Why We Fall for the Wrong Person | Couples Therapist Dr. Harville Hendrix

Summary

Episode Summary: "Why We Fall for the Wrong Person"

Podcast: A Bit of Optimism
Host: Simon Sinek
Guest: Dr. Harville Hendrix (couples therapist, author of Getting the Love You Want)
Date: July 7, 2026

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Overview

In this engaging and vulnerable episode, Simon Sinek sits down with renowned couples therapist Dr. Harville Hendrix to explore the reasons people are attracted to the "wrong" partners, the unconscious forces shaping our relationships, and practical ways couples can move from conflict to a fulfilling partnership. Drawing on half a century of clinical experience and personal transformation with his wife Helen LaKelly Hunt, Dr. Hendrix unpacks the "imago" theory, explains why adult relationships often replay childhood survival patterns, and offers actionable insights on how to truly thrive in love.

This conversation is rich with candid anecdotes, memorable "aha" moments, and practical guidance for anyone seeking, building, or sustaining love.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Dr. Hendrix’s Journey Into Relationship Therapy (02:22–05:56)

• Origins: Dr. Hendrix recounts his accidental path from a sharecropper’s son and teen pastor to seminary professor, then to well-known couples therapist after divorce ended his academic career.
• Personal Story: Divorce catalyzed both personal introspection and the development of his theories. Meeting Helen Hunt led to collaborative exploration into why relationships break down.
• Quote:

  “We started talking about—how come, you know, couples conflict? Well, what’s conflict about? So I am a theoretical mind. So I began to put together more questions and more answers...” — Dr. Harville Hendrix (06:29)

The Origins of Conflict—Parenting and Child Needs (07:00–16:29)

• Romantic attraction, according to Hendrix, often stems from unmet needs in childhood.
  • We unconsciously seek out partners who resemble caretakers who didn’t meet our emotional needs.
  • This is “nature trying to finish an agenda that it didn’t get to finish in the parenting period of childhood.” (00:01, 22:43)
• Dr. Hendrix on conflict:

  “We kept having all these conversations. Now we were dating and fighting. We’ve always fought. But they were not polarizing; it was just serious disagreements.” (06:52)

• Hendrix and Hunt’s personal marriage hit crisis points (almost divorced, even filed papers), but they transformed their relationship by applying his own “dialogue process”—a pivotal experience that reshaped his understanding.

The Three Stages of Love (15:46–16:43, 21:55–29:19)

1. Romantic Love:
   • “You meet my needs.” (15:46)
2. Power Struggle:
   • “You didn’t meet my needs.” (15:47)
3. Mature Partnership:
   • “We have to move to another place where we meet each other's needs… reframe my view of you as a blessing instead of a resource.” (15:59–16:29)

• True transformation occurs when partners shift from using each other as resources to seeing each other as gifts—“that generates gratitude.”

Why We’re Attracted to the “Wrong” Person (21:55–28:14)

• Imago Theory:
  “Your unconscious mind… is going to pick the person that you’re going to fall for. Because your unconscious mind has inside an image. I call it an imago. It’s the core word in my intellectual system.” (26:36)
• We unconsciously select partners similar to caretakers who left unmet needs, driven by a survival mechanism determined to heal old wounds.
  • “You’ll have an attraction. You can’t control that… your brain has now seen a person… whose personality is similar to a caretaker in childhood from whom you did not get your needs met.” (20:28)
• Power struggle is inevitable; transformation is possible through reframing and adult consciousness.

The Path to Thriving Relationships (12:54–19:39, 34:34–38:41)

• Both partners do not need to make the shift at the same time—but one’s dedication can help hold space for the other’s growth.
• Shift required is from “child consciousness” (my needs first) to “adult consciousness” (becoming a resource for your partner).
• Therapy or facilitated dialogue is often necessary; most couples can’t make this shift alone.
• Commitment is redefined—not blind loyalty, but a proactive vow to do the work to see each other's needs met.
  • “It's a re-understanding of the word commitment… commitment to the work that needs to be done to see the other person's needs are met.” — Simon Sinek (34:34)

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Memorable Quotes and Moments

On the Unconscious Selection of Partners (22:01–23:32)

• Simon:

  “You're going to properly fall in love with somebody who replicates somebody who didn't take care of your needs?”

• Hendrix:

  “Exactly.”

• Simon:

  “But then how do you find attraction if they didn't take care of your needs?”

• Hendrix:

  “Your unconscious will say, ‘Mommy. The mommy who is not available… The brain has an agenda. It has to finish that agenda to get the unavailable mommy available.’”

Personal Transformation Through Conflict (11:25–13:21)

• Hendrix and Hunt’s therapist fired them:

  “Y’all, a couple from hell… you’re untreatable.” (11:25)

• What saved them?

  “She was so cruel in her diagnosis that we said, we’ll show her.” (12:54)

• Result: over nine months of the dialogue method, they “moved out of seeing each other as a resource… and saw each other as a gift.”

On Needs, Wants, and Sabotaging Love (38:32–45:43)

• Hendrix:

  “If I really become vulnerable and let it in, I might lose it… I will sabotage what I want in order to maintain the status quo.” (38:32)

• Simon’s anecdote:

  “I dated an amazing woman… she loved to make me dinner… but she wouldn’t let me do the dishes. It was very uncomfortable for me… and where I had to learn to receive love is, I had to put my own sort of desire aside and… accept the love…” (43:13)

• Importance of learning to receive as well as give.

Egalitarian vs. Equal Relationships (45:50–46:28)

• Simon:

  “Successful relationships are not equal, they’re egalitarian… Equal is I cook, you cook. Egalitarian is I’ll cook, you do the dishes… Where both parties feel whole because they feel the other person is contributing.” (45:50)

• Hendrix:

  “I like that distinction… It makes it a kind of teamship rather than a transaction.” (46:28)

The Evolution of Dating (47:21–50:01)

• Hendrix argues dating was more effective when people met in-person rather than technologically mediated:

  “Dating paradoxically was better when people met face to face… the separation of the personal as the rise of technology has increasingly contributed to more and more indirect attempts to meet people.” (47:21) “I’m fine for people to scour the world… but then go see them, get together and… smell them and touch them.” (50:00)

• Simon:

  “The next time you go on a date, make sure to smell the person you’re with.” (50:05)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:22–05:56 | Dr. Hendrix’s origin story
• 06:29–08:56 | Hendrix meets Helen; early relationship dynamics
• 11:19–13:21 | Filing for divorce, therapist firing, and dialogue process
• 15:46–16:43 | Three stages of love
• 19:39–23:32 | Why we pick partners like our caretakers
• 26:36–29:19 | Imago theory and projection
• 34:34–38:41 | Redefining commitment and the necessity of safe vulnerability
• 43:13–45:43 | Learning to receive love—Simon’s story
• 45:50–46:28 | Egalitarian vs. equal relationships
• 47:21–50:01 | The evolution of dating and the necessity of IRL connection
• 52:08–52:46 | Dr. Hendrix on having “no needs left, only wants"

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Practical Takeaways

• Relationship fulfillment requires a conscious shift: From seeking to have needs met by your partner, to becoming a committed provider for your partner’s well-being.
• Conflict is inevitable, but transformative: What begins as a power struggle can be the foundation for lasting connection, if couples practice gratitude and see one another as gifts.
• Your attraction isn’t random: Unmet childhood needs guide your unconscious partner selection; awareness of this process is the first step toward changing it.
• Egalitarianism, not strict equality: Healthy love is about wholeness and reciprocity, which may take different forms for each person.
• Vulnerability and receiving love: Many block themselves from accepting love due to deep-seated beliefs or fears—working through these is essential.
• Face-to-face connection matters: While technology has changed dating, nothing replaces the complexity and richness of in-person contact.

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Final Reflections

This episode delivers both personal and universal insights, inviting listeners to rethink why they fall for certain people and how to truly sustain love. Sinek and Hendrix’s dynamic—curious, candid, and sometimes self-deprecating—transforms dense relationship theory into practical wisdom, accessible whether you’re looking for love, trying to save a partnership, or committed to self-understanding.

“We should all aspire to have a relationship where our needs are completely met, and all we have left is wants—beautiful.”
—Simon Sinek (52:27)

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For deeper engagement, listen from [22:00–30:00] for the crux of imago theory, and [45:00–47:00] for the egalitarian vs. equal relationship discussion.

Transcript

[Simon Sinek]

And this is healthy.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

It's nature. Nature's trying to finish an agenda that it didn't get to finish in the parenting period of childhood. Nature's trying to finish that. And it's simple. It's about survival.

[Simon Sinek]

So I'm trying to think about the people in my life when I was a kid and what did they not meet? And then what am I attracted to now? Ah, it works. You're right. Ah, dammit. They say that it's better to have loved and lost than never loved at all. But you know what's even better than that? Learning how to stay in love. Now I have my own podcast, which means I get to bring on whoever I want. And it may or may not be a coincidence that I have had multiple relationship and love experts. And the reason is because the stuff is hard and I have a life of failed relationships to prove it. But that might all change thanks to my guest, Dr. Harville Hendricks. He spent 50 years figuring out love, working alongside his wife, fellow relationship expert Helen Le Kelly hunt. He's written 10 books, including the bestsellers Getting the Love youe Want and Receiving Love, the subjects of which made him a fixture on Oprah for nearly two decades. And my conversation with Harville really challenged me. But then that doesn't help me understand.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

I'm sorry I didn't create nature, but I've watched this for 50 years and

[Simon Sinek]

it really helped me reframe what's supposed to happen in a relationship where we learn to stop seeing each other as a resource to meet our needs, but rather that relationships become an act of service. Trust me, this will help anyone who's either looking for love or is looking to stay in love. If you like this episode, please remember to subscribe. This is a bit of optimism. So I'm always fascinated by someone's origin, like how they got into their careers, because I bumbled and fumbled into mine. You and your wife and your books. You were an Oprah a million times and you still are, you know, the go to for anybody who's trying to understand love and religion, relationships, you know, how did you find yourself in that place?

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Oh, in that place. So I could start with the fact that my first interview was when I was 15 years old. I didn't know that was the beginning of my career. And I became a pastor of a Church at 17. So I've been on the stage regularly every Sunday. And I've done stuff like that ever since I was ordained at 17. I grew up on a sharecroppers farm. I had no money, no status, no nothing. I just happened to speak one day at church and people said, hey, this boy can talk. And that led to the ministry and blah, blah, blah. So I have a PhD then got a divorce in 75. I was a professor at Perkins School of Theology here in Dallas. It's a Methodist seminary, and at that time it was a conservative Methodist seminary. So the dean had to fire me because his supporters in the Methodist church could not have a divorced professor. Five of his tenured faculty were divorced five years later. But I was not tenured.

[Simon Sinek]

What you're saying is, is you're a pioneer and a trendsetter.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

I didn't know that, but I. But I decided they. I got my degree to be able to be paid to write and read and talk. They put me on committees so that 20% of my time was on teaching, 80% of my time was on committees. So when they fired me, I said that was not fun. I was a clinician. So I decided I would go full time in private practice, started psychotherapy, then met Helen the fifth year of my divorce. And we clicked around a bunch of things, started talking. Five years later we got married. And then I had begun putting together this imago relationship therapy theory stuff. And so our conversation has continued about what causes conflict, why do people get divorced, and so forth. And then when we got into it, Helen became the second most important person in the world in the women's movement after we got married. So we did parallel for a while. She was doing the women's world and she was number two, along with Gloria Steinem. Helen paid the bill for the women's movement. Gloria was the face. Then Helen decided she liked working with couples and we co wrote books. She began to join me in lecturing and doing workshops. Our life just merged together. Yeah. So that right now we. We do everything together.

[Simon Sinek]

You had one failed marriage before this happened, and now you have a relationship that you're still together. And I believe you're 90. Right. How long have the two of you been together?

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

45 years.

[Simon Sinek]

45 years. You've been together almost divorced twice. Right. Which we will come to.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

All right.

[Simon Sinek]

I mean, I can tell you from my standpoint, like I never imagined that I would be talking about leadership and culture. I came from the marketing world and I was talking about communication. And it sort of became that those who could communicate from this thing called why, which is what I was talking about, were actually the best leaders. And so I discovered leadership rather than pursued it. How did you discover love and that you had a point of view on it, especially after one relationship ended in divorce. And then you found love again.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

When we both met at a party neither one of us wanted to go to, and she was single and I was single. And it turns out she was in one of my classes at a big class, and I didn't know her at all. She sat on the back row that had a door that went out the back end of the room. I didn't know her, but she came to this party, and I didn't recognize her. But I was leaving because I didn't want to be there anymore. I dated enough, and it was really tired of women. I thought I'd be a monk or something like that. And I would leave. But on the way out the door, she stopped me and said, Dr. Hendricks, I'm Helen. At that time, she was called Helen Kreiling. And I said, so I'm trying to leave. She said, well, I was in your class. And I said, cry. Okay, okay. So Helen. Because it rung a bell, Helen Kreiling. I remember she wrote the best paper in the class. That's why I remembered the paper. These are those 30 seconds interfaces that if they don't happen, nothing after that happens. So, oh, you wrote that paper. I'll go to my office tomorrow and be sure. Because I saved the best papers yet, wrote the best paper. Only one in the class was worth reading because I learned something from it. Everything else was a regurgitation of the lectures. So I called her and said, I do have. I do have your paper. She said, so, you know, you want to get together and talk about it? So we got together and talked about it, and we started talking about. We were both divorced. How come I'm a university professor. She's one of the richest women in America because she's the daughter of H.L. hunt, who was at one point in 1976, the richest man in the world. And so she's a socialite, and she's educated and beautiful. How come you divorce? Why come I divorce? So we started asking that question. So we got to, well, couples conflict. Well, what's conflict about? So I am a theoretical mind. So I began to put together more questions and more answers and more research and interviews and all that. And after a while, I found I had a system emerging about how do people get attracted to each other? How do they pick each other? Why does romantic love turn into conflict? And we kept having all these conversations. Now we were dating and fighting. We've always fought. We would date and fight, but they were not polarizing it was just serious disagreements. And so that eventually turned into lectures, which I started giving in public here in Dallas. And people started showing up and wanted to be trained in what I was talking about. And so I decided when I moved out of the university, I would move into practice. I became a psychotherapist. But then I got interested in marriage after I got my divorce. Yeah, so what is this marriage thing about? I blew one, and I have no idea what to do next. So it began to show up. As I began to see couples, they began to tell me what they needed because I did have a good listening ear. Like, what do you need me to help you do?

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

And I finally learned from them. If I do certain things, it really helps. If I do other things, it doesn't help. So I finally put it together. And in 1980, I had a working system that was enough that therapists wanted to come and be trained. That's fun. And then I started writing this book. And here's another 32nd thing. The book got dropped in Oprah's executive producer's office. Her boyfriend came into the office that afternoon, and they got into a fight. And Debbie de Meyer, I still remember her name, said, you know, we can't even be together without fighting. And Oprah called her in the middle of their fight. She had to go. He said, can I have this book on the top of the stack? And she said, you can have all 40. He said, no, I just want this one. He picked up my book, getting love, you want Guide for Couples. Went home and read it, came back the next afternoon and said, you should read this book. She said, I'm not going to do workshops. I'm not going to do any shows on relationships. They don't work. He said, no, no, no, no. Not. Not for the show, for us. This will help us. And she said, I nearly fell on my face. If you think in is, this guy was a lawyer, so he's really smart, fast reader. She took it home and read it and went in the next day and put it on Oprah's desk and said, I changed my mind. I do want to do a show on this book. Twenty years later, I'm still on the Oprah show, except during that time, Helen and I get into trouble. And I say to Oprah, I can't be on the show and be going through a divorce. And she said, well, when you fix it, call me. She had no belief that we were going to get a divorce. She said, but when you fix it, call me.

[Simon Sinek]

This is important. The two of you are now, you know, in part due to Oprah.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Yeah, we're visible.

[Simon Sinek]

You are world famous for relationships and functional relationships, and you are a case study yourselves of a beautiful, loving marriage. But here you carve at the secret where you came very, very, very close to actually ending the relationship.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Yes.

[Simon Sinek]

How close did you actually get to the. Because people, I think, think it, you know, when they're angry. Sometimes they talk about it when they're angry. But how close did you actually come to getting the divorce?

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

First time was like, well, we backed off. The second time, we actually file the papers.

[Simon Sinek]

Wow.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

And then we went to therapy, and the therapist fired us.

[Simon Sinek]

Wait, wait, wait. Why did the therapist fire you?

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Y' all a couple from hell. She said, you're untreatable. You're uncoupled from hell, and I don't want to see you anymore. So Helen said, look, you've been teaching dialogue now all over the world. Why don't we practice that ourselves?

[Simon Sinek]

Novel idea.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Okay, so why don't we do that? So we said, okay, we're going to practice what I preach, the dialogue process. She was now still in the women's world, so she hadn't been teaching it very much then. So we did that nine months of dialogue on a weekly basis and finally got to the point where we moved through our polarization and went through this revision in which we moved out of seeing each other as a resource, because that always generates frustration and see each other as a gift, that generates gratitude. And that is what transforms marriages.

[Simon Sinek]

One of the things I'm astonished by is you filed the paperwork for divorce, which means you sort of gone through the trials and tribulations. You've even tried therapy to help save the marriage. I mean, you've done it and you've given up that there's nothing else that we can do. And. And yet you then commit nine months, which is, let's be honest, if you're filed for divorce, that's quite the commitment to stick around for nine more months. What kept you in it, a commitment?

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Cause this therapist was a catalyst for that because she was so cruel in her diagnosis that we said, we'll show her.

[Simon Sinek]

So you both shared a spite for the therapist, which is what motivated you

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

to fix your marriage. Right. And there was no therapy that would help us, so we needed to use our own therapy. And it worked. And in fact, that transformed my own understanding of my own intellectual system.

[Simon Sinek]

There's many things that I know. Anybody who's listening now wants to know. Okay. For people who are struggling in relationships who may be considering divorce or breaking up. And maybe in the process, what was the transformation that took place?

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Okay, so this is a technical thing, so say it right now. When you're a baby, your orientation to the world is that my needs are outside of me. So I got to find that nipple. Then I got to find that hug in that eye contact, I call it. Now, the child consciousness follows you all the way into adulthood. And I think nature sort of sets it up that way. In adulthood, however, you become a parent, and you can't now live in child consciousness with your children. You have to move to adult consciousness and you become a resource for your children. But somehow, nature didn't figure out how to shift the adult consciousness to your relationship. So one side of your brain says, helen, you're my resource. The other side of my brain says, my children. I'm a resource for my children. So I would be fine with the kids, be a good parent, and then fight with Helen because she wasn't meeting my needs. So what you have to come to understand is that when you become a parent, nature has set it up that you also become an adult so that your needs are not outside of you. You are a resource. Not looking for resources. You are a resource, and you have to become a resource for your relationship.

[Simon Sinek]

I assume that for the relationship to succeed, both parties need to come to this realization.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Yes.

[Simon Sinek]

Otherwise one will martyr themselves in the attempt to save the relationship, while the other just milks it. No pun intended.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Right. So in working with a couple, that's exactly what has to happen. Nobody ever gets to this place on their own. And I hate to say this because it sounds so arrogant, this particular insight into the transformational relationship does not yet exist generally in human consciousness. Yeah. Because we do three things. Romantic love is all about your mind. You meet my needs.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Power struggle is all about, you didn't meet my needs. The third stage, which is built into relationship, is we have to move to another place where we meet each other's needs.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

That helps the power struggle work better, but it doesn't end the frustration. Yeah. Because somebody is always going to blow it. So you really have to make a cognitive decision that I need to reframe my view of you as a blessing instead of a resource. And when I see you as a blessing, that generates gratitude. And now it's amazing what gratitude does to the brain.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Bradicude cuts off that deep yearning that never got met in childhood. Cuts it off. It actually goes away. I don't no longer have that yearning and so then we live supporting each other's full potential.

[Simon Sinek]

When you hear couples in trouble or you hear couples breaking up and you say to them, what happened? I've done it myself. I've given this list, I point out all the other person's failings. It can be done with no anger, but rather this person is incapable of meeting my needs. And these are the things I need. And we even call them. These are my deal breakers, my non negotiables. Right, that they haven't met. So what you're proposing is that that mentality is rather to look at oneself and say, did I put the work in to meet their needs. If both individuals can come to the conclusion that, that I did not and both still wish to, that the relationship is savable and you may actually be a good couple for each other.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Absolutely. And this is where the dialogue process is the engine of that conversation. So the therapist holds the couple looking at each other and essentially gives them words to say to get them started. Because the brain, I don't think we human beings have evolved to this point yet, but it's obviously on the way or it wouldn't have shown up in my mind. So you hold this couple in this conversation and they're going to wiggle, but you don't wiggle. You hold them in the conversation and at some point they relax enough to drop their defenses. And here you say, now we, I want to shift you out of what I'm now have already told them is a child consciousness into adult consciousness. You remember when your children were born, how you shifted to be their resource.

[Simon Sinek]

How do people do this if they don't have kids?

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Well, then we talk about it as a theoretical possibility.

[Simon Sinek]

And do you have to have a therapist to do this? Or can couples, can couples do this themselves?

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

I have not met a couple yet that can do it by themselves.

[Simon Sinek]

I assume that, that if one of the members of the couple, if one of the individuals cannot make that shift into how do I help take care of you rather than you just taking care of me, that if one of the individuals cannot do that, then the relationship should move on. That, that you should go find someone who.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

No, definitely not. No. If one of you can do it, and that's usually it, there's one more willing and capable than the other. So we support then the one who can to hold the one who's reacting without reacting to them, without judging them and criticizing them. And that person then will experience something in their lower memory cell, the hippocampus, that they didn't have since childhood.

[Simon Sinek]

Okay.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

So the person who holds them becomes safe enough for them to drop their defenses and then move into the work.

[Simon Sinek]

Okay, so now let's move on to pre relationship finding, pre relation finding love. I think that from what I've read, and you're the expert, so, you know, you can tell me if this is right or wrong. You know that younger couples these days are taking more time. They're having sex later, they're waiting longer when they're in relationships. Very often they're actually not in relationships as frequently. And it raises questions, which is, what's not happening? What are they missing? Like, how do we find love? How do we start a relationship? That we meet somebody who wants to provide for our needs and. And that we want to provide for theirs. How are we supposed to date? I guess is where I'm getting to. Like, what are we supposed to do to find. I mean, we're all looking for it. You know, it's a basic human need to want to feel it.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Yes. The search for the partner is regulated by what's happening in the culture at the time. And so that is going to influence, you know, even the fact of having a dating site. Right. Is a cultural, technological innovation. But no matter how many people that may increase their contact with or they may be working through some stuff from their childhood and so they're just not ready to do that. But at some point, the selection process will be, you'll meet somebody who will attract your interest. We call it falling in love. You'll have an attraction. You can't control that you can't make it happen. And when it happens, you can't stop it from happening because your brain has now seen a person, opposite sex or same sex, doesn't matter, whose personality is similar to a caretaker in childhood from whom you did not get your needs met. So there's a yearning left over from infancy and childhood. And the brain is committed to survival. So the brain has to find a replica of that caretaker who didn't meet your needs to put you in relationship with so that you can still try to get those needs met, but they can't be met because the person you fall in love with is similar to the caretaker who didn't meet them.

[Simon Sinek]

You're going to properly fall in love with somebody who replicates somebody who didn't take care of your needs.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Simon Sinek]

But then how do you find attraction if they didn't take care of your needs?

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

So your unconscious will look at this woman or man and your unconscious will say, mommy, Mommy. The Mommy who is not available. So the brain has an agenda. It has to finish that agenda to get the unavailable mommy available. Unfortunately. I know it doesn't make any sense.

[Simon Sinek]

It sounds like trying to convince someone to love you like I'm trying. And it sounds like sort of like my mom wasn't there for me as a kid. So I'm going to convince the next person I meet to replace my mother.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Yes, It's. That's what you. That's what you do.

[Simon Sinek]

And this is healthy.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

It's nature. Nature's trying to finish an agenda that it didn't get to finish in the parenting period of childhood. Nature's trying to finish that. And it's simple. It's about survival. Yeah. So the baby doesn't get the needs met. So the brain is left with, I could die until I get this need met. So I have to get the need met with this person.

[Simon Sinek]

I'm so confused, Harval, because finding love is finding somebody to complete the stuff I didn't get as a kid to have somebody meet my needs. But what makes the relationship last and survive is that I have to go from a child brain, which is what this sounds like, to. To the adult brain, which now I have to convert myself to meeting their needs. So I'm now meeting the needs of the mother who didn't meet my needs.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Now meeting the needs of the mother who didn't meet your needs. Yes, That's. That's the way nature sets it up. So that's the power struggle. Okay, I'm sorry. I didn't. I didn't create nature, but I. I know, I know.

[Simon Sinek]

I'm trying to understand. I'm trying to understand. I'm tracking. But then that doesn't help me understand why one relationship succeeds and one relationship fails. It's not the nature that I'm pushing against. I'm trying to understand. I'm trying to understand. You had me, which is I fully get showing up in the relationship and expecting somebody else to meet your needs. And that's why the relationship fails, because that doesn't work. And that what rescues the relationship is making the conversion of. Instead of showing up in the relationship expecting the other person to meet all your needs, we make this beautiful. Beautiful. We mature and make this beautiful conversion of dedication and devotion to helping the other person meet their needs. And if both individuals are able to do that, the relationship thrives. And I'm thinking of my favorite couples, you know, that I watch the way they interact, and that seems to be the way in which they're organized, which is how do I help my partner succeed and thrive, find joy and happiness and all the rest of it? As opposed to how can they help me find joy, happiness, and thrive in.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

That's right. You know, I get the struggle is

[Simon Sinek]

over where you lost me and where I need help to understand is. And because I asked about finding it, this is. That's in the relationship, which I get wholeheartedly. But if I'm trying to set myself up for success in a relationship, wouldn't it be that I meet somebody who wants to meet my needs? I don't understand where I'm attracted to people who. Who don't meet my needs. And I'm trying to. I'm trying to put my own. I'm trying to run it through my own filter rather than intellectualize it, right? So I'm trying to think about the people in my life when I was a kid, and what did they not meet? And then what am I attracted to now? Ah, shit, it works.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

You're right.

[Simon Sinek]

Ah, dude. Damn it. This is really interesting. So I'm thinking, like, what I was unable to get from the people who were tasked with looking after me when I was a kid and what the most attractive thing that I find in a partner is their ability to give me that. Yeah, okay, so, wow, okay. Tracking. Got that part of it. But now I'm still left in the dynamic. I found the person who meets my needs fulfilling the void that was left when I was a kid. Got it. But I'm still in the mindset now of that person meeting my needs and having that child mentality because it fills this childhood void. So now then, that's what makes me attracted to the person. That's what makes me fall for the person. But that's not what makes the relationship succeed.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

What we have to add here is the whole concept of the unconscious. You are not in charge of the selecting process. You're just in charge.

[Simon Sinek]

Well, I did swipe right. I was in charge of swiping, right?

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

But what you have to bring into this, and this is once you get this, this is easy to understand that your unconscious mind, outside of your awareness, is going to pick the person that you're going to fall for. Because your unconscious mind has inside an image. I call it an imago. It's the core word in my intellectual system. An imago, an image of this caretaker.

[Simon Sinek]

Right.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

And when somebody crosses your path, right, that matches that picture, your brain is going to go, wow, look at that. But what it's looking at is I'm Going to get my need met now.

[Simon Sinek]

Right.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Because there's mommy or daddy, whichever one was the most active, in my frustration. So the expectation is you are going to meet my needs. But you never make that conscious. You just say, wow, how wonderful, how beautiful. Let's go date. And you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you'll both go through the romantic stage with all kinds of things that are wonderful until some difference shows up in which you had an expectation. And this can come anywhere from the end of the honeymoon to 18 months later, which is about the range. It'll show up that the expectation now, 18 months later, still not being met. Now you know you're with the right person. And this may sound paradoxical. What?

[Simon Sinek]

So you're with the right person because you're attracted to them because they meet the need, but then 18 months later they don't meet your need and that makes them. Right.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

The first 18 months is all fantasy.

[Simon Sinek]

Right. That I. That I've definitely lived that. It took me a lot less than 18 months.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

There's a kind of collusion. Yeah. Yeah.

[Simon Sinek]

I projected. I've projected on somebody. I hand picked the things about their personality that reinforced my narrative of what I wanted them to be. And then I projected that they were the perfect person for me because they met all these needs that I have only to discover that they didn't like. I set them up to fail. It was a. It's not fair.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

That's right.

[Simon Sinek]

And I think we do this to each other generally.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Absolutely. It's pretty universal.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

That you do pick it up. You create this person in your mind and then you attach an expectation to them. And when they show up, they don't meet the expectation.

[Simon Sinek]

Then of course, that's when we break up. Be like, you didn't meet any of my needs that I projected on you that you would meet all of them.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

The person you projected onto and the real person are very different. But you're going to live with the fantasy, but this real person cannot live in your fantasy.

[Simon Sinek]

I think this is the distinction between lust and love. Right. Like we fall in lust with, you know, and I make the distinction that one is more superficial, one is more the falling in love with the projection, and the other is actually more grounded in. And I think very often we fall in lust. We fall in lust quite easily. But to fall in love, I think actually is a little deeper and a little more complex, I hope.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Yeah, well, I. I think probably we all fall into lust and then move into something more serious. Like hopefully. Hopefully we really need to get this need met. Yeah, but the sexual attraction is one of nature's ways of getting you in bed together, is one of nature's ways to getting you in a relationship to get the need met. You see, you have to have the tension of the polarity of the difference in order to activate the undeveloped part of yourself. So nature set this up, but it didn't give you a handbook when you got married. I guess that's why therapists were created or why books are written.

[Simon Sinek]

God invented therapists.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Nature is trying to get it out.

[Simon Sinek]

So how does this reconcile with the fact that dating as a concept is a relatively new experience invented in America in the Industrial revolution, where most relationships, if not all relationships and marriages, were arranged by the family, either for convenience or. Or for wealth or for what? Wealth exchange or power exchange. When the industrial revolution happened and people were leaving the home to go live by themselves in the urban centers. And. And when dating first started showing up, it took about 30 years for me to normalize because it was. If you were walking down the street with a member of the opposite sex and you weren't married, bad stuff. It was considered disgusting. And the accusations of prostitution. And so it took 30 years for that concept of choosing my own mate and walking down the street with somebody I'm not married to. To be acculturated. So how does this. Because everything we're talking about here is a very modern conception of choice and unfulfilled needs. And yet. And yet arranged marriages have much lower divorce rates than marriages of choice.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Yeah. I'm not an expert in your question, but I have thought about it, read about it, and have conclusions about it. One of the things that if you look at arranged marriages, while they look stable and are stable and they last longer, they have compensatory sidebar behaviors.

[Simon Sinek]

Oh, that.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

The affair.

[Simon Sinek]

So the king had mistresses is what you're saying.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

The king had mistresses. The queen had mistresses, courtiers. In other words, this dynamic of romantic love, being attracted to somebody has been around forever.

[Simon Sinek]

Got it, got it. So the romantic love was sometimes found outside the relationship. I understand.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

And outside the relationship. It's like Romeo and Juliet, you know, they found love outside, and it was the forbidden love. Yeah. The natural dynamic that finally got culturized and culturated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Didn't come until about 150 years ago, but prior to that, nature dealt with the same thing. It just didn't have a cultural container for it. So it had to happen outside of.

[Simon Sinek]

If we think this through and for. And Again, these are two people with a lot of opinions who have done very little research on the subject. Which is my favorite kind of conversation, which is when there's an arranged marriage, it sort of meets your standard, which is, okay, I'm going to make this work, and that means I have to invest in meeting the other person's needs, otherwise this is going to fail. Because I can't sit around going, you know, is this person going to meet my needs? Because the interviews that I've seen of arranged marriages, there's a commitment to the relationship, which means there's a commitment to the other person, and it meets your standard to a T, which is, I enter the relationship with a commitment to meet the other person's needs. Because that's my job in this arranged marriage. Because the interviews that I've seen with arranged marriages, very, very happy. And the love came later. But the work started immediately where I think for us in our choice of relationships, the, the, the, the love may come sooner, the lust may come sooner, but the work starts later, usually when problems occur.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Yeah, that's right. Yep.

[Simon Sinek]

So we've made it more difficult for ourselves. And what an amazing concept, which is, you can still have a relationship by choice, but to enter the relationship with the mindset of, I'm going to commit to seeing my partner's needs. And by the way, if, if they won't let me meet their needs or they won't take the same commitment to me, then, then this is not a relationship that should survive and we should both move on. It's a re. Understanding of the word commitment. Right. It's not commitment like a blind loyalty, which is often how we think about commitment. You know, you have commitment issues. You know, we usually mean that you don't have the intense loyalty that you're supposed to have to the relationship, regardless of what's happening. I think that's sometimes how we use the term commitment, but here the way we're using it is commitment to the work that needs to be done to see the other person's needs are met. And now when you say somebody has commitment issues, they are unwilling to do the work that needs to be done to see the other person's needs met and wants met, I think is a very nice construction.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Yeah, I would agree with that if you have commitment issues, which is why when we do work with couples, one of the first things we say is we call it a no exit decision. And the reason I do the no exit decision is I can tell you in advance that when we start working, you will start making progress. You will get more and more anxious about the progress you're making because it's violating your survival directive. Yeah, because your brain has been fine with survival without the needs being met. When the needs start getting met, it changes the survival directive so you get more and more anxious and you'll want to stop therapy. And when you want to stop therapy is when I'm going to invite you to make a non negotiable recommitment to the therapy process. Because in about three to five weeks, the anxiety will go away because your brain will discover it's not dangerous to receive stuff that you really want and need and are getting. But if you leave when you get anxious, that simply means your brain says, hey, I can't. I don't know how to operate and be safe with this system of stuff. Good stuff coming in, I can't count on that. I can count on the bad stuff because that gives me security. So the brain's kind of crazy about that.

[Simon Sinek]

I'm tracking this conversation. I like it. The one part where I disagree is I do think couples can do it without a therapist. It makes sense that you've never met a couple that couldn't do it without a therapist because you were their therapist.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

That's the only couple. Yeah.

[Simon Sinek]

So that makes perfect sense to me, Helen.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

I did without a therapist. We became.

[Simon Sinek]

There you go, you see, you. You and your own wife did it without a therapist. So you have. You have empirical data to show that it can be done without a therapist. You just both have to be self aware and willing. Here's one thing that I think happens in relationship, and I've definitely done this in mine, which is the person is meeting my needs. And I'm so afraid of losing that that I shy away from total transparency for fear that I will somehow push them away or upset them or they won't like, you know, all of me, and then I'm going to lose this person who's meeting my needs. But in so doing, they are now either forming a relationship with somebody they don't fully know, or worse, they always feel a little bit distant and like they can't get close. And that ultimately will be the undoing of the relationship. And the accusation is it's like, I don't know you. You know, it's like your walls are up, whatever the terminology and euphemisms are. Because I think to your point about this childhood getting our needs met, it's so seductive when you find it, or at least it's even seductive when you project it that.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Oh, yes.

[Simon Sinek]

I think very often we become afraid. So afraid of losing it that we. We choose not to be our full selves, which if we take the commitment to see the other person's needs met, one of the needs they have is to know who they're dating.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Yeah.

[Simon Sinek]

And so there's sort of the requirement to be honest and transparent. That doesn't mean I necessarily. On day one. You don't need to tell everybody everything on day one. But. But to go through, go through the process of gently opening up and, and taking risks and discovering that the person still likes you. I think a lot of relationships fail because they're never true. They're more open with their friends sometimes than they are with their. With the person they're supposedly getting married to.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Yeah. Right. And so let me just add on to what you just said, that part of it is that if I really become vulnerable and let it in, that I might lose it. Yeah. The other side of that is that if I take it, I will violate a directive in my mind. So I have to reject what I get, which is what I want in order to. To honor a directive in my mind. Usually coming from some message from your caretakers early in childhood.

[Simon Sinek]

Are you talking about sabotage?

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Yeah, I'll sabotage what I want in order to maintain the status quo.

[Simon Sinek]

In other words, I like being in the state of seeking it because in some twisted way that makes me feel like. I don't know what that makes me feel.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Not quite. Let me give you an example. We wrote a book called Receiving Love.

[Simon Sinek]

And I had to learn that this

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

couple, they were not even a neurotic couple. They were, you know, like, they had really deep childhood needs to work through before they could even get to their relational needs. They owned a store. It was a. I don't know what. A store where they sold paper and pencils and all that sort of stuff. And it wasn't a big store, so they were the primary people in it. I think she would come to work, like 9 o', clock, would leave at 3 to go home and make dinner. He would have one or two other staff people managing that. Then he would come home at 6 o' clock to eat dinner. And so their pattern was, I go to work with you at nine, I leave at three, you stay till six, I go home at three to cook dinner. You come home and then we have dinner. And so then now, then the office with me. And what is the complaint? And she said, well, you never thanked me for fixing dinner. Well, this is not a Pathological complaint this is. I work with you all day. I go home and do another job. And you come home. And he said to her, well, I don't think people should get compliments for what their job is. That's what your job is. In our relationship, my job is to stay there from 9 to 6. Your job is to come home at 3 and fix dinner. And then I come home. You get three hours from three to six. Well, it's like, you know, some parents say to their kids, you know, don't complain about having to take out the trash. That's what you're supposed to do. You just do that without being complimented. Yeah, that's your job in the family. So he had that, and he said, you know, I'm not going to thank you for what you're supposed to do.

[Simon Sinek]

Right, right.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

So and so that made sense. So I said to him, peter, would you just stop and let Mary tell you what she wants? And so she said, well, what I would like is when you come into the door, that you would come find me. I'll be in the kitchen and you spin me around and hug me and tell me how grateful you are that I came home and fixed dinner. I said, do you think you could do that? She just said that. That. He said, well, sure, I can do that. So I said, less inactive to that. So you move up from thinking to enacting. So he did. First time, he did it sort of clumsily. Yeah. So we did it about the third time. He got it down, and he was having fun doing it and was appreciating it. And she said, no, no, don't, don't. Don't hug me anymore. I don't want anymore. You don't mean it. You just don't mean it. I was watching him. He did it perfectly. His tone of voice was warm and loving, and he was apologetic for not having done it before. He saw this could really be fun. He would really like to make that a part of their life. And the more he said, the more she said, no, no, no, I'm not going to do it. So I had this gut thing, and I said to her, mary, would you tell me what would happen if you accepted his appreciation now? Yeah. And she said, oh, my God. My mother would tell me that you don't deserve that. And if you get that, you should be ashamed of yourself for asking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a voice from her hippocampus showed up. Yeah. And she said, my God, I didn't even know that was back there. And she Just broke down and cried. Yeah. I didn't know. I can't even receive what I want because if I do, I'll disappoint my mother, and my mother's dead. How crazy is this? Well, it's not crazy. It's normal human stuff that gets triggered around the critical issues. Then I said, okay, well, now that you've got this clear, would you be willing now to let Peter come over and really hug you? And she said, please do.

[Simon Sinek]

That's delightful.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

So the breakthrough. See, she could not receive what she wanted.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Now, the reason I wrote a book on that was I had 20 couples in the same impasse, and I didn't know how to get them through it because I didn't know that they had an unconscious rejection of their wishes. Yeah.

[Simon Sinek]

So my experience was I dated an amazing woman who. Her love language was acts of service. And she loved to make me dinner. Right. And. Which was very nice. And she's a better cook than me. And it was a. It was a wonderful thing. But she wouldn't let me do the dishes. I always wanted to do the dishes if she cooked me dinner, which I was super grateful for, I wanted to contribute and I wanted to do the dishes. So it was egalitarian in the construction, and she always refused. She goes, no, no, no. I'm making you dinner and I'm doing the dishes. That's part of dinner. And it was very uncomfortable for me. And where I had to learn to receive love is I had to learn to put my own sort of desire aside and be like, well, this is how this person wants to express her love for me. I have to learn to receive it. And I did. I always was uncomfortable with it, but I learned to accept the love rather than be insecure about that I wasn't contributing. The relationship didn't survive, and we took a long break where we didn't talk for a long time. And then when we got together again, we sort of reconnected. And she said to me, I owe you an apology. And I said, what happened? She goes, in this time that I've had to think about our relationship. She said, I was so hell bent on taking care of you and giving you my love that I didn't give you the space to show me love back. Because you wanted to do the dishes as your expression of love, your act of service. And I denied you that opportunity. And. And it goes to the original theory of helping the other person have their needs met. It was such a beautiful, genuine place of wanting to love me. And I'M sure it's fulfilling some. Some unmet need as, you know, whatever it was. Going back to your. To your. Your point, I was so struck by. It was so meaningful for her to recognize that she. She was allowed to receive love as well, and she was somehow denying herself, like maybe that she felt unworthy of receiving love and recognized that. Bummed me out, you know, and it was this beautiful, beautiful reconciliation. And it's to your point of wanting to do the thing that made the other person have their needs met, which is to give love, to give service.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's beautiful. That's the perfect example of something in her unconscious. Yeah. Prevented her from receiving. Yeah. So she had to, in a sense, then deprive you of what you wanted to do, which was to give, so that the reciprocity, which is beautiful in a relationship couldn't happen.

[Simon Sinek]

It raises a nice, interesting point. You know, successful relationships are not equal. They're egalitarian. And.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Yeah.

[Simon Sinek]

And I think people sort of. It's really important to make the distinction, because equal is. I cook. You cook. I clean, you clean. I take out the garbage, you take out the garbage. That's equal. Egalitarian is, I'll cook, you do the dishes. Egalitarian is I'll put the kids to bed, you take the garbage out. Where both parties, they both feel whole because they feel like the other person is contributing, even though the. The act of contribution aren't exactly the same. Which is nice, because you get to do the things that sometimes you want to do, that you actually prefer doing, and the other person feels that you're doing the thing I don't want to do. Boy, this is a great relationship. But healthy relationships are egalitarian. They're not equal.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

I like that distinction. I hadn't thought about that. I use the word equality a lot, but I can see how egalitarian makes it a kind of teamship rather than a transaction.

[Simon Sinek]

You've been doing this for a long time.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Only about 50 years.

[Simon Sinek]

Only about 50 years. You said something early in our conversation which really, I think was so accurate and so right. I can't remember the exact words, but that dating is constructed around the norms of the day or the culture of the day.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Yeah.

[Simon Sinek]

And so it does change. And it changes from city to city, country to country. It changes in with time because it is a construction of its time. It is not some deep, biological, normal thing. This thing called dating. Right. I'm very curious. Over the course of 50 years, how have you seen dating change for better? And how have you seen dating change for worse?

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

So I don't think I have a terribly sophisticated answer to that. So let me just qualify what I'm going to say with it. I think dating paradoxically was better when people met physically face to face long ago, sort of like I did. You can't meet on the telephone, but you can meet on a zoom or you can meet on a. A dating site. There were no dating sites as I grew up. We all are noticing of the. Of the separation of the personal as the rise of technology has increasingly contributed to more and more indirect attempts to meet people through some technological encounter rather than through personal experience.

[Simon Sinek]

Right. I think that's a fair statement.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

And I think it'd be great to have dating sites in which after you scour the field, but to move once there is a connection of some kind, to move into the personal immediately rather than, you know, spend some time getting acquainted with or even going to Zoom or doing all that sort of stuff. The more impersonal, the fewer cues you have. I know technology is really not. The problem is our use of technology. That's the problem. There are things you can't pick up. Yep. Except face to face.

[Simon Sinek]

You're just advocating IRL in real life.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Advocating what in real life?

[Simon Sinek]

Telephones, you know, FaceTimes. They're perfectly valid ways of meeting somebody. They're perfectly valid ways of fostering relationships you're already in. But what you're saying is nothing can ever replace the magic of face to face. When in. In courtship and getting to know someone because so much is revealed that is subconscious when we are with someone that eventually will show up if we find ourselves in relationship.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

You're in an energy field right now. You're in an energy field. If you and I were in the same room, our energy fields would be intertwining and we would be feeling each other in different ways from the way we are now. We're still feeling each other, but it's mediated through this distance of the screen. So it's not as rich. It's not as rich and not as rich. Yeah, but. But it's okay. I mean, it's just different ways. But the realm of intimacy is a realm of intimacy. And that requires seeing, touching, holding, feeling and that. I'm fine for people to scour the world to find the right person, but then go see them, get together and.

[Simon Sinek]

Yeah.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Smell them and touch them and kinds of things.

[Simon Sinek]

You heard it here first. The next time you go on a date, make sure to smell the person

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

you're with exactly Meldom Harville.

[Simon Sinek]

My favorite guests are people who teach me something, you know, and I love to have people on here who know stuff that I don't know and I get and help me think through things. I so appreciate you letting me go through it with you. I have definitely smarter and richer about relationships now. And you're giving me so many good thoughts about even how I want to approach my own relationships moving forward and the construction that my commitment to the relationship. Assuming that I think someone is worth it and they think I'm worth it because it is a lot of work to commit yourself. To see that the other person's wants, needs and desires are met is a beautiful, beautiful thought. And I hope that I and everybody else finds the person that they want to make that commitment to.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Yeah, that would be wonderful.

[Simon Sinek]

And you clearly did.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Clearly did. Took me a while to work through the anxiety and mine was working through the anxiety of vulnerability. And my biggest need was visibility, but my biggest defense was vulnerability, which made visibility impossible. So I was a saboteur to my own journey. And we had to talk long enough until we felt safe enough in the conversation for the defenses to drop. And I think that is non negotiable that you have to be safe enough with the other person to be the real you. And now Helen and I, we don't have any struggle. We walk around playing and kidding. I don't have a sense of a need. She doesn't have a sense of a need. We may have a want, like I'd like to go for a walk or I'd like to go out to dinner or I'd like to have pizza for dinner, but we don't have needs. Yeah, the needs. We're cut off with the gratitude. And so all that's left is just our diversity and our difference, which becomes negotiable. We can say, oh, so you want X like the bedroom at the temperature every night is a conversation, but it's a fun conversation. I like that. If this heater would just work for us better.

[Simon Sinek]

I love this Harville. I love this. And I'm thinking my. I've done the same thing where I desperately seek being seen but don't give people insight enough to see the thing I want seen. So I'm clearly sabotaging. I'm clearly not going to get the thing that I want because I won't show them the thing that I want to be seen. It's such a beautiful magical paradox. I love, love, love the idea that you have no needs left and it's only just once. And how wonderful is that? We should all aspire to have a relationship where our needs are completely met and all we have left is once beautiful Harville. I'm so glad you said yes. I. I really. I think you're the best.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Well, thank you. I'm so glad that you asked me. I never have an idea of being interviewed by you, but just so I met you at ted, and it's like I met Simon Sinek, the guy that I admire so much.

[Simon Sinek]

Oh, you're too kind.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

I got to spend a whole hour

[Simon Sinek]

with you, so that's all my needs are met.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

All your needs.

[Simon Sinek]

I hope to see you soon and maybe, maybe we can do this one day in person.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

Oh, I would love that. I would love that. And I'm available anytime and I'll get

[Simon Sinek]

to know each other.

[Dr. Harville Hendrix]

This is the most fun conversation I can remember having.

[Simon Sinek]

Oh, thank you so much. As always, thanks for listening. And if you liked this episode, please do remember to subscribe to A Bit of Optimism wherever you you enjoy listening to podcasts and remember new episodes drop every Tuesday. A Bit of Optimism is a production of the Optimism Company, lovingly produced by our team, Lindsey Garbinius, Phoebe Bradford, and Devin Johnson. And if you want more cool stuff or just to find out what I'm up to, visit SimonCinek.com until next time, take care of yourself, Take care of each other.