 The following is a clip from my popular YouTube live streams answering your questions. If you're brand new to my channel, don't forget to hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you can be notified of new videos. And if any time this video resonates with you, please hit that like button so I can be seen in the YouTube algorithms. Really quickly, my coaching is what I call heart-centered radical honesty. It's direct, a little tough love, and a lot of heart. And occasionally I use expletives to enhance the sentence. So if an F-bomb or two isn't your cup of tea, I suggest logging off right now. Lastly, these are my thoughts, my perceptions, my opinions. By no means do I suggest this is the truth. You have to decide the truth for yourself. I'm a bit of a contrarian, so my advice goes contrary to public opinion and traditional expectations. All right, take it away, Jonathan. What's the... I've been lately pondering the idea, what's the difference between spending time with someone versus growing with someone? I'm going to repeat that, spending time with someone versus growing with someone. And what I mean is in the context of a fully committed relationship. Because I've observed that many people are actually in relationships that they're only actually spending time with each other. They're not actually building something together. Now I want to tell you where my belief system comes from, and we're going to have to go back in time before I got married. I remember, I was about to say brainwashed, but I wasn't brainwashed. My blueprint growing up, and this is true for a lot of Gen Xers baby boomers like myself, was go to, you know, graduate high school, go to college, get a job, meet a woman, get married, buy a house, start a family. That was the programming. I was actually going to say meet a girl, but I don't want to say a girl. But I just did. So, and that was my programming. That was the blueprint I was raised with. So in other words, that's the track I followed. So in my 20s, you know, I was actually on the hunt for a wife. I was on a hunt for the wife. You know, when you hear that men are on the hunt, you know, by the way, men aren't very few men are actually in their 20s on a hunt for their spouse, although that was the programming I grew up with. I would suspect that younger men are quite a bit different these days because the millennials, the Gen Zs are a byproduct of a significant amount of divorced parents. So they've seen dysfunctionality in their home and they're probably less likely on the hunt for a wife. Okay. So coming back to this hunt for a wife I was in, I was on the hunt for a wife. And eventually I met a woman, introduced her to my circle of friends. We started to hang out together. And then one of my friends was got engaged and another friend got engaged and another friend got engaged. So guess what? I'm supposed to get engaged because she seemed like the best candidate to be my wife. And that was the programming. While I'm sharing this with you, I'll never forget that when we met with the pastor, and by the way, I'm getting to a point. So just sit with me here for a second. When I was getting, when we met with the pastor to talk about the ceremony, he encouraged us to do some couples counseling, some marriage counseling. And what I mean to say was to get a better sense of what is marriage all about. So we're like, and we're looking, I'm looking at her. She's looking at me. We're just so much in love with each other. We don't need this because our love is going to transcend it all. We don't need any coaching or counseling. And so we kind of passively did it. We did some of the homework assignments, but we so passively did it. And sure enough, you know, we got married and within 12 years, we were divorced. And I don't need to go into the particulars of that. While I'm sharing this with you is even though I was on the hunt for a wife, I really had no idea how to be a husband. I had no idea how to be in a relationship. I didn't know the mechanics of a relationship other than I'm supposed to go to work all day, you know, to make the money and she we have, you know, she was to make the babies and take care of the babies. That was basically the blueprint of when we got married. We had no understanding of how to make a marriage work. We had no understanding. So eventually all we did was spend time with each other. We weren't actually growing with one another. I repeat that we weren't actually growing with one another. And let me ask, can anyone listening to this right now say I can relate? I can relate because I got to tell you something. By the time we hit divorce and I'm sitting in family court recognizing what marriage was really all about. And what I mean to say is when you're sitting in family court, also known as divorce court, and you start hearing all the problems from the other couples, you start recognizing, oh, yeah, we had that problem. Oh, yeah, we had that problem. Oh, yeah, we had that problem. And we had no idea how to make this work because we never were really growing with each other. We didn't know how to grow a relationship together. This is why I want to introduce a new book to everyone that I just ordered. It's called The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work. Now, what I love about that, by the way, by John Gottman, and what I love about this book, I'm just skimmed it through right now, is that it's really helping you on the deeper understanding of the mechanics of how to make a marriage work. Now, you don't have to be in a marriage to understand, you know, you don't have to be in a marriage to get this book. This is a great book for those of you that are just in a relationship with someone and why I'm high on this book right now, because it goes back to what I was sharing before. Are you spending time with someone or are you actually growing with someone because just because a guy secretly is in love with you, doesn't mean he has any clue of how to make the relationship work. And ladies, you purchase these books tenfold greater than men. Men are men are, by the way, if you're in the age demographic that I coach, which is midlife, which is after baby making years before retirement, most guys aren't on the hunt for a wife. They did it earlier. And what I mean by wife, they were really on the hunt for the mother of their children. So in midlife, it's a whole different ballgame. But Jonathan, I'm just supposed to sit back in my feminine energy and let the guy do all the work. That's because you and every guy is mostly clueless out there to understanding the mechanics of a healthy, happy relationship. This is why I'm going to share with you my new relationship iceberg form. There's a little bit of a glare. This was Georgie sent this to me. She redid it and sent it to me. Thank you so much. But as you can see, most humans see the chemistry piece, which is attraction. But what's below the iceberg for compatibility is shared values, blendable lifestyles and emotional maturity. That's where the real meat of a relationship is. And as you start checking this box, the box is off. You start to feel more attraction with your partner. Now, what I'm here to say is, folks, I know you love the idea of chemistry and romance leading the dating process. That's a recipe for disaster. If you're not thinking about true compatibility, if you're not familiar with the work of where is that book? OK, the guy who invented eHarmony. I know you guys don't like eHarmony, but he wrote a book called Two Dates, Two Dates, and he talks about the 25 areas of compatibility and understanding this puts your chances for success at a much greater level because most of you guys are winging it. You really are winging it. And when you leave it up to the man, you're really winging it out there. This is why when you understand the mechanics and you actually can have deeper conversations. Let me tell you something, folks. You know my rhetoric before the penis goes inside the vagina. Purchase the book Eight Dates by Doctors John and Julie Gottman. He wrote the book Seven Principles of How to Make Marriage Work. Because this is going to help give you the context to get to that juicy, delicious relationship. Because even if the guy is secretly in love with you, it's no guarantee that the relationship is going to work. There's no guarantee. Folks, we have to look beyond the beginning stages of dating. We have to think of, well, you don't have to do anything. When I say we, you don't have to be part of the we. What I'm here to say is if you really want to have a juicy, delicious, healthy relationship, then understand how a juicy, delicious, healthy relationship works because here's the bottom line. If you don't, you're merely spending time with someone and you're not actually growing with someone. And tell me, do you want to grow with someone? If the answer is yes, hit that thumbs up button. Tell me you want to grow with someone right in in the chat box. If you're on the live stream right now, I want to grow with someone because my channel is all about inviting two basically, two basic things. The understanding of a healthy, happy relationship and the understanding of a healthy, happy self. Understanding a healthy, happy self. This is why I wrote my book, What the Heck Is Self Love Anyway? A Journey of Personal Development, Self-Help and Spiritual Work. By the way, I updated my Jonathan Recommends book so you can see all the books I have now updated the page. Look at the description of Jonathan Recommend books. Folks, a healthy self is far more important than whether or not the guy is secretly in love with you. A healthy self is more important than being out on the dating apps because here's the bottom line. As we age, our chances of meeting a great partner become slimmer and slimmer. I'm sorry. As we age, it's becoming more difficult because here's the thing. We're stuck with these devices to meet people because the reality is, is most folks aren't meeting out in the real world. Yes, there's the exception to the rules. OK, there's always the exception to the rule. But Jonathan, I can go to a meetup group. Yeah, you can go to 100 meetup groups and never get asked out on a date. And the reality is, as we age, I'm sorry to say, men and women alike, we become less attractive to the opposite sex because as we age, we tend to overvalue what we can attract in. And I say we, I mean, everybody overvalues themselves. Unless you're a guy with a lot of box or you're a smoking hot gal. Those are the people that get more hits, if you will, they get more leads. So it's more important to develop the inner work because if you don't end up in a relationship, that's OK, too. But guess what? People are meeting all the time. It is happening. And you know why? Because they developed a healthy sense of self and they've learned how to vet for emotional maturity. They've learned how to really vet for those healthy people. That's what I teach in my private coaching. Check out the link to a free discovery call with me to see if working with a coach is right for you. If you want to put the odds in your favor, then work with someone like myself and not some feminine energy coach that's going to tell you to just sit in your energy and wait for the guy to be claimed. You can be claimed by dysfunctional men all day long. Yeah. How does that benefit you? I get so riled up. I get so passionate. I yell. All right, let's just bring it down.