Why the Conversation You Keep Avoiding Is the One You Need Most | April Benincosa | EP209

April thought a marriage with no fighting was the goal. What she discovered was that the silence wasn't peace. It was two people slowly disappearing from each other.

In this raw and deeply personal episode, Chad sits down with his partner April Benincosa to explore why avoiding hard conversations is the single fastest way to kill intimacy, and what finally happens when you stop running from them. They get honest about childhood nervous system programming, the performance of a "perfect" relationship, what it means to create real space for truth, and how one dreaded conversation led to the most connected night they'd had in months.

This is not a conversation about conflict. It is a conversation about courage, and what becomes possible when two people finally decide to stop pretending.

Did you know Safe to Love is also on YouTube?

In this interview, you'll learn:
1. Why the absence of conflict in a relationship is often a warning sign, not a green flag
2. How the stories your brain tells during conflict are almost always worse than reality
3. Why you have already been suffering long before the hard conversation actually happens
4. How childhood nervous system wiring turns necessary conversations into felt threats
5. What "creating space" actually means in practice and why rushed conversations almost always go wrong
6. Why curiosity is impossible when your nervous system is in threat mode and what to do about it
7. How performing a perfect relationship quietly replaces real intimacy with a shared mask
8. Why the stakes feeling higher as a relationship deepens is normal and what to do with that
9. What Tantra teaches about presence, authenticity, and why a real no makes a yes mean something
10. How to know your own truth when you have spent years absorbing everyone else's
11. Why conflict is often just intimacy that ran out of room and what that means for repair

You are allowed to choose yourself. You are allowed to stop playing small. The life you are grieving may be the very thing making room for the one you actually belong in.

With Love and Safety,
Chad & April ❤️

What We Discuss:
0:00 — The story your brain tells you during conflict (and why it's almost never true)
0:34 — Welcome to Safe to Love | Introducing April Benincosa
2:05 — The post that started it all: not having hard conversations kills intimacy
2:52 — The conversation April had been rehearsing alone for weeks
4:08 — Why avoidance hurts more than the conversation ever does
4:39 — Creating space: why tired, rushed, and empty-cup conversations go wrong
6:53 — What spaciousness actually means and why the feminine needs it to flourish
8:06 — Spiritual bypassing, wanting joy without doing the dishes
8:30 — April's childhood nervous system: explosive mom, absent dad, and a freeze response still unwinding
10:12 — How quality time gets hijacked by task mode and what that costs a relationship
12:03 — Creativity, curiosity, and the drain that happens when life gets full
13:54 — Why safety is a prerequisite for curiosity in relationships
15:21 — The stories we tell about our relationship when conflict arrives
17:16 — Why the stories we avoid speaking out loud keep us suffering alone
20:21 — Why hard conversations get harder as the relationship deepens
23:34 — The irony of performing your best self upfront and what it costs later
26:00 — Where April learned to perform
29:09 — A 15-year marriage, a decade of wanting to leave, and the success the mask made possible
30:43 — Two people performing a power couple and the quiet loneliness inside it
31:55 — What April discovered when she was asked about her needs for the first time
33:19 — Falling back into old patterns under stress and what it means to rebuild from an embodied place
36:00 — What Tantra teaches about presence, realness, and why a no makes a yes sacred
38:20 — Sexual intimacy, the female orgasm, and why presence is the only path there
40:28 — If you don't have a no, your yes doesn't mean anything
41:33 — Is it harder to share your truth or hear your partner's?
45:03 — Spaciousness for yourself: knowing your own truth before you can speak it
46:24 — April's closing message: have the hard conversations. They are never as bad as you made them.

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Transcript

The story your brain tells you during conflict (and why it's almost never true)

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What stories go through your mind about our relationship when there is conflict?

SPEAKER_01 0:05

I feel like you're getting sick of me. I feel like I'm too much. I feel like oh the shininess has worn off and he's over how dramatic I am and how busy I am and how emotional I am or whatever. And so then my brain will go to, oh, he's going to leave me or he's gonna break up with me or we're just gonna fight all the time and this is gonna be our life. My ex-husband, we never fought. And I always thought that was like such a marker of a good marriage, but really like we were both just withholding, building quiet

Welcome to Safe to Love | Introducing April Benincosa

SPEAKER_01 0:34

resentment.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

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. And I'll be your host today. My name's Chad Nielsen, and my guest today is the lovely April Benicosa. Hi, April. Thanks for the show. And we are here today to talk about hard conversations. And this whole episode is actually inspired by a post from April. So I am just going to read that for you real quick and spur your memory. So you put a reel that says this one thing will kill intimacy in your relationships more than anything else. And the answer is not having the hard conversations. And you type not having the hard conversations will kill your intimacy faster than anything. I get it. I used to avoid the hard conversations like the plague, and I sometimes still do. But the more I trust myself and my partner to move through discord, the deeper and more safe the relationship gets. The avoiding the hard conversations leads to resentment, and resentment is an intimacy killer. All relationships have discord. That's why repair is so important. Have the courage, breathe, ground, and be kind. Take accountability and speak your truth. If your relationship can't survive a hard conversation, that's something to really look at. So April, I'm curious what was coming up for you and what that inspired you to make that post and you know what that means to you.

The post that started it all: not having hard conversations kills intimacy

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Um, well, it came after a hard conversation, of course, that I think you'd been wanting to have for a while. And I was sort of dreading it. And even though I inherently know about Discord and how it's a healthy part of a relationship, um I really kind of came from this model of like happy couples don't fight. Um and so there's like a lot of programming in that. But what had happened is in my mind, I was making this conversation like so big and so like, oh, he's gonna say this and then this, and then I'm gonna feel like this, and then this is gonna happen, and then this is gonna happen, like, you know, just going

The conversation April had been rehearsing alone for weeks

SPEAKER_01 2:52

into the So you had already been having that hard conversation. I'd already been having it in my head with myself and not a very compassionate one. And um, and then we end up creating space for it and having it, and it turned into a really beautiful evening where for the first time in a few months, I found myself really genuinely curious about you again and being like, Oh, I wonder what he thinks about this, or oh, that's interesting. Like you were it led to a different conversation that you were kind of just talking. And I remember when we first started dating, we would just talk for hours and hours and hours about the world and our philosophy and our beliefs. And then um, you know, life kind of started getting like happening. And uh, I feel like those conversations got less and less, and it really nourished me, and I know it nourished you, and I felt a lot closer to you after. And it was far less painful, it wasn't even actually really painful at all, uh, as I had made it in my head. As is, you know, when we come from fear, we tend to catastrophize things. And then when we actually do it or say it or have it, it's far less than we had made up in our mind.

Why avoidance hurts more than the conversation ever does

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Well, in the experience of avoiding it and repeatedly having those conversations in our mind, which I am an expert on. I have I've had a number of conversations in my mind 20 times before I actually had it. Um the it it it's not so much sometimes that difficult conversations can be difficult and painful, but by the time we often get to the ones we've been putting off for a while, we've been suffering so much from the act of avoiding it that it seems like relief in comparison. For sure.

Creating space: why tired, rushed, and empty-cup conversations go wrong

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Uh there's a couple of things you said there that I I want to dive a little deeper into. Um one of them is creating space for it. And I know that's something that um really has come up a lot in conversation pretty much since the day that I met you. Uh and and really a lot more so lately. You know, you've been um both of us have been really busy. You've been taking this very intensive and quite frankly incredible course from Layla Martin on top of everything else, and the the space to have quality time together uh has diminished quite a bit um in this year in the last four or five months. And um, what is the value of having that space? Why is that space so necessary? And what does that look like in practicality?

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Yeah, space in general is um like the feminine needs space. It needs spaciousness to flourish. She does not like the rose doesn't grow in a tight little constrictive thing. If you like wrap your hand around it, it won't ever like bloom and open. So naturally, like your emotions, your body, your heart needs space, needs space to breathe. But also a really important part of I have reframed them for myself, to necessary conversations. Um they they need you to feel like if I show up in the conversation rushed and which has happened many times and doesn't really turn out super well for us, um rushed, running out the door or like super tired and exhausted, or I've been coaching all day and I haven't really like had time for that. Um, then I'm coming with an empty cup. If I'm tired, hungry, or rushed, then the conversation's not gonna have the room or space that it needs to. Um, but for me, you know, making that space a priority when I have had like a, oh, I don't know if I want to do this. It's like it's it's harder. It's been harder in the past to make that time. But every single time I do, I like affirm to myself like that was totally worth it. That would definitely needed to happen, and I want to create more space now.

What spaciousness actually means and why the feminine needs it to flourish

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Yes, I think space is very important, uh, not just to the feminine, by the way. Um but you know, one thing that I I've noticed, um, and I think this is very common, that one of the challenges can be when we our lives become very full, and the time that we get to spend, we'll call it quality time with our partner, you know, uh, which can be a lot of different things, right? We can quality time can be going to the gym or even doing a dish together, but that time where there's no agenda, there's no nothing that we have to worry about, there's no clock, that sense of openness and and freedom, um when those times become rare at certain times of a relationship, certain times of our life, there's a lot of resistance to spend that time doing having something that doesn't sound like that much fun. Um and I and I know that's you know often can be a part of the avoidance pattern, right? I I we haven't had that much time. I don't want to spend having a conversation, let's just uh sit on the couch and and googly eyes each other, or let's have a, you know, uh let's have a cocktail and unwind or something. And um, how have you found that kind of showing up in some of those avoidance

Spiritual bypassing, wanting joy without doing the dishes

SPEAKER_00 8:06

patterns?

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Ben, I think there's two things for me specifically. Um, one is my old programming, which is still unwinding of spiritual bypassing and not wanting to be in the negative energy. So, like, you know, I'm in this tantra program. We're learning a lot about like pleasure is our birthright and joy is our birthright. And so there's a part of me that's like, no, I just want to be in

April's childhood nervous system: explosive mom, absent dad, and a freeze response still unwinding

SPEAKER_01 8:30

joy. I just want to be happy. I just want to do these things. But that's kind of like, I just want to make this amazing, healthy meal, but I don't have any good ingredients and I'm not gonna clean up after and put the food in the fridge. Like, I'm not gonna do the things that actually get me that. And so, um, so for me, that's one of them is that I have in the past wanted to protect my energy. Um, but also really underneath it is a deep discomfort of a childhood avoidance pattern. My dad was very absent growing up. Um, my mom was very explosive. And um my siblings like yelled a lot, and I was a hyper-sensitive child and was very sensitive to yelling. And it it literally like me, I'm still reprogramming my nervous system because I'm finally in a safe relationship and able to do that to like not freeze because when you know, when you do wait so long, it's kind of the chicken and the egg, right? Like if I actually had the conversation two weeks ago before I played it in my mind. But now that I played it in my mind and it's like, oh, he's gonna say all these things and all these things, and I automatically come in defensive. My energy is already heightened. You wanted to have the conversation, you know, multiple times and it's been being put off, which makes you feel like your needs aren't being heard or validated. Um, so then the energy already is a little bit more explosive, which then to my nervous system is like fight, flight or freeze. And so usually in that state, I will freeze or flight, which would be avoidance, which is like I'm not gonna deal with this right now.

How quality time gets hijacked by task mode and what that costs a relationship

SPEAKER_00 10:12

When you think about quality time, like what are what are the um when you think about oh, I'm gonna have some time together with my partner after a week where we haven't got to see each other much, what are some of the uh things that you imagine doing?

SPEAKER_01 10:26

I mean googly eyes on the couch, of course. My favorite. Um, which totally works when you're like resentful and mad at each other. It really doesn't. Um quality time to me it's fluid. Um I really like when we play drums together. I really like when you show me like a drum beat on the djembe and um like even just chat with me while I'm practicing my guitar. I love when we sing together. I love when you pull out the karaoke. Um, I love when we walk our dogs together. Um, I like in the afternoon sometimes how you're like, let's just go cuddle and lay on the bed and we'll just like kind of talk about, like, oh, I haven't heard about your coaching calls. Like, how are your clients doing? Like, how's your men's group going? You know, kind of just getting caught up. Because when you don't have a lot of time, you kind of sometimes those are the things you miss the most, is just like, I don't know how your I don't know how your day was. I didn't get to hear all the fun, exciting things in your day. You know, when we first started dating, we would send each other voice notes constantly, like our, you know, so like for an hour back and forth, we'd just have like 18-minute long voice notes and just be listening to them, like, oh my gosh, this thing just happened. Oh my gosh, I just got this download. Oh my gosh, I'm in all this creative energy. And, you know, so like I got this view into your inner world. And now that I'm in this program and it's 28 hours a week extra than where we were last year, it we definitely don't have as much time for that. So a lot of it's just like catching up on what insights have you had, what new things have come in, or what processes are you and where are you working on?

Creativity, curiosity, and the drain that happens when life gets full

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Yeah. Um, you said two things in the course of this conversation that really are pinging for me. One being creativity or having this creative energy, and the other being curiosity. And I just kind of had this imagining of it's been the end of a long day, we're gonna get to see each other. And the last thing I want to do at the end sometimes of a day is talk about it, especially when our jobs involve a lot of talking and uh the chores and tasks have to do involve a lot of talking, and recapping that day does not sound appealing at all, but there is a lot of connection in there. Um But when there is uh when we're in when we're kind of almost sort of stuck in that rut of task-oriented instead of being in that creative space, that there's something draining about it. There's something um like you said, without that space, and it isn't just space in the relationship, but space in our life for the creativity to flow in, then we have less that we want to share. Sometimes it isn't even that there is uh something uh difficult to say, as much as there is a lack of that creative energy inside of us to share with each other. And I know that can be when it's really easy, like I just want to watch TV or I just want to tune out. I want to get out of what's inside of me instead of being present with it. Um and then curiosity, you know, it's interesting you said that you had this realization that you had not been curious. And we've talked a lot about how important curiosity is in a relationship. Um, what do you think is going through your body before when those conversations, um, as you said, necessary conversations, when they're when there's that sense of them built up that that makes curiosity hard to come by?

Why safety is a prerequisite for curiosity in relationships

SPEAKER_01 13:54

I mean, it's the speaking from the pattern or the wound, usually the automatic default. Um, you know, in the book, getting the love they you want, they talk a lot about the reptilian brain and how it's like natural for your brain to go to the reptilian brain, which is like survival mode. And this person that you have found is mirroring everything that's unhealed between your parents. So it has all the good quality, like you have all the good qualities of my parents, and then all the qualities that like I didn't get as a child that I'm trying to heal in this relationship. So when you are tired, when you are stressed, when you are not nurturing yourself, when you're not self-caring, it's really easy to go to the automatic default thing of I'm bad, because that is kind of the wound from childhood when you have some kind of trauma, like I had sexual trauma, I couldn't understand it at five years old. So the only way my brain could understand it was like, oh, I must have been bad. That's why this happened to me. And so some like when you are in a partnership, that part of that child is still healing. And so part of it is just um when I'm tired and stressed and like not creating spaciousness, then I automatically default to like, what did I do now? I'm in trouble. Right. Because I I go to my little girl, which would mean like little girl is in trouble. She's just wanting to get love and be seen and have her needs

The stories we tell about our relationship when conflict arrives

SPEAKER_01 15:21

met.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

So that sense of safety is is a prerequisite for curiosity almost, because uh curiosity is the um kind of the opposite of a threat response, right? Curiosity is when the unknown is exciting and and interesting, and and when we're in that threat mode, the unknown becomes dangerous and scary. What um what stories go through your mind about our relationship when there is conflict and what that means about the relationship?

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Um I mean, I I feel like you're getting sick of me. I feel like my I'm too much. I feel like oh the shininess has worn off, and he's like over how dramatic I am and how busy I am and how um emotional I am or whatever. And so then my brain will go to, oh, he's he's going to leave me or he's gonna break up with me, or um we're just gonna fight all the time, and this is gonna be our life, and I don't know if I want to fight all the time. And um, you know, we kind of had a conversation last night about my ex-husband, and we never fought. And you were like, Yeah, there's a reason that you left that, right? We we we did it, and I always thought that was like such a marker of a good marriage. Like, oh, we we hardly ever fight. We have such a good marriage, but really like we were both just withholding and not saying building quiet resentment over time that ended up being too too much, like there was just too much to unpack there, and not a willingness of both parties. So um, so yeah, I don't know if that to answer your question.

Why the stories we avoid speaking out loud keep us suffering alone

SPEAKER_00 17:16

No, it definitely did. Um the stories that we have in our mind, um, when we speak them out loud, it's it's it's almost they're almost absurd. And I don't just mean the stories in your mind absurd. It's almost absurd, but when we when we are avoiding those conversations, like we're listening to those stories in our mind and we're suffering from them, right? It's we're it's we're extrapolating into the future, um, we're adding extra meaning to it. Um, and that's one of the reasons why I think avoidance of difficult conversations can be so uh damaging into intimacy because it causes us to pull inward into um being left alone with those stories. And reality is messy, but it is rarely as bad as the stories that we make up about it. So, you know, I I I don't necessarily think that conflict is necessary, but I think it's almost inevitable with human beings because we have difference. Um but one thing that I've always found interesting is that we have these tropes in sort of traditional society, and I don't know that there's anything traditional anymore in the age of the internet, but um one one kind of for those of us that grew up in the in the era uh pre-internet era when we got a lot of our cultural norms from TV, makeup sex was this big thing. We was talking about how hot makeup sex was. And I always found that interesting because uh in those moments of conflict, conflict often occurs when what it is that we're hiding from bubbles up to the surface and comes out. And in those moments, we are more open. Um so while conflict itself may not be necessary, it's often the natural result of us avoiding intimacy and a part of our body saying, I cannot hold this in anymore, if that makes sense. Um and yeah, they when we've created space for them, they often aren't that difficult. When we've had these conversations in a half hour between one call and another uh while trying to make a sandwich, they can be quite awful, quite awful and and and very uh disbalancing and disruptive. Um and I think that's why it's so important to have that space and and why that space being open and expansive enough for us to move all the way through the process of of you know reconnection, especially when people go out and have the different lives and they come back and reconnect and then have that not be the entire experience, you know. Sometimes that's all that we have space for, and and there's a sense of reconnection. But the the um the most beautiful times come when we have enough space to be with what's real and the natural flow of intimacy and the googly eyes and the sexy time that flows from that. Do you think it's uh become easier or more difficult to have those conversations as the relationship has progressed uh deeper into the relationship past the initial courtship and honeymoon phase?

Why hard conversations get harder as the relationship deepens

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Um that has gotten more difficult for me. It is getting easier, but from the be when we first started, we were obviously um in Limerence, and we were so excited, and we were both in very creative energy, but also we had a lot more time and space. I wasn't in the program, you weren't in your program. Um, we were dreaming about the podcast or YouTube, we hadn't started it. Um, everything was just like this great idea. And also I had my own space, I had my own place. And so, like, I got time alone, and you got time alone. And so then when we had time together, you know, it was like, oh, what did you do yesterday? And um, and so it we we were very much in, you know, like let's talk about it, let's talk about it, like let's talk about it. And um, I remember staying up multiple times like late at night, just being like, let's, you know, that that bothered me that you said this, or this bothered me that you said this. Well, let's talk about it. And I was really open and receptive and curious. And then when I moved in and then we started the our programs, you know, time got tighter, but also like we don't, we both don't have as much alone time or as much space. So there hasn't been as much spaciousness. But also there was a deepening when I moved in of like, wow, this is like for real. You know, this is like um my forever person. And that felt like there was a lot more to. Lose so then the conversations felt like they had a lot more weight to them, and also you know, this is a part of intimacy is kind of like how you always said there's levels of safety and levels of intimacy, level of safety and levels of intimacy. And I feel like um moving in and starting all of this, and then like going, like both starting these programs, like I don't feel like the safety was there as much as far as um like financially, we were like not in as good of a place as we were in the summer, you know? And so we had this kind of like scarcity come in as well, as well as scarcity of time and then energy and then not having the alone time, but also the the levels of safety that we had created, it had opened me up to more parts of myself that hadn't been able to be healed. Like more parts of my child got a little louder, got a little stronger. Then also I feel that I was putting so much into our relationship at the beginning because it was like our my main focus. And now I have this main focus of my program and it's other things. So like I am finding like a hard time balancing where my focus goes and how to they all matter, but they can't all matter.

The irony of performing your best self upfront and what it costs later

SPEAKER_00 23:34

I think there's a lot of great reasons you come up with there, but the one that um I think it's very universal is the stakes get higher. And what I find so ironic about a lot of the ways that we approach dating is we want to bring we we we want to bring all the best parts of ourselves up front, hide away the parts that we don't think are lovable. Um this is very kind of like a younger sort of juvenile approach to relationships, right? And think, well, we gotta sell it's almost like we take it as a I gotta sell them on me, and then once they're kind of hooked and in and and signed, signed up for the contract, then you know, maybe let these other parts come out. But um, you know, by the time I met you, I had really worked on doing that the other way around, knowing that they're actually easier, they're boundaries are easier to set up front. Um being clear about our needs are much easier to set up front because when we're in especially even in the courtship phase, we can still have this idea that like these are my needs, these are my boundaries, and if you can't meet them, that's okay. But I I am committed to them. And when we start to have ideas of this is a person I could see myself being with in the long term, suddenly uh potential conflict feels like it could threaten something that we uh have become very attached to. And I think that we were lucky and blessed, um, and you know, uh because of some of you know some of those decisions early on to really set the groundwork for having a lot of that truth. Like we even when it got harder, we had really practiced that truth a lot more in the beginning. Um but you know, sort of the opposite of being real is performing, right? And we live in a very performance-centered culture. And like a lot of the um blocks or maladaptive behaviors or defects of characters, they would call them in recovery, however you want to put it, that we have they we have them for a reason, right? Like we some something we get something from them, we get some value from them, and performing is definitely one of those. And I'm curious if you know when in your life you found yourself starting to really lean into performance and what that did for you.

Where April learned to perform

SPEAKER_01 26:00

I I was taught to perform, and I feel like women specifically are like taught to perform. I know men are taught to perform in different ways, but for me, performance looked like fawning, you know, that was like safe for me when I was in my 20s and I was working at the airport, and I was one of there's like a lot of guys that worked there, and they were had all worked there a long time, and they were like the cool guys, and I was just the sweet Mormon, like just barely getting out of Mormonism. Like I'd started drinking, but I was just so and this. I never said the F word before. And they would they were like, April, can you go make me a milkshake? April, can you go take like and I was just doing all their bidding, I was like waiting on all their tables for them as I was waiting on my tables. And then one day one of them was just like, Why don't you just say no? Or just kind of like fucking with you. Like, you can say no. And I was like, and I was so angry, but also I was like, what the hell? And they're like, You you don't have to say yes to us. Like, and I remember they kind of were trying to always toughen me up, you know, they were always like, let's toughen April up, let's toughen April up. And um, and then I remember I started dating this guy that I worked with at the airport, and he had cheated on me with a girl at the sunglass hut across the way. And everybody knew it. Everybody knew he was cheating on me before I did. And um, they had one of them had invited me to a Thanksgiving party, and I really wanted to go, but then I found out this guy was gonna be there with this new girl. And they were like, You are gonna go and you're gonna show up and you're gonna put on a brave face and you're gonna never let him know that he hurt you. And I was like, Okay, but just so not me. Like, I really I had dated him for a year and a half. I really loved him. I moved back from Florida for him. And I remember going to that party and being like, he will never know how much he hurt me. I will never show it. Like, I will act. And and I just had to start pretending. You know, I worked with him and he would start showing pictures of this new girl he was dating literally a week after we had just broken up. And it was like, look how hot she is, look how skinny she is, and would like say these like things to just get at me. And I remember just being like, I'm like masking, just like he's never gonna know how much he hurt me. And um, and then I would like go back into the freezer and cry or something. And then, you know, my friend would come back there and be like, it's not worth crying over, don't cry. So then I stopped kind of crying over it. You know, I was like masking and then holding, and then I just started performing, like, oh yeah, I'm so unbothered. Like, oh yeah, I'm good. And I just created this really great mask of like, I don't have feelings. I'm happy all the time. I'm happy, go lucky, nice girl. Nothing bother bothers me. And I was very proud of that for a long time.

A 15-year marriage, a decade of wanting to leave, and the success the mask made possible

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Well, and then um, I know you had shared about your, you know, being married for 15 years and even maybe in the last 10 of that, some part of you wanting to leave. But uh this story you just told is kind of leading up to right about that time when you were 30, right? And you had started to learn how to perform well. And you had a lot of success uh after that period of time. The the the it does, you know, I think it's important for us to acknowledge like the reason why we do it, what we get out of it.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

Yeah, I mean, I was winning, I was winning at this game, right? I bought these four salons and I would be so busy and I'd have these tenants who would say, Do you mean horrible things? And I would just be like, Okay. Like I just, and and people were like, Oh my gosh, you're so confident. You're such a great leader. Like I was masking as a good leader. I was masking as confident. Like you would never know that I was inside just very insecure and doubtful and didn't know my own needs and didn't trust myself. Like I was so good at pretending. And then when I got married, my um ex-husband was also very good at pretending. Like he pretended to be a man, wanting to be a man for a long time. And we pretended to have these roles, you know, and he he performed. He did perform, and I performed. And we were both performing this role of this couple who's this power couple, who's in love, who has this best marriage, who never fights. And that was a role that we both played for a long

Two people performing a power couple and the quiet loneliness inside it

SPEAKER_01 30:43

time.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

And and what did you get out of that?

SPEAKER_01 30:47

Um, a lot of self-abandonment. Um, I mean, to the outside world, uh, like it looked really good. People would always be like, Oh, I wish I had a marriage like your marriage. And so it gave me a lot of surface um validation. And it gave me pride to be like, wow, all these people are getting divorced and they have these messy relationships, and I have this like perfect marriage. And it just was really like a prison for myself because inside I was desperately lonely and not getting my needs met. And um, I remember when you and I first met, before we even started dating or anything, we were just kind of talking about Tantra, and you were like, Well, what are your needs? And I was like, so uncomfortable. Like, why would you ask me that? But more I was more uncomfortable that I had no idea what they were. And so I don't know how to tell you. And then I was embarrassed that I didn't know, like, I should know what my needs are.

What April discovered when she was asked about her needs for the first time

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Well, and it just makes a lot of sense that you know, you shared more recently you found yourself struggling with that pattern again, you know. Um my sponsor used to say, in times of stress, we fall to the level of our training. And that's what you had known. You know, I I know your story, and you know, your childhood there was a lot of scarcity, there was a lot of there wasn't a lot of wealth or or security. And so those performances that you had mastered in your 30s led to some of the most success you had had in your life. And it makes a lot of sense that in times of fear and stress we would fall to that. But what I'm really curious about is is you know, lately you've really um you're in that sort of phase of transition, and getting divorced, it's a huge transition. And often when we do that, we like to do a career change and a bunch of other changes at once just to transition. Career change all the time. Every change, everything as you're starting to get into that sort of second phase of that transition where you're finding your footing, where you're starting to have some real success, and this time from a more embodied and authentic place, uh, how does that feel differently compared to the kind of success you would have both in your relationship and in your business before?

Falling back into old patterns under stress and what it means to rebuild from an embodied place

SPEAKER_01 33:19

Yeah. Yeah, it feels so before it was all in my mind. I didn't feel any of it. I was moving too fast to feel any of it. Um I was moving too fast to feel the success. I was moving too fast to feel the winds. I was just like trying to outrun the story or the nervous system or the pattern, all the things. And um now that I'm doing it and find like removing the masks is scary. It's terrifying. It's terrifying to let someone actually see you because then what if they don't like you? At least if you have the mask, you can be like, well, they don't like the mask, and I can change the mask, and I'll find someone that likes the mask. But like to drop the mask and and risk that vulnerability of like they're going to see me, my purest, most innocent, raw, wild version of me. And then they cannot like me. Um, and so that's where like self-love really, really comes in, is like, even if they don't like me, even if you don't like me, like I love me, and it's okay. It's okay, not everyone's going to like me. But I mean, that's a big reason why people mask A. It's a big reason why people aren't vulnerable and don't put themselves out there. People are mean. People are mean, they're mean online, they're mean to people they don't know, they're mean to people who are being courageous and vulnerable and doing something they wish they could do. And it hurts. It hurts when your heart's so open and so vulnerable, and someone just, you know, puts a little stab in it, it hurts more than if you have armor on, right? That's why we have it. And so, but it feels like I couldn't do it any other way now. I keep wanting to go back and then realizing this way doesn't work for me anymore. It's almost like my soul's like, yeah, we already did that. We're not doing that anymore. And so whenever I do try to do that, it just doesn't work. Like life stops working for me. And as soon as I like surrender, trust, let it down, then it's like, okay, we're back in flow. Okay, things are coming in again easily. Like things aren't building up momentum again. And so it's like I have this internal guidance system, just like, nope, yep, no.

SPEAKER_00 35:59

What

What Tantra teaches about presence, realness, and why a no makes a yes sacred

SPEAKER_00 36:00

do you say that Tantra has to teach us about the uh importance and the impact of being real versus performing in intimacy and especially in sexual intimacy?

SPEAKER_01 36:15

Um, you know, life is happening here in the present moment. And when you think about the past, it creates anxiety. When you think about the future, it creates stress. Um, so when you're like here in the present moment, you're just working with what's real. And when you learn to operate from that way, it moves, it moves quickly. Like if you're here feeling something like what's real for me right now is I felt calm and I feel grounded and I I feel open in my heart. And so like checking in, you know, and and checking in from moment to moment with the other person. And then you're kind of always having this like little dance that's just like moving, and then as you kind of move with the present moment, you don't know where it's going to go. Like if you come in with an agenda, then you know where it's going to go, and you're like leading it and guiding it very much like this is where we're getting to, right? But like even today with this call, we kind of had a few questions and a few ideas, but we're kind of just seeing where the topics go. Where's the conversation go? What's this question is going to bring up another question and another answer? And so it kind of like leads to something unknown, which is also fun and exciting. But um, when you allow yourself to feel everything and be present with it, it you don't hold it, you don't take it with you. I'm also not bringing in, you know, our fight last week or the fight we're gonna have next week that I'm already planning in my head or whatever, right? Like I'm just like here in this conversation right now, and that does create spaciousness.

Sexual intimacy, the female orgasm, and why presence is the only path there

SPEAKER_00 38:20

And um how does that relate to specifically like intimacy and sexual intimacy?

SPEAKER_01 38:28

It just leaves room for it to be present or to to move into that space. Um if you're especially for women, if they're in their mind a lot. And I know this is true for for men as well, but you know, specific like a lot of women have a really hard time when they're making love to be like, I gotta pick up the kids at four, and I gotta do this and I gotta do this. And like women can't orgasm, they can't, um, it's like they're in their mind, they have to be in their body, and to have these deeply orgasmic experiences, you are following the breath, you are following the energy, you're following the flow, you're seeing where it leads you, and you're letting it build by being in your body. Um, so it can be, I mean, you can go to altered states of consciousness with it, and which is so beautiful, but you you can't get there with trying to have the outcome of getting there. Like that's also the trick of the female orgasm is you can't have the goal of orgasm. You just have no goal. You're just in the present moment, see what's available, see where the energy takes you, and the energy could just like turn on like that. The arrows is like available, and then it could just leave and it could come back. Like it's just kind of like this fun little game that if you follow it with curiosity, presence, um, breath, and also like energetically when you're being present and calm in your body, then you're more able to attune to your partner, right? And so then you can like kind of move together and dance. And then when you don't have any outcome or any goal that leaves space for super magical containers.

If you don't have a no, your yes doesn't mean anything

SPEAKER_00 40:28

You know, I know um the the kind of programming and the performing of of being agreeable, something really programmed strongly, especially into women. And you know, one of the things that I've learned from Tantra is if you don't have a no, then your yes doesn't mean anything. And that that uh I've learned for me, there's a lot of safety in authenticity, is definitely not only frees me for that expression, but there's uh a sense we have when other people are authentic. We're drawn to it, drawn to other people's authenticity. But in order to be authentic, I have to be able to say, I didn't really like that, or that hurt me, or I actually don't really want to do that, or I'm not in the mood for that now. We're not really taught how to do that.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:24

Right? So we have to we have to make up for that and learn these things as adults to really have that, those deeper levels.

SPEAKER_01 41:32

Yeah.

Is it harder to share your truth or hear your partner's?

SPEAKER_00 41:33

So I'm I'm curious about one other thing. So is it do you find it more difficult to share your own truth or to hear your partner's truth in those uh hard conversation moments?

SPEAKER_01 41:48

I think it depends on what the truth is, my partner's truth or my truth. Um I feel like it really like when I hear your truth and it's something that I've done that hurts you repeatedly, like a pattern that I'm still working on or haven't like done and being resistant to being accountable, it's really hard for me to know that I've hurry you multiple times and that it's been hurting for you know a month or two or whatever. Like that that hurts. That is like hard for me to hear. Um and depending on the truth, it you know, the thing for me, Chad, that we were talking about yesterday that's really hard for me sometimes is to know what my truth is. I absorb so much information. And I remember watching Rachel Hollis back in the day, and like she would just be up on stage and she would just be regurgitating all these other people's things, but would never give any of them credit for it. And it really bothered me. It didn't sit well with me. So I have been to the opposite extreme where I will credit every single person in conversations, like, oh, and this person said this, and this person said this, and this person said this. And um to the point of like, I wasn't actually having any original thought of my own. So when you challenge me or ask me, like, I want to hear what April Ben and Costa has to say that is hard for me in a different way. It's not emotionally as hard for me. Like it's emotionally hard for me to hear your truth, especially when it's that I've hurt you, which is usually what's the hard conversation, right? Is something that I've done or haven't done or keep doing that is hurting hurting you. And I don't ever want to hurt you. Um, so it's emotionally hard, but it's hard for my soul in a different way of like what is my truth, and I get frustration come up, whereas the other part of me is like more of this kind of wounded child that's like, Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you, you know, it's like tender part, it's like younger part of me. And for this part of me that's what is my truth, because I haven't known it, or maybe I always inherently knew it, but I didn't take time to discover, I get very frustrated. So it's hard in a way that's more impatient, but it doesn't quite hurt my heart as much in the same way. Does that make sense?

Spaciousness for yourself: knowing your own truth before you can speak it

SPEAKER_00 45:03

Does uh you know that reminds me of something that you've um said and I think it's a human designy thing. But you um need time to go sit by yourself to get clear on what your what is yours and what's your what's your truths, what's your real feelings, what's your real experience and thoughts are and um kind of comes back to what we were talking about at the very beginning about the importance of spaciousness, not just spacious, not just creating a space in a relationship to spend time together, but to spend time create enough space in a relationship to spend time by ourselves and time together. So important. So both those things are so important to be able to even know. And I, you know, I've I've um don't struggle with that as much as you, but I I know that frustration of being like, I am feeling emotions, but I don't even really know actually what it is that these emotions are about. It's very it's very frustrating and can lead to a sense of avoidance for me. So I think it's when my avoidant pattern comes up, I'm like, I don't even know why I'm upset, but I just want to go away. So I don't uh say anything. Um I know I've asked this question a few times, but I'm asking again what is one piece of advice that you would leave our audience with to give them hope and love?

April's closing message: have the hard conversations. They are never as bad as you made them.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

Um for today, my answer is have the hard conversations in service of the relationship. It is totally worth it. And it's not near as bad as you make it seem in your head. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 46:44

Oh, thank you, April, for sharing your wisdom with us today.

SPEAKER_01 46:47

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 46:48

And remember, everybody, be brave. Love is worth it.