What's up guys, Lisa here? Just want to let you guys know that rating review in this podcast means the absolute world to me and to encourage it on reading out weekly reviews. This review comes from A-L-B Walker. About a year ago, my boyfriend introduced me to impact theory, stroke relationship theory. I absolutely love hearing about the journey that you and Tom have been on and gained so much inspiration from the both of you. I've just discovered women of impact and listened to the first episode and can't wait to listen to the rest.

I think it's safe to say, almost universally, that every single human on a planet wants to

be in love. That heart fluttering stomach churning, heads in the clouds, I can't believe it

kind of love. I mean, Disney has made billions of dollars selling the fairy tale of happily

ever after. We've spent close to 2020 billion for Valentine's Day to show our love for each other. I mean, there's even a drive-through chapel in Vegas that has got in on the love action. Where there's a demand, there's a supply. And yet, despite the fact that we all love to be in love, We still find ourselves within an approximate 50%

of horse rate.

And that's just data on people that chose to break up.

Let's not forget the couples that agree to stay together

out of convenience or for the sake of the kids

or the couples that are living in quiet desperation

or the couples that are suffering from bed death.

Now, I've been married for close to 18 years

and I'm here to declare it's freaking hard. No matter what Hollywood may try and tell us, arguments are not solved with a romantic slow motion kiss in the rain or by moulding a clay pot while an orchestra plays overhead. It takes a willingness to take a hard look at yourself, to stare nakedly at your inadequacies, admit when you are wrong and be willing to change. Be willing to communicate. Be willing to open yourself up to being vulnerable. You must be willing to give to receive and to compromise. So today I wanted to do a different kind of episode. I believe beyond anything else knowledge is power. And so I wanted to bring on a guest who can give us tips, tactics and their own perspective on what it actually takes, like no BS would it actually takes to have a happy relationship. To give a perspective that my own estrogen eyes may not otherwise see, to enlighten us with a viewpoint that we may not otherwise understand. The more we know and understand about relationship dynamics, pitfalls, hurdles and conflicts, the better we can be at navigating those river rapids. And in my opinion, there is only one person on this whole planet that can do that. So please help me and welcome in today's In-Fly Entertainment, the pilot to my plane, the Ying to my Yang, the Mr to my Mrs, and the half to my whole, the love of my life, my hobby, Mr Tom, Billu. Very, very. Maybe. I got it little emotional at the end of reading that. It was very sweet. Welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Your first man on the show, wanted to do a very special episode of Alan Tinday and it's just, I've had 18 years of marriage with you and the lessons that we've learned along the way have just been so empowering and enlightening, but I can only talk from my point of view. So I was like, you actually make the perfect guest. So I want to welcome you. And then also I want to start with one of the things that you have always said is like the base and foundation to relationships, selection matters. that that's where I want wanna start. Talk to me about selection matters, what you mean by that. So this is, I feel so bad, because for a long time it didn't don't know me how important it was. And I just thought that I was like, kingship, it relationships. And then I really started to think about the way that you are in the relationship and how would I be able to apply the things that I'm learning from reading books and all of that stuff about how to make a relationship work. If you weren't so adept at one, just being good at communicating to, you're so good at letting things go and realizing how much grace you were giving me in the relationship to make mistakes, to try things that didn't necessarily work or to just be playing young and stupid. I don't remember when it hit me, but I remember how it felt when I was like, wait a second. If I didn't have that, then all of the knowledge and tools and tactics wouldn't go anywhere. If you didn't have a growth mindset as well, then this would really be sort of dead in the water and it really made me start to reflect on how much of this is actually that I have tools and tactics and how much of this is that I just really chose wisely and really began to realize you need both, for sure. You need the tools, you need the tactics, you need communication, the hard work that you were talking about in the intro all of that's real but you really need to pick somebody that has certain sort of objective universal characteristics like either already a growth mindset or a willingness to pursue it I mean we got together so young and I think either I know neither of us had a growth mindset but we understood very early on that you either grow together or you grow apart. So we put equal energy into improving. And then there are things that are specific to you. There are certain things you're going to like, not like the fact that we're not both, you know, just sort of alphas banging our heads together that we found a nice yin yang balance like you were talking about. What are you thinking about the yin and the yang? this is a question that I get asked a lot. People are surprised that we're actually very different.

But some... balance like you were talking about. What are you thinking about the yin and the yang? Because this is a question that I get asked a lot.

People are surprised that we're actually very different.

But sometimes I actually think that being

two different can also be detrimental to the relationship.

And for me, we talk very heavily on values.

So when we first got together,

talking about the values to our core,

because even though we're different in personalities,

I'd actually haven't found that that's been a problem. Well, it creates all the issues in our marriage. 100%. But you're absolutely correct about that narrow band of different, but not too different. Yeah. Where do you think that fine line is? So I think that you have personality, what I'll call the combination of in-bred traits, just the way that you are, your default orientation. I don't think you've done anything over your life to have the default personality type that you have, nor do I feel like I've done anything for mine, but the values were added on. So your personality types, I think, are yin yang, your values values, though, I think need to be very similar, deadly similar. Because if you really clash on something super important, we talk about this. It's like, when you're arguing, arguing and arguing, you may have a base assumption, misalignment, and it's like, oh, you think things are one way, I think things are another way. But once I understand your base assumption, oh, you think, you know, XYZ, then it's like,

...