How to start building a designer relationship

Want designer relationships? Want to show up as more of yourself and less of what others might expect, and help your partners do the same? Let's talk about some conversations, actions, and self-reflection that will help us get there. 

The following transcript was generated by machine, so enjoy the AI-flavored word choices and unconventional spellings of names.

You can find the podcast episode here

How to design a relationship that works for you

Joli Hamilton
Hey, good morning.

Ken Hamilton
Good morning.

Joli Hamilton
Now we're recording this episode. From our tent,

Ken Hamilton
it might be a short one because it gets kind of hot here in the morning.

Joli Hamilton
In the morning, it's beautiful in the evening.

I wanted to talk about designer relationships today. So designer relationships, the way I define them, it means a designer relationship is about creating the relationship. That is exactly what you want.

But there's a trick, because you're in relationship with other people. Oh, yeah. So I wanted to talk about the messiness that comes with knowing that you want more you want to be either creative, you want to you know, there's some some part of your relationship, you want to be different, or you want to really open up an experiment, or you're just not feeling like the way the relationship is right now isn't necessarily working. You don't even know exactly what it is you do want. But you've heard about creative monogamy, or design or relationships, or you've heard about opening up or you know, somebody who has, and so you're curious is like, is that a solution? But wanting your relationship to be different? Well, a really common thing that I hear from people who reach out to me is I know I need something to be different. I know I'm ready for change. One, I don't even know I don't even understand how to get my partner on the same page with me about wanting change

Ken Hamilton
wanting change, let alone what change? Exactly,

Joli Hamilton
exactly. So yeah, there's, there's some trouble there. Because? Well, I mean, you've been there before. I've been there before. Yeah. What happens when you hit a wall in the relationship that you're in? And you have to break news to someone? You have to like, you have to tell them this is what's happened? What's happening. And,

Ken Hamilton
yeah, and what are we going to do about it as in this relationship?

How to work toward growth oriented relationships

Joli Hamilton
Yeah. I mean, there are big changes and big adventures that can happen from the outside. So you and I have gone through big changes that were, we didn't have any say in them, my brother got sick. And we didn't have any say in him getting sick. And we both had a set of values that led us to make a set of decisions to help him through that time. That that happened to us sort of together in many ways. But sometimes a big change that comes along really sort of blossoms from within one partner or another. And I'm talking about couples here, because that's a lot of people who come to work with me are in a couple. There, they are happily in their Couplehood. And they've had an experience relatively recently, or sometimes it's been going on for brewing for a couple of years, where they realize that they they're experiencing a change. And so it doesn't feel like something's happening from the outside. This isn't about some external actor, like saying a change has to happen, this is about no one of us has changed is experiencing change. And that transformation? Well, I always say relationships are systems and systems respond to change, they do. So the change the changes that we experienced, while we're on our own individuation path, they open up our relationship to,

Ken Hamilton
to change to change. And I

Joli Hamilton
feel like this is bad news for some people. I occasionally I'll get somebody who shows up for a connect call with me. And even though they've tried 100 times to tell their partner or their spouse, hey, this isn't working. Their partner just isn't able to hear it. And that was my experience. My my first marriage was a lot of me saying, um, something's, something's changing, I'm experiencing a big change here. Help. I don't know what to do. But, but we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to change too. And I think it's okay. But I really I believe that this is a sticking point for so many people in getting to a spot where they feel like their relationship is actually working for them is working for them at all,

How to identify values, purpose, and wants in a relationship

Ken Hamilton

which is the goal, right? That's what we want. We want the relationship to be working for everybody involved in it. So you started with the concept of designer designing designer relationship? Yeah. And what are the elements of design for relationship? Yeah, and right away, I'm thinking of what are our values? There's what are what is what do we want? That's it. important. And then there's our values.

And what Matt got me thinking about that was your example of when your brother got sick, we didn't have explicit conversations about our values, but based on you know, I look back and based on our behavior, our values were aligned, right, you could see that in are the choices we made. So the values let us come to a very, very fast paced decision, like Oh, yep, this is how we will behave in this situation. And we didn't know whether it had an end point or like, we couldn't really tell what was going to happen. But the values did provide that foundation. And that's sort of an ideal scenario, right?

Joli Hamilton
But I see

How to manage individual change and growth in a relationship

Ken Hamilton
people use or align, yeah, just go. It's, it's

Joli Hamilton
obvious. But I see people who are experiencing an inner transformation, an inner shift and inner awareness, maybe they're feeling like they're waking up, maybe they're noticing that they they actively feel like a different person. But your partner isn't always ready to hear that when it's happening, right. And so something you and I promised each other during our our wedding ceremony, which it still shocks me that we even knew to do this, because we were still learning a lot like we were still making some serious mistakes around designing our relationship. But we promised each other to be more invested in growth. And each other's growth process, each other becoming an individual than we were to the idea that this relationship had to stay looking a specific. And I had promised to make in a way

Ken Hamilton
it is it was stepping away from something that I had totally taken out of the the monogamy culture. And it wasn't even about it wasn't about polyamory or non monogamy or anything, it was about individual growth. But what I had taken out of my previous monogamous

Joli Hamilton
relationships, well was that don't ask, don't tell, don't ask

Ken Hamilton
don't tell relationship was that the relationship had its own presents its own rights and values separate, to eat the values of either of the people in it. And so it was this anchor, like not in a good way. But in a is a ball and chain, like not being able to step forward, because that would change the relationship and the relationship had its own identity.

Joli Hamilton
So okay, so here's how I see this show up when couples come to me is the relationship has, has taken on a life of its own, in a way where it, it now actually overrides the individual desires, wants needs, both people Yeah. And some times that has been very comfortable for a long period of years. So oftentimes, what will happen is people get married, they, they they make a fool connection with each other. And they set up a standard, right, they set up their, their, their basic, usually implicit agreements about how things are going to go. And then they that's the flywheel that got going right now. It's now it's flowing. And now stuffs happening, right? We're building businesses, or we're getting new jobs, we're going to school and we're having kids and all that stuff. And that relationship having that structure and that wheat and that what I heard you describe was autonomy, the relationship with yourself having this sort of autonomous, rightness, goodness, truth, right. That's the flywheel. And it keeps going. And yet, in order to keep a flywheel going, something has to provide some input of energy and energy has to go into it. And frequently, I will see people where nobody's put energy into that system for a while. Or the energy that they're putting in his kind of row. It's like, out of obligation. That's where I met you, you were still putting energy into your first marriage. And when we first started really seeing each other as as close friends and intimates, it was you were putting energy in but it was out of obligation, right. And neither one of us can speak to what our partners were feeling. But obligation ran both of our relationships a lot. And that's if I could go back and do something over. One of the things I wish I could do is get clear on where I was acting out of obligation to preserve this, this autonomous force of the relationship versus showing up every day, knowing that we're all changing. We're all growing and that's the norm. The norm is change and growth. Because when people come to me and that flywheel is going in it's been carrying on but it's maybe it's it's just obligations was sort of moving at a slow pace and the relationship isn't feeling juicy and fast and exciting. Writing. But one or both of them may have experienced transformation on their own. But they have no idea how to put it into the system, right? So maybe one person has decided to get really involved in their passion projects, and maybe their their creative work has taken off, maybe another person has started delving into their their independent sexuality, perhaps completely within their monogamy bonds, but is really enjoying feeling pleasure in their body and looking for what lights them up. And that's all great. But because those things haven't been brought back into the relationship over and over again, in small ways, Oh, yeah. My wheels rolling, man, it doesn't have there's no room

Ken Hamilton
right? When you say you bring this big thing instead of the little independent individual little pieces along the way that you get to a point you're like, Well, let me see if I can jam this on. And the flywheel just spins it away. Just to extend the metaphor, like it's too big. And it it either stops the flywheel entirely, or is rejected.

Joli Hamilton
Yeah. So let me see if I can put this give a real example. Cool. So I worked with a couple recently, who was they were struggling because they still really, really enjoyed each other at a core level, they really, really loved each other. And they and they really enjoyed the life that they had built. But they both know that the life that they had built is also like it has to change. They're in the empty nest phase. It's, you know, it's coming upon them. And so stuff has to update and change. But over the years, the massive amount of energy, each of them has had to put into running their own businesses, parenting their kids, taking care of life, all of that means that they hadn't necessarily really made time to know who each other was in a growing, hey, you're a new person every day sort of way. And I get it, I understand why, you know, medical things happen and business stuff happens. We go through, we went through the 2008 recession, we've gone through a pandemic, there's all this stuff. And so we come home each day, and it can feel great to just be like, good. Here, I'm going to pretend like none of that change is happening. And I'm gonna just relax with you. But this couple found that after, yeah, a whole bunch of life going by, it was time for a reimagine. It was time for reimagine, because otherwise, they were really having a relationship with, like ghosts, like people who they used to know that they were

Ken Hamilton
okay. Yeah, that's, that feels, that resonates with me the idea of having a relationship with who somebody used to be. And I feel that in both directions, I know that I have done that to other people, right. And people have done that to me. And it's, it's tough to have a relationship like that to get to who we all each actually are.

Joli Hamilton
Right? So when it becomes performance, right performance, okay, say more about performance?

Ken Hamilton
Well, yeah, so. So speaking from my own experience, somebody, I have a collection of people in my life who treat me like I haven't changed from, you know, when I was a child, let alone from last year. And so they treat me in a particular way. And there's this implicit pressure to for me to respond to fill in my side of this, this expectation, this Yeah, the expectation, I was gonna say, obligation, but it isn't. They don't, they can't obligate me to do it. But there's this social pressure of treating me in a way. And I know how I used to respond to that. And I know that if I do I know how they're going to behave back. And, and so we cohesion,

Joli Hamilton
it's plot cohesion.

Ken Hamilton
Yeah, they don't want any plot twists,

Joli Hamilton
right? We're all together in this, right? And so if I need you to behave in the way that I expect you to behave, because that's how I'm writing this story. That is my world.

Ken Hamilton
And it's part of my, the stability of my world, and that you've seen, and I get it, because it can be very uncomfortable to find out that something that you were relying on, isn't true anymore. Right. Right. It's and so of course, I mean,

Joli Hamilton
if the new thing is good, even if the transformation is just in a great direction to actually feel destabilizing. Hmm, that reminds me of what happened with this couple. So they needed to reimagine. And what I noticed as they showed up week after week, so we did a relationship reimagine, which is a 90 day program that I take people through, and it's fairly intense because we need to drop into the deep stuff quick. But the reimagine process means having to notice not just where your partner is change but also where you have and what I noticed is with this with this particular couple, each of them how to break through Moment. And I would ask all of the listeners, if you're listening to this, and you're thinking you can't have a breakthrough moment. Just imagine this. When you wake up, who are you today? Who are you today? Ask yourself that question. And because each of them had moments where they saw themselves fresh and new, because they were reimagining the relationship, because they were in the container. So if you can wake up, and really take five minutes, right upon waking up, to just consider who am I today? Who am I now? What is it that I want? And you might need to do this on a day where you don't have to be in all of your obligations, just to allow enough space to really question it?

Ken Hamilton
Since cuz I know that yeah, the pressures and obligations of jobs and parenting and various other kinds of relationships can make it feel pretty tight to like, like, there isn't a lot of space to imagine something new in you, right? Because where, what are what's everybody else going to do about that?

Joli Hamilton
Right? So when you do this, because you're great at it, you you are really good at noticing, change and transformation in other people. Your your, I think my experience of you is that you're really

Ken Hamilton
hearing the emphasis on other, yeah, you're really good

Joli Hamilton
at noticing for other people. But you have struggled to notice it in yourself, you, you often will, will hold on to an image of yourself, too. So I hear you talking about people from your past who treat you like your past version of yourself. The interesting thing to me is you often imagine that you're worse than you are. You imagine that you haven't done the growth work that you have, like you forget to update your identity. This is my experience of you. Yeah,

Ken Hamilton
I see what you're saying, I don't always trust it. I'm like, oh, maybe that was just like, I had a good day. Versus I've learned how to be like, I've grown. And now my, my values have shifted my choices shifting, or maybe I just had a good day. So that's how I approach it. And it leaves me in a place I think this might be where you are getting it leaves me in a place to respond more quickly to other people's expectations of who I am based on who I used to be like, Okay, I'll just I'll be that person for them and for me,

Joli Hamilton
right? Versus, and the reason I think this matters is because if we're talking about designer relationships and wanting to create, to create a relationship that works for the US that we are now. Right, right, then I need to be able to update my idea of who I am and who you are. And I find that different clients respond differently, right. So some people are really, they're really able to turn to their inner world and like and notice the changes and transformations that have happened for them. And some people are more easily able to notice how their partner has transformed and changed. And, really, we want to have both, we want to have access to both your you notice change in me really, really well. And it's been key to me that you've reflected that to me in quiet moments of appreciation. In moments of like, saying, I see I see what you've done, I see how you have, you know, like noticing, Hey, I see you went to school and you learn these things, but more importantly, that you incorporated that into who you are. And when you reflect that back to me I'm able to really embody my transformation really embody my growing up my continued growing up in a way that i don't know i i could

Ken Hamilton
because I like to celebrate it speeds it up. Yeah. Well, I I hope my intention is for it to be positive feedback, celebrate the changes celebrate the growth and, and observing how. And this is because I know you observing how those things line up with changes I know you've been wanting to make in your life. Yeah, yeah. So if I if I show you that I see that I and then you can see that. You're not just imagining it, which is what you were talking about how I don't see change in myself. I don't always notice in myself because I can easily imagine that something else is happening. But if somebody else says this is what I see independently, it helps strengthen the belief that oh, this actually did happen.

The ingredients of a designer relationship

Joli Hamilton
Okay, so I want to tie some of this together because we have I have people who come to me all the time and I know that you're out there listening to this because you care about the idea of designing your relationship And in order to design the relationship you want, there are a bunch of raw ingredients you're going to need, you're gonna need to know who you are not a small feat, your partner ideally would know who they are, you're gonna need to commit to a path of growth and change because designer relationships. The whole concept of having a custom made creative relationship is you're going to create your relationship. We're going to create your relationship. So we got to know what we're working with here. And so I think some of the basic tools that we talked about quite a bit on this show would come in handy. Doing a values exercise is one Oh, yeah, doing your values exercise, which just means, you know, you can turn to I think is chapter seven in the book, I'm not sure which, which chapter it is. In Project relationship, there's a values exercise, no, my know your values, know, your relationships, purpose, get clear on what your relationships with purpose is. So we've done previous episodes on this, you can go back and listen to just episode 65. Even we talked about values and purpose and getting clear on what your values and purpose are. But also, you can commit to being in a growth process all the time, because that's a leveling up, most of us get married, hoping for stability, right? Most of us join our households or whatever, for stability. And sometimes we mistake. stasis. Yes, right? Exactly the same for stability. But creatively making your relationship what you want, means that you gotta be okay with the fact that it's gonna be dynamic stability,

Ken Hamilton
right? Where we're stable standing still, but we can also be stable walking, right? Yeah,

Joli Hamilton
or stable moving in a lot of ways. In a lot of ways. This is reminding me of the fact that, you know, there are stable dynamic systems all over the place. But we don't pay as much attention to them. They're like, they looked at the dynamic part. Looks like the part we should pay attention to. It's moving. That's probably going off down a tangent, but so I'm hearing that values, exercise purpose, exercise would be useful. And the other thing that's coming to mind is, rituals. Oh, when you want to set up a new relationship agreement, when you want to come to like, Hey, okay, let's design this relationship. It's always going to be important to figure out what it is you're agreeing to. And, you know, sometimes when I talk about relationship agreements, people are like, okay, great. Give me like the long checklist, what should we? What kinds of things? What should we agree to, and that's important, and that, the more the more you can get into the details of your relationship agreements? Yeah, great, you're gonna get more, you're gonna move more stuff from the implicit column to the explicit column. And I love that. However, there's some really basic stuff that you might want to work on to some really basic, hey, can we agree to growth as a primary, you know, movement in our relationship? Or can we agree to acknowledging that we're going through change? Could we agree just to being present for each other and putting our phones down? When we spend an hour together each day? I read a study somewhere not too long ago, that said that the average couple spends, like four minutes alone each day. Okay. And that's just not a lot. That is not enough to maintain a dynamic and stable system.

Ken Hamilton
No, no, that's, that's not going to sustain a desirable system. And what I hear you saying is the explicitness of agreeing what what are we doing, bringing bringing out and saying directly? Yeah, what, what your goals are, what your purpose and values and growth orientation are?

Joli Hamilton
And, yes, I'm getting clear. And I say simply getting clear, but I don't think it's simple for most people. And it wasn't simple for me to start making my expectations into actual negotiated agreements, right. Implicit expectations are the polar opposite of explicit negotiated agreements. But it's not easy for most of us to do that, because it means it means risking asking for what we want, and showing who we actually are now. So what's something these days that's been challenging for you to bring to me over and over again, as you've been growing into

Ken Hamilton
a challenging thing to bring to you? I don't know if this is the kind of answer you're looking for. But I still struggle to bring to you. The things that are going to cause you trouble, like to bring you things that I know are going to make you feel like things are more complicated or that they're, they feel

Joli Hamilton
like so anytime you think you might be upsetting that stable

Ken Hamilton
Yes, yeah, that's I have trouble bringing Yeah, bringing that stuff in. Yeah.

Joli Hamilton
Yeah. I, I hear you. And I would say, yeah, that is I see the trouble that that is for you. And I see how I reinforced that fear by by sometimes responding in ways that show you that. Yeah, it is gonna be a little scary. Bring me one of those things.

Ken Hamilton
Yeah. And I have occasionally made the statement. It's like, okay, I'm going to commit myself to, to bothering you to upsetting you. When, when I like I'm just gonna, because if I don't say it out loud, like, there's so much in me that's like, oh, all caretaker II and let's keep this all.

Joli Hamilton
Nice. You know, I guess the logical route of nice is ignorant.

Ken Hamilton
That's very important. Because

Joli Hamilton
sometimes you don't want to tell me things. And then because you would rather leave me in blissful ignorance. You'd rather leave me thinking that the thing? Everything's staying the same. Nothing's the same. We're in a time. No, it's

Ken Hamilton
but yeah, I have so so that's the thing you have

Joli Hamilton
behind there. Right? It's, it's partially for you, and partially for me. But the but the, but it doesn't work. Because all that happens is that stuff builds up. Right? So

Ken Hamilton
that's, that's the thing that I miss about that as I'm like, Okay, right. Now, I see that you are currently dealing with a whole bunch of things. And I don't want to give you another one. But by holding it back, it gets bigger. And so later, okay, you're not dealing with all these other things now, but here's one that's huge, right? So that doesn't work. In fact, and I forget that, and I'm like, No, this, this will be better later. The second be the same later, it's gonna be worse, it's gonna be bigger, it's gonna be more of the thing I'm trying to avoid.

Joli Hamilton
Oops. So a habit in our relationship is that I will bring you a million small things. So you can feel like you're being constantly, you know, drip down by one drip of water, you can feel that and but you are more likely to hold on to a whole bunch of stuff. And then just like push, you need to tell it all to me. Here's the Brachiosaurus read from the Flintstones. Yeah, a little overwhelming, right. And so those are different ways of being in the world. And in all likelihood, neither of us is going to remarkably shift that we're in our mid 40s, mid 50s. Like, we're not, we're probably going to maintain those habits unless we make a really pointed effort to change them. So even just now, hearing you talk about how you don't want to bother me is a reminder to me to invite you to bother me. Oh, to invite you to bother me which is why we have some of our rituals

Ken Hamilton
committing to your part of that those exchanges, right.

Joli Hamilton
So yeah, so and so inviting in the discomfort but also the rituals give us a time when we are supposed to bring these things out. Right, right, we have a couple of things that we do we have our our recalibration talk or weekly. Some people call it a relationship check in. I call it celebrations and recalibrations because I want to focus on the way that we're celebrating each other. And also reset for the following week. But we also have some big ones, we have some big markers, we have our three year renegotiation of our whole relationship. And we have some monthly things that we check in about because they're about running a household together, the things that yeah, all of those ritualized those things. And how we do this, we do it in a specific place, we usually have a specific food attached to each of these things. And having those rituals helps us create intentional space. And I've noticed that for you the intentional space is especially helpful when you want to bring to me something like so I don't know whether I want to do the particular work I'm doing anymore, or I don't know whether I'm I want to have a relationship look this particular way something big like that, the ritual creates space for it. And I would say that I have a similar thing. The ritual space because my stuff is little, little little, it can feel like I've never really coalescing it into something. So the base gives me a chance to reflect a little bit and bring it to you in a more cohesive way. Okay,

Ken Hamilton
that's a good list of stuff.

Joli Hamilton
So these are some ways that we deal with creating our designer relationship and letting ourselves be dynamic, creative individuals who

Ken Hamilton
are in relationship and support each other. If

Joli Hamilton
you're curious about the relationship reimagined. Absolutely. You can reach out to me you can go to talk to joli.com and apply to work with me if you're interested in a relationship reimagined conversation. Yeah, and either way, we'll learn whether you know Working with me is is the right fit for you. And if you're not there, but you're ready to take a step for yourself, I invite you to start today. Don't wait. Relationships are messy and that's good news and I say that all the time, but in this way, for real,

Ken Hamilton
yeah, I keep talking to each other