In this episode, your host, Leandra Costa, talks with Relationships Done Different Facilitator Dr. Imene Benzamouche about re-prioritising your relationships. Imene grew up without a model of a joyful relationship and found herself resisting the idea of relationships. As an unmarried woman, she faced a lot of judgment in her community. Through addressing her own personal judgments, going into allowance, and rediscovering joy, she transformed not only her relationships but her entire life. Key points from this episode’s conversation Having Drama in Relationships Choosing Relationships Done Different Melting Your Judgments Not choosing a relationship in a community that considers it a must Going to Allowance How to get to a place of clarity about your choices Choose a joyful life Easy ways to find joy What energies do you want in your life? You have to be the priority.  Having Drama in Relationships Imene’s life was dramatic before she found Relationships Done Different. She had a conflict, in that she always gave amazing advice to people and had a really good perspective on relationships, but found it difficult to follow her own advice. Whether it was with family, friends, romantic partners, or business partners, relationships were always a little bit hard. She didn’t know how to deal with people, how to be, or what she wanted. Choosing Relationships Done Different Relationships Done Different was one of the classes Imene resisted. She convinced herself there was no resistance, but class after class would go by without her signing up, and eventually she realized that she wasn’t choosing it. This was terrifying because she recognized she was going to have to look at where she was right and wrong in relationships. She had perspectives that she couldn’t apply to this reality according to her point of view, because she thought she was so right and at the same time believed she was so wrong. Finally, she asked, “Okay, what would my life be like if I actually chose this?” And she felt a sense of relief and expansiveness. So the next class, she was there! Melting Your Judgments The class brought about so much change within Imene and within all her relationships. She started seeing how the relationships in different periods of her life - especially those with her parents - had affected her relationships with men and women in the present. Facilitated by peoples’ questions in class and using the tools and the manual,  she looked at what she had hidden from herself. Her judgments on relationships melted away and she started discovering how and what she actually wanted as her life and her relationships. Her whole life, not only her relationships, changed.  Not choosing a relationship in a community that considers it a must Imene faced a lot of judgment as she is from an Arab background and being unmarried at thirty is not accepted in her community. Growing up in this landscape, she didn’t have a model of a joyful relationship and the relationships she looked at were not very appealing. When she asked herself what she actually liked in a relationship, whether she wanted kids, whether she wanted to be married, or whether she even wanted to commit or not, it didn’t sound joyful for her. Not only was she being judged, but she was also judging the relationships she was seeing. Going to Allowance Imene used to feel resistance to others’ point of view, because she didn’t know what she wanted and what her point of view was. As she started getting over the rightness and wrongness of being or not being married, she realized it was just choice. When you get to the space of acknowledging that everything is just a choice and you don’t have to choose something just because it is the accepted thing to do, you can go to Allowance.  For example, people used to pray for Imene to find a husband, and eventually she recognized that they were saying what they were saying from what they thought was a place of