457: Hard Relationship Truths You Need To Hear

Chase Kosterlitz
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Sarah Kosterlitz
Hello, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in to today's show where I welcome Todd Baratz. And Todd is a renowned psychotherapist and sex therapist whose innovative approach to mental health and relationships has established him as a leading figure in his field. And I found Todd on instagram, and maybe you've seen him there, too, under his handle, which I love your diet nonsense. And he has really interesting posts.

And I really like his approach, which is similar to our conversation today, where we actually talk about one of the posts that I saw and a few others and just some ideas that I like Todd's perspective on. And that is the myths of relationships and the things that we are told in the media and online, how beautiful and easy relationships are and how the reality is not quite that, and it sounds negative on its face, but it's not because we talk about understanding these realities and how to navigate them, and we won't be as disillusioned if we go in to relating or if you're currently in a relationship and you know that the honeymoon phase is going to end, it won't come across as much of a slap in the face as you know, you're like, I used to be in love with this person, and now it's harder to have desire for the bedroom or this or that. And, like, those are just normal human things. So normalizing them, understanding why they happen and how to navigate them is, I think, super important. So I really enjoyed this conversation today with Todd.

I hope you guys do as well. Thank you for tuning in. Enjoy today's show.

Hi, Todd. Thanks so much for joining me on the show today. Hey, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to chat with you. Today.

We're going to talk about something from a little bit of a different angle. You and I talked briefly in the pre show how much I really like your style on Instagram. I saw you there, and there was one particular recent post that really stood out to me, and that is the hardest truths about relationships. And a lot of times we have this Disney world idea of how they're supposed to go. And in an online space too.

And often there's some hard truths that we need to know. And it's not negative to dive into these. It's actually, to me, it's quite beautiful. So I wanted to start by having you share why you like sharing information from this perspective, you know, maybe this particular post, and then we'll dive into these hard truths. Thank you for the kind feedback.

Todd Baratz
Yeah, I mean, relationships in general are a hard truth in and of themselves. But information, wisdom, knowledge, insight often leads to better outcomes in a variety of different spaces. Relationships, our emotional wellbeing, life in general. So I've just. In my own experience as a client in therapy, and in my experience as a therapist with clients in therapy, understanding ourselves is really a key to unlock a variety of different avenues for growth, especially when it comes to relationships.

So I really do like sharing all the information I possibly can to get people to start thinking and questioning some of the, for lack of a better word, bullshitty advice or mainstream value systems that I think we've all internalized that need to be questioned. So I really like challenging that status quo, but I think at this point, we're all doing a lot of so, you know, challenging a lot of the rules that we grew up with, which is great. Totally. And I think that is a good descriptor, the bullshitty stuff out there, because even being aware of it and not a heavy user of social media, but I'm definitely on there. I do notice that I have this influence on me of that my life in general should be more perfect than it actually is.

Sarah Kosterlitz
I think that almost subconsciously by what we're taking in. So I think that's just an important thing to bring awareness to. Yeah, which is a really important point. And I really like how you put it. It's really simple, but it's actually the reality of what happens when we're using Instagram or social media or watching tv is that we do start to internalize this sense of, gee, my life needs work, I should be better.

Todd Baratz
Which, you know, sure, it could be better, but we're not internalizing it in this kind of softer way. Gee, it could be better. It's like, gee, I suck. So there's a really big difference. Most of the people are thinking they're just a piece of shit, or that their lives are terrible because of all of these new values that we're all internalizing about relationships, which is no different than what our parents grew up with in terms of the values they internalized and felt pressured to fulfill or sustain.

They were just the content of the values are different, but the process of I really should be doing blank. My relationships really should be blank is no different depending on what time you're looking at in our lifespans. Well, let's talk about some of these illusions that we may be taking out there. One of the first ones that I saw that caught my. They all really resonated with me.

Sarah Kosterlitz
But you say that we will always, in the end, choose someone that frustrates us. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. Well, firstly, I mean, we're all really fucking annoying. We're all frustrating, we're all disappointing.

Todd Baratz
All of us are hard to live with because we're human beings. We are not perfect. Yet I do think that many of us believe that we should be or our partners should be perfect or some kind of ideal, which we're not. So everyone, even if you think you had a normal childhood and no trauma and no unfinished business, you're still with another human being. And human beings are fundamentally flawed and imperfect and annoying.

Everyone's annoying. I, even my dog, she's really fucking cute and she's so annoying. And I love her to pieces and she couldn't do anything but love me. But sometimes that's even annoying. Everything can be disappointing.

So, I mean, that's just the baseline with which we have to approach our reality in our life. But when it comes to our partners and who we pick, we pick people that are familiar, so familiar with the level of intimacy or types of love that we grew up with. And familiar meaning familial, meaning our family. So we will pick somebody. We'll say, I'm never going to pick somebody like my father.

So we pick somebody exactly the opposite of her father and realize that, oh, gee, that's something there too, that's hard for me. So we are all learning as we go along and we base our present life on our past. And so this is how we end up choosing people, whether or not it's intentional, usually it's not. But we all end up with some version of something that we had during childhood. And that's, one, because it's familiar, and two, because of who we are.

We often play a really big role, which people often don't realize, a role in shaping and creating the dynamics of our relationships that make us feel a certain way. So the way we learn to be in our family context is the way we are going to be with our partner. And then we play a role in actively carving out the dynamics we experience with our partners. And so that also ends up recreating familiar dynamics that we had during childhood, because we're the one in the relationship and we are the one coming from that family that we're saying is familiar. So all of this is to say that we are going to pick somebody that's going to frustrate us in similar ways that our parents did.

We are going to pick somebody that is symbolic in one way or another of something from our childhood that is unfinished, unresolved, that we will then have to work through. And that's not a bad thing. I mean, this is a really huge opportunity for growth. So long as people take it, so long as people do something different, meaning they don't do what they did during childhood, they do something different as an adult with their adult partner to work through whatever it is that they picked unconsciously. One of the things that I've noticed and have tried to work on is if there's an issue in a relationship, you know, our tendency is to look towards the other person.

Sarah Kosterlitz
They are making me feel this blame. You made a great point of like, we are all flawed and just that our partner is going to disappoint us, we will disappoint our partner. So I think turning that lens and pointing the finger, it doesn't necessarily need a point at yourself, but try to do that first and understand that you're going to be triggering your partner as well and that you're both hopefully coming in with your eyes wide open, hearts open, and healing through relationship. That's the beauty of it. When you kind of both come to that understanding.

Todd Baratz
Yeah, it's fully necessary. I mean, blame, it's not blame, it's responsibility. It's accountability. It's partnership. And that's what you need if you want to grow.

When we just completely blame, we are basically reenacting the powerlessness of childhood. We give our power away. We say, it's not me. I didn't do anything here. I have no control over my life or this relationship.

It's all my partner. And the minute we do that is the minute we give up our power. And so many people do that because that's what we're used to in these relationships that are intimate, the parallel or earlier experiences. But it's a big red flag if all you're doing is blaming and it feels like you've done absolutely nothing. We all play a role and we're all responsible for figuring out what that role is.

It's actually cool, too, because then you can realize that you have can have way more of an impact on your adult relationships than you ever could, and the relationships you had with your parents or your siblings that you can literally co create it, but you can't do it by demanding that your partner change. You have to change. You have to understand your role. One of the other things that you wrote about that really stuck out and might, I don't want to say be a shock, but might make people have to think about their approach to love is that all adult relationships are conditional. We like to think, oh, unconditional love.

Sarah Kosterlitz
So can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. What a disappointment. I mean, all of these hardest truths, we could say the most disappointing things about our lives, basically the things we learned from Disney and our parents and the world and values that we have. Unconditional love, which, sadly, is not the truth.

Todd Baratz
I mean, I'm a therapist. I see individuals and couples. Relationships end. Love ends, sometimes for no reason at all. Sometimes just because we grow in different directions.

Other times it is because we or our partners do not do our part. And those are the conditions of our adult relationships and satisfaction. It is no longer one person forever, so we can survive and carry out the family name. People don't necessarily have to get married. They don't have to have kids, they don't have to even live together.

So the rules for love have completely changed. And because of that, the idea of this kind of unconditional entitlement to love is no longer, and I don't think it was ever to begin with, but our relationships are extremely conditional, extremely insecure, extremely risky. They can end. Our partner can cheat on us. I mean, bad things can happen.

Not to. I don't want to scare anyone, but, I mean, this is the reality of our lives, and we don't want to live in denial. That's not to say that, you know, you can't fuck up and still receive love. That's not to say that you can't work through things. But it is to say that if we are approaching our partners with a sense of I deserve their unconditional love, no matter what I do, that's taking our partners for granted.

It's even taking ourselves for granted. So the expectation that our relationships will have unconditional love is a bit of a fairy tale. It sounds sweet, it sounds nice, and I want it, but it's not reality. And the goal of our relationships and our. For our emotional well being is to live in reality.

You know, the more we can be conscious of things and be real, the better our lives are. You mentioned that relationships can be insecure and one of the other posts that I enjoyed from you about not using attachment theory as a kind of a scapegoat for how we show up in adult relationships and inherently relationships are insecure, like from an objective standpoint. Can you talk a little bit about that information sharing that? Because I love attachment theory. It's helped me a lot in understanding myself and my interactions.

Sarah Kosterlitz
And I loved how you wrote about kind of not using that as a scapegoat in a sense. Before we continue on, we're going to take a short break to tell you about our sponsors.

Chase Kosterlitz
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Todd Baratz
Yeah, well, I mean, firstly, attachment style is so pivotal to understanding yourself and your early attachments, and it can be really helpful in further understanding your adult attachments. But they're not adult. I mean, they're not attachment relationships. Attachment systems and attachment relationships. And attachment theory is really about the relationship between a parent and their child, specifically during infancy.

So we're applying a model that was really being applied for a kid being fully dependent on a caregiver. So that meaning for food, shelter, water, clothing, like literally life itself. So we're, we're taking parts of theory and I think we're applying it initially it was applied, it was supposed to be applied symbolically as an analogy, as a metaphor, not as a literal translation. But most people are literally translating their attachment styles that they grew up with and projecting them onto their adult relationships. And it's not that, it's not a straight line.

Our adult partners are our partners. They're not our parents. So they're not responsible for us. They don't have to feed us or clothe us. It's a team effort.

Your parent, it's not a team effort when you're a kid. You need everything from them, fully need. It's a developmental need. With our adult partners, we don't need their validation in order to survive. We don't need them to text us back.

We don't need to have a good time or even have good sex with them. I mean, we want to, and these are the things that we desperately seek. But in terms of our survival, because that's what attachment styles are based on, survival and developmental need, they're completely different things. And also because they can end these attachment relationships and styles are based on, again, parent child relationships that don't necessarily end. So I think that attachment styles is a really great tool to understand yourself and to understand what gets triggered.

The earlier attachment traumas get triggered in the context of our adult relationships, which we then reenact. So we then reenact and recreate the same anxious patterns, the same avoidant patterns, the same anxious avoidant patterns, etcetera. But that's not to say that it is a securely attached relationship, because that's just not a thing. Our adult relationships are anything but secure. I mean, the longer we're with somebody, the more power they have to fuck us over.

And I don't mean that in a, don't be with somebody for a long period of time. I want to be in a long term relationship. But the reality is that we build a life with somebody, that means we lose an entire life. I only know you for six months. I mean, it's fucked and really hard, and I'll suffer.

It's completely different. So the security of our adult relationships is also an illusion. Just like saying they're unconditional, which is, again, why we know, we say we're in an insecure, we have an insecure attachment to our adult partners. Of course you do. It's an insecure relational environment.

They can end at any time. Your partner could just leave you. Again, I'm not trying to soak fear, but I am trying to get people to think more in the context of the realm of reality, which is relationships require work. They're not a place where we receive caretaking like we did and should have, which most of us didn't as kids. And so that's why we recreate, that's why we reenact because of our traumas.

And so I want people to use attachment styles and to understand attachment, but specifically how they recreate and reenact their attachment styles, not because they are an attachment style or their partner is an attachment style or the relationship is a certain attachment style, but because they are reenacting their trauma, that's what, what, that's what people are really saying, but not even aware of that they're saying because unfortunately the book attached, which was a fucking great book, didn't take us to that level, which is where all of this is coming from. But what we're really talking about is attachment trauma that gets reenacted in the context of adult relationships. But it's become all a mess because it's become so trendy and exciting for people, which is not a bad thing. I mean, I talk about attachment styles. That's great that people know that.

I think it just needs a little bit of tweaking. Totally. And yeah, as I shared, and we've had episodes on it, but I think your point is important because I noticed in myself that understanding it, as I said, is super valuable. And I have, yeah, well, I've caught myself using it almost that I understand it and it reinforcing my insecurity in a sense of like, well, of course I'm acting that way because this is my attachment style or this is the attachment relationship I'm in and this is what we're going to do instead of just using it as a loose framework in a sense and definitely lots of tools to gain from it, but yeah, not getting stuck in reinforcing our identity. Once we understand, hey, I'm insecurely attached, I think that can be a tendency to do is that we'll then subconsciously act out our insecurities because that's all we know.

Sarah Kosterlitz
Right? Yeah. I mean, it can become that. It can also just become a way of missing really important information and misframing the way we're experiencing our relationships and ourselves. So, like, if we solely focus on our anxious attachment or insecure attachment to our adult partner, we very well might miss the opportunity to fully understand what our initial experience with insecurity, with our parents, with our caregivers was and how that really impacted us.

Todd Baratz
So when the focus is so much on the present day attachment ish relationship, it's not great because basically you're not focusing on or integrating your earlier trauma into your present. And that's really what's creating the impact in your relationship, your attachment style that comes from your childhood, not your adult partner. It may be being triggered by your adult partner, but the real information is in the past and the origin of that attachment wound that we are describing happening or unfolding in our adult relationships. So people are really missing that big chunk of the story. And it's kind of like the main part, you know, your early trauma.

So for anyone listening, think about your attachment style, but also situate it within the context of attachment trauma, which is your childhood. Totally. One of the things that we all have heard, or most people listening is that the honeymoon phase and then this reality that some people listening may be in the mint stuff right now, or they're going to confront it, or they're ending that and they're like, what do we do now? But this reality that the honeymoon phase ends, can you talk a little bit about what's going on in the honeymoon phase? And then how we can navigate when all those good chemicals in our brain start to flood out and now we're left staring at another person.

Sarah Kosterlitz
In the reality of relationship, the honeymoon. Phase is the beginning of a relationship. So that's even before the relationship is defined. That's dating. That's before you live together, if that's what happens in relationships, which it doesn't matter.

Todd Baratz
So it's dating. It's the beginning of a relationship. Maybe it's the first couple of months, maybe it's six months, maybe it's a year. But it's where your partner is this ideal, wonderful person that can do no wrong. They leave their underwear and leave all the doors open, and you don't care because you just talked for 3 hours and you had a wonderful dinner and laughed all night.

And then you fell asleep in each other's arms on a cloud, you know, and that goes on for however many months. And then as intimacy grows, you start spending more time with them. You see them when they're in a bad mood. You see them when they're constipated, you see them when they're sick. You see them when they're pissed after a long day of work where they had a shitty meeting, and you're seeing all the full range, the full spectrum of who they are.

And then they start to disappoint you a little bit because they're not available as you once thought that they were. And maybe you don't want to spend all this time with them. And then you really get to know them, and then you really fucking hate them for one day. And you're like, what was that day about? And then the honeymoon ends.

And so the honeymoon is really just like this blissful state at the beginning, and I don't even know if I believe in it anymore. But then as intimacy grows, meaning you get to know someone better, you know, disappointment starts and as I said in the book, you know, this is really where the beginning of relationships are, or what, you know, many of us therapists say is the beginning of a relationship. When you get out this idealization phase, which is the honeymoon phase, and you really start to get to know somebody and you can really start to do the work because when you're in this idealization phase, you know, it's a really nice place to be, but it's a short amount of time, and there's a lack of emotional intimacy, which means that the ways in which it's going to trigger you, the things it's going to bring up are going to be minimal. So all this attachment trauma, all of this childhood stuff, all of that risk thing that I was talking about is ultimately at its lowest during the beginning of a relationship. So we can be ourselves.

We don't care, whatever. But then once you get to know somebody, things really become a little bit riskier. Disappointment becomes a little bit hurtier, and that will set someone off to the races if they've had certain traumas or experiences or just even just generally. And so then I and other people call this phase, you know, the disillusionment phase, where you're like, wait wait a minute. They're not this ideal partner.

They're not this perfect person. What? How did I end up choosing somebody who could actually be limited and not communicate or not be able to have conflict? And they just yelled at me, how could I have done this? Who could they even be?

You know, in a shock, you know, how could I have picked an imperfect partner? But, you know, it happens in all relationships. The time period for every relationship is different. Some people are in a honeymoon for a long time, which, you know, I have to wonder, well, what's happening there that they're able to stay in this place? And I don't mean that they're doing something right.

I mean that they're avoiding something or for other people, it's, you know, three, six months, and then they really get to know each other quickly, and they fall in love really quickly, and everything is a trigger. So it's not. It's something that most people are alarmed by. You know, when they really get to know somebody, they're like, oh, I don't know if I like that. But that's actually the reality of our relationships, obviously.

Don't take this to cartoonish levels. You know, this isn't about abuse or really horrible shit, but it's about the normal human imperfections that we really get to know and become disillusioned by after the honeymoon is over, if that even exists. Before we continue on, we're going to take a short break to tell you about our sponsors.

Chase Kosterlitz
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Sarah Kosterlitz
To someone that's dating or with someone, let's say, for four months, and they're in this honeymoon phase. What kind of mindset do you think is healthy? Because you want to maybe enjoy this time, right, of getting to know someone and just be in love and not overly thinking things. Obviously, we want to know our boundaries, our red flags, our green flags. But how can we not be totally aloof in a sense and enjoy it?

Because I think that's part of the beauty of relating is not being in our heads all the time, but not to be completely blindsided when this person shows their true self. And maybe there were signs earlier. What kind of mindset can someone take into that? Well, one, enjoy it. I mean, like, being present, as you said, is really the goal and is really hard and is actually the easiest for some of us at the beginning of a relationship.

Todd Baratz
So if you're able to be present and you're able to be blissed out into this state, that's great. Also, though, you don't want to live in denial. You want to know that this is where you are. You're at the beginning of a relationship and things feel easy, and that's great. You don't have to create problems.

You don't have to worry about the problems, but you just have to be mindful that you're in a certain stage and phase of a relationship. I mean, also, it's really great to communicate during this phase because you're not already resenting the person. So you can start communication without criticism, without blame. And that comes from, or that starts from a place of curiosity. You know, the beginning is the best time to talk about history, to get.

To get the full history of childhood trauma, relational history, sexual history, to really get to know each other before you're a year in. And then you're already starting to hate them and you're like, I don't know anything about them now. I didn't know they had this problem. So the more you can learn about your partner in the beginning, the better. And that can be what are your struggles, what were your triggers in your past relationships?

What do you want to do differently in our relationship? So you can get kind of an idea of who they are before it's just smacking you in the face at month seven. And that's not to say to get an idea of who they are so you can leave. It's saying to get an idea to get to know them. So it's not like all of a sudden you have someone, month seven getting triggered and you have no idea why they're getting triggered because you don't know anything about their history, where when the disillusionment kind of sets in, you can say, oh, is this what you were talking about?

This is your trauma. I can see it now. It's coming up. You're anxious because of your mother or your father or your sister or your brother. Okay, now I get it.

So gather information. So we get through the honeymoon phase. We've got all of these tools. We're a little disillusioned, but we're happy and we're recovering. And then desire starts to creep down.

Sarah Kosterlitz
That is also something that seems inevitable. Can you talk a little bit about that and how couples can navigate a decrease in desire? Yeah, I'm noticing early page, a good awful portrait of relationships. But they're really great. They're just, you know, they're imperfect.

Todd Baratz
Desire does decline. It really does depend on the couple, though. I mean, my last relationship was shockingly. It never really declined. I mean, it definitely declined, but it wasn't often what I see in the many couples, which is it goes away, it disappears.

But it's really common that desire will decline. You know, the first couple of months, most of the time, couples are really like, fucking all the time. And by fucking, I do not necessarily mean penetration. I just mean hooking up or having sex, whatever words. But anyway, lots of sex at the beginning.

Usually it's new, it's exciting or discovering. And then over time, desire usually declines. It's totally normal. People usually freak out. And it gets worse because most people avoid it and don't talk about it.

And then they just resent their partner passive aggressively for either wanting sex too much or wanting sex too little. And again, this is something that's completely, I don't say completely avoidable, but completely manageable. That requires simply just to be able to communicate about it. And again, something else to communicate at the beginning. What do we do when desire declines?

You know, are you usually the high desire partner or the low desire partner? What's your relationship like with your sexuality, because most people have sexual issues that don't really come up until desire has declined. And then the sexual issues arise and, you know, being able to talk about sex or do the things to create desire are such. There are sexual issues or such barriers to doing those things that desire even plummets. And that's often what I see with a lot of couples, is that they, like so many of us, grew up in a culture that's super sex phobic and shamey and internalize those values.

And once the rush of the excitement of the newness turns off, their sexuality goes underground, or is just kind of uninterested, which is a huge contributor to our lack of desire. But either way, there are things that couples can do, and it can actually be really exciting to have a type of relationship with somebody that's not based on this kind of spontaneous, honeymoony type of sex. That's not sustainable. The couples can really get to know themselves and each other in a much deeper way that can feel much more satisfying if they're able to work through the desire issue. And it can actually be really cool and really empowering for people.

But they do have to first work on whatever shame anxiety issues they have that most of us do have if we've not worked through them. But it's a challenge. I mean, it's a challenge for most couples. Yeah. And I think that's kind of the takeaway.

Sarah Kosterlitz
It's not to say that these things, that relationships are all negative, it's just the reality of relationships. And as you said throughout this conversation is they take work. And I think that's also kind of an illusion that is coming down, too, is that we think, oh, if we're in love, if we find our soulmate, like, whatever, and then we're just in relationship, it's like, no, there's going to be work, no matter how compatible it feels and how great your partner is. And that's really the beauty, is that we're going to learn about ourselves and them and then grow a relationship. So I think it's important to have this message out there and this idea that although the context sounds negative of these illusions, it's actually the best thing we could do for ourselves.

Todd Baratz
It's also the most universal experience. I mean, whether we're talking about relational challenges or just challenges in general, suffering, pain is universal. I mean, it's inherent to what it means to be a living thing. Animal, person, flower similar to the weather. Nothing is ever a constant state of joy, especially relationships.

So, you know, it's really important to normalize those things so it doesn't become worse. You know, when you have. When you're getting a headache and you think that you're going to. You have a tumor, you know, it's like similar, the parallel as a couple having a conflict, thinking a relationship is going to end, or that it's a big red flag if they have conflict. No, it's normal.

This stuff is normal. We are constantly going through rupture and repair, whether it's our cells, our bodies, our relationships, the weather, the trees. There's always rupture and repair. And it sucks that we live in a culture that really stigmatizes the rupture, the pain, the suffering aspect of our lives, because it's so normal. It's literally the most universal thing there is, suffering.

But people really struggle to understand and tolerate that. And it's especially true in their relationships because there's still so much fairytale as content on social media and on tv that, you know, you deserve a relationship that is blankety blank. And relationships shouldn't require you to have to blankety blank and all of this shit. That's just not realistic. Well, the.

Sarah Kosterlitz
The work that you're doing and conversations like these are changing that narrative. So thank you, Todd, for coming on today. I appreciate this conversation. Before we wrap up, can you tell our listeners about your new book and where they can find you online? And then we'll say goodbye.

Todd Baratz
Yeah, I have a book coming out. It is my first book. It's called how to love someone without losing your mind. And spoiler, you will lose your mind, which is normal. And the book is about me, my clients, and a bit of a cultural analysis about modern love in general.

But it's a story based book that's stories about, as I said, my past relationship, my clients relationships, and relationships in general, with a little bit of buddhism and philosophy thrown in at the end that I hope will help people. It will. And if it doesn't, it doesn't. You can cut that part out and you can find me on Instagram at yourdive nonsense. Or at my website taught usparretts.com.

But Instagram is probably a lot easier to remember, which is nonsense. I love it. I love the handle. And I encourage everyone to follow the page. Check out Todd's new book.

Sarah Kosterlitz
We'll have the links in our show notes and on our website. And thanks for taking the time to come on the show. Thanks for having me. I enjoyed this. Thank you guys so much for tuning into today's episode.

Chase Kosterlitz
As always, all the links to the guest, as well as any of their recommendations will be in the show notes page. You can find the link to that in the episode description or by going to idopodcast.com. Click on the podcast tab up at the top and you will have access to all the episodes that we've ever done. There are over 300 of them. And while you're on our website, if you haven't checked out our free 14 day happy couple challenge, we really hope you do.

It's a free email challenge that we send to you. That's 14 days of fun, easy, doable challenges to help strengthen and improve your relationship. And if you're looking for something that provides a little more help with working on your relationship, whether it's improving intimacy or communication with your partner, or just bringing the spark back, we would love for you guys to check out our online course, spark my relationship. We're offering $100 off to all of our listeners if you go to sparkmyrelationship.com unlock. We worked with over 15 psychologists and therapists to create the real life tools and strategies that they are teaching their clients, so we wanted to give them to you.

It's a self paced online course that can be done in as little as a month or up to three months. You can really decide how much or how little you want to do with your partner or maybe just yourself. So we hope you guys check that out. It's sparkmyrelationship.com unlock. Have a great day.

Sarah Kosterlitz
You were listening to a pleasure podcast. For more from our sex podcast collective, visit pleasurepodcasts.com.

457: Hard Relationship Truths You Need To Hear

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Episode Summary

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Episode Chapters

1: Introduction

2: Debunking Relationship Myths

3: Navigating Relationship Realities

4: Maintaining Desire and Intimacy

Actionable Advice

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