Conscious Relationships: From Shy Nice Guy to 44 Years of Love with Geoff Laughton

Conscious relationships are built, not found, and Geoff Laughton has spent 33 years proving it. In this first segment of the Reignite Resilience Podcast's conversation with internationally bestselling author and relationship coach Geoff Laughton, cohosts Natalie Davis and Pamela Cass sit down with the man behind Instant Insights on Building a Conflict-Proof Relationship and Built to Last to hear the origin story behind one of the most compelling love stories you will ever encounter on a podcast. 

Before Geoff became the wildly respected relationship and men's work coach he is today, he was a painfully shy young man from the Bay Area with a psychology degree, a 15-year corporate career that took him from technical writer to Chief Operations Officer, and a pattern of attracting the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. By the time he was near 300 pounds, bedridden with a back injury at 34, and hit with a panic attack in the middle of a board of directors meeting, he knew something had to change, and it was more than just his weight. 

This segment traces Geoff's journey from the moment he recognized himself as the common denominator in a string of devastating relationships, through a three-year sabbatical where he rebuilt his relationship with himself, and into the serendipitous, fumbling, hot-chocolate-spilling beginning of his 44-year marriage to Sarah. Their love story did not begin with perfect circumstances. Their parents disapproved. The age gap raised eyebrows. The spiked punch, the birthday party, the broken-up-with-girlfriend, none of it was smooth. What it was, was real. And Geoff knew it the moment Sarah went out of her way to make him feel okay after he covered her in hot chocolate on their first date. 

This episode is for anyone who has ever been the nice guy or the people-pleaser in relationships, anyone who has ever recognized a pattern and wondered how to break it, and anyone who wants to understand what it actually takes to build love that lasts. 

In This Episode: 

• How 15 years in corporate, rising from technical writer to COO, left Geoff bedridden, anxious, and finally ready to change 
• The pattern Geoff kept repeating in relationships and the three-year solo sabbatical that helped him break it 
• What therapy, group work, and learning to be alone taught him about finding his mojo before finding his person 
• The serendipitous, deeply unglamorous story of how Geoff and Sarah found each other, and almost didn't 
• Why the moment Sarah made him feel okay after spilling hot chocolate on her was the moment Geoff knew she was the one 

Whether you are doing the work on yourself or looking for the framework to build something that lasts, this conversation is the place to start. 

Connect with Geoff Laughton: 🌐 https://yourrelationshiparchitect.com/ 🌐 https://theundauntedman.com/ 📚 Instant Insights on Building a Conflict-Proof Relationship. Available now 📚 Built to Last: Designing and Maintaining a Loving, Lasting, and Passionate Relationship. Available now 

Connect with Reignite Resilience: 🌐https://reigniteresilience.com/📘 Facebook | 📸 Instagram 🗓️  

Reignite Live 2027- January 22, 2027 | Casa Sagrata, Loveland, Colorado. Geoff Laughton is a featured speaker. Tickets available now. 

Subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who is ready to do the work.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 3:06

All of us reach a point in time where we are depleted and need to somehow find a way to reignite the fire within. But how do we spark that flame? Welcome to Reignite Resilience, where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. We'll discuss the art of reigniting our passion and strategies to stoke our enthusiasm. And now here are your hosts, Natalie Davis and Pamela Cass.

SPEAKER_03 3:42

Welcome back to another episode of Reignite Resilience. I am your co-host Natalie Davis and so excited to be back with all of you today. And truly excited because I'm not having tech issues, but I'm afraid to say it before we get too far into the episode. But of course, joining me is your co-host Pam Cass. Hello, Pam. How are you?

SPEAKER_02 4:01

You can't like put that out into the into the universe because our last interview, you got like thrown off, and then we were less. I don't know what happened.

SPEAKER_03 4:11

I I literally got kicked out of the call twice, I think. We it was the third time that we were able to actually get the episode recorded. And so I've taken all of the appropriate steps. I feel like the only windows that I need open are open, but I'm feeling good today.

SPEAKER_02 4:29

Well, we're putting that positive energy out there because, like when you and I both got on at first, we were like, man, this Monday has been Mondaying all day long. Yeah. Just yes. Come on. Come on. Is it done yet? We're like, is the week over yet?

SPEAKER_03 4:44

Is it over yet? Where am I?

SPEAKER_02 4:45

Where am I? That's yeah. Oh my gosh. We are we are here. We are in this moment and so excited to have a special guest with us, somebody that we both know. And so it's it's kind of fun to dive into a little bit of this. And so I'm gonna jump in and introduce if that's okay. Fabulous. Okay, awesome. So today we have joining us Jeff. He is a wildly respected relationship and men's work coach. He is the author of the internationally best-selling books, Plural, Instant Insights on Building a Conflict-proof relationship, and built to last, designing and maintaining a loving, lasting, and passionate relationship. He's also co-written three other books on relationship dynamics. For 33 years, he's been guiding couples and individuals in designing and building the conscious, spirit-led relationships and life they truly desire. Welcome, Jeff. It is so fantastic to have you here outside of where I know you from, just to kind of learn a little bit about your story. And I had the honor of being at a weekend retreat with you. I think it was on a weekend, Unshakable Love. Yep. And you had your incredible partner with you. And just watching the dynamics and the relationship of the two of you going through that weekend was one of the most beautiful things I've ever witnessed. And it's something that I think if other people could have the honor of witnessing, they'd be like, that's what I want. I want that kind of deep connection with another human. So I would love to hand it off to you for you to kind of share, I guess, your journey before your marriage, and then kind of jump into what's gotten you to where you are today.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Well, thank you for the lovely intro. It just made me think, God, I gotta get to work. I should be doing some things, right? Before my time rungs out. All right. Before love, before meeting my wife, Sarah, I grew up in the Bay Area, and I had actually, like probably a lot of people that you two talked to, and maybe you yourself, have done corporate career, worked in the corporate world for 15 years after getting a, you know, really practical degree in psychology. And I had every intention of becoming a therapist. And when I got out of school, I wanted a little breather. Because, like a lot of people, I think in my generation, I was on the six-year plan for getting out of college. And I just wanted a breather before grad school, make a little money, start paying off student loans, all that. Through sheer serendipity, I got a job in the corporate world as a technical writer and editor, and that turned out to be great for a while. And after a few years of doing that, I was ready to do some other things. And I got involved in project management and all of this in a field that, you know, you would never expect a psychology graduate to get a job in, which was engineering. So I was the non-engineering person in the engineering and environmental consulting world. And over time, I just kept finding jobs for myself. You know, I've I've been a slacker my whole life. And I just decided, you know, I'm bored. What else could I do? And so by the time I wrapped up my corporate life, I'd gone from being a technical writer to being a chief operations officer for two multimillion dollar firms, consulting firms. And that was fine, but it really something wasn't working very well for me in it. And I really didn't know what initially. And by the time I got to, you know, being uh near 300 pounds and to really acknowledging that I was a workaholic, something had to shift. And I'll backtrack in a minute to how I met Sarah. But when my corporate career ended, we were already together, and that helped hasten the process of getting out. But I just had a physical breakdown because carrying all that extra weight, backs are not designed to carry all that kind of extra weight. So my back went out, I was bedridden for near a month, and I was only 34 when that happened. So when you're lying around and you have you can't move, you're in pain all the time, you have to suffer other indignities that being bedridden create. You know, I kind of thought, hmm, I think I probably need to get my shit together, but what what is it that needs to be brought together? And so that really began a whole I lost all the weight. That took me a year, and I really thought that was the only problem. And so I went back to work and I was doing my normal workaholic stuff. I just looked more fabulous than I had previously. And what ended up happening was I started getting anxiety attacks. Perfect. We're talking about resilience, because I don't know if you two have ever gone through one of those. They're awful. No warning. And when the final one hit me in the middle of a board of directors meeting where I was presenting to the board, I had one just nearly incapacitated me. Humiliating, embarrassing, but it was the wake-up call that you know I knew I needed to do more than lose weight. I had to deal with whatever I didn't know was waiting to be dealt with. So that really began a journey that now that was three, four years ago, I'm still on, which is constantly working on myself, developing myself, growing myself. And I just, you know, if you guys remember the early 90s, that was peak time for all kinds of amazing transformational work. I just was a total fiend for anything that was going to get me out of my suffering, teach me something, and grow me. So I really got heavily involved in different kinds of workshops. I got my first coach in '94, and that was at a time when life coaching was not really even a thing yet. And I just took to all that like a duck to water. And that really got me like, all right, I have to get out of corporate. This is not where I meant to be. And doing that work the first couple of years, I really got to see that what I think originally drove me into psychology when I was in college. Was one, I love listening to people. Two, I like helping people, go figure. And, you know, I had a coach once who told me, if you're having trouble figuring out what you want to be when you grow up, look at what you loved when you were four. Hmm. All right. Well, I'm too young for Spider-Man, and I was too little to run a train engine because I was really in the trains when I was four. But when I was an adult and I heard that, and I look back from the time I was about five or six years old, I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandmother. I grew up with a single mom. And so her mom took care of me a lot. And she used to have friends over, and I always referred to them as, oh, my grandma's old lady friends. I am older now than any of the It does it doesn't apply, Jeff.

SPEAKER_03 13:57

It's not the same. It's not the same, not the thing.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

Yeah, there's there's definitely humility will find you. So I loved sitting around and listening to these older women talk, and I would occasionally either have a great question, or I would just ask what came off the top of my head and say something, and they would often be impressed with wow, what a great question. Or, wow, we've never thought of that. So that began the whole coaching journey that's been going on ever since. So now to go back to your original question, I think like any young man that was, you know, from teenage years on, I found myself, you know, hard pressed. I was very shy, really, really shy. I'm still kind of shy. I've just learned how to cover it up. So I was not comfortable around girls, didn't know my way around how to be a smooth operator. And so luckily for me, my first ever relationship was a girl that I was an altar person. Back then, they called them altar boy. I'm being metaphysically correct now. So I found this girl that was also working in our church services, and she came up to me one day when I was 16 and said, Hi, I'm you know, Katie, and I'd love to go out with you. And for a long time I joked that if that hadn't have happened, I would have probably been the 40-year-old virgin. So I found that I had this pattern that developed, and this will lead to Sarah and I. I developed this pattern of being the perfect knight in shining armor. And I tended to attract girls that were very pretty and very insecure and had pretty dysfunctional home lives, as did I. So, what better qualifications to help a damsel in distress figure out how to get through her stuff? So, in the course of doing that, I found that I was meant for longer-term relationships. I never had a relationship that was under a couple years, you know, from 16 until I was about 21. And the pattern would be they would really feel great about themselves. And then they would dump me for the bad boy. Yeah, for like, what the fuck? I couldn't. And I mean, I wish I knew then what I've learned since, right? But I decided after the last one, which was probably the most devastating relationship I had ever been in, I mean, just destroyed my heart and took every bit of confidence that I had and threw it right out the window. I did finally figure out, well, I'm the common denominator. I have to figure out I'm creating this. Why am I creating it? What's the point? So I took a three-year sabbatical from dating sex women, just moved up to San Francisco, found a housem, and just worked. And you know, really had to learn how to be comfortable with myself and not to get to a place where I would never need a woman. I wanted to want one. And that was a big, big deal to figure out. So when all this happened, that was 21 to 24. So when I was 24, I started dating this young lady who I had gone to college with, and it didn't take me very long to realize, hmm, well, I mean, it's nice to kind of get back in the swing of things, but something wasn't feeling right. And my mom had an employee working for her at that time. Her name was Sarah, and I had gone to my mom's office to just say hi. She introduced me to Sarah. Hi, yeah, didn't think a thing of her. Yeah, pretty, cute, but I had a new girlfriend. I wasn't in the market, and I won't go into the long story about how, in my view, now, the universe just brought us together enough times where the fourth time that we had bumped into each other or had been at a similar event, I went with her to this housewarming party of her current boyfriend. And she didn't know that the punch was spiked. She drove. I never even thought of I could drive her home. I just thought, oh my god, I've got to get her sober so she can get me home so that by the way, I'd be home in time to hang out with my girlfriend that was driving up to spend the weekend with me. Still not believing I'm a smooth operator. We're looking at now.

SPEAKER_03 19:42

I have a little you were juggling, all the balls were in the air. I mean, that was I didn't know.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Homeboy had a little game. It was Yeah. And so I gotta figure out how do I get her sober enough to be able to drive us back. So we spent about two hours sitting outside. This was in the Bay Area, and it was December, but cold outside, and that there was my amazing thinking. I'll freezer in the sobriety, and we started talking. And I'm like, who is this woman? And I'm just getting, I mean, I again very shy, not super open, and I'm just telling sharing stuff, she's sharing stuff, and I'm realizing this is one of the nicest human beings I've ever met. And I was really drawn. I started noticing, hmm. So I get back, I have my weekend with my girlfriend, and I invited Sarah to come in January, you know, like a month later, come to my 24th birthday party. And she came, she brought, you know, at this age, all of my gifts were albums and bongs and papers and pipes.

unknown 21:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Now I don't want anybody to get the wrong idea. It's not like I was a huge stoner, but yeah, I could go there. And so Sarah comes to the door looking amazing, and she gives me a birthday gift that was a beautiful salmon colored dress shirt with a cable knit tie that went perfectly with that, you know, like for work.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

And I was so like, wrong, a really great outfit. You know? There's something she sees about me that I'm not seeing.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

And you know, one thing I would always tell people that are looking for a great relationship, you want someone who sees things in you that you don't see in you, and vice versa. Yeah. So I notice I'm spending all that time at the party more with her than with my girlfriend. Oh. And so I'm feeling guilty, and I realize I want to go after this woman. This is the one that's the one for me. Yeah. And so in atypical, if either of you have ever heard of the book No More Mr. Nice Guy, I was a textbook nice guy.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

And I really had to go. I I broke up with my girlfriend that night, never heard from her again, which I had coming. And I started going after Sarah. And she had been divorced, she was married twice to the same man. And had a when I met her, her son was eight. So here I am, 24, beginning my corporate career, and I'm falling in love with a woman with an eight-year-old. That didn't fit my picture. And but when I told my mom, I'm gonna go after her, my mom said, Don't even think about it. Healing. Which I don't know about you, Natalie. I know Pam has sons. You never tell a son, don't do this. That's like guaranteed. Oh yeah? Just watch me. But I said, why? And she said, because you're too young for her. Exactly. Hmm. Because I really genuinely thought she was my age or maybe a year younger. And I said, How old is she? And she said, She's about to turn 35. And she has a kid. So anybody who ever, like in my generation, there were two movies when I was growing up. One was The Graduate, and another one was called Summer 42. And they were both about teenage boys, horny teenage boys who get seduced by older women. So I am like, as soon as my mom told me that, my private thought was, well, mom, you're screwed. I'm going for it.

SPEAKER_03 24:47

Yeah, you know I guess it's perfect. Doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

Yeah, exactly. You know, it's everything you can hope for. And Sarah was very clear. I enjoy being With you and yep, I'll go on a date with you. I don't want anything serious. I just got divorced. I'm not great. Okay. My little Machiavellian mind is all right. Yep, I can hang. I'm patient. And so this will be the probably the last detail about the beginning that I would offer you two. We go to dinner, and then we're gonna go to a movie after. We both like movies. So we're at this little underground kind of pub cafe type place, and I wasn't a drinker, she wasn't a drinker, so I order hot chocolate. Now I want you to picture this very beautiful dark-haired, brown-eyed woman wearing a cream-colored dress and blouse with her kind of darkish brown suit, business suit. And I'm like Mr. Suabe, and I take a sip of my hot chocolate, it goes down the wrong pipe.

SPEAKER_03 26:14

And immediately comes back up.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

It does. Oh over Sarah's suit and cream-colored gloves.

SPEAKER_03 26:26

Oh no. All right.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

So to say that I wanted to crawl under a hole would be a gross understatement. I'm just mourning. I mean, I'm sure it was like, you know, freeze frame. Yeah. And how how do I deal with this?

unknown 26:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

And and this was the moment where I really knew, yeah, I'm gonna love this woman, and probably for the rest of my life, because she went out of her way to make me feel okay about it.

SPEAKER_03 27:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

And I had never had that experience. And it was so I mean, she was so charming and so kind, even was willing to go to the movie with the remnants of my hot chocolate. And from there on, it was just other than a brief little detour about a year in when I met her mom and dad for the first time, who could only imagine a young boy like me being interested in a grown-ass woman who had gone through two divorces. The only thing I could be after was her car.

SPEAKER_03 27:43

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Because I didn't have a car. So they really put the pressure on her to get out of it. And she did. She broke up with me about nine or ten months in. I was devastated, but I moved back up into my place in the Hayde Ashbury neighborhood. And I licked my wounds, and I thought, well, okay, valuable learning. And I also had this old habit of wanting to be friends with ex-girlfriends. So after a few months, I sent her a card, no internet back then. Hope you're well. If you're ever up in the neighborhood, it'd be great to go grab a cup of tea. And I hope you're okay. So a mutual friend of ours told me that she was going through a health crisis. I wrote her a card wishing her the best. And she got through it okay. And I said, Well, why don't you come up and, you know, come over and have dinner? And honest to God, ladies, I really don't think I had an ulterior motive. I just genuinely, I mean, I felt I was over her. So I make dinner, which, if you knew my culinary capabilities, that I made anything other than peanut butter and jelly was a major miracle thanks to the I Hate to Cookbook. And I made her dinner. She shows up at my door, I open the door, I'm in tears, she's in tears. We're in bed five minutes later, and we haven't been apart in the 44 come on year since.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

Oh. Thank you for joining us today on the Reignite Resilience podcast. We hope you had some aha moments and learned a few new real life ideas to fuel the flames of passion. Please subscribe on your favorite streaming platform, like or download your favorite episodes, and of course, share with your friends and family. We look forward to seeing you again next time on Reignite Resilience.