Transcript of How to Heal Your Trust Issues

Okay? If Matt has anything to say about it, Rams through and through, okay? The baby's wearing blue. If the Coopers have anything to say about it, fly Eagles, fly E-A-G-L-E-S, Eagles! Okay? Um, so yeah—so today it's going to be a very heated situation. Both sides of our family are coming over to watch the game. It's definitely going to be a shit show. It's definitely—because we're, we're a lot of big shit talkers—I will say every single touchdown scored, it's going to just be a justification for which team our child needs to be repping, okay?

And Matt, if you're watching this, which you should be because you need to support your wife and you watch all my episodes, right? Um, I just have to say this: have you bought a Rams onesie yet for our child? I didn't think so. I didn't think so, Matt. Also, shout out to Erin Andrews, because after I interviewed her, she literally—all of everything I'm wearing is from Erin Andrews. I—listen, I have Eagles gear, but when she gave me this little number, I said, "Matt is going to hate this, and I'm going to love it so much."

Um, okay, honestly, let me just say something. Now, you guys know. I—I guess I like sports, obviously, but I love the Eagles. And let me just say, the Eagles' performance last week was so horrific, so I'm just going to pray that they have, like, a little bit of a better showing this week so they don't completely embarrass me and I'm not just, like, showing up here in a full windbreaker, just, like, repping my team and they just lose horribly. Eagles fans, can you please show up in the comments so that we wipe out the Rams fans? E-A-G-L-E-S, Eagles! Let's just, like, get it going in the comments. Now that we've got the Eagles out of our system, I want to talk about the relationship that changed you today.

And no, I don't necessarily mean your first love or the person you thought you were going to marry. I want to talk about the relationship that changed the trajectory of every relationship that came after that for you. So maybe they cheated on you. Maybe they were an incredible liar. Maybe you spent months hearing, "No, babe, she's—she's just a friend," only to eventually find out that she was very much not just a friend.

Speaking from personal experience. Um, or maybe it wasn't one huge betrayal, right? Maybe it was years of inconsistencies and half-truths and moments where something just didn't feel right. But every single time you questioned it, somehow you ended up being called the crazy one. And then eventually, maybe you got out. And you blocked them. You moved away. You cried over it to your friends. You went to therapy. And you moved on.

Except—did you? Did you is the real question today. Um, today I want to talk about the relationship that gave you trust issues. Because even when that relationship ends, the truth is, the version of you who learned how to survive that dynamic is still living and breathing and follows you into your next relationships. You start dating someone new and they're doing everything right, but you're sitting across from them while they're on their phone and, like, your eyes start switching and you're like, "Who are they texting?"

"Oh, like, why did they just put their phone face down?" "Why haven't they responded to me in an hour when I just completely saw them active on Instagram? So they must be lying." And—and why were they being so nice tonight? Like, what is the catch? Like, are they hiding something? Daddy gang, I want you to know I'm coming into this episode fully having lived this. This was my life. And as lovely and healthy as my marriage is now, trust issues have been a huge part of my dating history. And honestly, some of those old patterns even showed up in the beginning of my relationship with my husband.

Um, throughout my relationships, I admit, I have done it all. I have gone through phones. I have interrogated. I've gotten the Instagram password. It's so much harder than it seems. Um, I've hacked the system before, and I'm not proud of it, but it is the truth of what I experienced. And I know there's a lot of people watching who have also done the same. And when you have been there, you know how far you can take it. If anything, like, sometimes you're like, "God, I'm good."

Like, I am talking about you are calculating how long someone has been active on Instagram versus how long it took them to text you back. And then I'm talking about intentionally sitting across from someone where there is a mirror behind them so that you can see what they're doing on their phone through the reflection of the mirror. Or maybe it's the glasses, right? But here's something I understand now that I really could have never understood back then, which is: I wasn't born knowing how to do this. None of us were born knowing how to do this.

We learned how to do it. And for me, there was one relationship in particular that really ingrained this in me and influenced me. Um, this was one of my first, like, really, really serious relationships. I really thought that I was in love with this person, and I do believe I was, um, for what I was capable of understanding of love at the time, right? And when I got into this relationship, almost immediately there was a power imbalance.

He was a little bit older than me. He was always busier. He was less available. And pretty quickly I learned that being in a relationship with this guy meant that my nervous system was constantly going to just be all over the place. And if he didn't text me back, I would go on Facebook, throw back. Um, I would see he's active on Facebook, and I would immediately get a pit in my stomach. So I would be, like, refreshing the page, refreshing the page, looking at chat. And then maybe I would post something hoping that he would see it, right?

And so, understandably, I would ask him about it. I would just be like, "Hey, this doesn't really make sense." Whenever I did that, he would make me feel crazy. And he would say things to me like, "I was suffocating him," or "I'm paranoid," or "I don't trust him and I'm ruining our relationship." And so naturally, especially with this power imbalance and this age gap and all of it, like, I would feel insecure and I would start to feel guilty. And so I inevitably would apologize. And I would pull back. And I would convince myself, like, "Shit.

Like, maybe I am crazy. Like, I'm just acting young. This is embarrassing. I need to stop." I remember one situation so clearly that I'm going to share today. Um, so when I met him, he was friends with his ex. And his explanation always—I mean, it made sense on paper, right? Like, okay, they had the same friend group and everyone hung out together. And it would be weird if everyone had to pick sides and they couldn't be at the same places anymore. So, like, they've just kind of, like, stayed amicable and they're all in the same friend group.

And honestly, when I met him, I was completely fine with that. But then whenever we were all together, I would notice these tiny things that anyone would notice. They would kind of linger at the house parties or at the bar, and they would talk longer than everyone else, or they would always kind of, like, seclude themselves in moments. And there was just this energy between them that understandably made me think, "Wait, is this actually just two exes being amicable, or are you guys secretly enjoying this a little too much?"

And every time I brought this up to him, he made me feel insane. Not only was I jealous and I so paranoid, but now I was apparently threatening the entire friend group, he had convinced me. Like, the conversation would quickly become, "Everyone's going to hate you if you keep making this such a thing. You're making it so awkward on everyone. Why are you being so insecure? Like, it's not like that." And because I already felt, like, an outsider coming into his group of friends and he was older than me, I then had nothing left to do but just question myself.

Because what? I'm going to lose him? No. I had to, like, be like, "Okay, maybe it is me. Maybe I am being dramatic. Maybe I'm seeing something that isn't there. Maybe I just need to chill out." And then one night, one stormy night, um, there was a party. And I was on the phone with him, and he told me that he was tired. He was going to stay in. He wasn't going to go to the party. And so I decided, "Okay, I'm going to stay in too, like, you know, since my boyfriend's not going, I'm not going to go to the party." And it was mostly his friends.

And at the time, one of my good friends that I made in that friend group ended up calling me and convincing me that, "Don't just stay home because your boyfriend is not coming. Like, come to the party. Come with me. Like, let's have a girls' night. It's going to be so fun." And so I said, "Okay, great."

Daddy gang, I walked into this party, and I will never forget it. It's a house party. I walk in, and immediately I look, like, into the living room, and he's sitting on, like, a lounge-ish chair, and his ex is sitting on his lap. And they're, like, in each other's faces, fully flirting, staring into each other's eyes, having, like, a complete alone moment. And there is me.

It's like this scene from Tell Me Lies. Like, I felt like Lucy in the fucking coconut bra. I'm, like, such an idiot. I, like, dressed all cute. I think I had, like, a little, like, denim mini skirt on with a tube top and my fucking straightened hair. And I just froze. Because suddenly every little thing I had been noticing was right in front of me. I was not imagining it. I was not crazy. He had literally lied to me. This man was supposed to be in his pajamas watching, like, Seinfeld with his dad, and meanwhile he is fully at this party hanging out with his ex on his lap, probably with his dick hard.

And so after I am staring at them, like, blinking multiple times, like, capturing this in my head, seeing them plain and clear, I just stormed out of the house. And he saw me and everyone saw me, and he followed me outside of the house. And instead of saying, "I am so sorry," this man proceeded to scream at me. He is in my face, screaming at me. And he started saying things like, "You're so fucking insane.

Why would you show up to this party? You're, like, stalking me." And now I was apparently the one that caused the scene. To the point where the argument also got so heated that other people came outside and had to intervene and tell him, like, to stop screaming at me. And it was so—I was so mortified. I was so embarrassed. I remember just being completely frozen. Like, my words couldn't come—I didn't even know what to say. Because somehow, even after seeing this with my own eyes, he was so committed to convincing me that I was the problem.

And—and I was, like, a weird stalker. And it was weird that I showed up and, like, I'm obsessed with him and his friend group and duh duh. And I'm standing there, and I literally start questioning what I had just witnessed. And I'm thinking, like, was I overreacting? Like, maybe it wasn't, like, sexual that she was sitting on his lap. And it's like, no. Alex, his ex-girlfriend who he has been inside of, is on his lap. He lied to you. This man told you he wasn't coming to the party to make sure that you were not at the party.

And then I'm—and then I'm feeling like an idiot. I'm realizing, oh my God, his friends knew more than they had ever let on, but obviously they're his friends. They're not going to tell me. So now it's like, okay, now it's not that I just can't trust him. I also felt like I couldn't trust the entire environment around me. And I just felt so suffocated, and I felt like an idiot. And I literally—I think the most messed-up part, to be honest, when I look back at this girl and I can't relate to her, but I empathize with her, is, like, eventually he talked his way back in.

But something I think—when I think back to that young girl who was going through this, like, something had changed in me. Because now my brain had tangible proof, and it was like I had the gut feeling. Everyone told me the feeling was wrong. And I think once I decided to take him back, it's like I stopped listening to myself. I stopped trusting myself, even though I was right the whole time.

And that was so sad. It's almost like in that moment when everyone's staring at me, I had a decision to make of whether to, like, be the fucking boss bitch to be like, "Go fuck yourself. I'm leaving," or stay. And I stayed. And so I stayed. And then the next time that I had that feeling with him, of course, I investigated it, right? But this is where I think we have to understand something that is really important about understanding trust issues.

It's like sometimes hypervigilance develops. Because at one point the hypervigilance worked, right? Every time I went looking and found something, my brain got another piece of evidence of, like, "See, good thing you checked." And every time I ignored my gut and then later found out that he lied, I was like, "See, this is why you never let your guard down." And slowly I was basically—I didn't realize it at the time, but I was training my brain and my body to watch and observe and to analyze and to anticipate and to never get caught off guard.

Because getting caught off guard hurts, and it's embarrassing, and it makes you look like an idiot. So even if I take him back, it's like, "Yeah, but I knew. But I knew. But, like, we worked it out. But, like, I—that I knew." And I also think it's important to recognize, like, it wasn't miserable all the time, right? I think every girl can relate to this. Like, it's important to note because these relationships, if they were just horrible every second of the freaking day, most of us would probably not stay in them. There were moments that felt so incredible with this person.

You can become addicted to the relief you experience when the person you're seeing temporarily stops treating you so horribly, and you're like, "I feel better now." And then, oh my God, I don't feel good anymore because I'm feeling triggered, and I think my trust issues are flaring up. And oh my God, we made up. Even though I just caught him cheating, but, like, we're back, and it's going to be different this time. And so this—this cycle that my nervous system started to get used to, all of this was just a lot. But I was in love, and I put up with a lot.

And eventually I got out. But I will be honest, it literally took me physically leaving the state to get away from this person. I went to college in Boston, and I remember I got there for preseason for soccer, and we were talking on the phone. We were texting. But then suddenly I just was busy, and there was distance between us, and I couldn't spend the entire day obsessing over what he was doing and stalking his social media. And so slowly, without even, like, fully realizing it, the hold that that relationship had on me started to loosen.

Or at least I thought it did. Because I think here's the sad part. Yes, I left him and that relationship in Pennsylvania, but I brought everything that that relationship had taught me to Boston. And without consciously realizing it, I started seeking out relationships that felt like the one I had just escaped. I found men in Boston who would just reactivate all of my trust issues.

And because it was exactly what I understood and I knew, it was my first love, so I thought, "This is what it is, right?" And I think here's where it kind of gets interesting for any of my girls who've been through this. Because I then also dated a guy who wasn't like that at all. So my freshman year of college, I started dating this hockey player. And going into it, I immediately thought, "Oh my God, this guy is going to be exactly what I'm used to. I can already tell. He's a hot, popular college hockey player."

And so my brain obviously is like, "There is no way this man is trustworthy." Except he was. This guy could not have been a better guy. Couldn't have been nicer. We would literally go out to the bars. He would tell me exactly his plans, where he was going, what his friends and him were doing, invite me and my friends. He would show up on time. He would buy everyone drinks. He wasn't flirting with other girls. He would even wait so that we could all leave together, make sure we all got home safe, even my friends. Like, daddy gang, this was literally every girl's dream college boyfriend.

And instead of enjoying it, I started convincing myself, "This can't be real. This has to be fake. There has to be something. Like, no one's this nice. No guy is this honest. There has to be something I'm missing. Like, I've lived this before. He's also a hockey player. Like, there's no fucking way he's actually being honest." And I had no real concrete evidence. And so what did I do? Sometimes we would be drinking, and I would pick a fight, and I would say something like, "Well, I saw you talking to the other girl across the bar."

And he'd be like, "Alex, I genuinely don't know what you're talking about." Like, that is my friend's girlfriend. Like, it's nothing. But I realized when I look back that I kept trying to pull him into this dynamic that I understood. And then, understandably, eventually he was so exhausted by it. And the hardest part, too, when I look back, is, like, everyone around me could see it. My friends were like, "Alex, what are you doing? Why are you doing this to yourself? Like, he's so into you."

And I think somewhere inside of me, like, I knew that too. I knew he was a good guy. I knew he really cared about me. But eventually I ended up breaking up with him because I think the guilt became so overwhelming. I became self-aware enough to realize, like, this is so unfair to this man. I'm basically torturing this man. And then I had to watch him move on with someone else and treat her perfectly, and that really hurt. Because I could see by him treating her so well, there was a part of me thinking, like, "Why—why couldn't I enjoy that?

Why couldn't I have enjoyed the peace when I had it?" And then I'm like, "Oh, because I'm so fucked up from my first ex that fucked my whole head up that I don't believe that anything any man is going to tell me is the truth? Because why would I, right?" At that point in my life, I genuinely believed there had to be ulterior motives with a guy. And I think there was another piece of it that was even harder for me to admit, which is sick, but it's like a part of me wanted him to do the dance with me.

I wanted the friction. I wanted to fight and question and get into these arguments and then, you know, have this incredible relief of making up and coming back together. Because again, that's what I knew as love. And when he wouldn't do that with me, I got bored. And so what did I end up doing? I eventually moved on, and I found someone who was a professional at giving me trust issues.

Let me just put it this way. If my high school boyfriend was, like, in the minor leagues, when I tell you the man that I ended up seeing in Boston, he was in the major leagues, literally and figuratively, of triggering my trust issues, okay? I remember meeting this man and being like, "Oh my God, we're back, baby. This is—this feels incredible. This feels incredible. The rush is back. I'm alive again." It's like, "No, you dumb bitch.

You're about to get fucked up again." But it was like I really, really, really confused intensity in a relationship with intimacy. Again, because how could I not? My first formative relationship was just that.

And to be really clear also, I'm not saying that if you're attracted to someone toxic, it's because you secretly, you know, enjoy being treated badly. No. What I'm saying is our brains learn patterns. And familiar doesn't always mean healthy, but sometimes familiar just means, "I have been here before, so I know what to do." That's why for me it took a lot of time. Eventually, after enough games and tears and heartbreak and honestly just, like, growing up, I think I literally just got tired.

I was like, "I'm tired." What is that quote from Holes? "Grandpa, I'm tired. Like, I don't want to do this anymore." And the rush wasn't the same anymore because I had done it so many times, and I just wanted peace. I was like, "Honestly, peace will give me the rush at this point." Now being fucked over and having the trust issues, like, I'm numb to it. But the problem was that I didn't know how to exist inside of peace. I literally didn't know how that would work in a relationship.

I didn't know what that looked like aside from my parents. And I was also convinced that my parents were, like, an anomaly. I was like, "No one is going to be like my dad. No one's going to treat me like my dad treats my mom. So, like, that's impossible. My first relationship taught me that. Everyone's a cheater. Everyone's a liar. And so I just have to accept it." Like, I was like, "Da, da, da, da, da." And then I met Matt. And from the beginning, I could immediately tell, like, there was something different about this man. And by this point when I met Matt, I had done, like, some work on myself.

I had been in therapy. I had investigated those childhood wounds I'd never really looked at before. I had matured a little bit, and I was definitely interested in something more serious. But let me tell you something. Wanting a healthy relationship and actually knowing how to be in one are two very, very, very, very different things. Matt, from the day I met him, was so incredibly direct.

And he would call me at the time that he said he was going to call me. And he would send me pictures. And he was, like, not shady. And somehow, some way, even though that's exactly what now, looking for a healthy relationship, that's what I said I wanted, there were still parts of me that were fucked up from the past that was, like, waiting for the shoe to drop. Like, okay, I just kept thinking, like, "When are you going to prove me right?" Like, and so I will say, because he just was so great in the beginning, I then decided that I'm going to test him, just like I did to the guy that I did in college, who was a good guy.

And I remember specifically one instance comes to mind. I remember it was early in our relationship. Things were getting more serious, and I went to the Hamptons with Lauren. And I could not have been more inconsiderate that trip, truly. I was such a fucking bitch. I went out. I was posting all over social media. I was hardly answering Matt. And when I look back, I realize I was just trying to create the chaos myself.

Things were going too well in our relationship, and I think that honestly scared me so much. And some part of me was like, "There is no way that this lasts. Let me just—let me be the one to prove it." And maybe I'd push him and push him and push him enough that finally, you know, he'd finally get a little shady or he would retaliate or he would pull away. And then I could say, "See, I knew it. See, everyone's the same as my first boyfriend. It always happens. They always fuck you over." But thank God Matt was a mature adult because he didn't let—he didn't meet me in the pettiness.

If anything, he just called me out. And I remember him basically being like, "What are you doing?" Like, I was so hungover. I remember one morning I'm laying in bed in the Hamptons, and he's literally like, "What are you doing? Like, who is this person? Like, I know the woman that I'm falling in love with, and you're—this is not her. Like, what is happening? Go have fun with your friends, but why are you trying to push me away? Like, this isn't making sense." And I felt really stupid. And I remember we debriefed afterwards when I got back to LA.

And honestly, I couldn't even fully explain to him why I had done it. And looking back, it definitely was self-sabotage. I finally had the peace that I had been asking for, and my first instinct was to see if I could turn it back into chaos. And that, I think, was a really pivotal and eye-opening moment for me and our relationship overall because for the first time, I was aware enough to recognize the pattern while I was still in it.

And that gave me some control over then what I was going to do next, right? When I look back at the college guy that was treating me right, it's like, I so self-sabotaged so hard. And then I had to look at him in a new relationship being like, "Wow, I kind of fucked that up." With Matt, it was like I was holding on for dear life being like, "No, no, no, no, no. We've been here before. He's showing no signs of being anything but honest. Listen to this man, Alex, and listen to—maybe actually don't listen to your gut. Like, actually fuck the gut. Just go with the facts, babe.

Because your gut is fucked up, and it's been for almost a decade." And I remember admitting to Matt, like, "This is something I do. This is coming from my past. I have been cheated on before, and I do not want this to keep interfering with our relationship." And I think just being able to have that conversation openly instead of, like, acting out the pattern without understanding it, it gave us something to actually work through together.

Because then Matt was like, "Okay, I can so understand. Like, if you're saying this is all because of trust issues and because you've been cheated on, like, I really appreciate you sharing that with me because now I know why you're acting a certain way. And also, I can do my part in making you feel even more secure and confident and just giving you even a little bit more reassurance in certain moments that I wouldn't have thought of. But if you need that, I got you." But when something is that deeply ingrained in you where you have been cheated on in the past, when you have been lied to, guys, one conversation doesn't just magically fix all of this, right?

And that's the annoying part. I wish we could be like, "Okay, we see it. We're moving on." But no. And this is, I think, where trust issues can get really tricky because maybe you've now finally met a good person, right? And you genuinely want the healthy relationship, but your brain is still—it's like it's running on the old software, okay? We haven't done the update yet. You keep saying, "I'll do it later. I'll do it later. I'll do it later." And so your ex used to cheat when he went out with his friends, and now your new boyfriend says he's going out with the boys on Friday night.

Nothing has happened, but your body, understandably, you're already there, right? You're like, "Oh, I know what's going to happen tonight." Your ex used to become distant right before you discover something. So now your partner has a busy week at work, not texting you too much. Immediately, you're like, "He's being shady. He's pulling away." Maybe your ex hid messages. You guys remember I found texts on an iPad, and it was all disaster and nudes and all this. So then when you then see a new partner put their phone face down on the table, meanwhile, they're probably actually trying to just, like, give you more attention, but you're like, "Oh my God, someone is literally sending him pictures of their nipples right now, and that's why it's face down."

And it's like, "No, no, no." But your mind can't help but be racing. You're like, "What is he hiding? Like, what? Show me. Show me the pictures." And suddenly, you're checking locations. You're monitoring social media. You guys know the whole thing. You're testing. You're picking fights. You're blowing the whole thing up. And maybe even you're threatening to leave because somewhere inside of you, leaving them feels safer than waiting to find out whether they'll leave you and whether they'll fuck you over. And in your mind, you're just protecting yourself.

But eventually, I do think you have to ask, "Am I responding to the person sitting in front of me, or am I responding to the person who hurt me five years ago?" I also want to be careful here because if you're the person struggling with trust issues, girl, I see you. You are a 24-hour security guard over there. You're like, "I'm on call. I'm on call. My eyes will never close. I am right here.

I have all my screens up. You can't get anything by me." You're never taking a shift off. But I do think it's important to kind of flip it almost and, like, talk about it from the perspective of the person on the other side of this, which is your partner. Guys, imagine if you are with someone who's trying to be healthy with you. Imagine constantly having to prove your innocence for a crime someone else committed. Like, your partner is sitting there. They explain where they were. They show you their phone.

They reassure you. They even are over-explaining completely normal things because they're like, "I'm so terrified that you're going to just, like, misinterpret this, and I'm trying and I'm trying." And eventually, your partner is going to start thinking, "What could I possibly do that is ever going to be enough for this person?" And that's the tragedy of this dynamic. It's like one person is desperately trying to feel safe while the other person is desperately trying to feel trusted. And I think without conscious work, both people can end up feeling completely misunderstood and completely alone.

And so now you're like, "Okay, so how do we break that pattern? What do we do?" Listen, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that by the end of this episode, you're going to magically trust anyone and just be like, "All right, we're solved. Like, this is not how it works." It definitely wasn't linear for me. I regressed. I messed up. I spiraled. Because when you have trust issues, you want certainty. You think, "If I could just see the phone, then I'm going to relax."

So you see the phone, and then you relax for an hour. And then you're like, "Okay, but what about deleted messages?" And so now you need a password, and then you need the location, and then you need to know who the girl is, and then you need—and it just keeps going. You need the reassurance that he loves you. It's like there will always be one more thing you could check. And that, I've realized, is such a trap. Because if feeling safe requires eliminating every possible opportunity for someone to betray you, you're never going to feel safe. At some point, trust requires tolerating the fact that you cannot know everything.

I could just ask him. I could just say, "Hey, I'm feeling insecure about this. My past is kind of triggering this for me." And instead of being met with, "You're crazy. Why would you even think that? You're ruining our relationship. You're a psycho," Matt would basically just be like, "I'm so sorry you're feeling that way. Let's talk about it." "Yeah, of course." What? What a concept. He didn't make every fear I had his responsibility to fix, but he also didn't punish me for having those fears from my fucked-up past.

And then, I think even more importantly, he kept showing up consistently again and again and again. He'd say what he was doing, what he was going to do, and then he would do it. And slowly, all of these tactics that I had learned—the snooping, the investigating, the reading between every line—I didn't need to use them anymore. Because now it was like I was collecting a completely different kind of evidence. And I think that is what trust actually became for me.

It wasn't, "I know with absolute certainty that nothing bad will ever happen." No. It became, "This person has consistently shown me that his words and his behaviors match over and over and over and over again." And so over time, my brain started to go, "Oh, maybe I don't need to read between the lines when there isn't anything even between the lines. He's just being direct and honest."

And Matt, to his credit, and I love him so much, he absolutely helped create that safe space for me. He took the lead early on by being reassuring, respectful, and consistent. And he also, I will say, and some people aren't going to be down, like Matt was down being like, "Okay, so you have some trauma from your past. Like, we got this." Like, he looked at it so as a nothing burger where other men, if they maybe were being shady or whatever, would have been like, "Oh, well, you're going to have to figure that shit out because I don't want to put up with that."

And Matt was like, "Oh, that's such an easy thing for me to do, to just check in in the middle of the day. Like, I got you." Or, "Just show you this," or whatever. And then eventually, I stopped needing that. But I also had to choose to follow him there. I had to stop testing him. I had to communicate instead of investigate. And what it really took was hundreds of seemingly really inconsequential experiences where someone tells you who they are and then keeps being that person.

So here's the truth. I cannot sit here and promise you that if you heal your trust issues, nobody will ever hurt you again. Unfortunately, I wish I could, daddy gang, but I can't predict that. They might. Someone might lie. Someone might cheat. Someone may betray you. But in my opinion, I think healing is knowing you have to just continue to do the inner work on yourself. Healing is learning to trust yourself so that as you grow and you attract new relationships, you don't allow your past to completely consume you.

It doesn't mean you have to forget about it and the lessons that it taught you, but it also doesn't define every single relationship you have moving forward. Because I have to believe, similar to what happened to me with Matt, although I had multiple relationships that were absolutely heartbreaking and I was cheated on, I didn't let what those men did to me take away my opportunity to find true love and happiness.

It doesn't mean it didn't take a lot of work and F those men that did that to me. But if I can turn it into a positive, in the end, my past wounds and the trust issues, it actually made me and my relationship with my husband potentially even stronger because of the conversations we had to have, the emotional vulnerability we both had to lead with, his willingness also to meet me there, and then the dedication to show up every day for each other and to prove that this relationship would be different and it would be worth fighting for.

A relationship shouldn't be hard, but I have to believe that each of your past traumas, if you're both willing to come together and be like, "I got you. Oh, this is your trigger. Oh, this is your trigger. I can stand up for you. I can meet you there," that's when a partnership is going to work. And sometimes you may meet someone and they're just not ready to take that on. And so it kind of has to be this karmic energy of like, "I was in the right place at the right time when I met Matt.

Matt was at the right place in his life to meet me, and we both ended up healing something in each other." And so to anyone who has trust issues, what I can say to you is it will get better, but you have to want better for yourself. Again, we couldn't control what happened to us when we were given those trust issues. And it's horrific to think about. I think about there's probably a lot of people, maybe your trust issues didn't come from the first relationship romantically that you had.

Maybe it was because you watched in your household that your father cheated on your mother, and you literally grew up thinking they were this perfect couple, and then you found out and your whole reality was distorted. And so you're like, "Oh my God, if my dad can't be faithful to my mother or vice versa, how will I ever find someone?" Because these people, I thought, loved each other the most. And so it's like we all have something that can cause trust issues. And I think we have to be lenient on ourselves to know that it's the repetition to believe, "Okay, I can heal.

I can get better. You're going to regress." But in a beautiful way, I think sometimes it also can be like the right partner can actually really help heal something in you. I'm not saying they heal everything because you have to do a lot of self-work. But the best part was meeting Matt and being like, "Oh my God, a healthy relationship isn't boring. This is like the best thing that's ever come into my life." And he has taken all of the anxiety and stress out of my life that at one point I thought was a high and was exciting and was thrilling and was needed in a relationship.

And now I'm like, "Oh my God, my poor nervous system. I can't believe I put up with so much in relationships thinking that that's how it had to be." And to find someone who loves you and actually wants to ease your pain and wants to ease all of the discomfort that you used to have and is like, "I never want you to feel that way. I never want you to go to bed with a pit in your stomach. Just talk to me if you ever have a question. Oh my gosh, if you saw something that you thought you saw on my phone, like, here." No, that feeling, eventually, you don't even have to snoop.

You don't have to wonder. You don't even need to look inside of their phone. You don't have to do it because you just trust them implicitly. And that is a type of high that is so much better than the other type of high because it doesn't go away. And the one that I grew up having out of those first relationships, that was a roller coaster. Now we're just smooth and steady, okay? Smooth and steady, and nothing about that is boring, girls. So trust issues, you got this.

From one reforms to another, I see you. You will get through this. I'm going to go watch the Eagles. I probably look insane that I'm wearing a windbreaker on Collar Daddy. Do I look like Bradley Cooper from Silver Lining Playbook? Yes. Okay. Also, my bump, you guys, you don't even want to know how pregnant I am. I am getting close to that point where I'm going to pop, but I also still somehow have a little bit to go. So it's like a weird mental state that I'm in, but it's kind of nice to just keep working because I'm like, "What else would I be doing?"

Just staring at the ceiling, being like, "When are you coming into this world?" So fingers crossed. I don't know when, but I'll let you guys know when I go from a father to a mother. And yes, go Eagles, go Birds, and I love you guys. I will see you fuckers next one. Say goodbye.