Relationship School w/ Jayson Gaddis

Kylie Larson:

Welcome back to Far From Perfect Everyone. I am your host, Kylie Larson, and today we get to hear from Jayson Gaddis, who is the founder of The Relationship School. Jayson is an artist, an author, a podcaster, a speaker, an executive coach, a CEO, a founder, a human behavior specialist, and a relationship expert. Needless to say, I could have talked to him for hours. He's the creator of Interpersonal Intelligence and Present Centered Relationship Coaching and has trained over 200 coaches in 11 countries. His book, Getting to Zero: How to Work Through Conflict in Your High-Stakes Relationships was voted Editor's Choice, Best Nonfiction and Best Leadership and Business Book in 2021 on Amazon. He's been married to his amazing wife since 2007, and has two beautiful kids. They live in Boulder, Colorado, just down the road from me. When he doesn't live and breathe this relationship stuff with family, he pretty much just gets his ass handed to him.

Jayson believes the world will be a better place if we just knew how to effectively work out our differences. That is what we talked about in this episode. Of course, I asked him relationship questions, but specifically things like, "What do you do when you're on this path to evolving, you are improving your life, your interpersonal development, but your partner is not into that? What do you do in that scenario?" He has some really great advice.

What do you do when one of the partners wants to be intimate but the other partner doesn't want to? What do you do? Is that a deal breaker? What do you do with your parents? How do you have an honest relationship, or excuse me, an honest conversation with your parents without reverting back to being 16 years old? Whether you are actually partnered up or not, that does not matter because the work that he talks about is all work that we can do, whether we're currently in a relationship or not. Enjoy this episode. Make sure you follow Jayson on Instagram @JaysonGaddis. That is J-A-Y-S-O-N G-A-D-D-I-S. Also check out his website to learn all about his program offerings, relationshipschool.com.

Welcome back to the show everyone. I am honored today to be talking with Jayson Gaddis. He is among many, many things, a relationship expert and executive coach and an author. He's also the creator of Interpersonal Intelligence and of Present Centered Relationship Coaching. Welcome to the show, Jayson.

Jayson Gaddis:
Thank you, Kylie. Good to be here.

Kylie Larson:
Yeah, it's so great to be here. What I'm so curious about is did you know this was what you wanted to do? When you finished school, did you know, "I'm going to go be a coach," whether it was an executive coach or relationship coach, or do you have a more colorful background?

Jayson Gaddis:
Yeah, definitely not. My undergrad was in... I didn't know what I wanted to study actually. The counselor met with me and said, "Dude, you got to pick a major here, or you're going to be in school forever." I was on the five year plan and I picked environmental geography because that's what I had the most credits in. Then twenties was a... It's a whole story. Then I got clear I needed to get help with myself and I wanted to help people.Graduate school was in my early thirties. I'm not sure where your question was, undergrad or grad school?

Kylie Larson:
Both really. I just was curious as to your path. Did you start working what I call a real job, or what did you do? How'd you get here?

Jayson Gaddis:
Yeah, relationship failure got me here, got me my foot on the path to personal growth because I was confused and a mess and making women wrong and didn't know myself very well. I was working with troubled adolescent kids as a way to probably help myself vicariously. I needed more skills, so I wanted to go study more, and I wanted to study myself and figure my shit out so that I could have a successful relationship.

Kylie Larson:
Absolutely. Well, on your website you were saying, "I help you take your relationship pain and turn it into love." What does that look like? When people come to you, what are their issues that they're dealing with?

Jayson Gaddis:
Well, most people come now to me through the school to take courses because they're learners. They're in some kind of relationship pain or longing, and they want to change their life. Our courses are really... They're long courses because they're transformational, because I know after being a therapist and then a coach for so many years, people don't change unless they do the work for quite a while. I don't attract a lot of people anymore, at least in our longer courses, that just want pain relief. They want to change their lives.

Kylie Larson:
Here's something that I hear. I work mostly with the women, and when they start working with me, they're on this journey. They're evolving, and sometimes we evolve at a different pace than our partner, or our partner is not interested in personal development or evolving. What happens in that scenario? What do you suggest for people if they're on this path but their partner isn't and they're wishing that they were?

Jayson Gaddis:
Yeah. Well, there's two paths there. One is inspire them by being an awesome human and giving what you want to receive to them. The other path is moving on, because I don't recommend trying to change them. It's getting really honest and accepting them for who they are, because all of us want to just be loved for who we are. We don't want to be changed. Not everybody wants to do the work, and not everybody wants to apply themselves, and that's okay.

Kylie Larson:
Yeah. Oh, I love that. One of the things that really drew me in... Well, first off, one of my friends went to one of your retreats. She absolutely loved it, and that's why I started following you. Then every single thing that you talk about in posts, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this is so great. The world needs to hear this message," especially what to do when your partner isn't having sex with you, if you're not having sex in your marriage. The other day, we were talking about this, and how would I have this conversation? I thought maybe you could address that. Because again, my listeners, they're like my age and they're forties, and we're going through this transition, hormonally. We're going through perimenopause, and maybe the sex drive isn't there. As you know, it's not all about hormones. How do we have this conversation if we're wanting to be in intimate with our partner, but they're like... They're checked out.

Jayson Gaddis:
I start with the conversation about the conversation first, which is, "Hey, are you open to a conversation about our sex life?" Getting kind of buy-in. You might get defensiveness initially, but hopefully you get a yes or a no, and hopefully you get a yes. Then if it's a yes, you can move on to the next step. "Great. When are you available? I know this is tender for us. This is really vulnerable. We've had some conflict here before. I want to get help here. This is a vibrant part of our humanity, and it matters to me that we find our way." Sex has to also be defined.

Kylie Larson:
Oh, sure.

Jayson Gaddis:
A lot of men in particular define sex as intercourse, and women have a much smarter, wider view of sex being so many more things than just penetration. It's like, "Well, what do we mean by sex, honey? Can we just take our clothes off and just lay next to each other?" Because that can feel really good to both people. That's a step, right, toward being sexually expressed. I think both people need to be... It's less about getting into some sort of goal and more into a conversation that's exploring. It's like anything, it could be parenting, it could be how do we navigate our financial situation that's tricky right now? Or how do we pay off our debt? Or how do we deal with our money differences because you're a spender and I'm a saver?

It doesn't matter what the issue is. It's we're a couple and we're a team and how do we want to approach these hard conversations in general, and then how do we want to approach this conversation that happens to be about sex? How are we going to do that? Because it matters. It's part of our lives.

Kylie Larson:
It sounds like communication is a really important thing here.

Jayson Gaddis:
Yep. You got it.

Kylie Larson:
That's another thing that I wanted to talk about with you, the other day you were making a post about. You think you're a good communicator. Look at your communication with these three groups. You came in hot with that first slide, and it was your parents. You're like, "Do you ultimately go back into your juvenile voice or your adolescent voice?" In the comment section, everyone's talking about their parents. I just was hoping you could expand on that. Why? Why do we have such a hard time with our parents?

Jayson Gaddis:
We could ask the same question, why do we have such a hard time with an intimate partner? It's all about the attachment system. When we spent 18 years with these people, and I don't care how great your family was... We have a great family, and my son is a teenager now and is getting annoyed at times by me because we live together, right?

Kylie Larson:
Right.

Jayson Gaddis:
We're just in the same space for 14 years. We're going to get on each other's nerves. That's the deal. Then 18 years of that, for many people, it's longer now, 20, 25, and it's okay. But ideally the family has a high... When you're creating a family like I am, creating a family you didn't get, let's say, you create rules of engagement that are very relationally focused and relational centric, and where we prioritize and value connection and we value repair. If we get hurt, we repair it and fix it. Many of us grew up in families where that didn't happen. We have resentments, we have hurt feelings, and it comes sideways in how we talk to our parents. We go back for the holidays and we turn into a 17-year-old again.

Kylie Larson:
Literally. I felt so validated reading that comment section. I was like, "Okay, I'm not the only one that all of a sudden is 16 when they go home for the holidays."I'm a grown-ass woman, but not when I go to that house."

Jayson Gaddis:
Yeah, exactly.

Kylie Larson:
I was wondering too, do you see any generational differences in couples? As people are doing this work and hopefully it's trickling down through their families, do you see people in their fifties dealing with issues that maybe people in their thirties aren't having anymore? I don't presume you see many 20 year olds. I guess I'm just curious, are we evolving? As we heal, as we work on these things ourselves, is it traveling down? Is it getting better?

Jayson Gaddis:
I mean, that's a good question. The divorce rate doesn't seem to be getting any better. It seems to be the statistics are generally the same. I do think it's a little more cool to be into self-awareness. I think millennials, for example, there's a lot of influencers now and easy access to influencers on your phone that are talking about self-awareness. There's a lot of athletes willing to admit they're depressed. We have Olympians now saying, "I'm depressed and I can't stand the pressure." I think we have more role models and access to role models who are being honest. Is it making a difference though, in say, marriages? I don't think so, necessarily. I do think younger people, maybe one advantage to social media is they're getting just exposed to a level of vulnerability and transparency that's maybe refreshing.

Kylie Larson:
I would agree with that. How can I or anyone listening, how can we make sure or work towards being the best possible partner?

Jayson Gaddis:
Yeah. Well, you're probably on that path yourself, which is to grow and to look in the mirror and to, not in a self-judgy way or a shamey way that there's something wrong with me, not from that kind of view, which is more of a victim mindset, more of a, would I want to be in a relationship with myself? Do I like myself? If I were dating me this week, would I be having a good time? Would I be able to handle my own upheavals breakdowns and drama that I... When I get into my victim seat and I want to blame everybody else, can I handle myself there? Can I have enough of a witness?

We can do that, whether we're single or in a relationship. We can always ask, "Am I being a good partner today?" We can just ask our partner. If we're partnered, we can just ask them, "Hey, I'm open to some feedback here. How do you feel like I'm doing as your partner? Where am I not considering you and your feelings? Where am I dropping the ball? Can we have a conversation, give each other some tender, honest, vulnerable feedback?"

Kylie Larson:
This is so crazy because this was a couple months ago, and literally my mother-in-law asked me, she's like, "Would you like to be married to you?" I was like, "No way I'd want to be married to me." And she's like, "Yeah, I wouldn't want to be married to me either." Just speaking to the fact that we have these amazing partners. Clearly, I'm open to doing all of the work and all of that, but I had never thought about that. Like you said, all these weird quirks that I have and everyone has, that's a great place to start.

Jayson Gaddis:
If we're single, we can take that view. If we're partnered again, we can... I mean, partnership is so much about acceptance. It's about learning to love the person that we chose. What happens after the honeymoon phase is people become kind of unlovable. They become difficult, and it's like, "I can't believe I married this person. Oh my god, they act like this. I didn't know about that. Holy shit." That's the practice, is, yeah, I made a commitment to you and I do genuinely love you. And this part and that part are a little hard for me at times, but wow, I'm working on it. I'm working on embracing you more. I think that's just a cool frame and a cool practice because I think too many people are like, "Well, I got married and everything was great, and then it got really bad." It's like, so that's people not applying themselves.

Kylie Larson:
Right. Because like you talk about, it's work. We have to work towards this.

Jayson Gaddis:
Yeah. If you have an aversion towards the word work, then change it to effort. I don't care. As Henry Rollin said, nothing good comes without a certain amount of effort in work in our lives, whether it's getting our body in shape or making money or whatever. We've got to fucking put in some effort. Get over it. It's okay to put in some effort.

Kylie Larson:
Right. Anything worth doing is going to take some effort.

Jayson Gaddis:
If you want to feel good about yourself and about your relationship, you need to apply yourself.

Kylie Larson:
Are there things that people should consider before they get married? I'm wondering, is marriage for everyone? Probably not.

Jayson Gaddis:
Yeah. I mean, you probably saw my post that basically said, "Never, ever get married unless your person has three things." The first thing was a willingness, just a willingness to be open-minded to work on things. The second one was, I think, embrace conflict, but you're going to have differences. You're not going to like each other at times, and you need to learn to work with that. If you're married in this moment, I don't remember what the third one was, but the first one is the most important, is if you have an resistant partner who will not get off the couch and go to therapy or coaching or read a book or apply themselves, you are screwed.

Kylie Larson:
Yeah. Red flag.

Jayson Gaddis:
Huge red flag. The biggest, in my opinion.

Kylie Larson:
Well, since I'm a female and I mostly work with females, I know a lot about, or I know what females are looking for out of their partners. I would love to hear from a male perspective. What can we do to support the men in our lives if we are a partnered with a man?

Jayson Gaddis:
Yeah. Well, men, as one you know, of our buttons where we get feel easily triggered is feeling criticized, like we're doing it wrong. If we feel the opposite, like, "Hey, I believe in you. I accept you. You're kind of neurotic and intense sometimes, and I don't always like parts of you, but overall, I'm so psyched on you and who you are." Women can convey the message to men that, "I like you. I respect you. You're not doing anything wrong. I'm just triggered right now by how you're being with me." That's huge. Men also want to feel a woman's willingness to work on it. These are good men I'm talking about, of course.

Kylie Larson:
Yes, of course.

Jayson Gaddis:
If we're talking about the conventional man who just wants to watch the game, he doesn't want to do anything. He wants you to just leave him alone, not ever bring up anything difficult. Don't go after those kind of guys, obviously. Men want to feel that you believe in him and respect his choices. He doesn't necessarily want to feel talked down to, or he doesn't want a mother. Some men unconsciously do want a mother and behave like little boys. This is when you meet a woman who has three kids, and then the husband's like the fourth, and she's like, "Oh, well, my fourth kid." It's so sad to hear that shit.

Kylie Larson:
Yep, I agree.

Jayson Gaddis:
Throwing her husband under the bus like that, it's like, "Wow, you too need to have a conversation clearly about your dynamic."

Kylie Larson:
I think sometimes... I work with high performing women, and oftentimes they lead with that masculine energy. I always am wondering, how's that playing out at home? Does the man feel like part of his masculinity is being taken away? I just think it's, again, another conversation that we need to have. Maybe some females aren't aware that they're making their husbands feel this way.

Jayson Gaddis:
That's right. That's a good point. I think I'm not too into the masculine-feminine dynamic thing. However, I think it has merit and value. If a woman is a professional woman holding down a job, and she's a high performer, some women like that could attract a guy who's an under-functioning guy who doesn't have a job. It creates a dynamic where she's constantly feeling like she's telling him what to do or coaching him, like, "Come on, man." Maybe he's more of a nice guy, for example.

If a woman wants to have a more equal equitus kind of relationship, eye level relationship where she's not above him, she can soften, and she can not always be the leader, and she can do the more uncomfortable thing of being a follower at times. A couple like that, if they don't like the dynamic, they can take turns doing leader-follower stuff in the bedroom, and also just going to dinner or whatever we're doing. High performing women, I love high performing women, and there can be an energy that's not leaving a lot of room for vulnerability, and like, let's drop in and slow down and feel and be together. In a way, it's like it doesn't matter the gender labels. One partner could be more of a achiever and one partner's maybe an underachiever. Again, it's just an opportunity. It's another cool opportunity for the couple to talk about their differences and be like, "Wow, you're kind of like this, and I'm kind of like that. How are we going to work with these differences?"

Kylie Larson:
That's great. I want to be really mindful of your time, Jayson. Let's say someone is listening to this, they're like, "Oh my gosh, I need more of this." First of all, tell them they need to follow you on social media, like Instagram for sure, sign up for your daily texts, obviously. What other offerings do you have through the Relationship School?

Jayson Gaddis:
Yeah. Our primary course is called Relationship Mastery, and that's only for people who are growth oriented, who want to make a big commitment. It's a nine-month course. It's a cohort model. It's both live and recorded, so people can do it at their own pace, but there's live components and they get live time with me, and they get assigned a coach. That's the most transformational course that's entry level. It's awesome because people get permanent upgrades. They like themselves more, they become better communicators, they're better listeners permanently for life, which is amazing because it's nine months. They become better parents if they're parents. So that's rad.

Then of course, we have deeper level courses where if you want to now become a coach, like yourself, you can take our coach training. Those are probably the two best places to plug in. Then if people want free resources or really affordable, there's always my book Getting to Zero: How to Work Through Conflict in Your High-Stakes Relationships, that's great, or our podcast.

Kylie Larson:
I love it. I want to point that out. There are so many resources out there for people that are free, or it's just the cost of a book.Again, it comes back to that willingness to do the work. I think at the end of the day... I've been in coaching forever, but those people didn't do the work for me. Of course, I'm still doing the work, right? It's all on us. Like you were talking about, that ownership is so important.

Jayson Gaddis:
Totally. Yeah. We have to be honest that, look, listening to podcasts is awesome, but it's probably not going to move the needle in the same way that going to the gym for a year straight five days a week is going to move the needle.

Kylie Larson:
Absolutely, yeah.

Jayson Gaddis:
We just got to get in there and stress test ourselves and put ourselves in a classroom or a dojo or something to change the patterns. That's why I like the longer course, kind of big investment model.

Kylie Larson:
I love it. Well, thank you for all the work that you are doing and everything you're putting out in the world. Clearly, we need it, Jayson.

Jayson Gaddis:
Yeah, I think we do, Kylie. I'm on a mission to help people not only be who they are, but to help them work out their differences because we need help in our neighborhoods and our communities, and it's a problem.

Kylie Larson:
Right. Well, that's what I think about... I only have one child, but you were talking about we kind of want to do it a little bit differently maybe than our parents did, even though we know they did the best that they could, like that ripple effect. Thanks for making those ripples.

Jayson Gaddis:
Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks for being someone who cares so much.

Kylie Larson:
Absolutely. Well, I hope I get to talk to you soon. Thank you so much.

Jayson Gaddis:
Okay, thanks, Kylie.

Kylie Larson:
Bye-Bye.

Jayson Gaddis:
Bye.

Kylie Larson:
Thank you again for tuning in. As always listening to this podcast, it really got me thinking about maintaining our relationships. I talk a lot about being in maintenance with your nutrition and with your fitness. Maintenance takes work. Just because you aren't actively pursuing someone, just because you aren't actively pursuing like a physique goal, that doesn't mean that the work is over. That's actually this time of integration where the work, that's where it starts to sink in, and that's where you truly start to change. I just wanted to end this podcast with that one final nugget. Keep doing the work because it's so worth it. It's so worth it to have these valuable relationships.

Thanks again for tuning in. I can't wait to talk to you next time. My next guest is going to be Dr. John Deloney, or Joctor Don Deloney. Dr. John Deloney, and I know it's going to be a fabulous conversation. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.