Why any of this exists.
The Spark
My parents divorced when I was 13.
For decades since, I’ve been obsessed with what shapes human experience — committed to finding and understanding what people actually need in order to thrive together. Identities, beliefs, values, emotions, communication, energy, sexuality, nutrition, environmental design, healing, martial arts, NLP, bodywork, money, seven kinds of intimacy.
I was looking for what would have held my parents’ marriage together. What they didn’t see, hear, feel, and understand that would have allowed them to thrive together as they dreamed they could.
And any significant relational breakdown you’ve experienced is evidence to me that learning to thrive together is worthy of our best attention.
The Yin & Yang
The yin yang dance of our parents is how we came to be.
None of us arrived any other way.
Similarities are resources for comfort. Differences can be resources for growth, creativity, and humor — and differences are the source of all innovation.
So I stopped treating them as opposites.
- heart flowbiz focus
- givingreceiving
- directioncreativity
- consciousnessaliveness
Not one or the other. Better together.
The Attraction Codes
Everything I learned eventually sorted itself into three.
- Attraction Code
- Energy and polarity, attention and presence, body language and play.
- Intimacy Code
- Empathy, relational communication, holding space for each other.
- Partnership Code
- Gifting, devotion and commitment, shared vision.
They aren’t stages you graduate from. They overlap, and the overlaps are what feeds joy.
If you’ve been to Connection Dojo, you’ve already practiced one of them. Relational Communication sits inside the Intimacy Code — the art of receiving, and being received, well.
Joseph P. Faust — founder of ConnectionWest.com, LoveCampus.com and DomainNametag.com, author of the Attraction Codes™ (a.k.a. the Three Love Codes), and co-author of the SelfCare Kit™.