Discovering Your Theme: How to Understand Yourself and Your Partner Better - Aaron Steinberg | Ep 25

Aaron Steinberg  
I was born in Washington DC, and I grew up in Fairfield Iowa, which is the home of the transcendental meditation community. I don't know if you guys have heard of Transcendental Meditation, but I actually grew up in the transcendental meditation movement. And my parents have been doing it since they were 15. And I went to the Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment, believe it or not. And so I've been meditating since I was five years old. Actually. Welcome to the Stacking Habits podcast with your host, David, Matthew and Taylor. Our mission each week is to dig into the habits, rituals and routines of guests who are living life to the fullest. But remember, knowledge without action is worthless. So be sure to take what you hear, put it into practice. turn these words into words in your own life. Without further ado, let's dive in.

David Chung  
Welcome back to the Stacking Habits podcast. We're joined with a very special guest today. We have Aaron Steinberg, with grow together. Welcome, Erin.

Aaron Steinberg  
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

David Chung  
And Aaron, where are you joining us from?

Aaron Steinberg  
I'm in the outer Bay Area in California, a town called San Leandro.

David Chung  
Okay. I've never been to the Bay Area. I'm assuming it's beautiful. It's everywhere. It's beautiful out there.

Aaron Steinberg  
It is beautiful. The stories are true.

David Chung  
are you originally from the Bay Area?

Aaron Steinberg  
No, actually, I was born in Washington, DC. And I grew up in Fairfield Iowa, which is the home of the transcendental meditation community. I don't know if you guys have heard of Transcendental Meditation. But I actually grew up in the transcendental meditation movement. And my parents have been doing it since they were 15. And I went to the Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment, believe it or not. And so I've been meditating since I was five years old, actually.

Matthew Osborn  
And meditation to someone that young, what concepts do they teach a five year old, with also energy and attention span? Yeah,

Aaron Steinberg  
totally. So Transcendental Meditation is a mantra based meditation, which means you're given some sort of sound or meaningless word to repeat internally. And for kids, they have it so you do a walking version of it. So you are walking around, you know, with your class around the school, quietly, and you know, supposed to be kind of, you know, being mindful of your mantra. I can't remember being that young and knowing if I was actually able to do that or not. But basically, it's the mixture of, you know, activity and mindfulness or going for and then when your time you transition to doing a setting meditation, how

David Chung  
large was the community that you grew up in? So

Aaron Steinberg  
Fairfield is is a 10,000 person town. And it's a little funny, actually, there's a book if anyone's interested in learning about this. There's a book called greetings from utopia Park, written by Claire Hoffman, someone I grew up with about sort of what it was like to grow up in the transcendental meditation movement, and 4000 of the people in the town were meditators and the other 6000 were not. And it was sort of this funny. There wasn't I mean, it wasn't that much of a divide, it kind of felt like a divide. But Transcendental Meditation, like worldwide has probably 10s of millions of people practicing. And at this point, I would guess that's

Matthew Osborn  
super interesting, though. So how did there transition kind of out of that? Or did you really transition out of that, as you got older? Did you? You moved away, obviously, because you're not there. Now? What did that look like going that helped influence your career path and kind of where you lead right now?

Aaron Steinberg  
I would say it for sure influenced my career path. I mean, I, you know, I have a myth. I have mixed feelings about growing up there. Honestly. I in some ways, I really loved it. And I think conceptually, like, having a scenario where you are encouraged to think about, like, what really matters in life for the time you're really young and, you know, kind of go beyond just a strict like, you know, life is random sort of materialism viewpoint regardless of whether, you know, whatever the truth of reality is, I think it's a rich, you know, endeavor to like, kind of consider who we really are and all that kind of stuff. So, I think that's at the foundation of me getting into psychology, for sure. But I yeah, I had I have and had a mixed relationship with I, like, there's a difference between practicing Transcendental Meditation is just like a person, you know, who wants to learn to meditate and chooses that type of meditation versus like, being immersed in all of the philosophical underpinnings of it and just the community and they're just some things that really didn't land with me and I, I feel like this sort of gray area skepticism, appreciation, max that had it so that I was never going to like stay prioritizing being around that community as And that was like my life path. I just wanted to, you know, go somewhere else and lead, like a normal life, so to speak. Not that growing up in Fairfield wasn't quite as culty as I'm implying, it sounds right now, but just, you know, I just am like, I, it's like something I appreciate. It's something I still practice, you know, semi regularly. My wife learned, but it's just like not, as you know, it's not as big a part of my life as is for my parents, for example.

Matthew Osborn  
Yeah. So there's still there's still there, you still go back out there? It's

Aaron Steinberg  
my mom is my parents are divorced. My mom is still in Fairfield. My dad lives in Boston. Yeah. But they're both, you know, they've been meditating since they were 1415 years old, like, you know, some of the first early adopters, and it's just hugely important to who they are as people and their well being.

David Chung  
Well, now, now, Aaron, I know, you talked a little bit about leading a normal life. My understanding is that a few years later, you became a professional poker player, which I would say is maybe extraordinary. You don't see that every day. So how did you make the transition from you know, transactional track Transcendental Meditation to professional poker player?

Aaron Steinberg  
Yeah, maybe my, maybe my version of normal is a little different than other people's version of normal. But so it's a good question. So I was a math major in college. And I, I've done a lot of sort of philosophical twists and turns in my life. So when things start when I started to investigate more the philosophy of transcend meditation and the claims and got older, and it's kind of like, kind of some of the themes. By the way, can I swear on this podcast? Sure. Okay, okay, great. I was like, some of the, you know, some of the seems like bullshit to me, I started to question a lot of it and started kind of trying on different ways of viewing the world. And this corresponded to, as I said, me becoming a math major. And then my, I have two little brothers who are identical twins, and my dad for their 17th birthday, gave them $50, to put into an online poker account. And this is kind of in the heyday of online poker, and they subsequently turned that into a lot of money, and became professional poker players from the time they're in their late teens. So this all kind of went together for me of like, oh, you know, kind of, like, just do whatever, you know, like, just do whatever makes you happy. I was reading a lot of iron Rand at the time, you know, like, just get a, you know, get really good at something, do whatever makes you happy, be selfish. I was like, Cool, I'm gonna, you know, use this math stuff. And I'm gonna kind of follow my little brothers into into their, their career path and have them teach me it sounded really fun to me and kind of glamorous. So

David Chung  
that's what I did. And I know, that's surprisingly, sort of a twist of fate. That's sort of what launched you into what you're currently doing now, isn't it?

Aaron Steinberg  
That's right. Sort of. So it was an interesting transition. So I graduated college. And I, I had a lot of student loan debt. And so I took kind of the first job that seemed reasonable, which was working for my cousin at a clothing company, he had a clothing company in New York, and it was really fun. I was 23 years old, and you know, partying all the time, and whatever. But it just, I was like, this is someone else's dream life, like, this is not my dream life. And so this was really when my brother was like, okay, like, let's take this seriously, come live with me, like, I'll teach you how to play poker. So I moved out to California. And that lasted about a year of grinding poker. And then I was just like, this assumption I had that I would feel fulfilled. And I don't mean this in any negative way. Like, I love all of my friends who are poker players, or stock traders, or whatever. But for me, just the type of person I am, I was like, This doesn't feel like me. Like, I can't have this much input where it's like, I'm literally taking other people's money and like, there's nothing like I'm just I've just always been this kind of, like, I want to help people type of person like that trite cliche, like, I want to save the world type of archetype. And so I just felt really empty. And I talked to my dad and he was like, what do you actually like doing? You know, that's not this vision of where you want to end up and what success looks like but what do you actually like doing? And I said, I like talking to people about their problems. I seem to be the guy on my friends call to talk about what's going on with them. And, and so that led me down the road of I decided I wanted to be a therapist, I felt and then I met someone who was like, well, you should try it out. and see if you like sitting with people. So in coaching as a much easier access point. So then I became a coach, and then, you know, to what you're referencing I, my first clientele was doing like performance coaching, success coaching for professional poker players, because I had experienced all of the difficulties of how hard it is to like stay sane, kind of in the long run. And also in the moment, when you have, you know, 1000s of dollars on the line right in front of you and your ego and the line and all this kind of power struggles with other people. So I started working in that field,

David Chung  
can you share with us a little bit of the maybe the techniques or the the problems that you sort of worked through in performance coaching?

Aaron Steinberg  
Yeah, so. So poker is, I mean, many things are like this. But poker is an interesting arena, because there are two entirely separate skills that you need to succeed in poker. One is the ability to understand what you need to do in a particular situation, which is a similar, in that in itself is kind of two skills. One is your ability to study because like now, and even at that time, there's a lot of studying, people are speculating about something called game theory optimal, which is basically like, what's the best possible way you can play poker. And so a lot of it was studying, like understanding the different situations and what the, the array of correct things to do would be in their proper percentages, like, you should call this much of the time, fold as much of the time, whatever. And then there's kind of this separate skill of like, being fluid with that, and understanding how to apply different things, right. So I call that kind of like the academic side, but then you get into a situation in real time. And it's, you know, now all of these emotional dynamics are play, all these ego dynamics are at play, all these power dynamics are at play, and there is absolutely no guarantee. And in fact, it's somewhat unlikely if you're just kind of at the beginning of your career, that you're actually going to be able to execute in real time, the thing that you might know how to do in the back of your mind, like, you might be like, fuck this guy sitting in front of me, like, I want to dominate him, and you re shove all in over his arrays, when actually you should fold. And then you're kind of sitting there going, Wow, I just wasted a ton of money, based on something that I knew was wrong. And so my goal was to help people a lot. I mean, this, in some senses is still my goal. I think this is one of the most interesting human problems as the difference between what you want to do and what you end up doing in real time. But basically, that was my goal was to align people with, you know, what they knew how to do. And what I realized was that so much of this had to do with people's identities, or their sense of self, however you want to think about it, and how they want to feel about themselves, and how they want it to be perceived by other people. And that, in the modern world visit sort of a trite thing to say that a settle off, but it's important in the modern world, like we're not in much danger, like obviously, this is not true. And a lot of places in the world where people are in a lot of danger. But you know, the average person is not in much danger day to day, we're not surviving on the savanna or whatever anymore, right? So what has become threatening to us is basically relational, right? Like the main sort of currency of our threat system is now our self image. And, you know, some people want to pretend that that's not true, and they don't care what others think. But it's biologically ingrained in us that that we do. And so what I realized is if I could understand the very particular ways that people want to feel about themselves as a poker player, and what kind of identity you know, concepts and history is influencing how they are behaving at the poker table, I could then give them therapy basically, and tools to make their make them less attached to those kind of like identity fixations, and I started, I ended up with kind of like this cohort of all these people in Vegas who are working with me, we're kind of texting each other because, like the first technique that I stumbled across, which is very crude, now that I know a lot more about coaching and therapy, but it was basically like admitting to another person that you wanted to see you a certain way that you were feeling a particular type of insecurity about your poker game. And, and so that sort of mindfulness and sharing made people less wrapped up in their stupid behaviors basically. Did

Matthew Osborn  
you were you living in Vegas during this time you were a professional poker player.

Aaron Steinberg  
Now I've lived in the Bay Area for For 15 years, and so I was doing all of this remotely. And actually, this is part of why. So I have a master's in psychology. But as part of why I never got licensed is because at the time when I was graduating from my master's, I was living in California, and I had a full roster of clients all across the world and was basically going to have to start from scratch. So I kind of kept going down the the coaching plus route, as I call it, can

David Chung  
you tell us a little bit about how you transition, then from performance coaching, to relationship coaching, which is what you're doing now?

Aaron Steinberg  
Yeah, so I when I start, so I went, I went to life coaching school in 2010, served my masters in 2012, very much from the beginning, the reason that I went into school was that I wanted to do relationship work, I knew that from the beginning that like, that was the most fascinating thing for me, I just observe that. I think it's so interesting in our, in our culture, so little so boxy moment here, but that, you know, relationships are among like the top three most important things to basically all people, you know, for some people, the top, maybe second top for other people. And yet, like we are so categorically horrible at them, like we tolerate this incredibly bad success rate where most relationships are failing, even the ones that are technically succeeding, and that they're still together have a large quantity of people, some high percentage of people that are miserable. Like, we have a very high failure rate of relationships, like how many people do you know where you're like, they're like, I genuinely have an amazing relationship, and you believe them. For me, it's not many, you know. So anyway, I found this really fascinating. And relationships played a big role in my life, as I said, my parents got divorced. So that's what I went in with. And I've, I've tended to kind of repeat this pattern over and over again, in my life where I'll make a decision, then I'll do the version of it, that's the most accessible to me, and then kind of work up to the version I really want to do. So at this point, the version that was most accessible to me for coaching and working with people was poker, but I had relationship clients as well, during that time, it was just the minority. And then as time went on it, it you know, flip flop. So, by the time you know, by the time a hand, like four years had passed, I was doing basically entirely relationship work, and almost no poker work.

David Chung  
So Aaron, now that you have all all of this experience, and you've coached, you know, many, many couples, what's the secret? What's the secret to a happy, healthy, great relationship?

Aaron Steinberg  
Oh, man, you're gonna give me like the the 10,000 foot view question. What's the secret to a great relationship? So here's what I would say. I'm going to answer I'm going to answer that question with equivalent sort of summary. And you can love let me know if any of this seems that we need more, we need more detail. But what I think is interesting, here's here's a maybe controversial thing, I think about people in relationships. I don't think it's controversial. But I think a lot of people find this sort of offensive. I think that people are actually much simpler than we want to think we are. I have this analogy. I use a lot that like, there's like, we're if we're a tree, right? There's like most there's not that many trunks of the tree. Right? Like, this is why I think purse, people Personality Typing systems work, you know that people get really into them. Because, you know, there's not that many personality types, like there's not that many quarters of the way you orient you might want to be someone who helps other people or someone who's a high achiever or someone who feels special or elevated, or someone who feels included or a leader or someone who's adventurous. Like, there's maybe like seven, you know, some are five, 712, whatever, right? But there's not that many trunks of the tree, where people get complex and interesting isn't our leaves and branches and how we express these sort of core fundamental themes of being a person. So to me, relationships carry a similar sort of simplicity, and also complexity, which is that I think, fundamentally, I call these themes so I call like, these trunks of the trees themes. And one complexity is I think language is really important, like if you say to someone in a coaching session, Oh, it sounds like you want to feel like you're you're really important though. Like no, no, no, that's not it at all. I want to feel like I matter as if those are like, very, very different, right? So language matters a lot. But anyway, so I think each person has maybe two three themes that are important for them to feel in a relationship. So some of mine are like that. I'm a good husband, I matter and that I feel wanted, right? Those are things so you'll see in relationships, we all have the same fight over and over and over again. And to me this is because what happens in a relationship as peoples themes, you end up how like the reason we are With someone somehow I don't know how this works, I don't claim it's like, oh, it's just because your parents this are spiritual, that's like, I don't know. But it seems true that whoever you end up with, you will have at least one place where you're you have to theme a theme that is positioned against their theme. Right. So it's like, I want to feel like I matter. And you want to feel like you have freedom to be yourself. And the more that I push into you to feel like I matter, the more that you try to individuate yourself, and then I get insecure, and push into more, and then try to individuate yourself more, and you end up in these negative feedback loops. So basically, I think that each person comes in with two or three core themes. And again, language really matters here. And that the making or breaking of the relationship is literally your ability to deal with the one or two or three places where your themes feel like they're in opposition to each other. And in a certain sense, I think it's that simple. Now, I think we could go beyond that. And say, that's a little bit of like an ego reinforcement practice. And then there's kind of like, you could say, the spiritual journey of relationships, which is like, Who do you want to become beyond these themes? And what do you want your relationship to become? But like, in a very fundamental level, I think it's almost that simple. Like, now, how you do that is obviously complicated, and the communication skills and all that kind of stuff. But to me, like, that's the thing that either makes relationships succeed, or and that I've seen, do you

Matthew Osborn  
have a systematic way of identifying these themes, right now, when you have new clients? Do you have a test or a systematic way of pulling these out extracting these, if

Aaron Steinberg  
I'm being kind of lazy about it, or not lazy about it, but just if I want some help, like, I might have them take a personality test, I personally think the Enneagram is a cool model. I'm not, I'm not obsessed with any sort of personality tests. For me, they're just doorways. Like I get really annoyed when people view personality tests as like stopping places like, Oh, you're just doing that because you're a Pisces, or you're just doing that, because you're a four on the anagram. It's like, drives me nuts. But like, I might have them do that, just so I can kind of ballpark it. But at this point, like, basically, I can listen to people talk for about 10 minutes, and I can have a pretty good sense. I won't have the language perfectly, but you just hear. Like, if I hear people fight, you know, like, in their standard fight, that's easy. Like, basically, it's like, whatever they are accusing their partner of what is the impact of that on them? So it's like, if you're like, you're really selfish, you know, it's like, okay, what is the impact of that? You don't feel like you're on a team, you don't feel like you matter? You're right. Like, what what is that? You know, because they're going to be opposite sides of the coin. Oh, you're too needy, okay, is that nothing I do is good enough for you. And it's like about achievement, to feel like I don't have enough space. Like, I can kind of see the structure of it through their fights. So that's one thing if you know what your repeated will. So let me say repetition basically, is the answer. Whatever your repeated judgment is of your partner, whatever your repeated, sort of you make me feel this way as of your partner, or whatever your repeated fight as is basically going to be the answer to that question. So I spent all spend a lot of time are finding it. But basically, I'm kind of taking like the easiest is when people come in, and they go, here's the fight that we keep having over and over and over again, that we can't get out of I'm like, okay, cool. I can create a model around this pretty easily.

David Chung  
Yeah. Aaron, going back to what you said a little bit earlier, I have a question about you mentioned that there often is what you found is there's one area where the couples are in direct opposition of each other. Is that just human nature? Or is that part of I guess, a relationship where you almost need sort of that friction in order to maybe desire to be in that relationship, if that makes sense?

Aaron Steinberg  
Yeah. Well, just to be clear, I so I don't feel like they are in opposition to each other. I feel like it's more it's more sincere or nuanced to say, the couple perceives them to be in opposition to each other and the way that they operate currently, when they're trying to access those themes, or feel those themes or create those themes within their partnership creates an opposing sort of feeling between the two of them or seemingly oppositional things that don't fit together. I think part of actually the solve of this is understanding that they don't have to be in opposition, and I can talk about that more. But to answer your question directly as I may be all of what you said is true. I mean, I don't totally know to me, this is an area where I think People are making shit up in an unfounded way. And we don't really know, I have some thoughts about this. I mean, I think one way of thinking about it as, like a standard way of thinking about is like, whatever is unfinished in your childhood, you know, you pick in a partner. And so if you think about how that would create opposition, it kind of makes sense. Because because you create your id like developmentally, you create a lot of your identity based around kind of reactions to the deficits of your childhood. So if you didn't get a lot of affection or something, you may create a, I don't need anyone, I'm good by myself individual sense of self. And then you go into partnership, and if you're going to marry or be with your unfinished childhood stuff, you might be with someone who also doesn't give a lot of affection, or something. So then it creates this, like, you know, then all the like, unmet needs from your quote, unquote, from your childhood come up, and you're back in that same thing. It might be that I think of it kind of more simply as like, I think that we have, like humans, or we know that we're very collaborative at this point, like neuro scientifically, even, you know, like, this is not, it's not kind of like survival of the individual. It's kind of more like survival of the payer, or the collective or whatever seems to be how we actually got here. And so I think that there's this instinct toward complementarity of like, if we're going to survive and thrive in life, I'm going to need to, and I don't think this is conscious. So it's like, I'm gonna need to pick someone who's kind of different than me that can shore up some of the stuff that I'm not good at. And I think another way to think of it is, yeah, I think people don't tend to end up with people who are a lot like them, because it's really boring. There's just not a lot of gravity, you know, there's just not enough kind of like, tension to keep things together. So I think you do end up kind of with people that are different than you in long term relationships, even though I think when people like make less of like, here's the thing, I really wanted a person, it's just like, an idealized version of themselves, basically. And then they like, meet someone who's nothing like that. And I kind of You're nothing like what I thought my partner is going to be like. So anyway, it could be a lot of things. I think it's, I think it's partially human nature. I think it's part of just all the structure of relationships. And I think this is actually sorry, I'll say one more thing, and I'll stop talking. But I think this is a very important thing to understand. Because I think we are living in a time when you have 1000s of other people at your disposal in literally the click of a button. And it's really easy to go, oh, this person is annoying me this way, there must be someone else better for me. And you know that in a lot of cases, that's probably not true. You know, but we have this sort of like infinite, like this Cheesecake Factory problem where our menu is way too big. And so we, you know, are like assuming there must be something better to order. And so this understanding that, like, even the best relationships will have this kind of oppositional feeling to them, sometimes I think is really important to understand for like relationship success. So you know, that it's normal to argue about the same shed, it's normal to, you know, feel like you guys are trying to get through an intractable dynamic.

David Chung  
Is there, I guess, besides seeing a coach or, you know, a therapist, is there a way that couples can communicate? Or is there something that you found that helps couples get through these difficult conversations?

Aaron Steinberg  
Yeah. I mean, I personally, even though I am in this world, I don't personally feel like everyone needs to do coaching or therapy. For the record, I think that there are some cases where I mean, I, my wife and I do have regularly for a long time, and it's kind of like, if we can't see the answer to something, you know, we're just can't find it. Like, we wouldn't be like a third party to look at the situation. Or sometimes we're couples people or one person is, so there's this word. And in the therapy world that's become really popular, which is called which is dysregulation, which basically means like, are you overly stimulated or like shut down inside yourself. And so if one of the people in the midst of a tough conversation either becomes like very, very ungrounded and heated or very, very shut down, sometimes you need professional intervention to support with that, because you can't get through it on your own if you go that far to an extreme. But other than that, I think there's like some simple things. I mean, first of all, there's great relationship books right now that you know, you can co read together I currently am reading a book called us by a therapist named Terry real that I think is maybe the best couples therapist in public figure land right now. I think he's really phenomenal, like CO reading a book together as a great way had to do that. And then kind of talking about, like what you're getting out of it. But like to answer your question more directly, like, to me, the people say, you know, communication is the most important thing, communication is the most important thing. And the reason is, because if you can't talk through something, none of the other tools matter, like I can give you infinite tools for, you know, here's how you should divide, you know, roles and responsibilities. And here's some sex practices you should do. Or here's how you can make better parenting decisions, if you don't agree on, you know, what you want for your kid. But none of that matters if you can't get through a conversation. So there's sort of two sides of that, that people can work on. And you can work on this without help, you know, one and one is your own mindfulness and tracking of like, am I getting shut down here? Or withdrawn in this conversation? Or am I getting overly heated? And understanding what is causing that? And again, for me, that's a themes question, right? If it's being implied, right, if your partner says something, and it's implied like, well, you're never gonna get what you want, you know, it's, there's no reason even trying, because they're just gonna keep shutting you down, it would make sense to get really shut down and disengage from the conversation, right? Or if your partner is implying, like, I don't give a fuck about what you want, you know, that's what you're making up about what they're saying. It would make sense to get really angry. But these things do, like really derail the conversation. So it's like, if you cannot speak sincerely, without hyperbole, right? without shutting down, if you cannot stay. getting emotional is fine. There's nothing wrong with emotions, right? There's not about like, emotional suppression, you know, or even Ness, or these things that people kind of incorrectly laud is like, this is the end all be all as being like, totally calm, the emotional is fine. But if you can't stay connected, yourself and your partner, you can't get anywhere. So like just practicing mindfulness of like, what's going on with me? Why did I say that? What am I wanting out of this interaction, instead of just complaining about a bunch of stuff, right, you clean up your side of the street. And then instead of and then basically, like, peeling back all of the overlays that you have about your partner of what they mean, or what they're saying or what they want. And like getting very curious, this is such a trite thing to say, but it's very important. And I find that people like, oh, yeah, I know what they think about that. I've asked them all the time, I'm sure that what they're gonna say, I cannot tell you the number of times in my office, I've been like, what do you think that they just said? And then they'll say it, and it's totally wrong. I've almost never asked someone that question. They've been like, here's what I think they meant. And they're like, Yeah, that's right. Almost never, you know, and I've worked with 1000s of people. So like, pull back your assumptions, stop reacting so quickly to what your partner is saying? And genuinely, like, want to get to the bottom of it. What are all the layers of what they're saying? What's the fear that they have? What's their history with us? What's the assumption they're making? What is it they want, you know, is there are there subtle nuances about like, language that we're not getting to, or behaviors, like, peep, like a lot of what gets people through is getting into the nuance of like, you know what, that word doesn't land with me. But when you say that word, it actually feels really good. And that is what I'm looking for. Or, you know, I do want more physical connection with you. But when you kind of grab me out of nowhere, when I'm doing the dishes, I recoil. But if you were to say to me, like, Hey, I'm craving some physical contact with you, do you want to like make out or whatever? Like? I would say, yes, you know, and we don't get here to these things that actually help our relationships, because we keep looping on the surface of these issues over and over again, and ending up in these debates, where it becomes like, Yeah, but this No, but that we're we're just dismissing each other, and actually having two separate but related conversations at the same time. Like, that's not going to get you anywhere. So if you can inhabit your partner's conversation, and then them inhabit your conversation and separate them from each other and deal with them individually, that will get you very far. So to summarize, basically, understand what's going on with you and work on your own ability to stay grounded and connected with yourself and actually be curious and then it doesn't mean you need to abandon your perspective. You don't need to agree with what they're saying, right? This is an important habit like, like listening to your partner does not mean you have to agree, it just means you have to understand that what they're feeling and thinking and make sense if you were them. Right based on their history, their themes, their ways of making sense of the world, and get in there with them, get it see if they need anything different from you and then vice versa. That will get you really far and you don't you don't need a professional to do that. You just need to be accountable to not being an asshole. Basically,

David Chung  
you make it sound really easy, but I know just from personal experience, you know those two concepts So which I would summarize as self awareness and empathy. Those are, you know, two areas that it takes a lot of work to, to get to a point where you're doing it effectively. Yeah,

Aaron Steinberg  
I would say it's, it's infinite. I, I'm not trying to say I'm even great at that all the time. Sorry, I got you out David Ortiz.

David Chung  
No, I was gonna say, you know, there's this common phrase, you know, stepping into someone else's shoes to get their perspective, but I actually think that isn't enough to truly feel empathy. I think Stephen Covey puts it best in the seven habits, where he says, you know, in what, you know, in what reality? Is the other person completely correct and logical? Like, what reality? Does the other person's perspective, make 100% sense, totally. And like, using that sort of framework, to understand where the other person is, otherwise, what you're doing is oftentimes, like, I find myself doing this often is, when I'm putting myself in someone else's position. I'm looking at that position, through my own lens. And oftentimes, that isn't enough to really understand what they're seeing and where they're coming from. And so, you know, you said, like, oh, it's really simple. Just don't be an asshole, like, do this and do that. I'm just like, man, for a lot of people, myself included, I'm like, I think getting some sort of help would be really beneficial. Yeah.

Aaron Steinberg  
But by the way, just to be clear, that was that was a joke. I know that it's not, that's not very simple. I think actually, this is a this is an interesting sort of habit conversation to me, as one of the words, I'm gonna kind of circle back into what you said, through a kind of loop here. But I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make in relationship is sweeping stuff under the rug, that basically like you have this upset with each other. And then, you know, time basically kind of flattens things, it doesn't heal things, but it flattens things. And so then you go, Hmm, can we just keep going and sort of pretend, you know, was what we talked about good enough? Or can we bury it or whatever. And our default is going to be to do that, because it's easier, you know, and it's less uncomfortable. So. But this is the completely wrong habit, I would say maybe one of the core incorrect things that people do in relationships, and I have zero expectations for you, for my clients or myself, that in the moment, we are going to be able to perfectly do any of the things that I'm saying, right, there's no way we're human beings, right, as you said, you would have to be, you know, a 10th degree black belt and emotional intelligence to be able to do that. And even then you might not be able to do it. If your you know, partner is saying something to you, that's like your perfect trigger or something. So the habit is to come back to things as soon as you possibly can. That's what matters, it does not matter. Actually, at all that you got it right in the moment. I mean, obviously, that would be preferable, but from like a relationship satisfaction and progress standpoint, all that matters is that as soon as you have the capacity, you even if that's days, you come back and go, you know, when you said that thing, I went off the rails because I was just like, wow, you know, they must not care about what I need. And that's what I like, made up and then I just kind of went with it. And I got mad at you. If I could do that, again, here's what I would have said to you. Can we try this again? Like what were you trying to get across to me, you know, or here's, I'm sorry about that, or here's what I was, here's what I you asked me a question, I got really bent out of shape about it. Here's what I would have said, If I had my wits about me. And you might immediately go back in to a terrible communication thing at that point, that's fine to write. And at first, it might be days, then it's one day, then it's a few hours, then it's a minute, right. And you and you keep working on this. And as I said, I mean, I have been working on my relationship and my relationship to myself in some way, you know, for 33 years since I was five, but more so specifically for you know, the last 15 or whatever. And there are things that my wife does or says that like really get me and I act like an asshole, you know, or I act like I doing all the things I'm saying not to do. Right. But the the, the timeframe now for me is minutes most of the time, you know, and most of the time I can actually just do it in the moment. And that came from just coming back to things. It's not that complicated, actually, you know. And so the other thing I want to say about what he said is that it's it's hard, but it's not complicated, right? Like this is why I think these themes are really important. because most of the time, right, like, what's going to happen is you're going to get lost in a theme. And then you're going to act accordingly. Right? If your theme that you're in is I don't matter, or nothing I do is enough for you, which is the two most common relationship themes or some version of you're not loving me or caring about me the right way, versus you don't appreciate my efforts, or nothing I do as enough for you. Right? Those are, those are kind of the most common positionings. So you're gonna end up there. And it's like, you know, it's, it's pretty, it's pretty simple. It's like, I went to this theme, and understanding that like, this is a theme for you, because of some history that you have that develop this into a theme. And, you know, that's, that's basically it is understanding kind of, I mean, it's more complicated than that. But like, just understanding the rep, repetition of that, that's where you go, and that, you know, that's where you and your partner is going to go to some other one. And kind of having the mindfulness to like, get that more and more and more in the moment, basically,

David Chung  
I know, you spent a lot of time with this idea of baby proofing your relationship. Yeah. And during our pre call, you said something interesting. You said that most people think that having a kid will fix their relationship. But yeah, you've actually experienced something totally different. Can you share a little bit about that?

Aaron Steinberg  
Yeah. So I don't know. So yeah, sorry. If I said those those words, that's probably somewhat hyperbole, I would say most people think having a kid is going to make their relationship better, or enhance their feelings of love only what you said, Yeah. Fix maybe some people, it's gonna fix their relationship. And, yeah, and so that's what I found is that, like, that's still majority of the case. That's a very old school way of looking at things. And it still is kind of the view that people have, at best, people seem to kind of think, you know, kind of put it out of sight out of mind like this should be fine. I'm not going to worry about it. It is not even remotely unknown, or debatable at this point, that that is not true. Like the Gottman ones who are like the world's foremost relationship researchers at this point, their statistic is I think it's it's this number fluctuates, I think it's 69% of people become very unhappy with their partner in the first three years of having kids. Right. So that's very much the inverse. There is, I don't know, at least 10s, maybe even hundreds of studies on how kids impact your relationship, and none of them say anything positive about it. Now, of course, there is this little group, right? Studies are large swaths, and we're working in percentages or whatever. So it's like, of course, there are people for which that happens, right? But, I mean, I would guess that there's like self selection issues and self reporting issues. And but I would guess it's actually more than 70%. But I could be wrong. I'm just one person. So anyway, yeah, that's what I discovered is that that's, that's not true. And, you know, also, the statistics on divorce show that like, this time, like in the first years of having kids is basically when relationships start to fall apart. So it's very difficult experience that was starting to change was very kind of under supported and under talked about, which is why I was interested in tackling also because I became a father.

David Chung  
So I guess, what's the difference? Because I'm thinking of, you know, having a kid, it's a really stressful time, in a couple's life. So is, I guess, the passing of a loved one, or moving to a new state, or starting a new job? How is having a kid so much different from any of those other challenges that a couple might experience?

Aaron Steinberg  
In some ways? I would say it's not I mean, I think you're onto what I'm guessing you're implying, it's just like, different kinds of transitions are difficult on your relationship, which are difficult on us as individuals. And actually, this is something we talked about when creating all of this as like, what's kind of the bigger picture thing that's interesting to us as it transitions is that kind of why this is interesting. So in some way, I would say it's not different. You're going through some sort of thing that's fundamentally changing either like the structure of your life or the way that you relate to yourself. And those things tend to be difficult on relationships. I think the second hardest time in my relationship was moving in together, behind having kids. So I think those things are fundamentally hard. I think there are particular dynamics about that happened in parenthood that are particular and difficult. Like, for example, when you become a parent, you really are creating an entirely new sense of self. It's not that you become an entirely different person, but your sense of self is expanded, you now have your identity as a parent and all of your behaviors as a parent, which you didn't have before. And so you're kind of discovering who you are in a new way. And what when, what's the same? And how do you stay connected to the thing you were before, which is very difficult to do when you're now consumed by the survival mode of parenthood, and then your partner's doing the same. And so that's a weird overlay, you know, that creates kind of a lot of confusion, like I heard someone say, when I was making the scores there, like, I never needed affirmation before I became a parent. And now I like desperately need affirmation. And so it's like, if in a relationship, if you relate to your partner is being offended by affirmation, and like, not wanting that, and then all of a sudden, they need tons of affirmation for you, because they've become this new sixth band itself, that's very confusing, you caused a lot of problems, you know, you're not in the habit of doing that. So that's one thing, I think, also, just the plain sort of parenthood is just very consuming, like, like, you just don't have a lot of free time for yourself. And so you are meeting your partner with a pretty empty tank a lot of the time. And then like, with sex and intimacy, you know, you're not really I mean, if you gave birth or breastfeeding, you know, like, usually, you're not going to feel your best in your body or maybe even want to be touched. You know, and if you're also like, for both people, like, the windows of time for intimacy are like really small and exhausted, you're like, well, the baby went down, and I can barely even keep my eyes open. And you know, so that's a difficult dynamic. There's a lot of scarcity that can come with having kids of just financially, I mean, it depends on your situation. But having kids is expensive, so there can just be this tension in the survival mode anxiety are going into. And I find that like, a lot of the problems that that people have already become exacerbated by the process of having kids. So you might just finding John Bowlby, who is the founder of attachment theory said that parents fight nine times more often than they did before they had kids, I find that basically impossible to believe, that seems just insane to me, but I'm sure it's at least, maybe two, one and a half to three, I don't know. So that's just the dynamics of parenthood are just a pressure cooker in which, you know, the sort of the freedom and ease that you might have been experiencing in your life just gets really tested. And it's just hard to relate, you know, you barely have enough time to feel like you're a person, let alone a person who wants to relate to another person.

David Chung  
Aaron, you. You mentioned some interesting things there. And going back and tying all of this to this concept of themes. Would you agree that, you know, sort of these big life experiences, and especially having a kid maybe introduces new themes, or amplifies existing themes within individuals, and there's essentially a period of time that essentially these themes need to be re harmonized, or, you know, these couples need to, I guess, learn this new theme that the other person has?

Aaron Steinberg  
What an interesting question. So I think they're to me, the jury is out on how much people change over the course of their lives. I'm not sure. And I think some people think we don't change at all, and some people think we changed a lot. I think there's evidence to, to show that maybe we changed a little bit. I think in terms of themes, what I've tended to find is like, yeah, there might be a new theme introduced from a new experience, you know, or something that was dormant kind of in the background that now is coming more to the surface from the new dynamics of being a parent, sometimes seeing your kids reminds you of your own childhood in ways and new things come out that are interesting. But I think in general, kind of the majority of the experience is that the themes you already have become exacerbated, like you said, so like, if you're a person who identifies as like an achiever, you're now going to put a lot of that sort of achievement pressure on yourself in the realm of being a parent. If you're a person who identifies as like a how offer a service person. Now you're going to be very worried about the impact you're having on your kids, you know? And so I think what you said is I found really beautiful like a re produced I can remember he said reharmonization, or reintegration. I think that's true. Like, I think you have to find, actually one of the one of my coaches that I trained and grow together said, this quote that I thought was really cool. She said to me, when we were talking, I feel like when my she had twins, actually, so this was even more and they persevered. But she said, when I had kids, I felt like my sense of self became like a quadruple exposure image, and I'm still kind of trying to figure out like, what is the me that becomes a more uniform image, you know, two years down the line? So I think I think you're really spot on there.

Matthew Osborn  
Can I can I put you on the spot and ask you an interesting question. I'm curious your answer. If you don't, that's fun. Are there common habits or practices you nearly across the board recommend if I were to come to you, whether it be as a parent or a relationship, and just say, let's say relationship? Yeah, like, I've got some issues, you don't know what those issues are? What are some things and practices I can put into my relationship right now without you knowing anything that can take steps towards improving that relationship? Yeah,

Aaron Steinberg  
it's a great question. I would say my answer to that is, is, is essentially a lot of the things that we've talked about already. So So for me, as I said, because I think that I think that relationships in a certain way, are very simple. And it's basically the intersection of two peoples themes with each other. For me, like if you're going to take on the Aaron Steinberg way of doing things, my suggestion is, figure out what your themes are. And and the way that I do that, again, as I go, What's your most common argument? What is your most common judgment of your partner, and then work backwards, right, like back solve it. So if your most common judgment of your partners, they're really selfish, probably you want to feel like you matter, or feel like you're on a team or something like that. And language is very important. So you want to keep refining those and having a like, ideally, both of you kind of think about this. And, you know, you kind of know, and can have this understanding of like, what is the figure eight that we're in, or the reinforcing feedback loop, or the more I'm like this, the more that you do this, that particular understanding, is maybe my top of the ladder of things that I would recommend, in fact, like I, in the background, I've never released this. So I've been developing this kind of like couples practice, it's just something you could like, teach and take with you instead of going to therapy. And the entry point to it is that the entry point to it is understanding your themes. And the figure eight in the end, the feedback loop that they form with each other. So that's, that's one thing that I think is very important, maybe maybe the most important. And I think the thing I said about not sweeping anything under the rug is extremely important. You know, like, that's, like I say, as a default, this is kind of obnoxious, but like as a default, I say, say everything you're feeling and and ask all of your questions, right? Like, people over synthesize things in relationships. So like, if you're thinking about your sex life, you might feel five different things about this, I want I want to have sex with you more, I'm worried about what it would feel like if I said that to you, these are the things that are actually working for me, but it's actually just this, and I really don't want to make you feel bad. And I understand this as a sensitivity for you from this and, but like I really do want to feel more connected to you. People then over synthesize that and they'll come to their partner will be really nervous, like, I want to talk about our sex life, but we need more sex. And it's kind of like there were just like what you know, and then they're forced to assume a lot of stuff. So say all the like don't synthesize present the whole iceberg and ask about the whole iceberg is a big one. And coming in, I said coming back to things right not sweeping things under the rug viewing kind of the long game. There's, I have like this pyramid of at some point, I want to create a visual around this. But basically, there's like a pyramid of like, I have a relationship model at the bottom of it is willingness. So if you're not willing to receive feedback, look at yourself, honestly share what's going on. Like, you're not going to get anywhere. You know, like if you're if have what's referred to as a fixed mindset, like you're not going to get anywhere in a relationship. It's just not how relationships work. And then, on top of that is, are you committed to your own well being and are you committed to the team's well being? Right and both in correct proportion, then on top of that is your ability to regulate your feelings and stay grounded? And then on top of that is the stuff I just talked about? So basically, when when people come to me, I started here's the practice and then I work backwards into like, how's your willingness? How's your commitment to the team and yourself? How's your ability to regulate yourself? And then back around to like, how do those influence kind of these dynamics between the two of you? That's kind of the core for me of like, if there's kind of a couple of things you need to know about relationships, those are the things and then from a communication perspective, I always teach this tool that I have kind of cute silly, called FAQ, which stands for fact, assumption question. And fact is not, I don't know, if anyone, you guys, or anyone listening smellier with nonviolent communication, which holds fact is like something you need to view in a video camera. That's not how I view it. I think it's sort of unnecessarily restrictive. It's just like, here's the experience I have, right. Like, I thought this, you didn't do this, you did do this. And there's a lot of qualifying Right? Like, I know, I'm not God, I'm probably not remembering this correctly, whatever. But here's kind of what I experienced. And then assumption is, here's what it implied to me. And then the question is, you asked about it, because underneath every low, here's a Arianism, every thought you have is an answer to a question you don't know you're asking. So. So you want to insert. So what happens is there's a stimulus, there's an experience, it goes into our brain, which is an uncertainty filtering machine, that is literally the function of our brain is to create rules around uncertainty, or a funk or mental function of our brain. And then what you hear in your mind is your assessment. You don't even hear the question. So instead, it's like, Hey, you said like, I saw your face change, or it seemed like a change to me. To me, that made me feel like you're not with me, or you're like mad at me or something. That's what it implied to me. I'm making up about it, like, Did something change for you in that moment? You know, and being able to ask that way, right, and create open more openings, and less closings, right, more doorways and bridges between the two of you will get you really far. So basically, theme if I'm going to answer more simply themes and FAQ. Those are my do things I say for everybody. That's like my premarital counseling baggage that doesn't exist. But when people come to every marital counseling, that's basically where we go, Aaron,

David Chung  
as we start winding things down, we've talked about, I mean, so many interesting topics in this last hour together. And you shared so much great insight on this concept of themes, as well as this nifty little tool called FAQ. If, for the listeners, you know, listening currently, if there was one person or one type of person that you'd recommend that this listener share this podcast with that, you know, your message would benefit the most. Who would that type of person be?

Aaron Steinberg  
That's an interesting question. I mean, I don't know if I see myself accurately. But I've always kind of prided myself on being a practitioner, who isn't kind of in a particular sort of worldview, or like way of relaying things like a lot of people in my world are very well, you know, like, overly spiritual. A lot of people in my world are very academic and kind of harsh. Like, to me, I try to be, you know, like, obviously, like, I think really intensely about things and try to model things, but I try to make it like really simple. So for me, like, I think there's a, there's a bit of, like, there's people who are going to want to work on their relationship, no matter what, and there are people who are not going to work on want to work on the relationship no matter what. But I think there's this set of people who are like, I'm kind of not that happy, or there's some stuff I'm questioning, but I don't see anyone around me who can explain that in a way that doesn't make me want to vomit, or something, or, you know, so that's how I see myself as like, kind of the modeler or, you know, psychology person or counselor for people who, you know, are kind of on the fence. You know, because like, to me, like theme, like, none of this is like super simple, as we have kind of talked about seriously and joked about but it also is kind of simple. It's like not, you know, you don't need to, like inhabit any sort of, you know, thing about your parents are, you know, dubious spiritual claim to inhabit my way of doing things. So, so I feel like if someone's listening to this and like you have a partner, it's kind of like, Yeah, I'd rather I have think our relationship could be better, but I don't trust anyone to do that. Or nothing's really resonated with me. I think I'm an interesting person to try. You know,

David Chung  
that's a great answer. I was I was gonna say, if I see any couple bickering on the street, I'm going to tell them to listen to this

Aaron Steinberg  
episode. Okay. You're being much more generous than I'm being with myself. So I appreciate that, David.

David Chung  
For those who want to reach out to you, what's the best way to connect with you, Erin? Yeah, so

Aaron Steinberg  
my Instagram is at the grow together CO and so you can follow me there. My website is the grow together co my email is Aaron at the grow together co one of my favorite things about what I do is honestly like answering people's questions. So if anything you heard in this is like, that was interesting. I wonder, can you say more about that? Or, you know, or similarly, like, a lot of people have reaction, you know, I speak kind of tongue in cheek sometimes, like, you know, you're like, you're just saying, like, don't be an asshole. And obviously it's and I'm like, Yeah, I know, you know. So I like going in further in those directions, you know, and kind of hitting in the nuance because the nuance obviously things branch out really quickly and get into like, Well, if that doesn't work, then you do that. So anyway, all that to say is asked me questions. If you feel inspired to communicate with me like it's, it's fun for me so you can get in touch with me any of those ways. Awesome.

David Chung  
And of course, we'll drop those links in the show notes. And, Aaron, I just want to thank you for this enlightening conversation about relationships.

Aaron Steinberg  
Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me. i It was it was a lot of fun. I hope I wasn't too bold dose with all this. All this stuff that I

David Chung  
thought it was perfect. Not at all. All right. And with that, we'll see you next time. Thanks, guys.