The most important thing we ever choose in our lives is our partners, but many people still get into such a relationship without preparation. Jeffrey Saad breaks down the importance of not only creating your personal constitution, but also a couple’s constitution. Looking back on his own experiences, Jeffrey explains how couples can address the biggest and often ignored frictions in their relationships that lead to significant problems. Tune in as he emphasizes the importance of proactive communication, openness, and swift conflict resolution in living a meaningful life with your partner.
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Why You And Your Partner Needs A Couple’s Constitution
First thing I want to say is thank you to all of you who are so supportive and loving and so much connection to get me through the cancer. I got the PET scan. I am cancer-free and I am not going to ever label myself a cancer survivor or anything like that because, by now, I’m about the moment and in this moment I am good. I do want to thank you because I owe that to you and it was such a lesson and how much connection and love heals. It’s unbelievable. Chemo and radiation do a good job too. The connection, the love and the support I got from people I never expected, from the people I did expect, like my family, all that put together was magic.
Anybody reading that knew and that was supportive, thank you. If you didn’t know, sorry to throw that at you. Also, we’re back from a vacation. We always talked about doing it. We tend to do like a month in the summer and then a few more months scattered out throughout the year. This is the first time we said we’re doing two months straight through in the summer. As many of you know, my wife and I are realtors. Most people, especially realtors, think that it’s impossible to leave for two months. I don’t want to sit here and brag and boast about all the amazing places we did and all the wonderful people we saw, but I do want to say it because you can do it if you want to. It is life-changing.
To totally check out, to be okay with whatever work you miss, to be with the ones you love. The memories, the people we are with, the things we did this summer are the things that I’ll be smiling about with my eyes closed as I fade away one day. It won’t be doing another transaction or running around being busy. It’ll be those great moments.
For any of you that are struggling to take a vacation, you can do it. For of you that want to reach out to me, if you’re going through cancer or any situation, I want you to know I’m always here. That is my single goal with this show is to help people live their life inside their circle of control. To live the best life you can live and to wake up loving your life. My wife always gets so annoyed with that. “Nobody wakes up loving their life.” I’m like, “I do and we can and we should.”
Why Couples Need A Couple’s Constitution
One of my observations during the summer and with all that time to think and seeing so many different couples and friends and people, was this concept of the constitution. If you’ve heard my other episodes, you know about the personal constitution. What that is, is I think I created it. Nothing’s probably truly original. As a chef, I know that every recipe is a version of, but I created this thing called a personal constitution many years ago. I said, “How do I want to live my life? How am I going to make my decisions? I need a roadmap.” It’s been such a blessing because you rewire your brain. What’s so cool is most of us have negative triggers. That triggers me and I go to a bad place.
How many of us work on positive triggers? That’s what the rewiring does. When you write this personal constitution, I read it every morning, it becomes part of your DNA and all of a sudden, your immediate reaction is the thing you want to happen instead of having your reaction just be based on whatever your mood of the moment is because we’re all going to fail. We’re all going to fail regularly. I fail constantly.
My goal was never, “I’m never going to fail again.” That was never a goal. The goal was I want to keep getting better. The art of kaizen, as we’ve talked about in past episodes, being 1% better every day, just constantly moving forward. If you want to do that, you can either hope that it happens by luck or you can have a plan and a system.
We’ll get more into the specifics of the constitution. What it made me realize this summer, observing people and in particular two comments that I’ll share with you in a second, is couples need a constitution. We need a couple’s constitution and I’ll call it couples because whether you’re married or not married, anybody you want to spend your life with. Isn’t it crazy? The most important thing we ever choose is our life partner. For the majority of us, there’s no conversation ahead of time. At least not structured and not deep and not uncomfortable. It’s just, “We’re in love, this is great,” and you go with it. The danger of that is you can slowly grow apart and not even know it. That’s why so many divorces happen after somebody’s been together twenty years because by the time they realize they haven’t been on the same page, it’s too late.
Three Things To Determine With Your Partner
Here’s your test. I have a test for you. The three things. I did this with some friends one time and it was really powerful. Could you, right now, write down on a piece of paper the 3 things that would make your partner the happiest if you were doing those 3 things and the 3 things that they want you to work on, the things that they wish you would work on for them and maybe also for yourself, but for them. If you can, stop reading, move on or if you love your relationship and you have no issues, then you can also just stop because that’s what I’m going to be blabbing about.
I am never interested in making anybody like me. I am never interested in judging anyone. I only want to help people be their best self. If you’re already there, again, like I always say, if you wake up in the morning and you love your life, it doesn’t mean you don’t have a bad day. It doesn’t mean you aren’t in a bad mood sometimes. In general, same thing. If you wake up and you think you’ve got a great marriage or great partnership or whatever it is, then stop because this is not a goal to change you unless you feel what I’m saying and want the change.
Could you write those three things down? I’m willing to wager that a vast majority could not. I think that is the problem. The longer you’re together, the more dangerous it is because you start to just think your interaction is normal and you get used to it. That’s what we’ve observed with people we know. It’s like, “That doesn’t seem like a nice way to treat the other person.” I can’t imagine that’s what they want. The danger is even the couples that sometimes think, “Yeah, it’s all good,” they’ve convinced themselves that what’s happening is okay because it’s always been that way.
You’ve seen this and you can tell from comments that are made or things that are said or done that it doesn’t make them happy and they are missing that piece. They snap back to like, “No, we’re good,” because we all want to be proud of having a good relationship. There are some people that thrive on complaining, but I think most of us want to believe we have a good relationship and want to say that and want that to be the outer facade and the image.
How Jeffrey Created A Couple’s Constitution With His Wife
This is really a challenge to get on the same page. I’ll give you a personal example. Nadia and I, we’re going to have our 30th anniversary this April 2026 and I love her more every day and every year. Truly my soulmate. We were almost divorced. Literally, I thought it was over and so did she. It was shocking because it went from fine to it’s almost over. I think that’s the worrying thing. It’s not the big things.
For a lot of people, it’s even the big things as well but you can be on the same page about the big things, but a lot of times, it’s the little things that’ll slowly wear on your armor, wear on your wellbeing, wear on your sense of self-worth. The next thing you know, it just explodes. By the way, I said I’d tell you the two comments that I had heard. Two guys who I love and respect and I think are smart and successful and awesome said the same thing to me.
Couples are usually on the same page about the big things. But a lot of times, it is the little things that slowly wear out your armor and destroys your sense of self-worth. Share on XThey’re engaged or they are married and having a baby is something they’ve never discussed. Now he’s shocked that she wants a baby. The other one was like, “I don’t know, I guess she probably does.” How could you be marrying someone and your answer be, “I guess she probably does?” That’s an important thing in my book. Maybe that should be a conversation.
Not everybody is doing that and not everybody has that issue. It can be many little issues. The little issues are the danger because what happened with Nadia and I is these little differences were ticking away and I was proud of absorbing them and not making a big deal out of them and being patient and putting up with it. She was doing the same on the things that were bothering her about me.
We were both trying to be heroes because we love the other one so much. One of the things in my personal constitution is I will always love my wife for exactly who she is, not who I want her to be. I fell in love with who she was, not somebody that I wanted to create and make my perfect something. Having that in my personal constitution was good, but the bad part was I somehow related that to putting up with the things that aren’t making me happy. It was to my demise slowly. It was to both of our demises. That’s the danger.
What happened was our son was going through addiction as you’ve read in past episodes. It was easily the worst seven years of our lives. It almost killed us individually as a married couple, then her mom died. As anybody out there knows that’s lost a parent you’re close to, the void is massive. I don’t know it because my mom and I didn’t have relationship and my dad died when I was very young. All of a sudden, for that person to be gone.
It was the combination of our son going through that and her losing her mom, she just shut down. She wasn’t there. One time I even tested it and I said something off the charts and she didn’t even hear it. I was getting so lonely and felt so sad and so unheard and so unappreciated and so unnoticed. I give myself a hard time then and even now sometimes like, “Put on your big boy pants and just be there for her. She’s going through hell and that’s what you want to do.” That’s what I always tried to do.
To ignore your own needs is also a huge mistake. It’s you’re not being a hero because it’s going to do damage. Her natural way to go when tragic things were happening was to keep it all inside, to get quiet, to be more alone than ever. My go-to when something’s happening is more connection, more talking, more conversation, more love. Both of our go-tos were the opposite of what each other needed.
Here’s the most important point. Right now, you think, “We’re getting by and things are fine,” but if you haven’t been tested, that’s when you’ll find out. It may be too late because when you need the armor, when you need the experience, when you need the test, no different than the endless silly athletic analogies, which I’m a sports idiot, but all the sports analogies, all the army wartime fighting analogies, it’s that practice every day of punching and blocking, which is something I’ve done my whole life.
All of a sudden, you naturally just block or punch. If you haven’t practiced this couple’s constitution to where you know exactly what each other needs, you’ve agreed about it ahead of time and you’re on the same page, then when the time comes that you need it, guess what? You’re not going to be ready because it’s hard enough to deal with stuff when you’re prepared to go into it blind. Blind is, as we all know, impossible for many.
I really believe that. I don’t know what the number is, but I would put money on it that no less than 50% of divorces didn’t have to happen if they had had this couple’s constitution, if they had been on the same page from the beginning and continued with it and evolved. We were sitting next to this one guy at the bar, there’s this place we love to go. I’ll do a call out in case you’re in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, California. It’s called the Boulevard Steak. Greatest guys. They run a great business, awesome service, but we love to sit at the bar and just have a drink and an appetizer and talk to people.
This guy was sitting next to me and I said, “It looks like you’re waiting for a date.” He laughed and he goes, “Yes.” We started talking and he had been married for 25 years with kids. To try to make him feel better naturally without realizing I was doing it, I said, “I’m sure it was so worth it to go through all that. Now you’re doing what you really want to do and you’re probably happier. It was great that you had the courage to just move on.”
He said, “No. I wish I would’ve worked more. I wish I would’ve worked at it more. I should have worked at it more.” What I’ve always believed is when you, I say divorce because for married couples, but you don’t have to be married for a split up, a separation of any kind, you really just swapping 20%, if you will. You want that partner who wants to socialize more and go out and party and be this and be that. It’s the thing that ends up driving you apart or money and then you go out and you find that missing piece. Guess what? Something else is missing now.
Of course, I’m not sitting here saying nobody should ever divorce or split up. When it’s not working and you’re not in love and you really believe it can’t be fixed, then yeah, it’s better to move on and live your best life every day. The only thing worse than splitting up is staying together when you should be split up. We’ve seen those examples in our lives with friends too. It’s like, why are you torturing each other? Just move on. It’s sure not for the kids because they see it.
Important Things To Consider With Your Partner
This will probably be at least two episodes because I don’t want to overwhelm it. Just to give you a sense of what I’m talking about with this couple’s constitution is, and again, they say the best time to plant a tree is 100 years ago. The second-best time is now. Same thing. The best time to do this couple’s constitution is when you’re first getting serious and being together. The next best time to do it is now because it’s never too late to say, “What do we want the rest of our life to look like together?”
That’s another important point, going backwards. I’m not a big fan of therapy because I just feel like the answers are never backwards. The answers are in the moment. The answers are right here now. What do I want my life, our relationship to look like starting now? To sit down and say really start with the personal constitution. What’s important to me? That by itself is a little bit of therapy because if you’re going to talk about what’s important in a relationship, you have to first understand what’s important to you and then that’ll drive if this person’s a match or how we get through some of our differences.
For example, just to use Nadia and I, we are lucky, like I said, because we just happen to be soulmates, madly in love and on the same page on most things. We’ve been able to pull it off, but again, we almost got divorced over the little things. I want to reinforce that. Don’t just assume because we agree, which Nadia and I did, on how to raise children on how many kids to have, on what real estate to buy. On all the big stuff, we’ve really been on the same page. That was a blessing, but again, sometimes, it’s the little stuff that’s way more dangerous.
Those are the things to talk about. Do you want kids? How many? Why do you want kids? What’s important to you about having kids? As this one girl told me in her 30s when she was getting married and I said, “I’m sure you’re sick of people asking, ‘Are you going to have a kid? When is the kid coming?’ do you want one?” She said, “I don’t know if I want one or if I just think I’m supposed to have one.” That’s what society has done to us. You’re supposed to get married, buy a house, buy a car, get a job, have a kid.
It’s important to really say, not only do you want them, how many do you want, but why? What’s that journey going to look like? Go even deeper. When that happens, how do we think we want to interact with each other? I know that like of course you learn as you go with a lot of stuff, but learn as you go is also an excuse for being lazy because, again, anything worthwhile is worth preparing for. You can always edit it, but edits are a lot easier than starting from scratch. What do we think we want it to look like as parents? What do we think your role’s going to be? Do you want to work? Do you want to just be Mr. Mom or Mrs. Mom? Those are real important questions.
Anything worthwhile in life is worth preparing for. Share on XIf so, why? What do you expect it to look like? They might say, “I’d love to be Mr. Mom, but that’s because I thought you were going to be making millions the way you work now. What if you know your wife or your partner doesn’t want to keep working like that or isn’t going to make that money? Are you only up for that if they’re making a bunch of money? Drilling down into what do both of you want and what should it look like?
A big one, I think, and I learned this from trial and error, but again, that is way more painful. You can learn by almost getting divorced or having a ton of fights or you can learn by working on it ahead of time. How do we talk to each other? As silly as that sounds, we all probably were raised with manners and we understand basic manners and basic ways of communicating. We all know as well that the thing that we should understand best communication is usually the thing that we fail at the most.
Guilty right here for sure. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The thing I learned the most about myself, especially being somebody who likes to talk and connect, is it’s more important seek first to understand, then to be understood. Most of us, including myself for a long time, did the opposite. You need to understand what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, what I want, what’s important to me. We’ve seen that even with friends and relationships. It’s all about one of the people.
Doesn’t the other person deserve to have their needs taken care of too and to be acknowledged? I want to say it a million times, I don’t know what goes on behind closed doors and maybe that dynamic does work for them and they’re super happy. It’s not for me to judge, it’s not for me to say they should be like this instead of like that. If my observation is at all correct, then I think there’s an opportunity there.
How are we going to talk about things when we have big disagreements? How are we going to talk about things with the kids? For a lot of us, it’s basic, but of course, as parents or as a couple, you don’t disagree with each other in front of the kids and or maybe you do, maybe that is your couple’s constitution. “We want the kids to see that there’s two different opinions and we want them to understand how we get on the same page sometimes.” Okay, cool. That’s your couple’s constitution.
For Nadia and I, and I think for a lot of people it’s like, “Let’s have those conversations behind closed doors when the kids are young and then let’s have a united front and figure out.” These are big conversations. How are we going to decide how we move forward when we disagree? I wonder how many people talk about that. What will our technique policy, philosophy be when we totally disagree on something, how do we want to go about that? When you’re calm and in love and everything’s great, it’s a lot easier to have those conversations. When you’re screaming at each other or when you’re frustrated, or even worse, when you don’t even bring it up, it’s a lot harder to talk about it. What I did know about Nadia was that she was raised like an only child, even though she has 2 older sisters because they’re like 10 and 12 years older.
I knew she was raised like an only child and maybe I should have done more assuming. That’s the problem as well with relationships, especially the longer you’re together. You start to assume they should know you, that you assume they should understand you. Just because you adore somebody and just because you’ve been together a long time doesn’t mean they do. If we would’ve had this conversation and she would’ve said to me, “I really need a lot of alone time. I could be alone 70% of the time and be happy. Just going to work or just going to school, whatever it is, is enough connection for me. After that, I could be alone.”
If I had said, “I can be alone for like 38 seconds,” she would’ve realized, even though you could see in the interactions probably how each other behave, assuming and trying to figure it out is not as helpful as having the conversation. If we would’ve started that, that’s been the biggest change in our marriage. For the last few years, we have totally reprogrammed.
I know her pattern. She comes home, she wants to do her Candy Crush, have her glass of wine, be alone, have her cigarette. Yes, she smokes. That’s her business. I don’t own her. I don’t judge her. It’s not my life. That’s her choice, which again, is another couple’s constitution thing. Nadia doesn’t love that I’m on motorcycles every day, but she respects and appreciates that it’s my life and it brings me a lot of joy.
Staying Within The Circle
I’ll hear plenty of guys say, “She won’t let me buy one.” Even though, again, I’m not judging, if that’s what they’ve agreed on, I respect it, but is that something we really should impose? “Yes, because they’re the father of my children or she’s the mother of my children. I can’t let her smoke. That’s not fair to the kid.” If that’s your couple’s constitution, great. For us, it wouldn’t be because, again, each of us deserve to have our life as long as we’re not violating what the other one needs and wants from us. That’s why this, as you can see, this starts to get very intertwined and it’s why it’s just so awesome to figure it out. It’s funny too that I did this personal constitution and it is truly been life changing for me.
Every person deserves to have a comfortable life as long as you are not violating other people’s needs and wants. Share on XPlease go back to The Personal Constitution episode if you haven’t read those, because it’s just incredible. It’s like this snap reaction. I still fail, but I snap back so fast. Gratitude and optimism are my lifeblood. Better every day for myself and those around me. Do the right thing. Bring joy. I’ve been reading that opening line for almost 30 years. When people say, “You always seem so happy and joyful,” it’s not an act. It’s not like it’s just my programming. I have believed that’s how I wanted to be. I’ve read that every morning and I then adjust my actions and behaviors to bring that to fruition. I find myself just constantly grateful and joyful and optimistic, especially in these crazy times we’re in.
As a little side note, for all of us suffering through this politics, remember two things. One, the circle of control. If you can’t or won’t have an impact on it, you have to let it go. Just being an expert on the problems and repeating all the stuff and lashing out at the opposite side and being aggressive as we’ve all seen is not working. The second thing is, this is an opportunity for me more than ever to work on myself. I think if we can all emerge from this period of time as better individuals. I’d like to think we’ll be better as a community as well, because that’s where the solution lies. It definitely doesn’t lie in digging in and hating more, as painful as it is for both sides.
You can see where this is going. The personal constitution, the couple’s constitution, what is the filter? What is that internal compass that you program to live the life you want to live? Not what I think you should do. Not what your mom thinks you should do, not what your boss or your cousin’s friend that you love and respect thinks you should do. What is the life you want to live?
This is your chance. Think of the constitution as a script for the movie of your life, you know? And if you don’t write the script, then you don’t know who to cast. You don’t know who the players should be in your life because you don’t have a script that outlines what that storyline looks like. It really is about that. What’s the script you want to write for the life you want to have? What’s the script you want to write for the relationship you want to have? How do you make each other better while being better yourself and living the life you want to live?
Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words
I think that’s probably already more than you want to digest in one episode, but that’s my thoughts for the day. I hope this finds you well. Maybe jot down the 3 things you think your partner needs from you and the 3 things they want you to work on and show it to them and see if you got it right. If not, maybe that can trigger a conversation to see if you can get on that same page. Much love, stay in the circle.