Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Sex, Love and SuperPowers podcast show. I’m your host, Tatiana Berindei. Today, I am here with Sam and Patrick Cullinane. We are going to be talking about Keys to Mastering a Successful Marriage. Authors Sam and Patrick have been married for over 20 years. They would tell you that they are one of the happiest couples they know, but they weren’t always this happy. In fact, after 10 years of marriage, they were ready to sign the divorce papers and be done for good. They talk about this in their book, Bigger Love. I’m so, so grateful and pleased to have them on the show with us today.
I’m glad to be here.
Yeah. Thanks for having for us.
Absolutely. All right. I’m gonna start us off and because you’re a couple, I’m asking this question in a little bit of a different way because I want to hear what your superpowers are, but I would love to hear both what your individual superpowers are. Then what is the superpower of the relationship entity that the two of you make together? Who wants to start?
I’m happy to start.
Awesome. Sam, what are your superpowers?
I like to make people laugh and I laugh a lot.
I think one of my superpowers is my sense of humor. I like to make people laugh and I laugh a lot. I think it helps carry me through my life no matter what’s going on. I think one of my other superpowers is writing songs. Sometimes I get to weave my sense of humor into my songwriting, too.
Good stuff. I would say my super-
Did you hear that, Tatiana?
I did not hear that. Can you say it again?
I will. I know it-
I heard yours.
Looks like our internet …
Yeah. I heard yours.
Oh, you did hear mine.
I didn’t hear Patrick’s.
Okay. He hasn’t said it yet.
Oh. Okay.
No.
He stopped him … I heard him say, “I would say my superpower,” and then blank.
Oh, yeah. Okay. Anyway. I would say one of my superpowers, the one I’m focused on most right now is the ability to share the message of love with the world. It sounds like an ambiguous superpower, but we do have a plan and a way to do that, which is part two of “The Love Endeavor,” which we talk about in our book.
I love it. I think that’s a beautiful superpower. Maybe this caught you a little off guard ’cause I didn’t prep you guys for this question and I don’t know if you wanna answer it. Maybe each of you gives an answer for what you think the superpower is in the entity of your relationship, but I do think that when we join together in a relationship, there is another being that’s created in that unification so I’d love to hear what the superpower is of that.
Is it trite to say that it’s love? I think it’s … love in all of love’s complexities. We talk a lot about the different kinds of love. We talk about love in terms of love for your lover, which to me feels very different from the love that I have for my children or the love that I have for God or the love that I have for my family or the love that I have for friends. All of those love, although there is, I think, something at the very core of those loves, they all are very complex and have these different nuances about them. I think one of our superpowers and I’ll let Patrick talk, is that we’ve been able to weave all those kinds of love and figure out how they work in our relationship.
Yeah. That’s a good one and I wouldn’t go in a different direction because that’s how our book works. She gives her opinion on what she thinks something is and then I tell everybody what it really is. I’m just kidding.
I think one of the superpowers we have as an entity is just genuine caring. Sam’s one of the more caring people I know. I also am the same way. That’s how the whole book came about is we just wanted to share and put the message out there about all the different things that we’ve tried that have worked and the successes that we’ve had in the last 10 years. We’re not necessarily that worried about monetizing it as much as we just want to get the message out. That’s the giving and the caring part that I think makes us work as a couple for each other and for other people.
Beautiful. Let’s talk about this book a little bit. For people who don’t know you, give us a brief overview of your story and how you came to the decision that well, we need to write a book from all of this.
Well, in part, it was a little bit of a shortcut because it’s fairly unique, I think, for people to split up to the point of signing divorce papers and then somehow finding their way back together and being happy. Then having a successful, what we consider a sexful, successful, sexcessful… That was a good slip of the tongue.
Oh, yeah. You’re on the right show for that.
Sexcessful and successful relationship.
Sexcessful and successful relationship. Exactly. We have a lot of friends who have come to us and asked us for help and for counsel as they are hurting and discouraged in their own relationships. We started thinking that our story and what we learned in the beginning of our marriage through the breakup and then also what we’ve learned since our journey back together is worth sharing with not just our friends, but with the world because it has … It’s helped us. It’s helped other people we know and we hope that it can help other people.
Yeah. It’s definitely a story of failing forward and a tale of two different decades. The first 10 years, we didn’t have any tools and we stumbled miserably through our relationship, like a lot of people do. Then we took a year apart and when we got back together … Excuse me. We got back together, we’d gotten rid of a lot of our own personal stuff that enabled that to happen. Then afterward, we continued to try to grow and learn and get better and better at our relationship. Essentially, that’s the story of the book is the first 10 years and this is everything we did wrong. Then this is what we’ve done since then to make it much better.
That’s so beautiful. What I love about both of you and this book that you’ve created is that and you say this really clearly at the beginning of the book, you’re not Ph.D.’s. You haven’t studied the science of relationship if that’s even a thing you can study, but what you’re bringing forward is a real practical experience. I think often times in our culture that doesn’t get given enough weight because we come from such an academic perspective and those letters after your name are so important for people to be able to listen to you. Yet, I think, you’re really demonstrating a different way that we have real valuable experience and it does have value enough that we can put it in a whole … We can write a whole book about it and we have and here you go. I just think that’s really beautiful. I really wanna give kudos to you in that sense because that’s rare. It’s rare to see. Thank you for having the courage and the willingness to step out in that way and put the wisdom that you’ve gained from your life experience out there in a way that it can be used and be valuable to other people.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thanks.
Absolutely. We are gonna go to a quick break here. I wanna give you an opportunity to tell people where they can go to get the book, where they can find out more about you. I know you do some couple’s retreats here and there and when we come back from the break, we’re going to really dive into some of these Keys to Mastering a Successful Marriage. Before we got to break, will you tell everybody where they can find out more about you and where they can get your book?
Yep. Our book’s on Amazon and we have a webpage called biggerlovebook.com and a Facebook page with the same name.
Awesome.
There’s a Twitter account, but I’ve never been on it. Sam?
Yeah. It’s the same: biggerlovebook.
I love that. All right. We’ve been talking with Sam and Patrick Cullinane. Today, we’re going to be discussing Keys to Mastering a Successful Marriage. Stay tuned. If you are married, you’re definitely gonna wanna hear this when we get back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Music Credit: All instruments played by Amanda Turk. Engineered and produced by Tatiana Berindei and Daniel Plane reelcello.com
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