Record Live Podcast

 

 And we're back with Record Live. It's great to see you again, Zanita,. We've also got a special guest today.

. And that special guest is Paul Borges. Paul, you are the course coordinator at Avondale University for the counseling , streams, the counseling subjects and courses there.

And you've got a background in family, and marriage therapy,, counseling. So you've got some experience in relationships, which is our topic for today. And it's really great to have you with

us. It's a, it's a pleasure. Thank you very much, Jared.

Now, Paul, , Maybe you could share with us the best piece of relationship advice that you've ever received.

. Some of the best advice that I've had comes from a guy called john Gottman, who's written numerous books in the area of relationships based on 35, I think 40 years of research seen as one of the best voices out there. And one of the best researchers on what actually makes marriages work long term.

And I think there were a couple of things from him that I've really found incredibly helpful. The first is. That you don't have to solve all your problems in relationships. In fact, he found that people who had long lasting marriages and we're happy there, so we're not just talking about people who are enduring their marriage, but people who are enjoying their marriage, he found that 70 percent of the problems they had were never solved.

He called them perpetual problems. These are things to do with idiosync, idiosyncratic behaviours. These are to do with personality traits. These are to do with likes and dislikes. , and that means that we are always going to come up against that stuff., I get a little bit amused when people say, you know, I've been married for 40 years and we've never had an argument.

My initial temptation is to go, well, dementia's got you already. Um, you know, the good outweighs the bad so much that you And even remember the arguments you had, the other option is to say, well, maybe you don't talk at all, because if you don't talk, you can't argue, , the idea that people in good marriages actually don't solve most of their problems, but they find a way of dealing with them.

That doesn't take away from the essential good stuff in their relationship. In other words, they manage their perpetual problems. They don't necessarily solve them. A lot of them cannot be solved. Yeah. Just

before you go to your second, your second point there, Paul, 70 percent surprises me. That's high.

It's higher than I would have expected when you started talking about these perpetual problems. Maybe there's hope.

So, so, so Gottman says, Jared, that 30%, about 30 percent he calls solvable problems. And that about 70 percent he said are about managing. In other words, how do we manage our conversations around that?

How we how do we decide what hills are worth dying on? What things we can just let go even though they bug us?

We have to kind of decide that even if something irks us a little bit, what do we need to do to let that go? And why does that irk us? And yeah, why is it such a big deal? And there are a lot of things that may feel like they're a big deal. But when you boil it down, is it really? You know, is it really?

What's the worst thing that could happen if our partner never changes? And in reality, partners don't change all that much. They change a bit with behavior, but personality characteristics, they're biologically wired to a large extent, or, formed and shaped by early life experiences. I was going to give you a second one, wasn't I, Sunita?

I'll make this

Before you do the second one, can I ask you about the first one? You mentioned that we can work through a lot of these things, but as I was asking some people in the office before this conversation, what are some things they would like to know, they were actually asking, how do we actually have these difficult conversations?

Like, what are some tools to have those? Because maybe we can work through them, but we still... Kind of need to know how

Yeah, I think the worst thing to do is to try to work through it when you are what psychologists call flooded. In other words, you've gone into fight and flight response, fight, flight or freeze.

Freeze is that stonewalling thing that people do in relations when they just refuse to talk. Fight is pretty obvious, you fire back, flight is you just walk out of the room, you're gone or dissociate or whatever. , that's the worst time to try to solve things. We often say, particularly in Christian circles, never go to being angry.

Okay. I'm not sure that's a great idea at all, because at one in the morning, when you are still trying to sort something out and you're more and more tired and you're more and more in defense mode, you've got Buckley's chance of sorting that out. You're probably far better to take time out to go, let's just put this on hold.

Let's get back to this at a time when, we are both actually in a state. So I think. Timing is really important for any kind of conflict resolution or problem talk. I've suggested some of my couples that they have a weekly or fortnightly state of the union talk where there's specific rules.

There's a structure around that. And, affirmations because we know affirmations are a great way to start any conversation to tell the person what they are doing well before you tell them what they're not doing well, and less defensiveness if that happens. And this is a place where you use all those good communications.

skills, I statements or other new statements, get the blame out of it. I have a problem, a kind of a solution focused emphasis to the conversation. Doesn't matter who broke it. I mean, couples spend a lot of time paying counselors like myself to talk about who broke it.

What, what does it matter? Yeah, who broke it? It's broken. How do we put it back together? That's what really matters. But see, this comes from a view of causality, which we call the linear view of causality. A causes B. In other words, she did that. Therefore, Our marriage is no good and it's always more complicated than that.

We believe in the circular view of causality. Somebody does one thing which affects what the other person does, which affects what the first person does and it just goes around and in that kind of a model, it's really hard to figure out and particularly unhelpful to say who caused what. Now there are some extreme examples where it's pretty easy, such as an extramarital affair or alcoholism or something like that, but they're extreme.

Yeah. That's not the. The run of the mill stuff that comes to Couples Council is usually on the,, yeah, nowhere near as obvious, as that.

It seems like almost human nature, Paul, to, try and have a narrative or trying to understand the story. Why someone did something and so that A to B seems to make more sense to us perhaps than the sort of circular causality that you're reflecting on , and just for me, I guess, just listening to what you've just answered in that question, , it's a helpful paradigm shift to go, well, actually, it's a lot more complicated.

There's a lot more factors bearing down that perhaps I'm not even thinking of because I'm always thinking. What's happening to me? What? What's the problem here? And making a story up in my head. Sometimes we all do it to explain why I'm feeling the way I'm feeling. And you're saying that's not always helpful because we can actually blame where it's not due or we don't aim, as you said, to fix the broken thing.

We just want to apportion blame to someone who's done that. I think that's a really helpful, yeah, you've given me something to think about, which is

good. I think the, the issue is Jared, that, I can come up with a narrative in my head, but invariably it'll be different to the narrative that my wife.

pass. And I think one of the really helpful things that I've learned is that there are going to be a number of narratives about any incident that happened. , my wife's going to have her version of what happened when we argued at that particular point in time. I'm going to have my version of it.

And maybe I just need to keep mine to myself. Yeah, maybe that's the most helpful because if I am trying to force mine on her, she's going to get defensive. She's gonna fire back and fight for her territory. And then we get into a power struggle. And one of the things that I have found helpful, maybe this could be the second thing.

, I've just replaced the one I was going to say. The second thing is to actually, and this can be really, really, , quite challenging. But one of the things I've challenged myself to do is If there's a discussion, my wife and I don't argue. We just have robust discussions. Yeah, if in one of these robust discussions, yeah, I stopped long enough to ask myself the question, what is more important right now for me to win?

Or to solve the issue and move on. What's more important? And if I'm honest with myself, I have to come to the horrifying realization that so often I want to win. That's what I really want to do. I just, darn it, I just want to win. And as soon as I identified that motive within myself, then I can go, okay. I need to back off because this is now about my ego and that's not gonna be helpful.

That's not gonna, yeah, if I need to win this, all I'm doing is empowering the other person who will then also want to win because nobody likes to lose.

So when we're having some of these,, Intense moments of fellowship, I call them in my marriage, , we can get quite heated. And I think the advice to step away and try and plan a time to resolve it is very helpful.

What are some things that can make our relationships more resilient? So the 70 percent of things that bother us, we can live with that because we've put things in place that just make it longer lasting, that just makes us survive some of those conflicts, those little battles and we get out of them.

Winning both winning on the same side. How can we make ourselves more resilient in those relationships?

I think one of the most important things is to do what Gottman says and to build a relationship that has what he terms as positive sentiment override. Now that's a technical term. It simply means you put deposits in the bank because You will probably both know and can relate to this that there are some times when something that your partner does, it's just not an issue.

You just go, ah, whatever. You have just had a hard day and you go and give them a hug. And yeah, it's all good. And there are other times that starts. Yeah. a real conflict and a real battle. And I think it has a lot to do with how much goodwill there is in the relationship at any particular point of time.

When there's a lot of goodwill, and that's what we mean by positive sentiment override. When there's a lot of goodwill, we can let things go. We can let them slide when gas, not a biggie. Our partner speaks to us a bit of impatient voice or tells us off about something. And we just go, I don't need to do anything with that.

I know they're going through a rough time at the moment or, and it's cool. I don't need to even take it personally, cause we're good. We're in a good place. She's just, she's just a bit crabby. That's fine. Yeah. , and we don't do anything with it because the problem is. When people get in an attack defense pattern with escalation.

In other words, one person says something, the other person fires back, the other person says something, and it's a downward spiral. =that, then escalates to the point where people say really, really damaging things. And I have told couples there's some things that should just never be said, even if you think them.

One of those would be, I wish I hadn't married you. I've known couples who've said that back from that. That's a big one. If you think that's normal, most people sometime in the marriage will go, What was I thinking? What on earth did I do? This is so hard. That's that's not unusual that that's going to happen sometime in a long term marriage.

But not everything you think at any particular moment of time necessarily has to be expressed because once you express it, then it becomes your partner's problem rather than your problem to deal with. It then becomes your partner's problem, and then it becomes a relationship issue. Any type of put downs or name calling or, as a couples counselor, it's been doing this for many years.

I have heard of some horrible things that people who supposedly love each other. And people who supposedly follow Jesus as well have said to their partner, just horrific stuff that you'd never, ever. Be said, language that should not be used, terms, insulting terms, derogatory terms that should just never be said, put downs, those, those things are incredibly damaging and sometimes make it hard to come back from that.

Yeah, it's interesting you say that because Some people, take relationships as, Oh, you should be a hundred percent honest with your partner. Tell them everything you're thinking. But, , I guess you're saying there should be boundaries even with that.

Totally. I get really nervous, Anika, when people say that we tell each other everything and I go, Oh, horrors.

Really? Does she want to know every time you look inappropriately at somebody on the beach? Does she really want to know that? That's your problem. That's your problem of lust and how you deal with that. You've got to deal with that, um, to keep your thoughts pure. , and, that's your own personal problem.

It's not your partner's problem. I don't think, I don't think honesty is the same as telling a person absolutely everything. I think they're two different things. Because some thoughts like the thought, I wish I hadn't married you, maybe gone in half an hour and you go, yeah, I'm really glad I didn't.

You say you have that internal dialogue with yourself. It's a moment of anger. I remember very well when I sat with this couple of years ago. And she kept session after session. She kept coming back to a fight that had two years previously where he had in the middle of it said, I wish I hadn't married you.

He had apologized a thousand times. He had said he was angry. He didn't mean he'd said all that. And all that was stuck in her mind was you said it, you said it. You wish you hadn't married. You don't want to actually be here. And he protested and she said, you said it. She was stuck on that. She couldn't move beyond that.

She couldn't see that as, yeah, something unfortunate that he had said because it had hurt her so deeply.

I guess it leans into another point, , that I was thinking about is. Sometimes these days we expect our partner to be everything. So for example, I have a partner and I expect him to be my partner and my girlfriends and my mom and my dad.

Like we go to our partners for all things. And it's kind of the same as, we don't have to share everything with our partner. Like we also have. Our friends. Do you see that in a lot of relationships these days? Or, um...

, I think when relationships start off, they often are seen by the young couple as, you're everything,, I'm now complete.

This idea that I wasn't complete before, but now I am, I've got my better half. Now I'm a better person. None of that is sound. I don't think it's sound biblical. It's certainly not sound psychologically. The idea that you can't be a whole person unless you're in an intimate relationship. Where did that come from?

You know, pity for the apostles. Pity for Jesus. He wasn't married. So was he not a whole person? Yeah, you get to a pretty ridiculous place if you, if you see it that way. I remember somebody saying to me some years ago, she said, I decided a long time ago that my husband was never going to get what emotions are about, that he was never going to get it and I needed to give up trying to tell him about my feelings and just hang out with my girlfriends when I need to have chat about feelings.

My husband's a wonderful man. She said, I love him and I don't want to be without him and we have a lot of fun and we have a good marriage and I talk when I want to talk emotionally. I go to my girlfriends because they get it. You'll never get it. And she said, I've stopped blaming him for that.

It's never going to change. He doesn't want to know how to spell the word feeling. So. I go to my girlfriends and I get other needs met. And I think that shows the maturity of a relationship when you go, these are the needs that are met in my relationship. And this is the stuff that, I do elsewhere.

And I don't need to necessarily do that with my partner. And I think that comes to activities. I ride a bike. My wife's never gonna go cycling with me at six in the morning. Yeah, dressed in lycra. That's never gonna happen. You know, she thinks I'm insane getting up at that time to ride a bike, on the road with trucks and cars.

Like she thinks I'm crazy. So yeah, it's never going to be what she does. And it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to.

And I think that's actually very liberating. In terms of I feel like unmet expectations are often something in a relationship that can really damage and be difficult for it.

But oftentimes, it's just you're expecting that significant other to be A counselor, a protector, a provider, a husband, a friend, everything. And this brings us to, something's Anita wrote a piece for the signs of the times magazine, and it's looking at the,, it's actually about the recession of sex, the great sex recession, they're calling it people aren't hooking up or connecting with others as frequently, including young people.

But I guess the. The place we landed on with that piece was that it seems like society is more and more disconnected. We're not having significant relationships. We're having trouble making friends. We had an office conversation about how hard it is. People joke about Jesus's greatest miracle being having 12 close friends in his 30s.

So, people are feeling that loneliness epidemic, that disconnect. How can we get better at that? How can we get better at diversifying, our relationships and not expecting one person to be the be all and end all? Are there things we can put in place to actually invest in other significant relationships than our intimate?

intimate partner relationship.

Just to reinforce what you're saying, Jared, one of the questions I will often use in therapy, both in couples therapy and individual therapy is to ask about how many good friends the person has. And it's quite scary. The amount of people says, Well, no one I'm close to or nobody that I could ring if I was in trouble, I have three or four acquaintances and I talked to them occasionally,, get along well with the people at work, but nobody that I would share with you with, share with what I've just told you.

It's really scary that people come to a stranger who they pay to see to tell them about the stuff that is most painful or most relevant in their life, but don't have people around them that they can trust with that information. I think that's. I think that's really unfortunate. It's a, it's amazing how often that gets said to me.

What do you do about that? I think you have to start taking risks. And this is what I encourage my clients to do. Take a little risk, start, invite somebody that you seem to get along well with. Can we go to a cafe and sit down and have a drink together?

I enjoy just, going in and having lunch with you. And doing that and then building something upon which we can then have a deeper and more meaningful conversation. I think you have to start slow because if people try to. Okay, I'm going to have this deeper, meaningful conversation about my depression with somebody I'll work with.

It's either going to freak the other person out or it's going to freak them out. So I think, you have to establish your context. And this is where community, including church, is, So important. I think one of the, one of the struggles with church is we do this pretend thing at church, don't we?

I mean, you will know when you go to church on a Saturday morning, and somebody asks, how are you, Jared? What do you say, Jared?

Pretty good. At the moment, I've got a newborn in the house, so I say a bit sleep deprived, but generally it's, yeah, I'm good. Thanks. How are you?

And in saying that you're a bit sleep deprived, you've probably gone further and made yourself a little more vulnerable.

Not a lot of people do. , I remember very well a public announcement being made at the church that I went to that somebody in leadership that he and his wife had separated. That were both in leadership. And somebody said, just for you to know that this is what's happened. So next week she's not there, but he is.

He comes to church and I So I'm so how are you and without blinking, he said, fine, I'm good. And I just looked at him and I said, I'm not buying that. He said, well, what do you mean? Why would you not believe me that I'm good? I said, with what we heard in church last week, I cannot understand that you could be okay.

And it really took him back. And he stopped, didn't say anything. He was a man of many words. So this was something for him not to speak. He didn't say anything for a little while. Then he looked at me and he said, I am as good as can be expected under the circumstances. Can you accept that? And I said, yeah, I'll buy that.

I said, that sounds a bit honest, and we would, over the weeks. So it's a, so how are you? He said, you're not going to accept fine. Are you? And I said, no. I'm not going to accept that. I said, I value you too much to accept fine. And we started to get just that little bit deeper. And I think communities often struggle to do that.

So we live in cliche land rather. It's not about saying everything, but it is at least about saying something. And we may want to say, Yeah, it's a tough way. But, and the person then has the option of going. Do you need to talk about it? And I might say, No, not really. But thanks. Yeah. Or actually, I wouldn't mind.

Can we catch up this week? Yeah. I just don't think We foster emotional intelligence in many community settings, , and, , the one I'm probably most familiar with is church, and, I think we could do that a lot better.

I guess on that topic, , I'm all for having these open, how are you questions, , but I think what a lot of people fear is, they fear being vulnerable, but they also don't know who to trust and how to trust people, I don't know, from my experience, when I haven't been doing well, I And people have asked me that in general, , How are you?

Some people I feel okay talking to, and then some people I'm like, I don't really want to bear my sleeve to you, kind of thing. , how do we know, how to trust people, or who to trust, and what are some ways that we can build that if we just aren't open to anyone?

Yeah. Yeah. I think we actually have to ask ourselves what is the chance that this person will not gossip about the information that I've told them.

And if we go, the chance is pretty small that they won't gossip, then it's not safe to share. And then we may have to come out with a cliche because it's just not safe. And if we do, we're going to regret it. So I think it's about asking ourselves two questions. One, can this person just accept the emotion that I want to share with them.

Do I have some confidence that they'll accept it? Not preach at me, not give me a Bible text, not write me off with a cliche or anything like that, because then I'm gonna feel that my emotion isn't taken seriously. And secondly, can they keep this to themselves? And in the church, we don't do confidentiality.

really that well, I think in a lot of communities, we don't and it's a pity in the church because if somebody says something to us, we just assume that's, common knowledge. And, a person may have trusted us. With a personal story, and if it's something personal, the safest thing we can do is just keep it to ourselves.

And I think if we foster that more in communities and churches, that would show real respect to other people's painful experiences, thus making it safer for people to share some of that, in those communities.

We're fast running out of time, Paul, we want to respect your time as well, but a question that's burning in this conversation around relationships for me is how do we know, and I think Christians have particular trouble with this, right? Jesus taught us to forgive. He taught us to forgive, you know, 70 times 7, 490 times, you can't count it, just forgive.

And one thing I think as Christians we have trouble with is knowing when to end a relationship. Some relationships end, whether it's friends, family members, there's something toxic, there's abuse situations, even , marriages. We don't like to talk about the end of marriages because, There's certain texts about divorce that we may take out of context or we think others will judge us for, how do we know if we're in a relationship that's, maybe it's on shaky ground and we go, no, I'm going to stick this out.

I'm going to be resilient. I'm going to practice the 70 percent rule that you put in place earlier, or actually there's red flags, this relationship for my own. benefit needs to end for that person's benefit. It's toxic or , it's not working. I have to end this friendship. I have to go to a different church.

I have to stop seeing these friends from this period in my life because they're not healthy for me in this period of my life. Whatever the relationship , is there anything we can do, to help us answer that question? If we're in a season like that.

Yeah, I think there are some things, Joe, and it's an excellent question.

The first thing I'd want to say is forgiveness... and having relationship and not one in the same thing. I think forgiveness is always a good aim, but we have to realize firstly that forgiveness is a process and sometimes it can take years. There's something really horrible has happened to us. But that does not mean we should Yeah, that we should initiate or reconcile necessarily with the person because forgiveness is about letting go the anger, the need for vengeance, the need to get even all of that, letting that go.

And that's important for me to be able to do that. But it may never be safe for me to be in that person's company again. Just maybe just. the reality of it. I think some warning signs in whether it's an intimate relationship or whether it's a friendship relationship or even a work environment is for us to monitor our own anxiety.

How anxious do we get when we know we're going to be around this person? Does our anxiety just go off the scale? No matter what we do, no matter what we try to do, we just cannot get past this massive anxiety that we have that is only relieved once we know that encounter is over. That's a warning sign if that continues.

If that goes on for a long period of time, months or even years, you go, yeah, what is it there? I think also the question I would ask is, do we feel some kind of safety with this person? Do we feel safe? Or do we feel that they could attack us, they could say something, be sarcastic, and have a go at our character, and it's not just a one off thing, it's not just something they did accidentally, but it's a continual pattern of that.

So I make a difference between a one off instance, something that can happen, we can all say stupid things, versus a pattern. I think also we need to listen to the advice of others. Sometimes I find that people stay in relationships or foster relations with everybody around them can see how destructive it actually is.

I've had people come and say to me, she is a different person since she's been with him. Her whole character has changed. We don't even know who she is anymore. And I'm a believer, particularly when it comes to marriage. I'm a believer in marriage, and I have a very high view of marriage, both as a Christian and as a marriage and family therapist.

I no longer believe in marriage at all costs. No, I don't think the Bible does, and I'm pretty sure God doesn't. In fact, I'm 100 percent sure God is not expecting us to stay somewhere where, for example, we are being physically and emotionally abused. And when someone's physically abused the issue being emotionally abused, , large levels of emotional abuse can hurt every bit as much as physical abuse.

And I don't think it's a contradiction of a high view of marriage to say there needs to be situations that are downright dangerous. And we need to get out of there. There are times like that. Where the person has shown no signs of any lasting change. Yes, they may say sorry when it happens, but that was all over again.

A week later or two weeks or a month later. I'm in the typical cycle of domestic violence, for example, comes to mind. Unless we have some reason to believe. That change is actually occurring. We need to ask yourself some very honest questions, which is at what cost am I prepared to continue this relationship?

And it's one of the common questions I'll ask clients. What are you prepared to pay in order to stay in this relationship? And are you okay with what you're paying to be in this relationship, whether it's a friendship or relationship?

So good. , I guess to land the plane, it would be nice to end on a lighter note , , and I suppose just to end it on a practical note, like, what are some fun things we can do, whether it's like with a partner or a friend? Do you have any just fun, practical ideas of like dates we can go on or things we can do

with our loved ones?

That's a different one, Zanita, because everybody's different and what different people enjoy, I think. I think if you're in a relationship for a while, it's think back at the stuff you used to enjoy. I mean, a lot of couples I talked to don't do the stuff anymore that they did. Lots of when they first got married or lots of when they started dating, they just don't do it anymore.

Why? Because they're busy because they're counting pennies because Yeah, they haven't prioritized. They haven't been intentional about it. I think intentionality is important to actually get the diary out and go. Okay, we are going away this weekend. Yeah, just the two of us. We are going away. And that's hard when you've got kids and,, that may not be appropriate, when kids are really little, but, to be as intentional as you possibly can about time together and try to remember what did we do before that was fun.

Second bit of advice I'd have. Which is should be self evident. But yeah, Jill and I will go out to a restaurant. We'll look around and we'll see these couples sitting there and guess what? They're both doing it both on their phones. Yeah, we looked at and we got there's a really nice restaurant. But what they're doing is exactly what they could do at home without paying 150 200 for this lovely meal in this really good restaurant because they're just on their phones and you just and it's not just young people there's people think. My age just sit there on the phone. We become addicted to the jolly things. And I think that's a real danger. There's some just to end with one more comment from Gottman. If I may, he has this lovely term where he talks about love maps and he says people in long term relationships, people who stay together and he did longitudinal studies, followed couples for 20 years and He found that what they did was they created a love map about their partner.

And what that means is they knew lots of little things, seemingly insignificant things, but all those things together showed their partner that they really were interested in their life. And so Gottman actually has an app, and it's called Gottman Love Maps, 2. 99. And sometimes Dylan and I will sit at a restaurant and I'll pull this thing out and I'll ask some questions from her.

Then you pass the phone backwards and forwards and pretty simple things. Best movie you ever saw, worst movie you ever saw, most painful experience you've ever had, closest friend. Yeah. , all of those things. People can be together for years and not know that sort of stuff about each other. Does that answer your question, Sunita?

Yeah, I love that.

Oh, it's very cool. , obviously Paul's been good enough to join us today, but there is therapy and counseling available for people that are really struggling with different relationships and things in life.

I'd like to add to that, Jared, that some people think you only go to marital counseling when your marriage is on life support.

I would suggest go well or the marriage has to be admitted into I see you. Yeah. , see marriage counseling is preventative. You know, maybe just some little things that you're just stuck on. You seem to keep having the same conversations that are not satisfactory. Sometimes three or four sessions of couples therapy will be enough to get you unstuck.

Having an objective outside third party just taking you Okay. through a process. There have been numerous couples over the years where I've gone, I wish they had come years earlier because by now they've done so much damage that , it might be too late. Um, and I would advise people, don't wait till it gets really, really bad.

Yeah. As soon as you get stuck, it's the time to go, let's get a little professional help.

That's great advice. Cause yeah, pastor that, we know. Told us or would explain it this way. You get your car serviced every year, every six months, maybe for three, 400 you might spend with upgrading it, looking after it, getting new parts so that it runs smoothly so that it doesn't just fall apart one day, , and that's what I hear you saying about our marriages.

And that's what he, the point he made spend, it was for a couple's conference that they used to hold every year. They spend 300 bucks, come away with you, your missus have a good weekend. Invest in your marriage. It's a maintenance thing. It's keeping the car running. Keep the engine running. Don't wait until it completely conks out and you've got to wait for four hours in the rain for the roadside assistant.

So I think, I think that's a really good thing to leave us with, to think about, Hey. Let's invest in our relationships and our marriages before they reach breaking point.

Well, thank you again, Paul, for joining us. It's been awesome to pick from your knowledge. We will be back for another episode of Record Live. So tune in.

Thank you everyone. Thanks, Paul. Cheers guys. Bye

bye.