Girls Gotta Eat - You Can Change Your Story feat. Therapist/Author Lori Gottlieb

Episode Date: December 13, 2020

Free therapy session alert! We are joined by the incredible author/psychotherapist/TED speaker Lori Gottlieb to discuss that big, scary (but it doesn't have to be!) thing called CHANGE. We're chatting with her about changing your patterns when you keep dating the wrong people over and over, the steps to making changes of any kind (small or large), and how to stop beating yourself up over missteps. We also discuss the way we narrate our lives and how to examine your "storytelling" to make positive changes, and share advice for when you're feeling depressed/rejected/anxious. Plus, we're catching up on a recent engagement (hint: one of our exes) and dating guys who have been vaccinated, AND bringing back a hilarious round of Is This Weird? Hope you enjoy! Follow Lori on Instagram @LoriGottlieb_author and check her website for her books and more. Follow us @GirlsGottaEatPodcast, Ashley @AshHess, and Rayna @Rayna.Greenberg. Check our website for show dates and merchandise. Thank you to our partners this week: Rory: Try out your personalized treatment for just $5 at hellorory.com/gge. Quip: Go to getquip.com/gge to get your first refill free. LiquidIV: Get better hydration today at liquidiv.com, promo code GGE25. Daily Harvest: Get $25 off your first box at dailyharvest.com, promo code GGE. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do we all date our dads? Well, they say we marry our unfinished business. Okay. Okay. And unfinished is the key word here. So if you work through this stuff, you're not going to get into relationships with those kinds of people. The unfinished part is the problem. Another episode of Girls Got to Eat.

Welcome back. We're a comedy podcast about dating relationships and sex. I'm Ashley and I'm Raina. And this is our show. How did that feel? I was like, what are you doing? What is she doing? What is she doing?

150 episodes in. How did that feel? We've never done it. Three years in. Now you guys know what the show's about. A lot of you've been asking. So I have been listening to some more podcasts recently. You know, I don't listen to podcasts.

Just the daily in ours. And a lot of them do that. And I'm not throwing shade. It's nice. It's nice to cue a podcast up and hear what it's about. We don't have to ever do it. Like you read the description. Also, how many people just went,

oh, that's which one Ashley is? Like, no one, like it would be funny people listening. for years. They're like, oh, that's who it is. Sometimes I'll meet people and they will, I'll tell them who I am. They're like, oh, my God, I listen to your show. And I'm like, oh, you don't know what I look like. A couple quick announcements. We're going to fly through these. The holiday live show at this point, if you're listening on Monday, was last night. I'm sure it was incredible. Thank you all for attending. And because we know so many people would be like, I didn't get tickets, man. I heard it was great. It's like, yeah, it fucking was great. You snooze,

you lose. Sorry, I'm kidding. We're going to let you get tickets. You can still buy. You can still. Ashley's still on our SoundCloud rapper vibe. You can still buy access through the week. I cannot stress this enough.

It ends end a day Saturday. So you can still buy it. Go to Girls Gotta Eat Podcast.com. It's right there at the top of our show page. And the link should still be in our bio, probably on Instagram too. My bio, Raina's bio. So this is the final week.

And you can still buy access and watch it this week. Nothing's different. you won't have seen it live. It's the same price, same show. Yeah. Yeah. And for those of you who bought it before and missed it,

we have access a week. We've been telling you guys that for a minute. So again, thanks to everyone that showed up and came. We're sure it was a blast. And you can still watch it. Yeah, enjoy that guys. And in terms of merch, we let you guys know that the deadline to order

for Christmas shipping has passed. Those deadlines are hopefully just an estimate of fulfillment times and when our fulfillment centers say that they can get stuff to you guys. we'll get it to you as soon as possible. You'll get emails of tracking information. And if you guys didn't get merchant time, you want something for Christmas,

we have gift cards. They're on our website. It's girls' guttypodcast.shop. And under the accessories tab, the very first thing there will be gift cards and those things will be mailed to you immediately. They're super cute. They're fun to use.

And it's a nice gift you can give to people that aren't time sensitive via the mail. Yes. And then also on our website, as every episode we've ever done, yes, I'm glad you brought that up. We have gotten a ton of new listeners. We've done some really great episodes lately, and you guys have recommended us to your friends.

People have been emailing a lot asking, do you have an episode on XYZ? On our website, Girls Gotta Eat Podcast.com, we have cataloged every single episode we've ever done, every guest, every topic. Ashley writes great descriptions of them. We have copied and paste them into the website, and you can search those topics. So if you're wondering about topics about money, sex, relationships, crazy sex, dirty sex, sex in general. Vanilla sex. Just go to, yeah, I don't think vanilla sex is in any of the descriptions. But you guys can search them.

They're all there for you. We've tons of resources. We have amazing gifts on Instagram for your Instagram stories. We have a great Instagram account, which is really fun. Please follow it. You can follow us on Instagram. Just follow all the stuff. We love having you guys be a part of the community and, you know, just follow all of our things.

Yeah. And yeah, if you're new here, welcome. We got such an incredible outpouring of support from our episode last week. Rain and I have been like crying every day. So thank you guys again for listening to that. And for those of you it resonated with, it was about choosing to. to not have children. And it was just, we were overwhelmed. So with the emails and the messages. And so thank you guys so much. You really share some very personal things with us and you really

trust us. And it means the world and it never goes unnoticed. And thanks again. Yeah. Thank you guys. Oh my God. I'm going to start crying again. I'm going to pull together. First thing I texted Ashley was like, I am sobbing. But yes, thank you guys. We're happy to have you. Welcome. And we have really fun stuff planned coming up and for the new year as well. Yes. We have a therapist on today. Lori Gondon. Gottlieb, and she co-hosts a podcast with a former guest of ours, Guy Wynch, who reined ahead of it. I can't stop smiling when I think of that. I know. You just got really, like, blushed. And he was a few months back. People still go back to that episode a lot. It's called like rejection, heartbreak, an emotional first aid, something like that. And he recommended her to us. They host podcasts together called Dear Therapist. So we're going to ask her some questions, but we would ask a therapist today. So I hope you guys like it. Yeah, Ashley found Guy, actually. I love when we have these therapists on the show, these like world-renowned therapists. It's so.

fun. I'm like a nice mix. Kelly. Oh, is that really hot? You know where I emailed the first time I contacted guy. I was sitting in a pretamange eating soup. Oh. Okay. Can't not bring up soup. Yeah. She's like, you bring it up every week. I do. I do bring it up every week. I'm talking about all you want. Well, you have a date this week. I do have a date, a second date, but it was not somebody I met on an app. So still this day, I've never gone on a second date from an app date. So just to be clear, this is DMs, came from the DMs. So we are going on a second date, allegedly. At this point, it will have passed. So at this point, it was just a few days ago on Friday. We're recording a few days before that. So yeah, this Friday, I have a date

with this guy. We're, you know, going to go eat outside and try to stay warm. And yeah, I mean, we had a good casual first date, told you guys about it. So we're going on a second. This is something that's kind of interesting, COVID-related. So he, has gotten a clinical trial of the vaccine, which I think is admirable. That's not something that's not somebody everybody would do. You know, it's a trial. You don't know. It's been tested clearly.

I mean, I know everything that goes into a vaccine, listen to the daily. They've done a ton about it. So they're safe, but it's still not like totally approved and you're choosing to be a guinea pig for it. And I think it's like a really admirable thing for somebody to sign up to do that. So, but I also find it like fascinating. And like, this guy's like been vaccinated already. I think it takes a minute to be fully,

he'll get his second one by the time we will have gone on this date. So we got the first one and he had some side effects. Like we've talked about this. I'm obviously very interested. I think we're all interested. It's like all anyone's talking about right now is the vaccine. So yeah, I'm going out with the guys who's been vaccinated. And I just like, I just been thinking about.

Vaccinations are like the new boundary. Yeah. Or like, yeah. I just keep thinking about this is like the future of dating. Like talking to somebody about their status if they've had. had the vaccine, if they have antibodies, like things like that, like you would ask about STD tests. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. And I wanted to also share this funny thing while we're talking about the vaccine. I, you know, Tank Sinatra, a former guest as well. We had him on maybe last year around this time. I feel like it was the fall of 2019. Okay. Tank Sinatra, he was a great guest. You guys loved him.

And he is like a meme guy. You know, he's like almost 3 million followers in Instagram. And his meme said, this was yesterday. people will literally eat a stranger's butthole but won't take the vaccine. I feel that. And I commented, ladies get you a man who'll do both. Like, that's obviously what I'm going to write. I wrote, ladies get you a man who will do both with hard eyes.

At this point, as I'm looking, it has over 3,000 likes. So it's the top comment. And of course, I ended at that. I don't go back and read what people say. I don't give a fuck. And people troll him all the time for various things. But I kept getting notifications. of people just fighting back and forth,

like anti-vaxxers, like crazy things. And I just, like, texted Hank. I was like, this is nuts. My notifications are blowing up with all these crazy people. And he was like, I know, it's wild. So it was just like very funny. You're living around free.

And then people just like, then you were just insulting me. I was like, okay, what do you? I just, I didn't even make the meme. I just comment. You just made a silly. No, I love it. I love it when you just like ignite people so hard.

went crazy. I think a lot of girls got to eat listeners or like my followers were like, ha, ha, ha, you know, they were laughing.

And then I would like, look at my notifications and there was just this like, page long. Really rude thing. I'm like, I don't know you. The same thing happened.

I don't think I've ever told you this. Right after one of the debates, Jill Biden was where, the presidential debates, obviously, Joe Biden was wearing a mask that matched her dress. And I just commented on Joe Biden's, like,

mask and dress. People did not think that was funny. Like most people thought it was funny. Most people were like, she looked beautiful. Oh my God. Yes, Queen. She's so gorgeous. What a style of like. A lot of people were like, I can't believe that's what you took from this debate. Oh my God. I can't play it's why it's why you took from this. I'm like, can we relax please? People saw an opening to get offended. People love to get offended. People are like offending me. I was like, I don't care. But it was also funny because last week I talked about eating ass. And so it's like it's all so tied in. So anyway, to wrap it up, I have a date. He picked a great place. I'm, I, okay, it impressed me. Yes. I have a high bar for food. I mean, not that you don't,

not that you're some like country bumpkin. Ashley, go to McDonald's now. I just, I was thinking food. I love the place you pick, love the food. It's cozy. It's appropriate. Maybe a little too fancy of food, but nothing's fancy. We're just eating on the street. We're eating on the street under a heat lamp, you know, wrapped in a blanket. I have, I, it has a Michelin Star. It's great. And he was cute about it. He said, here's the menu. Does this look good to you? The way he asked was great.

He's great on text. He sent you the website. It was cute. It's just, I find it like, you see stuff like this now and you're like, that's so sweet. Like that should be the norm. It's a normal thing to tell somebody this thing and send him. But like, he just did like a normal, polite, kind, great thing. Like, you don't have to do that much, guys, to just be a decent person.

Right. Just try like a little harder than the one guy not trying at all. There's like a little bit of effort. Yeah. Like, it's been so long. I feel like since a guy, you know, I've gone in a few dates recently and I've just always picked the places, like, you know, which is nice. Guys are like, you know your neighborhood better than where I live, whatever. Does he live above the restaurant?

No. He lives in like grammar theory. I would die if we like spent a whole episode time about like how great the restaurant was. He just lives upstairs. That's why he picked it. He's like, we're fucking tonight. I'm vaccinated. Let's go.

Okay. So. You have nice guys. I found out something last night, which you know. No, but I wanted to tell you how it happened. And I think everybody can relate to us. We've all had this moment. I found out my ex got engaged.

And we've all had this moment where we find out that, like, your most serious ex has moved on from you. And it hits different for everyone. Listen. For me? It hit a lot different than your experience. Different scenarios. I took it 10 times harder when your ex got engaged than I did.

That was like the engagement hurt around the world. I was in Chinatown. I just like paused where I was. And I was like, what do I need to do? But it was fresher. We, we, I've talked about it. We've been talking. It was, it was, I was blindsided.

We talked about it on the episode called, so you got blindsided. You have not been with this man. And coming up on eight years, seven, eight years? Seven years. I mean, it's a really long time. Yeah. The last time I saw him, you and I went on a double date with him. Oh.

You can't just say that if we don't talk about. Do we ever talk about this on the show? I don't, it was January last year, December. It was right before and New Year's or right after. January. I hadn't seen him. since we started the podcast, you and me, I've seen him maybe like five or six times.

We've hooked up a couple times. We tried to. He tried to. He tried to. And, you know, he attempted to, if you know what I'm saying. And we, Ashley and I, I went to the comedy show with him, and then we went to the comedy seller, and you met us there on a date that you were on,

and the four of us went on a double day. It's very weird with Andrew Schultz. And Mike Cannon. Actually, he is, my ex is Andrew Schultz, who just got engaged, actually. Yeah. I feel like Raina, like our listeners are like, what's happening here? We need to back up. If you're going to drop this, we can't just like yada yada, yada. And we've hooked up. You guys have had a few moments over the last literal three years since we've been friends where like three times maybe run-ins, one sort of hookup, drunken, maybe two, like nothing crazy. I just people are probably wondering like what the fuck her ex-fiance. It's not, it hasn't been like that. You guys don't communicate regularly. There's been these rando occurrences. Yeah, we've had I think four times. we've hung out on purpose. It was planned. There was about six months between each time. Yeah, you're not

catching feelings. It's not a thing. Oh. And I didn't see him for years after we broke up either. And we took like three and a half years off from speaking to each other. Right. And so the final time I ever saw him was the double date that you and I went on with him. Let's fucking talk about it. You went to a comedy show

with him and I had a first date with somebody that I would end up dating for a little bit before pre-pandemic. And I'm out on this day with this guy. You were on a with your ex, I guess, and we both were going to go to the comedy seller was Mike Cannon's album release. Yes. And so I was like, if this date goes, well, I'll bring this guy with me to the cellar. And then you ended up going there. And then you're like, I'm sitting here with Andrew Schultz,

and I'm like, he told me to some shitty open Mike at a coffee shop. Yeah. And I was like, do you want to go see some real comedians? Like some buddies of mine. Because he was on the show. Okay. He decided to become a comedian. He decided to become a comedian, which is insane. Why are we doing this? Okay. And so funny. I never met him. Yeah, it's the only time you ever met him. So I'm like, we're going over there. And I'm on this first day with this guy.

And I'm like, so listen. We have to go meet my business partner, her ex-fiance. And her ex-and-Fiance. And her ex-Fiance is there. And I walked into this bar. I said, I had my king of Francis Ellis is there with his girlfriend. He goes, who's this? And I was like, it's my ex-fiance.

And he's like, no, really, who is this? Yeah. I was like, no, it's really my ex-Pena. I told Andrew Schultz. I was like, you guys are just chill. It's pretty cool. You guys are just chill. I was like, oh, no, no, we don't speak.

This is like the once a year we've seen each other. Yes, this is our once yearly meet up? Every person was like, is she okay mentally? And also this guy, this first date I'm going on, he got a really wild ride. Because then we're just hanging out with Andrew Schultz. I mean, the guy that I was with also did comedy. So he's like, what's going on? This guy's like the goat.

This is nuts. And then we just like went downstairs and then like your ex-fiance had like a brony tail. Listen, he just, he could have a man bun if he just like pulled it together. but he insists on not looking hot. I don't get it. And it's so funny because you wouldn't treat him like that if you were dating him. It's like it's naggy and it's emasculating. But you had no problem being like, please put your hair down.

It was. No, you wanted him to put it up. I wanted him to put it up. Yes, his hair was down. He looked like yonnie. Or he looked like. He did look like yonnie. And he's hot.

Kenny G. That's what he looked like. And he's hot. That's what it was. He was down. He wanted him to put it up. You're embarrassing me in front of all these people. It looks like a perm.

Wait, what is it? It looked like Rea Pearlman. It was like wet curlemen. He did not have cherry girls, okay? It was like a wet, fresh perm. I know it was it. I did not. Okay.

Why are we doing that? I don't care. It's so funny. We never told this story before. And then I'm with this guy that has super long hair. Andrew Schultz was like, what the fuck? The guy's like girly men, you guys. he the dude you're with I frequently see women that I think are him

well he looks like Ashley Gavin he's super attractive in that night another friend of mine he goes are you what that guy looks like he should be on the CW which is a deep cut I don't think he looks like he would be like a vampire yeah he's really pale on vampire diaries um yeah I just I can't tell you how often I see women that I think are right Well, my other ex looks like Rachel Maddow.

Yes, he does. Why you would type? I can see you with a strong, powerful lesbian. Same. Okay, what are we? This really took a turn. The point is that he got engaged. And by the way, we did not hook up that night.

So I don't know if he was seeing that girl at the time. You guys have not, like, touched each other for years now at this point, probably. No, we hooked up in May of 2019. Oh, long time ago. When you and I had that. Last time I was sick. When you did a huge street fight. we had a street fight.

You went a street fight. You walked away from the street. I was like, you're not going to fight with me on the way to the train. Oh my God. And that was last time I saw him. But I literally just said

May 2019 earlier today because the last of most sick, May 6th, 2012 19. I've been sick and last time and Ashley. But yeah, we haven't hooked up in a really long time.

So I mean, I don't know when he started dating her on anything about their lives. But that was last time I spoke to him was like almost a year ago. And then yeah, last night I was so, we've all found out my point an hour ago

who started my mom. Should we even have a guest this episode? Sorry, Lori. We're going down a different road. We're all sad. We're having fun. We're having fun. We're having spicy.

So we've all found out that our exes have like gotten engaged or found to somebody else. It's like a totally different experience. But in my mind, it's like this really bad like, oh my God, he moved on before I did, like experience. He's also had like a pretty serious relationship in between those too also. I mean, I just didn't have that moment. Anyways, I'm on the phone with like my Charleston ex-boy.

friend, ex-boyfriend, ex-boyfriend's loose term, we slept together, whatever. Multiple times. Yeah, a lot. We are on this, like, marathon phone call last night. The reason why I talked to him is he called me because he saw the episode that we published and the person I talked about on last week's episode who told me on our first date that they didn't want kids was him. So I wanted to tell him about the episode.

Anyways. And he was also engaged at one point years ago. And so on the phone, I was saying to him, like, would you have had kids with her and things like that? And so it made me think of my ex-fiance also. So we're on the floor. phone and I just like went and checked my ex's Instagram and on the phone

with this dude I find out that my ex got engaged. There's like a post that says like we're getting married. Yeah. And like I just start hysterically laughing. I cut him off in the middle of a sentence and he's like what's up and I was like my ex and fiance just got engaged. It is so funny. I'm like I got to read you the caption. This picture is ridiculous.

I like popped off. I was laughing so hard and then I was like I got to go. I got to talk to Ashley about this. It's too funny. It's just it was a nice. I was thinking it's just the reason when I tell this, it's a nice gift to like, be like, oh, I don't care about that. That's hilarious. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm sure that like some people maybe would be embarrassed to be on the phone with another boyfriend while this is happening. But I thought that it was hilarious. It was my way to tell you. Yeah, I know. It's, it's so funny because it's like you look at it of like, I can't even imagine being with that person. I don't remember it. Yeah. Like it was a different,

you, you had a different life. I always say that, like my old life. Like my old life when I lived in Atlanta and I was with this person. Like, that was your old life. That was your old life. Completely old life. Honestly, when you Google me, our friend Jeremy brought this up. When you Google me, one of the things that comes up in me, it's like Raina Greenberg's teeth and Raina Greenberg's ex-fiance. And every time I see photos, I'm like, because now I know people are searching for you. And if someone finds you and sees how homely you look, you know how much this is going to reflect upon me. I know, because you've said like he's hot before. And he's just not anymore. Yeah, I mean, yeah, he used to be. He was like transitioning when I saw him into a non-attracted person. Well, she won the big prize. So anyways, Ashley and I have recorded this. We're going to send us to them as an engagement present. Yay. Maybe I'll take all the engagement presents I got with him and send them to them.

Yeah. I still have like a crock pot, I think, and a fondue set that I never sent back. That'll be great for them. Fondu set. So when they're living in the woods, they can use it to boil cheese. Yeah, they'll have it like over like a campfire. With like big beans in it. I hope that they'll have us as the performers at their wedding.

Okay. You were a wreck for me. Oh, I had a quick wreck, just because it's super relevant. So it's a show called 12 dates of Christmas on HBO, HBO Max. Same creators, I think, producers, whatever, as Love is Blind. Which is, as we all know, the best show ever. Yeah. So, and it's a dating show in the vein of not Love is Blind because they see each other.

But, you know, I don't know. They're all kind of in the house together. So it's with the people. There's three people they cast as like the leading ladies and men. It's one straight woman. one straight man who lives here in the East Village, I guess, and one gay man. And those are the three main characters, and they're trying to find dates to take home for Christmas.

And dates come, and then they do like little rose ceremonies types of things with, like, presents. But people come and kind of like bump other people out of the running. And then they have to, like, send people home. So there's like an elimination aspect. And it's just kind of cool when people come in and come out. I have two more episodes to go. They're releasing them like two, three at a time. So I've watched six.

There's two more to go. But everybody's picked who they're going to be with. and I like it. I wish it was a little spicier in terms of like the makeouts and the hookups, but maybe they're not really getting that steamy.

Like you kind of just see like kissing and I'm like, can we get, can people be like horizontal? Actually wants people to be fingering. Or something. Like even it's not even, it's not even as steamy as the bachelor,

a bachelor. Oh. Yeah. It's really kind of like tame and the people are really nice to each other. There's like one catty girl, but the other, everybody else's really nice.

It's a feel good show. And it's, it's filmed in a castle in Austria. It's like the most beautiful Christmasy, wintery setting. watch it just for like the winter porn. So I recommend it.

And yeah, it's, if you like really dramatic, cutthroat dating shows, it's not for you, but it's a feel good show, especially around the holidays. I don't need dramatic. I mean, I didn't feel like Love is blind was like mean-spirited either. And the nice thing about that show is three of the five couples are still together. Yeah. Which is crazy. I know.

But this is they're all together. So everybody's together in the castle. In a house. So like some people will be out on a date and then everybody else is hanging out, like, having hot cocoa in the castle in the castle in austria it's nuts and i'm like looking up all these people in social media no one's famous yet you know we love a show where no one's famous like no one's these people these people are not known they're not verified the main lead guy who again i guess allegedly lives here in the east village has like you know a thousand followers in instagram

like maybe they're getting more now but like i just love to watch people on a show before it blows up and they're just like normal fucking people i what was that show on to you credit what was the show on Netflix dating around. Yeah. That's great. Just like normal people. We knew a couple of people on the show. I mean, I thought it was a great job. I interviewed for the show. They didn't want me. Okay. We are really excited, guys, to introduce our guest today. She is a psychotherapist, a nationally recognized journalist and New York Times bestselling author of the book. Maybe you should talk to someone. She is a frequent public speaker, including her TED Talk, how changing your story can change your life and a co-host of the podcast. Dear Therapist,

with former girls' got a guest, Guy Wynch. Please welcome to the show, Lori Gottlieb. Yay. Hello, hello. Hello. Hi. Thank you for being here with us. I'm happy to be here. Well, we ask everybody the same question up top.

We're going to talk about your work. We're going to talk about your book. Ashley and I both watched your TED Talk, which we loved and we were very moved by it. But we asked everybody to be the same question up top, which is what gives you the right, which basically means, you know, what is your background? How did you get into this line of work? What do you enjoy about it? what attracted you to it. And then we would love to talk about, obviously, your book and some

themes of it. Yeah. Wow. So I became a therapist in probably the most nonlinear way possible, meaning I had several careers before I was a therapist. But all of them had to do a story in the human condition. So when I graduated from college, I worked in the entertainment business. I did film development. Then I moved over to NBC and worked on Primetime Series. And when I got to NBC, the first shows that they were premiering that year were some shows you may have heard of. One was called ER. And the other one was called Friends. That little show?

What? Oh, wow. Okay. And it was really interesting because that was the beginning of Thursday night, Musty TV on NBC. And when I was working on ER, I spent a lot of time in an actual emergency room with our consultant on the show, who was an ER doctor. and I really love the real life stories, right?

So, and when I say love, I mean, they were incredibly moving. It's like, you know, nobody goes to an emergency room because they expected something to happen. And so the consultant said to me, you know, I think you like it better here than you like your day job. Why don't you go to medical school? I should mention I was a French literature major. So it was not an obvious, you know, trajectory. Not biology. Right.

Not a lateral move. But I did go to medical school. I went up to Stanford for medical school. And when I got there, a lot of my professors were talking about managed care and how everything that I sort of wanted to do as a physician might be hard because of the environment, right? And I wanted to sort of guide people through their lives. And you can sort of see the burgeoning therapist in this. And so I started writing when I was up there.

And I left to become a journalist where I felt like I could really help people to tell their stories. And it was after I had a kid when I think, you know, a lot of great. parents, they feel like they need adult company during the day. The UPS guy would come and I would literally detain him. And I'd be like, how about those diapers? Do you have kids? And he would back away to his Brigg-Brown track to avoid me. And so I thought maybe I should finish medical school and go back. So I called up the dean and I said, maybe I should come back. And she said, listen, you can come back. But a lot of psychiatry is medication management. Why don't you get a graduate degree in clinical psychology and become a psychotherapist. And so that is the very circular way

that, that I came to. This is the longest answer ever to that opening question. First of all, it was like, so interesting, but like I just can't, I'm just thinking of like friends and ER to what you do now. Like that was, well, I started working on friends. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of it. Like, I just love that path. Well, I think it's interesting because maybe you should talk to someone is now we're making it into a TV series. And so a lot of people are saying that it sort of came full circle. Full circle. Yeah.

And we love to just tell people that it's like never too late to pivot or to pick something different. I mean, you went from television to med school. Like, that's a huge leap. And you can always wake up and do something different. It's never too late. So we always love that message.

It's really awesome. Yeah, well, that's right. I mean, I think that so many people think, well, I'll be this age when I do that. So I'm not going to do it because I'll be too old. And it's like, you're going to be that age anyway. So don't you want to be doing what you're doing at what you want to do at that age.

Like, nothing's going to prevent you from becoming that age. So you can either become that age and be full of regret that you didn't do the thing you wanted to do or you can do the thing that you want to do and you'll be doing that at that age. So I do feel like it's never too late. Wow. Well, and it's funny that you said, it reminded me when you said people were coming to your door and you were like detaining them of like how we felt during the quarantine, you know, like you would get like food delivered and you're like, wait a minute.

Exactly. Stay. Well, we want to talk to you about the book that you mentioned because there's so many great themes of, you know, how we pick the people that we pick romantically, why we pick them, why we self-sabotage and things like that. So maybe that's a great place to start is just telling us a little bit more about your book. You published it in April of 2019. Is that correct? That's right. That's right. Before I had any sense that before any of us had any sense that there would be a global pandemic. And interestingly, I think so many people are reading it right now in the pandemic. because it's so relevant to this idea of how we grow in connection with others. The book is basically me as a therapist following the lives of four very different patients as they go through their various struggles with relationships and all kinds of things. And then there's a fifth patient in the book, that fifth patient is me. As I go through my own struggle with a breakup and go to my own therapist.

So it's sort of, you know, life from the perspective of me as clinician and me as patient. What are some common themes? You mentioned to break up yourself. So breakups and tell us why we pick the people that we pick. Yeah. You know, that's such a great question. There's a woman and maybe you should talk to someone and I call her Charlotte in the book. And she's a woman in her 20s and she keeps dating these guys who turn out to be really disappointing.

and she keeps saying, oh, there are no good guys out there and, you know, that kind of thing. And she, and at one point, you know, she's hooking up with all these different guys. And at one point, she actually hooks up with this guy from the waiting room. I don't mean, by the way, that they hook up in our waiting room. Our office is not that exciting. Just to clarify. Can we come to the waiting room or what? But they, it's a dating service in the waiting room.

But they actually, they meet in the waiting room. He's waiting for his therapist and she's waiting for me. and then of course, you know, I know that he's bad news because everybody that she chooses is bad news. And we're just waiting to find out why he's bad news. And her whole thing goes, well, at least he's in therapy, right? But then he shows up in the waiting room with his girlfriend. So we can't, we don't know if it's his girlfriend, by the way. We just know if this woman, it could be his sister, it could be his girlfriend.

Like, we don't know. But of course it does turn out to be his girlfriend. And he keeps sort of breaking up with the girlfriend. And he's with her. He's not with her. He's with my patient. he's not with my patient. And she doesn't realize that she's really recreating this situation from childhood

where she had a father who was very much when he was there, he was very much there. And when he was disappointing and forgot about things or didn't show up, it was crushing. And those are the kinds of guys that she would choose. They call that repetition compulsion where you repeat these patterns, but you don't know you're doing that. And the reason we do that is because it feels. familiar. So it's kind of like we say, oh, this, you know, this, I was hurt this way as a child. I'm never going to pick someone like that as an adult. And yet we have radar for those people because it feels familiar. So we see someone like that. They look very different on the surface. But unconsciously, we say, oh, you look familiar. Come closer. Right. And so it isn't until you start to get to know that person that you start to feel like, wow, this is deja vu. This is exactly what happened to me before. And I really thought. this person was going to be different.

Do we all date our dads? Well, they say we marry our unfinished business. Okay. We marry our unfinished business. So it doesn't, it means that an unfinished is the key word here. So if you work through this stuff, you're not going to get into relationships with those kinds of people. The unfinished part is the problem.

So if you work through whatever, you know, you're still dealing with, then you're going to pick much better people, people who will really be helped. for you, people that you will really have the kind of relationship you want to have with. And so I think for Charlotte, it really took a lot of, there was a lot of denial of though I don't do that. And I think, you know, just to be fair, change is really hard. Whenever we try to change, change is really hard because change, even really positive change involves loss. So people say, you know, good changes. Like you're going to, you're going to take this new job. You're going to move to a new place, you're, you know, whatever the change is, you're going to get out of a bad relationship.

It's hard because we lose the familiar. It's like the devil you know. The thing that you know, at least is familiar and humans don't do well with uncertainty. And so if you do something different, like you leave the bad relationship, you don't know what's going to happen next. If you stay in the bad relationship, you know exactly what's going to happen. You're going to have the same arguments over and over day after day. You're going to have the same disappointments, the same feelings of not being satisfied. And sometimes, even though we don't want that. We say, well, at least I have that versus this thing that I don't know. We don't do that consciously, by the way. It's totally outside of our awareness. And so it sounds like what you're

saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that someone who can relate to Charlotte in that type of situation that you recommend that they date while they're working through all of this? Absolutely. It is so important that they are dating while they are working through it. The thing that I can tell you as a therapist is that most big transformations come about from the tiny, almost imperceptible steps that you take along the way. A lot of therapy takes place outside of the therapy room, meaning if you're just sitting in a room discussing something, it's all theoretical. You actually have to put it into practice. So with Charlotte you see in the book, you watch her go through these different men, you watch, you know, you watch all of the different things that don't work out. And you start to see how she starts to make these changes. I love that. And everybody has a different. story. We have a dear friend that took a year off of dating because she felt like she needed to and then she met her husband and there was different things going on there. But I just love that because I worry sometimes people have this narrative of I'm so fucked up or I'm broken and I need to take I need to take time by myself and deal with this and go to therapy and not date. And it's like I love that

you clarified that no, let's work through it while you date. Well, right, because you're going to learn every time you go out with somebody new, you start to learn something new about yourself except now you have the guidance of a therapist to help you see the things that maybe you hadn't been able to see before. So it's really this process of noticing and then also changing the behavior. So we like to say that insight is the booby prize of therapy, meaning you could have all the insight in the world, but if you don't make changes out in the world, the insight is useless. So someone might say, oh, now I understand why I got into that argument with my boyfriend. And I'll say, great, did you do something different? And the person will say, well, no, but I understand why it happened. So

the next step is now you need to do something different because otherwise you're just doing this dance we all do a dance with someone right um and if you change the dance steps then the other person either will fall flat on the dance floor or they will have to change their dance steps as well and usually they do change their dance steps because they're responding to something different you're not just having the same old argument or the same old issue over and over where you guys can practically script it in advance because you know exactly what's going to happen. It's funny because I mean, I hear myself and so many other people saying, like, I know it's bad for me, but I'm just going to, you know, I just can't break the pattern. I'm not going to, you know, so many of us know what we're doing is wrong, is not good, is self-sabotaging. It's like you said, it's more comfortable to just sort of stay there instead of call the behavior out and change it because sometimes I think changing the behavior means losing the partner, the friend, the relationship that you're in, and that's scary. Well, it is. There's a chapter in the book called How Humans Change. And it shows you that it's not just like with New Year's resolutions or Nike, just do it, right? It's not like you just make a decision to change and then

you change. There's a whole series of steps starting with pre-contemplation where you don't even really know you're thinking about the change, a contemplation where you're kind of thinking about it, then you're preparing preparation, you know, how are you going to do it? Action, you take the action, you make the change. But the most important step in change is maintenance, the last step. How do you maintain the change? So how many times do people say, okay, I'm going to leave this bad situation, this bad relationship. And there's three in the morning and someone text someone or you run into them at Starbucks or something happens.

You see them on social media and all of a sudden you're back in it again. So maintenance is the most important phase. Right. I mean, it's like anybody that said like I'll start a diet this week or I'll start working out this week. Those things are easy for a week for a month. Well, right. And the other thing is that I think people need to have a lot of compassion for themselves.

That I think that really helps with the maintenance. So people will slip back. We just do. And so you have to expect that that's built into the maintenance phase. So it's like, take the example of the diet. If you say, you know, it's New Year's and I'm going to eat better and then, oh, wow, look at all this cake I just ate. Then people say, well, then forget it. I, you know, I failed.

I failed at the diet. So I'm not going to do it anymore. I'll just eat the way I used to eat. No, just go back to it. You have to be compassion and say, okay, you know, it makes sense that it's hard for me because I've been doing this other thing for a long time. So I think the same thing when you're going through a change and it's really hard is you know, you might slip back, but that doesn't mean all is lost. And that's the important part of maintenance is to know you can get right back on track. Yeah, I like really have issues with being on my phone in my bed, going to bed at three in the morning. Then I slept to sleep till 10 or 11 and I hate it. And last night was like it was three. I had done nothing except look at stupid stuff. Not even anything. I got nothing out of it. I didn't even read a good article. Like I was just on my phone doing who knows what. what from like, you know, 1.30 in the morning until three. And now I'm like, now I'm not going to be able to get up early like I want. And I like really kind of beat myself up while I'm laying in

bed, you know, at three in the morning. I was just like, okay, well, I can't, there's nothing I can do now. I can only start fresh again tomorrow. I'm pretty good with most things. It's this thing that I can't seem to get a handle on. And I go in good, I have good days, I have bad days and I go in really great spurts where I'm going to bed earlier and I'm waking up earlier and I'm feeling more productive. Like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to waste time and go to bed late and wake up, you know, late and half the day's gone. It's just kind of like a constant internal struggle with me. And I, I know it's not the same as eating, but it feels a little bit like a food addiction where you're doing it and you know you're doing it. And there's, it's not making you

feel better and you just keep doing it. Well, that's right. It doesn't make you feel better because what happens is you're not really aware of what you're actually feeling. And so what do we do and we feel something uncomfortable, right? We try to push it down. But we can't really do that. You can't suppress your feelings because feelings need air. and they're going to come out in other way. So how do they come out? They come out in what you're talking about, the mindless scrolling through the internet, right? Through too much food, through too much wine, through a short-temperedness, you know, shopping online, whatever it is. This is what we do with our feelings, and it's not very helpful. It's much more productive to say, what's going on right now

that I'm trying to distract myself from? And that's going to help you so much more than beating yourself up over the fact that you're having trouble tolerating a feeling. Yeah. And to me, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings on things that are happening in the world. So it's like, I just need to not bring the phone in because then I see something on the internet. And then my mind starts going. And now I'm just trying to process that.

A lot of it's just, Raina says this all the time. She's like, just put the phone away an hour or two before bedtime is kind of, at least, this isn't about my therapy session. But I just feel like you do beat yourself up. Well, that's the thing, though. I think, you know, this beating ourselves up. I mean, so it's so interesting. Whenever I'm doing public speaking, I will say to people in the audience, I will say,

show of hands, who is the person that you talk to most in the course of your life? Is it your partner? Lots of hands. Is it your sister? Is it your mother? Is it your best friend? Right. Who is it?

You get lots of hands. But the truth is the person we talk to most in the course of our lives is ourselves. And what we say to ourselves isn't always kind or true or useful. And so I had this patient who was this young woman that was so self-critical. She was always beating herself up for minor things. And she didn't see it. And I said, listen, I want you to go home and I want you to write down everything that you say to yourself.

Listen for that voice. Write down everything you say to yourself in the course of a few days and we'll talk about it next week. And so she comes back the next week and she had dutifully done the assignment and she starts to read it. She says, I can't read this. I am such a bully to myself. And there were little things like she woke up in the morning.

She was like, oh my God, you look horrible. Or she made a very minor mistake that any of us would make during the course of a day. And she's like, you're such an idiot. You're so stupid. Or there was something, there was a job she was thinking of applying for. And she's like, you'll never get it. You know, just the way she spoke to herself. If somebody else who was not her, right, who knew her well, like saw her in the morning.

They would not think like she looked terrible. Let's put it to this way, if she looked at a friend who looked like that, she would just think, oh, my friend looks totally fine, right? If her friend made that mistake, she would not think my friend is an idiot. She's incompetent. If her friend had her credentials and was thinking about applying for that job, she'd think, yeah, she has a totally good shot of getting that job, right? So it's really important to be kind to ourselves.

And we think that if we self-flagellate, like if we're taskmasters to ourselves, that we're somehow helping ourselves, like motivating ourselves to change. you're not. The more that you can have compassion for yourself, the more accountable you will hold yourself. Because what happens is when we self-flagellate, we are bathing in shame. And when we are bathing in shame, we are paralyzed. Shame, it causes paralysis. And so when you can be kind to yourself, you can hold yourself accountable and say, okay, I'm human. I made that mistake. Let me learn from that and let me move on. And I think, you know, in therapy, so often that's something that we work on with people.

And it really changes their lives when they can get past the shame and they can see their lives more clearly. I mean, that's really what the TED Talk I think is about, you know, which is about the story that you're telling yourself and how to how to change that. So I want to talk about the TED talk because I loved it. I felt very moved by it. I want to wrap up something earlier, tie all this shame in and just answer a question, which is how you make better choices about who we're picking.

Because right around the time we interviewed Guy, actually. actually, I was talking to Ashley and I felt like I really identified a problem myself with who I was picking. And although on the surface, they all looked really different. They had different jobs, different income levels, different interests. At the baseline, they were all people that seemed really fun and exciting in the beginning and weren't people that were ever really going to be partners or be able to be the kind of partner that I needed, right? And so I identified the problem, but, you know, I think that you can really get sucked into what you were saying, shame and regret of not changing, of making bad decisions. So,

I want to wrap up, like, how do we make a better decision, you know, about, like, because it's hard to just say, like, I just won't be attracted to the thing I'm attracted to. Oh, no, it doesn't work that way. As you know, as everybody, as everybody listening has experienced. Right. And you said, you know, small things moving forward. So, anyways, I just, I'm getting her about that guy on the phone for three hours. Yeah. Well, I tell her all the time what to do. Okay, this is not about us. But I think, I think you can tell her all you want, but she's still going to want to do it, right? And so, so that's the, that's the issue. You know, I think it's interesting because so many times I talk and maybe

should talk to someone about the difference between idiot compassion and wise compassion. And idiot compassion is, you're dating someone, you tell your friend like, oh my gosh, he did this, whatever. And your friend is always like, yeah, you're right. He's wrong. He's terrible. He's a jerk. You're amazing.

And if you've listened to your friend's stories over time, you will start to hear a pattern that no matter who they're talking about, whichever guy happens to be at that moment, there's a familiar pattern or theme to what's going on. And so, yeah, maybe that person wasn't the person for your friend, but at the same time, your friend is choosing these people too. And so there's something that your friend is responsible for as well. It's kind of like if a fight breaks out in every bar you're going to, maybe it's you.

We don't say that to our friends. So idiot, compassionate, it's like, you're amazing, they're terrible. And it's not so cut and drive like that. When you do go to therapy, what you get is wise compassion, which is we hold up a mirror to you and help you to see something about yourself that maybe you haven't been willing or able to see. As friends, we tend not to do that as much because we're worried that our friend will feel unsupported by us.

So when you say, what can you do? I think that the first thing that you can do is to notice, wait a minute, when I feel that initial rush of attraction and I'm really drawn to some. somebody, does that feel familiar? If so, that's like a put a big, imagine a big stop sign. Like literally imagine a stop sign in front of your face and just say stop. I need to slow down here and I need to evaluate the situation. This feels very intense.

It feels very quickly intense. And that probably is a signal that it's something from the past. It's something old that is drawing you toward this person. And then you really want to watch what happens very slowly with this person, right? Like, how do I feel when I'm around this person? What are some of the things that I really want in a long-term relationship? And am I feeling like this is possible in this relationship in terms of how we are together, how he's acting toward me, what he wants in his life right now?

People's actions, too, are very important. So no matter what somebody says, how do they act? You know, like, are they reliable? Are they calling you when they're. they say they're going to call you. Are they showing interest in a committed monogamous long-term relationship? Are they interested in the same kind of future that you're interested in? And people are afraid to talk about these things because they feel like, well, I'm going to seem needy or desperate. Well, no, you're actually going to seem like someone who has her shit together. You know,

this is someone who's like, I know what I want. And, you know, you seem like a great person, but we might not be the right people for each other. And we try to tell people, there's easier, lighter ways to have these conversations without having a... Oh, it's not an inquisition. Right. Yeah. And I don't think that's what you were saying. We talked last week about, you know, asking somebody if they want to have kids and we talked about how there's... If you ask somebody where they see

themselves living for the next five years, the kids will usually come up. Like, these don't have to be really serious, heavy conversations all the time. It can, you can, you can probe lightly. Well, right. And I think that it's interesting because you don't have to pretend that dating isn't part of the process of figuring out, is this person with me for the long term? Am I, am I the right person for this person for the long term? I mean, that's what dating is. So we can pretend that dating is just romance, right? But dating is the process of getting to see whether or not you two are compatible for the long term.

And I think that that sounds so clinical. And people don't want to think about dating that way. But, you know, that's sort of the most fundamental thing. And then, you know, you have to see like, am I attracted to this person, is there chemistry between us? All this stuff must be there. But it's easy to find the attraction in the chemistry. It's harder to find the attraction in the chemistry and the infrastructure that you're looking for. And so so many people dismiss the infrastructure altogether. They're like, I'm so obsessed with this guy. Oh, but I'm not sure if he's going to call or I'm not sure if he's, I don't know what's going on with him. It's like, is that how you really want to live? Will you feel happy if you are married in that situation?

most people would not. Yeah, this is like the number one thing about our podcast. It's like if he likes you, you'll know. If he doesn't, you'll be confused. And it's just like, I don't know any successful relationships, you know, the ones my successful relationships in the past included, that started out with this confusion. It's supposed to kind of be easy at the beginning.

You know, I have a friend that's dating right now. And I think she's been, I think she's done a lot of work on herself. And she's always kind of went through, went for those avoidant type of guys and has had a lot of trauma, I guess in terms of breakups. And she's dating this guy and I'm keeping tabs on it. And it's just like he shows up

when he says he's going to show up. He calls me every day. And I think she was like, this feels too good to be true. But I'm like if it feels right and it feels like he is showing up, just go with it. And then he invited her to go meet his parents.

I mean, it's just kind of like it's all falling into place. And from what I, it sounds like a secure guy that likes her and wants the same thing. Right. And so like with Charlotte in the book, your friend probably doesn't trust that yet.

So Charlotte, when she finally did, start meeting guys like that. It was very foreign to her. Like she had no experience with that. And so then people get really anxious. It's funny that they don't get, they're anxious in a different way

when it's with the guys who like you never know where they stand, right? That's one kind of anxiety. But it's a familiar anxiety. And then you meet somebody who was really into you, who really wants to be with you, who does what he says he's going to do, right? And then all of a sudden you're like, ooh, this, I don't even, like I landed in a foreign country

and I don't even know the customs here. I don't know my way around. I don't know where anything is. You know, it's like I don't, I'm not used to being here. And so that's what happened with Charlotte, is that it took her a while to really be able to trust that.

There's a word for that, by the way. It's called charophobia. And it's fear of joy. Oh. My mom has that. Right? No, there's a lot of people. There's a lot of people who do.

And even people have it, you know, maybe on a smaller level, where they start to feel like, wow, this feels really good. And now I'm scared because the other shoe might drop. What if the other shoe drops? Like this does feel, as you said, too good to be true. And so they're afraid of joy, cherophobia. And it's a real thing for people who have never been able to trust good things in their lives.

Or as you sort of brought up, people that have never felt the stability of a good relationship don't even know that they can have it. And Ashley and I've talked about this before. her and I have had really solid, stable relationships with somebody that shows up and does the right thing. So when we see the wrong thing, we're like, I know it exists. I know I can have it. I know somebody else has given it to me. But the people you're talking about that are like, I don't even know what this looks like. Keep accepting it because they're like, I don't know if this is possible. Yeah. Like obviously your parents play a huge part, but also just hopefully someone comes along in your life and sets the bar of like this is how I'm going to be treated. but I totally understand the feeling of unfamiliarity. And I guess that's where the self-sabotaging comes in.

Well, that's right. They tend to self-sabotage. Yeah. So what happens is you meet someone like that and you start to get really worried, you know, because it feels so good and the disappointment of what you imagine it will feel like when, quote, the other shoe drops, right? Because that's what you imagine will happen, even though you have no signs that this is going to happen. They're not doing anything to make you feel that way.

the other people that you dated always made you feel that way and you stayed in those. You know, you weren't sabotaging those. You were trying to get closer and all of that. Now you have someone who wants to get close to you and what do you do? You start to distance yourself because you start to get really worried about this feels so good that I'm going to be so devastated when this goes away that I'm going to protect myself by not getting too close. And that's where the danger happens because then the other person thinks, oh, maybe she's not that into me or why is she pulling away? And then he gets confused. It's always interesting to me when things are so hard and it's like this is supposed to actually

be the easier time. And a lot of people confuse drama with chemistry. So a lot of people feel like, oh, wow, like this is so intense. There's so much chemistry here. That's not chemistry. That's, you know, again, your unfinished business. Do you find that that is inherently a problem in people, that I'm trying to say this in a sensitive way. Like it sounds like a younger, like when I was younger, I think I confused drama for love and excitement and less.

I don't know that it's like a characteristic I've carried through my life. I think you just meet people and have better relationships when you grow up. But do you see a lot of people that sort of carry that throughout? Or is this like a younger characteristic or both?

You know, you're right. I think that a lot of younger people as they're experimenting and learning about relationships, sometimes there's that, you know, real intensity and that drama. but I'm talking about really young, like high school college, maybe. Sure, me too.

By the time you're in your 20s and you're dating, if you do have that secure attachment style, you're not going to have the patience for the drama, the chaos, the uncertainty. You're not going to stick around for that. It doesn't appeal to you. It appeals to you if there's some unfinished business that you're working out. And what we do is we think to ourselves, again, totally outside of our awareness, like this time, I'll get this person to love me. This time, I'm going to have a different ending. And that's what's going on unconsciously, which is why people try so hard to get the person to love them, to get the person

to show up, to get the person to like be the reliable, you know, partner for them that the person just isn't going to be. Yeah. So is there a outcome with Charlotte that we can kind of discuss? I mean, did she find someone or is she? I'll let people read the book. Read the book. Okay. Yeah. I don't We won't be able to read the book. Yeah. Okay. Well, check out the book, guys. It's a New York Times bestseller.

So, you know, it's good. Well, if we can move on to the TED Talk, because I was very moved by it, and you can talk a little bit about it because it was your TED Talk. And then I'll quote you back to you. But you talked about changing the narration and your own story of your own life. So let's talk about the TED Talk. Yeah. So it's really about this idea that if we don't revise our stories, we relive our stories. And what I mean by that is when people come in.

into therapy and they tell me what's going on. They're telling me a story. But the thing is, we're all unreliable narrators. And I don't mean that people are lying or trying to mislead you. They're telling you the truth from their perspective. But the problem with their story is usually the reason they're stuck is because there's something wrong with their story, right? They're telling, they have a very narrow view of what's going on. And so when I see couples, for example, in my practice, I see both sides of a story. And it's really interesting. Like, things move so much faster when you can see both sides. When I see an individual, I have to intuit what that might be, and then I have to kind of figure it out. And so, you know, I think that what happens is people come in,

they're telling a story. And usually they are stuck in some way. So it's like the protagonist can't get on to the next chapter. They're sort of stuck. And they have all these things that are confusing. Like, you know, is the protagonist moving forward or is the protagonist going in circles and who are the major characters and who are the minor characters? And most important, what are the parts of the story they're emphasizing? And what are the parts of the stories they're minimizing or leaving out altogether? And again, they're not trying to be deceitful. This is just their perspective, but it's very, very subjective. And so what I feel like I'm almost an editor as a therapist, you know, and I have this writing background. So I think that

they're very complimentary because what I'm doing is I'm helping them to revive. their first draft, which is a lot of problems with it. And so as we start to expand the story, as we start to consider other perspectives, or like, I will often say to people, if this person that you're talking about in the story were sitting on my couch and they were telling me the story from their perspective, what would it sound like? And then all of a sudden they're like, oh, you know, like all of a sudden they see, wait a minute, first of all, there is some overlap. And maybe they weren't, you know, it's not out of malice that they did that, but it's because they did, you know, they thought this. And they understand more about

their own role in the story. Like, they're reacting to me too. It's not just that I'm reacting to them, but they're reacting to me. And I always say to people, I think that, you know, a lot of people come to therapy because they feel like they want to get to know themselves better. And I feel like in a lot of ways, therapy is about getting to unknow yourself, meaning to let go of that limited story that you've been telling yourself about yourself. So so many people are living this story that just isn't true instead of living their actual

lives and they can't see things clearly. So it's this real process of kind of rewriting the story, getting rid of these false beliefs like, I'm not lovable or, you know, nobody, you know, I'm not good enough or, you know, whatever there, you know, everybody else is the problem. That's another story that some people have. And really getting clear about, you know, what are what are the holes in your story? What are the problems with your story? What are the inaccuracies in your story? I love that you said that because Rain and I have talked about when we've shared stories of past relationships, breakups, whatever it may be. And we always think, is this a story the other person would tell too? Because we want to share an accurate story. We certainly don't want someone hearing that

on the other end and being like, that's not how that happened at all. And I had this one friend who had an engagement breakup. And the way I was there through it all. Are you talking about me? The way that this friend will tell us to show up, Brayda, the way that this friend will tell us to show up, Brayda, the way that this friend will tell us. The way that this friend will tell us story if it comes up. Let's call her Raina. No. Let's call her Raina. So her name is Dana. And the way that Dana

will tell the story. Kayla, you're doing this now. The way that Dana will tell the story in a group setting if it comes up. Because it was kind of a crazy story. You know, it comes up. It's so not it. Like it's, it's skewed. It's, but it's like, I'm

screaming because I know and I know the ex-fiance's side. And I'm just like, it's almost, it's not lies, but it is the most one-sided bananas version of a story. And I'm like, the audacity to tell it in front of me, I'm not going to put my friend on blast, but I'm almost like, don't you remember that I was there? Actually, he left me and you weren't there. But I think the reason people do that is because they're telling a story that is palatable

to them. And again, I want to go back to shame because the reason that we don't tell the accurate version of the story is because there's some shame. in what really happened. Makes us look bad. It makes us look bad. We feel like, again, the difference between I did something that I wish I had done differently and versus I'm a person who's, you know, incapable of being in a relationship or, you know, whatever the story is, again, separating out the thing that happened from the person you are.

That's the difference, again, between sort of learning from something or just bathing yourself in shame. Right. And so I think that the reason that we have these, you know, these unreliable and their generations is because when people first come in, they're just getting to know you. They want to tell a story where they're going to come off in a way where you're going to like them. But truly, the people, you know, people always say like, you know, is that I want the therapist to light me. When you show the truth of who you are, you become much more likable to friends, the therapist, to everybody.

And so I think so many times we put on this false self. We put on this, you know, we tell this story in a certain way. And what it does is it distances people from us. The way that people get closer, to you is if you say, here's the real story, and I have so much regret about it, or I have so much shame about it. That's how you get the support that you want, not by telling a false story. And I feel like sometimes the closer we are to a situation, the more shame we feel. And when we get some space, we can have a more top-down view of it and say, you know what, I would do the exact same thing again. Or I understand why I did something like that. And I stick to that decision. And I had an outcome I didn't like, but, you know, I get why I did the thing that I did. And I think

sometimes when we have some space from it, like my engagement that Ashley's talking about. Oh my God. I can't stress it enough. It's not about she didn't know me back then. But I like what you said though about about I stand by my decision. Meaning I understand, again, the self-compassion. I understand why I did what I did.

Maybe I would do things differently in the future. But I can't beat myself up for what I did. So it's not about beating yourself up for what you did. It's about I understand why I did that at that time. And in the future, Here's what I learned from it. And here's how I might go about things differently in the future in a different situation. Yeah.

And what she was talking about, which has nothing to do with me, but still, I do tell that story very differently today than I did at the time because I was so embarrassed and shameful. I'm regretful. And now I tell the story differently because I don't feel any of those things. I feel perfectly fine. And I feel like I was true to myself and what happened, happened. And that's why I think we need to learn how to listen to people and to our friends when they're going through difficult times around relationships.

Because I think that a lot of the time we'll hear a story from our friends. You know, this just happened. And we either try to fix it or, you know, whatever we're trying to do. It really helps when someone's going through something to think about timing and dosage. So timing is this just happened to them. Is this really the time for me to point something out? Probably not. Dosage is how much do you want to kind of tell them at a certain time?

And so when somebody comes to you with something, you might say, like, how can I be helpful right now? Do you just want to vent? I'm here for you. You know, maybe we can talk more about it in a couple, you know, tomorrow or later in the week or whatever it is. Because at different times, it's not like you're going to have one conversation about it.

As we all know, we will beat this thing to death, right? So it will get talked about a lot. And so in different conversations, you can offer different things, depending on what they're ready and willing to hear at that time. Just like you were saying about the engagement, there were probably times when you weren't willing to hear certain things that later you thought, oh, this is really useful for me to hear. Rain and I are so huge on growth and like that's what we do as humans and I look back at things I did or said in my last serious relationship and I'm like horrified. I mean, and it's like, of course I know

I did that and why I did that in the moment, but I would never do it today. I, you know, I will admit it, but I'm embarrassed to remember it a little bit. But I've grown as a person. I've done a lot of work. I've realized a lot of things. I'm just a different, better person. So you can be a different, better person two weeks after something crazy happened. You know, I think that humans have the ability when we're willing and open-minded enough to grow and change, like, pretty quick. We learn new information. If we absorb it and we change our habits, we change. So talking about things that you did in the past doesn't even need to be four or five years ago. It can be, this was last month. And I know why I was triggered at that time and why I did that. And I, you know, I would react differently if this

happened tomorrow. I would hope. Yeah. And I think that we can hold more than one feeling or state of mind at a time. So, for example, I think when something ends, even if it's good that it ended, there's still often grief and there's still loss and there's still pain. And you can hold that at the same time as here's what I'm learning from it. And so, and they'll come in and out. So it can be that, you know, we want our friends to feel better so quickly that we don't really allow them the time to greet. And I think that we have to let them go through that process. Because, you know, you can say, well, he was horrible to you. Like, why are you still talking about this? Or, you know, let's move on. Or, you know, you want to help them move on. And they're grieving,

not necessarily that person. Part of it is that person, but mostly it's not. Mostly it's their grieving this idea of, I thought that I found a person that I wanted to be with. And then there's the grief of, and now I have to start over, and now I'm back doing this again. And so I think that sometimes people don't really talk about how hard it is to date and how much, you know, that a lot of times people have a lot of grief, not necessarily because that was, you know, that they're still sort of stuck on that person, but because that was the closest thing they had to the thing that they hoped to get. And they haven't found that thing yet. And so they have to deal with, you know, all of the feelings that come up with that. Yeah, and I just think maybe you feel so victimized in the moment, I guess, fresh off of

a breakup or fight. I mean, I think that, that, you know, there's this sort of when you're, when you're feeling depressed, when you're grieving, I always say to people who are depressed, you are not the best person to talk to you about you right now, because when you're depressed, you're thinking is so distorted. It's very black or white. It tends to just stay in this veil of negativity. You can't see things clearly. You can't see your soul. clearly, you can't see other people clearly, you can't see the world clearly. And so I think that it's really important that you realize that, you know, my thinking is going to be distorted right now. Maybe I'm not the best person to evaluate myself at this moment. I just need to grieve right now. So I think

that that that step is really important so that you know that what, you know, everything that you're dealing with right now is a little bit distorted. And I think that's very comforting to know that it's not always going to look like this. Well, we wanted to talk about this as well in terms of the story that you tell yourself and just reframing your mindset. And I like you did say this in the TED talk of how depression distorts our views of ourselves and our stories. And I think lumped into their depression or not you know, clinical depression, but just overall sadness, rejection, anxiety, all these things distort us and our ability to make good decisions, assess a situation, things like that. And I mean, what is your take on it, your advice? Because it's like what? Stop being sad.

Like that's not really being. answer. No, but I think it's just the awareness of, you know, this might not be the time for me to make a big life decision. This might not be, you know, all of these thoughts that I'm thinking that are that are really self-flagellating or that are really negative or the future looks so bleak, those kinds of thoughts. You have to know it's not going to look that way. You're grieving right now. It's not always going to look that way. And so I think that that's just helpful in the moment. It's not stop being sad. It's know that because I'm sad, sad. I'm seeing the world for a clouded lens. I just, I love that we and you give people permission

to have that time, have that space. People write us all the time and say like, I'm too sad. I can't get out of bed. I don't know what to do. I'm in so much pain. It's like you got to go through it. There's no easy fix, you know, like there's no like read this book and you feel great. Take a walk, work out, eat a salad. You know, it's, you got to go through it. Right. And at the same time, though, I think that you can, you can go through it and you can connect while you're going through it. So many people isolate when they're feeling like that because they feel like, oh my gosh, I don't want to be around anybody. I'm, you know, I don't feel like doing anything. Just even watching a movie with a friend, you know, just anything low key, I think is helpful. Just connecting with other people, not isolating. Isolation is so harmful. You know, and by the way, by isolation, I don't mean that we don't need time for ourselves because I think that having time for ourselves is really important.

But I think there's a difference between sort of time for yourself where you're really, you're feeling whole and you're having that time for yourself and time for yourself where you're just like, I don't want to be around anybody because I'm so sad. That's where connection is really important. Yeah. I mean, I think about all the worst times in my life and how sad and low I felt. And, you know, you're at least my inclination is self-isolate. Think about this laying bad and cry. And the way that I've always felt better is to pick up the phone and call somebody, even if it sucks and I hate it. So I have like a PSA for the single people in the world, which is that. So in my practice right now during COVID, you know, there are so many people that I see and maybe they're in couples or they have kids or whatever it is. And then I have people who are single. And maybe they've even just had a breakup and they're in a really bad place. And they always say, oh, my, you know, my friends have, you know, they have partners, they have kids, they're too busy.

Like, I don't want to call them. I don't want to bother them. I don't want to be a burden. And when I'm hearing from the people who are, you know, married with kids or whatever it is or they have boyfriends, they're like, I love this person dearly. I love all these people dearly. But like, I'm so sick of them right now. Like I don't know why my friends aren't calling me.

I don't know why, you know. And so my message is please call the married people and especially the married people with kids because they are dying to hear from you. They are suffering. They are dying to hear from you. And they really want to hear from you. And it's so interesting, the projections of like, well, they don't want to. to hear from me because they're so busy. No, they are, they are, they really want to hear from you.

They really want to talk to you. You know, it's like you will be doing them a favor as well as doing yourself a favor by reaching out. I love that. Yeah, that is so. And what a welcome break that that the, that a parent, a married parent with kids gets to hear about some single person's problem. I'm not saying that to be to joke around. They're like, oh, this is great. I've been just like cleaning up like kid shit all day. I'd love to hear about this traumatic breakup. It's not even. And I just say it's not, and I want to say a lot of single people, like their identity becomes, like I went through a breakup or their identity becomes I'm the single person. I'm always having relationship problems. Your identity isn't that. What can you talk about? Well, you might have more

time to say like, I read this great book or I, you know, did this great thing or here's this thing that I found really interesting that the person who is in that couple or with those little kids didn't have time to do and they're like you're, you're an interesting person. Right. And you realize You're an interesting person. It's not just about, like, let me tell you all about my dating adventures. It's about, hey, oh my gosh, let me tell you about this thing that I read or this thing that I did that the other person hasn't had time to do. I love that you said that. My best friend is married with two children.

And it's funny because I feel like sometimes she'll call me and she'll ask, like, what's going on with this? I'm like, do you really want to hear this? And she's like, yes, like more than ever. I don't want to talk about my kids. Like, tell me everything. Just please dominate the conversation. take the next hour to talk about whatever you want. So I love that you said that too.

No, single people aren't just defined by rejection in the single. No, my friend, my married friends with kids love to hear that stuff. I want to repeat back to you something that you said. Maybe it'll be like a nice way to wrap up the whole theme of the episode. You can elaborate on it a little bit. But you were, I was listening to your TED Talk while I was showering. And I popped out of the shower to write down this thing that you said. And I wrote the way we narrate our lives shapes what they become.

And I love that. And, you know, this narration of your life, it's your own self-talk, it's your negative self-talk, it's your past experiences you bring into every experience currently. And it really stuck with me. And I used this example with Ashley earlier today, and I've probably used it on the podcast, but my mom always says, like, if something can turn out positively or negatively, it always goes negatively for her. And I'm the opposite.

I always say that things just work out for me. And I, you know, but I think that it's, we have similar lives. I just think it's how you view the things that happened to you. And I think that if you can be happy with certain outcomes, then you will feel like things turn out more positively. Yes, I think that the way we narrate our lives determines the choices that we make. And that's what's important. So it's not just like things happen to you.

It's that you're in the driver's seat. And I think so many people feel like they're not in the driver's seat. They're kind of like being driven around. They're like in the Uber, except they didn't get to say where the destination was. And I think that what happens when you start to narrate your story differently, when you start to have a clear version of the story, you realize, wait a minute, I do get to choose the direction my life goes

in terms of the choices that I have, right? So we can't control everything. But I think that there's so much more agency that we have than we give ourselves credit for. So I think that when you get the story straight, you start to say, wait a minute, I can take the story in a lot of different directions. I can move on to the next chapter very differently than I imagine. Yeah, I think that's great. I mean, I think some people, I hate to say like a victim mentality, but they think everything's happening to them, you know, and it's like, I don't know, this is your life. There's got to be some ounce of responsibility here, but I don't want to end it on like such a negative note, but I think maybe, especially during this time, people are feeling so powerless because of what's happening

in the world. And I'm sure you see, you know, like, I did everything in my power to create this career for myself that can't exist because of a virus, you know, and it's, it's, I've lost my job and this and that, or you people have lost family members. I mean, is there any way we can kind of like just touch on the, that feeling and like the anxiety that people are feeling just given the state of the world? Yeah, absolutely. And I want to say that while I think a lot of people, I think everybody is struggling in different ways. And people, I talk about the hierarchy of pain and maybe you should talk to someone, where I think that a lot of people feel like, especially during COVID. If it's not loss of life, loss of health, loss of income, people feel like, well,

I'm not allowed to feel sad or I'm not allowed to feel anxious or I'm not allowed to feel whatever I'm feeling. We don't do that with our physical health. You know, we don't make that comparison like, well, it's not that bad compared to other people. So if you break your arm, you're not going to say, I'm not going to go to the doctor and get a cast and get an x-ray because somebody else has cancer, right? You don't do that. You don't make that comparison. We do that with our emotional health all the time. We say, well, yeah, you know, I might be really struggling with isolation right now or with depression right now. But look at this other person who, you know, their mother died in a nursing home or, you know, whatever happened. So I don't, you know, my problems aren't really that

big. And I would just say, you know what, there is no hierarchy here. Pain is pain. And if you are struggling, please reach out to people. There's no, it's not a contest. Pain is not a contest. And I think that that's really important, not just during COVID, but I think all the time to remember. so many times we minimize our pain. You know, it's like someone will say, it was just a breakup, it's not a divorce, I don't really have a right to feel this way. You know, it was a miscarriage,

but it wasn't death of a child. Or even just like the pain of being single for a lot of people. It's this ambiguous grief of not, you're grieving the person you haven't met yet. Meaning like you're grieving the fact that that you don't know who that person is, you don't know when you're going to find them.

And I think that people go through that. And it's important that you can, you know, reach out and get some help with that because it will really, again, going back to the stories we tell ourselves, it will really help you to narrate the story differently. So ultimately, maybe you should talk to someone. It's subtle, right? With the big tissue box on the cover of the book, it's subtle. I love that, by the way, we just hit exactly one hour and then you wrapped it up like that. And our time is up, right? Yeah. Right, exactly. But not necessarily therapists, just in general, pick up the phone. You know, we've been saying this since.

That's what I mean. The title of the book, maybe you should talk to someone, doesn't just mean, hey, maybe you should talk to a therapist. Right. It means we need to talk more to one another. I love that you said that. If there's one quick takeaway of someone being like, I just, this is the worst. You know, it's just like we've been saying this since the beginning. And again, you're not a burden.

But there's more to you than that, too. You know, it might feel like that's everything right now. But I think that the more you reach out, the more the world opens up to you. and then you start to see what else is there. I love that. Well, that feels like a really beautiful, positive note to end on. You'll pick up the phone, reach out to somebody.

I'm sure people will want to listen to you more, read your book, listen to the podcast. So if you could tell people where to find you, website, Instagram, podcast, everything. Sure. My website is Lori Gottlieb.com. My TED Talk, you can find on TED.com. And my podcast is called Dear Therapists.

And you can find that anywhere you listen to podcast. and we basically do a therapy session. And then we give advice and the person has to try out the advice and they report back and let us know how it went. So you get the full story. They can read my weekly advice column called Dear Therapist every Monday at the Atlantic. And the book is called Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and they can find that anywhere they get their books. Well, this was great. Thank you.

There's so many great takeaways from this episode. This was really special. Thank you so much for all your time. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you so much for the conversation. All right. So it's just us. We hope you guys enjoyed our interview with Lori.

And we wanted to do our spin on Dear Therapist, which is her podcast. And bring back, is this weird? Because we are your therapist when it comes to a weird fucking shit. Best game ever. So it's our original game. Dear Ashley and Raina, is this weird? Ashley said the magic words to me, she said, do you want to start an ad with cum? Listen, we could have done a whole cum themed.

Is this weird? Oh, yeah. You guys ask tons of questions about come. We just, we had to delete some, but there were so many of them. It's so cummy. Like, we could do a whole bonus episode on cum. We might. Yeah.

Hear me out. Okay. You know what I'll talk about come all day long. Come fetish all day. Okay. Do you want to start? Yeah. Start in and I with Cum.

Yeah, starting out with coming. Okay. Thank you guys to these submissions. They were great. First question. I was hooking up with this guy and he was a total germophobe, which I gradually found out. We were having sex doggy and he pulls out to finish. And instead of finishing on me like a normal man,

he catches the cum in his hand and is holding. it. I turn around and I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? And he said, oh, I didn't want to get it on you. Like, he went to the bathroom and washed his dick because he was grossed out by his own cum and would have been grossed out by being on my body. This is weird. Ray and I know you love come. Please ladies provide some insight. Okay. So what I need to do is put myself in this situation. Right. Same. Like I'm trying, I want, because I don't want to give bad advice. I don't want to give advice that I wouldn't be able to take because these situations, you want to be like, ask them what the deal is, but it's uncomfortable.

There's pretty much all six, every, every sex situation I'm in, I don't ask you in the moment. They're so weird. Sometimes you're like, I just got to get out of here. My thing with this was like, guys are so stupid. Like he might have like been like, my, my com's weird lately. I want to get it checked out. Like, they don't fucking know what's going on. Like this could have been a one time thing.

For me, it was, it would have to be if it happened multiple times, in which case I would be like, hey, like, I don't mind if you come on me, I think it's hot. Yeah. To me, this sounds like a young guy who maybe, like, even like his dad or someone, like, really antiquated was like, girls don't like it when you do that. It's like really rude. You can't just like pull out spray all over them. It sounds like something that's not like that's sexually like experienced. Maybe somebody doesn't even know what they like.

And somebody just said to him, like, girls don't like when you do this. It's rude or it's not polite to like spray your cum. And that's all it is. I mean, also he might be like a weird sexual divian. He's saving loads of his own com. Oh, my God. Also, he could have had a, he could have fucked somebody like me. one time after a spray tan and I said don't come on my spray tan because I've said that a lot to people

because it takes it right off. So I think that you're right. He heard this somewhere along the lines or it could be some weird germaphobe thing. The only way to know is to find out and it is zero percent awkward to tell a guy you want him to come on your stomach or on your back. Like that's hot. So tell everyone. Yeah. I tell the waiter at the restaurant. Yeah. But it sounds like this might have been a one time thing. So it's like who cares? Like she might have ditched him by now. But these things don't happen inside of a bubble it's happened to someone else. So if someone is catching his own come after he fucks you doggy style, you just have to be like, hey, like, you can come on my back when you're fucking me or you can come on my stomach. Like I think it's hot. Say, say those words,

I think it's hot. You will know immediately if he's like, well, I couldn't ever do that. And then you got to dig deeper. Also, she said he's a germaphobe. So I think in his mind, he's like, this is bodily excrement. This is gross. I think it's gross. She'll think it's gross. And he's a, people become born germaphobes. They're, they're conditioned, to be them. Someone told him this is gross. Someone told him the stuff inside your body is gross. Don't put it on other people. So I agree with you. I think you just ask somebody, this turns me on. I like this. I don't mind this. And then that's the end of it. Right. Okay. This we have a family one. So as the holidays are coming up, these, the family ones become more relevant. This one's

fucking nuts. Okay. She says this is an is this weird and a YOR notice. You know I love a YOR notice. Okay. I recently had a shocking experience while eating dinner with my boyfriend's family and I need to know if I'm in the right thinking the situation was strange. I have been dating this guy for a year and we have eaten dinner with this family many times this time his mom was making spaghetti when it came time to make our plates I saw that the bowl of spaghetti noodles did not have a spoon or tongs

I hung back to see if someone would realize and get one but then the whole family just started getting the noodles with their hands I was so shocked but had to keep my cool and stick my hands into this bowl of spaghetti noodles during a pandemic

No! It was during coffee? Recent experience. Okay, I will say there are some cultures. A lot of Indian food is eaten with your hands, no silverware whatsoever. And there are certain

like African cuisines where you use like Ingera bread to pick up the food. This is not it. This is just like an American, Italian family. Nobody loves eating with their hands more than me. No one loves to put those pinches out and eat with their hands.

I fucking love eating my hands. You don't dive in family member at a time to the spaghetti pot. Hot wet noodles? Hot wet noodles. You know how people want to want shrimp tails on food. Okay. I won't even take a shrimp tail off of a shrimp, let alone stick my whole hand. Do you think they're fucking with her? Like she got punked? I don't know. I think this is a weird. I've never heard of this before. I've never heard of such a thing. We're serving the whole family hot pasta, hot wet pasta with our fingers. And I want to just clarify, I'm pretty positive that the didn't have the sauce on it. When I make spaghetti now, when I do Hella Fresh now,

I'm always making it in one pot and the sauce and the noodles are all together and I serve it that way. Growing up, there was the noodles and there was a sauce on the stove top. So I'm picturing there was just a, you know, regular noodles. Dry noodles. And you're picking them on it. It's not okay. I think this is crazy even if it was a joke because it's during COVID. Okay, only because during COVID.

Hear me out. If it's pre-COVID, it's spaghetti noodles. I'm not talking penny. I'm not talking stuff. You really got a scoop. I'm talking, you literally stick two fingers in and like a giant. giant clump of it comes up. There's no oil or like, it's dry spaghetti noodles and it's me and my man. Nope. Maybe. No. Maybe. I mean, it's just crazy because I love to eat with my hands. You

have watched me go over to my fridge and eat pasta with my hands. Like, I don't care. I'll eat ice cream with my hands. Oh, no. Like, this is a crazy thing for a family to do together. If it's anybody who said your significant other, you're with a family. This is wild. That's how they roll. That's fucking crazy. Well, at least you know what kind of family you're getting into. Can you imagine, like, what happens on, like, lasagna night? I'll tell you one thing. Nobody in this family is scared to get and come on anything. This is the opposite family.

That family needs to meet his family. Or that guy came from that family because he was so traumatized and he was like, my family's fucking disgusting. They pick pasta up with their hands and now I can't touch my own cop. All right. Our next one is this weird. Hey, ladies. Love the podcast.

Oh, man. Okay. Is it weird for a fully grown man to have a twin bed in his room? I had been talking to this guy from Hinge and we went back to his place after our second date, got COVID tested earlier in the week to be safe. And when we got to his bedroom, there's literally just a nightstand and a twin bed. He has enough space to fit a larger bed and based off where he lives and his job, he can definitely afford an upgrade. Or is this just a psycho way to make sure girls don't spend the night after hooking up? Please let me know. I don't think it's the ladder at all. I just think this is just like a New York City comic. that lives in Bushwick.

I don't think so because I want to make sure we're not like shaming people for what they can afford. You know what I mean? Like if that's all you have, you can't afford a new bed. That's one thing. It sounds to me like this guy has a good job where he lives. Like he can get a bed.

Okay. She says grown man. I want to know how grown man he is. I mean, there are just some guys that you would call if you're 22, you might refer to a 24 year old as a grown man. And he just graduated college a year ago. And like he moved to the city with the shit from his dorm or wherever he was living.

And they're just too lazy. Yeah. just lazy. I don't, it's definitely not a ploy to not have you stay over because like, who wouldn't want a bigger bed

to fuck in in general? There's a million ways you can get somebody to leave your apartment. Like if, that's not, that's not the bed. That's not how guys think

they're not even that smart. I'm sure some guys are listening like, damn, should I get to win bed? I know. I think you're right. And it is kind of a pain in the ass

to get a new bed because, and then in New York, or anywhere, where do you put the other mattress? So in his head, he's probably like, well, now, then I got to put the twin on the street or whatever.

You can't sell a mattress. I got to get a new bed frame. Like, this is what I got. I think it's just pure. He hasn't thought about it. I am never talking to that guy again. You don't want to live the same type of life as me. Right.

Your standards of living are so low that you're a person, a full-grown person, especially a man who tend to be larger than women who was sleeping in a twin bed. This guy was like, listen, it's either have enjoyable sex. right but I have to buy like new pillows and sheets and I don't want to do that so he just kept the name to do all that he doesn't have navy sheets that fit a double and put like all that all that all he used to use to buy like he's just upgraded from the $20 sheets to the $22 sheets by one more pillow it's not worth it to him to have better sex in a bed you could both be in so this is one of those things because I will say there's things that you can change about a man and it's totally fine

things like their furnishings their home their clothes I said this before with my ex's pillows. Like, I came in there and I was like, I'm spending the night here. We got to redo this bed. So had it been more of a situation where he had a twin bed and I really liked the guy, which, you know, I wouldn't have gone past the twin bed, but let's just say, I would have been like, can we work on this? Because like, I want to fuck you. And I don't know when's last time you fucked in a twin bed, but I'll tell you for me, it was December 2017. And I was on that press trip. And the place we stayed was this awesome place in Key West. It was made for groups. It's called the NIA, if they still have it. NYHA. Can't recommend enough. But it was

made for like a bunch of people in a room, almost like upgraded hostile style. And we were, I was reviewing it. And I met a guy the first night and fucked him. And I had a room of seven twin beds. You know that I just learned about this, by the way? Our whole friendship was based on this story. Ashley tells everybody, she knew that we could be friends because she called me

after she fucked this stranger on vacation basically. And in my mind, it was a luxury. You need to back up, but not a vacation, bitch. On a work trip. Work trip. I didn't know. You thought it was like the writs? Yeah, I thought you were like a beautiful hotel room on the beach.

I didn't know there was seven bunk beds in the room like you were in prison. It's so bad. Like this was a guy, six two, six three bigger than me. I'm such a big person. Like it is so difficult. And then I think the next night we fucked in his room that had a bunch of twin beds. And I slept in another twin bed. You got up and slept in a twin bed.

We can't sleep together in a twin bed. I'm not doing it. I'm not fucking doing it. I also by the way, like, I don't want to sleep together in a king bed. You know what I said earlier, there's like a lot of situations during sex that like I just won't ask about until later, like, because I'm like, what just happened there? I'm asking about the twin bed the second I see the twin bed. Before we're in the twin bed fucking, I'm immediately asking why do you have a twin bed?

Yeah. Can you imagine me not making fun of somebody for that? Yes. Immediately. And I have dated and fucked a lot of like man children. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like when I was younger and even when I was old, like never have I seen this.

Never. I have been fucking in dirty. old New York City slum holes. For 13 years, I have never met a man, a grown man with a twin bed in one of them. Listen, I'm a grown-ass woman. I'm not fucking in a full bed. Queen or bigger. I walk into a guy's room and be like,

well, you're a foot taller than me. What is that bed? What is his children's bed? I would rather, I'd rather just fuck on the floor, honestly. We'll drag your mattress on the ground. I know. Rather fucking a race car bed. Okay, we're going to end with cum.

I have a friend who's been hooking up with this dude pretty regularly since her last breakup. Her ex was pretty vanilla and this new guy seemed to be sort of fun and dirty. So most recently she starts telling me, they were hooking up and he went down and her, got her off, whoo. And he told her he wanted to come in her mouth. So she started giving him head. As he's about to come, he tells her, don't swallow. I want you to spit it in my mouth. I asked her what she did and she said I spin in his mouth.

It was mid-come. I didn't have time to question it. Is that weird? they've hooked up since and it has never been brought up. Like it just doesn't happen. What do you guys think? I've heard this before. I don't, okay, I know that you're looking at me like, this is crazy?

No, that's the thing. This is when I feel super vanilla because I feel like people are like, yeah, guys want me to spit, they're coming. No, I don't think this makes you vanilla. No one's ever asked me to do this. I've just heard, I've heard from our listeners. I've gotten DMs about this. I watch a lot of porn.

People want this. Like, when a guy goes down on me, I don't mind that he comes right back up and starts making out with me. I think I taste great. No big deal. I need a minute. You do? I mean, a minute.

I don't need you to brush your teeth, but I need you to like have swallowed a little bit. I just don't want to taste myself like so fresh out of my pussy. I don't mind it. Yeah, no. Good for you. But yeah, I'm obsessed with the way that I taste and smell. Cumb is different because I'm not, I mean, I don't excrete like any liquids. I mean, you guys know that my dream is to squirt.

I just can't do it. Come can be like a mouthful of liquid. This guy wanted to be baby birded with his own cum. I'll throw up, actually. Yeah, let's just, we can't talk about anymore. I'm getting sick. I know, me too. I feel like it's like not, here's what I think.

I think guys see it in porn. They want to try it once. Have you seen this in porn? I watch a lot of porn. Have you seen this? That's what I'm saying. Yeah, I've seen it. I haven't watched it.

Okay. I like, it says it's always in the description. Like, guy drinks his own cum. Hot girl, like, blows guy and spits his load in his mouth. Seriously. Yeah. Okay. That's what it is then.

If you can dream it, it's on the internet. Yeah. You're totally right. Some guy saw it on porn and was like, damn. And he's like, everything that comes out of me is fucking awesome. I want it back in me. Like, what do they do with it? Like, you put it in their mouth and then what happens?

That's what I want to know. Like, what's the follow through here? What are we talking? Are we swallowing? I just, it's he swallowing. Right. That's what I'm talking. Like, what is the steps?

Like, you baby burn it to him and then what does he do? He goes to the bathroom with it? It's so awkward to have a load of come in your mouth. Like, Nikki Glazer does this great bit where you're just like walking. walking around and then you leave the bedroom and then there's like the roommates are watching TV but somebody's the matchroom and you're just like, who are you guys watching? Like it's just like you have to come up from being down there and you're like, okay, what do there's so much. And then you spin it into this guy's mouth and then he, yeah, what does he do?

If he just takes a gulp, I am Uberine and me, if he just gulps. I'm calling the police if he does that. 911. There's been a situation. 991. There's an emergency. this guy just made me blow him and then spit his load in his mouth and they're like so and I'm like he swallowed it. Yeah. We'll be right there, ma'am. And this sounds like this happened a while back, but this guy got COVID for sure. That was patient zero. Oh my gosh. That is crazy. Okay. Yeah, it's one of those things of like, I don't know. Do you call it weird? I don't know. Whatever you're into, if you both feel comfortable with it, do it all day long. Do it safely and call it a day. People have fetishes that they have. Like I have some weird fetishes. I'm not doing that. be shamed, shame me for it. I'm not doing it. But also, I don't, maybe I don't care. I spit anyway. I'll spit it in your mouth lest I don't have to go to the bathroom. It's your face or the sink. Right. So true. This is great. Now I don't have to get up and go to the bathroom. Awesome. Open up. Should we all be spitting come back? Yeah. You know what?

We should give it back to you. Why should it be in my mouth? Okay. It came out of your disgusting body. Why should it be in my head? This took a turn. Why shouldn't I put it back in your hand? You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to pull a move like the first guy and I'm going to catch it in my hand and then I'm going to put it in their mouth. And then I'm going to go get some spaghetti and take a handful of noodles out of the pot and then I'm going to take a nice long nap in my twin bed.

We'll give you guys all each other's information if you guys want to get together. If you guys are going to live the fantasy. Okay, well, thank you guys for asking us. Your therapists, if those things were weird, keep them coming. Always you guys can email us at hello at Girls Gotta Eat Podcast.com

with all your crazy stories. This is weird. It's like our power move. Just whatever. So yeah. And you know where to find us. Girls Gotta Eat Podcast.com. On Instagram, we are also Girls Gotta Eat Podcast.

I'm Ash Hess. Raina is reina. com. Greenberg. Girls underscore got to eat on Twitter and YouTube.com slash Girls Gotta Eat. And again,

you can grab merch and still get access to watch the live show till the end of Saturday. And we'll see you next week. Have a good week, guys. Bye.