[00:00:00] Intro: We’re saying goodbye to the rigid numbers and strict budgets, and putting relationships back at the heart of personal finance. This is more than a podcast, it’s an invitation to reimagine your money story and journey with us through a landscape of intuitive strategies and abundance. Join a community that nurtures transformative financial mindsets.

[00:00:25] Welcome to Intuitive Finance. I’m your host, Dylan Bain.

[00:00:36] Dylan Bain: Ladies and gentlemen, I am really excited to be bringing you this very first interview that I’m going to be doing in a series of interviews that are going to be part of the podcast. And I couldn’t think of a better guest to kick this off with other than my mentor, Mr. Duey Freeman.

[00:00:51] Duey, thank you so much for being here.

[00:00:53] Duey Freeman: You’re welcome. I’m honored to be here.

[00:00:55] Dylan Bain: And I would just like to take a second to level set where your experience and where you’re coming into this world of relationships.

[00:01:05] Duey Freeman: Level set, as in wanting to know a bit of my background?

[00:01:09] Dylan Bain: That is 100% correct. Why is it that you can be able to be the authority on this relationship space?

[00:01:16] Duey Freeman: Well, I don’t know exactly if I’m the authority, but what I do know is that I have been working for well over 50 years with people.

[00:01:25] Dylan Bain: 50 years.

[00:01:26] Duey Freeman: Yeah. 50 years with kids, families, adults, couples, individuals. I’ve also spent 34 of those 50 years, teaching in universities. I’ve started a couple of institutes that I run. One, I don’t run anymore, one of my friends is running that.

[00:01:49] And virtually everything that I’ve done therapeutically and as a mentor, and educator, as well as a therapist, is look at what happens in relationships? How do they work? What do we do to promote relationships? And what do we do to inhibit relationships? Regardless of whether it’s with another person, whether it’s with animals, whether it’s with nature, and clearly with those that we are intimate with. And intimacy, to me, is not just sexual intimacy. Some relationships, sexual intimacy is a part of that. And I have many friends who I’m incredibly intimate with. And sexuality is not even a part of that on any level.

[00:02:40] So, what I’m talking about in regard to intimacy is a very deep, close, trusting relationship.

[00:02:47] Dylan Bain: Amazing. So, I’ve obviously met you before this interview. One stat that gets thrown out every once in a while is how many contact hours do you think you have working with clients?

[00:02:57] Duey Freeman: Probably somewhere around 80,000.

[00:03:00] Dylan Bain: You think that’s a conservative estimate?

[00:03:02] Duey Freeman: I don’t know if it’s conservative. If you look at doing this for 53 years, that’s just maybe — what does that average out to, 12 or 1300 a year? That might be conservative.

[00:03:14] Dylan Bain: 100%. So when you’re talking about relationship, and the idea of relationship, and how we are in relationship and inhibit relationship, I think a lot of people think about intimate partners or couples, something of a romantic nature. Can you expand on how you view relationship and what that looks like to you?

[00:03:35] Duey Freeman: Yeah, from my perspective, everything that we do is a relationship. Whether it’s a relationship with ourselves, whether it’s a relationship with the clerk at a store, or whether like — Kimberly, my partner and I just had lunch at Downey Golton. And throughout, while we were talking, the man who was waiting on us, there are different levels of relationship, but we were both totally in relationship with this dude who was waiting on us. I mean, he was just delightful.

[00:04:06] So, relationship to me, is not just a thing that we do with a person that we call a partner or a wife or a husband or even a friend or a child. Relationship is virtually how we relate to virtually everything that we come into contact with. You and I just walked up the hill from my house. There’s a relationship with the land, relationship with trees. The other day when you were up here, you mentioned that there — we talked about a woodpecker feeding and having relationship between you and me in regard to the woodpecker, but also relationship with this particular woodpecker, so.

[00:04:52] Dylan Bain: The relationship is a much broader topic. It’s literally how we’re interacting with absolutely everything in our environment. Does that include — and I would love your thoughts and opinions on how this idea of relationship intermixes with things like food, things with society, and particularly our money?

[00:05:11] Duey Freeman: I think two things happen there. One is we do have relationship with food, for instance. What that relationship is, is I believe different for everybody. Sometimes that relationship is get as much food and meals as possible so I feel better. Sometimes it’s an aversion to food. Sometimes it’s just eating while you’re watching TV. Other people, when I’m really talking about for instance food, I’m talking about how does this food nurture us and when we can really allow food to — if we can eat for nurturing versus eat to get filled. Those are two very distinct kinds of relationships, same way with society in general.

[00:06:00] And also the same with money and what we do with our finances. We can actually be with money as a way to nurture ourselves, to nurture those we love, to provide nurturing, to provide home, to provide safe places. We can also have a kind of relationship with money that is sort of a diminished relationship or relationship where we’re afraid not to have money. Some people can even have the kind of relationship with money where they project themselves onto the money — on to money itself. Meaning if I have a lot of money, that means I’m good. And if I don’t have a lot of money, it means I’m not so good. So we have all different kinds of relationships with money.

[00:06:48] Dylan Bain: If I’m somebody who’s navigating in what I’ve termed an anti-human society, and that is how I look at how we’ve made our modern industrial society, that it’s separated us from nature, it’s separated us from ourselves. If I’m somebody who’s looking at that setup, and I’m saying I want to be able to have good relationships, what is the core of being able to build more healthy relationships?

[00:07:13] Duey Freeman: Could I ask you just real briefly what you mean by anti-human?

[00:07:18] Dylan Bain: Sure. Another episode of the podcast, I’ve talked about like a financial system that is so focused on 30% of your income has to go here, right? We’re losing the human. It’s the idea that people will buy a house because they think it’s a good tax option or a good investment without ever considering that this is a home for their family.

[00:07:36] Duey Freeman: Right, right.

[00:07:36] Dylan Bain: We’ve separated the humans out. You know, car dependence is something else I’ve talked about where, we’re trapped in cars, right? Where we’re in our little boxes and we never really interact with each other. We don’t see each other. We’re not in community with each other, and the design of society encourages that, which means that it’s built for the car and it’s built for the financial system, but it’s lost humans inside of it.

[00:07:59] Duey Freeman: Got it. A way that I would look at that would be relational deprivation. And let me speak just briefly about nature first. We as humans have what I would call, generally, nature deprivation. What that means is that most human beings don’t spend much time in nature. In fact, there was a study that I heard about on NPR, and I apologize for not being able to quote the study, is that most humans spend an average of nine minutes a day outside.

[00:08:35] Dylan Bain: Oof.

[00:08:36] Duey Freeman: And most of that time is running from their house to their car. So, literally as you’re putting it, from one box to another. Like in my life, I spend on probably average, I would guess a minimum, on a minimum day, I spend three to four hours outside. There are many days that it’s eight to ten to twelve. That’s the same thing I think that happens in, well — and actually I want to add one more piece there. Nature deprivation is not only something that we need to look at, but nature deprivation is actually harmful to us. We are designed for one, some of our very first relational processes to be in nature, as well as with our mothers and our parents. That’s how we’re designed.

[00:09:22] And the reason for that is, is because we’re part of nature. Now from a relational place, what I also see is when we have nature deprivation, we also oftentimes have relational deprivation. And what I mean by that is, the idea of standing in a room with maybe 10 to 50 people, and feeling isolated. And many of us walk through the world with what I call relational deprivation. So it’s not just a deprivation, but it’s actually harmful to us to have both nature and relational deprivation. It’s healing for us to have relationship and nature in our life.

[00:10:09] Many times — I’m gonna go into another piece here. Many times what stops the relational piece is we can either truly connect into another person relationally, or we can objectify another person or another being. So if I objectified you, I would miss all of who you are. All I would see is you isn’t quote yet. If I don’t objectify you, if I really allow myself to create an opening, to let you into my space and you create an opening to let me into your space. Part of what happens is, is we actually really get to know each other as two beings on the face of the earth.

[00:10:52] One of the things, and I’m going to tie this into the money piece here just a little bit, is if we objectify money, which is an interesting concept, then money cannot be anything but money to us. Money cannot represent anything other than whatever a bank account says, or like what you were saying, put X amount of money, X percentage of money in savings or all of those kinds of things. Versus working with money from a relational place within the relationship that we’re in, like say for a couple, and working with money from a place of what can this money do to help nurture us? What can this money do to help provide a home? What can this money do to help us nurture each other? Or we just have a lot of money, or maybe not a lot of money, and be completely separate from what we do and what that money means to us.

[00:11:54] Does that make any sense at all?

[00:11:56] Dylan Bain: Yeah, so then the process of actually establishing good relationships is what? Because if we have somebody who’s saying, as you just said — I think you outlined two really interesting standpoints.

[00:12:09] You have on the one hand, the people who — they’re defined by their money and the quantity that they have, right? And I’ve seen this come into my own coaching practice where I have somebody who’s doing very, very well, but all they can think of is, how do I make my next million?

[00:12:24] And my question is, well, but you’re already financially independent, what about your intimate relationships? What about your — do you want a girlfriend? But they’re focused so —

[00:12:34] Duey Freeman: Right, right, right.

[00:12:34] Dylan Bain: — heavily on it versus the other side of the extreme, people who are saying, well I don’t have any money and I should never have any money because I’m not worthy of money. How do we go about bringing ourselves into a more healthy relationship place?

[00:12:47] Duey Freeman: So let me with this, bring in the concept of contact. And a lot of people don’t talk about this. And in fact, when people come in, it’s an interesting thing that I run into when, say for instance, a couple comes in. They will present with, we’re having fights. We don’t know how to communicate. We’re not having an intimate relationship. We’re not sexual. And we argue about the kids. And what we really need to be able to do is communicate better. And I politely listen to them. And say, okay, how do you make contact with each other? And they look at me like I just landed from Mars, and they go, well, we touch.

[00:13:33] So how do you make contact with each other? Well, we fight sometimes. Well, how do you make contact with each other? And many times what will happen is people will go, I don’t know what’s contacting — and I’ll talk about what contact is in a moment. When people come in and say, we don’t communicate, or we’re not in relationship, it’s literally because they’re not making contact.

[00:13:58] So, let me talk about contact for a moment, and what that is to me. And this is my definition, this is what I’ve come up with over the years. Contact is that place where our physical, emotional, energetic, and or spiritual boundaries touch another in presence with another being. Does that make sense? Should I say that again?

[00:14:22] Dylan Bain: One more time, Duey. One more time.

[00:14:25] Duey Freeman: Contact is the place where physical, emotional, spiritual, and/or energetic boundaries touch another. That can be between you and me. That can be between me and a tree. That could be between you and the other Dylan that lives on this property.

[00:14:44] Dylan Bain: Which is a horse.

[00:14:45] Duey Freeman: Which is a horse. So we have the two Dylans. That could be with you and your daughters, could be with you and your wife. It could be with whomever we’re in relationship with. And if we do not know how to make contact, then we will never be able to have a relationship. So I’m going to say that again too, because that’s a pretty strong statement. If we don’t know how to make contact, then we will never be able to have a relationship.

[00:15:15] And contact, if you could sort a picture, either of the foundation of a house or a building or something like that, contact is the building block. It forms the foundation of everything that goes, that a relationship is built on. It’s the underlying structure by which we can have relationship with ourselves and relationship with other people.

[00:15:40] Most people, in all honesty, don’t really know how to make contact. Most people will think that eye contact is real contact. Sometimes it is. Other times it’s not at all. It can be, depending on how we make it, with another person. It’s actually a way to break contact.

[00:16:00] So a little bit earlier, I talked about what do we do to either promote or inhibit relationships. If you break that down, what’s underneath that is, how do we really work to promote or inhibit contact between ourselves and another being? So if you could paint sort of a mental picture, they’re sort of the building blocks that we build everything on. Does that make a little bit of sense?

[00:16:27] Dylan Bain: It does make a little bit of sense. One of the things you said was that, without the ability to make contact, without those boundaries or borders of our, what is it, spiritual or physical, emotional, energetic, and spiritual — and/or spiritual, without the ability to be in contact with another person, it’s not possible to be in relationship.

[00:16:50] And so the follow up I want to ask on that is, you gave this example of this couple who comes in, they’re fighting about the kids, they’re arguing all the time. You know, money’s out of control. And you ask them, how did they make contact?

[00:17:02] I mean, obviously these people at some point got together and were hoping that that was a good love story. And what happens where people either lose the ability to create contact or are they just going through the motions that they didn’t know how to make contact? How do we get in that situation?

[00:17:18] Duey Freeman: Where does that begin, you mean?

[00:17:20] Dylan Bain: Yeah.

[00:17:21] Duey Freeman: We’re going to dive in deep here a minute.

[00:17:23] Dylan Bain: I’m here for it, man. And for those of you listening, I hope you’re here for it too.

[00:17:28] Duey Freeman: Yeah, right on. The place where we initially learned to begin, interestingly enough, learned to make contact is in utero.

[00:17:35] Dylan Bain: So in the womb.

[00:17:36] Duey Freeman: Yes. And that’s the initial setup. What happens in utero, we actually — it’s a little bit different than what happens in, what is it? What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas?

[00:17:49] Dylan Bain: Yes.

[00:17:49] Duey Freeman: We’re going to shift that. What happens in utero, we want to come with us out of utero. So it doesn’t stay there. And then, in utero, we actually begin the process of attachment. That’s why I’m talking about that. Through our breathing process, and then typically, the first year and a half to two years of life, we are learning how to attach, how to connect, how to make contact. That is the underlying foundation of every relationship.

[00:18:18] So, every relationship that I’ve ever been in is the foundation of the relationship of both what I’m able to give and whomever I’m in relationship with is able to give. That — we’re coming from those two foundations to see if we can actually make contact. And if we can’t, we can learn how to. But most people actually don’t really know how to. I would say my guess is probably somewhere between 70 and 80% of the people that live in the United States do not really know how to make contact and don’t really have a really good underlying foundation of attachment.

[00:18:58] Before everyone freaks out about that, attachment happens on a continuum from very, very little attachment to full, healthy attachment. So I’m not — this is not an either or thing. We sort of slide up and down that continuum. The bad news is that most people don’t know how to make contact. Most people don’t know how to really create a good attachment process or bond between themselves and others. And it’s something that we’re designed to do. And it’s something that we can learn to do.

[00:19:29] So typically what happens oftentimes in relationships is, and especially since we’re talking about money, is that people will oftentimes attach to money instead of to the other person. So if there’s 100,000 sitting out here, both of us are really attached to that. But if that goes away, we don’t really know how to attach to each other.

[00:19:53] Dylan Bain: I just want to put a pin in that. 100,000. And we’re attached to it. That means that — what does it mean to attach to an inanimate thing?

[00:20:02] Duey Freeman: Well, when we “attach” to something that’s inanimate, what happens is it’s predictable.

[00:20:08] Dylan Bain: Okay. So it’s learning that I can be in relationship with this money because that hundred dollars or that a hundred grand is always there for me. I know exactly what to expect from it. I find safety and security with it. Is that, am I in the ballpark?

[00:20:21] Duey Freeman: Yeah, you’re in the ballpark. It’s the same way if I attach to something else. I can attach to exercise, I can attach to food, I can attach to drinking, I can attach to drugs. If I, for instance, if I come home and I don’t drink — but if I come home and would have six shots of tequila, I know exactly what’s going to happen, it’s predictable.

[00:20:47] But if I’m coming home and I’m trying to make contact with my partner, it’s like, that’s not always predictable. It’s like, I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen when I walk into the house. Nor is she. It’s not a thing where it’s like — I’m not saying this is only about her, she might walk in the house, and I may have just gotten off a phone call that was really upsetting, so she’s not quite sure what she’s gonna walk into either.

[00:21:11] But when we attach to inanimate objects that we have control over, we’re really trying to attach to something that we can control, which is the opposite of attaching through a trust bond. So like between you and me, we’ve built quite a bit of trust between us. That’s my perspective anyway.

[00:21:32] Dylan Bain: I would agree.

[00:21:33] Duey Freeman: So there’s that bond there through trust where it’s like, we’ll be able to work something out no matter what, if something happens. And I won’t know what that is all the time. I won’t know exactly what the solution might be if something happens. But I do know that whatever happens, we’ll work through it. If I have 100,000 over here in the bank, I don’t have to work through anything. It’s just there.

[00:22:00] It’s sort of the difference — I’ve done a lot of things in my life. I’m, as you may know, I’m very into horses. And learning to ride a horse really well is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done in my life. I’m also a pilot. And so I’m going to compare those two.

[00:22:22] Learning to fly an airplane and learning to ride a horse are not even in the same ballpark. The reason is, is an airplane’s a machine. And if you do a certain thing with, if you do something with the yoke in the airplane, if you press a pedal on the airplane, the airplane will do what is predictable.

[00:22:43] Now, what’s not predictable all the time are the air currents. And I’m also assuming that the airplane engine is working. I mean, there’s some stuff in there that could provide variables. But an airplane is, it’s a machine. A horse is not. So I may be real solid in a day, but if I’m out riding my horse — like yesterday, I was riding on a new trail, and my horse was nervous. And so I could fly an airplane to a new place, and that airplane is not going to get nervous, that airplane is going to do exactly what it would do to some other place.

[00:23:22] So the relational process is a process where we actually have to interact and interact from a place of trust to be able to make that relationship work. So if I’m going to tie this back into money, it isn’t the money that I need to trust. If you and I are in a relationship, it’s you that I need to trust. And it’s me that you need to trust in relationship to the money that’s out here. It’s not the money.

[00:23:49] Dylan Bain: There’s so many different ways I want to go with this. Let’s stay on the trust thing because I think that’s a really critical piece. My wife is very fond of saying if there’s money involved, you can’t trust them. And you know, she works in the energy markets where there’s a lot of shenanigans. And I think about like her and I’s relationship with money, where I trust her and she trusts me. We create plans. We have a business meeting together as a couple and we execute — despite all of our other problems as a couple, the business side of our relationship has always been kind of the winner.

[00:24:24] What would you say to people though, who are coming into a relationship and they’re saying, well I’ve been screwed before. And you know what, I’ve been trusting and it never works out. And so you know what, I’m not going to — you can trust me, but I’m not going to trust anyone. What would you say to someone in that situation?

[00:24:42] Duey Freeman: Well, now I can answer that in a thousand different ways.

[00:24:44] Dylan Bain: Duey, I feel like we could do this a thousand different times to come up with radically different interviews.

[00:24:51] Duey Freeman: That would be a thousand percent true. Let me talk about that first. And let me talk about the trusting around money.

[00:24:59] When somebody says, I don’t trust anybody and I’m trustworthy. That is completely false. The person who says, I’m trustworthy but nobody else is means they are watching pick and choose, and they’re going to manipulate on some level. Whatever happens relationally.

[00:25:21] Person who says, sometimes I struggle with trusting, and I’m doing my best to be able to work with everybody and create openings for people. That person is trustworthy. Struggling with trust is not the issue. Saying that if a person says they’re the only one who’s trustworthy, that’s what the issue is.

[00:25:41] The way to get through that is, in a relationship, is to have business meetings. So let me jump on that for a minute. Every relationship has a minimum of three parts. It doesn’t matter what relationship it is — especially like a spousal, like a romantic relationship is what I’m talking about here.

[00:26:00] One part, whether you’re married or not, is called the spousal relationship. And that’s the part that started when you began dating and, that’s the friendship, the lovership, the playfulness, the what do you do with friends, all of those kind of things.

[00:26:18] Another part of every relationship is a parenting relationship. And we all have parenting relationships or parental relationships. Whether or not we have children. If you have a cat you have a parental relationship. If you have a goldfish, you have a parental relationship. If you have horses, you have a parental relationship. And even if you don’t have any of those and you have parents, for instance, who are getting older, you have a parental relationship toward your parents.

[00:26:44] A parental relationship is, how do we work together to take care of others? And the third kind of relationship that is in every larger relationship is the business relationship, and that’s where the money piece comes. And many people do pretty well with a spousal relationship. They do pretty well with a parental relationship. And they do sort of horribly with a business relationship.

[00:27:11] And the reason is, is people go, I don’t want to be in a relationship with my — a business thing with my spouse. And it’s like, well, you need to be. This is a true story years ago. Had a married couple, both were attorneys. The woman of the couple worked for a law firm where she got a certain amount of money per month. And then in addition to that, she would get bonuses, et cetera. The man of the couple had his own firm and he, like — all of his cases were on a contingency basis.

[00:27:43] So she would get X amount of money per month and he would get X amount of money per year but sometimes he would go six months without having any income. Then he would get the half a million dollars. And I asked him, I said, do you have meetings about money? Because almost everything that was coming up in their relationship was about money. I said, do you have business meetings? And they looked at me like I was nuts. And I said to her, do you have business meetings at your law firm? And she goes, yeah, once a week. Do you have business? I said to him the same question. Do you have business meetings at your law firm? Yeah, once a week and sometimes more often depending on what’s going on.

[00:28:20] And it’s like, so why are you not doing that with each other? Because together, they were bringing in well over a million dollars a year. And it’s like, you don’t run a million dollar company without having business meetings. And what that means to me — it can be pretty structured, like we’re spending this much on food this month, and this much on buying the clothes, and we’re gonna budget for vehicles. Or it can be less structured than that, that depends on the couple.

[00:28:52] But if anybody is running any kind of a household, and even people like, I went through this with a couple who both are getting their master’s degree in counseling. And they were going, we don’t have any money, but when you put it down, they were worth probably half a million dollars. Between the furniture they had, the jewelry they had, the vehicles they had, those kind of things.

[00:29:17] And it’s like, what are we going to do with these finances? And it’s through the business meetings that we can actually work on nurturing each other financially. Because it’s like, okay, now we know what we have as far as resources, how do we put those resources to use that are good for both?

[00:29:39] Dylan Bain: I like that you use those two different examples because I’ve heard it both ways. I can always make more money, so I don’t have to worry about it. And therefore we don’t need to talk about it. And I’ve heard it the other way, where people have said, I don’t have any money, so what is there to talk about? And in both those cases, to me it feels almost like there’s a bypass that goes on there.

[00:29:58] Duey Freeman: Yeah, I would agree.

[00:29:58] Dylan Bain: Of saying, no no no, that’s too scary. Don’t want to look at it. What would you say in terms of — particularly when you have a couple who are there maybe for the first time in a 40-year marriage actually having a conversation about money?

[00:30:13] Yeah, obviously some shit’s gonna come up. How do you navigate that, both for yourself and for the other person that you maybe have some trust issues with on the other side of this equation?

[00:30:25] Duey Freeman: Well, one of the pieces, and this isn’t gonna — I would agree with you when someone says, well, we don’t have any money, so we don’t have to talk, or I can always make more. Either of those, those are bypasses because what we’re really looking at is what resources are we bringing to this relationship?

[00:30:44] Doesn’t matter whether you’re bringing 200 a week or 2,000 a week, you’re still bringing some level of resources to the equation. What can also be built into that is — and people get this really mixed up because many people think that money is the only resource that gets brought in too a business relationship, and that’s just not true.

[00:31:11] And I’ll give you an example in my relationship. I make substantially more money than my partner does. And the resources that she brings into this relationship of, if I spend an hour working with a client and she spends an hour at the grocery store. To me, those are the same. Those are the same because I’m not putting a money value on it.

[00:31:36] I’m putting a, what do you bring — what resources are you bringing to the relationship? And to be really honest, I’d rather sit with a client for an hour, and if I never had to step into a King Soopers again in my life, I’d be a happy man.

[00:31:50] Dylan Bain: King Soopers being at a grocery store.

[00:31:52] Duey Freeman: Any grocery store. I’m not dissing King Soopers. You can list them all. Safeway, Whole Foods — it’s like, ugh. So it’s like, what resources are you bringing in? So as soon as we change it to resources — and money is one of the aspects of a public resource. Another is what project can we — one or another person — do that is helpful to the relationship? So what resources are we bringing in? And working out — we’re making — working with that, so that it’s equitable, so that there is trust. So if I spend 10 hours a day working, and Kimberly spends 10 hours a day working toward our relationship, to me those are the same thing.

[00:32:41] Dylan Bain: So you’re not putting a judgment call on saying, well because I can quantify in a dollar value, what an hour of my time is worth, you know, versus her, your relationship with the money is, this money doesn’t say anything about what our time is worth.

[00:32:56] Duey Freeman: That is a thousand percent correct. And just to be clear, Kimberly brings in — Kimberly works and she brings finance and money into our relationship. So I’m not — just to be clear. And the way that you just said it is a hundred percent accurate. It’s like, what resources do you bring in? Because that’s how I look at money.

[00:33:15] Dylan Bain: Right. When I think about stay-at-home moms — not your situation or mine, but that immediately comes to my head. I’ve had clients where you got the husband’s working, the wife is staying home with the kids, and I’ve talked to them about things like life insurance. And saying, you need to have a good policy on your stay-at-home wife.

[00:33:34] And why? She doesn’t bring in the income. I said, but think about the service and the resources that are there, with the food and the managing the kids and the homeschooling and all the other stuff. If we were to try to quantify that, I would quantify that as a higher dollar value than what this husband’s bringing in.

[00:33:50] Duey Freeman: I would totally agree.

[00:33:52] Dylan Bain: So I love what you’re saying about not having that judgment attached to it, and then being able to separate out our sense of self-worth from whatever the quantity dollar value is.

[00:34:05] Duey Freeman: Totally. And again, the word I use — and money fits into this — the word, and I totally include this in business discussions, like business meetings, is what resources are we bringing in? And money clearly is a resource. I mean, money can help us feel safe. Money can give us freedom to go do other things. Money can provide a level of security. Money can provide a level of choice sometimes. I mean, all of those kinds of things, but I clearly expand the business meetings into resources versus money versus just money. And here’s why. We can actually make contact around creating resources with another person.

[00:34:54] Dylan Bain: I was just going to ask that question. How does this relate into contact? And that’s exactly what you’re talking about.

[00:35:00] Duey Freeman: We can create contact around resources. And actually, you and I did this an hour and a half ago. I was parking my horse trailer and you provided a resource. The resource was helping make me make sure I didn’t run into my other trailer. That’s a resource. And it’s an incredibly valuable resource. Like maybe, if you want to put a money value on it. Maybe 10 grand, because if I were to run one trailer in the other, that’s probably how much I’d have to spend to fix it.

[00:35:31] But it’s like you provided a resource, which is a part of our relationship. And you didn’t ask me for 10 bucks, and I didn’t tell you to park my trailer, money wasn’t involved. But it’s a resource, and so going back to where you, and that — when we provide resources for each other, that creates contact and that creates trust.

[00:35:52] Dylan Bain: Makes sense. So I do want to focus on that resource piece for a second ’cause you had said like, oh, the resource I provided, which is an extra set of eyes to help you park this horse trailer could be quantified as 10 grand. But we never had that conversation.

[00:36:07] So I would love your opinion on this idea of, we could try to quantify everything so it’s “fair,” right? So we’re even, therefore I don’t owe anything to anybody else, which I think relates back to that trust thing. Versus what I’ve sometimes called the college pizza economy. I’ll get the next one, right? Of like, I provided that resource, but I know that if I was backing up a trailer and you were there, you’d do the same thing. You’ll get the next one.

[00:36:34] So I’d love you to talk just a little bit about that difference between like, oh, I got it. I have a cosmic balance sheet. Got to make sure everything’s even versus I’ll just get the next one.

[00:36:43] Duey Freeman: When we’re in a trusting relationship, what we know is that over time, when — that it’ll even out. And here’s what I mean by this, because many people in relationships have, and even in therapy school — and this is part of what drives me nuts about teaching therapists or in — that’s not the way I want to say drives me nuts about some of the ethics in how people teach therapists, is many people relationally say, ask for your own needs to be met.

[00:37:16] If I’m in a relationship with you, and I’m going, Dylan, by God, I want you to meet these needs. And you’re going, Duey, by God, I want you to meet these needs. That creates a relationship where we’re literally at odds. We’re creating tension between the two of us.

[00:37:32] If I am in a relationship that’s trusting, which again, ours is, mine with Kimberly is. My statement in question is not about what I need. It’s about what do you need? What can I do to support you, Dylan? And then, when there’s trust, your response is, well, it might be X, Y, and Z, and Duey, what can I do to support you?

[00:37:55] So, there’s a huge difference relationally when I’m saying, what do you need? What do you need right now? What can I do to be helpful? And when you’re doing, what can I need — the same thing back to me. So it’s like, that’s what creates equitability. That’s different than, well, you didn’t give me this. I’m not going to give you that. That creates a transactional process versus a relational process.

[00:38:21] The relational process is, hey dude, what do you need? What can I help you with? And your response is, whatever the answer is, and if I can truly count on you, which I can, for you to say, hey dude, what do you need? Then we get to where we need to go. And that’s the same way around bringing in resources into a relationship. Like I’m saying, hey babe, what do you need? And she’s going, hey, what do you need? And it’s like, how do we provide that for the other person? And that’s actually what builds the resources to be able to have a relationship that works.

[00:38:56] Dylan Bain: Amazing. Well there’s a lot there that I’d love to just go down that rabbit hole, but I know we’re coming up on time. And so first off, again, thank you so much. If people wanted to find more about you, do you have a website that they can go see?

[00:39:09] Duey Freeman: Yeah, it’s a really easy one. It’s DueyFreeman.org.

[00:39:13] Dylan Bain: And it’s Duey, that’s D U E Y.

[00:39:15] Duey Freeman: D U E Y. I also have a website for the Gestalt Equine Institute of the Rockies. And then Kimberly, my partner, she and I work together, as well as being life partners. She has a Colorado Ecotherapy Institute that she runs, and we collaborate on all of them. So those are the ways to find either or both of us.

[00:39:38] Dylan Bain: Fantastic. There you go, folks. I really encourage you to go learn more about Duey and some of the work he’s doing. Again, Duey, thank you so much.

[00:39:45] Duey Freeman: You’re so welcome. Thank you.

[00:39:49] Outro: Thanks for listening. The conversation doesn’t end here. Please share the show with friends and make sure you keep up with all the latest updates on Instagram and Threads @TheDylanBain and dive deeper into the world of finance with me at DylanBain.com where you’ll find insights, resources, and strategies to reimagine your money story.