break from the increasingly dysfunctional culture out there containing toxic levels of hate violence war poverty mindless distraction and trauma becomes a necessity i was very fortunate to have a chance last week to go to rural east texas and be at a retreat with the alternative health activist gary null it was possible to be immersed in the beauty of nature and with the community where relationships were based on loving positive energy it reminded me once again how we as social animals need so much to be with people who have the capacity to care to be creative to nurture can laugh and have fun to love these are the sorts of people who can radiate positive energy about just how wonderful this world is and can be these are the people who can imagine and help create alternatives and new beginnings to build a more loving culture and a more progressive world what's equally important is to bring the lessons learned and that renewed energy back to the larger world that desperately needs it i am extraordinarily blessed to have been able to come back to an individual who in her extraordinary way personifies this positive life force she's my wife bt and she's our guest on the show today we met in our late teens and early twent took a couple of the tours as she puts it and are back together my love forever and beyond beatty is a psycho therapist sex therapist a nationally acclaimed author of a unique book on how to rate your mate which i passed right ok i did ok has been a national media expert guest and consulted host of the top radio top rated radio call in show in providence rhode island called appropriately ask bt and today is the host of the ask b d show on the progressive radio network sheets even showed her comedic talents on the daily show where she collaborated with samantha bee and a whole larry a welcome sweetie to the radical imagination this is quickly and through so and love and marriage would never leave you but people are leaving each other right right and left love isn't leading to successful or happy marriages well when you see them all the time and you know about this so what's going on then well some of the answers if it's true i mean we're looking and a very high divorce rate i mean intercourse rate for first marriages is a little under fifty percent for a second marriage is that number goes up to sixty three percent and for third marriages it's seventy two percent so we're not learning anything you know the more we're marrying there are some real issues and less people are marrying is that true too yes less people are definitely marrying but i am very very clear so i have a lot of good news that i want to share with with the audience look at the negative stuff out first right well ok the negative stuff where we there's so much negativity that we're always you know talking about it we're viewing in the in the media you know what i'm looking at the domestic violence that is degrade i mean do you realize that between three to five women every single day are killed by their so called intimate partner so we're not we're not doing well but there's really really good news that i have that i want to share with everybody and after almost forty years that i can't believe that i've been practicing as a psychotherapist and as a sex therapist i'm very clear about what the issues are and also be very very clear about what we need to do so first of all first of all this is now when you're talking about deciding whether to commit to a relationship is things there are three things that people have to know about number one each of us really needs to be in a good place a motion alee psychologically psychiatric if we are ever and that is something that i have found to be true if we are ever going to be able to have a successful relationship with anybody we need to be ok and you know as i tell my patients all the time relationship needs to be the icing on the cake we need to be the k we need to be the foundation so we have to be prepared we have to be serious to work through our issues our family of origin issues our depression or anxiety our traumas our early child sexual abuse our substance abuse issues we need to do the work and acknowledge and address and resolve our issues as best as we can even though we cannot change our history and also within the culture there's increasingly more dysfunctional more full of hatred and venom makes it even more difficult we are  clear within ourselves whether or not the choices that we are making are positive choices or whether they're negative choices i mean i see people in my practice here in new york city and induced him to all the time when they're just kind of going around on a merry go round and they're not clear about why relationship number one or marriage number one is is ending in the same way is relationship number ten and they want love the all want right the world needs and wants we need love so going around as you see in circles we're going around in circles and don't know why and people who come to me hopefully are are serious about figuring this out but number one we've got to be ok we've got to take care of our unfinished business and what i call our skeletons in the closet and many many people would like to just bypass that whole area and kind of wait and hope that we're going to a bandage on the trauma that there is a way to emotionally work through what did and what didn't happen in your early life so that you are then able to really live in the moment because if you don't do this you always have one foot in the past and one foot in the present so that is really the first secret that people have to be able to sew together by dealing with those past traumas and skeletons in the causes and current issues and current issues that are as well products of those unresolved conflicts exactly so it's going to take a little bit of work and it doesn't mean that people are go be in therapy for a thousand years but this is the first and most important step if you're really really serious about having a successful relationship with anyone so we need to be ok first number two and this is something really really interesting that i discovered over the years when i finished my post graduate work at mcgill in canada i started off in the inner city world in the school social services world and many of the people that i saw were from various different parts of the world and were waiting for the welfare checks to come at the end of the month it was tough they were living in poverty it was a new country there was new languages that they needed to to learn and you know the the rate the reality is is that in the last i would say twenty five years so many of the patients and people that i've treated are in quotes the successful rich and famous people of the united states and what really was interesting to me jim is that whether or not you are rich or poor or black or white or hispanic or gay or straight or buyers thought i heard trans we all need to take personal responsibility and learn what ingredients actually go into a successful that as we know life isn't fair some have more opportunities a better education or you know a more loving parent parental experience and so on but still whatever it may be take responsibly for that and learn what ingredients actually go into a successful relationship and the people who i see who are at columbia university and harvard  know was little about all this so it's not a socio economic thing it is about being serious and realizing that we need to do some work we need to read we need to take some courses perhaps we need to have some some therapy and figure this out but first you have to even be aware that you need to figure out why you can't do that i mean you could as you do go on media and sort of say this but people themselves have cut to come to the point where they say hey i don't do this right right and i don't know what a healthy successful relationship is and then when you think about it jim where are people supposed to learn this ok they can learn on you know the radical imagination and look at learn if they watch it and shows but if people were not fortunate enough to grow up in families where they saw healthy relationship dynamics i mean that was the beginning that was where we learned you know about love and relationships and then you look at the at the school system who teaches relationship education in any of the schools being taught in well i've been out of six hundred three now right for almost thirty years i ran the school social services program with two other colleagues through the entire province of quebec the english schools and of course in canada we did not worry about bad and we don't worry about health care so i didn't have to worry about asking for money to design and implement relationship education programs which i did and my programs began at the kindergarden level and i was like a little idea of what you were doing that you were you brought marlo thomas is work yes tells just you know what how did you good friend what are some of the things a good friend does or if it taught you know if you're talking about expressing emotion and communication so how would you express your anger if you're not upset with somebody and somebody might say this and somebody might say that we'd say no there's another way would be a better way no it's not a good thing to scream it's not a good thing really throw your sewer around the house  be a good thing so we were able to with that very very early early stage of development begin to teach the kids how to say it you know where to say it how to be  remember the schools they they allowed me to you know it was an hour a week out of the of the children's curriculum in that i train my staff and they when we go we en and they would do this is well but of course we were there to quebec was so it was so exciting for all of the news about the elementary forms of love yes is love and how to express it not to get and the kids were able to and they were naturally yes into this now oh it's a kindergarten so what happened first second grade third grade and to new day yes it it did continue in different ages in different issues and we would go into the classrooms with a year by year and we were talking about you know dating and what does it mean to be a good friend and what does it you know teaching people about you know what is a really good way to express anger so it's not just about love but it's about really being able to be in touch and learn how to express the full gamut of emotion love and upset in disappoint me and him and frustration and we did this and it was so no it was just so it was fun for us and it was so so so task of you know myself and my staff you know was to provide therapy for that for the kids who were experiencing issues you know in the classroom everything from depression and anxiety and eating disorders and in those days you know we would make home visits and it was a very comprehensive systemic way of doing school social services in fact a patient of mine is a school social worker and she was telling me last week to a successful relationship and then number three is my formula ok and this is where half and i was in private practice in providence rhode island and i remember it was a friday evening and i had seen all these terrific students primarily from brown university my office was three blocks away from brown and i remember i was thinking you know what happened during this particular day and what i realized is that people had absolutely no idea how to assess who was right for them and who was wrong for them so there was all of this complaining and disappointed and be moaning and you know and  diagnosis i need to be able to find out who they really are and who they are not and it takes a little bit of time and what i realized is that the very same thing that i need to find out about people is exactly the same thing that everybody in the world needs to find out about people who they would like to have a close relationship with you know and i laugh because jim before i did the research and i did research with four hundred fifty people which is a significant you know that people in the providence connecticut and boston area and so i devised this formula and before the formula i would meet someone i would me anyway and i would say i like them i'd say i met this to reflect manner i met this lovely woman who's bright and nice i would never ever ever think anything like that  wouldn't know who anybody was or was not unless i went through this assessment process and when you think about it people spend and then norma's amount of time assessing what cellphone to buy in which property to buy in what may be school to send their kids to or what dress to buy or what shoes to buy and we don't think about it at all when it comes to our relationships so after the  the research i had a book and the book was published by a publisher boston for better for worse for ever discover the path to lasting love and there are ten different areas of discovery but just to go back from it to also before we get on to ok but there are people from the introduction there that radiate a positive energy you did and i that's when i about that right yeah we know and we feel that now what you're saying is we need to go what much further much much much much further i mean somebody can exude positive energy but we have no idea whether or not they have great communication skills or problem solving skills or whether they're capable of emotional intimacy or whether they have and i'm kind of going through the formulae here a little rant but again you're differentiating between let's say meeting someone who's wild to rick and wonderful and this ok you want to get to know them and more and really decide if you're interested right that's all that's important distinction right that you're making here right again right to only be around people who sued a lot of positive energy but i don't assume for a moment that i will know who they are and that's why the the former every body i wish i had had this formula when i was starting out ok my relationship life and life would have been much much easier told me didn't have this formula when we first met well i was really i is this is stuff that everybody is interested right yes there you longing for this i mean you know so yes here they have to be serious and they have to be willing to really go through this process so family background you know if you're dating somebody and you don't want to put somebody on on on trial you want to find out you want to know what they learned from mom and dad if there was a mom and dad and if there wasn't what they learned from growing up about love about communication whether or not there was  what that person learned or or didn't learn you know well being friendly way in a very loving friend way because you're not doing diagnostic tests and i mean that would really be a turn off but what i want people to really know is that because somebody was unlucky and grew up in a really dysfunctional home where there may be an abusive where there may have been terrible communication and problem solving or not existing communication  make you don't throw that person away but what you want to hear and not only do you want here you want to see because it's not what you say it's what you you actually do you want somebody to say you know i did i grew up and it was really really tough but i have done everything that i can i've read i've taken courses i've been to therapy because i don't want to repeat in my relationships or in my marriage what happened tenuous and they need to hear that from the embers they make they're not hearing it and yet you can't force this on to something right so you can't you can't force anything on anyone you can only encourage  encourage change so again because you know your partner somebody that you're dating you know had an unfortunate beginning that that's not necessarily going to be a red flag but the proof is going to be in the pudding as you play out the relationship did that person in fact do their homework so that even though they learned nothing about communication or nothing about problem solving or there was verbal abuse  sexual abuse and emotional abuse and physical abuse were they able and war they wanting and did they do the work so that they were in a place where they were living in the one person against the other it's how can we boast when exactly and of course problem solving is huge and you know people will ask be all the time you know i've interviewed in various different media being you know what are the two most important ingredients that make or break relationships and it isn't sex and in it it is not i mean sex of course is very important and we can talk about that money but it is a motional communication and problem solving because if people do not have the capacity and it's a film it's like tennis if it's like baseball if they don't have the skills then you're not going to be able to get we're in position in your relationship whether or not you're talking about money or or sex or any don't know you could hurt each other and hurt yourself and just take things in the becomes damaging it becomes more and more imagine ever yeah like robert goulet right i mean people have to learn the skill of of conversation i mean how many people can really have a really good conversation especially if there are differences so there is a a process that people have to go through where there is discussion and if there are differences you want to be with somebody where you're going to be able to negotiate and then c and tradeoffs and then you're looking you know to a win win resolution but then again jim there are certain compromises that people must never ever ever make in and that has to do with you know poor  even once in a while of the recreational drug use or drinks once a week well drinking once in a while it is not and not an issue i mean i have a patient right now who is dating a man who is an alcoholic and he told her very very clearly he will not stop drinking and what she's doing is she's you know going into his car imagine looking under the seat to see whether there's another bottle of vodka and you know the red flag it's a huge red and lag and in my conversations with her and she has a lot of issues you know she'll say well he's really handsome and he's really nice and he really has potential and you know the sex is good but every other day she doesn't know whether or not he is going to be drunk whether or not he is going to be verbally abusive to her and it's starting the verbal abuse is actually starting you know the more he drinks the more out of control he is and i said to her he was really honest with you he told you absolutely directly i will not stop drinking you can take it or leave it and she's in a place where she does not have great self esteem and she has a lot of issues that we're really trying to you know really work hard she may take it and then she's going to have to deal with the consequences of making a really really bad decision but you brought up something very important i know the audiences sexiness the attraction the charisma there what a great role that's that's great sure how what does that play how does that play in this whole formula in the scheme of getting to know people it's very important and we're not doing well in the bedroom in the united states and all cite a study that was done at western pittsburgh psychiatric hospital interesting is that there were one hundred couples who defined their marriages as happy or very happy at least jim on a conscious level they were not in therapy but maybe they should have been in therapy because the results of the study were really interesting fifty percent of these happy and very happily married women had difficulty becoming aroused and additional thirty five percent of these women had difficulty experiencing orgasm and fifteen percent of these women were unable to experience orgasm under any circumstances at all and with the man and this is interesting a third of the man for third of the man had ejaculation and i want to tell all the man out there it is a really really easy easy problem to resolve and this is to stick even really surprise me that fifty two percent of men between the ages of forty to seventy had problems with erectile dysfunction and that is a really high high number it's also related to the capacity to communicate to feel yes and to trust yet intimate and so on so it's often can be i'm sure physiological but yes it's tied into one's one's ability to here that's that's true you know it's only a part of it ok so if you're looking at the reasons why people have problems in the bedroom again if particularly for women although certainly for men as well i mean if you're suffering from you know untreated depression or anxiety or or substance abuse i mean all of these things or untreated early child sexual abuse or actual harassment or all of these things are going to play in to your sex life i mean i had a patient on saturday a young woman of twenty one who's a barnard student and she told me that she was really really concerned that she had no sex drive at all and as we went through her history during her whole childhood she was involved in a terrible terrible legal divorce that you ation where she was just going from her mother to her father  was she when that was happening from the age of two on and it went and it went throughout her entire her entire childhood and through her through her adolescence and then she told me that she was involved in a very very physically abusive relationship with a student a fellow student who forced her to have sex although then she said well he didn't really forced me she wanted to have sex but she wasn't sure she did and and then she wondered why she had no sex drive and i said to her i said listen you know this is not going to be a question of just sex therapy i mean there are a lot of underlying issues that really needed to be you know sorted through to help her understand why why understandably she had you know really no sex drive at all and yet when she masturbated she did so at least and i think her at that said that that was a really good thing right that it was there but it could manifest itself with another of things that we're people who are listening to music the media the cinema the larger culture a president who actually for that matter series of political leaders who are seemingly that's really really scary you know that thirty percent of college coeds are reporting or maybe they're not actually officially reporting that they've been either sexually harassed or sexually abused  in some fashion the other thing that i have been talking about on my ass b d radio show on the progressive radio network is that porn the porn sites i mean there are millions and millions and millions of people who are watching porn on a regular basis and some of the younger women that i treat are telling me that their boyfriends or their partners are really kind of expecting them to be playing out the role of wanted to do but a lot of these young women are all are almost feeling like they are in some sort of a competition with the women porn stars then these boyfriends or with these young men are not as young men you know are watching so there are a lot of conflicting a lot of conflicting messages and one of the things here in new york that really surprises me is that i find people very repressed when it comes to being able to talk about sex there's a real discomfort even in my women's networking groups that i attend plenty of things and so how do we narrative i think we need to we need to somehow make it be ok that sex just like in your intro about love and marriage i mean some people don't want to get married and that's fine too  this is just a normal part of life and that it's found and it's good it's enriching and it can add so much to our relationship but people have a lot of hangups and the other thing that i talk about a lot is the sexual side effects of all the different prescription medications that people are taking all of the antidepressant medications in the anxiety the anti anxiety medications and the cholesterol medications and it goes on and on and on and people really i mean that's not to say that nobody should be taking any of these medications but these are conversations that people really need to have with their with their doctors and they have to ask about sexual side effects i mean in my world of you know psychotherapy drugs you know well butin is an example of an antidepressant is one of the only antidepressants that has few of any sexual side effects and all of the other long lives of antidepressants have significant significant sexual side effects of these are conversations if you have to with i was just thinking i would be surprised if where last monday was my two hundred and twelve show on gary knowles progressive radio network info very exciting and love to do the show appreciate people's calls and comments and we can debate and has so much more to talk about so the proof is in the putting and it's not what people say it's really what they do and as you get to know somebody you have to really look at things like substance abuse of various different kinds of verbal abuse sexual abuse physical abuse emotional abuse and you want to know in a more positive you know sort of way of looking at things whether or not your partner is capable of emotional intimacy the caring in the sharing in the loving in the respect and the trust and all of this is only going to be visible to you when you actually play this thing out my research found that it takes close to a year to really find out who somebody is and isn't and of course to see where you're here so i'm on ther take the time and of course the emotional communication and the problem solving and there's lots to talk about you know money and saxon children and religion and all of these kinds of conversations and yeah those on on you and if people are having trouble they should not be reluctant to reach out to a really good qualified they're pissed and it's not a weakness it's strength and it really can you know change your and i love you so much and i love you so much reverend beyond yes thank you so very much for being out of the show it sped by and thank you very very much again all of you out there for watching us on the radical imagination this is jim brett it was your host who see you again next week and we're going to go out with appropriately louis armstrong singing it's a wonderful world great and then right after that short clip from rever william barber going on how we can build a more loving world and community the poor people's campaign and talk more about that this is all part of this wonderful radical love and giving that you are so wonderful in your whole persona p d and i blessed to have found you and we found each other and thank you again so very much for being on the radical imagination see you all next week didn't call for us to go find every militia member and kill them because they knew that hate only leads to more hate hate wants us to read in this moment hate wants us to be cynical and this moment but we must remember that down through the years and i question sometimes the media this is this is the worst well we've got to be careful about this is bad my god it's bad but we need to understand it in our past people have faced worse and they still did not give in to the and so as i conclude we cannot in this moment my unit turn friends fall into hate strap we cannot become cynical we cannot go hide behind our walls of quarantine no no we cannot lose faith in faith and hope and love and justice we cannot hear into the politics of hate and we surely cannot do this we cannot allow those who have us who have been our history the commonality of suffering from hate but we also know from history that all too many those who have won the day are those who chose in the midst of hate those who chose not to let hate define their lives those who rose from the crucifixion of hate to the resurrection of love of truth and justice my brothers and sisters this is the time that we we will speak up we will stand up we will come together and we were built we will make sure that love justice and equality and nonviolence hands the first