How To Believe You Are Worthy Of The Love You Desire | Jillian Turecki

Hey, my friend, welcome back to another episode of the School of Greatness. I'm excited for this episode because so many people struggle around relationships. I have been one of those individuals. For most of my life, I struggled. And I think I was in five or six kind of long-term relationships from, you know, my late teens to my late 30s. So for 20 years, I was in multiple long-term relationships and I just, man, I struggled. And I thought I figured it out after every breakup, what to do, and that it wasn't my fault and it was someone else's problem. And man, was I wrong? And it took me a lot of sadness, a lot of suffering, a lot of pain, a lot of harsh lessons through all these different relationships on what I needed to start shifting to attract harmonious love to attract someone who was the right match for me and really to become the person who was the right match for myself. So it was not even actually about finding someone else who was right for me first. It was really about me becoming the person I needed to be in order to create healthy boundaries, in order to speak my truth, in order to feel safe. And then from that space, I feel like I really attracted an incredible person who who understood me, who accepted me, and who saw me. But I wasn't even seeing myself in all my deficiencies until I started to do a lot of the work. And today I'm sitting down with a powerful relationship coach and author, Jillian Tarecki, for a conversation about love, relationships, and personal growth. And she's got a new book out called It Begins With youh. And in this episode, we dive deep into the incredible takeaways from her book, as well as her life experiences, because Jillian brings unique insights from both her professional expertise and personal journey, which is something that I love. including her experience with divorce and healing her relationship with her father that caused her a lot of pain in intimate relationships with men. We dive deep into the difference between lust and love and why you can't convince someone to love you and how to develop the self-awareness needed for healthy relationships. This was something I wish I had 20 years ago because it would have saved me a lot of pain and a lot of stress. But we all learn lessons exactly when we need to learn them. So unfortunately, I didn't have this podcast 20 years ago or this, this content wasn't out there for me. So if you're here and you're going through a breakup or you just went through a breakup or you struggled in relationships, then I want you to know you are in the exact place you need to be. This is a synchronicity and a sign and a signal from the universe that you are in the right place. And I want you to get out of bed and paper and take some notes. She's also going to talk about the critical importance of speaking truth in relationships, even when it feels uncomfortable and risky. And man, do I wish I had this power for two decades. I was not able to speak my truth and it was a massive cause of a lot of breakdowns. Then she's gonna talk about the essential truths that can transform how we approach love and connection. So if you've ever struggled in relationships and you wanna build stronger ones this year and beyond, this episode will give you the tools and the wisdom to create lasting change. And I am so excited for you to dive in. If this is your first time here, please click the follow button on Apple Podcasts right now or Spotify and leave us a review. When you follow and you leave a review, it really helps us to spread these messages for free to more people in the world who might be struggling or want personal growth. So click the follow button, leave a review, and just go ahead and copy and paste the link to this episode and share it with one or two friends Send it in a WhatsApp group chat, post it on social media, share it with a friend of yours that you wanna see continue to thrive in their relationships now and in the future. If there's someone you care about deeply, send this to them. And I am excited to dive into this episode. But also, big announcement, if you haven't heard yet, my new book, Make Money Easy, Create Financial Freedom and Live a Richer Life is coming out very soon. I'd love for you to order it pre-order right now. The link will be in the description. below on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you're listening to this, just click on that link. It'll take you right to Amazon. We'd love for you to get a copy of my book because one of the biggest problems that people have in relationships is around money. So if you want to create a harmonious relationship with money and have better, healthier conversations with money with the people you're with, friends, family, and intimate partners, this book will give you the tools and the teaching you need to feel financially free and harmonious in your relationship with money. Make sure to check it out. It's called Make Money Easy. Create Financial Freedom and Live a Richer Life. Without further ado, let's dive into this episode right now. With the US Bank Smartly Visa Signature Card, you earn an unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase, earn 2% cash back at restaurants and another 2% cash back at the gym to work it off. Unlimited 2% cash back every purchase, That's earning more smartly. Visit usbank.com/smartlycard to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is U.S. Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA Inc. Some restrictions may apply. This podcast is sponsored by Northwestern Mutual. Everyone wants to feel good about their finances, right? Well, that's why I've had life insurance with Northwestern Mutual for years. Their financial professionals ask the right questions, truly listen, and help uncover opportunities most people miss. I've seen it firsthand. Northwestern Mutual has been a part of my journey from the very beginning, providing the security and peace of mind I need as a human and an entrepreneur. Find a better way to money@nm.com the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, paid testimonial by a Northwestern Mutual policy owner.

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Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Jillian Tareeqi in the house. So good to have you back and congrats on the new book. It begins with you, the Nine Hard Truths about Love that Will Change youe Life. You've got an amazing podcast as well. This book is coming out very soon. and you have been on just a tear over the last couple of years of helping people figure out about relationships and love. And it seems like the world is struggling more than ever to find harmony between people. There's a lot of divisiveness in the world in general, but two people coming together, it just seems like it's really challenging to find peace within love.

Yes.

And I'm curious, I saw something that you talked about recently about why it's really hard to create a relationship with someone who's not invested in you. And I'm curious, what are the signs that you can tell whether someone is invested in you or not? And why can you not build a relationship with someone who's not showing you these signs of investment?

Okay, so when someone is invested in you, like if you're starting to see someone, they actually are interested in you as a person. They wanna know your story. They want to know the things that make you happy. They want to know the things that make you sad. And they are carving out space in their life for you versus someone who's always busy, not really interested in getting to know you on a deeper level. not really wanting to know your story, not wanting to, not making time to spend time with you. You know, time is such a precious, precious resource for all of us. And most of the time, you know, like if we're not making time for someone, we're not that interested. You know, I guess sometimes it's that they, you know, someone really is busy, but anything that you really want, Anything that you really wanna know, anything that you really wanna acquire, anything that you want to build something with, you're gonna make the time. So it's investing time, it's investing energy, and someone really wanting to know you. They're asking questions. They wanna know about your childhood. They wanna know about your hobbies. It's not just, oh, let me vet you to see if you're the right person for me. It's like, I'm actually very interested in you. That's, I mean, that's attraction. And when we're attracted to someone, we want to do that. And then when we start to develop an emotional bond with someone, we want to know even more. And there are some people who are just not investing at the level that you are. You know, they're not putting in, so another part of this is, so I was speaking a little bit more to like the beginning stages. But then when things get, it's like, okay, you're quote unquote in a relationship. You're not taking the time to work on what needs to be worked on inside of yourself and in the relationship to make the relationship wonderful. And because it really, a relationship is something that is built and it's only as healthy as the two people are behaving in it. So you can't, I think that one of the biggest myths out there is, well, a relationship should just be easy. And I think that, it's, well, there's a fine line. You have to know where you draw the line when something is just too hard.

Yes.

But easy? First of all, if relationships were just easy, we would be really bored. We need a little friction. We need friction to grow. We need friction to learn more about ourselves and to learn more about the other person. And so there are people who don't understand lots of people, many, many people, because we're not really taught this unless we're modeled this by our parents. that your relationship is really dependent on what you put into it. It really is. And so if someone is not investing, they're not putting in the work to make it great, like they're not going out of their way to be a great partner. They're not going out of their way to meet your needs. They're not going out of their way to communicate what their needs are. And, you know, maybe that person just thinks, well, I can be in the relationship and just coast. And that's very frustrating for someone whose understanding of relationship is, no, we gotta put the work in. And so you have one person who thinks a relationship should be easy, another person whose belief system includes, no, a relationship is what we make of it. and then you got a recipe for a clash, you know? And so you can't build it with someone like that.

You mentioned something that, you know, and a lot of people put their best foot forward in the beginning stages of dating, but then they'll start behaving differently, you know, two years after the honeymoon phase or something. And you said something about, yeah, maybe three months. And you mentioned something about having, you know, a relationship is only as strong as to healthy people in it or how healthy the individuals are in it, is that correct?

How healthy they're behaving in it. Yeah, absolutely.

Why do people start behaving poorly after they're in a relationship?

Let's see. Let's take the whole hour, you know, right?

Well, so... And why do people stay in the relationship once their partner starts consistently behaving poorly?

Oh, wow. We got, these are two big subjects. Okay. So, Here's a reality to life and love. When we start seeing someone and we're attracted to them and they're attracted to us and we're excited about them, we want to seduce them. And this isn't necessarily sure there are the people out there who are manipulative and they're gonna do all these games and they're wearing a thick mask and then when the mask comes off, they're a real son of a and they're really, really mean. Those people exist and they're incredibly toxic. But let's just talk about all the rest of us, right? So we put our best foot forward because we're trying to, we're marketing. We're in sales and marketing. It's like, how can I present myself to be the best person I can be? And a lot of times, unless it's someone very manipulative, A lot of times the person who we are in the beginning is actually who we are when we are unburdened by stress, monotony, you know, negative moods. Like sometimes it really is like our highest self in the beginning. And sometimes it's just like, okay, maybe you're not being as authentic as you need to be. So we do that in the beginning because we want to It's marketing and sales, and we're trying to seduce.

We wanna close the deal.

We wanna close the deal. And everyone is doing it whether they're conscious of it or not. It's not that there's no place for that because that's going to happen because oftentimes, because when we're attracted to someone, we're also really excited, right? And we're happy. But it's also important to have really important conversations of, Hey, this is something that I struggle with. Whether it be like, you know, I get really anxious sometimes, or sometimes, and I'm working on it, but sometimes I can get depressed. And this is what's going on when I am depressed. This is the support system that I have, but I want you to know that this is something that sometimes rears its head. Like the more real we can be with people in the beginning, the better. So I think I answered the first question, did I?

Yeah.

Yeah. But what happens is that, let me go a little further, the masks come off and then we get comfortable. And it's almost like our partner becomes like a family member and we think, oh, they'll love me anyway. I mean, here's the thing. It's a paradox. On the one hand, you want your partner to see you at your worst and still love you. and you wanna see them at their worst and be like, you know what? If this is your worst, I love you. On the other hand, there is great value in continuing to be polite and to be kind and to really do your best, to put your best foot forward every day for yourself and for your partner. But it's an unrealistic expectation that you're always gonna be that because we're human beings and we're complicated and we have negative emotions and sadness and anger, these are all all part of life. But where are you living emotionally? That's really what's important. What are you bringing consistently to the table? It's the consistency. Why do people stay in relationships if they're not being treated well? Is that what you asked? Yeah.

So, you know, if a behavior is good in the beginning of a relationship, hopefully, and you get into it because the person is kind and caring and thoughtful and curious and investing time and all these signs that you talked about, But then whatever, six months, six years later, their behavior start to change. And they're not living up to that standard from the beginning. Why do people stay when a standard drops significantly in relationships?

Let's talk about six months in. Sometimes these red flags, and I put that in quotation marks, do only come up about six months in. And it's very difficult because six months in, if you really like someone, the attachment is there, you're already entangled.

Yeah, and it's hard to disconnect.

It's really hard to disconnect. And people, it can be very disorienting. We get, and then we have, you know, even three months of bliss, three to six months of bliss, we now are part, we're living out a dream. We're living out a fantasy of what this could be.

And how amazing it's been the first three months.

And how amazing it's been, and now I don't have to go out into the dating world, and now I can actually build this. And so it's devastating in its own way, in its own right, when six months in, all of a sudden this person is really nothing like who you thought they were.

It's devastating.

It's actually devastating, but you gotta be really strong. And if it's, it's one thing if it's like, oh, they're in a bad mood, maybe they're a little bit cranky, or maybe you notice something that's a little red flaggy. Then you sit down with them. You don't just say, I'm out. You sit down with them and say, this is something is something that concerned me, can we talk about it? And then it's in that conversation or their willingness to have that conversation that really you're getting to see if they are someone who you can build with. And you are someone who is ready to build because it's all in that conversation because there's going to be things that are gonna come up because one of the biggest mistakes that people make, I think everyone, if they're honest with themselves, have been guilty of this is, Many of us on an unconscious level have a blueprint of the kind of relationship we want and the blueprint of the kind of partner we want. And so we meet someone and they're amazing, we're attracted to them, and we unconsciously project our ideal, the ideal of what we think a partner should be onto this person. And we put them up on a pedestal. And then, and this is a little, this is, I'm deviating a little bit why we stay in relationships. where we're mistreated. I wanna get back to that. But this is, then we get to know each other and things get real and we think, and again, not an unconscious, it's usually an unconscious thought. We think, this person is not as perfect as I thought they were. What happens to the person who's on the pedestal? Whenever you're on a pedestal, you are inevitably going to become the fallen hero because you're gonna fall off the pedestal. And then things start to get real. and they start to nitpick, and you're not living up to my expectations, and a lot of people break up at that moment. Why? All because they had unrealistic expectations about love and about people and about partnership. And that's something that they have to resolve within themselves because the transition from the honeymoon phase to the more committed stages of the relationship, things get really real. And when things get really real, that's when you have to, that's when the mirror is in front of you and you're seeing, oh, all those things that I was working on, why is this coming up now? Right? It's like, okay, this stuff is coming up right now because you're still human and there's still things coming up and you're gonna see it in them. The beauty is, can you talk about it? And the beauty is also how judgmental are you? Because there's people, there are some people who are just, their expectations are too high and they're too, they have no tolerance for imperfection.

And they're not perfect.

No one is.

They have the expectation for someone else to live up to, but they're not living up to half that standard.

Exactly. Because they have, again, this unconscious blueprint of someone is supposed to be perfect and bring and make up for the imperfection that lives inside of me.

Yeah. Without calling me out on my imperfections.

And the thing is, you think, oh, that's a toxic person. No, this lives inside of us All of us at some point in our lives, because we've been conditioned by this idea of romanticism and the perfect person, and I'm gonna meet this person who's going to make up for, you know, they're gonna love me exactly for who I am, and they're gonna come in and they're gonna heal me. Again, we know, most people know intellectually that that's not how it goes, but we do, we think this, we romanticize as the one, we all long for someone who's going to love us almost in the way that a parent has loved us and then our flaws are gonna be irrelevant and they're going to be flawless. So getting back to why do people stay in relationships where they're mistreated? Well, I mean, self-worth, not feeling like they deserve more, naivete, not understanding that that's actually not how you're supposed to be treated. You're supposed to be treated with kindness and respect always. Sure, you might have arguments and it gets a little bit heated, But there should always be a baseline of kindness and respect and politeness, honestly. So yeah, but people stayed because also they saw maybe their parents in something unhealthy. They don't think that they don't see their worth enough to be treated well. And they keep seeing in the person the potential of who they were. You know, this person was so amazing and now they're not. And so they're so attached to that. And then they think, you know, real low self-esteem. self-esteem will have a person asking themselves, what did I do to bring this out in this person?

Blaming themselves.

Blaming themselves.

Interesting.

Yeah.

When were you the lowest self-worth in a relationship in your past?

Oh, many, many years ago. Many years ago. Over 20 years ago, I was in a relationship with someone who was very abusive. I've never been in a relationship that has been abusive since. I mean, definitely I've been in relationships. I've been in beautiful relationships, and I've been in relationships where maybe We're definitely, I was not treated at the level that I want to be treated, but that we have to differentiate that from straight up abuse. Not every time you're not, you know, maybe you want to be treated better. That's not the same thing as abuse. So my lowest self-worth was when I was in that relationship.

-How long were you in that?

-One year.

-One year of that abuse happening.

-Yeah, the first three months, the first couple months were great, and I was Very naive. It was just, and I, it was all attraction and lust. There was nothing, I wasn't, my radar was not up for character, my radar, like even, I remember asking my friend who knew him, what do you think? She was like, I think that he might be really complicated with women. And I was like, that's a good answer.

Challenge.

Accept it.

You're like, I love it. I'm gonna solve this.

I'm gonna solve this. I'm gonna be different. It's gonna be different with me. Like, yeah.

Why do women. Why do some women love to take on a challenge with a man that they're starting to date? When they see a man that maybe has some charm or has some good qualities, but also has a lot of complexities.

Yes.

A lot of Brokenness, a lot of Poor behaviors, a lot of wounds. Why do some women say, I'm excited to take on this challenge and fix him or solve this problem and be the one to essentially rescue him? Why do some women take that on?

I think it's more, I'm going to be the one who inspires him to change. And so therefore- you- can't change anyone, though. No, of course not.

But why do some women do that?

Because it's depicted in films. I mean, how many movies are there out there where there's like the bad boy and he changes, he softens.

But is that movie, like, He becomes a better man. Or is that something chemically inside of us? Well, it's also, what if you didn't watch any movies ever growing up and you never saw that? Would you still have that?

I believe most of us is, there's a lot of conditioning that is happening. There's also a childhood, you know, maybe for that woman, that father was very emotionally unavailable. And so she's able to then be with someone who's never going to be able to meet her needs. It also depends on who the broken man is. If the broken man is very masculine seeming, he's not truly, so there's a misconception.

False masculinity.

A false masculinity. So maybe he's big and muscular, maybe he's tough.

He's got tattoos, maybe he's got- well.

Maybe he's just the guy who she thinks that if anyone's gonna mess with me, he's going to protect me. And so she's drawn to that, but what she does not realize yet is that someone who's broken and disconnected from themselves is absolutely nowhere close to who he is as a man. And it will never actually protect her. In fact, he will take from her rather than give to her.

He'll give false sense of protection in the outside world, but intimately, he'll take from her.

Yeah, he'll take, he won't be safe. The broken, anyone who's broken is anyone who's broken, regardless of gender, how you identify. They're not, you're not safe. You gotta, you gotta heal some stuff within you. You don't have to be perfect. But yeah, so the Broken Man, I mean, it's like that phenomena of women who fall in love with, men in jail who've committed horrific crimes. There's an amazing book, and I, I am embarrassed that the author is escaping me, but I will name the title, and it's the Women who Love Too Much. They get into these, these relationships with men who are deeply, deeply, deeply traumatized men who are, essentially, everything exists on the spectrum, right? So getting into a relationship and thinking, I will be the inspiration for his change, I will fix him, that man could be just like maybe a little bit messed up. And then there's women who get into relationships and they are just like, I'm gonna be a rehabilitation center. But men do that too, you know? Men do that too.

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That. Well, it starts for it. It usually starts with childhood. Maybe their father was an addict. Maybe they saw their mom doing that. Maybe they don't see their worth. And so they figure out a way to be needed in a man's life.

This man will need me.

Yes, and so he'll never leave me. Instead of, we really want to enter relationships wanting to be loved. But some of us get into relationships thinking we're not, we don't have enough value to be loved, but if they need me, then I will never be left. And so if she gets in and she's fixing him, then he'll form a dependency on her, and then, gosh, he will never leave. This is, and this sounds crazy, but in many ways this plays out, it's very subtle. So I'm very committed to helping people. You don't, you don't want a project. you want a partner and you have to get in touch with your net, because there's lots of men who want to rescue the broken bird. You know, a lot of men who want to be the hero, because he doesn't see his worth. But he's like, if I can rescue this person, then she or he will form a dependency on me.

The challenges with that.

There's so many challenges with that.

I mean, I speak from my own experience. The challenge with that what I've experienced in the past is that it has never worked where, you know, person I've been with, I've tried to put, pour into them as much as I can. They've never been able to kind of overcome their level of self-worth or whatever it might be. Yes. And so you're always going to be let down to thinking, oh, I can help this person grow. You might see a little bump, but the more you pull her in, they have to want it so bad. they have to want to improve and heal and change and transform personally. If you're pouring into them and they barely do a little bit, but then they go back and they stay back, you're going to be exhausted. You're going to be emotionally exhausted. You're right. And then you're going to be resentful, which is what I've experienced. It's like I'm pouring in this person. They don't want it. I'm half the problem. You know, I'm the one who's choosing this.

You might be the bigger problem.

Exactly. And as opposed to choosing someone who's.

A partner, not a project, right? Yes.

It's a big difference having a partner in your life where it's high engagement, low attachment, and you go into it highly engaged in investing all those things you said at the beginning, like invested, curious, a caring, thoughtful, all those different things and being your best self and pouring into someone investing them, but being very low attachment to if this is going to work out. like you wanted to, but if their behaviors are all wrong, if our values are all off, if it's, yes, certain things are completely off, you can't be high in attachment to how it's supposed to turn out, which is the hardest thing when you're investing in someone.

Very, very hard. We have so many expectations. So what you're describing is what so many people do, which is, I will change this person. You cannot change a person. You have some options. You either completely accept them as they are and realize, and maybe realize that you yourself are not as evolved as you think you are. And you accept that maybe they are growing, but they're growing at a different pace. Yeah. And they're not growing the way you want them to grow, right?

You gotta accept it.

Yes.

Or don't be with them.

Or just don't be with them. It really, it's very important if you can't It's very important that we grow, but at the same time, we're also always changing. So there's also another conundrum that people face in long-term relationships is, oh my God, you're different. Oh my God, you changed. That can make someone feel really out of control and feel like, oh my God, are you not gonna love me anymore? Are you the same person? There's a, you mentioned the word attachment. As human beings, we get attached and we get attached to outcomes and we have expectations. And the road to less suffering is to have very little expectations and very little attachment to the outcome and to really live and let live. But that's very difficult for us humans, you know? And so going back to Maybe I'm half the problem. No, if you're in a relationship and you are so fixated on your partner being someone who they are not, you are the problem, not them. Because they can just get into a relationship with someone who's not fixated on changing them and they will have a better relationship.

-Right, it's true. If someone has a low self-worth, we were mentioning the cases of women who love too much. If there's a woman extreme case that finds a broken man in prison, you know, or sees like, oh, a case of this man who, like, murdered people or whatever they did, and then starts writing them love letters and then starts visiting them and then starts getting a relationship, which has happened many times, and starts a relationship with a man in prison at their lowest, most wounded place, essentially.

Right.

If you could guess on a scale of one to ten of a self-worth scale, 10 being those women. who make those decisions have a high level of self-worth, 10, or one low level of self-worth, where would most of those women be in that scale range of choosing to be with a man who is the most broken man essentially they could find?

And let's add something to that, which is, and let's even remove the prison part.

Sure, anything in life.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, let's just say because of his quote unquote brokenness, He could never, ever love her the way that she needs to be loved. He cannot meet any of her needs. He's selfish. He's self-involved. He's unable to be there for her, to support her, to make her feel safe, to make her feel loved. Pretty low. Yeah. And I think it's, she does not see that she's actually worth being given to. She doesn't understand that love is a two-way street. She is so in the hamster wheel of trying to be enough for the other person, and she's trying to be enough for someone who's actually not even on her level in many ways. So it's pretty low. There's a spectrum. It depends like, you know, is he, how bad is he, you know, what, but it's pretty low. I mean, because here's the thing. She doesn't, it's also a self-respect thing. It's also seeing, it's a self-acceptance thing. And when someone is with someone who is so broken that they are just not treating them well, not meeting their needs, what's happening in the low self-worth is that she is feeling a disconnect from herself.

100%.

She's so divorced from herself and her own needs. She's so divorced from her body. So she's divorced from the, from the signs that her body is giving her that everything is all wrong. And she lives inside her head. This is, and we're saying she, but this could be really anyone. She lives inside her head. and all she's fixated on is being enough for this other person or making sure that this person never leaves them. That's pretty low. Again, there's a spectrum to this, but it's pretty low.

Something that's coming up for me right now as we're talking about this is, even just reflecting on my own life, is that I believe our self-worth is connected to our sense of wholeness and our healing journey. Yeah. Because I can, I can reflect back and see my level of self-worth even though I had a false sense of confidence in a lot of areas. But my true inner self-worth was a lot lower than I projected.

Yes.

And my behaviors matched my lower sense of self-worth when there was a trigger and I didn't know how to emotionally regulate my nervous system. And as I've learned how to create more wholeness internally, my level of self-worth has continued to increase and my level of detachment, like being fully engaged in something I've committed to or value, but being less attached to the outcome has been able to expand that range, has been able to expand more.

Yes.

And it goes back to what you said earlier. It's like, you know, two healthy people coming together or two people working on increasing their level of inner health.

Yeah, I want, yes, because there's so much here that I wanna, that I wanna touch on.

But again, to recap that, I believe that, like, when we feel more whole, our sense of self-worth will increase and we feel more whole when we start to heal.

Yes, and I'm, we're gonna go into a deep dive into that. But I, first I wanna say something. This idea that, like, you have to be two fully whole healed people to come together to form a healthy relationship is not true. And it's actually, we cannot, we can't continue to spread that. We wanna be healing. You wanna be a work in progress. You wanna be self-aware. You wanna be working on your stuff. And you wanna do that with someone who wants to do that with you too.

But most people are not committed to the healing journey. They might say, no, I'm committed to the healing journey.

And they're not.

Absolutely. But your actions Where on your calendar are you putting in time to heal?

Absolutely.

Show me the actions. It doesn't have to be therapy, but what are the actions you're committed to on a consistent basis? And what are the results you're gaining? Are you be able to reflect on that journey?

Yeah, and sometimes what that is is literally like, what am I doing in the relationship? to communicate more.

Yes, and that takes courage.

Yeah, it takes so much courage. It's not just, what am I doing in the therapy office? What am I doing when I'm sitting on the couch with my loved one, with my partner, and they're having a hard day, and I don't really feel like listening to it? I'm tired, not in the mood. Am I going to kind of lose presence and not pay attention when they're having a hard day? I'm not in the mood, or am I going to take a deep breath and show up for my partner even though I'm not in the mood? That's healing. Because in those moments you're overcoming and you're breaking patterns that you did in the past that would did not help your relationship, and you are being a better person inside of the relationship. That's healing. And you learn and you actually gain a stronger sense of self, When you do things that are good for you and good for your relationship, when you do things that challenge you rather than, you know, it's like the road less traveled, the easy route, you're never gonna build your sense of wholeness and your self-esteem. You have to do things that challenge you. It's one of the things I talk about in the book. It's like that you have to do some things that challenge you. And so it's, in those seemingly very insignificant moments in a relationship where you're like, oh, I can go this way, which is just like what I've always done. Or I can go this way even though I'm not in the mood. I'm gonna make the choice to go this way. And you feel better about yourself because you've transcended something in yourself. And then that healing is happening there. So this idea that some people definitely need a timeout and they need to do work on themselves. I know you did that. I mean, lots of people have to do that. I've done that. Plenty of people have said, you are not ready to be in a relationship. You are not ready. But other people, it's like, okay, you're ready enough. And the rest you're gonna have to do when you're with the person because you learn, because we, how can we build our sense of self-esteem and self-worth and self-acceptance if we're not bouncing off the reflection of other people and how they see us. We know we don't exist in a vacuum. So people often ask me, well, how do you know you're ready? How do you know you've healed enough? How do you know you're ready for a relationship? Well, I mean, there's a lot of, when you roll number one, when you realize that there is no the one, you choose who the one will be and you're gonna have to make that choice many times throughout your relationship. Because if you're thinking 10, 20, 30 for the rest of your life with someone, you could love them and you can have a great relationship, but you think there's not gonna be days where you actually have to choose love. Of course. You're ready for a relationship when you realize there is just no one who's perfect and you are going to have to decide. You have to know what is tolerable, what versus what is intolerable. Because there's gonna be, you have to have a lot of tolerance because we are complex. where we can be highly annoying, we can be highly weird, we've got our stuff, we've got neuroses, we've got our stuff. What are your deal breakers? What's absolutely intolerable and can you tolerate the rest? People who have really the most impressive, beautiful, long lasting relationships, they are not judgmental. They're not tolerating garbage from the other person.

Yeah, disrespect.

No, no, no, no. but they're just not judgmental of all the other stuff.

But most people are judgmental in general. So how do you become less judgmental as a human being? Not everyone is.

I mean, well, you start with being less judgmental of yourself. The people who are hardest on themselves tend to be the hardest on others. And then, yeah, so you have to check it. You have to have a lot of tolerance. You have to keep, it all begins with self-awareness. Your awareness of yourself, like, oh, am I doing that thing again? But yes, as you heal, do you feel more whole? Absolutely. Do we ever feel 100% whole? I don't know. I think that there's, we have so many different parts to ourselves. The goal is to be less fragmented, but I don't know if we're ever going to be 100% healed. But yes, as we heal, we feel more centered. Another word for that is for more integrated, more whole, all of that. And, we want to, everyone is kind of drawn to a similar level of consciousness. So if you really are more integrated, you know, you've got your stuff and you've got your wounds, but you're generally you're more integrated person, like you're connected to your heart, because most people live inside their heads. And it's really quite rare these days to find someone who lives more inside their hearts and is truly emotionally available. I think we have a little bit of an epidemic of people in here and emotionally unavailable. And I'm seeing that a lot in people who are dating. It's like no one's emotionally available. It's like, yeah, we were really struggling.

What's a sign of someone being not emotionally available?

There are some people, this is taking it full circle to your first question about investment. There are some people who are going to be emotionally unavailable to you because they're actually not that into you. They might be attracted to you. They may want to have sex with you. They might think that you're like, you know, cute, lovely, fun, convenient, but they're not emotionally available to you because they don't feel emotionally bonded to you. So they're actually not that interested. Then there are people who have real psychological and emotional barriers to closeness and to openness. They live in here, they're psychoanalyzing everything. They have a lot of walls that maybe they were, have a lot of relationship trauma. They were hurt in the past, so the walls are up and, you know, they wanna be discerning, but really they're just, no one can really get through to them. you know, some people, they grew up in a home where they didn't talk a lot about emotions. And so that's very difficult for them. But there's a difference between someone who's really present with your emotions and maybe is difficulty emoting themselves, but they're trying. Like you give them that feedback and they're trying. That's very different than someone who's just not emotionally reachable and you can never go deep with them. And every time you want, you know you're with someone who's either not into or emotionally unavailable when you're seeing them for a few weeks and you're like, okay, I want to take this a little bit deeper. I want to talk about deeper stuff. I want to share. I want to be vulnerable. They're not vulnerable. They're not willing to be vulnerable with you. And they're not particularly receptive to your vulnerability.

-What would you say are three tools then that all relationships should be investing in developing in order to have more success in their relationship?

What relationship should be investing in or the people in it?

The people in it. What tools should the people in it be investing in to set up their relationship for more success?

Okay, that's a great question.

Success meaning peace, harmony, joy, fulfillment, adventure, all the things that they want in the relationship.

That's a great question.

Three tools that each individual should be investing in to have more success.

Learning how to communicate better. So that might mean just buying some books on communication.

But you gotta practice it. You gotta practice it and practice it.

Every tool needs to be put to use. So none of these things are gonna, you know, so you have to practice, you have to learn the communication skills and put them into practice.

And what is better communication in your mind?

Better listening starts always with being a better listener. Talking less, listening more. Always. Number two, understanding that we don't just communicate with our words. We communicate with our body language. We communicate non-verbally all the time. So being attuned to really paying attention to what's going on with your partner even when they're not directly telling you.

I'd put that in number one still.

Oh, you put that number one.

Yeah. Communication in all forms.

In all forms.

What you're saying, what you're not saying. Yeah, all that. Yeah, yeah.

You know, you want to be a great partner. Master your partner. You wanna be a great person in a relationship, master your partner. Know their emotional highs and lows. Know their triggers. Know if they're menstruating, know when that time of the month is and what that means to them emotionally. Know, become a master of your partner. And two people who are doing that, and what that means is you are so, and it not a master over them, but they are a piece of art that you understand, like the back of your hand.

You dissected it.

Yeah, you paid attention. So you're so attuned to your partner that when they're sad, you know it. When they're happy, you know it. When they're communicating to you non-verbally, you're like, Hey, everything okay here? You know them. you know what they love, you know what they hate, you know what makes them happy, you know what makes them miserable. If you don't know these things about your partner, you know what their needs are, you know exactly what they need to feel loved, you know what they need to feel safe, you know what they need to feel important. People get into relationships and they don't study each other and know each other. They don't, I mean, the amount of times I've worked with couples where they didn't know what the other person needed. And yes, There is, again, paradox. We have to say what it is that we need. We can't expect mind- But communicate, yeah. But we also have to be interested in what the other person needs. We have to be curious.

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Okay, so the third tool is, so those are the, so the communication, to learn the communication, It could be therapy, it could be couples work, you know, and maybe it's not the classic traditional couples work. Maybe you do some, I don't know, a tantra workshop together, you know, anything that's gonna bond you in some way. So I think tools where you're doing some couples work together, maybe it's doing a workshop together, maybe it's doing a trip together, maybe it's anything that's going to deepen your bond and take it to another level. Really, really, really important.

I mean, here's the thing. I'm hearing these three things, these three tools that I got to set up a relationship for success. But someone watching or listening might say, I don't have any time to do any of that. I've got, you know, it's a career. He's got his career. We've got kids. We've got responsibilities. We're exhausted. How can I learn to communicate better? How can I learn when I don't have the time for myself? How can I learn to master the other person when they've changed so much.

Over the last five, ten years? Yeah.

So you have to keep mastering them. And how can I, you know, we don't have time to do couples therapy or workshops or things like that, this just seems like too hard.

Well then you get what you tolerate in life. Then your relationship will be maybe good. If you want it great, these are the things you got to do. It's really your choice. It's your choice. Our lives are based on the decisions that we make. A relation, no one, we're not guaranteed the relationship that we want. No one owes you a great relationship. It's based on the choices that we make. You can be a great person who's also, you could be the perfect catch. You're not owed the relationship. You have to make the right choices to make a relationship strong and wonderful. And you think of that as too much work. I don't know. I'd be curious to know their how they approach the rest of their lives if they think that way. You know what's a lot of work? Staying up at night arguing.

But exhausting.

Yeah, you know it's a lot of work waking up in the morning anxious and feeling so disconnected from your partner. You know it's a lot of work trying to change your partner. You know it's a lot of work trying to be enough for your partner constantly because they don't ever acknowledge you. To me, that's exhausting. The other stuff, fun.

You'Re single.

I am.

And you're a relationship coach.

Yes.

Teacher educator coach.

Yeah.

You've been in some beautiful relationships, some challenging relationships. What is your biggest fear at this age of your life being a single woman and a relationship coach? And what do you, I guess, what's your hope for your relationship in your future?

I don't have a scarcity mindset. I have in the past. I don't anymore. It's like the older I get, the fearful I become with scarcity.

Scarcity around, like, are there enough good men out there? Is there anyone for me? Is there, you know?

Yeah, I just don't really think about it. Okay. It's really weird. And I, that's why I like to help women, like, not put so much energy into, I want you to want a relationship. I believe in relationships. I believe in partnership. I think overall, we live longer if we're in a good relationship. But, man, is your life going to be cut short if you're in a bad relationship? So I think you know, but I, but this, but I really, really think that people need to, you can want a relationship and still love your life, not in a relationship. And I think that's very, very important.

The challenging thing is when you're single for a long enough time and you've got an amazing life and you've experienced a bad relationship in the past.

He's like, you don't want anyone in.

It's like, why would you want a relationship when you can do anything you want at any time and life is freaking an adventure.

Yes.

And you have the things you like, the way you like it.

Yes.

No one telling you what to do. No one making any special requests. You don't have to deal with anything outside of your world. Yes. It can get very tempting to want to stay single for a long time.

Then you can be careful because no one will lie to you more than yourself. So be careful that you're not lying to yourself when you're like, you know, I would like a relationship. But then you go into, oh, but it's that story of, oh, it's gonna be too difficult. It's gonna be so stressful. As long as, you know, you can say, I'm loving my life right now. I really don't need a relationship, or I just need little affairs here and there, like little adventures here and there. Just don't lie to yourself. If it's, you know what, someone coming in is just gonna be exhausting and blah, blah, blah, and that's because you've associated relationships with pain because of your past, then you're tethered to an old story that's actually controlling you and you are not really the conductor of your own life in that regard. But if it's truly authentic, then stay single.

What's the vision that you have for yourself in a future relationship? What are the values that you want in a relationship? What's the vision and the lifestyle that you want to create in I'll get.

To that in a moment, but you first said, like, what's my biggest fear? I think it's the same thing. Like, I was a yoga teacher for many years. And so I got hit on a lot, you know? Yeah. And as a teacher.

As a teacher.

Yeah.

Yeah.

As a teacher.

Not just in a class, but teaching the class.

Yeah. It was just. There were crushes developed. Right. Which is normal because I'm sort of, like, in a position, like, you know, but. But again, the pedestal, I've been put. many, many pedestals, which when I was younger, I enjoyed because I thought that's great. When I became wiser.

A man should worship me and put me on a pedestal.

Exactly. But when you become wiser, you realize if you're on a pedestal, you are not being seen for who you are. You're being seen for who they want you to be. And so, oh, she's a yogi, she's a teacher, she's got the glasses. I mean, it's the whole thing. She's got, she's grounded, she has her together. And like, yes, of course, like all those things are true and I'm also flawed and I've got trauma and like, I'm like really quirky and, and, and, and, and, and, you know? So I guess my biggest fear as a relationship coach is a really amazing man being, I don't want being intimidated or thinking like, oh, she's a relationship coach, like what's that gonna be like? Because who I am in a, I don't wear a relationship coach hat in my relationships. You're more messed up in a relationship. No, I'm not more, no, yeah, exactly. I'm really messed up. I'm just Jillian, right? I'm Jillian the partner, Jillian the girlfriend, Jillian the lover. Like, I'm just not, I don't analyze the people who I'm in a relationship with at all. So I don't want to, well, you assess them.

Oh, for sure. You're making sure they're like not toxic in their behavior.

Totally. But I don't want to be, like, I want to be in a a relationship with someone who has a few things to teach me, not the other way around. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that's my fear. So the kind of relationship that I want values.

I mean- But I want to see you getting into a relationship with a guy who can't add value to the relationship.

Oh my God, never. So here's something that I was saying yesterday and that I think will speak to the value part, which is in the past, like in my ex-marriage, a lot of what inspired the writing of this book. There was a few incidents, but one that really is etched in my brain that I go into detail in the book where his tendency would be to kind of shut down and kind of shut down.

Avoid.

Avoid and shut down and just kind of not tell me what was bothering him. So instead I had to guess it. And that was very much like my father. And because of that, there were and it would sometimes happen to a degree where it was really not nice, really not nice.

In the marriage.

No, before the marriage. This was before the marriage.

But why get married when you started to see this before?

Because 90% of our relationship was great, 10% was very problematic. The 10% that was problematic was really big, and I was too afraid to look at it. Yeah, I learned a lot, hence why I'm here, right? Yeah. If you can't tell me when you're upset with me or you're going through a hard time or you're just upset, you can't communicate on that base level. You don't have a shot with me. I don't care how perfect it is for six months, you're gone.

High engagement, low attachment. Yeah, yeah.

You cannot do that. You can do it for two seconds and then immediately take responsibility because the shutting down and not being able to simply tell me what you're feeling is just not... It goes back to one of the.

Three skills you talked about, the tools of learning how to communicate better. And it's maybe someone's tendency is to be like, I need some space for a minute. I don't know what to say, but I'm going to be back in a few hours and we can talk about it. I'm totally cool with that. Hey, I'm shutting down because there's a trigger and I don't want to talk about it right now, but I'll come.

Back and talk about it later. That's emotional intelligence. That's totally fine. That's totally fine. You're communicating with me. You're in touch with what's going on in your body. You don't wanna say anything that you would regret. You need some alone time to just regroup. I'm perfectly reassured that you're gonna come back, that you're not running away. All good. What a lot of women do, and also some men do, would be like, no, we need to talk about it right now. They protest. You can't do that. You can't do that. No, no, no. That's a recipe. You can't do that. So that's something that you have to fight. that's that, for example, is causing you a lot of anxiety. You have to, you have to respect that because that's actually really good. That's someone taking care of themselves and the relationship as well.

Yeah, I need some space for a moment or I need an hour.

I love you. I'm just triggered right now. I don't want to say something that I'm going to regret. I'm not shutting down. I promise. I just need to, like, I need a couple, need a couple hours and we will talk about it. Then that person who maybe is feeling like, oh my God, anxious, then they have to self soothe. Then they have to call a friend. They have to call a family member. This is really uncomfortable. Please remind me that everything is okay. I need to breathe. I maybe have to go for a walk. I have to do something for me. Remember me, you, you have a life that actually has nothing to do, you have a life outside of this partnership. Go tend to it. Go tend to it. It's going to be really uncomfortable and it's going to, especially for the anxious person, it's going to be extremely counterintuitive. But you got to go do that because you have to keep reminding yourself that you are a whole person without this person. and that they actually just communicated. They didn't do, you know, they didn't just disappear, which by the way would make anyone anxious. That's very high risk relationship behavior. But it's also high risk relationship behavior to not allow the space when someone has been very reassuring to you. So you have to go then take care of yourself, work on a project, get your mind on something that is not just about the love and the partnership and something that reminds you in that moment of who you are and what your purpose is and the things that are meaningful to you. This is not easy. That's why the more wounded we are, the harder the work it is going to be in a relationship. It just is. But I don't want that to discourage you. I wanted to just encourage you to do it and encourage you to choose partners who are not, who are going to be in it with you and to stop choosing the partner who's always rejecting you and/or who's just not right for you. That's driving you deeper and deeper into your own pathology and making you miserable.

Yeah.

Who you choose matters. It's like more than half the battle.

It's probably the most important decision you'll make ever in your life is the person you wanna partner with long term.

Absolutely. Who you spend your life with, because the person who you spend your life with is going to have the greatest impact on your overall well-being. They just are. You can't, I mean, you become in many ways, you're two people, but you also in many ways become one.

Yeah, it becomes your mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, and sexual environment.

Absolutely. It's who you spend the most time with.

And that environment is gonna dictate your level of happiness in a lot of ways.

Yeah. But then you also have to realize, no one's respons, like your partner can make you smile and they should, you know, often your partner can make you laugh and I think they should often and they can make you feel good a lot of the time and they should. But you knew there was a but. No one can fulfill you. No one single human being can fulfill you. Fulfillment comes from various sources and various people who we interact with, but they can't actually fill that emptiness inside of you.

Do you think love is enough? No.

Love is not enough. Because of love, because people rarely end their relationships because of a lack of love. They end because they don't feel seen, they end because they feel misunderstood, they end because of resentment. Lots of people break up and say, I love this person, but I can't seem to make it work out with them. Love is not enough because eventually the clouds will come in and they will cover the sun of love. And what we are left with is, can we communicate? Can we relate to each other? Can we understand each other? Can we collaborate? Can we repair? I think that love is often the fuel that makes us want to do all of that. But again, sometimes you're not feeling so in love with your partner and it often has nothing to do with them. We make the mistake that if I'm not feeling head over heels in this moment, that it's something in them when really it's you. You're stressed out, you're feeling disconnected from yourself, you haven't gotten enough sleep, you're not eating well, it's you. And self, the ultimate form of self-awareness, relationally speaking, is I understand that when I'm feeling off the way that I see the world and the people in it, which includes my partner, is going to be a little bit skewed. Let me go reorient myself and get centered. so that I can actually see people as they are.

Create your own fulfillment first.

And I think that it's a never-ending journey, don't you think? 100%.

I mean, even just this last week, I've been traveling. I had a big event a month ago, and then I've been on the road for like a whole month. I've barely been in LA, and I've been traveling multiple trips every week, and every weekend I've been gone. And I was feeling, even just last night, I was just like, man, I feel a little off. you know, I feel like I've. I've gained some weight in the last month. I've been eating poorly. I haven't been in my routine. I haven't been able to work out the way I like to. Like, it's just been, like, sleeping, all these different beds. It's like, it's disoriented. Yeah, it's. You're off. You're off. And even when I feel like I, you know, and maybe because I. I feel like I have a high standard for myself with my routine and my nutrition and my sleep and my environment, I'm still fine. I'm still doing good, but it's like I can feel it even being off for, like, a month.

Right.

And trying to get back to that environment, that space that brings me fulfillment. And it doesn't mean I'm not fulfilled. I'm fulfilled, but it's just like I.

Can feel a little off, right? Yeah.

You're a little unhappy. Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

You're like suffering a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

Not bad.

I mean, I don't hold on. I don't hold on to suffering. And I go back quickly to, man, I have a beautiful, blessed life. I'm grateful for everything. Yes. Great. But I could feel emotionally and physically like, oh, just a little off.

Yeah. Yeah.

But I know what that's like being off all the time. And having, you know, and feeling wounded consistently and feeling like, and then making poor decisions because of my lack of self-worth. And then reacting out of fear or anger or resentment versus centered wholeness and all those human things.

Yes.

And it compounds over time.

It does.

And it can really impact a relationship in a negative way if two people are living in that space.

Even if one person is living in that space. Yeah, it's very, it's stress. Let me tell you something. It's to get back to your tools, figure out a way to manage your stress. That's very, very important. Look, sometimes very stressful things happen in life. Like there are legit circumstances that are very difficult, like deaths and stuff and illness and money problems. But more times than not, it's not what's the stress, it's how we're reacting to the stress. And people think that once their lives become less stressful, that their relationships would get better. When the truth is, once you start reacting to your stress differently, then your relationship will get better.

100%. Yeah, it's your ability to tolerate more of the things that are uncomfortable, but not tolerating poor behavior in a relationship.

Yeah, that's very different. That's very different.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What would you say then, do you think are the three biggest killers of a relationship? Like the three things that when you're coaching or working with people that, oh, this relationship is done, unless they decide to change these three things.

Resentment. Resentment. Resentment, you know, which leads then to contempt. Resentment is really bad. And resentment comes because people, there's a couple of reasons. Either they're not speaking the truth, they're not telling the truth, and/or they have, their expectations are out of control. Like, I expect my partner to just know how I'm feeling rather than for me to express what I'm feeling. They should just know if they really loved me.

No, that's the worst thing.

It's the worst. So resentment is a killer, stress is a killer. It's not a little bit of stress. It's the, like you said, the consistently feeling off, stressed, overwhelmed, and not doing anything about it. Stress changes the way that you see things. It changes your biology. It changes everything. And so stress destroys relationships. So resentment, stress, the other killers of relationship, I mean, taking each other for granted, forgetting that your partner is a gift, not a given. The law of familiarity sets in and we stop getting curious and we think, I don't have to put in the work. I don't have to show, I don't have to show my appreciation. And so that is a huge killer because then people, we feel that, right? We don't feel as special anymore. We don't feel seen. We don't feel understood. It's a horrible feeling to feel like we're being taken for granted. Like you don't see the spark in me anymore. You're not grateful for me. you're not appreciative of me.

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It's the, the expectation that someone's supposed to do something without appreciating it for me is something that I resent.

Yeah, of course. Yeah, I'm sure.

And it's just like, oh, well, you're my boyfriend or you're my partner. You're supposed to do this.

Yes.

And so I'm not even going to acknowledge anything good about it. Yeah. You know, whether you're paying for something or showing up in this way or doing these things, whatever it is, and not just saying a simple thank you.

Yeah.

Just showing, you know, putting your arm around them and just like hugging them and like when they do something nice for you, just showing the sign of appreciation, right? And you don't have to say thank you all day long to someone like you're, but it's the lack of that is the loudest thing for me.

I would have to agree with that, you know, and I think that this goes, this ties into, 'cause I know it's maybe a weird word for people to hear, but It's also polite. It's having manners. And I think people, when they've been together for a while or even not, they lose their manners with their partner and like, you should still have your manners.

100%. 100%.

Yeah. Please and thank you.

Yeah, they're a gift, not a given. I like that a lot. So the killer of relationship, resentment, stress, and taking someone for granted.

Taking each other for granted, yeah. And taking, yeah.

Why do certain people, when they're starting relationship, and the other person, man, they're really showing up. They're doing all the things you talked about. They're really investing, they're showing they care, they're not ghosting them, they're getting back to them within a reasonable time and texting them. They're, you know, saying, Hey, let's do more of these things. They're going to hang out with their friends and willing to be with their family early on and really showing up for the other person. And they're showing all the signs of like, man, this is a quality healthy human being. why does some, someone might be attracted to that for a while, but then start to sabotage it and then start to say, this is maybe too good to be true. Or they start getting angry at the person or trying to pick a fight or trying to test them in some way. Why do, I don't want to say women are the only ones that do this, but this is my experience.

Yeah. No, I don't think that's true.

Why do some women try to, or some men try to, like, they're too good. and start to sabotage and start to like pick fights and start to get mean and start to disrespect them. Why do people do that in the beginning stage of a relationship?

Well, there's different reasons. So some people will start to sabotage because the relationship is progressing to a more emotionally intimate stage and it's, they're scared. They're just very scared to get close to someone. They're afraid that they're not gonna be enough. They're afraid they're gonna be left. They're afraid they're gonna Maybe they have very low self-worth and they think, this person is going to see me for who I am and they're not gonna like it and they're gonna leave me. Everyone fears the loss of love. And so the sabotage is, let me end this, or let me provoke them to end it so that I don't have to look like the bad guy, or I don't have to get my feelings hurt, A lot of women will test, particularly their male partners. They do this same sex relationships too.

Yeah, yeah.

But particularly their male partners, they'll test to see, do you really love me?

Why do women do that?

I see.

I don't feel like men do that as much.

Yeah.

I don't want to generalize it, but.

I think it's different.

Yeah. Is that from like a have like a young girl in childhood like testing their parents or what is that?

No, I think so for women it's, are you safe? It's really what most women are really looking for particularly. Are you safe? So in other words like, are you just gonna drop me when you see that I'm not perfect? Because there's a lot of cultural, particularly in this country, it's not in all countries, there's a lot of societal pressure on women to be perfect, to look perfect, to act perfect, to not rock the boat. And so if you see that actually, like, if you see my crazy, if you see that I'm flawed, and this is unconscious, women aren't doing this consciously. I'm trying to help them To see that it's conscious and to not do that, because it's not polite, we shouldn't be doing it, right? It's just not healthy. But we do that because on an unconscious level, because we want to see, like, are you still gonna love me? Are you still gonna protect me when I'm not perfect?

Why don't men do that as much?

Well, men don't have the pressure that women do to be perfect. I don't know.

Men have a different level of pressure.

Perfect in different ways.

They're expected to make six figures and be a certain height and it's like, and make me laugh every day and be, you know, emotionally intelligent.

Well, that's, it's like, emotionally intelligent.

That's new. I mean, the level of pressure, I feel like, is you have to be sensitive. You can't be a man.

You have to be sensitive more than what you're used to, you know, all those different things. It's a different level of pressure. It's me.

I'm telling women, like, stop that.

I'm a big advocate for men. I love men. Men also feel like they're not enough, you know, 100% constantly. 100%. This is more new, the emotional intelligence thing. That really is a new thing. I think that, you know, we're talking about something that's more historical. And men will test women all the time, but in different ways.

They won't sabotage it. They won't try to sabotage it right away.

Ah, yeah, they will. Men do that. But you, why don't you share? 'Cause men do test women all the time. Why don't you share one way that men test women?

I don't think I've tried to test Martha with anything without it being just being very direct.

Yes.

And just communicating.

But in the past, when you were not as healthy.

I don't think I tested any. Let me, I'm sure I did.

Yeah.

I'm gonna say I didn't test anything.

Yeah.

But, 'cause I'm still thinking about a woman I dated that after three months she started just like sabotaging it. and I was like, what is going on? Like nothing just happened to you.

You're trying to hang with me. But that's also just her.

Of course.

Right? Yeah, yeah.

But what is that within women that they're getting into a relationship sometimes and things are good and then they just want to start, I don't know, attacking the guy they're with or just be, nothing happened, but all of a sudden it's like, okay, I'm gonna push you and press you and see.

Yeah. And see, and see if you're strong enough to be, yeah. Well, okay, so some women will- and.

The whole, you know, if he can't love me at my worst, he doesn't deserve me at my best thing. I'm like, yes. Does that mean you just get BD to watch your worst the whole time?

I'm not defending the behavior. The behavior sucks. I'm just trying to explain the psychology behind it, right? And so unconsciously it's, are you strong enough? Is there an out of control rageful monster inside of you? that I need to know about. So I could be a monster out.

Of control, but you have to be strong enough to take it. Not defending the behavior.

I understand, but yes, it's crazy to me. It's crazy, but biologically what's happening is safety, safety, safety, safety, safety, safety, safety, safety, safety, safety, safety.

I know. Not good behavior, not defending. You have to be strong enough to handle it, but then I need you to be emotionally sensitive enough and have such an extreme range of safety for me.

It's absurd. It's like without me having to actually find safety within myself and also without understanding that like, so we all need to feel safe in our relationship, but we can't provide safety for the person who we are in. Well, no, we can, but we can't if we don't, if we're not integrated.

No matter how much safety we create for someone, if they don't feel safe or integrated, they're still gonna feel unsafe.

Okay, so here's, so yes, that, but also I do believe that it is our responsibility in a relationship to provide safety for our partner.

Sure, 100%.

There's a limit, right? We can't just keep providing safety for someone who doesn't feel safe inside themselves.

You can't call someone every hour and.

Say, But you can't ask for safety from the person who's not integrated in some, who's not connected to his or her own body.

Yeah. They don't have it.

Right, so like you're trying to find safety from the person who has no control over their emotions at all. It's never gonna happen.

It's not gonna work.

So work on yourself emotionally and choose a partner who's doing the same.

Exactly. It goes back to two people who are working on a healthy journey individually.

Individually and together. And together.

I think I mentioned this last time we talked where, you know, I've been in, I don't know, five kind of longer term relationships, you know, from whatever, 18 to, for 20 years, I was in like five different long-term relationships. And, they all ended in therapy, right? But I wanted to do the therapy.

Oh, interesting.

Each partner didn't want to do therapy.

It's usually the other way. It's usually the reverse.

I go, every woman wouldn't be begging for their man to go to therapy. Like, what is this? this. And then I realized after the fifth time, I was like, well, I'm the common denominator. I'm choosing these women who don't want to do this work. So something is off with it. Me. Yes. By attracting and choosing these type of women. Absolutely.

Staying in these relationships, trying to make.

Them work and all these different things. Also, you're not a quitter, right? That's a big part. Is that a big part?

Yeah.

Like an athlete. You know, it's like, I'm gonna make it work. I'm gonna do whatever it takes. I want to show you I'm here, I'm committed, I'm safe, you know, whatever it is. Yeah. And so one of the things that I, I to going back to your other question, which like, how do you test someone in a relationship?

Right?

I wouldn't say it was a test. It was more like, I'm just gonna be completely honest about what I want. And you can either take it or leave it. And so I guess it was a test.

I mean, we're testing each other a little bit all the time, right? Yeah.

But early on in the relationship with Martha, as we were just dating and weren't committed yet, I said, the next relationship I get committed to with someone is someone that's willing to go to couples therapy at the start.

At the start.

Not because something's wrong, but because I want to create, make sure we have shared values, a shared vision and shared agreements, and make sure we have alignment. If we don't, why are we going to spend two years and then start talking about that when things start going bad?

Listen, couples therapy is a lot more productive and effective when you go preventatively than when you go or when things are already messed up.

And we go to the gym, you know, Yes. Preventatively as well, to stay in shape, to stay healthy. Yeah. And that makes us feel better than going when we're sick.

Absolutely.

It's a lot harder to repair when you're sick.

Absolutely.

It takes a lot longer to get healthy.

Yeah.

Then when you're healthy or healthy enough and you continue to prevent and stay healthy. by actively pursuing it.

Absolutely.

And why do we think, if our intimate partner that we choose and want to stay with for a long time is the most important we will ever make in our life, and we don't choose to preventively or invest in the health of that relationship, we're setting ourselves up for a disaster.

I agree. You know.

And I was like, I'm going to be, I don't care if you think I'm crazy, if you don't, you know, and I'm not saying everyone needs to do this. But I spent 20 years, five different relationships that I suffered in. You know, not the whole time, but there was suffering, there was sadness, there was exhaustion. It was, I'm sure for my partners too, you know, it was a lot, we weren't right.

Yeah.

There wasn't, there was good times, but it was also like, man, it was a lot, a lot of energy wasted. And I'm not here to blame them. It's like, I take responsibility.

Yeah.

But it's like, man, I look back and I wonder, what could I have done with my life? in terms with more peace, with more harmony, with choosing differently and them as well. You know, what could have they done? What could we done?

And.

And it wasn't like I had like bad intentions and it wasn't because I wasn't willing to do the work. It was just, I guess I wasn't ready or wasn't healing yet to be able to choose and have the courage to communicate. That's what I think it is, like learning the communication skills. I was a good listener, but I lacked the courage to upset someone with my truth. -Yes. -JEN: and so I, when I would start to tell them my truth and like, here's what I want, and they would start to react emotionally.

-Susan: you: were very afraid of the reaction.

-Jen: well, okay, how do I make you happy?

-Susan: Yes. And part of actually, for men, part of them finding more strength within themselves is not to be so afraid of his partner's reaction, you know, and just to stay grounded. Yeah. In that conversation.

But that's why I don't, I think you shouldn't, you know, be sexually intimate until you get to see more of the person. Because when you're chemically bonded early and that rush or that high or that drug feeling.

Yeah.

Is in your nervous system and all you want to do is get back to that. It's really hard to disrupt that once you've experienced it.

I know.

And that is where I think a lot of people get themselves tied up in a web that they cannot get out of, or it's much harder. And so if we can wait longer, which is the hardest thing to do right now, if you can wait longer before you enter a relationship, which is so hard to do, especially if you're having fun and you're connecting, you're going on these magical adventures together, and it's.

Been so long and you've been single and you haven't connected with someone in so long, It's very- you- have sexual needs.

I get it. I'm telling you, it is one of the best things I ever did.

You should talk about that more often so that other people- well, I tell.

My guy friends this. As I was like, weird, you know? And they like, it blows their mind to realize how long I waited.

Yeah.

They like, this not possible.

Because they're probably their fault. Well, what is it? What if it's bad? It's like, well, you know, then, You.

Know, I go back to the whole, I don't know if Esther Perel originally said this, but it's like, you need to be thinking of, could I have 10,000 meals with this person without having sex with them? If I wasn't having sex with this person, could I have 10,000 shared meals with them?

You have to like them.

You have to like them.

Yeah. You have to like them. Friendship is a very important part of our long-term relationship.

You have to respect them without sex.

Yes.

Both people use sex as the tool to repair. and get back to feeling good again. I know. And then they go back in a cycle over and over.

It happens all the time. It's exhausting. It is exhausting. Absolutely. Look, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I mean, there's a lot of people who think, well, you know, how do I know if we're not having sex?

But look.

And it doesn't mean it's going to work out.

There's no guarantees. That's the whole thing. I'm just trying to say to set yourself up. I felt like I was able to be more creative. This was my testing, if you're asking, like, how did I test someone.

Yes.

But it wasn't about testing. It was more just like, I'm gonna be.

You weren't testing her. You were testing the waters. You were testing to see, like, if this is the right match.

And it was, how can I remove chemical distraction so that I can have ultimate courage with my voice and say my truth 100 and see how this person reacts or responds in front of me? And based on that response, I'm not chemically bonded to where I can say, oh, that's interesting. This person is acting hysterical right now. And if they're hysterical, there's history that they have not tended to. Yes. And they have not healed their history because they're hysterical for me. Just saying, these are my values. This is my vision. This is what I'm up to in my life.

If you're freaking out over that. Okay.

That's a non-starter yeah, we're not the right fit. Yeah. And absolutely. I'm glad we got to have some friendship and fun and connect, but we didn't chemically Bond, and therefore I'm not. confused of saying, well, can I make this work? Because the sex is amazing. Well, I'll just let that slide, you know? And that has been, that was a massive, it created so much more peace in my decision making. And to say, and Martha is incredible. And she was like, yes, I'm willing to go to couples therapy at the beginning. Yes, I'm working on myself, and I have my own friends and my family and my own fulfillment. I don't need you to make me feel better.

Yes.

And yes, I'm doing, you know, it's like, it made me feel safer to have the courage to speak up. And another way I tested was telling her all about my stuff from the past early on. Like, here's the relationships I've done, here's the things I've done that I'm not proud of. Here's the thing, like, how early on did you, I mean, maybe like, I mean, well, some stuff within the first, like, night of meeting her.

Oh, really?

You know, it's like, because the conversation allowed for the space.

Yeah, it was a very bonding conversation.

It was a very, You know, we had some, I was like, okay, she's opening this conversation. Let me go a little farther. But within the first month, you know, and we spent a lot of time together. And I think it was just like, I'd rather know quickly if we want to continue to hang out. Why spend six months together before I open up? Why not just share within the first few weeks? And if she's scared of my past, I can't change my past.

Well, that you just said something very important because, One of the things that is a non-negotiable that I tell people is they have to be okay with your past. If they have any issue with it, whatever it was, like they're not for you, 'cause you can't change the past, it's over. So if they're gonna have a hang up over something that you did in the past, if you have a hang up over something that they did in the past and clear it, then maybe they're just not- They're not the right fit. Yeah. They're not.

You can't hold someone against their past.

No, no. You can't hold their past against someone.

Yeah, I guess what it is. Yeah. And it's like all of it, you can't hold it against them. You have to be able to accept the person for everything they've been through, where they're at now. Yeah. Otherwise don't be with them.

I say it all the time. People are like, well, people need to grow. It's like, yes, well, that's sort of inevitable, but you need to really accept.

Them for who they are now, not their potential. And there's not things that I like about her past. It doesn't mean you have to love everything that's happened.

She probably doesn't like or love the.

Things that I've done, you know. But you accept it. You say, but you also say, oh, that's also made you who you are today. And you're more loving and compassionate and willing to grow because of this stuff. Absolutely.

And, you know, vice versa.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. If you can't accept a person's past, it's going to be very challenging. 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. And 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 Podcasts 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 are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.