Successful Relationships with Drs. Barbara and Michael Grossman

george grombacher 0:00
Come on one lipid, this is George G. And the time is right, welcome today’s guests during the powerful doctors Barbara and Michael Groesbeck, welcome, doctors.

Unknown Speaker 0:20
Thank you. Wonderful to be here. Thank you.

george grombacher 0:22
I’m excited to have you on. Doctors, Barbara and Michael are the authors of ageless love and the sexy science of falling in love forever. They’ve been helping couples for over 25 years create fulfilling, romantic partnerships, again, excited to have both of you on, tell us a little about your personal lives some more about your work and why you do what you do.

Unknown Speaker 0:45
Well, we love doing what we do. And we started out working on our own marriage, where we were married for about 10 years. And the first marriage that we had was really nice. We did whatever I wanted. And I liked that marriage. And then Barbara went back to graduate school and started thinking for herself, I had her own ideas and opinions. And that was a difficult transition for us how to have two independent people in that same marriage relationship very difficult. And we went to a lot of counseling, which was not helpful. And we went to a lot of courses and classes and mentors. And that was really helpful. And we learned a lot about marriage and relationship and interacting with each other. And then we began to teach classes after we got our own marriage working together. Dr. Barbara was a marriage counselor at that point. And I was a family doctor. And we gradually began to share what we learned with our patients. And we begin to grow and grow our experiences. And we started doing courses and classes and writing books. And we have a great time now and we love doing what we do. Well, the only thing might, you

Unknown Speaker 2:00
know, instead of that what comes out of personal experience, there’s nothing more important, more joyful and more painful than having a relationship that doesn’t work. And it has far reaching consequences. Not only are the partners miserable, but it affects children. And so our, you know, my focus is to really make a difference in American marriages. Because we want America healthy and happy.

george grombacher 2:26
Well, amen. I think that certainly, everything you said makes a ton of sense to me. My folks split up when I was five, and it’s it’s complicated, the last 40 Some years of everyone’s lives. So the more that can be done to help folks have happy relationships, I think that that’s all the better. So, you know, I think that there’s probably a ton of things that are standing in our way and standing in the way of those relationships, what are some of those barriers that that y’all have seen or are seeing?

Unknown Speaker 2:58
Well, there’s a variety of things going on. One is the inevitability of relationships to get into trouble is there, because we’re changing who we are, when we’re two is different than when we’re six different than when we’re 13. Different than when we’re 25 Different when we’re 40. And these changes are inevitable. And we see the inevitable changes of a teenager, we know that they went from feeling close to their parents to feeling they want to be more independent. When we’re in our 20s, we are feeling close to our, our family, our husband, wife, when we’re 35 and 40, we start feeling separate again. And it’s a natural transition, we write a lot about both of our books that we wrote, the ageless love book is the newest book, and then one before that is the marriage map book. And that’s an inevitable change. And when you see the big picture, then you don’t think Oh, suddenly one of my leadership, I’m getting out, I’m leaving. No, it’s this is what’s gonna happen just like, take a breath. It’s not the end of the world, you got to get new skills now to deal with it.

Unknown Speaker 4:12
Right? So it’s inevitable that this disconnection happens whether you know, if there’s children, there’s the there’s a partner who’s home with the children, usually the the female, and she’s still about bonding and connection, and the partner who’s working is more about individuating and becoming successful and, and accomplishing and defining themselves. And so they were they were once really connected and integrated. They are in very different developmental states. And it’s, it’s hard to bridge that. And the alternative if there’s no children, and both partners are working really hard and becoming successful and powerful. That creates a power struggle because they’re both individuals. They want it their way. So there’s really no way a couple in this day and age can escape, that that transition time where they’re simply not as connected as they were It’s unpleasant, it’s uncomfortable. But it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not meant to be together need to understand what it’s about. And we help people understand. And we help people learn how to consciously communicate, so they can connect and really move through this, this period of time, and stay close and understand what’s going on with him.

george grombacher 5:22
It’s fascinating that we are constantly evolving from the time when we’re little kids to, you know, just in for as long as we’re living, I hopefully, we’re constantly evolving, and we’re doing this separate, we’re doing it together. And the challenge and the opportunity is, is letting the other person know, hey, I’m changing. I’m not changing, because I’m interested in moving away from you. In fact, I’m changing because I want to be a better partner for you, trying to be better together,

Unknown Speaker 5:53
be a better person. Right? Right. And that is, that is the big picture. So one of the big secrets, we talked about three secrets to fall in love forever. And one of the secrets is seeing the big picture. The second secret is you have to learn to share your new way of being in the world with your partner in a way that doesn’t create arguments and upsets. And what we say if you’re not listening to your partner without interrupting them, when you’re not really listening. And we have a whole skill set that we teach people how to do that. How to listen to your partner without interrupting them, where you’re really open to seeing the world to this new way of being your partner is seeing the world a new way you’re seeing the world in in a new way. It’s not the way when you first fell in love. It was so automatic and easy. Everything was great. Now it’s like, they’re so different. Why can’t you just be the way you used to be because you’ve grown and changed. And you’ve got to listen to each other. So one of the critical thing is to skill of listening without interrupting. And that has to be learned. It’s like roller skating or ice skating or basketball playing it’s a skill.

george grombacher 7:09
Why can’t you just be the way you were. And it seems like a

Unknown Speaker 7:16
romantic relationship is not designed to be a smooth ride. Brothers and sisters, parents children could be a smooth ride, it’s possible. But romantic relationship, it’s not possible. Unless you’re already 50 years old, and you’re getting together well, then you’re kind of like, you know, set in so many ways. But to go through life. Romag lace up, it’s like fiery relationship. It’s not the water, smooth release, it’s fire. It’s intense. If if you don’t see your brother or sister for a few years, and you see him again, oh, you just can’t wait to be together, talk to them. Don’t try that with romantic relationship, it doesn’t work. You’ve got to have that intense, intense relationship that is ongoing. And it’s not it’s not you know, it’s just the nature of romance. But romance has the possibility of increasing your lifespan of increasing your your your brain and your mood, your energy and your terminal health. It’s very, very special. But it’s it’s designed in a certain way that it’s intense.

Unknown Speaker 8:27
Also, your intimate relationship gives you a lot of feedback, it actually promotes your development. There’s nothing that grows people like having a partner in life and equal partner, who lets you know, when you’re, when you’re out of line, when you’re unpleasant when your your thinking isn’t clear. And the requests from your partner will stretch you in various ways. So it’s a very, very meaningful relationship, as far as I’m building your personality over a lifetime.

george grombacher 8:56
equal partner. I think that that, that that that really jumps out to me. And it makes sense to me, when when Dr. Michael was talking earlier, sort of introducing YALI talked about the first sort of stage of our relationship was was me doing all the things that I wanted to do. And then we shifted. And it sounds like you both came together with the understanding is we’re both really high achieving successful people. And we’re going to have our own path together. When you do are working with couples who are maybe that first version where you have one person who is really trying to change and evolve, and the other person says, Why can’t you be the way that you were? I like to better the old way. How do you how do you reconcile that?

Unknown Speaker 9:42
Well, I don’t know that people say that. I think what happens is that the new desires, the new goals, create friction. And so there’s there’s perhaps conflict over new requests or new interests that aren’t consistent with the past. So it’s usually much more localized than that and And then that’s where, you know, really sharing what this, this new desire means to you. And, and what it can possibly mean to both of you, it’s important to be open about it rather than defensive and, and focus on the conflict. And, and by the time I see couples, they’ve had those, those conflict conversations over and over again. And it’s eroded their bond. So it’s important to support to understand that we develop over a lifetime and not to, not to stay in that negative space for a long time, but to have the help and talking about it so that you understand how you can support each other and, and partner in things.

Unknown Speaker 10:38
So the secret number three that we talk about, is dealing just with this, this issue that you’re raising, we teach couples how to make requests nicely. So if you’re changing, and you want your partner to do things that they haven’t been doing before, because you have changed and they have changed, then you have to say it wouldn’t really make me happy. If when you say what you’re saying. And you say in a way where it’s not like a demand, that’s not like a threat, you do it or else. No, it’s not about the way we teach them how to make it nicely. And you want to make a little TV request, we have a whole structure of doing that in our courses and classes. So that changes the way it is a man wants to make his lady happy. He doesn’t want to have to exhaust himself doing it. And he doesn’t want to be criticized for doing it. But he loves to do things to make them happy. But the lady has to make it easy for him to succeed. So we have that, that that that methodology that we teach our couples.

Unknown Speaker 11:50
And then there’s the matter of negotiation, if there’s some if there’s a way you can go partway towards the partner who’s made a request, you do what you can do, and then you you have the opportunity to articulate what you know, concerns you have about it and what inspires you. And so you you have you constantly have to evolving individualities working together and negotiating and and sharing their lives together. And it makes for a very rich life.

george grombacher 12:17
Yeah, that certainly does make sense anytime you can have open and constructive understood conversation that that that would be a recipe for success. Do you do you advocate for for structured conversations for scheduled conversations? How do you think about that?

Unknown Speaker 12:38
Absolutely. Some of the most important conversations need to be scheduled and there needs to be rules about it when it’s a conflict. And we teach a structure for how to talk about important things. And we also, we also teach or coach that there needs sometimes to be breaks where you think, oh, go away from each other and think about it, and come back to the conversation later on in that day, or perhaps the next day, but by appointment, because a lot of a lot of conversations really need deeper reflection.

Unknown Speaker 13:09
And you don’t want to jump on the other person and make them have a conversation when other things are going on for them. Definitely structure schedule, we have a whole process that we teach people how to do it. And we like couples to have when they come to our classes to have regular conversations and to schedule them that that’s a regular part of their life. They have you know, three to five minutes where Okay, here’s the structure, here’s what we’re doing. And yeah, it makes a huge difference in a relationship.

george grombacher 13:39
I like that a lot. So it’s a schedule and then sort of a rules of engagement for the when we’re talking and also then breaks and then you coming back by appointment. They can see just for me personally that a lot of the time I do need a little bit of room to breathe and to process things on my own. And to get my thoughts right before I just talk through everything with with with my wife or with other people,

Unknown Speaker 14:06
right, we usually limit conversation, maximum five minutes each person that’s the maximum was more than that. You can process that much when when there’s some issues going on.

george grombacher 14:23
It strikes me that that so seeing the big picture, making sure that you’re learning how to you have the skills to be able to share your new way of being and then making the request nicely that it really is so essential that I have the right tools and the framework for making this happen otherwise, just like you talked about learn how to roller skate or ride a bike or speak a language if I have no framework for learning how to do that or actually carrying it out. My odds of success I might be successful but it’d be a lot easier with with a framework All

Unknown Speaker 15:00
right. Now not all issues are rational. Some, you know, what happens in a relationship is that we reactivate each other, and our, our injuries or hurts from childhood are aroused. And we have to know that that’s going on. It’s a partnership is a really deep emotional bond. And it’s inevitable that you will feel feelings that you have forgotten about for years. And your reactions to feeling those feelings may not be so, so pleasant. And so the opportunity to to feel those things and think it through and share and share what you want that would heal those feelings is a remarkable gift that comes from from a loving relationship. And those conversations need to be managed properly so that the the hurt and the RE experience of old injuries don’t overwhelm the relationship. And that happens to everybody. But a lot of people don’t know how to contain it.

george grombacher 16:00
That makes sense. Well, doctors, Barbara and Michael, the people are ready for your difference making tip, what do you have for them?

Unknown Speaker 16:07
Oh, we have so many things that we could talk about. What I can add to what we already talked about the three secrets as couples get older, to maintain passion and maintain intimacy and sexual functioning. The the science of what I do as a medical doctor, I replace hormones, naturally bioidentical hormones, changes people’s lives every day, when women go through menopause. And men get to be 50 or older, they lose their hormones, when we’ve replaced them, they feel younger again. And that creates the passion that they used to feel in their romantic lives and your life. And that’s a huge, huge kind of, of a benefit. Dr. Barber, you want to talk about our classes?

Unknown Speaker 16:57
Well, we have classes online to teach where we teach skills. We made it simple where we have five courses depending on what your what your biggest issues or injuries are. We have courses in about what do they mean parenting being important. There’s a part about sex, there’s all that to stop arguing we we want couples to have access to this there. We’ve made it extremely inexpensive. It’s $37 for a course there’s a part of the course that’s where we talk and give information and then we give homework and and actual skills training online. We want all of American families to build their bond and grow their lives and raise their families with joy and love.

george grombacher 17:57
Excellent, excellent. Well, I’m so grateful for for both of you I’m so grateful for both of you for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? Where can they get the books and where can they access the courses?

Unknown Speaker 18:10
Well, ageless love.com is a just love quiz.com is probably the best place to go. They can they can get the courses there ageless love quiz.com and book will be available in the next month or so. And it will be available in many places but they can go to falling love forever God calm and and get the book there and they also can get on Amazon.

george grombacher 18:41
Excellent. Well if you enjoyed this as much as I did show it Dr. Barbara and Dr. Michael your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to ageless love quiz.com and then falling in love forever.com and take advantage of all this value that they’re providing pick up a copy of the book and get better at relationships. Thanks again doctors Barbara and Michael. Thank you. Thank you. And until next time, keep fighting the good fight because we are all in this together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai