So many things inform our personal definition of love: how we were raised, how love was modeled for us, our culture, and more. But what is the most meaningful definition of love?
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh is a world-renowned social psychologist, specializing in sexuality and relationships. Based on her research, she shares a new way to look at love, and as part of that, a new way to love and be loved.
Dr. Sara is interested in helping people move past a more superficial love, to the type of love that more lasting, more real, and more desirable–all by design, not by chance.
About a few other things…
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TRANSCRIPT
Monica Packer: Dr. Sara, welcome to you about progress.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Thank you so much for having me.
Monica Packer: I’m just going to go right in to the deep end here because I just wanna know right off the bat, why love? Why is that a topic that you are so interested in? You’ve not only spent decades researching this and helping people with their love lives, but also you’ve written a whole book on the topic.
Why does this matter to you?
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: I have a whole story as why I was always very fascinated by it. Yet confused because when I was asking people around me, aka, my parents, you know, the first people that you ask like, why did you marry each other? And they often told me something That we have in Farsi, they said, “Love is like a watermelon, so when you open it, you don’t know if you have the red and juicy ones or you get the tasteless ones.” I’m like, that’s not the answer. This is horrible. Right? So I thought, okay, so that was not helpful.
And then little by little, as I grew older, I look around me, marriages fall apart, hearts are broken. So this is a part of life that all of us experience, right?
So those were the initial seeds that were implanted in my head. And then it was so bad to the point that when I was 15 I read a study that talked about 50% of marriages end up in divorce.
So I am not kidding you. I quit going to weddings. I was
Monica Packer: at 15.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Yes, at 15. And I thought, you know what? Why are you celebrating this 50% of chance this is, this does not make any sense. And then little by little again, you know, life happened and then I met my own husband, you know, now husband, you know, and then I figured if I want to be with this person, I better have an answer as how this thing works, because I do not want to add to that statistics.
So that is the simple version. But obviously along the way, a lot of stories, a lot of things unfolded. And yeah. And then I really did dedicate my life to deconstruct this concept that when people say, I love you, I’m not in love with you. You are love worthy. You are not love worthy, what do we even talk about?
Monica Packer: Well that’s, this is what I’m excited to break down because I’m with you there. Like once you start to actually question the language we use and all the meaning we put behind it, and you just start to wonder, does any of that really make sense or is it really what we think it is and. If so, why? And if not, why?
And what can we do to better improve the loving relationships we have and that we want? And in ways where it’s more intentional and less just up to chance. And that’s what I feel like love to me often feels like. It’s just seems like it’s destiny or you like stumble across it by chance. You fall in love by chance.
You stay in love by chance, and I believe your premise is all different. I wanna learn more about it. But first, can we start with what are we getting wrong about love?
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Unfortunately, I have to say maybe a little bit of a background. So I studied linguistics to begin with, and then I went to write social psychology, and then I went to psychosexual therapy and then couples counseling, you know, so I got my hands into different parts of a relationship. The way that I see it is relational spaces from bedroom to boardroom, right?
And if you really look at all of these spaces, love has a place in all of these. However, in many of these places we have a rule.
For example, every year they have a review. You sit together, 360 review. Are you abiding by the culture of the company? Is this still serving you? Are you still serving us? All of that, but we don’t have that for intimate relationships, and we spend majority of our times, we make the most important decisions of our lives in those intimate relationships.
Right. Again, going back to me, my questioning mind, that did not make sense. What we get wrong is the process that we are introduced to very early on through movies, through anything that we are watching and hearing is there are two people come together,we start spending time together.
So think about the resources that we spend. And resources for me are four folds, right? Money, time, attention and energy, we start pouring a lot of that into that space, right? We spend a lot of time together, share our friends together, you know, all of that. And then we come together.
And when one plus one equals one. Then we are like, yay, we are in love. So let’s just move forward with the nexus step. You live together. And then there’s legality around it that is going to be, formed in the form of being engaged or
on paper, living together, cohabiting as you know, with the civil rights or getting married or producing something together, or adopting a pet together. You know, producing meaning like having children together, right? So that is the model. But what I’ve seen across so many countries that I worked in more than 41 now, it’s really interesting.
It does not work because if the two of you are one, one entity, imagine where does the pet go? Where does the child go? Where does the sick parent go? Where does the financial crisis of the world go? So you don’t have any capacity in that mishmosh of the situation to handle it with two adult grownup minds.
Right? So that is what we get wrong, that I call submerged love. One plus one equals one. Nothing else is accepted, but this one plus one equals one that is accepted.
And to make it worse, we expect that to remain the same forever.
Monica Packer: Okay. My husband and I were talking about this recently, one of my friends when she got married, her mom and I were talking and she said, you know, marriage is a crap shoot. And when she said that, I thought, well, that’s a weird thing to say the morning of your daughter’s wedding. And now, you know, it’s been probably 14 years later, I, my husband and I are talking about this.
We’re like, she’s so right. In many ways you don’t know who you’re gonna be, who the other person’s gonna be, how you will evolve separately and together, and that marriage will and love changes as people change or don’t change. And I’m trying to square that with the old model. And obviously I can’t, you know, one plus one equals one.
That’s part of the problem is we’re expecting it to stay the same. We’re we’re expecting us to be a single entity. So what? Is there another model then that we should be kind of switching our gaze to and trying to understand differently about love?
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Yes, absolutely. So the emergent love model. When I started to do this work, I realized that one of the issues we had with love is that we wanted to remain the same. Right. It’s aesthetic, but love is dynamic. As you mentioned we change, the other person changes, hopefully, you know, and both of us change and there are so many things in life that happens, right? Imagine that a log and a spark, they come together.
Monica Packer: together.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: As long as they’re in conducive context fueled with oxygen, it, so the, the fire that they create stays, but take away the spark or take away the log even for a second. Do you have a fire? No. So emergent entity is when everything is coming together, the crucial or elements, they are present and they are in interaction with one another day after day. So that that emergent entity, which is the love in this case, has a chance to emerge. So one plus one equals three.
Monica Packer: Ooh. Okay. I thought you were gonna say two because when I, when I heard about the other model that I’ve been, you know, thinking of and probably following for much of my life, one plus one equals one. I think like wholeness, togetherness, being in synergy together, moving as one together. And I thought you were maybe gonna say no, we just need to be separate entities.
But it’s different than that, so, so can you explain, break that down a little bit more? For someone like me who was hearing this for the first time, they might be a little confused, like, what’s so bad about the other model other, and how was this math like working out?
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Right. Probably mathematicians out there are going to really hate me right now. One plus one. But okay, that’s a great question. Let’s look at it this way. If you really think of a triangle, right, and then the triangle has the tip on the, on the ground we call love. So they fall in love, be in love, the rest will follow, right?
That is the promise. As a married person, I think you know that it does not follow just automatically. Right?
Monica Packer: Yes.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: how about if you flip it over and the base of the pyramid or the triangle is on the floor, on the, solid ground and then the six ingredients that we found through our research, they need to be present for love, to have a chance to even emerge. Let’s say for example, a couple comes one plus one equals one, right? They’re in love, infatuated, they are together, all of that over a period of time, the reason they come to me or my colleagues, is that they really don’t feel seen.
They don’t feel appreciated. They don’t feel as a person anymore. It actually happened to me. I had to come with a full disclosure in the book because it feels like, it feels to me that one day actually I had a panic attack as I was with my friend. And then when I came home I told my husband, I said I had a panic attack.
That was so strange. I don’t know where it came from and I just ignored it. But then I went to a psychologist for an analysis. He said, well, do you like to look at your close relationships, AKA, your marriage? I said, how dare you? It’s perfect. My marriage is perfect. And he said, well, maybe it’s too perfect.
It’s talking about perfectionism, right?
Monica Packer: Oh
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: So maybe you are too close. Maybe you’re too enmeshed. So it took us a while with my husband of 23 years that we really worked it out so that in every day, which part of me, where do I end? Where do you begin in every interaction? So how do we incorporate all of these ingredients that are absolutely critical for an emergent love to make sure that we are intentional and conscious about which one of them is at play at every phase of our lives. You know, becoming parents, immigration, all of these, right? So each phase requires different strength that you can borrow from one of these ingredients. So in the old model, basically what happens is you reach a point that you keep asking for a space, I need my space.
It’s some, some sort of an acquired narcissism because you went through this codependency for such a long time that you have to push the other person away to feel like a person yourself.
Monica Packer: And in this new one, you are two separate people that are choosing to be in the same, or in similar, I guess, time, money, energy, space, and giving that to each other too and to yourself. And that’s what creates the third part, which is the love.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Exactly, and you have not, the codependency, not interdependency, but you have intradependency. You know, where and how to rely on each other and the ingredients that came out of our research, and I keep referring back to our research. There were two pieces of research that informed this. One of them was 312 couples that I personally worked with, and these couples are from all across, the world and walks of life.
Question I started with was, why do marriages fail? Why do relationships fail? But then I flipped it over and I started asking, why do relationships thrive? Then I started getting the answers I wanted,
Monica Packer: Hmm.
And that’s another flip.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Yes. That’s another flip, right? So those resources that you’re talking about, like you know that, that I mentioned earlier, they need to be put behind the six ingredients that matter because a lot of couples with good heart, good intention, they pour so much of the resources somewhere that does not matter.
Monica Packer: Okay. So the resources are different than the ingredients.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Yes, yes. So the resources are time, energy, attention, money.
Monica Packer: Okay. And then do you mind sharing what the ingredients are too, just so that they have that overview?
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Absolutely. So the ingredients are mutual attraction, and I’m not talking about sexual chemistry only-
Monica Packer: Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Trust, shared vision, compassion, and loving behaviors.
Monica Packer: Hmm.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: So these are the six ingredients.
Monica Packer: And I can see how resources will be different depending on the ingredient and also the season of life and where people are at within that season, and which resources you’ll need to access to nourish an ingredient to then nourish the love. What I love so much about this, Dr. Sara, is like you talked about. Before the old model is you fall in love. Then all of those ingredients come after just like by chance. It’s just what happens when you’re in love with someone, then you’re going to be mutually attracted to them. You’re going to treat them in loving ways when really it’s the reverse. It’s when we, when we apply ourselves by design to these ingredients, use the resources we have to lean into the ones that we need, then that’s what creates the stability and the love. Right?
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Exactly, and both parties feel that they are thriving. So after that first research, when all of these came about, we did a US representative sample. So basically 159 couples who self-identified as thriving. Some of them have been together for 50 years. The minimum was one year, so it, it was a big range.
When we asked them about these ingredients, they talked about everyday interactions that, and there are new meanings that they shared with us. Like, for example, for respect. Respect is not just be polite and courteous, and that’s, that’s not on, that’s not what it is. Respect is, well, based on the wording of it, linguistic part of me coming out, to look and to look again.
That’s respect. Meaning I keep reknowing you, I keep relearning you. I keep making your life easier. I keep learning what makes your life meaningful to you. And then I put my efforts there. So
Monica Packer: I see how that’s deeper too.
You know, like being polite can be, it can be seen as respectful, but it’s more of a surface level. It’s almost like a false respect, although you can, when you really deeply respect someone, you are polite to them too. But if we’re just staying in the surface level, that’s where we lose.
The love.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Absolutely. Like, for example, my couples come, I ask them, obviously I ask them, like, you know, how much respect do you think you have for one another? And then they say, well, a lot. What do you mean? I’m like, well, I didn’t see it. You kept interrupting each other. That’s very disrespectful to me, you know?
Monica Packer: I bet they’re like, Oh, oops. Didn’t realize. So when I’m thinking about this old model, I think a lot of people will have that fear of letting go because they think they’re letting go of these feelings of safety, of togetherness, of, of, of really being this. This force together, like a singular force in many ways, but as I’m just listening to you, and I’ve also been digging into your research and it, to me, just makes much more sense because it’s such a deeper way to get to that thing that you wanted.
So it’s not like you’re saying goodbye to that. You’re just doing it in a deeper and more different way.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Exactly deeper and actually more real way. Okay. If you are more real, if you really see the participants of our research, if you really talk to them, you will see they are in their, like, 60s, 70s, 80s, and still being refueled and refilled with the love they have for one another. And that’s what I call love.
That’s what we are looking for. That’s what, what, like, the research shows if you’re in a loving partnership, you’re Your blood pressure is lower, your cholesterol level is lower, the general, happy hormones so to speak are higher. That’s what they’re talking about. Not falling in love, being infatuated for like two seconds and then the rest of life you’re just chasing it, chasing something that what, is not even to be chased.
It’s not there even. Silence.
Monica Packer: you, I know that there’s so much more to this. And I know that’s where we want to direct them to your book, Love by Design, but I want to give them a place to kind of start and more practically. So, because even though so much of this work feels a lot deeper, it also seems like there’s things on the outside.
With our resources that we need to do as well. So if you can just give us just a few ways that we can start acting differently or shift the way it’s where we’re approaching the most important loving relationships we have in our lives, presumably with a partner of some sorts, what are some practical ways we can make some changes to how we are both loving someone and also being loved?
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Absolutely. First and foremost, you need to know your love blueprint. So in however way that you. You think, you’ve been loved. What was the definition of love? So for example, go forward, give grandpa a kiss. That was a sign of don’t you love him? Come here, cook for me today. Don’t you love me? Oh, you should have known to prepack me this snack versus the other one. Don’t you love me? So what was the language of love when you were growing up? And how are you applying it now into multiple relationships that you have? With your loved ones, with parents, with children, with your partner, whoever that you assume to be in a loving relationship with you, with a friend.
So that’s one. The love blueprint is very important. I give you a very concrete example. When I do my workshops, often I ask people to bring two objects for me. One is the love that they desire, and one to represent the love that they, feel they deserve.
Monica Packer: Okay.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: One of the most memorable ones that I had recently was a lady who came and brought a very cozy blanket.
Very small, cozy, like one of these blankies almost, you
Monica Packer: Mm hmm.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: one of those and a very spiky rock on the other hand. I said, okay, so what is happening? She started crying. She said, look, when I first got the blankie. I felt like, Ooh, so soft. I want to be embraced by this.
But then when I thought about the love that I think I deserve, I went for this spiky rock so how do you marry these two?
Monica Packer: Hmm.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: So that was also the person, just as a matter of background, that ended up, to her words, in wrong relationships. So if you feel like, you know, you need this, you want this, but you deserve this, that piece of deserving comes from your blueprint as a child and also as a grown up in significant relationships that you’ve experienced in your life.
So knowing your love blueprint is very important.
Monica Packer: Okay. And then with that, I’m sure they’re going to have to do some deep thinking. I love that object lesson though, because to me that can help for someone who might have a hard time trying to dig back in the past or to try to bring that up to the forefront. It’s hard to name. An object might be most helpful and, and, and putting the words to both the memories and experiences, but also just your own desires as well.
That’s great.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Yeah, and also to your point of the fear of letting go of the concept that you grew up with. Do you think it was easy for me to let him go, you know, of that concept? No, it wasn’t. I wanted to be Cinderella, you know, Many little girls dream to do that, you know? But on the other side of it, I’ve sat so much with pain, I can’t take it anymore.
When there is a better way, why not? Why not? You know, let’s democratize the science of love so everybody can have access to it. Everyone deserves to be in their desired loving relationship. I 100 percent disagree when people say, I don’t deserve to be loved.
I don’t deserve to be in a loving relationship. Look at her. She doesn’t deserve that. Or, no, I’m not on that camp. Everyone can make it happen.
Monica Packer: For those who are ready to get into the this, I am, I deserve to have the love I desire, after they’ve considered their love blueprint, what else would you recommend they do?
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Okay. Thank you for that question. Then, if they are in a partnership, they’re gonna get to know the love blueprint of the other person. And that’s a matter of conversation. So, for example, if a person brings a glass, the other person brings a rock, what are you expecting? So, it’s important for them to really see, and psychologically speaking, using an object, in this case, with a degree of separation between you and what you think.
and what actually is. So it makes it easier. Now, after knowing one’s blueprint, then you need to learn how to put yourself out there and communicate it. So, one is learning it, experiencing it for yourself, and then expressing it outwardly.
Monica Packer: So you said you have to, you have to be able to feel it yourself. And then express it. When you say, feel it yourself. Does that, is that self love or is that just, is that something different?
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: So again, thank you for that informed question. Self-love is a part of it, so loving yourself. Again, there’s a lot of terminology out there that honestly, this is to me, acquired narcissism. It’s very, very different. Self-love means loving many through one. When you love yourself, you can love anyone who is around you.
So that’s a baseline we can, if we can really get to that place. And look at all the hatred that is promoted in the world these days. We need more love, but real, real quality. Right? So if you really have self love, heal your narcissistic injury, the injury to your ego, the injury to the soul, to yourself, then you can actually put yourself out there with that knowledge of love blueprint and to be able to receive the love that is expressed to you.
Monica Packer: Ah, again, like this is one of those things. We don’t want to let go of the old model because that’s what we want. But to actually get that model, we have to do it differently. It’s the same thing here. A part, a part of that like narcissistic. Version of love that you’ve talked about is because we love that feeling of being admired, of being respected, of being supported.
But when you misplace that, you put it first, you put it at the bottom, then it will never be enough, right? It’s not going to ever fill your, your love tank. But if you are coming from a place of it, you already feel it yourself, then you actually can invite someone in to love you.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Exactly, and you can receive it. You can perceive their actions. As acts of love. Because how many people do you know that they are in a loving relationship and they actually sabotage it? That comes from that to prove to that injured ego that, see, I told you I didn’t deserve it,
Monica Packer: Got it. That’s where the rock, the spiky rock is interfering with the cozy blanket. So I didn’t mean to spend more time on this, but I am interested if we can just dig in just a bit more to that, that self love piece, because this has been such a talking point in the zeitgeist, I think for the past 10 years or so, like self love, love yourself.
It’s really hard, and also it can almost become another narcissistic way of viewing things, if that makes sense. I don’t know. It gets twisted. So can you share anything on this topic that you think will actually help people better than just the trite words, love yourself?
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Absolutely. I give you a very quick assessment point that I give to my clients. Whenever you hear yourself say, you know what, I need to take a shower to recharge. That’s a sign of self love. That means that you know what you need in that moment in time. Go get it. It’s not too complicated, right? Go get it.
I’m recharging myself. But whenever you hear you say, I need my space, know that this is not coming from a place of self love because
Monica Packer: why is that?
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: imagine the gesture around it. When I’m recharging myself, just listen to my tone. I need my space. I need to recharge for a beat. How did you receive this?
Monica Packer: The latter one?
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Both? How did you receive
Monica Packer: Yeah. The first one felt like accusatory, you know? The second one felt like it was more just about you.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Exactly, and the other person is more likely to give you benefit of the doubt and to even help you to get there because you’re going to recharge. your batteries and come back. There is no disconnect. There’s no rupture. But when I say I need a space, you are the burden. I’m taking space from you.
Monica Packer: Yeah,
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: So that is the little assessment that we can do.
That is it coming from true self love, self care, which is also going hand in hand with self love, or it’s actually I’m giving, giving, giving, giving to the point that I just have nothing else to give. And then I’m just going to push the whole world away.
Monica Packer: And I’m looking back to the ingredients you shared as well as the resources and how that directly applies to love of self too. Just recognizing where am I lacking this for myself and what resources will help me lean into that ingredient better. Because like we talked about at the beginning of this conversation, we evolve, we change.
Also our needs change and what we need from ourselves change. So this is giving me more of that practical lens on how to do that instead of just like, okay, I love you. That doesn’t feel like self love, but what, you know, that, that gives me a way to act on it. Okay.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: everything that you think about, really think about.
Monica Packer: Mm.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: and nothing more is because those are the ones, if you look at them, we don’t have them. Endless quantity. Money, time, attention, energy. We don’t have endless of them. So it’s important to put intentions behind.
Who am I in that 1 plus 1 equals 3? How much of it goes to my one? How much of it to the other one? And how much of it am I going to intentionally put into the third circle, which is the relationship? And all of these are in interaction with one another, constantly.
Monica Packer: So that, so the three here again, me, you, and our relationship, that is what makes three. And we work together by design to nourish all three, but you know what, we take care of ourselves. We take care of each other. We take care of our relationship. This is all making so much sense to me. And I, I’m just like, It is so revolutionary too, at the same time, why, while it makes so much sense, it is so revolutionary and I, and I do want to lean a little bit more into the last thing you just mentioned, and I’m sure there’s maybe more to this, but let’s keep it to what you just suggested here, knowing your blueprint, knowing your partner’s blueprint, leaning into your own blueprint, just like knowing how to love yourself and then being able to communicate and invite someone to give it back to you.
Communication. Yeah. Setting expectations, a lot of us find that really difficult when we think someone who loves us should just know what we need.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Silence. Yes, look, think about the times that we were dating, right? Or when, for your audience who are actually dating now, right? Wouldn’t that be nice if you remembered what my favorite flower was? It is nice. It’s wonderful. Or your colleague remembers that, you know, oh, you are actually allergic to this and that knot, so they organize their holiday party in a way that is convenient to you.
It’s wonderful to be seen. That’s amazing, right? But over a period of years, If that’s really important to you, it’s one of those things that you feel, again, we are talking about people who did their own work, coming to the relationship, not expecting the other person to make them like full or complete . So when you are in a relationship, it’s extremely important to have a balance between these two. One is I always tell my couples that you both look like angels to me, but not mind readers. And we do a little exercise, what to see in the room to the best of our knowledge, even to a gimmicky side.
Like, you know, we do a little bit of a charade, you know, whatever. Can you read what’s on my mind? No, you can’t, right? So what do you expect that from the person who you live with and you have such high expectations from them? And to make it worse, it’s not just you didn’t know I was thirsty, you didn’t bring me water.
I go all the way to you don’t love me anymore, do you? So we question the whole thing. So that’s another thing. One thing that I would love for people to do in practical manners is Don’t expect that your partner guide you through everything. Show some initiative. For example, that’s why I say balance. It’s not okay that every single occasion your partner has to tell you Can you please buy me that bag?
Can you please buy me that clip? Can you buy me, you know, those socks? You know, whatever. That’s not okay. Show some initiative. You know that by now that you’re living together, you know, for people who are together, you know some information. Take a risk. That’s very smart to take a risk. Take a risk. Go, you know that she likes pink, but you don’t know what object?
Get her something pink. Who cares? She returns it. Just do it. Right? So instead of just going back, a lot of my couples fall off the track because of that. Little things happen, and by the time they get to me, they say, well, he never gets me gifts anymore. She never gets me gifts anymore, or they never do this for me anymore.
And then I say, well, was there a time that they did? And yes, there was for most couples. For some couples, no. And then it’s really interesting when you go back and ask them what happened. Well, every time I got a gift, she returned them. Every time I did this, he scolded me because I spent money. So, you know, so then we go to another conversation.
But as we are talking about not being a mind reader, there are certain areas that you can take risks. Just to bring it all together. There are certain areas that you cannot take risks. So, for example, you need to have a conversation with each other that what are the things that bring you pleasure in your intimate setting, for example, right?
And listen, listen carefully. If the person shares something 15 times and you don’t pay attention, again, you do it the way that you want, that’s horrible. That’s not just, Oh, I’m sorry, I couldn’t read your mind. That’s just, you’re negligent. No, you’re just lazy.
Monica Packer: Hm.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Don’t do that in the couple of them. That’s disrespectful.
Right? So that’s how all of these ingredients come to play in different conversations that we have, within a relational space. Does that make sense?
Monica Packer: It does. It also is one of those things like we can’t just give prescriptions, which I find so many people take comfort in and want to do and want to replicate. They watch something on a talk show, like do this for your partner, your loved one. And it doesn’t work for that other person because it doesn’t actually match what they want or need, but it also hasn’t been communicated like it’s there.
This is a tangle. Love is a crapshoot. We’re going to go back to my friend’s mom’s statement, but it’s not one that we can’t all do better at. There is hope and so much more hope when we realize it’s not left up to fate or chance, especially when you have two people who are willing to do the work, both separately and together.
And so for those people who are ready to do that, I want to direct them to your book. Can you tell us what they can expect to find in Design?
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: I wrote this book based on personal experience. , based on clinical experience with many, many couples over the past 20 years. So the reason I called it love by design, six ingredients to build a lifetime of love is because that’s what you can expect. So the first part of the book, I’m going to talk about how we got ourselves into this mess.
The reason I wanted to cover that is even within that, there are so many things that we need to. The spell to get to the other part because I understand this is a revolution. I understand that this is a new model. I understand we didn’t grow up with it. But does it mean that if we are in a dirt road and somebody says, here’s it, here’s a road that is not going to give you flat tire.
Are you not going to take it? You know? So the logic says, let’s do it. Right? So the first part is that. Even I’m, even without giving too much away, even like those statistics, 50 percent of marriages end up in divorce. That’s not true,
Monica Packer: wondered that.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: right? It’s so per, everything is so perpetuated, nobody questions nothing anymore, right?
So all of those will be in the part one. The part two, I’m going to introduce, the readers into the six ingredients. And I give the definition, like for example, the same with respect, I talk about why we don’t need, for example, too much empathy, but we need compassion in relationships. So there are so many things that you’re hearing for the first time, but I promise there is research behind it.
There is beyond our own research, but there is other research behind this because we know a lot now about neuroscience and the relational science that we can pull from. Right. So that’s the, this part. And then the other part of it is I give a lot of building blocks for this designing of the love that they desire.
A lot of exercises, a lot of things that they can do together and also alone for individuals who are single and looking as well. So I have a whole part about getting ready for love. And then the third part, I’m giving the check in points. What can they do every day?
What can they do every week, every month, and every year? So there are tons of exercises that they can make and adapt to their own context and use. And I hope to God that as many people as possible are really accepting to their heart this new model of love, the emergent love model. And if I die tomorrow, I’m happy.
If I can change the world in that way. so that would be my liberation is theirs. So I’m hoping that it helps them..
Monica Packer: Knowing your why behind it all, I mean, that just gave me You know, the, the good kind of shivers, like I’ve just, I, I believe in you and I believe in your work and I can’t wait for my audience to dig in more to what you have to share with us.
This book is out now and so they can go and order it and get it wherever they get their books. Is there anywhere else online they should head if they want to learn more from you?
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: If they want to have resources, they can go to the lovebydesignbook. com.
Monica Packer: Okay.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: There are some resources that I put, up there for people to go and download, and yeah, and on Instagram, I do the daily post, daily dosage, but it’s Instagram, so it’s not like a deeper dive, as you know. But on the website, I try to upload, the resources, and if they are a part of my newsletter, they will receive the worksheets and different things, and as our research evolves, I share with our circle as well.
Monica Packer: Oh, great. Okay. Well, we will link to all of those things in the show notes. My final question for you is what is one small way listeners can take action on what they’ve learned today?
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: If you are in a relationship, think about making your partner’s life easier. Just show a little bit of act of kindness, go out of your way. Even if you don’t feel like it, love yourself and yeah, love many through one. Start with yourself. That’s what I would say.
Monica Packer: Beautiful. No better note to end on than that. Thank you so much for your time, Dr. Zara. We appreciate it.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh: Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Thank you.
Monica Packer: Okay, I’ll press stop here. That was so good.
