Next Level University

#1464 - The Hardest Thing To Learn About Love…

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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Love is phenomenal and one of the most powerful emotions we experience. However, love alone can't always guarantee a successful relationship. Today, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros talk about the reality that love can't always guarantee a successful relationship. Relationships require nurturing from both partners. It's not just about the love you feel for each other but also about the work you both put in to maintain and strengthen the bond. They also talk about how pain often leads to transformation and the importance of making hard decisions when necessary. They also discuss that everyone deserves a partner willing to match their efforts and align with their growth.

Links mentioned:
Alan's Peak Performance Coaching: https://calendly.com/alanlazaros/60-minute-call-with-alan 
Email: Kevin@nextleveluniverse.com and/or Alan@nextleveluniverse.com

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Show notes: 
[3:38] Love doesn't fix all problems
[7:40] Three buckets where couples belong
[12:47] Bianca, the co-founder and COO of Evolve Ventures, talks about Alan's unwavering support as her coach and the profound impact of mentorship on her life
[13:58] There's no guarantee
[17:11] Incompatible
[19:56] Letting go
[26:19] Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Speaker 1:

Next level nation. Welcome back to another episode of next level university, where we help you level up your life, your love, your health and your wealth. We hope you enjoyed our latest episode, episode number 1463. One skill we all need to be more successful today. For episode number 1464 the hardest thing to learn about love.

Speaker 1:

Long before I was hyper conscious podcast Speaker coach kev, I was just a guy who enjoyed helping people. I've always enjoyed helping people, even though sometimes I didn't really know how to help them and I don't know if I, if what I was telling them, was actually helping them. But I remember I had someone who I had dated, and this is where my life gets really weird. I dated someone and After it was more a friends with benefits situation. I'll just say that Taren loves when I talk about my friends with benefits on the podcast. It was a friends with benefits situation, but we were actually really friends.

Speaker 1:

And when we stopped hanging out, this person a few months later met someone and they they would message me and say, hey, what do you think's going on here or what are your thoughts on this? And I took it very seriously. It was like hmm, I know a lot of. So it was a A woman who is dating a man. I know a lot of guys. I can probably figure out some of the behavior that's happening based on what I've seen from my friends and other Relationships are having the date doctor having the date doctor, nice I like that nice brand, that you're the relationship guy now.

Speaker 1:

So you're far ahead of me in the coaching when it comes to that. But at the time I Didn't know anything else really, and there are just some relationship Fundamentals that just always made sense to me always. So I remember having this very difficult conversation with this person. I said look, it's, it's very clear that you're focused on this relationship and you're focused on growing and being a better partner and being Having a higher level of communication and just increasing the quality of the relationship. I have to keep it real with you.

Speaker 1:

Not all relationships are going to succeed and, truthfully, unless your partner changes like everything about themselves, I don't think yours is either. That was a very hard thing to tell that person because this person was a sweet human being and the person she was with was toxic. He was, he was not a good person, he just wasn't, he was not a good man. And that was the the conversation we had. I said, look I know we hear this all the time love conquers all. Everything works with love. And I said, at the end of the day, love is great, I enjoy love thoroughly, it's amazing, and it's amazing thing to have in your life.

Speaker 1:

It does not fix all problems. That is what we're talking about today in this trigger warning. This is. This might be a little bit heavy. The hardest thing to learn about love is it doesn't always work, unfortunately. It doesn't conquer all, and Love is a feeling, love is an energy. But there's a lot that goes into staying in love, going deeper into love, remaining in love over the long run, and I just know there's a lot of amazing people out there listening right now who they're doing a ton of work and you're listening and you're tracking habits and you're trying to Figure out. Figure out the negative parts of your ego and the positive parts of your ego. But if your partner's not doing the work you are, there is an unfortunate chance that the relationship will not succeed.

Speaker 2:

And that is the Heart driven, but no BS truth that we want to deliver today the first thing I want to share here is what I told Kevin behind the scenes, which is I love this topic. The reason I love this topic is because it's a hard truth that I think can free everyone in a way, and it certainly, I think when we're young, we're taught that love conquers all. And you know these, these sort of little quips or fortune cookie quotes that that are affirming and supportive, and I get why they exist, but they're not fully accurate. They may have some truth, but they're not the whole truth. And I think that, instead of a blue pen, kevin and I want to describe that this is not just a blue pen, this is a navy, royal blue ballpoint pen that is also a gel pen with a gel grip the person who uses that second tool is going to be much more effective, and so, instead of love conquers all, it's love is one part of a relationship. That is absolutely critical. But the quote that I want to replace it with is relationships don't work unless you put in the work.

Speaker 2:

So, kevin, you and I interviewed Tori let. Oh, she's a friend of ours, she spoke on one of our stages and she does and studies relationship. She does relationship, family therapy. She is a clinician. She's worked with hundreds, if not thousands, of couples, and at this stage I've actually worked with dozens, if not hundreds, of couples. So it's so clear to me and for those of you who don't get the chance to work with this many different couples, this many different people from this many different countries, from this many different backgrounds, like Tori and myself, it might not make as much sense. And you might think you're the only one. One of my favorite things about being a coach is I get to tell people this is not a you issue. This is an issue. This is not a you problem, this is a relationship problem. So you're not the only one who is deeply in love, and that's not enough. As as as pessimistic as that might sound, all's I'm saying is that if you're not doing the work on yourself, if your partner is not doing the work on themselves, and if you two are not working on improving the relationship, the relationship is not going to flourish. It's just not. And so I've coached a bunch of different couples.

Speaker 2:

And to go back to the Tori thing we asked Tori when we interviewed her I don't know what episode it was, but it was in the early hundreds, probably 200s, and she said one of the things that I think is most fascinating about relationships is with our careers, we understand we have to work hard to be successful with fitness. We understand we have to work hard in the gym to get in shape, but for some reason, with relationships we think they're just gonna work without hard work. And she says it's just not true, it's just false, it's just inaccurate and I think it's, you know, a little bit naive for us to think that. So there's three buckets that I put each couple in and maybe you're in one of these three buckets and you can transform out of these two. So this is not like you're fixed and I'm labeling you and you're just stuck forever. None of that.

Speaker 2:

The first is bucket one. This is a couple where neither partner are really working on themselves and they're just coasting and the relationship is usually a lot of fun. Maybe you met in high school, maybe you met after college, maybe you met in college, but you are not really proactively building yourselves, developing yourselves, developing each other and building a magnificent life together. It's kind of stumble upon, we had a good time together, fell in love, kind of thing, and again, that's bucket one. Not making that wrong, I've been there too. But that's bucket one.

Speaker 2:

Bucket two is one partner is working on themselves and on the relationship. The other partner is reluctant to work on themselves. I have one couple I'm thinking of that the husband came to his wife and literally said I'm not really into personal development, I don't really care about personal growth like you do. I don't really want to work on myself, and maybe that will change one day, but right now I just don't. That's bucket two.

Speaker 2:

Bucket two a lot of our conscious couples podcast listeners. So Emilia and I have another podcast called the conscious couples podcast and a lot of our listeners struggle with that second bucket because they're listening to a podcast about how to improve the relationship. But one of the unfortunate truths is is that if your husband or your wife or your, your partner is not also working on themselves and the relationship, it can be very difficult. It can feel a lot like trying to drag a dumpster up a mountain, and I've been there too, by the way. Bucket three is awesome.

Speaker 2:

Bucket three is what I hope for everyone. Bucket three is what I'm fortunate to be in now with Emilia, where she is working on herself every single day to a drastic extent. She has a therapist. She has coaches. I'm one of her coaches. She's just constantly working on herself, where I'm doing the same, and we both also proactively work on the relationship. So bucket one is neither partner is really working on themselves or the relationship. They're kind of coasting. Bucket two is one partner is working really hard on themselves and trying to improve the relationship and bucket three is both partners are. Unfortunately for Kevin and myself, we've finally gotten to bucket three, but trust me, we did not start there, and so the question becomes how do we get people into bucket three?

Speaker 1:

I think of it this way Alan and I are in a canoe. We've been fishing together, but we've never been fishing in a canoe together. I don't think. No, we would have tipped it for sure, definitely. I want you to imagine that Alan is sitting in the front of this canoe and I am sitting on the back and Alan is paddling on the left side of the canoe and I am paddling on the right side of the canoe. If number one, if I don't paddle, we're just going to go in circles. If I paddle on the same side as Alan, we're going to go in faster circles. Maybe I don't know, I don't really know the logistics of that, the physics of that. Probably not going to be great If you could bet on somebody. So if there's two canoes Alan and I who are just all over the place, we're not on the same page. I am on one end paddling, he's on the other. Sometimes I'm not paddling at all, I might be trying to tip the canoe and on the other, so on the other side of the racing line, there's somebody who is just perfect, one side, one side, one side, one side. That's a really good example of a relationship that is going to make it the distance, and one that's just going to stay stuck.

Speaker 1:

This is the saddest part. You might internalize that as oh, I can't quote, unquote fix my partner. I can't seem to make any headway on this. It doesn't mean you're not growing a ton. It just might mean that that other person isn't the right person for you.

Speaker 1:

That's the hardest thing to tell someone is look, you can love something that doesn't serve you 100%. You can love something toxic. You can love something that's not great for you. You can love something that's not going to be around forever, unfortunately. But you have to have that real talk with yourself of am I working on myself as much as I can on a scale of one to 10? How much? Nine out of 10 are awesome, good for you, good for you on a scale of one to 10.

Speaker 1:

How much is your partner working on themselves to out of 10? Okay, on a scale of one to 10, how well have you done in communicating the difference in the fear and potential uncertainty and insecurity with vulnerability between those two numbers? I feel like I've done a really good job. Just nothing's changed. Maybe it's time for a deeper conversation, and that's just the hard thing. Now, of course, you can go to therapy and you can hire a coach like Alan or go see Tori Aletto. I would recommend both of them highly, alan and Emilia. I want to make sure I give Emilia credit, definitely.

Speaker 1:

Alan and, emilia, yeah, but there's no guarantee that that's going to work Just like. This is another good thought you can hire a business coach.

Speaker 2:

What are you trying to say? There's no guarantee.

Speaker 1:

There's no guarantee. I'm kidding, I believe you're really good I'm being playful man, You're good.

Speaker 2:

That's funny. It's almost like a business coach.

Speaker 1:

If you go and hire a business coach, they can tell you a lot of what to do, but you've got to still do it. And if you have a business partner, imagine Alan and I go and we see a business coach and they say this is exactly what you guys need to do to succeed. And we walk out of that room and I tell Alan no, not doing it.

Speaker 2:

Nope, just like the thumbnail. Yeah, just like the thumbnail in our previous episode.

Speaker 1:

How did that work out for us? Pretty good, I would say, all things considered. We are producing Evan Carmichael's podcast, so that's pretty good, that's good news yeah, it works out. Things have come up, so, yeah, that's very nice.

Speaker 2:

It's all because we didn't do that first thumbnail.

Speaker 1:

Most likely. Yeah, we stuck in his mind for that, but if someone's listening.

Speaker 2:

by the way, that's a reference from the last episode, so if you haven't listened to the last episode, we apologize for a reference that is going to have no context.

Speaker 1:

Messy action, messy action. I think that's a really good example. Unfortunately, you can work really, really hard on yourself and you can work really, really hard on your relationship, but if the person on the other side is not doing the same, it might not last. The reason relationships are so hard is because there's two people. Going for a run is as challenging as your level of fitness and cardiovascular health and the path that you choose. It's just, it's you against you and the environment when you're in a relationship. It's you against you and it's you against your partner being against themself, and it's them against whatever they're going through. There's a lot more factors that play into this. So, again, a very heavy episode.

Speaker 1:

I do enjoy doing these as well, because I think sometimes this is what you need to hear. Not necessarily what you want to hear, but I have people in mind right now that I'm thinking of that. I hope they hear this and I hope it resonates with them, because I've been in this too. I've had these situations. I've had the situations where I was working on myself diligently and Trying to work on the, the partnership, and it just didn't work. I've also been in the other side when I had a partner who worked very hard on themselves and worked very hard on the relationship, and I was just not ready. I was just not ready to do it. I wasn't capable of that yet, or at least I didn't. I didn't feel capable.

Speaker 2:

So I Also have both sides of this experience, similar to you, alan the Story I want to share here is of a person that I care about deeply. I started coaching her two two years ago, started out in group coaching and then eventually did one-on-one coaching and and she was in a relationship that was definitely not toxic. I always do green, yellow, red. It was yellow, it was not red. So red is toxic. You can't win there, no matter what you do. There's no point like just leave, and that's the hard truth. So if you know you're in a red situation, you really do have to just Cut ties. As hard as that is I've been there as well it's the worst. It's the worst Because you want to believe it's not red, but deep down you know it is. It's like the worst. Okay, she was in a yellow situation, which what I mean by that is she wasn't really flourishing to her full potential and her partner definitely wasn't either and he was kind of holding her back. But not not toxic, not in a toxic way. This is a good, good guy, good dude, and we actually did some really ship talks, coaching with them and they were. He wasn't toxic, she wasn't toxic. They were just very incompatible. They didn't have any goals in common. Their core values were definitely not in common.

Speaker 2:

This person was not nearly as growth oriented as as my client and fast-forward, fast-forward, fast-forward. Eventually she leaves him and they both go off to their own thing. She's in lonely land what we referred to as lonely land for quite a long time, probably I guess it wasn't that long probably six months. Six months. She was alone and working on herself and she's like is anyone gonna be out there and am I ever gonna find my person? And that whole doubt Land of I don't know if this is gonna work. And again, I've been there too. Prior to meeting you, milia, I was definitely there. I was like is this ever gonna happen? Am I gonna be alone till I'm 50? And so, anyways, fast-forward, fast-forward, fast-forward. She meets someone and I have since heard many, many things about this person. I haven't met him personally yet, but I was talking to this person recently.

Speaker 2:

We were on a coaching call and I said how obvious is it to you now that that last Relationship was just never gonna work? She said 10 out of 10. I would kick my own ass if I could go back in time. That was what she said. Now, hindsight is 2020. I have a partner where I, if I could go back and talk to me, I'd be like dude, wake up, like leave now. This is never gonna work. You are, this is pipe dream stuff. You need to wake up. Santa Claus is not real.

Speaker 2:

Now, that wasn't that extreme for her, but at the end of the day, I told her and this was really hard for me because I was coaching her while she was with this other partner and I said honestly, in my honest opinion, if you want to achieve these dreams and you want to maximize your potential, there's just no way. I don't want to say this. Most people will never tell you this. Most people aren't even aware of this. I coach enough people. There's just no way. There's just no way unless something drastically changes to Kevin's original point, unless this person changes everything about themselves which, by the way, they shouldn't have to do. They shouldn't have to change everything about themselves. That's fair. You're a unicorn, you're very unique and and you need to find another person as unique Maybe not as unique, but at least more so than this.

Speaker 2:

So, anyways, I fast-forward, fast-forward, fast-forward. I'm on the call and I asked her. I said isn't it interesting how what I told you back then is so, 10 out of 10, obvious to you now. And she said, yeah. I said now here's the killer question, that the the million dollar question. What isn't obvious to you now? That is still obvious to me. What is it obvious to either of us now that we're missing?

Speaker 2:

And so this older version of her that didn't want to admit that this wasn't going to work, that didn't want to leave her partner because she loved him, that wanted to believe love was enough. She had to let that bar go. She had to evolve, she had to grow, she had to face the hard truth and when she did, she had to face Lonely Land for six months. And now she's in a relationship where, when she looks back at her past relationship, she wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole, because now she knows the difference. This is the problem we don't know what we don't know. I've been in relationships in the past that were awful. They were just awful in comparison to my relationship with Emilia. But I had never met Emilia, so I had never been in a magnificent relationship before. So you don't know any different. You don't know any different.

Speaker 2:

But deep down, intuitively, you kind of have this thing that's saying you know what, alan, there's got to be more than this. This can't be it for you. There's no way that this is all you're meant for. And if you have that intuitive whisper, kevin and I talk about how the whisper eventually becomes a scream If you have that intuitive whisper, you got to answer it, even if that means you only leave your partner for a couple of weeks just to see, and then you realize I made a mistake and then you guys get back together. There's a lot of value in taking a leap of faith and, no matter what, you're going to get more information, because I know that there's a lot of couples we coach where it's like, well, as soon as I leave him, he's going to transform everything. I said I know, but the irony is you're sitting there thinking he's going to transform while he has you. It's not going to happen. A lot of people are transformed after pain, so I'm not going to tell anyone what to do.

Speaker 2:

I hope you can identify which bucket you're in. Bucket one is you're deeply in love, but you're kind of coasting. Neither one of you is really working on yourself. That's probably not you, because you're listening to this podcast. Bucket two is one of you is really working hard to try to be better and create a better life and create a better relationship. And bucket three is both of you are flourishing and, yeah, you're struggle bus because you're working on yourselves and growing and growing pains are there, but your relationship is flourishing as a byproduct of growth. And if you're not in bucket three, the only wrong answer, in my opinion, is to sit back and not take a look.

Speaker 1:

We talked about this a while ago. There's an anomaly. It was like there's an anomaly, there's a surprise. This was your framework. I know, I just don't remember what it was. I have to go back and listen, because I haven't talked about it.

Speaker 2:

I kind of completely forgot something along the lines of yeah, probably an anomaly is something that happens just extremely rarely.

Speaker 1:

Just extremely rarely to the point where you are unreasonably surprised. I would say a surprise is probably like a pleasant surprise oh, that happened again. I didn't really expect that, but it doesn't. It doesn't blow your mind. Then you have a pattern, something that is fairly consistent, and then a law, something that is like a guarantee when Alan and I travel. It is a law that we look for a gym. The first thing we do when we travel together. We always work out. It would be an absolute anomaly for us to eat at a restaurant when we travel together, because I don't know if we've ever done that. We don't think we. Yeah, I don't know if you and I have ever eaten in a restaurant together. That would be an absolute anomaly. We went one time, fridays, with the cope daddy. That was five years ago.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah, I know, that was six years. I think it was like seven years ago Actually, so that would be a.

Speaker 1:

That would be an anomaly. Yeah, if that ever happened, ask yourself that question when it comes to your relationship. What are those? What are the anomalies? Are the anomalies? Your partner says something that surprises you about growth. Okay, is it? Has it become a pattern? Is it a surprise? Because, at the end of the day, to Alan's point, the last, I don't want you to do anything different based on this episode, but I do want it to be an opportunity for you to think about it and just say, wow, I've been, I've been waiting on this for six years and nothing has changed. But I've grown so much and I feel like I have to lessen myself. So again, heavy episode, a lot of contemplation, hopefully, but sometimes that's all you can do. You don't have to make a new decision today. You can have a new distinction, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Speaker 2:

What's your next level nugget sir.

Speaker 1:

My leg. My next level, nugget, is we have to have you off here in four minutes because you have a coaching call. My next level, nugget, is you deserve someone who's willing to put in the amount of effort Into the relationship and themselves that you are. That would be my next level, nugget.

Speaker 2:

It's fire. But yeah, I agree my next level nugget You're not going to have a flourishing relationship unless you can be on the same page and be on the same team. And the last part of my next level nugget is honestly, check in with courage, humility and vulnerability. Those three, in my opinion and in hindsight, I was emotionally mature in my, you know, teens and twenties Courage, humility and vulnerability. If you don't have high levels of that, I don't believe your relationship will flourish. I Really don't. And so if your partner doesn't have humility, courage and vulnerability or you don't, look in, look at that first.

Speaker 1:

Last thing before we go. If you ever need any assistance when it comes to this, please reach out. I don't do coaching. Alan does so. If you're looking for a coach who can help you with this, as well as peak performance business, all that reach out to Alan. If you ever want to bounce a question off of somebody, I'm my DMs are always open shoot me a, shoot me a message. You don't have to do it alone. You can. You can get feedback from other people and I can promise you if you are getting feedback from us, it's from a non non-judgmental place. Obviously, at this point, we've heard a lot of stories and we've just had a lot of Experiences shared with clients and community members, so you are safe in that. Tomorrow for episode number 1465, juggling emotion and logic, I Am very excited for that. I.

Speaker 2:

I think you like that one as well as always.

Speaker 1:

We love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you and an L? You. We don't have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.

Speaker 2:

Keep flourishing with your partner. Next little mission.

People on this episode

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Alan Lazaros

Host
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Kevin Palmieri

Host