This Messy Gorgeous Love

Episode 220 of the Secular Buddhism Podcast

An interview with Devon and Nico Hase

Noah Rasheta: Welcome, Devon and Nico. Thank you so much for being on the podcast with me. I'd love to just start with quick intros. Tell the listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do. Given that I will have already explained a little bit of that in the intro of the podcast, but yeah, tell us a little bit about yourselves.

Devon Hase: Sure. How far do you want to go back? We could tell our whole life stories here. I can say for myself, I started meditating at 19. I had a wonderful philosophy professor in college who introduced me to meditation. And then that same year, I went on my first retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California. So pretty much my whole adult life, 25 years of study and practice.

As a young person, I was so gung-ho. I just wanted to give my whole life and my whole heart to this practice, to awakening. So it resonated very deeply from the beginning. The questions that have been alive, and maybe are still alive for me, are: how do these ancient traditions exist in our lives now? How do we bring them to our partnerships and our relationships and our work world and livelihood, and secular versus spiritual spaces? Those are all questions that Nico and I get to talk about a lot together. We're writing about them, and they're more questions than answers at this point, but all very alive.

You probably heard that we teach meditation all over the country and get to lead a lot of retreats, long retreats, which I love. So yeah, I feel grateful that something about that 25 years of inquiry has blossomed into a full life of dharma and meditation and teaching. So that's what we're up to.

Noah Rasheta: That's great.

Nico Hase: Similarly, I started meditating when I was 16 going on 17 when I did my first weekend meditation retreat. I got hooked from the start. I did a long meditation retreat after my freshman year of college. I did a month after my sophomore year of college. I took time off and did a six-month retreat, a five-month retreat. And I was living in a Zen monastery when Devon and I met. I'd been there for five years. She walked up the driveway, and we started talking, and we have been talking ever since.

Both of us have studied in different Buddhist traditions. We both practiced a lot in the Insight Meditation tradition. I was a Zen student for 10 years, including six years in a monastery. And then we have practiced pretty deeply in the Tibetan Buddhist traditions. We completed a three-year retreat together, and that ended in 2023, which we also talk about in the book. So we've woven our lives together with this spiritual path, and it has also been kind of how we express ourselves in the world.

Noah Rasheta: Great. That's a long time that you've been committed to the practice, but also since you've known each other. And both at a young age. It's not super common for people to encounter these teachings at a younger age, right? It's usually later in life, and something happens, some type of event, and then we go into seeker mode. At least that's how it was for me.

The Instagram Photo Story

Noah Rasheta: I want to start with the very first story in your book, because I think it perfectly captures what this whole conversation is about. You describe a student who came to see you about her relationship troubles. She hesitated because she had just seen your Instagram photos, and you looked like people look in their photos: adorable and all great. And then you told her what had happened 30 minutes prior to those photos. Can you share a little bit of that story here?

Nico Hase: Yeah, sure. So first of all, this is so classic. Devon and I, when we post to Instagram, just like every other person who's posting to Instagram, it looks like we have a perfect life. We put the pictures out that look the best. In those particular photos, we were in this montage of Vermont fall colors. We have a friend who's a great photographer taking the pictures. If you look at our Instagram account, it looks like, how could these two people ever have tension? Look how great they are. They're Buddhist practitioners, and they have mindfulness weaving through their days.

But as you just mentioned, half an hour before those photos were taken, we had a blowout fight. Just so out of control, because just like everybody else, sometimes we get tired. Sometimes we get stretched thin. At that point, we were living in our van, an RV with like 80 square feet of space, and had been for the last six months, traveling around the country teaching meditation retreats, sleeping in our van in people's driveways and in RV parks in Nebraska. We were just exhausted.

So when it came time to take these pictures and I walked up to the van and I said to Devon, "Okay, it's time to go," she looked at me and she said, "I don't want to do it." And we had this whole back-and-forth exchange of me trying to psych her up to do these pictures. The more persuasive I tried to get, the more she dug in her heels, until she finally said to me, "I'm not taking these pictures."

And then we just lost it. All of the skills that we talk about in the book, all of the things that we suggest that you do when you're in the midst of conflict, out the window. Totally gone. All resentments, drag them up. Say the thing that you know is going to blow the situation sky high. We did all of that, on both sides. Neither one of us came out of this looking the least bit good.

And then there's this moment in that exchange where Devon paused, and she said, "Can we just take a breath?" And I will admit, in that moment I thought, "Really? Like, now you're wise all of a sudden?" But I did. I took a breath. We took a breath together, and she put her hand on her heart. And I was like, "Oh my God, fine," and I put my hand on my heart, because actually that's a really good way to settle an over-activated nervous system.

We paused, and we breathed. And then when Devon spoke again, she was actually able to say, "Okay, I'm tired. I'm frazzled. I hate taking pictures." And then I was able to say, "Yeah, I'm tired too. And there's really very few things in life that I would like less than taking a picture, especially now when I'm tired." And so we kind of found each other again. Neither one of us wanted to go do the pictures, but 20 minutes late, we did go meet our friend Isabella, and we did take these pictures, and they did end up on Instagram.

But the point, I think, is what we got to tell our student: it's okay to have conflict. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong in your relationship. And you certainly shouldn't look at us as some pristine couple that never has any difficulty, because in fact, partnership means tension. It's ongoing negotiation in a complicated life. So when these things are coming up for you, nothing's broken. It's just the way it is.

Noah Rasheta: Exactly. I love that so much. And I love that that's the start of the book, because it sets up the understanding that, in the same way that when someone approaches the teachings in general, sometimes it's with the thought of, "Here's this stuff. If I practice this, I'll finally be at peace. I won't have these difficult emotions or difficulties in life anymore." And then as you start to learn, you realize: no, the difficulty is just part of it. But the way you relate to the difficulty can be more skillful.

That's exactly what you're setting up here. Relationships are difficult. It's not that they won't be difficult, but how do you relate to that difficulty in the relationship when it does arise, because it will. I just love that so much. Especially coming from two people who you would think, "Wow, they've got 30,000 hours each or something of practice and meditation. They're never going to fight, right?" And of course it's like, well, no, if you're in a relationship, there will be difficulty. I love that.

Relationships Are Rough: Dukkha and the First Noble Truth

Devon Hase: I'll just jump in and say I also love starting with this chapter on relationships are rough, because in some ways it's very subversive. It's dismantling the perfectionism of our culture. One working title we had for a bit was After the Happily Ever After, because we are fed this whole story of the romantic. You spend some time searching, you have this whole journey of finding your person, but then all the stories end with: "You found them," and then you get married, and it's smooth sailing from here on out, right?

I think there's a lot of our culture that feeds that perfectionism in relationships, but also optimization, right? Wellness culture. As meditation teachers, we're adjacent to this wellness culture that actually has a very opposite message: if you just find the right person and get the right job and have the right diet and the right exercise routine and take all the supplements we're going to sell you, then you're going to be great. Then it's happily ever after. You just got to figure it out.

What we're doing in the book, and we leave this all the way through as dharma teachers too, is saying: actually, life is suffering. Life is stressful. Maybe that's a better translation. It's not going to be perfect. You're not responsible for getting it all right, because you never will. So what does that do to our orientation towards life in general, and also towards our partnerships, our relationships?

When we start with this square one, like, "Okay, it's going to be rough. We're going to have arguments. Even our most optimized people have arguments in their relationships. Relationships end, that's also part of it too." It feels to me like this First Noble Truth is really what we're naming. There's a relaxation, a relief in the system when we're just that honest with each other. Like, "It's going to be hard, and that's good." That's what we're signing up for.

Noah Rasheta: Yeah, I love that. Devon, in that first chapter, let's unpack this a little with the topic of dukkha, the Buddhist principle of dukkha. You apply it directly to relationships. For listeners who might not be familiar with the terminology, dukkha is often translated as suffering, but it means something broader than that. It's inherent stress, inherent unsatisfactoriness. I sometimes like to say it's just that life entails difficulty. And what you're saying in this opening chapter is: relationships are dukkha, and that's not a bug, it's a feature. Can you unpack that a little bit more?

Devon Hase: Yeah, thanks so much for pointing to that. This word dukkha is traditionally translated as suffering, and so it can all sound pretty morose and difficult. But I think it's pointing to something maybe more subtle. The etymology of dukkha: du means kind of a bad fit, and ka can mean a wheel or a circle. So literally it's like a wheel that doesn't fit very well in its hub. When you have a kind of broken wheel like this that doesn't fit well, it's just a bumpy ride, right? We're in for a bumpy ride.

That's what dukkha, this Pali word, is pointing to. It's not that all of life is suffering, all difficult. It's not that. It's that there's this underlying rub, this kind of bump that happens even in our best times, even when we get it all together. If we're talking about the optimization culture, you finally get it all together, and then you start getting old.

Noah Rasheta: Yeah.

Devon Hase: Or with partnerships, you find each other, you have this blissful wedding, and then after the honeymoon is over, you have to talk about money and kids and the household and where you're going to live and how you're going to live. So dukkha has this big range. Starting from real pain, physical difficulty, very real, aging, illness, sickness, all of that. But the whole spectrum can go down into very subtle dissatisfaction, to use the word that you just named, or this sense of stress. Everything's changing, we can't hold on to things. So there's this underlying sense of being ill at ease, like we can't actually fully settle, because there's part of us that understands things are outside of our control.

No matter how much I've learned all the relational skills that we write about in the book, it's still going to be difficult. We're still going to get into it. Conflict, things change, people change, all kinds of unexpected things arise. So this first naming, like the Buddha did with his First Noble Truth, has this sense of, I find it like a relief, because we get to give back all that appropriation, all the responsibility we've been taking for control. Like, "No, it's up to you. Just pull yourselves up by your bootstraps." It's kind of like the American dream: just do it, get all the A's, and then you'll be fine.

But actually, that erases all the conditions, all of these situations in life that are completely outside of our control, that we're not going to be able to get right. And that is so true in relationships. If we're going to try to get the right partner, make them the perfect fit for us, or we're trying to make us the right fit, the perfect person, that's kind of a recipe for disaster. At one point, our other subtitle was something like, "How to stay in relationship without fixing the other person or losing yourself." These are dynamics that are part of that perfectionism: "Just got to get them to do the thing," or "I just have to be different, then we'll be okay." But that underlying assumption isn't trustworthy. It's not possible.

So when we acknowledge, "Okay, step one is relationships are rough," it actually gives us more agency to do what we can within this structure of, yeah, an inherently unsatisfying or stressful experience.

The Wobbly Wheel

Noah Rasheta: I love that. While you were talking, I had this image come to mind. You talked about the definition of the words with the wheel, and I've heard it where it's like, imagine a wobbly wheel that just has a slight wobble. But as you were talking, I was thinking, wait, why don't we imagine, in this context, a relationship like a chariot, the Roman chariot with the two wheels, where one wheel is always wobbly. But which wheel is it? It's not mine, it's my partner's, right? For the partner, they'd say, "No, it's mine, it's the partner's."

And then I thought, yeah, if you take any two-wheeled thing and it's just two different wheels, it doesn't matter what they are. The point is that they're different from each other. You're going to have dynamics there where it just ever so slightly veers to the left or the right or something, because you're trying to make two things that are different work in the same thing.

Devon Hase: That's a great image. I love that. Life is hard enough with one bumpy wheel, one wobbly wheel, but then when you get two, it's like, choice, the wobble. Which is really a lot of what we're trying to address in this book. Some of us, like you named, orient towards trying to fix the other wheel. But others of us, and I can say for myself, are the ones who will assume, "No, this is my wobble. I can't take on too much responsibility. I just got to fix this first."

And it's actually this reciprocity, we write a lot about this. It's not just about fixing one or the other. It's like, how do we actually acknowledge, just like you said, there's two wobbly wheels. And given that situation, how do we kind of do it together, reciprocally?

Deep Listening: Self, Other, and the Space Between

Noah Rasheta: Yeah. So you talk about conflict and repair. You have conflict and repair sections in your book, and you spend a lot of time before getting into those sections on something that would seem counterintuitive, and you just highlighted it: that maybe we should focus on ourselves first. Nico, you use this phrase, "deep listening." Can you talk about that a little bit?

Nico Hase: I can. This is the way that I've been talking about mindfulness in general these days. There are so many really wonderful definitions of mindfulness. We've got Jon Kabat-Zinn's definition, or we've got more classical definitions coming to us from traditional Buddhism. The way that I talk about mindfulness right now, and what's inspiring to me, is thinking of it as deep listening.

We learn through practicing how to really deeply listen, first, here. So I can deeply listen to my own body, and the sensations of my body are going to give me a tremendous amount of information. We could call it intuition, we could call it a quiet knowing. It's like we're eavesdropping on the nervous system itself. We're going to know so much more about ourselves and the situation when we learn to listen deeply to this system here, me.

From there, when we really learn to listen deeply to ourselves, we can extend that depth of listening to another. This goes for our partners, our children, our parents, friends, family members, coworkers. We can really learn to listen to what is here in front of us. If you pay close attention, you might start to notice how difficult that really is, how much of the time we are projecting something onto the other person that is blocking our ability to connect with the sort of raw aliveness that is actually there. When we begin to learn to listen to another, we're getting all of this information, all of this data, that we wouldn't otherwise be able to access through that deep listening.

And then I think the most interesting one, and the most subtle, is listening to the space between. It's like listening to the dynamic that is unfolding between the two of us in the case of partnership. It's not only me, and it's not only you. There is a third space. There is something that is going on between us, within us, around us, that you could call the dynamic, or you could call it the context. When we really get refined, we can start to notice that "space between-ness," and we can learn to deeply listen to that.

So one example, making it accessible. Let's say you come home from a busy day at work, and your partner comes home from a busy day at work, and you've got two children, and you get them dinner and do homework and all the things that you have to do. They're young enough that they have the bedtime ritual of total refusal, filibuster. There's always another reason they can't get to bed. You finally, takes forever, all these negotiations with brushing their teeth, and it's totally exhausting. And then finally you get them into bed, and you sit down with your partner for the first time all day, and you're actually going to get to have a conversation. And then they say, "All right, let's talk about taxes." Or they bring up the one thing you didn't get done on your to-do list, and it just hits you like a truck.

Now, that is not you, and it's not them. It's all of these things that make up the context. It's the way the kids were that night. It's what happened at work today. It's how they are in their health. All of these things are coming together to make that moment of you feeling like you just got hit by a truck. You might feel really confused, like, "Why am I reacting so strongly to that seemingly innocent comment?" But it's that third space.

So the deep listening is: I learn to listen to me, I learn to listen to them, and I learn to listen to this in-between-ness. That's going to give me so much more information so that then I can work skillfully on everything else that we talk about in the book.

Listening to Silence

Noah Rasheta: I love that. Sounds like you were here last night experiencing our bedtime routine with our kids, because you started describing us. I was like, "Yep, that's all the way up until you talked about taxes." Or whatever it was, it was different. But it's what it is, right? Last night, that's exactly what happened here with kids, and the youngest who still kind of just needs you to sit with her until she falls asleep. It's an exhausting process that sometimes I want to say, "Let's just lock the door and let them cry it out if they have to."

But in this case, as soon as it was done, it was, "Okay, can we go spend a few minutes and sit in the hot tub? Because that's where we can just talk. We haven't talked all day." I bring this up because you mentioned listening, specifically listening. In my mind, I was thinking, "I just want to listen to what was the day like." So we sit in the hot tub, and within 30 seconds, she just kind of leans back, and she's out, falls asleep. I just sit in there looking at the stars. I like to talk. I was having a moment of thinking, "I was really looking forward to having a moment for us to finally talk through the day." And there's no talking. She fell asleep, and I just sat there.

But as you were just mentioning listening, I thought, "You know, listening can sometimes be listening to the silence too." Because what I gathered in that moment, first feeling a little offended, like, "Oh, I thought we were going to finally spend time together and talk." And then realizing she's just exhausted with, it's a busy time of the year, the context you mentioned. This is the middle of the dance season. Every weekend has been dance competitions with the kids.

It's like, "Okay, I can listen to what's happening here." I'm not listening to a talk. I'm not listening to us particularly in this moment. I'm listening to the context. We just sat there in silence for, I don't know, 20, 30 minutes, until I woke her up and said, "Okay, we should probably go inside now." Thank you for sharing that.

Devon Hase: I think that's a great example of listening to both. You kind of knew what your need or your expectation was in the moment. And then you can see, "She's in a different place. She's exhausted." And then the condition, the situation that you're in, the relationship, is, "What's needed here maybe is just your patience, and for her to have a good nap." I think that's a really good, healthy example of how this three-part listening can happen.

Noah Rasheta: Yeah, thank you. We jokingly say here in our home around mid-March, well, about March, the joke is, for whatever, "We'll say maybe in June," because we know March or May, it's really packed.

Patience Is for Amateurs

Noah Rasheta: So let's talk a little bit about chapter five. The title for chapter five is "Patience Is for Amateurs." I love that, because sometimes we think of patience like that's the ultimate virtue we're after. But how do we define it, right? Sometimes we're thinking, "Well, patient just means I tolerate or put up with anything," or, like I mentioned earlier, in the case of someone who's conflict avoidant, they might feel like, "I'm being patient," when in reality I'm not. So let's talk through that a little bit, the idea of amateur patience that you bring up in the book.

Nico Hase: Yeah, I think first, we're being a little cheeky. "Patience is for amateurs" can sound like we don't think you should ever be patient, and it's okay to explode on anybody at any time, and the more the merrier. That's not really what we mean. What we're pointing to, and this might be in particular in our Buddhist communities, is that there is this tendency to avoid conflict and to think if things are calm, they're better. "If I remain calm, I am a superior practitioner. And if I have strong emotions that are blowing through, and I'm expressing that to my life partner, that somehow I am not practicing that well." This can be a pretty strong narrative in Buddhist communities.

So the first thing that we're doing is we're blowing that up a little bit. The idea that calm is always the best, and not having emotions is better than having emotions, does not function in a long-term partnership. Once we clear the decks and we understand that that's not what patience means, then we can start to maybe dig into what a genuine patience might be.

Maybe we could say that a genuine patience is something like the ability to bear witness to what is happening, whatever is happening. So if you are having an explosive moment, or a moment of true despair, or you're just freaking irritable right now, patience would be the ability to be with that. To admit it, voice it, understand it, talk it out, talk it through. Or if you need to take a walk around the block, process it for yourself, come back. This bearing witness quality is what we would call a true patience. It's the staying connected with what is difficult, because, as we've said now already five times, there is going to be real difficulty in partnership. There's a kind of courage to being able to turn toward that. And you can turn toward it in yourself, and you can turn toward it when your partner is having one of these really difficult moments.

Noah Rasheta: I love the way you frame that. In these circles where Buddhist practice or mindfulness, something I have to continually remind myself and members of the community when they're new and they're learning these concepts: patience is not the same thing as resignation. I've come to try to visualize patience as a form of active curiosity. Because when we have a sense of certainty that, "Oh, that's right, they're thinking this, or they're doing that, or here's why they're acting this way," to think, "I'm going to stay quiet," that's not patient. I'm sitting with the certainty of a story that may or may not be true.

Whereas patience is more like, "I'm going to allow this to be what it is, and recognize I actually don't know exactly what's happening. Maybe if I'm curious and I observe, I might recognize, well, it could be this or it could be that, but I don't know. And I'm sitting with that uncertainty, and sitting with whatever the experience feels like." That to me feels like patience is active. It's not passive. It's a form of, like I said, for me, it's active curiosity. I love that.

You use a quote or a phrase in the book, "patience with teeth." Tell me a little bit about that. Where does that come from, the idea of having teeth?

Devon Hase: I was just going to name that. I think we use that phrase really to point to this different kind of patience. Our Tibetan teacher calls patience "resiliency," actually. There's this real sense, and it's almost the opposite of a collapse or resignation, because it's this deep engagement. So if you think about teeth, like canine, we're here, we're in it, we're engaged. That kind of patience has some energy to it. It's not a recoil. It's not a giving up. It's more like, "I am here for it, for however long it takes."

So that's the kind of, we're bringing heat to this kind of patience. Whereas I think the connotation often is that patience is cool, and it's kind of removed, at the remove. But we talk a lot about how relationships involve being so vulnerable. It's like having no skin, or it's like the other person lives right up close into the folds of your heart. And then to stay in that kind of intimacy that can feel so intense. Our emotions are running high. We're up against our most difficult edges, and the other person is shining that mirror right at us to show us all those points.

Patience with teeth keeps us in the game. It keeps us, "Okay, this is so hard, but I'm committed. I'm here. I'm going to stay," regardless of what that means. That could also mean taking a break, pressing the pause button, all those things. But that kind of long-term patience that says, "I love you, I'm committed, regardless of how hard it is, we're in it together." That's a little bit what we're pointing to.

I do think it's kind of a prerequisite, or a helpful value, to bring to conflict. We have some chapters that talk about, we call it "rupture like a pro." How do we actually engage in healthy conflict, given that kind of resiliency, the willingness to be in it for the long term, even if it's hard?

Noah Rasheta: I love that. There's that expression that we use when an idea is good, you say, "It has teeth," like there's something there. I like thinking about that in the context of a relationship. A relationship that has teeth, it has a bite to it. It's there. It's going to stay in. And it needs that, because you're on, life is already the roller coaster, but you're on that two-wheel chariot with a wobble. It's going to bump around. If you don't have a bite, the grip or something, you'll slide right off. And I think a lot of people unfortunately do. Not to say that the answer is always stay or go, but too often it's easy to get caught in this thought of, "If it's difficult, this must be the wrong person."

Like you said earlier, society has implanted this idea that with the right person, it'll never be difficult. In the movies, you see that it's happily ever after. And if I don't have that, then, "Oh, I must be with the wrong person. I should probably leave or something."

Conflict Styles: Volcanoes, Diplomats, and Dodgers

Noah Rasheta: Now, you mentioned something a second ago with the explosiveness. I want to draw something out that you mentioned in the book that really stood out to me, and this is the idea that there are different conflict styles. You talk about how no conflict style is better than another. You talk about volcanoes, diplomats, and dodgers. The problem comes from denying your particular style, or not recognizing your style, or being mismatched without the awareness. Being mismatched isn't necessarily the problem, but not being aware of the mismatch could be problematic. So a volcano wishing that they were, or thinking they're a diplomat, or a dodger that's trying to be a volcano, that can be problematic. So let's talk about that a little bit.

Nico Hase: Yeah. So first, let me just define them. I think that's helpful. We're drawing from John and Julie Gottman and their research, and we renamed them. But basically, this is what the Gottmans are talking about. So you probably understand already, dear listener, but here we go.

Volcanoes explode. This is the conflict style where people just get into it. They say what is on their mind. They hold nothing back. It's a little bit brutal. It's a little bit loud, but everything is on the table immediately. Obviously, there are advantages and there are disadvantages of being a volcano. The advantage of being a volcano is authenticity and clarity. Everybody knows what everybody feels, and everybody thinks, and it's all out there. The disadvantage of being a volcano is that it creates rupture. So if you're going to be a volcano, you need to be especially excellent at repair. You need to find ways to repair quickly and skillfully. So that's the volcano.

Then we've got the diplomat. Diplomats are those that have done all the trainings. Usually they love nonviolent communication, or they've done all the insight dialogue and the different ways of being in relationship with each other. Diplomats can talk until the cows come home, and then the cows leave again, and they come home again. It's like endless conversation, getting into all the minutiae of how I feel and how you feel. The advantage of the diplomat is that you get to really vibe together, if you're doing it well, and you get to really develop a deep understanding of each other. The disadvantage of being a diplomat is that it's bloody exhausting sometimes. And you might talk your way right out of the kind of spark that is necessary for other parts of your relationship, which we might get to. So that's the advantage and disadvantage of a diplomat.

Dodgers dodge. They are conflict avoidant. So something starts, and they're out the door. They might be physically out the door, or they might just be emotionally out the door and checked out, but they're going to dodge that conflict. There's nothing wrong with this necessarily. The advantage of being a dodger is that it keeps the peace. And the disadvantage of being a dodger is that you might not be able to surface the real difficulty, and therefore you won't be able necessarily to address it always.

So no one of these is a better way to be or a worse way to be. The most important thing is that we understand what is our style, and how do we work skillfully within our particular style. You also mentioned mismatch. This is a really big thing in relationship, because you can be in a relationship with, say, a volcano and a dodger. The dodger is going to get scared when the volcano erupts. And the volcano, even if they don't admit it, is going to get scared if the dodger leaves. It can feel like abandonment.

So we have to understand, "Okay, well, my partner is a dodger. They're going to check out for a little bit. As long as they come back, that's okay." Or the dodger has to understand, "All right, the volcano is going to get loud, as long as they don't get into character assassination or saying terrible things about who you are or things that they can't later take back. It's just loud. It's just kind of, it's just big. It's just big energy, and it's okay, and I can be safe within that."

I'm not saying this is easy. Mismatch in any part of your relationship is a real rub. It's rough. It's dukkha. It is something that we're going to be working with for the entirety of our time and partnership together. So I don't mean to say, no problem when it's a volcano, one's a dodger. It should be super easy to smooth it over. It's never going to get smoothed over. It's just going to be one of those tensions that you work with in your relationship. But if you can acknowledge it, understand it, and bring all of your resources and your education to bear on that, it is workable.

Noah Rasheta: Yeah. Well, even if they're not mismatched, it can be equally difficult. Two dodgers, they're never going to get to the bottom of it. Two volcanoes, which I believe you mentioned, that's the two of you. What has that done? Does it help you know or understand, "Okay, this person's just, they need to explode for a minute," and you understand that because you do the same? Or does two explosions make a bigger overall explosion?

Devon Hase: It can certainly make a big explosion. And as Nico was talking, I was thinking about my own trajectory. I think these conflict styles show up differently in different relationships. So for whatever reason, I'm a volcano with Nico, but with most of my friends and family, I'm actually more like a dodger or a diplomat sometimes. Like with my parents, depending on the friend, I might be more diplomatic.

Noah Rasheta: Interesting.

Devon Hase: These different styles bring out different things in each other. I can say for myself, maybe this is why I appreciate one aspect of Nico. It used to really scare me, the way that he would just tell me. I knew exactly how he was feeling. He would tell me when he got upset or angry. But there was a sense of, I could meet it. There's been a learning of, "And I can meet it too." That volcano actually gives me permission to also be explosive and direct and clear.

So it feels like with any aspect of this, we're in a dance together. As long as we're doing those three listenings, there's actually a lot of potential for learning. For our particular volcano style, to also be honest, we might be overstating. We don't yell or raise our voices that often. We're not throwing stuff. We're not that kind of volcano. We're just sometimes big emotions are rising, and we're showing them. That can look like a pretty big experience. But for us also, because we've learned a lot of ways to work through those explosions, they don't last for very long. And we have somewhat agreements, like probably best to not go to bed in one of those explosive places. So as much as we can do it earlier in the day, or work on repair and forgiveness before bedtime, we try to do that.

I think with any of this, again, each individual relationship is going to be so different in its constellation. And it might change over time. In the beginning, maybe Nico and I were both more explosive, and now we're a little bit more edging towards the diplomacy side, maybe. So I think you can know your type, but then that kind of self-knowledge is power. There's more capacity for flexibility, for learning, for setting these agreements.

We were just having a conversation with a friend who's in a partnership where she's the volcano and he's the dodger. But there's a lot of understanding that they have mutually. So she understands that her volcano energy really scares him, kind of like Nico was saying. But his dodging energy triggers her. When they can know that about each other, there's a way to navigate, again, with these three listenings.

A little bit like your story too. Your wife just needed to take a nap. You were sort of willing to sacrifice your own need or your own style for what she needed in the moment. With some of these mismatches, it can be like, "I know this dodger is dodging, and I'm going to give them the space and the grace to take a break before I dive in with my volcanic style." So we can learn that flexibility and that way to be skillful, even if we're very different.

The Identical Twin Experiment

Noah Rasheta: Yeah, I love that. I was just thinking back to experiences I've had. We're talking about relationships, but other relationships, like parental relationships. I remember growing up, my older brother and my dad are very volcanic. They'll say whatever right then. I remember they could interact in a way that was like, "Oh my gosh, that was a little scary." And 10 minutes later, they're best friends, like nothing ever happened.

I have an older brother, then my identical twin and I. I'm an identical twin. We are very similar, and we would have an interaction with my dad that felt harsh, and we were like the wounded little puppy that's like, for the next week, "I want to stay away. I'm offended." I remember thinking, "That's so fascinating. Why can my older brother speak up and say something, and then take it harsh, and then like nothing? But I can't." I felt like, "No, this affected me for days and days."

So I carried that later into life in my relationship, and realizing it's one thing to understand yourself, but then also to understand the dynamic of two personalities. In our context, that's why I remember this, because I was like, "She's a lot like my dad. She'll just say what she needs to say in the moment." And doesn't think there was really, "Like, why are you so offended? I said that, but I was mad. Now I'm not." And I'd be like, "I've been carrying that for a lot longer than I needed."

So yeah, just to emphasize the importance of understanding the way the dynamics work between the various relationships, and then learning to be skillful within that dynamic, rather than thinking, "They're a volcano, and I need them to be something else." That's not going to happen, right? It's like, again, the wheel. You're not changing the wheel. You're trying to become more skillful with the fact that I'm in a chariot that pulls to the right. That's the dynamic. That's what we are, or whatever the thing is. I like thinking that way.

Devon Hase: 100%. Can I ask you, I'm just curious, as an identical twin, do you feel like a lot of these traits track with you and him? Do you share conflict styles, relational styles, or is it different personalities?

Noah Rasheta: No, it's very similar. In fact, I find it fascinating because our wives are similar in some ways and different in other ways. My wife and I talk about it, I'm sure they do too, where it's kind of like, "I don't know if I could be in that relationship." And at the same time, I ironically recognize, "I kind of am, but mine is, this one's okay. That one would not be okay." I'm sure he feels the same.

So it's interesting that he and I are very similar, and that we ended up with partners that are somewhat similar in some ways. But speaking of the similarities between my own brother and I, we're also the two wheels. There's a slight wobble, right? We might be a whole lot more compatible than most, because in a genetic sense, we're 100% the same. But there's enough difference through lived experience that even if I had to live with him as my partner for the rest of my life, we would probably have our little altercations from time to time over how you organize the fridge, or whatever it is.

Because there is no perfect person out there who's going to be the way that you want them to be all the time. Or in the context of a loving relationship, a romantic one, no one's going to ever love you 100% the way you want to be loved in that moment. Because sometimes you don't even know what you need in the moment.

I just find all of that fascinating, the psychology of relationships. That's what drew me to your book. I love the idea of understanding relationships and psychology and interpersonal dynamics. And then all of that flavored through the Buddhist lens was just like, "I want to read this book."

A Practical Tool: The Check-In

Noah Rasheta: I think it's packed with incredible frameworks, concepts, ideas. But the other thing I like is it's not just theory. You have meditation practices, journaling exercises, partner exercises throughout the book. For someone maybe who's listening to this now and saying, "Yeah, a lot of these ideas are clicking, or they resonate, but what is something I could actually try tonight with my partner?", what is one exercise you would point them to? What would that be?

Devon Hase: Yeah, great. I just want to say also, I love your example of living with your identical twin. That dismantles, again, this kind of assumption that there's somebody perfect out there for you. Even if you share 100% genetic material, and you're similar in all these ways, they're still going to be wobble. So I like that image a lot.

One very simple practice we kind of start with is the check-in, checking in. We mostly probably do this informally. You probably your hot tub time in the evening is a kind of informal check-in. But we've sort of formalized it. One way I think it's very effective is that it puts that three-part listening right into the practice.

So it's formally, like, even timing yourself. Nico and I will do this. Take turns, and the first one who's speaking speaks for five minutes and just shares what's on your heart and your mind. It could be that evening check-in after the kids are in bed, share about the day. It could go to all different levels. This could be very deep, intimate sharing about what's on your heart. But it could also just be like, "Here's how my day was."

But there's something about unadulterated time. I know I'm going to speak for five minutes without getting interrupted and without the topic changing. That feels very respectful and very spacious in terms of getting it all out there on the table.

So we do that, and then we swap. Without commenting on the other person's check-in, the other one will go. So the listener becomes a speaker, and then just shares what's on their heart and mind for five minutes. And then we have a period, which is kind of like the third listening, where we're just naming what we saw, maybe reflecting back for the other person, or maybe taking the conversation further if we had certain decisions we have to make, or certain altercations we're resolving together.

But that kind of checking in, where we're really giving each other a lot of time and space to just share, is such a gift. I'm finding it, because now we do it a lot, Nico and I do it a lot together, and I also like doing it with friends. It's interesting, because I'm sort of trained now to want to just share it all. I'm seeing friends I haven't seen for a while, and I'm just like, "I want to tell you everything that's in my life and on my heart." And yet they're stopping and pausing, and there's questions, and the conversation is more creative, which is also another lovely way to interact.

But I guess I'm realizing, there's something so generous about checking in, where it's like, "No, everything gets to be put out there. And then we can choose, what thread do we want to follow?" My heart and mind really loves that sense of, "I get to fully listen to myself, and then fully listen to the other." And it's always a mystery. There's discovery in listening to the other one. And then new kind of situational context and insights can arise through the reflecting at the end. So that's the check-in.

Noah Rasheta: I love that. Do you try to stay on a particular topic or theme? For example, let's say you have a couple, and their dynamic just becomes like, one comes home and is always venting about what happened at work, and the other one's always venting about their work, but never really talking about family, the relationship. If someone's listening, like, "I do that, but I'm always listening to the same thing, and I talk about something else. How are we doing?" Or is that not part of it? It's just get into the habit of listening and letting them talk.

Nico Hase: I think it's a really good question. I would encourage a listener to just try it without sculpting, without managing in any way. Just see what happens when you give the person a full five minutes. Usually what happens is they start out in the same old territory. And if you're really listening to them, there's a kind of magic, there's a kind of alchemy, where they will begin to deepen, and they'll begin to discover new territory. There's something alchemical about your attention that's really on them, where they can discover themselves in a new way.

Now, if you do it 10 times, and it's still the same territory again and again and again, I think there's nothing wrong with checking in on a particular topic, if that's going to feel useful to you. But first, I would make no demands on the process. Just experiment and see what happens when there's deep listening.

Devon Hase: I'll say, I think maybe one of the magic parts of this formula is, whether you choose, you could choose five minutes, you could choose 10 minutes, that actually feels like a long time. So it invites this going deeper. If the default, you're kind of in a rut about complaining about work, that may not take five minutes. So it sort of gives the person full range to just vent. Maybe they really do want to vent for five minutes. But often it's like, those usual tracks will get run out, and then it's still three more minutes left, and now what to say? So it kind of allows for that extension to get out of the habits.

It might not always happen that way. I certainly have themes that I'll be checking in on for months. Nico will tease me. He's like, "I can hear that you're really, really engaged with this particular issue. You've been hearing about it for a long time." But that's also part of my process. It's generous that I can check in about the same topic again and again. But partly it's because the intention is there for learning. So it's not just venting and staying stuck. It's more like this check-in process. Even if I have to do it every day on the same thing forever, I'm learning, I'm naming. There's something about, it's like mindfulness out loud, where we're kind of clearing the space then for new insights to arise. And because we kind of share that intention, it feels like things can open up at their own time.

This Messy Gorgeous Love

Noah Rasheta: Yeah, I love that. Thank you for sharing that. I want to close with your title, the title of the book, This Messy Gorgeous Love. It seems like the whole book is an argument that the mess is the gorgeous part, and that we don't find beauty in spite of the difficulty, but somehow in it, or through it. What does the phrase mean to you after being together 20 years?

Devon Hase: Yeah, choosing a title is always the hardest part about writing a book, I think. There was something about juxtaposing these two words that for me really describes the whole thing. It's messy. It's a mess. Being human is messy. It's a pretty good word for dukkha, actually. As soon as we get our house cleaned, it starts getting dirty again. That's the truth with the relationships too.

So there's mess there, and there's a relief. The mess itself is what's gorgeous. There's so much humanity. There's so much capacity then for intimacy, for mutual understanding, for deeper love, when we're willing to get into the mess together. Again, this goes for partnership, but it also goes for any kind of relationship that we're in. It's both messy and gorgeous. And how wonderful that it's both.

We end with this theme, and maybe I'll toss it to you, Nico, to talk about. We have a chapter, a passage, that's called, "Death Is the Mother of Beauty." When we open to these maybe less savory truths about life, that actually opens us more to the beauty and the gorgeous and the mystery of it all that we can be in together.

Nico Hase: Yeah. In terms of the title, I think the word "allowing" really captures it for me. There's something in fully allowing myself to be messy, and simultaneously to be deeply listening and to cultivate kindness and patience and all of these pieces that are essential to connection. But something about really allowing myself to be this, and then really allowing my partner and my family members and my community members to just be messy, and not need to clean it up for them or for me. Just like, it's just like this. That is such a huge relief. So that's the title.

And then Devon mentioned the last chapter of the book, where we talk about impermanence. This is a chapter about joy. It's a chapter about fun. But we kick off that chapter on fun by talking about the contemplation of our own fleetingness. We don't know how long we have. We don't know how long our partner has. If we can really acknowledge that this is impermanent, this connection is impermanent, then how will we want to treat the preciousness of that connection?

Noah Rasheta: I love that. Thank you for sharing your thoughts about the book, but thank you for writing the book and putting that content out there that no doubt will help individuals, and especially relationships, to navigate the messy and beautiful experience that it is to be in relationship. Where can people find your book?

Nico Hase: They can find it just about anywhere that books are sold. You can go to our website, which is devonandnicohase.com. There's a book page on there. Of course, you can find it on all the big booksellers. You can find it on Goodreads. You can find it on Barnes and Noble. You can find it on Amazon. You can have your local bookstore order it if they don't have it already, et cetera, et cetera. Anywhere that you find books. It's an audiobook, so you can listen to it wherever audiobooks are sold.

Noah Rasheta: Thank you both again for your time, and I wish you all the best with the book.

Nico Hase: Yeah, thank you so much.

Devon Hase: Thank you so much, Noah. What a pleasure, what a delight to meet you this way. Thanks for having us.

For more about the Secular Buddhism Podcast and Noah Rasheta's work, visit Eightfoldpath.com. To learn more about Devon and Nico Hase or to purchase This Messy, Gorgeous Love: A Buddhist Guide to Lasting Partnership, visit devonandnicohase.com.