Conscious Loving and Relationships with Dr. Kathlyn Hendricks

Dr. Cates: Hi there. I’m Dr Trevor Cates. Welcome to the spa doctor podcast. Today we’re talking about conscious, loving and relationships. My guest is doctor Katie Hendricks who has a phd in transpersonal psychology and has been a pioneer in the field of conscious loving for over 40 years. Katie has an international reputation as a presenter and seminar leader botified the core skills of conscious living, authenticity, responsibility and appreciation. She is the Co author of 12 books including the bestselling conscious loving as well as at the speed of life and conscious loving ever after. Katie’s unique coaching and leadership programs have generated hundreds of relationship coaches in the u s and Europe and she has appeared in over 500 ad radio and TV programs and traveled well over 1 million air miles as a ambassador for the work that she and her husband Gay Hendricks have developed in today’s interview. We cover many aspects of romantic relationships from new relationships to those lasting over 20 years and beyond.

Dr. Cates: We even discuss what to do before you start dating to help attract the right loving relationship. I asked Katie so many questions such as is there such a thing as a soulmate? Do Long distance relationships work? Is online dating a good idea when his divorce inevitable, if ever, is monogamy the only way? And is it possible to have a loving intimate relationship into midlife and beyond? So many of questions that I’ve asked her and she answers them oss as a bit of low long side of an interview, but I want you to listen to the very end because it’s packed full of great information. So please enjoy this interview. Katie has so great to have you on my podcast. Welcome.

Dr. Hendricks: Thank you. It’s a real pleasure to be here with you.

Dr. Cates: Great. So I’m so excited to have you on my podcast. I read your book conscious loving probably like six, seven years ago and it’s been continuously one of my favorite books on relationships. And so whenever anybody asks me what’s the best book on relationships, I always refer to your book and you wrote it with your husband. And I think it’s fascinating. You guys are still together after all these years. So obviously you’re doing something right, not just with other people but with yourself. So I’d love to hear a bit first about what, what made you guys decide to write the book, what led to writing the book and, and you also do workshops and lectures together.

Dr. Hendricks: Yeah, we have actually now, after almost 40 years together, we have a really big body of work, but it’s really all based in when we first met and connected, we had a recognition of each other at a very expanded level. And then we feel the, in the details, like we lived in different cities and, uh, you know, there were a number of other things that really needed to get handled. But at the core of our relationship was a, a recognition that in love we can experience our partners as our friends and allies and that two people together create more energy than either of them has on their own. And so the relationship journey, it can really be a journey of lifelong discovery and of, uh, being a source of both presence and inspiration, but also of challenge, um, an inspiration to keep learning about being more. And more of who you are. We really saw each other’s essence. And uh, and that’s really at the heart of all of our work is revealing assets.

Dr. Hendricks: How can I be more and more fully myself in the presence of someone else. And also this third thing that begins to develop, which is this space between the, the actual co-creativity, it’s almost like a third person in the room is the relationship itself. And as each of us were contributing and being and relating to each other, this third thing began to develop. And that’s really been very exciting to see over the decades that the practices that we wrote about in conscious loving have really stood the test of time there. You know, that was like 27 years ago, conscious loving, and it’s the only relationship book that I know that’s been in continuous print, uh, since it was published. And I feel really happy about that. But at the core of your question, when I got together with gay, he was already a published author. And at the heart of his genius, his writing, he communicates in writing with this kind of clarity and expansion that I think is very accessible to people.

Dr. Hendricks: And what, so I thought, well Gosh, if I can contribute to this at all, I’m happy to do that. And so we started, um, end gaze, also a very, very generous person. You’ll see if you look through his biography that he’s co-written books with a number of people and I really admire and appreciate that about him because he understands the power of cocreating, not just creating and that kind of generosity I first experienced with him when we got together and we’ve written 12 books together now. Oh Wow. Plus he’s written, he’s written over 40 himself. So the, you know, having kind of coming into a relationship where I had all of these possibilities to, uh, to expand into areas that I had not yet was really a, that was a real bonus to be able to, uh, to publish and to learn all about that. Cause it’s a, it’s a whole world of its own as I’m sure you know.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And I imagine you’ve seen a lot of change and relationships over the decades. And so it seems like now there’s such a high divorce rate and people are so independent. Right. And we want to be independent. I mean, I know what that’s about myself on many of my, many of my friends. We want to be really independent. How do we, um, the question is how do we have B and relationship these days? And, um, and so I know you talk about conscious loving and so can you explain first what that means? What does conscious, loving mean?

Dr. Hendricks: Conscious loving means that you’re awake and you’re able to choose. Most loving is unconscious loving. That’s based on patterns that you learned. Um, not just from parents and seeing what parents do, but from movies, from media and now of course from social media and all of the, the different attempts to get your eyeballs. You know, there were such an eyeball, a society now that, that people can get actually disconnected from each other and addicted to the device. That’s giving you that stimulation, you know, that brain stimulation. So I think that the, in fact the subtitle to our book conscious loving was how to be fully yourself, how to be fully together without giving up yourself. And we’ve really seen like from the very beginning that humans have two basic urges. One is the urge to merge the urge to experience something bigger than yourself to be able to let go into another.
Dr. Hendricks: To me that’s one of the big joys that I didn’t even know was possible. I feel as if I can really let go into gay and he can receive me both energetically and intellectually. And um, he’s wonderful to hug and he stands in himself so that if I give him my full energy, he doesn’t fall over. That’s really wonderful. And I think a lot of, especially women I think are missing that the ability to really be fully surrendered, not in a falling back, but in a really falling forward and being fully yourself and being net that I think is, is something that only humans can give each other. And we also have an equally strong urge to individually. And my sense is that that’s what’s really up for a lot of women right now is this urge to individually to find your own expression and to give that into the world.

Dr. Hendricks: To be able to communicate directly rather than through somebody. Like in my mother’s era, it was all about the man and my father worked for GM and even at my mother’s memorial, one of the people from, from General Motors said, your mother was such a great entertainer. She really supported Bob, my dad in his work by, by creating an atmosphere of connection. But she was also a frustrated artists. That was really hurt. Essence calling was to be an artist. And so the division between the roles that were assigned in the things that we really want to do, I think that’s an ongoing issue for individuals and couples, but also for our culture. And I think that now we are in an individuation phase as a culture that people want to do their own thing and not be tied down. Uh, but it’s not going to override the fact that we also have an inbuilt urge to experience union, uh, and to experience being able to be in a larger space than just our own individual psychology and psyche.

Dr. Cates: Right. And so there’s in are you in the book, one of the big things that I loved about it was shifting away from codependency, which is what a big, I think one of the mistakes that people kind of get into and that causes relationships to be dysfunctional eyes that kind of being too dependent on each other. Right? That codependency. But you described what another option for that and you’re kind of, you’re explaining a bit about that now and it is coke, coke commitment is that with the

Dr. Hendricks: yes, it’s co commitment. And um, one of the principals that’s been really surprising and how powerful it’s been for people over these decades is the power of commitment. And most people look confused. Commitment with constriction and duty rather than what commitment really is, is gathering yourself together and taking yourself in a chosen direction. So commitment is both a place to come home too. Like, Oh, here’s what I really want. Here’s what I’m after. And it’s also a place to navigate because nobody ever commenced perfectly. So what we found was that it’s not only commitment but it’s recommitting. So when people commit, like one of the, it was very powerful for me. One of the commitments from conscious loving was the committing to revealing rather than concealing. Cause I came from a long line of a group, did a lot of my growing up in the Midwest and you just simply didn’t say anything unpleasant or and it, and it came to be anything real.

Dr. Hendricks: You just were, you know, nice and seen and not heard and all of those constrictions on being authentic. But when you commit, what is going to happen is you’re going to get to learn. The next lesson we think of committing is like getting in the pool. So if you want to learn how to swim, you can’t do it from the side of the pool. You have to jump in the pool and then you get to find out what you need to learn. So I can swimming. Some people are natural floaters and can just go in and just paddle around. Other people who have more lean body mass, they just won’t sink. So committing gets you into the game and then recommitting keeps you on the path that you want. So we found that committing what is the entry point and then recommitting allows you to learn because your relationships, not just your romantic relationships but all your relationships.

Dr. Hendricks: If you commit to learning from every relationship, interaction for example, then your, all of your daily interactions can be alive with discovery and with renewal because one of the issues and in relationships is the, you know, same old, same old, you know, finishing each other’s sentences, thinking that you know everything about each other. And I think that comes out of the fear of being authentic because you’re going to rock the boat and the sense of we have to each be in our own lane. Uh, otherwise we’re going to get into power struggles. And we have found lots of practices that we talk about in our books and in our seminars that take the place of power struggles. And one of them is actually committing. And another one is tuning into what do I really want? And asking, what do you really want rather than what would be a good thing to do?

Dr. Hendricks: What’s my duty here? What would make you still approve of me? Really tuning into what is an essence question of what do I really want? And in a co committed relationship, both of you experience yourself as whole people, not the sense of, you know, we have, people often say, how’s your other half or how’s your better half? And we consider that really kind of leaning on each other rather than standing as two whole people moving together. Or one of the other things that can happen is getting into control struggles. If you’re doing that, how’s your other half? Then you have the no, I’m going to be in charge. No, I’m going to be in charge. And then that adjuncts is what people think of as relationship, but it’s really just a power struggle.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. So I want to talk to you about new relationships and I also want to talk to you about people that have been a longterm relationships and the keys to keeping people together. But let’s talk about new relationships for us, for people that are either looking to get into a relationship or starting a new relationship. I think one of the things that’s come up, especially lately is the role of men and women and how do we actually come together because women are, uh, or you know, tired of being treated a certain way, being sexually assaulted, uh, being talked down to or you know, and, and there are these issues coming up at work and in social media and in the media. And so for women, we are, we’re kind of struggling with this idea of how do we, how do we be sexy without being too sexy and how do we be in, you know, attract a man without coming across the wrong way. And then men are also confused about how do they not cross the line? How can they show a woman they’re attracted to them without saying the wrong thing?

Dr. Hendricks: Yes, I totally understand. And I’m really happy that we’re in this phase because it’s much better. I mean, we’re like have turned over the rocks and we found all of, you know, at least most of the bugs underneath there and we’re, you know, beginning to look at what happens when we shine the light on patterns that have been going on for centuries. And you know, my sense is, is I’m hearing you talk is that underneath that the commonality is coming to relationships from fear. And I’d say anything that’s been going on in the last, uh, almost 20 years now, certainly since nine 11, if not before, is what I call the fear trance, is that people are really scared and there has been a low level chronic fear that just goes on all the time. And so when I’m in fear, the big thing that happens is that you look like the enemy.

Dr. Hendricks: So when I’m scared, I can’t see you as a possible ally or even somebody that I want to talk to. I, and I’m not aware of it in my cognitive brain, this happens at more the level of our reptilian brain that’s been wired in for hundreds of thousands of years. So unless we can acknowledge and shift from what I call fear to here, if I’m here, oh, I can actually be real. And that is our number one recommendation for people who want to attract a mate is to be real. And that involves appreciating yourself, finding yourself lovable, that the real you is lovable, which is a challenge for everybody because our cultural also runs by making you feel inadequate so that you’ll buy something so that will, you know, the latest thing that’s going to make you more attractive or more. And that’s mostly all directed at women because our job for, uh, you know, many, many decades now has been get your man how to keep and attract and keep your man and as if that’s the woman’s job.

Dr. Hendricks: So for, for both men and women, my sense is that as we really open up to I’m, I’m so scared that I don’t even know. I wouldn’t even know really men. And I think it’s true for men that men don’t know. Women were not taught to really get to know each other as humans. You know, the sexualized roles that we’ve been in for so many decades, I think really prevent people from being goofy or being, you know, um, I was just remembering a friend of mine who would stick Kleenex up her nose and turned around and you know, she would do a little skit with, you know, to have that kind of spontaneity to play. I think it’s something that we’re really missing and that each of us can start to make friends with fear and befriend fear. I have a whole, we’re creating a whole program about that.
Dr. Hendricks: Been in conscious loving ever after. There’s a chapter on that, how to move from fear to hear to presence so that you can actually come to your relationships with a sense of, here I am and I’m ready to connect with you and see what wants to happen rather than I’m going to check you out. And so from fear, you’re already disconnected. Uh, we also have an animation that’s on youtube. It’s called a fear melters. So if anybody just goes to youtube and clicks on fear melters I have a six minute animation that’s all about fear and how to move out of fear. So, you know, my sense is that when you’re scared, one of the things you can do is simply wiggle just and Ha. And you can also just say, oh, I’m, I’m, you know, as I’m starting to talk to you, I realize I’m feeling a little anxious. I can feel my heartbeat. And that kind of authenticity also opens up connection both with you and with the other. So there are things that all of us can do right now that allow us to come to relationship as an exploration rather than as a battlefield.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think it is so important for us to work on ourselves and to realize that we are lovable and to be open to that it. And when you go into a relationship from that place, it’s Admin. It’s just a lot easier, I think, for, for everybody.

Dr. Hendricks: Yeah. Well I think it’s something becomes possible. So then rather than recycling and going into unconscious loving and then wondering why it didn’t work, you really get the opportunity to practice conscious, loving really step by step. And one of the things I know from having worked with thousands and thousands of people since 1980 when gain I first got together is that the relationship map that we laid out in conscious loving and that we’ve added to with conscious loving ever after it really works. So I want to invite anybody that if you have any interest in having a, a really dynamic and robust relationship life though maps that we laid out, I’m, I feel really happy that can know cause we were experimenting, we didn’t know, uh, you know, whether it would work or not and it really does work. So, um, you know, dive in and we’ve got lots of people too who have been using our work for decades. And so there are lots of folks who can say, here’s what I learned and here’s what worked for me. And No, no, that one didn’t work, but this one really did work.

Dr. Cates: That’s great. That’s great. So, one of the things I wanted to ask you about is, is um, online dating, dating apps, electronic dating, basically think about these. And there of course there are so many different versions, so maybe you have different feelings about different ones.

Dr. Hendricks: Well, since I’ve been out of the dating pool since long before there was an internet, so I have just a, you know, I people tell me about, um, you know, dating apps and, and I’ve had a lot of friends who have met their mate through online dating. So just to say that I think it is a, a tool just like any other tool that, um, it makes more connection available when it works. But I think if you bring your own unconscious patterns to it, you know, you’re going to have the same kind of result that you would if you were meeting someone in person. So my, my sensitives are our focus on authenticity that, uh, that is really been a hallmark of our work for all these years of how can I speak in a way that really matches what I’m actually experiencing? How can I share myself from the inside out rather than from the outside in?

Dr. Hendricks: So rather than looking good, what is it that I’m actually experiencing? What do I really like to do? What to I not like what are my, we have things we have to distinguishing features that we share with people. One is called the apps. You’re absolute yeses and your absolute nos and that before people go on to any kind of a dating site, get in touch with your three top things that you really want in a relationship. These would be the things like if I can’t have these three then I’m not interested. So like for example, for me, top of the heap is um, a sense of integrity and a sense of wholeness, a commitment to wholeness. Number two, his sense of humor. Okay. And uh, number three is a commitment to his own creativity. So those are my top three and gay met those in a split second and my end.

Dr. Hendricks: Then also what’s really important is your absolute no’s. What are the three things that are deal breaker for you? Cause we had experiences with people who had, you know, that feeling in their first date. But they overrode it. And that’s just a recipe for disaster. Like we had a friend who went out for uh, for her first date and no, and the guy, uh, drank an entire bottle of vodka at lunch and she thought, well maybe he’s just anxious. He’s loved Sushi overrode that one. And then you know, the years of, you know, the mess up and then having to fix it. So one of my absolute nos is someone who is mean to children or animals. Another one is someone who is actively in the grip of an addiction. Okay. So if you got those really clear, those are like your tent poles. Those are allow you to stand and to move forward with a sense of support. So those, that’s an example of the kinds of things that can make you, as you’re coming to the realm of online dating, you’re bringing yourself with you rather than trying to fit yourself into what the format is.

Dr. Cates: Okay. Well any, any tips on when you’re starting your relationship, things to, to, to look forward to? No, like this isn’t, I shouldn’t waste my time on this or I just, I need to lean in and trust this more because there is that time where it’s exciting but sometimes it is easy to go. Well maybe it’s just, you know, Oh yes,

Dr. Hendricks: oh maybe I could do a whole seminar on the Oh, maybe, uh, which I call the override and um, personally and for all of the women who are close friends of mine, that’s where we’ve gotten into trouble cause our, you’re, the problem with technology is that it’s making us leave our body wisdom and override our body wisdom. And your body wisdom is such a complex inner computer that has been developed over centuries. All of the information that you carry in your cells and that information is such a support for making decisions, for knowing, not quite sure about this. The first thing that I would look for is what is the quality of the exchange of attention. And you can get that pretty quickly from listening. So does your partner or your day, does he or she or they, do they give you room to speak? Do they let you finish a sentence before they come into they interrupt, but also are they turning their whole self towards you, you know, or are they kind of looking around and you know, being distracted, you know, or uh, you know, looking down at their co, no, those things may seem very obvious, but they can go on at a very subtle level that you, you can feel like, I don’t quite have this person’s full attention.

Dr. Hendricks: The other thing I like to have people check into is how do I feel around them? It’s not even just do I like them or not like them, but do I feel, ah, can I breathe easily? That is an incredibly powerful sign because if you want to really expand in your ability to connect, you can’t do that if you’re contracting. So fear takes us into contraction and you can feel that the first moment when you’re with somebody in the, you know, back in the day we used to call it the vibe, what’s the vibe? But it’s really about can I just be with this person and feel good being with them. So for me, those, those are two real indicators. And then the third one, which I use as a challenge to people is to say something real and notice how they respond. So to say something like, you know, it doesn’t have to be profound, do you know, and, and world shaking, but, um, I’ve never liked Ruda bag.

Dr. Hendricks: We used to have Rudy bag all the time at Thanksgiving and the smell of Rutabaga just made me sick. And then just see how the person responds. You know, it may be like, well, that’s weird, or, um, what’s a Rutabaga or, but if they respond with curiosity and a sense of being real themselves, then you’re in flow. There’s not a stop sign there, but there may be a caution sign or a stop sign that you can notice if you check your breathing and you check on my expanding or contracting. And those are sign posts that you can use all the way along in your dating life and, and on into your relationship life. Right, right. Absolutely. Okay. Well, I also was kind of crazy. I think you mentioned this, that with your, that you

Dr. Cates: had a long distance relationship for a while. So it was one and asked you about long distance relationship because a lot of the things you’re talking about you,

Dr. Hendricks: we need to be

Dr. Cates: physically present together to discover this. So long distance relationships, I mean, what, what do you, any tips on that or completely avoid them?

Dr. Hendricks: Well, a long distance relationships are very challenging and, um, we’ve explored with people, uh, over the decades, you know, lots of different long distance relationships and I think they can work for a while, but ultimately a long distance relationship just, I think adds another stressor into our already very complex lives because you have basically forming a relationship and then dissolving the relationship, informing the relationship and dissolving the relationship over and over again, uh, along with, you know, the demands of somebody’s job, you know, moving or being on the road for business. And then the coming and the going okay. Uh, is very challenging for people just in general, how people then come together after a day of work. And then, uh, it, for most people, that’s what leads to what we call the upper limit problem of when we’re have the opportunity to get close. It triggers people’s fear of, uh, of experiencing that much energy.

Dr. Hendricks: Cause as I was mentioning, when two people get together, they generate more energy than either of them has on their own. And then that really allows you to either expand your relationship or to run into roadblocks, be generally because you get scared and it reminds you of something, some familiar pattern that you learned in the past. So I think that gets accelerated in long distance relationships. The whole, um, do I, my whole getting close and getting separate, you know, urge to merge and urged individually, you’re doing that all the time, so you don’t really have a chance to establish the US ness that keeps getting interrupted because you don’t have our house, you know, you have their house or my house, uh, or some or a hotel or some place where you meet in between. So I think for it, except if you have a real nomadic spirit, I think that could work. But I think at some point there’s this question of, you know, are you going to move or am I going to move? Are we both going to move to someplace, you know, that we both choose. Yeah. So I wish I could be more positive, but, uh, you know, that’s just what we’ve seen over, you know, over the years.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. So it sounds like if it’s temporary or made it, know that, but hopefully the people can eventually get together. Um, so in

Dr. Hendricks: fact we had a, um, some of our closest friends whom we married 15 years ago met each other at a conference and they lived in, in separate states and they carried on the long distance relationship for several months and then they both moved to a place that they both liked. So, um, so it can work for sure, but it’s very challenging. Yeah. So do you believe there is such a thing as a soul mate? Well, I, no, I don’t, I think that, um, I think that there are many people in under the right circumstances who you could partner with very delightfully for long periods of time. Um, the problem with the soul mate is that it puts a lot of pressure on even a first date. I was just remembering reading a, a book to my son, uh, years and year when he was a baby called, are you my mother?

Dr. Hendricks: And the whole book was, are you my mother? Are you my mother? And so when you’re, you know, are you my soul mate? Are You my soul mate? And that kind of pressure that it puts on both of you to kind of be on your best behavior rather than just being yourself. I prefer, um, you know, uh, my, my partner, my mate, but um, it’s also soul mate sort of puts us into a system that, that may not really resonate with our own preferences. It’s got to have these kinds of characteristics. So I prefer who’s, who’s the person who really can meet me, whom I can be fully myself around and can do what we call tossing. I can, I can throw something out and be received. I can appreciate and be appreciated. We have a, um, an easy commonality with each other rather than, you know, a sense of rigid roles. So I say basically no. Okay.

Dr. Hendricks: Um, and along those same lines, do you think, um, there is such a thing as love at first sight? Yes, and in fact, I’m a product of love at first sight. So, uh, when gain, I met each other in Gen on January 9th, 1980. We had an across a crowded room recognition of each other and that was it. There was a, you know, he was looking around the room, he was teaching seminar at my graduate school and he went around the room, about two people passed and then we locked eyes for this infinite amount of time in, in which sort of everything occurred. And uh, so yes, I believe that love at first sight can happen, but it doesn’t mean that, that the journey is all not on the law.

Dr. Cates: What if, what if, is it possible that people could have, uh, a beautiful sustaining relationship without that love at first sight?

Dr. Hendricks: Oh, absolutely. Oh yes, of course. Um, I think there’s as much variety of love. Is there are varieties of flowers in the world. And the, the basic, our basic job is to celebrate and love ourselves so that we really show up and that we’re, we’re living ourselves and that’s the best tractor. You know, I’m appreciating myself and I’m moving around in the world doing what I most love to do. And then somebody who, who matches that vibration, which was really, I think what they mean by soul mate, someone who really resonate is going to recognize and go, whoa. And then the dance starts to happen. The relationship dance.

Dr. Cates: No, that’s great. I love that. Um, so I know over the decades you probably have seen a lot of changes with relationships and what are the things that I’ve noticed is that, that, um, monogamy has come into question and polyamory and open relationships and marriages has become a little bit more popular all of a sudden. Like it was, I guess in the 60s and Seventies.

Dr. Hendricks: Yeah. Well then it sort of went underground in the 80s now it’s coming back again along with what I’m noticing too is a lot more gender fluidity. And what I’m, I, I’m appreciating this expansion because I think for all of this is going to give us a chance to be as idiosyncratic as we are, that we’re not wired up. Uh, the way society would like us to be. A, and a lot of us have that anxiety of I don’t fit in. I’m not like the other girls. I’m not really being a man. All of those roles that were taught, those are all breaking down. And I think that is a really good thing. So we have currently a nar our seminars and um, and in some of my advanced training I have, mmm. I have some folks who are transgender. I have some folks who are polyamorous.

Dr. Hendricks: I have some folks who are exploring whether they’re going to, they’re, how they’re going to be expressing their gender. I have people who like to be addressed as day that’s been a linguistic exploration to move from he or she. Uh, and my sense is that still it’s going to be difficult given our society for polyamory to be as easy as relatively easy as more gendered roles are. But the main thing, the main reason that I think that monogamy has the, the the most possibility for us to explore the magic of relationship is because monogamy allows you to go deep. So if I’m committed to expressing my sexuality with one person, you know, and I have clear agreements about what I’m going to do and what I’m not going to do, especially when the other person isn’t around. It creates a frame of safety, of being able to be fully myself, of being able to find out more and more about the other person.

Dr. Hendricks: I keep discovering things about gay that you know, really every day. This combination of deepness and freshness of being able to create variety while knowing another person and being known really deeply. I think that’s the gift of monogamy. Now, the gift of polyamory of course, is having lots of different relationships and being able to express different aspects of yourself and not feeling like you have to be everything for your partner, which we don’t advise anyway. But that’s a lot of watching the culture is that you’re supposed to get the heart of codependency is I’m going to get my needs met from you, not from me, but from you. And if you are not giving them to me, then there’s something wrong with you rather than, oh, how can I open up to asking for what I really want for noticing what I really want and expressing that.

Dr. Hendricks: But the, the other aspect of polyamory is that I consider it a full time job because you got, if you know who said what to whom and who was with whom and people being and jealousy and you know, all of these different things that need to be processed, you know, cause otherwise you get into a real pickle. And um, so my choice is not an ad. It’s not a, and based in anything other than energy efficiently. Efficiency is I don’t want to have that full time job. I got a whole bunch of other things that I want to do in my life and books I want to ride and seminars that I want to conduct. So if I’m all the time dealing with who said what to whom and who’s sleeping with whom and I didn’t get enough of your time and you like her better than you like me. It’s just not how I’m wanting to spend my time. Although I seen, you know, our, our folks who are involved in polyamory, I can tell that, you know, it takes, you know, it is, it takes clock time to deal with it. And so it’s just a choice and some people go, well that’s how I want to be spending my time and hooray. Cause I think they’re broadening the possibilities for all of us.

Dr. Cates: Hmm. Interesting. Um, I wasn’t sure how you were in responding to that, so I really love your answer. That’s great. Um, great. And so for people who have been in relationship for years and um, you know, we’re, I don’t know, like is it the seven year itch? Is it the 12 year, the 10 year, 20 year? What is it?

Dr. Hendricks: I think that all of us are called in our lives to continuously renew ourselves, to continuously recreate ourselves. And we know that the cells in our body completely change every seven years. That might be the, the one of the sources of the seven year itch. Although Fisher’s work, you know, in relationship, she talked about four and a half years that most couples stay together and that’s really based on procreation. It’s really based on giving the, that time for the mother in the first few years of life to have security, to be able to raise a kid. Um, you know, I think that’s what it’s based on, um, in our down in ourselves and, uh, down in our physiology. But my sense is that longterm relationships, there’s also some recent research that’s come out where they did brain scans of people who were just newly couples and, and then people who were in a 20 year or longer relationships and we’re still considered themselves in love and their brain scans where the same. So this whole mythology about, you know, enjoy it now because things just keep getting worse is a myth. It’s not true. And what we’ve discovered

Dr. Cates: brain scans where the same can you

Dr. Hendricks: a brain scans of, well, when, uh, when a newlywed, you know how your brain lights up, you know, your oxytocin and uh, your limbic brain lights up in a certain way when you’re in love and people say, that fades over time. But this latest research says that is not true. That you actually can sustain love over decades. And my sense is the key to that is, uh, what we call, you know, expanding into more and more choices, more and more, um, renewing yourself with keeping, opening up to what can I learn from this interaction? Am I doing what I really love to do? What is it that you really want and how can I support you in having that? One of the things gay asked me, he just asked me yesterday, is there, is there anything that I could be doing that would make you feel more loved and treasured?

Dr. Hendricks: And that’s a question that we exchange at least every week. So there, there are very simple but very powerful things that you can do to keep renewing that sense of, oh no, the, you know, when I, when I walk around the corner and I see gay, I have this, this same thrill that I had, the the very first time that I saw him. And I think we can keep that flame alive, um, both in ourselves that also between us. And then it starts rippling out into your family, your community, and becomes a source of Ha. That sense of connection. That doesn’t just have to be in a sexual relationship. We can become a source of connection and, and collaborating and play and appreciation in all of our relationships. Whether it’s the relationship with the person in the, the checkout person or with someone that you’ve known for four decades

Dr. Cates: and so does, but what about sex? So it can it be Ken, intimacy and, and sex continue to be great after 20 years or longer?

Dr. Hendricks: Well, we have infected conscious, loving ever after we have a whole chapter on that. And the summary of that is it just keeps getting better, which was astounding to me. And, um, I just turned 70 gaze about to turn 74 and we have, we have better sex now then ever, you know, more creative, um, you know, deeply satisfying, playful sometimes very, very funny. Sometimes cosmically just, you know, like, whoa. Ah, so that was, that was a very pleasant discovery because it certainly, you know, just even in my parents’ generation, I thought, oh boy, no, I don’t know if I’m going to want to get to be that old and just kind of sitting around and falling asleep, you know, in front of the television.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s really goodness,

Dr. Hendricks: lovely. Really good news. And I think it’s something that’s accessible to any of us who are willing to simply be more and more open and more and more connected.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. And that’s great. Anything that I wanted to just touch a little bit on divorce and I mean, do you, do you, I think that it’s, in some circumstances it is good to get divorced. I mean, people need to go their separate ways. What are, what are your feelings on that?

Dr. Hendricks: I am in fact, we’ve written articles and we have chapters on, you know, should I stay or should I go? And, um, okay. And also, um, what we’ve seen in our work with people is that there are three kinds of relationships. Most relationships in the bell curve and kind of the center. There are what we call learning relationships that you get into a relationship to learn something that you couldn’t learn on your own. Like to learn how to be independent or, uh, to learn how to share your feelings, uh, to learn how to really commit, to learn to enjoy yourself. So that’s most relationships, but on both ends, there are a very small number of relationships that are toxic. And what that means, it doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with the people. It just means that there are oil and water. They just do not mix two perfectly happy, normal people when they get together, just create chaos.

Dr. Hendricks: And how you would know that is that you literally make each other sick. So in the, in the relationships that we’ve studied that we say our job is to help them get separate as quickly as possible. It’s because they really do literally make each other sick. They have more accidents there. Their kids, if they’re, you know, forming a blended family, their kids get sick, have accidents, so you can see it. It’s measurable. Uh, and then when those people get separate from each other, they become, they’re perfectly wonderful individuals. Again. Now on the other end of the scale, there are, uh, what we call celebratory relationships. A small number of relationships where people are not playing with, you know, who am I really? And who can I be with you? The job really is to celebrate and to cocreate. And we’ve seen a small number of those relationships, but I think that number is growing is more people are learning how, you know, how to express their own essence and to receive the other.

Dr. Hendricks: Uh, but I’ve, we’ve, we’ve counseled lots of people to separate and the, the, the distinguishing factor really is it does the pain outweigh the promise. And I think, you know, if people just tune into that, they, they know and generally when I give that some time, right? Yes. Yeah. It’s not something that you can just go, Yup. That, but feeling into that it’s, it’s generally pretty clear and out. Also if you asked her body, uh, and, uh, one of the things we suggest to people is to step out into the future, to actually literally step out into the future, turn around and face the present and say, I’m so glad that we got a divorce. And then just to notice what happens in your body. Do you get more breath? Ha. Do you feel more peaceful or more uprising energy? And then to do that, the same thing, step out into the future. Again, turn around and face the present and say, I’m so glad we didn’t divorce. I’m so glad that we decided to stay together. And then again to notice your body response. And those are some things that can give you more information about making a choice.

Dr. Cates: Because I’m sure that there’ve been, I mean every time I talked to people who have been in a long relationship that they all say they’re, there are tough times, right? It, and so you might feel at some point that divorce is the only way out or separating. But then I’ve talked to many couples who managed to work through that too. That did, did maybe they went apart for a little bit and then they came back together or maybe they just decided, and this is my parents included, um, did this and they, um, before my father passed, they were together almost 60 years. But they, you know, that I saw them kind of work through things and um, to come out. And so in the moment it might seem like this is the divorce is all my, all the way out. But if you really just relaxed into a little bit maybe, um, come out the other side.

Dr. Hendricks: Uh, well we actually did that. We have one of our books, the conscious hard talks about when in 1995 gay got attracted to a woman 25 years younger than me. And, um, how we handled that. And basically we used all of the tools that we write about. And I wouldn’t say we came through the other side. I would say that we recreated, I mean it polished away anything in me that wasn’t me, you know, anyway, I had a, what I would call a very devoted persona, which was really based in my, not fully loving myself and thinking if I could just be devoted enough, I could kind of, you know, feel of value through gay. And that all got polished away. And so what we found was that down at the core, we really did love each other and we, we just needed to learn how to, to unlearn those patterns and roles that, that we had learned in childhood. So I can say absolutely it’s, it’s possible to, to go through what some people call the tough times, but I really call it more of a is a big learning opportunity.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, that’s beautiful. Katie, I could keep talking and asking you questions for hours, but I’m, I know I need to wrap this up. Um, I, I have a copy of your book. I’m so glad you were after. And uh, of course I have the first one cause I, that’s how I heard about you initially and I tell everybody how they can learn more about you and find your books.

Dr. Hendricks: Yes, thank you so much. Uh, our main website is hendricks.com h e n d R, I C K s.com. And that has a lot of resources, videos. It will show you our in person seminars and how you can look at those and, and uh, come to those to play with us in person. We have on Facebook a Facebook page that’s called hearts in harmony. And that’s where we have daily relationship tips and we have dozens of videos. We have, um, we have a youtube channel that also has relationship, um, videos, short ones like how to listen and how not to could we like to play. So we teach. So we also teach people like what we call bad listening theater. So how not to listen and then have listen how to stop an argument, how to really appreciate. Um, so very, our work is really called practical magic.

Dr. Hendricks: Uh, so we, we like to create magic. We also like to have our feet on the ground. And so, uh, we’re always creating new resources for people. We have one other website that’s called the foundation for conscious living and that’s going to really be devoted to how people can move from fear to hear, regain their resourcefulness and create caring communities because we’re really wanting to bring conscious, loving to a bigger community, to all of our relationships, not just our romantic relationships. Yeah. So those are some of the ways you can get in touch with us.

Dr. Cates: All right. Well, okay, thank you so much, has been incredible and I really appreciate all that you’ve shared and on the questions that you’ve answered.

Dr. Hendricks: Well, thank you. I really appreciate having the opportunity to interact with you and appreciate what you’re doing and contributing in the world. So thank you. Thank you.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr Katie Hendricks and got some chips on your relationship, whether you’re actually just looking for a relationship, whether you’re new to relationship or you’ve been in a relationship for a while and looking to rekindle it or keep it going strong. So you can also learn more about doctor Katie by going to the spa Dr Com. Go to the podcast page with her interview and you’ll find all the information and links there. Also, encourage you to share this interview with a friend. I’m sure you know other people with the same kinds of questions that I asked Doctor Katie during the interview. So feel free to share with a friend someone that you think that would be interested. And if you enjoy this, hop on over to iTunes and leave a review. I would love to see your reviews, and if you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend you get your customized skin [email protected]. Find out what your skin, your magic mirror is trying to tell you about your health and what you can do about it. Just go to the skin quiz.com also, I invite you to join me on social media, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Youtube, and join the conversation and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.