The Big Picture of Love | LQ001

Crystal Clark: 00:00:00

Welcome, welcome to Love Quirks today, I'm Crystal, your social relationships and love person. I'm just so happy for you to be joining me today. And, you know, it's so crazy how we get to different places and our lives. And sometimes we take a straightforward path. And sometimes our path meanders and takes low five tracks, but really always get to where you need to be right now, don't you.

Crystal Clark: 00:00:30

So I've always had an interest in human human relationships, and in people understanding each other. And when I went into my work as a behavior analyst more than, you know, 10 years ago, I think that's really what drew me in was the idea of how we get to understand each other and how we get to communicate with each other. And working in the neuro spicy community. That communication piece was, you know, really important, like some of the first little guys that I got to work with, you know, were what we would call nonverbal, like, couldn't talk. And that really just interested in me, and how we could help these kids understand just the idea of communication, it's not necessarily that they need to learn the words right away, but they need to just learn the idea of how we're sending messages to each other, and that as human beings, we send and receive messages to each other, and we interact with each other. And, you know, when I was first starting out that part of my career, that, you know, kind of around the same time, really coincidentally, that my first big long term relationship, like sort of my first marriage was starting to have some difficulties. And what, what I knew to do, as I knew that, that meant that we should go to marriage counseling at that we should put work, you know, this idea of work into the relationship. And in that process, and unfortunately, that process didn't work, despite working with really a wonderful, wonderful person. And I think that's because in that process, you know, me at that, at that person, we got so caught up in the small details of what wasn't working in the relationship. And we didn't step back and look at the big picture of what it meant to be in love and to have a romantic relationship with each other. And, you know, to actually collaborate and work together and put energy in together. And I think, you know, not understanding the importance of that, that we should have been coming together as a collaboration and rather than coming together and working on it, which, you know, so boring, right, that sounds horrible. I worked all day, and have to go home, and work with the person I love on our love. That sounds awful. But, you know, can I collaborate and put energy in and everyone loves the word, you know, collaboration nowadays? Oh, can I put can I put some energy into this? Can we come together? Can we be a unit together, and I really think that is the piece that was missing.

Crystal Clark: 00:03:29

From my experience at that time, and now from, you know, kind of going through that at the beginning of my career and behavior analysis, and in my career in social health. And now, I realized that that big picture, that piece is what's missing. And my work with kids and teens and, and adults in the neuro spyzie community has made me realize how proactive we are in that community at really trying to teach communication, and trying to teach, you know, the idea of how humans are coming together and interacting, and how proactive we are. And the piece we're really missing from our adult lives, is that we're not proactive about our relationships, that we wait until things are falling apart until things are miserable until we have, you know, built a wall between each other. And actually, this is, you know, such a great metaphor that the, my love of the love of my life currently, and forevermore, you know, that we've talked about is that, you know, like, if, if certain things are happening in your relationship, it's almost like, you know, every time that thing happens, you're putting a brick between you and that other person. And then it happens again, and you haven't really stepped back to look at the big picture of what's happening and it happens again, and we put another brick in another brick in another brick. And soon that brick wall gets so big that you can't see over it, that you can no longer see each other's perspective. And really, that's what we're taught in our culture nowadays is that we should wait until we can no longer see over that wall. And then we should go to counseling. And we should help someone help us chip away at that wall. And lots of times before we can ever get through it. You know, things and things fall apart. It's too much work to chip through that wall. How silly as that. How crazy is that? That we spend time teaching kids about how to make awesome friendships. And that's what we should be teaching ourselves really, because, you know, the big picture here is that, you know, everything I'd love to do you need to know I learned in kindergarten, right? Wasn't that a book that was written like a million years ago. And it's kind of true. The way we make friends and friendships when we're like little guys and little peoples is as the same as the same skills, the same things that we do when we make our romantic relationships when we're older. Crazy. So let's destigmatize that, let's be proactive in our adult relationships.

Crystal Clark: 00:06:23

And that's, that's my passion. That's what I am here for today. In working in social health for so long, and getting to be proactive about it, and then seeing so many relationships break up train COVID and the strain of everyday life, it really pointed out that missing piece that we have that no one has been proactive on their relationships when they're healthy, and vibrant and going. Awesome. And that's, that's what we need. Right? We need time, and energy, to focus on the love of our lives. When things are awesome. When things are going well, well, we can keep that energy going. Right? Like that's the great thing about momentum is when you have some momentum, and you add to it, it keeps going. It goes even more I mean, I'm not, you know, super great physics. But that's my basic understanding of momentum. But that's, that's why I'm here. That's why we're here. Because we're going to D stigmatize working on our romantic relationships, we're going to work on them right now, we're going to practice doing the things that are going to make our relationships awesome and healthy. Right now.

Crystal Clark: 00:07:49

You know, the World Health Organization, and governments around the world, including the Government of Canada, which is where I am, humbly located. They're all starting ministries and putting research into social isolation, and loneliness. It's a it's an epidemic. There are so many of us, that are sitting at home and are surrounded by people. And still can feel lonely and isolated, we can be sitting and having dinner with the person that is the love of our life, and we can feel disconnected. That's not how it's supposed to be. We're not you know, we're not supposed to feel. We're not supposed to feel disconnected from that person. That should be one of the people in our lives that we feel most connected to, most safe and secure with most energized by most supported and held by. That's where we want to be. We want to be looking across that, that breakfast table, that dinner table at that wonderful person that we fell in love with and feel even more in love with them than that first time. And the way we're going to do that is we're going to think we're going to explore right here in this space. We're going to talk about how we can put that energy and how we can be proactive how we can grow things. And if you're at the spot where you're like, oh no, oh, goodness. Maybe I've waited too long. Don't worry, we've got you. Here, we've got you.

Crystal Clark: 00:09:43

We're going to do this together. And you know, one of the things that gets talked about and you might be saying like crystal that you know, you're a silly belly and a dreamer and ridiculous and you know that that's just like, silly billy gall multiplex them so, but it's not so think about when people talk about new relationships, there's even a term called new relationship energy, that that part where you feel like all like ooh, and butterflies and everything like that. But notice that's not called new relationship work. It's called new relationship energy. And I think that's the piece that we're missing out on is N destigmatizing. You know, I said, destigmatizing, putting work into our relationships are going well and not waiting on it, that Let's also change the word work. Let's change that to, we're going to change that to energy. Right? We want to put energy and focus into our relationships. And that's what we're going to do here. So that you can with the love of your life, with the relationships you're in now, with the romantic partner you have, that you are going to be there and have that new relationship energy, have that real relationship energy. Fill all of your cups, you know, people talk about their emotional cups being filled up or their love languages, you know, being filled up. We're going to, we're going to get that we're going to be vibrant, we're going to be growing on love quarks. We're going to be sparked. And I'm looking forward. Forward to this journey with you. Let's be sparked