Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Want to go for a walk this evening, babe? It's a simple question that might have a far more powerful outcome than you realise. We spend a lot of energy encouraging couples to take active dates because we know what a game changer they can be. And the evidence backs this up. When you get active with your partner, you can communicate better, deepen your connection and feel more in love. Want to know exactly what the science is telling us? Stay tuned as we dig into the three big reasons active dates are a must have in your relationship.
Hey, we're Kim and Rog and we're here to show couples how to get the best out of their relationship so they can start living their dream life together.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: We're a West Aussie couple who are living the life of our dreams. We don't entertain the word should, we think about the future as a field of possibilities and we let joy be our compass.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: We've taken the simple idea of working as a team and applied it to our marriage and it's been a game changer, allowing us to work out what truly lights us up in life and to go after it together.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: From living in snowy Japan to starting our own house flipping business, we've achieved some big dreams and most importantly, we feel fulfilled in having the most fun we've ever had.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Pick conversations from inspiring couples, thoughts from relationship experts, and tales from our own lives as we help you to gain the wisdom and skills you'll need to turn your relationship into a real team.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: These are relationship conversations for real people, by real people. So sit back, get comfort in whatever tickles you, pickle, and enjoy living the team life.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Today we are talking about active dates and it's something we've mentioned on the podcast quite a bit in the past, but we haven't had a, haven't spent a whole episode on it and something came up recently for us with someone we know, and we just really realized how important it is for people to understand the power of active dates and the fact that they are such an available tool that can significantly improve the quality of your relationship.
The science is there and that's what we wanted to unpack today is the science so that people could understand why we're such big fans of active dates, why we talk about them all the time, why we ourselves do a lot of active dates, and that's what we're going to be delving into today. So we'll just tell you a little bit about this person we know, this friend of ours who came to us recently and said that she had had a shift in her relationship.
And she told us that she had been able to, for the first time ever, talk to her partner about really important things. And she said it had happened whilst they were out walking.
And this was really interesting to us because we knew immediately this was an excellent example of the power of active dates.
When we get moving, there are literally things happening in our body that make it easier for us to communicate. So biologically, we are going to have an easier time. We want to give ourselves that leg up to be able to have deeper, more meaningful, more purposeful conversations. And that's what we're going to dig in today. We're going to dig in what these things are, what happens in our bodies when we start moving and doing things actively together.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that we're talking about this today because when our friend told us exactly what had happened, we sort of looked at each other and grinned like, that's right, active dates.
You know, she. She was. She's been with a partner for quite a long time. That's a serious, long term relationship. You know, both of them want a future together, but they got in a bit of a rut. They were stuck, self admittedly. And it's only recently that they decided not to talk, but to go out on walks together every few days. He's someone who, I don't think, you know, we don't know him very well. I don't think he opens up emotionally much or doesn't like to talk about the big picture, strategic stuff. And the way she described it was like it just started coming out. It started tumbling out of him. And I'd never seen this side to him before. And all of a sudden, we went from not talking about the future to talking about kids, talking about buying a house. We're going to a home open. So it's funny how this sort of. I don't know how this moved forward to something even bigger. And I guess the main point is they started to feel connected.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: Did you relate to it? Roger, I'm kind of curious as a bloke that being active made it easier for you at any point. And I don't mean to fully generalise in terms of gender, but my gut tells me that for guys, this is a particularly important opportunity and space for them to be able to deepen their communication and feel comfortable to do that.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: Well, maybe, you know, we've talked about on the show, we've talked about the fact that often women have more tools in their emotional toolkit. They have a larger vocabulary.
I think in general, women are more emotionally intelligent. And that's a sweeping statement. I'm generalizing here. They read the books, they watch the shows, they talk to each other. They're social animals.
But maybe it's the going back, harking back to the old hunter gathering days, that when guys were walking or hunting prey or doing stuff like that, that's when they discussed, that's when they talked. But for me, maybe not going back to when I really started talking to you. But even this week, we've been on two large walks together because we've got a bit of life strategy happening right now, a few things happening in our.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: Life right now, a few big life changes.
[00:05:47] Speaker B: A few big life changes going on right now. And we both needed to clear our heads. And sometimes sitting at the table or even out the back, across from each other, you know, it's nice, but sometimes it's hard to really get those creative juices flowing, those, you know, how to get your thoughts in order. And I think what we're going to talk to about today really, I guess, puts a bit of science behind why it is a lot easier, especially for a bloke, especially for me, to talk about stuff, to talk about life, to talk about emotions, talk about how I'm feeling, to talk about, I guess, the bigger picture on a walk, on an active date, out and about than it is if I was just plonked right in front of you.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: You know, the thing that's standing out for me, my memory, that's really coming up for me when we think about active dates, is when we came home from Japan and, well, you weren't home yet. You were doing Fifo to Japan for another ten months or so, which was extremely challenging for us as a family. We had. Our daughter had just been diagnosed autistic. We didn't know what our future would look like. We really were learning so many things very, very quickly, and me on my own doing that. And you left trying to run a business in Japan with staff and a big job up there, as well as trying to manage, supporting me remotely. It was a very challenging time, and we had to think about the future. We had to pivot because we could no longer stay in Japan. That wasn't going to be best for our daughter. And so we went walking. We had all our big conversations. I can specifically remember the decisions we made that that were the direction we ended up taking. They came about on our big walks, and it was one of those things where some of the stuff that came up in the walks that I really noticed hadn't come up at all outside of the walks. We just couldn't get deep enough in what we were talking about. We couldn't get open enough in what our options were. And when we were walking, we were able to blue sky things a lot more. We were more open to.
Let's just throw it out there. It seemed like some of the fear, some of the anxiety had been removed and just a freedom to just really explore. And I guess the science backs that up, which we'll get into it in a second. But the. That's what I remember when I think about this. If you really wanna get down to the most profound times that active dates have been important in our lives, those were pretty important times. I mean, probably the most important time of our life.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: Yeah. We had to reimagine our lives. We had to set a strategy for our daughter. We had to set a strategy for us. Do we, one of us go back to work or do we stop and start our own business? Which we did. And, you know, I was in Japan for two, three weeks at a time while you and the little one were back here. And, you know, we talk on the phone a few times a day, but you can't have. It's really hard to have those deep conversations, especially where we're both feeling lonely. We were bit detached, hyper stressed.
And then at home, we had a. Back in Perth, we rented a little tiny little townhouse near Kings park, which is an incredible natural resource in Perth and Western Australia. And even in then, it was tiny. Like, it was like a two by one, and there wasn't much space to swing a cat. Right.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: And it was very sweet, though.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: It was very sweet. But I love that it was on those walks through Kings park, through the bush, that we're pushing our daughter in the pram, that we, I guess, really reconnected and then really started. Started redreaming.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: Yes. Yep. All right, so let's get into why some of. Some of the really big reasons behind. So, three big reasons, in fact, we'll go through today that are really the evidence behind why active dates work, why they help you to deepen your conversation and deepen your relationship. And the first reason was really interesting.
It's. It's called optical flow. And Huberman, anyone who knows Professor Andrew, is it doctor or professor?
[00:10:09] Speaker B: Both.
He's literally both, right? He's Professor.
[00:10:13] Speaker A: Doctor Andrew, doctorate. Huberman.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Doctor, professor. The Hube. The hoops.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: The hoops. Everybody knows. Everybody knows who Huberman is.
And he is actually a professor of ophthalmology and neurobiology. I believe, at Stanford. He's just an incredibly intelligent human.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: We were talking about this earlier. He's probably one of the most trusted brands on the planet. Is he?
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Yeah. We're going to go off to the side a bit here, but you're right, he is such an interesting human in that he has built so much trust. If anybody wants to back up a claim these days, they'll say something like.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: Hooverman says on Huberman's podcast, I don't drink as much anymore because of Huberman.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: He's become like an Oprah when you get a one name following, you know?
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Yeah, Huberman.
[00:11:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Anyway, back to optical flow. Optical flow. So Huberman talked about optical flow on a podcast with rich roll recently, and he broke it down in a way that just made a lot of sense. He was saying that walking and talking or riding or running, these forward movement activities where you're continuously moving forward create this thing called optic flow. And what it actually does is when we're moving forward, and I won't get into the nitty gritty of it's to do with the imagery coming through the eyes at that point and how it gets read through the retina, I think. But that's beside the point. When you're moving in a continuous direction through one of those sorts of activities, it has the effect of calming the circuits or lowering the activity involved in the threat detection center of the brain. So within our brain, we have obviously different parts to it, and we have a central part that is called the amygdala. So the amygdala lives in the central part of the brain, which is really what you can think about as your emotional part of your brain. And the amygdala is a threat center. It is like the alarm system in your house, right? It detects when something is wrong, and then it sends off all these messages to make sure that you get the necessary chemicals and supports you need when you are under threat. But if the amygdala is really sensitive or overactive, it's going to be firing off a lot faster. So what he's saying is that with optical flow, with continuous forward movement, the brain, for various reasons, calms the amygdala. So your amygdala isn't going to quickly fire off those threat detections. It's going to be more calm, it's going to read information differently. And if we think about this in the context of being more open with your partner, it just makes perfect sense.
Deep conversations are scary. Deep conversations are intimidating because they involve being vulnerable. Will this person accept me? Will this person want the same thing as me? Will this person judge me? Is this going to cause an argument? I don't want to go down this path again. I don't want to deal with the disagreement. These are all what our brain can perceive as threats, and that fires up the fight, flight, or freeze response. And so if we're in a conversation with someone and we want to deepen it, and our amygdala's firing away, saying, oh, threat here, threat there, then obviously we're going to start to become either defensive or we're going to want to shut down that conversation, because our brain's telling us, protect yourself, protect yourself. But if we're in this optical flow, so if we're, say, walking and we're walking in a forward direction and we get this flow through the brain, through this optical flow, our amygdala starts to calm down. And so when we raise those conversations, those topics of conversation that are traditionally more threatening, the amygdala has more tolerance for the level of threat it's perceiving. So instead of saying the first word you mention around, you know, I was, for example, I was thinking about our future. Some people's amygdala is going, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like massive threat. But if you're walking, it's just going to give you a bit more capacity and say, maybe that's not such a big threat. Okay, let's see if we can talk about this. It's got more capacity for difficult conversations.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: Yeah, we know. We know. Deep conversations are really important to have because that's how you become an expert on your partner. That's how you stay up to date on your partner. And yet we constantly put them off because they are so emotional, they are so hard to have. So by going on an active date, going on a walk with your partner, where you are actually watching the world go by, you are calming your nerves, meaning that you are more capable to hold that conversation without it turning into a fight or without being emotionally flooded and one or the other not being able to continue the conversation or not being able to get to a point where you actually can move forward and work through that deep issue, whether it be a deep issue that impacts one or both of you.
[00:15:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a good point, Reggie. And I think also, if we think about it, it feeds off itself. So if we are, for example, our amygdala is feeling more calm, that circuitry system is more relaxed, so it doesn't perceive everything quite as threatening. As it might ordinarily, then you share the information. For example, you say, oh, okay, I'm safe to maybe share this. So you share something, and because the other person's in the same state, they receive it better. So then they share back something. And then your brain says, oh, it gets the evidence, I am safe here. So then it goes even deeper. And that's where people say, oh, we went down. I mean, they might use a term like, we went down a rabbit hole. We started talking about things we hadn't talked about, and it just, you know, it just kept going. Sure. Because the brain. Your brain realized, oh, I'm safe to do this.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: Yeah. We often say where you have your conversations just. Just as important as what you're having the conversation about. So being outside is great. It's beautiful. It feels so good. But when you're moving, what you're saying here, what the research is saying, the science is saying, what human is saying is when you're moving the world, going through your vision is actually calming your nervous system. So you are creating an even safer space to have this conversation.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: Beautifully put. Thank you.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: All right, so the second piece of science we're going to hit you with in terms of why active dates are so important, why these are a must for your relationship, is you get in sync. So I'm going to talk about a study which was broken into parts. And really, the outcome of the study was that couples who are biologically and physically in sync with each other have higher levels of relationship satisfaction. And one of the studies in 2018 that a team of scientists conducted looked at people working out on stationary bikes. They got them in the lab, and what they did is they measured how fast everyone was riding. They then got people. And these are strangers, right? They got people to pair up and start talking to each other about something, about their lives, or, you know, something they found interesting. And the point here is that some pairs peddled at a similar pace and some pairs didn't. However, the researchers observed that the pairs who pedaled in sync with each other when questioned after the experiment found that they had a deeper and quicker and stronger connection with the people who rode at the same speed than the people who rode at different speeds.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Okay, so I'm gonna try and break this down, see if I've understood it correctly. So, strangers came together for an experiment, sat on a bike side by side, and there was two outcomes. Some of the people who sat next to each other, the pairs of strangers, started riding at the same speed, so they became in sync with each other.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: And the other half, we'll call them group b. So, group a, they started riding at the same speed. The other half of the strangers that came together, for whatever reason, didn't start riding in sync. And what they learned from feedback from group a, which was the pairs who naturally fell into sync together, was that that pair felt more connected and had a deeper bond than the strangers who were not riding in sync together.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: That's 100% right. You must have been part of the study.
And what the scientists found is this suggested that moving your body in sync, even amongst strangers, can enhance a sense of rapport and empathy between two individuals. Now, they then did another study with couples who were romantically involved, so they knew each other. This time, they asked the couples to listen to footsteps that were in sync. And then they got a group of couples to listen to steps that were out of sync while they were doing this, they got them to imagine them walking alongside their partner. And what the scientists found was that the couples who listened to the steps in sync when questioned afterwards. So they listened to people walking at the same pace felt closer to their partners after the study than the couples who listened to steps that were out of sync and thought about their partners.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: Okay, so I hear this one. This is even more interesting. Really? So when you feel synchronicity, which you can feel through the audio, right, hearing two people hearing footsteps that are synchronized, you feel more. What was the outcome? More loving towards your partner?
[00:20:12] Speaker B: Yeah, they felt. They felt closer.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Closer to your partner. So their memory then made them feel closer to their partner than if they didn't have the sense of being in sync. So. So my question then is, if for anyone listening, how do they know that they're necessarily going to be in sync if they go for a walk, does that naturally happen?
[00:20:35] Speaker B: It naturally, not to everyone, but for most couples. And this was in a different study. Actually, this study has been studied quite a lot, not just with our partners, but with anyone who walks together. When people walk together from an evolutionary standpoint, their cadence start to intertwine, they start to get in sync. So what we're saying through these over complex studies is that if you go walking with your partner, eight times out of ten, you will likely walk in sync with them. And these studies are saying that partners and people who are walking in sync, their bodies get in sync, and as a result, they'll be more empathetic, bond better and have a better rapport, and they'll feel closer to each other.
[00:21:15] Speaker A: That's very interesting. Okay. All right, so that's the second piece of evidence that supports why active dates are so powerful. So we've got the first bit, which was optical flow, the second, which is the power of being in sync with your partner. And the third reason is the chemicals that you release when you are being active. And we talk a lot. This is another thing like active dates. We bang on about the chemicals that you have power over in your own body that can support you to stay connected with your partner, that can support you to have deeper feelings of love towards them. And especially, we like to really talk about the fact that obviously, after that initial attraction you have to your partner, the chemicals you have access to easily, they change. You don't have those same big hitters you get at the front end for free when you meet someone you're attracted to. And so thinking about how you can get the chemicals to work for you, which we actually did a full episode on, do you remember which one it was, Rod.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: It was making the love. How to make the love drugs work for you.
[00:22:23] Speaker A: Okay. How to make the love drugs work for you. If you look that episode up, it actually goes into detail. But we'll just pull out four of the chemicals that you can influence through active dates. And the first one is serotonin. So when we share activities or enjoyable experiences, we release serotonin. And serotonin is such a great chemical or a great hormone because it's a mood stabilizer. So you can imagine in a relationship how powerful it is to have serotonin released and feel more stable in your mood, feel more emotionally stable in the longer term, and feel more attached to your partner in terms of being able to have deeper conversations with them. Second chemical, oxytocin. When we spend quality time together, which is what you're doing when you're on an active date, that is most certainly a quality time. It requires planning, it requires deliberate action. It requires you to be in close proximity to one another. That makes it quality time together. And this sort of shared social activity, that's a great way to release oxytocin. And most people will have heard of oxytocin. It is indeed the love chemical. And it helps to promote deeper conversations in a relationship because you do feel more connected and more bonded when you have higher levels of oxytocin.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: Yeah, and then we've got vasopressin. You've heard us talk about this before. This has been shown in research to be really important for men to bond, not only with just with other men, but definitely with their partners. You know, men. Men bond through going on quests, through working together, through achieving something. So if you say, babe, I want to go on a six k hike in the bush, or I want to go on a 4k walk to go get a coffee, or I want to go play tennis, I want to do it. That's going out, setting a goal and achieving it, and that helps mend bond. That's what really gets that vasopressin working. And of course, the other one, which all know is dopamine. When we sit there and flick on our phones and we doom scroll, that's triggering dopamine in our brain, but not in a good way. If you want to trigger dopamine in your brain in a good way, active dates is the way to go. Because what happens is when you go out there, when your body's moving, when you're having a great experience with your partner, when you're hitting an ace, or you're paddling out on the river, or you're just going and walking with a coffee and looking at the beautiful ocean or in the hills, or just some beautiful art together, because you're walking down one of the old streets, you trigger dopamine in your body and this sends pleasure. This is the pleasure chemical. And not only that, it's the pleasure chemicals that's your body telling, I like this, I want to do it again. And so it gives you that emphasis to go, hey, how good was that active date? When's our next one? Let's do this again.
[00:25:19] Speaker A: So really, what we're hoping that we've, that we've really helped explain today is what the science is behind active dates and why they really are so powerful. They, for us, are a very, very important tool in a healthy, successful relationship. We cannot emphasise them enough. And the beautiful thing of active dates are they're free. They're an easy, easy win. So anybody who's thinking about simple ways they'd like to get started with their partner in deepening their relationship, or even just simply starting by reconnecting. I hope that the science today has helped you to have enough faith and belief that it would be worth taking a walk with your partner sometime this week.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. If you think about what we went through, those three major scientific, those three.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: Pieces of science, three pieces of evidence.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: Those three pieces of evidence behind active dates. One, as you watch the world go by, your body calms down. The part of your brain, your body calms down.
As you walk with your partner, you start to get in sync with them. And when your bodies are in sync, you feel more empathy. And then you start to release chemicals in your body which make you feel good about what you're doing, good about your partner, and then make you want to do it again and again.
[00:26:43] Speaker A: Okay, rog, what's your gold nugget out of today?
[00:26:46] Speaker B: My gold nugget was for us.
We've been talking about active dates almost since this show started. It's something that you and I do all the time. I think probably, I'd say 75% of our dates are out and about in the world active. And don't worry, we love a pub lunch. We like a beer. We like a palmy or Palmer, wherever in Australia you are. But definitely when we added active dates to our repertoire, it was a big change in terms of our bonding and connectedness. And we didn't need the science to let us know that this was really important. And now we actually have some key scientific evidence behind it. So, big tick.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: I actually don't think we added them. I think we've been doing them forever. We even, way back when we used to train for marathons, it was a form of dating. We would spend a lot of time together out on the road, talking about life. And we may not have had the language around that or understood how powerful it was, but it was very powerful in bonding us and connecting us at that time.
[00:27:46] Speaker B: We're also carving out time for yourself, aren't you?
[00:27:48] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: Or each other.
[00:27:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, my favorite thing out of today's conversation was really understanding the depth of evidence behind active dates. It's not just as light as, oh, you feel good when you're out in nature, which is another benefit which we didn't even talk about. And that actually has a lot of science behind it. But there is real depth in terms of the power of active dates. This is not a tool to be glib about. It really is. It really can change the way that you engage with your partner. And again, it's free, it's super accessible, and I just really, really hope for everyone listening that they get out there and give it a go and see the benefits for themselves.
[00:28:35] Speaker B: You're amazing. You've just spent quality time on your relationship.
[00:28:39] Speaker A: Feel like you're on a roll. If you want more living the team life relationship insights and conversations, head over to kimandroj.com where you can find all the show notes as well as tons of other relationship goodies.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: And if you like today's episode, please hit subscribe or let another couple know where they can find us. It'll make them happy, and it'll make us really happy.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: Until next time, keep on living the team life.
