Welcome everybody to the Greg McEwan podcast. It's really a pleasure to have you. To spend

a little time with you as you're walking, maybe you're running even, maybe you're driving

to work or back from work, tidying up in the kitchen. One thing that you certainly

have in common with me and everybody else who's listening is you are in many relationships.

In fact, in a certain way, you're in more relationships now than probably anybody has

ever been, because the advent of social media that at least promises to connect us. But

meanwhile, at exactly the same time, we're living in the loneliest period, perhaps in

recorded history. And the solution to that is simply not going to be found in more shallow

distant digital connections. This is episode three in a series on fewer but deeper. That

is how do we establish the kinds of relationships that can actually meet our need for connection,

our need to be known, to be seen, to be understood, truly, to use those words from the classic

book Howard's End by EM Forster to Connect. That this matters to people is, I suppose self-evident,

but as we shall see in today's episode, that's not always been true. It's not always been

obvious, not always obvious even to the psychologists and the therapists. Indeed, they talked

something quite opposite. By the end of today's episode, you will feel a renewed commitment

to build deep relationships, deep connection with the people who matter most to you. And

you will have a key to being able to understand those closest relationships to more clearly.

Let's get to it.

Remember not to try and take this journey alone. This journey we're on together. Go with someone.

Go with your partner, your spouse, your family, your closest friends, even your teammates at work.

Think about who you can share this with so that the conversation begins when the conversation in

this episode comes to an end. A few days ago, Eric Newton went on to Twitter as was and wrote a

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