How to Break the Toxic Patterns in Your Love Life (With Marie Forleo)

It was so painful and so torturous. It almost to me, Matthew, felt like my dating life and my relationship life was this big black hole of like a pain in the ass.

Recently we had a special event where coach, author, speaker Marie Forleo came to join my members and I in the Love Life Club. it was an amazing conversation. We did a whole round of questions and coaching live by Marie for my members. If you weren't there, I wanted to bring you a small clip from that session that you could watch here today on video. There's also a longer part of the conversation that is on the Love Life podcast. So if you enjoy this at the end of this clip, I'll share a link for you to go and listen to that on the podcast. But for now, enjoy this special part of a conversation I had with Marie forleo. When you say that, you know, that it would be good for people to be more curious to whether it's a new app or a new social gathering, whether the different kind of person than the person they are used to, this person over here, this stereotype that I keep going for, that's the kind of person I'm attracted to. So am I supposed to go for someone I'm not attracted to? And will that serve me long term? If I feel bored in this relationship or if I don't feel physically attracted to this person, even though they're perfectly lovely to me. What do you say to people about what parts of that blueprint to shed, but also how to find attraction in new sources than the ones that either keep hurting them or keep rejecting them or don't seem to exist in the form of a real relationship?

Yes. Okay, so let's tackle the blueprint first, because I think that this is really interesting. I remember in my own history, from Jersey was dating basically the same guy in different bodies again and again and again and again. And like as an Italian American, we have this term, it's called a guido, if you've ever heard of it. It's like somebody who's like, got a lot of muscles, definitely went to a tanning salon, definitely has some gold chains. So I had that same type of boyfriend like over and over and over and over and it never quite worked out. And I remember when I first saw Josh, he was not that. He was very different than that. Different, like, from, you know, he's Jewish. I'm Italian. He's like a. A filmmaker or an actor. Like, all these different things were 17 years apart. Like, there were all the things that none of who he was on paper was, quote unquote, my blueprint at all. It was almost like the opposite. And yet. And yet, Matthew. I felt more myself around him than anyone I had ever dated. I felt more me. So the qualities in me that were seeming to get amplified were the best qualities in me, my sense of humor, right? My heart, my desire to be expressive. And I noticed in myself that blueprint just melting away because of who I started showing up as. And then I started thinking back and I was like, wow, when I was dating all those Guidos over and over again, the most insecure parts of me were showing up where I felt needy or grabby or just like I wasn't enough and everything about me wasn't it was just I was so floored by how diometrically different I felt and how I was showing up that that's what made the blueprint melt away. So what I would just encourage is to not come from here, but if you have that incredible bravery to put yourself in some new situations and say yes to whether it's going to a party, being out at a social event, maybe having a coffee date or some type of exposure to other people that again don't fit your blueprint, to just do it from a place of playfulness and non expectation and do it as a way to start seeing how you show up differently with different humans, regardless of what their external form is. And then this is something that I think most of us know, but I can never hear it enough. You know, I think when we're kind of in our late teens and 20s and maybe even 30s, you know, there's still so much around the physical attraction. The physical attraction, of course, is incredibly important. We know that. but we all also know that that stuff doesn't last. It just doesn't. We all change and evolve as we get older. And one of the things that's really come to me is how grateful I am that I chose and continue to love someone because of who they are on the inside. I mean, I've watched myself change, all of us, right? It's not a bad thing. It's a beautiful thing. This is like part of our human journey is that we're not going to look the same and the external shell is going to change and it's going to be different. But what are the qualities of that person that you want to be with? How big is their heart? Are they loyal? When you're with them, do they make you feel like what you have to say and what you have to think is important? And I think that's so individual for all of us. So for me as a person, freedom is my number one value in life. And to be with a man who really respects and gets how important my freedom is to me, you know, and this is just little stuff, but the other thing that was really important to me was I was very clear that I didn't want to have biological kids. and so many of the guys that I dated beforehand who fit that blueprint, they were like, okay, so we're gonna get married and we're gonna, I'm like, do you, are you looking at this thing? Like, have you heard what I said to you? Like, I have no interest in any of that. You know, I don't want kids. I don't want to get married. And so for me, it was a lot about the experience of being with people outside of my quote unquote blueprint that taught me it's about those inner qualities and how I show up with that person that made all the difference. so pay less attention to your head. Don't get twisted about the complicatedness of it, and just get your butt out there and start feeling your way into new truths.

When people find themselves in that situation.

And.

I suppose a lot of people don't ever get into the situation where they can have enough proximity to feel at home with someone or to notice that my best qualities are coming out because they've kind of, especially if they're dating mostly online, those people don't even get through the door because they don't look the way that the normal people they go for look. And so I think real life still has the advantage of we surprise ourselves in real life. We rarely surprise ourselves on dating apps. You know, we don't go through dating apps scrolling and suddenly get surprised that we're attracted to someone that looks nothing like the kind of people we're attracted to. But In real life, someone can look nothing like the people we're attracted to. And because of something that's going on in person, we are surprised and we do give them that extra chance. So I do think it's another reason why, even if dating apps are part of the portfolio of action that you take in your dating life, real life, and putting yourself in situations where you can bump into people and have surprising interactions is really important. But for people that find themselves in that situation, how do you, how did you listen to that and not go back to your programming? Because our wiring can be so strong. And we have been attracted to a certain kind of person or even a certain dynamic. We think we hate being the one chasing or the one that feels like we're being needy or someone who's hard to get, but something about that dynamic we're addicted to. And there's a kind of a rush to getting a person like that, whereas a person that's just standing in front of us facing us, meeting us where we are, may seem almost vanilla by comparison to that person that normally makes us work for it. But the person that wakes makes us work for it inevitably breaks our hearts. So But we're used to that wiring. So when you've spoken a lot about listening to your body, listening to how you feel about things, being in touch with yourself, perhaps that's part of the answer. But a lot of us just, when we come across something that's alien, we so quickly, even if maybe it feels good or we don't even, maybe we're not even in touch with ourselves enough to be able to consciously know that it feels good. But we very quickly go, that's interesting. Now I'm going to go straight for that guy who won't text me back.

Right.

How did you switch your programming so that you actually listened to that feeling of, wow, I feel more at home here? And that might be, I'm not suggesting for one moment that you don't have physical attraction to your partner, Josh, but that might be the more important thing here than trying to find the most physically attractive person in the room or the person that excites me the most instantly because they replicate some blueprint I've had in the past.

Yeah, no, the bad boy thing, 100%. I think for me, it was so painful and so torturesome the relationships that I had had before because I'm someone who's very creative and very bold and very ambitious. It almost to me, Matthew felt like my dating life and my relationship life was this big black hole of like a pain in the ass where my not best self was coming up. It was taking me off track. I was insecure. What am I doing? Who is this? Like it was taking up so much emotional, mental, psychological space in my life that wasn't good. It wasn't like it was exciting. And then all of a sudden when I had this contrast where I was like, Wow, this guy's fun, he's funny, he's different, I'm showing up different, and it's as though I felt like I expanded, not expanded because he was so great. It was like, oh my gosh, this is what a healthy relationship could be like. That's what helped me break that pattern because there was so much of the negativity that I was used to in my patterning that all of a sudden went away. It's almost like, you know, if you're used to an air conditioner being on in the room and you're just living with that hum all the time and you're like, this as much as I must just have to live with this. This is like what the sound is and it's just grating on me. And then all of a sudden, you turn off the air conditioner, like, wait a minute, it could be different. I didn't even know it could be different. And so there's like this rush or surge of newness. For me, that's what it was like. And I have to, I have to say this. I think for each of us as human beings, we have to decide, how do we want the quality of our lives to be? How do we want the quality of our lives to be? How do we want the quality of our relationships to be? What are we truly interested in? And for me, I was clear that I wanted a partner that was fun and trustworthy and someone who intrinsically felt like loyalty, like where we had a lineup of inner values. And I'm very clear in my inner values. I mean, even for me, it was important to me. I wanted to be able to talk about money. I wanted to be able to talk about and be excited about my career. I wanted to be able to be with someone who really got the intensity of who I am and didn't try and kind of dial me down. That's aside from the marriage and the kids thing. So I think another piece of breaking that habitual pattern is getting clear about what are the values that are important to you and how do you want this love life to go? And if you're kind of meeting with people who in instantly, it's like, no, that ain't possible. It's like, trust yourself, move on. Go ahead, swipe, go next, next. Business and love, I think, is a numbers game until you find your person. if you believe in such a thing as like, I want a long-term relationship and I'd like to have a beautiful, healthy, long-term relationship, let it be a numbers game. It's the same thing in business. If you just go at that, you know, and go for like a client or try and make a sale once a month or once a week, you're going to be a lot slower to build that business than the person who's like, next. Okay, you don't want what I have to offer. Okay, next. And you do it with a smile and you do it with enthusiasm. Does that take practice? Yeah. Is it easier said than done?

Yeah, but it works. I hope you enjoyed that clip. If you want to listen to the rest of the conversation, which was fantastic, we covered so much great ground in relation to dating, relationships and life. Go check it out. It's on the Love Life Podcast. I'll leave a link right here. And while you're at it, become a regular listener of the Love Life Podcast. Why not? There's new episodes every week that can help you with love and with life. I'll see you over there. Thank you so much for watching.