How to Spot a Narcissist When Dating | Dr. Ramani

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I want to introduce you as if she needs an introduction to a dear friend of mine, psychologist and expert on narcissism and narcissistic abuse, Dr. Ramani. She is known by so many as the world leading expert on YouTube. She teaches us not only how to recover from narcissists, but how to avoid these kinds of relationships in our future. So many of us end up in toxic or abusive relationships that are so difficult to get out of. And what this woman does is not just life changing, but life saving. In helping people to untangle themselves from these difficult relationships, not just in their love lives, but in every part of their lives, whether it's a parent, a sibling, a friend, or a co worker or boss. This is a powerful conversation for any of you who have been affected by these relationships either in childhood or in your adult life. Maybe you married one, maybe you stayed with one for a very long time and has had a tremendous impact on your self esteem, your identity, what you think you're capable of. Watch this episode because I think it is one of the most powerful episodes we have ever done. Me and Dr. Armani talk about her new book. It's not you. Grab a copy while you're at it. It is a powerful book. It is the consolidation of years and years and years of her work. And I know this is going to help so many people. So grab a copy of it's not you and then sit down and watch this. This interview. I present to you one of my dear friends and one of the people I respect the most out there, Dr. Ramany. Hey, friend.

Hello there.

It's so nice to speak with you these days because it's so easy.

Oh, I know. I feel like we're basically filming a conversation that we would have had. So this is easy.

Congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you. And I mean, I don't have words for the amount of support you've had. I think that this is a process where we both know it can be demoralizing. It certainly brings up my anxiety, brings up all my old wounds of not being enough too, which has been fascinating to sort of. It's sort of like meta book at that point because like I'm in it. But the book is what's causing all those feelings. So I can't thank you everyone, your team, for their unyielding, un. Unending support. Yes, Unending support. So thank you. But it's terrible. What? Terrible.

I can relate. I can relate. I. It's one of the things I love about you is that you just have. There's no part of you that is trying to be perfect for your audience or trying to, you know, create an image of having it all figured out for yourself at all times. And you know, you saying that is just more, more of that. And I think it's one of the things, it's one of the reasons people love you and find you so relatable. I, I, One of the moments I really appreciated in the book was when you were vulnerable about someone emailing you that was in some way, you know, either making light or kind of devaluing the work that you do and what it brought up for you. And I know, like, I was in a situation recently where someone that was an old school friend actually really got under my skin. It's not even someone that I actually spend any time with anymore, but it's someone that like, we ended up having to cross paths over something, over an event. And at this event, they immediately made me feel bad again because it was just immediately negative and pulling me down and saying negative things. It's almost like they couldn't help themselves. It's just like straight, straight into how can I dig you? And it really, like, sent me into a little like, funk because it made me feel like a teenager again.

Correct. And I think that the psychology of that is interesting because you now, I now were so circumspect. We could absolutely to within a millimeter and analyze the why of why someone would do these things. Right. They're insecure, they feel competitive, they themselves are not happy with where they're at. That's all good and well, but that kind of interpretive kind of take on it usually comes afterwards. I mean, this is where so much of what happens to folks in these narcissistic relationships, we feel it somatically first. We feel we get taken back to being a teenager, to the six year old, to that developmental stage when some of this was all sort of, and so, and there's a certain exhaustion that happens to us. Like, you know, that that sort of not feeling good, not feeling safe, not feeling that once again feeling not enough. That's why, I mean, you know, all kidding aside, that's why this book promotion process is so hard for me, because there's things I feel confident someone's asked me to write something, give me the time, I'll write it and I'll write it beautifully. I feel confident in that skill set to sell it. Forget it. It is absolutely not my skill set. And so I think that when we go out of the things we know, we really feel that sense of those old wounds come up, right? Because when we think about it, that's often where we got the most wounded, is when we didn't feel good about something. Some people will say school was always that place of invalidation for them. And so anytime, even something feels like school, it brings up a lot of anxiety. It could be a person. And while, like I said, we can give these elegant and very clear interpretive explanations of the why of people afterwards, when it's happening, it takes us down, and sometimes we're sort of. We get exhausted. We don't even know why. You're like, why am I. Why. Why do I feel so tired after this event? Or it's the. And there's a lot of restraint, too. I mean, I think that the thing you're talking about in the book I had written was that how I'd shared, you know, I had held back, basically, the win that. That interaction that I wrote about, that I held back in terms of sharing, in terms of getting into it. And if you can get to the other side of that, not taking the bait, not falling into it, you do feel good, great. Like, I didn't do that to myself because it's really caring for yourself when you don't give it up, right, and say, I'll tell you what I'm doing. And then they go right in there and make their dig. You don't give them that part. Because if all. If someone's like, hey, what's going on? What's new? Not much. You know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, they're not often going to go for you. But even in that, you know, in that. In that particular case where the person was making light of it, that getting to a more authentic place with it, knowing it's. It's important, it can help. But it still stings. It still stings.

Does. What do you say to people who feel like they must be in some way, you know, that they almost disappointed in themselves, that after everything they've done in their life, after everything they've achieved, all the work they've done, that something can still get under their skin in that way. Something can still affect them in that way, and it can make us feel like, God, if something like that can still get to me, then I must have made no progress or I must just be broken, or I must. Like, there must be something just wrong with me that's beyond repair. What do you say to people who really are frustrated that they don't feel like they've made more progress in their lives about what hurts them.

Right? And I think that. Oops. And I think that knowing one of the greatest progresses that a person can make is they become aware of why the thing is hurting them, right? They become very connected to that vulnerable space within them. I don't know that there's always a version of this where that goes away. I think we can become protective and caregiving of that part of us that gets affected. So it's not so much that this will never bother me again. It's. I understand why this bothers me. I understand how this. How I held this. Again, I say we hold it somatically, especially these things that make us feel small or young or again, take us back to these core wounds. We do carry it there. And as far as our nervous system is concerned, we're getting a message of there's a threat. You're not safe. You might lose connection, you might lose love, you might lose attachment. You better believe our bodies are going to respond to that. So when you might think like some little dig from some random person, well, that's nothing to do with attachment. It kind of does because the body's funny in how it holds things that are. That resemble the original wound, Right? And so when we recognize for a moment why we try to overcompensate the way we do in many ways, like, for me, I've had to do a lot of soul searching, why it's so important for me for this book to do well. And, you know, there's layers of. It's funny, the COVID of the book is layers. And there's a reason for that, because the layers of it are that we, you know, you have to dig in. Like, all of us are motivated by ego. Matthew. There's nobody who's ego free. And anyone who says, I'm free of ego, I'm like, you are either taking ecstasy or out of your mind because you. All of us have ego. We need ego. Ego is the endoskeleton. Ego is why we're not a massive smush on the ground. It's. It what's. It's what leads to advocacy. It's why we sometimes, you know, put our own needs first. It's why we don't give away everything we've got. Like, we have to have some ego. And so. And when there's too much ego, well, that's what I write about. But we all have it. And I think it's about being in check, about what core wounds are being addressed. So when I even thought, like, I really want this book to do well. And there's practical reasons, because it could mean, I think, to me, it's. The topic will be taken more seriously. I think people who go through narcissistic relationships still face a lot of, like, well, this isn't a thing. I'm like, we gotta make this a thing kind of thing. So people will get trained in this and get help for it and not be doubted about it. And people who went through trauma years ago would face the same kinds of doubts. Right. So I want that to happen, but I also. And I want the word to get out. I want it to help my career. But I think there's a little girl in me who felt very unseen, who felt very unvalued, who. Who desperately wanted someone to notice her, but was also scared of being noticed. And the combination of those things, like, if I get seen, then I can fail, and then. And then people will make fun of me or will be disappointed in me, but if I don't succeed, then I won't be loved. So it starts to become. All of a sudden, I'm like, all I'm trying to do is get on someone's podcast and I'm going through some sort of psychoanalytic hell. And so that's the. And it's being honest with ourselves. So when it doesn't happen, I have to recognize there's a problem. Primal part of myself that feels like I'm the little girl who didn't, you know, didn't win the spelling bee.

Wow. So many people, when they're out there in their love lives, and not just in their love lives, in all their relationships, find themselves drawn to people or situations that end up hurting them. And it can take us many years before we ever realize that, A, there's a pattern, and that, B, that pattern in some way relates to our history. It's not just this kind of genetic thing that we are predisposed to keep being attracted to certain kinds of people, but there's actually something in our history that has precipitated this. And you said something really interesting, which is that when you can understand why these things, in the case that we were talking about, when someone says something and it gets under our skin, why, that hurts us, that there's something liberating, even just in having the compassion that comes from knowing that this didn't come from nowhere, that this connects to something.

Or I'm not too sensitive, because that's the other thing we think is like, I'm just too sensitive. I'm being ridiculous. When in fact there's nothing ridiculous. Again, bring it back to the sort of orienting system within you that's trying to keep you safe. And so this felt like, again, a primal. It's hitting a primal sort of a wound.

And when we know that, that connecting the dots in that way can actually be a recipe for self compassion. But a lot of people aren't necessarily connecting their dating choices to those old wounds because they've never really explored them. Or maybe they even have an image of their past that doesn't suggest those wounds. Or they just don't. They don't look at it and go, oh, that comes from there. They have a story about their past that is. I don't even really have a right to be this insecure or to keep chasing these bad people because I was loved or I was in a situation where things were going well or whatever. My parents were good to me. Can you help us just understand more about, you know, people who search for any kind of advice online in their love lives will at some point come across the term trauma bond. Could you speak to what the trauma bond is for people who are just starting to learn about it now and how it might be impacting them and where those things come from so that maybe people can have like a, even as they're listening to us now, a mini excavation of their past that might start to illuminate some of the ways they are today.

Yeah, so the term trauma bonding is one that's again, psych, narcissism. It's often used incorrectly. Right. So. But understanding it can be really quite empowering. So trauma bonding, the experience of trauma bonding is this, this, this perception, this experience, this sense that you have an unbreakable or difficult to disrupt bond with someone that's created by a relationship that is chronically alternating between good and bad. There's the experience that if you pedal faster, you'll earn that other person's love. And they sometimes do show up at that love. And when they do, it feels like a cold room becomes warm all of a sudden and you feel whole and good. But then they pull back again. And so life becomes this sort of quest to maintain those good moments. And there are there. It's not like it's all bad moments. Trauma bonded relationships can look a little different in childhood and adulthood. In childhood, it really becomes a sort of a laying down of sort of pathways in the brain and the body in the sense that the primary caregivers, usually parents, are people who might be variably available and in some cases they're acutely abusive, right? But then they're still good moments. And in other cases they're simply not available. They're checked out for any number of reasons. This is why it's tricky when you have one narcissistic parent and one not narcissistic parent, because the not narcissistic parent is suffering. And it's not that they're not a loving parent, but they can't always be present. And so that can also leave the child in the sense of how do I also take care of that parent who's suffering and win them over and stay in good stead with the sort of. The more problematic. More I would say abusive is probably a stronger word, but like, yeah, problematic, in and out parent, right. So that, that back and forth, the alternation between good and bad is how we create this trauma bond. The good creates a buy in, right. That it's there and I can get to that. So when the bad happens, the tendency is to self blame. Well, it's not going well because it's me, because there were good moments, so it's got to be me. By internalizing the explanation into ourselves, it's adaptive because if it's us, then there's something we can fix. If it's the other person, then we're in trouble and we can't maintain the status quo and the social connection that for a child it's a survival need and for an adult, physiologically it's experienced as a survival need, though they could break up and find someone new. When you talk to trauma bonded people, they will say, the idea of ending this relationship is literally giving me a sense of panic. I can't breathe, my heart is racing. And they said, yet intellectually I can sit here and tell you 25 things that are wrong with this relationship. That disconnect is classically a part of the trauma bond. So people in trauma bonded relationships experience a lot of cognitive dissonance, that tension that comes when things are not consistent. The best way to take away that inconsistency. Sorry, it's the best way to get rid of that consistency and make that dissonance go away. Because we don't like being tense like that, is to justify they're having a bad day, they don't mean it. You know, we had a good time last weekend. Of course, my parent loves my parent, took me fishing. Whatever it may be, the excuses get created and some of it is just simply you tell yourself what you need to tell yourself so you look like everyone else that your life Looks like everyone else. But the justifications, the, the self blame. You keep having the same arguments, you keep having the same like you ruminate in the same circle. Maybe if this, then that and next time I'm going to say it differently. But the argument's always the same, right? It's always. The conflict is there and it keeps going around in the same merry gone. It doesn't get resolved is my point. In a healthy relationship, conflict happens but the conflict hits a point of resolution. It doesn't here. And I've always said sort of my trauma bond hack that at least I tell therapists, but I think it matters. Here is when I've worked with clients who I believe might be trauma bonded or even in the early trauma bonded phases and they're in a relationship that's very unhealthy and I'm talking now an intimate relationship in adulthood, I'll say tell me what you love about this person. And they'll say, well let me, I, it's, it's hard to put it into words like I, I don't know. Like it's a, it's like a connection. Like I don't. That's not an answer I'm looking for. I feel safe with this person. I love spending time with this person. I look forward to seeing them. I feel seen in their presence. I, I love watching them excel. Like that's what we're, those are the answers I'm looking for. Okay, when you give me this, I don't know, that's a trauma bonded answer. And yet, and yet they can't step away from it. When it's a person who's sort of trauma bonded to a parent, you'll often get very duty, loyalty and obligation kinds of answers. You know, sort of, well, they had a tough go of it and you know, our family kind of sticks together and we, you know, so there's a sense of maybe loyalty maybe to the larger construct of the family or, or other people in the family system. So a lot. But what I will never hear about is tell me what you like about your parent. They can't come up with anything but they'll say, well like we're this really close knit family and you know, my parents had a rough go of it and I'll be hearing the whole damn genetic history of the family. But I'm thinking tell me what you like about your parent. And the question so uncomfortable that people pull away from it. That's often a sign of a trauma bond when a person feels that they can't Pull away or they can't say, like, no, my father, mother, whatever, is a terrible person. I keep interacting because I value my sisters or my cousins or whomever it may be. So these are the things we look for in the trauma bonded relationship. And so there's almost always what we call a repetition compulsion. A person's almost trying to work the same thing out over and over and over again. There's this constant sense of tension and dissonance. There's often a lot of betrayal. And I'd say by definition, narcissistic relationships are betrayal laden relationships. I think anytime a person doesn't show up and show up in the roles and responsibilities we have when we're in a close relationship, that's a betrayal. I think saying a betrayal is only someone cheating on you or lying to you or taking your money. Those are betrayals too. But I think it's a betrayal when. When the other person isn't holding up their side of the relationship honestly. Right? So when we are betrayed in our close relationships, there's an adaptive value to not seeing it. Because if we see it, then we feel compelled to engage in a call. It's like a call to action. Gotta do something about it. Now this person's so unhealthy. So the natural tendency is to just sort of cordon it off. And when it gets cordoned off, we start feeling sick, but we stay in the relationship. That's something else we see in the trauma bonded relationship. There's Matt. There's nothing but cognitive awareness. The person will say, I know this is unhealthy. I know they're treating me badly. I know it. I can't explain why I can't leave. That is the mantra of everyone in a trauma bonded relationship. So it's almost like you have this. And it's where it gets interesting as we look at work on polyvagal response, right? As long as that left brain's online and things are. If the person feels safe, so like, yeah, this is what's wrong. They might even get closer to a call to action. But there are times, for example, if a person someone's trauma bonded with uses things like withholding and withdrawing as part of their relationship behavior. And the trauma bonded person has a history with abandonment, right? That pulling back is enough to throw that trauma bonded person into that polyvagal response. Now that right brain is firing and it's all emotion, right? So that logical ability, that. That sort of frontal lobe ability to say, yeah, no, this is so unhealthy and I could spend another 10 years in it, that goes out the window. So what we need to do is bring people back into their body, regulate their nervous system so they can see this more clearly, what's happening. But that takes a minute. It takes a minute, but until then, people are in these relationships that are unhealthy. They can articulate they're unhealthy and they cannot figure out why they can't see a way out. And this, Matt, is also above and beyond practical factors. Practical factors can make trauma bonding tricky because people will always use those as a justification. We've got young kids, it's expensive to live here. I don't have a job. This has looked down on my culture. Those are all very valid reasons and I understand they're why people don't leave. But a person can. You can untrauma bond yourself and still remain in the relationship. If that makes sense. Sense. So you can say, I see this clearly, I can't get up and leave this. Or I'm not cutting this person fully out of my life right now because it's going to upend an entire other system, workplace, family, whatever. But I see this clearly, I see what's in front of me. So I am not going to trust this person in the same way. I'm not going to engage with this person in the same way. That's what I mean is you can become untrauma bonded but still physically have contact with that person. That's a very long answer. Sorry.

No, it's. I have so many, so many jump off points from that. I. So how. Because when people feel that emotional response to it, that emotional response itself, especially in attraction for a lot of people, they use it as a signal for attraction. Right. I must be like, I'm feeling a lot. And so that must lend itself to the importance of this person or the relationship or. That feels like passion to me.

It does to a lot of people. That backing and forcing, the good and the bad, the breaking up and making up, that very much does feel like passion. They, they view it as we're alive, we're, we're. We have these hot tempers, we're fiery tempered, that kind of thing. There will be the sort of narrative that's constructed around it.

Yes. And, and even, you know, the number of people that I coach that they are hung up on a person that they may be dated in the last two years that really never tried. And if I, once I start looking at these messages, they'll send me the texts and they'll show me and in their Mind, there is this whole history worth talking about with this person. And if you were to look at these messages, you would say, there's almost nothing here. You know, there is an enormous story we've spent the last two hours talking about. Like you chose in these two hours to focus on this situation with the time that we have together. And yet there's actually very. It's almost when you look at it from a distance, you go, I can't believe we're dedicating this much time to this person who definitely isn't thinking about you right now and definitely is like, you know, this may have been a blip on his radar, but for you it has become this central story of the last year. And, you know, why didn't he call back or why. What happened there when he initially showed interest on the date and then he pulled away and it gets chopped up and dissected so much. What, what would your advice be to people in these situations where they are, what is happening with people where they are getting so hung up on these situations that actually, on the surface there's so little going on.

I think that, number one, let's, let's talk. Think of this from the point of view of narratives and meaning making, right? We human beings have this capacity to take bits and pieces and turn it into a coherent narrative about something, even when there's not a lot to work with or what feels coherent to us, I should say it's not actually. Maybe coherent is even the right word to turn it into a narrative, right? So the, the, this, like you said, they were in a relationship for two years and almost nothing happened, right? Or for a year or six months and really nothing happened. But the way it's being talked about, you would have thought that this was a solely, fully robust relationship, right? But then the next, the next sort of layer down on that is this is very possibly what this person had to do as a child. Create this very rich, robust fantasy world of the parent that was engaged. That was interesting that that was in, involved, really involved with them. I remember someone I talked to whose parent had gone on a business trip or something. Parent was very, very disengaged and actually quite dismissive. But the parent remembered to get the child a small gift on the trip. And that child, it was almost like a museum piece in their room. They cherished it. They would, they would only sparingly interact with it because they didn't want anything to happen to it. They loved this object. And so there was a whole story about, look, how important I Am. They got me this. And they would talk about the object and so many objects that come into their life. Like, look at my dad. My dad got me this. This. This bank, and. And I'm gonna save all this money. And he was in this. He was in Denver. He was in Denver, and he got me this. And, like, he was thinking about. I mean, it's a whole thing like you would have thought. The dad thought about the kid the whole time in Denver, probably saw it in the airport and quickly grabbed it and brought it to the child, and the child has turned it into nothing short of a relic. Right. So. And if that child also had that same parent who would withhold or withdraw, you can all of a sudden see how, if you had the capacity to turn a piggy bank from an airport into the greatest thing that has ever happened, how easy it is to take a few text messages and turn that into a relationship. So that's another piece. But the next level then becomes the one thing. And this. This is where you and I sort of have a lot of shared resonance in our work. Think I come at it from a different angle. You talk about it in terms of standards, I talk about it in terms of acceptability, which is this sense of, is this behavior acceptable to you? If anyone else in the world. You reached out to you, actually. I said, what if you're in the same room and you talk to someone and they just sat there stone silent and didn't respond to you? You would not find this to be strange. And they'll say, blah, blah, blah, electronic. I said, no, no, no, no. It's communication. You explained to me how this is. Is this acceptable? And that I. This is. And to me, this is one of the cores of this whole narcissistic piece. Because everyone is trying to come up a billion excuses for why narcissistic people are the way they are. I said, and most of those excuses, frankly, are valid. At the end of the day. There's only one thing I said. This behavior is not acceptable. I do not care what's under this iceberg. All I know is that this behavior is not acceptable. And the more time you spend in space of unacceptable behavior, the sicker you're going to get. That's the only thing I know here. That backstory is not going to protect you. So those are the sorts of three ways I would think about that if I was working with a client on something like that.

Yeah. And the more you spend time around it, the more normal it becomes to you. And I think that's where people really lose their way because they no longer are tethered to another reality. And they.

It. It.

You spend all your time justifying it and you, you end up becoming part of this strange little world that has no bearing on what a healthy relationship is. But you don't know, you don't necessarily have any memories anymore of what a healthy relationship is, right? What, what can people do to orient themselves towards healthier relationships when A, they may not know what one looks like and B, they still find themselves attracted to the old thing? It's like the new thing that they need to be going for is invisible, right? They don't even know what they're shooting for or not compelling. And the old thing feels very visible because it's on their radar and to their nervous system at least, it seems compelling.

Well, yeah. And this is where sometimes it's. And it depends on how we interpret this. It's interesting what that which is interpreted as unsafe by one person is interpreted as compelling by another. That's why some people are willing to skateboard down a steep road. And I'm like, well, that just looks like a hip injury to me, so I'm not going to do it. They are. They get a different pleasure out of it. You know, we're talking about this idea of narratives, right? So I want to come back to that because I just read something very interesting the other day and I talked about it actually in a. In a seminar we did this past week. And it might have some bearing here. And this was old, actually, I think it was an article I read when I was in graduate school and I needed it as a reference. I'm like going to go old school on this. I'm going to pull this piece out again. And it was even more stunning now than when I'd read it in grad school because it was one thing that you were talking was a tiny little, tiny little corner of the article. But they were talking about this. The capacity, if somebody has the capacity to create a coherent narrative. And you and I have talked about this socially and you know, I've just. No, we're not on camera. But this, you know, just in terms of how narratives get constructed. But if somebody has the capacity to create a coherent narrative about what has happened to them. By coherent, I mean like based in reality, not fantasy, not. My father thought thinks about me all the time. Look, I have a piggy bank kind of thing, right? But a coherent narrative, whomever it's about, those are people who have a lot better, not only probably healing but definitely discernment, because the capacity that the coherent narrative is the truth of the situation. In this particular article, they were talking about women who are now mothers who had abusive mothers. And the women who were able to create coherent narratives that really captured the truth of what happened to them as children were almost completely unlikely to. Yeah, almost completely unlikely to harm their own children. Because that's always the fear, right? If you have a terrible parent, you're going to be bad with your own kids. But that ability to say like, no, this is what happened to me, that is enough to actually, in a way holding that inner working model like this is that you now know what you're not going to do because you see it clearly in your life. You're not in denial about that. You have not sort of tried to make it nicer and make it more palatable because that's when it sneaks up on you and it bites you, right? So to this point of how do we get people to think differently about this? The hardest thing of all is to create that coherent narrative because it's painful. And it means you have to see all the players for what they are. And it means that you have to acknowledge you might have come from a really, really damaging, harmful place where you were not kept safe. And in some ways, it sometimes even means seeing the parent you thought had your back kind of fully didn't have your back. It's not an indictment of that parent, but is like, whoa, this I created. A lot of people will create this sort of, this parent's a savior, this parent's a devil, you know, or this parent's a savior. And this parent works hard. And then they're like, that's not so much what it is. And then when we get into adult relationships, people might even say, well, we were just in different places. No, this was psychologically unsafe. Your sympathetic nervous system looked like the Fourth of July. Like, this is not. This is not just two people in different places. So it's really being forced to look at that and then be able to have that be very manifest and clear. Yeah, sure, interpretations may vary, but something happened. And so that's one piece of this. The second piece is growth only happens when we're uncomfortable. And the uncomfortability here is to be with a person where you're not feeling this churn all the time. A lot of people have no schema for what safety feels like. None whatsoever. They don't know what it is. They've, they've. I mean, when you think of what trauma does A traumatized person lives life in hyper vigilance, constantly looking for, you know, combing the environment for threats. Because after being through trauma, all your nervous system wants is to keep you safe, right? So there's not that sense of what safety. That fully parasympathetic relaxed state which we can create through things like meditation and mindfulness and, and sleep and better nutrition and grounding and just sort of loving our bodies a bit more. That these poor bodies try to love it. They love us so much, but we don't do right by them all the time. It. And so all of these things is to even see what safety feels like. Because for many people the absence of safety in a relationship almost doesn't feel. It's, it's unknown. And so it's then having that like talking that through. And I've had clients say like, I kind of had to white knuckle the boring relationship, right? And I'm like, can we use it then? And I've even used that word, boring. I realize it's a different word. I mean, how about we say the non activating relationship, right? Where you can show up as your real self, where you can make mistakes and not worry about rejection. But then you're not having to earn someone's love. If you're not earning someone's love, well, what the hell is that? So that's where this gets to be. Helping people understand the transactions that they were in that without earning. It's almost like if somebody just said, hey, you woke up, Here's a little bit of money. Not enough to make a difference. But that doesn't actually really feel very good. You want there to be some. We, most of us want to, we feel like we have to earn. Well, that doesn't, that shouldn't be the case in relationships, right? There has to be the sense of I exist and I feel okay with this person. I feel safe, I feel seen, I feel heard, but I don't feel chaotic. And for most people, love equals chaos. I hate to say it really for most people. And movies don't help. They all sell the same message, that chaos is love.

It's so really is. And Audrey and I talk about this all the time. And one of Audrey's favorite phrases since the beginning of our relationship was always just, people will be happier if they chase the right things and will always reliably be unhappy if we chase the wrong things. And she always said, you know, you could chase the wrong things for a while, but you'll always end up having to circle back again. And. And chase the right things in order to be happy. But it does feel so alien at first to be chasing the right things. And it can feel strange and even boring. And how. What do you tell people about whether. When they don't know if what they're going after right now is just unexciting or unappealing because it's what they're not used to and they need to learn to acclimatize to it, or whether it's that way because it's genuinely not a stimulating relationship for them.

It's funny you ask this question because I have to say, sort of answer it in a, you know, like a sort of aspirational way. A lot of the work I do with a few clients I now work with is on. Is on discernment, right? Because after you've been through a narcissistic relationship, you can't. You don't want to go to that party again. So it's all about discernment. And. And I am struck about how well people are able to do this. They said, we just never had a roadmap. We never had a rulebook. We didn't even. You're saying you chase the wrong thing. People don't even know the right thing or the wrong thing. Looks like. I mean, they just don't know. And in fact, maybe even take away the chase, like when it comes to relationships and simply be. But they said for most of them, they're probably. They're overcorrecting a little bit on the discernment. You know, as soon as they see anything that feels abrupt or dismissive or doesn't feel safe within them, they are saying, yeah, no. And so I think, like I said, they're throwing away. They're throwing back fish that they could have kept, but. But better they air that way because they are saying, like, I felt sort of not seen in that comment. And. And they're saying, these are things I never would have dreamed of saying about another human being before. They never thought they had the right. Right. So it's the. Here's how I'm going to put it to you, all right? Because I think that this is probably more relatable and more tangible. I have seen people go into a grocery store and fuss in an aisle. I don't know. I don't know. I don't like those. They do that for 10, 15 minutes. They're discerning more between two cans of soup than they often will about a person. And they will do that about. Is the banana organic? Is the Soup. This is the hotel. That is the car. This is the refrigerator. That we know how to discern. We just aren't willing to bring that analysis to people. Right. And even with the refrigerator. Right. I recently bought a refrigerator because my other one broke. And everyone's like, you got to get the one with the drawer in the bottom. You got to get the. The one with the drawer in the bottom. That's how it. This is the state of the art. I'm like, I don't like the drawer in the bottom because this stuff always sinks. And I can't get the ice cream I want. Can't get the thing I want, and it goes to the bottom and it melts and it goes bad. I'm angry at the drawer. No, no, no. It's a drawer in the bottom. I said no. I understand. I hear all the arguments. I like the one on the side that was, as silly as that sounds, was I was going against a tide because I know my frozen food consumption habits, and I needed the freezer on the side. Zero regret, Matt. And I know it was. I mean, it's. It's not cheap. Like, his refrigerator is not cheap. Right. But as silly as it sounds, in that process, I knocked myself out. I researched everything about all the pros. You want to buy your fridge, I'm your girl, because I can tell you anything about how to pick a fridge. So I. But the idea of honoring myself and saying, I understand that this kind of fridge is considered the modern way. I. And I don't need such. And they're like, but what if you have platters? I'm like, I'm an introvert. I don't want platters because that means people are coming to my house, and I don't want anybody in my house. So let's just take that piece right out. And so it was a moment where I chose what felt right to me. Whereas in the past, Matt, I would have bought that one with the drawer in the bottom because I thought, everyone in the world is telling me this one's right. I would have gone against what was in my best interest. I think we can sometimes get there a little bit easier on objects. Cars, refrigerators, you know, the hotel you're going to stay at. But there is a certain amount of knowing ourselves. Like a person might think, like, I don't want to stay in some tall, fancy hotel. I'd rather stay in a small hotel. No, no, no. It doesn't have the amenities. Listen to yourself. That can actually start elevating and escalating to people. So if you can start with small discernment experiments in your life and say what feels righter to me? To help with all the guides and the ratings and the stars, what feels righter to me and see what the. And make the decision and commit to it, that becomes a brick building towards. That refrigerator thing worked out real well. And that hotel thing worked out real well. And that sweater I got glad, I swear I wanted to get. I'm glad I didn't because I can see now how that wouldn't have worked. We pay attention to these little discernments. We do. And then we start to see that when I listen to myself, these decisions are going a lot better. And so there's that piece. But you're talking about, but what if my body is saying I want this? I think that this could work for me. Like this feels better in my, in, in myself. Number one, I. Number, number one, most people don't know what a healthy relationship is. If I gave everyone a test and said list out what a healthy relationship is, I think you get a little bit of love, compassion, forgiveness, sort of stuff. But I don't think you'd get the respect, the growth orientation, the patience, the, the collaborative sacrifice piece. I don't think you'd get to those higher order. And I don't think you'd get to see safety. Most people don't use that word because they say them safety means something that's not punching me. Right. And so I think, number one, people need to know what constitutes a healthy relationship. Number two, people have to be able to dig in to where they really came from. What was a template they were given for marriage? What is a template they were given for love? What is a template they were given for attachment, for closeness. For many people that was a very friend fraught script. And so dig into that and pay attention to that and then start to see how did you get love as a kid? What did you have to. What kind of machinations did you have to put yourself through? Because those machinations are likely what makes someone exciting.

Now one of the things I loved in the book was the kind of whole section that you had on changing patterns. And it was a sort of highly practical section where you talked about various things that people can do to start changing patterns. One of them was be mindful of them and what your patterns are. And I even loved actually the practical side of like doing, slowing down. Because when you get that nervous system response to something, if you're not getting a text back or if someone has done Something that's kind of sent you into that fight or flight. You talk about doing an activity deliberately, even if it's emptying the dishwasher or folding laundry. Just anything that can almost slow things down in that moment. I really related to that because my anxiety always wants to speed things up. And anytime for me, it's like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a thing that forces presence for an hour and I can't be anywhere else when I do it. And whatever it is that's troubling me, there's a state that I come to it an hour later. There's a state that I come to that thing with that's different because my. I feel more present and grounded and like I've slowed everything down. So I thought that was really fantastic. Actually there was even. I made a note here because I wanted to read this part. It was on page 147. Let me just find it.

It's good that you know the page number. And everyone, you need to see how Matt has two books. Everybody needs two of these books.

Everyone should have two of these books. For everyone. By the way, who doesn't know this book is called. It's not you Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People. Is there a particular website you want people to go to or just wherever they get their books?

Yeah, if you go to my. Even if you go to my Instagram, in my bio we have a link so you can. You can sort of share the wealth because there's lots of different places to get books and you can go to my website, all those places. But even my Instagram bio would have that link to all the places.

What's your exact.

Dr. Romani at Dr. Ramany.

So go over there now and. And grab a copy while you're listening to this. I have underlined so many parts of this book, it's ridiculous at this stage because I just find there wasn't a page where I thought that's not important to me. But you said here. Yeah, your higher order goals and aspirations like marriage, children and career matter. But rushing into relationship or opportunity and missing unhealthy patterns can mean that those goals get distorted. And I thought, I thought that was a really interesting point. I almost would couple it with There was another moment in the book, if I can refer to to my notes, there was another moment where you talk about the things that predispose us to falling for the wrong patterns or overlooking in some cases the wrong patterns early on. Outside of simply the trauma bond coming from a wound. It could be being In a difficult transition in your life where you find yourself in a new city or you just got let go from your job, or for whatever reason, your defenses are down. That is a moment where someone like that can enter or you also talk about rushed relationships. And that made me think, because when I think about what creates rushed relationships, outside of someone love bombing you and trying to speed you up, we ourselves can, can, we can almost love bomb ourselves because our higher order goals and aspirations like marriage, children make us think this has to happen yesterday, especially for so many women who want children. So how, what is your advice for people trying to navigate the world of dating who want healthy relationships, but the speed at which they're trying to go and their anxiety about not finding love in a certain period of time for their goals is predisposing them to overlook the wrong behavior.

Yeah, I mean, these are big, right? Because I'm telling you now, every. The vast majority of narcissistic relationships I have worked with people adult, like marriages and long term committed relationships was either the rushed or the transition thing. You know, in essence, they were far from home, they were in an unfamiliar place, they were coming out of something or the pressure and the rush. Pressure often comes from the outside. All my friends are getting married, all my friends are having kids, that sort of thing, right? And that's like, if I don't lock this down, I don't have the patience to go back out there for two years and it becomes the devil I know kind of thing. Like, at least I know, I know all the weak points in this thing, right? So I can make this work. I know when the roof leaks. And I think that again, I'm going to say that sometimes it's hard to think of slowing down unless we start practicing slowing down, right? Imagine you're on a car ride through a gorgeous national park, but you're going 60 miles an hour and the most beautiful sights in the world are just whizzing by you. El Capitan Half Dome. You know, like the arches in Utah, like, boom, boom, boom, boom. You're like, wait, wait, that was really nice. And you miss things, but you also miss, you're driving so quickly you might miss like, oh, that's a little bit dangerous. Oh, you're not supposed to go on that road or whatever. When we go so fast, we miss the good and we miss the bad. Training ourselves to slow down can happen in ways. Like you said, you take a Brazilian jiu jitsu class, it forces you to slow down. And it could be doing something like making an intricate recipe where if you try to do it fast, you're going to end up wasting all that money on those ingredients and the thing's going to burn. Right? It could be clipping the nails on a cat. Let me tell you that you better go slow on or you're going to be, you're going to look like somebody's like, Jack the Ripper is coming. Sorry, Jack the Ripper is coming to your house. So that takes a minute, right? But this can be applied to everything we do, is just slow down. However, you also have to ask yourself what's happening around you that's making you rush. Because there's, there's an internal sort of speeding up, right? And for some people, there's also an internal anxiety that if I don't lock this down, if I don't get this person to commit, if I don't get this to a place where it's going to feel more committed, like I got to make this relationship commit as soon as possible. There's an anxiety that even though it might actually move things in a way that's not comfortable, because many narcissistic people actually do like to rush relationships because there's no chance to sort of pick up on the patterns and then you're kind of in deep and they've sort of secured their supply. So it's slowing down in everything you do. It's understanding where the pressures to rush come from. But Matt, here's where it gets interesting and I'd actually love to hear what your thoughts are on this from your community, which is some people, number one, don't feel they have the right to ask for things to slow down. Right? If I say slow down, then this person's gonna leave. And they've literally had that experience, right? Especially if it's someone narcissistic. The narcissistic person likes to be in charge of the speedometer. They are gonna decide how quick this thing's going. So if you were to say to them, hey, hey, I am, I love this, I am loving spending time with you. This is, is so fun. But can we like, I, I mean, I'm loving, but I need just, let's just slow it down a little. Especially if they're saying, no, no, come stay at my house every night of the week or let's like go do this three week trip or, you know, or might even feel pressured into sex or something. A narcissistic person invariably will shame you or doubt your commitment. Well, so I guess you didn't really want a Relationship did. You're like, oh, gosh, you seemed like you wanted a relationship. Now the person's like, I do want a relationship. And maybe they're right. Maybe this is why I don't find a committed relationship, because I don't just go all in. Right. So I would be curious to know from. For you, when you've worked with so many thousands and thousands of people on this, how they manage that point of. Many of them may have known it needed to slow down, but they have trouble negotiating that particular point.

Hmm. Do you know what's funny? This brings to mind there was a client of mine who described to me, not even realizing that there was anything wrong with what she was saying, how she was just deathly sick on this date that she went on, like, really ill, like, just having to go to the bathroom frequently to, like, try to stop her eyes from streaming because she had such a horrible cold and was trying to, like, like, dose up as much as possible. And I said, why did you go on this date so sick? Like, why didn't you just postpone it? She said, because he's a really in demand guy and he's a super attractive guy. And I just, I. I feel like he would not be on the market long if I, If I, like, yeah, like, if I, If I didn't go on the date, I felt like I had to go on the day, or he'd end up getting snapped up by somebody else.

That.

So it couldn't, it almost couldn't have been a more literal example of someone abandoning their own needs for the sake of pleasing somebody else, combined with a scarcity mindset that this wouldn't be around tomorrow if they waited or if you.

Express a need, if you were to say, like, I can't make it because I can't make it because I have. I have a dinner with some friends. I can't make it because I'm doing something else that that person would lose interest. That actually is something we would see for somebody from somebody who had that sort of. Especially that kind of narcissistic parent that was often checked out. Right. In that particular situation. The. Even the tiny bit of attention, you're going to hang around all the time because maybe this is going to be the day. And if you're, if you don't take advantage of. So if that parent turns to you and says, hey, you want to go run this errand with me? And you're like, actually, I'm having fun playing the game with my siblings, that opportunity may not come again for Another couple of years. Right. So a lot of kids get trained, especially when they have very self centered parents. They really get trained into doing, doing anything they can to maintain the attachment, even when it doesn't feel right, even when they're engaged in an activity that they really, really enjoy. And I so relate to that personally. I. When the short window, windows of time, my life, I did date, I would go on dates when I was like I didn't want to, when I wasn't feeling well, when I had other more compelling things to do for exactly that reason. If I don't say yes, I'm forever going to look backwards. I'm going to realize like me not saying yes that day is why this didn't work out. And I know I've run into that mentality and so many clients and, and you know what? It's, it also, it's that theme is backfilled by a lot of films by them on that one fate faded day they went on that day, the whole sliding doors of it all, like that was the moment and it's only because you showed up that day. So everyone's walking around with that head like, if I say that no to this one day, then this is it, it's gone. But in fact, that one day might have been a day where another need of theirs had greater primacy and that if somebody is a decent person or they're interested in you, they're going to make it work on a day where it works for both of you. And if not, this is a really crappy precedent. And it's all about precedent, right? It's all about what you're setting up for. And I think that's where narcissistic relationships, it's all about precedent there. Everything is being shown pretty much in the first three months of what you're looking at at. And people will think like I, we made a reason we had a video on YouTube recently called the Cool Girl. Everyone wants to be the cool girl for. You're in a narcissistic relationship, right? It's we call it cool girl easy breezy. I've had so many clients say, like I just want to be cool, like easy breezy. Like I don't want him to think like I like even care. I said, but you care. So we've now cut off an authentic part of yourself. But the cool girl easy breezy is like chum in the water for a narcissist. Because in essence what you're saying is I'm going to go along with anything you want to do because I'm a cool girl. And so what's happening is not only are they like, great, this is super for me. They're never going to turn and say, hey, wait a minute, we've been doing everything I want. Like what do you want? What are you about? They're never going to do that. And this person who's playing a cool girl, the narcissistic person, sticks around. I mean, I hate using such a gendered frame, but that's often how it comes up.

It's, I mean that is absolutely bang on. And it's weird how we unconsciously play into these dynamics. You know, the one of the examples we talk about is if someone ghosts you for two weeks and then comes back and suddenly on a Saturday night says, hey, how you doing? And before that you had had good consistency, you'd been talking regularly and then two weeks, nothing. There is this, you know, one way of looking at it is, well, I don't want to come across like this has affected me because that makes it look like I care too much. So the way to hold on to my power is when they reach out to me two weeks later is be.

Really chill or I'm not going to respond for a couple of days or.

I'm not going to respond for a couple of days, right. Which then sets up a whole other dynamic. But if you're chill, you're, you're actually doing exactly what they want you to do, which is you're creating a consequence free environment to them going completely cold and then reappearing. But it feels, it sort of intuitively feels like that might be the right thing to do because I want to, I don't want to look like I, I don't want to give this person the power of showing that I care.

But now we're back to power, right? That, that's, that word in relationships is very dangerous, right? So when the narcissistic relationship, that's the narcissistic person's sole motivation in a relationship. Power, control, domination, that's it. I am going to always listen. They're always asymmetric. I'm here, you're here. The only way the relationship works, right? So this idea of I'm going to be chill because if I tell them I'm interested, I've lost power. It's actually you've cleaned up the whole power thing because they're going to, if they're going to keep playing a game, you've completely taken it all back. But nobody is socialized to do it's. Easy to sit here and say it, but at the time you feel like you're going to lose it and. But it is about power and you feel disempowered. So of course you're trying to create some level of symmetry again and it's never going to be there.

No. And actually, instead of trying to have power within a situation, it should always be testing the waters to see if you can be you in this situation. And what happens when I am me? What happens? It's no different to friendships. If you go on a friendship date with someone that you don't know that well, but you go for coffee, what happens when you share with them? Do you find that they share back or do you find that they don't go there with you and you're like, oh, this is, this is interesting data. Because with all my closest friends we are able to share with each other and that's what builds the friendship. But I just feel like this was very one way and I could never get beneath the surface with this person. You know, maybe we're not in the same place for a friendship or maybe that's not. We're not going to create that bond with this person. That's a much. It's a much more powerful way to be in any dynamic because then you're always getting data from this person. But instead, I feel like we don't collect that data. We're just trying to figure out what's the strategy that will allow me to get this person. As if getting is the major goal, Right?

Well, getting is a major goal, but also some people have been very indoctrinated into accommodation. Right. So accommodating another person is the way of getting attachment needs met to do something different, which is again, make a need known, pay attention to data. Paying attention to data is very dangerous from somebody who comes from a betraying family system. Because if you paid attention to data there, you'd have been screwed. You're like, whoa, this is not healthy. Right. Kid doesn't want to do that. So in many ways we. Anyone who's been from that kind of an early environment almost has this mild dissociative experience. Like, I don't need to see that. I don't need to see that. It's the opposite of collecting data.

And so they're just skipping over all of these moments that.

Correct.

Really are signs that they're going to get hurt down the line.

Right. Because there was once a danger to doing that. Yeah, right. To sort of looking. Looking the horse in the Mouth kind of a thing to really, really paying attention to what it is. And you know what though, Matt, I'd be curious because I think actually I've had, I've heard people in your community bring this up as a question. So I want to bring this to you as a question. If somebody says, what if I keep showing up as myself and it ends up never working out with anyone, when I say, I mean, Obviously people live 90 years but now they're coming to the end of what they'd consider like sort of reproductive years or something like that. He said, I kept doing that. I had my standards and I'd make things known and I would communicate and I showed up as myself and it didn't work out because that does happen. This in the sense, sadly we live in a world where accommodation is what sometimes gets someone. The person. Maybe not a person you'd want a long term relationship with necessarily, but that sort of societal tick box gets ticked. How do you guide people through that? I'm just curious.

Yes, well, I think that I can get someone if I'm accommodating enough. Thing is like a kind of race to the bottom. And so you have to be really careful of that because that's like just saying if I sell myself cheaply enough and if I accept enough catches, then I'll get someone. But, but that's not what any of us are really in the market for. We, we want something sustainable. And sustainable means it has to be capable of supporting our needs and making us happy. So, you know, I think that they're almost similar. Look, a huge part of this and what we're talking about right now is what do I need to protect myself against, what do I need to avoid, what do I, how do I make clear what my needs are, how do I make myself willing to have the hard conversations, all of those things that shape a relationship of mutual respect and care and compassion and drive away relationships that can't support that. I, you know, at some point we always, I think, also have to be aware of the other side of the coin, which is that if I'm doing that, then great, I am setting myself up for healthy relationships. I then have to have the self awareness and the self evaluation to go, what am I bringing to the table as a person who is enjoyable to be with, who is fun, who has, who is playful, who is flirtatious, who has all of these things that we all want, that we're all looking for? You know, we're not just going on a date saying, you know, I Want someone with high standards. We're going on a date hoping that we're with someone who's a company we really enjoy. And I think sometimes in the kind of. All the work we do on ourselves, to have those standards or to know what's acceptable to us, we forget that there's another person experiencing us and what experience are we bringing to that person. And it goes both ways. It's like going to a job interview. You can go to a job interview and say, this is how much money I want, and this is when I want to start, and I want a respectful boss, and I want this and I want that. But at some point in the interview, that person who's hiring you is going to want to know, well, what do you bring to the table? And I think it's. I think it's a very valuable place to start from, to go. What was I missing in my previous relationships that I can't survive any relationship without ever again? I think that's an important starting point because nothing else matters outside of that. If you keep walking headfirst into relationships that make you miserable, then your life's going to be misery. But I think in a more advanced way after that, at some point, it behooves us to say, hey, is there anything that I feel like I need to work on in the energy that I bring to the table? Because maybe I have been taking this whole dating thing, you know, maybe I'm so afraid at this point, and I've been dealing with so much pain that, you know, people leave a date and it's like, I. There's no flirtatious energy from me at all on that date. You know, I. No one's leaving that date thinking I could possibly even really be interested in anything romantic. So I. I think that's the next step. And being yourself is an interesting phrase, because being yourself is it. It's being our authentic selves. But I can. There's a. There's an authentic self in me that shows up on my most fearful days, and there's an authentic self that shows up on my most playful days or on the days where I'm having a great time. You and I have had many very deep and serious conversations, and we've also sat at the dinner table together and talk shit and cracked up together and been silly. And that's. That's a relationship, is that you have to be able to be those different things. And I think it's worth all of us asking, is this something I keep showing up as? And is there anything that if I were on the other side of this equation, I might be hoping I would get.

Yeah, yeah. I think that that's. And that kind of. I mean, this is why I loved your work. Because in essence, what you're doing is. It's sort of. To me, it's what everyone needs to do is to. It's like when we're planting a farm or a field or a garden, we prepare the ground so it'll grow beautifully. And we need to do that with ourselves before we get into relationships. And I think that we don't do that. It's interesting. We go to high school, we go to college, we learn all these things, but we don't do this. This sort of. This deep dive in self awareness in terms of how we show up in any relationship. That sense of, again, being agreeable and accommodating, that sense of fawning to stay safe, of accommodating, to stay safe, of believing that you have to hold your needs back. All of those things that. That all has to be unpacked and gone through. So a person is aware of those things and how family of origin issues may have come into this. That deep dive, Matt, I'm telling you now, is not how people are going out there and meeting people, you know, because when you think about when people are really doing their dating in earnest, it's in their 20s and 30s, right? And I'm not meeting people who are necessarily always doing that. You know, they're kind of going in because that was not. It's not something we've really ever done in a systematic way and certainly in a deep way. But I mean, I'm seeing some changes. Certainly the. The world, there's so much more content people can do this. Because my hope is that in doing this, they'll be able to navigate and figure out the. The signs of a relationship that has antagonistic and narcissistic features and say, this doesn't feel right. I mean, this isn't okay. Because I will tell you this without exception. Without exception. This is over hundreds, probably even thousands, if you include groups I've worked with. Every single person who's been in a narcissistic relationship will look back. I'm saying an adult relationship. We chose, if you will, and say something wasn't right from the beginning. Like I call it what you. I felt it in my gut. I felt it in my head. I felt it. I just felt it. It was a knowing. It's like a. And we are so taught that intuition. And maybe I don't know her or I'm my own worst enemy. And maybe that there's actually. This person looks great on paper. So what am I even thinking? Over and over again, people like, this person actually has a really good job and da da. All the things, all the things they'll say. But something did and feel right. And they would even say things to themselves like, Matt, like, maybe I'm being greedy. Like, I remember one person. It was a. It was a moment when you would have given someone a certain kind of a gift, right? Of a certain value. I'm trying to keep the sort of the hide the details of the story. And this person showed up with something that really was not. I want to say enough, but wasn't appropriate. Like it was just really flimsy and it wasn't necessary, that wasn't congruent with this person's means. They really were just being careless and looked at after years. And the insight was like, clearly it was careless. But the woman went right to this really loving place of like, I don't know, like, I'm not a gift person. These things didn't really matter to me. But it was. It wasn't the gift of it all. It was a lack of attentiveness. Was the. The thing this was purchased for her was so off that it made you think that, did you give me the gift that you were giving someone else? And they'll have the thing that you're supposed to have? Like, it made no sense. And. Or it was already in their closet or whatever it was. And so there was. It was thought thoughtless. And she got so caught into the. I'm not a greedy, materialistic person. That's not what I am. But when she did bring it up to him and said, hey, this felt a little thoughtless, like, what was this? What were you trying to say? You're the most greedy, awful, selfish person. Do you see what I'm saying? So it's like literally the thing she was thinking was borne out. We see this happen in these relationships, but it's that. Yeah, it's. It's very, very difficult for people to get to this place where they're prepared to do this work of. Of meeting someone. And I mean, listen, Matt, in what, let's call it two, maybe I think of my own parents, arranged marriage, knew each other for 20 minutes. Okay, well, that doesn't work. Can establish that. Right? Well, my grandmothers knew who they would be married by the age of 8 and 12, respectively. There was no consent in that. Right. So it's not exactly. Like, I come from a world where there's knowledge about this. You look at your own family, you tell me that all people who lived in the same neighborhood just met and married each other, right? There was no discernment, there was no selection. It's like, we're the right age. Everyone else is doing this. You're close by, let's do it, right? We've entered into an interesting phase. This is the first time. Time in earnest. We're talking about all this, and I think that's a wonderful thing. But I even think in my generation, right, Because I'm quite a bit older than you. We weren't talking about this. We were not talking about. In 1995, the book the Rules came out to give you some sort of cultural point in time, right? So in 1995. And that was madness, right? Like, that didn't. That didn't even make sense. Like, it was like, follow these rigid rules and you're gonna. You get. In fact, you're going to end up with a narcissist of your very own. What a great plan, right? Because it was all cool girl stuff, right? So even the first attempt to codify that was a mess. So we're talking about a conversation that's only been going on for about 25 years, and it's new and it's not all over the world. And so what my point in saying this is I used to beat myself up saying, what the hell was I thinking? And I rec. I came up in a different time. And I can't even compare my mom's experience because it was so. I mean, it's. It's ridiculous. It's like saying, why didn't dinosaurs do taxes? I don't know. Because there was no IRS in the Cenozoic period. I don't know what to tell you. Like, it's. That's how ridiculous it is. So we also have to understand that this is a work in progress. Folks like you didn't exist when I was growing up. There was nothing like that. Nobody talked about this. And so this is intergenerational, too. These are huge generational leaps of people doing something very different than their parents did. And I think we. Everyone has to. I just want people to be kinder to themselves. Like, how come I'm not picking all of this up? I mean, this is. Nobody's being taught this. And for the longest time they weren't.

I wonder if I'm only just hashing this out out loud, but I feel that that's true at the same time as there is this other thing happening that threatens to derail that discernment right now, which is that. And it speaks to your work. We live in a world now where the level of perfection being portrayed online is insane. Like, it's among men and women. So now, like, the. And not only that, it's not like you're just seeing the quote, unquote, hottest person in your neighborhood. You're seeing the hottest people from everywhere and the lives they're living, which are equally unobtainable. These, you know, pina colada, sitting on an island, sipping, like, relaxing, seemingly never doing anything really, and making gobs of money doing it. And there's male and female equivalents of that. And it's like every man is some, you know, hot entrepreneur leaning up against a Ferrari, and every woman is some perfect body in a bikini. It's like, you know, so there's. And of course, narcissism. And the narcissistic tendency to portray ourselves in this perfect way that doesn't reflect our own lives plays into that. But it, I think, has a created this extraordinary level of entitlement that so many people feel like I'm entitled to someone who looks like that or who earns that much money or who has their own business that somehow doesn't demand all of their time but also makes them a fortune. And I, like, I am entitled to all of these things. But we're also, I think, in danger of more than ever being driven by ego in our dating lives. Not by what makes us happy, not by what's going to bring us peace, but by who we can date that is going to feed our ego and make us feel like we're enough or look good on our arm or look great when we pull up their profile to our friends or our family. So that, I think, is working against.

That discernment that I agree, I I. And I think it even gets interestingly subtle in the sense that I also think it's created a sense of disappointment and frustration in people, right, because they're peering into the lives of others that they can't obtain. And even if they don't feel entitled to it, their lives now feel pale in comparison. Right? So it's a sense of I am not enoughness, Right? And this happens at all stages, right? It's when, Dennis, you're looking at how people are planning their weddings, and then you're looking at how people are having their kids, and then you're looking at people are decorating their homes. And so what we've done is we've very much created this because here's where it gets really interesting around narcissism is that people ask this question, like, is narcissism on the rise? And I was talking to Keith Campbell, who's a professor of psychology, University of Georgia, big narcissism expert. And, you know, he said, you know, it's probably grandiose. Narcissism is staying kind of steady, right? But it's the vulnerable narcissism that victimized, sullen, resentful, when's it my turn? How come nothing ever works out for me that's blowing up.

Well, and if you look at what's going on with, with men these days in like the some communities online, and the kind of what feels to me like a terrifying kind of emergence of bitterness and reset, deep resentment and then that, you know, this is a whole other podcast we could do on this. But that, you know, the, the way that those people then end up lashing out and the entitlement that gets created among those communities and shows very, very angry men. It's extraordinary. And I think so much of that comes down to I never got mine.

I never got mine. And so then that also translates into that I never got mine mentality, being brought into a relationship, you see, and then that's when it's. The relationship is predicated on I need to be the more special one in this relationship. And it also sets up this unrealistic sort of marker for what these men are expecting from women. Right? So, you know, we're talking a lot of what we're talking about. Listen, the narcissism conversation is often affecting women who are women who are getting into relationships with narcissistic men. It's not always that. There are plenty of men out there who've gotten into relationships with narcissistic women. But this, this entire sort of, this whole conversation about I want more, I want better means that women who are going out there and kind of, if you will, showing up as their best selves, really bringing their best selves into the dating world, they're meeting men who are getting indoctrinated on a steady diet of bikinis and women like sort of, you know, doing all kinds of unnatural things. And so maybe that's unfair, unnatural, but certainly very attention seeking and kind of. So there's this sort of, you know, there is this, this trope of no woman's going to measure up to that, and in a way that's almost being borne out for people too, and people will struggle with That I have. No, there's no two ways about it. Narcissism, I mean, social media did not create narcissism, but it's given it a platform to multiply like nobody's business. The conditions, it's almost like a petri dish. The conditions were perfect and it's really allowed this to insert itself. So you're right. Now that we even know, we may know more. Was that my point about how to get into relationship and prepare ourselves for it? But then this has now twisted it a bit and made it this very almost competitive, performative, superficial, attention seeking space.

Yep. And we're kind of looking for a standard that doesn't exist, that has just been created.

I don't even think it's a standard though. I think it's a. I mean, I think it's a delusion. Literally a delusion.

You're kind of like chasing ghosts.

Yeah, you're chasing. Yes, you're chasing ghosts. But. But people are then internalizing that and they're saying to themselves, well, I am not that I don't look like that. I don't have this life. I don't have these experiences that's culminating in a self devaluation. And then that self evidence devaluation against any core wounds is making it really hard for people to enter relationships as anything but a person. Like, what do I need to give up? What do I need to accommodate to. To make this work? I do think that that's operating in a really, really lethal way.

Oh, what do I need to give up? What do I need to give into in order to make this work? I feel like that describes so much behavior these days. Is that just terrible disillusionment of. I'm just gonna have to go along with it because otherwise I'll get nothing. And do I really want to live out the rest of my days? And that's what I hear from people is okay. Do I want to live out the rest of my days with this high standard and have nothing?

Have nothing. No, I hear that too. I hear that too. And it's. What's interesting is I get people at a very different sort of, if you will develop developmental stage than you. You certainly. And I've worked, I've had the privilege of working with your beautiful, wonderful community. And I've met certainly there's people there who've been through toxic relationships and there's people out there who are sort of, they're gearing up to sort of get brave enough to be in relationship. Right. I am dealing with people who are sorting through the life lessons, right? So there I'm getting them raw. Come in the narcissistic relationship, coming out of the narcissistic relationship. So there it's like, now we're pulling stuff out of house fire. Like, what can we keep here? What, what did we learn here? So I think that that's a big, big. I think that that's a big piece of what people are. You know, you were getting them at different, at different stages. But I do think that disillusionment is big. It's interesting for people coming out of narcissistic relationships, though, it's a different kind of a thing because those who can actually get out, they sometimes have a sense of, oh, now I get this, I'm gonna, I'm gonna look for it. I'm much more aware of it. And then they're committing to the long work of becoming your true self. You know, I have my 12 month cleanse, as I call it in the book. Once you end a toxic relationship, however it ends 12 months, I don't care if you were in it 13 months under 12, I'm like, you can do it for as long as the relationship lasted. So if you're in an eight month toxic relationship, I need eight months off. But for most people, it's not that short. It's 12 months down. And I said, no makeout sessions in the back of a bar, no all those dating apps off. You need to be alone. The only way we're going to get you back in your body, get your discernment up, help you sort of figure out who you are, what you're about, what you stand for, what makes you you. You cannot be in a relationship. That's a tough one. That's a tough. Because you have.

I always imagine that's the thing that you say that most people push back on because they just desperately, like, they're like, no, I'm. I want to, I want to get back out, right?

Or they say, I've been lonely. I've been in this bad, terrible relationship for years. The last five years, it was like. It was worse than being alone. I was being abused. And I want to know what it feels like to be held and touched and felt and seen and romance. And I said I would. Let's just, just. It will happen when.

The inverse of that is that if you keep rushing into something, you risk, you know, losing much more time, 100% repeating the cycle than you do by taking a break. Audrey has just fed me a question. Speaking of discernment asking, what is the difference between selfishness and narcissism? That is what you can shape and change and what is a brick wall?

Okay, so the, There's a big difference, right? There are, as hard as it may seem, there are all actually selfish people out there who are empathic. Because selfishness is a tricky word, right? I think self centered is probably where we now veer more into narcissism. Because a selfish person might be a person who says, you know what? I like doing my own thing. I like my surroundings to be the way I want them. I am. I work all the time. And then I like to travel when I want to travel. And I know I could not in the way someone deserves, accommodate someone into my life. That's a selfish person who also has empathy. They're saying like, and so they're not in a relationship, they're choosing not to. It'd be easy to say you're selfish. I'd be like, they are selfish. And in very circumspect way. They're not bringing, they're not saying they're entitled to that. They're saying, this is the life I've chosen. But that also means someone won't fit in it, right? So I've said this again, I think even to you, but to others. If a person gives me an egg, I'm going to say thanks for the egg. If a person mixes that egg with flour, sugar, baking soda, vanilla and sticks it in the oven, I'd say thanks for the cake. An egg isn't a cake. An egg is an egg. So that's, that's how I feel about selfishness. Selfishness is a part of narcissism. I think self centeredness is a better way to view it, right? Because in first, instead of selfishness, selfishness is always bad because it's a time you say, like, I need to kind of cut out for the world. You know this. We both wrote a book. Like there were times you're like, folks, you're not going to see me for the next three weeks. None of you, none don't come to la. We are not having dinner. It's not happening. That's selfish. Okay? Made no time for anyone else. We both were guilty of that, right? And then, then, and then made the plans for that. I'm going to see you. This, I'm going to do this. I'm going to, I'm going to. I want to make amends for the time I wasn't available. Self centeredness is, I'm the center of the World. I'm the most important in the world. Sort of a preoccupation with myself, my needs, my wants, my distress to the exclusion of others. A selfish person can actually hear someone else of stuff. But selfishness is still only a brick in that only the egg of the cake. You need the low and variable empathy. You need the entitlement, you need the grandiosity, you need the arrogance. You need the excessive need for validation and admiration. You need the superficiality. You need it all right? Otherwise it's not a cake. Otherwise it's not narcissism. And so if some, if you meet someone and you're kind of taken by them and you have a dinner and the person says, this was great, I've loved meeting you, this has been so wonderful and I wish we met at a different time. I am too deep into what I'm focused on now is my everything right now. And kind of have my life sort of set up or might be a person who might have young children. And one would say, well, is that selfish because they were looking out for their kids? Maybe, maybe not. And say, I love meeting you. However, my kids are my only focus right now. Could kind of be argued to be selfish. But they let that other person person know and then you hear it and it may not feel good. But I think the problem is a lot of people say, well, maybe I can convert them. I'm like, they just told. They expressed their need. The hardest thing is to accept that, let it go and walk away. Because we feel like we have a finite number of hits at target. We really.

Yeah, and that's kind of. I think, I'm glad you said that because it. One might hear what you just said and go, ah, okay, so the selfish person is the one worth trying with and the narcissist is the one. If you get the cake, then, okay, definitely avoid that one. But. But no, actually your reality is the same with the selfish person, albeit that it's a more transparent. There's a more transparent dialogue going on. But your reality is one where you're not going to get your needs met. So just because someone doesn't hit all of the check marks of the narcissist that qualify them, it doesn't mean that they're a good bet.

That's my point. I thank you for putting it in those terms because at the end of the day, the selfish person, even if they're selfish for the most noble reasons, right. That maybe they're a graduate student finishing their dissertation, you know, maybe they're commuting all over the place, trying to work in a busy new job. Right. Whatever their reason is to put all that focus on themselves and communicates about it clearly, that's it. They're not going to meet your needs. And that's. But see, there's a difference between not someone, not meeting someone's need and what the narcissist does, which is not only not meet your need, shame you, humiliate you and pathologize your need. That's the, that's the tip. That's, that's, that's the issue. And so, and I think that the challenge is, is that people think, well, I can, I might be able to convert the selfish person and you can't.

Okay, I have one more question. The so, so everyone listening though and watching this because I know a bunch of people are going to be watching this on YouTube. Hello to all of you on YouTube. I know a bunch of you are going to be listening to this on the Love Life podcast. Take this opportunity. Now, at this point in the interview, if you have not already, and I'm assuming many of you already have to go and order your copy of it's not you. This is.

I.

It is. I have to say, I have encountered so many different coaches, therapists, psychologists, mentors in my life and I have never experienced a more life saving work for people. And this is so, you know, I can't even just say it's true for all of you women out there. It is true for everybody that when you encounter narcissism, it is something that has the potential to rob you of years of your life. It can explode your life in unimaginable ways. It can make you forget who the hell you are in this world. It can make you entirely lose yourself and then find that at the end of a relationship like that, you have to find yourself again and recreate, learn again what you are, who you are, what you like, what you dislike. I have seen over 15 years the damage that gets done to people's lives when they fall into these relationships, when they're a victim of these relationships. And it can happen to anyone. One of the things that Dr. Ramany talks about in this book is the happy family trap that you. It's not just people who have a core wound that fall prey to narcissistic relationships. When you're from a happy family, you don't even know the animal you're dealing with. And so people like this can come into your world and they're just not on your radar and you think that if you give them more, or if you are kinder or if you're more empathetic or more nurturing or listen harder, that or give them time that this person is going to respond in rational ways to those things. And by the time you've realized that they don't play by any of the same rules as you, you are so deep in that your life is entangled with theirs. And there are real consequences, either in the form of a terribly broken heart or in very real, financial, natural, logistical consequences in your life or the damage that they can do. So I say all of this because this is I I've been I read this on my honeymoon with Audrey, which is. Which was I did. I read this on my honeymoon with Audrey, but it was fresh out at the time and I couldn't put it down. And Dr. Romney had just sent me a very early copy of it and it blew me away. And then I reread it again for this interview and it did the same thing all over again. If you could see my copy is There are highlights throughout this book, and it's been incredibly healing for me reading this book. I know it will be for you too. There is no one else that I would point you to in the way that I point you to Dr. Ramney's work. So grab yourself a copy of it's not you. And if there's someone in your life, many of you have parents that you know have been suffering for many, many years and have never had the language to articulate what they've been through. And this book will give them the language to articulate what has happened in their life. Some of you, it's happened to your sister or someone close to you, a best friend. But this is one of the greatest gifts that you can get to give to somebody else. So go to Dr. Romney's Instagram profile, Rmani, or Barnes and Noble or Amazon, or wherever you get your books. I will also say this because it's easier for me to say it than Dr. Ramani, go and grab a physical version of the book. The either the hardback or the ebook, because as authors, one of the things that helps us get the word out is if the book makes a splash. And one of the things that helps it make us make a big splash is hardback, physical copies and ebooks. But grab a copy because I promise you this will be some of the most important reading you ever do for avoiding or healing from the relationships in your life that have the potential to take you away from your dreams, your goals, all of the things that matter to you in life. I. I have one more question on this because I know that speaking of people who are on the other side of it, who have experienced the fallout from one of these relationships and trying to heal, but are experiencing this. This just head trip of feeling like the. The. And I imagine that you would draw many parallels between what someone feels when they leave a cult and how it feels like reality has what they knew to be true was. Is no longer true. And there is this. What you talk about in the book is complicated grief that happens as a result. Could you speak to, I suppose, reassure people about the complicated grief they may be feeling at missing someone or the life or even though they've got someone so unbelievably damaging and toxic out of their life, it's like there's some part of them that can't seem to let go of. Of the good that they had or the moments that were special or even just the person that, maddeningly they can still imagine all these good moments with, how do people manage the complicated grief of leaving a narcissistic relationship?

You're kind of taking us full circle here back to trauma bonding, right? I mean, that's the nature of trauma bonding, is the. And so in some ways, we almost go the opposite of what our brains typically do. Our brains typically favor remembering bad information, you know, because that's considered evolutionarily adaptive. You can remember the bush that has the poison berries. You won't eat those berries again and get sick, right? So we. We do sort of favor remembering bad information. In fact, it really requires a real muscle to remember the good over the bad, right? Except when it comes to these relationships, because there was a. There was a. And almost a different evolutionary need came into it, which is attachment and survival. So we then had to selectively go out and cherry pick those good moments. The little gift the father got for the person in the airport, right? We have to cherry pick those small moments and hold on to them like little precious things because they're. They're all you've got. So that euphoric recall is what it's called, is what can keep people sort of stuck in that loop. These relationships are also really. Are a person's grieving a narrative, the story they told themselves about this relationship. People literally do convince themselves, I was in a perfectly good marriage. We had lots of friends that were couples, we had kids, we had a really nice house, we went on vacations. Like, we did all the things right. And so now what's happening is the day, you really understand that. And it's a tough moment, that penny drop moment. When you see it, you're like, oh my gosh. This whole thing was a fiction in a way. That is one brutal moment. So now we get to this place of disenfranchised grief or complicated grief, which is. It's not. I'm again, grief is made all the more complex by the nature of the relationship we had with the person we lost. When we love someone deeply and we lose them and it wasn't a fraught relationship but a loving relationship, we miss them, we miss their presence. But we are also able to live in the goodness of the gifts that that person brought into our lives. It's again, we miss them. And if they're, you know, again, I've had, I've shared with you a very unjust loss in my life. It happened too young for this friend. But really when it comes down to it, I miss her and I know all the gifts she left me with right now. When we lose someone where the relationship is complicated, a very, very complicated relationship with a parent would be classical example that grief gets when they die is actually can be quite messy. People will say it's horrifying. The first thing I felt was relief. But then they'll say after that initial relief wore away, they said that landscape of grief was a disaster for them. It was just messy. And they realized how much they didn't try to resolve while the person was alive, not with that parent, but within themselves. Right. Now, when we take it to the fact that the loss is everyone's alive, nobody's dead, that this is that you are now you've ended a marriage, for example, or distance from family. This doesn't make sense. First of all, no one else sees it as grief. They go, grief, who's dead? Nobody's dead. Right. So that's what we talk about in disenfranchised grief that gets at it. But because it was so complex, you've created this narrative. The, the trauma bonding makes it all the more confusing. You engage in this euphoric relationship recall. It's the sort of thing where, number one, grief is the most human of experiences other than birth and death. Grief is probably one of the only universals we've got. We're all going to go through it and it is a process. And while we go through this grief as this is why all, all cultures have morning rituals and grief rituals. We need something to take us out of the usual. Right. And there's things we do the way we might Be in our own homes, the clothes we wear, the ceremonies we attend, the way people might interact with spiritual systems. That changes for a set period of time. Not forever, but for a set period of time. And in a way, those periods of time, amazingly historically have been about what was needed for a person to sort of go through the initial stages of grief. There's no set time, but even six to eight weeks. There's a big st. There's a big shift in a person who sort of adjusts the. To sort of a new normal, if you will. But the, but the. In terms of the Working it through, talking it out, Matt. Talking it out, that coherent narrative. One of the best ways to create a coherent narrative is to talk it out, ideally with a trained listener. So much of the work I do with clients is I will literally, I mean, session two. No, my family was good. Like, yeah, we were close by session 20, it's Tennessee Williams. I'm like, I'm not sure how this happened, but it was the telling. And the retelling went from like, yeah, close knit. Like, yeah, my dad traveled a lot for his job to we go. And each time I'm like, wait a minute. The therapist catches the contradictions. Like, I'm missing something here that you're. You're. You. You said your mom left you for long periods of time. Like, yeah, I didn't ever thought about it. I said, yeah, no. Leaving a six year old for six hours is abandonment. You must have been terrified. And then they're thinking, oh my God, like I. And that's it. It's that the things are given name. The objective person comes in and says, how did you endure that? That was so hard. That wasn't okay. And as that happens, the process again, the narrative becomes coherent. It starts to make sense. But I don't know, some people may not have a therapist to talk to. Group work can be fine, perfectly fine way to do it. Journaling, writing it out, talking to someone who can hear it. But the talking it out gets you from, yeah, like, yeah, we were a family like any other, to what the hell? And that process, that, that evolution really helps a lot with that process of grief. Because now you can see it more clearly and you can say, oh, this isn't what I thought. And now as you see it more clearly, that's why I even have. Do people do things that seem farcical, but they're not? I have people write down, write it down. I want every terrible thing that happened written down. It takes a minute personal say, as I started writing the first 10, I just remembered another hundred. I'm like, funny how that works. When you open up that closet, there's a lot more stuff in there than you thought. But I also have them write the little things they gave up in life that matter to them that aren't big ticket things like Thai food or movies with subtitles or, I don't know, painting walls of a house red. Like silly little things or, you know, having a TV watching party with friends over a show. They're all. You're all watching together that they were not allowed to do in this relationship. Have eat ice cream out of the container. Right? And that's another list. And then that final list is what's the big stuff you gave up? And it might be university, it might be trying to live in another country for a time of your life. It might be giving up your interest in the. You're a good violin player. And you maybe you say, okay, I'm going to pick that up again. And maybe you don't go on to play for the New York Philharmonic, but you might join a local orchestra. Maybe you don't go back to college, but you're like, well, there's this huge extension program and I'm going to go take some classes. Like, writing it down also helps with the grief because it's not locked in. And all of these things can really be crucial to managing the grief of the. That comes up, the very, very complicated grief that comes up in these relationships.

So much. I feel like we could go on and on and on. I. We do. I the. I always think that a book is one of the most invaluable, valuable investments a person can make because by definition, it's the thing that we've worked the.

Hardest on and the men the most thoughtful about because we could go in and fix and fix and fix again. And other eyes have been on it. Right. So it, even that perspective cleans it up a little. I totally agree. It's probably my crystalline thinking.

Yeah, correct. I mean, when you think of how many hours you and I put a lot of hours into a YouTube video, but when you compare it to how many hours we've put into a book over the years is exceptional. So I, like I said grab a copy of the book. It's not you. It's available to order, to ship right now. I can't wait for everything we have coming up this year. I know we've got some really fun stuff coming up together this year. And in the meantime, congratulations again on this book. I love you I'm so grateful for our friendship and I continue to be, I think, one of your biggest fans in the world.

I appreciate it so much. I love you dearly too. I'm so grateful for your friendship, for being a sounding board in many ways. Some of these ideas I ran across you probably you didn't even know I was using as a sounding board. I'm like, oh, this is an interesting new way to think of it. So, you know, where all the people we know become, the ways that these ideas can sort of develop in a way so they do the most good. So I can't thank you enough for the time, for the grace of sharing this with your audience. And again, having had the privilege of working with them, I know a book like this can help a lot of them, whether it's, you know, no matter who the relationships with. That's why we made it about narcissistic people instead of narcissistic relationships, because when people see the word relationships, they think it's just an intimate relationship. But for many people, it was that relationship with a parent that actually really set the course of their life. And yes, it led them stumbling a bit more through other relationships, but that's really where that's what really needed to be understood. So I wanted, this could be, this could even be a friend, you know, it could be someone who's significant in your life, where this behavior left you feeling less than and not boss. A boss. Yeah. But people wondering what's wrong with me? And this book is really here to tell you it's not you.

It's not you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for watching. Everybody leave us a comment, let us know what you thought of this conversation. How did it affect you? What did it mean to you? What spoke to you the most? And of course, before you go, make sure you pick up a copy of Dr. Ramany's book. It's not you. I have read it cover to cover. My copy of the book is very well dog eared and underlined and I know yours will be too by the time you reach the end of it. Go grab yourself a copy. And thank you you as always, for watching this and for listening to the Love Life podcast. We'll see you next time. Love Life.