The Break-Up Diet - Don't Waste Years On The Wrong Person | ft. Yasmine Gould

Episode Date: July 1, 2026

This week, I'm so excited to welcome Yasmine Gould back to The Break-Up Diet. Yasmine is a life alchemist who helps people heal unconscious patterns and turn their triggers into transformation, and every time she comes on the podcast, I leave looking at life (and relationships) completely differently.If you've ever questioned whether someone is actually right for you, worried about wasting years in the wrong relationship, or found yourself repeating the same dating patterns, this episode is for you.We talk about what compatibility really means, why chemistry isn't enough, the conversations you should be having much earlier in relationships, emotional maturity, attachment, choosing someone to build a life and family with, narcissistic traits, recognising unhealthy relationship dynamics, and how the patterns we learn in childhood can shape the people we choose as adults.This is one of those conversations that genuinely makes you stop and think, and I know I'll be taking so much of Yasmine's advice into my own life.I really hope you love this one as much as I loved recording it. 💗 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to another episode with Yasmin and Yasmin. With a double duo. There we go. Yasmin today is going to talk about basically the perfect partner, how to find the one, but you don't think there is the one necessarily. And compatibility, because what actually is compatibility? Well, if you're not viewing this, I'll try and describe the image that I'm about to create. For compatibility, long term, you want to imagine two lines very close together, moving at a similar space, like pace, in the same direction.

Lines that cross over like this, you're going to have problems, lines where one is going very far forward and the other one is too far behind, you're going to have problems there. You want to be very close together in similar alignment, moving at a very similar pace, the same direction. Buckle up, bitches. It's going to get bumpy. This is the breakup diet. So what does compatibility actually look like? It means that you have a very similar idea

about what you want your future to look like. If one of you wants to travel a lot and the other one doesn't ever want to leave the house, are you happy to have separate lives in that department or not? So I think it's about exploring what you want life to look like and what that person wants their life to look like. Also, there's an element of consciousness, right? how much that person explored themselves, you know, how much they really know about the world,

how much pain if they had to experience. If they've never had anything really significant test their patients in life, how is it even possible that a person's explored themselves that much to even really know what they want? I had cancer when I was 29. And I was somebody that had experienced a lot of challenges in my life long before that, like serious challenges that, you know, lots of people. would never experience in a lifetime. Even then at 29, which is, you know, you're a solid adult or 29,

right? Like, you're, you're not a 21, 22 year old adult. You're a solid adult. I'd known for a long time before that, that I didn't really want to live in the UK, but I didn't really know what I wanted that to look like moving forward. I didn't know where I wanted to move to, what I wanted it to look like, etc. Now, once I'd had cancer, it was so clarifying for me, it was like I'd been given a shot at life again and it became so clarifying in the sense that it was like I thought about what I needed to make me happy in life. One of the things on that list, this is going to sound silly, but it was like palm trees and sunshine and puppies. Yeah, I mean, there were other things on that list too, but when I really sat down and thought about how do I want to experience life, how do I want to feel

and what makes me feel good? I just started to write down the list of things that make me happy in life and it was actually far more simple than I'd made it be in my head. But it wasn't until I was confronted with the idea that actually I've got a second chance at life. I actually sat down and offered myself that level of clarity before I knew I liked sunshine and a warm temperature. But I didn't realize that I must have these things in my life for maybe more than 70% of my year for me to really be content with my experience. It's actually so true.

You hear that a lot that people shift up their lives after like a dramatic experience. Yeah. Something painful. A breakup or watching somebody in your life suffer that's close to you. or going through a really big health scare. Unfortunately, humans need to experience pain to awaken. Sometimes we awaken to other things without it being super painful. But generally speaking, typically, most human beings need to experience something that forces them

to look at something within them and within their experience. When you're looking at compatibility, there's a certain level of do we want the same things. But also, has that person explored themselves enough to really know what they want? Because if you're a 35-year-old man and you're dating a 23-year-old girl, first of all, 23-year-old girl, 35-year-old man. At 23 years old, most people, even if they've had a lot of life experience, are going to change a lot between 23 and 30, 35. So does that individual have enough contrasting life experience

to actually know what they really want? Probably not. So when you're dating somebody, are you actually looking at somebody that knows what they want when they talk about their future because what you think about your future when you're 23 and what you want it to look like compared to when you've actually lived a bit of life

looks different. Yeah, you might be compatible in the beginning. Are you going to be compatible in 20 years' time? Who knows? So when you're asking somebody what they want out of life, how well equipped are they to know what they want out of life? Yeah, true. But then also there's a thing of like men and women

get there at different spot like times. Like I don't know if that's always true, but like a lot of the time. Yes and no. Yes and no. Yes. that women are typically across the board more emotionally developed than men and more emotionally intelligent than men quicker. So in psychology, according to psychology, the average age for a man

to develop a reasonable amount of emotional intellect is around 42. So average age is 42. 42? Some are going to be a lot sooner than that and some are going to be later and some never. Same will apply to women. But the thing is with women, women are different, right? When you walk into a school playground. What do you see? You see boys playing games predominantly. Football, soccer, rugby, cricket. They're playing strategic things. Girls are sitting there playing with each other's hair, talking to each other about their feelings or bitching about another girl they don't like, or the girl that took their boyfriend playing kiss chase. So when you think about it, women from birth are wired to talk about how they feel, which is definitely going to advance that

process quicker because you're already exploring how you feel and it's not to boo for you to discuss it. many men in today's society boys men whatever they are not encouraged to display how they feel or talk about it like we said earlier a lot of guys don't talk about their breakups they don't talk about their emotions and the person they would have spoken to their emotions about they've just broken up with yeah that that is it because even if they seem quite open and they're talking then as soon as you're gone they don't really talk about it with their parents normally yeah so unless they've got a sister they're really close to or a mum they're really close to that has emotional intellect as well because yes women are more advanced in terms of these things

but generally speaking emotional intellect and self-awareness is still quite rare it's more present than ever and it's fantastic and it's growing but it's still quite rare even you know sometimes i meet people that have done tons of work of themselves years and years and years and they've got such strong blind spots in certain ways that they just don't want to see. Even though they've done loads of work on themselves, that's okay. We all have stuff that we're doing a dance with for a long time. But when you get together with somebody, particularly if you commit to them and you decide to have children with them, I think there's a big difference between having a relationship

where you're not rearing children together and having a relationship where you are. So like if you're in a, if you look at compatibility and you're not raising children, it doesn't matter if one person's Jewish and Muslim, as long as, you know, you're not. they've got their own boundaries in that that work for them because you're going off and doing your thing and you're going off and doing your thing and maybe that works well for some people. But if you've got children, one of you wants to raise the children Jewish, one of you wants to raise the children Muslim or any different scenario that that could apply to, I'm just using those particular religions as an example, you've got problems now.

And not only that, in those particular types of cultures, like religious cultures, quite often you're then going to have family input interfering and now you've got a whole different kettle of fish going on. one of the biggest tips I'd give for compatibility early on is you both make an agreement not to allow your parents to get involved your parents should not be having any real input in your relationship is dangerous for like for the longevity of the relationship if this is someone you see yourself having a potential long-term commitment with or raising children with you need to be very selective about what you tell your parents

particularly when you're triggered and you've had an argument So what would you say to somebody like, for example, feel like I necessarily am that open to date So like this stuff doesn't hurt me as much right now Because my guards are very high again Maybe my reaction to things like that would be different Whereas like before I would probably be more anxious Whereas like now I feel like I'm probably more secure

But not because of the good secure Like I would probably say like Oh, you're probably not interested and that's it But I wouldn't be like, I don't know if that's necessarily coming From a secure place Yeah I understand. So it's like the behaviour you might read as more secure, but actually the root of it and where it's coming from

might not be coming from a place of security. Yeah. The two can be true, yeah, for sure. I think of everything like a pendulum, right? So if you were more this way and you were more anxious previously from your experiences and that's caused you or resulted in you experiencing pain, quite often we do swing the other way. We keep swinging from one extreme to the other until we end up somewhere more in the middle, which is usually the slightly healthier spot to be in. So if previously certain behaviours, whether you're aware that they're anxious or avoidant or whatever, if you're doing something from the place of it being because you want a certain reaction out of somebody, like you want somebody to behave a certain way so that you feel better, you're already lost.

Because it's like, you know, okay, let me give you an example of you want the guy to bring you flowers more often, he doesn't. But if you ask him to bring you them, it won't have the same effect because you've asked him to bring them. What you're actually seeking is a feeling, right? So again, this is a lot of the work that I do, like coming from the place of the trigger, what's the desire for the flowers? Okay, for some people it's going to be to be thought of because it's romantic. For some people, they don't even know why it's just because what they see in movies and what they associate with romance or what a man does if he loves you or whatever.

There's all sorts of stories that we have playing out in our psyche all the time about what things mean. But the only reason we ever want anything is because we want a certain feeling. Like why does somebody want to drive a Ferrari? Because it feels a certain way and that's the feeling they seek. They don't actually care about the Ferrari. It's the feeling that they get as a result of either owning the Ferrari, driving the Ferrari being seen in the Ferrari or whatever it is for them.

And that's filling up the void. And it's the same. It's like when it comes to your spouse, we only ever want our spouse to change behaviour because it means we will feel better. And so that's where we go wrong because it's not about getting the other person to change. I remember speaking to a friend once where

she was in a very codependent relationship and they were in therapy and the therapist basically taught her to manage his triggers so he would need, in order for him to feel secure he would need her to reply within a certain time frame so they just agreed in therapy that she'd always reply within that time frame

that's not the correct answer that's not good therapy that's not good therapeutising that's not good relating that is teaching somebody to walk on eggshells and manage your triggers yeah because what does she want one time but it doesn't matter it's not about that what it's really about is that if you feel insecure when your spouse doesn't text you back within two hours or whatever the time frame is,

that's your work. If it triggers you, it is yours. No one can make you feel anything that doesn't exist within you already. If you have a trigger that comes up when your spouse does something, that's for you to work on. That's your stuff. That's your back to unpack. That doesn't mean you can't share it with them. It doesn't mean you can't talk about it. It doesn't mean that your spouse never changes their behavior. That's not what I'm saying. There are some things we do compromise in relationships. Absolutely. But you have to ask yourself, is it reasonable what I'm asking for? Is it reasonable? And if it's not reasonable, most of the time it's your stuff and you need to unpack that bag. And if you need somebody to help you unpack that bag, there are myself and many other people on the planet that can help you do that. The reality is that when we look at things like compatibility, compatibility is really coming down to what do you imagine your life to look like really and truly. How much life have you lived to be able to give you an idea of what you really want that to look like? and does it look similar?

And also, you want to take into account things like raising humans, not raising humans. When it comes to raising kids, if you both know you want kids, you should be talking about that in the first three, four months. One of the problems I see that happens a lot is people don't have these serious conversations early on and then they find themselves already emotionally attached to somebody two, three years in, and then they start having these conversations, but you're already emotionally attached, you're already in love. It's really hard to walk away from stuff when you love people.

You've got all these good memories, they do good things for you, they make your life better, but actually, you're going to spend another two, three, four years of your life with somebody where you don't actually want the same thing. So you're just prolonging the eventual pain. The eventuality is still the same. You're just delaying it. And there's nothing wrong with that.

I'm not saying that's good or bad. That's just sometimes how it is. That's fine. And it's up to you how you want to spend your life and your time. But my whole thing is, if you want to spend your time well, we don't know how long we've got. We've all got this invisible clock next to us. But we don't know.

Some of us might have thousands of days left. Some of us have got 10. You never know. and so you have to ask yourself what would I regret more? Would I regret having a baby with somebody that I know isn't going to be around long term or somebody that I know I'm going to end up fighting with but it's okay because they're a good person or you know do I want to keep my family unit together or do I want to just get on with it now and think about that later.

That's usually not a good idea but I think that's yeah I feel like a lot of people do it and the problem with that kind of stuff is that it's quite often than the baby that it's the bill because anything that you don't deal with, anything where you're operating from a place of fear, that gets passed on to your kids. It is just inevitable. It just does. So anything you're not willing to fix in yourself and your spouse isn't willing to fix in themselves, you're literally giving it to your kids. So quite often people say about like they'll die for their kids and they love their kids, are you willing to do the work on yourself for your kids? Is the real question. Sometimes women are worried that, you know, it's getting too late for them

to have kids, which is a lie that we've been told like all the other lies. we get told from Powers of the B, it's actually not the women's eggs that age. All the time that you're bleeding, you have a menstrual cycle, you're able to conceive. I also hear the argument that some people don't necessarily want to be raising teenagers in their 50s and 60s, and that makes a lot of sense to me as well. But actually, you know, you're not running out of time at 32 or 34. If you are not sure that who you're with right now is the person you want to have children with, I would encourage you to really evaluate what you want it to look like when you have

children and to really be active and selective about who you choose to have kids with because what I notice for couples when they have babies is no matter how amazing your husband is, you can have one of the most awakened, sensitive, amazing men on the planet and we need more of those. So great, fantastic. It is your life that changes as a woman. It's your life. The man's life will not change anywhere near as much. It just doesn't. It's just how nature intends. And that's perfectly fine but if you as a woman want to have a baby and you want to give your child a good shot at life having a good dad and a man that is very supportive to you and empathetic is a necessity and so if you're looking for a man that you're going to do the family unit stuff with

it's probably the most important decision you're ever going to make in your life and your child's or children's life. You know, like children really foot the bill when they've not got a good dad or stable parents, like it's kids that suffer. And also, there's a lot of things that contribute to us having difficult people in society. And those difficult people in society often have not very stable childhoods. And if you don't have a stable childhood, it's because quite often you've not had stable parents.

It's interesting, though, you know, with that, sometimes people, for example, they don't have a stable upbringing then succeed so far the other way and they're becoming multi-millionaires they're becoming like so driven obviously they might not have healthy relationship that's in one area of their life i'll give you a good story of somebody that i know of and this is more storyline because i know many people with this storyline comes from a very unstable background very unstable like no secure attachment to either parent not nurtured never had any money always left always being left behind always being abandoned decides that they're going to be rich and wealthy because then everybody in their life can be on payroll.

This is all subconscious. They're not aware that they're doing this. But then the wife's on payroll, the kids are on payroll, the nanny's on payroll, the mistress is on payroll, friends are on payroll. So nobody can leave you now. So this is a trauma response. And you know what? High traits of narcissism is often present as well. So what are traits of narcissism in general?

Well, there's lots of versions of narcissism, right? I mean, you hear the word a lot. You've obviously gone into a relationship. thinking it was your soulmate and come out with a PhD in psychology. Can relate. Totally get it. But then there's other people where they think that their spouse is a narcissist just because they cheated on them. And it's like, correct, that can be seen as a narcissistic trait. That doesn't make somebody a narcissist. And I think we need to be careful with how we use this phraseology because people that go through narcissistic abuse, whether it's a spouse, a parent, a child or

whatever, it's horrendous. It changes you forever. It literally changes your DNA makeup in some situations. If you've got domestic violence in a household, I could be wrong, but I don't see how they're not a narcissist. So something that a narcissist would do, this is the rhetoric of a narcissist, and there are multiple different types of narcissism. So you've got, there are some psychiatrists that will tell you there's nine different types, there's some that will say 11 and there's some that will say 16. But the underlying core of narcissism is this. It's like, I didn't say that, and I didn't do that wrong. If you're going to confront me with the proof, you're going to show me it on video, I'm going to tell you that the only reason I did that was because of you and it was your

fault anyway. So, no, I didn't hit you when you said that I did. That's not true. And then you showed them in the video. All right, but I only did that because you did this. They're never in the wrong. They can't be wrong. They, they can't take constructive feedback and they are reactive. These are the main pillars that I would give you as narcissistic traits. It doesn't simply mean somebody is a narcissist, but they can have high traits that you can meet people. that are maybe not diagnosable with NPD, but they will have very high traits and it'll be very difficult to be around and not good for you to be around. Like, what I can say to you is this, anybody that's got higher level traits of narcissism. And then if you look at things like bipolar,

BPD, like, which is borderline personality disorder, a lot of them have very high narcissistic traits. They're not necessarily diagnosable as a narcissist. And you'll meet lots of people with bipolar and BPD that are lovely people as well. But the more narcissism a person has within them, run. if you are close to a narcissist for a long period of time, you can expect your life expectancy to be shorter, you'll get sick quicker, because all of their bad stuff comes out onto you.

You're absorbing it. So if you're somebody that has a parent or a parental role model, whether it be a spouse, a step parent or something like that, but if you've got a role model that is narcissistic, you'll probably become an empath or narcissistic, or a mixture of the both. And then if you've got a spouse,

like for anybody that's in a domestic violence relationship and by that I don't just mean like being physically hurt it can be emotional abuse it can be someone that's angry every single day and shouting at you all day it will not improve I can tell you that it will not improve and you are not doing the kids a favour by staying the opposite lots of people think if they stay and keep the family unit together that's better

when it comes to domestic violence that's not true if you're just at odds with each other yeah go to therapy sort out your so out your internal compass and get back on the same page together and keep your family a unit together. Yes, that's much better. Yeah, because lots of people do that with kids that, when kids are growing up until, like, they finally leave, yeah, if you're in any type of domestic violence at all, any sort of abuse, if you're, okay, some people don't even know what abuse is. If you feel like you're

walking around on eggshells every day, you're waiting to trigger your spouse and that's happening every day, that is not healthy for you, all your children or for anybody. So if you can't get that rectified, the first sign of any type of abuse or toxic situation growing and evolving is feeling like you're walking on egg shells on a regular basis. That's crazy actually to hear because you wouldn't, I wouldn't think that that would be. I'm not talking about once in a blue moon because you've done something that you know is going to piss off your spouse and you know that you've done something that they don't like that's going to piss them off and you're waiting for their reaction. Yeah, yeah. Once in a bloom, I'm talking about consistently feeling like, like you don't want to go home or you're avoiding them a little bit.

Yeah. These are the, these are the early stages of abuse and domestic violence. These are big signs. So if I'm not sure about a client, I ask them like, how often do you feel like you're walking on eggshells? That's the first indicator. So that's one of the first things I look at. Sorry to pause you, but do you think that most successful people are narcissists?

Because I feel like that probably lots are. Anybody that has a huge thirst for power, control and image has high levels of narcissism, yeah. So when you say like successful people, what are we based on? Because I see a lot of people asking, you know, inadverticom as successful people for advice. Like somebody will go and make a lot of money

and have a Fortune 500 company. Fantastic. In the area of finances and business, and business, you have achieved 100 out of 100. Like, hats off to you. I think that when we look at getting advice from people that we consider to be successful and adverted commas, a lot of people are seeing that success as what they can see, whether that be fast cars, attractive spouses, or whatever people attribute value to.

I can also see a movement of people at the moment where it's like the flex is having an amazing marriage or an amazing relationship, an amazing commitment, living a great life, building together, having a family, or whether that's a family where you're having children or whether that's a family that you're creating like a network of amazing people. We've all got different ideas of what we're shooting for in terms of our experience, which is great. When we attribute success to this person has an amazing amount of money and business, but you don't know what goes on behind closed doors, like if their spouse is miserable, if they've got a terrible relationship with their children, you want to have people that you seek advice from or

guidance from that are actually living wholesome moral lives that they are satisfied with. There'll be a lot of people that are highly what we say in adverted commas are successful that are living immoral lives and it looks like they're having a great time but I promise you they're not because I see some of these people like in my line of work people share with you their deepest darkest secrets because they've got nobody else to tell you know clients and friends that are multi-millionaires and billionaires and I've also got some that you know living paycheck to paycheck we're all suffering with the same stuff people that have just made money what they've done the relationship with money is a reflection of a part of themselves that works well

You look at other areas of their life. Everything we have a relationship with that's external to us is a mirror. Let me give you a quick breakdown then. So your brain is made up of conscious part and a subconscious part. The subconscious brain is 95% of your brain. The 5% is conscious. So that begs the question, how much free will do we actually have? Because your subconscious brain is creating patterns between the ages of sort of conception

and around 7 years old. So all the survival patterns that you learned between nought and 3.3% seven is what you will repeat in life. So if you grow up in a household where minimizing yourself keeps you out of trouble and out of the way of an aggressive father or parent, well, then you'll minimize yourself the rest of your life to stay out of the way of reactivity until you become conscious of that pattern and you bring it to the conscious mind and you consciously choose to change your behavior.

So that 5% of your brain is where we bring the subconscious to the conscious. And this is why we all have blind spots and where we need to work with other people that say, huh, you've just told me about that pattern that you've been doing for the last 20 years. Let's work out where that pattern comes from because it doesn't sound like it serves you, that we can course correct and create better behavior so you can choose behaviors that give you the life that you want now, not the one you're choosing for yourself and autopilot from a place of pain from childhood. I think if there's one thing I'd like to leave you guys with today, it's that compatibility isn't about finding the perfect person. Because let's be honest,

they don't exist. It's about being really clear on who you are. what you want in your life, what you want your life to look like, and finding somebody who's moving in the same direction as you. The more you know about yourself, the easier it becomes to recognize the right people.