 it was a question of is our work relationship going to have to slowly stop so that our relationship can thrive or is it more important that we keep the ball rolling and work and then our relationship will work itself out we fucking did it we still got forever to go but i think the first year correct me if i'm wrong plays the highest risk factor in our relationship or in the baby both both them i think that for the survival of the child but i also think the survival of the relationships i we i got into a particularly bad argument a couple weeks ago and i was talking to my sister about it and she was saying you have to remind yourself how hard the first year like a lot of parents will tell you zero to one is harder than two to 20 yeah maybe not but zero to one it's just you know what it's not necessarily that it's the hardest because it's all relative to what the child does or what life throws at you but i think in terms of the amount of change you have to adjust to is to short amount of time yeah and it's hard to accept the zero to one because like every parent that you speak about or speak to they're like i miss when my little one was such a little boy you know every time they like talk to me about their little child and reminiscing on the baby i'm like i'm good once you get through this part i'm fine i thought about that too that you know everybody kept saying to us every step of the way like you're gonna miss it you're gonna miss it i don't look back and miss any of it i'm always glad for where we are i'm like right now is my favorite time but a couple months ago i'm not going back there so i hope i keep feeling that way that oh like where we're at right now is my favorite time because as she gets more autonomous and she gets more of her personality and we get more into a groove i think life keeps getting better yeah and i'm open you know to like 20 years from now to remember reminisce back on this time you know if that happens i'll be okay with it yeah you know i i think that while i'm in it though i'm like i can't wait and so you can finally just communicate with me and not just scream at me has there been a moment with ride where you thought that this relationship wouldn't survive through this before we go on can we just give a moment to shout out our sponsor let's shout them out what's going on everybody i am popping in to let you know that this video is sponsored by squarespace from websites to online stores to marketing tools and analytics squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a powerful beautiful online presence today and run that business you've been wanting to start so if you haven't checked them out go over to squarespace.com slash shan booty and start playing around for free and when you're ready to launch just go to squarespace.com slash shan booty and give that business a shot now back to the video no i think there's been moments between you and i as a result of the changes of a baby yeah but nothing you're such a no you're an incredible dad you're a great father and i love seeing the two of you guys together and i don't ever see you do anything parenting wise that makes me think like i need to take my child away you know yeah i don't think that um there's definitely been times within this past year where i have felt like i've taken on the bulk of the unpleasant parts of parenting yeah and i'm not like the disciplined part but i just mean like getting up at night and you know i would devote a lot of my work hours and make sacrifices but just by virtue of what you do for living you leave the house more yeah so sometimes or you you're not available more yeah whereas i'm kind of always pseudo available so it's easy to throw the baby in my arms yeah no i mean and it's not consciously at least i think a lot of times i think the difference in our work relationship or our work lifestyle is that like wow you get to have your work that's only here or with you and yourself i'm also balancing multiple things that are not out or outside of just me yeah you know um so i guess when i get time to work on the craft that i want to work on it kind of like leads me to leave the house or the baby fall on you yeah it's almost like i'm pulling double shifts yeah you know um whereas i just think in general though i've never not met a mom who hasn't said the same thing yeah so i also tried to be really like unpersonal about it it's the wrong word but while we were going through those spurts i felt comfortable tapping you i mean that i didn't tap maybe i slammed sometimes and i apologize about that but while i was going through those times i would be like ah this is everybody else's experience there's a reason for that you know there's just a different bond that is for him there's a just a different set of responsibility that you take on so i am really appreciative that you have listened in those times even if in the moment it was hard to hear um so i think in terms of us as a family i am really proud of us and i am like wow you and i as a couple i think has been where the struggle has been yeah not necessarily as a couple who parents but as a couple who's in love and who's in lust with each other yeah i remember hearing this um this one parent that i knew he's his kids are out the house now and he told me as soon ryu was born he was like do your best not to pour the love that you guys have for each other you and your wife into ryu only um because it's very easy for new parents to take the love that was sparked between us and just pour it into to the to the kid and then they lose the love for each other um so i definitely could feel us slipping into that mode where it was like the focus was only on ryu and work yeah there was no focus or time or space to love up on each other um and and that like hurt our relationship a lot i will say that it's hard choices because you got to choose between us having one hour in the day when we're just alone as a couple or sleep yeah or us having one hour in the day where we get to bond and putting our house together which is a tornado at all times yeah so you always have these choices of like do i live in a pigsty and wake up in the morning like why does our room smell this way or do i just say fuck it the room's gonna be a mess i'm just gonna spend time and just like cuddle with jared or have sex with jared yeah so there's always these i feel like our bonding time is always the thing that's like up for negotiation because there's something else like when ryu is awake she's his priority and when we're doing work you know we have people who come to the house and work lauren is here and kray is here so we don't have the option of being like let's go off and cuddle for an hour so like that's the priority and then when they leave she's awake from five p.m until our bedtime yeah so the only time that we could technically even have together is the time that we really should be spending sleeping so or cleaning up so i think those things i've just like i said like i kind of give the space of like okay cool this is meant to be challenging there's a lot of adjusting during this time and i had said this out loud to somebody and i realized it was true that i have never in my life done anything more than look after a baby yeah i've never looked after myself this much i've never worked this much i've never been with a man this much like the amount of time and energy that a baby takes and because she's in the home of us when we're working even if we're not presently with her we can hear her we're responding to her we're going upstairs to like make her an egg or make suggestions so like we're always in the business of care caring for the baby and thinking about her yeah does that bring fear to you and what it means for us no no i'm not afraid i mean maybe in the moments you know there are times um and i want to say something to you and i want you to reflect on this i think it's could be interesting for everybody but i had said to you that i think for a woman seeing a man be a dad is a turn on so when i see you you know be a father and be fatherly it's like really attractive to me but i don't think on the flip side seeing me in a motherly role is attractive like sexually attractive to you i think it's it's it's different right it's not gonna be like a sexual turn on but it is going to be a bonding turn on it's something that i admired something that draws me closer to you i don't know if it will lead into sexual desire or like this like oh look at her breastfeed right no no it's not going to lead into that but it's it's definitely something that like warms my heart and it makes me feel good and makes me feel like i made a great choice yes but it's definitely not sexual and i think that's kind of the difference i feel like during this past year i was like so turned on by you i thought you were so hot and i do believe that you deepened in a appreciative love for me but i think that's where my frustration came in our relationship where i didn't feel that fire anymore i felt the warmth and i felt the love and i felt the security and there wasn't a second of any day that i was like questioning whether you felt the same way for me but it was that you know that energy that i think like suffered yeah and i think that's where it just comes down to like you know um more intention when we are together um and so at least for myself that helps me i i know that after we had that conversation or we had like pretty tough talks i think i could correct me if i'm wrong but i think that the intention when we're together is different yes um because now it's like okay our relationship is suffering as a result of our lifestyle right now so how do we fix that because it's always like fighting back on life like that's why i view it life is trying to push us into a position of like every other you know situation or relationship that people have kids and it's like no we're gonna fight back at that yeah um it's the reason why when when right he goes to sleep when we should be sleeping it's like us fighting back on life like no no we're gonna stay up a little bit so that we get some alone time and you told me that was the thing that you did when you were single yeah and working so much because you had to work three jobs to survive yeah we're like i'm not going to sleep then no i'm not going to sleep because i'm not gonna let life make me its bitch and so as for as far as this like i'm not gonna let life bitch out our relationship because we have a strong bond in that like it's it's it's a simple fix yet it's an intentional fix which is sometimes hard to do i feel like i'm not gonna make life my bitch is the perfect tagline for this year yeah i think that's how we overcame it i'm not gonna let life make me its bitch sorry thank you you're gonna make life it's gonna life i'm not gonna life like your life you bitch you bitch man fuck you i think that like that was the secret sauce to this year yeah um i got to a place of self sacrificing where i would go through stretches of time and think back and like i didn't do one thing for me this day and instead of being like oh that's my new norm i would be like no what do i have to change who do i have to hire who do i have to empower how do i have to reprioritize life so this doesn't become the new norm for me i feel like the secret was not going with the flow because the flow that comes with all the changes we've had this year because this hasn't just been a matter of growing the family it's been growing the business too so the flow you know with leading us in a certain direction and i will say that even if our romantic connection had suffered our work relationship thrived this year yeah and i i guess that's where it comes down to like the real questions is like what matters more which is the dangerous question right what's the answer i think our relationship matters more but it's like at some point how often do we have to be with each other right in order for love to still be burning and so it's like we work together we live together when we work from home there's rarely times when we are not together it was a question of is our work relationship going to have to slowly stop so that our relationship can thrive or is it more important that we keep the ball rolling in work and then our relationship will work itself out yeah no the most important thing to me is our relationship and i think that was important for me to ask myself that question and to know that that answer was that strong and that is something that i aspire to now yeah i also think too that in this past year there's a lot of like the sexy mystery that goes like because my boobs for example have a very important job they're just out all the time yeah and they're out doing unsexy things so i thought about that too of like how often you see my body in an unsexual way that maybe that makes difficult for there to be like this mystery and this desire attached to it so i feel like we have to kind of find our fine tuning like you just said in we're always around each other and that estra perot quote that like fire can't grow when there's no oxygen like you need space to breathe to grow to spread so how do we reprioritize that fire and does that include some separateness and what does that look like for people who are so intertwined yeah and i think it's a perfect time for that i think it's the perfect time for that in the sense of like maybe i take a more of a project leading role in the areas that i was heavily involved in um and it's and it's i think it's necessary and like i said to you when we first had the conversation about how do we readjust our relationship because of all of the changes around us i not our relationship but our our dynamic i remember saying like i mean it doesn't hurt to try it's working fine right now so let's switch this up and see if it can work better and then if it's not we can go back and figure out another way you know and it's not the end of the world at the end of the day like i'm here for you and i'm here to help and and if our relationship is suffering because i'm so involved in like let's figure out a way that we can make it so that it's not if you could go back a year and give yourself a piece of advice you just come you just came out the hospital you have this high this brand new baby and you get to pull yourself aside and say something what would you say there has been so much advice to me when i was you know we were getting ready to have raya was that like stay out of the pregnant woman's way you know like get if she wants to do something just let her go um but i think that i use that as an excuse a lot of the times of like no no she actually prefers to do this part so i'm just gonna let her do it um and then later to find out that you know you felt like i wasn't there or showing up for for raya the way that you were um and so yeah i think yeah that probably would i would have told myself is that don't ignore your instincts and just do it i think that's a really beautiful one too if i don't ignore your instincts this other person elaine welteroth who i'm obsessed with as you know but she's pregnant now her partner are pregnant and i was like i'm gonna do the thing that i hate what people do but i'm gonna give advice but like genuinely the best advice i can give to you is just be curious like people are gonna tell you a lot of things like for a fact this is what's gonna happen for a fact you're gonna feel this way and some of those things might be true and a lot of them are not going to be and the only way that you're gonna know that is just by being curious like don't take anything on as like this is a rule of thumb it's just like oh well i'm glad to know that these are a range of reactions or experiences i could have let me see what's true for me because you're it is crazy how much our instincts have guided us through this yeah um and i'm really i'm really proud of i'm really really really proud of us as parents yeah no yeah and i i am too i love what rayu is turning out to be me too she's turning out to be a bundle of chaos but good chaos can i tell you my favorite speech that you gave to me um it's a lot of pressure you know being a parent because you have a small person who can't advocate for themselves can't communicate and so everyone has an opinion on what diaper size you're putting on them and what you're feeding them and what you're allowing them to put in their mouth what you're allowing them to do and how loud you let them be in a restaurant like everyone's got an opinion about everything and so i felt a lot of judgment because we are raising a kid that we want to prioritize curiosity and we want to prioritize confidence and a big part of that is letting her do things that could lead could look like neglect it could look like we're just letting our kid do whatever they want but instead we're just allowing space for her to be curious to explore and to try and fail um and so you said to me you were like listen we got to just go through it right now and let other people look at us like we're crazy but we have to be solid as a unit and know what we're doing and that it will pay off down the line that we're not raising raya to be a perfect baby we're raising her to be an incredible adult and i loved you for that yeah it's so true i mean it's like a lot of the things that i look at it myself that i love about myself was snuffed out as a kid and i don't ever want to do that for rye yes it might be tough now yes the people might be like you got a crazy ass kid she's wild she's loud she does what she wants she's confident she's kind of mean all those things like i i'll take all of those because i know that those attributes that if they're shaped but not stuffed out they're gonna be great for adult for when she's an adult how are you coping with the fear of being a parent knowing that her safety is in our hands do you have fear in that yeah i don't you don't i feel more comfortable with her here i have more fear in her when i give her to him like my dad for the night yeah the night or or you know somebody else for us extended amount of time then i do when she's with us i think it's just natural to constantly picture like your brain is set up to think of the worst case scenario and that's a survival factor because your brain wants to put you in a position where you can imagine the risk so you can mitigate those risks so i as a result i might constantly picturing her falling down the stairs or falling back off something or smashing her head or slipping on the bathtub or like i'm always imagining dangerous things happening to her and that was really hard for me in the beginning i felt like it had me in this constant state of fight or flight and it felt like i had you know when you could feel like a lump in your throat like you're about to cry i spent a lot of time in the beginning in that state yeah i had that in the beginning but right now i don't have it as much i feel confident in her mobility me too i feel confident in the way that she approaches things obviously there's times where she falls but a lot of the time that i've seen her fall she knows how to protect herself um so i don't really have fear in that in that way i have more fear when it's not in my hands when when she's with somebody else or i'm not directly watching her but i also i feel that i'm a little bit more cautious for her than you are you let her do some like extreme stuff you know but i'm a little bit more like i'll pick take her off of things or i won't let her play with certain things does that bother you no it doesn't bother me but i think that's why your flatter flight is always home because i am i'm watching her do these things but i'm letting her do it because i want her to go through the motions i also sometimes to know that she can fall and i can catch her as she's falling and so then you can feel the motion of what would happen without the pain of it yeah but maybe you're right to your point i'm just like watching her do something crazy and my heart is pounding but i'm like letting her do it so maybe the better thing would just be to pick her up um yeah or the balance is nice if you don't mind being in that state yeah the balance is nice you get to learn whereas you know i'm choosing comfort over that how are you coping with the loss of freedom at times it's tough i will admit at times it is tough i think i haven't fully felt it yet because we're just now kind of sliding out of like the everything being locked down and there's only so many things you can do um but yeah at times it it does does hurt um more so more so to do with like we can't just do the things that used to bring us a lot of joy we're we can't just go to the movies how are you doing with the loss of your individuality yeah tough i think um i miss parties i miss i was like lamenting i'm going through my wardrobe like there's so many cute summer day party outfits i did not get to wear so there's like little stuff like that um it's also kind of nice to have an excuse why you can't go to stuff because i'm the truth is we're not being invited so friends pick up the pace but even if they could but the fact that like i see my friends out and then i'm like oh well i couldn't have gone anyway so it kind of gives you an excuse for fomo like a built-in um but yeah it is a little tough because yeah the parts of you that used to be fun and spontaneous and exciting and i think also too a big thing as a couple you know and this is a statistically study thing is statistically not right in terms but this is a study thing in that it's seeing each other out in public that actually creates the fire because you're seeing me in new lights you're getting to be reminded of old parts of me and then now i'm no longer this person that you have access to and that you could have sex with any moment and that you just like know is just like oh that's just shan i'm this woman who's out there in the world who's like garnering attention and like that does something for you and in turn it would do something for me to see you in that light so we're missing a lot of that element of and i think again like going back to our relationship struggles that we went through a big part of that is that we're not going to see each other in the reflective glow of the world do you feel like being a dad takes away some of your sexy at all yeah a little bit um but i think also when you think about yourself as an artist yeah a little bit i i think um me being a dad has aged me 20 years in this like short year yeah um i i saw a video of myself like right before ryu was born and i looked like a boy and then i see myself now and i'm like what happened yeah you had that obama the obama glow up yeah i don't know what happened but i look completely different um and i don't know if it has to do with hormones i'm sure there's some scientific reasoning on it but yeah i i completely like almost my bone structure changed in a weird way but i think it changed to make you i think you're hotter now yeah well i think you're much i receive it i think a lot of people would agree that you're much hotter now um do you feel like the things that matter to you before you had a child have changed now now you have a baby not at all no no i don't think so i don't really feel like a different person at all yeah is that bad no if anything it's just allowed me to be more myself and yeah i feel more like me rather than less like me i definitely noticed a lot of changes in myself i i have a i don't give a fuck kind of mentality um i i noticed that i have a lot more opinions uh and less desire to be liked more desire to be understood i love that can i just say something that i want to work on for next year that i noticed in myself that's bothering me about my parenting skills i have a really hard time being present i feel like when i'm with ryu i'm always like thinking about the next thing like i gotta change your diaper oh i gotta feed you oh i should like move you to this room so i can do this thing like oh like let me move you over here like just being really in the moment and i thought about that in life the times that i feel genuinely like present like there's nothing else i'm thinking about is when you're rubbing my back like i feel like in those moments i'm just like i am 100% like there and when we're watching a show that i enjoy and i'm just like in i'm not thinking about what i'm gonna do afterwards i'm not thinking about what i did before like i'm just completely in that moment i think even during sex sometimes you can be like trying to get to the orgasm so you're not like there um so i do want to take that and figure out what that is so i can be more like completely present when i am with her because i don't want her to feel like i have shifty eyes i don't see that in you when you're with right i see that you're very present a lot of times if you guys in the room and i walk in it's not like you're watching tv or on your phone you're like literally on the floor with their playing with the things that she's playing with um so i don't i don't see that in you but if you see that in yourself i mean i feel it and maybe i mean i'm actively working against it if i do feel it and then i'm like no like be present is funny because i put that story up yesterday where i was trying to do insta story with ryu and i'm like this is what happens you can't combine the two things like when i'm with her like she just really needs me to be with her but sometimes my mind is like thinking about other things and so i maybe want to start journaling or something just to increase that practice in my life overall meditation um yeah i just i definitely do because we have a great fucking life we really do you know i mean like and like everything we do is so fun and so cool and so fulfilling and i watched that justin beaver documentary and he was just saying that like getting to a place where your inner inner circle is so strong and the bonds that matter most to you are so reliable and fulfilling and sturdy like taking that and then applying that confidence to everything else to really enjoy life in a different way like i think i could just do a better job of that yeah that's beautiful i'm gonna adopt that too yes yon i feel it daddy i feel it uh i'm proud of you i love you i'm grateful for you congrats you fucking lations you did it a year in the tank yes and um thank you to all of you all of the fellow parents out there drop a line what was zero to one like was it the hardest year of your life um and if you don't have a kid what uh what are you looking forward to what are you least looking forward to when it comes to having kids let's have a conversation below but before we dive into the comments section can we give one more shout out to what's popping it's me again uh listen 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