The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – I Didn’t Know I Needed This: The New Rules for Flirting, Feeling, and Finding Yourself by Eli Rallo

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

I Didn't Know I Needed This: The New Rules for Flirting, Feeling, and Finding Yourself by Eli Rallo https://amzn.to/3QKE3WK From TikTok star Eli Rallo, an irreverent, laugh-out-loud funny, and searingly honest take on modern dating and romance with tips, tricks, and survival-guide style rules. I Didn’t Know I Needed This is the dose of confidence every girl needs to live their life on their own terms. Eli Rallo is a social media superstar, a Carrie Bradshaw for the TikTok age, a true romantic at heart, and the best friend every young woman wishes she had. As someone who prides herself in feeling fully and deeply, Eli is on the ride with you, kissing the frogs, sending (and deleting) the risky DMs, climbing down frat house gutters, making the friends you’ll have for life, all while finding love and falling in love with yourself and learning that everything will be alright. In this earnest and vulnerable look at what it’s really like to date as a young woman in the modern world of dating apps, rotating rosters, and social media snafus, Eli gives her rules for each stage of the game—tried and true tricks of the trade. I Didn't Know I Needed This follows the natural lifecycle of dating, starting with being single, flirting, and navigating the apps to going on dates, having sex, falling in love, and managing relationships, to finally dealing with heartbreak, finding closure, prioritizing your friends, and honoring your life. Discover the rules that have worked for her, and garnered her more than a half million TikTok followers: prep for a first date like an athlete before a big game try a person out in different settings before committing to them plan the second date while you’re out on the first find your perfect “eff me sweater” flirt with your partner, no matter how long you’ve been together give yourself a set mourning period to wallow after a breakup, and then stick to it always (always!) communicate your needs, wants, desires, and boundaries find little ways to love your life and treat yourself With touching stories of her own adventures and mishaps, Eli helps you navigate dating in a way that’s frank, honest, funny, and relatable, giving the advice that you didn’t even know you needed.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, our family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys being here.

Remember, The Chris Fosh Show is the greatest show and family in the world. The Chris Fosh Show is a family that loves you, but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as your mother-in-law. And we know how she is about you, because she's seen you lately, and you need to work on yourself. Anyway, guys, as always, we have an amazing guest on the show,

and she's got an amazing book coming out. And we're going to be hearing about what dating life is like and how to find yourself in the world that's kind of out there. And kind of what the new thing is about having sex, falling in love, managing relationships, how to deal with heartbreak, finding closure, prioritizing your friends that honor your life. How does that sound? I don't know. We're probably not going to get into the sex part too much. This is a, you know, we've got to do this on youtube people so i picked the wrong place to jam in there on the uh on the book description but she's gonna be joining us she's a big tiktok star

and she has millions and millions of followers millions and millions of views uh i think over 100 million views on her tiktok i think And she'll fill us in, I'm sure. And so we're going to be talking to her about her amazing insights, her life, and what she's put down in her new sort of memoir and guide, I guess, for young women and people alike, I suppose, of all ages. So we'll be talking to her. In the meantime, refer to the show to your family, friends, and relatives. We always have to get the plug in there of the guilty and shaming. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschristmas, linked fortress chris voss youtube.com fortress chris voss and we're

even on tiktok too chris voss one we're not as cool as she is but uh we're old so uh she's cool and we're not uh she is the author of the newest book i didn't know i needed this the rules for flirting feeling and finding yourself a book that I need. Eli Rallo joins us today. Her book is coming out December 12, 2023. You can pre-order it now. You want to get this book, you know, buy several copies and make it, put it on your gift list to give to people because maybe they didn't know they needed it either. And they can read her amazing book. eli is a social media star with massive followings on tiktok and instagram she hosts the miss congenial podcast

she is a graduate of columbia university's graduate school of journalism and university of michigan school of music theater and dance she's originally from the joji showa that is that the right accent i don't think it is uh eli spent her early 20s in new york city figuring it all out and now she's here to tell us what it's all about welcome to the show eli how are you i'm great thank you so much i'm very excited to be here we're excited to have you as well give us a dot coms where we want people to find you on the interwebs please yeah my website is just theelirallo.com, and that's where you can find my book and all the things.

And then on TikTok, I'm just Eli Rallo, and on Instagram, I'm eli.rallo, because Eli Rallo was taken. You should sue. Have the lawyers get over that. There you go. Or hire a hitman. No, don't do that. That's a joke, people. Hang on, I've got the FBI sending me messages. So give us a 30,000 overview of your book, please. Yeah. So my book, I Didn't Know I Needed This, comes out in December

and it takes you basically through the life cycle of a relationship from being single to being single again. And it is a dating book at its core. Most of the chapters are about dating, but I think that what it's truly about is kind of finding little ways to elevate your lived experience. And especially like as a young woman who's recently post-grad or in college or in their twenties, it's really for everyone. But I think that's my target demographic. It's about showing those people here is a little way to make your life more fun, interesting, better, whether you're in a relationship, out of a relationship, you want to be in a relationship, you're in a long term relationship. I think it kind of has something for everybody. And it really hits on all the different parts of kind of flirting feeling and finding yourself

from friendship to navigating heartbreak to, you know, situationships and hookup culture and all that good stuff. So I think it has a lot of good tips and tricks, some of my personal stories and advice, and it's fun and funny. But I think it also has like a lot of good tips and tricks, some of my personal stories and advice, and it's fun and funny. But I think it also has like a lot of really heartfelt parts as well. There you go. A great guide, you know, for everyone. The one thing you find when you go through life is you always seem to be finding yourself and feeling stuff. And sometimes you're going in and out of relationships.

You know, I have friends that are mine. They've been through three divorces. So there you go. So this is a guide for everyone. So give us a little bit of your hero's journey. What were your origin stories and how did you build this great following and get to where you are? So I'm originally from the Jersey shore as,

as you said, and the accent was good. Was it? Oh, I liked it. And I always wanted to do theater. I loved just creating things when I was a child. I was always like writing in journals and giving it to my parents or poems or plays or whatever it was. So I decided I was going to go to school originally

for acting. And then I kind of woke up when I was 18 and I was like, I think I actually should be a writer. That's, you know, what comes the most naturally to me. And I think like, I think I actually should be a writer. That's what comes the most naturally to me. And I think I had trouble at first realizing that because something feels natural doesn't mean it's not challenging. I just had yet to find the people that were going to challenge me yet. So I decided I was going to go full force on the writing front, but I wasn't ready to abandon the arts and theater specifically. Really, I felt like theater raised me and it was such a big part of who I was.

So I decided to go to Michigan because they had a program within their music theater and dance school where I could study playwriting and producing. And maybe I would become an entertainment agent or I would figure it out. I knew at the end of the day, I wanted to be an author, but that seemed so arbitrary and sort of ambiguous and huge that I was like, I feel like I should learn a bunch of other skills as well. So Michigan was amazing. And towards the end of my time there, which was in 2020, actually, I was one of those that didn't have the graduation and everything. Oh, no. Yeah, I was like, kind of had this moment where I thought to myself, you know, I don't really want to be an entertainment producer. I don't think that's my skill set. Like, frankly, there were people that were so much better

than I was at doing that at school. And at the end of the day, what I really was was a writer. So I thought to myself, I should go to grad school, I should become a journalist, like that's sensible, right? Like, that's like a path. I'd always, you know, pressured myself to follow a path, because I felt like it gave me security. And it made me feel like more of an adult. And so I was like, I'm going to go to grad school. And I got into Columbia and it was such an honor. I was so excited. And then I got sent home for the pandemic from my senior year of college. And while I was at home, I was just messing around with my brothers on TikTok, accidentally posted a video and it went super viral. And at first it was just these silly jar videos. I still do them sometimes sometimes it's like filling up this jar trail mix with all these snacks it's very fun but then it took a turn people started asking me questions about myself and i started sharing more and then right before i moved to new york to go to grad school i made a video being like the jar content isn't really going to happen at the volume

that it's been happening because i'm not at home. My parents are no longer financing, financing that situation. I'm going to be living with roommates and it just doesn't make as much sense. But if you want to stick around, I would love to share content about living in New York and going to grad school and being a writer. And I was so surprised. I was ready to lose like my whole following. I had like 90,000 followers and I gained people. And I was like, Whoa, that was like one of the luckiest feelings. I was like, people are excited about this. And then while I was at grad school, I obviously learned so much and I'm very indebted to the fact that I was able to have that education, but it just didn't feel right. I still felt like the person that wanted so desperately to write

about dating and sex and specifically the female experience and just all these feelings inside of me, all the things that make me feel so passionate. And I was still like, I'm going to do journalism and make money that way and figure it out. And my TikTok was growing and growing and growing the whole time. And eventually my now literary agents reached out to me when I was, you know, postgrad, and I had just left a journalism job that I was working for some unforeseen circumstances. And they were like, Are you ready for a book? Because we know you want to write books. And we've read your essays on substack. I was doing a blog. We've seen your videos. And like, we think there's a book and we're excited to meet you and it was

really one of the most crazy moments like i remember reading that email and being like whoa like whoa i always knew because i'm very confident person i always knew i was going to get to that moment of the literary agent and the book i just didn't know how like how does anyone you hear and i would get kind of exhausted hearing authors tell the same story that I just told like there's not one path and like you just have to keep trucking along and believing in yourself and keep putting out the work and putting out the work even if you think nobody's gonna see it eventually somebody will I think it was frustrating to hear that from so many other people who had figured it out but then when it happened to me I was like wow they were right you just have to keep, for lack of a better phrase,

throwing shit at the wall and waiting for something to fit. And it stuck, and it was amazing. And then everything happened really fast after that. And so now we're here, and I'm still doing TikTok. Love TikTok. I think it's very theatrical for me. So I feel like I haven't departed from my theater roots fully. Yeah, it fits right into what you want to do there.

You know, I do want to put a plug in for the jar or endorsement of the jar. I saw some of the videos and I did have to take an insulin shot at the end of this one. But they do look good. But they're good for the soul. Yeah, there you go. It's always good to have some soul food. So tell us about the dating world. And I guess it comes from your advantage point of being a young woman. I know a lot of things have changed from when, well, I've always been in the dating pool, but I mean, there's these terms now like hookup culture, rosters, and things like you talk about your book. And so dating has kind of changed. It's like,

you know, in my world, you would call somebody up and go, Hey, do you want to go on a date? And you take them to dinner and a movie. And then, you know, you progress through a series of dates. And now things seem to change, you know, Netflix and chill and stuff. So tell us what that's like in the world now. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right that it's changed so much, especially with social media and dating apps and even the pandemic. But I think at the core, something that's forever, two weeks or two months or two years or whatever it is or two nights. And I think we like sometimes forget that, you know, the core of it is really the same. sort of infatuated with like talking about dating. It was really because I felt like people are so afraid to talk about dating and relationships unless they have like a degree or they're a doctor. And I'm none of that. But I think that what is different about my perspective

is that I know I don't know everything. And I know I haven't figured it all out. And I know I'm not this like God voice telling you the best advice. I just am so ready to have these conversations about exactly all the things you're talking about. Hookup culture. It's weird. It's a newer thing. It's difficult to navigate. I wish that there were more people

just like openly discussing their feelings on it or how they felt when I was in college. Because realistically, I was just going through it blind. Like you're saying, like it's just this new uncharted territory. What even is a situationship? How do you know if you're actually dating someone? Like, how do you genuinely communicate it to someone that you want to date? And especially after the pandemic now, it's like, even worse, because we have these like, heightened social anxiety. And there was a long period of time where we weren't dating or going anywhere. And

a lot of us got into relationships because it was easy to cohabitate with a person or it was comfortable. And then we got out of the pandemic and we're like, this no longer serves me. I think it was like a really a rude awakening. But I think the crazy thing to me about dating, especially in New York, is that people hate dating in New York. They're very simple about it. And I get it, right? Like I'm from the East Coast. People can be really blunt.

And I think that bluntness is oftentimes mistaken for being rude. But realistically, like it is a little cynical, but I think you have to just look at it with fresh eyes and realize that like, yes, dating apps might be the reality, but there are still people meeting out in the real world. And if you want that,

you might have to work a little harder, but that's an opportunity that's available for you. And if you kind of act so cynical about these dating apps, like that's what you're going to get out of it. So I think putting your best foot forward is really helpful because we are in such like a social media phone era of dating and it's helpful to just like be optimistic about it because there is so much cynicism i love your attitude about it i've i've dated all my life and i have people that like i hate dating i i in fact i hated dating so much i just went and got married and i'm like wait you went got married to the first person you met because you hated dating like if i heard that and

i was a husband i'd just be like are you serious like you just chose me because you're like sick of dating like and and and when you really understand it people you know people try each other on they're trying to find a fit they're they're different stages sometimes in their lives especially in their in their 20s and and they're going through a lot of growth and and development and finding themselves like you talk about in your book. And so there's, you know, people try each other on. There's, that's what, and you can't be, you know, people are usually at their best. They're doing their best as they, whatever they've developed. And you have to just go, hey, we tried, we did our best and we don't fit.

And we tried each other on, you know, it's kind of like coats a little bit. I don't know. That's how I look at it. I don't know. Am I crazy or wrong? No, no, no, you're not. I have a metaphor about codes actually in the book. But to your point, I think when people say they hate dating, they might just be dealing with a level of a lack of self-confidence or not realizing how special and wonderful they are. Because when I ever said I hated dating, it was because I had some sort of

loathing for myself that I needed to work on because you shouldn't hate yourself, you should love yourself. And it's such like a hard journey into self love. But when I started to like dating more, it was because I liked myself. So I was excited to go on dates with people and be like, I'm awesome. And maybe I'm not saying I'm awesome. But I'm saying, I'm a catch. I'm really funny. And I know what I want out of this life. And you don't have to know what you want out of this life. But I could just go in with this confidence of knowing that I liked who I was. And so I was kind of pitching myself as someone who liked who she was.

And I write a lot about that in the book, how I really always wanted to be a woman who liked herself. And I think once I started liking myself, dating stopped being something I hated because it felt kind of fun like oh I like who I am and somebody else who's worth it is gonna like who I am and I'm gonna like who they are too so then it becomes more exciting yeah and not everyone's a fit like you know if if I go on a first date and they don't they're not a fit and we don't match then then cool fine that's fine yeah welcome to life sometimes you go to job interviews and you're not a fit sometimes you uh get fired from your job you're not a fit it's just you know welcome to life and but some people take it really personal i suppose they can that can be

a thing for them hi voksters foz here with a little station break hope you're enjoying the show so far we'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements, if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff. With over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO, and be sure

to check out chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com. Now back to the show. So with dating apps, we hear a lot about what's going on with dating apps. I come from the generation where you would go to a club or a bar to meet a woman, and you would get her phone number, and then you would call her up. And there's a lot of complaints about dating apps. I mean, these guys are making trillions of dollars. I think there's pretty much one company that owns most of them. And there seems to be a lot of human gamification that companies are doing. What's your thought on dating apps and what's going on with them and how that impacts the dating world for everyone? Yeah. I don't hate dating apps because I think that while I

understand the critique of them, I do. Everybody wants to meet somebody at a coffee shop, at the bar, at a bookstore. Everybody wants that. I think we all have to acknowledge that that's like a universal fact. But the fact of the matter is that's become much more difficult, especially in a post pandemic world. So if you're willing to be patient, and you're going to just date in the real world, and you are going to, you know, find that confidence in yourself to approach that person or leave your number at the table for the waiter and all of those things. Amazing. But if you're really, really wanting to set yourself up for success in dating, I do think incorporating dating apps is helpful and you don't need to just, just do dating apps. You don't need to go on one

app date a week or anything like that. Just kind of having them in your rotation of the way that you're dating and kind of putting your best foot forward. I think a problem a lot of people find on the apps is that they can't find somebody who maybe wants the same things as them. And so to that, I say, you have to be really upfront about what you want. If you're on the app and you don't want like someone just to hook up with or something casual, like you're looking for something serious, say that. I think a lot of us think it's weird to say I'm looking for something serious and legit. That's not weird. That's never been weird. And I understand because I would always be like, well, will I ward people off by saying I'm looking for something serious? Like you're only going to ward off the people who aren't on the same page as you. I think being really, really upfront with

prospects in general just avoids people wasting time. It avoids people getting hurt. And I think that's one problem that we do see. People are like, I feel like I've dated through all these apps and like no one's on the same page. And I'm like, we have to just be more clear. And I would be lying if I said like dating apps are my favorite thing ever. But I do like them. Like I did really like using dating apps when I was single. And I liked kind of doing a mix of dating. Like if I had met someone in a class or at the grocery store or something, awesome. But otherwise, I'm going to do some swiping here or there and just incorporate it into like kind of my dating routine, I guess I would call it.

There you go uh do you find that there's these studies out that say that men aren't approaching as much and i don't know if that's true you you probably know better than i do because i don't date men uh but they say men aren't approaching as much maybe me too made them a little bit more skittish about approaching or i don't know some there's these seems to be a lot of incels and stuff in this gen z of young men who uh i i don't understand the first girl says no to them they don't want to go out and suddenly they're scarred for life i'm like you're gonna get a lot of no's from women over life uh you just get used to it it's fine it's it's part of the gig yeah i you know i definitely think that if those studies are like legitimate, and men are

approaching women less, it's likely because of the phone thing and the pandemic, I think like, in a few more years, we'll have more studies about, you know, how that impacted us. But I think a lot of people really solely use dating apps now. Like, I feel like I watch Sex and the City a lot. It's like one of my favorite TV shows. And when you watch that in the nineties, like they are exclusively being approached or approaching. And that's the only real way to do it. Now, a lot of people go out with their friends and they're not even trying to meet someone. Like that's not what they're doing when they go out with their friends. They're just like trying to have a good time. If they happen to meet someone, sure, great.

That usually indicates more of a casual experience or something casual. And realistically, I think a lot of people think like when I'm dating, it's going on Hinge, going on Bumble, going on Raya or whatever after on and like using those. And when I'm going out with my friends to the bar, I'm going out with my friends to the bar and I'm trying to have a good time with them so i think if we looked at it like that that would be the reason i also think women are approaching more um women that date men i think are gaining in confidence a lot more than in the past at least i would say my circles like i would totally approach somebody and have no problem doing that.

Really? Wow. Yeah, I think I would. And I I've genuinely like grown in confidence from a place where I was in college, which I write a lot about in the book. But I think, you know, in my circles and the people I talk to, I think we see women kind of coming together and having more conversations and being more open about all of these things and then just growing in confidence. And so there's more of a sort of amiable back and forth where anybody could sort of approach. And I think that's a very Gen Z thing, which is great. Of course, there are the incels online, and that's just terrifying. But I would say, most of all, it's just like this idea that our my generation, and the good ones in my generation are really like getting to

a place where we want to encourage that. Like anyone could approach anyone, which I really like. There you go. In your book, you, you, you talk about stories of, of dating going in and out of relationships. You know, the, the great thing about stories and life and books and stuff is, is we share the, our journeys with each other. And we find that many of us are all on the same sort of journey. And they're like, oh, you have a perspective or a paradigm that you look at it from this, and that's a better way to do it. And so we kind of find that we're kind of in that pool of human beings where we're doing the same.

Tell us a little bit about stuff you put in the book about going in and out of relationships or trying to find relationships and dealing with loss etc etc yeah i you know i think the reason that i'm really proud of this book is that of course there are stories of people who broke my heart or people who confused or emotionally manipulated or hurt me but i think there's an equal amount of people whose heart i broke and things I did wrong and like places that I fumbled or messed up and like lessons I learned from the way that I treated somebody. And I think that like bridging those two things together and thinking about both of them was really like

healing in a way, but also was a very vulnerable sort of exercise because I've had a few relationships that were serious. And then I've had like plenty of more casual things and whatnot that I write about. And I think that there's just like a nuanced approach where I try my best to, to be like very, very truthful about like, well, this is a person I let on. And that was really crappy of me. That wasn't kind. And I did something to someone that had been done to me in the past. And then I felt it on the other end of like, wow, it doesn't feel good to hurt someone's feelings. It just really doesn't. And all you have to do is be a better communicator, whatever the lesson is there to not do that again. But I

think it's a lot of times we read any sort of like advice related books. And you know, I don't want to call my book a self-help book as much because i think what it really is is just advice from someone figuring it out just with you in the moment i think a lot of those advice type of books sometimes give us the advice from somebody who really like never did it wrong but you know they just like killed it and they did do it wrong but they're not sharing that part because it doesn't fit in the story. And for me, the point of the story is to show that, like, it's OK if you do something wrong. Like, you're not evil.

You're not a bad person. You can learn from those things. So that was really a lovely thing about the book. And something I love a lot about it is sort of reflecting on those relationships. And even the people that did hurt me, maybe there was something that I also did that I would have not done the same way today. So it's definitely been, that's been a really great part about it. There you go. Stories are the owner's manual life is what I usually say. So when we share our stories, even though sometimes it's hard to open

up and talk about them, sometimes we feel like we're exposing more of ourselves than and and might be painful or might be embarrassing or shameful um it helps other people and i've always been surprised when i share stuff that people go hey i didn't know that i you made me realize i didn't get closure with my father's death or some you know some sort of thing and so i think it's great you share these stories and uh what do you think about hooka or not hookup culture uh this hot girl summer thing so i've seen these videos on tiktok about hot girl summers about girls racking up massive amounts or claiming the rack up massive amounts of body counts what do you think about that so i think it's like less about just that but the idea of a hot girl summer can really be

like whatever you want it to be so i think that like some people's version a hot girl summer can really be like whatever you want it to be. So I think that like some people's version of hot girl summer is like going on a solo travel expedition all summer and like seeing all these amazing places and like gaining all these adventures. Like for other people, it might be just like finding confidence in their style and like going out and having a good time. And, you know, just like it's, again, another way that women are just like coming together as a community to gain confidence. But I think I talked about this in the book, you know, there's so many different ways that society has tried and succeeded to make women feel badly about body count in a way that they don't make anybody else feel badly. Or there's just like a very severe double standard which i think is sort of common knowledge and i think that you know we've realized and reclaimed in a lot of ways especially gen z

this idea that it's like an entire construct like body count or whatever it's like not really a real thing of course you could have a number of people that you might have slept with but sex means different things for different people and also all of the ideas that surround body count and having a high body count are like entirely rooted in really misogynistic things that just directly target women and shame them in a way that it the same does not happen to men at all so i think that on another level hot girl summer can just be about reclaiming that own confidence for yourself and your sexuality and in the way that you want to approach sex because i think that something that i kind of struggled with when i was early in college was just this idea of shame a lot of shame around

you know any sort of sexual anything and i've really gotten to a place where that's not a thing for me anymore and i really hope to use my voice to just make women feel a little bit more confident about their choices, whatever those choices are, whether they want to wait till marriage, because that's their choice, or whether they want to have a new partner every week. I think it's just really important to like give people the power to have confidence in their own choices and feel really secure in those. And also just realize that like a lot of times if they are experiencing shame, it's coming from a societal source that maybe is impacting women really largely

in a way that it doesn't impact men. So I think hot girl summer can also just be about like reclaiming confidence and power for yourself. And now it's turned into all sorts of things. You know, there's lazy girl summer, chill girl summer, party girl summer, all the things. I think it's just the summer of whatever you want it to be, which is really great. There you go.

There you go. Finding confidence, finding yourself. You know, I like your perspective of how you look at your past relationships and you're learning from them and you don't seem to be getting toxic from them. I meet people in the dating markets where they're really toxic about their past relationships and failures in them. And I'll tell people, you know, people say to me, they go, so, you know, do you have any issues with your exes? I'm like, no, I appreciate all my exes that we were two people who tried our best. They were doing their best.

I'm probably 50% of whatever the problem was or more, if you know me. I might have been 75% or 100%. But, you know, you just go, hey, man, it's two people in a weird place in life. And sometimes you're at different points and you're trying each other on. And there's no reason to be hateful and angry and mean and destructive to people. If it didn't work out, you just go, hey, you know, we tried our best. It didn't work out. And I'm thankful.

Like if i met any of my ex-girlfriends i would be like hey thanks i'm sorry i was probably an asshole uh but uh thanks uh i learned a lot from you and i hope you found what you were looking for and and god bless and and i think that's the best perspective people really need to do they really take dating maybe a little too personally i don't know yeah i think i think you're 100 right that there is like a level of toxicity around like exes and breakups and everything i think on some level it can be warranted you know if somebody like was abusive in any way or made you feel horrible about yourself and maybe that's emotional abuse or manipulation or any of those things like

be toxic like that person deserves nothing Like I hope they get bad karma. If anyone ever hurts someone in a relationship, emotionally, physically, et cetera, like that's awful. But I think on the level of just like when you grow apart from somebody and maybe the breakup is, I wouldn't want to call it amiable if somebody's instigating it

and the other person doesn't want it to happen. But I think like you eventually do realize that it was the right thing and you once i always say every no makes itself known to you in the future like the reason for every no will make itself known to you in the future so if you're if you're going through a breakup like you're going to feel horrendous for three four five six however many months it takes for you to heal but you're going to get to that other side and maybe you'll meet someone new or you'll just be thriving alone and you're gonna say oh my god i realize now why we had to break up this makes so much sense like that was not the correct life path for me this is or it's different but it's better and i think that that's just a realization it takes a lot of people like a very long time to come to and then they will regret

maybe their actions in the immediate aftermath of the breakup like whether it's like being toxic online or with their friends or just whatever it is i think that you know there's definitely like uh there's definitely like both sides to it because i think if the person sucked then of course yeah not even toxicity that's just you know telling your truth based on what someone did to you. But if it was just sort of like a, we grew apart situation, I think that you really have to take a step back and remember that the reason will make itself known to you in the future.

There you go. Finding what you want. Sometimes you've got a, what's the old thing. You've got to dig a lot of coal to find diamonds and stuff. Yeah. So any final thoughts and tease outs on your book you want to give us? I'm just very excited.

And while, of course, I've been talking a lot about women and girls, I mean, that's who I am and that's my identity. I really think the book can be for anybody who's kind of just wanting to feel found or heard or listened to or wants to have new raw conversations about relationships, whether that's friendship or anything else. And it's really for everybody. I tried to be as inclusive as possible. Obviously, I'm a woman that dates men, but everybody, I think, could feel heard, and I hope they do. So that's something I'm really, really looking forward to when it comes out.

There you go. This will be awesome. Hey, you know, you could do a second book on jar recipes. Yeah, cookbook. There you go. A cookbook for making imported jars and stuff. It could be like a whole thing. You could make it. You probably thought of this already, thinking about making it maybe a business where you can make pre-made jars. The way that 2020, that was like, everybody was like, you need to have a business.

And I was like, I want to be a writer, but maybe one day. You'll sell jars. Yeah. Well, it's been wonderful to have a business. And I was like, I want to be a writer, but maybe one day. You'll sell jars. Yeah. We'll see. Well, it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Thank you very much for coming on. Thank you for having me. There you go. Give us a.com too as we exit so that people can find you on the interwebs. Yes, it's just theelirallo.com

and you can find everything about me there. There you go. Folks, pre-order the book wherever fine books are sold. Stay away from those alleyway bookstores. You might get mugged. Eli Rallo, I didn't know I needed this. The rules for flirting, feeling, and finding yourself.

I'm going to order it up because at 55, I'm still trying to find myself and wherever he is, I think he's hiding from me somewhere. Anyway, I'll order it up and make sure that you pre-order it. Buy a bunch of copies. geez, it'll be Christmas So, you know, you can make those your Christmas presents And, you know, if you're like me

I know a lot of people need to find themselves So there you go Thanks so much for tuning in Go to goodreads.com, 4ChestChristmas YouTube.com, 4ChestChristmas LinkedIn.com, 4ChestChristmas And we're on TikTok at Christmas1 We have about 5 followers over there

So there you go Thanks for tuning in Be good to each other, stay safe And we'll see you guys next time We're on TikTok at ChrisVoss1. We have about five followers over there. So there you go. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time. That should have a sound.