Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How Are You Contributing To What Is Not Working In Your Love Life? Hard Truths From Relationship Coach Jillian Turecki.

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

Why self-inquiry is the first ingredient to a healthy relationship.Jillian Turecki is a renowned relationship coach, teacher, author, and host of the podcast, Jillian On Love. Fueled by an insatiable curiosity about what makes a relationship thrive, Jillian has helped thousands over the last 20 years through her teachings, courses, and writing to revolutionize their relationship with themselves so that they transform their romantic relationships. In this episode we talk about:The difference between lust and loveHow to make the idea of self love more than an empty clichéHow to be honest with your partnerThe myth of finding “the one”How to be your best self even after you’ve exited the honeymoon stage And why, if you want a successful relationship, you have to make peace with your parentsRelated Episodes:#510. Me, a Love Story: How Being OK With Yourself Makes You Better at Everything | Sharon Salzberg#464. How to Keep Friendships From Imploding | Esther PerelEsther Perel on the One Thing That Will Improve the Quality of Your LifeSign up for Dan’s newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://www.meditatehappier.com/podcast/tph/jillian-turecki-905See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello everybody, how we doing? With Valentine's Day approaching, here is a provocative question. How are you contributing to what is not working in your love life? Let that one sit with you. That question, which comes from today's guest, the relationship coach, Jillian Turecki, reminds me of another question,

one that my executive coach, Jerry Colonna, poses to people all the time. How are you complicit in the conditions you say you don't want? He usually asks that question in a work context, but either way, it's a very powerful thing to contemplate. It's one thing to complain about the dynamics in your love life or your work life, and I want to be clear that's okay sometimes, but often, and probably

more often than we're comfortable, it is incredibly helpful to take a look at our own shit, to grow up and take some responsibility. It may not be fun at first or ever, but it often pays off, and I say this from no small amount of experience. I hope it's obvious that this is not victim blaming. Sometimes there are unacceptable dynamics that necessitate a departure. With that caveat aside, however, I'm a huge fan of skillful self-inquiry.

Anyway, so back to my guest, Jillian Turecki. She has written a new book. It's called, It Begins With You. And in it, she explores nine hard truths about romantic relationships. In this conversation we talk about the difference between lust and love, how to make the idea of self-love more than an empty cliche, how to be honest with your partner, the myth of finding the one, how and why to be your best self even after you have exited the honeymoon stage where you're trying to win the other person over and Why if you want a successful relationship, this may be tough to hear you have to make peace with your parents We'll get started with Jillian Turecki right after this

Before we get started I want to tell you what's happening over on danharris.com Join me on February 11th at 4 p.m. Eastern for the next in my series of live AMAs. That's Ask Me Anything. We start by doing a short meditation together. I'll guide it, and then I'll take your questions. You can ask me about anything. These have been super fun. Recently, we've talked about how I handle anxiety and what tips I might have for you.

We talked about how I handle insomnia, which is often related to my anxiety. We talk about some of the political tumult in the world today. We talk about how to go deeper in meditation, how to get more information on Buddhism, if that's interesting to you. Lots and lots and lots of questions,

also a lot of laughs. This event coming up on February 11th is exclusively for paid subscribers at denharris.com. So if you aren't already a paid subscriber, you know what to do. We'll see you on February 11th at four Eastern. Bring your questions, I'm looking forward to it. If you deal with anxiety, you're definitely not alone.

The bad news is that it doesn't go away overnight. The good news is that you really can change your relationship to it. The Happier Meditation app offers a course called Taming Anxiety. Over the course of 10 sessions, meditation teacher Leslie Booker and anxiety expert Dr. Luana Marquez guide you through strategies to cope with challenging situations, break free from anxiety loops, and build mindfulness, compassion, and bravery. To start the Taming Anxiety course, download the Happier Meditation app today wherever you get your apps.

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on this podcast. Indeed.com slash wonder ECA. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Gillian Turecki, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure. If you're cool with it, I'd love to hear your personal story about how you got into

this work. Sure. So I was a yoga teacher and practitioner for many years. I'm still an avid yoga practitioner and meditator for over 20 years. So I've always been obsessed with the mind-body connection and that if we're feeling something emotionally, we're going to feel it in our bodies and if we're feeling something in our bodies, it's going to impact our thoughts and our emotions. And as a yoga teacher, I was very happy until I just kind of wasn't. I just felt like I wanted more.

And I also wanted to get married and have kids and go down that route. And I did, I ended up meeting the man who would become my husband and then later my ex-husband. And I thought going into that marriage, because I was in my late thirties at the time, and because I was a yogi and a meditator, I thought that I had all the tools and understanding of what actually takes to make a relationship work long term. And what I later discovered is that I had very little tools actually. I didn't really quite understand love.

And I didn't have the self-esteem or the self-awareness of my own patterns and relationships that I needed. So we got married and I always say that before we got married, our relationship was 90% great and 10% not so great or actually 10% terrible. 10% not so great, or actually 10% terrible. And you know, you could say, well, you know, no relationship is perfect. 90% is a pretty good stat. But the 10% was so incredibly profound. It was the things that you shouldn't ignore. And so when we got married, people think, okay, you get married, then your problems

are going to get better. But when you get married, it's the opposite. It's like the 10% became the 90% and the 90% became the 10%. And that was incredibly difficult. And it all kind of came to a head. The way that he ended our relationship was terrible. It was like over text. It was the morning that I had a miscarriage. My mom had like two months to live. She was dying of lung cancer. I mean, it was just everything that you can think of. It was very tragic. And so that was the day that my life completely fell apart to the point where I just, it was

surreal. I couldn't believe that it would fall apart to that degree. I had to figure out one, how to survive that emotionally, and two, I became obsessed with the question of what makes a relationship work. Because I was absolutely beside myself that I was in this position that getting a divorce and the relationship didn't work. I felt like an utter failure and I felt very afraid.

And so it became my mission to figure that out. And I did figure it out also through my own personal work and working with incredible mentors. And I'm so glad that it didn't work out with my ex husband. And the couple's work that we received was terrible. And one of the things that I thought, as I was learning more about relationships and psychology and whatnot, is that there has to be a better way. So I decided to work with couples. And then there were a lot of singles flocking to me about finding the right person

and raising their self-worth and self-esteem. And I sacrificed everything just for my work. That's just what helped me heal. And I worked with thousands of people. I don't necessarily recommend that. I just, again, the only thing that I did was that. And then a few years later, I started to think about how I had to leave

these profound lessons that I learned in a book and Here I am Once you realize that you're the cure to your heartbreak was figuring out how to make relationships work and then helping other people Make their relationships work and then you realize that you were Dedicating all of your bandwidth to that which wasn't healthy Was there a beat that happened between that and writing this book? In other words, did you slow down

and get into a relationship yourself? Sure, yeah, I actually got into a couple of relationships and they were all actually really lovely. And I also like in the beginning got to practice sort of what it is that I'm learning. And the relationships that I got into didn't work but they didn't work because They didn't last I should say and it's not because they didn't quote-unquote work

but it was just more I had a better understanding of what it is that I really wanted and That's like why a big message of mine is, you know Don't settle and choosing the right partner and how to make a relationship work and also how to Raise your self-esteem so that you can have a voice in your own relationship. So yes, my life did become more balanced, but yeah, I've just been in this pretty hefty pursuit of understanding this and then sharing that message, for sure.

It has to be intimidating to be in a relationship with a relationship guru. You know, it's so funny because as a yoga teacher, I would be put on a pedestal. Oh, you're a yoga teacher. You're a meditator. You know, you must have all the answers. It's like, no, actually most of the people who get into meditation and yoga actually, I have, we all have a lot of problems that we're trying to heal, we get into it mostly because of pain.

Yes, I have to be with a very self-assured man. But that being said, I don't bring this into my relationships. I wear a different hat in my relationships. Got it. Yeah. Just to go back to a point you were making, or at least alluding to,

and a point that you make quite explicitly in the introduction to your book, and this is something that I've wondered about aloud many times. Some of my close listeners might feel some deja vu here, but it's so interesting to me and I think to you too, that we are intensely social animals. That's like a cliche to even point that out. And yet, nobody teaches us how to do relationships. Rit large, And yet, nobody teaches us how to do relationships. At large, nobody teaches us how to do relationships. And specifically, nobody teaches us how to do romantic relationships. And we learn from our parents who are often really shitty teachers in this regard.

Yes. You know, it is quite an irony that relationships really do shape the quality of our lives. But I don't think as far as the school system or even as far as society and culture is concerned, it's fairly recent that it is being more recognized that relationships are really what contributes to our longevity or maybe a lack of longevity. And that when we have strong friendships, strong romantic relationships, strong familial relationships, we're only now really recognizing how that impacts our physical health. That our mental health and our physical health are intricately connected.

And so the fact that it hasn't been in the school system is because we haven't recognized the true like depth of value that relationships actually have on our lives and how impactful they are. And so I'm hoping that continues to change even more, certainly all relationships, but especially a romantic relationship. I believe that, you know, you could be a rock star at work, you could have all the money that you want in the bank, you could have your physical health, but if you're in a relationship and that relationship is not going well, you are gonna wake up totally anxious

and feeling empty inside. Do you agree? Yeah, it's a really exquisite form of loneliness when you're with somebody and it's not working. Yes, it is. It's deafening and it's far worse than being lonely, like alone. Yes. Okay, so your book goes through nine hard truths about romantic relationships.

I feel like all the truths about relationships are hard. But if you're cool with that, I was going to kind of march through the nine. Let's do it. So, truth number one is it begins with you. cool with that, I was going to kind of march through the nine. Let's do it. So truth number one is it begins with you. What does that mean? It means that you have to be the change that you want to see in your love life. I mean, you could apply this to your life in general, but we are the common denominator

in all our relationships. Now that does not mean that because it's very popular right now in the Zikai to say, oh, the problem is me. It doesn't necessarily mean that you are the only problem or that the problem is you, but it does mean that anything that is going well in your life or in your love life, you are the common denominator and if you have a series of relationships and things are not going well. The first place to look is you have to look in the mirror. And what you will see if you are willing to look is certain patterns, beliefs, fears. And the number one fear is that we are somehow not going to be enough

because there is nothing other than a romantic relationship of any kind that is going to trigger inside of us our deepest fears that we are unlovable in some way. Even if you're in a good relationship, that it's going to surface. And fortunately, we live in a society in a time where we're not walking down the street fearing for our lives. So the greatest threat is really that we are not going to be enough for someone who we

love and that somehow someone is going to stop loving us. And it's the great irony of life, which is that nothing is permanent. Nothing is permanent. Even if you are with the right person, you change, they change, life happens. And so uncertainty is built into the very fabric of a romantic relationship. And how we cope with that uncertainty I think determines the health of the relationship. It determines the quality of the relationship. But it begins with you is understanding that fear that you have that makes you absolutely not unique.

It makes you like just the rest of us. And how that fear is manifested through certain behaviors and beliefs and is impacting your life and your relationships. And that if you want to change it, the first place is to look within. Look, you sit whether it's like on Zoom or on the couch and a couple comes to see you.

What they're coming in with is fix them. Everyone is thinking that. Whenever you work with a couple, like this is like a running joke with people who work with couples. Or even when I work with singles, it's like they seek out therapy or they seek out counseling, even if they don't know this consciously,

with the hope that the other person will change so that they can be happier, so that they can feel more content inside of the relationship. And every single time, what people have to recognize is that if you change something in you, you have the power to change something in the dynamic of the relationship. Now that doesn't guarantee that the relationship is going to transform necessarily or stay together. You cannot change another human, but you can change yourself.

And I want people to recognize that they have far more influence over the state of their love life and their relationship than they think they do. You talked about the number one fear being life and their relationship than they think they do. You talked about the number one fear being unlovable or being alone because you're unlovable, which makes sense given how we evolved. The lonely human on the savanna was likely a dead human. Now to be clear, there's a subset of people who are happiest alone and that's totally cool. But as you were talking about that being a pretty common, if not universal, fear, I was

thinking about this very funny cat sitter my wife and I had back when we lived in the city. And she said, if you have one cat, it's fine. If you have two, it's a little suspect. If it's three, it's really embarrassing. And if it's four, it's die alone. I always love that. That's good.

We went on to have four cats, but we're a couple. And then the other thing you said, and this will all build up to a question, if you're in a relationship and you have struggles, which all relationships do, this may be counterintuitive. Instead of trying to cajole your partner into changing, you can actually do some work on yourself and that may affect the changes you're hoping to see. And that reminds me of something that for six years now, I've been working with these communications coaches, really helped me with my interpersonal hygiene.

And they often say that it only takes one person to have a successful conversation. And I think that may not be entirely true in a relationship, but there's some element of truth to it in relationships. And in that, if you do the requisite introspection and the right practices for you, that you can really have an impact that wouldn't require so much change from the other person. Of course, you know, there are some limits to this. And so this leaves me up to my question, which is, what do we do about this insight?

If it's true that it starts with us, what happens next? What does that mean? How do we get the introspection that is required for this? And then once we have some insight, what do we do about it? Sure. Well, first I wanted to say something about it takes one person to have a good conversation or to make the communication good. What is actually really interesting about that and true is that how you begin a difficult conversation How you initiate a difficult conversation will impact the whole flow of the conversation So people need the actual skills, you know There's a difference between saying we need to talk the moment you tell someone

We need to talk is the moment that the conversation is already gone. So I just wanted to add that because I think it's interesting. Well, let me just jump in on that just because I think about these communications coaches, they've been on the show before. I'll drop a link in the show notes for listeners and many listeners will have heard me talk about Mudita Nisgar and Dan Clurman many times before because they've had such a big impact on me.

And I think about their work, they don't describe it this way, but I think about it as teaching people how in conversation to avoid activating the amygdala or the stress and fear center of somebody else's brain and keep the prefrontal cortex, the locus of logic and reason and creativity on board. And actually, if you frame things correctly, if you learn how to make sure that the other person feels heard and understood, you know, so if you start the conversation well and then make sure that throughout the conversation you stay in the same loop, you can really, even if the other person has no skills whatsoever, you can get to a win.

Yes, absolutely. And part of getting to that win is also understanding the way that our brains work and people and understanding people and also being able to read people. That's a very big part of it. If you pay attention, you can tell when someone is actually starting, when the amygdala is starting to fire up and whatnot. But yet, and we need to talk, is going to trigger the fight or flight response in someone like that? And then they're going to want the fight or flight response in someone like that. And then they're gonna wanna avoid you. The question was, how do we actually put this into practice?

What do we do now once we know these things? Well, it depends on the individual, but sometimes it's as simple, and I put that in quotation marks, as just understanding that your mind is creating a lot of stories. Maybe your ego is getting in the way way and you need to take a deep breath and start to learn some skills like we were just talking about.

Sometimes learning just that, those simple communication skills so that you can speak differently to the person who you're in a relationship with or even the person who you're starting to date, then that could be huge. For some people, it's learning how to work on their emotional states. It's learning how to find a sense of purpose and meaning in their own lives because the fact that they don't feel connected to themselves. And what I mean by that is that they don't really know what their needs are. They don't know how to meet their needs.

So this is what's in the book is learning how to meet their own needs. It's learning to understand, to figure out what they need to do to build their self-esteem. What are some of the hard things that they need to do? What are some of the things that they've been procrastinating on? For others, it's understanding, it's softening their reactivity to their partner or softening their reactivity in dating. And part of softening their reactivity is recognizing, which is the second truth, that the mind is a battlefield and it certainly can be a battlefield and learning how to mitigate that and to understand that sometimes people are really

good at coming up with very disempowering meanings about everything. And when you're in a relationship and you fall into the trap of they don't love me because, or they did that, which means this and this and that, and now, you know, they don't care about me. These are actually the things that destroy relationships. So this and that and now you know they don't care about me. These are actually the things that destroy relationships. So this might mean working with a therapist, maybe not. Maybe it's going to the gym every day, maybe it's meditating, but it's building the self-awareness and then having the courage to do it differently.

I think that in a relationship there's always endless opportunities to transcend our egos and to ask ourselves, is what I'm about to do loving? Or is it not? Am I speaking my truth or am I suppressing my truth? So there are many different roads to healing, but putting things into action right away is very important. If communication is your thing, like you said, work with some people or buy some books and work on communication. If your self-esteem is the problem, then need to figure out how to meet your needs, how to find more meaning in life,

how to do things that are difficult, maybe build community. So everyone has perhaps a different task. But I think the first step is having the awareness of what are my patterns? How is that impacting? And what is it that I actually need? I hope that answered your question. Yeah, I mean, I think what I'm taking from that is that this is a big and kind of individual that is that this is a big and kind of individual project. It starts with you or it begins with you. There's not a one size fits all recipe for figuring your shit out when it comes to how to be effective and healthy in a relationship. You know, yes, it's individual, but there are actually some principles.

And one is understanding that love is not just a feeling, but it's actually an action. It's a choice and it's a verb. Another principle is that you have to tell the truth in your relationship. If you keep avoiding the truth, what's going to build is resentment and resentment destroys all relationships. So there are definitely certain principles that if we don't follow, it's like there's certain principles if you want to get in shape physically. There's certain things that we have to do and that's, everyone kind of knows that, but people don't really know that about relationships. And there are definitely certain principles, but everyone's healing journey is unique to

them for sure. You have a self-reflection practice that I like, because it reminds me of something that my executive coach often gets people to ask themselves. My executive coach is Jerry Colonna, who's also been on the show. I'll drop some links to Jerry. Yeah, he's great. You ask people to ask themselves, how am I contributing to what is not working in my love life? Jerry, in a different context, more in a work context,

asks people to ask themselves, how am I complicit in the conditions I say I don't want? Yes, that's exactly it. And it's a very difficult question to ask oneself. But accountability is probably the most important thing to any relationship, including the relationship that we have with ourselves. And so we have to be able to see how we get in our own way, how we are complicit in the things that we say we do not want, how we are contributing to our own suffering. These are not questions for the people who don't want to change. These are not questions for the people who want to stay feeling like a victim in their

own lives. But this is literally the path to a better life and to freedom. And the reframe is that this isn't about blame. There's so little in life that we have control over. And I want people to feel empowered to understand that there are things that they actually can change in their lives. But you do have to be able to kind of look within. And it's never a reflection of who you are as a human being, but it is

a reflection of the things that kind of make up like your ego, you know, your beliefs and your patterns. And it's only when we're able to say, okay, how am I complicit in the things that I say that I do not want? Because it's, you know what's suffering? You know what drives us mad? Is we say we want something and yet we keep doing that thing that's making it so that we are farther and farther away from our goal. And it's a maddening thing to think about. It's like, why do I keep doing this thing?

I say I want the relationship, but I keep dating the emotionally unavailable person. I say I want to achieve this in my work, but I keep doing the exact opposite. And it's very painful. And so in my book, I try to reveal to people that that's sort of what they're doing, that they say they want that, but they're doing something else. Well, why might that be? Well, underneath it all, you will always find an internal conflict. And sometimes that internal conflict is, I want that, but my mom, when I was growing up, always expected me to be like this, you know, like I'm an artist, but I was raised in a family of lawyers and I was expected

to be a lawyer. So I say I want to be the artist, but I'm doing everything to prevent myself from being the artist. And that's because of the internal conflict of seeking out the approval understandably from your family. So it's really about understanding like what that internal conflict is because often that's what you will find. And just to put a fine point on this because I think you you nodded in this direction this is not about blaming the victim if you're in a abusive

relationship or whatever it's not about making the victim if you're in an abusive relationship or whatever. It's not about making it. And I know you have some experience with abusive relationships. I do. It's not about saying, oh, it's your fault the abuse is happening. It's about accountability where that is healthy and appropriate. Yeah. So look, as you said, I feel very qualified to speak about abusive relationships because I was in one many years ago.

And I had to really ask myself those difficult questions. Why did I let this happen? And by the way, anyone who's in an abusive relationship, the worst is being brought out in you too. So you have to look very, very carefully at the kind of people you choose, why you choose them, where your self-worth is. Always look at it with great compassion.

And I have a lot of compassion and empathy and I hope that it's conveyed through my writing. It's very important to me. But look, if you are in a abusive relationship, let's say you are in a relationship with, you know, a so-called narcissist who manipulated the hell out of you, or you were even in a relationship with someone who hit you, who hurt you physically. When you get out of that, part of what your mission has to be is that you never again, ever get in a relationship like that again. And so to make sure that never happens again, there are some

things that you're going to have to address, such as family, self-esteem, standards, beliefs, naivete, all of the above. It's interesting in this chapter about, it begins with you, and you referenced this earlier, some of what you recommend to people is very simple self-care, exercising, resting, and things like that. That may seem obvious in some way, but I think what you're, and this harkens back to another thing you said earlier. It's like, figure out what is going to make you a healthy and whole person so that you're not relying on your partner for absolutely everything. Yeah.

So the first thing is you're never going to feel 100% whole and 100% love yourself before you're in a relationship. The school of thought that you have to feel whole and then you can be in a relationship. I mean, if that were the reality, we'd all be doomed. But, or and, how we feel about ourselves definitely is reflected in our relationships. So I think the main thing that I try to convey is that we've been sort of hypnotized by this notion that there is the one, there's this one person who's going to come into our lives and when they do, everything's going to come into our lives and when they do,

everything's going to kind of fall into place. And even though we might think of that and our logical brain would be like, yeah, you know, we know that's not true. I think that we all have, and this is before you get into relationship and even if you've been married for several years, we have to really, really be on top of ourselves to not expect the person who we love or who we're in a relationship with or who we're starting a relationship with to make us happy. I believe that we should be adding happiness to another person's life.

Why be in a relationship with anyone if you're not adding value to each other's lives and making the road, the road that we call life, easier in some way. But no one can actually fulfill you. No one outside of yourself can fulfill you. And we get into relationships and we think with this person, with the one, I'm going to be fulfilled. And it's a lie. The truth is, there are definitely people who are much better match for you than others. But love really is an action and it is a choice. And you decide who the one will be. And over the course of a long-term relationship or

a marriage, you're going to have to make that choice many, many times throughout your relationship. And so you have to understand that the onus is really on you to feel as whole as possible or to do the work, and that no one can actually do that for you. I really hope that everyone chooses the person who is their greatest fan and their biggest supporter and wants to see the other person and wants to help the other person, but it's on us and no one else can fulfill you. And this goes very deeply against the whole notion of romanticism where we're told that

with the right person, everything is just great and that we don't really have to do anything. And that love is just a feeling that we're going to feel spontaneously when we're in the presence of this person. And when we're not feeling that love, there must be something wrong with the relationship or it must be something wrong with them. When yes, of course, if you're not feeling the love, maybe something is wrong with the relationship.

But most of the time it's because no, somehow the light is dim inside of you and you're in a bad mood or you're going through a hard time and that creates the filter that covers your eyes and then you see your relationship through that filter when really something has to change inside of you. Does that make sense? It does. Coming up, Gillian Turecki talks about the difference between lust and love

and the role of self-love, which is often delivered as a sort of gooey cliche, but it's way more than that. Being an actual royal is never about finding your happy ending, but the worst part is, if they step out of line or fall in love with the wrong person, it changes the course of history. I'm Arisha Skidmore Williams.

And I'm Brooke Zephrin. We've been telling the stories of the rich and famous on the hit, wonder-y show, Even the Rich, and talking about the latest celebrity news on Rich and Daily. We're going all over the world on our new show, Even the Royals. We'll be diving headfirst into the lives of the world's kings, queens, and all the wannabes in their orbit throughout history. Think succession meets the crown meets real life. We're going to pull back the gilded curtain and show how royal status might be bright

and shiny, but it comes at the expense of, well, everything else. Like your freedom, your privacy, and sometimes even your head. Follow Even The Royals on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Even The Royals early and ad free right now by joining Wondery+. and you're not going to believe the conversations I've had. Like, is OnlyFans only bad? How has dating changed in the digital age? What's the deal with Disney adults? I've talked to John Stamos, the VP, Kamala Harris, to Jordan Peele, Raven Simone, and yes, the one and only Jamila Jamil.

And just wait until you hear our conversation. We talk Twitter drama, bad dates, and then some. How the hell do you actually get sexy? Like, what the hell does that mean? Like, I know how to be funny. I know how to be like, you know what I'm saying? Yes, exactly. Like, I don't really know how to be like,

and take your clothes off. I'm not robbing fucking Givens. You know, it's like, how do people do that? I've been in this situation too many times and not felt any of those things. The girl eyes, the quiet. Like, I've never been quiet a moment in my fucking life. Yes!

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You can download the Happier Meditation app and check out Even Now Love today. Let's keep going with these hard truths. Truth number two, which you referenced before, is that the mind is a battlefield. Can you say a little bit more about that? We are story-making machines and we are meaning-making machines.

And in ancient yogic texts, there's this metaphor of the monkey mind and that's the metaphor of the monkey swinging from branch to branch. And our minds can kind of do a lot of gymnastics. And if we do not question our mind and our thoughts often, our mind will easily convince us that the other person is bad because the mind is trying to keep us safe, but it's not really designed to make us happy.

And so the amount of times that I've worked with people where they've created an entire story, an entire narrative about their relationship and their partner, and it builds up all this resentment, it also builds up pain and hurt. And the story is actually not true. Like the meanings that they are coming up with are not actually true. And I think, no, I know that there's a lot of freedom and understanding that when you have to become aware of

and practice becoming aware of when you are sort of like in that loop and to communicate instead and to just even say to yourself, okay, my mind is like getting the best of me right now. I'm totally in a story. I'm in like my anxiety. I'm in this sort of pattern that I do all the time because usually it's quite familiar to the person. What do I have to do instead?

Is that really true? I love the work of Byron Katie where you're just like, is that true? This idea of bringing mindfulness to a relationship is rooted in understanding that the mind can be the monkey, that it can swing from branch to branch and not make a whole lot of sense. And we have to tame that wild monkey. And part of that is through mindfulness. You know, another example is, oh, you know, my partner, wife, my husband, they're just really annoying me right now.

And you know, all of a sudden sudden then you go into like a whole thing about how they didn't do this and how they didn't do that. And then all of a sudden you're looking at your partner with a little bit of disgust and a little bit of contempt. Is it them? No. Maybe sometimes it is and you just haven't been speaking the truth in your relationship and you need to deal with the monkey or the elephant, I should say, different metaphor

in the room. But oftentimes it's like, no, it's because you're just in your head and you're creating all these stories. And so this is a really big challenge for a lot of people. And it's in dating. Oh, they didn't call back. They must not like me or they're seeing someone else. That thing that we do, it's neurosis and it will bite you in the butt.

I have plenty of bite marks. The opening line of my first book was, the voice in my head is an asshole and the monkey is real. So you mentioned mindfulness meditation. What are some other ways that we can learn how to tame the monkey mind? So number one is practice, becoming aware of when it's happening. So most of the awareness is really just taking what is unconscious and bringing it into conscious awareness.

So you have the awareness that this happens. When you practice it, you get better at catching yourself mid-story, mid-thought. You take a deep breath and you think, do I need to have a conversation with this person? Do I need a glass of water? Do I need to go for a walk? Do I need to change something in my physical state so that I can think more clearly? Do I need rest? So these are some of the things that we can do.

But oftentimes it's communication. And a great way to start a conversation about this is, look, I'm having all these thoughts and I realize my mind is getting the best of me. Here's some of the things that I've been thinking and I really don't want to think these thoughts anymore and I just want to kind of get it all out on the table. Can we talk about it? And then you can say, I realize that this is probably me and I realize that my mind really is just kind of going a little nuts right

now and I would just love if we could talk about it so we can clear the air. Brené Brown, who I'm a big fan of, has this little hack speaking of communications skills that you can often start a conversation by saying, the story I'm telling myself is dot dot dot. Yes. That's a good one. The story I'm telling myself is this. dot. Yes. It's a good one. The story I'm telling myself is this. Yeah, it's a great one.

I just want to point out, you do recommend throughout the book a lot of exercise and movement and I actually just want to plus one that because I do think that, and there's evidence to suggest this, that it can really relax your nervous system and help turn down the volume on discursive thought. Another thing you recommend is to call trusted counsel. Yes. It goes to a point that previous guests have made on the show, which is that if you look to

your romantic partner as the be-all end-all, the only real relationship you have, you're likely to suffer because you're putting too much weight and pressure on the relationship. And so if you have friends and advisors, they can give you advice and context and perspective on your relationship. And again, it takes some of the pressure off your person being the only person and everything to you. Yeah, your partner can't be your only confidant. You know, I had an interesting conversation with someone recently and she's in a really good marriage,

a great marriage, and they are very transparent with each other and they're greatest fans and whatnot. But she said something which I wholeheartedly agree with. He doesn't need to know everything that goes on in my head. Because first of all, that's not really good for a couple sex life. And I wanna say something here because this is important. So much of my message is having the hard conversations.

And the worst piece of advice, relationship advice I ever got was from a therapist. And that was when there was the first miscarriage when I was married. Basically there was no heartbeat. And they told me that and they had to schedule a DNC to basically abort the fetus that was no longer living. And I remember this was one of the hugest red flags that I was obviously very upset.

And I really wanted my husband's support and solace in that moment. I didn't want anyone else's, I want his. And her advice was, this is a scenario where you should be going to your sisters or to your mother or to your friends. To this day, I always say that's the worst piece of advice I've ever received on relationships ever, because you have to be able to talk to your partner about really difficult things. And to our point just a few minutes ago, everything that's bothering you, everything that's ailing you, every obstacle or mental thing that you're trying to overcome, don't have that be your

partner's responsibility to solve. And you don't have to tell them everything that's going on in your mind because, and this is where it gets very nuanced and difficult to kind of pinpoint, but there has to be a little bit of mystery, just a little bit. And it's so hard. It's because curiosity about your partner, I wonder what they're thinking right now. Not the constant, I wonder what they're thinking because they're so shut down from me, but just a little bit of curiosity and like, I wonder and just not knowing the contents of their brain

every five seconds is what keeps chemistry sort of brewing. And so to your point, yes, speak to trusted counsel and even though your partner can be trusted counsel with certain things and should be, I think you should be able to, it's important to like when you're trying to clean up some of the messiness in your head, that you don't bring that to your relationship all 24 seven. Well said. Truth number three is lust is not the same thing as love. Yeah. Say more.

Well, we think that that's obvious, but I wouldn't have a business if it were really that obvious to people because it's just not. When we first meet someone and we're really attracted to them and we're feeling all these things and it's like the first couple of months and you're just so excited, and everything is perfect about it. And you think, I just love this person, I'm falling in love with this person. No, that's lust.

When you think that this person is perfect, your connection is perfect, you're getting all excited. And I don't want to rain on anyone's parade. That enthusiasm that we experience when we first are interested in someone is one of the great delights of being a human being, this our fleeting experience on this earth. But they are simply the stimulus that is triggering inside of you,

something that actually resides inside of you already, which is aliveness. And when you feel that aliveness and that novelty, it's a wonderful feeling, but that's lust. And so a lot of people will rush into playing house with someone who they barely know because they haven't learned how to process their enthusiasm, which I will get to in a moment, but they get so excited. They get so excited. They get so excited. So it's like, oh, let's spend every day together.

Let's have sleepovers. Let's do this. And my reminder to people is, you know what? You're in lust, not love. That connection that you feel is actually sexual attraction. And that true connection is made up, I should say, of emotional safety and respect and trust. And that connection, which really serves as a foundation, that takes time to build. And so when you're a busy playing house with this stranger and you're in La La Land, great,

but recognize that that really, that is not actually love. They're still a stranger. You could find out in a couple of months that they are actually terrible for you. And so you have to slow down and enjoy the lust, but see it for what it is. And what we do is we get into teenage mode and we project when we're in heavy lust. And some people have a pattern of getting so entrenched in the lust that they do not know how to see things clearly. They can't see things clearly because we can't when we're in lust.

They'll get themselves very entrenched in this person, very attached, very quickly. And I just want people to slow down because when that happens, what we're doing is, unconsciously, we are projecting our 15-year-old, 14-year-old's fantasy onto this person, and we put them on a pedestal, and we idealize them. And then as soon as things get real, so when we transition out of the limerent stage of a relationship, the newness and the novelty, and then we're transitioning into the more comfortable stage of a relationship, moving towards commitment, then we're transitioning into the more comfortable stage of a relationship moving towards commitment. Then we're like, oh, this person is not as perfect as I thought they were. This person is just as fucked up as I am.

Or this person has just as many flaws as I do. And then the person who does not have the awareness and the maturity to realize that there's lust and there's love, that person will be like, I guess they're not for me. Or they'll be crushed by the weight of their expectations on their shoulders. And so you have to know that there is a difference between love and lust to really just so that you can save your own ass in relationships. Honestly.

Yeah. Sorry for my potty mouth. No, potty mouth is fine here. This is a comfortable place for the word fuck. Yeah. Sorry for my potty mouth. No, potty mouth is fine here. This is a comfortable place for the word fuck. Great. The couples counselor that my wife and I have seen intermittently over the years is this incredible guy, Michael Vincent Miller. And he has this line about the immaturity of our modern conception of romantic love,

where he says that, assume it's gonna go from one enchanted evening to happily ever after, and we skip over the hard work that is in the middle. And that really rhymes with everything you just said. In the interest of time, I'm gonna just keep us going through the hard truths of your book.

Number four is you have to love yourself. Yes, two schools of thought. One is you learn to love yourself through relationship. The other school of thought is you have to love yourself and feel totally whole, and then you're ready for a relationship. I think it's somewhere in the middle. One is, yes, we are social animals, and we get our sense of self through our relationships with others.

We can't really know who we are if we're not in relationship of all relationships with others because everyone's holding up a mirror. So we don't really get a sense of self. And also, it's quite impactful for a person's self-esteem in a good way when they're in a relationship and they're doing the work. That's actually really good for a person's self-esteem because it gives you a sense of accomplishment and it gives you a sense of validation. When someone loves us selflessly, it's a beautiful thing when love is to see something in someone that they perhaps don't see in themselves.

And that's a very real thing. And the way you feel about yourself is going to be reflected in your relationships. If you're in a marriage and you're feeling terrible about yourself, you could easily sabotage the relationship. You could make it so that it's impossible for you to receive love from your partner. You could be showing up in a bad mood all the time, making you impossible to live with. And then there are the people, and these are many of the people who I've worked with, whose standards are so low, you know,

your self-esteem matters. Your self-esteem is very relevant to the quality of your love life. If you can't hold yourself in high regard in spite of the fact that there are gonna be parts of yourself that you feel ambivalent towards, then you are going to be in relationships with people who don't treat you well or who don't have their shit together at all, even though you totally have your shit together and you think maybe, you know, I'm not worth being with someone or having someone love

me. So, self-love, sort of a nuanced topic, the way that I like to think about it and the way that I describe in the book is really self-acceptance. I do believe that the road to true self-acceptance is lifelong, but learning how to hold yourself in high regard in spite of the fact that, again, there are things that you're not going to totally love about yourself. You have to know that you are worth being loved. And there are millions of people who don't know that. And so I tried to convey in the book, how to actually love yourself more and to see yourself as more worthy and to see your value.

And one of the things that I talk about is, first of all, yes, you can look in the mirror and tell yourself that you love yourself, which by the way, can be a very powerful practice for some people. For some people, it doesn't land. It just doesn't work. For other people, it lands really well. For some people, affirmations work really well. For others, not.

But if you think about children and what builds the self-esteem of a child, the first time that a child goes potty on their own, that builds their self-esteem. That gives them a sense of accomplishment and autonomy. The first time I grew up in New York City, so it's like the first time I got on the public bus or I got on the subway, you know, without having my mom to be there. That gave me a sense of self-esteem. It's the same thing as adults. We have to challenge ourselves to do things that are hard in order to feel better about ourselves.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I don't think it's intuitive to a lot of people because self-love can seem so gauzy or out of reach, but it's a little bit grittier than that in the way you're describing it. And one way to develop it is to consistently set goals and then to achieve them to the best of your ability. And even just the trying can boost the regard that you have for yourself.

Are there other strategies that you would recommend? Yes. The first sentence of your first book was, can you remind me again? The voice in my head is an asshole. So that's it. The voice in your head is most likely a big asshole. And so one of the biggest things that I did to help myself is noticing the way that I talk to myself and then making a conscious effort when I'm starting to say really shitty things to myself to be like, no, I am not doing that today.

I am not going to talk to myself like that today. One thing that's really helpful, some people might think this is kind of narcissistic, but I think that this has been very impactful for me and many people I've worked with and many people I've talked about this is, sometimes just having a photo of yourself as a child is really impactful.

And just looking at that photo and trying to throw that photo some love and compassion and because we can dissociate so easily from that child. And so being able to see that that child is sort of still sort of inside of you and can you speak to that child with more respect? So the way that you talk to yourself matters. The way that you talk to yourself about your partner or about your mom or about your dad or about your friends matters. So the voice in our head really matters and it can definitely be an asshole.

Just to riff on that briefly before we move on to truth number five, having personally done some writing and speaking on self love, there's one point of confusion and I think you've navigated it well is that this isn't just like unbounded egotism that that's not helpful at all. It's as Kristin Neff, the godmother of self compassion talks about it. It's like moving from an inner drill sergeant to an inner coach. And a coach does call you out on your bullshit, but also sees your potential. And you can channel your capacity to be a coach and mentor and direct it toward yourself.

And just on the thing about the image of yourself as a child, in Buddhism, there's this practice called Metta or loving kindness, where you envision people starting off with yourself and send phrases like, may you be happy, may you be safe, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the instructions that's often given is when you're sending meta to yourself, which again, it's not affirmation. It's more like basic goodwill and friendliness, which I think is meaningfully different from like you're the best. May you be healthy, may you be happy, may you be protected and safe, and may you live

with ease. You can, many teachers will instruct people to bring to mind a picture of yourself as a kid, because that often directing any sort of benevolence toward ourselves is so hard that one way to do it is to imagine yourself as a kid. So I just wanted to say that for anybody who had a reaction to your idea of having a picture of yourself around. But having said all of that, let's move to truth number five, which is you must tell the truth,

which seems so obvious that it doesn't even need to be said, but I think it actually does need to be said. Yeah, people are lying all the time to themselves and to the person they're in a relationship with, and they're even lying to their date. Oh yeah, you know, I don't care that we're not serious. I don't care that you know, you're dating other people. That's okay with me.

I'm okay with the fact that you really hurt my feelings yesterday. That's okay. I'm terrified of losing you and that's why I'm having performance anxiety in the bedroom. You know, there's lots of things. No one's going to lie to you more than you lie to yourself. And people avoid the hard conversations all the time because they want to keep the peace. But peace is not the goal of a relationship, love is, and we have to have the hard conversations in service of that love.

And I withheld the truth all the time especially when you are afraid that someone might leave you if you are terrified of abandonment rightly or wrongly in the relationship that you're in there are lots of people who have mastered the art of not telling the truth and suppressing the truth and suppressing the truth. And no relationship is worth keeping if you have to lie to maintain it. And so I think that this truth in particular is going to land really hard for those who have that fear of abandonment or maybe were raised in homes where you just kind of avoid the reality of what's going on to keep the peace or you sweep things under the rug or whatever that, you

know, the ethos was your family of origin. But the truth is extremely important. It's not the same thing as, oh, does my ass look fat in my pants right now? Yeah, you know, a little white lie around there might be good. It's not like emptying the contents of your brain like we were speaking a little bit earlier. But it's about removing the elephant in the room and it's about saying when something really hurts you, sometimes it's self-assertion. You know, and a lot of women in particular will silence themselves to be cool or to be

the good girl. A lot of men will do that because they want to make sure that their partner is pleased and happy. And so if they say this thing, that's the truth, that might put a frown in my partner's face. And so I'm not going to do it. And so what's going to happen is that I'm going to lose my voice in the relationship and the relationship is going to

lose its authenticity. And then I'm just going to hate my partner and blame them for the fact that I've been a people pleaser. So there's so many things that can go wrong with not telling the truth and it is scary and it can be particularly frightening as hell for certain people and everything that I'm suggesting rather is going to require some courage and for some people it's going to take everything they have but it is going to require some courage and for some people it's going to take everything they have, but it is going to transform whatever the situation is. And certainly by lying to ourselves or lying to the others, I mean, even people who are

dating, it's just like, yeah, I can have sex with you and not get attached or, you know, whatever it is. So telling the truth and having the courage to tell the truth is everything. Coming up, Jillian talks about one of the biggies from my perspective, perhaps the biggie in this conversation. Her argument that if you want to have a healthy romantic relationship, you need to make peace with your parents. Truth number six is you need to be your best self even after the honeymoon. Yeah, we tend to be the ambassador of ourselves in the beginning of a relationship.

And then what happens is, you know, we get comfortable. And with that comfort, we sometimes like stop taking care of ourselves, we take each other for granted, it's sort of the law of familiarity. And if you want a great relationship, then you have to continue to do a lot of the things that you did in the beginning of the relationship. And then your relationship won't suffer. It's kind of not so easy, but it's quite simple. And so I don't know if this resonates with you Dan,

but like for me, I can think of lots of times where it's like, oh, I'm not really like being that person that I was. Like I'm not bringing, look, life can be hard. We're human beings. You don't have to be some saint in your relationship. And you deserve to have bad days. And for the person who claims to love you, to love you through those bad days, you don't have to like always be perfect.

God knows that would just be a recipe for disaster. But that effort that we put in, in the beginning, it has to continue. We have to at least attempt to bring more of our higher self to the relationship. And maybe that is telling the truth. Maybe that is just the mindfulness. Maybe that's taking care of our bodies, you know, in such a way that we are, it's like, hey, I care about myself and I care that you care about how I look. So I'm going to take care of myself. It's these things.

But more than anything else, it's not treating your partner as though they would never leave you. Yeah. Number seven is that you cannot convince somebody to love you. No, you can't. It's a law of the land. You can't convince someone to choose you. You know, a lot of people, they'll meet someone and they want to get chosen by that person.

And what they do is that they abandon themselves. They become whoever they think the other person wants. And that in its own way is trying to convince someone to love you. There's also someone wants out of the relationship Like they have made the decision they want out You trying to convince them to stay is never going to work It holds a person hostage emotionally and then you imprison yourself in a hell that you don't want to be in which is your relationship

it's what your relationship becomes when you know that you had to convince someone to stay with you. And so this is a very hard truth. It corresponds with surrender and letting go. And that love truly is a choice. And so you can't convince someone of a choice that they don't want to make. Number eight is nobody's coming to save you. Yes, especially in literature and films, we see this all the time.

Let's say there's a male protagonist and he's depressed and he has no purpose in life. And then this woman comes into his life and awakens that dormant beast inside of him that, you know, knows what he wants and has purpose. And they think this person is the reason why I feel alive. They were the stimulus, but they're also going to, when you get to know them, they're going to fart, they're going to pick their nose, they're going to poop, they're going to do all these things. And then all of a sudden you're going to be like, hmm, where is this person? The onus is on you.

Or lots of women waiting for their knight in shining armor, whether that's in the form of a man or a woman, they're looking for someone for love to save them. And so many of the people I worked with, it's like, no, actually make your own money. Find safety in your body first. Learn how to meet your needs. And then you can be in a relationship that, as Eric Fromm refers to, where you need someone because you love them. You don't love them because you need them.

Become self-sufficient. All right, this strikes me as a biggie. Yes, it is. It's a huge one. Truth number nine, and I didn't see this coming, but I think it's really interesting, is you must make peace with your parents. So there's a disclaimer in there. If you were molested, if you were severely abused, I don't believe that you need to make

peace with your parents. I have worked with people in that position before and honestly, I don't think you should ever talk to that parent again. And so I just wanted people to understand, to open their minds and think of this more metaphorically. You could make peace with your parents and they could be dead, not living. You can make peace with one or both of your parents and you have a great relationship with them and making peace with them means that they no longer are the chief of your

belief system. You're able to have your own beliefs, your own path in life. You're becoming the artist when you thought that all they wanted from you was to become the lawyer. You could have a terrible relationship, a very troubled relationship, I should say, with a parent and make peace with them even though you continue to keep them at arm's length. That was very much my story. Much of my life has been controlled by this narrative that I've had with my father who had bipolar, psychiatrist,

diagnosed narcissist. And I was very afraid of him for most of my life. He never laid a hand on me, but his energy was very dark and I was very sensitive and I felt that. And when I was 21 years old, I decide right when I graduated college, I made a very life altering decision. I decided to never answer his calls again. So I ghosted him. I don't know if you're familiar with that terminology, Dan, but okay. So I ghosted him.

And in the beginning, it felt like a relief to just not have to pick up the phone because I was just, I didn't know how to be around him. I didn't know how to stand up for myself. I was scared of him. And as the years passed, it started to become more obvious to me that estrangement was not the solution in my case. It was actually, I could deny, I can avoid the monster and I could deny the monster. But that means it only gets bigger inside of me. And even though I had some, I start the chapter with saying that your relationship with your parents is going to show up in your adult romantic relationships. And that's not necessarily all entirely bad, but it can be quite troubling. I was in few really beautiful loving relationships that did not in any way highlight my troubled relationship

with my father. Why is that? I don't know. You know, whoever can figure that out will get the Nobel Peace Prize because no one really truly has all the answers. No one. And why I was able to be in lovely relationships and then after in my 30s, my relationship started to really signify, you know, my relationship or manifest in such a way that all my stuff with my father start to show up. I think there's a lot that goes into it. It's context, it's age, it's where you are in life. But I started to have relationships that it started to dawn on me like maybe there's some daddy issues here.

And by my avoiding him didn't make those issues go away. And so I had to really learn how to be in relationship with him, even if it's in my own nervous system differently. And that has been the biggest obstacle spiritual journey of my life. And so I felt that I absolutely had to write about it. So it didn't mean that you went back and started having long dialogues with him. It was more, I imagine, like you were having long dialogues with your confidants and shrinks, et cetera, et cetera. I was put in therapy as a child to work this out,

but no, therapy did not help me with this at all. This came with the work that I did as a coach and the work with my mentors and coaches. I'm not saying that therapy cannot help. Therapy can be a wonderful resource, but I can't credit something that does not, in my experience, deserve their credit. So therapy did not help me with that. But growing up and understanding belief systems and the stories that we create, and me deciding that I didn't want to be controlled by a story anymore, and having the awareness to see that

how this was controlling my life. No, it didn't mean I ended the estrangement. Estrangement was not the answer. It can be the answer for some people where their very survival depends on it. But estrangement was not the answer. It was having conversations, but it wasn't rainbows and lollipops and unicorns. It was I needed to learn how to actually have conversations with him where I wasn't filled with dread, fear, and vitriol. And the only way that I could do that was to start to look at him through the lens of who I am today versus my little

girl self. And so what that looked like at first was like all ego, like, let me, let me tell him, like, you me, let me tell him, like, you know, let me tell him he can't do that to me. He can't talk to me that way. And then I realized, you know, the pendulum swung in the other direction. And so now it was like, how can I have some more understanding and some more compassion? How can I be the wisest person in the conversation? How can I let go of this?

And he died while I was writing that chapter, actually. So you're healing with a parent, whatever that healing looks like, they do not have to be alive for you to do that. But if you don't do it, you're going to take those ghosts into whatever relationship you find yourself in. 100%. Jillian, two questions I ask at the end of every interview. One is, is there something you were hoping we would talk about that we didn't get to?

We're good. Second is, can you please shamelessly promote your new book and anything, I know you're on Substack, anything else that we should know about that you've put out into the world? Sure. So, my book, it begins with you, The Nine Hard Truths About Love That Will Change Your Life, available at jilliantarecky.com slash book, all major resellers and independent resellers and available internationally. I have my podcast called Jillian on Love that you can listen to on Spotify, Apple, anywhere on YouTube and my sub stack, Love Weekly.

And then I have a community called the Conscious Woman, which is basically community of women all trying to raise their level of consciousness and get better at relationships. Thank you very much, Jillian. Thank you, Dan. Thanks again to Jillian. Don't forget to check out her podcast, Jillian on Love. And don't forget to sign up at danharris.com. Free subscribers will get an email from me twice a week

with my top takeaways from each episode and then a third email on Fridays with a list of my favorite TV shows and books and things like that. Paid subscribers will also get a cheat sheet for every episode which includes time-stamped highlights and a full transcript. Paid subscribers also get live Q&As with me and the opportunity to chat with me directly in the comments and in the chat section over at Substack. Check

it out, would love your support. Before I go, I just want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.