Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 228: How to Spot a Narcissist When Dating | Dr. Ramani

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

How do you know if you’re in a narcissistic relationship? And how do toxic relationships with your parents affect your dating life today? In this episode, Matthew sits down with world expect Dr. Ramani Durvasula to talk about her new book “It’s Not You”, narcissistic patterns, and how to protect yourself from unacceptable behaviour in relationships. Follow Dr. Ramani:  Instagram: @Doctorramani YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DoctorRamani ►► Get Dr. Ramani’s book “It’s Not You” → https://rb.gy/5pyj7t ►► Pre-Order My New Book, "Love Life" at → http://www.LoveLifeBook.com ►► Deep down, if you know there’s something missing in your love life, your career, or your personal life. GOOD NEWS - I have a proven method to transform your life in just 6 short days with me → http://www.MHRetreat.com

Hey everyone, I want to introduce you, as if she needs an introduction, to a dear friend of mine, psychologist and expert on narcissism and narcissistic abuse, Dr. Ramani. She is known by so many as the world leading expert on YouTube. She teaches us not only how to recover from narcissists, but how to avoid these kinds of relationships in our future. So many of us end up in toxic or abusive relationships that are so difficult to get out of.

And what this woman does is not just life changing, but life saving in helping people to untangle themselves from these difficult relationships, not just in their love lives, but in every part of their lives, whether it's a parent, a sibling, a friend, or a coworker or boss. This is a powerful conversation for any of you

who have been affected by these relationships, either in childhood or in your adult life. Maybe you married one, maybe you stayed with one for a very long time and it's had a tremendous impact on your self-esteem, your identity, what you think you're capable of. Watch this episode because I think it is one of the most powerful episodes we have ever done. Me and Dr. Ramani talk about her new book, It's Not You. Grab a copy while you're at it. It is a powerful book. It is the consolidation of years and years and years of her work and I know this is going to help so many people. So grab a copy of It's Not You and then

sit down and watch this interview. I present to you one of my dear friends and one of the people I respect the most out there, Dr. Ramani. Hey, friend. Hello there. It's so nice to speak with you these days because it's so easy. Oh, I know. I feel like we're basically filming a conversation that we would have had. So this is easy.

Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. And I mean, I don't have words for the amount of support you've had. I think that this is a process where we both know it can be demoralizing. It certainly brings up my anxiety. It brings up all my old wounds of not being enough too, which has been fascinating to sort of, it's sort of like meta book at that point because like I'm in it,

but the book is what's causing all those feelings. So I can't thank you, everyone on your team for their unyielding, unending support. Yes, unending support yes unending support so thank you but it's terrible it's terrible i can relate i can relate i it's one of the things i love about you is that you just have there's no part of you that is trying to be um perfect for your audience or trying to you know create an image of having it all figured out for yourself at all times and you know you saying that is just more more of that and i think it's one of the things it's one of the reasons people love you and find you so relatable i i one of the moments

i really appreciated in the book was when you were vulnerable about someone emailing you that was in some situation recently where someone that was an old school friend actually um really got under my skin it's not even someone that i actually spend any time with anymore but it's someone that like we ended up having to cross paths over something over an event and at this event they immediately made me feel bad again because it was just immediately negative and pulling me down and saying negative things it's always like they couldn't help themselves it's just like straight straight into how can i dig you and it really like sent me into a little like funk because it made me feel like a teenager again correct and I think that that that the psychology of that is interesting because you now I know we're so circumspect we could absolutely to within

a millimeter analyze the why of why someone would do these things right they're insecure they feel competitive. They themselves are not happy with where they're at. That's all good and well. But that kind of interpretive kind of take on it usually comes afterwards. I mean, this is where so much of what happens to folks in these narcissistic relationships. We feel it somatically first. We feel we get taken back to being a teenager, to the six-year-old, to that developmental stage when some of this was all sort of set. And so, and there's a certain exhaustion that happens to us, like, you know, that sort of not feeling good, not feeling safe, not feeling, once again, feeling not enough.

That's why, I mean, you know, all kidding aside, that's why this book promotion process is so hard for me, because there's things I feel confident. Someone's asked me to write something. Give me the time. I'll write it and I'll write it beautifully. I feel confident in that skill set. To sell it, forget it. It is absolutely not my skill set. And so I think that when we go out of the things we know, we really feel that sense of those old wounds come up, right? Because when we think about it, that's often where we got the most wounded is when we didn't feel good about something. Some people will say school was always that place of invalidation for them and so anytime even something feels like school it brings up a lot of anxiety it could be a person and while like i said we can give these elegant and very clear interpretive

explanations of the why of people afterwards when it's happening it takes us down and sometimes we're sort of we get exhausted we don't even know why. You're like, why am I, why, why do I feel so tired after this event? Or it's the, and there's a lot of restraint too. I mean, I think that the thing you're talking about in the book I had written was that how I'd shared, you know, I had held back basically the win that, that interaction that I wrote about that I held back in terms of sharing, in terms of getting into it. And if you can get to the other side of that, not taking the bait, not falling into it, you do feel great. Like I didn't do that to myself because it's really caring for yourself when you don't give it up, right? And say, I'll tell you what I'm doing. And then they go right in there and make their dig.

You don't give them that part because if all, if someone like hey what's going on what's new not much you know a little bit of this a little bit of that they're not often going to go for you but even in that you know in that um in that particular case where the person was making light of it that um getting to a more authentic place with it knowing it's it's important it can help but it still stings it still stings does what do you say to people who feel like they must be in some way you know that they almost disappointed in themselves that after everything they've done in their life after everything they've achieved all the work they've done that something can still get under their skin in that way something

can still affect them in that way and it can make us feel like god if something like that can still get to me then i must have made no progress or i must just be broken or i must like there must be something just wrong with me that's beyond repair what do you say to people who really are frustrated that they don't feel like they've made more progress in their lives about what hurts them right and i think that oops and i think that knowing one of the greatest progresses that a person can make is they become aware of why the thing is hurting them, right? They become very connected to that vulnerable space within them. I don't know that there's always a version of this

where that goes away. I think we can become protective and caregiving of that part of us that gets affected. So it's not so much that this will never bother me again. It's, I understand why this bothers me. I understand how this, how I understand how this how I held this again I say we hold it somatically especially these things that make us feel small or young or again take us back to these core wounds we do

carry it there and as far as our nervous system is concerned we're getting a message of there's a threat you're not safe you might lose connection you might lose love you might lose attachment. You might lose love. You might lose attachment. You better believe our bodies are going to respond to that. So when you might think like some little dig from some random person, well, it has nothing to do with attachment. It kind of does because the body's funny in how it holds things that resemble the original wound, right? And so when we recognize for a moment why we try to overcompensate the way we do in many ways, like for me, I've had to do a lot of soul searching in why it's so important for me, for this book to do well. And, you know, there's layers of it. It's funny,

the cover of the book is layers. And there's a reason for that. Because the layers of it are that we, you know, you have to dig in. Like, all of us are motivated by ego, Matthew. There's nobody who's ego-free. And anyone who says I'm free of ego, I'm like, you are either taking ecstasy or out of your mind. Because you, all of us, have ego. We need ego. Ego is the endoskeleton.

Ego is why we're not a mass of schmush on the ground. It's what leads to advocacy. It's why we sometimes, you know, put our own needs first. It's why we don't give away everything we've got. Like, we have to have some ego. And so, and when there's too much ego, well, that's what I write about. But we all have it. And I think it's about being in check about what core wounds are being addressed. So when I even thought, like, I really want this book to do well, and there's practical reasons, because it could mean, I think think to me, it's the topic will be taken more seriously. I think people who go through narcissistic relationships still face a

lot of like, well, this isn't a thing. I'm like, we got to make this a thing kind of thing. So people will get trained in this and get help for it and not be doubted about it. And people who went through trauma years ago, we face the same kinds of doubts, right? So I want that to happen. But I also, and I want the word to get out, I want it to help my career. But I think there's a little girl in me who felt very unseen, who felt very unvalued, who desperately wanted someone to notice her, but was also scared of being noticed. And the combination of those things, like if I get seen, then I can fail. And then, and then people will make fun of me, or will be disappointed in me. But if I don't succeed, then I won't be loved. So it starts to become all of a sudden, I'm like, all I'm trying to do is

get on someone's podcast, and I'm going through some sort of psychoanalytic hell. And so that's the, and it's being honest with ourselves. So when it doesn't happen, I have to recognize there's a primal part of myself that feels like I'm the little girl who didn't, you know, didn't win the spelling bee. Wow. people, when they're out there in their love lives and not just in their love lives, in all their relationships, find themselves drawn to people or situations that end up hurting them. And it can take us many years before we ever realize that A, there's a pattern and that b that pattern in some way relates to our history and it's not just this kind of genetic thing that we are predisposed to keep being attracted to certain kinds of people but there's actually something in our history that has precipitated this and you said something really interesting which is when that you know when you can understand why these things in the

case that we were talking about when someone says something and it gets under our skin why that hurts us that there's a there's something liberating even just in having the compassion that comes from knowing that this didn't come from nowhere, that this connects to something. Or I'm not too sensitive because that's the other thing we think is like, I'm just too sensitive. I'm being ridiculous when in fact there's nothing ridiculous. Again, bring it back to the sort of orienting system within you that's trying to keep you safe. And so this felt like, again, a and so this felt like again a primal it's hitting a primal sort of a wound and when we know that that connecting the dots in that way can actually be a recipe for self-compassion but a lot of people aren't necessarily connecting their

dating choices to those old wounds because they've never really explored them. Or maybe they even have an image of their past that doesn't suggest those wounds, or they just don't, they don't look at it and go, oh, that comes from there. They have a story about their past that is, I don't even really have a right to be this insecure or to keep chasing these bad people because I was loved or I was in a situation where things were going well or whatever. My parents were good to me. Can you help us just understand more about, you know, people who search for any kind of advice online in their love lives will at some point come across the term trauma bond. Could you speak to what the trauma bond is for people who are just starting to learn about it now and how it might be impacting them and where those things come from so that maybe people can have like a, even as they're listening to us now, a mini excavation of their past that might start to illuminate some of the ways they are today. Yeah. So the term trauma bonding is one that's against narcissism. It's often used incorrectly,

right? But understanding it can be really quite empowering. So trauma bonding, the experience of trauma bonding is this perception, this experience, this sense that you have an unbreakable or difficult to disrupt bond with someone that's created by a relationship that is chronically alternating between good and bad. There's the experience that if you pedal faster, you'll earn the other person's love. And they sometimes do show up with that love. And when they do, it feels like a cold room becomes warm all of a sudden, and you feel whole and good, but then they pull back again. And so life becomes this sort of quest to maintain those good moments.

And there are there. It's not like it's all bad moments. Trauma-bonded relationships can look a little different in childhood and adulthood. In childhood, it really becomes a sort of a laying down of sort of pathways in the brain and the body in the sense that the primary caregivers, usually parents, are people who might be variably available. And in some cases, they're acutely abusive, right? But then there's still good moments.

And in other cases, they're simply not available. They're checked out for any number of reasons. This is why it's tricky when you have one narcissistic parent and one not narcissistic parent, because the not narcissistic parent is suffering. And it's not that they're not a loving parent, but they can't always be present. And so that can also leave the child in the sense of how do I also take care of that parent who's suffering and win them over and stay in good stead with the sort of the more problematic, more abusive is probably a stronger word, but like, yeah, problematic in and out parent, right? So that back and forth, the alternation between good and bad is how we create this trauma bond.

The good creates a buy-in, right? That it's there and I can get to that. So when the bad happens, the tendency is to self-blame. Well, it's not going well because it's me, because there were good moments. So it's got to be me. By internalizing the explanation into ourselves, it's adaptive. Because if it's us, then there's something we can fix. If it's the other person, then we're in trouble. And we can't maintain the status quo and the social connection that for a child is a survival need. And for an adult, physiologically, his experience is a survival need, though they could break up and find someone new. When you talk to trauma-bonded people, they will say, the idea of ending this relationship is literally giving me a sense of panic. I can't breathe. My heart is

racing. And they said, yet, intellectually, I can sit here and tell you 25 things that are wrong with this relationship. That disconnect is classically a part of the trauma bond so people in trauma bonded relationships experience a lot of cognitive dissonance that tension that comes when things are not consistent the best way to take away that inconsistency get sorry it's the best way to get rid of that consistency and make that dissonance go away because we don't like being tense like that, is to justify. They're having a bad day. They don't mean it. You know, we had a good time last weekend. Of course, my parent loves. My parent took me fishing. Whatever it may be, the excuses get created. And some of it is just simply you tell yourself what you need

to tell yourself so you look like everyone else, your life looks like everyone else but the justifications the the self blame you keep having the same arguments you keep having the same like you ruminate in the same circle maybe if this then that and next time I'm going to say it differently but the arguments always the same right it's always like the conflict is there and it keeps going around in the same merry-go-round it doesn't get resolved as my point in a healthy relationship, conflict happens, but the conflict hits a point of resolution. It doesn't here. And I've always said sort of my trauma bond hack, that at least I tell therapists, but I think it matters here, is when I've worked with clients who I believe

might be trauma bonded or even in the early trauma bonded phases, and they're in a relationship that's very unhealthy. And I'm talking now an intimate relationship in adulthood and I'll say tell me what you love about this person and they'll say well hmm let me hmm I it's it's hard to put it into words. Like I, I don't know, like it's a, it's like a connection. Like I don't, that's not an answer. I'm looking for, I feel safe with this person. I love spending time with this person. I look forward to seeing them. I feel seen in their presence. I, I love watching them excel. Like that's what we're, those are the answers I'm looking for. Okay. When you give me this, I don't know, that's a trauma bonded answer. And yet, and yet they can't step away from it. When it's a person who's sort of trauma bonded to a parent, you'll often get very duty,

loyalty and obligation kinds of answers, you know, sort of, well, they had a tough go of it and, you know, our family kind of sticks together and we, you know, sort of, well, they had a tough go of it. And, you know, our family kind of sticks together. And we, you know, so there's a sense of maybe loyalty, maybe to the larger construct of the family or other people in the family system. So a lot, but what I will never hear about is tell me what you like about your parent. They can't come up with anything, but they'll say, wow, like we're this really close knit family. And, and, and, you know, my, my parents had a rough go of it and I'll be hearing the whole damn genetic history of the family, but I'm thinking, tell me what you like about your parent. And the, the question is so uncomfortable that people pull away from it. That's often a sign of a trauma bond when a person

feels that they can't pull away or they can't say like, no, my father, mother, whatever is a terrible person. I keep interacting because I value my sisters or my cousins or whomever it may be. So these are the things we look for in the trauma-bonded relationship. And so there's almost always what we call a repetition compulsion. A person's almost trying to work the same thing out over and over and over again. There's this constant sense of tension and dissonance. There's often a lot of betrayal in and i'd say by definition narcissistic relationships are betrayal-laden relationships i think any time a person doesn't show up and show up in the roles and responsibilities we have when we're in a close relationship

that's a betrayal i think saying a betrayal is only someone cheating on you or lying to you or taking your money those are betrayals too. But I think it's a betrayal when the other person isn't holding up their side of the relationship, honestly, right? So when we are betrayed in our close relationships, there's an adaptive value to not seeing it. Because if we see it, then we feel compelled to engage in a call. It's like a call to action. Gotta do something about it now. This person's so unhealthy. So the natural tendency is to just sort of cordon it off. And when it gets cordoned off, we start feeling sick, but we stay in the relationship. That's something else we see in the trauma-bonded relationship. There's nothing but cognitive

awareness. The person will say, I know this is unhealthy. I know they're treating me badly. I know it. I can't explain why I can't leave. That is the mantra of everyone in a trauma-bonded relationship. So it's almost like you have this, and it's weird. It gets interesting as we look at work on polyvagal response, right? As long as that left brain's online and the person feels safe, they're like, yeah, this is what's wrong. They might even get closer to a call to action, but there are times,

for example, if a person, someone's trauma bonded with uses things like withholding and withdrawing as part of their relationship behavior. And the trauma bonded person has a history with abandonment, right? That pulling back is enough to throw that trauma-bonded person into that polyvagal response. Now that right brain is firing and it's all emotion, right? So that logical ability, that sort of frontal lobe ability to say, yeah, no, this is so unhealthy and I could spend another 10 years in it, that goes out the window. So what we need to do is bring people back into their body, regulate their nervous system so they can see this more clearly what's happening. But that takes a minute. It takes a minute. But until then, people are in these

relationships that are unhealthy. They can articulate they're unhealthy and they cannot figure out why they can't see a way out. And this, Matt, is also above and beyond practical factors. Practical factors can make trauma bonding tricky because people will always use those as a justification. We've got young kids. It's expensive to live here. I don't have a job. This is looked down on my culture. Those are all very valid reasons. And I understand they're why people don't leave, but a person can, you can untrauma bond yourself and still remain in the relationship if that makes sense. So you can say, I see this clearly. I can't get up and leave this,

or I'm not cutting this person fully out of my life right now, because it's going to upend an entire other system, workplace, family, whatever. But I see this clearly, I see what's in front of me. So I am not going to trust this person in the same way. I'm not going to engage with this person in the same way. That's what I mean is you can become untrauma bonded, but still physically have contact with that person that's a very long answer sorry no it's i have so many so many jump off points from that i so how because when people feel that emotional response to it that emotional response itself especially in attraction for a lot of people they use it as a signal for attraction right i must be like i'm feeling a lot

and so that must lend itself to the importance of this person or the relationship or that feels like passion it does it does. To a lot of people that backing and forcing the good and the bad, the breaking up and making up that very much does feel like passion. They, they view it as we're alive. We're, we're, we have these hot tempers. We're fiery tempered, that kind of thing. There will be the sort of narrative that's constructed around it. Yes. And, and even, you know, the number of people that I coach that they are hung up on a person they'll show me and in their mind there is this whole history worth talking about with this person and and if you were to look at these messages you would say this is there's almost nothing here yes you know there is an enormous

story we've spent the last two hours talking about like you you chose in these two hours to focus on this situation with the time that we have together and yet there's actually very it's almost when you look at it from a distance you go i can't believe we're we're dedicating this much time to this person who definitely isn't thinking about you right now and definitely is like you know this may have been a blip on his radar but for you it has become this central story of the last year and you know why didn't he call back or why what happened there when he initially showed interest on the date and then he pulled away and it gets chopped up and dissected so much what what would your advice be to people in these situations where they are what is happening with people where they are getting so hung up on these situations that actually on the surface there's so little going on i think that number

one let's let's talk think of this from the point of view of narratives and meaning making right we human beings have this capacity to take bits and pieces and turn it into a a coherent narrative about something even when there's not a lot to work with, or what feels coherent to us, I should say. It's not actually, maybe coherent is even the right word, to turn it into a narrative, right? So the, like you said, they were in a relationship for two years and almost nothing happened, right? Or for a year or six months, whatever, and really nothing happened. But the way it's being talked about about you would have thought that this was a solely fully robust relationship right but then the next the next sort of layer down on that is this is very possibly what this person had to do

as a child create this very rich robust fantasy world of the parent that was engaged that was interesting that was involved really involved with them. I remember someone I talked to whose parent had gone on a business trip or something. Parent was very, very disengaged and actually quite dismissive. But the parent remembered to get the child a small gift on the trip. And that child, it was almost like a museum piece in their room. They cherished it. They would, they would only sparingly interact with it because they didn't want anything to happen to it. They, they loved this object. And so there was a whole story about, look how important I am. They got me this. And they would talk about the object. And so many objects had come into their

life. Like, look at my dad. My dad got me this, this, this bank and, and I'm going to save all this money. And he was in this, he was in Denver and he was in Denver and he got me this. And like, he was thinking about him as a whole thing. Like you would have thought the dad thought about the kid the whole time in Denver, probably saw it in the airport and quickly grabbed it and brought it to the child. And the child has turned it into nothing short of a relic, right? So, and if that child also had that same parent who would withhold or withdraw, you can all of a sudden see how if you had the capacity to turn a piggy bank from an airport into the greatest thing that has ever happened, how easy it is to take a few text messages

and turn that into a relationship. So that's another piece. But the next level then becomes the one thing, and this is where you and I sort of have a lot of shared resonance in our work. I think I come at it from a different angle. You talk about it in terms of standards. I talk about it in terms of acceptability, which is this sense of, is this behavior acceptable to you? If anyone else in the world you reached out to, you actually, I said, what if you're in the same room and you talk to someone and they just sat there stone silent and didn't respond to you

would not find this to be strange and they'll say blah blah blah electronic i said no no no it's communication you explain to me how this is is this acceptable and that i this is and to me this is one of the cores of this whole narcissistic piece because everyone is trying to come up a billion excuses for why narcissistic people are the way they are. I said, and most of those excuses, frankly, are valid. At the end of the day, there's only one thing I said, this behavior is not acceptable. I do not care what's under this iceberg. All I know is that this behavior is not acceptable. And the more time you spend in space of unacceptable behavior, the sicker you're going to get that's the only thing i know here i that backstory is not going to protect you so those are the sorts of three ways i would think about that if i was working with a client on something like that yeah and

the more you spend time around it the more normal it becomes to you and i think that's where people really lose their way because they no longer are tethered to another reality and they it you spend all your time justifying it and you you end up becoming part of this strange little world that has no bearing on what a healthy relationship is but you don't know you don't necessarily have any memories anymore of what a healthy relationship is right what what can people do to orient themselves towards healthier relationships when a they may not know what one looks like and b they still find themselves attracted to the old thing it's like a new thing that they need to be going for is invisible. Right.

They don't even know what they're shooting for or not compelling. And the old thing feels very visible because it's on their radar and to their nervous system, at least it seems compelling. Well, yeah. And this is where sometimes it's, it depends on how we interpret this.

It's interesting what that, which is interpreted as unsafe by one person is interpreted as compelling by another. That's why some people are willing to skateboard down a steep road. And I'm like, well, that looks like a hip injury to me. So I'm not going to do what they are. They get a different pleasure out of it. You know, we're talking about this idea of narratives, right? So I want to come back to that because I just read something very interesting the other day. And I talked about it actually in a, in a seminar we did this past week and it might have some bearing here and this is so old actually I think it was an article I read when I was in graduate school and

I needed it as a reference I'm like I'm gonna go old school on this I'm gonna pull this piece out again and it was even more stunning now than when I'd read it in grad school because it was one thing they were talking was a tiny a tiny little corner of the article, but they were talking about the capacity, if somebody has the capacity to create a coherent narrative, and you and I have talked about this socially, and we're not on camera, but just in terms of how narratives get constructed, but if somebody has the capacity to create a coherent narrative

about what has happened to them, by coherent I mean like based in reality, not fantasy, not my father thought, thinks about me all the time, look, I have a piggy bank kind of thing, right? But a coherent narrative, whomever it's about. Those are people who have better, not only probably healing, but definitely discernment. Because the capacity to have the coherent narrative is the truth of the situation in this particular article they were talking about women who are now mothers who had abusive mothers and the women who were able to create coherent narratives that really captured the truth of

what happened to them as children were almost completely unlikely to, yeah, almost completely unlikely to harm their own children. Because that's always the fear, right? If you have a terrible parent, you're going to be bad with your own kids. But that ability to say like, no, this is what happened to me. That is enough to actually, in a way, holding that inner working model. Like this is, that you now know what you're not gonna do because you see it clearly in your life. You're not in denial about that. You have not sort of tried to make it nicer

and make it more palatable because that's when it sneaks up on you and it bites you, right? So to this point of how do we get people to think differently about this, the hardest thing of all is to create that coherent narrative because it's painful.

And it means you have to see all the players for what they are. And it means that you have to acknowledge you might've come from a really, really damaging, harmful place where you were not kept safe. And in some ways, it sometimes even means seeing the parent you thought had your back kind of fully didn't have your back.

It's not an indictment of that parent, but it's like, whoa, I created, a lot of people will create the sort of, this parent's a savior, this parent's a devil, you know, or this parent's a savior and this parent works hard. And then they're like, that's not so much what it is. And then when we get into adult relationships, people might even say, well, we were just in different places. No, this was psychologically unsafe. Your sympathetic nervous system looked like the 4th of July. Like this is not, this is not just two people in different places. So it's really being forced to look at that and then be able to have that be very manifest

and clear. Yes, your interpretations may vary, but something happened. And so that's one piece of this. The second piece is growth only happens when we're uncomfortable. And the uncomfortability here is to be with a person where you're not feeling this churn all the time. A lot of people have no schema for what safety feels like, none whatsoever. They don't know what it is.

I mean, when you think of what trauma does, a traumatized person lives life in hypervigilance, constantly looking for, you know, combing the environment for threats, because after being through trauma, all your nervous system wants is to keep you safe, right? So there's not that sense of what safety, that fully parasympathetic, relaxed state, which we can create through things like meditation and mindfulness and sleep and better nutrition and grounding and just sort of loving our bodies a bit more. These poor bodies try to love it. They love us so much, but we don't do right by them all the time. And so all of these things is to even see what safety feels like, because for many people, the absence of safety in a relationship almost doesn't feel, it's unknown.

And so it's then having that, like talking that through. And I've had clients say, like, I kind of had to white knuckle the boring relationship, right? And I'm like, can we use it? And I've even used that word boring. I realize it's a different word. I mean, how about we say the non-activating relationship, right? Where you can show up as your real self, where you can make mistakes and not worry about rejection, but then you're not having to earn someone's love. And if you're not earning someone's love,

well, what the hell is that? So that's where this gets to be helping people understand the transactions that they were in, that without earning, it's almost like if somebody just said, hey, you woke up, here's a little bit of money, not enough to make a difference, but that doesn't actually really feel very good. You want there to be some, most of us want to, we feel like we have to earn. Well, that doesn't, that shouldn't be the case in relationships, right? There has to be the sense of I exist and I feel okay with this person. I feel safe. I feel seen.

I feel heard. But I don't feel chaotic. And for most people, love equals chaos. I hate to say it, really for most people. And movies don't help. They all sell the same message that chaos is love. It's so, it it really is and audrey and i talk about this all the time and one of audrey's favorite phrases since the beginning of our relationship was always just

people will be happier if they chase the right things and will always reliably it'd be unhappy if we chase the wrong things and she always said you know you could chase the wrong things for a while but you'll always end up having to circle back again and and chase the right things in order to be happy um but it does feel so alien at first to be chasing the right things and it can feel strange and even boring and how what do you tell people about whether when they don't know if what they're going after right now is just unexciting or unappealing because it's what they're not used to and they need to learn to acclimatize to it or whether it's that way because it's genuinely not a stimulating relationship for them. It's funny you ask this question

because I have to say, sort of answer it in a, you know, like a sort of a aspirational way. A lot of the work I do with a few clients I now work with is on discernment, right? Because after you've been through a narcissistic relationship, you don't want to go to that party again. So it's all about discernment. And I am struck about how well people are able to do this. They said, we just never had a roadmap. We never had a rule book. We didn't even, you're saying we chased the wrong thing. People don't even know the right thing or the wrong thing looks like. I mean, they just don't know.

And in fact, maybe even take away the chase, like when it comes to relationships and simply be, but they said for most of them, they're probably, they're over-correcting a little bit on the discernment. You know, as soon as they see anything that feels abrupt or dismissive, or doesn't feel safe within them, they are saying, yeah, no. And so I think, like I said, they're throwing away, they're throwing back fish that they could have kept. But, but better they err that way, because they are saying like, I felt sort of not seen in that comment. And, and they're saying, these are things I never would have dreamed of saying about another human being before they never thought they had the right, right? So it's the, here's how I'm going to put it to you. All right, because I think that this is probably more

relatable and more tangible. I have seen people go into a grocery store and fuss in an aisle. I don't know. I don't know. I don't like those. They do that for 10, 15 minutes. They're discerning more between two cans of soup than they often will about a person. And they will do that about, is the banana organic? Is the soup this? Is the hotel that that is the car, this is the refrigerator, that we know how to discern. We just aren't willing to bring that analysis to people, right? And even with the refrigerator, right? I recently bought a refrigerator because my other one broke and everyone's like, you got to get the one with the drawer in the bottom. You got to get the one with the drawer in the bottom. That's how it, this is the state of the art. I'm like, I don't like the drawer in the bottom. You got to get the one with the drawer in the bottom. That's how it, this is the state of the art. I'm like, I don't like the drawer in the bottom because this stuff always sinks and I can't get the ice cream I want. Can't get the thing I want. And it goes to the

bottom and it melts and it goes bad. I'm angry at the drawer. No, no, no. It's a drawer in the bottom. I said, no, I understand. I hear all the arguments. I like the one on the side. That was as silly as that sounds was I was going against a tide because I know my frozen food consumption habits and I needed the freezer on the side. Zero regret, Matt. And I know it was, I mean, it's not cheap. Like a refrigerator is not cheap, right? But as silly as it sounds in that process, I knocked myself out. I researched everything about all the pros. You want to buy your fridge? I'm your girl. I researched everything about all the pros. You want to buy your fridge?

I'm your girl because I can tell you anything about how to make a fridge. So I, but the idea of honoring myself and saying, I understand that this kind of fridge is considered the modern way. I, and I don't need such, and they're like, but what if you have platters? I'm like, I'm an introvert. I don't want platters because that means people are coming to my house and I don't want anybody in my house. So let's just take that piece right out. And so it was a moment where I chose what felt right to me. Whereas in the past, Matt, I would have bought that one with the drawer in the bottom because I thought everyone in the world is telling me this one's right. I would have gone against what was in my best

interest. i think we can sometimes get there a little bit easier on objects cars refrigerators you know the hotel you're going to stay at but there is a certain amount of knowing ourselves like a person might think like i don't want to stay in some tall fancy hotel i'd rather stay in a small hotel no no it doesn't have the amenities listen to yourself That can actually start elevating and escalating to people. So if you can start with small discernment experiments in your life and say, what is, what feels righter to me? To hell with all the guides and the ratings and the stars, what feels righter to me? And see what the, and make the decision and commit to it, that becomes a brick building

towards that refrigerator thing worked out real well. And that hotel thing worked out real well. And that sweater I got, glad I, I mean, that's what I wanted to get. I'm glad I didn't. Cause I can see now how that wouldn't have worked. We pay attention to these little discernments we do. And then we start to see that when I listen to myself, these decisions are going a lot better. And so there's that piece, but you're talking about, but what if my body is saying, I want this, I think that this could work for me, like this feels better in myself. Number one one most people don't know what a healthy relationship is if i gave everyone a test and said list out what a healthy relationship is i think you get

a little bit of love compassion forgiveness sort of stuff but i don't think you'd get the respect the growth orientation the patience the the um collaborative sacrifice piece i don't think you'd get to those higher order and i don't think you'd get to those higher order. And I don't think you'd get to safety. Most people don't use that word because they'd say to them, safety means someone's not punching me, right? And so I think number one,

people need to know what constitutes a healthy relationship. Number two, people have to be able to dig in to where they really came from. What was the template they were given for marriage? What is the template they were given for love? What is the template they were given for love? What is the template they were given for attachment, for closeness? For many people, that was a very fraught script.

And so dig into that and pay attention to that and then start to see how did you get love as a kid? What did you have to, what kind of machinations did you have to put yourself through? Because those machinations are likely what makes someone exciting now one of the things i loved in the book was the kind of whole section that you had on changing patterns and it was a sort of highly practical section where you talked about various things that people can do to start changing patterns

one of them was be mindful of them and what your patterns are um and i even loved actually the practical side of like doing slowing down because when you get that nervous system response to something if you're not getting a text back or if someone has done something that's kind of sent you into that fight or flight, you talk about doing an activity deliberately, even if it's emptying the dishwasher or folding laundry, just anything that can almost slow things down in that moment. I really related to that because my anxiety always wants to speed things up. And anytime for me, it's like Brazilian jujitsu is a thing that forces presence for an hour and I can't be anywhere else when I do it.

And whatever it is that's troubling me, there's a state that I come to it an hour later. There's a state that I come to that thing with that's different because my i feel more present and grounded and like i've slowed everything down so i thought that was really um fantastic actually there was even i made a note here because i wanted to read this part uh it was on page 147 let me just find it it's good that you know the page number and everyone you need to see how matt has two books everybody needs two of these books everyone should have two of these books for everyone by the way who doesn't know this book is called it's not you identifying and healing from narcissistic people is there a particular website you want people to

go to or just wherever they get their books yeah if you go to my even if you even if you go to my Instagram and my bio, we have a link so you can, you can sort of share the wealth because there's lots of different places to get books and you can go to my website, all those places. But even my Instagram bio would have that link to all the places. What's your exact Instagram? At Dr. Ramani. At Dr. Ramani. So go over there now and, and grab a copy while you're listening to this this i have underlined so many parts of this book it's ridiculous at this stage um because i just find there wasn't a page where i thought that's not important to me but you said here um yeah your higher order goals and aspirations like marriage children and career matter but rushing into relationship or

opportunity and missing unhealthy patterns can mean that those goals get distorted and i thought i thought that was a really interesting point i almost would couple it with there was a another moment in the book if i can refer to my notes there was another moment where you talk about the things that predispose us to falling for the wrong patterns or overlooking in some cases, the wrong patterns early on outside of simply the trauma bond coming from a wound. It could be being in a difficult transition in your life where you find yourself in a new city or you just got let go from your job or for whatever reason your defenses are down. That is a moment where someone like that can enter or you also what creates rushed relationships outside of someone love bombing you and trying to speed you up we ourselves can can we can almost love bomb ourselves because our higher order goals and aspirations like marriage children

make us think this has to happen yesterday especially for so many women who want children so how what is your advice for people trying to navigate the world of dating who want healthy relationships but the speed at which they're trying to go and their anxiety about not finding love in a certain period of time for their goals is predisposing them to overlook the wrong behavior. the vast majority of narcissistic relationships I have worked with people, adult like marriages and long-term committed relationships was either the rush to the transition thing. You know, in essence, they were far from home. They were in an unfamiliar place. They were coming out of something or the pressure and the rush pressure often comes from the outside. All my friends are getting married. All my friends are having kids, that sort of thing, right? And that's like, if I don't lock this down, I don't have the patience to go back out there for

two years, and it becomes the devil I know, kind of thing. Like, at least I know, I know all the weak points in this thing, right? So I can, I can make this work. I know when the roof leaks. And the, I think that again, I'm going to say that sometimes it's hard. It's hard to think of slowing down unless we start practicing slowing down, right? Imagine you're on a car ride through a gorgeous national park, but you're going 60 miles an hour. And like the most beautiful sights in the world are just whizzing by you. El Capitan, Half Dome, you know, like the arches in Utah, like boom, boom, boom. And you're like, wait, wait, that was really nice. And you miss things, but you also miss your driving so quickly. You might miss like, oh, that's a little bit dangerous. Oh, you're not supposed to go on that road or whatever. When we go so fast, we miss the good and we miss the bad.

Training ourselves to slow down can happen in ways, like you said, you take a Brazilian jiu-jitsu class, it forces you to slow down. It could be doing something like making an intricate recipe, where if you try to do it fast, you're going to end up wasting all that money on those ingredients and the thing's going to burn, right? It could be clipping the nails on a cat. Let me tell you that you better go slow on or you're going to be, you're going to look like somebody's like Jack the Ripper is coming to, sorry, Jack the Ripper is coming to your house. So that takes a minute, right? But this can be applied to everything we do is just slow down. However, you also have to ask yourself

what's happening around you that's making you rush because there's an internal sort of speeding up, right? And for some people, there's also an internal anxiety that if I don't lock this down, if I don't get this person to commit, if I don't get this to a place where it's going to feel more committed, like I got to make this relationship commit as soon as possible, there's an anxiety that even though it might actually move things in a way that's not comfortable, because many narcissistic people actually do like to rush relationships, because there's no chance to sort of pick up on the patterns and then

you're kind of in deep and they've sort of secured their supply. So it's slowing down in everything you do. It's understanding where the pressures to rush come from. But Matt, here's where it gets interesting. And I'd actually love to hear what your thoughts are on this from your community, which is some people, number one, don't feel they have the right to ask for things to slow down, right? If I say slow down, then this person's going to leave. And they've literally had that experience, right? Especially if it's someone narcissistic, the narcissistic person likes to be in charge of the speedometer. They are going to decide how quick this thing's going. So if you were to say to them, Hey, Hey, I am, I love this. I am loving spending time with you. This is so fun, but can we, like, I, I've been, I'm loving, but I need just, let's just

slow it down a little bit, especially if they're saying, no, no, no, come stay at my house every night of the week, or let's like go do this three week trip or, you know, or might even feel pressured into sex or something. A narcissistic person invariably will shame you or doubt your commitment. Well, so I guess you didn't really want a relationship, did you? Or like, oh gosh, you seemed like you wanted a relationship. Now the person's like, but I do want a relationship and maybe they're right. Maybe this is why I don't find a committed relationship because I don't just go all in. Right. So I would be curious to know from, for you, when you've worked with so many thousands and thousands of people on this, how, how they manage that point of many of them may have known it needed to slow down,

but they have trouble negotiating that particular point. Do you know what's funny? This brings to mind, there was a client of mine who described to me, not even realizing that there was anything wrong with what she was saying, how she was just deathly sick on this date that she went on. Like really ill. Like just having to go to the bathroom frequently to like try to stop her eyes from streaming because she had such a horrible cold and was trying to like dose up as much as possible.

And I said, why did you go on this date so sick? Like, why didn't you just postpone it? She said, because he's a really in demand guy and he's a super attractive guy. And I just, I, I feel like he would not be on the market long if I, if I like, yeah. Like if I, if I didn't go on the date, I felt like I had to go on the date or he'd end up getting snapped up by somebody else that so it couldn't it almost couldn't have been a more literal example of someone abandoning their own needs for the sake of pleasing somebody else combined with a scarcity mindset that this wouldn't be around tomorrow if

they waited or if you waited a couple of days. Or if you express a need, if you were to say like, I can't make it because, I can't make it because I have, I have a dinner with some friends. I can't make it because I'm doing something else that that person would lose interest. That actually is something we would see for somebody from somebody who had that sort of, especially that kind of narcissistic parent that was often checked out, right? In that particular situation, even the tiny bit of attention, you're going to hang around all the time because maybe this is going to be the day. And if you don't take advantage of, so if that parent turns to you and says, hey, you want to go run this errand with me? And you're like,

actually, I'm having fun playing the game with my siblings. That opportunity may not come again for another couple of years, right? So a lot of kids get trained, especially when they have very self-centered parents. They really get trained into doing anything they can to maintain the attachment, even when it doesn't feel right, even when they're engaged in an activity that they really, really enjoy. And I still relate to that personally. I, when the short window, windows of time, my life, I did date, I would go on dates when I was like, I didn't want to, when I wasn't feeling well, when I had other more compelling things to do for exactly that reason. If I don't say yes, I'm forever going to look backwards. I'm

going to realize like me not saying yes that day is why this didn't work out. And I know I've run into that mentality and so many clients and, and you know what, it's, it also, it's that theme is backfilled by a lot of films by them on that one fate, the fated day, they went on that day, the whole sliding doors of it all. Like that was the moment. And it's only because you showed up that day. So everyone's walking around with that head. Like if I say that no to this one day, then this is it. It's gone. But in fact, that one day might have been a day where another need of theirs had greater primacy. And that if somebody is a decent person or they're interested in you, they're going to make it work

on a day where it works for both of you. And if not, this is a really crappy precedent. And it's all about precedent, right? It's all about what you're setting up for. And I think that's where narcissistic relationships, it's all about precedent. Everything is being shown pretty much in the first three months of what you're looking at. And people will think like I, we made a reason we had a video on YouTube recently called the cool girl. Everyone wants to be the cool girl for the, you're in a narcissistic relationship, right? It's what we call a cool girl. Easy breezy. I've had so many clients that like, I just want to be cool. Like easy breezy. Like I don't want him to think like, I like even care. I said, but you care. So we've now cut off an authentic part of yourself. But the cool girl,

easy breezy is like chum in the water for a narcissist. Because in essence, what you're saying is, I'm going to go along with anything you want to do because I'm a cool girl. And so what's happening is not only are they like, great, this is super for me. They're never going to turn and say, hey, wait a minute. We've been doing everything I want. Like, what do you want? What are you about? They're never going to do that.

And this person who's playing a cool girl, the narcissistic person sticks around. I mean, I hate using such a gendered frame, but that's often how it comes up. It's, I mean, that is absolutely bang on and it's weird how we unconsciously play into these dynamics you know the one of the examples we talk about is if someone ghosts you for two weeks and then comes back and suddenly on a saturday night says hey how you doing and before that you had had good consistency you'd been talking regularly and then two weeks nothing there is this you know one way of looking at it is well i don't want to come across like this has affected me because that makes it look like i care too much so the way to hold on to my power is when they

reach out to me two weeks later is be really chill or i'm not going to respond for a couple of days or i'm not going to respond for a couple of days right which then sets up a whole other dynamic but if you're chill you're you're actually doing exactly what they want you to do, which is you're creating a consequence-free environment to them going completely cold and then reappearing. But it feels, it sort of intuitively feels like that might be the right thing to do because I don't want to look like, I don't want to give this person the power of showing that I care. But now we're back to power, right? That, that's, that word in relationships is very dangerous, right? So when the narcissistic relationship, that's the narcissistic person's sole motivation in a relationship, power, control, domination. That's it. I am going to always, they're always asymmetric I'm here you're here the only way the relationship works right so this idea of I'm going to be chill because if I tell them I'm

interested I've lost power it's actually you've cleaned up the whole power thing because they're going to if they're going to keep playing playing a game you've completely taken it all back but nobody is socialized to do it's easy to sit here and say it but at the time you feel like you're going to lose it and but it is about power and you feel disempowered so of course you're trying to create some level of of of symmetry again and it's never going to be there no and and actually the instead of trying to have power within a situation, it should always be testing the waters to see if you can be you in this situation. And what happens when I am me? What happens?

It's no different to friendships. If you go on a friendship date with someone that you don't know that well, but you go for coffee, what happens when you share with them? Do you find that they share back or do you find that they don't go there with you? And you're like, oh, this is, this is interesting data because with all my closest friends, we are able to share with each other and that's what builds the friendship. But I just feel like this was very one way and I could never get beneath the surface with this person. You know, maybe we're not in the same place for a friendship or maybe that's not, we're not going to create that bond with this person.

That's a much, it's a much more powerful way to be in any dynamic because then you're always getting data from this person. But instead, I feel like we don't collect that data. We're just trying to figure out what's the strategy that will allow me to get this person as if getting is the major goal. Right. Well, getting is a major goal, but also some people have been very indoctrinated into accommodation, right? So accommodating another person is the way of getting attachment needs met to do something different, which is again, make a need known, pay attention to data. Paying attention to data is very dangerous from somebody who comes from

a betraying family system. Because if you paid attention to data there, you'd have been screwed. You're like, whoa, this is not healthy, right? Kid doesn't want to do that. So in many ways, anyone who's been from that kind of an early environment almost has this mild dissociative experience like i don't need to see that i don't need to see that it's the opposite of collecting data and so they're just skipping over all of these moments that correct really are signs that they're going to get hurt down the line right because there was once a danger to doing that. Yeah. Right, to sort of looking the horse in the mouth kind of a thing, to really, really paying attention to what it is. And you know what, though, Matt, I'd be curious, because I think actually I've

heard people in your community bring this up as a question. So I want to bring this to you as a question. If somebody says, what if I keep showing up as myself, and it ends up never working out with anyone? And when I say, I mean, obviously people are going to live 90 years, but now they're coming to the end of what they consider like sort of reproductive years or something like that. I said, I kept doing that. I had my standards and I'd make things known and I would communicate and I showed up as myself and it didn't work out because that does happen.

This in the sense, sadly, we live in a world where accommodation is what sometimes gets someone, the person, maybe not a person you'd want a long-term relationship with necessarily, but that sort of societal tick box gets ticked. How do you guide people through that? I'm just curious. Well, I think that I can get someone if I'm accommodating enough thing is like a kind of race to the bottom. And so you have to be really careful of that because that's like just saying if I sell myself cheaply enough and if I accept enough catches, then I'll get someone. But that's not what any of us are really in the market for.

We want something sustainable and sustainable means it has to be capable of supporting our needs and making us happy so you know i think that they're almost similar to like a huge part of this and what we're talking about right now is what do I need to protect myself against? What do I need to avoid? What do I, how do I make clear what my needs are? How do I make myself willing to have the hard conversations? All of those things that shape a relationship of mutual respect and care and compassion and drive away relationships that can't support that. I, you know, at some point we always, I think, also have to be aware of the other side of the coin, which that i if i'm doing that then great i am setting myself up for healthy relationships i then have to have the self-awareness and the self-evaluation to go am i what am i bringing to the table as a person who is enjoyable to be with, who is fun, who

has, who is playful, who is flirtatious, who has all of these things that we all want, that we're all looking for. You know, we're not just going on a date saying, you know, I want someone with high standards standards we're going on a date hoping that we're with someone who's a company we really enjoy and i think sometimes in the in the kind of all the work we do on ourselves to have those standards or to know what's acceptable to us we forget that we still there's another person experiencing us and what experience are we bringing to that person and and and it just it goes both ways it's like going up to going to a job interview you can go to a job interview and say,

this is how much money I want. And this is when I want to start. And I want a respectful boss and I want this and I want that. But at some point in the interview, that person who's hiring you is going to want to know, well, what do you bring to the table? And I think it's, I think it's a very valuable place to start from to go, what was I missing in my previous relationships that I can't survive any relationship without ever again? I think that's an important starting point because nothing else matters outside of that.

If you keep walking headfirst into relationships that make you miserable, then your life's going to be misery. But I think in a more advanced way after that, at some point it behooves us to say, Hey, is there, is there anything that I feel like I need to work on in the energy that I bring to the table? Because maybe I have been taking this whole dating thing, you know, maybe I'm so afraid at this point and I've been dealing with so much pain that, you know, people leave a date and it's like, I, there's no flirtatious energy from me at all on that day. You know, I i no one's leaving that date

thinking i could possibly even really be interested in in anything romantic so i i think that's the next step and being yourself is an interesting phrase because being yourself is it it's being our authentic selves but i could there's a there's an authentic self in me that shows up on my most fearful days. And there's an authentic self that shows up on my most playful days or on the days where I'm having a great time. You and I have had many very deep and serious conversations. And we've also sat at the dinner table together and talk shit and cracked up together and been silly and that's that's a relationship is that you have to be able to be those different things and i think it's worth all of us asking is this something i keep showing up as

and is there anything that if i were on the other side of this equation, I might be hoping I would get. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that that's, and that kind of, I mean, this is why I loved your work, because in essence, what you're doing is it's sort of, to me, it's what everyone needs to do is to, it's like when we're planting a farm or a field or a garden, we prepare the ground so it'll grow beautifully. And we need to do that with ourselves before we get into relationships. And I think that we don't do that. It's interesting, we go to high school, we go to college, we learn all these things, but we don't do this, this sort of deep dive in self-awareness

in terms of how we show up in any relationship, that sense of, again, being agreeable and accommodating, that sense of fawning to stay safe, of accommodating to stay safe, of believing that you have to hold your needs back, all of those things that that all has to be unpacked and gone through. So a person is aware of those things and how family of origin issues may have come into this. That deep dive, Matt, I'm telling you now, it's not how people are going out there and meeting people. You know, because when you think about what people are really doing, they're dating in earnest, it's in their 20s and 30s, right? And I'm not meeting

people who are necessarily always doing that. You know, they're kind of going in because that was not, it's not something we've really ever done in a systematic way, and certainly in a deep way. But I mean, I'm seeing some changes, certainly that the world, there's so much more content, people can do this, because my hope is that in doing this, they'll be able to navigate and figure out the signs of a relationship that has antagonistic and narcissistic features and say, this doesn't feel right. I mean, this isn't okay, because I will tell you this without exception, without exception, this is over hundreds, probably even thousands if you can include groups I've worked

with. Every single person who's been in a narcissistic relationship will look back. I'm saying an adult relationship we chose, if you will, and say something wasn't right from the beginning. Like I call it what you want. I felt call it what you, I felt it in my gut. I felt it in my head. I felt it. I just felt it. It was a knowing. It's like a, and we are so taught that intuition

and maybe I don't know her or I'm my own worst enemy. And maybe that there's actually, this person looks great on paper. So what am I even thinking over and over again? People are like, this person actually does a really good job. And da-da, all the things, all the things. And they'll say, but something didn't feel right. And they would even say things to themselves like,

Matt, like, maybe I'm being greedy. Like, I remember one person, it was a moment when you would have given someone a certain kind of a gift, right, of a certain value. I'm trying to keep this sort of the, hide the details of the story. And this person showed up with something that really was not, I want to say enough, but wasn't appropriate. Like it was just really flimsy. And it wasn't necessary. That wasn't congruent with this person's means. They really were just being careless and looked at after years.

And the insight was like, clearly it was careless. But the woman went right to this really loving place of like, I don't know. Like, I'm not a gift person. These things didn't really matter to me. But it wasn't the gift of it all. It was a lack of attentiveness. The thing that was purchased for her was so off that it made you think that did you give me the gift that you were giving someone else and they don't have the thing

that you're supposed to have like it made no sense and it was already in their closet or whatever it was and so there was it was thoughtless and she got so caught into that i'm not a greedy materialistic person that's not what I am but when she did bring it up to him and said hey this felt a little thoughtless like what was this what were you trying to say you're the most greedy awful selfish person do you see what I'm saying so it's like literally the thing she was thinking was borne out we see this happen in these relationships, but it's that, um, yeah, it's, it's very, very difficult for people to get to this place where they're prepared to do this work of, of meeting someone. And I mean, listen, Matt, in what, let's call it

two, maybe I think of my own parents arranged marriage, knew each other for 20 minutes. Okay. Well, that doesn't work. Can establish that right? Well, my grandmothers knew who they would be married by the age of eight and 12, respectively. There was no consent in that, right? So it's not exactly like I come from a world where there's knowledge about this. You look at your own family. You tell me that people who lived in the same neighborhood just met and married each other, right? There was no discernment. There was no selection. It's like, we're the right age. Everyone else is doing this. You're close by. Let's do it, right? We've entered into an interesting phase. This is the first time in earnest we're talking about all this. And I

think that's a wonderful thing. But I even think in my generation, right? Cause I'm quite a bit older than you. We weren't talking about this. We were not talking about in 1995, the book, the rules came out to give you some sort of cultural point in, in, in time. Right. So in 1995, and that was madness, right? Like that didn't, that didn't even make sense. Like it was like, follow these rigid rules and you're going to end up, you could, in fact, you're going to end up with a narcissist of your very own. What a great plan, right? Cause it was all cool girl stuff, right? So even the first attempt to codify that was a mess. So we're talking about a conversation that's only been going on for about 25 years and, and it's new and it's not all over the world. And so what my point in saying this is, I used to beat myself up saying, what the hell was I thinking? And I reckon I came up in a

different time. And I can't even compare my mom's experience. Because it was so I mean, it's it's ridiculous. It's like saying, why didn't dinosaurs do taxes? I don't know, because there was no IRS in the Cenozoic period. I don't know what to tell you. That's how ridiculous it is. So we also have to understand that this is a work in progress. Folks like you didn't exist when I was growing up. There was nothing like that. Nobody talked about this. And so this is intergenerational too. These are huge generational leaps of people doing something very different than their parents did. And I think everyone has to just want people to be kinder to themselves.

Like, how come I'm not picking all of this up? I mean, this is, nobody's being taught this. And for the longest time they weren't. I wonder if, I'm only just hashing this out out loud, but i feel that that's true at the same time as there is this other thing happening that threatens to derail that discernment right now which is that and it speaks to your work we live in a world now where the level of perfection being portrayed online is insane like it's between among men and women so now like the and not only that it's not like you're just seeing the quote unquote hottest person in your neighborhood you're seeing the hottest people

from everywhere and the lives they're living which are equally unobtainable these you know pina colada sitting on an island, sipping, like relaxing, seemingly never doing anything really, and making gobs of money doing it. And there's male and female equivalents of that. And it's like, every man is some, you know, hot entrepreneur leaning up against a Ferrari. And every woman is some perfect body in a bikini. It's like, so there's and of course narcissism and a narcissistic tendency to portray ourselves in this perfect way that doesn't reflect our own lives plays into that but it i think has i created this extraordinary level of entitlement that so many people feel like i'm entitled to someone who

looks like that or who earns that much money or who has their own business that somehow doesn't demand all of their time but also makes them a fortune and I like I am entitled to all of these things but we're also I think in danger of more than ever being driven by ego in our dating lives. Not by what makes us happy, not by what's going to bring us peace, but by who we can date that is going to feed our ego and make us feel like we're enough or look good on our arm or look great when we pull up their profile to our friends or our family. So that, I think, is working against that discernment. That I agree. And I think it even gets interestingly subtle in the sense that I also think it's created a sense of disappointment and frustration in people, right? Because they're peering into the lives of others that they can't obtain. And even

if they don't feel entitled to it, their lives now feel pale in comparison, right? So it's a sense of I am not enough-ness, right? And this happens at all stages, right? Then you're looking at how people are planning their weddings, and then you're looking at how people are having their kids, and then you're looking at people are decorating their homes and so what we've done is we've very much created this because here's where it gets really interesting around narcissism is that people ask this question like is narcissism on the rise and i was talking to keith campbell who's a professor of psychology university georgia big narcissism expert and he said you know it's probably grandiose narcissism is staying kind of steady right but it's the vulnerable narcissism that that victimized, sullen, resentful,

when's it my turn? How come nothing ever works out for me? That's blowing up. Well, and if you look at what's going on with men these days in like some communities online and the kind of what feels to me like a terrifying kind of emergence of bitterness and deep resentment. And then that, you know, this is a whole other podcast we could do on this. But, you know, the way that those people then end up lashing out and the entitlement that gets created among those communities and shows up in very, very angry men. It's, it's extraordinary. And I think so much of that comes down to, I never got mine.

I never got mine. And so then that also translates into that. I never got mine mentality being brought into a relationship. You see, and then that's when it's the relationship is predicated on, I need to be the more special one in this relationship. And it also sets up this unrealistic sort of marker for what these men are expecting from women. Right? So, you know, we're talking a lot of what we're talking about. Listen, the narcissism conversation is often affecting women who are getting into relationships with narcissistic men. It's not always that. There are plenty of men out there who getting into relationships with narcissistic men it's not always that there are plenty of men out there who got into relationships with narcissistic women but this this entire sort of this whole conversation about um i want more i want better means that women who are going out there and kind of if you will showing up as their best selves really bringing their best selves, really bringing their best selves into the dating world. They're meeting men who are getting indoctrinated on a steady diet of bikinis and women like sort of, you know, doing all kinds of unnatural things. And so

maybe that's unfair and unnatural, but certainly very attention seeking. And kind of, so there's this sort of, you know, there is this, this trope of no woman's going to measure up to that. And in a way, that's almost being borne out for people too. And people will struggle with that. I have no, there's no two ways about it. Narcissism, I mean, social media did not create narcissism, but it's given it a platform to multiply like nobody's business. The conditions, it's almost like a Petri dish. The conditions were perfect. And it's really allowed this to insert itself. So you're right. Now that we even know, we may know more, was that my point about how to get into relationship and prepare ourselves for it. But then this is now twisted it a bit and made it this very almost competitive, performative, superficial, attention-seeking space.

Yep. And we're kind of looking for a standard that doesn't exist, that has just been created online. I don't even think it's a standard, though. I think it's a delusion. Yeah, 100%. It's literally a delusion. You're kind of like chasing ghosts yeah you're chasing yes you're chasing ghosts but but people are then internalizing that and they're saying to themselves well i am not that i don't look like that i don't have this life i don't have these experiences that's culminating in a self-devaluation and then that self-devaluation against any core wounds

is making it really hard for people to enter relationships as anything but a person like, what do I need to give up? What do I need to accommodate to, to make this work? I do think that that's operating in a really, really lethal way. What do I need to give up? What do I need to give into in order to make this work?

I feel like that describes so much behavior these days is that just terrible disillusionment of, I'm just going to have to go along with it because otherwise I'll get nothing. And do I really want to live out the rest of my days? And that's what I hear from people is, okay, do I want to live out the rest of my days with this high standard and have nothing? Have nothing. No, I hear that too. I hear that too. And it's, what's interesting is I get people at a very different sort of, if you will, developmental stage than you. You've certainly, and I've worked, I've had the privilege of working with your beautiful, wonderful community. And I've met certainly there's people there who've been through toxic relationships and there's people

out there who are sort of, they're gearing up to sort of get brave enough to be in relationship right I'm dealing with people who are sorting through the life lessons right so there I'm getting them raw come in the narcissistic relationship coming out of the narcissistic relationship so there it's like now we're pulling stuff out of house fire like what can we keep here? What did we learn here? So I think that that's a big, big, I think that that's a big piece of what people are, you know, we're getting them at different stages. But I do think that disillusionment is big. It's interesting for people coming out of narcissistic relationships though.

It's a different kind of a thing because those who can actually get out they sometimes have a sense of oh now I get this I'm gonna I'm gonna look for it I'm much more aware of it and then they're committing to the long work of becoming your true self you know I have my 12 month cleanse as I call it in the book once you end a toxic relationship however however it ends, 12 months, I don't care. If you were in it 13 months, under 12, I'm like, you can do it for as long as the relationship lasted. So if you're in an eight month toxic relationship, I need eight months off. But for most people, it's not that short. It's 12 months down. And I said, no makeout sessions in

the back of a bar. No, all those dating apps off. You need to be alone. The only way we're going to get you back in your body, get your discernment up, help you sort of figure out who you are, what you're about, what you stand for, what makes you, you, you cannot be in a relationship. That's a tough one. That's a tough, because you're like, I've been lonely. I always imagine that's the thing that you say that most people push back on because they just desperately like they're like, no, I want to get back out there. Or they say, I've been lonely. I've been in this bad, terrible relationship for years. The last five years, it was like it was worse than being alone. I was being abused. And I want to know what it feels like to be held and touched and felt and seen and romanced. And I said, I would let's just it will happen when the inverse of that is that if you keep rushing into something you risk you know losing much more time 100 repeating the cycle than you do by taking a break audrey has just fed me a question speaking of discernment uh asking

what is the difference between selfishness and narcissism, i.e. what you can shape and change and what is a brick wall? Okay. So there's a big difference, right? There are, as hard as it may seem, there are all actually selfish people out there who are empathic because selfishness is a tricky word, right? I think self-centered is probably where we now veer more into narcissism because a selfish person might be a person who says, you know what? I like doing my own thing. I like my surroundings to be the way I want them. I am, I work all the time. And then I like to travel when I want to travel and I know I could not in the way someone deserves accommodate someone into my life that's a selfish person who also has empathy

they're saying like and so they're not in a relationship they're choosing not to it'd be easy to say you're selfish I'd be like they are selfish and in very circumspect way they're not bringing they're not saying they're entitled to that. They're saying this is the life I've chosen, but that also means someone won't fit in it. Right? So I've said this again, I think even to you, but to others, if a person gives me an egg, I'm going to say thanks for the egg. If a person mixes that egg with flour, sugar, baking soda, vanilla, and sticks it in the oven, I'd say, thanks for the cake. An egg isn't a cake. An egg is an egg. So that's how I feel about selfishness.

Selfishness is a part of narcissism. I think self-centeredness is a better way to view it, right? Because in first, instead of selfishness, selfishness is really bad because it's a time you say like, I need to kind of cut out for the world. You know this, right? Because in first, instead of selfish, selfish isn't really bad because it's a time you say like, I need to kind of cut out for the world. You know this, we both wrote a book, like there were times you're like, folks, you're not going to see me for the next three weeks. None of you, none, none, don't come to LA. We're not having dinner. It's not happening. That's selfish. Okay. We made no time for anyone else. We're both, we're guilty of that. Right. And then it's then, and then made the plans for that i'm going to see you this i'm going to do this i'm going to i'm going to i want to make amends for the time i

wasn't available self-centeredness is i'm the center of the world i'm the most important in the world sort of a preoccupation with myself my needs my wants my distress to the exclusion of others a selfish person can actually hear someone else's stuff. But selfishness is still only a brick in that, only the egg of the cake. You need the low and variable empathy. You need the entitlement. You need the grandiosity. You need the arrogance. You need the excessive need for validation and admiration. You need the superficiality. You need it all, right? Otherwise, it's not a cake. Otherwise, it's not narcissism. And so if you meet someone and you're kind of taken by them and you have a dinner and the person says, this was great.

I've loved meeting you. This has been so wonderful. And I wish we met at a different time. I am too deep into what I'm focused on now. Is my everything right now? And kind of have my life sort of set up. Or it might be a person who might have young children. And one would say, well, is that selfish?

Because they're looking out for their kids. Maybe, maybe not. And say, I love meeting you. However, my kids are my only focus right now. Could kind of be argued to be selfish. But they let that other person know. And then you hear it. And it may not feel good.

But I think the problem is a lot of people say, well, maybe I can convert them. I'm like, they just told, they expressed their need. The hardest thing is to accept that. let it go and walk away. Cause we feel like we have a finite number of hits at target. We really. Yeah. And that's kind of a, I think I'm glad you said that because one might hear what you just said and go, ah, okay. So the selfish person is the one worth trying with. And the narcissist is the one, if you get the cake, then okay, definitely avoid that one. But, but no, actually that your reality is the same with the selfish person, albeit that it's a more transparent, uh, there's a more transparent, uh, dialogue going on, but your reality is one where you're not going to get your needs met.

So just because someone doesn't hit all of the check marks of the narcissist that qualify them, it doesn't mean that they're a good bet. That's my point. I thank you for putting it in those terms because at the end of the day, the selfish person, even if they're selfish for the most noble reasons, that maybe they're a graduate student

finishing their dissertation. Maybe they're commuting all over the place trying to work in a busy new job. Whatever the reason is to put all that focus on themselves and communicates about it clearly, that's it. They're not going to meet your needs. And that's, but see, there's a difference between not someone not meeting someone's need and what the narcissist does, which is not only not meet your need, shame you, humiliate you, and pathologize your need. That's the tip. That's the issue. And I think that the challenge is that people think, well, I might be able to convert to the selfish person, and you can't.

Okay, I have one more question. For everyone listening, for everyone listening though and watching this, cause I know a bunch of people are going to be watching this on YouTube. Hello to all of you on YouTube. I know a bunch of you are going to be listening to this on the love life podcast. Take this opportunity now at this point in the interview, if you have not already, and I'm assuming many of you already have to go and order your copy of it's not you this is

i it is i have to say i have never experienced a more life-saving work for people and this is so you know i can't even just say it's true for all of you women out there it is true for everybody that when you encounter narcissism it is something that has the potential to rob you of years of your life. It can explode your life in unimaginable ways. It can make you forget who the hell you are in this world. It can make you entirely lose yourself and then find that at the end of a relationship like that you have to find yourself again and recreate learn again what you are who you are what you like what you dislike

i have seen over 15 years the damage that gets done to people's lives when they fall into these relationships when they're a victim of these relationships and it can happen to anyone one of the things that dr romany talks about in this book is the happy family trap that you it's not just people who have a core wound that fall prey to narcissistic relationships when you're from a happy family you don't even know the animal you're dealing with and so people like this can come into your world and they're just not on your radar and you think that if you give them more or if you are kinder or if you're more empathetic or more nurturing or listen harder that or give them time that this person is going to respond in rational ways to those things and by the time you've realized that they don't play by any of the same rules as you

you are so deep in that your life is entangled with theirs and there are real consequences either in the form of a terribly broken heart or in very real financial logistical consequences in your life or the damage that they can do so i say all of this because this is i i've been i read this on my honeymoon with audrey which is which was i did i read this on my honeymoon with audrey but it was fresh out at the time and I couldn't put it down and Dr. Romney had just sent me a very early copy of it and it blew me away and then I reread it again for this interview and it did the same thing all over again if you could see my copy

is there are highlights throughout this book and it's been incredibly healing for me reading this book i know it will be for you too there is no one else that i would point you to in the way that i point you to dr ramani's work um so grab yourself a copy of it's not you and if there's someone in your life many of you have parents that you know have been suffering for many, many years and have never had the language to articulate what they've been through. And this book will give them the language to articulate what has happened in their life. Some of you, it's happened to your sister or someone close to you, a best friend. But this is one of the greatest gifts that you can get to give to somebody else. Um, so go to Dr. Romney's Instagram profile at Dr. Romney, um, or Barnes and

Noble, Amazon, or wherever you get your books. I will also say this cause it's easier for me to say it than Dr. Romney, go and grab a physical version of the book, either the hardback or the ebook, because as authors, one of the things that helps us get the word out is if the book makes a splash. And one of the things that helps it make a big splash is hardback, physical copies and ebooks. But grab a copy because I promise you this will be some of the most important reading you ever do for avoiding or healing from the relationships in your life that have the potential to take you away from your dreams, your goals, all of the things that matter to you in life. I have one more question on this because I know that speaking of people who are on the other side of it, who have experienced the fallout from one of these relationships and trying to heal,

but are experiencing this just head trip of feeling like the and i imagine that you would draw many parallels between what someone feels when they leave a cult and how it feels like reality has what they knew to be true was is no longer true and there is this what you talk about in the book as complicated grief that happens as a result could you speak to I suppose reassure people about the complicated grief they may be feeling at missing someone or the life or even though they've got someone so unbelievably damaging and toxic out of their life it's it's like there's some part of them that can't seem to let go of of the good that they had or the moments that were special or even just the person that maddeningly they can still imagine all these good moments with

how do people manage the complicated grief of leaving a narcissistic relationship you're kind of taking us full circle here back to trauma bonding right i mean that's the nature of trauma bonding is in some ways we almost go the opposite of what our brains typically do. Our brains typically favor remembering bad information, you know, because that's considered evolutionarily adaptive. You can remember the bush that has the poison berries, you won't eat those berries again and get sick, right? So we do sort of favor remembering bad information. In fact, it really requires a real muscle to remember the good over the bad, right? Except when it comes to these relationships, because there was almost a different evolutionary need came into it, which is attachment and survival.

So we then had to selectively go out and cherry pick those good moments, the little gift the father got for the person in the airport, right? We have to cherry pick those small moments and hold on to them like little precious things because they're all you've got. So that euphoric recall is what it's called, is what can keep people sort of stuck in that loop. These relationships are also really are a person's grieving a narrative, the story they told themselves about this relationship. People literally do convince themselves, I was in a perfectly good marriage. We had lots of friends that were couples. We had kids. We had a really nice house. We went on vacations. Like we did all the things, right? And so now what's happening is the day you

really understand that, and it's a tough moment, that penny drop moment when you see it, you're like, oh my gosh, this whole thing was a fiction in a way. That is one brutal moment. So now we get to this place of disenfranchised grief or a complicated grief which is it's not and again grief is made all the more complex by the nature of the relationship we had with the person we lost when we love someone deeply and we lose them and it wasn't a fraught relationship but a loving relationship we we miss them. We miss their presence, but we are also able to live in the goodness of the gifts that that person brought into our lives. It's again, we miss them. And if they're, you know, again, I've had a shared with you a very unjust loss in my life.

It happened too young for this friend, but really when it comes down to it, I miss her and I know all the gifts she left me with, right? Now, when we lose someone where the relationship is complicated, a very, very complicated relationship with a parent would be a classical example. That grief gets, when they die, it actually can be quite messy. People will say it's horrifying. The first thing I felt was relief, but then they'll say after that initial relief wore away, they said that landscape of grief was a disaster for them. It was just messy. And they realized how much they didn't try to resolve while the person was alive, not with that parent, but within themselves, right? Now, when we take it to the fact that the loss is everyone's alive, nobody's dead, that this is that you're now you've ended a marriage for example um or distance from

family this doesn't make sense first of all no one else sees it as grief like grief who's dead nobody's dead right so that's what we talk about in disenfranchised grief that gets at it but because it was so complex you've created this narrative, the trauma bonding makes it all the more confusing, you engage in this euphoric recall. It's the sort of thing where number one, grief is the most human of experiences. Other than birth and death, grief is probably one of the only universals we've got. We're all going to go through it. And it is a process. And while we go through this grief, as this is why all cultures have mourning rituals and grief rituals.

We need something to take us out of the usual, right? And there's things we do, the way we might be in our own homes, the clothes we wear, the ceremonies we attend, the way people might interact with spiritual systems. That changes for a set period of time, not forever, but for a set period of time. And in a way, those periods of time, amazingly, historically, have been about what was needed for a person to sort of go through the initial stages of grief. There's no set time, but even six to eight weeks, there's a big state, there's a big shift in a person who's sort of adjusted to sort of a new normal, if you will.

But the, but the, in terms of the working it through, talking it out, Matt, talking it out, that coherent narrative, one of the best ways to create a coherent narrative is to talk it out, ideally with a trained listener. So much of the work I do with clients is, I will literally, I mean, by session two, no, my family was good. Like, yeah, we were close. By session 20, it's Tennessee Williams. williams i'm like i'm not sure how this happened but it was the telling and the retelling went from like yeah close-knit like yeah my dad traveled a lot for his job to we go and each time i'm like wait a minute you the therapist catches the contradictions like i'm missing something here that you're here. You said your mom left you for long periods of time.

Like, yeah, I never thought about it. I said, yeah, no, leaving a six-year-old for six hours is abandonment. You must have been terrified. And then they're thinking, oh, my God. And that's it. It's that the things are given name. The objective person comes in and says, how did you endure that? That was so hard hard that wasn't okay

and as that happens the process again the narrative becomes coherent it starts to make sense but i don't know some people may not have a therapist to talk to group work can be fine perfectly fine way to do it journalingaling, writing it out, talking to someone who can hear it. But the talking it out gets you from, yeah, like, yeah, we're a family like any other to what the hell. And that process, that evolution really helps a lot with that process of grief, because now you can see it more clearly. And you can say, oh, this isn't what I thought. And now, as you see it more clear, that's why I even have do people do things that seem farcical, but they're not. I have people write down, write it down, I want every terrible thing

that happened written down. It takes a minute, personally, as I started writing the first 10, I just remembered another 100. I'm like, funny how that works. When you open up that closet, there's a lot more stuff in there than you thought. But I also have them write the little things they gave up in life that matter to them that aren't big ticket things like Thai food or movies with subtitles or, I don't know, painting walls of a house red, like silly little things or, you know, having a TV watching party with friends over a show you're all watching together that they were not allowed to do in this relationship.

Have, eat ice cream out of the container, right? And that's another list. And then that final list is, what's the big stuff you gave up? And it might be university. It might be trying to live in another country for a time of your life, it might be giving up your interest in your good violin player, and you maybe you say, okay, I'm going to pick that up again. And maybe you don't go on to play for the New York Philharmonic, but you might join a local orchestra. Maybe you don't go back to college,

but you're like, well, there's this huge extension program, and I'm going to go take some classes. Like, writing it down also helps with the grief because it's not locked in. And all of these things can really be crucial to managing the grief that comes up, the very, very complicated grief that comes up in these relationships. Hmm. So much.

I feel like we could go on and on and on i we do i the i always think that a book is one of the most invaluable valuable investments a person can make because by definition it's the thing that we've worked the hardest on yes it is yeah and the most thoughtful about because we could go in and fix and fix and fix again. And other eyes have been on it, right? So even that perspective cleans it up a little. I totally agree. It's probably my most crystalline thinking.

Yeah. Correct. I mean, when you think of how many hours, you and I put a lot of hours into a YouTube video. But when you compare it to how many hours we've put into a book over the years, it's exceptional. So I, like I said, grab a copy of the book. It's not you. Um, it's available to order to ship right now. Um, I can't wait for everything we have coming up this year. I know we've got some really fun stuff coming up together this year. Um, and, uh, in the meantime, congratulations again on this book. I I love you I'm so grateful for our friendship

and I continue to be I think one of your biggest fans in the world I appreciate it so much I love you dearly too I'm so grateful for your friendship for being a sounding board in many ways some of these ideas I ran across you probably you didn't even know I was using as a sounding board I'm like oh this is an interesting new way to think of it. So, you know, we're all the people we know become the ways that these ideas can sort of develop in a way so they do the most good. So I can't thank you enough for the time, for the grace of sharing this with your audience. And again, having had the privilege of working with them, I know a book like this can help a lot of them, whether it's, you know, no matter who the relationships with, that's why we made it about narcissistic people instead of narcissistic relationships,

because when people see the word relationships, they think it's just an intimate relationship. But for many people, it was that relationship with a parent that actually really set the course of their life. And yes, it led them stumbling a bit more through other relationships, but that's really where, that's what really needed to be understood. So I wanted, this could be, this could even be a friend. You know, it could be someone who's significant in your life

where this behavior left you feeling less than and not enough. Or a boss. A boss, yeah. But people wondering what's wrong with me and this book is really here to tell you, it's not you. It's not you.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for watching, everybody. Leave us a comment. Let us know what you thought of this conversation. How did it affect you? What did it mean to you? What spoke to you the most? And of course, before you go, make sure you pick up a copy of Dr. Ramani's book,

It's Not You. I have read it cover to cover. My copy of the book is very well dogged and underlined. And I know yours will be too by the time you reach the end of it. Go grab yourself a copy. And thank you as always for watching this and for listening to the Love Life podcast.

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