127 Unify Your Household: Maintain Harmony In Relationship

Polarity and harmony tend to be at odds in relationships— Obviously, the more different you and your partner are, the more likely there will be misunderstandings. But does that mean a polarized relationship needs to be a chaotic one? Absolutely not. Here's how to ensure harmony while maintaining polarity in your relationship.

Transcript

The Ruando podcast is an exploration of the unconscious and the game of life.

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Enjoy the show.

I'm out here on vacation with the baby mama.

We're in northern Thailand by the rice batty fields.

And actually,

Right in the spot that I'm recording this a couple days ago,

We had a fight.

It was a good fight,

In my opinion,

One that brought us closer together.

I think it's actually important that in intimate relationships you have a little tizzy.

Anyway,

What the fight was about isn't really important.

It actually is what every relationship fight comes down to underneath,

Which is misunderstandings based on differences in perspectives.

Now of course,

My girl and I,

We have differences,

Obviously,

From our masculinity and femininity,

From our cultures,

From our.

.

.

A lot of things,

Right?

So even though it was a misunderstanding,

I do ultimately think I was still right,

Of course,

But that actually is not important.

What's important in any kind of fight actually doesn't really matter who's right a lot of the time,

Because really what these fights reveal are places where you're not on the same page.

And in a polarized relationship,

I was thinking about this afterwards,

In a polarized relationship between a masculine person and a feminine person,

Because of the fact that hormonally,

Biologically,

Neurologically,

You're coming from really different places,

This is something that's going to happen a lot,

Right?

So rewind a couple days when I was still not in the greatest mood before we have actually resolved and that was maybe a couple hours.

I was thinking about this.

I was feeling a little resentful,

As most people do in the middle of a fight.

Then I started thinking about this podcast that I listen to,

This husband and wife team.

They seem to be very much the same person.

So unlike what I just said,

In a polarized relationship where by necessity you are very different people,

Let's say a masculine person,

A feminine person,

But of course any two people are going to have many other differences,

Cultural,

Familial,

Whatever.

I was thinking about this particular couple.

They're a little bit older,

They have the same profession,

The same education,

Basically the same opinions on stuff,

And it's nice listening to them talk because they seem to be a very harmonious married couple,

But it's really hard to imagine them fucking.

It's really hard,

Because they're so the same person,

They're like peas in a pod,

They almost look the same,

It's really hard to imagine them having polarity.

In fact,

I think most people observing them would be like,

Hey,

They're a pretty low polarity relationship.

In the middle of the,

When I was in this resentful mode,

I was like,

Oh yeah,

It must be nice to date someone who's just like you,

Right,

Because you'd understand each other,

You'd have a way greater overlap of your perspectives,

There'd be less opportunity for misunderstanding.

But at the same time,

I'm not envious of a relationship that is low polarity,

Because polarity,

Which the exact thing that allows for lust and deep attraction,

Is also the thing that kind of makes it easy to fight.

And it reminds me of my one taste taste,

There was an adage that was often said,

I don't know who originated it,

But probably the guru,

Which is,

When there's tension,

You can either fuck or you can fight.

Right,

There's this acknowledgement that fucking and fighting kind of stem from the same feeling,

Which we can say is polarity.

So let's think about this trade-off further,

Of like how polarity,

And not that you can't have harmony in a polarized relationship,

It's just harder,

Because polarity and ease of understanding are inversely proportional,

Right?

Opposites attract,

But opposites also make it easy to fight.

So then I went on pondering,

Okay,

Given that I want a higher polarity relationship,

Obviously,

You know,

Sex is important to me,

I like feeling masculine with my very feminine wife,

It's,

Yeah,

There's many,

Many virtues to that,

Many things I like about that.

But at the same time,

I want harmony in my household.

So it's like,

Okay,

How can I increase harmony or maximize harmony while maintaining polarity?

And what it came to is this,

If you want to have harmony and polarity in a given relationship,

Then you must unify your household.

Unifying your household means creating a group identity,

Right?

And in my case,

A group identity between myself and my bride to be,

Right?

In the moments that we were fighting in the couple hours that we were not on the same page and not feeling the most positive feelings towards each other,

We were in two separate identities,

Right?

I was judging her,

She was judging me,

I was resentful at her,

Which we're going to talk about,

She was resentful at me,

All because of misunderstandings,

And we made up of course,

And it was great.

But in that moment,

We were two totally separate beings,

As opposed to being one united team.

And the one key thing to unify in a relationship,

To create that group identity where you feel as if you are one connected being,

As opposed to two people that can misunderstand each other or have conflicts,

Is to reduce resentment to zero.

Let's say this again.

If you want to unify your household,

You must reduce your resentment to zero.

And I'm talking about your resentment,

Right?

You can't always control what your partner or your teammate,

Let's stick with romantic relationships,

You can't control whether your partner is resentful or not.

I'd actually say if you've reduced,

Removed your resentment and the other person just won't,

Probably not a good person to continue in a relationship with because you can't force other people to change.

However,

In my experience,

Not only does this put the agency on yourself,

Where you can reduce your resentment to zero and you can feel better,

In most situations,

Especially if you're in love or feel positively underneath it all,

If you can reduce your resentment to zero,

You'll also reduce the other person's resentment to zero.

Because it's very hard,

Resentment is kind of this covariant thing where it's easy to be resentful to someone who's resentful towards you,

It's hard to be resentful to someone who is just loving you.

But of course,

This is easier said than done,

So let's dig into resentment.

Resent at its root,

What it means for us psychologically,

Is an assumption that there are external forces that can cause you to have a bad time.

I'm going to flush this out more and I've spoken about resentment in a few different episodes,

I spoke about it in the Nietzsche episodes,

In sexuality episodes that we've had on the podcast,

Because this thing,

This feeling of resentment,

It's kind of this universal feeling,

You know,

They talk about resentment a lot in 12-step programs,

It's this core feeling that basically ruins your reality,

And that's not to go jump to mystical setting,

But like sticking with relationships,

If you are resentful at your partner,

Forget about you know,

Harmony and you know,

Relationship skills for a second,

Just from the world view,

Just for the assumption you're telling your own self-conscious,

Subconscious rather,

If you are resentful at this other person,

Then you are telling yourself,

Your assumption on reality is,

Here is this other person who can cause me to have a bad time,

And to relate this to the Nietzsche stuff,

I know it seems maybe crazy to bring up Nietzsche in an episode about romantic relationships,

But I'm going here,

Resentment or resentment as Nietzsche spoke about in his genealogy of morals,

This feeling,

This emotion is basically putting you into slave consciousness,

Right,

It's one of the defining aspects of a slave morality,

This resentment at this other entity,

The master or the authority figure that can,

That actually calls the shots on your life,

Right,

As opposed to taking on the master archetype yourself of recognizing or reinforcing to your own subconscious that you are in charge of your reality,

And bring it back to the relationship,

You are in charge of how you feel in the relationship,

And no matter what seemingly crazy feelings your partner is having or irrational or unreasonable feelings she's having,

Or he's having,

Whoever you're dating,

They're not going to bring you down because you are a solid person,

Right,

This kind of goes back to basic stoic ideals as well.

So a little bit later,

After we had mostly made up,

But I was still feeling a little bit of resentment,

If I'm honest,

I was journaling about this all,

And I was journaling about other things and kind of like the content of our arguments,

It was a little bit related to life plans,

Maybe we have a baby on the way,

One of the things that is stressful for both of us is recognizing,

Oh man,

Like our life expenses are going to go way up,

Right,

So I was thinking about that,

I was thinking about this,

The arguments and all that,

And I had a resentful moment while I was journaling,

And I thought and I wrote down actually,

If I'm going to make it rain,

Right,

If I mean,

How I speak about making money for my family,

If I'm going to make a lot more money for my family,

If I'm going to make it rain,

Then I need everything to be harmonious at home,

Right,

This is kind of this resentful moment of where I was like,

She needs to get on board,

Right,

This is,

You know,

Of course,

I'm sharing with you,

You know,

My resentful thoughts,

Like this is where I went for a second,

Right,

And I looked at it on the paper,

Which is why I think journaling is so great,

You can actually look at your thoughts,

And like,

Oh,

That's kind of a,

It's kind of a slavish thought to have,

Right,

It's like,

It's not the way I want to lead my family,

It's very not king archetype,

Not master archetype of me,

And I was like,

Okay,

How do I modify this to remove all resentment,

And the thing that was most fun was actually just to flip the causality,

Right,

It was an if then statements,

It was a conditional statement,

My resentful statement was,

If I'm going to make it rain,

Then she needs to get on board,

Or I mean,

What I actually wrote down is,

If I'm going to make it rain,

Then we need to be harmonious at home,

Right,

Or my house,

I forget exactly,

My house needs to be in order,

That's how I talk to myself,

Then I decided to flip it to remove resentment,

Which brought me to a kind of magical thought,

But it was like,

If I remove all of my resentment at home,

Then I'm going to make it rain,

Right,

Now I realize this is a bit of a magical thinking statement,

I'm not trying to say,

You know,

That I believe flat out literally that if I love my wife better,

A million dollars is just going to appear in my bank account,

I'm not saying that,

But it is a nice thought,

Right,

It is a nice thought to think,

If I make everything feel good at home,

Which I have control over,

Right,

Like I'm half of the people at home,

Then everything will work out business wise,

Everything will work out with my entrepreneurial projects,

You know,

Maybe it's not true,

Literally,

But it feels good to think about,

And probably a lot of us can think of instances where this may be,

You know,

A bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy,

Stay with me here,

As I realize I'm going in a different direction than the way we started,

If I unify my household,

Then I'll make it rain,

If it was true,

That would be cool,

If somehow by making better love to my wife,

More money came in,

You know,

Sex magic,

I'd like to believe in it,

No proof though,

Right,

But even if it's not true,

Having this worldview,

But playing with this as a working assumption,

Would make things really good in my relationship,

Right,

If I just,

If I really entertained the idea that making better love to my wife,

And treating her better,

And ensuring harmony,

And removing all resentment I could possibly ever think,

If that somehow made money,

It would make my relationship really great,

Put me in a better mood,

Put her in a better mood,

We both would probably end up making more money,

Just be in a better mood,

Right,

So there's something a little bit more realistic there.

And of course,

This is also hormonally backed,

If you caught my physiological toughness episode,

We do know that when we have the perception of control,

Even if it's not real,

When we have the perception of control,

Our cortisol levels drop,

Our dopamine levels rise,

Our testosterone levels rise,

And we just feel better,

And therefore can perform better,

So there's like kind of a roundabout way where this is true,

If not directly.

Then I started entertaining the magical side of this,

Because there was a period of my life where I really entertained magical thinking,

Particularly when I was in the sex cult,

And it reminded me of something,

I spoke about in another episode on arousal response in couples,

You can look it up if you're interested,

But I also spoke about resentment in that episode,

Because something I observed,

Both in the cult,

But also as a sexuality counselor in New York for a number of years,

When two people are resentful,

It actually is physically hard to feel sensation between them,

Right,

And like,

You know,

I counseled a lot of people,

A lot of couples,

Verbally,

But they would share with me like every single time that a couple had a bad sex life,

Or they just couldn't get off with each other,

Or just didn't enjoy the feeling between each other,

It was always resentment,

And a lot of couples would reach out to me for like sex techniques,

Or like ways to make things spicy,

But actually the one thing that worked every time was to reduce the resentment between them,

And once the resentment was gone,

They end up having a great sex life again,

Because actually,

When you're resentful at a thing,

Or stick with people,

Resentful at a person,

It actually becomes difficult to feel them physically,

And I'm not even talking about emotionally,

But here's where emotions and sensations,

Or emotions have a real effect on our physical sensations,

If you're resentful at a person,

It becomes damn near impossible to feel pleasure,

Even if they have the perfect sexual technique,

You know,

You're mad at your spouse,

They're doing a great job,

You know,

Touching your body,

But like your body actually won't feel it,

Right,

I know this to be true,

And there's something that they would say in the cult a lot,

Which is resentment kills sensation.

If you have the worldview,

The assumption of reality,

That there are other things outside of you,

That are to blame for you not having a good time,

Moment to moment,

For you not enjoying your existence,

There are other things that control your happiness,

Then it makes sense that you would choose to take in less of reality,

Right,

If your reality sucks,

You take in less of it,

This causes apathy,

If you think that interactions with a person,

Your spouse,

Is making you have a bad time,

It makes sense that you would turn off,

You would filter out what they were doing to you,

Right,

You would not hear them as clearly,

You would not be able to feel their touch,

Because their touch is just not something you want to take in.

A lot of what we experience,

Even through our five senses,

Is filtered.

But what all of this brought me to,

After this fight,

After this journaling,

After this pondering,

Is that I would like to take on the working assumption,

And I invite you to as well,

That if you can actively reduce your resentment on everything,

Of people,

Of things,

Of situations,

If you bring all of your resentment to zero,

Then you will actually have a greater influence over your reality.

Just want to be clear,

I don't know if this is true,

Right,

This is a bit of a magical thinking statement,

But we could probably tie this together indirectly with self-fulfilling prophecy,

And even if it's false,

Even if all of this is bullshit,

Right,

And there,

You know,

Life is actually random,

And there is no control,

I bet you,

That you will feel a lot better about your life,

And everything will be a lot better.

If you can just actively reduce your resentment to zero.

So I just want to bring up this caveat,

Because I can imagine people thinking of like,

What if my wife is really being a bitch,

Or my employer is really being an asshole,

There is some situation that really is not cool.

This is not to say that you accept everything without any correction,

It's that you actively reduce your resentment to zero,

Which,

Let's use the relationship example,

If in the middle of that fight,

I had the consciousness to drop my resentment to zero,

I could still say what I wanted in our relationship that maybe wasn't happening,

Right,

You could still say all that stuff,

But by the virtue of not having resentment,

I would not be framing it as if she needs to do this for me,

Or she needs to stop doing this thing to me,

Or whatever,

Which is really the root of every fight,

Right,

That kind of attitude,

And instead view it as here we are as one unit,

You know,

Here we are in this room,

Let's just rearrange the furniture together,

Right,

Here we are as one,

In the same way that you would adjust your own behavior to say,

Better achieve your goals,

Or have more internal harmony,

Taking that same attitude within your relationship,

Within your team,

Whatever.

So I know I went on maybe some tangents on this one,

I think it's all important,

In unifying your household with polarity,

Which I think can be taken,

You know,

This idea of this final takeaway of reducing your resentment to zero,

Doing your best to reduce your resentment to zero,

In your relationship,

In life,

At the government or whatever,

If you can do this,

Your life will absolutely be better,

I'm certain of that,

Because no matter what the life situation is,

You always have control over whether or not you feel resentful,

Because all resentment is,

Is this assumption that other people can spoil their good time,

Which is certainly not the goal of any empowered person.

So I challenge you,

I challenge you to join me,

Just taking on this working assumption that if you reduce your resentment to zero,

Everything would be better,

And let's see what happens.

George Clooney vs.

JW