Our Wedding Was Perfect. Then Our Relationship Fell Apart: Baya & Emmy’s Story

Good morning. Good afternoon. Where are you guys?

Austin. Austin.

So it's 1115.

12th night wedding.

Almost 1219. Right.

All right, well, you bet. You've been on podcast for me. Do you do? But mostly business related. You haven't done it like, just together or do you do first relational.

First relational podcast.

Yeah, sure.

Right. We met the three of us, actually, the four of us. Because Rebecca was there when you guys took, a boot camp, like, but you were like, you're diving in at what point in your relationship was that?

It's that early? We we weren't engaged.

Your memory is going to be better than God.

We, No, it wasn't that. It was almost.

Two years ago.

Okay, yeah. So we would have been a year in. We're three years in right now. Yeah. So we would have been at that point.

You were not engaged. Now you're married. Is that right?

Now we're married. Yeah. Right.

How'd that go? When do you get married?

We're still married.

Oh, we went to wedding. Wedding went great. We crashed after our relationship. Crash after. But the wedding was phenomenal.

It was like, did you get married?

August 2024.

So not quite a year ago.

Yeah, we're. We're creeping up on it.

Okay, but you said your wedding was phenomenal. Where do you get married?

In Santa Barbara. At a friend's house. Okay. And we basically turned it into a what our friends have called the Creative Olympics.

Tell me about it.

Yeah, it's like Burning Man.

It was. It was like Burning Man meets RuPaul's Drag Race. Meets adult summer camp. It was it. What we basically did is we decided for our wedding, we would throw out every tradition that we didn't feel was us, and then we would replace it with experiments. Basically, that felt like they encapsulated our relationship. And I would say part of how we think about our relationship is through the lens of Dada, which is a, it's it was like surrealism art. And then Dada came after. And Dada art was basically.

You explain what surrealism is.

First. Well, so so I actually don't think you need to know what's realism, okay, is to understand Dada. Okay. Basically what was happening in the art world was there's this kind of uppity art culture, and Dada artists came along and they were like, you know what we want to do? What kind of screw you to the uppity art culture? And instead what they did was they started bringing toilets into museums or putting putting a banana on the wall and putting tape across it and calling it art and charging tons for it. And so is this. It's it's kind of absurdism, and we have a lot of that in our relationship. And so that's really what our wedding was. It was absurdist. Yeah. Do you want to talk about some of the things that we did to make it super?

Yes, please.

Like, how far do we go? They had this really brilliant idea. So every year, I think for the, for the last three years, we have we, we do for every, each of our birthdays, we do a cake competition. It's didn't start off that way, but it's now kind of grown into that. And we try to to one up each other every year. And so we get these very extravagant cakes made that are all of these inside jokes about of our relationship, a lot of vulgarity.

So.

What else would you say about them?

Yeah. I mean, they're strange. They're they're very, you know, you might not understand them if you don't know the inside jokes, but they're, you know that show this is cake. Yeah. It's they're that level is don't make them is it is it's a cake. Yeah. That, that we, we have a cake maker here and then found one in California who who designs our cakes for us. But we basically give them what did you call a brief like a cake brief. This is what we need. I mean, one year Emmy. Emmy literally sent the cake maker a photo of my of my butt in lingerie.

You photo the your butt wasn't in lingerie. I sent them a photo of your butt. She was in a dressing room, and I was like, hey, can you turn around for a second? And she was like, pulling up pants. I just snapped quick photo, but. And I was like, I hope this isn't. I texted. I messaged the cake maker because she was asking for skin color and the tone and like what shape?

I was like, how that's how detailed that's.

So I sent her photo. I said, I really hope this isn't inappropriate.

So sorry that cake that year was a it was my butt with my favorite lingerie on it. This is a cake with. But we at that point we had a joke about Care Bears and I was Bedtime Bear and it had Bedtime Bear sliding off of a rainbow because we're gay. Yeah, and Bedtime Bear was sliding out of the.

But where was the rainbow coming out of the bowl?

I was going to anyway.

And what was the what was the inside of the cake?

And it was chocolate y. You say that anyway. So. So bring it back to the wedding, then.

So then wait, wait, are you going to tell me why it was chocolate on the inside? I mean, is it obvious? Or is it because.

You like when you.

Like? Yeah.

You got it from the devil. Yeah. Okay. I know.

Go there, but here we are.

All right, so this has to do with the wedding, because.

Sure, it isn't so for the wedding. What we did was we, we basically built to bare wanted to build these cake teams, and we did that so that people could feel like a sense of belonging and kind of know people before, because we had people from kind of all walks of life coming to our wedding, from our childhood to people who, you know, had recently met that we wanted to build deeper bonds with. Yeah. And so we built these cake teams on WhatsApp and had people there. We said, no boundaries. You can build whatever cake you want. We gave them a budget and we said, submit your cake by this date, your cake designed by this date to our cake maker in California. And then the cake maker would drive all the cakes up and then we kind of didn't I don't I'm not sure we recognize you were going to do this at the time, but we we got everyone to present their cake.

So there was like a presentation which really took the entire cake competition to the next level. But so we had these groups of people just design cakes about us, and they were.

Absurd to say the I mean, it was raucous. It was like we're saying, oh, we had a little cake competition. No, it was total full blown chaos. It was it was nuts. So we just made it. We made it us every part of the wedding. We did a drag show after that.

Go into what the cakes were. I mean, you're just going to like, gloss over that, you know?

Okay. They ask that you would come. I'd love you. I'd love you to talk about the cakes. Okay. One was a one. Well, no, we just give a bucket. We're not going to. Okay. One was actually a, Okay. The. Hold on. I'm going to pause here. Why are we here today? What do you want to learn? And then we'll tell you more.

Well, here's what I've found out. I have, I have this enormous privilege, of talking to couples all the time. I talked to couples. I mean, just my practice is full, and I have all of these. And one of the things I've realized is that my perspective on how relationships work has really shifted to kind of like they work when they work and they don't work when they don't work. And people make them work in ways that they make them work. And so with Mer's Therapy Radio, I'm like, I want to talk to him. I want my listeners to have the same privilege I have, which is listen to couples talk about, like how they make their relationship work. And the first thing I was going to ask you guys, except for the part about a, have you seen the movie centers?

Because I wanted to talk about it with someone was, what's your thing like? What is what are you guys about? What your what's your jam? And you're telling me you're telling me it's a little bit absurdist. It's a little bit, it's like, will you kind of make it up as we go? You have already said something, though, that I am chomping at the bit to hear about, champing at the bit. I can't ever remember.

How it was.

Just honestly champing. Chomping. It's something it has to do with horses. But this is amazing. Like, I love that this is what you're saying. And, so telling me about your kind of. I got it. You guys are willing and wanting to get outside the bounds of sort of traditional things that don't serve you, and, and you're super creative thinkers, and that's amazing to me. I knew that, of course, but I think this is fantastic. If you want to tell me about your cakes, tell me about your cakes. Otherwise, I got questions.

Okay. Let's go. Maybe. Maybe the cakes will fit in another moment.

Well, okay. So, you're gay, which you just told me, right? So we know because you're two ladies. The two of you are. When I asked you if you would come on the podcast and I was telling you kind of this thing about, like. And you're like, maybe you want to talk about being gay, which I don't need to. We can. But I am interested in, like, what is that? What does that mean for you guys? Like what? Who cares? But like, how do you appreciate or understand that, as part of the dynamic that you bring to one another, is it is it worth diving into for now? It's not the thing I really, really want to talk about, but I do want to hear about it since we've already referenced it once.

So this is this is what you were champing at, Chuck. No. That's hilarious. Before I got it. Got it? Yeah.

This is just like. Because it's like, let's just let's just name the elephant in the room and see if it's a see if it matters.

Okay? Do you want to start or do you want me?

I think you probably start. I mean, are you gay?

I would not consider myself gay.

I know, I.

Consider myself, yes, I there's a reason I.

Know this.

Yeah, well I've, I've until I have only dated men. And would have considered myself straight until I mean in fact I called I basically copied Glenn and Doyle when she called herself an Abby sexual.

Yeah.

And I was like, I'm just an Amish sexual. That's just what I am. I it's like, man, an Emmy.

Yeah. That's it. You told me in Orlando, I was wondering if that would come up, because when we were walking around, we were walking around that conference and we were talking about exactly this. And you said that. You said, I think I'm an Emmy sexual. So for those of us who are, don't listen to Glennon Doyle and don't know who Abby Wambach is. What do you mean when you say that?

Well, I mean, I mean, exactly it was men an Emmy. That's the like I was attracted to men and then somehow, I mean, just sort of snuck through the cracks. Think that's, that's how I experienced it at the time. And I didn't, it was I didn't come out, there was no coming out, it was like oh I'm attracted to this woman. We were exploring and we, we fell in love pretty quickly. And I would say.

Do you, do you know like you have a suspicion or a theory about why, why me and not Sally or Mary or Beth.

Well you know there's a pattern, there's a term pan sexuality, which is I guess if I was going to label myself anything. I think both of us agree on this one. A bit. It's energy. It's like attracted to energy. So why? I mean, I don't know. She has swagger. She's hot, like,

But he's also her best friend. So like, you're kind of weird. So.

Yeah.

Not not it's not about you.

Is that really, really your best friend's name is Ali?

Yeah. What about that? Yeah.

So it's not you. It's me.

Yeah. So, Sally. So I would say it was as surprising to me as anyone that I was. I mean, I'm fairly open minded in general, but I never been with a woman, so it was like, okay, I'm open minded to explore, but what this turned into anything. I mean, that was a big question mark, although we felt pretty hurt pretty fast. And once it was on, it was like there was just no question, and I wasn't, I actually, we didn't have so much around my sexuality come up.

No, I asked you about it a couple times and you were like, I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah.

Yeah. So it wasn't it just didn't actually it wasn't a big part of my it's actually more a part of my exploration now than it has been in the past few years. Because as I have opened myself up to Emmy, my scope has started to widen my scope of what is attraction, what am I attracted to has started. And so my lens has slowly but surely started to shift and help. Because lesbian TikTok also sent us down rabbit holes where I mean, it was like, by the way, I'm not the only one. And I was like, you're definitely the only one. And then we found lesbian TikTok, which is just TikTok, where the algorithm, the algorithm feeds you lesbians. And then I was like, wait a second, we.

Didn't find.

Lesbian take to it, I found this, I found lesbian TikTok. You and I went down a rabbit hole. I mean, I was like, whoa, wait, you're right, there are more of you, but you're also the only one. And I love you forever and ever right now.

Wait wait wait wait wait. More of you. What's means what.

Women with swagger like. Oh, yeah. We run in a primarily street community. Yeah. And so the women in our community are mostly feminine, straight, maybe some bisexual women, but they're all pretty feminine presenting. And so, you know, Emmy is the one of the more masculine presenting women in our community. So it's like, I mean, a bunch of fem chicks. Yeah, I wouldn't be. I mean, for me, I wouldn't be attracted to anyone who I'm just not. Yeah. But then on TikTok, all of a sudden, there are these got more masculine golden retriever masks are my thing. Apparently. For like, masculine women who really want to snuggle, basically. Yeah, I've. I've come to understand.

And I mean, that's not your story though. You have a totally different, sort of onramp to.

Kind of I mean, kind of similar, though. I fell in love with a woman, like in my early 30s and.

Just believing through then that you were straight or understanding that you were straight, and then you're like, oh, maybe I'm not. And then this is a thing. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is very similar.

Yeah.

I think the thing about this, it's fascinating to me, and I might have mentioned this to you once already here, but like I had this couple in my practice lesbian couple and they were one of them was very clearly a masculine presenting, you know, kind of had a masculine job, you know, air quotes or whatever, and knew from the minute they were like five, six years old this is who I am. And I like women. And it, it, and then the other guy out, her wife was a woman who dated men and women kind of picked and then kind of realize, oh, in dating women, I like, met more masculine women. Like, she sort of found her way through a decision process, whereas the other one kind of had this ingrained sense of who she was from the minute she was aware.

And it just made me like, realize I had this profound moment that, like, a lesbian isn't a thing. Like there's kinds and types and there's ways that they go and they, they kind of find each other based on. Okay. So any discourse that minimizes it down to something blackness or some whiteness or like sort of yes or no is or it's a choice or it's not a choice I think is confused and narrow minded. And so I'm always fascinated to hear, like, how did you how did you get there? How did you come to this thing? But the bottom line is the two of you found one another and you said, this is my person. And that that became apparent pretty quick.

Pretty quick. Yeah. Okay. Quick. It was a it was an easy on ramp for, for being so new in terms of, for me sexual my my own sexuality.

What do you make of this joke though? Like, you've heard it before, I'm sure. What is it? What do lesbians bring to a second date?

U-Haul? Yeah.

Why is that? Why is that a joke?

Because women move quickly. So I'm obviously this is the total, generalization here, but.

But you guys have fallen so fast. Is it qualified? Is it is it inside that joke?

I mean, who's ready to move in quicker than I was?

You basically were living in house.

Week.

Six. Oh, I don't know.

What are you.

Like? You had another place, but like.

Yeah, we did it.

We had to make a rule. Like, just if you wanted to move today, we had to make a rule where we went to sleep together one night a week because otherwise we would sleep. She would sleep in my house every single night. So, like, sure, we didn't move in for three months, but we were living together, so that's cute.

Anyway, so were you U-Haul joke a place.

I just wonder about it. Like, you know, stereotypes also exist for a reason, but I don't know necessarily what they are. And is it okay? Like, it sounds like it's worked out for the two of you. I don't mean is it okay, but is there something that women know that men don't know, or something about women who find each other and go, okay, we have clarity here that is separate from that same joke existing for hetero or for gay men or for whatever, you know, like that's that's a little bit of what I was curious about.

I think it's, I think that women bond to women more easily than women born to men. Like, right off the bat, I don't think that it's. What do I know about that? Enough. Yeah.

I mean, I just think, I think even in friendships and then like, standard.

Like for the most part. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, women want to, like, sit around and talk about emotions stereotypically more than men do. And so you end up going like deeper into these kind of like rabbit holes, more than men, men end up doing and obviously generalization. But so I think that that's why that joke, you know, exists is because if you look at even just the bonds that women typically have, like they're just different than the bonds that men have, not saying one is better than the other, but just they're typically different.

Yeah. It's that other joke, too, about the married couples, the hetero married couples who go and play tennis, and then the women, the wives play in the Hudsons play. And then and then when the couple gets back in the car to go home and the what the wife is like, can you believe that Sarah's getting married and she has a daughter and that it's too bad about that in that, there's a and then the husband goes, they're getting married. And they're like, the guys didn't talk about anything, but the women had entire, like, debrief about their lives while playing tennis.

Yeah, yeah. And most of I would say most of my strongest relationships are with men. And most of those relationships are also built around doing things, like going to shows, going and playing pickleball, going and like playing a sport, going and doing a thing. Like that's how most of my relationships exist. And I would say most of relationships. Yeah, yeah. But they're also my, like, men. My best friends are men. And and I would say most of your relationships don't necessarily involve going and doing a thing. It's like I'm just going to go over there and talk.

Yes, yes.

Yeah. And not that I don't do that. It's just not my core.

Yeah.

Like one of my best friends, Andrew, I don't like go to Andrew's house to talk. I'm like, hey, do you want to play pickleball?

Yeah.

And then we talk, but I'm going to his house to play pickleball.

So I also think, you know, when we're talking about gender, that there are different pressures and different expectations. And with women there, I think culturally, the message we have gotten is we are I mean, I'm talking broad strokes right now, obviously, but we are wives, we are mothers, we cohabitate. We are nurturing. We are. That's this. This is what's been shoved down our throats. And so the idea of moving in together quickly or moving fast emotionally is a message that we have gotten, you know, out of the womb. And, and men have gotten something completely different. Men have gotten like, stay single as long as that. Your best years are ahead of you. You know, that's there's a there's a it's a totally different message. So I think in another way it's also easier to move quicker, you know, based on the, the the cultural narrative. Yeah.

I also think I wouldn't just bucket it as like men and women. Yeah. Because I think within there there's it's like I think about this with sexuality too. It's like within that there's so much gray. Yeah, there's just so much gray. Like the whole I think you're absolutely right in my world. Like in my in my experience of the world, the world is gray. It's not black and white.

So I think.

It's so hard when we start bucketing it as black and white.

Well, that's what I think too. Like, again, most of the couples that I see in my practice and in and that exists in the world, they don't do what I get to do. They have very few ideas of what a what a relationship is, right? They have their parents, they have maybe God, maybe they have their neighbors, maybe they have John Gottman or Terry Real, or maybe they have, you know, who they have this very narrow like in sample of like 3 or 4. And so it's very easy to kind of put the like kind of think there's only 3 or 4 options about how it should work or how it should go. And I think the reality of living on this planet is that there are literally thousands and millions of options about how people express and articulate themselves. And we've gotten into this.

I don't want to go down this road, necessarily, but we've gotten to this very binary way of understanding the world, particularly in the States. And, that is just I think it's killing actual dialog. So anyway, it's fascinating to hear you guys describe it both in general and then each of your own different perspectives. But here's the thing I really want to talk about. You met each other. You fell really hard, really fast. You started investing in your relationship. You went to workshops, you consumed information, and you decided to get married. You are very clear about your identity. You have this absurdist thing going on. You have a rich community of people that you love to connect with and that knows you well. Then you get married, which is amazing. And then your relationship started to fall apart.

I would say we hit our toughest period after we got married.

Can we talk about that? I want to hear about it.

Yeah.

What? Yeah. What what happened?

Well, so what I didn't know, which I now know. And I work with couples, too. And so this has this was, news to me. I did not think it was going to hit this hard, but when we. When we got married, I think two major things happened. And and I'm curious your thoughts on this, too, but one is our attachment systems got kicked up in a very new way. And I think that's happened. I actually started to do a little bit of research on this afterwards because I was like, this can't be just us, everybody coming up to us and being like, oh my God, you're newlyweds. How's how's a newly wedded bliss? And we were both just like, what? That that's certainly not what we're in right now.

Like newly, we. That just was not it. And so, you know, as I started looking into this more, what I started learning was at every layer of commitment. And this makes sense at every layer of commitment, your attachment system gets kicked up in a new way, whether it's engagement, whether it's marriage or cohabitation or kids or whatever it is, your nervous system needs to adjust to whatever that next commitment level is, and then your attachment system gets kicked in alongside it. For us, for marriage, there was I'll speak for myself, the part of me that could not get out and obviously we could get out. We know it's a contract. It's we could have annulled like there are, but that but the nervous system, part of me that knew I wasn't going anywhere but felt the experience of I can't, I have lost choice.

I can't get out now. All of the things that we didn't, quote unquote, heal before our wedding, the things that we were still working on all of a sudden those were like, oh, I'm now opting into that forever. That's that's my nervous system story. This is forever. And I actually look at that as a benefit now because I'm thinking, oh, now there's no escape. The question, the question stops being, are we going to get through this? And the question starts to become, okay, how are we going to get through this? There's no there's no avoiding it any longer. This is now right up in our faces. And so I think this idea that we get married and we then get confronted is way more common.

Then we have talked about in the relationship space. And I'm curious what you see on your side too, Zach, because as I've started seeing, I've as I've talked with my couples about this, as I've talked to friends about this, all of a sudden people are like, oh yeah, it was really tough for us after we got married to that was, you know, so I think that was part one. And then I think there's another part that was related more to health if you want to. I don't know if you want to.

Oh keep going.

You're you're on a roll call. I feel like I'm hogging the mic right now. I'm down.

For it.

Okay. Also, you can't get out. So.

I don't know why you're telling how in the world that you can get what's our rules?

We have a joke to say. Not until death. Until murder. I love it. I've said so.

This is a running joke on the podcast, but my parents, my mom, my parents divorced when I was a long time ago. My mom remarried about 25 years ago. And when they got married, their. Their deal was where? Not till death do us part, but for 35 years, like for 35 years. Then all bets are off. But you know, they're going to be almost 90 by the time that's up. So it's, that.

Is we have a friend.

At you know what the terms are?

We have a friend to what? No.

We have a friend that just that is getting married in two weekends and they are committing to 25 years.

There you go.

They're like, basically the kids get out of.

The house is what they're committed to.

And we also have another five in terms. Yeah. And we also have another, friend who they one of them went through a really bad divorce and then they didn't want to get remarried. But every single year they come back to the table and say, do we want to opt in again? Do we want to opt in again? Do we want to opt in again? And it's been something like 30, yes, 30 something years.

And then we have another group of friends that call them forever. Forever couples. Right. What are they called?

Forever? Yeah. They call themselves forever couples. Forever couples. Yeah. And they are just in no matter what. And there's a kind of crew of them, and they they just know come hell or high water, there is no out. And what that allows for them to do is enter into various levels of devotion and really diving into what devotion actually is. And so yeah, yeah, but I'll, I'll say just to go back to that, I think the second reason and this I think is even even less explored in dynamics, and I don't think it's because of marriage necessarily, but it was the circumstances which we didn't, we were we had to leave our house because of mold. And so we didn't have grounding.

We were in between friends houses before. We were looking to to find a stable place to live. And Amy had gotten all these tests back and had mold poisoning. And through the years, through the year leading up, she had also gotten surgery. You know, she had been dealing with some pretty chronic health stuff that had come up. And then the mold had a crux and she was out pretty much. I mean, it was hard for her to work extreme brain fog. Her body was aching. I mean, I'm speaking for you right now, but you have you have a great job. Yeah.

And means like, I know, I know, I know.

I've never heard her tell the story.

Yeah. And and meanwhile, we weren't grounded. So I was also struggling in my own way and, and also had mold that was like I hadn't gotten tested for it because I didn't have as extreme of symptoms. Hers really showed. And so we were at each other's throats for really small things. And then those small things would just end up being bigger things, and those bigger things would end up being, oh, this is the pattern that, you know, that kind of the place you never want to go, which is like you always you never, you know, that kind of. And we would go there way we didn't have we weren't, we weren't resourced, but we weren't looking at it through the level of health. And so we would become dysregulated pretty easily. And the thing that I think we're used to saying, especially in the relationship space, is like, look at your trauma, look at your triggers, look at, oh, look at the patterns.

Look at the communication style. Let's do the four step apology. Make sure you're doing whatever. Yeah I mean, you know, any nit pick your poison with whoever you want to follow relationally. And there's a four step this and a five step whatever. Yeah. And what I think has not been that explored and I think is really important is what happens when your cortisol levels are raised and your you haven't been able to sleep well for weeks. And at this point, months or months and and then you're coming the table and you're trying to regulate yourself. And so small things would kick I mean it would be small triggers that would kick, kick up pretty big reactions. Yeah. And big fallouts that we.

Nothing burgers.

Nothing. Burgers. Yeah. Nothing. Burgers were turned into a big burger something because they years and but we weren't looking at it through the lens of our physiology. And I think this is something the relationship space misses a lot. Actually I think that we haven't looked at as looked at what's happening biologically, physiologically to our health and what's going on. Did we just eat a meal that was full of crap? And now our partner brings us something and we can't hold it because our nervous system gets dysregulated like that. And so when Emmi started getting healthy, when we started, when we moved into our home, and when I started learning more about the attachment system and realizing what had been kicked up, all of the sudden the things that were threw us into tantrums basically, and had us being like, what are we doing?

How did we do? Did we make this the biggest mistake of our lives? All the sudden, little by little, the small things we were able to move through more quickly we had sure we had. Of course we have skills. I mean, that's one that I can't I don't want to say we don't. Of course we have skills. But it wasn't just the skills. And I think we rely a lot on having the skills, and we need the skills and I don't mean to downplay that, but I think a big piece we're missing is what's happening health wise. Have we slept? Do you have a kid that's just been crying for three nights in a row? And you don't, you know, have did you just get in a fight with your boss? Did you have a really bad day at work? Did you, like, actually have nothing to do with what's happening in the relationship, but have everything to do with how you show up? You want to say no?

I mean, I just think the health, the health piece is so important. You touching on the health piece just feels really important that, like, what's actually happening inside your body and how that's determining you're spending an extra externally.

Yeah. I don't don't.

Don't think anyone's really looking at it.

Yeah.

I have a, I have a new theory. I've been joking. I think I've decided what love is. I think I've figured out what love is. Yeah I know right. Everybody laughs.

Tell us.

I think it's like, I think love is generosity. I think I and I could build this case, but part of what I've been, what's occurred to me is that when you can be in the midst of conflict and you can identify for the relationship and for your partner, that this has nothing to do with you. This is about that. I haven't slept or this is about that. My bully always wore a red jacket when he walked in the like. Whatever. Like it's actually an act of generosity to say, hey, I need to give you this information. I need to give this to you so that we can ease like so we can so we can do get to love quicker, right?

It's sort of like saying I, I it's it's an act of, generosity for me to be aware enough of what's going on for me. That has nothing to do with you, that I can now give that back to you and say, can we can we focus on the things that really matter here and not this sort of nothing, nothing better? I have a lot more to say about that, but but just hearing.

Caitlin, can I can I pause on that? Because I actually think it's really important. There are two pieces here that I that I want to touch on because I think they're I think this is a I just think it's really important. One is one of our dear friends and a relationship mentor of mine, Annie Lollar, has a phrase that she says, which is, it's when you act like you're in a competition, but you're in a competition for who can get back to love faster. That's what you're competing for. I think that's what you're speaking to a bit is that actually takes real generous listening. But the, the, the piece that I think is also really important is to notice if generosity is again, I actually I think you're right. If generosity is one of the biggest keys to being able to move through conflict and to come back to love, if you cannot get back to generosity, that it's actually your anchor.

It's a cue to do nothing. It's a cue that whatever is coming next is to, you know, Terry, as a teacher of both of ours, is when you're going to start going into, oh, I'm, I'm fighting for being right, not for the generous listening of the selfish. Yeah, but selfishness. Yeah, but if you don't if, if, if, if you are in itself. I think it's a cue. I don't think it's something to try and override. I think it's like, oh, okay. And then, and then you have the, the factors that we're, we're speaking to, whether we're speaking to, you know, whatever you need to do to, to get back to, to Grayson Jersey.

So would you do what did you do to get back to Grace and generosity? How did you like. So you're you you have months. You get married in August. You have months of disruption, whether it's attachment staff or your health. And, you know. And how did you find your way back? Were two.

Kind.

Maybe not even back. Right. Gets back implies like you're back to this thing that existed before, but you actually we need to level up. We need to go to something. And what did you how did you find your way to the next thing, whatever that is, and how would you define it?

Well, you might say it something different than I might say. I would say one. We just stayed in it. I think we just stay that like neither of us left.

Right.

And so I think we just kept coming back to the table. I think that was really important. I think there were definitely moments where both of us could have been like, like, this is a lot.

We say we packed our bags, but never left.

Yeah, like, pack your bags. Your bags are at the door, but you never actually walk out the door.

Yeah.

And I think the other thing is, is.

The couple that I just had on the last episode before years, she said, it's okay if you if you're going to leave me, that's fine. You shouldn't need to know. I'm coming to.

That's good. Thank you. Yeah.

I always loved this concept of of of thinking about that. You can pack your bags like, you can pack your bags, and you can even get all the way to the door.

Yeah.

You just can't go out the door.

Yeah.

You know, the I don't know, there was love that there was a piece of that that was just felt really real. Real to me. Like the amount of you're so angry.

Can I just like, sorry about that.

Yeah. Go ahead.

I can't remember if I've shared this with our, like. I'm just thinking about, like, the kind of the running stories that I have in my head, but one of them is about my my daughter who is graduating from high school next week. But when she was maybe eight or so, she was like, dad, I'm leaving, I'm running away. And I was like, okay, so like, I'm going to go live in my California family. That was that was her backup family that lived in California. I'm going to go with my California family. Okay? It's just I just need a ride to the the car parked by the bay, you know, all this stuff. So we spent the whole afternoon, like, packing, getting her ready and loading up her stuff.

And are you going to need this? And do you want some food? Yeah. Yeah, I probably need some. And then, you know, it's 6:00 now it's dinner time, and, like, you want to leave now or should we go in the morning like, you know, don't have dinner and maybe get some sleep? Or do you want to do you want to leave? And she was like, we should have dinner, you know? So we had dinner and and then she, you know, it's like, I think I'm going to sleep and I'll go in the morning, you know, and of course, in the morning, all our bags right there, we have photographs still packed by the door. She's like, nah, I changed my mind. I'm not. I'm not leaving. I'm I'm ready to do this.

But did you ever did you ever run away?

It was again. No, I was too much of a goody two shoes.

Definitely ran away. Yeah, sure. We pack a backpack. Peace out. Go out the door. Hang a left, and I would be chilling on the corner with, like, a long block. Who grew up on a street in D.C., like, very long block. And I would be, like, sitting on the corner of the edge of the block. I'd be like, I showed them, I ran away. Look at me.

Do you think that story that you have that sort of apocryphal story for you? Does it inform even now your philosophy of, like, you should be able to pack your bag and leave it there? I mean, is it are they connected that story from your childhood to the thing that you're just describing?

I mean, probably, are they connected?

Well, given freedom is one of them.

Yeah. Yeah, I would say probably. I mean, my biggest thing I think about this with most of the things that we do is how important freedom is to me. And a lot of the I mean, I think I would just give you natural freedoms anyway. But I think a lot of the way I think about it is, oh, would I want that? And if I would want that, then I then I, I automatically give it. And most of the time I would say like 99.999% of the time I would want it. So yeah, I give, I give it because that's.

Very generous of you.

Well, that's not capacity. Maybe it's selfish actually.

Yeah. Because that's what she wants.

Because it's what.

She wants. So she's modeling.

So it is, it is generous. Sure, but it's also kind of selfish.

Wait. I want to know what the second thing is. You're going to say.

Oh, I just think I mean, I spent many hours brain power money, like, just trying to get healthy. Was the second piece. Yeah. I think that that has just changed. Like my personal ability to show up at the table and have a conversation and to take ownership and to be able to hold her in the way that she wants to be held. So I think that's the the physiological pieces I just think are really important. And I think that, I mean, I think most people don't we haven't most people that have never been sick, you just haven't had to really ever understand your health. It's like something it's like a nice to have, but it's not. But it's not an necessity.

And I don't think our, our system of medicine is set up to actually empower the individual to understand their health. I think you have to really want it. And I think you have to figure out the tools to actually help you understand your health. And, when you get sick, if you're like me. But I would imagine most people, when they get sick all of a sudden, you want to know what's going on, you want to understand, you want to have the information. You want to be tracking you. Like, it becomes different because you are the only way that you're going to get yourself out of it. Nobody else is coming to save you.

And our medicine, our entire medical system isn't set up to save you at some capacity. Yeah. It's not. It's barely set up to even have transparency around your own medical health. So you have to go and hunt for it and figure out what's going on and kind of be your own project manager with it.

You're talking about investing in personal health. Did you guys did you do that each individually or did you did you have some version of doing that together? I mean, what was that? What was that journey like for you? I mean, like, did you do couples therapy or did you just kind of dive into, I'm going to take care of me? Oh, we.

Call our couples therapist. We call our couples therapist. Our third. Our third. Yeah. He spoke at our he's spoke at our wedding. Nice. Yeah. He's he we I don't think without him we would be where we are. No we wouldn't. Yeah. But it was I think that's the I think that's kind of the point is that it was multi layered and we were both needing to do different work. You know I think my biggest complaint to your point was capacity. I was like I don't feel like I can bring much without it turning into that kind of pursuer distance or dance. And it would happen so quickly. In my experience it was like, oh, I would say something and then that thing would trigger her to shut down.

And I had my own version of that. But mine isn't shut down. Mine is come towards. And when when she started to do, when all of a sudden her health, she started to really address her health and I saw her capacity begin to shift. Then I was able to see my my side of the street in the way I wasn't previously, cause it was so easy to be like, well, that's the most obvious thing. If that were to, you know, if you were to dance like the famous, like if you were to change, then this will all be fine. And then because she started to show up over and over again by doing her own personal work, by our couples therapy, by working on a personal health, all of the sudden I was face to face with my biggest wound, which is my.

My biggest wound is loneliness. It's this feeling of, yeah, like like I'm on my own in this and I will never be met. And when I started to see that as mine to do, I, I started to offload some of what I saw as hers to do for me and started to be like, wait a second, she really showed up and she's asking me to like back down. And, and I, I think about relationships not as just two people, but as two people and a third pole, which is the relationship. And I like to think about it. This is also came from Annie La La, and I've really adopted it, which is the relationship has needs, desires, requests that are outside of my individual preference or Emmy's individual preference, or need or want or desire.

It has a life of its own, and when we tune into the relationship, it will be different than what the relationship needs and wants is different than individual preferences. And when, when I started really leaning into that, it was, first of all, I'm just going to say it was really easy for me to think that I knew it all because I work with couples. Yeah. So when I brought that into the relationship, I'm just going to say this right now. It didn't work. Yeah, nothing I do with my couples works in this relationship. Just yeah, it the minute she even like smells therapist and she's like, this is over. And so I really had to get my head on my ass. I yeah, yeah, yeah. And that shit's somewhere else.

That's right.

That's right. Somebody else. And at one point, me came to me and she said, I can't process anymore. And earlier on in our relationship, I would have seen that as collapse. And and maybe it points it was. But actually this time, because she's done her own work, because she keeps showing up, she, she looked at me and she was like, I can't do this anymore. And immediately I was able to actually look at what the outside of what I wanted. More processing. I can process all day, like, yeah, put me in a room, like get gifts, like, the favorite. All day, all day. Yeah. All day.

And I said Sunday.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and I for the very first time was able to get it, I was able to hear what she was saying and actually get that she was speaking from what the relationship needed in a way that I had not been able to hear her. And so when I, when I got that she was speaking from the relationship I really got, the relationship was dying for play, which is what were the best. It is what it is, a pillar of our relationship. It was dying for play. It was aching for, for mostly me to be able to let things kind of roll off my shoulders a little more and for me to learn what it what it was like to actually not take things so personally and what my edge of development was.

And, and we actually and we're still in this period and we will be out of it at some point. But we stopped going to couples therapy because processing actually wasn't what the relationship needed. Play was. And as soon as I think as soon as she was able to shift her health and take my request seriously for capacity and she went first on that. So thank you baby. I was able to see I was able to see that our relationship didn't need more of processing. It actually needed something simpler. And coming back to its roots. And there there's something that Doctor Alexandra, Alexandra Solomon talks about. And I think it's a really important piece that is that I, I didn't understand until this relationship, which is there is one partner in a relationship who is often the person who what did she call it that who watched the change issue?

What did she call it? I just want to remember her, her words. It's the change it accept. So there's often one one partner who who wants the relationship to grow. There are the people who want to go. It's couples therapy. They want to read the books. They want to go to the workshop. And I think it's easy to look at. That's me, by the way, in the relationship, it's easy to look at those people and glorify them as the ones who want to make it work, the ones who are really like in the work and here to make it and and then there's what she calls the accept partner and the it's that partner is the partner who's holding the pillar, who's holding the pole of our relationship. Good. Like, can we just be cool for a little while? Like why does it need to change there also thing is fine, that's fine. That's fine. There. Also the partner who's big deal. Yeah, that's that's just a moment you say I'm.

What else is wrong here.

That's right. What else? It's like this will be fine tomorrow. We just need to sleep. We don't just sleep it off. Just cuddle. There's not much to do here, okay? Yeah. And. And I think it's easy for the change partners to look at that as being lazy and not putting effort in. And and actually, there's real brilliance that the accept partner brings to the table. But for the change partner, if that's really hard to see because it actually takes effort. Yeah. To be the for the change partner. It takes effort to be in acceptance of what is this? I will tell you my biggest work in our relationship. The thing that has kicked my ass the most is not feeling like we need to do anything, not feeling like we need to be in therapy and just enjoy where we are, who?

But here's the key. This is this is what I think is really important. Yeah. In order for the change partner in order, if I'm talking to the acceptance, the accept partners, in order to make this easier for change, partner, the accept partner starts to come forward with deeper questions like how are you doing lately? How have you been? I have, you know, what's going on in your head, you know, how have you been feeling about our relationship? And when they come forward, it, it it all of a sudden the relationship doesn't need to polarize into I'm the one who's got to hold the pole of we grow. Or if I don't hold that we don't grow at all. Yeah. And she doesn't need to hold the pole of if I just want to rest. I don't need to like, beg for, you know, beg for a day of play. But both partners, I think, have to come towards the whatever their polarization is the opposite of.

I put a, I put a, reminder in my phone to ask bear how she's doing. Brilliant.

Yeah.

Once a week I love it. I tell people that. I tell people that all the time. Well, there's no matter.

How, you know.

Sometimes. Some weeks. I miss it, though.

Yeah. So I remind her that. Yeah. That's awesome. Oops.

Okay, so, baby, you're the processor, and then you are quite the, like you. You do business all the time, and I want to talk about one of your businesses.

Yeah, I'm really. What do you like about that?

I'm really curious to hear about OnlyFans. How's it going? How's your.

OnlyFans? Yeah. Genius.

Yeah, genius. A friend of mine, and a friend of mine, and I thought it was a really great idea. So we go to. So I've been to Burning Man a cliche amount of times, and, we thought for one year it would be hilarious if we started a fan company called OnlyFans, and all we made were fans, and we actually had this thought that they should only be advertised on the OnlyFans website by OnlyFans girls. Which we never ended up doing. But we did make the fans and we partnered with an incredible artist friend of ours named lira, who we took a bunch of her art and we printed it on fans, and then we handed them out at Burning Man one year and we actually called the OnlyFans, shockingly, was taken. So we we rolled it solo. Fanatics, which is OnlyFans in Spanish. Got it. And, and we edit them out. Actually, we have a request in two weeks to, give some OnlyFans for a friend's wedding. So we were.

We're.

On a deadline. But yeah, that was it was it was fun little fun little. And there's.

Stunning.

There. Beautiful. Yeah. We'll send you some photos. You can pop them up. Yeah. They're they're really good. Yeah.

But.

If I wanted some only fans from only fans from solo fanatics.

Yeah. So not to post, but. Yeah. You're close. Yeah. It's hard. You should just.

Yeah. How do I do that? Right.

Just you who. You can't. They're not okay. Yeah, yeah. There they go. In addition, you have to buy a ticket to Burning Man and then get lucky enough to get handed one.

Got it, got it, got it.

Yeah. I feel like I can talk to you guys for hours, because of course, you have so many very cool stories and I love it's a very high value for me to think about absurdity and how absurd everything is and play and how valuable that is, and just how.

Honest to tell you a story about what we did last night.

You can tell me a story about what we did last night.

Wow. You have to give him the full lead up. If you're going to tell him the story about homelessness. No, because. Yeah. No, no, no. Here. Well, he can cut it. If he has my hair, he probably actually does want to hear it. And he can cut it if he does want to hear you have about sex.

Let's do this. Let's do two things. I'm trying to thank you for coming on the podcast and tell you that this is so fun to talk to you. And again, I could talk to you forever. And, and we will, we'll end here, and then you'll tell me about what happened last night. We'll put it behind the scenes for people to go if they want to. They want to get more.

You might want to put a friend center, but will they? And we'll leave that up to you.

Very cool for you guys to come on. And, you guys have a lot going on. If people want to learn more about what Bayer or and or Emmy are up to, like what city of Bear you have a you have a whole scene that you're, you're working on. Tell me about it.

Yeah. So my focus is on repair with couples. And I also do MDMA assisted psychedelic research with Columbia University. So it's not just out to launch. Yeah. So really excited to be doing the couple's work with MDMA and the research on that because we really want to push towards legal legalization. But but with couples, I just I just work with couples and my focus is repair. So you can find me on Instagram at Bayer Baia underscore voce v o c e.

If I want to work with you, who am I like, am I? Can I be anywhere in the country? Anywhere in the world? Do I have a specific like, thing we've got? Oh, she's my person because I am in search of repair. Is that the best way to put it?

Yeah, yeah. So I work with people virtually. I work with people all over and at different stages of the relational life cycle. I would say the people who end up finding me are at some sort of crux, whether they can't get through something really sticky or they're a high conflict couple, or they are a couple who's deciding whether or not to stay together, the those are those generally end up being the people who or actually a lot of people have found me when they're transitioning into marriage, I think because of how tricky or coming right out of getting married, because of how tricky our experience was and how much we learned.

That's very cool. Yeah. Because, I'm so glad to hear about that resource, you as a resource because I think you're brilliant. And I have people all the time who are looking for help. And, I like I like having access resources. And then, I mean, what are you up to?

You mean the best way to find me or what am I up to?

Yeah. Like, what if I want to find you? If I want to, like, what's what's your gender?

Yeah. I'm the I'm the CMO of a company called Break Harbor. So we help, individuals and small businesses recover after natural disasters. Oh, that's, Yeah, it's super cool. Really incredible work. And it's actually interesting because it for most people, what we found is that it's actually meeting people on one of the worst days of their life, because they've just lost everything. Yeah. And the drop of a hat. So talk about, you know, potential trauma or like, high stress situations. It's it's up there. But the best place to find me is on Instagram doing cameos.

Cool. Yeah, I love it. I love it.

All right, well, we'll point people in your direction, and we will. Yeah. Well, it's us. I hope to see you guys soon. I hope that you have, another really cool party and that I get invited to. Yeah. Just so you know, I'm I'm. I'm not sad I didn't come to your wedding, but I, I'm looking forward to the invitation to the next amazing thing that you guys put together.

Great. So get to know.

Thanks, Zach.