Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - Confidence Classic: Break Toxic Relationship Patterns with Jillian Turecki, Bumble Relationship Coach & Product Advisor

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Are you tired of being stuck in the same toxic relationship patterns, wondering why love always seems to slip through your fingers? Renowned Relationship Coach, Jillian Turecki, is here to empower you to realize getting what you want out of your relationships STARTS WITH YOU. We get real about self-worth, and breaking those toxic cycles we all get stuck in. Jillian dropped some serious truth bombs about why we keep repeating the same relationship patterns and how it all starts with understanding ourselves. She'll challenge you to stop playing the victim, take radical accountability, and learn to be the chooser in your own love story. If you've ever felt stuck in relationships or wondered why you can't seem to get it right, this episode is going to be a game-changer.  In This Episode You Will Learn About:  How to reflect on your patterns and REWRITE the stories holding you back from LOVE and CONNECTION. Ways to own your role in relationships and focus on what YOU can change to CREATE the connection you want. Learn to communicate with confidence to express your needs to build AUTHENTIC and lasting bonds. Discover ways to BUILD your self-worth daily. Resources + Links Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/monahan Download the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning at NetSuite.com/MONAHAN. Want to do more and spend less like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic? Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com/MONAHAN. Get 10% off your first Mitopure order at timeline.com/CONFIDENCE. Get 15% off your first order when you use code CONFIDENCE15 at checkout at jennikayne.com. Call my digital clone at 201-897-2553!  Visit heathermonahan.com Sign up for my mailing list: heathermonahan.com/mailing-list/  Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com  If you haven't yet, get my first book Confidence Creator Follow Heather on Instagram & LinkedIn Jillian @jillianturecki

A lot of women and men again will do this too, but a lot more women will silence what their needs are. Let me try to be cool. Let me go with the flow. Let me be a pleaser. Let me be a nurture because everything is like, I want you to choose me. I want you to pursue me. I want to be like that fairy tale. And nothing could be further from the truth of what reality is. And that is you have to be the one who is direct and forward about what it is that you want You are to be the one who is also choosing and you are gonna become much more attractive to many more people When you actually assume that role, I'm on this journey with me each week when you join me You're going to chase down our goals overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow

down our goals, overcome adversity, and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my closeup. Tell me, have you been enjoying these new bonus confidence classics episodes we've been dropping on you every week? We've literally hundreds of episodes for you to listen to. So these bonuses are a great way to help you find the ones you may have already missed.

I hope you love this one as much as I do. I'm ready to see you. I'm ready for my close-up. Hi, and welcome back. I'm so glad you're back with me this week. Okay, you are gonna love our guest and our conversation today, so get ready for it. Jillian Turecki is a renowned relationship coach,

teacher, author, and host of the podcast, Jillian on Love. Fueled by an insatiable curiosity about what makes relationships thrive, Jillian has helped thousands over the last 20 years through her teachings, courses, and writings to revolutionize their relationship with themselves so that they transform their romantic relationships. Jillian has sought out for her compassionate, direct, and very authentic style of coaching, teaching, and writing. Jillian, thank you so much for being here today. Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Okay, so let's get right to it. I have lots of people on the show that I'm not necessarily familiar with or a fan of. However, I am a fan of your social, like a maniac and now your new book. And you speak so directly to me and obviously millions of others.

But I am definitely a person who has struggled with relationships her whole entire life. And there's something about the way you approach things. I don't know what it is, but you've got to hear this from so many different people. What is it? What is your secret sauce? I don't know.

I think I just really understand the mind of people and a lot of women especially who are really great people, but struggle in relationships. I think I just understand that psychology because I've been that person before. So maybe that's it. And I think I just, I draw a lot from my own experience as well as my professional experience. And I just try to really just say the truth. So maybe that

is it. I don't know. It's definitely working. And I agree with you, I always say to people, I want advice on how to get out of a ditch from somebody who's been in the ditch and found a way to successfully get out not someone who was on the sidelines watching the whole thing go down. So I appreciate you being there. One of the things that was surprising for me reading your new book was learning about your childhood and your father.

I had no idea. Can you give a little bit about your backstory and how you got started into all this work? Yeah, so I mean, I grew up, my parents were immigrants. My father originally from Poland, my mom originally from South Africa, but then they met in South Africa. And my parents had a terrible marriage. My father at the time was undiagnosed bipolar disorder. He was extremely narcissistic, but extremely intelligent to the point of a genius and very good at what he does. And my mom was this young South African model

who was like had a baby when she was really young with another guy. And, you know, here she found this man who was my father who was like this Jewish doctor. And so that's what you were supposed to do was get married to the person who was good on paper and I don't think that they were ever really in love. I don't think she was ever really in love with him and they definitely did not have any relationship skills and there was a

lot of emotional abuse and a little bit of violence and a lot of codependency and my father also struggled, this was when I was young with addiction, but mostly like self-prescribed stuff. And so I grew up in a very, very tense household between two people with two parents who did not get along and there was just a lot of toxicity. So I was not modeled healthy relationships. And my father was a very complicated man. And I was born into a very sensitive constitution.

I was just very sensitive. And so he scared me. He never physically abused me in any way, shape or form. But he was highly manipulative and there were some emotional, I guess you would call it abuse, but I found him to be very, very scary. So I grew up terrified of him and very attached to my mom. And so that created some dynamics for me later in life.

And I was the child where, and I grew up with siblings, but I was the child where when my parents announced that they were separating, I felt this tremendous weight off my shoulders. I thought, thank God he's leaving. A big part of my life has been understanding how my relationship with him, and also my relationship with my mom, my relationship with my childhood has impacted my life. Specifically romantic relationships. And I've actually had some beautiful romantic relationships. So it's, I don't want to misrepresent myself saying that like every relationship I've ever had has been hard. I've actually had good ones, but I think that that's also what's so nuanced about the conversation relationships. You can go through a stage of life

where you have a great relationship and then you're later in life, then everything goes to hell because there's so much context around it. And so a large part of my life is learning how to, how to forgive him came later was more like, how do I be around this person without feeling like I'm terrified and feeling so deeply uncomfortable. My relationship with my father and many ways to find my life. And so learning how to deal with that was huge. And I would say that my marriage, which ended,

which was really the thing that got me into all of this. I taught yoga for many years, almost 20 years. And then I went through a relationship that was the most significant relationship of my life. And we got married and then it ended in 20 years. And then I went through a relationship that was the most significant relationship of my life. And we got married and then it ended in two years. And so I really wanted to understand, I became obsessed with trying to understand what happened between me and my ex-husband.

And that was really the time where I had to, I was forced to reckon with my relationship with my father and how I could not because I was very avoidant of my father. In the relationship between me and my father, I was the avoidant. In the relationship between me and certain men, I was the anxious one. I couldn't avoid it anymore. I had to face it directly. And so that's a large part of what has influenced this book is learning how to heal, learning how to have your own back, learning to raise your self-esteem

and also to take responsibility for what it is that goes on in a relationship. And I wanted to figure out years ago, like what actually makes a relationship work, but work really well. And I wanted to distill it into very tangible truths and lessons. And I spent years trying to distill it.

If I were to come up with like 10 truths or nine truths or seven truths, like what is it? What is the legacy that I would want to leave behind? Like, what do I feel people must understand about themselves and about themselves relationally and about love? That's what I birthed in this book. Well, the book is incredible and it's actually the nine truths, the nine heart truths about love. You mentioned something about avoidant and anxious. Is that necessarily every relationship? I'm so curious about that now that you brought that up.

Meaning in every relationship, is there someone avoidant and there's someone anxious? No. I think in a lot of relationships, you might find someone who is more wired for togetherness and values more togetherness. And then you might find someone who has been wired towards more autonomy.

But there are also a lot of relationships where there's alignment in that. So I think that it's not just anxious that the lens through which that we see relationship shouldn't just be about attachment theory. Attachment theory is a very important layer. It is not the only layer. It's just about how were you raised? Like, were you raised to just like go out into the world and be free and be left to your own devices?

Well, if so, then you were raised to become a very independent person. Or were you raised, maybe were people a little bit more protective of you? Or were you raised around more togetherness and connection? Well, then you are going to probably be more wired towards dependence in a relationship. So everyone brings their different things to the table in a relationship, how they were raised. Everyone has limitations. And it's really about two people being able to work within the constructs of how they

were raised, if they can, if they can. But no, it's not that in every relationship there's someone who's anxious and there's someone who's avoidant. It's so much more than that. In every relationship, there's someone who believes that over-communicating is better. And then there's someone who was raised to believe that it's best to just sweep it under the rug. There are some people who were raised to raise their voices when they're upset because that's

how you show that you care and there's passion. And then there's another person who was raised to believe that, no, you keep your voices quiet and anytime you raise your voice, that's almost a declaration of violence. So we all have unique histories and conditioning and beliefs and we all have our different lenses through which we see the world. And sometimes, I know often we forget that when we get into a relationship with someone,

we're getting to a relationship with a very unique individual who has their own unique ways of growing up. And part of creating a healthy relationship is understanding that, talking about that, seeing if you can find a middle ground in the areas where there's a little bit of conflict or discord. And that's what it is. It's not just anxious or avoid. There's so many layers to it. Why is might appear important to you? Let me give you a few examples. I feel so much stronger in my workouts. I'm recovering quicker. I have more energy. I want to proactively preserve my health, mobility, and strength as I get older. I want to support my cellular health. This supplement can help because it

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Joinbilt.com slash confidence to sign up for built today. Oh my gosh, it seems very complicated. But one thing that you just made very clear is a lot is around how we communicate in interrelational communication. One of the things that you mentioned when you were talking about your father, and you've made it clear in the book, as well as in your content, your show, the importance of healing our past and healing our relationships with our parents, you mentioned forgiveness with your father. What role does forgiving our parents play in our romantic relationships?

First, what I want to preface this is, if you were sexually abused, there was violence, I'm not in any way suggesting nor would I ever ask someone to forgive their parent who did that to them. I think some things don't really warrant forgiveness. It's more making peace with your past so that your story about your parent with whom you have struggled, you start to change the story a little bit. And the story does not have such a control over you. And so my story, particularly with my father, was like, here's this person who's like this,

and I'm this person who's like that. And I was very scared of him. But as you get older, and as I got older, I started to realize, yes, that is all true. But there are other things that are true too. Like it's also true that he grew up in a generation and in a culture where men weren't emotionally available. It is also true that he did the best that he could with the tools that he had. It is also true that he had certain gifts that I happen to have as well.

So the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree and sometimes the things that you adopt or that you inherit from your parents, even the crappy parent is great. So you have to start to see it differently and it challenges us to become the wiser person in the room. And if you're in the room with the parent that you struggle with, like how do you transcend your ego

and all of that to kind of see things differently? And that's the challenge and it's not overnight and it's about looking at your trauma differently and seeing it through a different lens, a more objective lens. So it's making peace and I think that that's very important because when we really struggle and sometimes like I said if it's strong abuse maybe it's making peace with whatever happened with a lot of distance, right? So everyone has a different path. But the most dangerous person to be in a relationship with other than the person who's the low-hanging fruit dangerous,

which is violent, manipulative, narcissist, we know that that's dangerous. So let's just say, let's table that, let's shelve that kind of dangerous person. The next dangerous person to be in a relationship with is the person who is unaware of how their childhood has affected the way that they show up in a relationship, who literally just does not know,

who does not have that awareness, and who isn't able to admit it and to talk about it with their partner. So we have to be able to do that. And that's very important. From a percentage standpoint, I feel like that's most people. Like it's so that people are really doing all of the work. I mean, maybe not as much in the world that we

live in today, but it still seems like the default is kind of, hey, you grew up this way, make the best of it and move on. Wouldn't you agree that most people aren't really diving into that? Most people are not diving into it. And there is some value to saying, look, I grew up this way, you gotta make the best of it and move on. And I realized that like, because mom was like this, or dad wasn't always present, sometimes I do this. Like, most people, you are right,

are not aware of their imperfections. But it takes a lot of confidence. You just have to know the ways in which you are actually difficult in a relationship and have a little sense of humor about it and love yourself anyway, and then say, you know, I'm gonna work on this. That's really what it's all about.

And then we also have to be very mindful of the fact that every single person has limitations. Now some people have huge limitations, but we're all limited. So you have to when choosing a partner, for example, to expect a unicorn, to expect this person who's just not going to have any limitations is very, very, very silly. Like you cannot do that. But what you can expect of yourself and of another person is someone who's aware of their limitations. And then what you have to be able to say to yourself is what limitations can I live with? And what can I not look with? Dr. Sarah Lichtenberger Seems so simple here. You say that, however,

when we get in these routines, it becomes so much more complex, or maybe not so much more complex, but so much more difficult. I just recently was talking to one of my best friends, who's been in this cycle with her husband, where she keeps blaming and pointing a finger at him so much so that she's not noticing she's doing it. I'm sure that you see people going through this.

And I'm speaking to her her and they love each other. They have a good marriage, but they're just in one of these cycles right now. When I mentioned it to her, I said, you just keep talking about everything he does wrong, but you're not saying that you ever do anything wrong or saying anything that he does right. It was almost shocking to her to hear that.

How do people break cycles when they get into these routines? Well, first of all, I just want to say that that was very good advice that you gave her. And I hope that it woke her up a little bit. That's honestly a large part of what the book is about, is you need to be able to see the role that you're playing in the dynamic.

And even more, this is how you can change it because awareness is the first step but then changing the behavior is the next step and change is where people is where we all struggle the most to be honest but yeah I mean if you love someone and you're in a relationship with them and something's not working out with them and you're going through a hard time. It's not to say that when there's a problem in a relationship, I am not suggesting that it's a 50-50 split, meaning like you're responsible for half of it and you're responsible for the other half. No, it could very well be that one person is more of a problem, their behavior is more of a problem than the other. But more times than not, it really does take two to tango. And so the constant finger pointing

without being able to say to yourself, okay, what am I doing that's contributing to whatever it is that's not working in my relationship? The moment you can ask yourself that is the moment that you transform yourself. You are transformed in that moment with just that question. is the moment that you transform yourself. You are transformed in that moment with just that question. And it's very, very important.

So when I work with people and when I worked a lot with couples, nine times out of 10, I'm helping people see their role and their role could be their perspective, their role could be how they're just not considering the other person's side. Most people when they go into like a couple's therapy couch, they're thinking, considering the other person's side. Most people, when they go into like a couples therapy couch, they're thinking, fix the other person. And oftentimes we change the dynamic between us and another person by changing ourselves. Not always, but often.

That's one of the things I love so much about your book is the emphasis on it begins with you, your first truth and that radical accountability. Cause that is the one thing that we can all control. OK, so I'll use myself as an example, because I feel like, of course, for me, this is more of a gray area. It's obvious when I'm looking at my friends, right?

It's simple to say, oh, no, you shouldn't just point a finger at somebody else all the time. That's not the right thing to do. That's clear to me. However, in my situation, I'll use a past relationship that I had, and it's similar to the prior one. I'll get into a relationship, everything is great, it's amazing, things are going well, and then slowly things will start to change. In my mind, I'll think, oh, give this person the

benefit of the doubt. This is a gray area, I don't want to be a pain, I'm sure it's whatever. But that person is in this situation making a commitment to make me a priority, to come see me, whatever it may be. And then I'm slowly seeing the actions not line up with the words. And then suddenly, you're having a conversation. Wait a minute, we've talked about this.

Why are we back at this again? And then for me, I want to blow up and walk away. My friends will say to me, you can't keep doing that. That's not working for you. But when you're in it, it's so hard to say, what is it that I'm doing wrong? It's very hard to see oftentimes when you're knee deep in it. It is very hard. I mean, mindfulness is a practice.

Mindfulness is a practice. The example that you gave, I mean, that could be so many different things. It could be that you're choosing the wrong men, right? That could be one thing. It could also be that a lot of women will, because we value safety so much, we have a habit of always trying to find what's wrong in another person because we're looking for danger

so that we can protect ourselves from danger. So oftentimes, is it actions not matching up with words or is there a communication breakdown? You know, is it the way that you're asking for things or is it actually them not being into integrity? There's so many different ways to look at the scenario that you shared. Mindfulness as a practice is, okay,

if I want to be in a relationship with this person, are our values aligned? Do we get along? Do I feel good around this person? If I were to have a child, would I want them to grow up to be like this person? Okay, and then let's say you're like, okay, yes, I think so, or I'm discovering so, but we're having these issues.

Okay, how am I communicating? Am I only thinking about my needs, my insecurity, my frustration, or am I taking the time to ask them about their experience of the same situation. That's really powerful. Okay, I could have used that when I was 20. I mean, we are, you and me both. But at least you're dropping it on us now. So thank you for that, Julie.

So when you were explaining that, and thank you for explaining that, the one thing that popped into my mind was red flags. And I know you talk a lot about this. When we start seeing the red flags, when is the time to say, wait a minute, this is the wrong person versus I should keep going and see if there's more there? More times than not,

the reason why people find themselves in toxic dynamics, unhealthy dynamics is because of ignoring red flags, basically ignoring their intuition. It's just basically that. There's a paradox and there's many paradoxes in relationships. One is people tell you who they are pretty early on. And the other one is at the same time,

it does take time to discover who a person really is in their character. There are certain red flags that might just be like, give you some pause and it's worth exploration. So it's not just like oh I'm not sure if that's a red flag you know let me just bottle up inside and then like pull away or walk away let me ask the person about it. You know like let's just say they're talking a lot about their ex and they're talking about their ex a lot and they're feeling like you start to get the feeling

that maybe they're not entirely over this person. What you would say is, you know, I notice that you talk about your ex a lot and I'm getting the sense that maybe there's still some emotional charge there, or maybe you just had a bad day around it, or like, I'd love to understand more, but this is what I'm observing.

And then you see what they say. You never know. Their ex could be their ex spouse, and they could say, you know what, really sorry. We co-parent, today was a bad day with them, so they're tough of mind, but I'm gonna be more mindful of that. Or they might just like, you know,

keep talking about how their ex is terrible, which is a really, that's a red flag, because you want someone to be able to, first of all, not bad mouth their ex and instead just be like, I learned a lot from that experience. This is what I learned. Because then you get the idea that they actually processed. But a lot of times people don't listen to their bodies.

Like when something happens and it feels like an immediate like punch in your gut or shut down in your system, and something really doesn't feel good. They don't listen. They don't say, hey, that did not feel good. They don't take it seriously. They think, well, I'm really attracted to this person, or I've just spent the last five months really trying to get to know them. I don't want this to end. And there happens to be this whole inner dialogue that happens about why it can't end. And these are the things that I really try to empower a lot of people to pay attention to, because those really unhealthy dynamics are ones in which people are ignoring their intuition.

I love that idea of really checking in with your intuition, seeing how you feel physically, mentally, emotionally, when things come up. However, this is what gets confusing to me. So I so look to your advice on this. Yes. checking in with your intuition, seeing how you feel physically, mentally, emotionally, when things come up. However, this is what gets confusing to me. So I so look to your advice on this. What's the difference between that, that like inner knowing versus just being simply triggered by something from a past relationship, which believe me, I've got many, many triggers and the older I'm getting, I'm trying to say, oh, you're getting triggered right now.

Don't react, you know, try to breathe, try to calm down. How can you differentiate from the two? A couple of different ways. One is you check in with yourself and you ask yourself, what is it that I'm feeling right now? And how much does this actually have to do with this person? Or am I looking at this person and seeing mom, dad, and my ex? Or am I actually seeing this person as the pure person

who they are? Or am I looking at this person and seeing an idealized version of who I want them to be versus who they really are? So you check in with yourself. You really have to check in with yourself. And if you can't, if you still can't decipher because maybe you've had a lot of troubled relationship history and you're having trouble trusting yourself and you're starting to now feel really anxious about it. Speak to someone who you trust, who knows you, who's grounded, who can give you some outside perspective so that you get out of your head about it and you speak to someone

about it. And I think that that's very helpful, whether it's a very close friend, a family member or a therapist, whoever it is, someone who you trust and you could be like, hey, this is what happened. And I just don't know. Like, is this something that I should pay attention to

or is this me just being a walk-in trigger? And that's another thing. I think that, you know, when we get into a relationship, part of what inspires me to teach people is assess how triggerable you are. Are you still being controlled by past relationships? Or have you looked at yourself and your role in it and the things that you can control?

And have you kind of changed the story around it? Or are you still stuck in the story of just constantly blaming your ex and feeling victimized by your ex? And so now it's like, you're just a walking trigger. So these are some of the things. And again, it's just, you don't have to get it perfect. It's just really, honestly,

what it boils down to is self-reflection. I don't know if this is a female thing. I think it is because I see it with so many women, myself included. You can be in a short relationship and you romanticize that this is gonna be it and everything is gonna be amazing. And then when you end that relationship

for whatever reason, it doesn't work out. And then you have constantly obsess and ruminate and think about that great relationship. And again, romanticize it. How do you get people to stop doing that? So like you said, they can separate from that past relationship to go whole into a new one. Well, first of all, men obsess quite a bit as well.

They can. Not everyone obsesses, but they can obsess quite a bit as well. The obsessing usually happens when we are the ones who are being rejected. So the rejection is what stimulates all the obsessing usually happens when we are the ones who are being rejected. So the rejection is what stimulates all the obsessing because then we're like, we're not good enough, should I try harder, all of that. Obsessing is part of the breakup process

and it's part of the rejection process. And you start to ruminate is really what it is. And you're going back in time and you're replaying certain time and you're replaying certain conversations and you're seeing it played out differently and what you could have done differently. There's different ways to put a little bit of an end to that. One is to talk to someone. Another is to journal, exercise, distract yourself with work a little bit. You are very right that what women will do is obsess over the person who they barely know who they started dating. Does he like me? Does she like me? Are

they into me? When are they going to call this or that? Because women, we are very conditioned to have this sort of choose me mentality. Pick me, choose me. And men will get into this as well. It's not just women, but yes, more often than not, women will get into this wormhole, basically, of this person who they barely know that they have made the central character of their lives before that person has even gotten remotely close to earning that role. And it is the obsession with being enough and being chosen

when in reality, you are the chooser and that is the most important thing. And we get caught up and a lot of women, and it depends on their stage of life, they'll get caught up because maybe they wanna have a family, they wanna get married, they wanna have the ring on their finger.

They have all this anxiety and social and societal and familial pressure that's on their shoulders. And so they meet someone who they're attracted to, who maybe looks good on paper, and they become totally obsessed with being good enough for them. And actually, that's exactly what turns the person off, particularly turns off a man. When really you have to think, do I even want you? Are you good enough for me? Are our values aligned?

Hey, this is what I need from you. Because a lot of women, and men again, we'll do this too, but a lot more women will silence what their needs are. Let me try to be cool. Let me go with the flow. Let me be a pleaser. Let me be a nurturer because everything is like, I want you to choose me. I want you to pursue me,

I want to be like that fairy tale. And nothing could be further from the truth of what reality is, and that is, you have to be the one who is direct and forward about what it is that you want, you are to be the one who is also choosing, and you are gonna become much more attractive to many more people when you actually assume that role.

And you will scare some people away, and those are the right people to scare away. That confuses me in this whole dynamic of femininity, masculinity, and this world that we live in today, where, you know, I've always been told I'm very masculine, very aggressive, very direct, and that, you know, stems from work, my childhood, whatever. But people always offer me that feedback. You shouldn't bring that into your romantic relationships, Heather. So I've been

working so hard in later years to not try to control everything, direct everything and take charge of everything in my romantic relationships and try to lead that somewhat at work. But then to your point, what you're saying is be direct. How does balance that and what role does femininity versus masculinity play? So being direct is not the same thing as being antagonistic or being controlling.

It's about being forward and vulnerable. There's tremendous vulnerability in exposing yourself to another person and saying, this is what I need from you. Because most of us are too busy unconsciously manipulating others to get our needs met. And we are trying to control the narrative. We're trying to control the way other people perceive us.

So we're doing all this strategy. It's actually very vulnerable to say, I care enough about me and you and what we can build together for me to say, this is what I need from you. And tone and cadence and your body language and your eyes, all of that, while you're saying that can be very soft, while at the same time being very direct.

And you can also be very intense if you have to be. I don't see that as masculine at all. You know, when we talk about the role of femininity and masculinity, you know, most people have it very wrong. Honestly, like you're not in your feminine if you're doing this. I think that if you prefer to be pursued, let the person pursue you. But that doesn't mean that you play hard to get.

It just means that you're busy living your best life and you let there be the dance that is so fun in dating of there being a little bit of courting. Now inside of a relationship, no one wants to be controlled all the time. And there's some value in allowing yourself to receive care from another person, allowing yourself to receive love. So I prefer to see it as more of a receptive energy, rather than having to control everything

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That's netsuite.com slash Monahan. That's really powerful. And that gave me a lot of clarity. So I'm sure gave everybody a lot of clarity. So thank you. That makes a lot of sense now. Okay. So when you were just talking, you remind me of one of the stories from your book when

you just said, be out there living your best life. And I remember in the book you sharing about one of the people, a woman that you work with who had been in a series of dysfunctional relationships and was getting back into another one and you were encouraging her to go spend time on her own, starting to live her own best life, starting to love herself. And when she was finally able to do that, she ended the unhappy relationship she was in, went out and was single for a while,

and that's when she attracted that relationship, the right relationship to her. How often do you see that being the issue for people that they're just not happy with themselves? Yeah, well, a few things. I mean, she didn't just attract the relationship. She chose the right relationship too, right? So that's very important.

You can be sad and you can even be depressed and you can find love. What's gonna feed the relationship is you getting help for that depression and not expecting someone to heal your depression. Having meaning in life, having sources of connection that isn't just one person, I think is very important. And that might mean that someone has to look at their life holistically and say, okay, I don't have enough meaningful connection in my life.

I'm making it all about finding that romantic partner. That is going to become stressful for my relationship because no one person could ever be everything for me. So what do I need to do to get more connection? And it might be hard. It might mean pushing yourself past your comfort zone, building community somewhere, joining a certain group of some sort where you can meet like-minded people. You know, that's why they call it inner work because sometimes we have to learn how to meet our needs in ways that we are

not accustomed to meeting our needs so that we don't do that thing that we usually do in a relationship that doesn't work anymore. So oftentimes, like this person who you were referring to, I believe it was the one who kept on dating cheaters and she had developed this belief that all men cheat, which is of course, it's not true. In fact, more women statistically than men cheat on their spouses. But she had a pattern of choosing these men that were had really, really big character defects. And she would overlook it because she just wanted the relationship. So when she learned to kind of challenge those beliefs and also realize that, like, she put all this stock in a romantic relationship and

totally forgot about the things that actually bring her joy and a sense of peace and a sense of calm and a sense of contentment. And when she started to nurture that in herself and remove some of the dire necessity of a romantic relationship right now, then she was able to date with fewer expectations, more open-mindedness and a lot more discernment. So it does play a really big role. Well it sure ended up working out for her. It sounded like did. Yes, they're engaged to be married. Yeah, so I'm so happy for it. So the good news there for me in these stories that you share in the book is change is possible and it's readily available when we start looking at ourselves first.

Absolutely. I think a lot is possible. Look, I think we human beings have a tremendous capacity to change. We usually don't change. A lot of people don't change because change is scary. But we have the capacity to change. And I think that, you know, when someone is unhappy in their relationship, or they find themselves chronically single, and they've just gotten to the point where I got to at one point in my life is like, okay, I need to figure this out. That's why I wrote the book. One of the things that you talk

about in the book is the importance of self-worth and some of the strategies around how to create some worthiness in yourself. What are some of the things that you can share with listeners to give them a glimpse of what they'll find in the book? Yeah. So one is learn how to meet your needs and challenge yourself. There is great value in learning how to talk to yourself in a way that's respectful. And that's very, very important because we tend to talk to ourselves pretty terribly. So that's very important.

But there's an element to building your self-worth that's not talked about enough, which I talk about in the book, which is do the hard thing. Challenge yourself to overcome a fear or to try that new project or to communicate when you're not used to communicating. This is actually how we raise our self-esteem. We actually have to do some hard things and then we're proud of ourselves and then we see that like, wow I just overcame an obstacle and then we can

start to look back at all the miles that we've walked and the things that we've had to face and we start to look back at all the miles that we walked and the things that we've had to face. And we start to see the resilience inside ourselves. And that starts to increase our self-esteem. Great point that change is so hard. But when you start and celebrating when you've gone through it, it makes you feel that much more empowered and that much better about yourself and that much better about what's possible in your life.

Absolutely. It's all about empowerment for sure. So learning how to meet your needs, like your needs for connection, your needs for fun, your needs for adventure, your needs for fulfillment, like really understanding like what it is that you need in life. Like what's missing and how can I start to fill in that gap for myself? So you can think of what's missing is a void, right? We talk a lot about sort of in the zeitgeist, like these voids that we have to fill. Part of it is that you want to be able to fill some of those voids for yourself. And the way that you can is by asking yourself

a very simple question, like what exactly is missing from my life? And then someone might say, well, it's a loving relationship. Okay, fine, valid. You can't control the timing of things. You can date like it's your job, or you can try to fill yourself up with love in other ways. And that's important. It's so important. So it's so powerful and so true.

So it begins with you. Who did you write this book for? I mean, honestly, I wrote the book for the person who can't seem to figure out why they have it So it begins with you, who did you write this book for? I mean, honestly, I wrote the book for the person who can't seem to figure out why they have it all together in many areas of their life, but they can't figure out the relationship part, whether they're in a relationship

or single or heartbroken. And I wrote for the person who's in a lot of pain about that, and they are confused and sort of perplexed and sad about it. And maybe they're the person who everyone says, like, you're a cat, you're smart, you're beautiful, you're handsome, whatever. Like, there's so many things that you have going on, but you can't, like this area, you

can't seem to figure it out. Or I'm in this relationship and I can't make it better. So I wanted it to be sort of a personal empowerment book for people who maybe tolerated less than they deserve. I also wanted it to be sort of like a surrogate therapy couch for couples who are just don't know how to find their way out. So yeah, it's for people who feel saddened and confused and determined to figure out this area of their life,

which is relationships, romantic relationships in particular. Well, I mean, this has been your life's work and the amount of expertise experienced, the thousands of people you've worked with, the content creation. I mean, Jillian, obviously you're an expert at this. It begins with you,

the nine hard truths about love that will change your life. The book is gold. Where can people get it? Anywhere it's available for. I mean, I don't even know if I say available for pre-order, but you can get it literally anywhere. Your local bookstore, Amazon, you can get it on Audible. So honestly, you just go to, I think you'll put a link it out.

And there's lots of different places where you can get the book from. Did you record the audio version? By the time this comes out? Yes. I love that. I love when the author does the actual audio. Oh, yeah, I'm doing the actual one for sure. So if you are someone who would prefer to listen to my voice, or you're someone who likes to listen to books while you're on the go, then we'll have that. And where can everybody follow you? I happen to follow you on Instagram and love your feed. Oh, thank you so much. So yes, follow me on Instagram at Jillian Turecki. I'm also on TikTok and threads and whatnot, but I'm the most active on Instagram. And I have a membership, a relationship

school for women called the Conscious Woman, a bunch of courses. So you can just find that on my site, jilliantarecki.com. And of course, my book and my podcast, Jillian on Love. Well, Jillian, thank you so much for the work you're doing. I wish I could have met you 20 years ago, but I'm so grateful to have known you now. And thank you so much for the book. It begins with you, go get it now.

Thank you for all that you're doing, Jillian. Oh, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. All right, guys, go for the book. It begins with you. Go get it now. Thank you for all that you're doing, Jillian. Oh, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. All right, guys, go get the book. It begins with you. You will not regret it. You are welcome in advance. Until next week, keep creating your confidence. You know I will be. I'm on this journey with me.