Transcript of How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship

There are two big things happening at one time that I've never done before. I'm going on a book tour for my new book, Make Money Easy, and I'm doing a podcast tour at the same time. It is going to be big, and I'm going to seven cities in 10 days. Get your friends, get your family, bring everyone you know to these cities. I'm coming to Austin, Texas, New York, Boston. We're going to Nashville. Then we're going to Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco. Make sure to get your tickets right now. Go to luishouse. Com/tour. Again, bring everyone you know if you're looking to create more financial freedom and abundance in your life, and you want to see a massive guest live on the School of Greatness show. Get your tickets. I can't wait to see you there.

Change is the only constant in business. So whether you're starting or growing your business, our dedicated business teams will always be here to support you every step of the way because the best businesses never stop beginning. Search Bank of Ireland business. Bank of Ireland, begin. Bank of Ireland is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. At Energia, we know you want your business to be the business. The bee's knees, the cream of the crop. Energia can help you save big on your energy costs with flexible and competitive rates that really are the business. Switch at energyia.

Ie/business, or call 0818-3637-44.

T's and C's apply. Energia. Think of the possibilities.

Goodbye, old friend.

Hello, new one.

Upgrading your Apple device is now more affordable with Select.

For a limited time only, Tradeinn any eligible device, and Select will top up the value by up to €100, meaning you can get the latest iPhone, iPad, MacBook, or watch for less.

Tradeinn, upgrade, save.

It's a win-win-win. Tradeinn is available store only.

T's and C's apply.

Visit, selectonline.

Com/tradin for more.

Select your local Apple expert.

The greatest harm that I've ever done to other people was through me not knowing how to take care of myself. Because if I don't take care of myself, a few things are going to happen. I'm going to lose my mind. I'm going to become super needy, super clingy, and super manipulative because I'm going to try to get my needs met through you. And that means I'm going to be objectifying you and using you as a parental replacement, a sex toy, a sleeping pill, an unpaid therapist. Whatever the need, this huge yarning need in me, parts of me will go out there and try to get that need met. So either I can figure out how to get that need met or that teenager is going I'm trying to figure out how to get that need met. All the amends that I've ever had to make to anybody in my life for the grave harm that I brought to them were because I didn't know how to take care of myself. Really? I had harmed them, blamed them, used them, manipulated them, tried to force them to be something that they couldn't be, become infuriated and enraged when they couldn't do it, when they couldn't deliver, cheated on them because if they couldn't do it, I'm going to go find somebody else who can, all of it.

Where self-care becomes not so much a New Age catchword, but a deeply humanitarian public service is, Byron Katie said it so well, nobody is safe from me when I need them that much. Nobody is safe from me, right? So I actually want, as somebody who genuinely loves humanity, I want to be somebody who people are safe around. If I'm not taking care of myself, I am an unsafe human being for anybody to be in any relationship with, whether it's a momentary relationship or a romantic relationship. Yeah.

I mean, you've talked publicly about your love life and your relationships and books and talks and everything. You said you were married and divorced twice.

Mm-hmm.

What did you learn after the first marriage into the second marriage?

Nothing. No, that's not true. I was a much better second wife than I was a first wife. I haven't really learned anything until recently. Really?

You're just repeating patterns.

A hundred %. So I've spoken very openly about identifying as a sex and love addict, and I go to a room for that. I go to a 12-step program for that. It took me until I was 50 to find out that there was a room for that. I spent decades, and I mean untold thousands of dollars, sitting in therapeutic situations. It wasn't I wasn't trying to be different. You know what I mean? I was paying a lot of people to try to help me not be the way I am. No one ever said, You're a sex and love addict. ' Really? There's a room for that. There's a 12 There's no room for that. Here's a phone number. Look this. Go get yourself some help. Because there's so much secrecy around it because I think especially for women, there's a tremendous amount of shame. But my acting out was nuts, Lewis. You mentioned that I was I got divorced twice, but I actually recently had lunch with my old couples therapist who's a wonderful, brilliant couples therapist. I said to him, Mark, did you ever have anyone else who was a patient of yours who brought three different people to see you over the years?

He was like, No. I was like, And none of them were my husband. None of them were the people I was married to. That was between my marriages that I was bringing. And he was like, Yeah, I don't think I have ever had Did anybody bring in three different relationships and say, Please make this work for me. And he said, I have to hand it to you, though, Liz. They were all so different, the people.

You were the same.

Yeah, he's like, I really admired the fact that... And I was like, Yeah, because I was trying to find what is the formula? Who do I have to connect with that this is going to work, that this great echoing God-sized hole within me, this deep unsolvable problem of never feeling like there's enough love. Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Do I need someone older? Do I need someone younger? Do I need a man? Do I need a woman? Do I need someone who loves me more than I love them? Do I need someone who I love more than I... Do I need two people? Do I need an open marriage? And I say this with all love, I'm so proud of myself that I spent 35 uninterrupted years trying to solve that, like trying to solve that and being like, why can't I make this work? Very similar to an alcoholic who's like, well, maybe if I just don't drink hard liquor, maybe if I just have wine, maybe if I just have beer, maybe if I just drink on the weekends, maybe if I... It's like, I'm trying to figure out how to have this thing not do what it always does, which is blow up in my face and leave me flat on the bathroom floor wrecked.

Depressed and sad and lonely.

Suicidal, if not homicidal. It wasn't until I- You were looking for people to be the solution, but it wasn't.

What was the solution?

The solution is befriending myself and finding a source, finding what I have always needed, which is a source of infinite, inexhaustible love. And that cannot come from another person because sometimes people have to get up and get a sandwich and go to work and go to the DMV and do other things besides poor love into me. You know what I mean? They have other things they need to be doing. They can't. Even if they love me, a person can't do that, or they might die. Which happened. Which happened. Or they might change, or they might have another crisis in their life that they have to attend to. And then I'm howling on the outside like a seven-year-old, who's got me? Who's got me? Where did mommy go? Where did daddy go? Am I safe? Why am I on this tundra of loneliness again? For me, it's about finding a source that can keep up with my need and pour infinitely into me.

That seems impossible in another person.

It is impossible in another person. Listen, I'll save you all the trouble. I did the research. I went out there and found a lot of people to try to get that from. It didn't work. It works for a while, like all drugs.

Six months or something.

Yeah, it works till it doesn't. Like every other substance, every other drug, it works till it doesn't. And then you wake up on Tuesday morning and you're still you. You're still you and you're still lonely and you're still overwhelmed and you're still confused and you're still hungry because this thing can't be filled. I also needed to find a community of people who understood me. The First time, well, actually, the second time, because I went to a sex and love addicts room once because a friend 13th stepped me there, sent me there, 12th stepped me there, and was like, I think you need this. I went in and I was like, Yeah, these people are really sick and it's depressing, and I feel bad for them, and I'm going to be a spectator, and then I'm going to leave. Then I went out and found another person to blow my life up with. Then I was like, Maybe I should go back.

From the group?

No, no, no. But it's just from the general population. Then I went back humbled. The first time I really showed up in that room and said, Hi, my name is Lizzie. I'm a sex and love addict, was the beginning of the end of a 50-year Another attempt to find somebody, anybody who would take that pain away. Oh, my gosh. To have a whole bunch of people in the room who don't look like me, who aren't my age, who aren't from my background, be like, Yeah, we super get it. And to hear my story being told again and again and again through other people's mouths. I remember hearing this woman say, I took one look at that guy from across the bar, and I was like, I would follow that man to hell, and then I did. I was like, Okay, I know that story. I've I've been in that story. I've been in that story. I've been on all the sides of these stories. And so to find a community of people who are like, We understand why you're like this, and we'll be your family as you move through this.

What are the main symptoms of a sex addict or love addict then?

There's different programs for sex addiction. There's different programs for love addiction. I identify as a sex and love addict. A lot of women don't want to use the word sex addict because it sounds gnarly and shameful, and it is gnarly. It's super gnarly. Because you're pimping yourself out to get to trade whatever you have to trade physically to try to get that love connection. It's not pretty, but it's what I've done. It also means constantly objectifying yourself, objectifying other people. But if you just Google 12 Characteristics of Sex and Love Addicts, when I heard those, I was like, Oh, that's a 12 for 12. That's a hard identification with each and every one of these. I've done every single one of these on the regular. But it essentially comes down to this idea that somebody else is going to be able to fix this on the inside of me and returning to unhealthy relationships again and again, abandoning your care by attaching to people who are unavailable. There's a whole list.

Sure. How do you then, let's say you go through, you accept that you're a love addict. Right? And maybe someone watching and listening is like, maybe I have some of these tendencies, right? And I heard you talk about in the beginning of this conversation about how there's this love that you're connecting with every single day and asking it, what would you want of me? What would you have me know today? What would you have me know today? Yeah. You have this new relationship with love, but a lot of people feel undeserving of receiving love. Yeah. If you don't feel like you're deserving of having love or being loved or receiving it, how do you have a new relationship with it where you can let it into your life?

For me, it's been about in the same way that those inner children and inner teenagers that we spoke about needed to gradually learn to trust me and needed to gradually learn to see that I do have them and I am prioritizing them and I'm not going to abandon them and I am here and I am going to say no and I am going to risk not pleasing people in order to make sure that they're Okay. It's almost like I've had to develop, I'll just speak for myself because I think it's probably different for other people, and I now am going to introduce the word God. I've had to have that same relationship build very slowly with the God of my own understanding of believing that I am being loved and not judged, believing that I'm not in trouble. I've spent my entire life terrified of being in trouble. What did I do wrong? I'm in trouble. I'm dead now. Believing that I haven't done anything that has caused God to not love me and believing that I can turn to that source and be fed and be held and be guided. I always say this, I always loved God, and I didn't even grow up in a religious family.

Maybe that's Why? Because I had my own independent feeling of a God presence when I was a kid that was very organic and natural. I loved the word God. I loved the whole idea. I loved everything about it. I didn't really know what it meant, but I loved it. I've always believed in God. I've always loved God. I have never trusted God. Really? Because that's a whole another layer. It's like, wait, I have to trust you? Because like many of us because of things that happen to us, when we were kids, we don't trust anybody.

Or you just see bad things in the world and you say, how could this be? If God is all love, how do these bad things happen? You'll question that.

Exactly. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why did all these terrible things happen to me? Why is there injustice? We can get trapped forever in that. But I have found when I communicate with God, I've said this many times and I find it to be true, why is not a spiritual question, and it does not bring a spiritual answer ever. I can shout why into the cosmos, and I'm never going to get an answer. No one is. But I can ask other questions like, What do you want me to do? And I will get an answer. Who do you want me to become? I will get an answer. Who do you want me to be around? Who are the people who you want me to be around? What do you want me to do next? How do you want me to comport myself through this? I'll get answers to that if I ask God, but I won't get answers to why. I think that's just the general humility of knowing that my mind can't know. We're not allowed to know why. Sometimes you get a glimpse later where you're like, Oh, I see why that might have happened.

I see why we couldn't have gotten here without that. But I even try to stay away from that. I try to stay out of the why. I have surrendered the why.

That's funny. I still ask my mom why questions, and she says she stopped answering why questions. Yeah. So I'm like, Why did you do this, mom? And she goes, I stopped answering your why questions.

I'm not accepting your question.

Ask me a different question. Yeah.

Come back with a better question. Sometimes God will say that to me. Come back with a better question. Interesting.

What is the best thing you've heard from God over the last four years?

It's a couple of things. One thing is I love this. I hear this from God a lot. When I'm unsure about what I'm supposed to do, because that's a thing that I can get really panicky about, like what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? I will often hear God say, When I've got something for you to do, you'll be notified.

Don't try to rush it or try to... No, right now.

For instance, I had a couple of years there where I didn't have any ideas for a book or creativity or anything to write, Every day in my journal, I would say, Am I supposed to be writing something right now? Am I supposed to be working on something? And that universal cosmic voice would say, When we've got something for you to do, you'll be notified. And then I would say, Well, what am I supposed to do in the meantime? And the answer would come, Hang out.

Just be.

Hang out. I'm like, Well, that's extremely uncomfortable. I would rather that you gave me an assignment. I'm a border collie. I do better with an assignment. But we'll let you know. That's one of my favorites. The other thing I've heard is actually very similar when I've said to God, Am I supposed to be dating anybody? Am I supposed to be now that I've gotten well, now that I've gotten emotional sobriety, now that I've been in 12-step recovery for sex and love addiction, now that I've learned I try to take care of myself and been celibate for five years, which is the greatest gift I've ever given myself. The first time since way too young an age that somebody hasn't been on me It's been so important for me to reclaim this body and just be like, mine, right? My body. This isn't a tool for anyone else. This isn't a tool for manipulation. This is ours. To find that and to learn how to self- comfort, to learn how to regulate my own nervous system. Now that I've done all that, I'm like, Am I supposed to be looking for somebody to be with? My favorite thing that God has ever said to me is the response to that, which is L-O-L, no.

Wow. Hard no, absolutely not. Absolutely not. I love that answer, and I trust that answer. Then God says, if I want you with somebody, I will let you know the idea won't be yours. It'll be mine. I will let you know. I will let you know who it is. You don't have to go hunting. You don't have to go searching. I don't want you chasing anything. Again, to me, so much of what all sobriety is is the end of chasing. You're not chasing a feeling anymore. You're not chasing a high. You're not chasing an escape. You're not chasing a person. You're not trying to replicate a way you felt once. Like, I think that's a big thing for sex and love addicts. Stop chasing a feeling. A feeling, right? It's a feeling you want to have. And all that feeling, if I can get it, I can get it met, but it just leads to craving because then I want more of it.

Yeah, and sadness.

And then I'm like, okay, now what do I have What do we do to get that? God has been really clear with me, I don't want you chasing anybody. I don't want you chasing anything. You're so good right now. What's the big hurry? Why are you out there looking for ways to make your life unmanageable again? Wow. I can sleep through the night without medication. I don't need to be on antidepressants anymore. I'm not on anti-anxiety pills anymore. My body is healthier. My work, I've written three books in the last six years. My friendships have bloomed. All of my family relationships have changed due to these new radical boundaries. I'm prospering, and God's like, what's the hurry to tip the apple card over again?

That's fascinating. When I decided because it was a We used to get in a relationship with Martha. When we got into a relationship, I told her a lot of these things that we're talking about where I was just like, listen, I've never made good decisions in previous relationships, and then I didn't have the courage to get out of them because I was afraid and I don't want to hurt someone. I stayed in things that weren't good for me. It was just never good. It doesn't mean they were bad people. We just weren't the right people together. I told her, I want to take our time if we're going to do this. We're not going to sleep together, which is not something I've done in the past. It was quick to rush to that. And that was one of the best things I did for the kids in me. Was not sleeping with someone that I was dating, but trying my best to get to know all the parts of her. Her family life, her when she's happy, her when she's going through a challenge, traveling together, all these different things, as opposed to rushing into chemical bonding.

Right. Because once the internal pharmacy gets activated, it's like a midsummer night dream when they put magic powder on the person who then falls in love with a donkey. It's like, those hormones will make me fall in love with a kitchen cabinet. Anything. It's I know. As somebody with a really dysregulated nervous system with a process addiction, I experience those hormones. It's estimated that people like us who have that experience those hormones at 10 times the rate other people. Someone else might feel pleasant experiences with romance and love and connection and sex. I get wasted. I get wasted and I shouldn't be operating heavy machinery. I shouldn't be making decisions about my bank account. I shouldn't be moved. I go insane. So it's really important. What you've done is a really gracious thing for both of you, actually. Yeah, of course. To slow that entire process down and try not to go chemical before you find intimacy. Exactly.

And I remember, And listen, we're only three and a half years into this. So it's like, we've got a long time ahead with our relationship with, hopefully it's all good and it's all smooth, but there's going to be challenges that we have to face. But I wanted to set myself up for the most harmony possible. Knowing that life is going to throw challenges at us individually and together, how can we create a relationship of harmony and peace where we both have nervous systems that are calm? Right. Nervous systems that are okay, independent of each other and stronger together, hopefully. But I'm I'm not reliant on her for my happiness, which I think I never had before. I was always reliant on the other people to like me or accept me and people pleasing them. And it feels so freeing to experience for the first time after 20 years of painful relationships, peace and freedom in a relationship. I didn't think it was possible. I didn't know it was possible. And it feels amazing to, at least up in this point, have experienced this for a number of years. So I'm very grateful for that.

I'm so happy for you, Liz.

Thank you. But I remember thinking to myself, I don't need to be in a relationship. I'm not going to jump in a relationship until I feel that consistently from a dating phase without sexual intimacy.

Yeah. Change is the only constant in business. So whether you're starting or growing your business, our dedicated business teams will always be here to support you every step of the way, because the best businesses never stop beginning. Search Bank of Ireland business. Bank of Ireland. Begin.

Bank of Ireland is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. At Energia, we know you want your business to be the business.

The bee's knees, the cream of the crop. Energia can help you save big on your energy costs with flexible and competitive rates that really are the business. Switch at energia.

Ie/business or call 0818-3637-444.

4, T's and C's apply. Energia, think of the possibilities.

Every year, thousands of people go to their very first concert. Our boosted signal at large events means they can always call a taxi to get home. Mom?

Yeah, it was grand.

Do you think you could pick me up?

Every connection counts, which is why Ireland can count on our network. Vodafone, together we can.

Subject to coverage availability, Imitations in terms apply. See vodafone. Ie/terms.

And that was hard. I mean, I'm like, my young guy, it's hard to say no to those things. But by creating that boundary for me, it's like a built respect for myself and about trust within my nervous system in the parts of me. And it has allowed me to trust myself in the relationship more than ever before.

It's wonderful.

And I feel like it sounds like that's what you've been doing the last five years is reclaiming trust within yourself, that you're not going to abandon yourself. And When you do get into another relationship, you're not going to abandon or people-please who you are. And it doesn't mean you're going to be avoidant either. You're going to be securely connected to the person because you're securely connected to you.

Is what it sounds like you're building. That's the thing. And also for me, as somebody who's now become God-centered instead of self-centered. My wants have driven me over cliffs many times. My wants, my needs, my desires, my ideas. Your feelings, yeah. My big ideas. I get some big ideas, and then it's cut to six months later. Oh, my God. What did you just do to your life? You just drove into another brick wall. So for me, I think you mentioned the word manifesting very early in this conversation. And I'm a good manifester. You're a good manifester, too. We're disciplined, we're resolved. We vision board our way into we're like, I'm going to get this. I'm going to make this. I'm going to get this many. I'm less in the realm of romantic and intimate connection, I've manifested, I've gotten what I wanted. I've gotten who I wanted at times, and it's almost killed me.

It didn't work.

Right? So I'm not that interested anymore in the question of what do I want, but I'm really interested in the question of what's God's will for my life?

Man, I love this.

And how can I live in alignment with that? I love this. And so I don't even worry about, will I ever be with someone When I get... It's not up to me. I don't really care. I trust when God says, you'll be notified if that's supposed to happen. Great. I don't have to think about it.

Wow. When did you bring God in your life?

Really, I mean, really seriously when I came into Twelve Step Recovery.

Which was five?

Five years ago, five and a half years ago.

Is God in Twelve Step Recovery, or is it more- Oh, yeah.

I mean, higher power is. It's a spiritual program because addiction is a spiritual sickness. It's a deep spiritual emptyness. Addicts, like me are people who have such a profound emptyness that we will use anything or anybody to fill it.

You don't have God in your life as the faith or the trust or the knowingness of it, then you find everything else to be your God, I guess, or to fill that void.

I've heard addiction referred to as false worship. It's like, I'm going to worship this thing. I'm going to worship this substance. I'm going to worship this person. I'm going to worship money. I'm going to worship success. I'm going to worship food. I'm going to worship cigarettes. There's this line in the Bible about false idol, about not worshiping false Idols. It says that people who worship false idol, and they describe them as like wooden creatures with lifeless eyes. It's like what an idol is. You worship that and then you become that. You become wooden and lifeless. I mean, I'm not a fundamentalist Bible reader, but I think that's a really accurate description of what addicts become. You become wooden and lifeless. The God Eyes Whole, is what it's referred to, can only be filled with God.

Wow. Do you feel a lot more peace now with God in your life?

Yeah. I mean, it is my life. And I had this great experience in step three, which is made a decision to turn our will in our life over to the God of our own understanding. The beautiful, generous thing about that language is the God of your own understanding. It doesn't necessarily mean the God that you were raised with or threatened with. I had a sponsor who said to me, Write down what you're looking for in a God. Nobody will ever surrender their life to a God who was forced upon them. So write down the qualities that a deity would have to have for you to surrender your life completely happily over to them. And I was like, You get to do that? And she's Like, of course you get to do that because why would a loving God not appear in whatever form you need? Right? Like, of course. And it was such a fun assignment because I was like, the very first thing was like, my God has to have a sense of humor. My God has I have a sense of humor and think that I'm adorable and funny and that my failures are adorable and funny.

I can't have a judgmental God. I can't have a punishing God. I have to have an incredibly patient God. I have to have a God who doesn't have anywhere better to be than sitting with me in the middle of the night present and comforting. I need a God who doesn't have office hours. I need a God who doesn't stand on ceremony and need me to prostate in a certain particular way. I can't have an insecure God. I can't have a God who's like, If you don't pray to me in this certain way, I'm not going to feel right. I need to have an abundant God, a generous God, a loving God who knows me and who likes me. I wish I could remember who said this, but somebody said that the true feeling of being one with God is relaxing completely in the presence of somebody who you know is deeply fond of you. And if people had been taught that in childhood, that that's what God presence feels like, relaxing completely in the presence of somebody who you know is very fond of you.

Yeah, not being afraid constantly.

Oh, my God. Instead of what James Joyce called the hangman God, the judge, the executioner. This is like, of course, I created you. I love you. I made you the way you are.

This is fascinating. How many relationships do you feel like you've been in in the past? Intimate relationships, whether it be dating or sexual or-Oh, like 40.

40. Okay. You know, like 45 maybe. I'm trying to remember because I had to inventory it when I was... It's part of the sex and love addict recovery. That's good.

So 40, 45 Intimate, loving relationships. Sure. Sexual relationship.

45 deeply intimate relationships, Lewis. How many?

How many of these relationships?

I love myself.

That's good. Yeah, you did that job. No judgment here.

No, I don't feel it.

How many of the relationships you've been in had God at the core or the center?

None.

How many... There we go. In the future, do you feel like God will be in the relationship in some way?

If God's not in the relationship, it's not a relationship. I heard a prayer recently in one of the 12-step rooms, and this is about every relationship, not just sexual and intimate, but somebody said, Dear God, please only bring me relationships where you can be first and I can be me.

Oh, man, that's good. Say that one more time? So again.

Dear God, please only bring me relationships where you can be first and I can be me.

Man, that gives me the chills. I know, isn't that beautiful? Imagine every relationship in your life like that. Friends, family, intimate relationships. That's a beautiful life.

Isn't it?

With every relationship like that. Because then you're not feeling judged or you don't have to people please, you don't have to impress. Obviously, you got to create boundaries and you have to communicate and you have to stand up for yourself, but you don't have to worry about what happens when God is at the center. God is going to have your back no matter what.

And their back.

Yeah.

To know that they also have their own higher power. I got super high off of becoming other people's higher power as As much as I got super high off making somebody my higher power. It's like, oh, let me be the thing you worship. That's a rush.

Big rush. Until you crash.

Until you get deepedestalized. And then you don't even want to be in the room when that happens. That's such a terrible crash for everybody, the terrible disappointment of that. I say this to my sponsees a lot. If they idealize me at all, I'm like, Okay, I I just want to point out that that language sounds a little bit idealizing. Please don't do that to me or you. Because when you inevitably discover that I am not this ideal, I don't even want to be in the room when that statue comes That's right. That's going to be really bad for both of us. Just don't do that. Let's don't do that.

Wow, this is fascinating. When do we make a decision that I'm going to choose to love this person?

We don't make a decision. We don't decide. Because if you decided, you could actually decide to fall in love. There's so many people who would love to fall in love, maybe even with the person that they're actually with already, but struggle to do that, or people who have fallen out of love would like to fall back in love, or the person that's trying to woo them is perfect for them in every way. Why can't they just love them? That would be great. I just don't. We can't quite make ourselves fall in love. But You know what happens is that people fall in love. It's very psychological because it's with an incredible absence of information. It happens quite quickly.

You don't know the person.

You don't. You have a few data points and you're connecting them to create a Mona Lisa with five data points.

Out of a flawed human being.

Potentially flawed. You have no even idea where. You have the rose-colored glasses. Everything's cute. Those things that are going to become incredibly annoying later on are still cute to you. You just fill in the gaps with optimism, with hope, with, Oh, they're probably like this. You really don't know the person you've fallen in love with most of the time. Because I say, if you need to know the person, you have to wait until you have your first fight. If you don't know how they fight, you don't know how ugly it gets, you don't know how ugly they get, and that can make a big difference. But that doesn't usually happen before you fall in love. It happens after. You don't know how they fight, you don't know how they travel. Maybe you love to travel and they are such an anxious mess in an airport that you really want to just, I am not with this person at all. You don't know that. You don't know how they are with their parents, your parents, with the holidays days, whether they are a mess, they're fun. There's so much you don't know.

What would you say are three or four things that individuals could do today to enter a relationship in the best way possible to give them a chance for happy, healthy, long-term love.

How much time do we have? But I'm going to start with this. I think the thing we get wrong most about relationships is that we are absolutely clueless about how critical the first steps are. Those first dates, those first months, what you are doing is you are creating an unspoken contract with that person about what our couplehood is going to look like, who's going to be responsible for what, what the dynamic is going to be, what the vibe is going to be, who's going to be pursuing, who's going to be the pursued. Everything you do is a precedent. But you don't realize that you're setting a precedent. You're just like, Oh, this part's okay. This part, I didn't love as much. But fine. No, it's not fine. I mean, maybe it's not a big deal, but if that's what's going on, that's what the other person is expecting would be cool to go on. Forever.

Yeah.

In that relationship. If somebody tends to be 10, 15 minutes late to all the dates, and you're like, It's only 10 minutes I'm not going to be. Then you are signing up for the fact that you get to be late. If suddenly 10 dates in, you're like, It's really not cool that you're late, they'll be like, Where have you been for 10 dates? That's not a new thing. You know what I mean? There's literally that expectation the other person has that if this is what goes on, this is what goes on. But if you're not aware that you're writing this unspoken contract and signing it and agreeing to all these precedents, then you're setting yourself up for a relationship that a lot of people are like, Oh, I'll fix this later. I'll fix it in post. Yeah, right.

This isn't a movie.

Here's why. I'll say this last part about this piece. Relationship dynamics are like cement. You can mold it when it's wet, when it's fresh, but you can't. It's much more difficult to do when it's dry, and it dries very quickly. You have to be aware of that.

Yeah. If you want to jackhammer it two years in the future because you don't like the way it's laid down, that's going to cause real damage. It's hard to mend that. It's not like, I forgot the Japanese saying where they break a bowl and it's golden. It's like. It's not that. This is like you're breaking a road and you're breaking a path and you have to almost create a bridge once you break it two years later. That person has to want to go over that bridge every time.

That's for each thing.

For each thing you want to fix or change or tweak. This is interesting. I'm so glad you're saying this because we've known each other for how long? Eight years maybe or something like that? I don't know. Nine. Eight, nine years. We're not super close talking all the time, but you've seen me go through three different relationships in the last eight years. You've seen me show differently in this relationship based on what we've talked about. There are things that I did differently, I think because, one, a lot of the wisdom I gained from you and other different therapists and psychologists that came on that I was able to learn from. Two, I was doing a lot of my own healing work in the practice every week with someone that was helping guide me to heal in my last relationship and going to this new one. Three, because I was just sick and tired of experiencing so much pain and sadness and suffering in relationships, the pattern that I was choosing, that I was like, I need to do something completely different than I've always done. Whether this works out or not, I have to just try something completely different.

I felt like what I've done has really worked well for me. I don't know if it worked well for everyone, but it sounds like I'm doing what you're saying people should be doing, which is entering a relationship in a way that is going to lay the cement and the foundation for the whole relationship and really doing it early on, not waiting. A few things that I did with Martha and we did together is when we started dating, I said, Listen, we're going to date each other, but I'm not going to have sex with you. That's one of the first things I said, it's not happening, where that wasn't the case in previous relationships. That was the first thing. I was like, I want to get to know someone without chemical interference, without sexual chemical interference. That was always blurring me in the past. That was the first thing. It's almost like we got to know each other as friends. You hear people who are married a long time or happy. They're like, Yeah, we were friends early on, or we were just in a friendship first, and then it grew into something because we really loved each other.

You hear that a lot. Not that that's always the case, but that was what we did. I think that was really helpful for me to see all the parts of her and say, Do I accept all the parts of her? Maybe I don't have to like all the parts, but can I accept it? Because she's not going to change who she is. Maybe, but this is pretty much who she is. I was able to see clearly, I accept all the parts of her to get into a committed relationship after a few months. Of us spending a lot of time together, traveling together, seeing her family. All the things we did early on, I was like, I put myself in those situations, friends, family, travel before getting committed. That was really helpful. It was like a year cycle in a few The next thing that I did is I told her the truth about everything. From my past, what I've done in my past, things I was proud of, not proud of, everything. I told her my vision for my future. I said, This is the man I am now. This is the man I'm growing into, and this is the man I want to be in my vision for my life, my career, my family, everything.

I'm not going to change it for one person to make one person happy. You got to accept this part of me, and I want to know what your vision is for your life and see if we're in alignment. Obviously, things might change and evolve, but if that's what you want, I want to be accepting of your vision for your life and you accepting of mine. That was really helpful. Then we also did a values exercise. I never created a values exercise in any relationship before. It was like, Oh, we like each other, and you're beautiful, and you like me, and whatever. We're having fun. Let's just be together. But We went on a trip and I said, I want to do a values exercise and get clear on what you really value around family, friendships, money, time, everything, raising kids, what are the values in your life that you have? We wrote them separately, and and then looked at them together. There wasn't any influence. We were in alignment on our values, which was helpful. Having that clarity of no chemical interference around sexual acts to values to, this is a vision of my life.

This is my lifestyle, this is what I want to create. Do you accept it? Because if you don't, I'm not changing for you. We were able to get an alignment. That doesn't mean it's all going to be perfect and it's going to out, but that created a foundation, the pavement you were talking about, where we were like, Okay, let's cement this. Let's start to mold it and start to let it dry now that we are in agreement of these things with each other. There was one other thing that we did that I'd always I wanted to do, because I'd always ended every relationship in therapy, and then it ended. I said, I want to start my next relationship in therapy. If that's with you or someone else, I'm not getting in a relationship unless someone else is willing to agree to have a session once every six weeks with someone where we can get clarity on agreements, because there was never agreements and relationships that were clear and that people stuck to. I was like, I want agreements so that if there's a disturbance, we can creating an agreement quickly so there's less disturbances. She was like, Yeah, it sounds great.

I'm in.

Change is the only constant in business. So whether you're starting or growing your business, our dedicated business teams will always be here to support you every step of the way, because the best businesses never stop beginning. Search Bank of Ireland business. Bank of Ireland. Begin.

Bank of Ireland is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.

At Energia, we know you want your business to be the business, the bee's knees, the cream of the crop. Energia can help you save big on your energy costs with flexible and competitive rates that really are the business. Switch at energy@energia. Ie/business or call 0818-3637-44. T's and C's apply. Energia. Think of the possibilities.

Those things that we created from the beginning have given me so much peace. You asked me, How are you feeling before the interview, I was like, I felt pretty peaceful. It's because I've never been in a relationship where I feel fully accepted for me, and I feel that. I have the energy to go out in life and tackle what I want. It's been really beneficial. But I went through 20 something years of pain and suffering in choosing relationships without having the courage to do these activities early on. I don't know if that's something that you would I can recommend for all people. It took a lot of work. It takes time. It's like you can't rush into something, but it's given me a lot more peace in this relationship.

I am so excited to hear that that's how you went about it. I'll tell you why. First of all, that's why you're at peace because you've done the due diligence. There's not these corners of her that you've never seen, exposed, or don't know about, and like, Well, I like what I see, but who knows what I don't? You actually We have seen a lot because you've asked a lot of questions. The due diligence you did over there, that investment of, if I'm choosing a life partner, I'm going to vet this as much as possible. I'm actually going to put in the work to build a foundation. People always say, Oh, we have a good foundation. Did you build it or are you just evaluating what actually turned out? Or did you intentionally, deliberately build a foundation? You did. That due diligence is extraordinarily rare. Why it's such a shame that it is rare is because we give that due diligence to purchases like homes and cars. I know people that spend 2 hours a day studying car models before they make the commitment on their next car. But they're not going to spend an hour thinking about their next relationship or what they should do or about whether they should have kids or how they want to raise them or what their values are or all of those things.

To me, if they're ever going to put in the work to do the research, do the due diligence, to put in the effort to build something intentionally, deliberately, mindfully, it relationships where it should be. And by the way, not just romantic ones, because all these rules of relationships are true for all kinds of relationships.

Yeah. What is the big mistake that people are making today then in relationships by entering the relationship? Is it they haven't healed from the previous one? Can you enter a new relationship while being wounded from the previous one? Or do you need to be on some type of healing journey to set yourself up for a better opportunity, do you think?

First of all, I think you can get into a relationship in any situation. It just might mean that you will have more work to do and that the relationship will have more work to do if you're coming at it from a wounded place or something like that. When you said, I told her what the plan was. In other words, you told each other, and this was your individual thing, you're like, This is the ride I want to on. That's where you'll be joining me for, You need to know if you want that ride. She's saying the same thing to you, This is the ride I want to be on, and you need to know if that's the one that you want to join me on. Now, they're not in conflict necessarily at all. Each person's goals and dreams of how they want to develop or what life they want. But it's very thoughtful and it's very important to say, This is the vision. Are we sharing it? And to ask all these questions, to have these conversations, they're not easy to have. They're not. Because Because I'm sure it wasn't the case that everything you said, she was like, Yeah, me too.

Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too.

Yeah, me too. Stuff needed to be worked out. Then you're like, Is this critical? Is this deal-breaking? Is this something that we can manage to accept? You use that word a lot, totally about accepting That's correct. That's the question. You're actually walking into a bit of a marsh when you do that. It's not all skipping along. But as long as you're willing to do that work, you get off and you get off into dry land.

That's true. Try peaceful land, abundant, fertile lead. No, it doesn't mean there's not going to be challenges and life's going to throw things at you. But I think if you're in it together and you're able to create agreements early on, then it just doesn't mean you have to have a lot of disturbances within the relationship. There might be things coming at the relationship that you need to handle together. But when we're in disagreement constantly about each other or what's wrong with the other person and what they didn't do or what they didn't do for me, then it It's just going to be a weaker foundation, I think, when you don't have agreements.

What you guys did is for a year or however many months, you actually practiced communication, conflict resolution, negotiation. You practice all these very important couples, relationship, and communication skills that would have come up a little bit here, a little bit there, but not in that substantial a way. You guys developed these muscles and these and these habits with one another of like, if we have a problem, we know how to talk about it, we know how to be honest about it, we know how to resolve it. That's the other part of the piece and the confidence. You worked all that out. You developed those skills together in the formation. That's why they're going to therapy every six weeks or whatever it was. Great idea. Let's get a little bit of guidance on that because it doesn't hurt. It actually helps quite a bit.

There was nothing wrong in the relationship early on.

It does not have to be to learn good habits. I know.

It was amazing. But it takes time and investment. I I remember, I was like, I don't think I'd have been ready for you if I met you 10 years ago. I wouldn't have seen you the same way. I didn't have the tools or the skills to deal with my emotions. I was still healing. I was still growing. I was doing my interview show and I had resources, but I think a lot of people don't have the tools or the skills to have the courage to speak up for what they want, to navigate challenges in a relationship when they feel their button is pushed and they're just reactive. They don't know how to respond calmly because they're in fight or flight. I've been there many times in the past. It's a massive problem for people. They don't have the tools. How do you see the younger generation, people in their 20s or 30s, being able to get into relationships and have these tools if they've never been trained? It took me a long time to have a lot of pain to be like, Okay, I need to learn something different.

But look how much research you did along the way. This is the third interview we've had. We speak outside of this sometimes, but you are prepared. You do the reading, you do the research. You've learned so much from so many different experts. You are not a layperson coming at it. You practically have an honorary PhD in psychology and relationships already for all the stuff that you've done. I'm serious.

But most people don't have this.

Most people do not. That's my point. In other words, you do have to put in the You had put in the work. The books I write and the things I do is to get people to be more thoughtful and more mindful about how they feel and what they want and what they do. Because we can't be on autopilot all the time, and most of us are on autopilot all the time. One quick thing I wanted to touch on, because I think this is something that young people say to me a lot, and it's problematic. They say, one person will say to another, I don't like when you did so and so, and that person will say, Well, that's who I am. I'm not going to change, and you shouldn't try and change who I am. I think it's really important that people distinguish who you are from what you do.

From behaviors, right? From behavior.

They're not asking you to change who you are a lot of the time. If it's like, Oh, you hate skiing, you must come with me on skiing vacations three times a year, it's not going to happen. But if it's about, I don't like when you say those things to me, well, that's just who I am. No, no, no. That's what you said. It's not who you are. People get stubborn and they don't want to change things that you actually should change and be open to.

Yeah, you can't be disrespectful and say, Well, this is who I am. Except me for being disrespectful to you.

Or stubborn or difficult or whatever it is.

I think it's also important to know, Hey, before you get into a relationship, make sure you find out if this is the way they are, and they're not going to change that, maybe they're not for you.

What I really find surprising is sometimes somebody will say to me, Yeah, the other person, the person they're dating, they just keep telling me what they want and what they like and what they want and what they like. It's like it's so annoying. I'm like, I'm sorry. They're giving you the user manual for how to be in a relationship with them, and you don't think it's important for you to read it. It's amazing. They're communicating that. That should be the best thing ever. Now, you like it or you don't like it, but it's not annoying that they're doing it. You should be doing the same. They're giving you the instruction manual on how to be with them. Exactly.

Pay attention. No, I think it's really important. I think I probably over communicated more in the first year, probably out of trauma from the past of like, Okay, this is really who I am, and this is my truth, and I just want to make sure you're okay with this.

She's lying on the couch, watch on her, watch TV, going I heard you the first three times.

No, I'm like, 20 times. She's like, You were really traumatized in the past. I'm like, I just want to make sure you know who I am. All my flaws, all my past, where I'm at, where I'm going, this is what I want. You're sure you're good? It's like mile markers. You got to lay this cement. It's like every mile marker, Okay, you're still on the same path. Make sure you're in alignment, because it's not worth me being like, I don't want to invest it, and then you want me to change who I am. I think you got to be willing to accept the person and make sure you figure out all their behaviors or as much as you can within the first 6-12 months before you take the long road with them and say, All right, am I down for this journey? If it's a little bumpy, am I cool with it? Or don't choose the person. If they have bad behavior over over, you don't have to choose them. If they're not going to be able to change, you either accept it and that's it. But you had this on your... I think this is on your website as well, a quote from you.

It said, Mental health is about diagnosable conditions like depression and anxiety. Emotional health is about common experiences like loneliness, failure, and heartbreak, the non-diagnosable stuff. You also mentioned that you grew up... Another quote from you, you said, I grew up with my identical twin, which, of course, made me an expert in spotting favoritism. When I became a psychologist, it didn't take me long to recognize how much we favor our physical health over our emotional health. For example, if we get a cut on our arm, we can just tell by looking at it whether we need a badge, a stitch, or an ambulance. But when we sustain an emotional wound like rejection, failure, we have no idea how to gage whether the wound is deep or whether it requires emotional first aid. A few of us would know how to treat it ourselves if we did. As a psychologist, you find that unacceptable, you said. Our physical health and our emotional health are the twins of our general well being, and as such, we should treat them equally. How can we start to self-diagnose the emotional wounds that we deal with? How can we know when we are having a symptom of an emotional wound that is worthy of a deeper look rather than just a quick rub it off or a bandaid?

I would use a similar guideline that you do for a physical wound. You might wake up with a little bit of a scratchy throat or a sniffle, but you don't know if it's going to go somewhere. If two days later, you're still sniffling and scratchy, you might consider that you have a cold or something worse, and you might want to do something about it, but it might go away. It's the same thing. We get wounded all the time. Every time you check social media and that person didn't like your thing or share your thing or respond to your thing, we feel rejected, and every little swipe that doesn't get swiped back, we feel rejected. There's a lot of rejection in the world today because we're tethered to so many people, electronically, the opportunities are tremendous. But if it nags you, really nags you, if it's really bothering you, if you're having trouble shaking it, that's when you might want to consider doing a quick exercise or doing something to actually treat the wound rather than just waiting for it to go away.

For Phelip, what would that nagging feeling look like for someone if it's an emotional wound? Is it a physical sensation internally? Is it like their chest is tight?

It's a preoccupation, probably, and it's a mood, probably.

A rumination of something?

It can be a rumination or just you keep thinking back, Why hasn't she haven't responded? I thought the date was good. Why is it? She's not responding, I guess. It's like, Now she's ghosting me. I don't understand. It's four or five days, and it was one date.

Right.

You just don't get over it. Now, you don't have to run therapy for that, but there are certain exercises you can do to just revitalize your self-esteem, your mode.

What's an exercise that someone can do if they feel rejected or if someone hurt them, whether it was intentional or not?

There are two things. Actually, there are many more than two. I'm going to mention two. One is the don't do. The don't do is the first thing we all do is become very self-critical. In our efforts to understand why it happened, we review everything that might not be great with to see if that's the reason. Is it because I'm not this or I am that or I'm too much here, I'm too little here? Maybe it's because I knew I shouldn't have done. You just got rejected. Not the best time to go through the greatest hits of your insecurities You want to be doing the opposite, reviving your self-esteem, not actually reviewing all the wounds that you've sustained in the past. Because when you look at past wounds, you reactivate them emotionally. If you had physical injuries, if you think about them, they're not going to hurt. But if you think about some of the emotional times, about the rejections or about the depressions or about something that got you really upset, you're going to get upset again, even if it's 20 years later. Isn't that interesting? It is, but that's the problem.

When we think about a memory of trauma that we have yet to heal, and we relive that in our mind, is it almost just like we're living that moment all over again?

Yeah, but it's not one that you have yet to heal. It can be one you've healed. If you think about something small and incredibly irritating that happened 15 years ago, and you start literally thinking through the details, you're going to start to feel really irritated. It has zero consequence or meaning in the present, none. But that's how we are. Our emotional reflection reactivates these things. It's important because that's when if you're spinning about, Oh, I'm not this enough or that enough, and that person reject me, was it for the same reason? Is it this? What's going on? You start to question yourself, and that's just doing damage to your self-esteem. Because if it's after one date, and really, truly, if it's after five, whatever the reason is, it's about chemistry, it's about fit. It's about timing. It's not personal. It's personal in that you might not have been a good fit for them, but it doesn't mean you're a bad person or not a great fit for anyone else.

Why do so many people take it personally when they get rejected in a dating situation or relationship?

It's not only that. They take it personally, and then they generalize it to mean something even bigger than what it does. I never find love. Really? She didn't sway back. That seems like a leap in inference to make from that. But it's a very natural thing we do. We assume it's us. Now, literally, people do that when they text it with somebody back and forth for a bit, and then that person disappears. You have no idea if you're even talking to a real person. You have no idea. That person might be in the hospital. They might have been chatting with you to piss off the person they're actually living with at the time. They might be going through whatever we could work. There's a thousand things that can be going on for you to assume that you did something wrong in five texts that was so bad that it's completely unnecessary, but that's where the mind goes. So let's stop that damage. That's the first thing to not do. But the thing you can do is the opposite. You want to remind yourself in those moments of what you bring to the table, what you do have to offer.

Now, you can't fool yourself. You can't say to yourself, I'm the most gorgeous person in the world, if you're not. And if the feedback that you get is that you're not, because your mind won't believe that. We have this automatic way of thinking that will reject things that fall outside the sphere of what it considers believable. And so you can't just convince yourself of something that's not true. You have to focus on the things that are. So think about your best attributes. I have amazing eyes. I know I'm going to find someone who will want to gaze into them. I am such a great listener. I'm emotionally available, and I'm always up for doing things. Those are wonderful qualities and characters that somebody will appreciate, et cetera. You actually review what is worthwhile about you and not do the opposite.

It almost sounds like before you start dating or getting into a relationship, one of the best things that you can do for yourself is build your self-esteem is what it sounds like. Because when you have a quality or high level of self-esteem, you're not going to get into a relationship that's not good for you. You're not going to stay in one where someone's treating you poorly or not respecting your boundaries, or you're not going to take the straps of something because because you're just lonely. Building self-esteem sounds like a great foundation for the individual before even getting into a relationship.

Wherever you start, however big you grow, OnPust Commerce is here for your business. With the Advantage Card, you save on every stamp you stick and every parcel you send.

So wherever you are right now, get your Advantage Card and Onpust com or at your local post office.

On Postcommerce, a world closer. Terms and conditions apply. Every year, thousands of people go to their very first concert. Our boost That signal at large events means they can always call a taxi to get home. Mom?

Yeah, it was grand.

Do you think you could pick me up?

Every connection counts, which is why Ireland can count on our network. Vodafone, Together we can.

Subject to coverage availability, limitations in terms apply. See vodafone. Ie/terms.

It is doing, and the way you do that is doing what you did in your relationship on an individual level, i. E, you get to know yourself and you get to accept yourself.

All the parts of you.

All the parts of you because there's no one who's perfect. Every good quality you have comes with a downside. It's going to be true of everyone.

Give me an example for yourself. For me? Yeah. What's a good quality that comes with the downside?

I can think of several. But okay, I have a sense of humor. You're very funny. I enjoy my sense of humor. I sometimes deploy it in ways that are maybe notBad timing or something? Yes. Because if the joke is going to be funny, I'm going to say it no matter what just because I can't pass it up, and I am going to be upsetting someone by doing so. Potentially, I try not to. It leakss out in sessions sometimes.

When they're sad and like, Yeah, whatever.

I'll give you a quote, and I'll give you a quote, and I'll give you this is terrible. Actually, I shouldn't do it just because it makes me sound so bad.

Now you have to do it.

You have to do it. Okay, I'm not going to say anything about the person, but it was a session in which somebody was having an issue in a relationship. I was challenging on why they're not setting more limits with their partner who needed limits set with them.

Setting boundaries.

Right. They said, Yeah, that's how it is. This person was very successful. They said, That's how it is. I'm a lion in the boardroom and a pussy cat in the bedroom. I said, I agree with every word except cat. It was funny to me. Not funny to the other person. I apologized for it. I apologize again if they happened to be listening. But the point was actually sound.

Yeah, of course.

I didn't need to. But the joke was dangling, and I couldn't. Here's a thing that has a downside. Sure. Somebody who's very, let's say, conscientious about things, that's a wonderful thing that they're conscientious But it's also a standard that they're probably going to likely have that they'll likely want to hold you to as well. So lovely to receive it, but then they're going to be expecting it. That can be a pain sometimes. There's always a It's a concept. You just have to learn to accept and to go, This is great. Yes, it comes with that. I'll accept it because I like that.

Yeah, exactly. Why do you think people struggle with emotional regulation, not just in life, but even heightened more in relationships? How can someone learn to regulate their emotions in a relationship if they've been so used to reacting in fight or flight mode for so long? What do you think is a process they can start? I'll have you start, and then we'll have you add to Asadeya.

I think the people that trigger us the most are the people that we're closest to. So it's hard to... They uniquely know how to push our buttons as well. Hopefully, they don't do that on purpose, but they have the knowledge to be able to push our buttons. But also just it's like family. You think you've grown so much and you think you've become so wise and you've healed, and then you go back for Christmas with family or for the holidays. Push your buttons and trigger you.

Within two days, something has you feeling like a 14-year-old who's mad again.

Those people that are closest to us have this unique ability to impact us. So I think it's really easy to have patience with people like, Oh, it's so much easier with my friends. Yeah, no, you don't see your friend every night of the week. You see them once every couple of weeks. It's like a little honeymoon every time you get together because you're just excited to see each other. Of course, they don't push your buttons the same way. But the person you're with every day is going to. So I think we have to almost step back from it a little bit and go, This It isn't necessarily a sign that my partner is so much worse than everybody else. It's a sign that this person is so close to me that it's the easiest place for me to get triggered. It's probably the place I have the least patience because I give so much energy everywhere else in my life. I take for granted that this person is going to be there at the end of the day. We go to work and we give our best energy, and then we go home and whatever is left, we hand to our partner, and So we've reserved our patience for everyone else in our lives.

I think taking a step back and going, what would it look like? This is a very hard thing to do, but what would it look like if I gave my partner the grace or patience or understanding that I give to other people in my life that, frankly, probably do a lot less for me, that show up a lot less for me. What would it look like if I started showing up for them in that way? I think isn't a bad question. Interesting.

What would you add to that?

I would say one of the problems with emotional dysregulation is we, as human beings, tend to select the person who enables the dysregulation rather the person we want to be with the most.

Why do we select that person more?

Because they tolerate our insufferable behavior a bit more. Sometimes as a woman who's suffered from lots of emotional dysregulation in the past, I would find myself just seeing somebody's tolerance of my insufferable behavior as a signal of love. Sometimes people who can't regulate their emotions will look for the punching bag in their life. They'll look for the person that they can be dysregulated for, and that person remains committed, and they see that as a signal of love, and they connect with person who actually has weak boundaries. A combination of emotional dysregulation and selecting somebody who is tolerable-Who accepts the dysregulation. Yeah, it leads to that dysregulation not being resolved. I think the key question is that with emotional dysregulation, we know if we do that at work, we'll get fired. And we know that if we do that in public, we'll get arrested if we do that in public. But when we pick a partner and we make sure that that partner doesn't actually have a willingness to walk away, or that partner just allows it the most, we might just exude all of our dysregulation on that one party. So it's really important when you suffer from emotional dysregulation to select a partner that still, just because they can tolerate, it doesn't mean they should.

And they should still, and you, on the receiving end, still have a threshold of how much you can and can't accept. Only when a partner or a person who's emotionally dysregulated meets somebody that they genuinely love and respect, but also has a very clear threshold of how much they can handle, does a dysregulated partner start to monitor their own reactions. But if they feel like they can get away with it, sometimes they will. So I think this regulation can lead to selection of enablers rather than selections of compatibility.

What is this quote? I'm sure you both have heard this. If they can't They don't deserve me at my worst, they don't deserve me at my best. What do you guys think about that saying in relationships?

I used to be a big banner for that because I was a nightmare myself. So I was like, Oh, I love your statement. But I think if you can't respect somebody your worst, you don't deserve them at your best. And so while you're at your worst, if you totally disrespect that person and totally crush their boundaries, you don't deserve them when they're at their best or you don't deserve them when you're at your best. So instead of expecting somebody to tolerate your behavior, remember, you also have a duty of care to them. You should also say, At my worst, I don't want to put them through so much suffering. At my worst, I want to express myself. I understand I'm not going to be perfect, but does it mean I treat as an emotional punching bag.

So I can't emotionally punch on them all day long and then say, Well, you have to deal with my emotions.

And then you'll get a party on your birthday. It doesn't really work that way. It's almost like a form of manipulation. And I'm saying in the worst case scenario because I've been that person that had that mantra. But it's actually how we treat our loved ones at our worst is a symbol of how much we respect them. And we need to try and be mindful of that because some people just can't tolerate you at your worst. It doesn't mean they don't love you. It's just that they're not equipped for that level of emotional dysregulation.

You should be able to... I mean, you're worst as a child, I'm assuming you're going to scream and throw tantrums constantly, but then hopefully you learn how to develop your emotions and navigate your emotions so that you can be frustrated or have a breakdown, but not trash on someone. Yeah, not punish someone. Not punish someone and say, You're doing this to me. It's like learning how to... Maybe you need to step away or maybe you're going to get loud for a moment, but you're not going to attack someone.

Ask yourself, would you tolerate you at your worst? If at your worst, you get abusive-Right now, yeah. Yeah, right now, I would.

I'm good right now, but yeah, in my past, maybe not.

In the past, I wouldn't. But right now, it's fine. But in the past, if your worst looks like emotional abuse, if it looks like infidelity, if it looks like physical abuse, would you tolerate you at your worst? And if you would, perfect, you're probably in a healthy space. If you wouldn't, what would you suggest to somebody who's going to have to... What would you say to yourself if you had to experience that? And if you would say to yourself, Oh, just leave, don't tolerate that, then You don't expect your partner to tolerate it.

Why is it so hard to leave a relationship after many years when someone treats you poorly or they have dysregulation frequently, let's call it on a weekly basis or every other day, it seems like dysregulation or this type of emotional, I don't know if you want to call it abuse or- Rollercoaster. Rollercoaster emotions, lack of respect. Why would you say, Matthew, it's so hard to leave a relationship. The relationship is failing. It's not healthy, but people tend to stay. In your work that you do with a lot of women, why do women stay so long? Maybe there's kids or not kids involved, but why do women stay, and how can they start to shift to make it healthier or get out of it in a healthy way?

I think it's... Well, it would be termed the trauma bond. There's a There's this behavior that makes life really hard with this person, or it might even make it intolerable, but we tolerate it for as long as we can. And then if it ever got too, too bad for too long, we would just have to leave. If it was If it was just hell 24/7, no matter what, we would leave. We would reach a certain pain threshold.

But there's doses of moments, right? Of good moments.

There's that moment where someone does something that hints a different side of them. It hints the potential for kindness, the potential for understanding. It hints at what the relationship could be.

Or was in the beginning.

Or was in the beginning. That reels us back in, and we are so elated and so happy to have this moment that we then say, Okay, I'm going to go back in. And then, of course, the other shoe drops, which it always does. I think of it as a broken clock. The broken clock is right twice a day. It's not a good watch for telling the time. It's failed in its fundamental function. But when it's right, you go, well... That relationship you're describing is the broken watch. We're trying to use this thing to tell the time thinking that, oh, no, it was right a minute ago. Well, maybe it's working after all. And then we have to wait another 12 hours before it's right again. You have to ask yourself, am I in that broken watch relationship? And if I am, what's the way to get out of that? Well, I think one of the ways is to properly tune into your feelings. Because I think we don't really tune into what our experience is. We are so focused on where it could go or the fact that we think that we will never be okay if we lose this person.

How will I get by? Can I deal with the pain of losing this person? If I could just get them and turn them into the thing that I need them to be, then I'll be happy. We're so fixated on that that we're not fixated on the pain that we are in constantly, which is making us miserable. Or if we really paid attention, we'd look at how this disproportionately makes us miserable. I worked with someone who ended a relationship with a very toxic person, and this person was never around. This person was completely dismissive. Even on the weekends when they were together, this person was just on their laptop paying them absolutely zero attention. The woman that I was coaching I remember at the end of the relationship, she said, I just don't know how I'm going to do this, how I'm going to be on my own. And then I showed her the relationship. Not in a relationship. Yeah. I don't know how I'm going to be on my own. And then I actually showed her the relationship.

You are on your own.

You said this person's never home. They stay out. On the weekends, you're completely alone, even when you're in the same room. You've spent the last five years learning how to be alone. You're already good at this. You just have this old association that when I leave, I'm not going to be able to take it, but you already have the tools.

Why does it seem like it's easier as a girlfriend or a guy friend of a person in a struggling relationship? Why is it easy for them to see, Man, this has been When it's in two years you've been in this pattern, this loop of up and down emotional roller coaster that doesn't seem healthy, when it's so hard for the person in the relationship to realize, Man, this is broken. This is not working. But I'm going to keep trying to make it work. I'm going to keep trying to get that clock to hit the right time every minute? Why is it so hard for people to understand they're in a broken relationship?

The investment they've placed into it makes it very difficult for them to see objective reality. In their mind, they have a vision of the future. It might involve children, it might involve a home, it might involve any connection, and they think that vision can only be achieved with the person they've invested the most in. They don't realize that vision is still achievable outside of this relationship. They attribute the ability to achieve all of that to this relationship working out. As a friend or a family member, you can say, You're still a great person. You can still find love, you can still have kids, you can still get married, but you can do it outside of this relationship. They don't see the vision outside of the relationship. So they've zoomed into the perspective of only through this person can I achieve my end goals? We, as friends and family, can say, your goals are still separate to this individual. They can still occur, but with somebody who doesn't have the unhealthy traits that make it impossible in this certain situation.

What do you think of the things? We're talking about why relationships fail, but what do you think are the things that people don't do before committing to the relationship that end up causing it to be just a rocky foundation to start with, which is destined to fail? What are the things that women do or men do that you think set up a rocky foundation? I'll let you start.

They don't communicate what is a deal breaker to them. They know all the things that they like. I like to go on dinner dates. I like to do this. I like to do that. But they forget that the stability of the relationship depends on the actual deal breakers rather than all the things that you love about the person.

What are some examples of deal breakers that people don't communicate?

It might be lack of availability, emotional availability. It might be a lack of affection. They might be funny. They might have a great job. They might be beautiful. All of those things. But if they are emotionally unavailable or if they are not considerate or if they're not compassionate as a person, but I haven't realized that, that deal breaker is still there causing disruption of peace every single day. But if I realize my deal breakers and I go into it with a mentality that as long I don't care if you're an angel on paper, but if you've got even one deal breaker, chances I will fight about this deal breaker forever. Really? It could just be that we disagree on... A deal breaker might be a commitment level. How much commitment do I want? Or a deal breaker might be how much time we spend together, quality time. It might be any of the love languages. One of them might be a deal breaker for you. But if that person has even one deal breaker, it will resurface again and again until the relationship slowly starts to corrode. So it's important to express what you think emotionally might be a deal breaker for you.

What do you think are the biggest deal breakers for people? Would you just say it's sex or topics around sex, money and topics around money, family, kids, religion, or something else?

God.

I suppose it could be anything, depending on the person.

Or is it just literally like, we could have three things that are right, but if we have two that are off, eventually it's going to be harder to make it work? What do you think?

I think if we We have a very different vision for how we want to live our lives, those are really hard. One person wants a family and the other one doesn't. But to the point of communication, those are things that often people turn a blind eye to.

Why is that? Why do we not communicate deal-breakers and things that are actually really important before committing to the relationship?

We have a scarcity mindset. It's that fear of nothing better is going to come along. Look, I think that in our love lives, especially, we really want to meet someone. It's a universal thing. We really want to meet someone. When we haven't met someone, we can start to get scared as time goes on. We think there's something wrong with us, and I'm broken, and I'm never going to find someone, and what if it never happens for me? God, it's hard to meet someone. The most dangerous moment in love and dating is the moment you meet someone you're attracted to. That is the most dangerous moment. Because if you meet a person you're attracted to in a place of scarcity and fear, that is precisely the time that you lower your standards and you lose your boundaries. Because the instinct is, don't do anything that could mess it up. The instinct is not, let me see how right this is. Don't do anything to screw this up. Now, people have different ways of dealing with that fear. But if you take one example is some people go into anxious faulling. I'm scared. I'm just going to do everything.

What characterizes anxious faulling? I'm I'm going to...

Anxious fawning?

Fawning, yeah. Fawning. I'm going to... So I'm anxious, and my instinct when I'm anxious is to try to make you happy, because if I can make you happy, maybe you'll never leave me. For a lot of people, what that means is I overgive at the same time as under communicating what I really need, which is a really poisonous combination. Because it simultaneously means you burn out giving to someone, but also no one knows what you really want.

Then you resent the person for not giving you what you need that you haven't communicated it.

Yeah, you resent them, but you're too afraid to rock the boat because you don't want to lose them. It's fascinating to me. You can literally look at different types of people and how they react to that. If you are doing that and you come across an avoidant, someone who's avoidant is going to get pushed away. They're going to be like, This is a lot. You're going to keep giving, even though they've pulled away, because that's what you do, but you're not going to communicate that it's hurt you that they've pulled away. So with an avoidant type, you won't get your needs met because you won't communicate as they pull away. You'll just keep giving, hoping that they'll come back. If you come across an anxious person and you're anxiously fawn that person might consume you. Most people, or not most people, some people have had that experience with a parent where their parent was just trying to get their own needs met, and they became the child that gave and gave and gave and gave and gave to try to make the parent happy. But because because they had no boundaries around that, they became deeply resentful of this one-sided relationship with their parent.

People then go into that in relationships, too, where it's like they just live in service of this other person who's anxiously taking as much as they can. If you come across a secure If you're a person and you're anxiously fauening, then that person is going to have a hard time connecting with you because they're not going to know what your preferences are. They're going to say, What do you want for dinner? And you say, What do you want for dinner? And they'll go, I don't know, Chinese food? And you'll That was me, too. I wanted that. And if you do that three times in a row, they'll realize they don't know who you are. They can't connect with you. They don't know how to make you happy. And they can't really trust you because they can't trust that you're ever really saying what you really think. So I say this to highlight the fact that this is how these dynamics get started, is we're coming from a place of fear. And when we're coming from a place of fear, we go to the weapons that we know how to use. We We all have our weapon of choice.

For some people, it's, I don't let anyone screw with me. And that's their weapon of choice. And the moment they think they could get hurt, they reject someone before that person can reject them. Other people is, my weapon of choice is making, trying to do as much as possible for you that I make myself indispensable. It's worth everyone asking, what's my weapon of choice? What do I default to? And if I never question what I'm defaulting to, I'm I'm going to always be in the same kinds of relationships. And by the way, that anxious fauning I'm talking about, who does it attract? The toxic person, because that person sees a free lunch. I'm going to come and take everything from the buffet here, and then when I'm done with it, I'm out. So then we go, Why do I always attract people like this? Or why do I always fall into these patterns? It's because there is a weapon that we are overusing. And at At some point, we have to... It's a very brave thing to go, What weapon am I overusing? And recognize, by the way, that's meeting a need, that there's some need it's meeting.

If If I'm... Not a healthy need.

Not a healthy need, yeah.

But if I crack jokes and make everyone laugh, and I know I can do that, then it meets a need for me. It's control. I know that I can control the room through making people laugh. Now, it also might be a barrier to connection in situations where sincerity is called for, and we never get deep because I'm always making jokes. But if I stop joking and I say, I'm going to try and create a deeper connection, and that means I'm going to pull back from the sarcasm, let's say, I've taken away my own most practiced sharpened weapon, and I may not know how to operate in this new territory. I now may find myself almost like a toddler in conversation going, I don't know how to play this game. I don't know how to connect with people when I'm not being funny. And it requires us almost to get worse before we get better, to feel like we're taking a step backwards before we take a step forwards. The step forwards might ultimately It's going to ultimately be a far healthier relationship or a far better relationship than anything we've ever experienced. But we might have to go almost like go back to learning how to walk again in an area and give up that power we're used to feelings so that we can have something much more rewarding on the other side of it.

I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you are looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook. Com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to the next episode on The School of Greatness. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. If If you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple podcast. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcast as well.

Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.