Today our topic is “Compromise in Relationships" recorded with the community on October 10, 2020. Happy Halloween! Anyone can join in on these calls by going to our Community Page and sign-up to receive notifications about upcoming calls. Contact Us Sandy & Lon Golnickwww.RelationshipByDesign.com 760-603-8343

Relationship By Design

023 Compromise In Relationships

Today our topic is “The Pitfalls of Promises” on our twice-monthly Zoom Community Call. At the end of the call, someone asked if there would be a replay of the call? We took a poll to make sure nobody would have any problem if we shared the complete call. Nobody objected so here it is. The complete 1-hour and 18-minute audio version of the call. The complete video version is available from our YouTube channel and can be found here. Anyone can join in on these calls by going to our Community Page and sign-up to receive notifications about upcoming calls. Contact Us Sandy & Lon Golnickwww.RelationshipByDesign.com 760-603-8343 Click HERE to join in on the conversations.

022 Community Call: The Pitfalls of Promises

The original title of this episode recorded on August 15, 2020, was “Do you have your relationship handled? Part 2" HOWEVER at the top of the call Lon asked the question “What’s possible with going forward?” So as it is with all relationships, things change. Carol England gave us permission to use her extended comments about how she and Jeff are thriving in “possibility” these days. You’ll want to hear about that. Do consider joining us in the conversations we’re having twice a month. Head over to the Community Page on RelationshipByDesign.com and sign-up to receive notifications about the next call and receive the Zoom links you’ll need to join us. Contact Us Sandy & Lon Golnickwww.RelationshipByDesign.com 760-603-8343

021 Community Call: You can do it. Or you can pretend you can’t.

We thought today we’d give you more excerpts from the Community Calls we have a few times a month. We take people’s privacy seriously. You’ll only be hearing from the leaders of Relationship By Design. If you like what you hear, consider joining us for the next call by going to the Community page on our website at RelationshipByDesign.com and sign up to receive notifications about upcoming calls. Conversations and Topics Covered Today Introduction to the topic for today Lon, Paul, and Sandy’s comments Carol on COVID and Racism Paul on “handling it” Lon says “Dance with it” Closing words by Lon, Sandy, and Carol Contact Us Sandy & Lon Golnickwww.RelationshipByDesign.com 760-603-8343

020 Community Call Exploring: Do You Have Your Relationship Handled?

We thought today we’d give you some excerpts from the Community Calls we have a few times a month. We take people’s privacy seriously. You’ll only be hearing from the leaders of Relationship By Design. If you like what you hear, consider joining us for the next call by going to the Community page on our website at RelationshipByDesign.com and sign up to receive notifications about upcoming calls. Conversations and Topics Covered Today Introduction. Power. What do I have to lose? Choice and the little things. Forfeit and power. We don’t know how much time we have left. Education. Live inside. I don’t know. Witness. Hallucinations. Gratitude. Allow and love. Listening and racism. Love and fear. Tomorrow. Being present. Being here now. And goodbye for now. Contact Us Sandy & Lon Golnickwww.RelationshipByDesign.com 760-603-8343

019 Community Call Excerpts July 11, 2020

Have you ever said something snarky, spiteful, unkind, or just plain thoughtless, to someone you love?  How did it go?  Did you get into a fight or hear a defensive reaction? Or worse. Perhaps you ended a relationship.  It happened to us and opened a door to greater intimacy. As Paul started to take lunch to his desk, Carol let fly this one: “So, do you like your computer better than your wife?”   The tone was accusatory, not inviting. As soon as Carol said it, she knew that it had come out sideways, inviting a fight rather than a joyful lunch together.  It was not aligned with her intention at all.   This is where she should have remembered the acronym WAIT, and asked herself “Why Am I Talking?”  After a few tense moments, while Paul maintained a stunned silence, Carol apologized for the snarky remark and then revealed some feelings she had not disclosed before – or even consciously recognized. She told Paul that she had expected him to join her, and felt rejected or abandoned when he took his food to his desk instead.   Anyone who has been in our 2-day workshop, Relationship: The Real Deal, knows the mischief that arises from unexpressed expectations. One person is disappointed and the other one feels blamed out of the blue. In our case, we had no agreement to eat our lunch together, just Carol’s uncommunicated expectation.    After communicating her (previously withheld) expectation, Carol could lovingly invite Paul to join her.  That’s all it took to restore our joy of being related.   By the way, Paul wasn’t abandoning Carol when he took lunch to his desk. It was just his habit  – what he’d been doing for decades before he met Carol.  The next time you hear yourself or another person making a sarcastic or biting crack, you could get curious rather than defensive. You might discover something new, and end up feeling closer than before the remark slipped out.   With love, Carol & Paul Contact Us Sandy & Lon Golnickwww.RelationshipByDesign.com 760-603-8343

018 What if a Snarky Remark is a Red Flag?

At the beginning of our workshop, “Relationship: The Real Deal,” some participants are startled when we announce this intention:  “The issues you have been dealing with, trying to fix, or just plain tolerating … dissolve/disappear simply by being in relationship.” For people who believe that successful relationships require work, that intention seems improbable, even outrageous. For Paul and me, issues dissolving and disappearing is a daily occurrence. Recently, I was irritated and annoyed with the pile of clothes in our bedroom – specifically Paul’s clothes. In the pile were shirts and pants he had worn three days ago!   Now, I know the “right” way to handle clothes. My grandmother Mimi taught me more than 60 years ago! Put them away, immediately, as soon as you take them off!  I can remember when I blamed Paul for my irritations. I used to demand that he clean up his mess. I  even tried to extract a promise that he would manage his clothes the right way - my way. I can also remember times when I just kept quiet to keep the peace in our marriage. I  was afraid of starting a fight over who gets to say how we deal with messes. And I was resigned to just putting up with the mess. But this time I said to Paul, “I’m irritated that your clothes are in a heap in our room.” Paul simply said: “Thank you for telling me.” Paul didn’t try to change anything. He didn’t resist my being irritated, or defend his actions or deflect blame.  When we both allowed me to be irritated, the irritation dissolved, and the joy of our being related revived. In our years of designing and leading workshops at Relationship by Design, it’s become clear to us that upsets, irritations, and disappointments will happen in all relationships. They’re completely normal.  What is not normal is for each of us to be responsible for our reactions rather than blaming the other person for causing them. What is not normal is to let go of trying to fix, change, or tolerate those reactions. What is not normal is to communicate our reactions and allow issues to dissolve. Yet that’s what happened in our relationship just last week. With love, Carol & Paul Contact Us Sandy & Lon Golnickwww.RelationshipByDesign.com 760-603-8343

017 Irritations in Relationships

Well, our first question for you is, “Are you willing to set aside your penchant to fix, change or leave your relationship?” Leaving, either physically or emotionally, surely doesn’t resolve anything. It simply transports your concerns to your next relationship. But staying and trying to deal with it doesn’t resolve anything either - especially when you don’t know what you’re dealing with. Fixing and changing do not work when you don’t know what you’re working on in the first place. So now what? Are you willing to let go of trying to find solutions?  And in doing so, discover there may be nothing to fix?  Are you open to seeing things about relationships that you haven’t seen before, the seeing of which has whatever hasn’t been working simply disappear? Vanish! Poof!  The first thing to see is that you, and all of the relationship experts that we’ve talked to, do not know what a relationship is. Simply because you and they haven’t been asking the question, “What is a relationship?” Are you open and willing to start from scratch, to explore and discover what a relationship actually is?   When you are clear about what a relationship is, what it is that you’re actually dealing with, most of the things that you have been working hard to resolve simply clear up. And you find yourself at ease with new concerns and possibilities.  Your relationships move through their ups and downs without major stress and frustration. They flow as they’re designed to flow, and you experience the peace, ease and fulfillment that are natural to relationship. Contact Us Sandy & Lon Golnickwww.RelationshipByDesign.com 760-603-8343

016 When Your Relationship Isn’t Working, What Should You Do?

How do people move from ordinary relationship to extraordinary relationship? In ordinary relationship, we react to upsets by pulling out of the experience of relationship, the experience that we actually long for.  It’s extraordinary to be aware that upset, irritation or annoyance are simply our individual reactions to ordinary events.  At any given moment, you can choose to interrupt your automatic instinct to blame another for your being upset, and to stay connected to that other person. That is extraordinary. Here’s an example from our life together: Carol walked into our living room, and her attention immediately zeroed in on two blankets jumbled up on the sofa – left over from Paul’s nap the day before. Automatically, she thought, “Those blankets shouldn’t be jumbled up. Paul should have folded them yesterday!  The couch looks messy and makes the whole room messy. I don’t like it, and Paul is wrong, wrong, wrong.” We’re sure you get the picture. CaroI felt irritated, at odds with Paul, and unhappy!  But something shifted when  Carol noticed that Paul didn’t seem to have any of those thoughts or feelings. For him, the blankets were just the way they were. They were on the couch – simply a fact. No judgment, no story, no guilt, no irritation. The circumstance – blankets on the couch – was  the same for both of us. Yet Paul was at ease, and Carol was irritated.  That was interesting.   Extraordinary relationship starts with waking up!  Carol woke up to the price she was paying for holding on to irritation and blame: she’d lost the joy of experiencing relationship with Paul and, in that moment, her joy in being alive. Her focus had so narrowed that she didn’t see any of the pleasures around her that invite her to be happy. She had pulled away from the one person who is central to her life’s joy. And by the way, Carol was alone in this unhappiness because she was choosing to keep her annoyance to herself. Carol hadn’t consciously chosen to feel this way. Her irritation was an automatic reaction. And she automatically blamed Paul for causing her feelings. He left the blankets, the blankets irritated her, and she was the helpless victim. (Are you snickering yet?) What woke Carol up was realizing that the same blankets (the circumstance) didn’t upset Paul. She had to ask herself, was the circumstance the author of her feelings, or were her feelings simply her own reaction? When she realized that the only things “wrong” in this scene were her irritation and her opinion that Paul should be doing things her way, her irritation dissolved.   Then she invited Paul to spend a few minutes with her. Just a couple of minutes looking in each other’s eyes, sharing what had just happened, followed by a hug and a laugh at how funny we humans can be. Our relationship was restored.  That was going from Ordinary to Extraordinary in our relationship, and it only took a moment.  Have you ever considered that your opinion, not the circumstance, caused your irritation with your partner, co-worker, child, boss, or parent? Did you then feel distant from  the other person? Maybe the next time you get irritated inside a relationship, you will wake up to your automatic reaction, interrupt assigning blame to the other, and make the extraordinary choice to stay connected and consider the other’s point of view.  Then the two of you will have the opportunity to consider how your relationship wants to live and what your relationship will do to fulfill that shared vision.  ~ Carol Herndon and Paul Bennett (Carol&Paul), Relationship By Design workshop leaders If you’d like to join us on the Zoom call Sunday, head over to RelationShipByDesign.com and go to the Community Page. At the bottom of the page there’s a place to sign-up to receive notifications about this and other upcoming Zoom community calls, where you’ll be emailed the unique links you’ll need to join us on the calls. And we’d love to see you there! Contact Us Sandy & Lon Golnickwww.RelationshipByDesign.com 760-603-8343

015 Ordinary to Extraordinary… in a Moment

For many of us during this time of “physical distancing,” we’re finding ourselves at home, sheltered in place, and in close-quarters with family members, and just maybe feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all. As Lon&Sandy said in this episode, “It could be said that family - is a network of relationships.” If you’d like to join us on the Zoom community calls we have, head over to RelationShipByDesign.com and go to the Community Page. At the bottom of the page, there’s a place to sign-up and receive notifications about upcoming Zoom community calls, where you’ll be emailed the unique links you’ll need to join us on the calls. And we’d love to see you there! Contact Us Sandy & Lon Golnickwww.RelationshipByDesign.com

014 Distancing Relationship

In this episode, Sandy&Lon continue with John briefly educating us on a coaching course they had done years ago for parents titled Parents: Outside The Trap. Are you interested in knowing more about the course? Let us know here. If you’d like to join us on Zoom for community “What’s On Your Mind?” calls, click here and add yourself to the notification list.  If you’re new to Relationship By Design start here: Episode 001 Get Real About Relationship Contact Us Sandy & Lon Golnickwww.RelationshipByDesign.com 760-603-8343

013 Parents: Outside The Trap Workshop

In this episode, John Biethan the producer of the podcast, asks Sandy&Lon for their comments on his thoughts about "arrangements." In some family relationships, in certain conditions, and when people get together in relationship and marriage, there “may” be a conscious or unconscious “arrangement and/or agreement” at play. In the next episode, Sandy&Lon discuss their workshop titled “Parents: Outside The Trap.” If you’re new to Relationship By Design start here: Episode 001 Get Real About Relationship Contact Us Sandy & Lon Golnickwww.RelationshipByDesign.com 760-603-8343

012 Relationships: Arrangements and Understandings

Subtitled: An Individual-based paradigm In this episode, we’ve taken the liberty of starting off with the last few minutes of the previous episode 10, Strike 2: Fear In Relationships Part 2, where Sandy&Lon talk about relationships during the holiday season. For more insights into the impact the holidays may have on your relationships, listen to episode 6, Strike 1: The Fantasy, and episode 8, Strike 2: Fear In Relationships Part 1. If you’re new to Relationship By Design start here: Episode 001 Get Real About Relationship Contact Us Sandy & Lon Golnickwww.RelationshipByDesign.com 760-603-8343

011 Strike 3: Hostile Backdrop

www.RelationshipByDesign.com  Continuing on from episode 008 Strike 2: Fear In Relationships Part 1, today Sandy&Lon take a deeper look into fear and what happens when it feeds into relationships when they're shaped. If you’re new to Relationship By Design start here: Episode 001 Get Real About Relationship Contact Us Sandy & Lon Golnickwww.RelationshipByDesign.com 760-603-8343

010 Strike 2: Fear In Relationships Part 2

www.RelationshipByDesign.com If you really listen to yourselves talking about your relationships, you’ll hear (1) how often you exaggerate with “always” and “never” - which fills your future with your past - and (2) how often you unconsciously talk about what happened in the past as if it’s happening now - which also fills your future with your past. Having a future filled with the past - which is, in a very real sense, forfeiting your future to the past - is the definition of resignation, which literally means “marked or signed again.” Today, a friend of ours spoke about how his wife “wakes me when she gets up early in the morning, and I can’t get back to sleep again.” By speaking in that way, he had what happened yesterday (and perhaps some other days in the past) as happening now and into the future. That produces resignation. That’s very different than saying “yesterday, and several other days recently, my wife awakened me when she got up early in the morning and I didn’t go back to sleep again.” The latter way of speaking - saying what happened as what happened rather than as what’s happening - puts the past in the past and produces the room for a new future, an opportunity to create another way of relating in future mornings. Creating new possible ways of behaving together resolves issues in your relationships rather than extends issues of the past into the present and future. And it’s all a function of being aware of the automatic, unthinking way you have been speaking. Saying what happened in the past as though it’s happening now is not unique to you. You live in a “linguistic environment” in which exactly that way of speaking is the norm and keeps most people - and their relationships - stuck in the past. When you get unstuck from the past, there’s nothing to fix.  There’s a future to be created together.    If you’re new to Relationship By Design start here: Episode 001 Get Real About Relationship Contact Us Sandy & Lon Golnickwww.RelationshipByDesign.com 760-603-8343

009 Is Resignation Shaping Your Relationship?

The show about mastering the art of relationship by first uncovering the default nature and design of relationships then gaining the insights needed to design relationships (rather than continually trying to repair them); and finally, equipping yourselves to successfully meet the many challenges that accompany long-lasting relationships.

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Relationship By Design

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