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Behind Closed Doors: A Real Conversation with a Real Couple · Return to Love

• Lisa Mauriello: For better or worse, till death do you part. Do you remember those vows? And if you do, do you think that it was romantic at that time? If you've been married a while or in a relationship, committed for a while, are you now thinking ⁓ my gosh, when we got to that part of the ceremony, I would have loved to have an uncle Larry stand up and shout. What are you nuts? Till death do you part? Do you think it's uncommon to have regrets or to have down times or times where you feel like, ⁓ my god, what did I do? Now I'm committed and my soulmate has become my worst nightmare. Hi everybody and welcome back to the Return to Love podcast. I'm Dr. Deb, your host, and tonight we're gonna go behind the closed doors. You know how everybody says you never know what happens with a couple behind closed doors? Well, I have with me a couple that is so special and they are so gracious to be with me on this podcast to give us a little glimpse into their love and marriage journey. And like all of us, they've been through the ups and downs and they're gonna share their story with us. And I want to tell you that this is not a therapy session. This is a conversation for educational and entertainment purposes. And ⁓ I have known this lovely couple for quite a while, ⁓ because they're my neighbors. So they are just a gorgeous couple, both physically and spiritually in all ways. Leonella is a fashion model and she is amazing. And her husband Mateo is a business owner, entrepreneur, and they are both hardworking and married two years, but together nine years. So welcome guys. Hi Dan, how are you? Good. I can wait wave to you across the hallway here. I know. She just said to me, she'd like to close the door. I was like distracted. So ⁓ do you relate to that opening of, you know Till death do you part and it's supposed to be a soulmate forever and a lot of people feel like, ⁓ my gosh, these ups and downs are not normal. ⁓ there's moments where we like can't stand each other. How do you relate to that at all? He's my worst nightmare. Like I'm the boogeyman. She didn't even know it. ⁓ I mean I could s I could speak on it a little bit, but The death through us part is like is funny because as we're we you know getting closer and we were you know the engagement happened and then you start hearing people saying things and ⁓ you know you get the few you know chirps in the air, Hey, you know, you know, you sure you want to be married? Like, you know, it's like it's a whole different ball game and you know, you know, it's like ⁓ you start realizing the negative talk behind the marriage and it's and you know I started realizing too, it's like what are they dealing with within their marriage? Yes. You know, are they understanding what they're what's what's what's right, what's wrong and so forth in their marriage. Yeah, and I always think about that better or worse part of the vows. Nobody talks about the worst part. And secondly, nobody talks about what to do about it. So ⁓ you know a lot of people don't have the skills that they need and then they get into the marriage and they're like, ⁓ my God, you know, all my parts of I'm turning into my father or my mother or my worst nightmare from my childhood. And it's really hard to think about well what are we gonna do here? Are we gonna hang in here? so you know nobody really knows what a couple goes through. And I know you guys have had your ups and downs. And tell me, yeah, tell me what kind of obstacles do you feel? We'll jump right in here. Do you feel you've overcome already ⁓ that you've put some work into? Because I know you guys are insightful. I know you're therapy oriented and advocates for therapy, which is great. What obstacles do you feel you've been through so far that you've overcome? So, you know, obviously like marriage is not perfect. You have good seasons, you have like, you know, bad seasons. and you just have to work through it. And I feel like we both you we're not perfect. So I have issues I have to work on in like individual and as like a couple. So I feel like I had to work on my communication. I I think like it's not that I didn't communicate good with my husband. I just think I was not a great great communicator. And I was he he actually was like, you know, that's something you have to work on. And I'm like, you know, you're right. So I am really big on therapy and I brought that up in therapy because it was affecting like our relationship. So then I I brought up to my therapist and I was like, you know, I shut down. I ⁓ like confrontation. So when you know, we have hard conversations and sometimes I just want to like not talk about it, but we have to talk about it. So I think that was my biggest thing I had to really work on. And that stems down also it to tr ⁓ childhood. And that's what we was saying. So that's what we have to do in our work on ourselves. Absolutely. You have to have two healthy people and most of us don't come into it like that. And you're making a really important point that we all come in with communication patterns and most of us have some kind of trauma from childhood. And how we saw marriage and how we saw our parents relating, that's what we bring in. So you gotten very aware, Leonella, of you know, you tend to be a shuttered downer of kind of a a silent, go silent wall off kind of shit. The definition of radio silence. Yeah, which is frustrating. Yeah. But it's very frustrating. It's very powerful. It's not like complete silence that I do that, but we have c we get into the hard conversation and then I just shut down. And then I'm like, I need some time. And then Sometimes I wouldn't even go back to that conversation because I'd rather avoid it. But then he's like, No, no, no. We talk about this. And it's true. Like I I see even like with my friends, like in their marriage and their relationship, like it it's communication is really important. That that's the the the one thing I was gonna say. I allowed her to talk about it first because I know that that was a a r a little bit of a struggling thing in our relationship was the communication. ⁓ you know, growing up In my like in my house, I know that my parents were very, you know, like, ⁓ don't don't talk about things. Like keep it to yourself. Like, you know, don't let other people know your business. And there's some truth to that, but that doesn't apply to a relationship. Like you have to communicate, you have to discuss things. Things are gonna be hard. ⁓ you're not gonna it's not gonna be pleasant for, but you're not doing it to attack your partner. ⁓ you're not doing it to, you know, ⁓ stir up more problems than it needs to be. But I also had to learn that constantly, you know, driving that the the discussion, I had to also respect her because her ability to shut down. I that I had to give her a little bit of space for her to understand and say, okay, she doesn't know how to absorb all this at once. Because I'm a little because of work, I have more problem solving skills that I'm good at. So when those things happen, I have to move forward with work. I can't sit there and be like, ⁓ I'll come back to in three days and we'll figure this out. I'd get fired. They'd kick me off the job, they wouldn't ever want to talk to me. So ⁓ that that was my down ⁓ the my part of like a I guess quote unquote downfall of of trying to communicate with her where I had to take a step back and give her a little bit of space for her to kinda gather her thoughts and then understand like why I was upset or she was upset and then we can kinda like slowly move forward. But it that took some time to ⁓ to get through at that point. Yeah. So communication to us was like the hugest. So I want to say a little something. So I said this is not therapy, but you are going to hear me ask some questions that I use every day as a couples therapist. So they're just part of me. So what I'm thinking about is are you guys now, do you feel like you're getting to building solutions when you have these conversations? Cause I see most couples get stuck in the problem talk, the problem description, and then they're going down the rabbit hole. They're stuck in the hamster wheel of describing the problem more and more and more. And I really work with couples to get to building solutions together as partners. Do you guys feel like you've made that shift into building the solutions when you get to the hard conversations? ⁓ I do. I feel like we we made some some progress. I can speak on that. ⁓ because conversations are a little a little bit more easier. she doesn't ⁓ shut down as fast as as she used to. You know, she there's occasionally she will, then she'll come back a little bit quicker. You know, but I also know that to like give that a little bit of buffer space to to allow her to process you know from the conversation and everything. Yeah, Mateo, I want to stay with you for a second here. ⁓ you know, I think both girls and boys get messages about how they're supposed to be as far as communicating and, you know, being a woman, a girl. I mean, I was told to be quiet, be pleasant, don't upset your father. I think girls are told to be quiet in one way and then boys are really told, you know, don't be a wimp, don't you know, don't man yeah, man up, suck it up, don't feel anything. What messages did you get, Mateo? 'Cause I know that you are a good communicator and I know you guys have worked on this so much, ⁓ but you naturally tend to be a good communicator. You talk my ear off in the parking lot so In the morning, first thing in the morning. Yeah, with curlers in my hair. He always sees me with curlers. But ⁓ but what kind of messages did you get as a boy? How did you learn to be such a good communicator? ⁓ well that that wasn't that easy. ⁓ Yeah, well ⁓ honestly is when I started working I 'cause I worked at Costco and ⁓ that was the one thing it's like, you know, being a kid you know, seventeen, eighteen years old, like working at a place and taking being delegated what to do. And ⁓ you know, of course, at that age I'm just like, ⁓ yeah, I'll do it and whatever. But I also noticed that people would say things to me like, ⁓ like, don't you listen? Like why don't you just say something f for before? And I and then I as I got older and I was pushing for the job opportunities, ⁓ it kinda like slowly kind of worked into me where I realized I had to communicate. And I think that Like I to me right now, like working at the at Costco was like my biggest Costco couples therapy, right? Yes. I will I like I'll advocate for Costco till the day I have to go into that grid. They're gonna put me out of a job. Yeah, but yeah, because they they there was so many personalities, different people, and as I progressed as manager and you know, taking over roles of of management. And understanding like everybody's got a different way of communicating and trying to understand. And and if you don't communicate, can you get anything done? And the answer is no. ⁓ you know, unless you do sign language, that's a whole different story, but still communicate. But ⁓ yeah, as that went on, and then when I chose the avenue of going to start, you know, to start my own business, I realized that communication was be with the customers because I did also learn from there that sometimes I wouldn't commit to communicate to the customer and the customer would get frustrated. Like, I just need communication. You gotta tell me when you're showing up. You can't just show up here. And I was like, Yeah, but what's the big deal? You know, I'm here. But I realized that that that's not right. And that kind of grew on me over the years and so you gotta do more than just show up. You have to be listening and ⁓ responding. And Leonella, how did you get a message when you were a girl? What message did you get about speaking up for yourself? And we're usually told not to use our voice. Speak up a lot. I feel like I just tend to shut down on certain topics. I don't know, and then I just don't want to talk about it. But when it comes to like speaking up, I do share everything. Like if I feel some way or I I do I'm very vocal about it. And I was growing up, I I don't know, I was never like actually taught that no like in my household, I I would just automatically step up and say something if I saw something wrong in my household because I grew up in ⁓ a pretty like toxic environment. and there was a lot of verbal like mental abuse towards my mom seeing that. And I would always step up for my mom. So I think I I could never stay quiet. If I if I If there's something wrong, like I don't like something, I will definitely tell what's h I yelled after getting to take the garbage out the other day. Yeah. So it she's Spanish, Latin. It magnifies like a hundred times worse. ⁓ yeah. But it's interesting that at a point in your marriage and your relationship, because you guys were together for a number of years before you got married, that you adopted this being quiet thing, this kind of, you know, withdrawing. little bit and but you d you didn't do that in your growing up. What do you think the kind of withdrawing thing was about? I think ⁓ I I don't know actually. I just think like our relationship was like I don't know, it was so easy. Like as in like we started as friends. It was you know there's no problems and years later still like we haven't No like pretty much like we we disagreed, but it was not for like a big argument or anything. ⁓ I I don't know, like I mean like when we first start dating, it was more like people would come up to us and be like, ⁓ you know, relation r relationship is work and we're like, nah, we we look at each other and like, Mm, we're fine, like no work here. We just kinda go with the flow type of thing. But as we progressed into a relationship, ⁓ you know, you start learning everybody's habits because I I what from what I learned is like we all come into a relationship with like a little like a big facade in front of us and we're like, ⁓ we don't want to disappoint the other person. Like I really like them. And then you little by little you start kind of bringing that facade down. And then you start having these little habits like you might wake up and not comb your hair right. And it's like, hey, you ⁓ every day you combed your hair but all of a sudden you stop like two years later. And it's like habits like that. It's like and you get too you start getting comfortable and you start Adapting a little bit. They you know, they they the other partner starts doing things and you start saying, Well, they weren't doing that before, but you realize it and you're doing it too. And they're calling you out on it. Yeah. So then that's where it starts to I feel like when people start realizing like, ⁓ wow, this whole time we had this facade up and now this is me. This is the real me now. The facade's down. It's you know, you take it or you leave it. And you know, some people leave it up until the after they get married. That's what I learned. And then they like, ⁓ they changed after they got married. Like, no, you just didn't pay attention to the facade that they had up for this whole time. And you got married like three years into the relationship. You didn't do your homework. You know? Things like that. What do you mean by do the homework? Well, I'm referring to as like you're not paying attention to the the the habits changing slowly of like things that they maybe do. You might not like the way they, you know, they blow their nose and all of a sudden you're noticing it now, like, ⁓ that's a weird way of doing it. You know, and ⁓ you know, it's like for me, for instance, like I would take the garbage out religiously all the time. But now I just like I leave the house, I run out, like I'll it later. And then she you know, she'll remind me, she'll be like, Hey baby, you forgot to take out the garbage. Yeah. And it now you start like little habits, like you gotta break away. Yes, start breaking away from it. And it it's like irritating the little demons inside. But now you have to choose you definitely have to choose Juice your battles. I was gonna say what you can let go of. And you guys said in the beginning, you're getting to the hard conversations now, which I love because for me that's the heart of intimacy. Intimacy is not just sexuality or affection or touch. It's opening to each other in all areas. And it is about taking on the harder issues. You have to be willing to do that to Rock the boat and take each other on, not aggressively, but to be willing to bring things up and then to work them through together as partners, not as adversaries. Now I know Yeah, I had to I know I tried to tell her like, Hey, you gotta cut back on spending, you gotta give me back the credit card. That didn't go well. So I just left that alone. How did you how did you get through that one? Did you let it go? No, she's good. She's good with the with the ⁓ finances She's not she's like from day one, like since we've been together, like that first year, Matteo gave me a credit card. Like, he's he's like the full provider. Like I if I didn't have to work like at all, I don't have to work. But I I you know, I I feel like I've gotten better with spending. I'm not I I start asking myself, do I need it or do I want it? And I feel like that has helped me more. Yeah. The the best part of it all is what she said to me one day I said to her, I'm like, Hey, like, what the hell happened here? And she's like, I know, I think I have a spending problem. And I'm like, You think? Like yeah that wasn't normally occurring that I caught my attention. And she's like, I'm sorry. She goes, I just really like these things. I'm like, Yeah, you just gotta take it easy. Yeah, I guess you weren't afraid to bring it up. You weren't afraid to say it. No email. No, because I I would I would expect her if I if I would did something, even though like, you know, I'm the one that's working and You know, and she's, you know, taking care of the house and doing other things. Like I I like if she said to me, Okay, I don't think you should have bought that brand new car out of nowhere and I'll be like, ⁓ yeah, you know what? Good idea, I'll go return it. But I won't return it, I'll just hide it in my parents' garage. Well he did you really do that? You didn't do that. No, no, I'm just I'm just being Okay, no hiding cars and garages. ⁓ my god. No, he You know, now that I think of it, my mother used to hide Yeah, my mother used to hide clothing that she bought, you know, but she didn't work and ⁓ you know, these there would be a thing in plastic in the closet and she's like, I have to leave it there until you know, the bill goes by and your dad doesn't realize it. Which is the whole thing with communicating about finances. ⁓ that definitely has gotten better better. Not that she was out of control or anything like that, but it was just being like she'll be like, Hey, is it cool if I buy buy this? And I'll be like can you just wait like a week? I was like, and then we'll see and then all of a sudden I'll be like I'll have some a little bit of extra money to save. They're like, ⁓ here you go. Just What are talking about? I never I I I don't really ask him if I could buy something. It's a it's it's in if it it's a big big or something. Like yeah. But these are kind of compulsive at one point. Like I'd be like, just buy me stuff out of nowhere and it's still in my closet. So how did you get to the point where it's okay? You just kinda naturally open up to each other now. It just kinda happened naturally, or did you have a No we had we had the the hard conversation about one point. Yeah, yeah, no, we did. It was and it wasn't like it was a difficult conversation. It was just more like, Hey, you know, just keep in mind that we have other goals that we need to like focus on. So if you start taking away things now, it it makes it harder for that for the to reach that goal. So that was like the way I I kind of placed it and and she understood it, you know, pretty pretty easily. So Yeah. I know ⁓ I know both of you are very much into self-improvement and advocates for therapy and having done some work on yourselves. And ⁓ I know you know about childhood and earlier trauma and multi-generational curses. Yeah, Mateo, you were when I gave you my book, you were starting to talk to me about multi-generational curses. I was like, whoa. He knows what he's talking about. ⁓ What have you guys learned about that? About, you know, what you need to do about the trauma we all bring in. I'm sure you guys each have some trauma that you've been working through or what you think your multi-generational curses are. Yeah, I mean I mean for me, I would say that is trying to understand it, right? Because you have a choice. If you s under kind of see that that you have something going on that re reflects back to as you were growing up that things that were happening. At that point you make a choice. You make a choice of whether you just don't care and you just go with the way you were kind of like brought up because as a child, you're picking up everybody's habits growing up because you think it's a normal, normal attribute to have. So you just wind up ⁓ like sucking it all in and then you as you get older you think it's normal. But you don't realize that there's what, three hundred million people in the United States of America. They all have different personalities. Right. They all had different issues that they that they that they grew up. So it's the understanding like, do they understand what they went through in their life to to their to their you know their generational curses as well. Well, and then we're usually acting those out in our marriages. We bring in childhood, you know, coping mechanisms, which usually aren't very good. What can children do other than shut up and be quiet, fight back, run away, literally? And then you try to do those things unconsciously in a marriage and you're repeating the the multi-generational curse, whether it's silent treatment. You know, I'm sure many of us that are watching right now probably have cutoffs in our families where people just cut each other off, they don't deal with anything, or their, you know, family environment was more explosive. and then that's your blueprint. So but do you guys feel like you both have worked on really trying to be aware of we're really talking about patterns that come from what we learn from when we're little. We take that in, that's our blueprint. I always call it the blueprint baggage. How do you feel you guys are doing with that now in your relationship? be self-aware of behaviors and things like that. And I think that's why it's really important for individuals to get therapy. Like he does his inner work, I do my inner work. And you know, then you know we come together and we're both growing together and as individual people. Yeah. And I I'm I'm like a like a big believer in in therapy and I advocating for everyone because it does help you get through things and really like you have to do also self-reflection within because we're not perfect. I'm not perfect. He's not perfect. We all have issues that we have to work on. And ⁓ and it's for the rest of our life. I feel like that's you're gonna continue to work, work, work. But you have to want to acknowledge They don't have these things because sometimes people don't realize they have these things and they think they're perfect. Yeah. And a lot of people, you know, when they come to me, they're at least aware maybe the relationship's in trouble. But some people come in and say, I don't want to change anything about myself. I'm not changing my personality. Well, relationships really aren't about personality. They're about actions and inner actions and how you treat each other every day. You know, and it's not so much about big date nights, although those are great. I like people to think about how do you treat each other every day? Do you have each other's back? Do you listen to each other? Are you focused on giving more so than on complaining? You know, I don't like people to put all that energy into the complaining and the problems. You know, if you can as a team work together. rather than as adversaries, it should be the two of you against the issue, not against each other. I yeah percent agree with you. I he knows like I'm so big on positive energy, positive mindset. And I think like, you know, complaining, complaining just doesn't get anywhere. Yeah. Yeah. So I want to ask you a different question. This is a question that I usually start with when I talk to couples, but I chose to go right into the obstacles with you guys. ⁓ what's going well now in your relationship that you would like to keep increasing as time goes by? He's going to soul. I mean, I the only thing I can tell you is is the com the communication. That was like the that like I said, the one of the hardest things that we experienced and obviously there's other top ⁓ tough conversations that we have, but it's been ⁓ so much easier to have those conversations where it's now it's like we're like two friends talking. were were difficult. Yeah. Well it was always two friends talking, I think. It is We're just mad at each other for a little bit. You know how you as friends are agree a little bit, then you kinda just like Yeah. It's okay to we're gonna be mad at each other sometimes. And I didn't use the term in the beginning, but ⁓ a teacher of mine, Terry Real, he talks about normal marital hatred. And some people get like, ⁓ my god, you said marital hatred? What that's not right. Well, it's human to there are moments where you're like, ⁓ my god, if this person Does this one more time? I don't know what I'm gonna do. You know, we have moments, but someone the other day gave me a really good phrase. They said, ⁓ you know, we talk about taking a pause if the communication's not going well. And they gave me this phrase. They said, Tell your partner, ⁓ I know you're struggling right now if they feel like they're gonna get into an argument. I know you're struggling right now, and I can't be with you right now, but I'm cheering you on. And I'll talk to you later when we feel better. You know, so just being able to not shy away from, you know, I have couples that they tell me for twenty, thirty, forty years, some of the topics you guys have mentioned so far, communication about finances and being open with each other, ⁓ that they have never talked about those things. And then, let alone sexuality, ⁓ my goodness, I have couples that have never in thirty years Asked each other what do you like? What do you don't like? ⁓ how can we make this better? Is this pleasing to you? They've never talked about it. So so you guys feel it sounds like the communication is tied to you guys solving your differences and not avoiding conflict and anything else going well that you feel really proud of? Like we like we're doing well, we have so much peace in our relationship. ⁓ which is like a huge thing that you should have is peace. I feel like well, we always had peace from day one. So maybe when I met him he was just so like calm, like yeah, you know. the the what the one thing that ⁓ just to rewind a little bit from what you were saying before is ⁓ from other couple other couples. ⁓ there's one instance that I'll like it just kinda like plays in my head a little bit and I just kind of look back and I said to myself when I heard this happen, I said, Man, Isaac, I never want to be in that position. And ⁓ I remember I was with a friend of mine and his wife had pissed him off like I guess bad. And ⁓ as she walked away, he, you know, kind of like said something really, really bad. There's voice and I just looked at him and I remember coming home and I don't know if she remembers this, but I came home and I was like, you know something? I was like, I never want to get to that point in a relationship. But even if we did, I still wouldn't like find myself to do that because at that point, then why are you even staying in this relationship? You know, to to to like say something like in that harsh manner. Yeah, and harshness does that again at that point it's like looking back on what I know about them is that. I don't think they communicated or figured out how to communicate where they they can trust each other with their with their own feelings. Yeah. ⁓ I think that the communication I think is the biggest Yeah. But you have to but you have to work like let's say if he points something out to me, like and I I have to take a step back and be like, Okay, yeah, we I have to maybe like take that into consideration and work on that, work on it with therapist. Yeah. So I think it's really important to also, you know, because I I do tell him, ⁓ babe, like, you know, 'cause can I share this about like pettiness? ⁓ yeah, yeah. ⁓ so he he was petty. He had at one point he was like being petty and I'm like, Why are you being like so petty over this? And then so I did point that out to him and he worked and he worked through it. And now he's not petty at all. But that ⁓ That pettiness I realized was stemming down to growing up because I like my siblings. And it was always like this little bickering back and forth, nonstop. And then, you know, that's something that kind of was like almost basically instilled with me because I, you know, I lived with my siblings for like twenty something years. So you kind of like create this bickering behavior. And then when she started pointing it out, I was like, Why are you not bickering? And then I took a step back rather than fight it and ignore it. I just started saying, Why is she saying that? And I I that's one thing I did learn years ago. I was in high sch when I was in high school, my teacher said to me one time, ⁓ I said something, he goes, Why are you such a wise ass? And I it didn't bother me, I just laughed it off, right? Uh-huh. And then one day my one of my cousins said that to me as I got a little bit older. They're like, like, you know, you're a little wise ass. And then I was just like, it kind of bothered me a little bit, but I didn't understand why he was saying it. Then one day I was in the car with my dad and I remember saying something, and he's like, You know, you turned you turned into a little wise ass. But he said it in a And ⁓ and that day that sat with me ⁓ and I and I said, I don't want to be like that. If my dad's saying that I'm a being a wise ass, I was like, There's something wrong. And that's when I started learning to too. No, not anymore because I realized it was I don't want my dad to Well, when was that? Well, I've been knowing him for what, nine years, so I don't know. You know no one could be a wise I was like 14 years old. It's more like But you know, we bring all of this in. We bring sibling relationships in, and sometimes the marriage starts to look like a s not a sibling in terms of you're acting like brother and sister, but you're bringing like twins sometimes have a lot of problems in their marriages because they recreate that dynamic. Or if you I don't know, are you an older or a younger both of them? Yeah. I'm the I'm the second. You're the second of how many? A four. So you're in the middle. And Leonella, where are you? I'm I'm the sm smallest. I mean smallest, I'm the baby. My mom had only two. Yeah. So all of that plays into it, you know, a baby and an older one, you know, or two babies who, you know, these roles have something to do with how we are then in our marriages. ⁓ another big thing the big thing is we've almost forgot. Yeah. Is ego. ⁓ yeah. Down. ⁓ having the ego, like ⁓ you're basically when you're in the in the discussion and then you allow your ego to kind of like rule the conversation rather than take a step back and say, you know what? Like, okay. And once the ego comes in, then it just I I feel me, from what I learned I've been learning, it's just way worse. Yeah. One of the very most common things I see in couples when they come in is they don't know how to open up like this and how to receive feedback from each other. They go immediately to defensiveness, attacking, explaining, excusing. But that is the most common and we don't really learn the skill of like dropping the ego. I tell people you gotta drop down. Take in. Tell your partner. Tell me about me. Okay. What do you have to tell me? Let me take it in. Even learning to say thank you for telling me that, I will think about it or I will do better or I'm sorry. And it is so much easier than what most couples are doing, the fighting that goes on for weeks and silent treatment and the you know defending and excusing and it's so easy to just say, you know, tell me what's bothering you, let me take it in and take accountability for myself. So And you guys sound like you're in a good place there, which is real nice to see. I have such a big ego industry. And and also like then to listening to other people, you know, when they they had to vent a little bit. It's like, ⁓ I was I was so mad that they but I I left the house and I I just I just went I just went and crashed at my friend's house or I I stayed at a hotel. And I'm like I would listen and I'm like, But what is that what's that solving? Like you know what I mean? Like and I had friends that would do that. But the luckily for us, like we never got to that point of ⁓ of like walk out with maybe we just might slept like in a separate room or just a little bit of separation, which was good until we reestablished to to communicate and dump down that ego a little bit. So I'll give you another one of my tips that I tell pretty much all of my couples how to take a pause, how to take a time out. not running out, slamming doors, driving away, cursing. Don't let yourselves get to that point. You know, both take responsibility for, okay, we're escalating. It feels like an argument is going to start. Let's take a break. And you either one or both be responsible to say that. But say, I think we need to take a break. This isn't good for us. And either one of you could say, I'm going to take a break now or let's separate, but Here's when I'll check back with you. I'll check back in a couple minutes or an hour or a half hour or a couple hours. So you do it responsibly and you label it so you don't abandon each other. ⁓ that's the most important thing is to have each other's back, to not keep abandoning each other. And I see so much of couples who every time there's a conflict, I'm c I'm calling a divorce lawyer, or I'm leaving and not coming back and then it's not safe to bring up the issues like you guys have learned to do is to put these things on the table and then it's okay. That's how you can keep growing together. Yeah you don't have to talk about it. But I have told him I I need time to to process. Yeah. Like I and then he lets me be and we go our own ways. Mm-hmm. And you you label it, you say we'll come back to it. But you gotta make sure you really do come back to it. I'll come back to it next year. Yeah. ⁓ that's a little thought. You're at 15 minutes before you die. Yeah. Yeah. But I have to say, like, he's great. Like he has so much patience at for me, because ⁓ my god, I'm I'm so annoying at times. But he does knows how to really like, you know, I don't know, he's just very gentle and, you know, let's meet beautiful. So we're just about at the end of our time here. ⁓ before I close it up, I want to say a huge thank you to you guys for doing this. ⁓ it's so generous and gracious of you. And I know people are gonna be helped by this because we covered some really important points about the foundations of a relationship. So On behalf of everybody who watches, thank you for what you gave us today. Thank you for having me. ⁓ my pleasure. And so to go back to where we began, do you have to have dread and feel like, ⁓ my gosh, I can't do this till death do us part or for better or worse? No, you don't have to be miserable. It is possible to stay in love and stay in love for the long term. I'm gonna give you the words of the father of Family therapy, Salvador Minuchin, who when he was interviewed for the last time, was asked, What's one thing you would say to a couple? What's the most important thing that you've learned in 50 years? And he said, Let your partner change you. So let your partner change you. You gotta work at this, guys. It's a commitment to action, not just words. You gotta practice it, you have to learn new skills. And as Leonella and Mateo told us, be willing to grow individually so you can grow together. Well, thank you so much for being here today. This is the Return to Love podcast with Dr. Deb. And remember, love is a precious gift. So make each day a whole season of love. See you again soon.