How To Find Love With Anxious Attachment

I started to see that that grief was just evidence of the amount I loved. And every time you love somebody, you're signing up at the exact same time for how much it's going to hurt to lose them.

Welcome back, everybody, to the Love Life Podcast. I am here with Audrey Hussie to my right.

Hi, everyone.

And across from me, I have Mark Groves, who I was introduced to by a mutual friend. And I can't believe this is the first time me and this man are meeting. I've heard a ton about you, brother. A real honour for us to get to sit with you and chat and get deeper into your work. I know that your stuff is wildly popular online and the nuance in the way you say things and the approach that you bring is really, really heartfelt and deep and authentic. There's such a connection between your work and ours because of the focus that you have on authentic connection, authentic relationships. And I'm excited to hear from you today. I know I've got lots of questions. I know Audrey does too. I want to say just before we start, Mark and his wife, Kylie Macbeth, just wrote a brand new book that is called Liberated Love: Release Codependent Patterns and Create the Love youe Desire, which I know is going to be so relevant to so many people in our audience. So I'm excited to get into that today as well. Love that you guys wrote that together. So exciting to hear and dig into. But thanks for being here, man.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited and I get both of you.

Yeah, you get all of Audrey's questions.

I have so many questions.

Do you want to kick off? Is there a first question you have?

I think we need to kick off by setting context for what your book is about because I think that in itself is so fascinating. So are you happy to share the story behind how the book came to be and what it's about.

It was really born from our own experience. So the book is really part memoir. We tell client stories, and we also walk people through the tools of moving from codependency to liberated love or interdependency. And, you know, it just felt like this is the time for this book. You know, one, it really is an amalgamation of both of our work individually. Like, here's two people who really loved each other, really had a lot of tools to make a relationship work and yet we needed to end our relationship. In the book, we have Relationship 1.0 and then what we call the Sacred Pause, which is we joke that that's what you get to call a breakup when you get back together, otherwise it's just a breakup. And then Relationship 2.0. And it's structured in that way just for people, you know, the Sacred Pause is really about letting the old patterns die and something new be born. And I, you know, if you think of like Esther Perel, she talks about like, get divorced but stay together. Like it's this same concept whether you single or in a relationship that you're willing to actually let what isn't working go. And we think about like what's possible for the world when we dedicate not just the way we love, but the way we live to truth, to like just telling the truth, to being with reality. We have a whole chapter that's called Getting Right With Reality, because so much of our energy and time is spent trying to not notice the thing that's true or not have the conversation that we need to have. And we look at our relationship 1.0, where we were still in codependent patterns. Mine was very much that I've chased love my whole life, essentially. So for a lot of people that would be seen as like, I'm more anxiously attached. And for my wife, there was a self-identification of like, what's wrong with me that I can't choose this relationship or that I didn't make my previous marriage work. and I think about my own work, which I really monetized my codependency. Like, right? Like, I think of all the people in caretaking service sort of work, coaches, therapists, physiotherapists, doctors. There's a survival strategy that made them really good at attuning to people. And people naturally came to me with their challenges.

And.

You know, it becomes a superpower when it's no longer where you source your worth. and so for me, there was like, oh, my wife has this, my now wife. But when we were together, it was like, oh, you're still trying to heal from your divorce. Yours. You think there's something wrong with you. I have all these tools. Like, this is perfect. I'll be something you need. And if I'm something you need, then you can't go anywhere. And she had to process this idea of, like, what's wrong with me that I can't choose this relationship with Mark and fully show up. She had it just for context. She had had this dream early in our relationship. And I went out for a run and I came back and I had this awareness. I was like, man, I feel like every time I get close to you, you distance. And I'm not interested in that dynamic. And she was like, you,'re right. I had had this dream where a house was burning. And the dream said, it's time to go. And I didn't want that to be true. Like, I don't want to go. And when she tells the story, she's like, here's this guy that I'd always wanted to meet, who's mindful and thoughtful and cares about his own growth and my growth, and now I can't have him. Like, what kind of cruel punishment is this? And so there was resistance to the leaving. So that dream haunted, I would say, the unconscious of our relationship, because here I am in a relationship with someone who had a dream that she might go, who's still processing whether she needs to or not. So I can't fully release or surrender into the relationship. And she's still trying to negotiate what's wrong with her that she had the dream.

For someone who related more to the anxious attachment style, that must have been the most triggering thing in the world to have someone in front of you who, for whatever reason, is demonstrating that they're unsure about the relationship or you or whatever it may be. They are like semi in, semi out. How did that, like, did that send you into any kind of a like tailspin of old patterns or control or jealousy or just how did that trigger you? And what did you do about that? Because I can just imagine that being like literally the worst possible thing that could inflame that in you.

Yeah.

If you want to be centered right in your wound, choose somebody who's ambivalent when you're anxious. attached. You could tell I hadn't yet learned how to move out of that. And, you know, in the language they called it earn secure. I hadn't learned how to become secure yet. And as much as my mind understood, okay, well, logically, I know the way out of this, right? Like, logically, I know it's to have all these conversations, but in what I felt was. And I learned this through that relationship. when I started to do work on my nervous system and really understanding my nervous system. And I had just this immense amount of grief. I remember we were in a psychotherapy couple session and I remember just starting to cry because I had this recognition that somewhere in my life I learned that it was okay to stay in relational dynamics where I wasn't being fully chosen. And it was actually, and she was in the room with me and she started to cry too because she realized like, by neither of us really actually choosing ourselves. We were staying in this, I mean, really punishing space, as you were saying, like, for an anxiously attached person, that is a special kind of hell.

Yeah.

And it was.

You know, when you talk about codependence, could you just explain, because it's a word that gets thrown around a lot, and you've touched on it a little bit there, but I'm just curious, could you just explain what codependence actually means and how that manifested Is it just, you know, someone who maybe identifies more as being avoidant and someone who's more anxious and them coming together and kind of trying to make something work through that? Is that what it is or...?

We define codependency in the book as any relational dynamic where we source safety from something or someone at the expense of our needs, our sense of self, and our overall well-being. Now, the the real key words there are at the expense of. And, you know, when I think about most people, we tend to not use our voice. We tend to not stand in our needs, our wants, our values. And, you know, who hasn't experienced, well, maybe really secure people, but to the majority of the population who hasn't experienced this idea of compromising yourself in order to maintain connection. And that is such a regular conversation that I have with people. It is like, I am going to give up my dreams, my desires, even my need for true safety in order to keep someone in my life or to have anybody in my life.

When you are stuck in that kind of dynamic, what happens is you are using your weapon and your defenses in order to make yourself feel safe. So, if you are anxiously attached, it might be like, I am going to please the person I'm with so that they love me forever. You've touched on this earlier, you know, this idea of making yourself indispensable. If I can just be perfect and never cause any problems, never stand up for myself, never show any needs that could possibly conflict with what this person wants, then I'll be safe in that relationship because they'll never want to let me go. And that's a way for us to make ourselves feel safe. How do you start to even put those weapons down and take the big leap of faith that is, I'm gonna actually stand up for myself in that moment, I'm gonna take a risk, I'm gonna do something different, even a little bit different, because that's so scary when you're in that, it's like a physiological response, right? You have, you're like, I cannot, I can't do that, because if they, if I do that, then they'll leave me and if they leave me, I'll die. That's literally how it feels. So how do you even begin to do that?

Yeah, such a big leap to ask of someone to go from like never being able to share how you truly feel and feeling that coming up in your chest and your throat, you go into freeze, and then you're like, oh, just start sharing how you feel. Like we'd all be doing that if it was that simple. And, you know, really it is, there's a few layers to it. I think the first part is that we have to understand where it comes from. I don't think you need to know where every challenge comes from in order to know that you have a behavior or something that you wanna change, but what what context offers is compassion. Because really, let's say I'm someone who's hypervigilant and I'm like constantly monitoring the environment or I'm constantly intuiting other people's needs. It's likely because as a kid, I knew that if mom was calm or dad was calm, I'm safe. Or like if I can take care of this, my little brother and my little sister, then my mom won't get overwhelmed. Or, you know, if you have a parent who wasn't even around, then you become needless and want less. So it's like by just giving context to it, Then there's compassion to say, like, Hey, it's exactly what you actually needed to do to get here. Because I will often hear someone say to me, like, I can't believe I do that about some behavior that is unhelpful or unhealthy relationally. And my response is always, How could you not? Like, how could you not develop the perfect behavior in order to survive? That's exactly why you are a mammal that needed to develop that. So, When we have compassion for it, then there's no longer shame about it. It starts to dissolve the shame because you realize it's not your choice. But now you're in a state where you have choice. You're an adult and we have to start to actually move into behaviors that allow us to create connection, to cultivate vulnerability and openness. We also have to look at what is the benefit we get from the behavior. What is this secondary gain that comes from it? And that one can be a little harder because I think the challenge that we have when we recognize that let's say we play the martyr or play the victim is we think that in order to move into a state of choice, we have to negate our experience of being a victim. But that's not what is actually required because you could say like, I have so much compassion for this thing that happened in my life or my childhood.

And.

People really do experience victimization. So I might not have had a choice in this experience. But I now have a choice in how I process it or what I make it mean. So to start to move from like, Hey, I recognize this behavior isn't helpful, which is really getting right with reality. Who am I? How do I show up to relationship? What do I choose? Like, these are such important truths to just come to because when you can, you can't change anything that you don't accept as true. Right? Because then you're not even dealing with reality. And when most of our life was spent not looking at the thing and now we're being asked to look at the thing, the other layer of that is that I really think it requires from like a nervous system perspective, the ability to be both internally resource, like to have skills to be able to be with feelings, you know, which you develop over time. That's not something that just happens. And the other one is externally resource. So like people, Community. I think of all the things we go through in our lives that we try to navigate alone when we really need people to be like, hey, like you're not meant to carry that alone.

Yeah.

You know, getting to that truth that you talked about where you accept the reality that there is something that I'm not responsible for originally, but that I have to be accountable for. going forward if I want to change my experience of this life. Getting to that place of truth, it can be really hard for people when the way their being isn't producing quite enough pain. Like it's like, yeah, the pain reaches a threshold sometimes where it's like, I just. Something has to change because I can't do this anymore. But often we've learned a way to be functional and get enough of our needs met within our way of being that we never reach that kind of crescendo of pain that forces the truth. What can people do if they've not reached that threshold of pain? How can they not have their entire life have to fall apart to confront truth in that way?

Man, I wish that I could say it never takes that sort of cosmic 2x4, but it usually does till it doesn't. You know, like I know that for the first moments for me to wake up to just start to ask questions like, why do I do what I do? It actually took, you know, an emotional rock bottom. And I think we think of rock bottoms as being like someone who, you know, drinks too much and wakes up in the wrong place. But it's really any moment where you recognize that, the choice you're making is not in alignment with who you want to be. And so, you know, Gabor Mate has that great inquiry where people say like, why the addiction? That's the wrong question. It's why the pain. And I think so much of the things we source in our lives and it's entirely, it's the most monetizable thing is your misalignment. Like you not being in alignment with truth and who you are and what you want to create, dating people who are not aligned, staying in relationships, having toxic behaviors, all these are like, They're just like the best opportunity for TikTok and Instagram, right? To just like, don't pay attention to it. And our world is really designed for you not to go deep within that. And that's why I see that as an act of rebellion then, that you get to actually go within and see. The very thing that we avoid is the very thing that is like the pain that we avoid relationally is also where love lives. And so that's actually the really strange paradox. It's like, I don't wanna walk towards commitment because I'm afraid that if I, you know, it might show up as I'm just afraid of commitment, but you're really afraid of where commitment leads. When Kylie and I, my wife and I broke up from relationship 1.0, it was the first time I'd ever gone through a breakup sober. And I wasn't just processing our breakup. I was processing every breakup. I was processing everything I hadn't sat with. I was terrified of grief. And I started to see that grief was just evidence of the amount I loved. And every time you love somebody, you're signing up at the exact same time for how much it's going to hurt to lose them. And so it's like, could I build this capacity to hold this? Because I was experiencing it in every moment I opened to her anyways. And instead of trying to run from it, could I actually cultivate an understanding of how to be with it? And here I am for my whole life being told that, like, if you're sad, there's something wrong with you. If you're anxious, there's something wrong with you. We've been told that negative emotion is an indication of a problem within the person. As opposed to if your environment is not healthy, if the relationship you're in is not aligned, the negative emotion you have is the exact appropriate response to the circumstances.

If I'm listening to this podcast, and what I'm hearing, just to paraphrase, is basically when you start choosing better things in your life and for yourself, you have to make peace with the fact that you had the choice before and you were choosing the wrong things, even if you were doing so unconsciously. I feel like there's a lot of people, especially people who have suffered through trauma and abuse and who have really suffered at the hands of other people and, you know, very malignant people. there are people who will hear that and say, but I didn't choose it. Because especially when we talk about those, like, nervous system responses and the way that, you know, our attachment styles and the way that we, our physiology very much dictates how we feel, behave and, you know, perceive the world and other people, it can really feel out of our control. I know I've been in so many times in my life where I have felt utterly out of control of my emotions and just honestly just thought there is something wrong with me, there is something deeply wrong.

With me.

And I just know so many people will be thinking that, right? And although I agree with you and there's a radical acceptance and a radical ownership, I think that needs to happen. And it's actually a very beautiful thing when you can get there. But what do you say to people who kind of will push back on that and say, but that's not true because I'm not, I didn't choose what happened to me in my childhood. I didn't choose what happened to me in these relationships. I don't, I'm not even in control of how I feel and How can I possibly be responsible for the hardship in my life?

Yeah, I mean, I want to absolutely validate that someone's experience that is a trauma is not something they choose. Because we can't change what's occurred in our lives, we have to change how we orient to what occurred. Because if all of a sudden the traumas I've experienced in my life, and I want to make sure everyone knows I'm not minimizing someone's experience of trauma, But rather saying that if I made that experience mean that I'm broken or I'm not enough or that I'm not powerful, that I can just through the use of how I see the circumstances. And that's why when we say like, it didn't happen to you, it happened for you. Well, that really minimizes it's like, but it did happen to you. But how do we actually just hold this complexity of saying it did happen to you, and how can it happen for you? Like how can it be a service? So because we live in these worlds of binaries, that is like, well, if you say it happened for you, then now we're minimizing the experience of the victimization. I'm saying actually live in both worlds because both exist, which is like, it's the same, if I minimize this, then it's not valuable anymore. And that we want to actually cultivate the value from it.

You know, when people look for the meaning in something. And they say it happened for a reason. I always struggled with that because it felt insulting at the more superficial end of the spectrum. And in the worst cases of abuse, it felt like almost a spiteful thing to say.

Yeah.

Like the, the, you know, it happened for a reason. Like when you consider some of the things you're talking about, when we say it happened for a reason, you're like, are you joking?

But.

What I love about what you just said, which is really an important distinction, is it happened to you and you get to make it happen for you as well. You get to choose. Like, I think much more important than finding a meaning is creating a meaning.

Right?

That's great.

So if someone is in that place, and they want to create the meaning and they want to start to choose, put intention behind different choices. Can you talk about practically what you.

Did.

To do that? Because there are times when I've been triggered where I'm so, you know, I can physiologically feel it through my whole body. I, and the idea of choosing something different than I want to do in that moment is it just feels borderline impossible. So how did you learn to start to regulate your nervous system? Because I believe, and I'm curious if this is where you've landed too, but I believe that, you know, regulating our nervous system is what starts to create freedom in choices. But people just don't even know what that means or how to do that. So I'm curious as to whether that's where you landed too, but also how did you do that practically? Could you give us a literal play-by-play of like, okay, I got triggered.

I worked with a somatic therapist, so that was a really powerful shift for me. But I'd say initially, I remember my wife and I early in our relationship getting into a conflict and both of us laying in the bed and just being like, I had so many words I wanted to say and they were like, ugh, like I just couldn't get them out. And it started to, I started to courageously just try to put a few words out. I was lucky, and I know you guys talk about this in your own relationship dynamic, the gift of my wife and our relationship is that they were then received. And so I was starting to re-pattern what I thought would happen if I share my voice because I was getting different evidence. of what actually was going to happen. And so I didn't, there's, I think like the most powerful or most courageous act is the first time because there's no evidence. And so it is like this leap into the complete unknown. And that's why boundaries or self-expression have a symbiotic relationship with self-worth. But the first time you ever lay a boundary, there might be no self-worth at the basis of that. So when you lay a boundary or express yourself, you're saying, I matter. And then it feeds I matter. And then now the behavior reinforces the belief.

I can remember a time when I was in a relationship and I said something that was, it took a moment of bravery to say it. It wasn't something I was actually intensely worried would make me unattractive if I said it. And then unfortunately, that person literally said to me, that was really unattractive.

Like it validated it.

It validated it. and I'm, I'm curious.

What wasn't me, by the way?

It wasn't Audrey, but I, but I'm curious as to what you would say to some, you know, when someone says, I, you know, it's so lovely for you that your wife, was she your wife at the time? Or this was girlfriend.

Yeah.

Early.

You know, the way she responded was corrective.

Yeah.

For you. What do you say to people who assert a boundary or express themselves. And, you know, the, it validates all of their fears and it's not corrective to encourage them to keep going.

Well, I would say that for people when you're expressed, because certainly not all my boundaries in my life have been received from, like, a positive affirmative perspective, is that when you lay a boundary, the success of the boundary is not in the affirmation of the person receiving it. often a person receiving a boundary will be resistant to the boundary. So my advice to people is always to start to see that the victory is actually in the process of laying it. So boundaries are really negotiations too. Like, their lines in the sand. Sometimes they start as walls. They start as ultimatums because we just don't know. I need to actually assert a bigger space around me because I don't know how to negotiate yet. I don't know how to have a need and you have a need. and us somehow find compromise when we.

Do not calibrate it.

Exactly. And so that starts to create nervous system regulation because you're starting to recognize that you have choice in what you're agreeing to relate to.

And sometimes, you know, there are people in relationships whose trauma or insecurity, it can actually make them you know, demand more than is reasonable.

Right.

Like, you can imagine a scenario where someone is demanding, you know, someone goes on a work trip and they want them to give them a call on the hour, every hour.

Right.

Right. We can imagine a scenario where it's like, actually, that's not a fair thing to do to your partner. I can imagine a scenario where a person is telling their partner, it makes me really insecure when you wear that outfit. So you're not allowed to wear those outfits when you go out because it makes me feel bad. Like, we can see these scenarios where it would very obviously move from an appropriate boundary to have and a very human and understandable one to, oh, that's now a mutation where it's gone too far. What do you say to people who don't know where they are on that line and not only don't know how to calibrate, but they don't even know if what they're asking for in the first place is reasonable and therefore making them a less viable partner for someone?

I think it's great to be able to reflect it, like the boundaries are the things you're hoping to start to ask for, stand in, to reflect it off friends, to reflect it off trusted people. You know, the people who usually are telling us to assert our worth are the people who we push away when we're not valuing ourselves. You know, like the friend who actually tells us the truth. But that example you gave about, let's say someone saying, I need you to call me every hour. If I know that that person, if I'm in relationship with them, and I know that that's probably coming from a previous relationship where there was betrayal, what I might say to them is, Hey, look, I understand that you have a hard time trusting. I'm not the one who earned the lack of trust, but I'd like to participate in your healing of it. That's not a reasonable request for me, but what is reasonable is, you know, I'll check in with you at the end of the night. And is there anything else I can do that is coming up for you? Now, I would say if we're in repeated patterns with people who are unavailable, things like that, then We still need to experience those frustrations and those pains. Like me being with my wife at the time, girlfriend who didn't fully choose me, was exactly what I needed to experience to hit a place where I finally got to a place where it was no more. And so for people who are looking to say, well, how do I know if my boundaries are walls? Well, a great way to check in is like, are my standards so high that no one, I actually use it as a way so no one can get close? we'll start to get an intuitive feeling like, yeah, maybe that is true. And when we're starting to assert boundaries, we might get it wrong. That's why I said they are negotiations in some sense, because I might express a boundary like, to my wife, you need to call me every hour. But her feedback on that is actually starting for me to recognize even in the conversation there would be healing.

I know for me, I struggled in my life And I'm still working on it to pay attention to how something is actually making me feel and getting in touch with that. Because when we're in that state and someone's not choosing us, especially if we're coming from an anxious mindset, our brain just goes straight to how do I secure this person?

Yeah, exactly.

It doesn't go to this really doesn't make me feel good. So why do I keep choosing a situation that doesn't make me feel good? That for many people is a far less, even though it seems so obvious, Like, why would I stay somewhere I'm not happy? But it's a far less natural place to go than they are not sure about me. How do I make them sure about me?

There's two questions we're always asking relationally, Am I safe? And then the second one is, Am I safe to be me? But the first one is safety. And really what we're saying is like, let's cultivate and create a space between two people, which takes two people who are conscious of what they want to create. I know you guys talk about like being intentional about what you're creating. So many of us enter relationships and choose other people's vows. And really the reason relationships end is because they don't have clear agreements at the beginning. So it's like, what are we generating through this connection? What are we bringing to life? I really think it's ironic or crazy that when we get out of relationships, all of a sudden we do everything we love. We now pursue our dreams in a way to like get back at them. You know, like look at who I became. I get a revenge body, I get whatever. And I don't really care what makes someone fully step into their potential in themselves. But I think, like, why is that not what we use a relationship for? Like, when we're concerned about having the upper hand, we're already in the wrong conversation, because what's happening is we're playing off power dynamics. And as soon as you're doing that, you're in control and manipulation and you're actually operating from fear. But when I think about my wife becoming more powerful, more, her voice getting more clear, I just think about how hot that is. One, I'm also going to get more feedback. I'm not as excited about that, but that means that I'm going to grow. And when she becomes more powerful, the relationship becomes more powerful. I do. Because, like, let's be honest, two people walking through life is more powerful than one. Because not only is two perspectives more powerful, but two Curiosities, two ways of seeing the world, diversity in every aspect of the world improves the world and. why not use our relationship as the way that we come fully alive and actually cultivate safety?

You took a break, a sacred break? Is that right?

Yeah, it becomes sacred when you get back together.

Got it. So there was a sacred break and then you guys got back together after a year, 10 months? I'm so curious about this because it just feels like the validation that that must give so many people who absolutely should not Pine after an X. Yeah, yeah. The Mandate it gives them to continue to Pine.

Yeah.

Is really scary to me. So how, when you're getting those questions from people about, you know, they're looking for that.

Yeah.

You broke up with this person or you two broke up, and then you ended up. And then. And she wasn't sure about you, but now she's so sure and you're married and you have this unbelievably conscious relationship. It's like, in some ways, the most dangerous story imaginable.

Because.

Because, by the way, how many people have the exact story of someone broke up with me because they weren't sure about me or because they weren't all in. And, you know, the idea that I could be in something as intentional and as conscious as you're in with your wife now. with the starting point being they're not sure about me is so potent as a story. So how do you steer people away from using that story as a justification to continue giving so much of their time and energy for something that ultimately will never be or should never be?

My number one priority when we broke up was healing. And that was, I didn't, I cared about her feelings. I cared that, you know, we wouldn't interact, but I care more about my feelings and my healing than her experience of me muting her on social media. And because we were able to communicate, I did say, listen, I'm gonna mute you. I'm not gonna interact with you. I'm gonna not, we're gonna have no contact. and here's the rules of that. And we agreed on that, and that was hard, but it was necessary. And I also will say to people when they ask that, I'm like, are you using this as an excuse to go back towards someone who is actually toxic? And you're, you know, because for a lot of people who are used to chasing, the healing that is being invited is, can you get to a place where you're, you're actually doing the opposite of what your normal pattern is? and, you know, I realized, because Kylie was more likely to be avoidant in our dynamic, is that I would always want her to come towards me, but as an anxious person, I always took the space up that she needed to move towards. And I think more of attachment styles that anxiety is really about not being comfortable with space and avoidance is about needing space. So it's really our relationship to space that's happening. It just happens to be the space between two people. And so when I think about what we created in that time apart, Kylie did what she called a man talks. So she like again had no engagement with anybody, no conversations, nothing. And that allowed her to discover her voice to heal a lot of generational stuff. One thing that had come up in our relationship dynamic was that in her own family lineage, she'd never seen a woman stand on her own two feet that they were always provided for. maybe be the stay-at-home mom, whatever it might be. And because of that, she had experienced what happens when that happens is that women tend to compromise their voice. But anybody in that dynamic might. Harriet Lerner, who's a psychologist, she talks about how if you're not free to come and go from a relationship, you won't feel free to be yourself in a relationship. Because if being yourself jeopardizes the relationship, it jeopardizes your survival.

Mm-.

And so when it's about reuniting, for me, the main thing always is how do you use the breakup or the ending or the space as the way to fully step into your potential? Because what you inevitably find when someone steps fully into their potential and starts to go after everything they've always wanted, give birth to everything, and like really assert is that they stop thinking about it. It doesn't become a need anymore. Because if I change in order to get someone, if I don't get them, I'm gonna, the change goes out the window. But if I change because I want to become the type of person that creates the type of relationship I desire, then now I'm attached to a purpose that's greater than anything and it's not attached to a person. It's attached to a sense of self.

How do you do that if you have an abandonment wound? Because a lot of the reasons people don't want to let go is because letting go is so scary.

Well, I think for people to recognize that we tend to be drawn towards people who wound us in a similar way as we're familiar with. So, like, if I'm, if I, as a kid, I didn't feel attended to, I'll likely be drawn towards people who do not fully show up for me, who may be long-distance relationships. If I was overwhelmed, I might choose someone who's controlling, who's smothering. And so we tend to be drawn towards people who are really, what we're unconsciously trying to do is resolve an unhealed childhood experience. The strange paradox that I see when someone is terrified of being rejected, and then we talk in the book about the masks that different people that we wear, and we might wear more than one, that are adaptive strategies so that we can get our needs met so that we can avoid pain, so that we can avoid reliving relational experiences so if I am presenting a version of myself in order to get you to like me, and I'm afraid that you're gonna reject me, the very act of what I'm doing is actually rejecting myself. So I live in the wound. I live in the constant perpetuation of it, and I reinforce the story that I can't be who I actually am. And even this overt fear of abandonment that causes us to cling to something, what we're really trying to do is control the unfolding of time, right? Like I'm trying to like use this clinging to not be in as you were talking about the unknown. Because if I let that go, then all of a sudden now I have to be with my abandonment. But what we what is so deeper on the level of like how we're showing up for ourselves is that we are constantly living in a state of abandoning our own story. And so when we can get with that truth of like, wait, the very thing I'm afraid of creating is the very thing I'm always living in. oh my God, what the hell am I doing? And when we can see that and be with the pain of that, then we're like, why would we want to create that? And we were talking before about taking the experiences you've been in and validating their pain, but then actually somehow allowing them to serve you. And one exercise that I like people to do is they write out the timeline of their life, all the sticky moments, that they have in their life. And they might, like, draw that in a left column. And then in the column next, they write out what is the belief they created about themselves because of that experience. And then in the next column, they write, what is the wisdom that I could bring into my life through this experience? And what they do is they then tear off the belief and the experience and burn it, and they keep the wisdom. I like the idea of ritual, because ritual is also what we really if you think, like, evolutionarily, we were always in ceremony and ritual. And this allows us to actually have this visceral experience of burning up what we've been holding on to.

For those that don't know, Mark made the decision very recently to get off of Instagram. Was it delete your account or just to get off of it?

Delete or deactivate.

Deactivate.

Yeah.

So, you know, I feel like that's you really putting your money where your mouth is in terms of the intentionality. you know, you said that you reached a point in your relationship with your girlfriend at the time where you, you know, you realize this is not good for me. Like, it's. I. I can't be in a relationship with someone who's not sure about me, and you made the hard decision to leave. If, you know, it feels like there's something analogous to this relationship that you've had with Instagram, which I don't think is a you thing. I think it's. for sure, something the rest of us feel too. Everything you've said today to me, that's like you being very intentional about living it. So I'd just love to ask you, even if it's just for a couple of minutes, how that feels.

You know, I've been wrestling with my relationship with it for a while, and the reason that is, is that one, I really built the majority of my business on the platform, and now I'm really recognizing the statement that you build a mansion in someone else's backyard. I can hold the beauty that I've reached so many lives. And I met my wife on Instagram. Like everything, there's a both and. I've had such an awesome opportunity to pursue what I love and really grow and learn so much. I've been on there since I believe it's December of 2013. So it's been a while. But like anything, I think the intention behind a social media platform and especially meta has changed a lot. You know, it's if they make man, they make money from the attention of people because they can show more ads to people. So naturally, what they reward through an algorithm is that they desire only a certain type of content. And if you don't create that content, you don't get reach. So naturally, a Creator generally will start to curate their content to achieve that. So they start apart from their authentic art and self-expression. And really it starts to devalue art in a way. Now, I was interviewing Stephen Porges the other day who is the creator of Polyvagal Theory, so about the nervous system. And he was saying that we spend the majority of our lives being evaluated, like in school and all these types of things. And when the nervous system, when you're constantly being evaluated, you're vigilant. you're like constantly on the defense. And I was thinking like, not only are we being evaluated constantly on social media by people, we're actually being evaluated by an algorithm. And the problem which he referenced is that in a normal relationship or a healthy one, there is a feedback loop that you can express how the thing is making you feel, how the relationship is making how constantly needing to create more and it's never enough. And the thing about the algorithm is it's always a mystery. You'll never find out what it is. You're always on eggshells. If you say the wrong thing, they can take it all away. And he was saying that because there's no feedback loop, there's no opportunity for the other side of the relationship to change, and it really has no interest in changing.

I love the idea that like being on Instagram is essentially being in a relationship with a narcissist.

Exactly. And I started to make these parallels.

-What are you saying about Mark Zuckerberg? -I'm not saying.

But what I do think was really powerful, I was in a brand strategy meeting with my friend, and I was talking about my book, and I was realizing that what was coming up with so much dissonance is I couldn't be in the relationship that I have with my wife and write and speak about a book that's about liberation and then be not liberated. I'm consenting to a relationship. I'm not a victim of Instagram or Meta's circumstances. I've consented to it. But now I have the consciousness and the awareness that it's actually not in service of my well-being. I'm not saying other people can't have a healthy relationship to these things, although I'm not sure that they're designed to even be able to do that. So how do I feel in the middle? That's a great question. There's a lot of trepidation, a lot of fear, because so much I want to say one part of it is like identity because a lot of the times when you're pitching like a brand or a conversation, they're like, well, how big is the social media falling? So who am I without the social validation of that my work is credible through the following that I have? And I'm like, wow, look at what we've really minimized value to.

Yeah. And.

And so there's that fear of, like, who am I without that? And then also, what will I do? Like, how will I generate income? How will I take care of my employees? I, like, there's a lot of uncertainty in all of it, but what I've learned throughout my life is that that alignment is more important than anything, you know? that, like, to be in Integrity with what is true for me is I'd burn it all to the ground, you know, for that. I I. Now that I have a son, it's, like, completely changed the level of responsibility that comes with, like, with the choices I'm making in my life, you know, because I want my son to be able to look at his father's life. One, he can listen to my podcast, which is wild to think about, but two, that that, like, did I do and. And act in a way that was in alignment with what I said I stood for? And I don't do that as some sort of, like, look at me. I think I saw this funny reel that is, like, everybody when they leave Instagram, and it's a. It was really funny. The guys like dancing in the street. Like, other people like you might be able to handle this, but I'm enlightened, and I'm gonna go dance with roses and trees. I might do. but it's not a, it's not a hierarchical thing. It's more just like my body, my wife refers to it that the body is the somatic canary in the coal mine. And my body has really been saying, it's, it just doesn't feel healthy.

It's inspiring, man. Yeah, it's inspiring. And we've been saying recently, I think Audrey was the one who first said it that, you know, love when we talk to people in their love lives, love needs space. And if you are constantly attached to an unhealthy relationship or if you're constantly, I call it micro dosing on some person that, you know, isn't really even in your life, but you keep giving them your time and attention and texting them or hooking up with them, you never really create the space for something amazing to happen with someone who's right.

And.

It kind of feels like from the outside that this is creating space for you and I'm gonna be super interested to see what comes out of that space for you.

I think about how much of our life force and energy we put into things that are not aligned or crazy. Right, and because it's so normalized that we do that, that maybe in our childhood we learned to bypass alarms, red flags, orange flags.

And.

What will I do when my Consciousness is not thinking about what is Instagram doing? What does it need from me? What is meta? Is that working? Is it not? I'm like, oh, my God, I can actually just create.

Yeah.

And it already has enlivened me in a way that I think because I made a choice, and then the choice is now it's done. It's happening that now I'm like, oh, okay, there's certainty. There's no much. There's no ambivalence. you know, so I think it's so ironic in our lives that we're constantly brought back to different layers of our healing. And, and I see now that even I've been in ambivalence for four years. And of course, I'm gonna have anxiety because if you don't make choices, you're not directing your life. And, and that's going to show up as anxiety because you can't trust yourself. So here's to trusting.

This has been such an amazing conversation.

I could talk to you for another two hours.

Yeah, I've absolutely loved it. I don't think anyone is going to need any encouragement to go and get a copy of your new book. It is called Liberated Love: Release Codependent Patterns and Create the Love youe Desire. And it's by Mark Groves who has been sat across from us having this wonderful conversation and his wife, wife, Kylie Macbeth. Congratulations to the both of you for creating something so wonderful together. And let's do this again because this was a pleasure.

I'm so grateful and I've really enjoyed this conversation and to the people watching, listening for trading your time. That's something that I don't take for granted and trusting me with with this conversation.

Where should people go for the book? And is there a specific site or where do you want people to go for both the book and your work?

You can go to createthelove.com/liberatedlove and you can get the book from any retailer there. And on there, if you put in the receipt, you can get a meditation we created for it, a workbook, and yeah, lots of other goodies.

Amazing.

And you can just go to markroves.com and for my work moving forward, I have a podcast which you're a guest on and also on YouTube.

Where can people find the podcast?

Mark Groves podcast. So wherever they consume their podcasts.

Amazing. Mark Groves podcast. Mark, thank you, man.

Thank you.