The Rich Roll Podcast - It Begins With You: Jillian Turecki On Why Dating Is Broken, Self-Awareness Is Everything, & What Actually Makes Love Last

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

Jillian Turecki is a relationship expert, New York Times bestselling author of It Begins With You, and host of the podcast Jillian on Love. This conversation explores why intimacy reveals our character defects, how childhood conditioning sabotages adult love, and the universal fear driving relationship dysfunction. We discuss why there's no cruise control in partnerships, why stress kills more relationships than infidelity, and how to distinguish needs from unrealistic expectations. Along the way, Jillian performs a bit of relationship triage on me. Jillian's message is direct and empowering. This one rules. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Bon Charge: Use coupon code RICHROLL20 to save 20%👉🏼https://www.boncharge.com Squarespace: Use code RichRoll to save 10% off your first order of a website or domain👉🏼http://www.squarespace.com/RichRoll     AG1: Get a FREE bottle of D3K2, Welcome Kit, and 5 travel packs with your first order👉🏼https://www.drinkAG1.com/richroll Go Brewing: Use the code Rich Roll for 15% OFF👉🏼https://www.gobrewing.com Roka: Unlock 20% OFF your order with code RICHROLL👉🏼https://www.ROKA.com/RICHROLL BetterHelp: Get 10% OFF the first month👉🏼 https://www.betterhelp.com/richroll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors👉🏼https://www.richroll.com/sponsors  Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange

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if you want life partnership if you want a relationship if you want to potentially live with this person that choice is so important they are going to impact your nervous system

your sleep your choices your worldview your beliefs yes we enter relationships as autonomous sovereign beings but there's like a blending There's a yoking that happens.

There's a yoga that happens between two people. And so it's very important that you make that choice wisely. And the only way you can make that choice wisely is by understanding yourself. There's this great saying in AA, which is if you don't think you have any character defects, get into a relationship. And what that means to me is that intimacy is hard. It demands self-awareness and a level of vulnerability that can be, quite frankly, uncomfortable.

It reveals our wounds, it forces us to confront our fears. It brings out the best of us, but it also surfaces our flaws. So it really shouldn't be surprising that navigating love, of navigating relationships is so difficult and fraud, not just for people in recovery, but for literally everybody. Now, as somebody who has been with my wife for over 25 years, this is something I have a lot of experience with

and can personally attest to. There is no cruise control, constant work, vigilance, these are mandatory. And when I accept that rather than try to run away from it, when I embrace it, when I move towards, rather than avoid it out of discomfort or inconvenience or whatever, yeah, I have to deal with my shit in ways I prefer to not have to.

But the result is always the same, which is that I grow as a consequence, as an individual, and we together grow as a unit closer as a result. And yet, despite all this earned experience, I know that I still screw up all the time and have so much to learn about love, about intimacy, about how to resolve conflict, about how my hardwiring, my early childhood experiences,

my unresolved trauma, my triggers, my embedded patterns of behavior and default settings, all of it from time to time, still rears their ugly little heads and gets in the way, all of which is my way of saying that when it comes to relationships, whether you're just casually dating or deeply invested in a long-term partnership, the shit is confusing.

The work will never be done. But the work is worth it because the results are profound. So today, I'm going to take my shot at de-encrypting some of the source code with probably my favorite relationship expert and coach, Jillian Tarecki. Jillian is the New York Times best-selling author of It Begins. with you and host of the Jillian on Love podcast. She also has online courses, an online membership community, and a weekly newsletter, all of which and more,

you can find at Gillianarecki.com. All I'm going to say right now is that Jillian is the absolute best, and that this one rules. So pay attention people, because there is nothing more important than the quality of your relationships. And here we are. Here we are. It's good to see you.

Thank you for doing it. Thank you for having me. Excited to talk to you. You've been on quite a tear lately. I mean, really. You're like a mainstream figure now. Am I? I don't know.

I don't know. I don't really, it's hard for me to see myself that way. Is it disorienting or have you been able to maintain some level of groundedness amidst, you know, sort of the feeding frenzy around your ideas? Yeah, I don't feel disoriented at all. I feel grounded. And I think maybe part of that is because I just don't see. what other people see maybe. I don't know. And I feel supported and grounded and grateful.

Well, you're a really cool and important voice of reason in an area that flummox is, you know, the best of us out there. I think we're all on some level in great need of relationship advice. Absolutely. And no matter how committed we are to our personal growth, we tend to get in our own way and, you know, allow these, you know, deeply embedded patterns that don't serve us to, you know, kind of flare up and recur. That's exactly, right? And very well said. So if you had to put words to the overarching mission that you're on, how would you answer that? I mean, not to sound cliche because of my book, but I really am on a mission to help people realize that it really does begin internally, that your relationship. and your life, if even if we were to take this beyond the scope of romantic relationships or

familial relationships, that the life that we want is often within reach, but we have to overcome a lot of mental blockages. And so it really does begin with that sort of internal examination. There's a couple of missions that are sort of layered within that main one, which is, I don't think, at least not in this culture, that we really understand love. And, you know, I always used to think that love was something that you just feel versus something that you actually commit yourself to and practice. And a lot of people also don't know how to love themselves. And so I see those two things as really why so many people,

have problems in relationships. Sure. We need certain skills like communication skills. We don't learn this in school. We learn it by watching our parents or our caregivers. And I don't think that we really truly understand what it is to love. I think we all want love. But if we can get the craving to love to be as strong as the craving to be loved, you know, to give love. Yeah. And so I work with also a lot of different people, you know, some people, they just tolerate so much nonsense in a relationship. So I've got those section of people I'm trying to help, but we can't point fingers anymore. Like the victim mentality is out of control, and it's particularly out of control in relationships. And the more that you make it someone else's fault, the more you're going to

repeat patterns. And that doesn't mean that it's your fault, but it is your responsibility. and we are much more powerful beings than we think or know ourselves to be. So it's sort of a long answer, but yeah. There's something very empowering and really muscular about your message because like so much more of this is under our agency to control indirect.

If we just have an accurate understanding of the landscape and are provided with the education and the tools to develop, you know, the self-awareness and the emotional regulation and all of these things that play into the dynamic of how we relate to another human being. But it begins with having a proper definition of love. Like our understanding of love really comes down

to sort of two things in my mind, which are, A, like how we were raised, so what we observed and experienced in our upbringing, you know, with the people who were responsible for our care. And then the messages that culture, you know, inundates us with, whether it's Disney movies or whatnot, that provides this kind of basic operating system for how we think about and understand

and pursue, receive and give love, right? And generally, like, these things are off base. Like, no matter how well you were brought up, there was probably something not awesome about that. Yes. And, of course, we can all agree that, you know, the kind of cultural messages that we've all absorbed and intuitive over the years

are certainly not an accurate representation of, like, what love is. And you said, like, love is, you know, it's this choice, it's this decision, it's this verb, it's a commitment, right? So if you had an operating definition of love, like, what would that be? Yeah, I mean, so it's so hard because it's probably one of the hardest things to define. Love has many layers. I believe that there's the love that we feel when we're falling in love with someone,

which is very rich with emotion and irrationality. And then there's the meaning that we give love changes as we become more connected to someone. And so then there is the love where this, I don't love you just because I feel wonderful around you or I feel like a better person around you or I feel more calm around you. But I love you because I actually, your well-being and your best interest is my best interest. and so at the core love is selfless but i think that what we've been fed is a love that's incredibly selfish which is make me feel good meet my needs i i you know if i don't feel great around you all the time then it must not be love and i do think that the highest form of loving someone is to put their needs sometimes before your own.

Now, that's a tricky thing for me to say because I work with a lot of people, mostly women, but not all, who are putting themselves last in everything. And so my message to them is like, no, you've got to choose yourself first. You have to really love yourself. But one thing that I know for sure

that's actually quite interesting, which is even the most selfless people, just you know them to be selfless, that maybe to a fault. Maybe they are putting way too many of everyone's needs before them. We can all get incredibly selfish in a relationship. The moment we feel insecure, the moment we feel tired, whatever it is. And so I think the highest form of love is a selflessness.

It's I care about your happiness. And if that means that you are better off without me, then I'm not going to keep you trapped in this relationship because I'm too afraid to lose you. And that's pretty big stuff, you know? So that's how I would define it. Do you think that this crisis around relationships that so many people are experiencing,

you know, across the globe right now, is particularly acute in America by dint of the fact that we seem to have an unbalanced relationship with our own self-form. obsession. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like to your point, like, it's all about like, you know, you know, are you meeting my needs? Yes. Is my life, you know, being more optimized by having you in it? And it's very kind of like the calculus is all internal as opposed to like this real piece of love, which is, which is like the giving of it, you know, like the nourishment that we get

from the giving of it rather than looking at it as this one way thing where we're calibrating it based upon how much we're receiving it. Yeah, I do think there's something very cultural happening. And there's so much nuance to it. So, yes, we are a culture that we've become obsessed with individualism. We've become obsessed with, yes, are you adding value to my life? And that is a definite problem. And then you have the people who don't know how to choose the right partner for them.

And so they're not thinking about it correctly. They're not thinking, can this person bring value to my life? Here's the thing. It is an appropriate question to ask, does this person, if we're trying to figure out if we should commit to someone, marry someone, whatever it is, pursue a real relationship with them, it is a legitimate question to ask oneself, does this person add value to my life? That's important. what's missing, especially in this culture, is do I add value to their life?

And how can I add value to their life? As opposed to, let me just think of all the ways in which I need them to give to me. Unconditionally. Unconditionally. I mean, with certain parameters, obviously, if something's very unhealthy or you're mistreated, but yes. You said, when you choose a partner, you're not just choosing a partner, you're choosing how you're going to feel about yourself every single day. And basically this idea that, you know, who you choose is a declaration of who you think you deserve. Yes. So explain that.

People ask me, what is the most important thing that people need to know about relationships or starting a relationship? And I said, there's two things, just two things. Who you choose? and who you decide to show up as that's it we are not taught i certainly was not taught but i think maybe certain families do pass this down that your choice and partner is incredibly important you can choose whoever you're attracted to if you want to have a fun weekend that's not an important choice but if you want life partnership if you want a relationship if you want a relationship if you want to potentially live with this person, that choice is so important.

They are going to impact your nervous system, your sleep, your choices, your worldview, your beliefs. You just can't, you can't not. I mean, yes, we enter relationships as autonomous sovereign beings, but you know, you've been married a long time. Don't you feel like there's a part of you and this is a beautiful thing that there's like a blending? There's a yoking that happens.

There's a yoga that happens between two people. And so it's very important that you make that choice wisely. And the only way you can make that choice wisely is by understanding yourself. I want to really dive into the self-understanding and self-awareness piece. But when you were sharing that, all I could think about is the life cycle of the typical way we enter into relationships, which is like we become infatuated with somebody. And if that infatuation is mutual, there's a spark, there's lust, there's excitement, and, you know, it's very intoxicating and it's overwhelming. And both parties are projecting an idealized version of themselves onto the other person. On some level, you know, that projection is based upon what we think that other person will like about us. And we kind of shade, you know, the edges of the things we think they might not like. And then, of course, over time, that wears thin. The real selves emerge. And that's really where it seems like the choice has to get made.

Like the idea that you're going to pre-conceptualize all of this entering into it doesn't feel like that's the natural way that most people do it. Yeah, the natural way, like you said, yes, people get infatuated. What I'm trying to educate people on is, yes, we are emotional beings. And ultimately, we're going to make our decisions based on our emotions. But you can still be discerning. You know, you can decide, you know, this person. I'm really attracted to them, but like, I don't know.

Like, can we do the job for each other of being each other's partners? That's what I want to empower people to have those kind of decisions. Certainly, I've known people who fall in love, get infatuated, and they go through that stage, that very difficult stage of, oh, wow, you mean this person is not perfect? Yeah, what is the distinction between discernment and, you know, outsized expectations? or this idea of perfectionism. Yes. Choose three to five things at most

that are absolutely non-negotiable for you and be 100% open-minded and flexible about the rest. So give me an example. Okay. I'm not going to date anyone who is within the throes of drug addiction, alcoholism. That's a good rule. Not going to happen.

No matter how wonderful of a human being they are, no matter how loving they are, no matter how much they want to change if they're in their addiction no matter how attracted I am to them it's never going to happen and that's an act of self-honoring that's an act of self-honoring and self-love

because everyone suffers in that scenario right yeah so that's like a deal breaker so that's also non-negotiable non-negotiable for me is also someone who knows how to work through problems so I'm not interested in being in a relationship with someone once there's a problem, then I have to chase them for a week to talk about the problem. I don't care what trauma you had. I don't care of who your parents were. I'm not interested.

But you could have a hard time emoting. You could struggle to communicate sometimes. You could tell me, you know, I just need a day to really think about this so we can talk about this better. You could, I don't want you to leave the toilet seat up, but you can leave the toilet seat up. You know, like there things you I what's fundamental versus what's trivial and that's really important everyone wants to be loved for who they are so what does that mean we want to be loved in spite of the fact that we are anxious or depressed or have this weird habit or we struggle with a B and C and everyone deserves that and not a but and we have to bring to the table things that make it so that someone would want to be in a relationship with us.

Reliability, consistency, love, care, nurturing, all those things. Communication, the willingness to communicate. And this is so important that we're talking about this, because people do think that there's going to be this incredibly perfect, highly evolved, angelic-like individual who's going to come in and be so much more evolved than we are that they're going to almost rescue us and this is happening in people's unconscious all the time. Or the converse of that, which is that, oh, this is a project and I'm going to be able to fix this person or rescue them.

Yes. And that's a conquest. So that's conquest. And that's a conquest that both men and women fall under the spell of, which is, yeah, I'm going to fix this person. I'm going to rescue them. I'm going to save them. So to get clarity on what those important values are, it brings us back to self-awareness, right? I mean, the book is called, it begins with you. Like, it really does. I mean, honestly, what are the chances that you're going to be able to enter into and sustain a healthy relationship without putting in the work to develop that self-awareness to really understand what your patterns are, where your behavior leads you astray, and to be able to identify. those kind of landmines that are waiting for you out there. So kind of explain the premise of this idea of cultivating self-understanding. It begins with one very specific understanding.

Every single relationship that you have, whether it's romantic or not, has one common denominator, and that's you. People will immediately get defensive and misinterpret that as, well, I'm the problem. Not necessarily, but you're part of whatever is working and you're part of whatever's not working. You know, even if you were with someone, and I was once with someone who was terrible guy, just a really bad guy, and treated me horribly, I chose him. I picked him. So I could have spent years being angry at him and I could have spent years being angry at myself, all of it, a complete waste of time that yield. no growth and no maturity and no change in habits. Or I can say, huh, interesting, what was it about him that I was drawn to? What else was going on in my life when I met him? What could that be

about? So the step in self-awareness is to have a curiosity about yourself. I don't want people to get so obsessive with self, back to what we were saying, where you're constantly in this self-analysis. But if you want something to change in your life, in your love life, whether it's you're married, single, divorce, whatever your relationship status is, you have to be able to look at yourself and your patterns. So for somebody who's watching this or listening to this, for whom this is brand new, like, I just end up in the same kind of crazy relationship time and time again. I don't know why I do it. And I'm surrounded by friends that validate me, you know, how do you, like, what do you mean? Like, I have to understand myself

or look within. Like, what is the process of, of, you know, unearthing the stuff so that you can really understand what makes you tick and avoid these patterns that you seem to continue to perpetuate? Well, look for the pattern. What did they all have in common? What was your parents relationship like? What's your relationship like with mom or dad? Is there something there's some sort of familiarity about these people. Do you have a habit of just choosing based on chemistry? They're meeting some needs. What are the needs that you're trying to get met?

And then the next step, which is the step that a lot of people don't take because they get stuck in the analysis and the self-examination and they don't make any change. The next step is, well, what do I want and how badly do I want it and what am I willing to get it? I think that your personal backstory is the ultimate kind of illustration of all of this, right? Like maybe just begin with like,

how did you even get interested in this in the first place because I think that unties this knot in a really perfect way? I was a yoga teacher for many, many years, almost 20 years in New York City. And so I always was fascinated with the mind-body connection and I was fascinated with feeling more whole. And I had some lovely relationships, and I had some not-so-lovely relationships.

I had a relationship when I was younger that had nothing to do with my relationship with my father, which was very difficult. And I struggled my relationship with my father. I was very scared of him. And I was never really close with him. Well, it's even more acute than that. I mean, your father was sort of a renowned psychology. Right? And he wrote a book called, you know, The Difficult Child. And you happen to be a difficult

child, which is like an insane. The more I think about that, the more outrageous that is. Like, especially for a psychiatrist. Yes. Talk about lack of self-awareness. Perpetuate like this trauma. Like I'm imagining like the idea of me writing a book about my daughter and putting on the title the word difficult. Like, it's insane. Yeah, it's insane. What was that, like, explain that and what was that like for you? Yeah, so my father was a renowned psychiatrist, as you said.

I was born into the world with a sensitive nervous system. I was just sensitive. And there's very, psychiatrists know this, have a much better understanding of this. But, like, I didn't like the way certain fabrics felt, you know, I was not the easy kid. I was the very funny, creative, dynamic, you know, crazy kid. And I cried all the time. And I was born in the 70s. So that was a time where, like, mom did everything.

Dad did nothing. You know, my parents were immigrants. So there was that too. And he figured out that I had something called Difficult Child Syndrome and that, you know. It's so insane. Has that been renamed something else? It's been renamed something else. I mean, he could have given it a syndrome.

kind of like drama of the gifted child or one of those other books. I know. I know. Exactly. Exactly. And, um, you know, basically to help parents understand that they weren't messing up, but to learn how to work with this child so that everyone can be happy. So there, I think there was some intention behind and it's interesting because he would talk about a genetic makeup, um, that were born this way. And that's where, and I told him this, that's where I thought he missed a point, which is actually, yes, we are born, I believe, with certain nervous systems like, you know, certain sensitivities. But the sensitive child, the sensitive baby who is born into a fractured home is then going to be symbolic in her or his own

way of what's going on in the family. You know, my father was, you know, misdemeanor, he had bipolar had not been diagnosed yet. So he was self-medicating. There was some alcoholism there, I'm sure. My mother was, you know, like a model beauty queen from South Africa, like, so smart. But at that time, there was nothing like, yeah, I'm going to become something. You know, I'm going to become a housewife. And she couldn't stand him.

So he was clinically had some problems. He had mental illness. My mom didn't have mental illness, but she was depressed. So here I come, and I was not planned, and I'm very sensitive for, you know, whatever. I can't even begin to explain because I'm not a doctor, but I do think Iervidically speaking that there is like certain things that happen in a person's nervous system. And so I'm reacting to the environment. There was nothing about, you know, reacting to the environment.

Right. Or like maybe like... The book is all about absolving the parents of any kind of blame for the... Any responsibility or anything, you know, there's no self-reflection. It's just a very practical book. How do you deal with this difficult child? So that was a monkey on my back for a long time. Yeah.

And so I think it led me to yoga. I think it just made me want to understand myself more and understand myself emotionally because I was always very sensitive. So because of that, my relationship with my father, I was never close with him. and he was i picked up on an energy his energy was very off to me and he never he never physically abused me ever but there was i picked up on the passive aggressiveness and that was very hard for me and i had relationships i had some relationships that did not echo that relationship at all because it's still a mystery i even know psychologists love to say that everything comes from childhood

Some things are still in mystery. But as I got older and wanting to get married and wanting to have a family and that vulnerability started to seep in, then I started to make maybe not so great choices. So your husband, if I'm just purely projecting, on some level is manifesting these same behavior patterns as your father emotionally withdrawn,

on maybe volatile or unpredictable. Yes, personality-wise could not be more different, didn't look the same. Vibe was totally different just like, again, like in personality. But yeah, he would withdraw. And, you know, that was my father. You never knew what was going on in that brain of his. And you always wondered, is it me?

So there was eggshells. And I felt a ton of eggshells around my husband. And I didn't have the tools. to deal with that. And I was still under the hypnosis of a belief system that somehow it was me. Because after all, I'm difficult. There's a whole book to establish that.

Yes, exactly. Good Lord, the holiday season. I can't believe it. But once again, it's here a time of year that I tend to find overwhelming because I'm a creature of routines, and I don't like my routines being disrupted. But that's just the deal with holidays, all the travel, the family gatherings, eating patterns that go sideways. I think it's okay to admit that it can all be a little bit too much at times.

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You have your third miscarriage. And essentially, your husband breaks up with you over the phone. Yes. So my mother had been diagnosed a couple months prior, but I just found out that she was like basically had a couple months to live. Like, this was it. And I woke up one morning to a miscarriage. And he was at work already.

and I called him. I said, can you come home? He said, no. I said, well, I have to go to the gynecologist because I have to get blood work to make sure that this is actually what's happening. Will you meet me there? No?

I'm too busy. What breaks my heart about that version of myself because I don't feel, I have no emotional attachment to that, to him or that day really anymore. I can process it so much. But what breaks my heart for her, like me, was that I didn't, a hundred, I knew intuitively that that was wrong, but I didn't 100% know

that like, no, that's something that your husband, your expectation should be that your partner is 100% by your side during an experience like that. But having been reared in an environment in which you were walking on eggshells and, you know, there's this sort of fear of rejection or abandonment. You know, it's not surprising that you would imagine, like, oh, I did something wrong or like, what did I do to, you know, make this person reject me in this situation? I always turned it towards me.

Even though, you know, I have a feisty side of me and I would sometimes like that anger would come up, be like, no, this is wrong. But at the end of the day, I didn't stick to my guns with that. It was always like, I always felt like it was me. So, and then later that afternoon, And then that happened. And, you know, later that afternoon, he sent me a text.

He said, I'm going to stay at my parents. And I knew that he was fleeing because this was a pattern. And never to this degree. But it's not like this was like an amazing relationship. And there was no signs of this. And this was completely out of left field. So I knew he was fleeing. And then it was just, you know, a nightmare.

That was a nightmare day. But this is the perfect storm of circumstances to, you know, birth this, you know, by, to use your own word, like obsession with human relationships and what makes them work and what derails them. Yes. And I feel very passionate as well about helping people reframe traumatic events like this in such a way that you can change, you can actually steer your life in a different direction where I can look back and say, I wouldn't want to go through that again, but I understand why it happened. Look, I'm here sitting with you today. A fundamental thing that that seems to derail people is this idea that somebody else is responsible

for our happiness when in fact it's the opposite, which, you know, again, it brings us back to ourselves. What is our relationship with ourselves? How are we honoring ourselves? How are we understanding ourselves and how are we, you know, honoring how we honor ourselves by by seeking out partners who, you know, who, with whom we can have, you know, there's the potential for something healthy to emerge. No one can make you happy. I think they can contribute to your happiness, just like people can contribute to your misery. Um, but no one can make you happy. And we go into relationships thinking that this other person's going to make us happy. Even if rationally we know that's not true, we expect that. And no one who you're going to be in a, there's no one in your life

who you love who's going to always be on and only focused on you and only focused on loving you. And by the way, you wouldn't even want that from a lover. You wouldn't respect them. You'd be like, get a life. So we are responsible for our fulfillment. A relationship I really truly believe should add significantly to your life. Otherwise, too labor intensive. Why do it?

So then what are the foundational principles that create the bedrock for a healthy relationship? Okay. Well... Open communication, definitely. That doesn't mean you're talking about the relationship all the time. But what I have found is that the strongest couples, when there's a problem, they just tackle it. It doesn't mean that they're going to solve every problem. Some problems are just unsolvable.

But they're not avoiding it. They're not avoiding the other person. They're not sweeping it under the rug. They're just like, let's just sit down and talk about this respectfully, you know? there's also the ability to okay let me frame it this way you know what destroys relationships that people don't really know mismanaged stressed now life can get difficult you can have surgery that's going to be harder than you thought the recovery is going to be harder than you thought it would be your parents are going to die life can throw us some pretty heavy things

Most of the time, though, people are reacting to silly little things that are not anywhere even near the kind of stress I just spoke about. And they are bringing that stress home and they are becoming emotionally unavailable to their partner. Then they don't want to have sex or they don't want to kiss or they don't want to hold hands. And they're always, they're filled with so much tension. So bringing it back to the relationship with yourself,

the ability to be like, oh, a very popular term right now is self-regulation, emotional regulation. It's not about being happy all the time. It's not about being perfectly steady all the time. It's about focusing or paying attention to your relationship with your life and with stress and not being in a constant state of reactivity. When you've got two people who are constantly reacting

to the circumstances of life that are not even that major, you've got two people who become very disconnected from each other. I just had Mark Brackett in here last week to talk about this very thing. Oh, really? And the more I think about emotional regulation, it really is a cornerstone in a way that we underestimate. Like if we could just understand our emotions and self-regulate just a little bit better,

we would avoid so many of our problems. Like it really boils down to us being overly reactive too often. Yes. At the wrong time. Yeah. And in the context of relationships, I mean, this is the sort of epidemic of our modern time. Like we're out in the world, we're super busy, we do our thing, we come home, we're tapped out, we're exhausted, we laid it all out on the field, during the day and when we get home and we're faced with the prospect of interacting with the

person we care about the most, we're depleted. And so it's like, you know, I just don't, can we just table this until later? We avoid those situations because our energy stores have, you know, are on low or whatever. And I think the other thing that contributes to that is the longer that you're in a relationship and especially when kids get involved, it becomes very sort of, not transaction, that's a wrong word, but like logistical. Yeah. It's like you become a transit authority. And all of the conversations are reduced to like how we are managing the household and our lives together. And we mistake that for tending to the relationship. People mistake that for intimacy and it's very far from it. It's the ship of the relationship, right? It's the practice. It's the partnership

of the relationship. The business end. It's the business end of the relationship. It's important. but you better be tending to the intimacy. And I'm not talking about just sexual intimacy. I'm talking about eye contact, some tenderness, some laughter, a little bit of just relaxation together. That would be nice, but maybe like after next week when things calm down, like we have this propensity to always think things are going to, you know, be more chill later.

And that's the mistake that people make. You really have to be making an effort to connect with your partner every single day. And it doesn't have to be this whole thing. It doesn't have to be going out on a date. It could just be eye contact and just saying, I appreciate you, I love you. Or, you know, if you know your wife loves to hear that she's beautiful, you tell her that in a way that's very heartfelt. You know, whatever feels very meaningful to your partner because everyone likes to hear different things. Another piece here is disabusing people of the idea that if it's a good relationship,

it's like smooth sailing and easy, you know? And it's like, no, it's work no matter what, right? Like there must be something wrong with this relationship because we keep having these difficult things that we have to work through. Yeah, it's so, and this is where it gets so incredibly nuanced because there are some people who all they know is, hardship in relationships. All they know is hard. And then they're single and they keep choosing the hard. And for those people, I have to say, you know what? Relationships take work.

But as the Gottman say, there has to be a disproportional amount of good times to bad times. Like you might go through, especially if you're with someone over decades, you're going to have maybe many marriages within that relationship and you're going to go through hard times. But overall, things should be better than they are not, you know, and it shouldn't be so hard and laborious all the time. It's not supposed to be that either. But yes, relationships take work. It's not smooth sailing, but here's something that people, it's going to be hard for people to hear, should I say it? Please.

The more complicated you are, the more reactive you are. the more struggle you have with finding meaning in life, not happiness, but meaning in life. The more you, the more selfishness you have to overcome. The more work you're going to have to do in a relationship. And it's not about, because remember, it's who you choose, because that is always important, but it's also who you choose to be.

and sometimes the hardest work in a relationship is not just how do I get along with this other sovereign autonomous human being who has their own mind and their own beliefs and their own opinions which is part of the reason why I love them by the way how am I going to get along and live with them it's also how am I going to overcome my pride my selfishness my own complicated stuff that's the work and bring it all to the table And bring it on your table. In order to do that, to have that level of open, intimate communication with your partner, there has to be a foundation of trust. And I think, you know, in my experience or observation, when people are avoidant, and I would call myself an avoidant person. Don't. Well, we can get into that in a minute.

But there is this fear that is. that is oh if I shared with this person like what I really felt or what I really think or my real opinion on this that will be the end of the relationship I'll be rejected or you know I'll just be dropping a grenade on this thing that's that's the mind of many men because gender's involved in this too a lot of men think like that and what is the women the typical like women version of of that. If I say what I want, I'm going to be too needy or they're going to be abandoned. I'm going to be left.

You know, yeah. And so are those the two kind of paramount obstructions to open communication, do you think? Yeah, those are huge ones. And so how can you disabuse people of this or, or, you know, make the argument for having the hard conversation anyway? By understanding that every single person is afraid. that they're not good enough in some way in some way and in a relationship a romantic relationship where the stakes are high you are that fear of not being good enough and then eventually if

you're not good enough then somehow you're going to be deprived of love that's what we're all that is the pain that we are all trying to avoid is failing and not being good enough and losing love. So if your belief system includes, well, if I tell the truth, she's not going to be able to handle it. And then it's going to become a whole thing. So I rather just avoid it. What you could do instead is learn how to stay grounded,

even if she has a reaction. And how can the respective partners signal trust to the other one that it's safe to have this exploration because we all want greater intimacy and greater intimacy is purchased through engaging with this process. Yes. So part of it is how you express it. When you can express something that's difficult to express by starting out by saying, I think this could be just me and my perspective, or this is what I'm struggling with and this might be a me problem. I don't know.

So if you can be accountable, personal responsibility is the medicine. Instead of I'm having this problem and I think it's you. Yeah, that's probably not a good way to go about it. And we do that even if we're trying to be sensitive. You hurt me, you did this, you did that. Instead of, you know, this was my experience. You know, I am hurt, but I also realized that there might be more to this story, and I want to talk about it with you. Yeah, that's something that I've learned in AA, like just own your side of the street and share your experience without pointing fingers or castigating the other person. I think that's the best thing about the 12-step program is forcing people to take radical accountability. In this process of trying to communicate more

openly, I think you need to have a self-understanding of like, you know, kind of what you're comfortable with in that type of dynamic as well as an understanding of what works and what doesn't work for the partner. Like my wife and I, we kind of have an unspoken rule. Like when we are getting after each other about something, like we kind of stay in it until we find ourselves to the other side. And we're pretty good at conflict resolution. That's great. And we have a amazing communication around these sorts of things, but that's not for everybody. Like some people like need to exempt themselves from the situation in order to not be reactive to emotionally, you know, regulate themselves and return to it. Absolutely. But you don't take, you don't take a

whole day. You don't take a week. You say, you know, I need an hour and you say, I love you. I'm completely flooded with so much intense emotion right now. I'm going to go regulate. Give me a couple hours, babe. As long as you do return to the conversation. You have to promise to return and you have to always return. Otherwise, you are unreliable and you can't be trusted. What are some of the other myths out there that trip people up? Something that I talk about in the book is that you really can't convince someone to love you. You can't make someone be a better partner. All you can do is be the kind of partner in person you want to be and hope that that inspires better connection. And if it doesn't, then maybe you have something to figure out about that particular relationship. But you can't

make someone fall in love with you. You can't make someone love you well. You can't make someone choose you out of a sea of people like you're the person. And you should never, ever, ever try. You You should only try to be you and the best version of you. Neatiness is not a good look anyway. It's terrible. But it is this real pernicious thing because on some level, we all, we all, you know, we need and want love. And in order to get it, like, we pursue these people who we believe are going to deliver it to us for us, right? where the real solution here is like the more work you do on yourself, it's like water rises to

its own level. So if you're trying to attract a certain person, but you don't really have anything to give because you haven't engaged in that process of trying to, you know, work yourself out and heal yourself and improve yourself, then it's unlikely that, you know, even if you go on a couple dates with this person, that it's going to work out. Yeah. Instead, if you work on yourself and rise your own level up so that you are a match for that person, then you have something to offer and you become more attractive to that person.

Absolutely. But this is work. This is work nobody wants to do, Jillian. Well, because it's hard. It's hard, but here's a myth. And then I have another myth. It's not like you go into a cave and do all this work on yourself tirelessly

and then you come back and you're ready for the relationship because you know how many people come to me single and they're like, I was doing so well. I loved myself. my life was full. I was doing well.

And then I got into the relationship. And because you have to learn in the relationship. Yeah, that's another AA thing. It's like if you want to know your character flaws, like get into a relationship. Absolutely. It's like you can go meditate in the cave as long as you want. But as soon as you're in the world, that's the real litmus test.

And you have to be willing to look in the mirror and to be able to do that work. And it's just humility. It's just checking the ego. The other piece there is this notion that you have to, achieve some level of self-perfection in order to, you know, make yourself attractive and available to the person you would really like to be dating, right? We're all doomed.

Yeah. And so that's a process that is going to lead you to not a great place and has no, there's no end to that anyway. Here's what people are most attracted to. Men, women, doesn't matter who you are. Confidence. Confidence is not having faith in you being perfect or your perfectionism. Confidence is having faith in yourself in spite of or despite the fact that you are very flawed. A sense of your own internal capacity. Yes. And look, not every character defect is created equal. And a lot of people don't know, you know, ones where you really have to work on it versus yeah i mean i don't like speaking to the fact like people wanting someone perfect like i want someone you know they're never anxious or they never struggle with anything and they're always

consistent and this and this and that and i just want that it's like okay well i recommend that you don't compromise on someone being having integrity meaning they don't lie to you they don't steal and they they treat you with respect and they treat the people around them with you see if they are if they're a career person if they're in business the way they handle themselves at work this is this is called character i don't see anxiety or you know having whatever like really struggling with public speaking or even just struggling with you know your relationship with a parent or you're struggling with some procrastination like these are not character defects that really are deal breakers you know

I think there is a tendency to kind of self-identify with whoever you're in a relationship with, if they're doing something that you don't like or whatever, it becomes this like this referendum, you know, on the state of the relationship. Yes. Instead of just being like, oh, that's interesting that they're kind of having a moment and spiraling out, but it doesn't have anything to do with me and like, oh, do you need support? Like, I'm available if you need that. But I don't need to let that disregulate my entire day.

Yes. And some people are just better at that than others. And so they, so they're better match with someone who maybe spirals out a lot because it doesn't, it's not incredibly triggering to them. And it goes back to it begins with you because you have to understand like not everything they're doing is about you. Exactly. It almost never is. Almost never is. And that's like the real unlock in the entire thing.

And but they're reminding you of mom or dad or your ex and then you're projecting and then you're forgetting the fact that like you have to give someone. someone grace and that you're a real pain in the butt too sometimes. And so again, it always boils down to know what's absolutely intolerable. And if you can be very, very open-minded and easygoing and flexible about the rest, then chances are you're a pretty good partner. In order for that to function at the highest level, both people have to have growth mindsets and some basic commitment to their own respective self-improvement. And there's not going to be like a perfect balance of that. But if somebody is not interested in that

and the other person is, that doesn't seem like it's going to work. It's not going to work. And some people are just raised also with that. You know, they're just raised with, I don't know, just having a sort of like not taking, not making mountains out of mohills kind of thing, you know, and just having a lot of flexibility in relationships.

And look, if you're someone, look, I've met people and I've met women who've said, you know, I'm, I'm very loving, I'm very nurturing, but I remember speaking to this woman. She's like, but I'm a lot. And I used to always date men who would tell me I'm too much. And I thought, okay, I'm too much. I need to figure some things out. And, you know, there were some things that, because we all are responsible. She's like, you know, I definitely had to be less reactive. I really had to work on certain things in my behavior. I did that and I also married a guy who just like, for whatever reason, maybe it was his relationship with his mom. He was like, you're not too much for me. Like, it's cool. Like, I kind of like this. You're the challenge I've always wanted. So again, it was a combination of her. She wasn't fixing herself. She wasn't changing herself. But she, you know, worked on a few behaviors that she was like, you know what, this could be a little bit better. And then also she chose someone who just, it was like,

I like this. But that opens a door to a whole other really important piece here that you talk about which is like the story of it all. Yeah. So I'm a lot, you know,

maybe, but like it's also a story that that person seems attached to, right? Like I'm avoidant? This is, yeah, like, yeah, right, exactly. I'm not going to let you get away with that. And it becomes like an excuse for the behavior. Right.

You know, it's, it's, you know, psychiatry speak that makes us feel like we're doing something because we can put a label on it, but we're not actually doing anything to modify the behavior, right? And we're all, you know, humans are storytelling creatures. We learn by stories

and we make sense of the world and ourselves through stories. But those stories, you know, generally aren't anchored necessarily in anything that's actually true. And there's so many ways in which our attachment to those stories lead us to poor outcomes or astray. Yes.

So talk a little bit about the story aspect of all of this. Anything that we put after the word I am, we identify with. Anything that we identify with, we become almost addicted to it.

And then we stop seeing ourselves as very nuanced, multidimensional, multifaceted beings who are capable of changing behavior. There's also, well, I'm this, so, you know,

this is just who I am. No, no, no. can actually change that you can change that and if you believe that that's who you are believe it or not that's who shows up that's who's going to show up a lot of the time and then we then then we do something that's sort of what avoid in or anxious and then we go well that's who i am and you know i have this thing called you know insecure attachment you know all these diagnoses and um it's doing more harm in my view and this is I'm going to get some you know maybe some flag for this but I think it's doing more harm than good I think it's great to have an understanding I think it's been a very very important

contribution to the world of psychology catchment theory but I think that it's gone too far and a lot of times people are saying well I'm avoided or I'm anxious it's like are you or were you just in a situation where you didn't know how to handle it or are you just reacting to something to your environment in that moment. There's just way too much nuance. For me, I have to look at the errant behavior. I have to own it. And then I have to identify the need that it is filling. Like I'm doing it for a reason because it's doing something for me. What do you believe it is? What need is it meeting for you? Well, it would depend on the behavior, right? So let's talk about an avoidant behavior. So yeah. So if I'm avoiding a difficult conversation,

it's most likely because I feel that if I were to be honest in that context, that I will be, you know, rejected and abandoned because fundamentally I'm unworthy of love and love is a transactional construct that I have to earn. And the way that I earn it is by putting a mask on and showing up in a way that I think that person wants me to show up. You just, that's your story. Yeah, so this is a story. Yes. And like, I'm sticking to it.

You know what I mean? But like, okay. Now what, right? And so for me, yeah, the contrary action is like, okay, I know that's my urge or my tendency. And I can feel it coming on or I can be aware of it when I have that resistance. And then the work is to do the contrary thing, which is to not avoid it and go directly towards it. And every time I do that, it's muscle memory. You're gaining experience with this new behavior.

and the discomfort of it reduces, and that doesn't mean that it ever goes away. But with each one of those experiences, when you endure it and you get to the other side and you realize like you weren't abandoned or you weren't, you know, it's like there's a time and a place for all of these things, of course, but that's the hard part.

Like that's when you detach from the story and try to tell a new story. Yes. And let's, can I add something to it? try to understand what her story is in that moment, right? Because oftentimes I would think part of this story that you have is that you are going to disappoint her. Is that true? I'm going to disappoint her, but she will finally, you know, get a full picture of, like,

who I am and realize she made a terrible mistake. Right. So that's internal shame. It's not, I do this across the board, not just with my wife. I feel like I do this in all kinds of professional and social situations. Right. So it's the shame. But if we think about what the other person needs,

then we lower the risk of us being too self-involved in our own story. Sure. And what she needs is all of me. You know what I mean? Like that's what she's craving and I'm depriving her. Like I'm declining to fulfill that need, which is fundamentally intimacy by, you know, hiding from it

as opposed to, you know, engaging with it. Yes. Is that, would you agree with it? Yes, I think that's wonderful. And also, like, her fear of not being enough so that every time you do that, then she's wondering, maybe she doesn't, or the other person is wondering,

maybe this person doesn't see me as worth it. Or, you know, I have no idea that they feel ashamed. That's super interesting. Yeah. All right. I'm going to think about that. Okay. Today's episode is brought to you by Broca.

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Do they break up with this person? And how is that trust going to be rebuilt? When it comes to infidelity, there's lots of different stages to healing. One is the person who did lie or cheat or did the betrayal. They have to show remorse for hurting their partner. They often won't say that they are sorry for actually doing what they did. But they're sorry that what they did was the wrong thing to do to their partner. right like so they had the experiences maybe was important to them but they have to show a tremendous

amount of remorse you have to almost beg for forgiveness that's very important so that's just one that's just one layer of it that's not all of it if the person who is cheated on has wounding around that that's going to make that all the more difficult i would imagine to repair it's very difficult to repair but we have to also look into why people have why people cheat it's then this is difficult um there's there are people out there who cheat no matter what they're just have very very very low character and um they don't treat people well and they just cheat and i could psychoanalyze them and their family but it's it's there's no point you know they're going to cheat on whoever that's not as common as you're feeling disconnected from your partner which is as much of

your fault and responsibility as your partner and throw in you feel disconnected from yourself and that is the number one thing you feel disconnected from yourself and that is the number one thing You feel disconnected from yourself. So you don't know how to connect with your partner or you're living this life with your partner that feels so divorced from the aliveness that you want to feel. So instead of figuring out how to feel alive in ways that are actually productive

and ways that include your partner, you're going to have an affair. The affair meets the need for adventure, for novelty, for mystery, for uncertainty. And then at home you have all this safety. I see this all the time in women who cheat. My husband's so safe. It's very stable, but then I feel alive with this other person.

I remember working with someone. And she, you know, her husband was very devoted and she loved her husband, and he was a really good guy. but she was having this affair with someone who was, it's like out of a movie, you know, brooding, dark, unpredictable. You know, she knows, she knows in her mind, if I were actually being a relationship with him, it wouldn't last or it would be a disaster.

Why do I crave him? on the outside you can think well because maybe your husband's boring or maybe it's because you know whatever like your marriage has gotten boring or maybe as was the case with her you don't feel connected to what makes you happy anymore and what gives your life meaning and so this affair is part distraction for from that, but also part entryway into something that feels like your blood is moving through your veins again. And it actually has nothing to do with your husband, even though it has everything to do with him because you are destroying your marriage and have the potential destroy this man's

life because of something that you're doing. So it's the erotic with this affair, but it's something that she's missing inside her life. It's super interesting. I mean, it is also an example of looking for an externality to solve that, you know, internal dilemma around like meaning, you know, finding meaning in your life and externalizing it, right, rather than taking responsibility for it and like acting out in a self-sabotaging way. Or needing some adventure, needing some novelty, needing some excitement, but doing it

in a way that's self-sabotaging behavior, as opposed to ways that actually will give your life more meaning and make your relationship stronger? The fundamental question for so many people who are in a relationship that isn't like perfect or whatever, you know, at some point something happens and the question arises like, do I break up with this person or do I stick it out?

You know, like probably everybody in every relationship has, you know, come to that at some point and had to make that decision. How do you walk people through how to make the right decision? Obviously, it's incredibly case specific and everything. But is. Is there, are there some general principles to help people solve that equation for themselves? Yeah, it's the question. You know, it's the question I get the most. It's like the top three questions that I get the most. How do I know if it's time to go? So low-hanging fruit first because I think it's important. If there's any abuse, any violence of any kind, you get out. there is no plan B you don't give them a second chance it's done and you get help aside from

that and let's say you're invested this is not someone you've been dating so I think I think I should answer it like if you've just been seeing this person for like three months and you're not sure if this is it or like you're married or you're you know in full partnership let's start with the full partnership often when we are thinking about if we should stay or go we're thinking about one person and one person only, ourselves. We're thinking about what we're not getting, the needs that are not being met. And we're not thinking, how have I been as a partner?

Am I meeting their needs? Do I even know what their needs are? You know, it's like remarkable to me, and maybe this is, you know, I don't know if you and your wife have done this or maybe this will be a fun thing for you guys to do later tonight. But a lot of people are in relationships, and they don't even know what their partner needs to feel loved and important, cherished, to feel like they are important to them, to feel like they're growing together. Like, they just don't know what the other person needs.

The needs are unstated. They're unstated. Yeah, you said this amazing thing. And uninvestigated. I love this phrase that you use, which is unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments. which kind of gets at the heart of that. That's it. If you don't bring your voice to what those needs are,

you can't expect them to get met. And when they're not met, you simmer with all sorts of resentment that just sours everything. Yes. So before you leave, you have to ask yourself, first of all, do I know what, if there were three things that my partner can do differently

and they were to do it, Would that be enough? Because I've spoken to people and I said, okay, let's say they made all these changes. They did A, B, C, and D. They did all the things that have been missing. And I've had people say, you know what? I still wouldn't want to be with them.

And then you kind of have your answer. Then you know. Then you know. But oftentimes it's like, if there were two things that they could change, would that be enough? And a lot of times people were like, yeah, I just need these two things.

Okay, so now we can work with that. then there's do you know what they need and how would you rate yourself as a partner and can you try meeting their needs for about 30 days can you try just being the you know thinking about meeting their needs and being the partner that you want to be and seeing if something magical happens because often it does believe it or not if you pull the rip cord before performing that experiment yeah you're your jumping ship too soon your jumping ship too soon. In the context of a newer relationship, though, like how is it different? I think it's different because, you know, if you're like seeing someone for three months and you're not sure

if you want to really build with this person, I think values are so important. I wish I'd learned this at a much younger age. Most people don't really take the time to figure out what's really important to them. And I think that having, you don't want to be the same thing, same as your partner. incredibly boring but you want to have some core values that are the same you know you want to have you don't have to i mean preferences are one thing you know yeah sure it be nice if you both ate the same way or went to bed at the same time these things help but you can have all those things on point but if you don't share like core values and how you and what you believe a life well lived is It's never going to work.

So you've got to ask yourself, does this person, do you feel like you can build a life with this person? Do you feel like this is someone who you could really trust? Do you respect them and do you feel respected by them? I think that if you don't have that interconnection and some clarity around all of the things that you just said, it's so easy. and tempting when someone exciting comes along and they have this whole world that you're not a part of that is, you know, enticing. And you're like, well, my life is kind of like whatever it is right now, but it looks pretty good over there. I'm just going to like go over there. And I'm going to go live in this person's world and their life. Never a good idea. Got to have your own life.

I don't care how small it is. But you have to have things outside of the relationship that gives your life meaning. How does the calculus around needs differ in that earlier relationship context? Because I'm thinking about the confusion that can happen where people mistake like unmet needs for unrealistic expectations. Yeah, I know. It's like, well, this is my need. And it's like, is that really your need or that just what you want? Exactly. Exactly. So a little self-inventory. everybody wants everyone wants to be loved so what makes you feel loved have people write it down and sometimes what I see is a lot of rules well when they call it this particular time or this and this and that they have to text

back yeah yeah all these rules and the thing is that the more rules you have the more likely your partner, whoever you're seeing, is going to break those rules because no one can follow all the rules, get too many of them. But if you can summarize, well, I feel most loved when I'm told, but I'm told in a way like where they're just, not just saying love you, but they're looking at me in the eyes and they tell me and I can feel it through their eyes. You know, there's a presence there. Or I feel most loved when someone really cares about, like, my well-being. If I'm not feeling well, like, they care.

They care. They want me to feel, they want me to feel good. I feel loved when someone is, wants me to thrive. Like, they want me to be happy. I know that they can't make me happy. but they want me to be happy. That makes me feel love. So I try to, those are very realistic expectations.

What's unrealistic is they have to always be in a good mood and they have to always be like, you know, paying attention to me and they have to, you know, not have any problems. They can never be in a bad mood. And they just, I have to feel good. I have to feel good always when I'm around them. I don't want you to feel miserable.

a relationship you're not a relationship is not supposed to be extended periods of time and misery that there's a problem but sometimes you're going to be miserable and guess what it's not your partner to you most of the time what do you think women get wrong about men and vice versa men get wrong about women in terms of assumptions and expectations like where to where to kind of like the gender politics uh you know get involved here and and derail us I think what women get wrong about men is that they don't care. Because they're often the world, you know, they only think about themselves.

Conquering, whatever. They're often the world conquering, whatever. They just think about themselves and they just don't, you know, they don't care. They don't get their feelings hurt. Or they don't, you know, they don't get insecure. They just don't care. They're careless.

And emotionally unavailable. And emotionally unavailable. And the thing is, is that a lot of men, particularly of a certain age group, one of the things that men need to get better at, and we're speaking very generally here, is emotional availability, is to not run away from emotional intimacy. I think that's a task. That's a, that's a, that's work that many men are tasked with if they want to be better partners. Women are tasked with not constantly bringing their complaints about the relationship and about their partner to their partner and seeing more of what's going, what's doing well. The thing is, women, we're wired for safety.

So we, safety is the most important thing to a woman because we are physically weaker than men. and we are the target of violence in a way that men are not. And so we're more vulnerable. And so this is biological. So a bad habit that women have is let me just keep seeing, let me search for what's missing and for what's wrong and hyper focus on that because in some way that's just going to keep me safe

as long as I'm hyper aware of that. What she doesn't realize is that the man she's with does care and does want to be emotionally available, and he needs to be told that he's wonderful too, and he needs to be told that he's strong, and he needs to be told all these things, you know, that makes him feel good about himself. What men get wrong about, I know there's a lot to unpack here, what men get wrong about women, all she cares about is controlling me or, you know, needy, or you know she's going to be like just like mean to me and shame me and use every i'll use my vulnerability against me so i'm not going to be vulnerable because why would i do that because this this crazy creature is just going to annihilate me yeah the the idea that uh yes as a man i know i'm being told that uh i need to be more emotionally available and vulnerable um But then when I do, it gets weaponized against me, so I'm not doing that anymore.

Yeah, we really screw you up in that way, for sure. Here's the thing, we can all do better. We can all do better. Most women are craving their man to be more open emotionally. But we don't want you to be constantly talking about your negative feelings. Then we're turned off. It's just how it goes. is because, and I know this is hard to hear,

and it's not about, it's not, we want to hear when you're having a hard time. Don't pretend like you're not having a hard time, but don't always come to me with your hard time over years. Because then are you going to be strong enough to protect me? See how this works? Right, it becomes an encouraging.

on that idea of feeling safe. Of feeling safe, yeah. The need to feel like, okay, everything is under control, that doesn't mean that there aren't problems and difficulties, but fundamentally overall, like, you got this, right? And also, along the way, I need to feel seen, like really seen, and I need your presence. Yes.

And I think that's a challenge for a lot of men to just be, you know, just to be present and restrain the impulse to try to, fix whatever is going on and to just be available yes the feminine always wants the presence always wants presence i think where women are getting it wrong with men is wanting this perfect communicator and i and so many men are not raised to emot in that way the same way that women are and i say you know choose the guy who's really present for your emotions and if he's having a hard time emoting, make it safe for him to emote because he's going to think that you are going to use

it against him because if he says something that triggers some insecurity inside you, you have to self-regulate and not make it all about your insecurity, and you have to then be present for him saying something that might in that moment, if you were to allow your mind to really get the best of you is going to feel like abandonment or is going to feel unsafe. Overall, what I see between men and women, gender stuff, if we can make more room for each other's humanity and also understand, you know, if we want to take it away from gender, we just want to make it feminine masculine, that there are just certain things that the feminine really thrive off of. And there are certain things that the masculine really thrive off of. And so if you

are in a relationship with the opposite sex, you are in a relationship with someone who's more feminine when you're more masculine. Having some awareness of this is going to go a long way in your relationship. That's an incredible insight. Yeah, I think that's super, super valuable. Being able to create that safe place

and to remember to self-regulate, because if you are reactive in that moment, then that person will feel punished for sharing that thing and they're not going to do it the next time they will have learned that lesson it works at cross purposes with the goal reward good behavior

we are like dogs in that way we are we are we learn better we do better when we went with positive reinforcement we're very similar to dogs in that way we do not punishment is never a motivator

talk a little bit more about the parental piece I mean this is one of your nine truce Right. And it's somewhat counterintuitive. Basically, like, if you want to be in a healthy relationship, like, you got to heal whatever bullshit happened, you know, that whatever, however you were raised and whatever nonsense you are holding onto around, like,

your parents, like, you got to work that shit out. And you won't fully work it out, but you have to somewhat. It's going to creep in and infect, you know, like, turn your relationship into a festering wound. Yes. Look, you're not going to heal every single wound, but most people, and I really do mean most when I say this, are unconsciously playing out those wounds all the time.

And so if you want to be in a healthy relationship or you want to make your relationship healthier, you have to be aware of the unconscious. You have to bring it into your conscious awareness and realize, oh, God, I'm doing that thing again because a mom did this and blah, blah, blah, I got to stop. How does one begin to do that? You know, the wake-up call for me was like, wow.

I thought that if I could just forget about my father, because I was estranged from him for a while that I, you know, if I could just pretend he didn't exist, then it wouldn't be a problem anymore. Right. The joke's on me. How'd that work out? Hi, not so well. And so it really, it was finally, I mean, it took such a tragic ending to a relationship for me

to be sort of like smacked in the face with this reality of, you know, you can't, you've got to, you need to address this. You need to address this. But looking back through the rear view, it was divinely ordained for your growth and evolution. You know what I mean? Like these things that we look on as horrible or tragic or why me are all these incredible opportunities and lessons

for our growth and evolution if we can grab onto them. They just tend to have to show up in very acute ways in order for us to pay attention. Yes, and this is why I feel so passionate about helping people through heartbreak, which is, you know, no one wants to hear, like, learn the lesson, but there are lessons. And you have, and if you want to not repeat the lessons,

you got to learn them. There's a violence, a cultural violence, to the story we kind of tell ourselves about what a breakup represents. It's a failure. Like, if a relationship ends, it was a failure. And it's not necessarily a failure. Like, it could have just come to its completion

and, you know, people can go on their separate ways or whatever. And, yeah, it's lined with all of these lessons. But just because something ended doesn't mean that it was bad or you're bad or somebody did anything bad. Absolutely. I agree with that wholeheartedly. And if you can look at the story differently, you know it's like it's just being mindful about it it's being able to because coming back to stories

we get fixated on the story and we get fixated on the story of the relationship every relationship has a story we get fixated on the story that surrounds the breakup and then we create a meaning out of the story a lot of people tragically conclude well i'm just not good enough or i suck at relationships or relationship sucks or relationship equals pain or love hurts all these things and then that person is really in a pickle because they want love they don't want to be alone but they equate being in a relationship with all this negative meaning and then they wonder why they keep having problems in relationships because they're stuck in that story as opposed to can you look at the breakup that may be traumatized you the most and start to look at it from

lots of different perspectives and maybe see that it meant something totally different. I could so easily be locked into the story of my breakup, of my divorce. And I was for a little while, of course, because I was hurt and I had to process. My freedom comes from the fact that, like, I mean, God bless that relationship. God bless me for being in that. They talk about divine order and intervention. Like, I just, clearly I was meant to be on a different path. and it's not a failure.

But you glean that clarity by performing that fearless inventory. You know, you have to do an autopsy on your side of the street and your behavior and, you know, elucidate the patterns that, you know, that you performed that contributed to this. That's where you can begin the process of unraveling those patterns and creating new ones. Because I drew a line in the sand. And what forced me to draw that line in the sand is I was in so much pain. And most people change when they're in a lot of pain. Yes, they do.

Why is that? Why can't we just raise our hand and say, I get it, like, before, you know, I see where this is headed. I'm going to, like, course correct now. That's what I'm trying to help people do. We have to, like, end up, I think about this a lot, like, these crises,

your crisis, I've had versions of this in my life, and they become these incredible, like, launch pads for growth and evolution. But, like, did I really need that? Like, I could have opted to, you know, make these decisions short of that. It's just that I think we do on some level, you know, need those experiences to wake us up to another reality for ourselves. Yeah, it's just the way life works. But we can, once we have an experience like that, we can train ourselves now for certain things. You know, once we kind of wake up, as you say,

say we can be like more awake and like be more aware of like certain things like oh this is if I go this down this route this is not going to be a good thing you know I think it's also appreciating the gravity of these things like it would be easy to like you know you compartmentalize this thing with your dad it's not that big of a deal like I've dealt with it he's whatever and I'm going to live my life and of course it it it leaches out you know but the stakes get a lot higher when you have kids. Yes. And I think it's incumbent upon you to take responsibility for those things because until or

unless you do, you will pass them on and perpetuate whatever unhealthy behavior pattern. You're going to instill it in them and then they're going to go out in the world and do it. And this is how these, you know, this is how these patterns of generational trauma like continue to exist. And so what a gift to have that awareness and say, I actually have the opportunity. to not do this anymore and to model my behavior in a healthy way so that my kids are spared of what I had to endure. And they're not going to go out into the world and make the kind of mistakes that I did or my parents did. The greatest gift a parent can give a child, I believe,

is teaching them how to face pain. Parents naturally want to protect their children from suffering. I mean, is there any greater love than the love for a child? and suffering is inevitable. Pain is inevitable. So you want to teach your children how to have the resilience to face pain by how you face pain because they're learning from you.

So learning how to regulate your emotions is how you teach your child how to regulate theirs. Because what a lot of parents do unconsciously and with the purest of intentions is they try to control their kid in such a way that they don't make the same mistakes as they did,

as opposed to just teach them how to be more resilient. And you do that by showing that, by showing that, modeling it. And also just also, if they go through something painful, sit down with them and just say, and tell them about, like, you know, how there can be a story. Tell them about, like, there are different ways to look at it. You know, let's talk about the lesson. Let's talk about like how great it is to fail because when you fail, you're not afraid of failing.

And if you're not afraid of failing, you're going to be so much more successful in like whatever success looks like to you. The kids have to feel like the parents have got this. You know, they need to have that sense of security and safety. But I think if that is well established, then you have the opportunity to not be afraid. You know, like, I think there's this instinct, like, we can't let the kids know that, like, something isn't going well or whatever, because it may threaten that sense of security. But if that's established and, you know, intact, within that, you can be like, oh, my, you can, you can, like, be a little bit more vulnerable with your kids, I think. And I think you're modeling that, you know, you're not, you're not like, because kids can see through it anyway. I was just going to say that.

They know what's going on. So when you're pretending, like, you're, you know, you. you're in control of something that you're not, like they know, and that in and of itself is modeling a certain sort of behavior and it's undermining trust. But when you can say, you know, like I tell kids my stories about, you know,

crazy stuff I did when I was younger or whatever mistakes I made and we laugh about it or whatever, but I think it's important to demonstrate emotional resilience, you know, in a safe context for them. Absolutely. And it's just, yeah, I went through this and, but, you know, I changed the meaning. I changed the story.

I, you know, whatever, got clean, whatever your, you know, whatever their stories are that you tell, that you tell them. And I did this and I learned so much and I realized that like you just have to keep going. You can't, whatever, you can never give up. Don't do this, you know. Just don't give up when you go, when you're, when you face something hard. Yeah. Shifting gears here a little bit. I don't purport to have like any understanding of what it's like to be dating in 2025.

You know, like it is just a, you know, I've been married a long time. Yeah. And I have a lot of compassion for people who are trying to figure that out right now. It seems very difficult and complicated. And that applies across the board. Like I, you know, listen, like probably the vast majority of my friends and my wife's friends are like divorced or you know looking for love and you know i have teenagers and a 29 year old and a 30 year old and so i get you know field reports from friends and you know step

sons and kids and young people about just how difficult and challenging it is right now so how do you make sense of this and counsel people i think it's never been easy to find love So in some ways, nothing has changed. It's never really been easy. What's harder is that many, many years ago, you would meet people through your circle. If you went to church, maybe it's through church or synagogue, whatever it is,

or through your yoga studio. It would be like through community. The hardest thing in my view about dating right now is that we are not as people in the society as involved in community as we used to be. So therefore, you're meeting more strangers rather than people who are friends or cousins of someone you know.

And then strangers have less accountability. They can ghost you. Because if you're a really good friend's cousin, you go on a date with your friend's cousin or whatever, someone you're in community with their cousin, they can't ghost you. because there's too much accountability there. Then it's going to get back and then it's going to be a thing and blah, blah, blah.

So there's that. There's also just a lack of manners. So this is what's missing. Like some things are just the same in the sense that it's never been easy to find love. It's never been easy just to find a match. Unless you are raised in a culture where the match is made for you, it's never been an easy thing. You know, before dating apps, people would go to bars.

is that the bar is not a great place to meet, you know, your long-term partner. So it's never been easy. And I think that's really important for me to reiterate, because I think that we get into these sort of like catastrophic thinking, like it's just everything is horrible now. No, not true. And the problem is, like I have friends and clients who have met the love of their lives, quote unquote, on dating apps.

So I think there's dating apps can can be a really great place to meet someone. But there's also what runs the risk is all the disposability and the lack of manners. And the more we are on our phones and individualized and not in community and not and not, you know, you're texting instead of like meeting someone on the phone and making eye contact, there's just this wall that exists. and when you're behind the wall, you're like, you don't have to have really strong character. You can get away with a lot of things, and that's what makes it very difficult. It's by definition, objectification of people.

I mean, you're swiping these people. I mean, they're disposable consumer products. Everybody's seeking real intimacy and connection on some level, but the means to accomplish that is through a screen, in which we're interacting with people as if they're kind of products on a shelf that were price comparing. And you can go on more dates

so that you are also more, you're more at risk of just like meaningless hookups and situations. Like never have we been more starred for meaningful connection while simultaneously people are just settling for like these sort of these connections that are not really deep

because you can go on several dates a week. The incentive structure is kind of messed up, right? I mean, if you're just swiping, you're just, oh, there's an unlimited supply here. And depending upon, you know, where you find yourself in the

kind of pecking order of desirability, you're in a position to have unlimited choice, right? And so with that, it's like, well, why should I commit to anyone? There's always somebody else. And so if somebody doesn't meet

my insane expectation, I can just move on. And there doesn't need to be any decorum because I can just send a curt text or I can do nothing and pretend it never happened. Exactly. And then there's also just the nature of tech and algorithms, which is like, well, like, how do I cheat the algorithm? So I'm just going to put a picture of me from 10 years ago or whatever, like lie about my height or, you know, I'm not even being matched with good things. So then, you know, people are like, only relying on the dating apps. Like, if you want to meet someone, exhaust all your resources.

Because you have some choices. You can just live your life and love your life and trust that you'll meet someone when the timing aligns. Or you can get very intentional and exhaust all your resources. You can go on dating apps, You can meet people in real time.

If you could go, I don't know, take an archery class. If you want to like meet someone, like you can, you got to step outside your comfort zone a lot and make it like a job. The third choice is sit on your couch, daydreaming about Mr. Wright or Mrs. Wright and do nothing. And just swipe on the handheld casino in your hand. Exactly. And don't really do anything. What are the common complaints that you field from men and women about dating apps and how does it differ based on gender?

Well, this is sort of full circle. Women, it's just like no man is looking for a meaningful connection, totally emotionally unavailable. I hear that from women, friends of mine. Where, you know, where I want to date, where I can't find a good guy. Meanwhile, I have, I know lots of good men. And I have lots of good guy friends who say, you know, a similar version of that. Like, I've gone on all these dates and like it never works out or I get ghosted or, you know, I can't match with anybody. So the not matching with someone is big.

I also think that many, many people, more people than we'd like to admit don't have great social skills. So they go on these dates and they're just like sitting across like, you know, it's like this, right? but it's like they're interviewing each other and there's no energy for there even to be any chemistry and they don't know they're not particularly savvy when it comes to opening up or getting another person to open up and so I think there are lots of people who meet that actually could be a match but they end up not being a match because they're feeling awkward or they don't know how to talk to each other or they're expecting fireworks from like the moment they see each other. And so we have to be a lot more flexible.

So that's the, to get back to your original question, you know, no one, no one, men are just emotionally unavailable. I, with men and dating, I don't hear as many complaints other than, you know, maybe she just wasn't right. I have to be honest. But what breaks my heart is, and what I think is just almost utterly ridiculous, is the amount of comments of like, oh, yeah, that's because guys are like this or that's because women are like this. It's like, no. You want to figure yourself out before you go dating, figure one thing out.

Figure out your beliefs about whoever it is you date and sort that out because if you hate men but you love them, you're screwed. if you love women but you hate them you're screwed and this goes back to stories if you've been very badly hurt like i remember when my husband left i went through this i think it lasted a couple months where and this was very surprising to me because i'd never experienced this before where i would just i was also like in a fog my mom had died you know there was just i felt i was extremely vulnerable and i remember just like looking at random men men at like the coffee shop and just feeling like they were the enemy. And that's not part of my story.

That's not something that I've carried before. And it's just because I was so hurt by this one man that I made every man responsible for the sins of my ex-husband. And people are doing that well beyond the two-month mark and not even having that much trauma. They're making every woman responsible for the, you know, whatever. For their past grievances. Yeah. And you really, and unhealed wounds.

And you have to sort that out because recently I was around a couple of men both married. And I was speaking to them, they were giving me some business advice. And I had this thought. It really, really struck me. based on how they were with me and also how they are with their wives and how they are in the world and these are very, very well-known successful men.

They love women, and I don't mean sexually. They actually really, really like women. They really respect women, like deeply and profoundly. And I thought to myself, there is something distinctly different about being around men who genuinely like women. And I thought, wow,

there's so many women who hate men. I imagine that so many men on an unconscious level feel that they're hanging out with these women who really don't respect or like them. And I think both, Both men and women are feeling this all the time. And sure, there are, you know, some men out there who can be nightmares and don't behave well in the dating landscape and do do more of the ghosting. But there's lots of women who do that too.

There's always bad people. But if you're going to go out into the dating world, really try to figure out this aspect of it. and hang around some really good people of, you know, if you date women, hang around some good women, if you date men, hang around some good men, you know, they could be the wives or the husbands of others, but you want to, or they could be mothers, you know, it doesn't matter the age. It's very important not to have that unconscious belief of this person is the enemy because we feel that. I've never felt so safe

to be around men who I knew really champion women. If it's unconscious, though, it's informing your story in a way that you're unaware. Yes. And that story is continuously, like, affirmed and kind of emboldened by sharing it with your friends who are always going to tell you that you're right and, you know, like they're going to kind of like confirm your version of

whatever this story is. So the process of taking that unconscious thing, making it conscious so that you can then disassemble it and, you know, kind of understand it and create a new story for yourself demands some level of not only like work on your part, but like accountability. Like this is what you do. You're a coach. You can be this, you know, like, like a mirror. for the people that you work with but not everybody has a therapist at their disposal or somebody like yourself. They have

friends, but those aren't exactly, they're always the right people, you know, and the right context to really launder these ideas. So how does somebody find an accountability partner or engender more accountability into this process?

You can tell your friend, you know, your trusted friend, I want, I actually want to be held accountable. I want you to tell me the truth. But you're going to go to the friend that always tells you your right. But you, but you guys, I know. I know. I told them to hold me accountable and they're still, they're telling me I'm right. Or you hire a coach. Yeah. Or you join that group. I mean, recently I was speaking to a group of women. It's part of a membership that I have. And you know, I do it in a way that's very loving. But she shared a story. She was, she was so loving. And she was telling me about her boyfriend.

She lives in, she's European, lives in, Norway. And she was telling me about her boyfriend who just, she's like, he's amazing. You know, he's a great guy. He loves me. He's really patient with me. I have a lot of anxiety. And he's like really patient. But, you know, I have all these trust issues, blah, blah, blah. You know, a lot of the story that a lot of people have, particularly women. And, you know, I sometimes like get jealous or, you know, I have him explain things a lot to me. And he's starting. to get tired of it because he just wants to be trusted

and he's done nothing to break my child's done nothing but prove otherwise and I just don't know how to stop this and I'm going to go to therapy to figure out my childhood and blah blah blah I told her that I knew

when she shared the story that she was very close to sabotaging a very good relationship and that I wanted to intervene because I like to act more like an interventionist more than anything else. And when I see something like someone's about to sabotage the relationship, I got to think

quick. And I just, you know, the thing that came to my mind was accountability. And I said, you know, and I said it, and I delivered it very lovingly. And she knew she wanted the truth from me. And I said, you're being very selfish. All you're thinking about is you and your needs. You're not thinking about, and him. like his feelings are hurt

and he's feeling overwhelmed and his perspective being I've done nothing but I've given you no reason not to trust me and in fact I've been an amazing partner to you and yet I'm repaid for that with distrust and suspicion

I mean how does that as a man how does that feel well it just yeah it feels dismissive and disrespectful and unkind and unearned yeah and hurtful And she really took that in. She really took that in. I only bring this up because you brought up accountability and, like, seeking that out.

So you got to seek that out. And then the other layer of it was the reason why she was so anxious was because she was going through a hard time. She also, like, she was out of work, you know, she had been sick, so she wasn't working out the same way. You know, so she didn't have purpose meaning. She wasn't physically feeling well. So all the focus. goes to him. So I think that there's a lot to take from this story,

which is that context matters. And if you don't have anything in your life that gives you some sort of meaning and your relationship and your partner becomes the only focus and you're anxious, then you are going to just search for what's missing. Yeah, they become the vessel for all of your nonsense. The vessel for all of your nonsense.

And so how do you heal that? You heal that by your relationship with yourself. And your relationship with yourself is not about thinking endlessly about your thoughts. It's about what's missing and how can I learn to meet my needs better. It's so crazy that we understand and value the role of a coach or a mentor or an accountability partner in like so many areas of life. You know, it's like, if you're an athlete, you have to, you have a coach. Yeah. Understood, right?

If you are in school, you have a teacher. And then we kind of become adults. And it's like, all right, well, you're on your own now. You must have figured it out by now. It's completely insane, particularly in the context of relationships, when you understand and appreciate the fact that truly the quality of your life, the extent to which your life gives you meaning and purpose. and love and like all the things that make life worth living

all originate or track back to the quality of your relationships with other people. 100%. And we're all just freewheeling it out there, getting in our own way and dropping grenades on our relationships unnecessarily and just like screwing up constantly. Constantly. It's insane.

It's insane. We have to have a little laugh about it. So how do we like it's systemic, you know? It's almost like there needs to be a cultural shift where we kind of understand and value and prioritize the importance of all of us finding some version of you in our life to, you know, field our decisions by and check ourselves so that we can make sure that we preserve the thing that actually after all of it, after all the things that we're out there chasing, really is the only thing that matters. Absolutely. It is the only thing that matters. Find a mentor. And it could be. a therapist, but doesn't have to be. It could be a coach, doesn't have to be. But have a mentor, have a mentor, especially when it comes to this stuff.

But, you know, you want someone who knows more than you do when it comes to this area. You know? There's a lot of armchair psychologists out there right now. So it is a little tricky with that because there's plenty of people with their PDF program or whatever. Yeah. And I can easily see people, you know, going down blind alleyways and getting bad advice. also oh god terrible so this is how you filter it out you make sure that person has a mentor that you always make sure your mentor has a really like cool little like litmus test trick your mentor

should have a mentor and a lot of the armchair experts on social media don't have mentors are not actually working with someone they haven't actually gone through a certification program or I don't feel like you have to do years and years of psychology school to help people I just don't believe that I'm living proof of that yeah I mean what is it But I have mentors, man. I mean, I've, like, invested hardcore. I'm sure people say to you, like, I'm interested in the difference between what you do as a coach versus what a psychiatrist or a psychologist does.

And also, I'm sure people say to you, like, well, you know, who do you think you are? You don't have the credentials and the, you know, the PhD and all that kind of stuff. Like, what is your rebuttal to that? Well, you know, I've been lucky I really don't get that a lot. It's very, very rare that I get that. And I think it's because I have an incredible education, I have incredible mentors, and I've devoted my life for the last 12 years with the top mentors in the world. So I, you know, I've invested and I speak to them every week. And these are people who have helped families recover from

molestation. I mean, really hardcore things. So these are not just like, you know, the little mentor. These are like 80-year-olds who've been, you know, in the trenches of hardcore things. And so I often just don't even defend myself because I just know what has to be true. And I've been to therapists who have all the degrees and they haven't helped me. And I've been to therapists with less degrees and they have helped me. So, you know, I don't think it's always the degree, you know. I just don't. There are things that are outside of my scope.

if you're suicidal i'm not going to work with you i'm going to send you to a psychiatrist if you um yeah if you are a danger to yourself or if you are a danger to your child in a real violent way no no you're i'm not working with you that is i'm not qualified so i know what i'm qualified for and i know what i'm not qualified for in terms of of the modality itself my sense is that you're like you mentioned like I'm going to do an intervention on this person. Like this is, you know, in therapy, it's sort of just tell me more. And, you know, the therapist never really gets directly involved in decision making. That's changing.

Which is like, I guess I can kind of understand that, but also incredibly infuriating. Like, just tell me. You know, it's like, you've heard it all. Like, you know, why am I going to keep, you know, spinning this yarn when obviously you can see what I can't? Just tell me, you know, right? I've had Phil Stutz in here a couple of times, and he's pretty good about that. He's like, yeah, I leave people with, like, a tool

or here's what I would like you to do. Yeah. Being a coach allows you to have a more proactive role, I presume. Yes. And I do think that there's certain, there is a paradigm shift in the field of psychology where there's going to be more of that going on. more of intervening.

It's very hard for people to change. People can change. And you and therapy can be great for understanding your patterns, but what's the next step to make change? That's where things are. And to really see that there's so much context to a person's problem. That's what makes solving it so specific. and challenging and why I kind of bristle up against a lot of self-help

with a reductive like here are the 10 things that you should do to change your life because everything is so nuanced and unique. Yes. You know, context dependent for that person. But with that being said, with all of the people that you've worked with, what would you say is the differentiator between the people who can get it and like I want to change and then they actually go and do it

and make progress versus the person who struggles and really is challenged or unable to take these tools and put them into action to make the change. Hunger, their desire to change, often motivated by pain, so much suffering that you just can't stand in another minute. I think that's what makes people. It hasn't gotten bad in that.

Yeah, the rock bottom, you know, it's the same thing with addicts. And as you know, like you have to hit that, that threshold. So that's the biggest motivator. And then there are just people who have, they say they want things different, but they're still just getting so many needs met the old way, that it doesn't make sense the new way. And they're just some people who are just ready. It's so great working with someone who's ready.

They may be a slow learner in terms of our slow changer and everyone is different. But when someone's really ready, it's a beautiful thing. Willingness is a tricky, fickle thing. You can't compel it in somebody. So you have to have a why that's compelling. And sometimes that why is if I don't change, if I don't change, the... consequences are not ones that I want to live with.

As we wrap this up, what are, what is your sort of unifying thought that you want to leave people with about, you know, something, given them, I'm not asking you to like make some grand proclamation, but like maybe one insight that is overlooked or underappreciated in this, you know, context of navigating relationships. Mm-hmm. You know, working on yourself is not about fixing yourself. You're not broken. Working on yourself is literally unlearning a lot of beliefs and conditioning and patterns so that you can be free or more free or more whole. whole. And so I say this because in the whole personal development world, you know, the working on yourself and you have to do the work. Yeah, you do. But it's really more about self-awareness and it's not about fixing. So yes, work on yourself, self-reflect, but also understand that it's not easy but it's simple and that is you believe that you are not good enough in some way you've got some shame and even though there are parts of you that are not as amazing as the

other parts of you no one is walking around perfect so recognize that everything that you do that you're like, oh, why did I do that? Or why was I avoiding it? It's just because you are afraid that you are not good enough. So give yourself a break. We're all in it together. And if you can recognize that, then you can start to shed some of the pride and all the crap that kind of surrounds it.

That is the one insight that I really want people to understand. You're just, when you're starting to feel those old patterns come up, you are just afraid of failing. And if you fail, somehow love is going to be deprived. You're going to be deprived of love. That is literally, that's the game. That's it. Beautifully put. I think that really did encapsulate it.

I also think that it's the greatest gift that you can give to other people. Like, you can do it for selfish reasons because you want love. or you want to be happier or whatnot. But it also is such a benefit to everybody else, right? Like it's an act of selfless service as much as it is, an act of self-love. Absolutely. To everybody else.

Well said. Yeah. I love it. This was great. Your book, it begins with you. I mean, like smash bestseller sensation all over the world. Your face is all over the place. And you are performing an incredible public service in doing what you're doing.

So for people that are interested in learning more about you, they can pick up the book. Also, your podcast, Gillian on Love. How's that going? How are you enjoying that? I love it. It's a very different thing than what you do, you know, because it's more solo episodes. Yeah, you're just staring down the barrel of the camera and telling people what's up. I don't think I can.

I don't know how you do that. I don't know how you do what you do. Um, it's great. Uh, yeah, every, you know, every video is like very kind of focused on a particular issue. And, um, you just cut to the chase. Thank you. I appreciate you. Yeah. So check that out. And anything else going on? You want to mention? Yeah. Um, basically, you know, I have a membership for women called the conscious woman where we all talk about this stuff. And that's great. And, you know, other than that, you know, find me on social media. I'm there for you. Yeah. You're everywhere. Um, Well, this was awesome. Thank you, Julia. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. That's it for today. Thank you for listening.

I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course,

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Peace. Plants. Namaste. You know,