We’re excited to announce both a brand new website and that we’ll be taking on some new couples as clients for our 2-on-2 coaching practice!

Until now, we’ve only been working through referrals and word of mouth. And we’re thrilled to expand our offering toward the community and world at large.

We work with couples who see partnership as a path for deep personal transformation.

Apply to work with us

The couples we work with share one core thing in common: they know that their partnership is the most beautiful and richest experience in their lives. It gives them meaning and purpose.

Devotion is their guiding light — devotion to their own aliveness and to each other.

They turn towards each other, no matter how difficult things get.

They both know that they’ve chosen each other for a reason — for their souls’ evolution.

They seek a relationship that feels passionate and harmonious, one that they beam about — and they know that it’s possible for them.

Despite their love and commitment, however, they sometimes find it hard to navigate triggers and recurring issues.

Rather than to try to navigate it alone, they know they need to be supported.

They want to invest in their relationship as a top priority in life.

Maybe you’re in that same boat.

Maybe you sometimes fumble around issues — whether it’s about sex or money or wanting more freedom.

Maybe you’re tired of sacrificing what you want, and you want to stop feeding the frustration and resentment you’re feeling.

Maybe you feel stuck, and it breaks your heart to push each other away.

Deep down, you know more is possible for your partnership.

You want to grow together and find win-win solutions that will allow you both to thrive.

And with a little guidance, practical tools, and support, you know you can rediscover the love and joy that brought you together in the first place.

We’re here to help you find the magic in your partnership again.

Apply for couples coaching

What Others Have Said

Here’s what others have said so far:

We were in such a deep space, accessing some really deep wounding and ready to go deep. You both gave great guidance, helping us to land in our connection, and to explore the wounds between us in a safe, supported way. Since our session, we are processing less and moving more quickly to simply support and hold one another.
— Harwood Ferguson

I felt so relieved and hopeful after our session with Kiki and Edmond. They helped us find a place in our dynamic that had been holding us back. We felt so much closer and more easeful with each other after our session. It was like we were ourselves again with each other.
— Recent client in Boulder, June 2023

Thank you both for being shining examples of patience and reminding me to come back to my body. What was really powerful for me is that you both reminded me to nurture myself, to remember what I’m looking for in life. You helped me get back to where my joy is. And I took away a massive trusting. I appreciate you both so much.
— Nate Jones

If you’re in partnership and this type of transformation resonates with you, let’s talk. We have to 3- to 6-month programs available for couples wanting 2-on-2 coaching.

Apply for our coaching program

P.S. If you’re not in partnership, we also each have some space for 1-on-1 coaching relationships as well. Work with Edmond or work with Kiki individually.

We’re sitting at the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse — an ornate building filled with hand-carved and hand-painted tables, columns, and ceramics artisanally crafted in Tajikistan — enjoying dinner for our weekly date night.

Gazing into each other’s eyes across the table, we’re laughing and sharing stories from our early childhood, occasionally reaching for each other’s hands.

We both care deeply about maintaining a high degree of intimacy and connection. And we both look forward to our weekly date nights as a fun and enjoyable way to build more intimacy while enjoying delicious food.

The shared intention to enjoy each other is what makes the self-sabotage that happens next surprising.

We noticed that we’d be having a fantastic time — and then suddenly, we’d unknowingly slip into problem solving about upcoming logistics or we’d find ourselves emotionally processing something unrelated to the date.

And we’d feel irritated or triggered as a result because it wasn’t what we’d wanted for our special date night.

What in the world was going on?!? Were we just hitting an upper limit on our joy?

It took some introspection and detective work to realize something important:

When we don’t have enough structure in our relationship to hold important conversations about our needs — whether logistical, emotional, or something else — those conversations end up leaking into other areas of our relationship, including our precious date nights.

When we can trust that there’s time and space for important conversations about what we need, our bodies can relax and enjoy themselves. And the need to have those conversations doesn’t leak out elsewhere.

The way we’ve addressed that in our relationship is through the thoughtful creation and use of containers.

What Makes a Well-Designed Container?

The term “container” is often used in the context of personal development to refer to the intentional creation and maintenance of a supportive space — physical or virtual — that facilitates deeper vulnerability and exploration.

A well-designed container includes the following elements:

• A clear intention. The purpose of the container is clearly defined, so that we can meaningfully use our time and energy in the container toward a shared intention.
  

  For example, the intention behind our recent 30-day sex container was to confront blocks to sexual intimacy and heal the ways we push each other way subconsciously.

• Shared agreements. The agreements spell out the what and the how for behavior and communication, to support the shared intention.
  

  For example, we use a task-tracking tool called Asana to create a container for handling logistical things about life. Our agreement is that for any non-urgent logistical conversations — joint furniture purchasing decisions, travel planning, etc. — we use Asana.

• Time or space boundaries. Setting a specific duration and / or a specific location for the container can increase safety and trust. We know that there’s enough space to discuss what we need AND that if even we get stuck, the stuckness is time-bound.
  

  That’s why we set a 10-minute timer for our heart talk containers when we’re talking about hard things.

In the context of partnerships, a container is a powerful tool for defining the structure of a conversation or experience to increase safety and trust — so that we can both be more present and go deeper into the shared intention.

When used strategically, containers become powerful spaces where we get to share more of our authentic selves, listen more deeply to one another, and support each other’s healing and growth.

More specifically, defining containers for a partnership produces three major benefits:

• Containers prevent unrelated needs from leaking across different contexts. In a partnership, we each have needs. Those needs may span dimensions ranging from the physical, home, intimacy, family, sexuality, nature, community, and more.
  
  When we have needs from our partner but no safe space to express them, the unmet needs leak out in different areas of life. They may show up in aggressive, passive aggressive, or victim-like ways — like they did in sabotaging our date nights. Containers create a safe outlet for the needs to be expressed, so that they don’t leak out in other ways.

• Containers increase trust. A well-designed container creates a structure that lets both partners go deeper into hard conversations — with the trust that they’re aligned on a shared intention. It creates the felt experience of expanded capacity in the partnership to hold more scary and vulnerable things.
  
  For example, the agreements we’ve made for our heart talks create more trust and safety to vulnerably take ownership for our blocks to connection, without blame.

• Containers support deeper intimacy and connection. When we can more deeply trust that our needs are cared for by our containers, we get to appreciate the rest of life together more.
  
  On our date nights, because we know that there’s space in other containers to handle logistics and process emotions — we can fully relax into enjoying each other’s presence.

What Are Some Powerful Containers to Support Deeper Intimacy in Relationships?

The containers that we’ve personally set up in our relationship fall into one of two categories: containers for emotional connection and containers for logistics.

Here’s a brief overview of some of the containers we’ve created:

Emotional Connection Containers

These containers explicitly focus on our hearts and our connection:

• 10-minute heart talks. These are 10-minute talks where we sit down to take ownership of a pattern or emotional experience that’s blocking openness and leading us to push the other way.

• Repair conversations. After a disagreement or rupture, one of us will ask, “Are you available for repair?” It’s a conversation focused on repairing the connection — and explicitly not focused on addressing the content of the rupture or going deeper into the emotional process. We focus on what we each need to come back into connection.

• Married time and date nights. We block off time weekly where the intention is just to enjoy each other’s presence and company — without any other logistics or emotional processing. We’ll be curious with each other, share stories, and laugh. It’s a way of deepening our connection with each other.

• Sex container. Our 30-day sex container showed us that it can be really powerful to bring whatever parts of us might be present — even when those parts might make us push each other way — into our lovemaking. And so, we’ve now incorporated this container into our lives as a way of deepening connection.

Logistical Containers

These containers focus on the things we need to run our lives:

• Asynchronous logistics in Asana. We use Asana to track discussions on any logistical and execution-oriented things related to life and work. We agree to, as much as possible, confine our logistical conversations to the container.

  
  This has been one of the biggest game-changers for us relationally. It means that we don’t leak logistical discussions about things into our in-person connection time, where we’d much rather be sharing our hearts. We also have an agreement to not leak these logistical conversations — especially ones involving emotional decisions — into our text message threads, which we prefer to focus on more heart-centered texts.

• “Things to Talk About” conversations. Sometimes, asynchronous discussions about life logistics isn’t enough — we need to actually talk in-person. “Things to Talk About” is an hour-long container that we set up, usually weekly, to talk in-person about logistical things: flights for upcoming travel, joint decisions for home purchases, coordination for shared plans, etc.

Once we created and streamlined the necessary containers to hold the conversations that had to happen for our needs to feel met, we could relax into the rest of our time together.

We could focus the date night container on enjoying and celebrating where we were and on creating a deep sense of intimacy and connection.

What’s an intention that you’re wanting to deepen in your partnership? How might you design a container to support that intention?

• Read part 1 — The 30-Day Sex Container: A Deep Dive into Sexual Intimacy — to learn about the origins of our experiment to break down walls and build trust in our relationship.

I don’t want sex to feel like an obligation.
I don’t want to jump through another hoop before we become parents!
I don’t want sex to feel like a “chore” or a “should.”
I don’t want the pressure to say “yes” when I want to say “no.”

These were the concerns I expressed to Edmond when he shared his desire for us to embark on a 30-day journey of exploring sexuality before we have a baby. I clearly felt resistance to the idea.

We’d left the conversation unresolved — I needed a few days to consider it.

Then, a breakthrough came during one of my morning meditations. As I embraced the resistance and approached it with a sense of curiosity, I noticed it gradually softening.

I saw how I'd been afraid to reveal my insecure and scared parts around sex.

I saw how my initial “no” had been a self-protective strategy aimed at creating a sense of safety.

I saw how I had been pushing Edmond away in an attempt to avoid the difficult choice between his needs and my own, ultimately leading to self-abandonment.

Deep down, we both wanted a thriving sex life.

And so, I agreed to the 30-day sex container, as an experiment. For 30 days, we’d commit to confronting any and all blocks to sexual intimacy.

I said yes, because I knew that this would be about more than just sex.

What shows up in sex shows up in all other areas of life.

And I wanted to explore how we might heal the patterns that led us to push each other away — not just in sex, but in other parts of our relationship as well.

Undoing the Social Conditioning Around Sex

For so much of my early twenties, I’d believed that if I didn’t have sex with my partner, then someone else would.

I better keep them satisfied, I thought.

And so, even when I didn’t want to have sex, I would override my “no” and say yes instead — in the hope of feeling more security in the relationship.

And in my early thirties, when I decided I was done with overriding myself, I still had many protective strategies.

I would close my heart and push my partner away.

I would demand solo time so I didn’t have to factor in their needs and only have to worry about me-myself-and-I.

Or I would fight for what I wanted and and override their needs.

It was messy.

Protective strategies like these are shaped partly by childhood wounding and partly by social conditioning. Traditional gender roles place women in the role of nurturer. And the media objectifies a woman's body as being for the pleasure of men.

All of this created protectiveness around sex and concerns around childbirth for me, as I feared:

Will he stop wanting me if my body changes?
Would my partner's love go away if I stopped wanting sex?
Would the security I felt now start to get shaky when we have a child?

All of this inner conflict was the perfect material for our sex container — demanding to be faced.

One Step Back, Two Steps Forward

“Don’t pressure me. I’ll say NO whenever I want to, dammit!” I yelled.

My fiery nature came alive.

Eight days into the 30-day sex container, we hit a painful rupture.

I’d been miserable feeling so much pressure around sex. The container didn’t feel safe, and I was fighting for my “no” while he’d feel frustrated and hopeless that I was pushing back on the commitment to explore sex every day.

The experience seemed to be creating more fighting and hurt than it was healing.

We thought we were failing when just a week into the experiment, we called off the 30-day sex container.

We felt lost.

I was afraid that holding my boundaries would require a battle.

He was afraid that he’d have to shut down his desire whenever he encountered my resistance.

It took pausing for a few days to realize that in reality, the container was working! It was revealing both of our patterns and fears so that they could be healed.

And in that time, we realized we needed to redesign our agreements for the sex container so that we could both feel safe in exploring those fears.

So we carved out time to engage in a two-way, discovery conversation, where we both put what’s important to us on the table so we could create agreements that helped us feel safe.

One of the agreements we jointly decided on was to approach a “no” with loving inquiry, seeking to understand the underlying needs and motivations behind it.

The agreement would help us break through the brick wall that’d been there before, and it would unexpectedly open up more possibilities in all areas of life.

In sex, it would create curiosity where there used to be separation.

In our business together, it would foster collaboration where there used to be pushback.

And in daily life, it would bring about playfulness where there used to be misunderstanding.

With the new agreements in place, we gave our 30-day sex container a fresh start.

Discovering a Clear No Within the Body

I lay curled up on the bed in the fetal position, frozen in place, and felt the hard “no" in my body. Resistance, freeze, and shut down were what I was bringing into the sex container that day.

Edmond welcomed all of it.

He sat next to me and asked what I needed. As he did that, I noticed my legs began to uncurl, and his curiosity slowly created openness in me.

I’m feeling frozen and protective. Will you make love to those parts of me? I asked him with both fear and tenderness in my eyes. He said yes, and gently continued.

His acceptance of my emotional state was exactly what my body needed to let down my guard. And as we welcomed the patterns that would’ve historically pushed us apart, that became our path to freedom.

When we re-started the container with new agreements, it was no surprise that the same patterns that created distance the first time showed up again.

But this time we were better equipped to navigate them together, as a team.

Rather than overriding my “no” or fighting for my “no” by rejecting connection altogether, a new path became available. I could welcome the fear and bring that into sex, so it could be transformed into connection.

Weeks into our experiment, this became one of my most important learnings:

There's a difference between a “protective no” coming from fear and a “clean no” coming from truth.

A “protective no” felt like constriction, rigidity, and heaviness in my body.

A “clean no” felt soft, yet strong, and spacious on the inside of me.

Over the last four years in partnership, we've found that sex has become the most potent path to understanding ourselves, breaking unhelpful patterns, and healing ruptures.

And through that journey, our relationship has become a safe place to feel, to learn, and to heal together.

In future posts, we’ll share the impact of the thirty days on our relationship, as well as the structure and agreements of our sex container. We’re hoping to inspire you as you embark on your own journey of self-discovery and intimacy.

Special thanks to Edmond Lau for edits and input on this piece of writing, and to Papaya Photography in Costa Rica for the images.

This is the first of a multi-part series on how we’re intentionally choosing to focus on our sex life to heal wounds and transform intimacy in our relationship.

• Part 1 — The 30-Day Sex Container: A Deep Dive into Sexual Intimacy

• Part 2 — Shifting From Resistance to Receptivity in Our 30-Day Sex Container

“I want a chapter of our life before kids where we focus on our sex life,” I said to my wife.

We both felt excited about having little ones — especially imagining their adorable mixed raced faces! — and knew that this would be the year that we embarked on the journey toward parenthood.

But the more we talked about when to remove the birth control device, the more I realized that a part of me felt deeply afraid that our sex life would suffer after kids.

So many couples have shared this narrative: her energy levels would be lower. Her sex drive might be different. Her body would change after pregnancy. And once we actually had kids, we’d have less time, space, and energy to ourselves.

In the past, we’d both expressed dreams of have a thriving sex life where we’d have sex every day — sometimes even multiple times per day — but we could never get through more than 3 to 4 days in a row before something fell apart.

We’d find ourselves in a situation where we’d both wanted sexual intimacy. But one of us would get triggered. Or some past trauma or wounding would get kicked up. Or I’d feel collapsed after receiving a strong reaction for being mis-attuned.

And we’d end up feeling more disconnected than before.

Sometimes we’d even be afraid to have sex — for fear that some rupture might happen.

It was only 4 years ago that I’d left a sexless marriage, a 17-year-long relationship — and I worried about my second marriage having an unfulfilled sex life too.

I didn’t want to be yet another couple whose sex life atrophied only because we were afraid to confront the difficult emotions and conversations that surrounded sex.

I wanted more in our sex life.

I’ll be honest. Actually asking my wife for a chapter of our relationship focused on sex scared the shit out of me.

I knew a part of her would be furious and disappointed — she’d been excited and yearning to be a mother for so long, and I’d be asking her to delay her dream even further.

I felt the pressure of her biological clock — and was afraid that delaying too long might jeopardize our ability to have children.

I felt the fear of making a deeply vulnerable ask and being rejected for something that might be judged as outrageous — I’d never heard of any other couples doing this.

And asking also touched on a core question of worthiness within me — did I even deserve to have a chapter of life focused explicitly on sex?

One day, I collapsed into fetal position on our living room couch, sobbing from the weight and helplessness of it all.

And yet, I knew that it was something my soul needed to do.

Making a Courageous Ask to Get My Needs Met

It took a big and healthy dose of courage to initiate a series of heart talks with her, where I shared my desire for a chapter focused on sex.

I knew, of course, that our sex life would change after having a baby. But I also wanted to trust our ability to create a thriving sex life for ourselves given any of life’s constraints.

And that meant I needed to trust in our capacity to move through all the blocks that got in the way when we did have the time and desire for sex.

I needed to trust that we could hold ourselves and each other in our emotional triggers — rather than eject or push each other way.

I needed to trust that when I felt rejected, that rather than collapse into the stance of a wounded boy who’d done something wrong, that I could recover.

I needed to trust that we were willing to iron out any major kinks in our sexual intimacy before we had kids — so that when we did have kids, I’d be confident that we could create the sex life we wanted.

From that determination to face the hard things, the idea of a “30-day sex container” was born.

For 30 days, we’d commit to confronting blocks to sexual intimacy to heal the ways we were pushing each other way subconsciously.

Every day, we’d commit to carving out time for a sexual encounter and ask ourselves “What’s holding us back from sexual intimacy?”

Whatever blocks arose — pain, triggers, traumas, insecurities, collapses, or pressurization — we’d commit to bring them into our lovemaking. Fear, anger, sadness, and any other emotions were all welcome.

We didn’t know if we’d actually make it to sex every day, but we certainly hoped for it.

We also didn’t realize it at the time — but it would take a very high level of awareness, courage, and mastery of all the modalities we’ve learned to navigate the experience.

Each day presented different challenges trying to throw us off track, and leaning into the commitment we’d made to each other carried us through.

Sexual Intimacy — A Core Part of Any Thriving Relationship

Sexual intimacy isn’t talked about enough, let alone written about. It’s worked out in the darkness of the bedroom, frequently without support. It’s often shrouded by shadow and hidden by shame.

And shame, particularly sexual shame, is a powerful silencer.

In my first marriage, it took me over 16 years before I felt safe enough to open up about my sexless relationship to my best friend and ask for help — and by then I was already moving toward separation.

I know I’m not alone. According to Newsweek, psychologists estimate that up to 20% of American couples live in sexless marriages. The numbers go as high as 47% in countries like Japan.

And yet, despite how hidden the experience is for most couples, we believe sexual intimacy is critical to the health of a thriving partnership. It needs to be talked about.

“The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives,” says Esther Perel, well-known Belgian-American psychotherapist and author of Mating in Captivity. And when it comes to intimate partnerships, Perel adds, “If you fix the sex, the relationship transforms.“

The protective patterns and behaviors that show up in sex, show up in all other areas of life too.

If I’m afraid of being rejected or of doing something wrong in sex, I’m also second guessing myself in my business choices, how to spend my finances, or how to relate to other people.

If I’m afraid to own my sexual desires, I’m afraid to own and follow what I truly want for my career, my dreams for family, and how I want to be loved in relationships.

If some part of me worries about my sexual performance — afraid that somehow I’ll be loved or worth less if I’m not able to perform — that same part is subconsciously trying to earn love through status and accomplishment elsewhere in life.

Because of how deeply vulnerable sex is — we’re literally letting our partners see us naked in our patterns — our protective patterns show up more directly and intensely in the sexual arena.

This also means that from the perspective of our healing and transformation journeys, sex is a powerful leverage point.

If we can heal the patterns in the container of sex, we directly heal the patterns in the rest of our lives.

A Journey in Deeply Owning My Desire

I honestly didn’t expect Candace to be a yes when I proposed the idea of a 30-day sex container. It was a bold ask — the fear of rejection and the fear of a sexless marriage both weighed heavily on me.

It’s true that we’ve invested in sexual intimacy before — attending sacred sexuality trainings at ISTA, working with a tantra coach, and even recently attending a conscious kink retreat with the Light Dark Institute.

We’ve worked with coaches on limiting beliefs that have held us back from owning our desires and our needs, ones like “my needs are a burden” or “their pleasure is more important than mine.”

We’ve held each other in the tears and emotions that sometimes emerge unexpectedly during lovemaking.

But this would be the first time where we created a self-guided journey into the scary parts of ourselves that we didn’t want to look at, in a sexual context — especially with such a high level of intentionality and intensity.

It took several conversations for her to reach a yes. And even then, we both approached it with a mix of excitement and trepidation, with desire and fear.

In our relationship, we both wished I could initiate sexual interaction more often. And boldly take the lead in our business. And in other areas of life.

I wanted to feel the power and strength of being in my masculine energy, and she wanted to feel the safety and surrender of her feminine energy.

But one of the biggest blockers to our intimacy was this pattern:

1. When I predict a “no” or actually receive a “no”, I retract — afraid of being a “bad guy” who’s overstepping boundaries. This leads to hesitation.

2. When Candace senses pressure or expectation — that she might be obligated to have sex or be forced to override her own “no” — she fights for her “no” with anger to protect herself.

3. The anger creates collapse in my system, reinforcing the story that I’m overstepping.

Together, the two behaviors perpetuate a cycle where we push each other way and neither of us gets what we want.

Psychologically, I knew that my collapse was part of my own childhood wounding from wanting things as a child but having a well-intentioned and loving mom who’d say “no” sometimes a little too harshly. My young mind would perceive her “no” as a reprimand and a loss of love, and be afraid of pursuing what I wanted in future moments.

And so going into the 30-day sex container, I knew this would be a deep exploration of my relationship to desire:

• How can I own and feel the fullness of my desire — independent of how my partner responds?

• How can I continue to be curious and playful — even in the face of a “no”?

• How do I stay grounded and move through any feelings of collapse when they happen?

The 30-day container would turn out to be a deep act of self-love for ourselves, one that would transform our relationship — not just sexually but in so many other ways.

We’d confront the patterns that held us back from the thriving sex life, love life, and the partnership as entrepreneurs that we knew was possible.

In upcoming posts, we’ll share more about Candace’s experience, how we designed our 30-day sex container, and how it’s radically transformed our relationship.

Thank you to Candace Sauvé for editing early drafts of this post.

One of the most powerful innovations in our relationship for keeping a high level of intimacy and for repairing ruptures is the 10-minute heart talk.

A heart talk is a time-bound container for taking ownership in a situation or emotional experience that is blocking openness or connection in our partnership.

A partner schedules a heart talk within 24-48 hours whenever they realize that there is a truth that needs to be shared to feel clear in the relationship.

We’ve iterated through different types of relationship check-ins, feedback sessions, and clearing conversations in the past few years, and we’ve found this structure to be the fastest and most effective. It restores connection in a high-leverage and reliable way that our nervous systems can handle and minimizes the impact that unaddressed issues can spill over in a relationship.

The Truth Will Set You Free

Intimacy and connection are strong values of ours — they’re the foundation for deeply loving partnerships.

As a result, we hold a strong commitment to share what relationship experts and authors Gay and Katie Hendricks call the “microscopic truth.”

Telling the microscopic truth refers to sharing our thoughts, feelings, and experiences — whenever they’re blocking deeper connection — with absolute honesty and authenticity, without filtering, editing, or holding back.

The pointer for when something needs to be shared is, “Am I leaking energy by withholding my experience?” When we swallow anger, suppress a desire for what we want, or feel guilty for a secret, we spiral in our thoughts and leak energy in our thought loops.

And in that disconnection from our emotional experience, we disconnect from our partners as well.

That’s why Gay and Katie write in Conscious Loving,

“With the liberated energy from seeing and communicating the truth of your patterns and feelings, you will ride to a new, higher level of love and intimacy.”

The practice of telling the microscopic truth — though it can be vulnerable and takes courage — fosters deep connection, trust, and safety in relationships.

Recurring Check-Ins Are Great But Insufficient

Many relationship advice columns advocate for recurring monthly or weekly check-ins, typically with a structured list of questions. While that’s helpful, we’ve found it insufficient for maintaining the level of intimacy and connection that we want in our relationship.

Whenever there’s a rupture or resentment sitting unspoken in the relationship, it ripples through other areas of the relationship. An unaddressed rupture from a small jab in the morning can mean emotional withdrawal, tension in everyday conversations, reduced openness to sex, or something else until it’s acknowledged.

The resentment leaks emotional energy — we lose presence and connection in the relationship. And a single wound, if allowed to fester for a month or even a week, can create significant damage over time.

If a boat is leaking water, we wouldn’t wait until a weekly or monthly check-in to patch it. So why would we wait if our relationship is leaking energy?

Sometimes, the issue is small and all that’s needed is a quick reveal of our emotional experience. “I felt hurt when you made that comment,” or “I feel annoyed that there’s a mess in the kitchen.”

Other times, it’s something larger that feels scary to surface without the safety of a container. That’s where the 10-minute heart talk comes in.

The Anatomy of a Heart Talk

When asking for a heart talk, we look at the source of what’s blocking deeper connection with our partner, take full responsibility for it, and tell the full truth about how we feel to our partner.

More specifically, here’s what it entails.

Setting the Stage

• The person feeling the emotional block takes ownership for scheduling the heart talk as soon as the other person is available. Most of the time, we’ll just schedule it on our shared calendar. Other times, we’ll ask, “I need a heart talk. When would you be available?”

• Hold heart talks in a specifically dedicated space. Our brains create spatial associations with the key emotions that show up in that space. Ideally, we don’t cross-wire the often more intense emotions of a heart talk with the emotions that we might want to show up in the bedroom, for instance. We like to hold our heart talks on the stairs of our house.

• Heart talks are time-bound to 10 minutes. We set a 10-minute timer for the container. We used to schedule hour-long heart talks (we called them clearing conversations back then), but found that we’d drain our systems and end up trying to power through.

  Katie Hendricks advised us to aim for a 10-minute talk, and that’s worked wonders in creating a deeper level of safety. Sometimes, we might run over and schedule another 10-minute timer. But we’re targeting 10 minutes.

• Treat heart talks as a two-way dialogue. Even though the initiator of the heart talk might be the one expressing their truth, the other partner also gets a chance to reflect and respond.

Taking Ownership

• Open with positive intention for the relationship. The ultimate intention for any heart talk is to create deeper intimacy and connection. A heart talk can be daunting for both sides, and so it’s helpful to explicitly ground into a positive intention at the start of a heart talk. “I want to be a fuck yes to having children and there’s something I’m needing to feel that,” or “I want to feel excited about our sex life, and there’s something that’s blocking me right now.”

• Assume that your partner is on your team. When we feel that we need to fight for our needs in a relationship, we end up polarizing our partners and actually invite our partners to fight back. When we drop the fight, we invite more receptivity.

• Heart talks are ownership-based. They’re a way of taking ownership for a situation in the relationship that doesn’t feel aligned and that we’re taking steps to change. They’re not a way of making the other person wrong or blaming them for something (“You’re doing this wrong!”).

  Ownership could include setting a boundary: “I’m not okay with the anger that’s getting directed at me. When anger is directed at me, I’ll walk away and let you know when I’ll be back.“

  Or it could include the expression of a need: “I’m feeling resentment around sharing the car. I’m needing a day a week where I can just have the car to myself.”

• Heart talks are not requests for the other person to change who they are. It’s easy to fall into the trap of needing the other person to be different than who they are for us to be okay. But that’s not unconditionally loving and creates further distance. On the other hand, it’s okay to ask for what we need and the boundaries we might set to take care of ourselves.

• Pause the heart talk if blame shows up. We aim for ownership but sometimes we’ll still fail and blame leaks out. If either of us detects blame and sense our nervous system getting activated, we call a pause for five to ten minutes to allow our nervous systems to settle before resuming. Don’t try to power through a trigger.

• Lead with curiosity to identify the root issue. Sometimes, we know there’s disconnection, and it might take some joint detective work to identify what caused it. Inspired by our relationship coach Ethan Henson, we’ve been asking ourselves, “What got dropped?” It’s a way of backtracking to figure out the initial moment where disconnection happened.

The marker of a thriving and awakened partnership isn’t the absence of ruptures and resentments — it’s the direct addressing of them when they show up. And the practice of 10-minute heart talks has let us nurture our relationship in a deeply loving and ownership-oriented way through its ebbs and flows.

Four years ago, I sat on my couch in my Palo Alto apartment, my face crumpling as I sobbed into my hands, feeling so helpless at what to do and how to move forward.

My friend Ana had reflected to me on a call earlier that I seemed asphyxiated whenever I talked about my marriage at the time. Dreams deflated. Desires held back. Feelings boxed in.

“I actually feel more free in my marriage,” she’d said. When her husband championed and supported her, she felt capable of doing more in the world.

I certainly didn’t feel that way — at least not any more.

For several months, I oscillated between feeling confident and feeling terrified about leaving the 17-year-long relationship that had been a core part of my entire adult life. The decision agonized me.

This week marks the 4-year anniversary of me choosing myself and my aliveness by leaving that first marriage.

When I finally left, I tasted the sweet, newfound freedom of single life. No romantic commitments. Nowhere I needed to be. Just the freedom to be myself wherever I wanted to be. I thought it’d last me a while.

That all changed when I fell madly in love just months later with my now-wife Candace.

Here’s the kicker. We typically associate the jumping into new relationships and the end of single life with a loss of freedom.

But surprisingly, in entering the new partnership, I experienced a paradox — I discovered an even greater level of freedom than I imagined possible.

And it’s been a continuous journey of becoming more and more free.

How was that even possible?

It turns out that true freedom comes from being able to be authentically myself and to pursue the things that I truly care about in life. And in reflecting on the past few years, I realize that this freedom comes through two commitments Candace and I have in the relationship:

1. Our commitment to return to unconditional love creates an ever-growing safe haven where we feel increasingly accepted as we are.

2. Our commitment to champion each other’s growth creates a secure base where we’re supported and empowered to take bigger risks in the world.

Together, those commitments free up the energy to be the fullest versions of ourselves in the world.

How Safe Do You Feel To Be Yourself in Your Relationship?

It’s only in this partnership that I’ve experienced what unconditional love truly is — accepting the person as they are, without needing them to change.

As partners, can we hold each other in our grief, anger, disappointment, joy, jealousy, and other emotions without needing them to go away? And can we be with any emotion — even when it feels painful or uncomfortable?

In the very early days of our relationship, I would feel embarrassed and a bit ashamed to shed tears and show sadness in front of her — now it’s rare to have a day when tears don't move from something.

I feel more and more free to reveal parts of myself, as does she.

There are still parts, of course, that are difficult to be seen in — disappointment, anger, and shame, to name a few. And there are times when we make each other wrong for their emotional experience rather than loving and accepting it.

After all, our ability to be with and love someone in a given emotional state is limited by our ability to be with and love ourselves in that same state.

But our commitment to doing our own inner work — to deepen our own self-love and self-acceptance through coaching, meditation, reflection, and even plant medicine — means that we can be with and love more of what shows up. And that creates an increasingly safer haven for each other.

In her book Polysecure, psychotherapist Jessica Fern writes that we have a safe haven “when our partners care about our safety, seek to respond to our distress, help us to co-regulate and soothe and are a source of emotional and physical support and comfort.”

The safer the haven, the more free we feel to go inward and move through difficult emotions when times get rough.

And that inside job to feel at home with ourselves is the true source of freedom in life.

When I was going through mediation for my divorce, I received an email right before a mediation session that threw my nervous system into panic and shock. I feared potentially losing rights to a book that I’d poured years of heart and soul into, just because it was written while I was married.

I don’t have kids of my own (yet 😉), and the experience was the closest I’d come to losing something I considered my baby.

At the time, Candace was my new partner of less than a year, and she guided me back to my breath under some redwood trees and put her hands on my body to ground me back to earth. I was able to show up calm and collected in mediation hours later.

I felt freer emotionally to be where I was at and do what I needed to do because she was a safe haven for me.

How Supported Do You Feel in Taking Bigger Risks?

In our awakened partnership, one of our commitments is to support each other in our fullest growth and expression.

The degree to which we feel empowered to take bolder risks in partnership is the degree to which it's a secure base for us.

In Polysecure, Fern writes that we have a secure base when our partners “provide the platform from which we can move out in the larger world, explore, and take risks.”

I’d dreamt of doing a year of travel for many years, but the idea of packing everything into storage AND managing my business AND navigating the uncertainty of world travel felt overwhelming for a long time. With Candace, all the risks and choices in deciding to become nomads not only felt manageable but also adventurous — even during COVID.

We ended up traveling for a year and a half as nomads around the world. It’s an experience that I feel so deeply grateful for.

I’m also a very iterative entrepreneur, usually only dreaming of the next incremental product or program to create and build, based on what I already know.

Our partnership has helped and challenged me to dream bigger — as I see and believe more of what’s possible for myself and for us.

I dream of building a successful business with work that brings me joy and purpose and touches the lives of millions of people, where we get to enroll people we love to work with us.

I dream of writing a New York Times bestseller some day that empowers people to choose aliveness in how they’re creating their lives.

I dream of helping people at scale lovingly get into deeper touch with their emotions and create awakened partnerships that support their expansion and growth.

I might not know the steps to get to these places, but our partnership has fostered a self-confidence that makes dreaming big possible. I know that even if I were to fail, I’d have a supportive and loving home base to fall back to.

I feel more freedom today than I’ve ever felt in my life — and the safe haven and secure base created from this partnership plays a significant role creating that experience.

My desires and feelings get more and more authentically expressed every day.

My dreams and life purpose grow bigger and deeper.

And as proud I am for how far I’ve come and how much more freedom I’ve experienced, I’m excited because I know I’m also just getting started.

Thanks to Morris Rachel, Jesse Cheng, Vincent Tam, Tomáš Ruta, Karena de Souza, and Candace Sauve for reading early drafts of this post.

Creating Deep Intimacy in a Powerful Moment

Edmond

“I’m afraid I’m going to fall really hard for you,” I said, already six hours into deep conversation on our first date.

My heart beat fast as I looked into her bright blue eyes. Candace and I sat on the counter stools of my San Francisco apartment. I felt so alive, so connected, so seen — more than I had by any other human in my life.

Her opening invitation set the tone for the evening:

“I noticed you hesitated the other day when you mentioned that you’d separated from your wife,” she’d said. “I wanted to make space for anything you wanted to share.”

I breathed deep and felt through some nervousness at the bold invite.

She wanted to dive deep. No small talk. And I was ready for it.

I felt afraid that my mention of an ex-wife would mark me as “divorced damaged goods.” But my body visibly relaxed when she shared that she’d been divorced too — and that to her, it actually pointed to my ability to commit and the courage to walk away when something wasn’t working.

An hour in, I found myself opening up a tender part of my inner world. I’d recently left a sexless marriage (and 17-year-long relationship) — and had just come back from a tantra festival in Sweden as part of my journey of sexual reclamation. She received my story with total acceptance.

Throughout the evening, every time we encountered a fear, we’d take a few deep breaths — and lean in to share more of ourselves and create deeper vulnerability.

I felt a deep intimacy being forged at a powerfully fast rate, and a part of me knew that it would expand my world in a big way.

If deep intimacy — the type we often think takes years to create — could be created in just a few hours, what else might be possible for us to create together?

By the fourth date, I’d already said “I love you.” And four months in, I proposed in Costa Rica over New Years — she said yes.

On that first date, we unknowingly took our first step toward creating what we now recognize as an awakened partnership — and we experienced our first taste of the transformation that’s possible from it.

A Commitment to Vulnerability

Candace

“I have the story that you’re some sort of sex god with partners all over the world,” I said to Edmond. We were only fifteen minutes into sitting down at his kitchen table on our first date.

Underneath my story was a bundle of thoughts and fears…

I’m afraid you won’t want the commitment I might want with you.
I’m afraid I’ll be one of many women in your life.
I’m afraid that’ll make me unimportant.
I’m afraid you’ll break my heart.

And since I knew Edmond had recently left his ex-wife, had just returned from a tantra festival and a sacred sexuality training, and was traveling to a new country every month — naturally my imagination filled in the blanks!

He laughed and thanked me for clearing the story. Then he shared the difficulty he’d experienced in his 17-year relationship with his ex-wife. Especially around sex.

Just days earlier, I’d written in my journal:

I’m focused on making choices that build towards the vision I have for my life, and I’m dating with the intention of committed life partnership. I’m clear on what I want, and I’ll say no to anything that’s not aligned with it.

My fears softened when I learned that he’d gone to the festival to build more courage to approach people he felt attracted to. And the trainings he attended while traveling were the reason he was able to ask me out at all.

As the conversation unfolded, I felt my guard come down. Going deeper and deeper into connection and trust as the night unfolded.

We both felt awe at the depth of intimacy we created in such a short linear timeline (compared to the 17-year-relationship he’d just left). We also knew creating deep relationships was a skill, not an accident.

“Let’s start teaching this stuff about relationships!” he’d said to me later in the night. I smirked and pushed back — we’re better off actually having a relationship before teaching about it, I told him.

Six hours later, I was walking home, floating on air in the middle of the night.

When tension arose early in our relationship, I used to wonder, “Are we going to make it?” A part of me worried we wouldn’t. These days, I find myself asking instead, “How are we going to make it through this one?”

Since day one, we’ve been building an awakened relationship rooted in vulnerability by leaning into difficult conversations — like finances, a prenup, attraction to other people, and the list goes on.

Each day I notice myself feeling safer and more securely attached than ever before. And that didn’t just happen on its own.

It’s because of the intention and energy we’ve invested into our relationship as a journey of growth and expansion. Our commitment to that has created the path of awakened partnership.

So... What's An Awakened Partnership?

When we first started dating, we had a vague idea that we both wanted a conscious partnership — a relationship where partners adopted healthy practices like open communication, honesty, and mutual respect.

We both have several decades of partnership experience between the two of us. And so we saw it as a sign of emotional maturity to take ownership for communicating our own needs, desires, and patterns — so that we could stay in connection.

But this relationship is the first time we’ve ever felt fully met — fully embraced and welcomed for who we are as well as who we are becoming.

That helped us realize that we were creating more than just a conscious partnership — we were creating an awakened partnership.

In an awakened partnership, both people commit not only to being aware of their individual patterns and needs but also to their growth and evolution — and use the relationship as a tool to support that journey.

They see the relationship as a mirror — showing the inner work that needs to be done. Any uncomfortable emotions, triggers, judgments, or traumas that surface in the relationship are coming up to be healed.

They take responsibility for exploring their inner world, for healing any emotional wounds that may be impacting their relationship, and for removing blockers to deeper intimacy and connection.

They love and accept each other as they truly are — even when it’s difficult — and also commit to supporting each other’s fullest expression in the world.

The impact of being in a partnership like this is a level of transformation and freedom that neither of us could possibly have imagined.

We’ve traveled the world nomadically in a way that felt alive, safe, and free — even when most of the world was locked down from a pandemic.

We’ve broken out of limiting beliefs and lifelong patterns inherited from childhood around inadequacy and love needing to be earned — and created more space to authentically be ourselves in our lives.

We’ve even faced and healed sexual traumas and fears together — and created a vibrant sex life that we both love.

And we’ve had to explore many different questions along the way that we’re excited to share.

What We’re Here to Explore

We’re excited to use this writing to share what we’ve learned and what we’re continuing to learn. We’ll be exploring areas and questions like:

Money and Power

• How do we decouple money and power?

• How do we navigate difficult conversations around financial choices (like prenups) with curiosity and openness?

• How do we manage finances in a way that leads us to feel like equal partners and a team in the relationship — no matter what the numbers say?

• How do we create awareness of the power dynamics in the relationship, and how do we resolve them?

Commitment and Intimacy

• What’s our commitment to each other, and what type of relationship are we signing up for?

• What do honesty and integrity mean in the relationship?

• What rituals do we need to clear resentments and ensure both of our needs are getting met?

• How do we continually deepen our felt sense of intimacy in the relationship?

Sex and Attraction

• What agreements do we want to create that honor our freedom and our devotion to the partnership?

• How do we honor feelings of attraction toward other people, remove shame from them, and navigate through experiences of threat and insecurity?

• How do we heal wounds associated with sexual shame or inadequacy — so that we can both experience more pleasure and connection through sex?

• How can sex become a powerful container for working on our own personal and joint growth and transformation?

Psychological Healing

• How can we see any trigger not as a need for our partner to change but as an opportunity to heal our own wounds?

• What are the most loving and effective ways to navigate out of triggered situations?

• How do we show up with unconditional love and accept our partners as they are — and set boundaries to take care of ourselves?

• What are the most effective ways to break out of patterns from our childhood traumas and to heal them?

Join us for the journey if you’re intrigued. And let us know in the comments what other questions you’re pondering.

We’re Edmond Lau and Candace Sauvé, a husband-and-wife duo who coach and facilitate.

We teach people how to consciously create romantic partnerships where they're committing to support each other’s growth, freedom, and fullest expression in the world.

And we’re really excited to have you on this journey with us.

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A few fun tidbits about us:

• We both used to work in Silicon Valley — Edmond as an engineer and leadership coach, Candace as a headhunter and customer success leader — until we discovered teaching about emotions and intimate relationships as our life calling.

• We fell in love at our first dance — Edmond wove through a hundred people on the San Francisco Ecstatic dance floor in pursuit of the beautiful goddess he spotted. You can read our personal accounts of the story on Instagram here and here.

• We’re deeply committed to truth and living honestly with each other. That’s meant navigating challenging chapters — working through joint finances and prenuptial agreements, power dynamics, sexual attraction, healing family relationships, trauma healing, triggers, anger, shame, and more.

We’ve had a lot of support in our journey together. We spent thousands of hours and over a hundred thousand dollars learning relational and emotional skills to navigate tension. And we’ve even built a world-class team of coaches to guide us along the way.

In addition to our writing, we also run online and in-person programs teaching individuals and couples the emotional and relational tools they need to create freedom in their partnerships and in their lives. Stay tuned for details of upcoming events.

As part of our newsletter, we’re committed to —

• Using our writing to distill and share the best of what we've learned.

• Inspiring a new way of relating — by teaching powerful relational tools around emotions, communication, rupture and repair, devotion, sexuality, and attraction.

• Being honest about the joys as well as the hardships that show up in marriage and romantic relationships.

• Listening to your comments and feedback to inspire what we share.

Thank you for joining us on the journey!

If this email touched you in some way, it would feel wonderful to hear from you in the comments.

Love,
Edmond & Candace

P.S. We’d love to hear: what’s your burning question when it comes to romantic partnerships?