Many couples fall into the habit of lying to themselves because they are trying to follow a cultural script of how they should behave. Real breakthroughs happen when you stop projecting your own desires onto your partner and start seeking true clarity instead. It isn’t just about being honest; it’s about understanding that your partner might define things like “security” or “passion” in a completely different way than you do. By identifying your core relationship values and defining them with specific examples—like what exactly makes you feel safe—you remove the guesswork and the frustration. When you trade vague expectations for radical clarity, you create a foundation where both people can finally feel seen and supported.
Full Transcript
[00:00:00]Susan: I think couples just never really break the, the habit of lying to themselves, like the living under this cultural miasma of expectation of how you should behave. So truth telling.
[00:00:18]Tim: How about you?
[00:00:19]Tim: What do you think? I think it, for me, if that’s important. Sure. But I think it might be more along the lines of, the not understanding what their partner wants.
[00:00:31]Susan: So the relationship values
[00:00:32]Tim: more, it’s more like the relationship. That was like a su super big breakthrough for me too.
[00:00:36]Susan: Yeah.
[00:00:36]Tim: Was like projecting what I wanted onto you. Mm-hmm. And then being super frustrated and not understanding why that, well, why isn’t that what you want?
[00:00:45]Susan: Mm-hmm.
[00:00:45]Tim: That, that’s fair. I think think that might, yeah. I mean like, I don’t think you could
[00:00:49]Susan: separate. I think it’s, those are the things, and
[00:00:52]Tim: in a sense that is honesty, but a lot of times people, it’s clarity.
[00:00:57]Tim: Yeah. They don’t even know. Yeah. And they don’t know how to [00:01:00] structure or they don’t know how to communicate it.
[00:01:01]Susan: Yeah.
[00:01:02]Tim: Right.
[00:01:02]Susan: Because it’s a two step process. When you take the relationship magic workbook, first thing you do is you rank order the things. I give you a big list of them, and you rank order them.
[00:01:10]Susan: Then you re-ran order them over and over again until you’re really clear that these are the ones that you cannot be in relationship. If you do not have them, you would rather be alone if you can’t get them.
[00:01:21]Susan: And then you go to this next step, which is, okay, what does that, what does passion mean? What, what exactly is that?
[00:01:28]Tim: Yeah. What does it mean to you? That is, and it might be something different for each person,
[00:01:31]Susan: It’s gonna be a total. Mm-hmm. What does freedom mean to me?
[00:01:34]Tim: Mm-hmm.
[00:01:34]Susan: Right.
[00:01:35]Susan: You know that, that, defining it with specifics. What’s security? Security is things like. He just got the car serviced. My car’s gonna, my car runs perfectly.
[00:01:45]Susan: Um, we have a burglar alarm, we have a safe word. We have, he always pays our health insurance on time. One time he missed a payment and I was so mad at him and he, he, because just one
[00:01:57]Tim: payment,
[00:01:58]Susan: one payment. what if something [00:02:00] happened? And we didn’t have health insurance.
[00:02:02]Susan: You know what if I got in an accident, like it really woo, you know, made me feel so unsafe and so he knows the things that I need to feel safe and I, because I gave him a specific list.
