Creating Healthy Romantic Relationships with Monica Parikh

“Everything always goes back to psychology, so one of the things I really wanted to do was not only key women into their feminine energy but break whatever psychological structures that had them undervaluing themselves.” - Monica Parikh

On today’s Brave By Design, we’ll be looking at how each of us attract partners who match our own vibration frequency, and why this is such an important concept to understand as we heal, grow and evolve. Our expert guest reveals how we can start building relationships driven by purpose and honesty, and the ways we can approach pre-cohabitation, pre-marital contracts and more.

A graduate of Northwestern University and Cornell Law School, Monica Parikh believes that conventional education does not teach us skills for relationship success. Her writing weaves together relationship advice with positive psychology and spiritual truths. When necessary, she also draws upon her 20-years of experience as a lawyer. She keeps it simple and real to help others achieve healthy relationships—the most important factor for a lifetime of happiness.

Monica writes for international publications like MindBodyGreen and Well + Good, coaches private clients and gives motivational speeches. Her work has been featured in Marie Claire Magazine, Audible UK, Stella UK, The New York Post, and The Jenny McCarthy Show on Sirius XM radio.

In 2021, she will release Take Back the Power, a modern fable about breakup aimed to raise collective consciousness and restore world peace. 

Connect with Monica: https://www.schooloflovenyc.com/

Remember to hit SUBSCRIBE wherever you listen to podcasts!

What You’ll Hear In This Episode: 

• Monica’s journey from being a lawyer of 20 years to the educator and leader that she is today [1:37]
  
  
• The ways she has applied her therapy and studies of relationship psychology to her own dating life [9:26]
  
  
• Why she says it’s so important to move past the fear of being open and to your needs in your relationship from the very beginning [17:53]
  
  
• Her thoughts on healthy and conscious marriage arrangements and contracts, and how they can help reduce codependency [27:01]
  
  
• Whether or not men have the same emotional resources as women [35:55]
  
  
• How getting real with yourself and your partner about your relationship will build intimacy [45:15]
  
  

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Transcript

Monica Parikh: 0:00

Everything always goes back to psychology. So one of the things I really wanted to do was not only key women into their feminine energy, break whatever psychological structures have them undervaluing themselves.

Laura Khalil: 0:13

Welcome to brave by design. I'm your host, Laura Khalil. I'm an entrepreneur, coach and speaker. I love thinking bait, exploring the power of personal development and sharing the best strategies from thought leaders and pioneers in business to empower ambitious women and allies to bravely rise and thrive. Let's get started. Everyone, welcome to this episode of brave by design, I am really excited for you to hear from our guest today, if you are in a relationship, if you have been cohabitating with someone for the last nine months during this pandemic, you want to stay and listen to this Monica pareek is the founder of school of love NYC. She teaches about love psychology and higher consciousness to a global audience. her life's mission is to elevate the collective consciousness and build partnerships driven by purpose. Monica, I am so excited to have you here on brave by design. Thanks for joining me,

Monica Parikh: 1:17

Laura, I am at the hugest fan of yours. I just think that what you are doing and who you are as a person is beyond superlative. So it's really my delight to just be an invited guests onto your show. Oh,

Laura Khalil: 1:32

yeah. I'm super excited to have you here. You know, when I was sort of looking and learning more about you, I realized that you and I might, what we both have sort of interesting origin stories in terms of relationships. And I thought we could maybe start there. Can you tell us a little bit more about why you started school of love where this came from how you got on this path?

Monica Parikh: 1:57

Yeah, I mean, it's a really, trust me, no one's more surprised than me about what I do now. But I certainly was born for the work I'm doing now. So I practice law for 20 years. And yeah, I was a lawyer for 20 years.

Unknown: 2:15

Wow.

Monica Parikh: 2:16

And, and so I'll go back in my story, and I'll tell you how I made the transition from being a lawyer to an entrepreneur unconscious, this razor. So you know, I was a lawyer for 20 years I was married, and my ex husband was, you know, my best friend. And I thought we had a really good marriage. We were together for 10 years. One day, I came home. And my husband said he no longer wanted to be married, and he walked out the door and I never saw him again. So at that point, you know, in my life, I have this enormous trauma of not worry, you know, no story. And you had no idea you felt blindsided by this. I felt very blindsided. You know, at that point in our marriage, we at that point, had been married for about two and a half years. So we dated about seven and a half years before we got married. We had been together for two and a half years, we had a lot of stress on us. You know, my ex husband was also a lawyer. He was working at a big law firm, I had a very prominent public position for the city of New York.

Laura Khalil: 3:29

so crazy hours,

Monica Parikh: 3:30

we had a lot of hours, a lot of pressure on us. And at the same time, my mother had just been diagnosed with cancer. So I was shuttling back and forth between New York City and where my mother lived, and where my mother was getting treated. And really, like you know, just how long my shoulders and things were a little bit. You know, at the end of my marriage, my husband was quite a servic and crabby. But I also had a very long range view of marriage. My parents had been married for 50 years, no one in my family ever got divorced. So, you know, I kind of just saw it as these are kind of the storms of life. And this was like this minute, a rubber match. But it wasn't like we were, you know, at each other's throats. It was more that my husband was quite withdrawn. He was becoming increasingly withdrawn, and wasn't really engaging in any kind of self help to figure out what was going on with him. So that was, you know, a big part of that narrative. But no, when it ended I to say shocked, would have been a complete and utter understatement for sure.

Laura Khalil: 4:39

So what did you do next? So like you're sitting, I just want to go to this moment, like, your husband walks out the door, you're sitting what like in your living room in your bedroom? Like, what's going through your mind in that moment?

Monica Parikh: 4:51

Well, I'll tell you actually how it went down. how it went down with my mother had just had surgery for cancer in Washington, DC. So I feel spend a week taking care of my mom. And also by extension, my father because he he's now deceased. But my father didn't have that many life skills without my mother. So it was actually the night I came home after a week of taking care of my mom, that was the night my husband chose to tell me that he was leaving. And you

Unknown: 5:19

know, boy,

Monica Parikh: 5:20

I, of course, called up my, you know, family and said, this thing went down. And my mother said, Come back home. So I got back on the train, which was like a two hour ride. And, you know, I went back to my family's house. And, you know, very similar to that Sex in the City episode after Sarah Jessica Parker, and big the wedding blows up, you know, she's in Mexico, and the blinds are drawn. That's what I went into, right? I like, drew the blinds, because I was so completely just decimated, and I couldn't figure out what was going on. And I couldn't figure out how to save it.

Laura Khalil: 5:55

So you wanted to save it?

Monica Parikh: 5:57

I certainly wanted to save it. Yeah, I mean, you know, I came from a family. Like I said, you get married one time, when my father actually said that to my ex husband. He said in this family, we get married one time. So you know, I certainly wanted to save it, and I wanted to work on it. You know that that was actually one of the biggest life lessons I learned, you know, at that age was it takes two people to make a relationship work. And if one pulls out, it's finished, you know, you can't force another person to want to work on their emotional or mental health, you can only really work on your own. And honestly, I don't know why I never conceptualize that before that moment, is that you know, before you marry, you really have to figure out if the person on the other side has that level of tenacity, and desire

Laura Khalil: 6:47

to you know, work. That's a really great point. I mean, that tenacity and that commitment to work on the relationship. Because I think so many people get into relationship, or they think we've gotten to the point of marriage, and they kind of like coast. And that's I think, where the problems start to arise?

Monica Parikh: 7:08

Well, you know, certainly in our relationship in my relationship with my ex husband, the first let's say, nine years were pretty easy. You know, we didn't have major, I mean, of course, we have, like, you know, the common, someone would lose a job and have to find a new job. But we didn't have the level of stress that we were under at that moment in time with a sick parent. Yeah, you know, two very demanding careers, you know, and whatever, you know, my ex husband at that time had just turned 40. So I think he was also going through a lot of like midlife, which is very common, you know, midlife reckoning, and kind of like, you know, whatever existential inquiry he was going through, and, you know, to your point, and sometimes I would look back and say, Well, you know, maybe the problem was that we had it too easy for too long. And then when it got real, you know, that's when you really see who somebody is, is when it's getting real, you know, and I think one of the things I teach in my business now is that we often think love is that fuzzy feeling that you get, you know, when you first meet somebody, and the chemistry is super hot. Yep. Love is actually when things are starting to fall apart. And it's like, well, now I'm going to go to therapy, or now I'm going to hire a coach. And now I've got to really work on building my relationship skills. Because I have to do this for this other person, I have to show up for this other person. And I think that was the moment I realized, you know, there was only one of us, who was really willing to engage in that, you know, charm, and he actually said it as much to me, you know, he actually said, because at some point, I actually said to my ex husband, I said to him, but we took vows. Yeah, and he said to me, will your vow meant something to you that my vows didn't mean to me.

Unknown: 9:04

Oh, Lord. Yeah.

Monica Parikh: 9:06

And I was like, Wait a second, you know, and as a lawyer, you know, in contracts, we like, meeting of the minds and I was like, our minds that it made you know about language and that terminology, right, I'm not known.

Laura Khalil: 9:22

Right. Monica, what did you do nuts? What What happened?

Monica Parikh: 9:26

Well, so after that, you know, my did what any person in a huge trauma would do. I found myself an excellent psycho therapist. And, you know, a big part of my narrative is so I started undergoing the process of analysis. But at the same time, I started studying relationship psychology, and then after about a year that passed, I started dating really prolifically. So I went from being someone you know, my ex husband was like my third boyfriend ever, to being someone who I dated a lot. Bought I dated 67 different men over a five year period. Wow. Yeah. And I was applying all these principles of relationship psychology. Okay, quite complex. And also, nobody teaches us it is not part of our educational curriculum anywhere. And you know, in the very nascent stages of my business when I was due, and I remember, I wasn't thinking about ever starting a business, you know, this was just this trauma that had happened, and you're still an attorney, you still have still practicing y'all. Yeah, I'm still practicing law. And I'm, you know, doing my prolific dating, and I was dating some very famous men, and I just was keeping my Excel spreadsheet. And then what happened was, you know, I worked with a lot of women, and a lot of the women that my job would always come to me with their relationship problems, because I had this underpinning of now relationship psychology, right. And as a lawyer, naturally, I'm a strategist. So they would come to me with their relationship problems. And then one after one they were getting married, or, you know, their boyfriends were proposing, and, you know, my girlfriend started saying to me, you really have to write about the stuff you're studying and what you're doing. And I thought, well, there's anybody haven't gonna think it's that interesting. And so I started writing, and I started getting a following. And then what started happening was I this is like an interesting nuance to the story in 2012, I got into a serious relationship. Okay. And 2012 is a really important year, because 2012 was the year that the iPhone, and that technology became ubiquitous. So everyone started getting their iPhones and the swipe technology for dating app really cold, right. And so what ended up happening was that relationship ended in 2016. And it was sort of the beginning of a dark night of the soul. For me, I had a lot of traumatic experiences that were happening in rapid succession. And in addition to that, you know, when I decided to try to go back out to date, the entire, let's say, rubric of dating had completely been transformed by technology. Yep. So I started being like, Oh, my God, like we're entering into an era, unlike any era ever seen before. And given sort of my understanding of all these different rubrics from relationships, psychology, to law, to quantum physics. And then the changes that were happening in me, you know, I was really becoming conscious at an entirely new level, because of the rigor and amount of work I had done on myself. And really, like in terms of understanding the deep woundedness, inside myself that had attracted these narcissistic partners and to my wife,

Laura Khalil: 13:03

mica, wait a second, can you Let's stop and talk about that just quickly. Yeah, probably a lot of women who are listening, who say, I feel like I have all these narcissists, who find me. And you know, I don't want to throw the word narcissist around because that is like a medical sort of classification or psychological classification, but people who feel like they date very self centered men, or Me, me, me, kind of people. And so can we just talk about? What is that about?

Unknown: 13:33

Yeah, yeah.

Monica Parikh: 13:37

Well, you know, with so many things, okay. So first, just think about how we, as women are raised in a very patriarchal world. And remember that the patriarchal world logs certain things. So it logs thinking over feeling. So a lot of times what happens with my clients and what was certainly happening with me, you know, because of how cerebral I was, yeah, I could get very disconnected from my feelings. And I have always had a very strong intuitive sense. Okay, very strong. And what would happen is, my thinking would override my intuition, because oftentimes, I feel bad about the intuition I was having, including this as a selfish person, or this is a, you know, childish person. So you know, that was a big part of it. A big part of it is we, as women are trained to give you know, we're trained in you can see it in relationships all the time, where women are working their full time job, and then they come home and they take on the vast bulk of domestic labor or child rearing. So basically, you know, you start your second shift. Yeah, well, all of that giving is masculine energy. So a lot of what we have Women have to learn is there's masculine energy, which is giving, and there's feminine energy which is receiving. But if you've never received before, you know, if you've never been in a position to kick up your feet and really receive, that's a very uncomfortable shift to make. Yeah, you know, the next paradigm of consciousness is really the equality between masculine and feminine. But before you can get to that place of equality, you simply just have to understand these very different energy centers.

Laura Khalil: 15:32

Now Monica, there's one thing I want to point out, and I think you can elaborate on this, you can be a man, everyone has a mix of masculine and feminine. So it's not just that, like women have to have feminine energy and men have to have masculine we all kind of have a balance of or could have a balance of those correct. 100%. Right. Okay.

Monica Parikh: 15:50

It has nothing to do with gender, it has nothing to do with sexual orientation. This, you know, this applies across the board is that we're born, you know, with most of us, like, predominantly in one energy. So even though I'm exceptionally feminine, and my appearance, my energy is quite masculine, obviously, because I, I practice law, and I founded a business and I'm an entrepreneur. And so a lot of it was, you know, when I went through that dark night of the soul, what I recognized was that operating from that masculine paradigm drained me a lot faster. And it actually moved me slower. So once I understood how to tap into this other energy center, not only am I able to attract a lot more men, but also like in terms of business building, honestly, it just, it helps so much, because it's like building a business completely differently, where it's, you're building slower, you're building more intuitively, you're really more focused on your clients and client needs and relationship building with clients. And you know, a lot of it is everything always goes back to psychology. So one of the things I really wanted to do was not only key women into their feminine energy, rate, whatever psychological structures had them undervaluing themselves, I certainly was doing that, you know, in my romantic relationships, but also at work. And I recognize that was part of that childhood wound, right of growing up in, you know, a patriarchal society where, you know, I saw my brother getting valued more than me, my ex husband, and I graduated from law school at the same time, and I literally was watching money being thrown at him in a way that it was never being thrown at me. Yeah. And even in my family, you know, they would be like, well, well, he's a lawyer, let me ask him this question. And I would be like, I'm a lawyer, too. And

Laura Khalil: 17:44

excuse me,

Monica Parikh: 17:46

you know, and so it's like, you have to kind of examine it from all those levels, you know,

Laura Khalil: 17:51

that is so fascinating. So here's what I want to know. So for our listeners who are in relationships, and who have spent, you know, the last few months, let's say, with a partner primarily sheltering at home, and in these sort of quarantine situations that is our new normal, at least for the next several months. What are some of the challenges that you're seeing coming up, as it relates to this energy balance and energy flow?

Monica Parikh: 18:24

Wow. I mean, you know, for the people who've been quarantining for a long time, I think one of the biggest challenges they're going to have is a need for space. You know, we all need to have space from each other. It's super healthy. And I always say, if you think about the fires of love, you know, fire needs air to grow. Yeah, flames of passion don't grow, the oxygen is removed. So some of it is really just in terms of asking for what you need. And depersonalizing. You know, a lot of times when someone says, Look, I need space, I got to go away for the weekend by myself. We want it we take that personally, what do you want to get away from me? And it has to be more like, this is how I take care of my health. One of the things I'm seeing a lot lately have, you know, I bumped into an old friend of mine on the street, and he was telling me that he likes to go to the gym. So I knew him from the gym. And he was like, I like to go to the gym every day, because that's how I deal with anxiety and stress. And that's how I keep my immune system up. Yeah. And his partner was saying that, no, that was wrong because he could bring home germs from the gym. And those germs could make his partner sick. So he was asking me what I thought. And I was saying because he basically gave up the gym, having the after effects of you know, the anxiety or, you know, whatever, okay, not able to move out of his body. So I said, Well, you know, you could align needs and so a lot of the curriculum I teach is about nonviolent Communication, which is the need of each person, and how to align those needs. So I said to him, you can get on a digital platform at your house, you know, there's tons of digital platforms that are doing exercise regimens, you could get a personal trainer to come, maybe somebody who you feel is safe and is taking extraordinary precautions, or, you know, you can start to broker out that my feelings are valid too. And it's important for me to go to the gym, this is how I keep my immunity up and take care of myself. But I always feel like you should apply the highest standard, as opposed to the lowest standard, the highest standard is moving out of fear based thinking, you know, right, fear based thinking can only take root. So it's really just honestly learning the skills of communicating and brokering at a really high level, which it sounds super easy, but it's not. And if you can't do it yourself, you go and you hire somebody who can do that really quickly for you. You know,

Laura Khalil: 21:03

this is really interesting, because I teach a lot about how to have hard conversations and clear communication. And one of the things I always hear from people in the pushback I always get is, but that might upset them. And what if they don't like me? Right? How do you respond to that? How do you help people move beyond that fear of being open and vulnerable and stating their needs?

Monica Parikh: 21:31

Well, I think that one of the greatest misnomers is that when you have a healthy relationship, you don't fight. I think that's not true. I think conflict is very normal. And we have to normalize conflict. Now. When I say normalized conflict, I do not mean what we see now, which is like escalating domestic violence, right? That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is to people who are being honest and open about their feelings. Mm hmm. And learning to broker their broker needs like, because underneath every feeling, whether that feeling of sadness, or anger or rage, there's a need that's not getting expressed. And so, you know, I think one of the things I see is that people are really not having intimate relationships, their surface level intimate, because nobody's really telling the truth. I kept going around. And I'm like, No, you know, because one of the biggest paradigm shifts I teach to women, you know, and this is remember that this is deconditioning. This is deconditioning, from multiple generations of codependency. And like patriarchal, you know. And so one of the things I say to women is, the paradigm of a very healthy relationship is that the woman always loves herself the most, that her needs and feelings become Paramount, and that the man is actually his desire should be to please her, and to basically, you know, make her happy. And that paradigm has somehow shifted, where, you know, we as women are, we feel like, we're not entitled to our feelings. And what ends up happening is huge amounts of rage and resentment build up. And so that's when you really have a conflict, you know, so one of the things I always say is, like, you know, tell the truth early. You know, before the moving happens before the marriage happens. One of the paradigms I wanted to break in my business was that we spend tons of time and money on one day, which is the wedding day, and we spent no time or money on what the marriage should be. And one of the things I want to build in my business is pre cohabitation, and pre marital contract, where you actually are discussing every bit of what that relationship should look like, including the paradigm of when we start to have conflict, we're not able to resolve that we would commit to going to work with somebody, you know, if my husband and I had had that discussion before marriage where he said, Look, I'm not going to give you any time in counseling. Yeah, I probably wouldn't have entered that contract.

Laura Khalil: 24:26

Right,

Monica Parikh: 24:27

if it's too risky. And so it's like, you almost have to have somebody help you have those tough conversations. So you're talking real, you know,

Laura Khalil: 24:35

I love that Monica. You know, I've heard from the gunman's and I don't know, for folks who who are into relationship stuff like me, you probably all know about the garmins they talk about something like a weekly check in with your partner, where you're just like, sitting down and really being honest about like, what went well this week. What do you need more of? I don't have the specific questions in front of me but you you recommend something similar to that

Monica Parikh: 25:00

100% 100% because then you have a real relationship. You know, like I have a client, I'll tell you this quick story. I have a client, she's so awesome. She's gorgeous. She is so smart. She is so driven. And her boyfriend is, you know, very overweight. And in addition to being overweight, he has lost his job at mid career. And you know, that mid career career change? Trust me, I've done it, it is hard. It is very, very, very hard. And so he's overweight, he's, he's not transitioning, he's just sitting there now. He's redundant. And, you know, I said to her, can you take the song? Like, are you okay with taking the song, because like, if somebody doesn't take care of their health, you know, very soon there might have a health condition, you might be a caregiver. And the thing was that she had been a caregiver to her mother told her mother died, when I knew it was a very onerous responsibility. So I said, like, okay, like,

Laura Khalil: 26:05

he won't do it again.

Monica Parikh: 26:07

Right, exactly. I was like, are you gonna take this ride again? And, you know, the thing is, is I have been working with her for a long time, tell him the truth. Yeah, tell him you need him to go to the gym, tell him you need him to get a therapist or a coach and begin to work on some of these issues. Because this is too risky of a investment for you, absent those things. And the thing is, is you know, she loves him more than she loves herself. So she doesn't tell him a word. And not only that, she's in this relationship. And I tell her, you're loving him, like a mother, not like a wife. You know, a mother is that unconditional ride or die. And to me a wife is I'm telling you the truth. Like, you need to go to the gym, you need to get your

Unknown: 26:55

Together

Monica Parikh: 26:56

Together, or I'm going to go, yeah, you know,

Laura Khalil: 27:01

that's kind of an interesting contrast, Monica, because it's interesting when we started hearing about your story, and taking those vows and thinking, hey, these marriage vows are forever. Yeah, and now sort of hearing this shift of, well, we are in continuous sort of, or we have to constantly be in agreement with one another. How do you feel that kind of shifts the marriage vows?

Monica Parikh: 27:27

Well, look, if you really want to know my honest opinion,

Unknown: 27:31

do Monica please. That's what we're here for girlfriend. I feel like Laura,

Monica Parikh: 27:39

I'm like, very like Laura, come here. Let me tell you some secrets. Because, you know, December 21 2020, was a really pivotal day when we shifted into the Age of Aquarius, okay, Age of Aquarius, the beginning of it. So the Age of Aquarius is now a 200 year period, that's just beginning, which means that there's going to be a massive shift in the paradigms of relationships. And, you know, one of the questions when I was building my business that I was asking is, why is marriage failing? Why did my marriage fail? But why is marriage as an institution failing because the failure rate of marriage is like abysmal, it's like, you know, more than 50% of marriages end in divorce. Yeah. And seven out of 10 people who stay married report being unhappy. So, yeah, like, think about if that was a car, you know, if you were like, Laura, if you drive this, there's a 50% chance you'll die. And if you widen it, if you get to the destination, like seven out of 10 rides are going to be miserable.

Laura Khalil: 28:42

You're right. Oh, great.

Monica Parikh: 28:46

You wouldn't run to the car, but we run to the car all the time, you know, so. So I started really thinking about this. And then what I realized was that really like marriage is a contract. The lawyer part of me was like, marriage is a contract. But we, like I said, we go into the contract without a meeting of the minds. And so a big part of the shift in the age of consciousness is that we're no longer going to look to governments to sanction our relationships, that we could form agreements with this other person as to what this arrangement is going to be. And that arrangement can be everything from how many times a week we're going to have sex, you know, what are we going to do with both of us are not happy? Because, you know, I think that the societal construct is, the longer the marriage goes, the more we cheer for it. But if the marriage is two people, not speaking to each other in the house or sleeping in separate rooms, or like watching Netflix night after night, right? Wait, I don't know why we're cheering for that.

Laura Khalil: 29:51

No, like, Monica, I'm with you, girlfriend.

Monica Parikh: 29:53

I don't get it either. Right. It doesn't really make sense and what we should share is two people. We're fully lit up about their lives, who are coming together to maybe build something that services a greater good, or that they're just a model to other people about what psychologically healthy conscious partnership looks like. And psychologically healthy and conscious parenting looks like

Laura Khalil: 30:20

you know us that something really important you said lit up about their lives. What I understand is not lit up about some codependent relationship surviving, but I'm an individual, I am moving forward towards my goals. This is another individual, and we can come together, but we're, we're individuated we're not, you know, developing really unhealthy codependent bonds where, you know, I can't survive without you.

Monica Parikh: 30:48

Oh, 100%. You know, if I was going to say the number one problem with relationships, I really think it's the pervasive codependency. And our society loves it, like we lost when two people ride off in the sunset, and they don't have anybody else they talk to, and they obsess about each other night, like 90% of their time. And I'm like, No, like really like what it's supposed I mean, think about it, Sex in the City was a different show, right? Think about if those women were building conscious driven businesses, and you know, their partners were like 20% of their rubric. I mean, and they were they had each other and they were traveling the world and doing these things. But I'm even saying taking it up to the next level, where you're really filled with purpose. And you're really like charged up about the level of influence you want to have. And if you have a partner that is complimentary to that there's something in quantum physics called constructive interference. And this notion, really, it appeals to me so much, which is basically if you take two people who are vibrating at a very high frequency, and you put them together, what you get is an amplification of frequency, you kind of see that with people, you know, like Michelle and Barack Obama,

Laura Khalil: 32:09

that's where I was, that's exactly what I was thinking of.

Monica Parikh: 32:11

Right? You know, those are two exceptional humans as separate from each other, who basically amplify one another. And that's the kind of partnerships I plan on building with my business, and I am building with my business.

Laura Khalil: 32:27

So Monica, it's so funny, you mentioned that, so I am single, and it's funny, on my profile I've written I'm looking for the Brock to my Michelle, I swear to God, I have that written there. Because I won't settle for anything less than an extraordinary individual who's on their path and who we like each other up. But one thing I want to say to the audience, and I don't know, maybe you'll enjoy this, but I say to people in the realm of dating, you know, yeah, you want to have some sort of, you don't want to settle for someone that you know, doesn't help let you up and help further your mission. I call that kind of my final destination. But I mean, and that destination can change and move and stuff like that be multiple destinations. But on the road to the destination. I like to stop at the rest stops and enjoy some snacks. Who is a snack? Yeah, you got you don't hang out at the rest stop too long you got you don't want to buy McDonald's every day.

Monica Parikh: 33:31

You remind me of a client of mine. And one of my clients used to say to me, because I you know, I mean, Laura, my God, you could totally be in my community because you're just all the other people in my community. But like one of the women in my community, she said, I have snacks. And then I have named meals. And the thing is, is you know, I think part of the codependency and I certainly was guilty of this until like, I mean, look, codependency is really hardwired. So I have to watch myself all the time. Because I can fall into familiar patterns. But I think one of the patterns that happens and you have to be quite evolved to not fall into this pattern is let's say you have intercourse with a snack. And it's good. What happens at that moment is oxytocin and serotonin and dopamine and get flooded, flooded, you flood your system with feel good drugs. And that's what puts rosy colored glasses on where you're basically like, I love him, or he's it. And then the fifth thing begins to happen. So you know, one of my greatest coaches said to me, Monica, you move into a turnkey penthouse, not a renovation project.

Laura Khalil: 34:45

Amen. Right. And I realized

Monica Parikh: 34:47

like I had been renovating apartments, way too long and the only apartment I really want to renovate is my own.

Laura Khalil: 34:54

Preet Monica preach. Yes, ladies Stop finding fixer uppers,

Monica Parikh: 35:02

oh my god. But you know, we live in a society of fixer uppers, because remember that women, especially now we're more educated, we tend to not have an issue with personal development work. So you know, we go to a therapist, and we get to see each other's therapists, you know, I get up and be like more, what do you think about this? And what we're seeing now, especially on the dating market, like one of the biggest shocks I had going back out on the dating market was I was like, Where are the alphas? Like,

Laura Khalil: 35:31

where are they? Where did they go?

Monica Parikh: 35:33

Are they extinct? Where are they? Totally. And I think a lot of women are feeling that where they're just like, wait, we want men who are assertive, ambitious, who know what they want. And you know, of course, like in this next paradigm of consciousness, we also want men who are in touch with their feelings and can be emotional with us. Absolutely. And, you know, that's probably you know, it's

Laura Khalil: 35:57

interesting. You mentioned that, because so much women have put in so much work, probably over the last 25 years, even the last 10 years, to really begin to do everything you say, get into therapy, personal development, all this sort of work. And I think that where men are lagging behind is in those areas. Some of them feel still a little bit trapped, and maybe not sure where to go or who to talk to. Because Hey, like you said, Monica, I can call you up and be like, girlfriend, here's what's going on, let's talk. Do men have that resource? And do they have a man to talk to? Who can be emotionally vulnerable, who can be open, but can also be really strong? And I think most men do not?

Monica Parikh: 36:43

Well, I think that was one of the problems at the end of my marriage. You know, my ex husband had two best friends. One best friend was like the devil on his shoulder. You know, who was basically you know, at the time my marriage ended, my ex husband was making almost half a million dollars a year. So what do you do at that point, you go get the sports car, you start dating multiple women, like that was the dream, right? And he had another best friend. So my ex husband was an alcoholic, and had been in a for 10 years. And so I did not know this at the time, because I didn't really understand addiction very well. But he had relapsed. And, yeah, so his best friend who he had known from a, you know, he was one of the people that I called crying, and he said, let him bottom out. I didn't hit his bottom. And, you know, I didn't understand any of that. Like I said, this was all like, new to me. But so he had one friend that would tell him the truth, but that friends, you know, started becoming the person he was getting away from, because he was moving towards this, you know, demon, see the other friend. But the thing is, is I think a couple things have happened is one in this country, we've really stigmatized mental health care. And one of the things I talk about is not only how much mental health care I've had, which has been an enormous amount, but that to me was no different than going to the gym. That was just conditioning for my mind. And it was just someone saying, this is where you're not thinking, right. And this is how you have to change your thinking. So one, we have to completely de stigmatize mental health care for everyone, but especially for men. Because I think for men, what happens is ego comes into play, where it's like, oh, the only people who seek mental health care are people who are sick. And I'm like, actually, the people who don't seek it are the ones who are sick, the ones who get it, those people get all their mental issues cleared. And you can see them prospering. So I think that's the first thing that has to happen. And then I think we have to shed a lot of this toxic masculinity where, you know, men are not prospering in this country, from my perspective. And you can see that even on the political landscape, which was with what happened last week, like if you look at the people who storm the capital, these are not my guesses, by looking at them. That's not the leadership class. These are disenfranchised people who are probably very, understandably very frustrated, because their lives are not going in the direction they feel that they weren't entitled for it to go.

Unknown: 39:23

Yep.

Monica Parikh: 39:24

And so then it becomes a deeper question of Has anyone told them the truth about themselves? Has anyone said, Okay, if your career isn't going well, then you have to go back to school and innovate? Or if you're not, you know, pardon my French getting laid, then it's probably you don't know how to pick up women because technology has basically trained you out of good behaviors. Yeah.

Laura Khalil: 39:51

Totally. Oh my god, Monica. I just want to eat up everything you're saying. I am like, Damn, or Right now and I

Monica Parikh: 40:02

literally feeling is mutual maybe you and I should just go get married and get a panoply of benefits.

Unknown: 40:09

I am I'm into it,

Laura Khalil: 40:10

I swear to God, I've told women I'm like, Listen, let's build the Golden Girls compound. Just we'll make it work. I don't care how? Well, you can

Monica Parikh: 40:22

count me in on that, you know, yesterday, I was like texting with a really good friend of mine from New Zealand. And she was like, Girl, how you doing over there in America right now? I've been joking with her for a while. Well, probably the last four years, I've been saying to her Listen, girl, if I need to get married, and come to New Zealand on that, like passport, I said, Can you marry me? Yeah, like, well, we both like to travel and eat. So as far as I'm concerned, the foundation for like a very good marriage. And I was wanting. And we both like real estate investing. And like, actually, you know what this is firing on a lot of cylinders for a very good marriage between us.

Laura Khalil: 40:59

I mean, it's funny. I mean, we're joking, but you never know how things are gonna evolve. And frankly, if you want the benefits of that sort of contract that we've set up in society, that might be one way that people start getting them is just marrying their friends?

Unknown: 41:16

Well, you know, I

Monica Parikh: 41:16

don't think I think to be honest with you, I think that one of the things that's going to happen in the shift of consciousness, I definitely saw it in my own life, was that our definition of family will change. Meaning that at some point, when you get to a certain level of consciousness, you know, certain relationships, including familiar relationships are not viable anymore. They're not healthy anymore, they can be very toxic. And then what ends up happening is you have to find family and other places. And we have to understand that, you know, we live in a global world. So truth be told Laura, you may be my sister, right? Or you may be my, my plus one that I'm in the hospital and right all someone, you may be my best option, as opposed to, you know, I mean, I don't know what your experience was, but like, you know, most of the men I've dated haven't been overflowing with empathy. So like, sometimes I and remember, like, when you talk about nonviolent communication, you have needs that get met by lots of different people. So that's right, it's okay for them not to have empathy, because you had empathy. And I could call you for that. Yep. You know, and you basically look at things differently.

Laura Khalil: 42:34

Yeah, no, totally. And you know, it's funny, I just turned 40. And so it's kind of been for me like, and my, my girlfriends who are almost all in their 40s, we all kind of say this to each other. We're like, Listen, men often come and go. And I don't mean to say that, you know, as a Debbie Downer to people who are listening, who are thinking, Wait a minute, I still want my marriage to last forever. Good luck. I hope it does. But men often come and go, but friends are going to stick with you. And they're the people who I really rely on in my life, you know, even with you talked about your family, and your mom and your dad. And you know, I'm going through almost a very similar thing right now with my parents. And you know, what I always go back to is my friend support network, which has provided incredible support and structure for me. You know, as we move into those different phases, you don't just need a guy to get through it.

Monica Parikh: 43:31

Well, I think you need a guy for a very particular purpose. If you're a heterosexual woman.

Laura Khalil: 43:38

I love how you phrase that Monica, without us having to bleep you out. Because

Monica Parikh: 43:46

you want you know, hopefully, if you find the right, you know, and part of the thing I really I mean, in all seriousness, all jokes aside, you know, part of the thing that I think codependency does is we often front load intimacy, you know, we we smash it up as quickly as we can in a romantic relationship. And I think the real healthy things is a friendship that grows into something total when we don't value unfortunately, enough friendships. And unfortunately, I think the other, you know, sad truth is, even for men who are in healthy relationships, oftentimes their romantic partner won't let them have friends outside the relationship, especially if the friend is a dynamic, attractive woman. Right? I think that is another paradigm that has to change where we really need a strong, interconnected Society of Friends. Emotionally, it helps us with our communication, and it usually like gives us another perspective that can't be offered. You know, we need different people for different things. So I think everything you're saying is right on and I would say even to maybe expand that the Golden Girls compound would be filled. With pool boys. Well, let's not forget the pool Boy, you know what that's vulnerable work to,

Laura Khalil: 45:09

it really is an actually to your point, because we have actually sort of been dancing around this. So I'm just gonna go there. intimacy in a relationship, I have found is incredible when you feel really connected to your partner, when there's not a sea of unsaid things that is between you, I totally acknowledge and I feel that as well you want to have and many of us want to have an intimate relationship with an individual. And I think it's really awesome when those intimate relationships feel like hey, I can be myself, I can express myself, we've cleared the air, we have done the work so that we can really come together in this moment.

Monica Parikh: 45:51

Well, I think you're touching on so many important and great pains, because not only do I totally agree with you that the hottest sex is when you're really real with another person. But I would say even before you get there, to start getting real with yourself, you know, it's typically not until you have a decent amount of trauma or pain, where you're basically like, I don't have the energy to lie anymore. Like this is who I am. And you know, this is how I come at you from this energy. And I find that, you know, when you're talking about the shift, the paradigm shift or the consciousness shift, we're undergoing that movement, it's to greater authenticity. It's to communities. So exactly what you're talking about with the Golden Girls compound, which I'm totally into.

Unknown: 46:41

And I Monica, you're gonna find the property?

Monica Parikh: 46:44

Well, you know, it's funny that you should say that, because part of the company that I'm building, is I want to build global club houses. Oh, yes, it would be a global compound, you could just fly around to different compounds and hang out with different global, you know,

Laura Khalil: 46:59

I'm in Hell yeah. So

Monica Parikh: 47:00

that's the second part. But the third part and something that you kind of touched on really briefly, but I want to make sure that I mentioned it is individuation from family. So if you're going through some kind of breakup with your family, that's okay, too. Because that's you finding your voice and sometimes peeling away from the toxicity and healing yourself at a really deep pore level. So you can go back into those relationships and not be triggered by them anymore, right? Like, and sometimes what ends up happening certainly would happen to me, you know, in my family, and it's, I'm still going through it if I became a teacher, right, but I had to first heal myself. So when I taught it wasn't coming from a place of anger or rage, it was coming from a place of love, where it was like, Hey, you know, here's some things we do in this family that are not healthy, and I'm not okay with. So let's figure out how to do this better. That's beautiful.

Laura Khalil: 48:00

And it's beautiful that you can play that role. It's like going from student to teacher and sort of helping enlighten others. I really love that. Monica, is it not clear? We could clearly talk for hours? I mean, this

Monica Parikh: 48:14

bite me back and like, chunk by chunk.

Laura Khalil: 48:18

I love it. Yeah. This is incredible. I love it, Laura. Oh, you're a sweetheart. I love you too. And I think the audience is really going to dig into this. So friends. I hope that you have gotten a lot out of this episode. I just feel like Monica and I are jiving and Monica. For people who are also like firing on all cylinders hearing this, where can they go to learn more about you to get more connected to this incredible information and resources that you have?

Monica Parikh: 48:46

Well, they should definitely go on my website, which is www School of love nyc.com School of love nyc.com. And if they click on the upper right hand corner, there's a spot that says contact me. And I welcome you know, even setting up free 20 minute consults, if you're having a relationship issue, and I can point you into assault programs at various price points, everything from 1499 a month self directed coaching course to my private clients, which tend to be self made billionaire celebrities and entrepreneurs. And so I've tried to meet the need at every price point but contact me I would be happy to help as many people as I'm able to do.

Laura Khalil: 49:32

I love that. Monica, thanks so much for joining us on brave by design.

Monica Parikh: 49:36

Thank you so much for having me. Laura had a great time.

Laura Khalil: 49:39

I want to thank you for joining me and remember to subscribe to your favorite app so you can stay up to date. And I would love your review. If you've enjoyed this episode. Please leave a review and comment on Apple podcasts. You can also keep in touch with me online. You can find me on LinkedIn and I'm also on Instagram at force So all that information will be available in the show notes. Until next time, stay brave