Episode 089: Reasons why relationships fail & how to avoid it
Episode 089: Reasons why relationships fail & how to avoid it with special guest Guy Finley
Wondering why relationships fail? And want to know how to avoid it? Then this episode is for you! Meet Guy Finley, bestselling author of more than 45 books and audio albums on self-realization, including “The Secret of Letting Go,” “The Essential Laws of Fearless Living,” and his brand new book “Relationship Magic: Waking Up Together.” He is the founder and director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit Center for Spiritual Discovery located in southern Oregon where he gives talks three times each week. Guy is a faculty member at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, 1440 Multiversity, and is a regular expert contributor to Beliefnet and the Huffington Post. For more information about his new book visit www.RelationshipMagicBook.com
Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/guyfinleyofficial/
Full Transcript:
Leanne: 00:00:08 Welcome to Life Lafter Divorce, episode 89. I am your host, Leanne Linsky
The Boyfriend: 00:00:12 I’m The Boyfriend.
Leanne: 00:00:12 Hey, welcome back to another wonderful week of divorce. And while you’re out there, tuning in make sure you rate, review and subscribe. And hey, why not check out the website at www.LifeLafterDivorce.com. Check out our online store. The holidays are coming up. We have some really good gift ideas for yourself and for others.
The Boyfriend: 00:00:33 Yeah, so what are those gift ideas?
Leanne: 00:00:36 Yeah. You know what, for the holidays, what’s really fun is our spearmint and peppermint soaps. That’s right. We have estrangement
The Boyfriend: 00:00:44 Because nothing says holidays like mint.
Leanne: 00:00:45 That’s right. Mint is holiday season. We don’t have Pumpkin, but we do have mint.
The Boyfriend: 00:00:52 Ewe I don’t think I could shower with pumpkin soap.
Leanne: 00:00:55 I don’t think I’d want to smell like a Pumpkin, but I would like to smell minty fresh. Right? Yeah, true. Everything everyone does and it actually feels good and makes your skin tingle. So a checkout, annulmint and estrangemint. Yes, we bought. We haven’t been pink Himalayan salt or goat’s milk. Just depending on what you want. If you want a little exfoliation or if you want a little lather
The Boyfriend: 00:01:18 lather?
Leanne: 00:01:18 so check it out. We, they’re all handcrafted here in Long Beach, California and they’re all fun divorce themes just to keep it interesting. Perfect. Yeah, and also why not check out the life coaching tab on our website and book your free session with me. I am giving away one free session per person or do a full hour coaching session. So if there’s something on your mind that you need a little jumpstart on and some next steps, let’s talk
The Boyfriend: 00:01:49 What does that look like? What is that? What is that? What do you mean? Something on my mind and next steps?
Leanne: 00:01:54 Well, let’s say you are contemplating a career change or you’re maybe wanting to launch a big project or maybe you just went through a breakup and you’re like, where do I go from here? So any one of those things, basically I’m here to help you push through your limiting beliefs and get you to the next place that you want to be.
The Boyfriend: 00:02:16 Really. So if I told you I wanted to leave my institutional job and I wanted to go be a park ranger, you would help me.
Leanne: 00:02:23 Yes, I would! Giddy up. Get on that horse. Fantastic. So you want to be a park ranger?
The Boyfriend: 00:02:33 For another conversation
Leanne: 00:02:33 Alright, fair enough. Alright, you guys. Well that went somewhere. So boyfriend, I’m kind of curious this week. Have you, do you feel like out of all the people you’ve dated that they’re all very, we’re all very similar or do you think they’ve been completely different each time?
The Boyfriend: 00:02:54 What do you mean? Similar in how they look or similar to their personalities?
Leanne: 00:02:58 Oh, both.
Leanne: 00:03:01 I’m just curious about, but I’m really focused on personalities.
The Boyfriend: 00:03:06 Then we’ll come back to looks personality wise you’re probably the most different. I got stuck in a … let’s see, how can I say this? I started dating people that I worked with or were around a lot and highly competitive, highly. I don’t know, very in the relationships all sort of ended the same way. and now I’m starting to make changes in the way I look at relationships and who I connect with and that’s helped me a little bit, but yeah, I think when I was younger, yeah. all the women I dated sort of fit into a box. They all sort of were the same group.
Leanne: 00:03:50 That’s creepy.
The Boyfriend: 00:03:50 It was a big box. It was a big refrigerator box. Okay. How about you? Were you both of your husbands the same?
Leanne: 00:04:03 No, I didn’t think so at the time, but looking back, they were similar in many ways, you know?
The Boyfriend: 00:04:10 Yeah. They both ended in a divorce within two years.
Leanne: 00:04:15 They didn’t look the same at all. But I think the relationships were similar. I was the same. I had the same lessons to learn I think each time. Yeah. And I think I, I continued dating, dating similar people for many years, you know, they’re different faces, different looks, different names obviously, but essentially, same kind of issues would come up, come up, come up, and then I met you and then that, that’s kind of changed everything. Yeah, you’re different to see. Like if we had met 10 years ago, we probably, oh no, we would have been like, oh, and no walk away, walk away, run away, and we would have listened to each other talk. I roll, you know, you do. I think those things are going to get stuck in the back of your head sometimes, but yeah, isn’t that interesting how, you know, we think there are different when we go out with somebody new and we’re like, it’s going to be different this time and it ends up being kind of the same thing over and over again.
The Boyfriend: 00:05:17 Yeah, because you were dating the same personality type every time and just in a different package. But now I think both of us have changed and we’re exploring this.
Leanne: 00:05:29 Yeah. Well I’ve done what you just said is I think really important is we’ve both changed and therefore now we’re making different choices going forward. Which leads me into the perfect segue for I guess this week because he’s all about relationship magic. There is magic. Magic died a long time with us know. Very funny pants. No, our guest this week had a wonderful conversation with him. We could talk for hours, but he has so much insight and he’s so. He comes like what he shares with us is so it makes so much sense, right? And it’s like, Gosh, what a simple concept. Yet why don’t we see this? Why don’t we see this without being told this? Right? It seems so simple, but why aren’t we applying this in our everyday life? So I’m really excited about our guest today and I might as well tell you who that is.
Leanne: 00:06:29 Our guest today is Guy Finley. Guy Is the bestselling author of more than 45 books and audio albums on self realization, including the secret of letting go, the essential laws of fearless living and his brand new book relationship magic, waking up together. He is the founder and director of a life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit center for spiritual discovery located in southern Oregon where he gives talks three times each week. Guy is a faculty member at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, 1440 multiversity, and is a regular expert contributor to the belief net. And Huffington post for more information about his new book, visit www dot relationship magic book dot Com. And we’ll also put all of his show note all of his information and contact information for the book in the show notes and honor website on our homepage. So highly recommend checking it out. This conversation I had with them just barely scratches the surface on so much that he has the offer. So without further ado, Mr. Guy, Finley guy, welcome to life laughter divorce podcast
Guy Finley: 00:07:57 Thanks Leanne. I’m glad to be with you today.
Leanne: 00:08:00 Yeah, I’m excited to talk to you. I am really excited because, well, for various reasons. You’ve written numerous books and you have your newest book coming out and I’ve been reading the sneak preview. It just so happened. Well, before we get into it, I have so many questions for you on that. But you’re married, right?
Guy Finley: 00:08:24 Oh yeah. You’re married. I’ve been with my wife Patricia, just going on 40 years now. Wow, that’s a long time. Congratulations. She is. She has helped me in ways that I can’t even describe an undying gratitude for her companionship and what she’s put up with and what I’ve learned as a result. So, yeah, we have a very strong relationship. I can honestly say, as unbelievable as it may sound, that we have never raised our voices at each other in all 30, eight or 39 years. Not once. Yeah.
Leanne: 00:09:18 That is remarkable.
Guy Finley: 00:09:21 I’ll tell you why I say it. It’s possible for us as men and women to understand ourselves so thoroughly and want to have a relationship, not just with our significant other, but with the love that brings us together so strongly that we can begin to understand that all of the venom or the pain or the anger that we might feel towards our partner can be used in a completely different way. Once we understand why it appears, which is basically why I’ve written the new book, I know we’re gonna get into it, but so it’s not like, to me, that’s not special to me. That’s how human beings should be with each other to approach each other with a wish to understand our partner rather than the insistence that they understand so that we’re in a real moment where we’re listening and not just listening to what the other is saying, but really to what they’re not saying and to what we are feeling as a result of that moment and if we can be there clearly enough, we can begin to take a position inwardly where we realized first task here is to be present to myself to whatever button has been pushed and not try to push a button, but understand the mechanism behind it so that I can be free of that limitation and ultimately help free my wife or my partner or the person on the street, whatever that may be.
Leanne: 00:10:58 That’s a big awareness because typically one word I would, and I’m speaking from my own experience when we’re talking to people, it’s probably more common that we’re thinking of the point where I’m trying to make versus the point they’re trying to make. So applying that what are they trying to tell me? How can I get clarity on what their messages before I respond or react and it kind of makes me think when you said that it makes me think of Stephen Covey’s seek first to understand the first habit of highly successful people.
Guy Finley: 00:11:33 I never read it, but that to me,
Leanne: 00:11:35 yeah, it’s a, that’s where it goes. I can’t remember his other seven habits, but I remember that. So that’s, that’s I guess it takes practice with anything. Practice things become easier is to first be aware of them, practice that and all the conversations is trying to seek someone else’s understanding.
Guy Finley: 00:11:58 Of course, and that’s true, but I don’t know if you play any sports at all anymore. Yeah. I Love Golf. I don’t get to do it much, but it’s pretty much saved my life because I’m still, you know, maybe four or five hours a week. Having good exercise, play golf. Reason I bring it up is because I, I’ve watched people on the range practice imperfection, same swing, no change, just hoping it will be different. So while we must learn to practice learning to listen, we must also understand what the practice is, not just to try to create what we hope will be a significant relationship, but so that we can begin to understand what it is in us. It has no patience. No. Why am I so quick, as you said, to try to prove my point when you were trying to push yours down my throat.
Guy Finley: 00:13:03 And the reason is because there’s great impatience appears in us that is the product of a pain that is not understood. We don’t understand why we hurt when others say things to us. We only think the reason that we hurt the way we do is because of what they said. Instead of understanding that they couldn’t possibly look, shoot an Arrow into the air. What is it? Hit a bucket of black paint into the air. What is it? Land. So if there’s a moment where my partner stings me, sure should have they said that or done that? Possibly not. But if my first response is to send an Arrow back to somehow paint them the color that I feel they should be for having brought me in the conflict, we’re dead in the moment it’s happened. And important point. Why? Because why did they shoot an Arrow? Do they shoot an Arrow because they’re happy because they shoot an arrow because they’re feeling good or was my partner in pain and did the only thing they knew to do with it, which was to fire the Arrow, make the comment. So when you have two people, both of them in pain, they don’t recognize. All they can do is play the blame game, which is the pattern and then nothing is ever healed ever because no one comes into an understanding that releases them from the limitation of blaming the other person.
Leanne: 00:14:44 Oh, that makes so much sense. Especially in everyday relationships and people having various opinions on everything nowadays. So
Guy Finley: 00:14:55 relationship to let’s stick to relationships to relationships, but you can’t separate it out. Right? That we are seeing in the world today is because no one knows what to do with the power that’s coursing through them as a result of a demand or an expectation in this instance, the government on the social system, on our culture. And so when you’ve got everybody pointing fingers and firing arrows, what you have is a war where there will never be an understanding that we gained as individuals to allow us to transcend this pain and then find the true purpose that will allow us to find peace, a real middle ground, born out of self understanding, not trying to make the other person understand why I’m right and they’re wrong.
Leanne: 00:16:02 Where do we with something like that? You know, you mentioned people when we started this, this, you mentioned golfing and you’re watching people practice imperfection and that’s what we’re seeing every day is people practicing the imperfection of their communication, right? How do we switch it so we’re not practicing imperfection? How do we get that visual of what it is we’re supposed to be practicing? And when I think when I heard you say this, I think of Greg Louganis when he had that terrible dive that almost ruined his career but didn’t but didn’t. And it’s when I watch interviews and stuff with him, he never went back and watched that dive because he goes, I didn’t want to know what I was doing wrong. I want to know what I’m doing right. And so he focused on all of the right moves that he could do to be better. Like a lot of a lot of athletes don’t go back and watch what they did wrong. They listened to their coach on what parts we’re doing right and what to do to make it better. How can we apply that? And is that what I’m hearing from you when you watch people practicing imperfection,
Guy Finley: 00:17:20 I shouldn’t have brought up golf, let’s look at this and try to bring a bigger picture because my new book is a much bigger picture in which we can find the individualized polishing and perfection that relations ships are intended to bring us into. To understand love. But first the bigger picture. Yeah, relationships to me are the single most important vital resource there is in the world today. There is no better condition to bring us into a consciousness that allows us to realize the truth about ourselves in the moment as we are now. How does that play? I’m here in Long Beach. I’m in southern Oregon. I’m looking at a fairly drizzly day. Fall is coming, but all the colors are there and I’m looking at a great tree. Squirrel, trying to assault one of my bird feeders in everything that I look out outside, if I’m truly attentive to it brings up in me a certain feeling about nature.
Guy Finley: 00:18:48 I see harmony, I see movement, I see color, I see balance, I see life. If I don’t see that outside of me, I’m not aware that these qualities that I experience in that relationship already exists in me. Nature doesn’t produce the feeling in me when I see a mountain or a cloud or the ocean vastness, that moment of relationship awakened in me. Something that I didn’t know was there, but it was so that that’s why I love nature. She awakens in me qualities, aspects of my own consciousness that are asleep until I’m in the presence, the relationship of nature. We get that. Yep. Now I meet you and we look at each other’s eyes or you know, Skype and we get up and you. I feel things about myself I don’t ordinarily feel to. I look at you. The, the, our relationship produces an awareness of notes.
Guy Finley: 00:20:00 Sounds feelings in me. I’d never know. That’s what makes humanity so interesting. We, we missed so much. I need to go on this little tangent. I’ll get back to what I want you. I don’t know if you’ve ever gone to Florence or Europe or any of these places and you walk around and people have earplugs in and they’re looking at maps and books and supposedly taking it all of this history and we’re walking around 50,000 men and women each and every one of their faces is a study in history of study and character so that we would experience this endless array of revelation through what we realized when we see each other, but we don’t have that relationship. So back to the point. So we love my wife. For instance, when she, she’d kill me if he knew I was saying this when, when she says the words Tj Maxx, she gets this little quirky smile on her face.
Guy Finley: 00:21:04 It’s probably like I am. When I say the word pizza, you know, something happens. And what I see that smile, it just, it, it lights me up, it lights me up. Is that light already in me? Yeah. But it’s not there until my wife brings it out through whatever quirky, you know, characteristic. So she shows me things about myself that I don’t know and she ordinarily that when she does, I love her for what she teaches me about myself. Vice versa, she sees me not fallen in front of people. She tends to, she wishes she had that what she calls strike. So she feeds on that and falls in love with me because in her is waiting this strength that she knows there, she just can’t access yet. But she feels as being already a part of herself. Right. So we’re onto something very nice. So we love each other. For what each other’s shows us about ourselves. That brings us into an awareness of strengths, delicateness, balance, affection. You ready for the shoe to drop? I’m ready for the other side. Why then don’t we feel that way toward our partner when they show us something that we don’t want to see in ourselves, they didn’t produce it. They are that to me, they’re the messenger of love.
Guy Finley: 00:22:44 They are the herald of healing. Because without my wife to say the offhand comment, to make the same sarcastic remark or whatever it may be in my meeting, I have a foundation. I run a foundation. If there weren’t stress in a business meeting, how would anyone know? They walked into it with an image of themselves that no one should ever talked to them using a certain tone, the atmosphere, the actions don’t create the disturbance they revealed. There’s something living in US waiting to be disturbed, which means we brought with us something from our past that was never healed in the moment. It was first revealed as being needed to be released. So what life does. What love does your relationships is bring us full circle and circle and false so that when the student is the teacher appears and by the grace of love, by the divine, it never gives up it, it keeps bringing back the same lessons, but we don’t learn them because we keep looking at the person as being the source of the pain.
Guy Finley: 00:24:05 Instead of that which is showing us we are not healed. We are. That’s what we have to understand. So the shift takes place and the shift is now. Let me use this moment with you too. Thank you for what you have helped me. See God just because we’re on a walk and you say that, why is there a beautiful comment and it makes me feel good, but because we’re on a walk and you bring up something from the past and it’s innocent, but I’m carrying around some kind of guilt and the next thing you know we’re in an argument because I assume you meant to hurt me. You didn’t. And now I attack back and when I attack back, what do you do? Right? And the war is started by something neither of us understand yet. That’s what my book is about.
Leanne: 00:25:04 Yes. And it’s a relationship. I like it. When you said that our partner is of a reflection kind of like a mirror of ourselves.
Guy Finley: 00:25:13 Absolutely. And that’s what. That’s what look rather broad picture many times in your life, and I’m assuming, but you can tell me if I’m wrong, lessons come around and go, no, I don’t think so. Not yet. Someone else is responsible. I should have been different. Could have been like that. I ought not be like this. And then no matter how much we incriminate ourselves or judge others, by the grace of the lesson keeps coming back because it knows that inwardly we’re divided, that there is something she did in us, not our fault, that until it is revealed as being concealed, it can’t be healed and until it’s healed, I’m going to blame others for the pain of touching it.
Leanne: 00:26:18 So on that point because that’s such a good point. I hear so many people saying, well, my picker is broken. I just keep picking the wrong person and for is time or have you heard that and they do a sorry, can I just keep picking all the wrong people and after I had gone through a period of time where I had done that, I thought, obviously I’m not picking the wrong people. There’s something I’m doing wrong. Any relationship that I’m getting this pattern and not necessarily wrong, but there’s a lesson.
New Speaker: 00:26:47 No, that’s great. Nothing wrong. Just not understood.
Leanne: 00:26:57 Yes,
Guy Finley: 00:26:59 End of story. If I understand it is the teacher and the teacher uses everyone and everything so that I can find out where I walked into that moment, that relationship preloaded with something that was going to be a limitation, so instead of which is a way down the road, you know Christ said, love thy enemies. How many people really get that? Until we start to understand my enemy is not my enemy. My enemy is what I perceive as being someone causing me to realize a limit in my understanding. Love never hates.
Guy Finley: 00:27:50 Love never blames. Love never attacks. If we have, we understand that, but if you were like me growing up, come in and catch holy hell from mom or dad because we were late. I’m only doing this to you because I love you and that’s what we grow up. Hearing that somehow anger, cruelty, punishment is the proof that we love. No anger, cruelty, punishment takes place because love is absent in the moment and once we understand that even a little bit, then those moments where this nature just as you said, comes up and begins to react mechanically, which it has to now I have a new set of eyes, an actual section in the book and begin to see, you know what I’m on fire and love is fire, but not the kind that Burns people. Right? You know, Love Unites, love melts and brings together. Not Love Burns the feet of anybody who stepped on my toe, so that new understanding which belongs to or hope I can do this. That new understanding is very much like the moment where we understand that we have a strength in us that we don’t know until we see the mountain.
Guy Finley: 00:29:22 We don’t know that we have this deep time was order of our own being. I look up at the night sky and there’s a constellation. I go, oh my God, that is so deep and beautiful. The Sky is just showing me what’s deep and beautiful that the God has put in me. So it’s working like a mirror. Everything works like a mirror and that’s the secret of real successful relationships are starting to understand that. When look, you ever get mad when you look in the mirror at yourself? So the way you look, I know what happened, but that’s insane. I am what I’m looking at. There’s no different. No different than there is in my mind. I’m back in high school, not this, not this face that’s been run over by a car. Right. So. And that’s why we tend more and more just to look at headshots.
Leanne: 00:30:32 So funny. So I know in. So in your book, you also talk about when the student is ready, the relationship ships appear, but I liked that you add to teach because sometimes people are like, things always come when you’re not looking and they relationships come when they’re supposed to, but what we don’t always add to that is they appear to teach.
Guy Finley: 00:30:58 Absolutely, you said your friend said they had the wrong, which I’ve never heard by the way, who am I and why am I attracted to the person that I am? Now? In my instance, I’ve been same gal for the longest time. I was drawn to her because we had an equal interest in an interior life. We both wanted love to be the first and foremost thing however we would paint that idea of love. But lots of people go looking for relationships, to escape, loneliness, to escape, emptiness basically to escape themselves. Now, if I go looking for someone to escape myself and the self that’s looking to escape yourself, find someone, the odds are the one that’s going to find is someone also looking to escape him or herself. So what happens when you have two people finding each other in order to escape themselves? If you don’t mind, I’ll say you have great sex for about a week and then the picking starts because there’s a deep dissatisfaction, not with the other person, but was something in me that doesn’t understand what this loneliness is about. What is this? What is this sense of disappointment? Because look, to be human being, we should all have sweatshirts that say two things. First warning content under pressure, and the other is beware. Disappointment lives here. Yeah. Well look, that’s what happens because we go looking to each other to do for ourselves what must begin with ourselves and until it does, I have the wrong picture because the wrong picture, why is that? Picking on everything that no longer serves what it thought it would find in the person to remediate this pain in us. So that’s my pick on the picker.
Leanne: 00:33:27 I like it and it makes perfect sense because we attract what we are. Right?
Guy Finley: 00:33:32 Exactly. But even significantly, we also bring into our lives, which is critical. I know you’re in a relationship, everybody and everybody’s been in one. Even if we’re not in one right now, you can still put this together in your mind. Here I am, and let’s say it’s the early stage and I don’t know what that would be. Two months, six months in. Some of the veneer is beginning to wear off a little bit, you know, however that works. You remember when you couldn’t you be on the phone for like four hours late into it. There wasn’t anything that wasn’t interesting because that’s the blue.
Guy Finley: 00:34:21 But by the grace of God, some men and women myself, that it grows into a tree and bears fruit, but sometimes it’s just a bloom on a rose. The pedals, you know, they start to fall off and, and, and in those moments, if it’s going to turn into a seed to produce a tree, to produce fruit, we have to understand that love has two sides. The first side is the attraction and when we’re drawn to somebody, it’s a phenomena. If we’d been through it, I know I have where, you know what, I’m still crazy attracted to you, but you are driving me nuts. You know, the thing I used to thought was so cute how you would take food off my plate because you were hungry. I’m ready to stab me with my sword because you’re not supposed to do that without asking.
Guy Finley: 00:35:17 Right? So what’s happened? Now we’re in a relationship where it is possible that love holds us together so that they can polish the parts of us that want to push us apart. Love wants to Polish what we don’t like about ourselves. So it holds us in a crucible, you know, a crucible, that little mortar and pesto thing, but we don’t think we’re in a crucible when we fall in love. But eventually our partner in quotes can grind on us. And what I’m saying is that if we will stay in the relationship, I’m not talking about abuse, if we will stay in that relationship, will discover enough times that, you know what? I really. I always thought that you were responsible for my inpatience because I found you being irrational, too opinionated, demanding. Why do you want my time? So my impatience always pointed a finger at you is the problem.
Guy Finley: 00:36:26 Well, one day, maybe it dawns on me, I’m impatient about everything, not just these quirky things, so the problem, the limitation in our love isn’t what you do, but me not seeing my own reaction as the limitation. Now we have a chance because when I don’t react negatively, I don’t push you into a corner and if I don’t push you into a corner, you don’t push back and I’m left with my own impatience. I’m left with no one to blame for this fire that consumed me in that moment. This is such a beautiful thing because instead of a negative loop, a painful pattern where one blames the other, the other pushes back and space gets limited and limited and limit until there’s no space left at all between us justifier. Instead, we begin to allow space. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to.
Guy Finley: 00:37:32 I love bonsai trees. I’ve been doing it since I was 17 years old. You leave a juniper, a rose, a Nandina. You leave some plant in a pot too long. What happens to it and it will. It will. It will not thrive. Our relationships, our root bound and the root bound because we don’t understand. Love gives us an expansive pot to put ourselves into. Sorry, the words not that real magic again, but that’s the fact. So let’s look at the example. She says something and I start to feel impatient toward her, but I’ve been seeing my impatience not as a solution to making her be the one I want her to be, but actually making her more of what I don’t want her to be. You see it, right?
Guy Finley: 00:38:39 So when I make her more of what I don’t want to be, meaning I get negative. She gets negative. Is the pot enlarging or shrinking?
Both: 00:38:48 Is Shrinking? Shrinking? Yeah.
Guy Finley: 00:38:50 Less room for each of us to be able to see ourselves as we are because all we see is the source of our pain. So learning to give our partners space is actually how we help them change with you. Everybody listening, you know as surely you can’t fix the one you love.
Leanne: 00:39:18 No. So true. And it’s funny because when we, when we talked to people, it’s like well they do this and they do that, they do this and this drives me nuts, but it takes a while to really step back and go, but I do this and I do that. And because the only person we can change is ourselves.
Guy Finley: 00:39:36 Ahhh, Grasshopper.
Leanne: 00:39:37 yes.
Guy Finley: 00:39:38 Now we all get that. Now can we get to work and let love teach us how to change ourselves more accurately, change us so that we can have a more loving relationship with our partner and everyone else. Because love reveals what is concealed. Once it’s revealed, it’s easy to release because we won’t agree to go along with those parts of ourselves anymore. And we let go. We let go. Not because we’re strong, wise, courageous. We let go because who holds on to a burning ember? Nobody.
Leanne: 00:40:21 Right? And you know, so, okay. So let’s say we recognize these things in ourselves that we want to change and you know, as, as, because I have been married and divorced twice in my much, many, many years ago in my twenties, and what I’ve realized is some of the behaviors and the way I react to things instead of respond to things or, different things that I do, I realized I don’t want those. I don’t want those to be a part of me anymore and I want to let him go. But what do I replace them with? That’s the trick. I’m like, where are those tools of my toolbox and where do I get those behaviors?
Guy Finley: 00:41:10 Do you remember how we said that? When we look at something beautiful, it teaches us something about ourselves that we can’t know otherwise and in some way instills a kind of faith that within me, even though I can’t tap into it, there’s something timeless. Personally, I’ve had moments where actually write a whole chapter on it where I’ve been in as much physical pain and psychological pain is a person can be in, no, literally laying in a hospital bed. And then in the recovery room and then looking over and seeing someone as hard as it is to believe who is worse off than I watch, and in the moment that I saw her pain, my pain didn’t matter. That’s magic. No, I can’t. I don’t have a tool for that tool. But I’m. That’s what love does. Love is. So now you say, well, what do I replace it with? I replace it with a willingness to let love teach me what it wants to teach me in this moment. I let it show me what it wants to show me. Now the rub is, and you said it, I’m all on board with being shown all of this stuff when I’m not actually having to see it,
Guy Finley: 00:42:55 but when the moment comes, it’s like, oh, you know who said that? No, I don’t do it. The good I want to do instead I do the evil I don’t want to do. That’s part of love’s lesson. It’s trying to show you that right now, this level of consciousness is not aligned yet sufficiently enough to let love be the actor, to let love be the healer, to let love reveal what it intends to so that in my awareness of what love is showing me a new tool appears on the spot and the tool is, you know what guy,
Guy Finley: 00:43:39 if you have to put duct tape, here’s a new tool. I don’t know if anybody’s going to like it. When you start to react, get out the duct tape and put it over your mouth. Don’t say the cruel thing. Don’t think of yourself, “What’s the kind thing to say here?” That’s nonsense. Don’t think to yourself, “what would Jesus do here?” that’s ridiculous. See what that light, what Christ, whatever. See what it’s showing you, and then understand. If I responded with the wish to make the other person feel the pain that I’m in, then I am not doing what love wants me to do, which is to see this pain as a hitchhiker. It has been brought forward to me from numerous experiences where I didn’t see the lesson and I refused to bare myself. Now I will, and then you make that intention and if you fail, you still practiced what’s positive? You still get the result of a deeper revelation that you know what, there’s a lot more work to be done in here. This, I thought this diamond was just about nearly, you know, pitch perfect. Lo and behold, it’s got a few rough edges to be polite, you know, so I’m gonna let the light of that awareness start to solve sue’s heel and reveal what weights and what weights is a more and more perfect reflection.
Guy Finley: 00:45:26 Then my partner, if she’s mad at me because she went to Tj maxx and the things she went back to get, she never buys on the spot. Some things from practices. She always waited to see if she has to have something like that which are personally don’t buy, don’t buy much at all. It doesn’t do anything for me, so she goes back. If it’s not there, she might have a temptation to get mad at what you would call me, but the fact of the matter is she gets to see that actually she got something better than what she was going to buy stuff, understanding she didn’t know that she carried this attachment with her for that 10 days. The expectation that actually produces the pain of not getting what she thought would make her feel better. So she’s released from a misunderstanding. That’s love.
Leanne: 00:46:23 Right? Right. So this is super helpful and I love that everybody can now put some duct tape in their toolbox. You don’t have duct tape. Use a binder clip, but works about the same. And I’m wondering. Go ahead.
Guy Finley: 00:46:42 Well, and in some respects I’m speaking only metaphorically, but the fact of the matter is, the fact of the matter is no one wins a fight, right? I don’t care if you come out on top, the seed that caused the conflict remains buried in our consciousness. The task is not to win the fight. The task is to bring new light onto that seed. Then no matter how poorly I may manage in not getting negative, that seed has been exposed just a little bit to new awareness, and by the way, this is quantum physics. Anything that we observed is changed by the observation.
Guy Finley: 00:47:38 Anything we observed is changed by the moment of that observation. So if I actually begin to understand what I must first observed is the limitation, the reaction, that moment of light, which is what soap observation is, changes ever so slightly. What before was using my mouth and dragging me into that fight. I agree. You know what this is. It’s an endless. The original title of this book was relationship magic, the endless journey of love, not relationship magic. Waking up together. It just turned out that that was a little more provocative. I guess my publisher liked it better, but it’s not true. Wake up with my wife or she wakes me up when she comes down to my office either, but the endless journey of love is what we’re all in training. There’s no master here. We’re all learning about where it is that we have mistaken love for being a demand, an insistence, and opinion. God help us a belief. The more we replace mistaken ideas with understanding the more compassionate kind and self sacrificing we are. And that’s what love is about.
Leanne: 00:49:02 Yes, yes. And I’m also interested. So we’ve talked about like putting some of these, this awareness as one of the mechanisms to, to plant the seed, right? And then you also talk about canceling three painful patterns before you even get started. What are these? I’m really curious, what are the three painful patterns?
Guy Finley: 00:49:25 Look, we all know to some extent that it takes two to tango. I mean my mother knew that, right? But they still tango’d all the time.
Guy Finley: 00:49:42 So the first thing to bring the dance to an end is to realize what happens if I don’t walk out onto the dance floor here.
Guy Finley: 00:49:54 Most of us have never done that. Maybe we don’t dance for fear of our partner, but you’re still dancing. You know, maybe we danced because we don’t want our partner to give us the cold shoulder or refused sex or find something that we know they’re going to come at us with later. That still dancing, not stepping onto the dance floor is using the moment where we feel the we hear the music, hear the music, and there’s a section in the book that’s tied to that called the abcs of relationship magic and we know the abcs in school, right? The abcs of relationship magic are to understand that anger, anger as the blame drives, blame coercion. I he trying to change somebody by cements the mid, the very quality. I don’t want them. So as we grow in understanding where we have without knowing it been complicit in these patterns, then we can begin to be aware of that level of consciousness that thinks it’s going to end the pattern by throwing gasoline onto the fire. And we don’t do it because we understand. The first thing that has to happen is the fire has to go out and meet. I can’t put it out. Love can. How? By showing me, you know what a little saying of mine, before you serve someone, that dish of whatever you’re going to taste it yourself. Oh, that’s good. Because if you could chase it yourself before you give it to your partner to chew on your love won’t let you.
Guy Finley: 00:52:06 There’s a phenomena Leanne. When we’re in a fight, we think our pain is more important than our partners.
Guy Finley: 00:52:18 When you’re fighting with someone, do you ever think yourself, you know what? They’re in a lot of pain right now. When was the last time? I mean really, you know, here we are. We’ll get ready to go and when was the last time I thought said, look how much pain they’re in and I can really feel their pain if I really feel their pain, which only am I going to add to it? No, God bless us. It’s impossible. I can’t add to another person’s misery. If I can feel it in myself and how do I know what their pain is because we’re in it to get there, not your pain, not pain. Our pain and that pain when it is seen and understood is the beginning of the healing of the pain in me that produces the pain and you the beginning of a new conscious does. And this incidentally is how the world heels.
Speaker 5: 00:53:31 And that that’s a huge awareness that we all need to see. I mean because it’s way too easy to throw those. To shoot those arrows into, throw those words around and think that it’s not going to come back at us. It comes from us. So
Guy Finley: 00:53:52 there can’t be a more important look. I’m not patting Guy on the back. I just know there can’t be a more important conversation than this. I just know from 40 years of writing and teaching that once I actually begin to have the new self understanding, then I began to see really the responsibility is mine. It’s not just some aphorism or positive thing I say when everything’s going well, this is where the rubber meets the road, and then I can begin to see where it is that I have mistaken. Look, when we’re angry, we think we’re strong. When we’re angry, we’re weak because anger is choosing for us how to make things fixed and right. Anger doesn’t know how to heal things. Anger knows how to break thing, so what do I do with that? Well, I know it’s not going to heal. I know it’s not gonna Change. What am I left with?
Guy Finley: 00:55:00 Oh my God, I’m left with something in myself. I’ve never understood. Ellison has only been a power in my life because without knowing it, I’ve made it a god in the moment when it appears by doing what it tells me to do. It’s a false guide. Negative states are false gods, false gods. We asked because when they appear, they bring with us the cylinder and they bring with them, you know the thunder and lightening and all the stuff that I have to get away from you. I wouldn’t be with you if that person wasn’t like that. Then you start to understand the real alter, sorry, but that’s what comes to my mind. The real sacrifice, the real moment of truth is now it’s here and I’m going to do the best I can to see what I must about myself and I will fail. I want people to understand it, but I will not judge myself for failing because anything that wants to judge me for trying to do what love is instructed me to do is not love.
Guy Finley: 00:56:08 It’s the very nature itself trying to trick me back into identifying with it and agreeing with it again to go after what it tells me to go after we are in training. There is repeat after me. People, if you are who are listening, there is no such thing as a bad fact about yourself. End of story. Every revelation is the revelation of a fact. Embrace the fact, the fact that was shown to you. You will be released by the light that revealed. That’s magic. That’s the tool that appears only in the moment of a relationship. I can’t bring a toolbox. That’s what all this nonsense is about, and then when something happens, we find ourselves, you know, throwing tools left and right, looking for the correct way to respond. I don’t need to know the correct way to respond. I need to be in the right place where the response will be given to me by love for the real reason I’m in the moment.
Leanne: 00:57:24I like it and the duct tape is there to give us some opportunity to get that feeling across
Guy Finley: 00:57:30 a split second. Yep. We’ve heard that idea. Can I pause for three seconds or count to 10? Please respond. Why not? So I can think of a clever response. Not so I can pass myself off as being self possessed, but rather so I can see something’s trying to possess me and I’m not gonna. Let it do it so that I don’t blame you. Real, real fulcrum place where something can truly shift and change. Yeah,
Leanne: 00:58:08 no, this is great. We just had a guest recently on who said, you know, when we act out in anger, we usually do something that we regret.
Guy Finley: 00:58:16 Always. Yes. Always. Eventually I was angry. I stood up and I showed them and they backed down and by God I’ve done it. No, you’ve just cooked your own because you have increased an enabling relationship. We are unknowingly unconsciously codependent with negative reactions because of the power they seem to lend to us. We don’t need power. We need to awaken to the mistaken idea that we’re powerless in the moment. That’s what we have to do. Wake up from the dream, not find a tool that’s going to keep the dream alive and set up for the next set of circumstances where they’re going to be in conflict. Again.
Leanne: 00:59:13 I like that and I liked the fact that I don’t have to walk around with a toolbox. I like that it comes from a place. It comes from a place that I don’t know what it is with me (and the tool box). Maybe I work construction too many years, but I. I do like the fact that there’s this what I’m hearing so much as it’s trust. We just have to trust ourselves out. We’re going to find those right words. We’re going to find the right actions. If we just step back and instead of reacting, we wait and respond in turn.
Guy Finley: 00:59:43 if when you say we learn to trust ourselves, I learned to trust the principal that has brought me into this particular moment for the sake of the education because then it isn’t that I’m. I’m trusting myself that I am going to find the answer. I’m trusting that if I’m properly present, I won’t be the same order of human being who came into that moment. I’m going to exit with a new understanding of myself and since that’s true, I will exit the moment in a new relationship with you because I’m no longer who I was. Now you have room to be someone new as well,
Leanne: 01:00:30 Right. That takes a lot of pressure off
Guy Finley: 01:00:35 it. It a lovely conversation with you, but I can only tell you that as an individual enters more and more into this new level of self knowledge, the Old Testament called Metanoia, a new mind, a new way to perceive the pain instead of the old self perceiving what it needs to see to continue itself, and these moments were changed and the more you actually start to understand, you know what, that was magic. That was actually magic. I didn’t return unkindness for unkindness because I saw I didn’t want to give you that to eat because I didn’t like the taste of it. Then you didn’t respond to me and we actually wound up having a conversation because there was space for it. That’s magic, but I don’t have magic in my toolbox. I understand that love is magic relative to our level of being and that I can align myself with it and then the tools stream into the moment and I am given what to do. To be to say in that moment that I don’t carry anything. Nothing I made.
Leanne: 01:01:55 It makes us so much easier.
Guy Finley: 01:01:57 Oh my God, no, no need to appear, no need to protect, no need to prove. Instead I’m going a ceaseless self discovery mode and then that’s what becomes the real ground of relationship magic of changing ourselves at our partner with us at the same time.
Leanne: 01:02:21 That’s a lot to think about and I like it because it just, it’s just to go back to the beginning of that whole letting go, being in the moment and letting it happen,
Guy Finley: 01:02:36 being willing to see the truth. Can I bear it?
Guy Finley: 01:02:48 An example, when I was know 17 or 18 years old, I fell head over heels in love, love, love, love, and if love is the toughest, why? Because you never knew those feelings. I mean you didn’t. You didn’t know that someone could occupy your mind and strong for that long. Then the inevitable least in this instance, betrayed, hurt, crushed. Love is dead. I’ll never love again and unbeknownst to yourself, the fear of that pain goes into every relationship you have so that without knowing it, you actually think that love is something to be afraid of. It’s not conscious to us. I just don’t want any more pain,
Guy Finley: 01:03:55 so now pain. I see life through the eyes of it. Look, I can’t trust you completely. I say I want to give it all I can, but when you I see you. Look, I saw you. Look, I didn’t know you weren’t looking at him. Yeah, you were looking at the sweater in the window behind him, but my thing, I hear a tone. I don’t hear the tone, the pain. Here’s the tone and it connection through association with the heartache and the next thing I know I’m in the hands of that nature. That’s terrified. It’s going to get hurt again, and so I lived that nature’s life without knowing it, because when the nature appears, I agree with its perception because I don’t know any better. That’s what we can do. We can bring light into that darkness. The darkness doesn’t understand the light. The light understands the darkness, and as it does, I gradually I’m showing you know what? It isn’t you that I shouldn’t trust. It’s my perception of you as responsible for my pain that I shouldn’t trust. Then a beautiful kind of self doubt starts to show itself, not about my partner, doubt about my reaction toward my partner. Then we have a chance on something new can happen,
Leanne: 01:05:26 right? And that same thing can be applied. So hearing it from your first love for, well, this nurse who maybe have gone through a, you know, a divorce and they’re wondering, will I ever find love again?
Guy Finley: 01:05:41 Yes,
Leanne: 01:05:42 they can take and they can do the same thing and take. Let the light take over the dark.
Guy Finley: 01:05:48 Exactly. Look, I was not meant to die in us. Was here before we were so his love is dying. It isn’t because love is dying just because I’ve lost my relationship with it because something in me is telling me what love is and what love has done. We have to get past the point of listening to something in us that believes love is scary.
Guy Finley: 01:06:19 How can it be? It’d be like you can look out and here’s this young buck and new baby deer on my property on the whole. No. A book, a new book. You know, that’d be crazy, right? Because I’d lose the chance to feel the tenderness to see its nation strength to, to admire it’s tenacity. All of those parts of myself shut off because something in me had a bad experience with a young buck. Now let’s change the young buck to a young man or a young girl, young woman, all of it gone. Not because the creature is responsible, but a consciousness that didn’t understand the initial purpose of the relationship has stepped in and now it’s stepping on my heart, crushing the possibility of having something new and perfected. This is intended to be.
Leanne: 01:07:14 Yeah. So I love this conversation you’ve given us so much to think about and you know, I, I’m so thankful that you shared, you know, the preview of your book so that I could take a look at it. There’s a lot of fascinating thoughts in there. Just that really changed my perspective on how I view things. Right. And just, just enough, it’s like, oh, that makes sense, but I never really thought about it in this one.
Guy Finley: 01:07:44 Yes. A thousand times. Yes. The tiny shift in our perception of what love is and what it can do will now be like you having tasted a glass of wine that will make every other wine you ever taste susceptible to questioning. That’s how it works because I’ll look. Here’s a beautiful. I know we’re running out of time. Thank you, and I will never experience anything in our consciousness that wasn’t there prior to the moment of experience. It’s already in there,
Guy Finley: 01:08:27 so when I can begin to see what love isn’t, it’s not because it’s denying, it’s beginning to be able to see through the eyes of love, what I am mistaken as being. Now I have a chance to see these moments where my old in quotes was would’ve acted out. Now it’s not acting out anymore. It’s just for a moment suspended. If that’s the best I can do because I have a new way of proceeding this moment, and that’s the shift and it grows because the love that’s allowing you to see it lives full blown. It’s just waiting for you. You’re not waiting for love. It’s waiting for you. That’s the beauty of it,
Leanne: 01:09:13 right? Right, and as I’m thinking about this, if you have another second, my, my thought is, is like as people step out of these relationships, so oftentimes when I talk to friends or our guests that have gone through something like this and they say I want to get into this new relationship, but when you ask them to describe what it is that they’re looking for, a lot of people get hung up on, you know, someone very surface and very on the surface things, but they don’t really get down into like their core beliefs and what’s really true or you get the answer of, well, I don’t know. Can you go ahead. Can you tell us the importance of kind of getting clear and the place that we’re at when that, that new relationship comes in where we should, where we really want to be?
Guy Finley: 01:10:08 The first thing is that we are not going to escape
Guy Finley: 01:10:15 the parts of us that are naturally drawn to what they’re drawn to. There’s something else we almost never think about is the opening chapter in the book. I think I’m drawn to you, but the fact is that something in me is drawn to you just like something in you is drawn to me. Well, I’m not drawing you to me. You’re not drawing me to you. Love is drawing us to each other so that we can discover ourselves through one another, and by the way, the timeless nature of love that brings all this together. To that point, I was broken hearted by what I was brokenhearted about. He cut me to the core. He was so angry. So now I’m looking for someone with a sense of humor, right? Which means the seed of the fear of someone’s anger has merely turned into looking for someone who’s funny So without knowing it, I have an expectation so that my fear is producing some of these expectations. I don’t know if you can make this big step with me. Fear is looking for something to be afraid of, not something to escape itself through. So we actually, through resistance attract to us the very thing. We don’t want to another whole story, another whole chapter, but to understand, I go into a relationship with expectations. I can’t escape them, but neither do I have to be punished by them
Guy Finley: 01:11:58 so that when you don’t turn out to be what I expect you to be, and by the way, why do I expect you to be what I do because that’s my hope, that you will reveal in me what I want revealed. You will give me what I want you to give me and woe be an under you. When you stopped giving it to me
Guy Finley: 01:12:21 so that then I can start to understand when I feel like I’m being cut off or you’re not giving me any more what I want. The problem isn’t you. The problem is my identity was wrapped up in what I thought you were supposed to do. For me. We can change all that and the expectations, but now when they’re dashed, when the person. Have you ever fished for a compliment? Glen is what happens when I fished for a compliment or I fished for someone to agree with my opinion, but I’m very covert about it and they don’t do it or worse, they talk about themselves, not me. What happens to me, I get upset and want to blame you for not biting on the book that I dangled happens all the time. Yes, so the problem is not what you’ve done. The problem is, and she’s really looking for some way to confirm myself through another person. My partner is into here to confirm my reality, my being there, here to help me discover it,
Guy Finley: 01:13:45 but when we pass it off, that responsibility, we have to find fault because no one is going to perfectly prove to me that I am what I imagined myself to be. That’s a recipe for disaster. So true about so many relationships, right? Yeah. Yeah, and yet no. Nothing changes. Now it can. Now it can sort of a handbook for the unconscious heart, a way in which we can begin to use these moments for the purpose they have been given to us. That moment is not there to take something from it. Another whole chapter in the book, love appears at the door as a beggar. It’s in every ancient myth. Every true story of the hero or the heroine. Love appears as a beggar at the door. Do I let it in thinking I have nothing to give? Do I let it in saying, no, I don’t want you in the door because you remind me of my poverty. No, I understand it’s appearance and when I let it in, if you will love the God gives me something. I can’t get myself, but only after I’ve given it access into me.
Leanne: 01:15:12 I like that. That makes it such a clear picture in my mind. So this has been phenomenal. I’m very excited that your book is. Your book is here today, the day that we’re launching this episode, and I hope that when people are out doing their online shopping and taking a look that they get it because there is such insight, there is such valuable knowledge that you share on, on how to step forward and, and even you talk about the relationship within yourself and it starts with us. Everything that we do, and I, and I love it. So thank you so much for coming forward and spending this time with me to, to give me the insight into your book because there are so many good, good gems in there.
Guy Finley: 01:16:04 I’m so glad that we got to spend this time together this way because when we share what’s true and we’re not fighting with it because it contradicts some image or appearance of ourselves, then something really altogether different happens and then we feel it. We taste it, and then we have another taste of that and a little more of that feeling. Then that’s how faith grows. That love actually exists as a guide, as a way to change ourselves. And more importantly, everything that we do in this life, we’re not going to escape relationship. We might as well use it as the tool of self realization that it is
Leanne: 01:16:46 absolutely such great stuff and I’m going to go back and take some more notes and actually do some more reading on this because there’s, like I said, you gave me. There was that shift was I was reading it and I think it’s so valuable and just everyday conversations in our world today in every relationship, whether intimate or otherwise that we build. There’s something that we could we can really benefit from.
Guy Finley: 01:17:14 I would urge you to. I will go a little further if sometime after the first of the year you read through it and you want to talk a little more about it. I don’t often do this, but we can have another go around at this and dig a little bit more and see what we can learn because it will be different if we’d done this furry thing we’re talking about, we’ve already person,
Leanne: 01:17:38 we’re going to do it so we’ll be. You guys were going to be back after the holidays and we will be talking more about all of this magic.
Guy Finley: 01:17:49 So yeah, so, I trust people know that today is the official day. Do we need to give a url or do anything?
Leanne: 01:17:58 Yeah. Actually, the url and all of your contact information that you’ve shared with me, I’m going to be putting in the show notes, so wherever anybody finds any of this on iTunes, stitcher, castbox player Fm, and Google play music, wherever you found us on my website, all the resources and links so that you can grab a copy of guy’s book will be there for you.
Guy Finley: 01:18:19 Get a free audio book on the spot when you ordered the book. I read the Book First Book of mine out of 40 or so that I’ve ever read. So you get an audio book download on the spot when you buy the book, plus a Webinar that I’m going to give on the 28th of October, followed by a live question and answer the first part of November and another gift. Some other MP three or something, but a couple of really good gifts that will help us to stay in touch and working together. That’s what we have to do.
Leanne: 01:18:56 Awesome. So there are great bonuses. So if you get the book, you get the audio book, you get access to a Webinar,
Guy Finley: 01:19:07 the free webinar and the q and a that follows it. And a download of a 60, I think 60 minute MP3, maybe it’s an MP four s something about seven higher ways that we can learn to love and trust each other. A very nice, a supplemental piece of material.
Leanne: 01:19:24 Wonderful. So this is, this is something that we’re definitely going to make sure everybody can find those links easily. As always on my website, on the show notes and on social media. I’ll be posting them as well. So great stuff and I’m going to be talking to you in January. I look forward to it. Alright.