Relationship Guru Alexandra Solomon is here to teach us how to create the relationships we really want!

This is the Empowered Caregiver show.

If you are a caregiver or know someone who is, this show is meant to uplift you through education and support.

While also lifting up every caregiver's invaluable role in society.

Now, here is the Empowered Caregiver and your host, Liza Helen Brand.

You are listening to The Empowered Caregiver, and I am your host, Liza Hellenbrand.

And I cannot hold my excitement in any longer.

I am bursting at the seams.

Today, I'm going to be talking with Alexandra Solomon.

Over the past two decades, Dr. Solomon has become one of today's most trusted voices in the world of relationships.

Her work on relational self-awareness has reached millions of people worldwide.

She is a licensed clinical psychologist at the Family Institute at Northwestern University, where she also teaches building, loving, and, excuse me, building, loving, and lasting relationships, Marriage 101.

Where was that course all my life?

And Dr. Solman has authored three books, two bestselling books, Loving Bravely and Taking Sexy Back.

And when she will be joining me today to talk about her latest book, Love Every Day, 365 Day Relational Self-Awareness Practices to Help Your Relationships Heal, Grow, and Thrive.

Thank you so much for being here with me today.

Thank you Liza for having me on.

Yes, you bet.

So I do the empowered caregiver show because I have a 20 year old son.

who is diagnosed with autism at age two.

So I have been in the caregiving role for about 18 years now, and also both of my parents remarried, so I have two sets of parents, four parents total, that at some point will need some additional

care

and support.

And since I'm...

the best child, it will be on me.

The obvious choice is the obvious choice.

So when it comes to caregiving, I just think that there are so many things that we can talk about.

And there are so many things that need to be said and that we aren't taught or, you know, aren't taught in school or anywhere else,

quite

frankly, unless we have the

the pleasure and the opportunity to be able to take your course, which I wish everyone could.

Yes.

So one thing about caregiving, though, is I feel like it really shines a spotlight.

It can shine a spotlight on some of your strengths.

And I also feel like it can really shine a glaring spotlight on some of your weaknesses.

And for me, I like to take those moments and go.

in Word and use them to explore and grow and your books and your your teachings and your writing definitely have helped me in that journey.

And one of those weaknesses is really navigating for me.

relationships, including the relationship that I have with myself.

So every week, when I talk about a subject, I like to give the why, why am I talking about this and what what does this have to do with caregiving?

So would you mind just sharing a little bit making that connection for listeners about the caregiving role and the work that you do?

Yeah, I

I, um, well, I appreciate all of that context that you, um, that you're giving.

And I think there are a number of similarities in our stories.

We could just, you know, stop this recording and just kind of dive into, okay, how are you holding up?

How am I holding up this time of, you know, launching our families as our parents age, which is in some ways such a privilege to have parents who get to be this point in aging, but they're, this is what we're going through.

We just are in our first year.

I've been married to my husband for

25 plus years, we were just in our first season of empty nesting, which is an entire, you know, I have been, I've been blown away by the, what's come up inside of me, all of the reactions, all the grief, all of the, you know, possibilities, as well as what's come up between my husband and I and our marriage.

And just as we are starting to explore that, my mom received a really significant health diagnosis, which means that I've been shuttling back and forth between Detroit and Chicago.

hearing for her and that kind of sandwich generation phenomenon that we talk about.

And I think there's a way, you know, in the best of times, our intimate relationship or our peer relationships end up being a respite from caregiving.

And at the worst of times,

our peer relationships or our romantic relationship feels like it is in tension with our caregiving,

you

know, because they're different, right?

Who I

am as a caregiver, who you are as a caregiver is different than who you are as a friend, who you are as a romantic partner.

So I think that there's, there's just so many, like interest, as you're saying, so many intersections there that are right for us to understand and notice and then of course have all kinds of feelings about.

Absolutely.

And we do have a lot of similarities.

I am in the early stages of empty nester.

I have a son that is a senior.

I'm counting out down the days for freedom, for lack of a better word.

I've been a mom for a long, long time.

My oldest is gonna be 30.

And I'm also, like it's hitting me like a ton of bricks.

Like a bazillion emotions are coming up.

So I'm glad to hear that I'm not alone.

And I hope listeners listening know that they're not alone too because there has been days where I thought I was just

flat out going crazy.

And in the world, in the realm of caregiving, there are so many relationships.

Right.

You can't dodge that, that bullet that you have the person that you're caring for.

That's a very intimate, different kind of relationship.

And of course the people in your life and then those different relationships that are included in the caregiving packages, right?

With doctors and therapists and all

of the

different

people

that you need to, to, to be in relationship with.

So learning how to navigate those and understand those, I think are key and it really starts.

I think with, with yourself, but I would love to hear a little bit more about your caregiving journey.

What, what has it taught?

What has it taught you?

I

was just thinking, you know, the end of what you were saying about relationships with, you know, therapists and providers and doctors, just thinking about how that, that becomes

It becomes a form, I think there's a way that like that becomes an expression of love, you know, like when I schedule on behalf of my mom or I kind of spare her the difficulty of getting these appointments made like that advocacy part, you know, advocacy is a kind of love.

And I think what's, I think the, like the work is, the work for me is around continuing to check in with myself.

Like, and I,

It's a it's a privilege to be able to do I mean it's a privilege to be able to Do that to be an advocate.

It's a responsibility But I know that there's also another part of me that can get a little bit Oh poor me about it, you know that it feels like a burden, right?

And it feel and so I know one of the things that's been helpful for me is just to have a Witness to it because I don't want to my mom can't be my witness, right?

I have chosen to

How'd you say it?

Is the best child or the favorite child?

I

can't remember, but it was both.

I've chosen to do this.

I need to do this.

It feels very much like my obligation to do this.

And I need to have a place where I can turn and just vent and download.

And that's not a betrayal of my mom.

It's not a disrespect of the love that I feel.

It's just a very real

piece of it.

There's a piece of me that is proud and there's a piece of me that feels burdened and kind of like a little girl like, I don't want to.

This isn't fair and why is it me?

And so my husband has been that person for me at times.

My best girlfriend has been that person for me at times.

So I think a caregiver always needs to have that space where without judgment, you can just kind of throw yourself a pity party.

talk it all through knowing darn well that at the end of the pity party, you have to take responsibility and kind of, you know, get back in there and try to tap into the pride and the love of caregiving.

I love that.

And when you were speaking in the back of my mind, I was kind of going back to, and I want to touch on each of your books a little bit, but the loving bravely.

And

you really spoke about the

dbt therapy and the that things can be this and that and for me that is a big part of caregiving i mean you were just saying it you know it it can be hard and rewarding it can be this and can you speak to that a little bit for people that might not be familiar with looking at things through that lens i

think especially

I think especially women can get a bit tripped up here because so much of caregiving has been gendered.

I think that we're doing a better job than certainly what I saw growing up.

I think we have a long way to go around really, truly embracing men as caregivers.

So I think because caregiving has been women's domain, it can be like a good daughter would give selflessly a

good mother would not complain about her children.

We have this kind of idea of what a good daughter or a good mother or a good sister looks like in this moment.

And that gets us into trouble because there's no such thing.

All there are are real mothers and real daughters.

And a real mother or a real daughter holds a both and.

I am privileged to be able to care for people in this way and

there are times I just want to stamp my feet and say, enough already.

And that the privilege doesn't crowd out the frustration.

And the frustration doesn't mean there's also not an awareness of privilege, that we can be both grateful and tired.

Those are both that, in fact, most of the hard, beautiful things in life require us to hold on to multiple truths at the same time with self-compassion.

with grace with a little bit of like humor.

Like this is ridiculous.

I mean, really, really, I can love this bait.

How can I love this child so much and literally count down the minutes until that time?

How is that possible?

That is possible because that is the heart of caregiving is the deep love and the deep expulsion.

Those are both real.

Well,

you know, that is has been a

fairly new concept to me.

I mean, I'm sure I have gotten it for a long time, but the practice of it, the practice of it.

So if you are not one that thinks in those terms, I want to talk about when we come back, how do you incorporate that and get that awareness and make that a practice?

listening to the empowered caregiver show and I am your host Liza Hellenbrand and today I am speaking with Dr. Alexandra Selman who is a author who teaches at Northwestern University Marriage 101 who has written numerous articles and been on shows like the Today Show so I am so lucky

and privileged and excited to be speaking with her today about relationships.

And the reason that I really wanted to have her on, not only because I'm a big fan and I'll try not to be so sappy about it anymore, but also because relationships are key.

I mean, they're key in life and they're definitely key in caregiving.

And I think I,

I don't have statistics to back this up, but I'm going to go out on limb and you can tell me if I'm way off.

I think more people were raised in homes that probably didn't model ideal relationships or, you know, that carried some generational trauma and, and.

It's a work in progress, right?

But nobody has ever really taught this, and it's so important.

And before break, we were talking a little bit about the DBT therapy concept of, I didn't say it right.

How do you, how do you say it, this

and?

Well, I call it a both and.

Both and.

It's a dialectic.

It means two things, holding the tension between two things that seem like opposites.

I'm brave and I'm scared.

I love you and I need space from you.

My gosh, marriage is nothing if not a dialectic, you

know.

Amen, sister.

Yes, yes.

And there's so many emotions like that in caregiving.

And so step one is awareness, right?

Is that where we start?

Exactly.

And then what?

How can we build this muscle to be able to see life through this lens?

I think it is awareness because so often what we do, especially if we grew up in a home that had a lot of good, bad language, right, wrong language, do this, not that language, if we grew up in a home that was pretty rigid,

pretty systematized, we didn't really learn how to kind of sit in the shades of gray that really are so much of what our relationships are about.

So awareness is like, I don't know, 80% of it noticing because I think that what happens so quickly is if I feel irritated with my child,

That feels unacceptable.

I label that as a bad emotion.

That's what a bad mom would do.

That is a bad feeling and we shut that down and we kind of wrap it up in shame and we say something must be wrong with us for feeling this way or something must be wrong with my kid.

We're quote unquote making me feel this way.

The

gentler path, the more, what I would say, the more relationally self-aware path is to notice the irritation.

And to remember that the irritation sits alongside the deep pride and love and that we can be irritated with people that we love very much and that they don't, one doesn't crowd out the other.

And then from that place, if I'm not, if rather than kind of figuring out if the irritation reflects my defect or my kid's defect, now if I let go of that, now I can just

meet the irritation.

Okay, what do I need to do?

Do I need to put myself on time out, step away, go for a walk, get some water, take a nap, speak to my irritation, ask for something different than what's happening right now.

You know, a bunch of moves open up to me when I realize that my irritation isn't the sum total of my experience.

It is a reflection of how I feel in this moment right now.

I think that is worth repeating.

Can you say that one more time?

My irritation isn't the sum total of my experience.

It is a reflection of how I'm feeling in this moment right now.

It's true in our marriages too, right?

I think we scare ourselves in our romantic relationships.

If I feel bored or flat in my marriage, it feels like, uh-oh, here we go.

This is the beginning of the end and use what happens rather than bored and flat right now.

I wonder what that's saying to me about me, about my partner, about how we're spending time together.

Like noticing the feeling that's coming up in us then becomes a gateway for additional questions rather than the feeling being the diagnosis of the total of the relationship.

I'm bored, must mean we're done.

I'm bored, must mean my partner is a dud.

I'm bored, it must mean I'm depressed and unlovable, whatever.

We take these experiences of our emotions to such extreme places and they feel like they become the sum total.

So that holding nuance, that both and really gives us so much freedom.

I love that.

And you also kind of hit on when you

Get that level of self-awareness that creates that curiosity it seems like curiosity grows from from that and That you know obviously helps.

Well, you know what other areas, you know, what about this

and and then you

you know, you start gaining momentum on on some of these patterns that were really ingrained for such a long a long time

as somebody who now is, you know, I host a weekly podcast.

And that's the word that I use all the time, curiosity, curiosity, be curious, be curious.

It's just such a key word for relationships because it is right when we can bring that growth mindset, you know, caregiving.

If anything, caregiving is a journey across time because the person we're caregiving is either getting older and getting more independent or they're aging and becoming more dependent.

It's like a moving target.

So when we can bring curiosity to what is this moment like with them?

How am I feeling differently now than when my kids were younger?

How am I feeling differently now versus when my parent was younger?

All of this, that kind of curiosity and that growth mindset are huge assets for us.

I love that.

I had a question for you about when you're working with somebody that you can be doing all the work that you want on yourself.

And that definitely is going to impact how you interact with others.

So if they're not there yet, I think that is a struggle that I've

personally had in different relationships.

I'm doing the work, right?

I'm putting

in the time.

I'm getting super curious and asking a lot of questions.

And I've got someone over here that's not playing along.

What advice, I guess, would you give in those kind of situations?

Well,

if your listener is the reluctant person, the one who's not

listening to the show or not reading the book, my, my advice to them would be like, get with the program because I tell you what, if you have a partner who is interested in a growth mindset, who is doing the work, I think it puts your relationship at risk.

It's the thing I didn't, you know, I first published, when I published my first book seven years ago now, I had no idea that wasn't the question I would get over and over again.

It's like, I'm in for this, but my partner is not.

And I think that does put a relationship in a risky territory.

I think that

The person who's growing and changing has to stay true to themselves.

I think that they can invite rather than demand their partner.

I think they can ask questions like what would make it.

what would make it safer for you or what make it easier for you to read this book?

Would you read a chapter?

It's why my new book is broken down into like just little baby one of days.

Like you don't want to read the whole book, can you just read this entry?

So I think those are some of the things.

Yes.

Thank you so much.

I wish we had more time.

Where can people find your latest book?

DrAlexandrosolomon.com has links to everything in my orbit.

Books are wherever books are

sold.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

This is The Empowered Caregiver Show.

If you are a caregiver or know someone who is, this show is meant to uplift you through education and support, while also lifting up every caregiver's invaluable role in society.

Now, here is The Empowered Caregiver and your host, Liza Helen Brand.

You are listening to the Empowered Caregiver show, and I am your host, Eliza Helen Brand, and I have had the pleasure today with speaking with Dr. Solomon, who is a relationship expert over the last two decades.

Dr. Solomon has become one of today's most trusted voices in the world of relationships.

Her work on relational self-awareness has reached millions of people worldwide.

Dr. Solomon is a licensed clinical psychologist at the Family Institute at Northwestern University, where she also teaches building, loving, and lasting relationships, Marriage 101.

Oh, I wish everyone could have access to that course.

I would imagine it is amazing.

Dr. Solomon is the author of two bestselling books, Loving Bravely and Taking Sexy Back.

And we will be talking today a little bit more about the Love Every Day 365 relational self-awareness practices to help your relationships heal, grow, and thrive.

And I have a clip from Dr. Solomon that was pre-recorded, just explaining her third book, the new book that's coming out.

And I am going to let her do that because I am 100% confident that she can do it better than I. Erin, if you wouldn't mind playing that clip.

Celebrate your individual and collective potential.

And.

If you are currently single or between relationships, this book can help you understand your past, both in the family you grew up with and your prior intimate relationships, so you can make wise and conscious choices in your present and build towards a thriving future.

When compiling my essays and adding new ones to create this collection, I had people of all relationship statuses in mind.

This book is for the person who married their high school sweetheart and is still in love with them 50 years later.

It's for the young adult who has just started their dating journey and is both bewildered and excited to find someone special.

It's for the person who's healing from heartbreak or a difficult childhood.

And it is for the couple who is beginning a new chapter in the wake of a major life event, growing their family, or facing a relational challenge.

No matter who you are, the journey of relational self-awareness is for you.

By starting this book, you are making a brave and meaningful investment in yourself and your relationships.

Intimacy is a journey, not a destination.

My hope is that relational self-awareness can become your trusty internal compass, guiding you towards relationships that nourish you and away from relationships that replicate old pain and help you hold the beautiful complexity of being both whole as you are and forever a work in progress.

I'm so glad you're here.

I love it and I cannot wait to check out that book.

For those that are interested, you can get it just about anywhere.

You can find it on Amazon.

you could go to directly to DrAlexandraSolomon.com's website and get all of her books and tons of resources there.

She has an Instagram page with a huge following where she gives daily relationship advice.

And I highly recommend that you check it out because the reason that I'm going here, the reason that I'm talking about this is tying it into caregiving and just how much

relationship, relationshiping, is that a word?

You do a lot of relationshiping in caregiving and it's not always easy and it's one thing that we're really not taught how to do.

So that is why I want to spend some time talking about it here because it definitely impacts

the caregiving experience.

And the more that we can learn about our past, I think, and how it plays into the decisions we make, the things we say, the knee jerk reactions we have from day to day, the better off will be not only for us selfishly, so we are in better relationships, but also

the person that we're caregiving for or the person that we're in intimate relationship with, you know, they are also going to benefit when we take the time to learn about how do we make relationships work?

What does that even mean?

What does that even look like?

So in Dr. Solomon's latest book, it is, it's.

Wonderful because each day is just a page and it's just a lesson and there's different themes about it.

And I just want to read some of these themes off so you can see where we're going with this and how it may help you.

Number one, healing from the past.

So that is.

is something I just mentioned and that's something that she has is number one.

So I'm gonna take that as a sign that is a big one for a lot of us is how we make good relationships going forward is to really understand the past and the baggage and the traumatic experiences and things that we have from our past and identify them, put a spotlight on those.

And so we can make new and better decisions going forward.

The other thing is

practicing self compassion.

And this is another huge thing that is, I have to say, fairly new to me.

I have grown up being extremely hard on myself and just practicing that self compassion and knowing that you're doing the best that you can do.

You can rest more comfortable.

She has written, you can rest more comfortably in self worth and understand the power of connection between self love and intimacy with.

a partner once you have that self-compassion piece.

The next one is honoring your feelings.

Again, I love these because I feel like in the caregiving role, these are all things that one struggles with.

How can you not?

There's so much thrown at you and so many people you need to communicate with and square pegs that you need to get in a round hole some days and it impacts your feelings, it impacts your emotions, right?

Learning here, getting this book will help you in honoring your feelings.

And she has wrote about that to understand and interpret the data within our internal world and work more effectively with emotional triggers and your own, your own and your partners.

So emotional triggers, another new word to me.

And, and again, that requires a level of self awareness.

You know, it's, I think that that word is really coming out a lot these days, feeling triggered.

Erin, I know, I know that you are of a younger generation.

You hear that a lot, the trigger.

Yeah, I guess I used to hear it a lot more, haven't heard it as much lately.

Yes, even trigger warnings.

We have trigger warnings, and it's good.

Once you make that connection, I think so many people just react.

They hear something, they see something, it's triggering to them, but before they can even take that pause, they react in some way.

So I love the idea of

gaining that self-awareness where you can feel it in your body.

You can feel the tension.

You can feel the anger.

You can feel the sadness.

You can feel whatever your feels are.

And before you do a knee jerk reaction, which you've been, you know, kind of trained or an autopilot to do for however many years, you can kind of hit that pause button and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, what is this?

What am I needing?

What am I feeling?

And, uh,

and think about it.

And once you can identify that and think about it, it really offers opportunity for growth.

And that's when the curiosity begins.

What else?

What other problems can I solve within myself to help my relationship with myself and with others?

And another thing that she has in the book through these daily practices that she focuses on, and these are some of the

themes that you see throughout the book is understanding relationship dynamics.

Lose the me versus you mindset and move into us versus the problem mindset that deepens intimacy.

Wow, we could probably do a whole show on on on just that I am just thinking about a bazillion times through my head that it is specifically my husband Sorry dear husband where I had this me versus you

mentality and I think over time it starts to change, but we're going on year 22.

Some of these lessons would have helped me decades ago of the us versus the problem.

And again, that's just something that you see over and over in caregiving.

The next one is getting your needs met.

Another one that four caregivers tend

to give, give, give.

That's why they're in the role, whether they stepped up or whatever it may be, they have the giving heart and getting their own needs met can be a struggle.

Sometimes there's guilt with it and shame with it for even thinking about it or asking or so.

Wonderful lesson to be working on as a daily practice and she has wrote here to

how to learn strategies for creating healthy boundaries and setting expectations in ways that create respect and prevent resentment.

another huge caregiver word and how can we work on talking about these things and expressing our needs in a way that resentment doesn't build because you don't want to add that as something that you need to carry with you when you're caring for other people.

The other theme that you see throughout this book or another thing that she works on is transforming conflict.

learn what it means to fight against disconnection rather than against each other.

And another area that I feel we don't really...

get taught this.

I don't know where you get taught conflict resolution.

I don't remember that course being being offered in high school, but it's something that we as humans deal with just about every single day.

So being able to do these lessons and get these reflections and gain this level of awareness and create this curiosity within yourself.

all lead to healthier relationships for yourself and for those that you care for.

Another one that she has on here is addressing relationships problems, understanding the issues behind common but complex relationships problems, such as trust, infidelity, betrayal, jealousy, tons of them out there.

uh, addressing relationship problems.

She also has on here developing sexual self-awareness.

Uh, you know, I think I'm due to have a sex therapist back on.

I had one, uh, few years ago and it was a big hit.

So much fun.

A lot of laughter.

Uh, but another area, maybe not so suited for radio, but we don't talk about this at all.

Right.

It's very.

taboo.

So she writes, this book will help you find reasons to feel good in your skin and connect with your partner in ways that feel wonderful to both of you.

So definitely can't wait to read more about that.

And the last one that she has in there is navigating loves stages, celebrate the narrative arc of an intimate relationship and gain insight into what it takes to

to make love last.

So I love that.

I think I would need her to help me expand on that a little bit more, but I have read some of her other books and love definitely does go through stages.

I mean, being married over two decades, I think we had a handful of different relationships during that time period.

So, you know, just being able, I think to be with that and kind of

be able to talk about what's next and what you want the next stage to look like, I really think would help people in their relationship journey.

So I encourage everyone to go check out the book, Everyday Love 365 Relational Self-Awareness, Practices to Help Your Relationships Heal, Grow, and Thrive.

And who does not want that?

to the empowered caregiver and I am your host Liza Helen Brand and today I have been talking about all things relationships and how relationships are key in caregiving and how we're not really taught about how to have

effective, successful, meaningful, supportive relationships.

And so I am reaching out to the experts right and left, trying to gather as many as I can find to help enlighten us on what we're missing, what we need to know, what we need to do different to be able to have successful relationships and not only relationships with others, not only relationships with the people that we're caring for, but also for

ourselves, the people, the person, right, that we're with 24 seven, 365.

How do we make that work?

So we're feeling good and positive and not carrying around a lot of, uh, baggage, hurt, pain, confusion, frustration, uh, because we don't, we as caregivers, we don't need that.

We don't have time for that.

We want to be moving in the right direction and I want to be able to bring

tools and resources and people and authors and experts to the table to help us get there.

That's why I have the passion to do the show, along with some of the advocating that goes along with it.

I'm super excited to announce that Governor Evers will be joining me next, I believe next week for an end review.

So can't wait to hear what he has to say, what's going on in the work legislative.

to help support caregivers and what we need to do to champion that legislation so that it actually gets passed and through and is able to help and support us.

So that interview will be coming up.

I also am going to be speaking with another...

I don't know if he considers himself a healer, but he does somatic healing.

And again, that kind of relates, uh, releases some of the trauma, some of the emotion that is stored in the body.

Another area that I'm just really fascinated about how things that have happened 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago are actually being stored in your body and can create some chronic conditions.

So lot to learn there and a lot to talk.

about how we can help ourselves before chronic conditions set in and what to do if that's the case.

Caregivers are very susceptible to getting sick themselves because they're always putting the needs of others before themselves.

We want to make sure that we talk about that and what we can do to protect ourselves.

can't wait to have those discussions.

Also want to mention to follow me on Facebook and Instagram, the empowered caregiver.

As I speak with these people and as these resources come up to me, I love to be able to share them so that you have access to them as well.

So I just want to wrap up.

I have in the back of my mind, I'm just curious, Erin dying to ask your thought on all of this relationship.

talk that I have going on because we've got our similarities, right?

Our things in common, but we got our differences, right?

We have two different sexiest here.

We're in different age groups, married, not married, lots of differences.

So what's your takeaway from today and relationships and maybe what you've learned and where you're at?

I think it's...

I know on some other shows we often have people on, like we have Kira Sabin, a relationship coach on the Todd Albaugh show, and I've learned a lot from her.

I feel like I've learned a lot from Dr. Solomon today.

I always, even though I am single and not pursuing a relationship, I think that learning these things is great preparation if I someday do want to look for a relationship.

And also just for understanding yourself and it applies to friendships too and caregiving.

Like you said, it's just we, we do a lot of relationships in all of our lives.

And I think that just because something is labeled for an intimate relationship doesn't mean you can't still learn from it for other parts of your life.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I think it carries over, it carries over everywhere.

And you know, it's, it's interesting about the.

the choosing not to be in a relationship, I won't drill you there, but I have a daughter that's going to be 30, and I think she took that.

attitude for a long time.

She just recently had gotten into a relationship and it's going well.

And I was curious, you know, is it, is it the generation that you're in where it doesn't have the same level of importance?

You know, I still am in that tail end of the period where you get married and you have kids and you get the white picket fence and yada, yada, yada at the tail end of that age group.

But I just, I was curious with her if

the general attitude had changed or if living in our household was so horrific, she didn't even wanna ever, ever go there.

I imagine it's probably more just that it's less important to people in our generation.

Like for me, I just don't feel a need to.

I've been in a couple of relationships and I learned a lot from them and I think I grew a lot out of it, but I just haven't, like I feel like,

If I meet somebody who I'm interested in dating, then I'll have an interest for a relationship.

But I don't feel like I need to try and find somebody and force a square peg into a round hole and be like, I need to be in a relationship because I'm still able to, you know, learn about myself and everything without that.

No, I love that.

And I think I.

I would encourage more people to kind of take that attitude.

I feel like a lot of people are running around in this desperation, right, to be in a relationship and then when they're in a relationship, they're trying with this desperation to stay in the relationship when maybe it's not even a good relationship to be staying in.

Yeah, seeing some of my friends do that is another reason that I have a few friends who are always in a relationship.

or looking for another relationship actively, like with specific people in mind.

And I don't think they've spent more than two days single and just letting themselves be single in the last like five years.

It's definitely interesting.

I was watching a Jennifer Lopez documentary she made about her love life.

And I think she was referred to by a therapist as a relationship.

Addict and and like went to an actual therapy where I thought I don't think I knew that exists But definitely those people that just can't be alone

Yeah, it makes sense, but I'm glad that I don't have that issue

Yes, I I am glad to because it's it feels like a real big distraction

and taken away from who you are and what you want to accomplish and do.

And I'm glad that you're open-minded for when the right person comes along.

And I'll keep my fingers crossed for that youth that it works out either way, however you want it to go.

Well, thank you.

Before I let you go, I just want to remind everyone to go to WisconsinCaregiver.org for all your caregiver resources and needs.

There is a ton of information there, including access to Trualta.com, which is online caregiver support, which is paid for by the state of Wisconsin.

Wonderful resource.

Check it out at WisconsinCaregiver.org.