Michele Christensen 0:12
Hello, welcome to Sex. Love. Power. I'm your host, Michele Lisenbury Christensen. I'm a relationship and sex coach who has worked for 23 years with executives and business founders. Because they'd gotten great results in business with my guidance and support, and they wanted their relationships to be as high performing as their careers, clients asked me, more and more often, to help them with their intimate relationships. That's been a focus of my work now for the past dozen years. These extraordinary leaders have blessed me with a wealth of knowledge about how to create relationships that are not just successful, but truly great. This podcast is where I convene the conversations about love, and sex that help every listener create those same world class results in their relationships.
In today's episode, I'm going to break down exactly why my most successful clients, career-wise, are also the most successful in love and sex. I'll tell you the whole story of how it came to be that I was the sought after relationship coach for executives and founders, starting when I still had a whole lot to learn about love and sex myself. You may wonder why people with already good marriages would double down on help for their relationship, when they're absolutely not struggling. I was befuddled about it at first too. So I'm going to tell you what they taught me about why these really successful husbands and wives nonetheless seek my help to push the envelope on what's possible for their marriages. And then we'll look at the things my clients do individually to create extraordinary marriages. On the next episode, I'm going to show you what the most successful couples do together to create love that not only lasts a lifetime, but gets deeper and hotter through the years and that spills beauty and love onto those around them. So you don't want to miss that one either. But for now, let's jump in.
So here's what coaching already successful couples has taught me about having an extraordinary relationship. I mean, honestly, I fell into being a love and sex mentor, I already had my dream job as an executive coach.
The scope of my work in that first decade and a half that I was coaching was holistic. But my focus was usually on their leadership, on their career, on their finances, on how they engaged during their whole life, not at home, and definitely not in the bedroom.But I worked with a wide variety of leaders. And some of them, of course, would find that their marriages were suffering from neglect. I mean, it was a neglect that they considered all but inevitable, given the demands that their careers placed on them.
But other leaders, the truly extraordinary leaders, you know, the ones whose teams would fall on a sword for them, the ones whose own likeness lit up the room when they walked in those stellar career people didn't do all of that at the expense of their marriages. They were the people whose marriages were the strongest as well. Isn't that interesting? And here's the other part that kind of blew my mind. These Rockstar leaders who I so loved coaching on their vision, their values, alignment, their development of other people's potential, and the ways that they address their greatest headaches as leaders...
They'd sometimes come to a coaching session, and they'd say, kind of conspiratorially, "I know we're supposed to talk about my team today... But can we talk about my marriage?" They kind of whisper and wince, kind of embarrassed, but also, they really trusted me, because we'd done such great work in other parts of their lives. They didn't want to go back to therapy. They wanted to dig in with me, and create even more of the greatness that they'd already built.
For the first year or so that this kept happening with more and more frequency. I was thinking "Whaaaat?" Because these were the clients who made the best use of my leadership coaching, and they were the clients who already had the best marriages. So it didn't quite compute for me at first, why are you asking for my relationship help? Because your relationship is fine. But here's what they taught me.
The very first thing they taught me was the strongest couples seek the most support.
It's really paradoxical, isn't it?
We often still hold this stigma. Even I as a coach, I've dedicated my life to helping people who are not train wrecks, but are actually kicking butt already, to do even better. And my clients have taught me that that's nowhere more true than in the area of relationship. I mean, it would astonish me when those same leaders whose marriages were the strongest, who made the best use of my leadership coaching, were the ones who turned to me unbidden to talk about their marriages.
They weren't in crisis. They weren't mired in conflict. They weren't sleeping in separate rooms. They weren't weathering a years-long sexual dry spell. They were doing well. But they wanted more.
And as I helped these amazing leaders - some of them were male, some of them were female - I would help them with their side of the relationship. And I was learning as much as they were, I loved helping them in love so much that I gradually began to offer and then to specialize in couples' work for leaders. The story is important for you, because so many of the people whose advice you sought about marriage may have been "relationship experts" - and I put air quotes around that - who got that way by helping people whose relationships were struggling. The tools that they use attempt to help us cope with relationship struggles.
But if we look at relationship from the perspective of these perpetually improving, excellence oriented, consciousness expanding leaders, that's this whole other vantage: you're looking at your relationship from a completely new angle.
It's like the difference between seeking financial advice from somebody who's figured out how to make ends meet on $75,000 a year, versus seeking advice from someone who's figured out how to grow their income year after year, and how to keep more of it for the future, while they simultaneously fund their most valued experiences. Those are both valid financial perspectives. They both have value to offer you. But if you want to get great, you can't follow guidance that just takes you from bad to good.
And that brings us to the second thing my clients taught me about taking a relationship from good to great: Growth driven leaders seek growth everywhere. The peak performers in every field tend to be peak performers in every aspect of their lives. I'm going to say that again: If someone is a peak performer in their field, they tend to be pretty excellent in every aspect of their lives. They're not necessarily lopsided. Naturally, there are also many people in the highest echelons of each company, or each field, whose lives and relationships are in a shambles, because they burn everything else on the pyre of their obsession with their work.
We could definitely see those standout examples. And sometimes I was able to help those clients in the relationship realm...And sometimes they didn't even want that. But time and again, I fell in love with my ultra-potent clients who were so masterful at life, and nonetheless -- I shouldn't even say nonetheless -- I'll say, and consequently, they were masterful at love. And therefore, they were devoted to learning more, to getting more support, and to creating even better outcomes in their love and their intimacy.
The third truth that my amazing clients have taught me about relationship is this: every relationship, and every person has strengths and weaknesses. Now that sounds obvious, as I say it. But so often, when we're in a challenge with our partner, and we're thinking about them, or we're thinking about ourselves, we can really get focused on the weaknesses. Or when we look at somebody outside our relationship, when we're comparing, we might really focus on the strengths and not focus on what's hard about being married to that person, or what challenges that person struggles with themselves.
The most painful relationships have at least some of the strengths that the most effective couples share. And even the most amazing couples who share deep passion and a cozy, safe connection, great communication, and really effective systems for living out their dreams, and making a tremendous contribution in the world? Those couples still have rocks in their shoes and places where their relationship is painful and frustrating, and it invites them to grow and evolve. Every relationship and every person has strengths and weaknesses.
And the fourth truth about high achievers and love that my clients have taught me is that intense people have different relationship challenges than other people do. Intense people. My clients are high performing leaders. They're highly intelligent people, highly educated people. They are couples where both partners have activated a lot of yang power. A lot of out there in the world effectiveness in their careers. Some people call this masculine power, but I never want to be construing it with male. I don't mean male power. I mean, that yang, potent, pressing-into-the-world kind of energy. They've activated all that power in their careers in their communities, and often as being parents and they use it to stay healthy and plan vacations and parties... my clients do all the things. And they do it at a really high level. They are intense!
I did a whole podcast episode inviting women to look at whether they're intense, because I've learned that giftedness and intensity go hand in hand. And that emotional intensity, which is just one of the ways that we can be intense, means that we feel things intensely. We communicate at a higher velocity and we carry more concentrated energy than we often realize. When I recognized this about myself, it helped my marriage a ton, because I could have compassion for the unique challenges that we face. And that Kurt faces being married to me!
I mean, if one of you is a firefighter, or an airline pilot, or travels a lot for work, you're going to know that those separations, and then the periods of intense at-home-ness, create different strains and blessings that other people have whose spouses are home every night for 14 hours. But there's something invisible about the challenges of being intense, ambitious, hard driving, wanting a lot in your life and wanting a lot for other people. We think of those traits as being nothing but good for relationship. You know? They make us insightful, they make us self-reflective and communicative and visionary. But they really do also carry costs. So we need to learn to work with those pluses and minuses and engage in the care and feeding of our unique marriages with the unique nutrients that they need, rather than generic tips from marriage gurus that haven't worked for us in the past. So intense people, like you, like me, have different relationship challenges and needs than other people do. So generic advice just doesn't work for us.
And the fifth thing that my clients showed me was how much the excavation of our conditioning and the decolonization of our marriages is crucial to having the best marriages we can. Truth number five is that the very best marriages are deeply subversive. Now, here in the 21st century, a lot has changed for women in ways that have kind of moved faster than the change in men's perceptions. In some ways, we all reference these 1950s models of relationship, of gender roles, of valuing financial contribution and emotional contribution and family logistical contribution. Our culture renders certain labor invisible, and it overvalues other labor. Our cultural conditioning binds up our self worth with our financial earnings. It pushes us to be "independent" and "self-made," when who humans have always been is intrinsically interdependent, and profoundly relational. Perhaps most challenging of all, for the love and the sex that we really want: our culture pushes us to be in our heads, thinking and talking and watching and absorbing through screens, when what we were really designed to do, and what we need to do in order to thrive, is to be in our bodies, in touch with the energy and sensations of our bodies, and with our needs for rest, food, nature, movement, sex, and transcendence.
So the best marriages are subversive. They affirm all those needs, and they reconnect both partners to their bodies. The best marriages unplug us from clocks every day. They build a shelter from the busy world and from the culture. They create a place in which both partners can fully come alive the way we did when we were new lovers. And now I want us to back up a bit. And I'm going to point out a really fundamental difference between the couples I've coached who came in so so and the ones who came to me already amazing.
Here's the thing: the best couples really focus on their own individual relationship skills. Their wisdom starts at the individual level. So I'm going to end this episode by sharing with you the 12 individual keys I recognize that these people - not couples, but people -used to unlock incredible passion and connection and contentment and ease in their marriages. And then next time, I'm going to come back and talk with you about what they do together.
Key number one is free choice. At the base of it, they have chosen the relationship.
Key number two: Self knowledge. They honor their past. They honor the unique constellation of tendencies, needs and desires that they possess.
Key number three: Agency. The people with the most successful relationships take complete ownership of their relationship. They do not blame their partner. They don't wait for something to change before they will change. They don't rest in hope. They don't rest in complacency. They don't let themselves get bitter or resentful. They author their own experience and they create more results, ways of being, ways of showing up that serve both themselves and the relationship well.
Key number four: Self-regulation. They know how to calm themselves down when they start to get riled up and they cultivate a sensitivity to their own state so that they know when that's happening, and they can nip it in the bud rather than acting out their reactivity.
Key number five: Erotic Intelligence. The individuals with the best relationships continually develop their individual erotic intelligence, their comfort with their own body, their confidence in expressing themselves physically, their willingness to be present and vulnerable and in control, and also out of control and to give as well as to receive key.
Key number six: Skillful Use of Power. The people with the most successful relationships get right with power, so that they can flex as they experience fluctuations in power between the two of them in terms of earnings, spending, health, position, roles, and more.
As we spend a lifetime together, power fluctuates and we can roll with it if we have this kind of skill.
Key Number Seven: Purposeful Passion. These individuals know their life purpose. They live by their values, and they have a higher vision for their relationship. The relationship doesn't just exist "to make me happy," or even "to make both of us happy." In these couples, they're in love for the good of their spiritual growth and for the good of the world around them.
Key Number Eight is Holy Humility. The people with the most successful relationships seek first to give and serve, to empathize and understand. Before demanding that their partner give to them, serve them understand or empathize with them. These are qualities that the Buddha, Jesus and other preeminent spiritual teachers model and teach. And they are capacities that we can learn in marriage better than just about anywhere else.
Key Number Nine: Perpetual Repair. People with the most successful relationships build on that service mentality to humbly clean up their relationships. They're good at apologizing and making amends and cleaning up the messes that we all inevitably make in our relationships, since we're human.
Key Number 10: Dismantling Dehumanizing Systems. They liberate themselves, they get clear on the role of cultural conditioning and privilege in the ways that they interact in the world, and they actively seek to decolonize their minds and their relationships from destructive ideas that they inherited from patriarchy and capitalism. They eradicate hierarchies, power imbalances, entitlement, defensiveness, emotional reactivity, and other dehumanizing, intimacy-eroding dynamics in their relationships.
Key Number 11: Navigating by Desire. They're clear on their desires, and they communicate those well, and when they lose track of what they want or need, or they realize after the fact that they've inadvertently compromise their own well being, they renegotiate without blame and without apology.
Key 12: Liberation from Compulsion. The most successful individuals address their addictions and compulsions. They don't use their relationship as an excuse to overindulge together. And they don't use anything else as an excuse to avoid or cling to any particular sensation or substance or process. They do often struggle with such patterns, as many people do, but they don't live in denial or avoidance, allowing their addictions to deepen.
So that's it. These are the secrets that I began to learn when my executive coaching clients insisted that I coach them on their relationships, and that I've crystallized through my work with thousands of phenomenal couples in the decade plus since then. I know that the amazing couples in my community and my private clients will continue to teach me more. And I know that I'm going to dedicate my heart mind and soul to serving, supporting, challenging and adoring them onward, to ever deeper love and ever better experiences in life.
So what I invite you to do so acknowledge that whatever is challenging in your relationship, it has its own gifts, its own unique power. I invite you to devote yourself, regardless of where your partner's head is around this, to creating a world-class, high performance, badass, whatever you want to call it, amazing relationship...To not just staying together or fixing challenges between the two of you, but to perpetually growing and deepening together in your love and your connection and your sex and your communication and in your vision for what the two of you can contribute to the world. You are the change we need, you are going to be what helps us dismantle patriarchy and white supremacy...maybe even capitalism.
We can do this by making your relationship a place where you feed your soul's growth. It's a powerful journey, as my clients can attest. My own 20 year marriage would not still be existent if we hadn't made that decision together too. And because we did, we get stronger and better and hotter and sweeter every year. And I get to bring all of our struggles and strengths to my work, and impact others. And that's what you can do too.
And you know what will help a lot on your journey, having a community and a mentor. Did you know there's a secret society of turned-on couples that you can join for free? It's literally called the Secret Society. And you can join at society.lisenbury.com. The Secret Society is a great place to ask your questions, share your experiences, and join the conversation about creating the love and sex that we deeply desire, in ways that have all of us thrive. There are weekly live Q & A's and polls and discussions, all kinds of things. And we cannot wait to welcome you to the conversation.
It's all happening at society.lisenbury.com. That link is in the show notes at lisenbury.com/episode/020. If you've enjoyed this or other episodes, what would help me and the podcast immensely is if you would leave a review, particularly in Apple podcasts because those are huge help in finding new listeners and growing the positive impact that these conversations can have. So please leave a review right now with a few words about what the show gives you? I would so appreciate it.
Hey, have you subscribed yet? You're gonna want to, so you never miss an episode. Go to Apple podcasts or wherever you listen and smash that subscribe button, so you always get notifications of new episodes each week. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Michele Lisenbury Christensen and this has been Sex.Love.Power. I'll be back here next week with the next episode, when we'll talk about how the most powerful couples create amazing relationships that are continually improving throughout their lifetimes. So until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.