Intuitive Choices

A Divorce Attorney Turned Relationship Coach - Igor Meystelman's Story (Part 1 of 2)

• Kimberley Dobbs and Jacob Miller • Season 1 • Episode 5

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Get ready to discover how Igor Meystelman, a family law attorney turned  relationship coach, has harnessed the power of deep and meaningful conversations to strengthen his own relationship, as well as hundreds of others. Igor's unique career trajectory has equipped him with insights that we can't wait to share with you.

As we journey through Igor's life, we learn how attending couples therapy opened himself up to a deeper relationship with not only his wife, but also himself. Igor's candid sharing about the challenges and joys of this transition will leave you with a renewed perspective on what it means to sincerely communicate with the ones we love.

To check out Igor's relationship coaching: https://www.relationshipreimagined.com/

For Igor's very own podcast: https://www.relationshipreimagined.com/podcast

For Igor's Law practice: https://theimlawgroup.com/

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, I'm Kimberly Dobbs.

Speaker 3:

And I'm Jacob Miller.

Speaker 1:

And we'd like to welcome you to another episode of Intuitive Choices.

Speaker 3:

Kim and I are mental health therapists working in Philadelphia.

Speaker 1:

But wait, jacob, that's not all we are. I mean, I'm blind and you're an Orthodox too.

Speaker 3:

Yes, kim, that's correct. That's what makes our podcast interesting.

Speaker 1:

But what really makes this podcast interesting is that each week we invite a guest to speak about how their own intuitive choices have led them to live a more meaningful life.

Speaker 3:

We hope that this conversation encourages you to make meaningful choices in your own life.

Speaker 1:

All right, off we go.

Speaker 3:

Let's do it.

Speaker 1:

Our conversation with our guest Igor Meisleman was so engaging that it actually went longer than we had expected, so we decided to break this episode up into two parts.

Speaker 3:

If, in the future, you prefer that we keep this as one long interview, please let us know by sending us an email to intuitivechoicespodcastcom. Thanks, hi everybody. Today, kim and I are very excited to speak with our guest, igor Meisleman. In 2009, after graduating law school from Hofstra University School of Law, igor began practicing law, as you might expect. What you might not expect is that, after several years of practicing family law, igor then began a new career as an Amago relationship coach, having worked on both sides of the aisle, so to speak, that being helping couples safely transition out of their relationship and, on the other hand, strengthen their relationship. Igor has such fantastic insight for all of us on how to improve our relationship if we're in one, or how to strive for a thriving relationship if we'd like one. So, without further ado, here we go.

Speaker 1:

Hey Igor. Well, first of all, welcome, we're really thankful to have you.

Speaker 3:

Thank you so much for coming on.

Speaker 1:

We really appreciate it. This is really awesome to get to talk to you, especially with your background. So can you just tell us first what do you do for a living?

Speaker 4:

Oh man.

Speaker 1:

That's a loaded question. You're welcome, yeah.

Speaker 4:

That's going to start with the easy ones. So I am on a dual track of being a divorce attorney, family law attorney and also in the midst of career transitions into marriage and family therapy, slash relationship coach.

Speaker 3:

It sounds like a great catch line, frankly.

Speaker 1:

Really, what do you?

Speaker 3:

I just think it. I let you know. I told my mom this morning as I was handing her my son on the way to work. I said, oh, today we're recording a great podcast with a family law attorney turned like marriage counselor, a therapist, and she goes wow, that's so interesting.

Speaker 4:

So you should know that usually that is the reaction people have. For a while I was kind of left pondering what is that reaction all about?

Speaker 3:

And just kind of over time.

Speaker 4:

After it just happened frequently enough, I started asking people can you tell me, what about that catches your attention? And the typical feedback I would get would be things like well, if you got to see what goes on in the emergency room, like you must know everything, in the sense of there's nothing that's going to surprise you. You've seen what the end of these stories look like, so you probably have a good grasp on you know human conflict, human tension, how to intervene at different stages and try to give help to hemorrhaging relationship. I actually found it very inspiring and gave me a lot of sort of courage and strength to say, hey, you know, maybe I could leverage the skills in one into the other one. And I definitely don't shy away anymore from mentioning when I meet with new couples or couples that are going through a really hard time. It looks like things might wind up in divorce. So I want you to know that I've seen everything. Nothing going to tell me is going to be shocking in this room.

Speaker 4:

And now it's just a matter of are we willing to have a really open conversation, authentic encounter with each other to understand can this really should be salvaged or not?

Speaker 3:

That's a really great point to highlight that. You know, I think we see, kim and I see with our clients like someone who's new to therapy in general. They're like not there's a skill that is there to be built of, like really facing the things you're scared of and also then revealing them to another person. And I think it does help often to tell the client that, like you know, I'm here for you to listen and I don't want you to think like you're hurting me or shock me by what you're about to say, and I really am there to be with you. And it's so valid and I think I assume for many of your clients on the therapy side that you know you're kind of switching and playing for the other team, it seems, and you know, I think that's a unifying experience.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So the feedback you got from, from all of these this like qualitative data that you receive from people when they'd have that strong reaction sort of help shape your perspective on making that transition. But can you tell us a little bit more of what motivated you to make that transition in the first place from family law to relationship coaching?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, absolutely, and this really would take us back into another dimension of my own life, which is my own marriage. About seven years into my marriage, I'm actually just celebrated my wife. I celebrated 16th anniversary this past Friday and thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, how timely, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:

And about seven years into our marriage I was well into my work career actually was now about three years into my own law firm that I started, very exciting kind of you know. Everything was sort of on the horizon, going in the right direction. And one day my wife just said to me you know, I'm tired of kind of going on the same dates.

Speaker 4:

We always do you know either, going out to eat or we're going to watch a show and I would love to do something different. I said, okay, what do you have in mind? And she said I'd like to go to a couples therapist.

Speaker 2:

If my wife said that to me, I think my heart was flat per second. So were you laughing like that?

Speaker 4:

I was not laughing like that, what you just described.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what was your candid? What was your candid response? What she suggested was exactly.

Speaker 4:

Jacob say I froze.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

I stared at her and I said the following sentence is something wrong.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, logical that's right.

Speaker 4:

And she said to me no, I just want to do something different. I had this idea. Would you be open to it? Lucky for her, I was always a student of self development personal development it's just a topic that always speaks spoke to me and I said you know what? Why not? We can go try it out. And that's exactly what we did. And, on the knowns to me, she took me to somebody who specialized in a modality called Imago relationship therapy and we did a session and by the end of the session I was blown away by the experience and I know I'm gonna.

Speaker 1:

I just want to stop you there because I want to get further into into that in a couple of minutes. But can we back up first of all, what's your, what? What's your? Do you mind with your wife's name?

Speaker 4:

Lyora.

Speaker 1:

Lyora. How did that idea even come to her?

Speaker 4:

Do you or?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I can tell you.

Speaker 4:

What was interesting is that in her circle of friends she has like a WhatsApp group with a bunch of her like a high school alumni friends and in her circle of friends there was a number of girls who got divorced and one of them was mentioning like just in passing, I guess in their chats she's going to the therapist she's really happy with and I was like you know.

Speaker 4:

I feel a bit burnout. We just had our third child. She was wondering if she's having some postpartum stuff going on, and then she's like you know, why don't they go alone? You should go with me and I was like I don't mind, you're my wife of course. I'm not happy to be here for you. I know you'll be here for me and I just got the chills.

Speaker 3:

That's so much self awareness on so much a lot of preemptive works there 100%.

Speaker 1:

That's why I wanted to know, because I think that, like I've heard this so many times in my career, well, isn't couples therapy like where relationships go to die?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I'm sure you can speak to this more, but I think one of my professors in my master's program said this, or maybe I heard it later, but something along the lines like people go to couples therapy six years too late.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, same concept.

Speaker 4:

That speaks very much to me, and I dare say that we're the couple that was before those six years expired.

Speaker 1:

And this is what I say to clients all the time, like when I say, hey, why don't you? You know they might be six months into a relationship, even nine months in I always say, go right, there's nothing, you know it is. It's such a growth inducing experience to go to a couple of therapies. So that is, that is so cool, all right, so, so so she the amago relationship therapy. So you landed on this how I think you mentioned.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, so we, so we go there. So she invited me. We had a great time and then I said at the end of the session I would like to come back. I told my wife I really like this experience. It's what did you like about it? It's it the first thing that jumped out of me and I think it's the thing that has stayed till this day. And this is, for me, why I feel.

Speaker 4:

I feel so passionate myself about the work I now do as an amago therapist is that, unlike many other modalities, we were speaking to each other. She had us turn the chairs away from her meeting, her, the therapist, and we faced each other and then the therapist facilitated, but we did most of the talking to each other and all of a sudden, as we were speaking, I felt that something was deepening in our interaction, like we moved from the casual you drive the car pole, I'll go shopping, did you pick up this item? I'll go drop this off and like, for 45 minutes I was removed from my transactional existence with my wife to a deeply meaningful connection and I was like whoa, I feel like we're dating again and there's so many things I don't yet know about you the way I would like to, and that was seven years in seven years in Wow.

Speaker 1:

And kids and we just had our third child and we're.

Speaker 4:

We're like it would be typical family, totally consumed by our life, with little, three little kids Plus. You know I was averaging 12 to 16 hour workdays. It was. It was just, you know, madness on steroids and all of a sudden to have this 45 minute up close and personal moment of whoa. I live with someone I don't deeply know and it bothered me.

Speaker 1:

And it motivated you.

Speaker 4:

Then that journey to take off.

Speaker 1:

What was her takeaway from that first session? Very similar, yeah, very similar to mine.

Speaker 4:

We both just kind of looked at each other. We were like we want more of this. We're missing these moments.

Speaker 3:

How do you think it is that? You know you said you were already going on a weekly date night and you would think, like during a date you would have those moments with your wife. So what happens in the dating process, where I guess the date itself becomes more mundane?

Speaker 4:

It's a very good point, and here I'm very happy to be accused of being a cynic and a pessimist, but I challenge anyone to go to a restaurant, even at this point I'm even going to say to a bar, where I would feel like traditionally it's, we grab some beers and we have a really nice conversation. I dare you to walk today to any of these typical spheres of sociability with your phone and take a picture and see what's going on. You will see that I would. Again. I don't have a research data, but I would split 70, 30, 70 percent people are looking down at their devices and 30% of some very superficial interaction with the people in their immediate surrounding.

Speaker 4:

When are we having moments of deep, meaningful connection? Almost never.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think, igor, what, what you are talking about and I think so many people who are gonna listen to this episode are gonna Relate to, is that when you get to a stage in the relationship where you now have a Kid or multiple children, it it's, it's almost non-existent the time that you would have to even intentionally have a deep and meaningful connection, and Even going to a restaurant it's. It can feel like, or it can be like hey, did you pick up Johnny from his soccer game and did you do that? Like? All of it is just these catch-ups of and and and check the checking boxes of did you accomplish these tasks? You know they're not really Deep conversations.

Speaker 4:

I'm gonna say something very Probably out of the box and I know from many people, if not for most people, this would be a very big stretch and point of discomfort which is as follows I Barren a line from Dave Ramsey is a, you know, big personality in world of personal finance and he says this line live like no one else, so you could live like no one else. And what I always found very powerful about that line is you know, we went to a few sessions and I remember, just to go to this point, that you were just saying About six months into this process, I look at my wife is like I don't know how much more we can afford this. I, I'm really enjoying the work, but like this is a lot. And then we attempted the following we canceled the session. Then we attempted to do the Imago dialogue on our own on our living room couch as we put our kids to sleep. 10, 5 to 10 minutes into the dialogue we were sleeping on the couch.

Speaker 4:

And I realized I said you know, it's time to look in the mirror phase, the honest reality which is it is so hard to sit down at the end of a work day, of a family life and say we're gonna somehow Generate energy to be relational and deeply connect. And yet we would go into that office. Just the presence of that third person Awakened right, the need to, so to speak, perform, to be present. And and what did we do? I mentioned that quote from Dave Ramsey's because what do we do? I looked at my wife and I said look how to look at our friends. Look at other couples. What did they live for? They kill themselves all year so they could brag about the one week they went away on vacation.

Speaker 4:

And you know we can do, we're gonna trade in those moments of once a year for every week of consistent commitment to our marriage and, wow, that journey turned into a five-year commitment of doing deep, very profound work. And when people ask me like, so you know how's it going with business, professionally, savings, and I would just look at one, say all the savings have been invested and the dividends will come. And the life I live today, I can honestly say is completely a product of that deep five-year work where any dollar that was available, they didn't go to a restaurant, they didn't go to a Broadway show, they didn't go to any other expense except deep investment in our marriage. And here I am today.

Speaker 1:

That's incredible, and some might argue right that that the deep investment would be those excursions that's what I'm gonna call it's the word that just came to me an excursion Versus the. You know, a therapy session where you guys are having deep and meaningful content, dialogue with one another, but with the component that's missing is the dialogue. Right, and this is why they say you know most couples. I'm trained in emotionally focused therapy, so there's a lot of like, overlap and common principles and and so much of our time in relationships is actually spent Side by side on a couch in front of a television, but there's no dialogue. Yeah, right, or a screen or whatever, yeah, and, and you, just, you know, you guys, both of you, you know you just took all of that off the table, that's right and said look the, and you just sort of honed in on.

Speaker 1:

This is really what it is, that that allows us to deeply connect. Is that intentional Conversation?

Speaker 4:

yeah, and you know I just want to add to that that in the most recent book that Harvelyn Helen Hendricks put out the founders of a monotherapy they think it's both a model therapy doing the work in the space between us. They actually alluded to this idea we just mentioned of two people sat on the couch and they went even step further and they said you know, Couples are talking and they seem like they're talking to each other, but the reality is that we're mostly are having parallel monologues.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, wow, love that we're not connecting, we're not pausing to internalize the other person's experience and share with them ours.

Speaker 3:

We'll I'm gonna be totally honest. I got called out by this. I got called out by this about my wife this past week for something like this Did you. I did and she Um what she say to you.

Speaker 1:

My wife's a doctor.

Speaker 3:

She works like crazy hours, she's in a third-year residency and Because she's so tired when she gets home from work, I took that to mean like tell her everything about my day Because she just wants to decompress. And then I'm so grateful she did this, but she she literally said to me she goes look, I love hearing about your day, but I really would just like if you asked me more about my day and you know it's only been a week, but I'm trying to commit myself to that, but I totally feel what you're saying right now.

Speaker 4:

Can we comment to that? Yeah, I just want you to know that. But the comment we guys we discussed a little bit earlier about the six years too late. I just want you to know just to kind of it's important to take pause of the big picture what I would say if you guys came into me for a session and you told me this. The first thing I would tell you is you should appreciate that your spouse felt safe to share with you, that she has a need which tells me your Relationship is still in a fairly healthy place but in its default existence.

Speaker 4:

The question I would be is am I going to proactively, intentionally, sprinkle nutrients into this relationship or, right, I wait until enough? Toxicity settles in quote-unquote. Six years later, and now we're in the emergency room operation.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, you, we, igor, you know many of my mentors and how important they they. You know a macho, yakuya sheeva. I went to they really, really emphasize like connectivity with your spouse and your relationship with your, with your wife, and part of the reason I married my wife, actually, because how great I felt that the communication was between she and I and so I'm just doing my best at this point to really take that information seriously.

Speaker 3:

And you know it's hard being married to a to a residence are being married to a doctor, as it is hard being married to.

Speaker 1:

It can also be hard just to be married and listening to the two of you have this exchange, I'm thinking, igor, you I loved, I mean I am gonna borrow some of that language the toxicity settles in. You know, all these, the nutrients, help us, or help our audience, understand a little more about how. How does a person in a relationship no, what that could look like in a relationship that there is maybe some of that, some of that happening? Right, what are some of the signs that that's happening if you don't have a Wife like Liora or a wife like Danny, or you know, you know that, like our self-aware enough or tuned in enough to be able to go hey guys, wait a second, and I'm not saying it's only the woman to the man, but you hear what I'm saying. So, like what if two people are just not really even aware enough that that's happening? What would you say? Are some of the signs, or even symptoms that start to crop up in a relationship that our audience can go? Oh, hmm, yeah.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, so you know, I'm trying to ask you percent and I also just want to highlight that the difficulty that the question itself poses is the key word you said. I'm not aware If I'm not aware.

Speaker 1:

How am I supposed to flag the?

Speaker 4:

problem. So the first thing I would tell you is, for me personally and the work that I've done with, I dare say at this point, hundreds of couples, is the first place I go to litmus test Safety. I'm gonna put it on the big category. I'm gonna call safety because what I mean by that I don't mean somebody got forbid is being, you know, physically, emotionally, abused and like we need to get authorities involved.

Speaker 4:

I'm talking about the following I want to tell something my spouse, but I'm nervous about their reaction and I choose not to tell them for me, first huge red flag that if the relationship is not a place where there is an area of your own life that you would hesitate to share with your spouse, then that's a first indication. Something has either happened in the relationship or something is currently happening that's driving the hesitation or fear, and therefore we need to now start asking ourselves wait, there are other areas of my life where I would not be comfortable to share with my spouse. Why would I be uncomfortable? And if I could get just almost like this, a little inventory or safety inventory Going and just get an idea of what's motivating my hesitations, I would use that very much as like a first measuring tool of how healthy or unhealthy the relationship is becoming, or fluctuating between those Dimensions. So I would for sure start saying that okay.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I would call that like a general sense of security yeah, right, yeah, with your partner.

Speaker 3:

What is what is unique about a mago therapy itself, and how does a mago therapy help create that type of so couples?

Speaker 4:

make really big mistake. When couples come in, what they share is what I would call the content of the relationship. I'm a Republican and she's a Democrat, right and now we fight over policy. That's a content, but what I've come to see is that's actually a Many skill portion of what drives relationships and their tension. What drives the relationships is how we are being relational, rather than what we fill the relationship with. So, in other words, if I approached you and I spoke to you in a demeaning, condescending, critical, bashing way, right, you're gonna look at me and say I'm not okay with this, or you would run away, or you would say you know you give some feedback that that was probably signal to me. This is not appropriate. I'm not okay with this.

Speaker 3:

Whereas if.

Speaker 4:

I tell you. Well, you know, I believe that the you know death penalty is is a good or bad. You're gonna look at me and say, okay, well, here's what my reason is. Yours, I'm not so far with our day. So the reality is, is that what fuels the tension and relationships is how we are being with each other, not what we talk about with each other, but the what's, so to speak, more sexy. Those are the things that easier to just point out. Oh, we disagreed about, you know, I don't know which car is cooler, so and that's it. We could just stop there. But what we don't want to give conscious awareness, to wait a second. You know the thing you wanted to talk about, the. What you want to talk about is so much easier for me to hear If you would express it in a compassionate, caring, gentle tone, eye contact, safe body language. If you gave me those things, it'd be easy for me to hear what you want to say.

Speaker 3:

So let's take that, let's take that couple. That it's how we fight about the finances. Not that that's right, that's right.

Speaker 4:

That's funny say that because a friend of mine calls me up from another, another sitting in the US and says, hey, I cannot talk to my wife about budgets, like we just can't talk about finances. And he's like, isn't budget like step one of conversation about finances? And I immediately, caramofnis, said no, it's not. Step one is how you talk about the budget.

Speaker 4:

Step two is talking about the budget, because I bet the reason you are guys are struggling talking about the budget is the way you talk about it, and if she doesn't feel from you that you are here to discuss it in a collaborative, respectful, compassionate, open-minded way, then her defense system is already online in anticipation of Some tension or fight and therefore we enter these stalemates, points of contention Before we even reach the subject matter.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

So what I do with the mongo to answer that second part, and what I love about a mongo dialogue is I make them face each other and I say can you guys tell me a topic that tends to become very heated or uncomfortable in your relationship?

Speaker 3:

They'll tell me the topic.

Speaker 4:

And then I tell them the next hour we will not be discussing this topic. And they're like what? So how are we gonna solve this problem? And then I tell them we're gonna talk about how you approach this topic, not the topic itself because if I could get you both to a place where you feel both safe, you feel seen, you feel acknowledged and validated as to where you are.

Speaker 1:

Very often, the solution will simply surface about the subject that's, that sounds like, because I'm just like envisioning it going down and you're all you don't? I mean, and I'm like that sounds poetic.

Speaker 4:

Just that process.

Speaker 1:

You know, and you're laughing are you smiling?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I could feel the poetry as you describe it.

Speaker 1:

Because it really. It really really is. You know, an EFT and emotionally focused therapy.

Speaker 1:

Um, susan Johnson calls it a dance right, so it's there's a lot of overlap right, and it's really all comes down to you know, when I say to clients all the time look, we all just want to be seen and heard right and, and what tends to get lost in translation is that that being seen, being heard, and so when you're talking about the how, I love that, because that's something that's like a nugget, even I will be like, oh yeah, how can I address this? How can I communicate this? How can I listen to this while also staying aware of my own experience? While I'm listening to, this Sounds like all of that is what's happening in this dialogue, while you are, for all intents and purposes, coaching them through it.

Speaker 4:

That's right. What I'm going to overlay into that dance that I don't hear discussed a lot that I find just to be very effective and very powerful is not only telling, especially when couples begin to work or they're wondering about the work, to just tell them the psychology of it, because I know that for a lot of people the resistance in their own worlds is this is going to be fluff or this is just too theoretical. So one of the things I started pivoting into is I was just looking at my bookcase because there is a Harvard psychology professor named Daniel Siegel who has a book called Interpersonal Neurobiology. That's a mouthful.

Speaker 1:

He's a really great leader. Yeah, that's right, he's a leading researcher. But you know what?

Speaker 4:

I'll tell you. What's interesting is when couples come in and we just start having preliminary conversations and they're like what's?

Speaker 4:

this dialogue going to do? Anyway, I hear what you're selling us. What is this going to be actually doing for us? And when I say you know what, let's shift for a few minutes from psychology of all of it. I just want you to understand what goes on in your neurobiology when your spouse looks at you and all of a sudden you feel judged. You feel criticism is on its way. You know what happens in your world without you thinking about it. Your world says, uh-oh, I better point my weapons back as well. We're entering Cold War. It's time for me to also be ready. You know what happens when you go into your reptilian brain. You are no longer available to be relational. You're not really here. Your defense system is here.

Speaker 3:

That is so beautiful. I love that. The oldest parts of the brain are the reptilian brain and in thinking about how reptiles don't even have families. Reptiles do not have relationships. There may be a mating and eggs related, so on and so forth, but reptiles don't care for the young. Reptiles don't move forward. So if these types of interactions force someone into these core parts of the brain that are not helping the situation, that is a really Very primitive part of the brain.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's fantastic, and offering that education to your couples is such a critical piece to this process, so that they can really understand the why. That's right. Why are we having this dialogue in this way? Yeah, why is it Exactly?

Speaker 4:

That's why, then, what I follow up with is, I say, the structure and the framework that Imago Dialogue creates is, as you are speaking to each other in this specific way, which is very different from the way you normally talk, which is part of the reason why you're here talking to marriage. What the dialogue structure does is it walks you through a more effective communication, but it also helps disarm that parasympathetic nervous system, the existence in which I am shut down and I can only think of how to protect myself rather than how to come out of hiding and be relational again.

Speaker 1:

And to piggyback on that, because that's perfectly said is that we all come into a relationship I call it with a packed suitcase.

Speaker 4:

Right.

Speaker 1:

That's all of your life's experiences, how you grew up in your own family of origin, past relationships. So all of those things are at play as well, not just experiences from the present relationship you're having, but everything else as well.

Speaker 3:

If I can use that as a. I'm just going to snag that lead and make a little segue. Igor, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your own packed suitcase, so to speak, if that's all right. We spoke so much shop, so to speak, about the therapy itself, and I could honestly speak about that rest of the time. But I really like when we bring guests onto the podcast who can talk about their own lives in ways that help inspire our listeners to make their own intuitive choices they need to make. So can you let us know a little bit about growing up, how you got to college, law school what was that experience like? I can't imagine after putting so much effort into getting to college and law school and succeeding in those fields and then having the courage to switch to amalgotherapy. There's a lot going on there.

Speaker 1:

What's your marriage and family therapy right? Absolutely To just a totally different field.

Speaker 3:

How did?

Speaker 1:

you grow up.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, and I appreciated very much actually when you've added that the whole suitcase in the past, because I was also going to write away saying I'll give you sort of like very quickly, the end of the story and then take you back to the beginning.

Speaker 3:

All right everybody. Thank you for joining us. So much for part one of Igor's interview. We can't wait to follow up with part two next week. In the meantime, here's a little clip to let you know what we have in store.

Speaker 4:

About seven years into our marriage, I was well into my law career. I actually was now about three years into my own law firm that I started. It's very exciting, kind of you know. Everything was sort of on the horizon, going in the right direction, and one day my wife just said to me you know, I'm tired of kind of going on the same dates. We always do, you know, either going out to eat or we're going to watch a show, and I'd love to do something different. I said okay, what do you have in mind? She said I'd like to go to a couples therapist.

Speaker 2:

And I froze. If my wife said that to me, I think my heart was flat for a second. So were you laughing like that?

Speaker 1:

I was not laughing like that.

Speaker 4:

What you just described.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. What was your candid response when she suggested I froze?

Speaker 4:

Exactly, jacob said, I froze.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

And I said the following sentence is something wrong.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.