Feb. 16, 2025

Unraveling the Mysteries of Love and Relationships

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In this enlightening episode, we welcome Dr. Mark Hicks, an author, speaker, and relationship specialist, who shares his insights into the complexities of love and relationships. Join us as we explore the five essential components of love that can help anyone build healthy connections in all areas of life. Dr. Hicks discusses the importance of understanding grief, emotional connections, practicality, self-acceptance, and passion as foundational elements of love. Whether you're navigating personal relationships or professional ones, this episode is packed with valuable lessons to help you thrive.
Want to be a guest on Living the Dream with Curveball? Send Curtis Jackson a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1628631536976x919760049303001600

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome, um, to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. Uh, if you believe you can achieve.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, a, uh, show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today, we're going to be talking about relationships, as I am joined by author, speaker, ghostwriter, counselor, and relationship specialist, Dr. Mark Hicks. Mark's passion lies deep and unraveling the mysteries of relationships and figuring out what makes them tick. So we're going to be talking to him about his methods of unraveling relationships and figuring out how to tick.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So, Mark, thank you so much for joining me today.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Well, as you said, I am an author and a speaker and relationship, uh, coach, uh, because I really believe that relationships are the key to everything. And when I say relationships, I'm not just talking about our relationships at home, although that's very important and perhaps the most important thing. But we have relationships throughout our life, at work, in our neighborhoods, wherever we interact with people, wherever we can make connections. Those relationships are important. And in my book, I teach the five components of love that anybody can learn and practice to build healthy relationships in every area of life, at home, at work, and everywhere else. Because the key is understanding what love really is, what makes relationships work, and how to practice them. And it is a practice.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Love is a learned skill set.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>We all have the capacity to have love in our life, and many times we've learned a lot about love early in our life before we remember learning it.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>If we came from a healthy family, we probably learned a thing or two about love and relationships from that healthy family. But we still have things to learn. And so my passion is teaching people those components of love to understand what love is and how to practice them to build the kind of relationships they want. Even if they've come from a dysfunctional family, been through a divorce, gone through relationship trauma. Anyone can learn and practice the art of love.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Absolutely. So the art of love. What.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>What made you want to become a relationship specialist? And what is a relationship specialist?

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Well, what led me down this path is really threefold. One, I am a counselor. I have a master's degree in mental health counseling, where I've worked in clinics and hospitals and various other places. Uh, in the counseling world and in counseling, it's really all about relationships. Relationship with ourselves, relationship with others, with family, with work events, whatever is going on in our life. When we dig into the counseling World and how we help clients in counseling. It always comes back to that idea of relationships. At a counseling professor that would always say, what everyone is looking for is a life that matters and healthy relationships that last. And those are not two separate things. Those are two sides of the same road. We want that life that matters and healthy relationships that last. I also have a second track to my career as, uh, I work in spirituality and theology and ministry and mission work around the world.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>And in theology, what we deal with is, is relationships. Relationships with ourselves, relationships with others, relationships with God.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>The third track in my life was really my personal experience. I didn't always know what I know now.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>And early in my life, I had a toxic first marriage. It was a dreadful situation.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Uh, it hurt deeply. It left a lot of deep emotional scars in my life, and it ended in divorce. I still have those scars to prove that experience. And I came through that experience asking some really important questions, wondering, is love even possible? Is love just a fantasy that we hope for that isn't real in life? Can we really have love in our life? In a world where there is toxicity and there are abusive relationships, and it seems to be so hard sometimes, is it possible to build the kind of healthy relationships that we want? I didn't fully understand how to articulate those questions at the time, but I can look back now and see that those were the nagging things that were in my soul, in my mind at the time of how do we actually build healthy relationships coming out of such an unhealthy first marriage? And so that led me down the road as a counselor, as a theologian, and someone who has been through the hard knocks of relationships to come to a place in my life that I began to study and to learn and eventually to understand that yes, love does exist.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>It can be practiced, even if we've stumbled along the way or someone has hurt us along the way. And that we can understand and conceptualize love and relationships in these five components so that we can practice them.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>And so from that personal experience, from that, those emotional scars and from my professional life, I've developed this passion all.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Ah, right. Well, I know in your bio you talk about the five components of love and you really stress them. So talk to the listeners about what the five components of love are happy to.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>The first component of love is grief.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>And that one usually surprises people. When we talk about love and relationships, we, we maybe assume that the, the conversation is going to be about bubblegum and butterflies. Everything is sweet and beautiful. And we do get to that. That is Part of healthy relationships. But the reality is no one gets through life without scars. Life is difficult. That's not being pessimistic. There's great things about life, but there are going to be hardships along the way. And if we're not careful, we. Our natural reaction to those hardships can be to put up emotional barriers, to start keeping people at arm's length, to protect our heart, protect our mind, our soul, to try to protect ourselves from being hurt. Particularly if we have been through a toxic relationship or, uh, a, uh, difficult or dysfunctional family life or we've been hurt in some way. It's very easy to put up those barriers, thinking we're protecting ourselves.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>But what we are actually doing is building our own emotional prison where we can't connect with other people in order to build the kind of healthy relationships we actually want. And so one of the aspects, one of the foundational aspects of loving relationships and healthy connections is knowing how to grieve when life hurts you, when there are hardships in life, knowing how to get through that in a healthy way.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Because while grief is very painful, it's also a healer. Uh, it brings us to a place that we can go on in our life. Even if we can't fix what happened in the past, we can still go on to a good life. What I often say is that life is so painful, sometimes it's like it leaves a hole in our heart. But you can live a really good life with a hole in your heart. And that's what I want people to understand. That through the grief process, we can heal to a place that while we may always have emotional scars, we may always have that hole in our heart. We can go on to a good life with healthy, happy, thriving relationships. And the grief process is what gets us through that state of healing. Now, once we have that understanding and we can come back from the hurts of life, we can start building those emotional connections. And that is the bubble gum and butterflies. That is the sweet and beautiful part that we have those emotional contacts, those emotional connections that really bond us together, and that's throughout life. Now, obviously, the bond and the connection you're going to have with a spouse is different than what you would have with a coworker. But the foundational ideas of what it takes to build those relationships is the same. And we want to have those connections throughout our life. We obviously want them with our family. But even as we go to work and we work side by side, shoulder to shoulder, making a living and accomplishing the tasks that we have in our vocation that that's a bond in itself and we should enjoy working those people as much as possible. It's not always possible with everyone. But as much as possible we want to connect with them too and have those emotional connections where we can celebrate together and work together through the hardships.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>The balancing aspect of the emotional connection is the third component of love, which is practicality.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Emotion brings us together, practicality keeps us together. This is the decision making element of relationships that makes sound wise relationships on how to live together. Well, sometimes you may have heard someone say, I love them but I just can't live with them.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Those are people that have done really well making that emotional connection, the second component of love. But they failed in the third component, that practicality, that they haven't lived together well. They haven't made the decisions of how to do things in that relationship that work together. For instance, uh, as a couple that live together in the same household, you're going to have to make financial decisions. There's no one way to do that, but you have to work that out of how you're going to do that in your household. You have to make decisions about parenting perhaps, or how to run your household, who's going to do what chores to get things done around the house. It's also about taking care of yourself.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>If you have things like depression or anxiety, those things take a toll on us, but it also takes a toll on our relationships. And that's uh, those are treatable conditions. One of the practical aspects of building healthy relationships is getting help when we need it in order to take care of ourselves. And that might mean going to a doctor to take care of ourselves physically, but it also might mean help getting counseling or getting a coach or someone to help us on our emotional level in our mental state in order to live a healthy life and be our best in those relationships.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>That's a practical aspect too. Now the fourth component is acceptance, and this is twofold. First of all, we have to accept other people. We don't accept abuse. There is a line, there's a limit. No one was put on this earth to be abused, but no one's perfect.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>And so we're going to have to be accepting in our relationships. But even more important than that is being accepting of ourselves. Brene Brown has done some great research on this. Uh, other people have as well, but she's very noted for it. You cannot love other people more than you love yourself.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>It's not possible because love is organic. It's not a commodity like money.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Where you can. If you need more money, you can get a second job or take out a loan or borrow money from a friend, perhaps. Love is different. You can't acquire it. You have to grow it within you organically.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>It's something that we are. And as you have more love for yourself, you have greater capacity to love others. As you show more compassion, more care for yourself, you have more capacity to love others. So the fourth component of love is learning to love yourself. And finally, the fifth component is passion. And this is a passion for life. This is enjoying life and enjoying the people in our lives.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Now, we know life is serious, and that's why practicality is the third component of love. And we know life is difficult and there are hardships. That's why grief is the first component. But let's not forget that life can also be fun. We can enjoy life together. And this becomes the wind in our sails. This becomes the joy of life.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>And sometimes we get so caught up in trying to run a household, doing all the practical stuff, trying to love the right way, grieving the stuff of life, that we forget to just have fun together sometimes, as much as possible.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>We can't all the time. Life is going to be hard sometimes.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>But whenever possible, don't miss the chance to have fun with the people you love, the. The people you're connected with, both at home and at work, enjoy them and enjoy what you do as much as possible. So if you're able to grieve the difficulties of life and come back from those, if you're able to connect emotionally with people, if you're able to live a, uh, practical life of love, making good decisions to live together well, you love yourself first in order to love other people more, and you remember to enjoy life and live life with passion, you can build healthy relationships in every area of your life.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, speak to the listeners about the most misunderstood aspect of love.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>I think there's two of them. One is the grief element. I think people forget that one.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>A lot of people don't even understand what would grief have to do with love. But it is our comeback story.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>And sometimes we think those are very separate things. That love is on one side and grief is on the other side. They don't really interact. Grief is actually a very important part of laying the foundation to make emotional connections, to be able to tear down those emotional walls that we build to protect us and make the connections. A lot of people don't know that. They don't understand that. And it keeps them from making the connections in their Life. And then they wonder why. They wonder why am I not finding the love I want? And it may be from the hurt that we've had in the past.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Something has happened to us in the past that we've built these emotional walls that we don't even really understand. We have as we learned how to grieve, we can make the connections we actually really want. The second one that is most misunderstood, I think is loving yourself first. There is an idea that, well, of course I can love other people more than I love myself. I can be hard on myself, I can have this self loathing, I can beat myself up and then I can go home and just be completely loving with my family. You may think that, but are you really? If you've spent the entire day beating yourself down, criticizing yourself, uh, being harsh with yourself, living with a self loathing, and then you go home, are you really going to have healthy connections with your family? Most likely you're going to be critical of them too. There's going to be things that get on your nerves pretty quickly because you're just wore down from how you've spoken to yourself all day. When the kids get out of line, when you're spot, when your spouse says something, uh, absurd, you're going to fly off the handle.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>More, more likely to fly off the handle because you're just beat down. When we have show ourselves compassion, when we show ourselves love, we have a better capacity to connect with our families and our friends and have a stronger bond with them through the hurts of life. I think those are the two most misunderstood elements of the five components.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, let's talk about people who come from an abusive family. You know, a lot of times it seems that there is no love there.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>But can love be learned by people who come from an abusive and dysfunctional family?

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Absolutely it can. That's what really the five components are all about. Is making love a learned skill set? Not making it because it just is a learned skill set. If we came from a healthy family, we may have learned two or three or four of these components without even thinking, without even knowing. We learned them because we learned them from our family, but still there might be something missing.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>And this is how we conceptualize love and see which components do we have working for us and where might we be missing? A lot of people have a relationship, uh, and they think it we do.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Okay, but what's wrong? Well, maybe you're just missing one component and we, we can conceptualize that and work on that one component. Now in a dysfunctional family, you probably weren't taught very much of this. You probably weren't taught what a real emotional connection can be. You probably weren't taught about being practical in a relationship because a lot of dysfunctional families live in chaos. You probably weren't taught that you need to love yourself first because you were probably in an abusive family. You were probably criticized and put down, uh, a great deal and not built up the way, the way you need to be built up. And being in a dysfunctional and abusive family is certainly not fun. This is not a way, a place to learn passion. But all of those are learned skill sets.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>We can learn all of them. But I'll say if you came from a dysfunctional or abusive family, that first component is going to be critical to grieve that and to heal from that. And you will always have a hole in your heart because you came from that abuse. But you can live a really good life with a hole in your heart. I always go back to that. And the way to do that is to get help. We go to a doctor for our physical health. We go to a dentist for our teeth. We go to a mechanic if our car isn't running correctly. Why would we do anything less with our emotional and mental state, especially if we came from an abusive background. If people that, that said they love us and needed to love us, treated us in a way that was not loving and we came from an abusive background, treat that as if it were a physical illness. If it was a physical illness, you would go to a doctor. If you have abusive background, there are going to be emotional hardships from that. Go to a counselor, find a therapist, go to a relationship coach, find a life coach. Find someone that you can talk to and help you through that process of grief to get to a better place of healing where you can live that life of love that you deserve. You did not deserve to be, to be abused. No one deserves that. That was not right for someone to treat you in an abusive way. But that doesn't condemn you for your life. You can heal from that. You'll still have emotional scars, but you can still live that good life and practice love that you really do deserve in your life. So get the help you need.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, talk to the listeners about what you feel is the most important aspect of love.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>The most important one. It's hard to say. I think all of them are important. I think all five components have to be practiced. Um, and I think the most important one is the one that you're struggling with. There are some that are going to feel pretty natural.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Uh, for instance, some people make very natural emotional connections. They're emotional people, and it just comes naturally. Uh, but for other people, that's really hard, Particularly if you have been hurt before and you've got those emotional barriers. And it's a learned skill set for some people to be able to make those emotional connections. For some people, they really have to learn to say things like, I love you.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>While for other people it may come very natural. And so the most important one is the one you're struggling with. Because if it comes natural to you, if it is, uh, if it's something that, uh, that you learned from your family growing up and you have that component in place from an early age, then good, run with that one.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>But focus on learning the ones that you struggle with that really don't come natural to you. Beyond that, to be completely specific, I would say we really need to practice that fourth component of loving ourselves first. I think in our society that might be the one that is most neglected. Uh, and so I would say maybe for most people, that's the most important one, is that we really haven't learned to love ourselves, show compassion and love and understanding and care for ourselves. And it begins to show in our relationships. So for a lot of people, I would imagine, and the people I've worked with over the years, I've come to an understanding that that's probably the most important one for many, many people.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, talk about how trust and forgiveness is so important and such a vital part of love and relationships.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Yeah, forgiveness is going to be crucial because people are going to make mistakes. Now, there's an important aspect to this. We have to understand what forgiveness is. Uh, and what I always tell people is that we need to understand that. That forgiveness is a choice that we make to not seek revenge, even not even in our imagination. We don't seek revenge in real life.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>We don't set out to destroy people, hurt people, even if they deserve it. But we also don't seek to destroy them in our imagination because that just wears us down. Some people will outwardly show compassion and forgiveness and say, I'm not going to hurt you, even if it's in my power to. Even if you deserve it, I'm not going to destroy you. But in their minds, they ruminate on what they could do to that person, what they would like to do to that person, how they could hurt that person and get even with that person for what they did. That takes a terrible toll on us. Uh, someone once said it's attributed to many different people. Mark Twain for one. Uh, but it was said that anger and bitterness and, and hatred are like poison or like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. That ruminating on how we could hurt someone is a poison to us in our emotional state. It takes a toll on our physical state.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>And that needs. We got to get past that.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>We have to make the choice that we're not going to harm m them in real life and we're not going to harm them in our imagination. However, the. There's a second, completely separate aspect to forgiveness. Once we make that choice that we're not going to harm them in reality or in our imagination. The second aspect is we get to choose whether or not we continue a relationship with that person. Some relationships need to end. It doesn't mean that we're unforgiving because when we forgive, we're making the choice not to harm them again in reality or in our imagination, we don't harm them. But that doesn't mean we have to reconcile. Forgiveness does not require reconciliation. We.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Sometimes we have to set a boundary. Sometimes we have to.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>To end certain relationships. And that comes as a surprise to some people because they expect me as a counselor, as a uh, theologian, as uh, a relationship coach to always say that we need to make every relationship work. I would love to see that happen. I believe every relationship theoretically can work if we practice these components of love and learn what love is and how to practice it. It's theoretically possible. But in reality there are some pretty.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>There are some pretty toxic people out there. There are some abusive people out there. And we were never meant to be abused. And so some relationships do have to end. Ending a relationship is not unforgiveness. When we choose to not retaliate, to not destroy them, to not harm them. In reality, in our imagination, we are practicing forgiveness. It is a completely separate choice and a practical choice whether or not we continue that relationship. We do not. We are not required to reconcile when we forgive.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>What Tell the listeners about any upcoming projects that you're working on that we need to be aware of.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Well, my book actually comes out in June of 2025 as we record this now, uh, we are in the, the area of pre sales. The uh, the pre orders are available at Barnes and Nobles on Amazon. Other places. Uh, and so uh, you can go to my website markahicks.com make sure you get my middle initial in there. My last name is h I c k s hicks markahicks.com I have easy links to uh, pre Order my book.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>So if these five components of love sound like they may be helpful to you, I go into a lot of detail, a lot of uh, teaching and instruction and how to's and all of these things on how to make these things work in your life. And so you can pre order the book@markahicks.com you can also get my free ebook the Five Components of Love, where I briefly give an overview of these five components as I have today. So you'll have sort of a, uh, uh, a transcript, a little bit of what I've said about these five components of love that's completely free on my website. There's also a contact form there. Uh, I'm available for speaking engagements, for workshops, uh, for coaching.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>And so if I can be of service, please contact, contact me through my website. Please go to marques.com it's all available.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>There it is. So close us out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on or uh, any final thoughts you have for the listeners.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Well, I will just emphasize something we have already touched on, but I want everyone to understand that love is a learned skill set. I always go back to that. It may seem overwhelming at first if you've been through tough times, but love is a learned skill set. You deserve to have healthy, happy, thriving relationships in your life. And there is a way to do it and I would love to be of help to get help you get there.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>All right, ladies and gentlemen, mark a hicks.com jump on that website.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Get the book when it comes out. Check out everything that Mark's up to. Please be sure to follow rate, review Share this episode to as many people as possible. Jump on your favorite podcast app. Leave us a follow.

00:27:01.521 --> 00:27:19.834
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Share the show. Get everybody you know to check it out. If you have any guest or suggestion topics. Curtis Jackson1978t.net is the place to send them. Thank you for listening and supporting the show, Dr. Hicks. Thank you for all that you do and thank you for joining us.

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> Dr. Mark Hicks>Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>For more information on um, the Living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurve.comballcom until next time, stay focused on living the dream Dream.