112. Love, Romance, and Polarity

This week on the Podcast, Kate and Eric introduce a 3 part series that helps you understand Love, Romance, And Polarity, and how you can Evolve your relationship through this understanding.

Topics:
➡️ An introduction to Love, Romance, and Polarity
➡️ A simple way to understand Love
➡️ How the idea of romance can harm your connection
➡️ Why polarity is healthy, as long as you understand it

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Eric MacDougall
So this is an introduction to kind of this three part series we're going to do, I think it's a four part series because it's actually four podcasts. The first podcast is this intro where we're going to kind of touch on these three aspects love, romance and polarity. What exactly they kind of mean, and then we're going to do individual podcasts for each of them. We're going to dive much deeper and really share the practices that you can use create more awareness around what exactly these are love, romance and polarity, and how they impact our relationships. Right? Because oftentimes, you know, when one person says love, it means something different to another person. I just wish you could just love me like this word love is used interchangeably in so many ways. Same thing with romance and our understanding of romantic relationships, as well as polarity like, What the heck is that right. And so we're going to touch a little bit on each of them today in this episode, and then the following three podcasts will essentially be a breakdown of each of them individually. So the first one will be about love, the second one romance and the third one polarity. So this four part series will be very powerful, full of great information, and also teaching you how to practice some of these and understand how they can impact your relationship in a more positive way.

Kate MacDougall
And these three concepts they seem like so simple, right, like, love, romance, polarity, it's all things like, yeah, we've heard them before. And I remember you mentioning this idea to me and being like, we should talk about this. And we should do a four part series. And I was like, why you want to define things for our listeners? Like, what's the point? And then you started asking me these questions like, how do you practice love daily? Kate, how do you practice romance? And I'm like, right. Okay, so I know what these things are. But do I really sit back and think of like, how do these play in my life? How are these, you know, working in our relationship? Where are these present in my life and relationships?

Eric MacDougall
Like as a practice, right? A lot of people think that love is this thing,

Kate MacDougall
this thing, Love just happens. Yeah. And then romance just happened. And it's there, right now. And truly, there is a conscious effort that needs to be put into love put into romance and conscious effort into understanding polarity. So I think this is why this episode is so important and so insightful. Because, yeah, at first, it might seem like a simple concept. And you're like, Okay, Kate, and Eric, where are you going with this? But like, listen, listen, well, good idea.

Eric MacDougall
And I'll be real, like one of the guarantees I can make is that we're going to be talking about some stuff around these three concepts that you've probably never heard before. Exactly. At this level. I think this is really important. Because too many of us, like, we just think like, oh, how come my relationships not working? And then it's like, well, because I did this bad stuff. But when I'm not doing bad stuff, it should just be working. And it's like, no, absolutely not. Like this. That's not how healthy relationships work.

Kate MacDougall
Yeah. And we often make this mistake in relationships to kind of like, we sit there and we're like, ah, there it is, we're there. And it's like that there changes like, you think you've got a great and it's funny, because our wedding song was like that, right? The what was a call, I don't remember the title, but then, but he says that, like I thought I loved you, then I thought I loved you, then I thought I loved you then and it really shows how relationship evolves and how things happen in your life. And people are brought into your life, people come and go and, and your relationship changes. Therefore, that's why you have to constantly consciously think of these things constantly, in order for you to keep practicing, and keep understanding and keep growing and evolving your relationship.

Eric MacDougall
So if you think about the first one, which is love. And again, we're gonna dive deeper into these in their own individual individual podcasts. But love is essentially this word that can be described in many different ways. Right? For me, like I love you, Kate. I love my kids. I love my work.

Kate MacDougall
I love this desk.

Eric MacDougall
I love this desk is great desks are great. If you don't I mean, this kind of you can love a book. You can love a mountain. You can love a flower, your new shirts, you love your new shirts. I do. Yeah. And so this kind of comes down to then people start arguing, and they're like, Yeah, but like, it's different. Like there's three different types of love. And I get it like the Greeks talk about these different types of love. And this is not necessarily we're talking about here. When we're talking about love, we're talking about the practice of love, which is essentially the practice of opening, right. And I say this a lot like opening your heart. That's kind of what you're doing. And a lot of us in relationships, we're very guarded, we're actually often closing up things, right? So we go into relationships, we think about interacting in conversation, and immediately there's like this closing of like, okay, I'm gonna go in, but I'm gonna have all my guard up. And I'm going to mindmap my partner, and I'm going to guess what's happening, and I want to control it all. And that is not opening your heart. Right? And so, when you think about this idea of love, at its core, it's the practice of opening your heart to something, right, so to share love and practice love, or to receive it. Right so when you think about when you love a mountain, that mountain doesn't give a fuck about you. Like it's not like that. This human being is majestic. Thank

Kate MacDougall
goodness he loves me exactly. So

Eric MacDougall
in this case, you are opening yourself up to love that mountain by receiving its beauty right by receiving, its grandiosity. And you can actually create this practice of really looking admiring it, appreciating it, and learning to really love it. And, you know, we're talking about like, feeling it. And to a lot of people, that sounds really woowoo. But we've all had this in one way or another. Some of us do it. You know, if you're a fisherman, the time when you're on a boat, at dusk, the waters calm you just cast and you just start to hear you know, the loons going, you love that moment, that's because you are open to it, you have opened yourself up to it, it's like Time stops because your heart is open to this experience.

Kate MacDougall
Yeah. And on the contrary, it's so easy to close yourself to that, right. Like, all of a sudden, you can cast in the water is perfect, and everything around you is perfect. But then there's mosquitoes and it starts raining. And you know, there's a boy, you're annoyed and you forgot a loo or you lost your loo or in the water like, like that's being able to close your heart. And, you know, it happens so quickly. All you need is that one mosquito to land on you. And now all of a sudden, it's like closed guards are up No way. And we can see this in our human relationships, where, and we all we all do it. We all love and hate our partners. You know, totally, I love you. But there are days where I don't love you too much. And on those days, where I'm having trouble loving you, where I'm looking at you and I'm like, kind of closed off. I could, I could, you know, smack you right now, because I'm a little annoyed. That's me closing off. But in those moments, I can choose to open up my heart, I could choose to consciously find love and choose love. And, you know, we'll talk later about how to do this and what practices to get into. But that really is the difference between opening yourself up to love. And that's easy. When everything is perfect. That's easy. When you're sitting on that Crystal Clear Lake, it's easy to open up to love. When your partner you come home and your partner bought you flowers and did the dishes and made dinner and has the kids ready and life is great. And the kids are super listening and everything is going Lottie da, well, yeah. It's easy to love your partner in that moment. But it's not as easy when you know, things are kind of going south and you're kind of having arguments and you're busy at work and you're stressed. And that's it's harder for you in that moment to open up to love.

Eric MacDougall
That's right. And that's why it's a practice. And that's what we're gonna talk about on the first podcast around love is not only teaching you how to practice love, how to practice receiving love as well. And often what gets in the way of all that, which we're going to talk about. The second one is romance romantic. All right. And this idea, a lot of us call it romantic love. Right. But this is essentially the beginning stages of a relationship when you move from, you know, lust, which is essentially seeing everybody as a object and just being turned on all the time to essentially zoning into one person and really connecting with them. Yeah, right. This is the idea of the soulmate. I feel like we've known each other for years. It's exactly the love that I want. It's exactly what I need. It completes me. Right, the fairy tales that media sells to us. Yeah, that's romantic love, right? It's what we all want. It's what we all dream about. It's what feels absolutely amazing in the moment. And it's what eventually causes a lot of rift in long term relationships, right?

Kate MacDougall
Because unfortunately, romantic love fades. And it's one of those things. It's one of the first things to go in a relationship, right? It's all of a sudden, the things that you used to think were charming are now annoying the heck out of us, right? And so the practice here is opening up to that romantic romance, being able to find it again in new ways. Not trying to go back in the past, but really trying to find new ways to feel the romance and feel that like first, like oh my gosh, like you really complete me.

Eric MacDougall
Yeah, and in a sense, you know, when we think about romantic love, we're gonna talk about this on its own individual podcast, but like it said, romantic love does need to die, right? Like in our evolution as a species. If our only focus was romantic love, we would never have kids. Like we would never like why would we need to have kids kids get in the way of romantic love. And so if romantic love was a priority, we would have died out as a species A long time ago, but are at our core in our biology. Our priority is not romantic love. Our priority is to procreate so we can do exactly that so we can allow to continue to live As human beings, and this is where we get kind of confused as we think now, because we're in this beautiful time of relationships where we have freedom of choice go off where we want the flexibility to do that. We think, Okay, well, if I'm not getting romance, I need to jump somewhere else to another relationship to find that romance again. And we're going to essentially explain the complexities of all that in its own podcast, where that comes from, why the feelings you're experiencing feels like, oh, that's exactly what I want. Why it's essentially so addicting almost like a drug. And essentially, what happens in a relationship when you try to use that as a crutch, right? So you're like, Oh, I'm trying to, you know, I hear a lot of men, a lot of couples say, I just want to go back there like it was. And they don't understand this idea of the evolution of a relationship that like, oh, you can never go back there. No, right? Because you've essentially passed that threshold and now have moved into attachment, right to raise a family to prioritize different things. So like, you're saying, Kate, you can still do romantic gestures. Romance can still exist. But that feeling of initial infatuation, that familiarity that you have, that is gone, right. And typically, when you think about couples, and I know some couples are probably listening to this, like no way, like we still we still have romance. And I get it. It's actually something different that you have now it's not romantic love in the sense of how you first fell in love and how that infatuation, Your love has evolved, you get much deeper, and now you want to create a different type of connection.

Kate MacDougall
Right? And I do feel like for us, especially like, when, when, you know, this weekend, you were, we were gone all weekend, and you were here on your own. And when I came back, I got those butterflies, I got that like, oh, you know, like, I missed him so much. And like, that could be mistaken for romance. Right? Romance. I have such a French accent, romance. And so yeah, that could be mistaken for romance. But you know, it is something deeper than that. It's something bigger than that now, and how wonderful that we've gotten to that place. Even though the feelings the butterfly feelings are kind of what we had before, you know, when I hadn't seen you for a couple of days, and oh, my gosh, I miss them so much. It is those same butterflies, but it's a much deeper feeling. And we'll definitely go into that a lot more in its own episode. Yeah, that's

Eric MacDougall
right. And for the last one, which I think is really important, we've been playing with this a lot, which has been really great. It's a lot of stuff that I teach in the mastermind, but essentially, it's polarity. And a lot of people now have popularized these terms around like masculine and feminine polarity. So essentially, the difference between like order and chaos, life and death, right, you can use, like all these type of words, but masculine and feminine polarity have been really popular now in the mainstream media, right. And polarity is essentially kind of these two energies, right? That when they, when they connect to each other, it creates this kind of arc of energy, like this tension between these two poles, right? And a lot of times, I'm sure we've all felt this right? Again, like Kate's in a loving relationship. Me I'm loving relationship with her. We love each other. But sometimes, you know, maybe somebody will walk in a kid's life or man a stranger. She'll be the grocery store, and she looks up and she sees a man in the grocery store. Yeah, so. So these characters is perfect example. Because some of these characters that are portrayed in the media create this sense of polarity, this sense of wanting like, ooh, like, yes, like, you want to put your claws in that like, so that's so attractive. And that is the energy that we're talking about. A lot of times in relationship people call this passion, fire theory. Yeah, all that stuff. It's this. It's not necessarily secure, right? It's, it's more tense. And the energy is more intense, right? That's why we call it like a fire. And so that is polarity. We're gonna talk about that its own episode as well. But a lot of people think about it in terms of like, the masculine feminine poles in a relationship. And when you can really play with that in your relationship, you can create this deep sense of wanting, right? And not necessarily the wanting, like Katie talked about when she came home and just like, Oh, God, like I missed you. I just wanted to be with you like, not not sense because that's essentially secure attachment and love the energy and being together. But what we're talking about in the sense of wanting is like, Oh, I can't keep my hands off you. I can't wait to rip that shirt off, you know. And so that is the energy that we're talking about. Sadly, in long term relationships, a lot of times the our polls are all over the place. So you know, women in the world and we'll talk about this in its own episode, but women in the world have essentially had to grow out of a very masculine driven workplace. That's all about results, and driving behaviors, etc. So they have kind of lost themselves in terms of their own femininity, and their life energy. And it's all business, right. And what's that's created as well, is that men no longer know how to interact with that, because men don't want to step into that. And the whole feminist movement came along, which is really, really great and really powerful. But what that has done to a lot of relationships based on our belief systems, is it's kind of misaligned the poles in a relationship. I'm sure a lot of people have experiences, Kate and I have experienced this at some point our relationship to where it's kind of that roommate phase, like, everything's secure, and it feels good. We trust each other and kind of running a business. It's all good. But essentially, like it's dead, right? There's no fire, there's no passion.

Kate MacDougall
Yeah, you're missing that, like, feeling of the first look across the bar. And that Wink, you know, on the dance floor, and you're like, Oh, that's right. Like, it's like, yeah,

Eric MacDougall
excitement, energy, butterflies,

Kate MacDougall
kind of the unknown, kind of like, Ooh, you know, wonder when he looks like that was paying off. Oh, what?

Eric MacDougall
That's right. And we're going to talk a lot more about that in the episode of clarity. Again, fair warning, right? We all have this in us, that urge is there for all of us. Oftentimes, we can use it and kind of point in different directions and use it to our advantage, which is great. It doesn't, and we're going to talk about this, but it doesn't mean that you should be acting on this all the time. Oh, no. At All right. Or at all? I mean, if it's your your partner,

Kate MacDougall
well, yeah. He meant like the guy across the bar.

Eric MacDougall
I mean, if you're in a consensual relationship, and that's very exciting and attractive. But again, if you see a beautiful woman walk in, and you feel that energy come in you and your body gets hot, it doesn't mean that you should be doing that I think a lot of us have sense enough to understand that we shouldn't be doing that. Right. So we're going to talk a little bit more about that in polarity. But again, totally normal that you get that excitement, you get that that heat rise up, right, there's nothing wrong with that.

Kate MacDougall
It's an absolute normal human reaction, right? There are like, you know, scientists who've done years and years of research on this, like there are chemical reactions that happen between your body and another persons, that that actually have, like, proven that chemistry is a thing. But like, it doesn't necessarily mean that it needs to be, you know, answered all the time.

Eric MacDougall
Right? acted upon like, right, some of those urges. Exactly, exactly. really use them in other directions and other parts of Yeah, and

Kate MacDougall
bringing it into your marriage. And there's so many ways you can do that. And that's a that's an episode I'm really excited to do, because a lot of people you know, and I remember hearing Esther Perel, talk about it for the first time and kind of being like, what, oh, my goodness, that sounds so scandalous, but it was actually like, it totally makes sense. Like having kind of that, that third in your relationship. So we'll definitely get into that.