This is Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby, and you're listening to the love, happiness, and success podcast.

Today we're talking about us. Getting past you and me with Terry Real.

This beautiful song we're listening to together is called The Pearl.

The artist is Jenny Wood.

And I chose this song because the concept of the pearl being like a beautiful, precious treasure is a lovely metaphor for a wonderful relationship.

And on today's show, we're going to be talking about how to build

that kind of relationship with legendary marriage counselor Terry Real. I'm so excited for today's show.

Because today we're covering a topic that is dear to my heart, which is how you and your partner

can build a more connected and

loving relationship where you both get to be part of something that is bigger than just yourself.

As you know, I am a marriage and family therapist, so naturally I am obsessed with relationship

systems and I know how easy it is for all of us to get caught up

in what we need or want and, you know, thinking about what they did or didn't do or who said what.

And it is difficult sometimes to get that big picture perspective to see how we are both doing a complex dance together that creates

the relationship as the whole, right? And when we are able to do that and understand how we're

each contributing to the way we both feel, we can usually see that our partner's actions actually

do make a lot of sense.

We can have empathy for them, compassion for them.

And that is what empowers us to change things on our side of the equation to make the

relationship positive for both of us.

And so these are our big ideas.

And it's talking about how we as individuals work together

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