Methods of Relarionships Part 1-2

Methods of Relationship, Part I

Max and LuLu frame relationship as a volatile but generative orbit: two radically different forces learning not to annihilate each other, but to make life together. True partnership does not eliminate friction—it transforms internal friction into coherence, adds worthy external resistance, and turns the partner into a precise signal for undeveloped capacities.

The Sun and Earth Contract

LuLu: As I was saying before the train interrupted, it’s like, yeah, I realize that the reason why the Earth and the Sun can collaborate in the way that they do and create life is because they are not at war with one another.

They’ve figured out how to orbit one another and work together, despite the fact that the Sun is incredibly abrasive.

Max: An asshole.

LuLu: Just an onslaught of energy.

Max: Terrorizing.

LuLu: Blasting it. Or the Earth figured out a way to create a thin layer to slow that and then turn it into life.

Turn it into a whole other living entity.

And through that relationship, billions of plants and organisms come to life.

Max: Trillions.

LuLu: Trillions and trillions. It’s unbelievable, the amount of life that has come from that.

All of that is to say: that is the potential of the reconciliation that comes through relationship and this type of mirroring.

That’s why Max and I are doing what we’re doing. The exponential is so much higher.

Like, individually, my life was fantastic. I loved it. It was very peaceful and profound and, yeah, joyful. I loved it.

Everything’s about me. Everything I like. It’s great. I don’t want to talk bad about it.

We just chose a higher mission. That’s all.

The only catch-22 is that we chose something that has more requirement from it. It’s a greater responsibility, for sure.

The Responsibility of Staying

LuLu: Whenever you and I have deep conflict, there’s this—

And I have these thoughts of, like, “I could just walk away and not deal with this.”

That’s an option.

But I immediately feel this incredible responsibility that our mission is in service to—

Max: You, yeah, sure.

LuLu: Also responsibility, yes.

Responsibility toward everything that our mission—and everyone that our mission—is in service to.

And a responsibility to myself, because to remove myself from such a potent mirror immediately removes the feedback signal offered to me through this relationship.

And I feel the lack of charge that happens through no longer engaging.

No longer engaging in this difficult thing—in this reconciliation between the masculine and the feminine.

Because all of these things have this domino effect of, you know, every relationship being like:

“Fuck off. You’re the problem. I’m going to go do something easier.”

You could say that the billions of times that has happened are why we live in the world that we live in.

We’ve taken more and more steps toward separation, rather than toward reconciliation and utilizing the technologies and genius of the other.

Far, Fast, and Together

Max: Yeah, I mean, Lydia paints it romantically, you know, and there are many ways to paint it.

I think for me, it’s just like: my responsibility to myself is to be the most alive that I can.

This creates the most aliveness. This discussion is over.

And if I want to go a layer deeper, it’s like:

If you want to go fast, go alone.If you want to go far, go together.If you want to go far, fast—pack light.

That’s been my motto.

It’s like, I wasn’t in relationship. I packed light. I was me. I was going far and I was going fast.

The reality is, as in the journey, I found someone else doing the same thing.

I found someone doing the same thing.

Thusly, it didn’t take on more any issue. Like, we are both going the same way.

So although there’s some friction because we’re both used to going far, fast, you know, in our individual ways—now we’re on the hunt together.

Now we’ve figured out, okay, this person’s loud at these times during the hunt. They go to the bathroom at this time. They refuse to go in the toilet. They have to go outside.

LuLu: Yeah, they do that.

Max: At first, like, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Because your hunting style is different from their hunting style.

They step on sticks all the time. You’re like, “What the fuck?” Because you’d never step on sticks. But then you pee into the wind and they don’t.

Eventually, you start to figure out:

Okay, wait a second. They have good ideas. I have good ideas.

And now relationship is like this. Again, like, I’m just telling you, we’re up to—we’re up.

How do we keep that pace and move fast?

Finding Someone Whose Way Works

Max: Why is relationship beneficial to two of us who both had no intention of relationship?

It’s like, because I found someone that it worked for. That was working, you know?

And so, from the masculine and less romantic perspective, I just felt like it worked.

And it worked in a way I didn’t understand in the beginning—and I just needed to understand.

Because I saw it working for Lydia. I saw her way working. And it was way different from mine.

It’s like, okay: if your way is working and it’s different from mine—let’s go.

I want to figure that out.

I just want to be greater. I’m like, I just want to know.

It turns out, in the end, we ended up partnering up because, I don’t know, we’re so different. They work together, whatever.

Reduce Internal Friction

Max: But I think engaging in opposition is critical.

Lydia and I talk a lot about how you want to reduce internal friction and engage in as much external friction, almost, as you can.

That creates the most aliveness.

My internal friction was low before I met her. I met her—now my internal and external friction are both very high.

I worked to reduce my internal friction, which made the external friction easier.

Then our relationship got easy.

Now we’re able to load more external friction onto both of us, and we are both handling it better over months and months, or whatever.

It seems that the friction within our relationship can become low—which will be kind of boring.

So we need something hefty to keep us both involved and retained, which is you and all your bullshit.

Mr. and Mrs. In-Between Viewer, we are going to shovel all your shit.

And you can say, “It’s compassion.”

LuLu: Is it?

Max: Sure. Yes.

I would much rather shovel ice cream into my mouth. But we want something hard.

Human suffering is hard. Human ignorance is hard. Human confusion is hard.

And we’ve both taken it on—particularly myself—that I’m going to engage that.

I’m going to go straight into that.

And maybe your relationship doesn’t engage on that level right away. You can simply engage with something small in the beginning to start bringing cohesion.

You can find a group task.

The Partner Reveals the Missing Technology

LuLu: Many of the things that we’ve uncovered about the body became illuminated to us because we were so confused and conflicted about the level of friction between us.

It’s like:

How can two humans be drawn to each other in this way and yet hate each other so much?

How can they have so much resistance to one another—be so uncomfortable in each other’s presence?

How can that be?

That’s how we kind of unlocked chakras and organ systems and glands in the way that we did.

Like, oh, you have this technology of your body really powered up. I don’t.

I have this technology of my body powered up really high. You don’t.

So it feels like you’re manipulating me when you do this—when you use this organ, this gland, that you have much more developed than I do.

And the same for you, when I use life and make decisions and interact with you from this organ system that I have very well developed.

It gives the other person a feeling of disempowerment in that place.

Which is ultimately just a feedback signal that you have this other gland that is powered down.

That’s what the mirroring is.

That’s what the feedback is.

It’s like, I never, out in the world, really experienced myself to have a particularly low solar plexus or low gallbladder, as we call it sometimes.

That was mirrored to me through this relationship.

And now I have physical tools to build that thing—to build this technology in my system that summons life.

That is one of the ways that life is summoned through the human body.

It’s a note on the keyboard.

It’s one of the notes.

Methods of Relationship, Part II

Max and LuLu lay out their operating methods: map each other’s strengths and gaps, build a shared mission, use theatre and nicknames to reduce ego charge, study each other’s families and modes, and make failure a team problem. Beneath every method is one demand: take responsibility for the reality you are co-creating.

Give the Relationship a Mission

Max: Going into examples—and this exceptionally long post—you know, I give examples a bit about food and things.

Examples of how to do relationship.

So we talked a bit about more philosophy, but on a practical level, like: diagnose each other’s chakras. Find out what each one has working well.

Then know where you’re going to be missing or disempowered or shifting.

Make a decision and a plan on how to unite them, if that’s what you’re going to do, or balance them in a way that works for your mission—your goal together.

Which is: be a mission and goal.

Like, you’ve got to unify in something. Otherwise, you’re just either going to:

1. Use each other for entertainment; or
2. Just destroy each other.

If that’s, you know, deciding to have children, or running a business, or providing a service, or just learning a lesson together, or something—decide on a thing.

That way, you can divide responsibility and tasks and create a path or a method.

Nicknames, Theatre, and Family History

Max: Some other things, at least for the next stage: come up with nicknames for each other.

If you refer to each other by your names, there’s a lot of karma and nonsense attached to it. It’s much easier once you come up with nicknames, because then it takes the pressure off.

And learn to use theatre.

Develop different voices to communicate with each other.

That way—yeah, this is an old Greek method—it’s not so personal. Again, you want to try to take your egos and not have them so affected.

And exercise together or separately, but make sure you’re exercising. Otherwise, your systems are gonna clog up.

If you’re just sitting on a couch eating Doritos, bro, you guys are gonna either have a shit life or you’re gonna fight all the time.

Learn their culture. Study where they’re from, their ethnicity—and especially their parents.

Find out who their parents are. Learn how their parents act. Spend time around them.

That’ll help you understand the person a lot more.

For example, on these things, like, I had Lydia call and talk to my mom for a while. I lived with her parents for a long time. Talked to her siblings a bit.

I showed her a lot of my old photos, videos of myself, and my scholarship letters.

I call her LuLu. She calls me lots of different things.

LuLu: Like, “Fuck you.”

Max: Yeah.

She eats—I already went into food in our previous recording—but she eats differently than me. She likes to run. I’m not a runner. She wants sports to be in the form of games. I didn’t care.

So, you know, we figured out a mix.

She pees outside. I pee inside.

You know, like, finding these things. It’s useful.

If you do research for any job or any opportunity in your life, why wouldn’t you do research here?

Learn the Other Person’s Mode

LuLu: Something that we do is notice what mode the other person is in.

And usually, we notice that based on what mode we’re in, because when you share a nervous system with somebody, what happens is that you polarize a lot.

So once one person is in a very feminine mode, the other person goes into a very masculine mode. And that can happen with both of us.

When one person is very focused and duty-oriented, the other person can become very playful and soft.

And that’s because when you’re sharing a nervous system, it’s like one person is basically taking over one spectrum of the antenna—so the other person shifts to the other.

And so trying to figure out how these two roles, which are constantly switching and shifting between different states, can work together becomes very useful.

Super useful.

I forgot about that.

And noticing how, when one person is in a very masculine, duty-oriented, focused state, and the other person is very soft and playful, your own really direct and abrasive speech may be very painful for the other person—just because they’re in this sort of de-armored state.

Figuring out those things of mode is going to be really useful for understanding how to engage and work with one another.

Learning Both Polarities

Max: Yeah, that’s a big one.

For Lydia and I, we’ve decided to swap masculine and feminine roles. And if you do, you’re gonna find out really quick that one person is gonna be better at one than the other.

Try not to punish each other for being bad at one of those roles.

You’re learning. You’re growing.

And if you choose to—Lydia and I have chosen to do that because we want to merge within ourselves our masculine and feminine.

You may polarize. Many relationships do:

He’s the man. She’s the woman. That’s it.

And they become more woman, more man, and that polarity becomes their entire relationship. That’s what they base it upon.

Which is idealized, but that’s not the method Lydia and I took.

LuLu: Yeah. We want to be able to have choice in everything.

We want to both be able to lead and support. We want to both be able to be playful and directive.

We want to each individually take on the full spectrum of what our potentials have to offer.

And when, in any situation—you know, maybe as much as I come to understand the natural sciences, maybe I’ll never be as good of a scientist as Max, for example.

When life calls us as a unit and asks for a scientist, maybe Max will still step into that role.

But I will still have that color turned on inside of myself—to the level that I’m able to have it turned on.

And that’s the goal again:

To be fully alive.To be fully turned on.

Make Failure a Team Problem

LuLu: Try not to—this is again the blame thing—it’s like, to use the technology of relationship correctly, the fastest and most efficient way to do it is to not blame the other person.

Max and I talk about this a lot. It doesn’t mean that we’ve outgrown it. We still do it, just because it’s easy.

And it really does feel like the other person is at fault a lot of the time.

But when you start to make the failures of each of you the failures of the team—

Max: We fucked up.

LuLu: Yeah. Not, “You fucked up.”

We fucked up.

And how do we solve it?

Max: Yeah. That’s a big one. That’s super—it’s hardest when it counts.

LuLu: Mm-hmm.

Max: It’s right when you need to fucking be a team that you’re like:

“You piece of shit. It’s your fucking heathen, disgusting self crawling on the floor of existence.”

LuLu: Yeah. Like, how do you take every opportunity to see how the other person’s failure, if you want to call it that, was also initiated by some failure of your own?

Max: Correct.

And that’s the useful part. That’s the part where you’re taking responsibility so that you can grow.

Because guess what?

If you blame the other person, they will take all the growth.

LuLu: Good point.

Max: They will take all the fucking growth if you make everything their problem.

They will figure it out within themselves. They will grow. They will change. They will patch their holes. They will develop themselves.

And you will be left behind.

So you better make it your fucking problem too.

And better is to make it all your problem.

Take all the smoke. Take all the hate. Take all the blame.

Some famous people have said, like, yeah—then you’re gonna grow fastest.

LuLu: Yeah. It’s like taking it eventually. I mean, that’s just consciousness eventually.

“She Is Me”

Max: You know, same for me, I have to remember that in all of the times, like, Lydia is me.

This week, I’ve had to do that multiple times.

I’m like, okay, I’m gonna wait for Lydia to do the thing. Lydia does the thing. I’ll do my part, she does her part.

It’s like, that’s great.

Also, I am in Lydia.

And so, if I want it to happen, guess who’s got to do it?

Me.

If she does it, great for me. I prepared myself for her to do it because she is me.

It’s all me. It’s all me.

You want to be able to do both. You want to say, “Wow, I’m in this unit,” but also, “This is me.”

So the last couple months, I tried to stop eating meat. I was like, “I’m just gonna take care of myself. Like, Lydia is supposed to be taking care of me. We’re supposed to be a perfect union.”

LuLu: Mm-hmm.

Max: No, no.

I gotta be a perfect union.

That’s the deal.

I had to remember that. I was like, “Oh fuck, wait. I’m waiting for myself to make the move.”

Dumb.

And someone told me, like, “The man makes the move.”

It’s like, yeah, I don’t think it’s about the man making the move or not. And maybe what he’s saying is the masculinity.

But if you’re waiting—if you’re waiting for the train and you don’t have a ticket—you’re gonna feel real dumb, probably.

And you’ll wish that instead of waiting, you would have been proactive.

The Fastest Way to Lose the Crown

LuLu: I think people lose seventh—the crown chakra—very quickly in relationship a lot of the time.

Max: Because the sex is too good, usually.

LuLu: Yes. And that’s distracting.

And because of this blame thing that we’re talking about, the fastest way to lose seventh is to not take responsibility for yourself as a creator of the situation.

And so it becomes very easy to do that when you’re in relationship and really fucked-up things happen, and your deepest pain points are constantly having a nail shoved into them.

It’s very easy to say:

“This situation only happens when I’m around you. Therefore, it is you and not me.”

And both might be true.

Max: Both are true.

I mean, that’s the thing. It’s like, both are true simultaneously, and that is difficult.

Like, you are an asshole. That’s true.

LuLu: It’s true.

Max: And I created this.

LuLu: And I invited you here.

Max: That’s it.

Like, for the guys who look at their girlfriend and are like, “She’s such a whore.”

Bitch, you’re the one with her.

Like, you got in this. Are you surprised?

I find men get into this a lot. Like, what did you think it was gonna be?

I’m speechless, to be honest, because that’s the thing I see so much—that women struggle with men—is like, “She’s a whore.”

Bro, you got with her because she was a whore. That’s how you got there.

What, you think she would be with you anyway if she wasn’t a whore? Probably not.

I feel like—are you that valuable?

No. She’s just fucking.

The Partner as a Perfect Expression

LuLu: And to ask, like, why you invited that.

In what way is that person an expression—a perfect expression—of your masculine principle or your feminine principle, or whatever it may be in the relationship between them?

Like, Max and his blasting throat chakra, and sometimes his challenge in listening due to that blasting masculine throat chakra, is the perfect reminder to me that I do not take my own intuitions seriously a lot of the time.

And so that’s why sometimes he doesn’t, too.

It’ll just be a reminder. It’ll be like:

“Oh. My mind is skeptical of my body’s intuitions, and I am not acting on them.”

And that’s one of the things that we encounter in our relationship a lot.

So every time that happens, I’m like, “Ah, okay. What are the intuitions that I am ignoring?”

What are the ways in which my body is urgently trying to convey something to me, and I’m like:

“Yeah, later, bitch. Tell me tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow. I’m doing something now.”

So every time that happens, I’m like:

“Fuck. What is it? What do I have to go do?”

Oh, I have to start peeing on the Earth. Oh, I have to start doing this.

Whatever it may be.