There are three keys to successful relationships. Last week we discussed week 1, which was connection. This week we discuss the mechanism for connection.

Transcript

Welcome to honest talk about heartbreak, dating and relationships, relationships, the past, helping you navigate your path to happy ever after with your host, Rob McPhillips.

OK, so tonight, what we here to discuss is the three keys to successful relationships. And tonight we're going to discuss part two. So the first key is connection. So we talked about relationships being the mechanism by which we get connection with other people and connection being the way that we make sense of the world last week.

So. We we were talking about what that all relationships flow between various types of connection to this connection, and it may be that you like you right out of connection. You're right. Disconnected, which means that the relationship is not very enjoyable. And so the relationship probably breaks and but often there's a flow between the two. And so what we're looking at tonight is what is the mechanism that we can feel more connected? So just some housekeeping for me, if anyone whose in need we this call is recorded in the main room, the breakout rooms are recorded.

We don't use the video. So I think everyone's got their video on, especially in the breakout rooms. If you can use your video, if it's convenient, it just helps people see where you are and so that we can feel more connection. The philosophy to the groups we talked about, the Fink free rebellion, meaning that life is really about who philosophically we believe that life is really about us becoming ourselves without being swayed by dogma, other people's ideas, by emotions, or I've been swayed by short term emotions or by ignorance.

And so what we really hear about is to work out our own ideas of what's right for us. OK, so in the breakout rooms, you were discussing what had preceded or what had caused you to feel connection? Does anyone want to share the experiences already, insights they had?

OK, so so I'm sharing with Kareem and I don't know if I heard the story, but so where if he is going left in this house, which had three three flats. And so I was out putting my bins one sort of late summer evening and somebody came onto the property. No, I wasn't sure whether it could be somebody going to a factory or something like that. So I didn't really pay attention. And she asked me about the basement flat because there was a sign, a tilak sign.

And and I said, oh, I don't know. So I just continued. And then she kept on persisting and I was just ignoring her. I just thought, you know, just answer the question and continued what I was doing. So I just had one of these things to put outside. So I had to go out again and walk round round a bit and put the bed. And she was still there. And on the third attempt, she said something.

And instantly I found my wall just dropped that barrier I had. And I just looked at her and I suddenly was connected and with such a surreal thing, she just asked me whether she just asked me whether I practiced Reiki, which is something that I do. And I don't know what made her say that. But then she just offered me a card. And if you really get to connect and if you're interested in Reiki and then we had a discussion about Reiki, but it was only if only when she said something that I guess I was.

Already connected to that that ball drops, but she was obviously still interested in that basement, that things like that, I mean, that didn't change, but she just came out with that. So, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. So we talked about, like, there have been different layers of the onion. Last week we did. Yeah. And so, like, the flat downstairs is like the most superficial layer where she'd gone to something a little bit deeper and she said, well, I thought she was observing me.

She wasn't going away. So I was busy my head. I was just wanting to get the bins out. So it was a 10, 15 minute job I have to put out rolling it down. It was my turn. You know, we have to share that duties for a few bins so she doesn't go away. It's really just when she said that. So I suspect she was observing me and then said something which which didn't make me connect with her.

Stop and look. But my answer was not enough, it seemed. Well, obviously, contact the letting agency I was thinking of and there wasn't enough, so but yeah, and it's great because three months later I went to a birthday party and. Yeah. I mean, really connected. It was lovely seeing her. Yeah, so what would you so what do you think it was that you had something in common? Yes, I think yeah, there was a commonality there.

Some think that perhaps. Yeah, that I was already connected to something that I was connected to that she's like, for example, if she started to speak French to me, I wouldn't say, look, because it's, you know, my second language. And so I would. Would connect the two because it's unusual to find a French speaker sort of, you know, just just so yeah, I would probably have the accent and then would have maybe spectrum French and then there would have been a connection, but there was none of that.

So, yeah, finding something that is that you're connected with but married in the other person. Perhaps starts the connection in some way. Well, it brought my ball down because I then really turn to look at her and I hadn't before. OK.

Thank you, guy, does anyone else have any other examples that I can relate to in that I think that I felt connected with people, the previous partners, a cell phone that showed an interest in me, that interests me. So I guess it can be on the level of connecting interest or something or digging deeper. But I think that's that's when I feel that someone can feel connected to a person. When so when you feel understood and you feel that they're showing an interest, they care.

Yeah. Concern. I think my example is, oh, my goodness, I tried to go very deep. I hope I don't upset anybody with this one.

My best friend, who I met my first week at university. She is. The closest thing to a sister that I have because I have no sisters and we've been through everything, and some years ago her husband was found to have was diagnosed with colon cancer.

And from that, we had known each other, all of us, the three of us from university. And when he got the diagnosis, they lived together in Florida, every every doctor's visit, everything doing the research. We all we were all doing the cancer trips with me here. But she was doing the research, whatever any new thing, any new development, doctors visits, everything. We were going through it all, all of us, the three of us.

And he he went into remission and we thought, yes, it was OK. And then, of course, as usual, it's always on a New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. You get the bad news that it's back anyway to fastforward. He was terminal and he was going he was dying. And then he decided that he wants to go home from the hospital to die. He wanted to die at home. And I spent I don't know how many hours together, the three of us in the room, me here, she there him down on the phone until he died.

And. I don't know that I can get as close as that to anybody. Again. When he went when he drew his last breath, she says he's gone and the two of us were just there, the silence, the connection, we never had to say much. We were just there together. And. I've never I've never felt that deep connection with even my husband. Sorry, A.. Yeah, but that's that that to me was a connection that I don't know, that's that's my benchmark.

But I, I think so many times, like you've apologized and we feel that we shouldn't raise deep emotions. And really what connects us is the deep emotions. And it's like that shared experience. I don't think you can get a deeper connection and sharing something like that with someone. But it also it's hard when you are when you when you look at other connections, meaningful connections, if you know what I mean. It's kind of like, OK, yeah, it's OK, but it's you know, because you've been you've been all the way down there, uh.

I think the question is, how can we? Develop those connections without tragedy, even without. How can we develop them more consciously?

That's really a hard question, but we had a different part to the discussion, if I may. That he joined us and we were talking about feeling connected with being a two way street and feeling valued, feeling the sense of openness in in one respect. Betty pointed out that you may have baggage that. Well, I was point out that maybe if you have baggage, sometimes that prevents you from actually being receptive and being open and really connecting with somebody else.

And she pointed out that sometimes if somebody is willing to work with you through your issues, that that can bring about a sense of deep connection. And actually that that can be quite good. Know, I suppose the point about somebody working with you through the issues you have is that it's a case of them being there for you. And I think your point about what Rob was just saying in response to Sandra's story is that when you share an emotional moment when you need someone, I think that brings us to someone.

So I think I mean, I wonder, can we make a deep connection with someone if we don't have some sort of strategy? In other words, if we just share good times with people, where do we have the opportunity to actually know that they are there for us and that they will be there for us when the inevitable happens in life? Because we can never say that they will be there. If we don't know that. If we haven't tested that, I think really what really makes a bond is when there is some sort of tragedy or an opportunity for them to actually prove or show that they'll be there.

I think that's true. I just like to make a point first. Now, we've only been here for half an hour and you've been in separate rooms, who feels more connected to Sandra now? After that story, because it's sharing an experience and so I think so how do how do we know? We don't know until we see it. And that's the thing about. A terrible experience is that we can't know that someone will really be there for us until we're in it.

Know people will always going to say, hey, I'm your friend. I'm always going to be there. I'm your partner. I'm always going to I'm always going to love you. But until you actually pay that price. No one knows, and I think it's the it's the emotions that come. Barry Bonds is the. Actual experience is the actual knowing that someone is there, because what what is it really when someone shares that experience, its compassion, its trust, you know, that they're not going to have you know, that they're and there's something about when we have a superficial conversation, it's just words.

But when we have a. An experience. It's it connects us more emotionally, it affects us more. So so the. So how can we do it consciously, so I think we can share in joy. We can. And I think I mean, this is what our this is our quest tonight is to find out how can we consciously create more connection? I think with Nicole, we had we touch this subject a little bit about it's actually we was talking about as the kid we actually, you know, choosing the experience.

We just do it. We are there as depressants and as adults. It's the new experience that they seemed. Forty seven percent of our adult time, we are in our head. So we actually all the time be creating or we try to create our future or our past. So we're not in the presence. We're not experienced in defense. And from Sara Assunta studies, I really get it that to be dead even in the silent. It's already in the presence just to be there, don't need the word just to be there and expedient.

And so many times we just think when somebody sees something, then I lose them, just Sandra's stories, I didn't even have to imagine. I felt it had emotion. And that's how we get connected. I believe so. So can I say something? Yeah, sure. And so when we was talking in the break up, when we was all of a sudden when you're on the same frequency with someone, so in this situation last been in this group, now someone just sharing that with us, we now have a piece of sound.

Just so she said something that, you know, she went through really meant a lot to her as she shared that with us so we could have a little bit more of an understanding of Sandra's personality and the kind of woman that she is. When we was in the breakout rooms, we was talking more about maybe the really superficial because we're was talking about how when you felt a connection with someone, what's happened just before that. And I was just thinking maybe back to like a past relationship that I've had.

And when I felt connected to them, it's been when we've maybe been laughing and we've just been ourselves, we're laughing with each other because we've been alone so frequent saying we're having fun. And then I realized has a big factor to do that. But I was thinking more in a romantic setting, in a relationship. Yeah, I think that that's true, like, that's how, you know, when people die because of the fun times that they can because and I associate that person with that sometimes.

And like from affection and people connect from sex because it's a shared experience, because from being affectionate from even so. So that's. Yeah. So there's different levels. So for me, it's like it's slightly different though, because I know when I've been in groups I struggle with big group. So we feel like really uncomfortable. And I was in this part of this one group and I was really uncomfortable. But it was when when I let my vulnerability be shown or when I was truly saying that's when I felt the connection.

And I don't know if anyone's come across Brene Brown, but if you listen to her talk on the power of vulnerability and she says it's that that vulnerability is what drives connection. So when you let yourself be truly saying that's when when you feel connection with people. Yeah, yeah, very true. And so if we're looking at that point, what's the opposite? So if we were vulnerable, we we have that connection. What creates the disconnection? I think when you're not being true, you're not being your true self.

And so Brian Brown talks a lot about shame and because shame shuts us up, we don't talk about things because we feel shame. And so we've got so in every moment, we've got a choice where we can be vulnerable and connect. Or we can not be vulnerable, the opposite, which is the response to shame and disconnect, so. OK, so sorry. Did you touch on shame? And because you mentioned Brownie Brown. Brownie Brown is that I'm hearing the same the same as a TED talk, but she's she's done a couple of these too.

I remember very vividly remember when she made a distinction between shame and guilt. And that's quite important distinction to make because she said feeling guilty is that you've done something wrong. While shame is to say that I am wrong, there's something wrong with me. And I really stuck with me that distinction, because it was only once I understood shame and that in that way that it was. Help to unpack some some things I was going through at the time, but she's absolutely correct.

No one's actually come across that. She's actually amazed that TED talk was very powerful and they just wanted to just make that distinction. Thank you for that. That's really a good distinction because. So much of our childhood, I go to school when you've got 30 kids in a class or five hundred kids in the school, you want to control them. And the weapon that they use is often shaped like your, you know, like a teacher or a parent stretched.

And it's it's not like you're doing this bad thing at all. You're always like that. You're always naughty. Why are you always being in pain? And so we grow up with all this sense of shame and so many times, like we grow up into a world that's already going. And so we weren't there at the start of it. And so we're joining this world that's already going trying to find the rules like this is like a treadmill of of the world's moving and we want to let go.

What am I supposed to do? What do I do here? And. So what happens is we think there's a rule of what we should be doing, what we shouldn't be doing, and we inherently feel like I don't know other people, and because we we experience our world internally. But we expect other people externally, so it looks like everyone else has got it all together. And so there's all this this shame and this so much comes out in relationships like the, you know, the Facebook relationship, the Instagram relationship, where people have to make it seem like they're perfect, because if they if they if they showed the reality of their relationship, it's like, why?

Why doesn't he love me? Why doesn't why why is he looking at other people? All of these things mean that we don't talk honestly and openly about relationships. And that's really what this group started with, with just a place where you could talk openly and honestly about relationships. So yes, sir, thank you. That was always.

Hi, guys. You hear me? Yes, we can. Oh, hello. It's really amazing what everyone said. I've been absolutely blown away, especially what Sandra said. I just want to say thank you to for being just basically been in tears. I wasn't able to speak because that was just like I thought, a very similar experience when I was listening to Saddam. He took me through my own experience together. And it was just I just want to say thank you and allow you to know what I was trying to say earlier.

But my aim was to work with was the apple crumble connects me to see what makes the noise from bull. And even even we've joked now free episodes, and I think this is all that's to blame for, oh, if if we if we have to have an apple crumble addiction recovery group, I'm blaming IRA. And because we've had that joke about three weeks now that there's a level of connection. No, Brownlee's, I'm not I'm not going there.

If you're going to go millionaires' shortbread or a little hot with a bit of ice chocolate chip cookies count. I'm not really.

I had one today. I thought to myself, oh, okay.

Think all jokes aside, the food really does people like more than anything else. So I, I'm like the spoiler and getting all the food ready and the kids are all stuck around like with the foil. And I know it's like it really bothers everyone, all the food cooking and all the smells and everyone helping each other. It's like very tribal, very tribal, which I think is really missing in society at the moment. But it's a shared purpose, I suppose.

Yeah. And I think it's also like an actual campfire because that's where everyone gathered and it's a natural gathering point. Whereas now we've got Facebook and we go Instagram, but that they bring their own difficulties.

I've got a of occasions.

Sorry I this I had that on Saturday, so it's funny enough. It's like such a back story. So. Yeah, exactly. So I had sister that also. So then I had the kids round so my kids came down from the slums and. Yeah....