There are conversations that inform, and then there are conversations that reorient. This one, for me, was the latter. In this episode of Together We Rise, I sat down with Steven Goldhar -a transformational coach, educator, and certified Healthy Love teacher to explore something deceptively simple and profoundly radical: how we learn to love well.
Not as an abstract ideal, not as a romantic aspiration but as a practice, something we train, strengthen, and return to again and again. Steven has been a profound guide in my life, especially during the lonely, disordered moments that require a level of faith and care.
Love as a Muscle We’ve Forgotten How to Use
I opened our conversation with a question that had been quietly living in me for some time:
If love were a muscle we’ve forgotten how to use, what daily micro-workouts would you prescribe to strengthen it?
Steven’s response was immediate and precise. At the centre of healthy love, he explained, is self-awareness, the capacity to pause, observe, and notice what is happening within us before we react. Self-awareness behaves like a muscle. It isn’t something we either “have” or “don’t have”. It strengthens through use.
At first, we don’t notice ourselves in the moment. We notice after the fact, the tightening in the body, the regret in the words spoken too quickly, the sense that something has moved us further from connection rather than closer to it. And yet, even this “after-awareness” is progress. Catching ourselves after the moment is how the muscle begins to build. Steven spoke about journalling these moments, not as self-criticism, but as a gentle imprinting, a signal to the nervous system that we want to remember. Much like recalling dreams, awareness returns more readily when we honour it with attention. Over time, something remarkable happens:
We begin to notice ourselves before the eruption.
The pause arrives.
Choice becomes possible (often through curiosity)
Emotional Intelligence Is Not Conceptual — It’s Relational
From here, our conversation naturally moved into emotional intelligence, a term that is often celebrated, but rarely embodied. Steven articulated it, it is not learned from books alone. It is cultivated through lived relationship: with ourselves first, and then with others. It requires us to distinguish between:
the part of us that is reacting, and
the part of us that can relate to that reaction.
When we lack this separation, we become the emotion.
When we have it, we can ask better questions:
What is this part trying to protect?
What does it need?
Who do I want to be in this conversation?
This is why Healthy Love is described as emotional and relational education. Without awareness, there is nothing to relate to. With it, even difficult emotions become intelligible messengers rather than destructive forces.
The Hidden Ingredient in Long-Term Love
I asked Steven what he sees, behind the scenes of many relationships, that is most misunderstood. His answer was layered and quietly confronting:
We are only as healthy in relationship as our awareness of the strategies we’ve developed to get our needs met.
Blame.
Withdrawal.
Control.
Numbing.
People-pleasing.
Anger.
These are not moral failings. They are adaptive responses learned early, often unconsciously, in environments where our needs were not fully met or mirrored. Without awareness, these strategies run the relationship. With awareness, they become something we can hold, question, and soften. Curiosity, Steven noted, is as essential as awareness. Curiosity replaces the need to be right. It creates space for wonder about ourselves, and about the inner world of the person in front of us.
Forgiveness, Time, and the Compassion to Become Who We Are Becoming
One of the most moving parts of our conversation was around forgiveness particularly self-forgiveness (see it as a self-Ho’oponopono). Steven shared how, through structured reflection and story work, he came to see that many past choices could not realistically have been different, given the awareness and resources available at the time. This realisation doesn’t remove responsibility but it dissolves cruelty. It allows us to see our lives as unfolding intelligences rather than a series of failures to correct.
With awareness, we move from being life-driven reacting, avoiding pain, chasing safety to becoming choice-makers, able to respond from values, needs, and a clearer sense of self.
Is There Such a Thing as Healthy Anger?
Later in the conversation, we turned towards anger, one of the most misunderstood emotions in love. Steven spoke candidly about growing up in environments where anger was suppressed or disallowed, despite being a core human emotion.
Anger, when met with awareness rather than shame, becomes informative.
It tells us where boundaries have been crossed. It signals unmet needs.
It carries energy, not for harm, but for clarity. The question is not whether anger exists in healthy love. It’s whether we have the capacity to hold it consciously, rather than letting it speak for us unfiltered.
Love Beyond Romance and Into the World
As the conversation widened, we explored how the principles of Healthy Love translate beyond intimate relationships into friendships, families, leadership, and even corporate life. Emotional intelligence, presence, and relational awareness are not “soft skills”. They are foundational capacities for trust, collaboration, and integrity.
Steven and I also reflected on the future: how technology, AI, and global uncertainty may shape the next generation’s relationship to intimacy and why embodied relational skills will only become more essential, not less.
A Living Practice
What stayed with me most after this conversation is the reminder that love is not something we master once and for all. It is something we practice.
In small moments, pauses and noticing when we’ve missed ourselves and returning gently.
Steven Goldhar’s work reminds us that healthy love is not about perfection.
It’s about presence, awareness, and the courage to stay connected to ourselves and to one another even when it’s uncomfortable.
I hope you feel that transmission in this conversation as deeply as I did.
How to contact Steven Goldhar and find out more about his work:
https://healthylove.thinkific.com/courses/healthy-love-sessions
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