Mark Groves' Comeback Story Pt.1

00:00:10 Speaker 1: Welcome back, everybody. We're here for another episode of Comeback Stories, and today's guest is Mark Roves, a human connection specialist and the founder of Create the Love. He's a bridge between the academic and the human, inviting people to explore the good, bad, downright ugly and beautiful sides of connection. He's an emotional translator, empowering people to give words to their feelings, step into courage, and create a life and love. They'll look back on with a resounding fuck yes, fuck yes that you're here in the studio. Yeah, that's what I was so excited. Thanks for having me. Yes, this one really means the world to me and to us. And man, I've been following you for so long and just to have you here in the flesh. You know. I usually do this at the end and acknowledge people, but you have made such a tremendous impact on my life and so many ways. I met you really briefly at well Spring back years when I was years ago, yeah, in a relationship and then navigating through that relationship, leaving that relationship, and I feelt like you were always there by my set, by my side, walking me through that. And so and here we are today. Man. Yeah, it's an honor man, and thank you. I received your words fully. Yeah. I don't know if you'll ever truly know the impact that you're making in this world. And then I'm just saying from my experience personally, so that should be acknowledged. Thank you. You know. It's it's wild just how small the world is through things like social media and podcasts and connections you can make just through the human experience, and and how resonant relationships are to everybody. You know, we all have challenges in relate. No one's free of that, even though people might present that. And so yeah, I appreciate your words and excited to be here, excited to chat. It's beautiful. Well, we dive right in. We want to know what was it like for you growing up. Yeah. I grew up in Canada, in Calgary, Alberta, which is on the west side. It's just an hour from the Rockies. You know, I had a good childhood. I think by every sort of definition, parents are still together. My father was divorced before he met my mom, and he had a daughter, my sister, with that woman, and so we grew up with hers. And I have a brother from my mom and dad, and so there was a lot of beautiful things about that, Like one was that divorce was okay, that you could find love after divorce. You know, I just think of all the unconscious things that you learn as a kid. One thing that I think kind of maybe set me ahead in a lot of ways was that my father was really the one who spoke to me a lot about emotion and around connection and relationships. Like there's so many memories I have of sitting on the couch with him and him asking me questions about my relationships and how I was feeling, and often sharing. I remember one saying to him like, oh, yeah, you know, my partner when I was in my twenties, she's complaining about this, this and this, and I told her if it's so bad, she can just leave. And my dad was like, no, no, no, no, no, what are you doing? And so, you know, he gave me advice then that that every relationship is a separate organism and it must be nurtured as such. And I didn't really understand it then, but I do now, and I recognize how important that advice was. So yeah, my childhood was it was great. And I would I would say that I identified a lot as like being someone who really believed in love and really believed in connection and really believed in you know, I think a lot of us fall in love with the idea of marrying the person we're with, even when we're like seventeen eighteen. You know, it's just like you start a relationship and you just think it's forever, which I think is kind of an interesting thing that we just we don't study it, we don't learned the skills for it. We generally learn it from our parents and movies, and then we get to a place where we don't have the skill set to navigate, and then we experienced shame because the relationship ended, and you know, my belief in love sort of I would say dissipated in the first couple of relationships that ended with infidelity, and I didn't have good boundaries and I realized I was kind of a I didn't realize till I was a little bit older, but that I was kind of a doormat. So you know, I was set up well, but I don't know, I don't know where I kind of missed the boat on some of the relational skills. Can you trace back to like an early memory of pain. Yeah, yeah, I can a few. You know, when when I was in grade five, I was kind I kind of put on a little bit of weight. I think that was due to having an allowance and having a seven to eleven near the house and finding what we call five cent candies, you know, our chocolate milk, and I, you know, I can't really source where it came from, but I started to put on weight. Was playing sports at the time, quit and I felt the experience of like not having social inclusion. I felt, you know, especially as you get into like grade six, seven, eight, so like ten eleven, twelve thirteen, I started to notice the social hierarchy be created and me not not maintain any position near the top, but all these people that I was friends with did, and so I started to feel not included. And I really felt the impact of that. I think of you coupled to that that, you know, my nickname as a kid for my brother was Sensitor because I was sensitive. And I guess if I was a dinosaur, i'd be sensitor. And at the time, you know, I sort of trace it back is thinking, oh it's funny. I laughed it off, but it Wasn't you know, there was an experience that I think men have, especially that sensitivity is shamed. And certainly the thing that the world asks of men most, or what relationships need from menmost, is emotionality, an emotional fluency. But yeah, what the world says men should not have is exactly what we ultimately need. So I'd say those two experiences the absence of belonging, I think, especially because what it traced forward to in my adult life was the desperate desire to belong, the desperate desire to have self worth and significance by people pleasing and being chosen. Man. I was just talking about right on the show before this, like, you know, my thing was like not being black enough. That was my early pain. I was just like, man, like, how do I I can't. I can't change the fact that I'm black, but I'm not black enough. So I'm just walking around, like in this show, like feeling like a fraud. So just through achievement in football and grades and you know, trying to wool girls over and do all these different things like that was how I went about trying to find my identity and even going into the NFL and having all these you know this cool life on paper. It's like I'm thirty years old and trying to you know, peel back the layer still and and detached myself from people pleasing because it was ingraining me and at such an early age of like you know, I read it on your website, you said talking about the life that you were taught to want, Like that was me. Like I was taught to want football as success in performing well and I wasn't taught anything different. And now I'm still unlearning just on this five years of looking inward. But it's, uh, people pleasing can still be just a big force in my life. Yeah, And you know, it's it's interesting because, like I think outwardly, people wouldn't imagine that right from you and from you too, and in that what we appear as social status, which I think in a lot of ways, like my experience in grade eight. In the summer of grade eight, because I felt like I was not fitting in due to weight, I basically starved myself. You know, it was not a healthy weight lost journey. But I mountain biked a lot and I lost a lot of weight and I got back to you know, the first day of school that day where you feel like everyone's nervous, and I felt girls like me and it was one of the first times that ever felt that, and my well, it felt good. There was also a part of me that was like I haven't changed, like I'm still the same person, and so I really started to feel the sort of superficiality and I sort of endlessly pursued that, you know, endlessly pursued fitness from that perspective, So it wasn't necessarily a healthy intention, but I started to move up the social hierarchy, and you know, then you just start to place your worth in things like I'm so grateful that Instagram didn't exist when I was a kid, right because man, that's it's so easy to put your worth in a like button, in the type of posts that perform. And that can be true today too for the work that I do. But yeah, you know, it's we're all wired to want to belong. You know. Gobormante talks about that that we have two needs. We have the need to self express and be authentic, and we have the need to belong. And when self expression threatens belonging, belonging wins till it doesn't untill we experience the pain of disconnection from ourselves, our values, our integrity, and and you know, I think that in a lot of ways leads to addictions to treat the pain of an unfulfilled self and unlived self, someone out of integrity, not living in their potential and their values. And we have this perception of status, we have this perception of belonging, but really it's sort of superficial and empty. Even our relationships when we're operating from people pleasing, are manipulative for the people pleaser too. You know, my friend Terry Coole, who's his psychotherapist, says that the small part of us is colluding with the small part of them. And I really think that's such a brilliant way of seeing it. Why do you think specifically men try to pretend to be someone they're not. Well, I think you get a lot of value from it. You know, when I was a big believer in you know, when I was young and I was like that, believing that I could love all out, and I was very romantic in my ideals, buying roses for one month addiversaries. You know, when love and like that experience, you know, it's not like I'm going to the locker room when I'm playing soccer or whatever and being like, oh man, monogamy is really killing it. Like I'm getting deeper with my girl, and like we're talking about more stuff. You know, the locker room talk is not about that type of depth. And when I experienced heart ray really unconscious unconsciously, I created the narrative in my mind that when I loved people, they hurt me, they betray me, I lose myself and and then I went I had never really even had a one night stand. I'd never I'd never just kissed a chick randomly. And the one of the breakups occurred about three weeks before Halloween, which breakups before Halloween not a great idea, you know, because Halloween is such a disaster. Everyone's dressed, it's like, you know, in their best the most provocative nurses, the most provocative everything, and oh shit, sorry I missed that button. And I went out, and I'll get back to your question about why I think this is true. I went out and I got wasted. I made out with three chicks on a dance floor. I then brought a girl home for the first time in my life to my parents house. First rule of one night stands don't bring a girl to your parents house. That's pretty standard, and that you don't even need to know that one. That one's obvious. But apparently I didn't read that one rule. And I told her all this stuff. I was god, I was just you know, like, I'm gonna do this, this is gonna be amazing. And then I go to have sex with her and I can't get an erection. And this has never happened to me in my life. Like all systems are go, you know, like a pilot, and I'm like, all right, this should be working. And that felt very weird to me, because the next days I didn't know how to process that. I didn't have anyone to talk to about it. And what I discovered was that if I drank enough, I could drink away my values. I could drink away my grief. You know, the grief of that breakup was devastating, but I didn't know how to be with it. I didn't know no one had modeled that for me. And even as much as someone might have said, how are you doing, are you okay? I desperately didn't want people to see that I wasn't, and I sort of doubled down on trying to womanize having one night stands, creating short term relationships. And the inverse of that is that being able to talk about my achievements actually gave me status. And so that was a strange paradox that like, when I was really committed to integrity and love and commitment I did, there wasn't that celebration. But when I didn't want people to see my pain, I could talk about the things that I did and be celebrated and get male status. And so I think that's one of the reasons, or maybe one of the main reasons, is that we sort of still and I'd say even partner selection has done this way, is that we still rate men or like grade them, especially unconsciously, by their ability to provide protect and broker and and so I think that's maybe the largest contributor I've heard you mentioned. Especially men are in this like constant state of impression management I think was the term that you used, Yeah, like trying to hold up the appearance. You know that I'm sure that that's definitely true for women too, you know, especially with things like social media and Instagram, where a lot of their platforms are their accounts are actually based on that. But yeah, men, there's a you know, Burne Brown talks about a research that that when a man cries, a woman actually loses respect for the man, like he becomes less desirable. And you know, you want to express you know, you'll hear the sort of narrative that we want men that are emotional, and yet very often when we express emotion that is actually shamed. It maybe not explicitly, but it does become evident. You know, Ultimately, men want to become like men that women choose. I mean, that's ultimately how it works. And I think that when you start to really connect with emotion from an integrated place, which that doesn't happen initially. You know, when we talk about like nice guys finished last nice guys that behavior. You know, there's a book called Nowhere Mister Nice Guy, and in it the author talks about Robert Glever. He talks about how nice guys are actually anything but nice, because the kindness is people pleasing in order to get something, so it always comes with a secret contract. And I think that image management of like I've got my shit together, don't worry about me, because we don't want to be seen as having you know, kings in our armor. But yeah, we're all walking around needing to have be witnessed. You know, you guys, I've listened to your podcast talking about intimacy. It's like into me. See you know that word is so powerful when you think about it, and I think all men are death really desiring to be witnessed. That's why it's so powerful to have male friends that you can talk to these things about, because really that's that's really the permission I think we're looking for. What do you feel I know I've mentioned men a couple of times, but as you brought up the impression management with women too, especially on social media, what do you think the psychological effect of that is? Because it's hard not to you know, as a man, obviously will come across my feed, but it's I have a different perspective on it, and I'm like, wow, this is like your life. You know, there's probably a little bit of judgment in there, there's also some like compassion, So I'm just curious your take on that. Yeah, it's kind of ironic that the thing we really identify with his imperfection. Like look at what we love reality TV. We love when celebrities fuck up. We love all that shit, but then when we present ourselves to the world we want to appears as if we've got our poop and a group. And you know when you when you think about it, like it's Jonathan Height and Greg Lukyanov, Yeah, who are They're the co authors of the book Coddling of the American Mind, and they talk about like, ultimately, how did we get here today, Like how did we get to this place where we have no capacity for dialogue. We're canceling any opinions that we that we don't agree with, And he talks about how if you look at and I'm not gonna I'm not sure I'll be able to give accurate specific details of re quoting and retelling the book, but in it they talk about how girls try to commit suicide more than boys, but boys are more successful because they choose more aggressive ways. And so he's basically said that if you were to give a gun to boys and girls, more boys would die. They're just more prone to that. And when you see that with little boys playing with sticks and all that kind of stuff, he said, but the way that girls, especially teenage girls, managed social anxiety and problems in their social group is generally through social influence, like bullying, social consequences. I said, if you were to create the perfect tool for that, it would be social media. And so I really think about that a lot because if you look at the rates of anxiety, depression and those things, that has gone up at a greater rate in girls, and I think that's really doing a lot of ways to social media. And you know what do we judge women on. We basically ranked them based on appearing fertile, right, Like from an evolutionary lens, it's like bud implants. That's because they hipped to waste ratios, lip injections, that's because influence, you know, swollen lips means aroused. So we have all these different ways that we unconsciously do the same thing in terms of how we grade or choose partners. And so I think the pressure is immense for women the like image management. And in the book Stealing Fire, which is a fantastic book, the guy talks about the author talks about how when we're in a flow state, our prefrontal cortex shuts down, so the part of us that is in charge of creating a self. And so if you think about it, if you're constantly image managing, which I'd say we all are till we're not or till we're mindful of it. That means you're not even present because everything is going through a lens of who you want to be and how you want to appear, and so you don't even get to be with people. And when I had that awareness, I'm like, wow, it's and it's so easy to get lost in like I can know this and then maybe filter what i want to say or what i want to post because I'm afraid of feedback or pushback. But really, then I'm just colluding with and participating in cancel culture. Is there a low point that you can look to in your life or in relationships that may have been the moment that forced you to reevaluate your image management or force you onto a trajectory to where you have the wisdom and the information you have now. Yeah, you know, when I when I was in my mid twenties, I was engaged, and that really was the birth of my work, was when my engagement ended because I was with a really incredible woman and I didn't want to get engaged. I didn't want to get married, and yet I did. You know the story of like do what you need to do by this age, and it was it was in the ending of that relationship because at the time, I was a pharmaceutical rap and I was really studying how do you influence behavior? How do you manipulate behavior? And I wondered, why am I so good at talking about everything about my feelings? Like, oh, I was so good at relationships, but not romantic relationships. So I started to study relationships. And when I was thirty that was twenty seven, when my engagement ended. And when I was thirty one or thirty two, I've been dating this woman and I wanted to break up with her. And I had made a rule after my engagement ended that I would have every conversation I didn't want to have, because I wondered, how did I get here? How did I get to this place where I'm getting engaged when I didn't want to. That made no sense to me, and I thought, man, I've avoided every hard conversation. I ran from every hard conversation. I just let life and fate work itself out. But I wasn't an active participant. And at thirty two, I remember, or thirty one, I remember wanting to break up with her, and I'm thinking, all right, I made this commitment, I got to have this conversation, and I delayed the conversation, and three weeks later I broke up with her. And she said to me, you knew this three weeks ago, and I was like, yeah, yeah, I was. She was dead on and she said, and you made me invest deeper in this relationship knowing that, And I was like, oh wow. And I had a breakdown that night, and I journaled because I thought, what is integrity? Like, how do I want to be remembered? Who do I want to be? You know, I'm not just by avoiding that conversation, I'm hurting someone. So I had an active knowledge of something I needed to do and I didn't do it because I was afraid. And it hurt her, and in turn, you know, hurt me because that's not how I wanted to be in the world. That's not how I wanted to show up. And you know, i'd say every relational ending that I have had has been a massive deepening of awareness and alignment. Yeah, I can relate a lot. I mean I feel like in my last relationship six almost seven years, the amount of growth in the last year. I've probably grown ten twenty times as much as I grew over the last ten years combined, just in this last year. It took some outside help, some solid male friends, some accountability, some therapy, but so beautiful to look back on now. And when I just started to continue to point the finger back at me and look at all of my stuff and stop any kind of blaming and let go of any kind of resentments and just kept looking at my stuff, the amount of transformation it's it's such a beautiful thing to look back on now. It sucked in the beginning. It was scary, moving moving for living in Arizona my whole life, and moving to California scary, but um god, one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life today, And again a lot of a lot of help, a lot of help from you, just from listening constant podcasts over and over again of just I like your solo episodes the best. Those are the ones that just like you just drop bombs. Yeah. Well, that level of responsibility. You know, I think responsibility has a strange paradox, which is, if I'm going to take responsibility for everything in my life, then I have to actually process the grief and anger that I haven't, you know, like that's the part, Like I think that's what limits people from changing their lives, you know, and getting sober and all that kind of stuff. You know. I talked about Gobormante earlier, yes, his quote. He's an expert in addiction too, and he talks about how the wrong question is why the addiction. The right question is why the pain? And you know that if you're willing to say, Okay, every relationship that I'm currently in, every outcome that currently is happening in my life, I'm saying yes to it. And if I'm willing to just sit with the capacity of that truth, then now I'm free. You know, Now I'm actually free. And Alan Wants talks about how when you wake up to conscious choice, you become the God you were taught to praise, and that to me has always you know, really just the weight of that of like, oh wow, that's the responsibility of being alive, That's the responsibility of this life, you know, all of it. Can you talk a little bit about you or path to quitting alcohol? You know, I never thought like I'm maybe not like a traditional story where like woke up in the ditch or like had some sort of rock bottom like that. I certainly had moments drinking, you know, I think because of binge drinking culture, I had moments where I did that, and you know, I sort of would joke and say, had time traveled last night, and I'd have to like gather files from other people about what happened, And when I realized other people don't do that, Wait, wait, that's not normally in college, that felt very normalized. But as I was, I would say, becoming more present to my emotional experience and also to the responsibility that I had to the choices I was making, the life I was living. You know, everything I'd created, including create the love and the conversations I was having in my partnership with Kylie, they all just mattered so much to me that one of the things that I just recognized was that I really only ever made bad decisions when I wasn't sober. I didn't make any none that I would regret sober. And you know, I remember reading this book by Paul Selig, and I was walking on the streets of New York and soho in the book it said I was listening to it and it was saying, you can only your body can only alcomize the lowest level of truth that you're willing to hold, and I thought, I don't really understand that, but there's like something in that. And he went on to say that what truth do you know that you're not living by? And immediately it was like, you need alcohol to connect. And you know, I had the rule, after after an awareness in my mid thirties, that I would always live at my highest level of knowledge, that like, as soon as I heard something hurt and I had an awareness or I just had an unawareness or a knowledge come through, I would change my life. And it was in that moment that I was like, all right, like I can't ignore this. And in his book he says it's like being a fish that is in an aquarium and learns about the ocean and then goes back to the aquarium and pretends they don't know. And I realized so much in my life, and I think really the source of my relationship to alcohol too was that I had awarenesses that I wasn't living and so the pain of unlived potential, the pain of living a life or making choices outside of my values, needed to be anesthetized, and you know, I went to this retreat from a woman named Ganga Je and in the retreat, this person was sharing about their life and their transformation and how they just like they hadn't found it yet, and she said, I get sober from everything that pulls you away from who you are. So quitting alcohol to me was just like the next level. I first was like, I'll just do it for a year, but honestly, as soon as I got a taste of it, life was so much richer. And really a big part of it was actually that I was afraid to quit drinking because I was afraid of how it might impact the people around me, like you know, going to a bachelor party or going to a wedding. But right after I decided to quit for the year, I was the best man at a wedding. I organized the bachelor party, and then I had a guys trip for my annual guys trip with guys I grew up with that We've done for twenty years, and so I had all the greatest social pressures. And when I decided not to drink, you know, all my fears of how other people might receive it, which really was so codependent. It's like, I'm not quitting because I'm afraid of how someone else might feel. That's such bullshit. It and so you know, I've realized that even through the quitting of alcohol, it was just more healing of people pleasing you know. So, yeah, it's been and we talked to it a little bit before we hit a record, But life is so much richer, you know, life is so much more president I'm sure that's been. You're both your experience. Yeah, we were talking about just being in Vegas specifically, and it's cool to come back here sober and it's just a different perspective. We were mentioning the that I heard this from Darren once, just that sobriety is like a cheat code and it's a really cool perspective to have, and just energetically to be an observer, I get it, there's probably some level of judgment to watch people and watch them the energetic shift that happens where I can see and feel like this darkness, energetic darkness to kind of overtake people when the alcohol comes in and there's a shift and something different in their eyes. It's it's it's interesting. I love my perspect today, especially here in Vegas. Yeah, it really exposes you. Like I came to Vegas not sober for bachelor parties and the darkness did take over, you know. But it's so normalized. And that's the thing is, like the abuse of substances, addictions to things like social media, these are all just normal. So like when you decide to do something that's abnormal but you know it's good for you, it really does challenge people pleasing. It challenges belonging because like if all the people you hang out with get trashed all the time and let's just say womanized, and all of a sudden you decide that you don't want to, well, now it potentially costs you group membership and and then you realize that really it doesn't, you know, and if it does, then it's not your group because you know, I've been thinking about this a lot recently. Who wouldn't want you in your fullest expression? Like what relationship would not want you? Like in your values, fully expanded, moving towards your dreams, fully expressed, boundaried, feeling psychologically safe, emotionally safe, Like what friendship, what romantic relationship, what parent child relationship? What brother sister, cousin wouldn't want that, like to me that it's wild to think that that's what we're holding back when that is only a gift to the world, It's only a gift to a romantic relationship. But it's terrifying when we think that our growth or the person we're in relationship thinks that our growth will pull us away, and then we become selfish and we become the anchor or the tether that holds people back from their potential when really you living it, me living it. All it does is inspire all of us to make better choices. And you know, I really agree with what you said about I have to process the inherent judgment that comes sometimes when I see people in their shadow or making choice, but it's really parts of myself. I recognize that I still judge that I haven't like reconciled and really come to peace with like the you know, if I like to judge a guy with you know, pooka shell necklace and some highlights in his hair, and I was exactly that fucking guy. So you know where I love what you said about you know the rule of need to have every conversation that I don't want to have, do you have any more like practical things somebody can do to break free from people pleasing asking for a friend to hear Yeah, yeah, well, as I share it with you, I'll continue to share it with myself. Yeah, you know. I think it can be helpful to understand the pathology of where it came from. Usually it comes from our childhood, but that's not always true, and that people pleasing is actually a very protective behavior. It's not to be villainized. I think that's the hard part is that we have a hard time holding compassion for the behavior because then we don't know how to do that and not feel some sense of shame that we've been a people pleaser. But really shame inhibits us from accessing the grief, the grief of people pleasing, So getting the pathology of it, which you know, I don't think humans need to understand where everything comes from, but I think it's helpful because it allows us to see it's not our fault. So I'd say that's the first part is to approach the acceptance of it from a place of compassionate curiosity. The second part is to recognize what are you afraid? If you begin to speak the truth, like what are you afraid of? Because to say there's no cost is really I think naive, because the real fears are like, if my relationships are all held together or generally held together, especially the most important ones, by me playing small and not sharing my truth, not speaking up, not advocating for myself, all my relationships are centered around other people's needs or generally, then I'm getting a benefit from all those things, right, Like I'm getting to maintain relationship. But when you start to speak truth, whatever that means for someone, express yourself, set boundaries down, express your needs, what you'll experience is that fear of loss of connection again super important, valid. And this is a reorientation that I think everybody eventually goes through, which is that you go from sourcing your self worth from other people agreeing with who you are, other people agreeing with your life outcomes, other people agreeing with your choices, other people celebrating what you're doing. You go from seeking the applause and approval of other people to realizing that in order to bend over and orchestrate yourself in a way to get that becomes a source of immense pain because you think about I think the easiest example is like, if you grow up in a really religious household and yet what you witness is maybe not unconditional love and maybe not unconditional acceptance that is maybe preached, then you might from a valued perspective, just innately be like this doesn't feel right, but yet I have to live it. I have to agree that this is the God I'm praising and this is how I'm going to do that. Eventually you will experience the bending and pretzeling that's required and the pain of that, and so that fracture that occurs, which we would think from a from an addiction perspective would be like rock bottom. But we can have emotional rock bottoms. We can have these and our breakups I think are one of the greatest sources of this is you know, you get to this ending and you have anger and grief and I'm like center that, like use that. That's why I don't save people from breakups, because I'm like, there's nothing to be saved from. Like, this is one of the most important emotional experiences that you can use to transform your life, reclaim yourself or claim yourself, so you start to instead source worth from self. You know, when you express a boundary boundaries are inherently symbiotic with self worth, as in, when I expressed a boundary, I love myself, right, I'm saying I matter. But if I've never done that, that means the first time I ever do it, it's starting with nothing, and it's putting a deposit in the bank. But when someone's like I'm having a real hard time expressing myself or like sharing my boundary, I'm like, you might be the first person in four generations in your family to do that. The previous cost could have been death, Like there's a genetic, like an actual experience in your body that's like, no, I can't do this. And that's why I think things like coal water exposure, breathwork, they allow you to observe your somatic response, your body's response, like you're not going to die in a coal blund but you'll be able to observe your body is saying you're gonna die, and so you can start to separate trauma from truth. And so I missed it again in this experience. What starts to happen is the boundaries laid. Oh wow, I feel important, and so we put a deposit in and sometimes we collapse the boundary, but we've now felt it. And then the next one I lay starts on a bed of self worth and I go from expressing myself and seeing like you don't share how you feel or share a boundary so the other person approves of it. You share it to hear your own voice. And that's actually the people mostly, And you know, in addiction circles we talk about it's about progress, not perfection. That's exactly it. It's like we are addicted to the outcome, but the outcome is actually now what matters. The journey does. And so that journey of self expression of all that stuff, so like to let go of the people. Pleasing comes from what you know, I've heard both of you talk about, which is approving of yourself, like pleasing yourself. Most people choose relationship over self, so you know, they prioritize connection to other over connection to self. And there is inherently a thought just from their conditioning that there's a cost. And then there's other people whose reaction is to the cost is relationship, and they preserve self, so they're like an island. And usually the people who abandon self a relationship pursue the people who are islands because that just because that's just enough to piss you off and make you go crazy. But yeah, and so what happens is is you start to see and start to create relationships that actually celebrate self and include self, and then you only want to be in relationships with other people who prioritize self. If that makes sense, Yeah, no doubt man, Yeah because of me. It's like somebody like me. Oftentimes I found myself knowing that just showing up really as who I am, the multi think version of myself will do the people pleasing on its own. But I'll still find myself in a place where I'm like I have to have these calculated acts or yeah, you know, I have to make sure that I coordinate everything to where I please a person. But it's really like if I can get to the place where I am securing myself and I know that me just being me, just you know, existing in that space, well any people pleasing that needs to be done will happen by way of me being that version of myself. It's it's sometimes I find myself in that area where like I know that I'm like, yes, like I get it. Sometimes I'm just like not getting it. Yeah, which I mean, it's it's part of the experience, right, It's like the human experiences. You're gonna you're gonna move out of integrity to know where integrity is. You're gonna throw yourself under the bus to know where you do that, you know. And again it's always that orienting towards it with compassion, and once you learn it, don't repeat it, you know, because I think that's the source of pain that most people have, is they do it. They gather information that that was self abandoning or that didn't feel good, and then they stay in the same pattern, which you know, as I said, you know previously, you can't pretend you don't know. That's the trick. It's like you can't undo a lightning bolt of awareness. You can't pretend you're not awake anymore, you know, like, oh, that's it. You can't pretend you don't know the cost of not loving oneself or not being in healthy relationships. It's to pretend that you don't know the cost just will again feed the desire for addictions. It's like the fish bowl and ocean analogy. It's like once you see it, you can't underste it, and then there's a whole other level of awareness, and with that awareness comes responsibility right, and then if lessons will be repeated until they're learned right, and so it's like going to keep getting that same lesson over and over again until essentially we've we pass the test. And when it's in relationships and heartbreaks involved, it can really derail us, especially if we're attaching our identity to it and the relationship fails and we identify ourselves as a failure because it didn't go, didn't last forever. So common Hey, it's like if a relationship ends and you feel like a failure, that is actually such a gift because it teaches you to detach those two things that worth and relational outcomes are not correlated, although your behaviors can participate and contribute to relational outcomes, a relationship ending should not define someone's worth, and it's the problem that that exists. Like we treat people who are divorced as if they are worse than someone who's single. And if you're in a relationship, you're better in someone who's single, And then you got the hierarchy like you're engaged, you're married, way to go. But you know, it's like the way that society structure is like the question, oh, you're still alone, you still haven't found someone, especially as we get into holidays. You know, that's such a common question, and that just really just contributes to the belief that without someone, I don't have someone confirming that I'm worthy of being chosen, you know what I mean. And it's like you just are and that's it. And if you can choose relationships from a place where you're not chasing being chosen or not chasing validation or chasing being worth, then you can actually being worthy, then you can actually be in the relationship. But till you actually change that behavior, the relationship will always be the thing that's fulfilling your worth and your value. So if you lose the relationship, you lose your worth and your value, which I'm like, what a gift, because that's what teaches you that your value doesn't live in relationship. But that's like, you know, that's the kind of learning that that you have to be devastated to find. You know, what's coming up for me is beyond the relationship. This is my life. This was my life, and it wasn't even the relationship with the romantic partners, the relationship or the identity I had as an athlete and everything being wrapped in that, and then one day that being gone through an injury, and with my identity being as a baseball player, and one day that being stripped of me and not having any tools or any kind of other identity, it literally almost killed me. So it's like the same thing, whether it's a relationship or wherever we're identifying ourselves in something that's outside of ourselves. It's it's a slippery slope. It was like, it literally almost killed me, especially when it gives us status and worth and value and enjoy right, Like, yeah, I know lots of professional athletes that when they retire, they don't know who they are anymore, you know, And that makes sense because their whole lives have been spent doing these things. There's social status, there's all these things, and there's actually nothing wrong with some of those things. It's just, you know, my partner and when I was talking to her once about how I wanted to let go of something and and and just like allow a former part of me people pleasing to die, and she said, let it be a good death. And I remember hearing that and being like, wow, there is like something sacred about it, you know, like like don't try to prevent the death and trying to hold on to the former identity, the former pattern. But it's interesting, you know, as you say, it's like it almost killed me. Yeah, yeah, I get that, And it's almost like it And I'm sure when you look at your past, it's like it needed to. It all needed to for you to be here to create what you contribute to the world now, you know, like in the way that you do. Both of you sourced from the worst fucking shit, like the hardest moments, which is what people identify with. Again, it's I mean, it's it's my story. It's how I met him through that same connection. And Darren shared his story on HBO Hard Knocks at one point and I was sitting in my housewatching it and heard his story and we just shared this recently. We've shared the story a couple of times. But I reached out to him on Instagram, slid into his DMS three thousand followers at the time, and he responded right away. I just explained to him that I coach athletes, and his story like because he had done he did what I did, but on a massive platform. And it's the pain in the struggle that's connected us. It's why we're sitting Oh, all three of us are sitting here today is because of the pain and how that pain can give us access, an access point to a greater purpose. Is so cool. It's so cool just to be sitting here right now talking about this three men and really changing the language, especially Darren having his platform with football and what the world sees as the masculine of all masculine. If you notice, like we don't talk about football or we don't talk about sports on this podcast, ever, this is the ship we're talking about all the time, right. Yeah, it's such a it seems like it's even confronting to the former paradigms or the way that we perceive men or emotion. But you know, ultimately, as I said at the beginning, like what the world actually needs and wants from us beyond you know, sports and all that kind of stuff, is depth. And you know, when when you can step into depth and emotionality and not be loved but love yourself, then you actually change the definition of Like we're actively and I don't mean this like arrogantly, I just mean, we're actively contributing to redefining what masculinity or men and what because I don't know. If someone calls me sensitive now, I'm like, fuck, yeah, it's my superpower, you know. And and the often the thing that we did to adapt or or keep the peace or whatever as kids, when developed in an integrated, mindful way, it actually does become a superpower. And you know, I'm grateful to be to participate in this conversation and be able to like know that my sense of worth or belonging actually is is celebrated here, you know. Which that's the type of people that you end up being around. When you're willing to potentially lose relationships, you gain other ones that are more aligned with your values in your way of being, and likely you will change and transform people in the group that you're worried about not belonging to. You know, what can you describe for us what it was like when like these principles and these things you know now started to click for you in relationships like and with the relationship that you're in now, Like when like when did you start to click for you? And how did that feel? Yeah, so we've been together and I think seven years with a little break in there. And you know, I was already in the relational work when we met. I slid into her DMS two. That's it. Instagram's a new tender. Sorry tender, But yeah, I've learned so much with her, like having a partner who's willing to grow and change and we both see the relationship as a place of evolution, like a growth of possibility of potential. And I've just like refined and created more skills with her, which has been really beautiful. Like I'm not afraid to cry in front of her, you know, I feel actually witnessed and seen and held and her ability to repair I mean that to me, Like in relationship, that's the most important skill is to be able to say I'm sorry, but then to learn from each other's perspective and know that your partner's perspective of you is broader and richer than what you can see from you know, as they say, you can't see the forest when you're in the trees. And I really see the feedback that she gives me most of the time as as really a window into my possibility and my potential. She sees things I don't see and I'm eternally grateful for that. My partners in my twenties did not get this version of Mark, you know, and and he just wasn't available. I had to go through all of that, and I was terrified of actually being loved, you know, and and actually being chosen by women, you know. And I basically ran in all those relationships from women who really could love me, and I ran towards relationships that were more unavailable, and that was really due to my unavailability. So, you know, the the real change, I would say probably came in my early thirties and I'm forty four now. It came in my early thirties where I started to think about relationships differently, and you know, it's it's interesting to think about the relationships that I had with people in my twenties when I was you know, I was in a five year relationship that I got engaged, but outside of that, I very much spent a lot of my time in shorter term casual encounters and short term relationships, friends with benefits, that kind of stuff. And really the way that I was perceived my friends and people was that I wasn't a place that you went for a commitment and when I was in my when I started to wake up to how who I wanted to be in my integrity and what I really valued and how I wanted to be celebrated. That was hard because I had to I had to gain the trust and redefine who I was to people who I had spent so much time. I'd spend so much time convincing people that I wasn't hurting inside, I wasn't sensitive, that I was fine and everything was good and I was always smiling. To that I actually had more depth, and you know, I felt rejected by a lot of friends in that time. I moved away to Vancouver. When I moved to Vancouver, you know, people say, like you're moving and running from your problems. Yep, absolutely, I moved. But the gift of it was that I was no longer surrounded by people who I'd spent that time being someone else, being who I was, you know previously, with all the mass, and so I got to just take them off. And in a way that was very liberating. But then when you go back into former relationships without mass, that was really interesting. And as I was saying, they were like, I felt rejected by them. In a lot of ways, not everybody, but some people. And I realized that that was really very martyry of me, very victimy of me, because I'd never actually spent any time informing them of my authentic self, and so I spent a lot of time feeling rejected. But probably in the last five years, I've had the awareness of like, oh, yeah, I didn't even get I didn't even give them the window into my transformation. Your current relationship feels like a very safe space. Safety is just something that's been coming up a lot for me and cultivating and creating that safe space and whatever the relationship looks like. Can you just talk about the importance of safe d in relationships? Yeah, I mean from a just developmental perspective. As kids were and as adults were constantly unconsciously asking the question, am I safe to be myself? You know, that's happening all the time. And in psychology they'd call it like your attachment system. Your attachment systems like a radar, And it's with every relationship, not just your romantic relationship. As a kid, that's really framed sort of with your primary caregiver, and there's a correlation to your childhood attachment style and your adult attachment style, but you can change it, you know. And there's so much available information about attachment styles and all that kind of stuff, but safety, and if you look at even the key to healthy corporate cultures is am I safe? Am I psychologically safe to be myself? So you see in families and any human system, that's just an essential thing. And yeah, and ours that has been you know, I appreciate that observation. It's it's certainly been true. There's so much safety, and you know, I was just recording a solo episode yesterday and talking about how like I don't have the map to my relationship, Like I have no idea what I'm doing. I've never been in a relationship like this. I've never witnessed one. I've never read a book about it, you know, And so I feel very much like I'm like got a spotlight, you know, a head lamp, and I'm in a cave and I'm figuring it out with her. And the beauty of that is that I'm living a relationship and experiencing love that I've never touched before, you know, And that when I think about that, that just feels like such an honor. And every time that I take something that I fear I'm going to be judged for or I have shame about, and I bring it to her. She holds it. You know, when we first got back together, I was feeling the call to move back to Calgary. And when we first started dating, we had both made this declaration like I'll never move to your home city, like I'll never move to Vegas, She'll never move to Calgary. And when we got back together, I had this terrifying feeling of like, I've been having this feeling of moving back and I don't want to tell her because she said this at the beginning, and look at me now, I'm living in Vegas. We also live in Calgary part now. And she said to me when I told her, she said, I trust your knowing. That was it. I said, I've been feeling this and she just goes, I trust your knowing. I can support that, and I was like, wow, So yeah, there's an unfolding that can occur when we feel safe to express and also safe to lay. I say now, like I like to use the term like to lay at the altar of the relationship, the things that we fear most, the things that we're vulner about and you know, your guys's conversations about intimacy. There's just like an intimacy that becomes in a bond, that becomes so sacred because where else where else can you create that, you know, I think in men's groups you can, but it's still not at the same depth of being witnessed by a romantic partner. I think it's important also for the men to also understand that they might not feel safe, especially when it comes to showing emotion, you know, in relationships. I had this conversation with multiple friends in relationship that don't feel safe expressing their feelings and they're trying to embody these female feminine frequencies of empathy and open heartedness, and then they start to do it and then they get told something back or the energy back doesn't feel safe, and then it just shuts them down. Yeah. I think a lot of the times in a you know, in a heteronormative relationship, there is not a lot of trust and male emotion, probably because they've been manipulated by it or the other thing they've experienced is rage or like aggression for men. So there's i'd say, on a somatic like unconscious body nervous system level. There's a lack of trust in vulnerability because I think I did this in when I started to learn about vulnerability, I started to unconsciously use vulnerability to create connection. And it was manipulative, it was contrived. I didn't know why I was doing that till I realized it was doing that. And I think, you know, you can witness that a lot. When men learn the language of spirituality and vulnerability and emotion, they actually use it to use women or to create relational constructs where it's like, if you were conscious or awakened, you'd want this, like polyamory or whatever it is. And no criticism of polyamory if that's your dam just an example, but yeah, there's that. And I also think that if we're looking historically, women tend to consume far more emotional content, learn far more emotional things. Harry A. Learner, the psychologist, talks about the reason that is is that every subordinate group has to learn the needs and nuances of the dominant group for survival. You know, in that being true of black people, white people write and true of women and men right like that that in order to survive, there has to be an understanding of how to dance with and be on eggshells around men and manipulate and but not in a bad way, but in a way that is really about survival. So if we look at today, still more women consume emotional content, there's no doubt, but I think like eighty five percent of my content is consumed by women. But the other side of it is that I don't know that like part of having emotional fluency also gives the women the driver's seat emotionally in the relationship, and when a man can meet them in that space, they often don't know what to do. And I think that's the same experience for men experiencing women who meet them in a provider performance achievement space like CEOs and whatever building businesses, and so there is actually an unfamiliarity and who knows, Like when you actually finally meet someone who can meet you there or even call you to a greater depth, it's going to put someone out of their comfort zone. And if you've been spent your whole life coddling man, you know, lowering your own emotional capacity to meet theirs, and all of a sudden you've got a man who's like, I'm open hearted and I'm ready and I'm fierce and I'm gonna love you. And they're like, hmm, what's that crying stuff? You know, like we don't do you know. I think there's a lack of trust in it, and there's you know, there's probably a lot of beautiful layers to it. Man, you're going for days like I'm sitting here taking notes, just soaking it all in. I just appreciate just the energy you embody man like, I mean, all right now, and appreciate you coming on here talking about things that you're talking about, sharing your experiences because men really need these things. You know, I need these things. Everybody. We all need to hear things like this and sit and reflect with these things, which is well I'm gonna be doing tonight. So I appreciate your time. I appreciate you just being who you are. Man. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate you guys trusting me with your people, with your audience and having me in this Baller studio. Yeah. Same man. I just want to acknowledge you for coming coming in the flesh. Since you're in Vegas. I won't put you on the spot, but I mean there's so much we didn't cover if you want to come back for round two. We just kind of like scratched the surface on this conversation. But I know your time is valuable when you're a busy man and you're reaching a lot of people. And again, just to reiterate the impact that you've made on me personally, Gosh, I don't even know over the last six seven years, probably of just like consistently following your content and all. So every single coaching client and friend when I hear something, I give it to them. So there's a lot of other people like the ripple effect that you're creating and the impact that you've had on my life. It's I'm just profoundly grateful for you, brother, So thank you, well, thanks both you for having me and as I said, trust to me with your audience, and thanks for the work that you both do. And shit, I'm down for a round two. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you. I trust is easy, So thank you. All Right, we're up. What's up? Comeback stories? Family, It's Donnie dropping in here. So did you know that Darren and I's relationships started by me being his personal development, mindfulness and mindset coach. I want to let you know about both my one on one coaching program, The Shift, and my group Mastermind Elevate your Purpose. These coaching programs are specifically designed for people who are ready to take the next step in their purpose and level up their career, personal finances, and have more connected, deep and meaningful relationships. My gift and part of my purpose is to help others take that next step in leveling up their lives so that they can have a greater impact on the lives of others, create success that sustainable yet evolves and grows, and help build a legacy that will outlive your life. If this is calling you, just go to Donnie Starkins dot com and apply for either one of my programs.