00:00 

Well, hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 294, "The 90-Day Relationship How to." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:21 

Alright. Hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast today. Greetings from Samoa. My husband and I have just finished week one of four here and it is so beautiful. Really, it just blows my mind that people get to live in places like this. It is so pretty and the air is so fresh and beautiful and you can smell the flowers as you walk down the street. It's just amazing, just beautiful, enjoying it a lot. And it was my birthday this last week. I turned 56. Isn't that amazing? I just think the 50s, my 50s, have been my favorite decade ever. I feel that I've really been able to draw from a lot of wisdom and understanding that I've gained over the years and that I still have the ability to use it and I still have the physical strength and health to go out and do and have amazing adventures. And so I feel like this is just such a culmination of all the good things in our lives. I love it. 

01:30 

And I am coming up on five years of podcasting, which blows my mind. I know that a lot of people are like, "I don't know how you do this kind of stuff." And I'm like, "I don't know either." I just show up and do it because it's what I want to do. And I don't know that I would have ever thought that I could do something every week for five years like this, because this is a lot of work by the time I write a podcast and record it and get it posted and do all this stuff. I'm looking at generally somewhere between three and four hours a week. And to think that I have done this for five years every week blows my mind. In fact, the first six months I did two podcasts a week because I wanted to get some content out there and I'm just kind of amazed at myself. And I think all of us have this ability to amaze ourselves if we just make up our minds to do something. I just really felt called to do this podcast. And I would like, if this podcast is helping you, if you're finding content here that is just like, "okay, this helps me make sense of my own story..." I know that my story is not gonna resonate with everybody, but if it's helping you make sense of yours, I bet you anything that there are people in your life who could also use this content. Please share it with them. I think it has had the power to change my life. And I know it has the power to change others because I've seen it and I've experienced it. 

02:50 

Also, if you are interested in this emotional and physical intimacy discussion group that I'm going to start in March, once I get back to the United States, make sure that you are signed up on my my website for my email that I send out. It's called the "Weekend Win." You'll want to go to the "contact me" button. You'll want to scroll down just a little bit and you can sign up for my "Weekend Win." That's an email that just goes out every weekend, most weekends, not quite as consistent with that as I am with the podcast, but pretty darn consistent. That's where the information is going to come out first. If you want to make sure that you are one of the first to know about that, make sure that you get signed up for my email. 

03:41 

That being said, we are going to talk today about the 90-Day Relationship How-to. I know I've had a lot of people over the years ask me about my 90-Day Relationship thing and how it worked and how can they do it. In fact, I have a really great friend right now who has used it and she just has met the love of her life doing this and showing up in this way and they're planning a wedding in June and they just met in November. Just amazing to me what we do when we stop playing games and when we start stepping into honesty and vulnerability. And this is what the 90-Day Relationship allowed me to do, and taught me how to do. This is the process that I used to date once I got really serious about dating. I had dated a little bit here and there, and come and go, and stuff before and not necessarily had great experiences. I had one experience that was really horrific. The most were just kind of like, you know, nice guy, whatever. But once I really decided to get serious, this all fit together. 

04:48 

So it was in January of 2021. I had had that experience with my coach that I talked about last week where she was just like, "well, Tanya, you just don't choose the same kind of person," and I'd had that in probably October or November of 2020. So it was in January of 2021 and Brooke Castillo, the founder of the Life Coach School where I certified, had started dating someone and they did what they called a 90-Day Relationship and she and her boyfriend did a five-part discussion on how they executed it, and I was enthralled by the first series. It was one of those things that when you hear it, you just know it's for you. Like, I was just drawn in immediately and I'm like "oh that sounds like me, that sounds like my thing." So Brooke would later on create an actual course for a 90-Day Relationship and but that didn't come out for another nine months or so, but I was ready to go and I didn't need a course to jump off a cliff. Like I just felt like "this is my thing, I'm going to do it." 

05:40 

So here is the basic premise: you create a 90-day container for a relationship. It's a place to really practice showing up the way you want, cleaning up dysfunctional patterns of behavior, learning to communicate in ways you haven't before, learning to love in ways you haven't before. One of the things that made it work so well for me was that it put me in a committed relationship for 90 days. I couldn't just cut my losses and skip out when things got hard, and neither could he. We really had to put into practice the communication and the relationship tools that we were learning and that we were learning how to implement. So though I don't remember all the specifics of Brooke's plan, I did create my own form of it going forward, because it sounded like such a great fit for me. And as I mentioned last week, I wasn't much for playing dating games. If I was going to date for more serious reasons, I didn't want to waste a lot of time. And this process seemed like a way for me to get in, practice some good skills, see if it was a good fit, and either move forward or get out. And that's kind of my kind of dating; I don't like playing games. 

06:47 

So another part of the 90-day premise that I felt was super important for me was a sense of openness and honesty that I knew would be very difficult for me. My previous marriage didn't involve a lot of vulnerability. There was so much peacekeeping and not letting my wants and needs be known. And I knew I needed to learn how to be healthier in this regard. I don't remember if this was part of what Brooke talked about, but it was a part that I intuitively knew had to be a part of it for me. I had spent 24 years not showing up as fully me. And I was beginning to understand that that was a big part of the problem in my previous marriage. So as I formulated what a 90-day would look like for me, I did the cleaning up of my profile and the dating strategies that I talked about last week on the podcast. And I got to work. 

07:35 

So my first 90-day was a man that I'm just going to refer to as 90-Day Number One. And I chronicled this journey in podcast number 162. I think I recorded that about 10 days after we had decided it wasn't a good fit. And there's some tears in that podcast. It was a difficult thing to break up with him, but also the best thing, right? It was what we knew needed to happen. So he and I had met on an LDS dating site, and I had followed the pattern that I shared with you last week. I jumped in pretty quickly with a question that required some vulnerability, and he responded with some vulnerability as well. And after a few days of texting back and forth, more serious kind of stuff, we decided to do a phone call on a Saturday morning, and we ended up chatting for a few hours. It was easy, it was open, it was honest, and I really believe that the frankness of my texting and his willingness to step into that helped set the stage for some openness and some honest discussion. 

08:38 

He wanted a similar kind of emotionally intimate relationship, so finding someone who would show up that way was refreshing for both of us. We had such a great chat. that morning on the phone that we decided to meet a few hours later for a visit to the Salt Lake City Aquarium. We chatted the whole way through. It was easy and comfortable, and when we got to the last room, the shark room, we sat down on the benches and we chatted for probably another three hours or so. It was honest, vulnerable conversation. We talked about our previous relationships, what we felt were our biggest issues, we talked about our fears in getting into another relationship. I just decided I wouldn't hold back and he very easily met me in that place, and we had a great discussion for about five hours total that afternoon. What was making this work was the fact that both of us were willing to courage up and step into vulnerability, but we knew that we were going to go there from our previous texting conversation. We had already set the standard for this kind of discussion. 

09:41 

The next day, we just couldn't stand it anymore. We got back in touch and I drove about an hour to where he was and we went out on a hike for probably another five hours or so. Again, talking the whole time about things that really mattered. Practicing showing up really as me, not as some pretend version of me. I loved that he was willing and able to step into some real vulnerable conversation. He shared some pretty personal struggles with me and I was really practicing giving him a safe space to have struggles and to share them in a non-judgmental space. I was really seeking to practice accepting him  for who he was and the journey that he was on. 

10:20 

The next day, I decided I was interested in trying a 90-Day Relationship with him. I know, three days in, but I'm one of those people that once I get my mind decided on something, I dive in the deep end and I'm just like, "okay, I'm just going to do this." So I invited him to dinner and I said I'd like to talk with him about a 90-Day Relationship and he's like, "I don't know what that is, but I'd be interested in hearing about it." So here's how we set this up: we talked about being all in and exclusive for the next 90 days. That would mean that, barring finding out that the other person was a creepy pedophile or something else that would be an absolute non-negotiable, we would commit to creating new patterns of behavior for 90 days so we could learn how to show up in a relationship better. Full-on committed 90 day relationship. We discussed that we both had dysfunctional patterns of behavior from previous relationships and that we wanted to become aware of them, clean them up, and learn to implement healthier patterns of behavior, and that this would be a space for us to do that. 

11:21 

So in that context we talked about, first of all, never having any back burner issues. Everything would be talked about and we also had guidelines on how to talk about them, and that is the "own your own" process that I've discussed here on the podcast many times. There is actually a podcast called "How to Own Your Own," if you want to a refresher on that one. So what makes this 90-Day relationship work so well, I believe, is that we established amazing patterns of behavior before we had an opportunity to begin engaging in dysfunctional patterns of behavior. We really discussed how we wanted to show up in relationship and we talked about what that would entail. How would we be more open and honest? How would we engage in ways that didn't just keep the peace but rather address things that came up? How would we show up as equals to create a partnership rather than to people struggling with our maladaptive coping mechanisms? During this first conversation, we talked about everything we could think of that would create discomfort or uncertainty when dating and we put it on the table. We talked about how often we would contact each other via text or talking. How often we would see each other. We lived about an hour away from each other. So how is that going to work? I really hate that new part of a relationship where you aren't sure if you can text or not. Do I need to wait a day or do I need to wait three days? Can I text them when I just feel like it? Can I text them multiple times a day? Can I send emojis? Can I call occasionally? And if he doesn't respond to a text message, what does that mean? Like all this stuff, I just don't like that. So by discussing all of that upfront, it takes the awkwardness out of it. And it took some courage for me to bring up a lot of these topics but I was determined to figure it out. And so courage had to be on the table. 

13:11 

So we also discussed things like who would pay for what. Like especially in middle-age, it was hard for me to imagine him paying for everything. And I also knew that some men like to do that. So we talked about it. How did he feel about wanting to pay for things and how did I feel about it? And we were able to decide between us what we both felt comfortable with. We discussed if he was a door opener or not. Some men are and that's important to them. Some men aren't. I love being treated that way, having a man open my doors, but it's also not a deal breaker for me. But talking about it takes the guesswork out of me standing outside the door or sitting in the car with indecision of whether I should get my own door or not. There's always just that uncomfortable like, "do I get my own door? Is he going to get it? Is he not?" And so we just learned to talk about it and put it all out on the table. We talked about how much physicality we both felt comfortable engaging in at that point and where our non-negotiable lines were drawn. 

14:06 

So are you getting the thing of the discussion here? We talked about everything we could talk about, everything that would be new and strange and create those awkward moments of indecision when you're first dating. It was all up for discussion. And since we were committing to 90 days, we talked about how we wanted to engage when we had a conflict so that we could turn it into connection rather than contention. How do we talk about it? How do you apologize? And the circle back around process that I talked about was used here as well. And if you are not familiar with that yet, go back and find the podcast called "Circling Back Around" and listen to that one. And then we got to work and we got to play. Mr. 90-Day Number One was so fun. We really enjoyed each other's company and I learned from him that relationships could be easy and fun. I honestly didn't really know that before. 

15:03 

Before we started dating, I really wasn't sure that I wanted to get married again. I knew I wanted to experience an emotionally intimate relationship and I knew that I could do that through dating. I knew that dating would put me in  situations where I would grow and develop more, but I just, I wasn't really sure that I wanted to get married because I really was happy being single. But by the end of my dating experience with 90-Day Number One, I knew for sure that I wanted to get married again. 

15:33 

So one of the first things that he and I did was decide to take one of our biggest issues, put it on the table, and have a safe place to talk about it and discuss it and discover how to work through it without the other person judging us or accusing us or getting freaked out by it. But it was a safe place for us to talk about our big issue and to work through it. And as we worked through this process, I found that he'd put some things on the table that made me uncomfortable. Like so uncomfortable that if we hadn't had the 90-Day Commitment, I might've decided to walk away. But the commitment helped me learn how to create a space for him to be a human, to have weaknesses and failures and to learn to step out of judgment and into acceptance. And it was amazing for me to get to practice skills that I absolutely didn't have in my first marriage. 

16:21 

As I look back at my previous marriage, I was very judgmental. I had all of these expectations that he should be a certain way. And when he didn't show up that way, I didn't accept him. I would shame him and step into a one-up position. And I was very kind and unloving, very unkind and unloving. And also not realizing that I was being unkind and unloving, I was just scared. I was scared and I was reacting and moving from a place of fear. So my relationship with 90 Day Number One was a chance for me to learn how to accept him for who he was, to work through some of my self-righteous thoughts and behaviors, and learn to really love cleanly. And it was hard, but also so fulfilling, to know that I had shown up really well in this regard and in this space. 

17:11 

He jumped into this arena before we even had the 90-Day set up on our hike on Sunday. He had actually brought up some pretty significant stuff. And so he kind of started the process out, he couraged up first. And it took me probably about a week to courage up enough to put my biggest issue on the table. So my biggest issue was sexuality. And if you listened to the podcast with Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, I mentioned the podcast that I listened to that blew my mind about sexuality being a thing. It's the one where the lady was saying, "when a woman is well rested, when she's well sexed," and I was like, what? What, like "well sexed?" What does that even mean? And so I went into listening to a lot of podcasts and trying to figure out a lot of stuff. And I'll tell you what, I'm a little bit embarrassed to put all of this out here, but it's part of my journey. So I'm gonna share it with you, because I think it's important because I know that I'm not alone in this journey of figuring out our sexuality in middle age. 

18:10 

We were presented with a lot of sexual misinformation growing up about who we were and what sexuality entailed for us as women. And I think it did us a huge misservice. And I started to learn that. And in the couple of months, since I had first engaged with that comment on the podcast and to the time that I started dating 90-Day Number One, I had listened to a lot of podcasts. I had figured out a lot of stuff. So about a week after we started our 90-day, I said I needed to put my stuff on the table. It was my turn. And we sat down on the sofa to talk and I immediately went into a shame spiral. I started, then I stopped, and I started and I stopped, and I would say a little bit and then I would just be overcome with shame and embarrassment of how I had been in my previous marriage. And I was just so ashamed of how I had shown up sexually there. And I knew that it would be hard for him to hear. And so I was super scared to put it out there. Moving into this place of sexuality in my previous marriage, wasn't something that I consciously done, for sure. But in the few months since that podcast and before starting to date this man, I had listened to so many sex-related podcasts, Jennifer Finlayson-Fife's being a major one, and I had begun to understand the importance of sexuality, not just for me as an individual, like stepping into my sexual being, but also for me in relationship, being able to step into sexuality in the relationship. 

19:48 

Previously, I really had thought that sexuality was something just for the man and that I was there as a tool to satisfy his desire and keep him happy, like every good wife is supposed to. And I think that's part of the story that many of us received in the 70s and 80s and probably before then, just the 70s and 80s are my experience. And it makes me cringe now. But the reality is, that's the perspective that I was coming from. And so sex was always a difficult thing in my previous marriage. So I began to step into this conversation with 90-Day Number One, and there was so much shame. And at one point, he grabbed my hand and he was like, "listen, you don't have to talk about this if you don't want to," because he could see that I was just sinking into myself and sinking into the sofa. And I said something like, "no, this is my thing. I need to put this on the table. I  want to put this on the table." And it probably took over an hour for me to really put all my stuff out on the table. 

20:51 

So here's one of the brilliant pieces about the 90-Day. As wonderful as a man as he was and probably still is, this would have been the perfect opportunity for him to gracefully step out of the relationship if we hadn't had our commitment to figure out how to stay and support each other, how to learn how to do this. I can believe that there was a part of him thinking, "what have I gotten myself into? I don't want somebody with all of these sexual issues." And it was the same for me with what he was putting on the table. But we created the 90-Day commitment as an opportunity, not just for each of us to figure out our own crap, but to also learn how to create a safe space for the other person while we showed up, setting aside our fear and judgment, and learning instead to accept them for who they were and the journey that they were on. 

21:39 

So that initial sex discussion was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. It required so much vulnerability, so much of facing my shame, so much trust in him, but mostly trust in myself that I could do this, that I would have my own back regardless of how it turned out. Trust that this would help me grow into a stronger and better version of myself. And it did, almost immediately. It's like that first super vulnerable discussion broke down a wall and made it easier to broach other tough discussions. And I think that that's how it works. When we have that really first super tough, vulnerable discussion, we realize that it doesn't kill us. We realize that it opens us up. That we feel empowered by that ability to be vulnerable. So that was a huge awakening for me. 

22:38 

So part of my goal with the 90-day was to learn to be more aware of the potential for the other person to love like I have never loved before. So I decided, and this was part of our discussion, that when I felt love, even a little tiny bit started to grow, I was going to express it. That that was part of who I wanted to be: open and honest with what I was feeling and what I was experiencing. So about two weeks in, I was starting to feel some love for him, and it was a baby bit of love, but it was still love. And my newfound vulnerability shared with him that I loved him. And if I recall, we kind of talked about what that meant. Doesn't mean that I'm deeply in love with you or passionately in love with you, but it means that I am developing some feelings for you. And it's the beginning baby bits of love, right? So in seeking to really show up authentic and vulnerable, I needed to learn how to speak up and lean in to the love. And in a way, knowing that this was a practice run, that at the end of the 90 days, either one of us could say it wasn't working and leave the relationship without drama created a safe space for me to practice tools and characteristics that I either hadn't known or didn't know I needed in my previous marriage. 

23:50 

Another goal for me was to learn to talk about back burner issues. I did not have a place for this in my previous marriage. Either those back burner issues sat there forever and collected dust and resentment, or they came exploding out with all sorts of biting it down and swallowing it, or I was verbally throwing up all over the place. And I remember times in this 90-Day Relationship that I had something I wanted to talk about and it would take me an hour or more to get up the courage to do it. I was so afraid of rejection, so afraid of being dismissed, of feeling as though I was not important enough to consider. This was an amazing space for me to step into knowing that my wants and needs mattered as much as his. 

24:40 

There was one time where, my shoulders are always really tight, and I wanted to ask him for a shoulder rub. And it took me 10 minutes to get up the courage to ask him to rub my shoulders, and this was after we had been dating probably two months. And I look back on that and I'm just like "wow," right? Like how afraid was I of my own wants and needs? And his response to that when I finally asked him was like "oh, sure," like not even a thought, not even a hesitation. And I was like "whoa really?" But that's how it works. 

25:15 

So another situation with him was, I shared this in the 90-Day podcast that I did right after he and I stopped dating, but one time we were in his car and I had a drink in the console between our seats. We'd stopped to get gas and he came out of the out of the store with two drinks for him, and I immediately, without thinking, pulled my drink out of the middle console, there were only two slots there, so that he would have room for his drinks. And he looked at me and he said something along the lines of, "you don't have to move your drink. You get this space as much as I do." And it was, I know that seems super, super simple, but it was significant because I realized that I got to take up space in a relationship. And not just any space...valuable real estate space. I was so accustomed to making myself small to avoid contention, so accustomed to not saying anything to keep the peace, that I was doing things that put myself in a lesser space, like not taking a middle console drink holder, like creating all the space for him and me moving off to the side. And I hadn't even realized it. It was so natural at that point that I just shrunk back without a thought. 

26:34 

And this 90-Day container relationship allowed me to see things about myself that I hadn't seen before. Without this experience, I very likely would have gotten me into other relationships and continue to put myself on the back burner and kept approaching relationships from a one-down place. And then the one-up place when I afterwards moved into self righteousness about how I was so willing to put him first, right, so much one-up and one-down and not equal. And what I didn't know how to do before 90-Day Number One was to put myself as an equal person. He taught me that. And because of my time in that relationship, I was able to step up into myself in a way that I never had in my previous 24 year marriage. 

27:19 

So when our 90 days was up, we stayed on for another week and a half, and then decided that we needed to move on. And our breakup entailed both of us crying and hugging and some final kisses and and so much gratitude. And so much of "this was amazing. This was such a great experience for me" kind of kind of expressions. We really had created something amazing. And we could still break up, loving each other, but knowing that our time together was complete, that our relationship was complete. I was heartbroken and I cried a lot and I needed a few weeks to catch my breath and, guess what I did, and I survived it. And I realized that I could be heartbroken, and I could move on. And it's not that I moved on because I didn't care, because I cared and I loved him a lot. But I realized that that's part of the process as part of the risk we take when we get into relationship. We risk heartbreak. 

28:20 

But I'll tell you what, I left that relationship knowing without a doubt that I wanted to be married again. Now I knew that relationships could be fun, that they could be easy, that I could show up as an equal and be treated like an equal. And then I was all in on finding my person. And this is where my family started to go, "oh, good heavens, you're bringing somebody else." Because I started taking people to things I wanted. I would just jump into relationships. And I only had one other 90- Day Relationship before I met Sione, but I started bringing people around because I was like, "listen, I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to find my person. And this is what I'm going to do." 

29:01 

So this 90-Day Relationship created a safe space where I could learn to show up as me, show up as an equal, treat him as an equal, learn to be vulnerable, and learn to allow him to be a human with faults as well. I didn't really know how to do that before. And so I am so grateful for that experience. The 90-day worked for me because I didn't like the game playing often associated with dating. I felt like we took the regular first six months of dating, that time of insecurity and not knowing and hesitating and fear of vulnerability, and you know, "can I say this? Can I do this? Can I?" like all that stuff, I feel like we just time-warped all that out. We just skipped over it and we started our relationship at the six month mark, where you would get after six months of dating. And that was my style. And I was super blessed to have found a person who wanted growth and relationship education the same way that I did. 

29:56 

But for everyone out there who thinks that he was a fluke, I don't think he was because I found others all in the same year. I think there are so many middle-aged people, men and women, out there who want more. They just don't know what they want and they don't know how to do it. And everyone thinks we have to be coy and mysterious and not lay all of our cards on the table. And I just don't agree with that. The 90-Day Relationship does just the opposite. We put all of our cards out on the table right up front. We work to be upfront and honest and open from the very beginning. If we have a question, we ask it. If we want something, we ask for it. If we feel something, we express it. If we have a thought, we share it. And we practice doing all these things with love and compassion and kindness. So there you go. 

30:52 

As I mentioned, I had one other 90-Day relationship before I met Sione. So by the time he came along, gee whiz, I felt like a pro, right? I'd done two of them so far. But I had had so many opportunities to learn to show up as an equal, to learn to be vulnerable, to ask for what I want, to have the tough discussions in loving and kind and productive ways. So with Sione, after knowing each other long distance for about two and a half weeks, I was living in Utah and he was in Indiana and we met over at e-Harmony, we started talking most days for two to three hours every night. Sione flew out to Utah, we met in person, and we decided to be exclusive in a 90-Day. So this was the first week of December in 2021. So before he boarded the plane back to Indiana that weekend, we hashed out our 90-Day. We talked about everything that we wanted, the kind of space we wanted to create. We talked about all the rules, about how we wanted to show up, about how to discuss things, whether the open doors, who was gonna pay for stuff. We talked about all the things, like how it was gonna work. And because it was long distance, we had a lot of flying back and forth, and probably until a week or two after we got married, we were flying back and forth every two weeks. One of us was flying one direction. And so there was a lot of like figuring out all of that kind of stuff. 

32:20 

Now, as I explained last week, we had already started a lot of the deeper, more intimate, vulnerable conversations over text and over talking, because I started that off with that first question of like, "what are your three greatest failures and three greatest successes in life?" And we just continue to build on those. We created a precedence from the beginning for openness and honesty, and it was amazing. One other thing that Sione and I did was read from John Gottman's book called "Eight Dates" together while we were dating. And this is a great book, whether you're married or single. It gives eight pretty heavy topics with information and questions. And the premise is that you both read your chapter and then you show up for this specific date where you talk about all the questions that he has at the end. And we would independently read a chapter each week. And then on Friday, either over FaceTime or in person, we would discuss the questions. And it would take us about three hours to get through the chapter, just the question parts, because we had already read it independently. We dug really deep into all of these questions. We got to know each other so well. And I will say that we officially got engaged before the 90 days was up, and we got married four and a half months after our first introduction on e-Harmony. 

33:45 

Now, I know that everyone is not like me, and I know that this type of dating experience may not be for you. I want you to take some time, though, to consider what might work for you in this type of relationship. How do you need to learn to show up in relationships in ways that you never have? How can you show up more as you in order to find a person more like you? What tools do you want to learn to implement more concisely and thoroughly in order to communicate better? The 90-Day Relationship allowed me to go into dating with a clear understanding of what I was doing, and it wasn't to find somebody to complete me. That work, me completing myself, had to be done way before dating. The 90-Day allowed me to get into a relationship to see if it was a good fit and then get out if it wasn't. And it set the precedents for Sione and me to create a beautiful, no backburner issue, honest, equal marriage that we currently have. We've never played games with each other. We have never held back or feigned false modesty or been coy to pretend that we were something that we weren't. All of this process allowed us to begin our relationship with healthy patterns of behavior from the very beginning. 

35:11 

And thus far, we haven't had unhealthy patterns we have needed to address, although probably they will come up at some point because there are things that we just don't know yet that are emotional intimacy patterns. They were all established upfront, so they are a part of who we are together. And that, to me, is one of the brilliant parts of the 90-Day for us. Our relationship is built on a foundation of healthy patterns. We haven't had to go back and break patterns and address them and recreate new ones. So that's pretty amazing. 

35:53 

So here's the thing: do your own work first. Find yourself. Know yourself. Be true to yourself. Be clear on what you want and then go after it. You can and you will figure it out. Once I started doing the 90-Day with this focus, dating became fun and it became a puzzle to figure out. Finding my person became a challenge, and I love me a good puzzle and I love me a good challenge. I love growing up and I loved dating in my 50s. I think that there are benefits to dating in your 50s that you just don't have when you're younger. And I think I talked about those last week. 

36:34 

So here's the deal my friends: if you would love some personal help from me to work through your own dating scenarios to figure this kind of stuff out, or if you're married and your own relationships and figuring out how could I implement some of these concepts into my own marriage? How can I create healthier patterns, behavior? How can I show up better? This is what I do as a midlife relationship coach. I'm getting really, really good at this and I love it so much and I can help you figure it out. So if you would like to find out if coaching is a good fit for you and see if you would like to work with me, you can book a free 90 minute coaching and consult to get you session to get you started. 

37:19 

 So in this 90 minutes, we will talk about coaching, what it looks like, how much it costs, how long it is, all that kind of stuff. And I will also spend some time coaching you on what you want, because you getting coached from me is part of the opportunity for you to see if this is a good fit for you. So I would love to do that. You can go to tanyahale.com. You can click on the "free consultation" button and we can get to work. We can have a session and you can see if this is a good fit for you, and see if you'd like to work with me. 

37:55 

Hey, and that's gonna do it. Really quickly though, if you feel that this podcast is adding value, please make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss a week. Please leave me a review. Reviews pop my podcast up higher on "suggested for you" podcasts for people who are looking for similar content. It helps other people find this content. It's a super easy way for you to share the love without having to talk to anybody on your own. So leaving a review would help, and also sharing it with people who need some help, who you feel would benefit from this same content. Maybe even just a friend who you're like "I love this content and I want somebody to talk to about it and let's listen to them together and then let's dig a little bit deeper in our own brains and in our own experience to figure out more about it," because that's a really really great way to grow here. So that's see you next time. Bye.