113. How To Love Even When It Hurts (Love, Romance, & Polarity part 1)

This week, Kate and Eric talk about feeling anxious about feeling anxious, allowing yourself to FEEL the feels, and what exactly Love means to us. 

Topics:
➡️ The common beliefs we are taught about love in committed relationships
➡️ Other validated intimacy 
➡️ Contractual love and the death of intimacy
➡️ What practicing love actually means, and how you can do it today!

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Eric MacDougall
So today, we're talking about love and we created this based on this three part series on love, romance, and polarity. Because we really wanted to kind of dissect each of these and help individuals and couples understand how they play out in relationships, how we often mistake one for the other, how it can create a lot of dysfunction in our relationships, if we don't understand exactly what they mean. And probably more than that, like how do we actually, because of this awareness that we have around them, because of this knowledge, put these things to use and create healthier relationships.

Kate MacDougall
And I think that it's it's one of those things where, you know, especially with with love that word is thrown out. So often so easily. I love you, I love this. I would love that love, love, love. And we may not necessarily really put thought into well, what does that even mean for me? And like tonight, just before we were recording, you asked me and I was like, Well, it means and then I said something and I was like, then you asked me a question. I was like, Yeah, I guess not? Well, then it means this. And through that conversation, I realized that like, I'm 30 in my mid 30s. And I was gonna say my age, and I forgot it. So I'm just gonna write this. And I don't think I have a clear definition of what love is. And then I realized through our conversation that like, having a definition of what love is, isn't even relevant to what love it actually is.

Eric MacDougall
Right? Certainly not in the way that we're talking about today. Yeah. And so this is where we want to kind of get started. So first, I want to start by saying that a lot of these ideas that we're about to talk about are our ideas, right? Our beliefs, a lot of it is based in law knowledge and teachers that we've read about and learn from. Some people have their own definition of love. And that's not right or wrong, right. It's up to them, they get to decide what that word means to them. It's fairly important. A lot of people in the world so a lot of independence in the world. Well, we've realized through a lot of our learnings and our experiences that most of the time when we talk about this idea of love, we think about it in terms of romantic love, right?

Kate MacDougall
Like feeling Yeah, exactly. In love with him.

Eric MacDougall
Yeah, it usually includes another person. There's like a commitment, right? So I talked about it in terms of like, it's when one person decides to live another and then it's kind of reciprocated. So they're in love. So that way, like, Oh, we're in love. A lot of people have the belief that like if one person you know, loves somebody or wants to be with someone and the other person doesn't that you can't love them. Like there's no love there because one person refuses it.

Kate MacDougall
Right. And one of the questions you asked me was well, can you love something that isn't alive? Can you love something that can't love you back? Can you love a parent who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's? Can you love can a newborn? Can you love a newborn child because obviously the newborn doesn't love you. They don't necessarily have an idea of what love is. You can love your lazy boy in your living room where you sit every night to watch TV, but they can't love you back. So can you love something that's inanimate or something that cannot love you back? And my answer was, well, you can

Eric MacDougall
write and this is where we want to kind of deconstruct it a bit for all the listeners because typically when we first start thinking about love, we think about romantic love, which is romance with is that the kind of fire that when we meet a person? Yeah, like the eyes lock, and it's like ooh, like, yes. Like we're in and then that grows into this infatuation and this depth to attachment anyways. So that's kind of what a lot of people think about in terms of love. Then there's a whole other school that seems to argue around this idea that love is a feeling as opposed to love is an action, right. And there's all kinds of people in words arguing about what that is, somebody says, love to feel there's no other feeling it's an action. I mean, I know it's a feeling. And that's a whole other idea, right? Is love a feeling? Well, in some cases, we talk about this feeling of love, right, and it means something in our body, and we associate the word to it. Other times we talk about in terms of action, which is a lot of the five love languages, all that stuff came to fruition because it was how can we love our partner through these actions, right, and the actions,

Kate MacDougall
I speak most of them and actually speak their language, right in order

Eric MacDougall
to have an impact and display love in a way that is received by your partner. And that's where five love languages came really into popularity, which was mostly based around actions, by gifts, words of affirmation, physical touch, quality time, these are all things that you actually do to affirm love to your partner, right? And so, for us, when we start to deconstruct exactly what love is to us, we move away from this whole idea of love being between two people, right. And oftentimes, when we think about this idea of love between two people in our relationship, we call it other validated intimacy, right, which means almost like this, this kind of federal is a contract certain, like, unspoken agreement, that because we're in a relationship, when I do something really nice for you, it will be returned to me. Right, right. And when that doesn't really work, one of us will bring it up, right,

Kate MacDougall
and it goes as deep as well. If you're not going to love me in the way I want to be loved, well, then I won't love you. And so that is part of that unwritten agreement, you know, like, Oh, you didn't buy me a really great gift for my birthday, because maybe that's my love language, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna withhold something from you, because I'm angry at you. And, and so that's how, you know, not quite understanding what love is, can come in impact us in a very negative way. Yeah. And

Eric MacDougall
what you're talking about is kind of this idea of the withholding of love, which, again, like people do, especially in long term relationships, right? It's what we're taught to do as kids, it's like, well, somebody isn't give you something, then withhold it from them, right. And that's kind of a way to like get them back to teach them a lesson. But this can also happen without necessarily any animosity towards your partner a lot of times, you know, if one partner thinks about wanting to take action, or wanting to practice, love and do these things, they just start to think about the relationship. They're like, Oh, I guess we don't do that anymore. Like my partner stopped doing it. So I guess it's just not important anymore. It's all stop doing it too, right. And then what you end up with is two partners who stop practicing love consistently. Because eventually, you know, that's kind of being removed from a relationship. And maybe we've already courted each other when I got married, we have kids. So now let's like conserve energy, and remove this idea of like practicing love. And now we just come with this unspoken agreement, that is just not something we do anymore,

Kate MacDougall
right. And sometimes you'll speak to people who have been in relationships, especially long term relationships, and we just kind of assumed that like, of course, these people are still in love. They've been married for like, 20 3040 years. Like, of course, there's still love there. And you ask those people like, do you still love your husband? Oh, absolutely. I still love them. But then I asked them, you know, well, what do you do to practice that love? Yeah, that's where we're going to go today with our topic is What do you do to practice love?

Eric MacDougall
Yeah, and we're gonna break that down a bit. And I do want to touch base on one more little thing you just said there, which is this idea of kind of championing long term relationships, because we think that's somehow a sign of success, and our relationship is longevity. Right? So we think a seven year relationship is way better than a 20 year relationship, right? That's not always the case. The reality is, is that we know through a lot of statistics, and a lot of people who have spoken up that, you know, they are in marriages, they've been in long term marriages for a very long time, and they are deeply miserable. And they're unhappy, and they haven't been happy for a very long time. But a big part of the reason why they're staying in that marriage is because either the fear of being alone or the fear of having to separate finances or breaking apart a family. Well, that fear is greater than the discomfort of what they're currently living in. Right, right. And so that's the human's ability to just be really resilient and say, You know what, I guess it's not that bad. So my relationship is not connected, and I'm not getting what I want. I don't really feel like you love them. Yeah, I do. Yeah, but it's like more than anything, the partnership kind of work. So if this just continues until I'm dead, it's totally fine. I've accepted it. And so those are for us. Not really good. writing samples of love and what we really want to move away from a society of either validating intimacy and to okay was talking about which is practicing love. And so if we break down our definition of what we think love is, it really is this practice of opening your heart, right. And this is where we're going to get kind of a little deeper on it, because we want to really bring it to a place where you can understand it in terms of a daily practice. And so, for us, we want to think about this idea of love being an practice a constant practice, so you never get there, you can always love another more deeply, you can love yourself more deeply, you can love a thing more deeply, you can love a hobby more deeply. All it is, is the practice of continuing to open yourself to it. And a big part of the challenge in long term human relationships is that we get to a place where we open ourselves up very, very quickly in the beginning, right, we open up all the things we love, we show all the parts we like about ourselves. And then you get to a place in a long term relationship where the only thing left to show are the not so good parts. Yeah. And now this idea of opening an intimacy kind of comes to a really hard halt, where it's, you're now you're very careful about what you're going to show and what you're going to reveal. Right. And so that's where now the practice of love starts to slow down. And so in the beginning, you're often taking actions that practice love, you're calling your partner you're checking in on them, you're expressing your love to them, you're buying them things you're showing up, you're sacrificing your time for them, you're doing all these things. But then over time, what you're realizing and especially after you receive a lot, you caught your partner, you get married, you have children, you all that stuff, well, now you start to think about, well, I want to conserve my energy. And I want to put my energy towards other things towards work towards friendships towards other stuff. And therefore I need to take this energy that I use so much in terms of practicing loving demeanor, my relationship, and I need to start to slow that down. And not only that, is that over time, the practice of love becomes harder in a long term relationship. Because there is a lot of, you know, challenging discussions that we're often dealing with that are hurtful,

Kate MacDougall
right, and new things coming up things that are, you know, challenging to a relationship, kids, you know, in laws and family baggage coming in. And these things are difficult for relationship. And they they, you know, come and change the course of what you're used to, right things are going a certain way. And all of a sudden you throw a baby in the mix, and whoa, like, I don't care how ready you are how much you want this baby, it definitely turns your life upside down. And so these challenges are coming up. And these conversations who never thought would go a certain way are starting to go that way. And you're thinking, what happened? Like we were so good.

Eric MacDougall
Yeah. And a lot of ways you were so good at se new challenges come in, they essentially serve as a mirror. Right? So you become way more vulnerable. You're not holding it together as much because you're challenged in a totally new way. And this can happen with kids within laws. It can happens with betrayals in a relationship,

Kate MacDougall
new jobs, new writers, new friends Exactly. And

Eric MacDougall
over time, what happens is, you slow down the amount of opening that you're doing, and you start to guard yourself, right. And so you become much more guarded, because you are now aware that this person that you deeply love, that you've moved towards that connecting Heart to Heart is not only the person you love deeper than anyone, right, who knows you better than anyone because this is the steps that you've taken to get here. But in a sense, they are also the person who can cause you the most pain. And because this pain is happening in long term relationships, right? This is inevitable, your long term relationship, you're going to hurt your partner, right? Can we hurt each other sometimes? Sometimes we're not even aware that we hurt each other until we bring it up. We're like, oh my god, I'm so sorry. Right. And this is why repair is so important, right? This is why coming back together so important. But this is essentially a fact of long term relationships. When you're living with someone in close proximity for so much, you are going to step on each other's toes. And if you do not learn to continue to practice love to continue to open yourself to this person, you're going to start to come off as very guarded. And this is where you end up in relationships where nobody talks about challenging topics anymore. Nobody pushes the boundaries of loving and revealing and being more intimate with each other. And you end up in this very businesslike relationship, complacency and yeah, because the practice of opening is no longer relevant. Now you're actually much more in terms of practicing being guarded. Now you're guarding yourself, your mind mapping your partner constantly trying to avoid conflict. You're trying to see what kind of mood they're in so you can get what you want. Right? So you've essentially created this ecosystem where you're on high alert all the time. And so now most of your energy is going towards you rocking the boat and keeping the peace in the ecosystem, as opposed to boldly practicing love continuously,

Kate MacDougall
right. And it's the same with the receiving of love, right. So I, as a partner can practice giving love, can practice loving my partner by doing all kinds of things for them, really opening up my heart to them, but it's also receiving that love, that's difficult, you know, if Eric makes me angry, you know, we just had an argument about something and I'm still kind of bitter about it, I have to be able to practice love in order to open my heart to receive the love he's giving me. I could, you know, close up and pout and cross my arms. And you know, I'm not talking to him, I'm gonna withhold things from him. I'm not mentioning anything. But what good is that from my relationship, if I can open my heart to love he's giving, you know, I can see that. He's trying to make efforts, I can see past the anger. And I can see that there's a bigger picture here. It's not about the dishes, it's not about that surface argument we just had, there's something much deeper in there. And if I can open my heart to that, then I can see past that and see really into his deepest fears. And understand that maybe the way he was acting was because deep down inside, he's just a scared little boy, or vice versa, that the way I was acting is just because I was a scared little girl. And so having that deep understanding and having that, you know, openness to open your heart to accept to receive your partner's loved can make all the difference when it comes to reconnecting after an argument, or after you know, things. When things are kind of at a standstill, you know, I'm really busy with work, things are going on and on. And on my life, I don't necessarily put time and energy into my relationship. And on the other end, I see Eric coming in. And everyday he's doing acts of love, you know, he's buying me things doing things for me checking in asking me how I'm doing, these are all bids, right bids for connection bids for the bids of love. will eventually, despite my busy schedule, and everything going on in my life, I have to be able to slow down and open my heart to that and be like, Whoa, Kate, holy moly, like you've been way too busy way on the go. You haven't even seen these gestures. And I find that even in our relationship, that's something that is challenging to me, like I find myself often I'll say, like, I just wish you would like, hold me more touched me more. And you're like, I've literally been touching you every single day. But because my heart wasn't open to the love. I'm not even noticing those gestures, I wish you would tell me you love me more often, you'll probably do in 1,000,001 ways, but also maybe the words, but because my heart is closed off to it. Because I'm angry at you about something else. I can't see past that anger to open my heart up to receive the love you are giving to me.

Eric MacDougall
Yeah, and this is this is why I love that you brought that up because this is why we call it you know love is a practice for us. It's a constant practice, every single day you wake up, you have an opportunity, a choice to practice love that day to practice the the art of opening yourself, right, opening your heart to another, allowing yourself to be loved allowing yourself to give love freely, because it's abundantly in us to give right? And you're talking about something that's really important, which is this idea of like receiving the love and another and one of the big things that we see in relationships a lot is when there's been a betrayal when there's been a breach of trust, right? Essentially this idea that when I've given you my heart, and you hurt me deeply, now I am closed off. So I'm way guarded. And as you're taking actions, right? I don't trust that those actions are true or real. And therefore I remain guarded. And when that happens, there's two things that happen. Oftentimes you have one partner that's like, why is it not working? How come you can't just, well, you got to kind of give them a lot of time to open back up to rebuild that trust and understand that this is genuine, right? You can't you know, in the matter of a month, two months, change your behavior and then erase 10 years of behavior. That's the reality. But as the partner who's receiving that this is what we talked about in terms of practicing openness. Is that scary? It's scary to open yourself up. But that is love. And that as a choice. I tell a lot of men, a lot of couples that I work with, like you don't have to open yourself up. No, you can just stay closed off, stay guarded. But it's not going to get you what you want.

Kate MacDougall
Yeah, if you want to see your relationship evolve and flourish and grow and you want that feeling of true connection, true passion between the two of you. You need that openness, the openness to give and to receive the love.

Eric MacDougall
Yeah, and some people are just like, well, I am open and they just say it. And the reality is is that very few Few of us are deliberate about practicing love, right? And what I mean by practicing love, I don't mean doing a bunch of stuff for your partner, I mean, opening your heart to them, like practicing your love. So that might look like doing something your partner, but not just because you're checking things off or your

Kate MacDougall
score part, right, that's the easy part. The easy part is to do all those things for your partner. The hard part is opening up your heart to your partner and understanding that those things might not be received right away. It's understanding that maybe I'm not speaking the language that they need me to speak. It's understanding that this is going to take time. And I'm going to give my partner the time it's going to take and I'm going to continue practicing. And I'm going to get curious, I'm going to ask them questions. But I am open to love. I'm there for it. Yeah, and this

Eric MacDougall
is where, why so many people are challenged with it. Because a lot of times when I explain this to men that I work with, the first response that I get is, I would love to do that. But my partner, but But yeah, and then they start talking about how their partner doesn't reciprocate or gets angry or whatever. And I say, oh, let's just reframe here again, because you loving your partner has nothing to do with them. Like you can love your partner from a distance, you can love your partner after they leave you, you can love your partner, if they've betrayed you, you can love your partner at all. Like at all times, it's a practice of opening yourself up and it's

Kate MacDougall
your choice. 100% Choose at any point, I've opened myself up to my partner, I've opened my heart to love. And at any point you can choose, well, I've done it for long enough. And now I'm I'm done trying. That's right, that's okay.

Eric MacDougall
Yeah, in that case, right, by loving myself, by opening my heart to this person, I will be honest with them. And instead of just playing this cat and mouse game, or this, this, you know, whatever relationship game where we keep one upping each other or trying to hurt each other, I'm just going to tell them, hey, I'm sorry, but I've made the commitment to myself to move on from this relationship. It's no longer working for me. And I thought the best way to love You and to love me is to be open about that. So I'm gonna go ahead and end the relationship and either move to a co parenting relationship, or try to create a different relationship, if that feels true to me. But if it doesn't, if you essentially say I actually can't have you in my life, it's too hurtful to be in this close proximity. I have to take that step. But this is the idea is that a lot of people when we think about love, we think it's dependent on another person. So we're like, Why can't love this person until they Yeah, or why I'd love to, but they're not. And that is not love. That is what we call other valid intimacy, which is a contractual agreement that you create in order to create safety for yourself. And that is great, if that's the kind of relationship that you want to create, if that's your thing, and you and your partner love that. It's like, Hey, we've created this contractual agreement where we have to give each other everything based on the squadron mentality or whatever, that's your thing. But that does not lead to secure attachment. Right? This leads to whenever your partner steps out of line, or does something different, is essentially Oh, now you stepped out of line. So now it's like you're you're breaching the contract. And that is not love. That's just a business relationship. Right? Yeah. And sadly, too many of us are at a place where we feel so insecure in our relationships, we feel so secure, and we're so so insecure, and we're so guarded, right? That we're unwilling to bring down our guard, unless we get some form of agreement from our partner.

Kate MacDougall
Absolutely. And putting down your guard is the hardest thing to do in the relationship. That is something that can't always be done alone. Sometimes you need professional help, coaching, you need therapy, whatever that looks like. But it can take years and years and years for that guard to come down. But trust us when you say when we say because we've been there been there done that when that guard comes down, you can feel the difference, you can understand like, Ah, this is what love is like, like the sigh of relief, right? Like, it is possible there is a light at the end of the tunnel. But you have to first off be open to it, open to receiving it open to giving it giving it and then you know, let let it just be

Eric MacDougall
Yeah, because it is, you know it is in you to give right love. You can love people around you, you can love and just I'm talking about like opening your heart. That's what we're talking about here. And a big part of what you said was really important study of getting help. Sometimes it's about finding somebody secure in your life. You can create that loving relationship with, right. And I'm not talking about a lustful relationship with another person. I'm not talking about betraying your partner, you know, like perfect example is what we do in the mastermind, right? We create a space for men to support to love each other, to allow ourselves to share our truth to be open to be vulnerable. And despite that to be accepted, right and over time, what happens in a mastermind is these men whose hazard guard up for so long, because that's how they were raised. And now they're in a relationship with that to keep the guard up. For the first time ever. They're like, wow, like, I've never allowed anyone to see me this way,

Kate MacDougall
right. And I feel that once your guard is down, it's so much easier to see the love that your partner is giving you. Because it's surprising how much how love is different, how people give love in such different ways. And when your guard is up, it's hard for you to see that your wife putting out the garbage for you that week, because usually that's the task you do. That's a sign of love. And to you might just be like, Well, it's because I didn't do it. But to her, it was a sign of love. Just little acts like that that might seem you know, like nothing. That is a sign of love. The fact that she poured your cup of coffee or, or topped off your topped off your you're topped up your coffee. That morning, that might have been the sign of love. But if your guard is up, and you're not open to receiving love, you're not going to see those small acts.

Eric MacDougall
Yeah. And this is where we came to this conclusion around. You know what love was for us. And what we want to share with you, which essentially is this practice, right? It is a constant practice, you can get up every day. And you can choose to open yourself right to open your heart to another, to open your heart to the world, to be real, to be vulnerable to speak your truth, but also to allow others to love you. And this is not easy. This is a constant practice. Like you said, a lot of us are guarded. A lot of us walk around with masks on we're all armored up in all kinds of relationships.

Kate MacDougall
We live in a disposable society. Yeah, I don't love the table that you got every day. I'm gonna throw it out.

Eric MacDougall
Yeah, I don't like this friend anymore. Kind of my life. Right? I don't need my in laws, get rid of them. Yeah. But essentially, it's this idea where I choose to actively practice love. And that can look on the outside different in all kinds of ways. Absolutely. Only, you know, deep down if you're practicing love. So many of us have manufactured other ways that look like love that are not genuine love. Right? Oh, I Well, I bought her a nice car. And I gave her a bunch of stuff. And all I'm I've been with her for 50 years, even though she's never nice to me like no, that's not love. Love is every single day, right? Or when you choose and have an opportunity, you open your heart to another. Right? That's the this practice of love. And that's what we are encouraging you to think about taking into your life. Right? How can I practice love with my kids, with my spouse with my you know, in laws with my cousins with my neighbors with my my, you know what I mean? It's not lost. It's doesn't mean anything except I am opening myself to this heart to heart connection with another human being. Yeah, and

Kate MacDougall
I truly think that if you take one minute of your time right now and just think, what am I doing to show love to my partner to, to practice opening up to love daily. I'm sure you could do better. Because we could all continue and grow and evolve the way we are opening ourselves up to love.

Eric MacDougall
Yeah, it all even to you and better. You know, I love that challenge. Because I want to challenge everybody to listening. Like right now as you're listening to the podcast, take a moment and think of someone in your life and love them. Like not even in terms of Go call them go do anything I'm saying like right now in this moment. Just think about appreciating them, finding loving them, yeah, seeing them in a different light, and really opening your heart to that person. It's gonna be anyone, right? And so I highly encourage you to do that make this a practice, it not only is going to have you living a more fulfilling life, but your relationships are going to be that much deeper. And people are going to get to know you in a much more authentic and real way. Right. And to us, you know, what we've experienced is just this total sense of freedom to allow ourselves to love people openly as we choose to love them. Not because they need to do anything different or be different or give us something back. It's I'm sorry, I love you. Because I choose to practice that.