Slave to Love

Liz: We've had a very capitalist approach to relationships. You'll know that I care about you or that I like you because I'm going to buy you this.

Rhea: I mean, my experience of relationships and how they intersect with finances has always been really interesting for me because we have had this approach to relationships, like the kind of 3D approach to relationships has always very much been that you marry someone like you, but if you don't marry someone like you, it's only the female who can be less well off.

Liz: And you see that in romance books all the time, in rom-coms. It's always the Cinderella story.

Rhea: You are fixing me not only in my emotional state, but my financial state as well.

Liz: Yeah, it's the saviour thing. Save me from my impoverished state.

Rhea: And I really think that that is why we have a strange relationship to money and relationships.

Liz: Oh completely!

Rhea: Because if you're coming from that place of either it's someone who's of similar wealth, or it's a masculine wealth with a feminine need, then you can see that filtering down through the lens into how we look at dating and relationships today because it's the man must pay for dinner. They are going to take care of me. Part of them taking care of me emotionally, sexually is also financially. So I have to know from the start that they are able to afford to give me these things and to afford me this lifestyle and in order for someone to show me that they can take care of me, part of that is buying me gifts. And it gets to yes, provide for me so I can feel secure, but it's provide for me so I can feel secure in our future so I know that you will continue to provide for me. Financial worth is one of the ways that people can show that they're good enough. I am good enough for you. I am good enough for myself because I have money, because I am wealthy and because I can afford all these things. It's an attractive feature.

Liz: And I'll know I'm good enough because you're good enough. So you choosing me makes me good enough.

Rhea: Exactly. Yeah. And it's this kind of cycle. In fact, what it's doing, it's actually perpetuating that I'm not good enough because actually what you're doing is without that you're like, well, if you didn't have that wealth, would you still go out with me? I mean, I was watching something recently and there was this guy on it. He is fat. He is so ugly and he is clearly the world's biggest dick. He's banging all these women. Why? Because he's fucking wealthy. How many men do we know that we would not touch with a barge pole, not necessarily for their looks? Maybe because their attitude, maybe because of anything else that you know that they do, but all of a sudden they become much more attractive because they are financially wealthy or because all of a sudden they can afford us experiences.

Liz: Seriously.

Rhea: Wealth was one of the tenets of what we look for when we're deciding whether or not someone else is attractive.

Liz: Oh, completely. I mean, think about 50 Shades of Grey. Do you really think that she would have been okay with him smacking her ass and pretty much abusing her if he weren't a billionaire, if you will?

Rhea: Yeah!

Liz: I don't care how hot or what mommy issues he had. I don't think she would've found it that appealing.

Rhea: No, and also all of a sudden she had this amazing lifestyle as a result.

Liz: Exactly.

Rhea: It really is one of those tenets of like that 3D romance bullshit.

Liz: We're having to confront that now, aren't we? More and more as we're having to understand what it means to love ourselves is having to really separate out and tease out that karmic theme of: I am not good enough. The root of that karmic story of I am not good enough, and then having to understand our relationship to money and how money and relationships dating are so inextricably linked, that they've dictated how we choose to relate to people for generations and generations. And now as we are confronting our relationship to abundance and understanding what it means to love ourselves, now is the time for all of that to start to fall apart. So that kind of emphasis that money is so necessary and key for our survival and that it's that baseline, that level that creates a sort of anxiety and stress around money, that can really hamper a relationship.

Rhea: If you live with an abundance mind-set, then you trust that whatever you need, you will have.

Liz: Yeah.

Rhea: And whatever is aligned with your purpose will be made available to you. So it won't really matter as much. You won't be picking a partner based on what they can give you financially or whether they can match you financially. You'll be picking upon it based on do they fit me on a human level, on a soul level? And that yes, might include, they have a similar background to me. They have similar financial wealth to me. That could include that, but that will be entirely dependent on what's right for you and only you know that. And the question then comes always, am I wanting my partner to be wealthy or to have cash or to be able to afford certain things.

Liz: Or own a house.

Rhea: Or own a house or whatever else, because I feel that that's important to me, because it's coming from a place of fear and lack inside of me. I'm scared I won't have a house. I'm scared I won't have this or I need this to survive. Or is it coming from a place of these are my values, these are my guides. I want someone who is established in themselves enough, that can stand on their own two feet, that have invested in their future. It's coming from that place. You've got to always ask yourself like, why is this an issue for you? Is it an issue for you out of lack, or is it an issue for you out of respect and integrity?

Liz: Yes, absolutely. Do we match each other in terms of our personal and spiritual maturity? Do we match each other in terms of our emotional maturity? Can we be on the same page and agree how we take care of our expenses, where we don't owe each other beyond what we've already agreed to, if you will.

Rhea: We're trying to unpick every single one of these constructs and just do whatever the fuck we want to do, which is frankly where we're getting to eventually. That's why all this is happening. Everything is crumbling, but at the end of the day, money is keeping us locked into that 3D.

Liz: Very much. It really is.

Rhea: Because of our concepts of it.

Liz: It is, I mean more than anything else, even when the gender roles are falling apart, when all these other concepts or roles that have been reversed or shifted, money still keeps things a certain way in that very sort of third dimensional polarity way, where it really does stretch partnership on either end of that polarity. And it's what keeps couples from really coming together as a team, as real partners. At the end of the day when you're really with somebody who matches you, you're going to find the compromise, or maybe you kind of have a smaller flat so that you can afford the maternity nurse. Does that make sense? You don't always get what you want, but one thing I've learned 20 years of marriage that there's a lot of compromise and you can still get what you want and just get used to the fact that it's not going to look the way you thought it would. A lot of the things that we think are necessary aren't. But what really matters, as you had said, is what is going to keep the harmony in this relationship and not by sublimating what we want and who we are, but really prioritizing what our wants and needs are. You'll know that your partner is really the right fit for you because your wants and needs pretty much match up. Really what's key is always being able to communicate what your fears around money are because I find that in this world, most people carry a ton of fear around their safety and it's often tied to money, having enough money. It's a really big one for people.

Rhea: Yeah, I'm not going to lie. I wouldn't necessarily find someone attractive whose dream would be to sit on the couch all day, even if they won the lottery and they could afford to do that. For me, it wasn't necessarily about are you making money and can you afford X, Y, Z? It's more, are you ambitious to be the best that you can be in whatever field you choose to be in? And if that is if you were - I don't know - a lawyer for 25 years and then you left to go start a band, then well done you, if you are putting it in your passions.

Liz: Same. Absolutely. That was always my priority, but I do think that some of that comes from our relationship to ourselves. Am I expecting this from myself? Because for me, in many ways you can't really expect of another person what you can't expect of yourself. Three-dimensional consciousness is all about separation, you know, rich/poor and sort of living in that polarity of if there's wealth, then there must be poverty. I guess that would be really the only polarity we're talking about in this one.

Rhea: I was waiting for things to . . . 

Liz: I know. I was like, do I want to say another?

Rhea: If there is educated, there must be not educated.

Liz: Right.

Rhea: If there is ambitious, there must be lazy.

Liz: Yes. Well I kind of feel like there's still going to be . . . .

Rhea: That's okay. Let's keep the first one

Liz: I really think it's really just about wealth and poverty, and so as things are starting to collapse and we enter fifth dimensional oneness consciousness, Oneness and Equality is not necessarily about income equality. Of course we'll still have some haves and have-nots, but not in the respect that in order to have, I'm having it at the expense of someone else and diminishing their abundance. And it's not that if somebody has a little less than someone else, that they don't have more than that person in some other respect, or have-nots are unable to maintain a respectable and acceptable lifestyle. We're slowly making inroads at that, but we're having to understand our relationship to money around that, and it will take years to get there. I'm talking years. But this is the year as we've seen so far that we're having to confront all of these, all of our old relationship around that. And so the first way and the most effective way to do that is through how we date. Because it's in coming to understanding our relationship to money individually through ourselves, we're also going to know how we do it when we are connecting to someone else. And what I find encouraging, especially among younger generations, is that it matters less than it used to because our values are going to be shifting where it's the: 'I don't even need to own a house. What do I really want with a mortgage? Maybe that's just not going to serve me'. So we don't need to be locked into all these values that people had even a decade ago. Our value systems are changing, which means our relationship to money will change.

Rhea: You know, I think that often when we look at how much money we have in the bank, how many cars we have, how much savings we have, what we've put aside for a rainy day or that kind of stuff, I think actually you've got to ask, in my experience, does it come from fear, a lack, that we're scared that something will happen and that we will need it in some way and yes, if this year has taught us anything is that we don't know what's around the corner and we could all be locked up in our houses recording a podcast via our laptop. You never know what's going to happen.

Liz: No.

Rhea: But at the same time, I think that money is one of the ways that has really exemplified security for us.

Liz: Very much.

Rhea: Who's powerful and what that means. I mean, you just have to look at who's being elected and why they're being elected, and is it because they have money or not?

Liz: Suddenly, people with money are going to become the villains.

Rhea: But they have recently, it's crazy.

Liz: Very much, it's like in a way that I just find shocking, and it's also the keeping up with the Joneses. It's the FOMO. I need a second home. I need a house in the Hamptons cause everybody else goes to the Hamptons.

Rhea: Money is going to feel very important this year because economies are struggling. But I would argue that maybe money feels important this year and economies are struggling because it's time for us to confront our relationship to money and how it's making us feel, and how our relationship to . .  . not it's abundance, but it's lack is what's driving a lot of our decisions today, including who we have sex with. Regardless of an economic situation, if you're coming from a place of I need this in my account so I feel safe, you will never get to a number.

Liz: Or someone else has to provide this for me in order for me to feel safe. I mean, it's even our relationship to expecting the government to take care of us.

Rhea: Yeah. Right. Nothing will ever be enough. You're always going to look at it from a place of lack and it's not about positivity and saying, Oh, I've got this and that, so it's okay that I'm missing this and that. No. It's about asking yourself what are these things that I want because I want them, and what are these things that I want because I'm scared if I don't have them, I'm not good enough.

Liz: Right. The level of respect that we have for money is measured by how much we respect ourselves.

Rhea: Interesting.

Liz: And it's really important to understand that because what's happened and one thing we're having to really confront and that is going to be part of this whole story as we rebuild our lives and thus our relationship to money, is to really see how have we taken it for granted? How much have we wasted it? How much have we used money in order to assuage our insecurities? How much have we used money in order to validate us? Abundance is a given. Abundance is a very benevolent energy. It is meant for everyone. It is not something that is only for the chosen, or only for super spiritual people or people who are really smart. It has nothing to do with that. It's actually available to everyone. But we have to understand that. We have to heal our relationship to money in order to get to that point of abundance. And we can only do that when we begin to respect it, and you don't respect something when it has power over you or when you're giving your power over to it.

Rhea: So really in old 3D, money equals power or power equals money.

Liz: Yes.

Rhea: But in this kind of new 5D paradigm, that power is really coming from loving yourself and having a healed relationship to money as part of it, as well as healed relationships and other things.

Liz: Yes. Completely. We are in our own power because we know who we are and we don't allow any external things like money or position or education to define that.

Rhea: What that means is that the people you choose to date, the people who you choose to partner with, they match you to your integrity, they match you authentically by your self-love, not by your fears.

Liz: To your vibration, and you determine your vibration because you determine your worth.