things that were said connection, feeling valued, feeling wanted, this greater idea of intimacy, this connection, this in to me you see, or as as April's heard it, in Intimy I see, right? Which is just intimate with intimacy with ourself, that is truly what men and women are craving. And once that process, and that's it, once safety is established, and then we we can we can develop that intimacy, sex flows very naturally and easily. And I've found with myself and with working with clients, like you will have a lot greater, like there's a lot more value in ability to improve your sex life through connection, through heart connection, than any pose, position, bondage. And all these things are great, by the way. Like bondage is great. Um, kinky, there's all sorts of valid expressions of sex, but they're all kind of surface level if we don't start with a deep embodied heart connection between two people. And that's really what intimacy is to me, and what the world is craving, really just desperately thirsty for, is how to learn how to have deeper intimacy with each other.

SPEAKER_01 42:54

Yeah, and with the authenticity piece, um that's where you being authentic in your expression gets to show up in intimacy. So, like the part of me that feels scared to be a certain way, and then I get to bring that part into my relationship and have that part of me be loved, it does create a deeper sense of intimacy, but also creates more safety for me to be authentic. So they kind of go hand in hand, like the deeper the intimacy, the more authentic I think you get to express yourself.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

I love that. That's beautiful. Um and finding like true intimacy comes from fulfilling companionship, which leads me to the next topic of relationships, which is really kind of a foundation of safe to love. And I wanted to ask you, April, how relationships are going to appear on safe to love and what the structure of that will look like.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

Yeah, relationships, um you're always in relationship with something, right? You're like, this is how I really. To my mom. This is how I relate to this thing. And um, and so relationships are going to be the cornerstone. Um, because I 100% believe, and so does Chad, that like having a healthy, fulfilling relationship will change the world. Like, imagine a world where your parents loved each other and they taught you how to have healthy repair, and then you felt loved and nurtured in like in a hundred years, if everyone grew up in this safe home with good relationships, like how that would work. So we want to have, we we have a lot of guests on about their relationship and what it took to maintain that relationship, what it took for them to build, you know, relationships are earned. Like good trust is earned, respect is earned. It's not just given to you because you're hot and I want to have sex with you. It's like, okay, this will get you in the front door, and then this is gonna get you into the next door, and then this is gonna get you into there. So we have um a lot of experts about relationships with your body, relationships with yourself, relationships with dancing, relationships, you know, with men's intimacy, and then other couples' relationships, and then also Chad and I's personal relationship and our evolution as we're going through safe to love. We are in the process of the becoming as the podcast grows, so are we growing. So the relationship with our podcast is also going to change as our relationship changes, which I think is kind of fun.

SPEAKER_02 45:29

Yes, and at the core of that is a primary love relationship or a partnership, as um, you know, people refer to it as. And that is a relationship that is not to say that our life isn't full of many relationships that have value and that and that how we interact with all of them isn't part of our true selves. But we are, we believe that we are beings that are meant to be in relationship, like in a in in a partnership. And or at least that's what I want for myself, and that's you know, we we we talk about monogamous relationships, right? We think that's that is the that that is one area of our audience that uh is probably where I would say it's it's niche down to is people who are seeking and better, fulfilling monogamous relationships, true partnerships, where you can explore the depth with one person rather than skimming along the surface with others and how to do that better, right? And that's again like communication and how all that ties into it. Some not something that we were taught very well. We haven't we've grown up without a lot of great examples of relationships, right? We've either had like we all either had all the examples of the people who have been married for 30, 40 years that we're like really shouldn't be, and there's no part of that that like appeals to us, or we're surrounded by friends and older peers that and mentors that um are in a series of relationships and they can't seem to figure out why they keep quote unquote failing at them. And so how to create, build, sustain, deepen, and grow within a relationship is the central theme of the Safe to Love podcast.

SPEAKER_00 47:21

Safe to love touches on a very wide array of topics, one of them being sex. And as you mentioned earlier, with intimacy, it was it was automatic that sex came up. Could you tell me, Chad, what the difference between sex and intimacy is?

SPEAKER_02 47:38

Yes, and I wouldn't I wouldn't necessarily say they're different as much as one is a part of another. So I can have deep fulfilling intimacy with a person that's not romantic at all.

unknown 47:50

Right?

SPEAKER_02 47:51

Platonic friendships can be very intimate. I can also have deep fulfilling intimacy with my romantic partner that is non-sexual. And I focus on that with my clients first, even though a lot of clients come to me with sex issues. Um, we focus on those intimacy issues first because, as I said, that's sort of like it's almost like building the foundation up, right? You can't build the foundation of a house without laying the footings, and you wouldn't put up walls without a foundation. Sex is a very important part of our set of our human expression of intimacy, though. And a lot of people come to me or come to April or come to coaches like us or come to podcasts or scouring the internet or taking classes or spending any amount of money because they feel like their lives are lacking sexual fulfillment, right? And there's so much shame, not just shame around the act of sex, but there's so much shame around the feelings inside about sex, the desire for sex, or even the important we place on sex. And we are sexual beings. Um, to experience our full expression of our human soul requires a healthy relationship with our own sexuality, where that intimacy, that part of the intimacy that become that crosses into that field of desire, of polarity, of physical connection at a very intimate and and deep level. And so we will talk about sex and how people have how sex has played a role in relationships, how sex has played a role in relationship struggles and ways that people have found to deepen and explore their own sex life and release shame around sex that's getting in the way of them having fulfilling sex lives.

SPEAKER_01 49:46

Yeah, and not having them be sex separate. Like in Tantra, we're taught that the lower three chakras are the base levels. That's the kind of energy of I just want to fuck something. And I've had lots of clients that I've worked with that have told me that they don't like their partner to look them in the eye when they're making love, which is they're just having sex, right? They're just like having this primal need of like, I just want to have sex. And I feel like our culture is very like misguided that they that, you know, sex doesn't have to be intimate. And what we teach, um, especially in Tantra, is like when you move it up through the heart, you get the higher levels of consciousness. You get the higher levels of expression, which is sacred union. It's the Shakti and Shiva like had the joy and the separate to separate the joy of becoming one again. And that sacred union, it is intimate and it is sex. And I think that's like what we are here to also help cultivate is like not having sex that's not intimate. Because there's a lot of people who do. I I did that a lot in my 20s. Like I had a lot of sex and it was not intimate at all. And then I remember the first time I did this class where we had to gaze into someone's eyes and I was like, this is so intimate. This is so scary. And it's really like the more that you are intimate with yourself, the more that you get more comfortable. You know, our sexual energy is our chi, it's our strongest life force energy. And so it's kind of what gives us this passion and juice, juice for life, and it is our life force energy. And um, like I hope to kind of bring a different awareness that like they go hand in hand.

SPEAKER_02 51:35

Yeah, and I mean, and on the other side of that coin, right, are a lot of couples who are people who are in a relationship and feel like they have this connection and they have this domestic partnership, but somehow they've lost the spark of their sex life. And that is there's deep fear and shame in that as well. And so it's it we we don't lead necessarily with sex, but it's also really important to note that sex is an important part of that expression as well, and that we're not leaving that off the table. This is not just about how to get along better, do bills together better, and fight better, right? It's also about how to do all of that to create the space to have mind-blowing sex. And really, especially as a lot of our audience are people kind of in our age group, in the midlife to later age group, right? Breaking down these myths about the fact that we're supposed to, it's supposed to dry up. It's supposed to stop, it's supposed to fall off. And showing people that actually the best sex of your life still lies ahead, right? Like it only, it uh the more that we connect with ourselves and the more that we connect with our partners, the the better our sex lives can be. And so that um, because that you know, a lot of what we're about here is breaking, breaking untrue stereotypes, right? And that's that's a big one that we want to smash, right? Like you're supposed to stop having sex, it's supposed to get boring, the fire is supposed to die, uh, you're supposed to dry up and whatever else, analogy for men for that. And it's just not true, right? Like, no matter what age you're at, no matter where you're at in your life and in your relationship, like there's always there are always tools to have more fulfilling and connected sex. And there's a there's a reciprocal effect to that, right? Like, sex is also when done in an embodied and heart-centered and connected way, is an incredibly great tool for bringing that energy into the rest of the relationship. When our sex life is is in balance, it's easier to have compassion for each other, it's easier to be accountable, it's easier to have communication, right? It's it just it's it's it's not something that can be separated from the idea of partnerships.

SPEAKER_00 54:02

Gorgeous. Um, that leads me into my last topic of transformation. April, what does it mean to embody new and healthier patterns?

SPEAKER_01 54:14

Oh, what does it mean to embody? I mean, embodiment is that there's three ways of knowing. There's the knowing in the mind, and then there's the knowing in the heart, and then there's the knowing in the body when you your body starts to give you new signals, you know, you start to change the reaction from the pattern. So, an example would be like I get triggered over something, my body is like, he's gonna leave me. It's not safe, I'm not worthy, I'm not enough. My old reaction to the pattern would be defensiveness or shut down or leave, like I'm a fleer. And in the past, I was a fleer. I'm working, I'm not a fleer anymore. Um, but like now, you know, the practical step would be show up differently. So, first create safety with that small younger part of me. Like, okay, what does she need? Just give her a breath, remind myself I am safe, remember the tool. Okay, how can I show up differently? Maybe I need to take a walk right now so I don't speak from the activation. Maybe I need to just ask for a minute. Maybe I just need to apologize and take accountability, and maybe that would dissolve everything. And that's where the transformation happens, is when you have awareness of the pattern and then you have acceptance of the part of you that fills that pattern, and then you take a new action step, and then your body can learn, like, oh, okay, like we didn't die, he didn't leave, we're okay. And then the next time that happens, it happens easier and easier. And eventually your body, like, it's not about like not feeling activated or not feeling triggered. Like we're humans, we're always going to. It's like, how quickly can I get back to my baseline? You know, it used to take me three weeks. Maybe I would ruminate on something forever, and then it took me a day, and now maybe it takes me an hour, you know, and then maybe I'll get to the point where it's like 30 seconds or something. So to me, that's like really is the transformation is when the body and the mind and the heart are all having this process of like, oh, that's not true anymore. Let's question that thought, let's do this, like kind of this internal little process that creates a new level of safety in my body and a new action showing up, which over time then just creates a new reality.

SPEAKER_02 56:30

Yeah, and I transformation really links the mission statement to everything else that we've talked about today, right? Like people feel broken. People feel like they see other people sometimes they don't whether or not they believe it or not, but we see other people having relationships and feel that we are not capable of it. And the idea of why transformation is so important, and this is again something that I learned coming from a past uh of drug addiction and alcoholism and feeling broken beyond repair and thinking that I'm broken and like the lives that other people have are not available to me. And what what giving people that hope that there is no like to believe in miracles, essentially, right? And that and that doesn't mean that we and it's kind of paradoxical because it starts with this radical self-acceptance of who we are, but recognizing the way I show up in life, the way that I show up in relationships, the way that my body reacts to things is not bringing me happiness and joy and fulfillment in life, and how I can become an expression that's different than I'm currently experiencing, how to get out of that cycle that we feel stuck in and trapped in, and not become somebody else, but transform into a version of ourselves that's more aligned with our authentic being and that is more successful at all the things that we want to achieve in life. Um in I love that idea of transformation, and I always have because I I learn because I know what it's like to feel hopeless. I know what it's like to feel stuck, I know what it's like to feel like broken. And I also know what it's like to have these complete transformations and uh metamorphosis and alchemizing my entire being into being into a different life than the one that I have. And whether or not a person is watching the show because they have lost hope, or whether they're watching the show because they want to have better connected, fulfilling sex with the partner of 20 years, they're the the the core of that is saying, I want to experience something different than the status quo. And that's also true for the whole world, right? Like the world right now is hurting and it needs a transformation. And so that that's a very bold, that's why the mission statement is so bold, because we're not talking about just minor tweaks or you know, one little trick here, or how to put lipstick on a pig. We're talking about going all the way within ourselves and shifting how we feel, think, and act on a fundamental level.

SPEAKER_00 59:27

Well, thank you so much for inviting me to be your host. Is there anything else that you would like to leave our audience with?

SPEAKER_01 59:36

Safe to love is really that you get to, you deserve to, you are allowed to experience pleasure, safety, an authentic real love with the understanding that it requires maturity and work and courage.

SPEAKER_02 59:59

It is possible to experience excitement and safety in the same relationship. That you're not like to reject this false dichotomy that relationship that safe relationships means boring and unfulfilling one, and that passionate relationships are full of pain and fear. Like safety and excitement and passion can coexist in the safe relationship if you're willing to have the courage and do the work.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:28

And remember everyone, but be brave. Love is worth it.