Ep. 206: Love by Design’s Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh on the 6 Ingredients of Emergent Love

Here’s my Valentine to you, Clever listeners. This episode is all about love and how to intentionally design and build the long-lasting, mutually fulfilling, loving relationships you desire. Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh, author of Love By Design: 6 Ingredients to Build a Lifetime of Love unpacks her paradigm-shifting model of Emergent Love, and helps us with exercises and epiphany-inducing re-defines of attraction, respect, trust, compassion, shared vision, and loving behaviors. Along the way we learn to spot and avoid the common misfires and disconnects, and how this new way of thinking and behaving serves to benefit ALL of your relationships. When we’re intentional with our creative agency in our relationships, it ripples out to benefit all of humanity. *swoon

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• Read the Transcript

  Sara Nasserzadeh: When we own all of these ingredients in our kitchen, so to speak, or in our building a workshop, then we can really do design the love that we deserve and love is the word that I use also as an overarching… loving relationship is a relationship that gives you clarity of mind, not preoccupation.

  Amy Dever: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever. Today’s episode, Clever listeners, is my Valentine to YOU - it’s all about love and how to intentionally design and build long-lasting, mutually fulfilling, loving relationships. I’m talking to Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh about her new book, Love by Design: 6 Ingredients to Build a Lifetime of Love, Dr. Sara is an Author, Speaker and Thinking Partner. With a PhD in Social Psychology and specialization in the fields of human sexuality and relationships, she has worked with thousands of individuals, couples, and organizational clients to enhance relational health and sense of thriving at micro and macro levels. She’s also a senior cultural advisor for governments, UN agencies, academic institutions and fortune 500 companies and her groundbreaking work has garnered global attention, with media outlets such as NPR, BBC, ABC, CNN and USA Today. This new book centers on an innovative new paradigm for love called Emergent Love, and is the result of her 20+ years of research on the status of thriving relationships and the 6 key ingredients they all contain, namely: attraction, respect, trust, shared vision, compassion, and loving behaviors. And while those may seem obvious, think again. This is the kind of thing that is so logical it makes perfect sense, and yet still really creative and innovative, because it debunks a lot of the dysfunctional ideas around love that we’ve been saddled with, the cultural narratives that are embedded so deeply that we don’t even see them anymore, and helps us to reorganize how we can think about our own creative agency with regard to growing and cultivating the relationships we want to be in. Today, Dr. Sara unpacks what Emergent Love is and how it’s different from submergent love, and helps us with exercises and epiphany-inducing re-definitions of those six ingredients. Along the way we’ll learn to spot and avoid the common misfires and disconnects, and how this new way of thinking and behaving serves to benefit ALL of our relationships. And before we get into it - I want you to know these concepts are universal - so no matter your relationship status, culture, gender identification, sexual or relational orientation - this is for you. Dr. Sara’s mission is building world peace, one relationship at a time. And I’m here to support,  whole-heartedly. Here’s Dr. Sara…

  Sara Nasserzadeh: I’m Sarah Nasserzadeh, I have a PhD in social psychology and I study relationships, love and specialize in human connections and sexuality, from bedroom to boardroom, you name it, I’m there! (Laughter)

  Amy: Man, you must have an interesting life! (Laughs)

  Sara: I have! That’s by design!

  Amy: Yes! I’ve been reading into the book that you have just released and it is innovative and fascinating and illuminating and it’s got my high-fiving you from my couch and face-palming because I see so much (laughs) that I wish I had known before. And it is also such a refreshing and intelligent take on the way we talk about love, the way we perceive love. As a creative, as a designer/builder, your work really appeals to me because it makes perfect sense. I like to learn how things work by taking them apart, looking under the hood, seeing how everything operates together, and then if it isn’t working well or if it’s something that has a high failure rate, then I like to re-engineer it for the better. And that’s exactly what you’ve done for love. And thank you! This is important work. Love makes the world a much better place. It fosters harmony and peace and expansion and there’s nothing that can’t be improved by more love. So can you please talk to me about your background and how you came to develop this innovative framework, this new model for how to look at love and how to engage in relationships so that we can cultivate these really fulfilling, long term relationships? 

  Sara: First of all thank you for everything that you brought up about the book and the message, I’m honored that it resonated with you, that’s the purpose of writing this book, right? So I feel like as a person who worked with hundreds, if not thousands of couples across more than 40 countries in the world, I’m sitting in a privileged position. I’m not going to die with this knowledge. I was going to put it in a book, or somewhere, that people can actually use, because I was in your shoes, I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t know… it takes trial and error. And then I was thinking, hang on a minute, in every other field we have meal prep, we have proper training, for physical health, for mental health nowadays, a lot of things. But when it comes to love, which really… the most single thing in the world that people want more of, there’s no plan. There’s no nothing! 

  Amy: (Laughs) It’s true, there’s no plan! 

  Sara: As a relational scientist person, I really would like to understand. I’m not a designer, like yourself, a designer. But on the other side of it, the reason I called this book Love by Design is because I wanted to give people building blocks. I talk about blueprints, prototyping, all of that in the book. Because I feel like it’s really important for us to trial and error, put out trial and error efforts where the stakes are not as high. Why do I need to sign that marriage paper or be in a very serious relationship and then start to learn? What is it that we can do beforehand? So there’s a lot of literacy in the world that we read… people talk so eloquently about relationships, especially if it’s in English, a lot of people that I work with, English is not even my second language, so they are more eloquent in this language, right? Language of love, language of this and that. But then when it comes to actually being in a loving relationship, you see the pitfalls. You see they put their efforts where it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t get them to the love that they desire and deserve. 

  Amy: Well, let’s talk about that, let’s talk about the problem. If we’ve been thinking about this all wrong, how have we been foiling ourselves in relationships? What’s the current collective cultural narrative that’s not serving us, that needs a tune-up?

  Sara: So hopefully it’s changing, with everything that is out there, people are getting really smarter, because they don’t have multiple randomized control trial research to show them that what we’re doing is not serving us. But here’s the model that many of us grew up with, talking about deconstructing love and constructing it based on solid foundations. The way that many of us were raised, including myself is one plus one, two people, meet each other, spend enough time together, share their resources, time, energy, attention, money, all of those resources together, and then they become one. So one plus one equals one, and then they live happily ever after. So it’s like a static, there’s a destination that you arrive, and that stays there, that’s one. There’s nothing left of each person, you become one. That was the idea. And we can break it down into different cultures, different philosophical thinking and for example, Greek mythology was the main basis for a lot of things that we think in the western world these days. And if you go back in the book, I was compelled to deconstruct those at their root. For example, Aristophanes was really good in comedy, was really good in satire. And then he made the point that oh you know; this is really funny. So you go around and you find your soulmate, so there’s a lot of stories that are… we can actually keep them as that, as stories. And maybe it served at the time, sometimes, but in this day and age, it’s not serving us because there’s nothing modern about love, but the relationships, the way we relate to one another and what we want from relationships…we are different than even 40 years ago, like 80 years ago. So these are the things that I wanted to really bring up and put on the table, so that we’re not hush-hushing around this and we’re not taking chances by them. 

  Amy: Yeah, I really respect that. I have been married and divorced and it was amicable, but before the divorce, we went through a little bit of counseling and I remember in the counseling it became clear where our values weren’t aligned and where things weren’t working. And I remember there being this really deflated, disheartening reconciliation with the fact that love, the feeling of love isn’t enough. It still has to exist in the practical world. It still has to function with all of the day-to-day, with individual hopes and dreams. And I realized then that the conditions to continue love were not going to be sustainable. And so when you wrote about Emergent Love, I was like lightbulbs were going off, because it made so much sense and you distilled it down to something that’s so easy to understand.

  Sara: First and foremost, I hope that after reading this book and after putting all the practices and exercises in it, everybody can be in loving relationships, marriages, any kind of relationship that they choose to be in, and they believe that they deserve to be in their desired relationships and put their efforts where that matters. Now let’s go back to what happened, that you felt like, almost that disillusionment, that many of us have. I had it too. I want people to know that I didn’t come to this just as an expert who tells you what to do. I went through… I was in those shoes, impacted with… in my own journey obviously that I share in the book. But look, when we are talking about falling in love, the rest will follow. Love is all we need. Love is all we need is very poetic and epistemologically speaking, it’s a very universal perspective, like loving many through one. When you love yourself, you love others. When you believe that you’re the reflection of the source, then you can love everybody. That’s a different love, that’s a universal love. But when we get to applying to romantic relationships, one-on-one human relationships, it loses that energy, so to speak, the meaning, right? Something interesting happened with the concept of Emergent Love. As I was doing the research, at first I started to do the research, asking the question, hang on a minute, why is it that these couple fails in their coupledom? Why is it that they can’t really have that loving relationship? And then I found this data that talked about, for example, a lot of things that we already had in the literature, so why relationships fail. Let’s say for example, giving the metaphor of the design and construct. You know why buildings fall, you know why the design systems don’t work and you really try with a prototype and then see what works and what doesn’t work, right? 

  Amy: Right. 

  Sara: But I wanted to know, why they work. Not only that, how quick they work. And not just sustained and succeed, but also thriving. Because again, going back to this mother life that we live, we want more, we want better, we want to be fulfilled. Fulfillment was at the core that I was looking for. So as I went through a lot of data that I collected, basically just a little bit about how I came up with the concept of Emergent Love, so people know that this is not just my observation or my hope or wish. So this is actually based on two pieces of very solid research. One is, I took the account of 312 couples that I personally worked with, from so many different countries. I went through my notes and then I realized that there are certain words that are coming up over and over again, like ‘trust, compassion, respect,’ and ‘shared vision’ and ‘being loving,’ not ‘love,’ ‘being loving,’ so the act of it, how does that look like, right? And then I put that all together for whoever is out there that’s a nerd like me, it’s just based on grounded theory (laughter) model. So basically you have a bunch of data, you go through them until there’s nothing new that emerges. And then I went through that and I thought okay, so these are like seven/eight concepts that I found, let’s put them into practice with 159 couples who self-identified as thriving. So they still said after 40 years of being together, they still said, “Our relationship is thriving, I am thriving, this other person is thriving.” Okay, so which one of these do you identify with? And then after that validation study, then this became very apparent that there are six ingredients that needs to be present in continuous interaction with one another, with good quality, to be able to sustain and context that love even has a chance to emerge. It’s a totally different concept. 

  Amy: It is, and I liked how you explained it in the book in a very sort of simple analogy as fire. The fire can’t continue to exist if one of the three main ingredients, log, spark and oxygen aren’t there. 

  Sara: Exactly. So in this day and age I feel like to be in a thriving relationship, many people are misguided. (Laughs) They’re thinking, when we’re talking about one plus one equal three, so two people come together to shape that third entity, which is as you mentioned with the analogy, is the spark, love and the fire, fire being the relationship, that love that we want. So the misguidedness here is that they feel like to do that they need to keep their lives totally separate. They need to keep everything separate. ‘I need my space, you need your space,’ almost acquired narcissism, me-me-me-me. That is not what I am promoting either... there’s another way. And we don’t need to suffer. We know enough now. 

  Amy: I really, really appreciate that you’re attacking the problem by looking at what’s working and then we’re not trying to fix what’s working… we’re trying to look at what’s working and use that to fix what’s broken. That makes perfect sense. I wonder if you can walk me through Emergent Love like it’s a design problem or a creative process? Let’s say I’m single – which I am – and I want to cultivate Emergent Love. Where do I start? How do I prepare? What do I need to know about myself, about intimacy and about other things that maybe we weren’t taught in school or by our family of origin? 

  Sara: When you want to design something, first you need to know what you want. You’re not going to play with the clay and then see what comes out of it. You’re going to see what you want and hopefully you’re going to think about how this is going to fit into your life and how are you going to fit into that, to the purpose of that design, right? And then you’re going to think about what are the steps to get there and are they solid? Are the steps going to actually get you there or not? That is the piece that many people are missing. 

  Amy: Ah!

  Sara: So they come to me and say, “I’ve been dating all the wrong people,” and then just by a simple look at, I actually ask people to get a screen shot or show me their dating profiles online. And I’m sitting there thinking, really? With this profile you think you’re going to attract the person, what you just told me, who you would like to attract? There’s no way, no way, no how that you’re going to attract that person. 

  Amy: What’s the disconnect? How are they not seeing what the disconnect is? 

  Sara: I’ll give you very, very common, but for some people maybe extreme example. You know how people do selfies and then they bring their lips together as if they’re kissing? That thing, right? And then with the very, let’s say, revealing clothes and cleavage, what is it that they’re putting out there? This is what I’m seeing at the picture that is online, or there’s another person who is completely covered with sunglasses and covered in a sense that I can’t really distinguish them if I see them, distinguish between them and another person. Or I see another person who shows their muscles out there and then there’s this guy who is so sensitive, looking for somebody who is understanding, build a life with them and then they’re projecting the image that I would like to have some sexy, fun experience with you. So what are they attracting, right? 

  Amy: Right. 

  Sara: These are things that I feel are so nuanced and when I say it’s not something that is rocket science, but these are the things that we are not really paying attention to, and that’s what I’m talking about. Where you put your efforts matter. 

  Amy: Can I ask you a question? Do you think that those people might be over compensating for what is so authentic about themselves that it feels vulnerable to put out there? 

  Sara: That could be a part of it, but to be honest with you, I think many people don’t know. They don’t know how they come across. So in chapter three I talk about what we bring to love and we had a very extensive conversation with my beautiful editor, because this was a book about loving relationships, loving partnerships and couples and I said, no, we’re not going to talk about couples, with that we actually break down into individuals because that’s the whole premise of the Emergent Love. And I’m grateful that I had a very thoughtful editor who allowed for that. So we added a whole chapter there, what do you bring to love, who are you? And a lot of people think oh well, I can tell you who I am, my degrees, I can even tell you who I’m looking for. But then when I ask them, is that person that you’re looking for, is looking for you? So it’s really important that one of the biggest elements of Emergent Love and Love by Design is the reciprocity of everything that we’re talking about. When we talk about shared vision, trust, attraction, compassion, loving behavior, respect, all of these six ingredients need to be reciprocal, in a meaningful way to the other person, right, as well as you. So these are the things that are very important, that I want to highlight today in our conversation. 

  Amy: So the six ingredients are attraction, respect, trust, shared vision, compassion and loving behaviors. And all of those are necessary to create Emergent Love and not just once, but continually, right? 

  Sara: Absolutely, as long as they want the fire. 

  Amy: As long as you want the fire, okay, makes perfect sense. (Laughs) So yes, please do go through each one of those and break them down. 

  Sara: Let’s talk about attraction, because attraction is the one that is the most dangerous. Attraction, by default, when it comes to romantic relationships is that butterfly that we feel, that oh my god, I can’t get enough of them. That’s infatuation, and that’s ‘normal’ in a lot of romantic relationships at the beginning. But if we’re really limiting our attraction to that, we know that by research, on average, when you hit the mark of two years or so, on average, those feelings will go away. After that amount of time, more or less for some people, it feels like you’re tickling yourself. You know, you can’t really tickle yourself. 

  Amy: Right, true! (Laughs)

  Sara: If you talk a little bit about the neurophysiology and neurobiology, when you do that, it’s very important for you to realize, so that sexual attraction, that sexual chemistry, it’s distant to… to fizzle out a little bit. However, don’t fret, it’s not a bad thing to have it or not have it, but let’s talk about that. Attraction could be financial. Attraction could be social. Attraction could be intellectual, which is huge in this day and age, because as we’re all becoming smarter, not only because we have access to better education, better resources, but also genetically, we are also eating better and also genetically as the generations go on, we know now that we become smarter, we’ve got more intellectual stimulation on all fronts. So intellection attraction is a very important one too. So when we define those for ourselves, then you realize something about yourself. What is it that makes me want to be around this person, or a person, you know? And then you can look at your all-around relationships, who are the people that you choose as close friends? Not as close friends? Who is it that I would like to spend more time and resources on? So those are the things that will help you, and I have exercises to know what is the blueprint for the attraction and how to build on it, so that’s attraction. Why do you want to be around a person, over time, and how do you evolve with that?

  Amy: That makes perfect sense to me. It’s one of the reasons that I don’t enjoy the apps either because I don’t know if I’m actually attracted to someone by how they look or a photo, I need to know if they’re funny, if they’re kind, if they’re a good listener. And how they look is maybe part of it, but it’s not even the biggest part. But there was a very beautiful way that you helped us understand the mechanics of attraction as it plays out over a very long period of time. And so thank you for that, because I think that you also point out a lot of people think that attraction is about when it fades, you need to rekindle that fire and try to get back to what you had before, and actually that’s not the case. (Laughs)

  Sara: Absolutely, remember, that’s only one form of attraction, which is sexual attraction. On the apps you can decide whether you’re physically attracted to this person or not, which is by large socially constructed. So you kind of have a way of even… research shows that even as children when we are attracted to somebody at school, at the playground, we are playing with them more, we choose them as our friend, right? So that physical attraction matters. It’s actually one of the key ingredients here. But the problem is, when we put too much emphasis on one form, then we are really not paying attention to the rest and that’s the couple who come to me and say, “We love each other, we are not in love with each other.” So those points of attraction. The other thing is that over time, is that initial attraction doesn’t relate to intimacy, into me I see continuous effort to know myself, my multiple identities, my essences, and then choose which ones are doing to you, into me, you see, if you don’t have that constant exchange over a period of time, then we stay at the surface. We don’t really know each other as much, because we’re evolving beings. That’s one piece. 

  Amy: Yeah, intimacy, so beautiful when you get it right. What about respect? 

  Sara: So respect is one of those ones that I have to tell you, resonates with people most. Because from where I’m coming from, in the Middle East, North Africa, in the Mediterranean region, actually the majority of the world, but Western Europe and Northern America, respect is something that you are taught as a child first. It’s before anything else. Because there are hierarchies, there are different social systems that you have to navigate. That’s a big one. Respect means how am I going to see you and then see you again, and prioritize you, and make sure that I’m lovingly and fairly holding my boundaries around you, so you know how to treat me, how to be around me. Don’t create confusion. And lovingly and firmly being there for your boundaries. That’s respect. 

  Amy: Yes, you distilled down into a very clear concept, in practice it doesn’t go over so cleanly all the time. Where do you see people not understanding respect or not deploying respect in relationships and unwittingly undermining their relationship?

  Sara: The first thing I would like to answer this with a question. For yourself, whoever is listening, whenever you question respect, you’re actually looking closer at respect, the first question is, put the lens back to yourself, on yourself and ask yourself, ‘am I respectable?’

  Amy: Oh damn! Yeah!

  Sara: Am I respectful? And then am I respected? That’s important because a lot of us can feel that we are disrespected, but when I ask people, okay, I’m so sorry you’re disrespected, but do you feel in your heart of heart, in this relationship, that you are showing up in a way that you’re respectable? Do you respect your own boundaries, lovingly and fairly, without shutting the other person out? Without walking all over yourself, before anybody else does it, right? So this is very different than that acquired narcissism that is really flooding our society these days. Shutting everybody out and having borders around you instead of loving and firm boundaries. 

  Amy: When you turn it back on yourself and ask yourself, am I respectable, and I guess I’m sort of turning this back on you now. What are you looking for in yourself, to confirm or validate your own respectability?

  Sara: Let’s say I give you a very, very, almost superficial, but a daily example. 

  Amy: Yeah?

  Sara: You make an announcement and say from tomorrow, I am going to wake up at this hour, I’m going to exercise at this hour, I’m not going to look at my phone, that is my boundary for tomorrow, I’m not going to put junk in my body, I’m going to take the time I need for self-care. I’m going to do this… this is the boundary you set for yourself, this is how I’m going to be around myself, right? And then you wake up, argh, I crave that chocolate cake. And then the other person is observing this. I’m not saying to be perfect, but I’m just saying, either don’t announce it out loud to the person, that is observing your life, that I’m going to do this and that, that… and then multiple times break it. That’s one. Then they will learn that next time there is the thing come up, I want to go out with my friends and I want to go out with my friends as well. Well, you know what, it’s okay, you stay at home, take care of the kids, I go out with my friends. Because you’ve done it before to yourself, so why can’t I?

  Amy: Right, okay, so you’re looking at, do I honor my commitments to myself? Do my words and actions have integrity with each other? Do I do what I say I’m going to do? And do I treat myself with the kind of respect that I would hope to be treated with by somebody else? 

  Sara: Exactly. Exactly. For example, for women, this is really common, self-deprecating comments, it’s not a joke. Whatever narrative you have for yourself, it becomes the narrative of other people about you. No question about it. So little piece at a time, little piece at a time. Because we want to cater to somebody else’s insecurity. We want to make them feel good and secure about themselves. So we do this sometimes to ourselves, to put ourselves down. But then also I have to say, sometimes we are very respectable and respectful human beings, but then on the other side of it, we are with a person who has a very different understanding of respect. 

  Amy: Right. 

  Sara: So it’s not all on us either, so that’s why it’s mutual. I have a lot of people who tell me, do you know what, I always saw him when he was drunk, he would use foul language, but never to me. But after six years into the relationship, familiarity and the walls are down and all of that, then you are the new target. So to pay attention to where that matters, on dating scenes, in the coupledom, you know, the things that matter. And if somebody is listening and any of these ingredients resonate with you, the way to bring it up to your partner is in a loving and fair way and just say, “Hey, just so you know, I know we talked about you chewing with your mouth open at the dinner table when we have guests, it’s really bothersome to me. But I just want you to know that this is 7 out of 10 for me.” It’s important to make it clear, otherwise you become a nagger and the other person doesn’t really know how much that matters to you or how important that thing is. 

  Amy: Right, and then you feel disrespected if they don’t modify or acknowledge, like I’m trying. 

  Sara: Exactly. Exactly. So that’s a little bit about respect. 

  Amy: Yeah, that’s super interesting. Trust. Trust is something that I think again, we all think is obvious, but it’s much more nuanced?

  Sara: Absolutely. So trust has two main elements, reliability and consistency. 

  Amy: And not just when it suits your schedule, but when it makes sense for the relational space? 

  Sara: Exactly. Consistency and reliability. So trust really boils down to that, and commitment. Showing up for the mutually committed space that the two of you have with one another, commitment is a big part of trust. 

  Amy: One piece of trust that I’ve had issues with in my relationships is revealing vulnerabilities that then get used against me, I’ve heard it called ‘narrative trust,’ but it’s the kind of thing where I’ve learned to edit myself around people because when I share with them, not around all people… I learned to edit myself in a relationship where I felt like what I shared could be used to undermine me in some way, to hurt me, to humiliate me. That falls into the ‘trust’ category, right? I’m going to share something with you and you are meant to take that in confidence and

  Sara: Look, transparency and vulnerability are two different things. Transparency is, you just put something out there. You really don’t care what will happen after. That was your thing to get off your chest. Vulnerability, you’re inviting somebody to your space and because the majority of times you have an outcome in mind, it’s not just getting it off your chest. It’s to serve the relationship, it’s to build that trust, dynamic with the other person. But in my humble opinion, I think people in intimate relationships, they share a little too much. Not everything is to be shared. 

  Amy: I get that. 

  Sara: You need to have a private space and then define the secrecy. Secrecy and privacy need to be defined amongst couples, so that they know, what is it that they’re sharing with each other? What is it not? And also not everybody deserves your vulnerability. 

  Amy: Yeah. Yeah. Shared vision. You don’t mean that you’re completely alike? You mean that you’re able to both wrap your hopes and dreams around a future destination? 

  Sara: Yes, so basically this is where you’re committed to go together, and there are certain levels for it. Like geographically, spiritually, intellectually, physiologically, all of that. Where are you going together? Where are you committed to go together? Some people would like you just create experiences with one another, and that’s absolutely fine. There’s room for that too, with all of these six ingredients too. But some other people, they are committing to build something together. 

  Amy: Yes, and if we’re back to the building metaphor, you’re speaking my language. If you have two people, and only one of them is building something, and hoping the other one comes along, but they’re not helping, I can see how that doesn’t work. And I can also really identify with somebody just wanting to share, not identify personally, but being in a relationship with somebody who just wanted experience, but wasn’t really collaborating on building something together. 

  Sara: Yeah.

  Amy: How do you figure that out on the front end? How do you learn that quickly about somebody? 

  Sara: Well, there are certain questions that you can ask yourself first and then there are certain questions and dialogues that you can have with the other person to see how you can build with each other. Like for example, for shared vision, I have a lot of couples who come to me pre-engagement or pre-joining their way together. And simple questions, like where do you see yourself in five years? That’s really the simplest one, right? And then there are more that are listed in the book. So they come and say, I see myself, this amazing architect, let’s say for example. Now we’re talking about design and building, and living in a high rise in the middle of Milan. And the other person comes and says, I would love to have my own sustainable farm and live somewhere that is really cozy, I want to be outside of all of this pollution and everything. So how…

  Amy: Like you said in the book…

  Sara: Yes. Yeah, exactly. And I have those couples. I mean in the book I try to mix and match to preserve confidentiality, so each piece of that comes from one couple. But it’s really interesting that how do you envision yourself being together? And then when they come to me they feel like I have this magic wand to make sure that this will somehow work. It doesn’t! Because you’re going to be in a high rise in Milan, an architect, and the other person is on a farm. If you know that, and go in intentionally knowing that, your relationship, for some parts of it, will be long distance for you, and it might work. But going in with hopes and assumptions and secretly thinking, and wishful thinking that this person is going to see how great the farm is and they will come along. Or the other way around. I have not seen that happen. 

  Amy: That’s interesting. I think especially when people are in the infatuation phase. If they don’t have a shared vision, but they both are passionate about their goals and dreams. Even that’s intoxicating, right? I think there is a like, well, I just can’t not believe that if we continue growing together, like I feel like we are, that we won’t arrive at a mutual shared vision eventually. But what you’re saying is it’s really important to understand and respect each person’s vision, and maybe give them the credit that you’re not going to get into a relationship trying to change their version of what they want for the future, in order to match yours. 

  Sara: Exactly. You know, there are certain things that are habitual that could change. For example, I’m hoping that you don’t drink as much, then you can negotiate, you can discuss, you can again, put it in the skills, this is 10 out of 10 for me, do you think you can do this? And then give them a period of time, a trial to see if they can actually hold on to their bet. And then habitual things, yes, but vision, the world view, values, these are not the things that are easily changed. And in our research, it actually showed that moral value has very strong connection with the outcome of a thriving relationship, where people put their values. 

  Amy: Yeah, that makes sense. I was one of those people who in my first marriage that I already told you about, we got married because the timing was right, we had so much in common, we were compatible on a lot of levels. But it wasn’t until life got really sort of hard that we started to recognize where our values weren’t perfectly aligned. And those were types of things that I don’t think we had really given enough credit, had looked at carefully enough before we got married. And it was clear to see when it was time to separate, it was clear to see that in order for each one of us to thrive, it was not going to be together. That’s because you can’t divorce yourself from your values and still be in integrity with yourself. 

  Sara: I completely agree with you. I have so many questions. (Laughs) But I also don’t want this to turn into a…

  Amy: A therapy session? (Laughs) 

  Sara: A personal confession by you. (Laughter) I want to make sure to respect your boundaries. 

  Amy: I want to get to compassion because that is something we don’t… compassion of course is something that is necessary in terms of being a kind person and an empathetic person. And it’s important… as important as respect and trust in terms of how you navigate the world and who you show up as in your day-to-day interactions. But I think the cliché is that we always hurt the ones we love. So why is compassion something that we need to pay special attention to when it comes to cultivating really thriving long term relationships? 

  Sara: Thank you for that. There’s a lot that you said that I want to go back to. For example, we need empathy for compassion, or we are hurting the people who are closer to us. There’s so many different ways to describe that, right? To go in and deconstruct even those. Let’s talk about compassion. One of the things that we learned from the research and also from my work with couples is scientifically speaking, evolutionary speaking, we relate to one another. Let’s say for example, you come and say, oh my god, I had a really bad day. I immediately think of something to relate to that. So I will say, “I had a bad day too,” or, “Mine was not as bad.” So I’m trying to see, to bring in whatever you just said, to see if I can relate that somewhere. That’s perfectly normal, expected, all of that. Then relating becomes too much, that I’m actually stealing the situation, I’m making it about myself, or you come and say that, oh, this is like… I had a really bad day, and I say, “Oh my god, let me tell you about mine!” Or for example, “Oh my god, you had a poor day, poor you, I’m so sorry,” and then I even take it further, I start crying for you, and owning your emotions. That’s over-emphasizing in coupledom. What I would like to invite people to instead do, is to show up for one another with compassion. So if empathy is feeling with the person, compassion is feeling for the person. You are there and saying, “Oh my god, tell me more, what happened, what can I do? How can I be here for you?” That’s compassion. Empathy is, you’re bleeding, I’m bleeding too. Then who is there to give us a Band-Aid?

  Amy: Right. (Laughs)

  Sara: That’s really huge, that’s huge in any relationship. So that’s one of the things about compassion that I want to emphasize here. 

  Amy: Okay, so what’s the opposite of that, which is, I can’t relate to your situation at all and therefore I’m not going to give it enough credit, enough weight in this conversation? 

  Sara: In a compassionate situation, I could be talking about something that you don’t even understand what I’m talking about. But you just say, “How can I be here for you?” That’s compassionate presence. I’m not asking you to feel my pain. I’m not asking you to solve it. I’m not asking you to jump ahead and own it. I’m just asking you to be here. And in the book I talk about a tool that I give to people, framing, like whenever you want to share something, especially if it’s painful or sensitive, whatever that is, it could be done by either person. You come to me and say, “Sara, I want to talk to you.” And I say, “Oh, okay, how can I be there for you that is most relevant to what you’re experiencing?” You’re like, “You know what, I want to brainstorm.” You know what, just be there.

  Amy: Yes!

  Sara: So that framing piece is very important. 

  Amy: Yes, and I feel like that is a tool we can all take and use today because so often we know what we need, but we forget to frame it upfront and so I might bring something to someone and they instantly try to solve it and it’s like, no, that’s not what I’m asking for, I’ve actually already thought about what my solution is going to be. But what I really need right now is I need to offload it so I can see it and process it. Can you help me process it? I love that you bring framing into the conversation as a very accessible tool. I can also see how that relates to compassion because you’re understanding that the other person in their efforts to be loving and helpful to you might actually end up irritating you if you don’t give them the information they need upfront. So loving behaviors, that leads us into loving behaviors and that seems like a big bucket. How do you categorize it, so we can have some sort of clarity around what you mean by that?

  Sara: Again, when I was writing the book, the question came up as… the whole book is about love, do we need a whole chapter on it? Because loving behaviors are the ones that you set at the beginning of our conversation. To make somebody feel special, I can’t replace you easily. And in there, with my words, with my touch, with my presence, with my energy, that’s loving behavior. I go out of my way for you. I give you the benefit of the doubt more than I do to other people. These are the qualities. You know Amy, one of the things that I’m hoping people take away from this book is, we talk about respect, compassion… these are not new terms. But what I would love for people to know is that they’re redefining all of it. And also, not only that, we are bringing it full circle, to give tools to people. How does that loving touch look like? How does it feel like? Right? So it’s not only literacy that people take away. I want them to be fluent in the language of love. 

  Amy: This is so hopeful and optimistic and I love that you said yes, these terms are not new, attraction, respect, trust, but in all of this conversation, you’ve broken it down and I just want to say it’s not what we think it is, or it’s more than what we thought it was. It deserves another look and a more careful look. Don’t assume you know what’s in the chapter (laughs) because there’s so much to learn. From literacy to fluency… I want to now reflect this back to you, where are you in your personal Emergent Love relationship, but also in terms of your work and your career? 

  Sara: I’ve been married for 20 years, this year will be 24 and we had an interesting journey ourselves, and that was definitely the personal stake that I had in this, I’m going to crack this and I’m going to live it, I’m going to design it for myself and the rest of the world. So that was the personal stake I made. And every day, that’s why I call these ingredients, ingredients. Every day I wake up in my morning meditation, what does my relationship need more of? Some days you need a little bit more compassion. Some days you need a little bit more trust, either way, right? As long as you’re intentional every day, you just build and build and re-build and beautify you Emergent Love and go on. And the fire goes on. On and on. You know Einstein said, ‘you can’t solve a problem with the same frame of mind that created it, you need to see the world anew.’ And this is the new way that I would like to present to the world, that Emergent Love model could be the model of love that we can all live by, build, I’ve done it, you will do it. Everybody else can do it. That’s the hopeful part. Everyone deserves to be in the loving relationship that they desire. And when that happens, world peace will happen. Trust me. 

  Amy: I believe you 100%, because when you’re fueled and driven by love and it’s working, you’re not acting out of a need for lack of love, then there is no other option other than peace.

  Sara: That’s true. And you know Amy, one of the things I found, people tell me, how do you feel if you are experiencing an Emergent Love in your life. I feel like you have a very clear mind and peaceful heart. And the way that you do one relationship is the way that you do all relationships, because these are the ingredients… this is the same ingredient that I teach at corporate, I’m using my work with the United Nations. So these are just all the ingredients that go around. 

  Amy: I want to call out something too that you state, you stated it upfront in this conversation, but you’re pretty clear in the book, you’re not referring to just heteronormative love. 

  Sara: No.

  Amy: And you’re not referring to just a western version of love at all. What was really powerful to me is upfront you make a case for how universal these ingredients are, because they are not specific to a culture, a gender, an orientation. And that you’ve seen them work in all kinds of relationships, all kinds of choices, in terms of how people want to configure their lives. So that’s something that I really appreciate in terms of the way you framed it. But also something I really want to stress is that these are universal concepts for how you can just be in connection with anyone in your orbit.

  Sara: Yeah, the way that you are respectable, it’s everywhere, at work, at home, with your child, with your parents, with your siblings, with anybody really, with your neighbor, within the community. So these are all things that I feel like, when we own all of these ingredients in our kitchen, so to speak, or in our building a workshop, then we can really do design the love that we deserve and love is the word that I use also as an overarching… loving relationship is a relationship that gives you clarity of mind, not preoccupation. Not ups and downs. And to your point about not being heteronormative, a lot of myths that we have are based on those. A lot of movies… thankfully Hollywood and Bollywood are paying more attention to change their perception as well, but we have a long way to go. But yes, any sexual orientation, relational orientation, any gender identification that people have, they can all use the ingredients. 

  Amy: I liked how you framed it as ingredients in a kitchen too, and it’s sort of like making breakfast every day. If you know these are the ingredients you’re working with, you can mix them up a little bit for what you need that day, or what the relational space needs that day, as you described. But you always know you’re eating something healthy that’s going to fuel you and give you the nutrition you need to thrive. 

  Sara: Absolutely. 

  Amy: I have a very serious question. If everyone on the planet were to read this book, how soon do you think world peace would happen? How long would it take for the actual behaviors to be modified and then the world peace to happen? 

  Sara: That’s a big question. My hope is first and foremost, chapter by chapter, when people read this book, my wish is that they feel that they are becoming more fulfilled within the realm of their own skin. And that shows day-by-day, when you choose to eat a healthy diet. When you choose to do anything really in your life, it shows immediately in your life, in your surroundings. It’s like the ripple effect. When you show up differently, the world around you will be different, it can’t resist, it will be different. And therefore… you have a beautiful smile, for example…When you are glowing from inside, you go outside, right, out of compassion, out of act of loving you meet that cashier, you make that person at the gas station feel special, just a smile. It goes a long way. It can make their day, it can bring their cortisol level down, it can make them a kinder person, I received this smile, let me give this smile back to other people. And in your loving relationship, for sure, your partners might feel like oh my god, something hit their head, they’re different. (Laughter) But it doesn’t last long, because you are changing, so they are not actually reacting to whatever that they think you are, or you bring to the table. And initially it might be a little bit awkward or weird, but stick with it, if you’re doing this journey on your own. And if not, you can bring your partner with you, you can read chapter by chapter and then as you are changing, they are changing, the relationship, the atmosphere, if you have kids, your surroundings, your couples brand changes. 

  Amy: Yeah. 

  Sara: Then people start treating you differently, you are attracting different people into your life. So to answer your question, my hope is, as soon as you start reading and implementing, just take it slow, don’t feel like it’s one of those books that you read and just put away. Really read and again, literacy and fluency. Practice it, and make it your own. Again, nobody said I’m the queen of anything…

  Amy: Right, it’s a custom fit.

  Sara: This is what I know, exactly, right? 

  Amy: Yeah, I love the idea, the ripple effect. I do think that even just having… I have this theory that by learning how to make furniture, I started to learn how the world is built. I started to see the world in an exploded view. I started to understand how trees get converted into logs, so that kind of creative agency and confidence rippled out into absolutely every area of my life because now I felt like well, if I don’t know how to do it, I know how to figure it out. I also felt like I have this material agency with the built world around me and I don’t feel helpless if something were to break down or need fixing. And I also think that if you imbue or empower people with this kind of creative agency, with love, that that confidence is not only transferrable, but it will ripple out and exponentially improve (laughs) all of our social interactions and humanity by extension. So you’re doing really important work Dr Sara, thank you so much. 

  Sara: You are a part of it too my dear, we are all in this together. We rise together. 

  Amy: We are. 

  Sara: It’s a mission for all of us. 

  Amy: I appreciate that. I do feel like we’re all in this together and I feel like these kinds of conversations are important because there’s so many different ways that people learn And I also wish that it has an impact that we can feel. That enough people start deploying the ingredients of Emergent Love, that we can all start to feel it in our social interactions. That would be a beautiful thing. 

  Sara: Absolutely, yes, let’s spread the word, let’s rise together and really initiate this revolutionary discourse around love. It’s been a real pleasure to be in conversation with you, you’re so real, it’s beautiful. Thank you very much. 

  Amy: Hey, thanks so much for listening. For a transcript of this episode and more info about Dr. Sara and Love By Design including links and images - head to cleverpodcast.com. If you like Clever, there are a number of ways you can support us: - share Clever with your friends, leave us a 5 star rating, or a kind review, support our sponsors, and hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app so that our new episodes will turn up in your feed. We love to hear from you on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter, er X - you can find us @cleverpodcast and you can find me @amydevers. For bonus content and announcements, subscribe to our newsletter at cleverpodcast.com. Clever is hosted & produced by me, Amy Devers. With editing by Mark Zurawinski, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan and music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is a proud member of the Surround podcast network. Visit surroundpodcasts.com to discover more of the Architecture and Design industry’s premier shows.

Sara Nasserzadeh

Sara’s brand new book, Love by Design!

Sara at World Sexual Health Day event at Stanford signing her book on the wheel of context for sexuality education.

Sara at the Goop Health Summit in LA talking through guests on their love blueprint.

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Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Mark Zurawinski, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.

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