Powerful Healing Habits After Heartbreak - w/ Martha Higareda

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To the Love Life Podcast with me, Matthew Hussey and a special guest today. Her name is Marta Higuereda. She is an actor, a screenwriter, a producer. You may have seen her in Altered Carbon or Queen of the South. She's an incredible human being and an even better, better friend. I am so honored to bring you this woman. We had her recently on the Love Life Club for all of my members for a two hour session where we did an hour conversation and then an hour of question and answer for my members and I wanted to bring you today the interview portion of this. She talks about how to be confident even when you're single and searching for love and of course starting to get nervous that you're struggling to find it. How to plan for having a family even if you haven't met that person yet. What to do with the fear and the frustration and the not knowing what to do. How to get over past toxic or narcissistic relationships. How to heal your inner child. The amount of work that this woman has done on herself is so evident in the way she talks and she articulates so well how you can repeat the process that she has been through. I encourage people, everyone to listen to this all the way through. I promise you it will help your life, it will help your confidence, it will give hope to the things that you've struggled to heal. And by the way, if you do want to listen to the entire session, you can go to joinlovelife.com where you can get a 14 day free trial and listen not only to the interview portion but also the exclusive one hour member Q And a which had some incredible content in it. Don't forget also to check out Marta's podcast, Infinitos, her new movie Queens on the Run, out on Netflix April 14, and her YouTube and Instagram, which will be linked up in the description for the podcast. So, without further ado, I present to you Marta Higuereira. Hello. Welcome back back to the Love Life Club. So excited to have you all here today. Today I have a special guest. This is one of those special Love Life Club interviews with Martha Higuere. I'm so excited to have her here. I'm going to read your formal, you're a friend, but I'm going to read a couple of things about you just so that everyone understands how impressive you are. Of course, many of you will know Martha already. Martha Higurada is an actress, producer, and writer. She began acting in 2004 and went on to star in a number of popular films and TV shows, including A Shelter for Love, Street Kings and Altered Carbon. In addition to her acting career, Marta is also a producer and writer and has just produced a huge movie which will be airing on Netflix very soon, called Queens on the Run. And she has a huge podcast in Latin America called Infinitos, which will be. I will be going on soon.

Yes. I'm so excited to have you there because the audience is going to be really thrilled.

I can't wait. From your wisdom, it's going to be fun. It's fun to get to do this because you and I, we became friends. The four of us all became friends. You, me, Audrey and Lewis.

Yes.

And we've hung out so many times in a friendship context, but we've never actually got to do this.

No, this is fun. This is fun. I actually feel a little bit. A little bit awkward, you know, because I'm so used to, like, just hanging.

Like, sitting strangely out of context for us. Yeah. We've been all over the place. We've been to Vegas together.

Vegas together.

Napa.

Yeah. Oh, my God.

And now here we are.

It's been incredible adventures, and I'm so grateful for your friendship and for Audrey's friendship. It's been wonderful to see how you guys are building your relationship. Very inspiring. And I'm so grateful to be here and here with your audience. I was looking at the comments. Some people are from Mexico and they're saying hello. So hello, everybody.

Yeah, well, I know there's gonna be some huge fans of you in here in the chat. We're grateful to all of you who are showing up Live. And of course, a huge shout out to everyone who is watching this on the replay. We'll be doing a special Q and A. A Members Only Q and A with Marta at the end of the session. So I look forward to that as well. We'll get your questions ready. I've got Aud over here getting all the questions ready to feed us at the end so that we're ready with those. And I'm just. I'm excited for us all to learn from you today because you. It's funny, you know, you've watched mine and Audrey's relationship grow. I've watched yours and Lewis's relationship grow at the same time. You're an unbelievably impressive person in what you've achieved in your life. But the thing that really stands out to me about you and has always stood out is the energy that you have when you walk into a room. There is such a. There's such a kindness and an empathy and a natural, not forced, a very natural positivity, thank you, to you, that makes people fall in love with you very, very quickly as friends and obviously Lewis as a romantic partner. But where does that come from for you? Is that something that was always natural to you, or did you have to develop that?

You know, it's interesting. I was recently talking to my mom, and when I was a little girl, I was more of an introvert. I wasn't necessarily the life of the party or showing up to a room and, like, because my sister was the one that was the most extrovert and she took over the conversations at home and everything. But it was not until, like, I turned probably, like 11 or 12, like, adolescence is when I felt like I landed into more myself. And then all that. I'm an extrovert for real. So all my extrovert personality started to come out. But I think it's more like there's an essence of me that has never changed, which is since I was very little until today. I care about people. I love people. I love to hear their stories, you know, knowing where they're coming from, what they've been through to get to where they are. So I think. I don't know, I just, like. I just like people and showing up, you know, and really caring about others. So, yeah, I think that's. That's pretty much. And obviously a lot of the things of who I am come from my parents, you know, the education that I have, it's a little bit more traditional education you get in my country. And I'm Grateful for that because, you know, the respect. The elders, like we. The best seed on the table in Mexico is safe for your grandpa or your grandma, you know, because they have all the wisdom. So, like, there's things that, for me, I really cherish in. In my family.

So I love that.

Yeah.

Of course, as we go through life, there are events and experiences that we go through that whether we started with confidence or not, they can really knock our confidence. They can take us to a very dark place. They can make us question our worth. They can make us newly afraid to go out into the world. Whether it's to put ourselves out there for jobs or whether it's to meet a partner, we almost feel like we're now a different version of ourselves going into the world.

Yeah.

And one of the things that I know I've been through for myself, but one of the things that I'm dealing with with people across the world all the time is people who have been through terrible heartbreak, people who have been through toxic or abusive relationships, people who have been in a relationship with a narcissist and had to overcome that.

I, like I'm all of the above.

Well, that's really helpful, because I. I want to talk to you. One of the big themes of today's session with you is healing habits after heartbreak, after toxic or abusive relationships, after narcissistic relationships. And I'd love to know at your darkest moments, what the journey looked like for you to come back again to be the person that you are today. So if you could rewind back to that mindset, what were some of the most helpful things you did for yourself in that time?

I feel like, you know, it's interesting because I do write, and I been doing a lot of romantic comedies. I'm known in Latin America for being kind of like the queen of romantic comedies. And I realized that I was doing all these movies, Matt, but I was not fulfilled in love, that I would find myself, relationship after relationship, you know, heartbroken. And I was the common denominator in all of these relationships. Right. Whether it was an okay relationship or a toxic relationship or with a narcissist or with. I got to a point, for me, that I was just with myself, crying. And remember, I remember I had this conversation with myself in which I said, how come? I don't know? What is this thing about love? Like, what is this thing about love? I consider myself a good person. I consider myself, you know, I mean, I work out. I take care of myself. I think I'm smart in some ways. Maybe in love I wasn't. But, you know, I consider myself a good human being with good values. Why is it that I am not getting it? Where's the memo that nobody gave me? And then I realized, oh, it has a lot to do with my own wounds. I was attracting partners in my life that will complement me. And the reason why I'm using that word, the complement me, is because you complete me type of idea. It's because a lot of romantic movies, they teach you all the fun part of how to fall in love, but they don't tell you what happens after the happily ever after. And we grew up, and I love Disney movies. There's something that you, you and I and Audrey, we all enjoy, you know, going to Disneyland. We were actually talking to your mom right before this about going to Disneyland. And I love it. There's certain princess stories that I think could be very harmful to a woman. If you believe that that is your path and that you're going to follow, let's say the Beauty and the Beast, right? So talking about the narcissistic relationship I was in, in the Beauty and the Beast, she falls in love with a beast that treats her horrible, that locks her up in his castle. And then when she's trying to run away, she gets attacked by a pack of wolves. And then the beast defends her. And then all of a sudden she's in love with this man because she thinks she's the one that can change him, that she is the one that can get all the beast part of him out and have this beast, beautiful prince to come out. That's not healthy, in my opinion. This is my opinion, by the way.

No, there. There's a. We were speaking to our mutual friend Tom Bilyu, and he was saying how many of the stories of romantic love around women involve taking a guy who's. Who's kind of a really difficult. He's horrible to everybody, he's not a nice person to be around. But eventually, because of some unique formula that she applies, because of the key that she holds, she is able to get a treatment from him that other people don't get.

So then that makes her feel special because she's the one that's going to finally change this man and, and make him commit or make him quit drinking or make him whatever is the story. But then what happens to me is that then you're placing your value onto another person. If I change this man, then therefore I am enough. And it all has to do, I think, for me. And this is Again, my personal experience, it has to do with you feeling enough or not. So I was in all of these relationships, in different kinds of relationships, coming into them from a wounded place. I had not healed the most important part of me, which is my relationship with myself and my self. Love.

What would happen back then when you would come across somebody who had already done that work on themselves? Maybe they had healed a lot of parts of themselves. They were approaching relationships from a healthy way.

Yeah.

Was your experience that you weren't attracted to them? Did you not even see them? Were they not even like, did they not even stand out to you? Like what. What would you say your experience of people like that was?

So sometimes I wouldn't even see them. Like, Louis and I have had this conversation. We say to each other, if we had known each other three years ago, even three years ago, it's not that long ago, we probably wouldn't have seen each other. We actually went to the same salsa places to dance salsa because we both like it and we never saw each other, which is really weird because we know the musicians, we know the people. Is the exact same place in LA and we never saw each other. I'm sure we probably were there, but I just never saw it.

And for everyone who's wondering out there, Lewis is Lewis Howes. I probably should have mentioned that earlier, but we have an interview with Lewis inside the Love Life Club.

Oh yeah.

If you haven't, this would make a great pairing to watch this one and then go and watch the Lewis one afterwards. So that's who we're talking about, Lewis Howells.

Yes. So we say that to each other. We wouldn't have seen each other, literally. But sometimes I would meet a really kind, healthy, amazing man and you know what would happen to me? I would feel it was boring. Ain't that interesting? And my mom would say, this is a great guy. You know, mom's are so.

She could see it.

She could see him because you know your friends and especially your mom and your dad, they love you deeply. If you have a very healthy family, they love you deeply. They want the best for you. The older I get, the more I realize my mom is right. More right than I thought, you know, and she used to say, but this is a great guy. I just don't feel like I. Chemistry, Mom. And that word, chemistry is interesting. And it can be tricky when you haven't healed. You have a tendency to attract the person that's going to create the most chemicals inside of you in order for your soul to heal. So you're going to be attracting, you know, if you don't feel enough yet, you're going to be attracting a person that somehow is going to make you feel not enough. And that is an amazing chemistry. You experience all these things. So if I was to see a great guy, I felt he was great to be my friend, or he was great to be, you know, someone else's boyfriend, or if I was in the relationship, I had a one beautiful relationship. I sabotaged it completely. And the guy was great. It was me. So.

And that was because you, while you were in it, you almost felt more like a friend, or you felt like it just wasn't. Didn't give you the excitement.

It didn't give me the excitement. I used to say to my mom, mom, why do I get so bored with him? And he wasn't a boring person. It's a great life. It's just that I wasn't experiencing what I thought was familiar. So my parents are incredible. My mom and dad are great parents. They had me when my mom was 19 and my dad was 20 years old. So at that time in their lives, they hadn't done a lot of healing with themselves. They didn't know who they were. They were children raising children. That's what they were really doing. So I grew up with my parents trying to find who they were. And they sometimes argued a lot. They argued a lot. So in my household, in my experience, because my youngest brother didn't have that experience experience anymore, but I did. So there was a lot of explosiveness going on. So I felt, oh, this is what love is as a little girl. Oh, if my mom and dad are explosive with each other, because he was just like that. Explosive, but then amazing happiness. Right. Laughter, but then anger, but then laughter, but then crying, but then laughter. So in my world, when I became an adult, I was like, oh, wait a second, I'm only going to feel attracted to men. That would create that experience with me of craziness, but then laughter and joy, but then anger, you know, and then that felt familiar to me. And today I think, ooh, familiar is not necessarily the best thing.

That's interesting. So what were the things that. When you met someone and it did feel exciting?

Yes.

Like, are you able to pinpoint some of the things that made you feel that that were the wrong things to follow, the wrong instincts to follow?

Oh, yes.

So what gave you that excitement?

The excitement, just to give you an example that now, for me, it's a huge red flag. I met a guy that I went Into a relationship with that told me on the second date. I think you're going to think I'm crazy, but I love you. Today, Healthy me says, yeah, it may be a bit crazy because you don't know me. You can say, I like you. I like how I feel with you. That speaks of you. But if you tell me, I think I love you on the second date. Right. Another thing is that they would call. I mean, I'm talking about this specific person. Right. But I don't know, eight, nine times a day, hey, how you doing? And I felt seen. Right. Oh, my God, he's, you know, he cares about me. No, it was controlling, but I didn't know because it was disguised as, I am so attracted to you that I want to know what you're doing in your life. And in reality, it was control behind.

Yeah, that's super interesting.

Yeah.

How did you. Because I know there will be a lot of people listening to this who resonate and they say, I keep getting attracted to the wrong things and it keeps hurting me. But I'm not attracted to the kinds of guys that would actually be good for me or that would actually treat me well and maybe even the kinds of guys who like me. What advice could you give from your perspective and what you've been through about not only how to start recognizing what the right behavior looks like, but how to actually start getting attracted to it? Which is.

Oh, that's such an interesting.

You know what I mean? Because otherwise we start to say in our lives, well, okay, I know to go for this. Not that. But it doesn't feel like I want to because I'm still attracted to this kind of person. It's just that this kind of person is bad for me. Have you figured out how to solve the attraction riddle?

That's so interesting, because, like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna say something that's probably a lot of people that are Latino are gonna identify with this. I love mango. Do you like mango? Yeah, I love mango and I love.

Ridiculous person doesn't like mango.

Louis doesn't like mango. I love mango and I love mango with chile. This is what we do. Here's the best. But if you realize that every time you eat mango with chili, it gives you diarrhea, why would you continue to eat mango with chili?

Because it's so good.

It's so good, but it gives you diarrhea. Maybe if you remove the chili away, which gives you all that spice and all that thing, you will taste the sweetness of the mango. That's underneath and it won't give you diarrhea. So I know this is just an analogy, but for me, it was more like a click that happened inside of me when I healed my inner child. That was the thing. It wasn't. I think I would have continued to attract the same type of guys, the same type of energy over and over again until I'm 60 or 70 if I wouldn't have done that part of the healing. And so it. It just. I just went through this whole process in therapy of realizing that first when I was recently, you know, broken from the narcissist. And I went into this, like, what's going on? And I talked to my therapist and everything, and she said, you know, when you're ready to go out, remember a couple of things. Number one, chemistry is not everything. We cannot. We. We overvalue chemistry so much, and sometimes it's not even chemistry, it's trauma bonding. So she used to say, could you.

Explain that concept for us? Trauma bonding? Because I know there will be some people who haven't heard that idea.

Yes. So. So in this case, just in my case, I can explain from my case. I was. I grew up in my household. I took a place in my family as a little girl as the helper and the soother, right? So my mom has this very explosive personality. My sister has an explosive personality. And I was many times caught up in the middle, trying to bring peace, right? So I became the peacemaker. Then my mom used to say all the time, because I have two other siblings, oh, Martita, they call me Martita at home. Martita is so great because she helps me so much. And then if she would be, like, upset at my dad for some reason, you know, I would go to her and would make her feel good, and she'd be like, oh, you make me feel so good. You're such a good daughter. So you start putting as a child your value into the things that you can do to make other people happy. So that was my case, right? So I was a helper. I was the soother. So what would happen when I grew up, in order for me to feel I had a place in the world, in my love relationships, I needed to be the helper or the soother. So you're going to attract a narcissist because he needs a lot of soothing, or you're going to attract a person that needs you so much in other aspects in your life, and you're going to overpower your love and you will feel that it's never enough. And so those people inside of you, when you meet them, because people are energy. You have energy, I have energy. And we have these subconscious energy sensors. So when you meet somebody that needs a lot of help, that is a wrecking ball and needs some peace in their life. And if I am the peacemaker inside of me, my subconscious mind is going to feel attracted to your energy very strongly. And your energy, because you need peace and you need a helper because you're a wreck, is going to feel very attracted to me. That part is trauma bonding. And it's different to feeling spiritually attracted to somebody, which to me now is way sexier than the other one.

Extremely wonderfully explained. That was fantastic. Describe to me the spiritual attraction then that you're talking about there. That's become sexier to you. And I do want to rewind because I want to go back to where you were going with that thought. But what. What do you see as that spiritual attraction that's distinct from the trauma bond?

It's very distinct. So it feels. It feels different. You obviously, when I met Louis, I felt attracted to him, but it wasn't this anxiety attraction. To me. That's the difference. The feeling of anxiety is what creates the difference. You know, if you meet somebody that is healthy and is a great guy, you feel attracted to that person. I felt attracted to Lewis, but when he left, you know, home or whatever, I didn't feel this anxiousness of, like, is he gonna call me back? And he's gonna. I didn't. I didn't have that feeling. You know, I was so happy with myself and living my life that I didn't even think if he was not calling me back or, yes, calling me back. It was not even, like, a thing for me. And he didn't leave me with that sense of. There was no, like, game, you know, that game, that. There was no, like, power struggle situation of, oh, I'm going to call him first. No, he's going to call me first. No, I have to wait. There was no strategy that way. My only strategy was, I'm just going to be myself. And if he likes it, great. If he doesn't, that's okay, because I'm happy with me. Whereas in the past, I wanted to be loved and liked so much that I would bend my ways, change my personality in order to fit the other person or in order to suit them or bringing them peace.

So you said that in order to get to that place where you were looking, you were ready to be attracted to a different kind of connection, different Kind of person, different kind of relationship you had to do the work to heal your inner child.

My inner child, yes.

Not everyone has been on a journey of therapy or doing lots of courses or anything like that. I'm curious if there are key elements from what you learned there that you feel could be distilled for people who may go on that journey but may not, but still want to understand what they could do to heal their inner child outside of the context of that. And it's fine if your answer is it has to be done inside the context of that. But I'm just curious if there are specific things along the way that you're like, oh, someone could do this, they could do that.

Practically speaking, yeah. So the first thing is to look at your past and to remember how you grew up in what love meant for you growing up. So there's different wounds that we can have and we can attract people from the wound or we can attract people from the being whole. It's always going to be so much better when you're attracting somebody from being whole. And. But the question is, how do I get whole? Right. So therefore I can attract another whole person. So there are different kinds of inner child wounds. One of them is the abandonment wound, which a lot of people experience. I'm grateful that I didn't experience specifically that one with my mom or dad, but I have many friends who have experienced that. And it's very hurtful to a child. But you know, this is what happens if, if your parents got a divorce or your dad left or your mom left for another guy or sometimes it's not even that somebody left for another person, but your parents were always working and you didn't feel like you got to be with them and you have this abandonment wound. And so what happens is that as an adult you attract partners that eventually will end up abandoning you by abandoning you. Or you will create the circumstances in order for them to leave you. Because then it's like a self fulfilling prophecy. Then you will feel, oh, this is what love is. It's just the concept of what love was in your childhood, what is familiar. And then just draw the parallel in your life and look at your relationships. I'm going to give you another example. With another friend of mine, his parents were unavailable to him. They were so workaholic that they were. You know, if he had a hard time in school, he never felt like he could talk to them and get comfort. They would buy him things. So they were emotionally unavailable. He grew up to be this adult 40 year old man, who for some reason, which is this one, always ends up dating women who live in another side of the country who are in a relationship, so they're not available for him. So he's creating what he knows subconsciously to be loved and manifesting it into his life. So there's the abandonment wound, there's the rejection wound. People that felt like they didn't fit in in their family or that even maybe it's not the family, maybe is in school, they were bullied all the time, or that they had a mom, let's say, that was so into, like, being extremely beautiful and fit and everything. And the daughter is not like the mom. And so she has this rejection wound. So eventually she's going to create a situation in her life, in her love life, that she's going to feel rejected. And sometimes she may be with a great guy, amazing guy, but she will find subconsciously ways in which she feels rejected by this man. And the guy sometimes will be like, wait a second, what are you talking about? About I love you. You know, I'm thinking about you. I'm giving you all these, you know, sending you all these text messages. I'm like, there for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you don't buy me gifts and, you know, things like that. And so then therefore, I feel you don't love me. And. And then. Or you didn't invite me to this one thing, right? Oh, I'm sorry. It was just, you know, a mistake. I didn't. I wasn't even thinking. No, it's just that you really don't like me.

Have you got friends that have gone the other way, where based on their childhood wound, the pendulum swings all the way to the other way. So now you have someone who felt rejected, who in adult life only goes for people who they can control or are very safe, even if they don't feel it's the right person. They're like, I'm gonna be with this person because this person will never reject me.

Yes. So that is the betrayal wound. So when something happened in your life as a little kid that you felt betrayed by one of your parents or both, let's say your dad cheated on your mom and left and you felt that enormous amount of betrayal, and you could be the most loving woman, but for you, being in control makes you feel safe. Safe, because then that man that now you love, you have to make sure he will never betray you in the form of cheating or anything. So if you can be in, you know, like, I'm just saying, like, if you can have their, his, his phone passcode. If you can see what he's doing 24 7, you will feel safer because you know underneath there's control behind that, but underneath the control there's a wound. Dead child. So of course, yes, I have friends that, that could be that and they love their man so deeply. But inside is that betrayal wound that is speaking loudly and saying he's going to leave me for someone else.

If you want to get access to the full two hour extended cut of the Martha Higuray interview, we have it inside the Love Life club members app. We don't just have this one, we have full extended versions of all of the interviews I've done, plus all sorts of incredible content and tools to help you in your love life. Join for a 14 day free trial and you can explore it all right now Today, go to joinlovelife.com to start your trial. And now let's get back to the interview. So the first step, go back and recognize what's that love pattern that you grew up with that is familiar with you that in some way you're attracting or replicating because it's just the model that you know.

Yeah.

What came next?

What came next for me is writing these letters to literally. I remember my therapist said to me, sit down and write as if you are an 8 year old, 10 year old whenever these massive events happen to you or even could be maybe a tiny one, whatever it is that you feel that you want to take out. And she said, write it as it's coming out as if you're an 8 year old or a 10 year old. Dad, I can't believe or mom, I can't believe that when I got A's and that one time I got an A. I mean in Mexico we grade with eight but it would be like a B minus. I got so punished when I was such a great student. Whatever it is that you felt not seen, for example, in that case, that was me. I felt not seen or validated for my, for my efforts. You write it, write it, write it and take your time. It takes about a month to do these exercises and then just. Well, what my therapist asked me to do is to just go to a special place and burn it.

And it took a month. Why? Because of the number of letters you were writing or because of the length of the letters you were writing. Like what was the part of that that took that long?

For me, it took me a month to do different processes. So I was writing these letters. But sometimes you just write and then you get tired of writing. And then another thing that I did is I went for, for a walk with my mom and my dad. So I'm lucky to have a good relationship with them. So as an adult now, I was able to go for walks with them and telling them, you know, I experienced this when I was a little kid. And what was interesting for me to do it as an adult, and what's interesting to do it is when you're writing a letter is because you let that inner child speak. All the things that the inner child didn't get to say, you know, when you were little, all the things that you wanted to scream, all the unfairness, all the abandonment, abandonment, all the hurt, all the pain, all the shame, there's that other one, the shame wound and you take it all out. And then you say to yourself, because now you're an adult, you have the ability now to see your mom and dad as humans. And they were not perfect, but they were doing the best they could. So it's not your parents responsibility either. It's not saying, oh, I'm going to blame my mom or dad because, you know, and that's why I'm attracted to all these men. Because my dad was a drunk and he was an abuser. No. Yes, that was horrible. Yes, that was traumatic. But then, now let's look at mom and dad as complete human beings and then look at yourself with compassion and look at that little girl with compassion and say to her, you know what? Yes, when you were little, you weren't seen. Yes, when you were little, you were not validated. But now I got you. Now I got you. Now I'm going to take care of you. Now it's my responsibility. You and me together and you rescue yourself. And so then you don't put it on your man to rescue you. You don't put the responsibility of your happiness on your man. You're putting it on yourself. It's a good journey. It's a really, I really recommend it.

But yeah, I really recommend what you just said. We have to talk more about this because the, what you just said about this idea of I've got you now, like I'm, I'm taking on that, I'm taking on that role. Yeah, part of that is there's a, there's a recognition there that there is a role. Right. That you're not, we're not just. It's like we. I feel like it's interesting because we can even if we're, if we're a people, pleaser or if we love people, if we care about people, we go around seeing everyone else like they're a person. Person in this world. But we don't necessarily see ourselves as a person in this world. We're just sort of the vehicle that we travel around in.

Yeah, that's true.

And we just look out.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Everyone else. When we think if there's a, you know, 7 billion people on Earth, we don't think of us as 7 billion and 1. We're just witnessing everyone else. And I think that part of it is recognizing yourself as one of those people. But even more than that, you're the only one in the world who truly as an adult has the job of taking care of that one person.

That's it.

No one else has that job. You do. And I think the recognition that, A, I am a person and B, I. There's one person whose job it is to take care of that person, and that's me. And then recognizing that you actually have power in that, you can really impact that person by the way you take care of them. I think those are three really big realizations. And I love what you said about that. You can't put that on somebody else.

You can't.

So if someone is taking charge of that relationship now and they're recognizing. I love what you said about the. Your parents. Because. Yes, we. We elevate them in one of two ways. Right. We tend to elevate our parents or our caregivers or whoever those people were in our lives that wronged us. We elevate them either to the level of angel or to the level of demon. Either way, you make them really powerful.

That is true. Yes.

And both of them actually can be incredibly destructive because if they're an angel, then they're too perfect.

Then nobody compares to your mom. And then good luck finding a woman that matches your mom or a guy that matches your dad, if he was the most amazing dad.

And sometimes our parents feed into that. If you had the kind of parents that set up that kind of. That. That paradigm around themselves, or they didn't show you any of their darkness, they didn't show you any of their problems along the way, that then you can believe that this kind of person exists when even they don't exist.

Yeah.

But the other side is the demon where we elevate them to this really, really dark kind of God that we think we can never get over, that instead of seeing them as, oh, no, no, no, this is.

There are humans living their own human Experience with the tools they had at their time while they were raising you up. And they did their best. Because nobody says, I want to be a really bad parent on purpose. I don't think nobody says that unless you're a sociopath. I don't know. But nobody does that.

No, it's people. Some people's best is tragically bad, but.

Yes, it is.

But that's kind of a thing that just is as opposed to something that we need to invest personally in and personalize it. And it's about me, and it's about my worth. And it's. No, no, no. It's just, unfortunately, your. Your particular parent or that particular person in their life, in your life, that the best they could do was unbelievably traumatic for you.

Yeah. Or sometimes there's. Because there's a lot of abuse out there, too, from parents. And so.

For sure.

Yes. And so that's why I say I speak from my perspective. But I have a lot of empathy and compassion for people, including two of my, you know, good friends that you really hear their stories and you think, oh, my God, this is. This is really bad. So how can you tell that person, hey, you know, they did their best? Well, sometimes. Sometimes, no. But it's part of looking at the humanity of that person. Perhaps that person was abused by their own parent or the grandparents. And.

Yeah, there's that. And, you know, I think. I always think of doing your doing someone doing their best is almost like a figure of speech. Yeah, it is that we. I think that we give it the wrong connotation sometimes because we think that means that it almost implies this good. It almost implies good agency, choice. And I think that, you know, there are people, like, there are narcissists who don't just ruin everyone else's life, they ruin their own life.

Yeah, they do.

Over and over and over and over again, and they end up alone and they're doing their best. Do you know what I mean? Like, that their best isn't good.

But they know.

But that's like, if they could do better, they surely would because they wouldn't ruin their own lives over it as well. But narcissists will literally destroy their own lives because they can't seem to do any better. And all of that, I think, is just a route to depersonalization, which is the really important part. So then you've depersonalized and you realize, okay, I now have this person I have to take care of. When you had that realization that I've got to pick myself up and take care of this person. What did that actually look like? Because we live in a world now where self love and self care are so overused as phrases.

You know, it almost feels like, superficial. It does, because they're so overused everywhere.

Yeah. Feels like lighting a candle and taking a bath. It's like, what is that?

Yes, Self love.

Self love, exactly. And people's relationship with that feels either very superficial or deeply uncomfortable because they're like, what is. What do you mean? Self love? But I feel like it's almost more easy to latch onto this idea of, well, no, hang on. It's my job. I got to take care of me because that's my job.

Yeah.

So what does that actually look like in your world? And what practical steps do you think people can take to acting on that relationship?

Okay, so I'll put it this way, because I remember this is something I learned in therapy. My therapist said to me, you know, in any situation when you feel like crazy crying, that is that little Martita that's coming out. It's not the adult. It doesn't mean adults. We don't cry. We cry, obviously, but I'm just talking specifically about love and specifically about when you get triggered by your partner. Most of the time, when a guy triggers you, it has nothing to do with the guy. It has way more to do with you, your self value and your past. And you are projecting all of those three things into your mind. I was giving you a little bit of the example. Let's say I go to a party with Louis, and then Louis is hanging out with a bunch of people. And for some reason, in the entire party, he just does not connect with me, right? And this reminds me of me at home having my mom and dad and me going, hey, mom, hey, dad. And never feeling seen. And then therefore, at the end of the night, I am upset because I can't believe, you know, we went to this event, and all of a sudden, during the entire event, I, you know, you do this thing. You say, you ignored me. You didn't pay attention to me. You didn't. But your guy was just living his life, talking to people, having a blast, right? And all of a sudden, he gets in the car, and you're like this. He's supposed to guess what's going on with you. I don't know if this has ever happened to you in the past, but as a guy, you're like, what happened? You know, you're clueless as a guy of what happened, right? And then you as a woman you, first of all, you want him to guess what's going on with you, which should never be his job. You are you. You're responsible of yourself. So if you're upset about something, you communicate to him consciously, not like this. And like this unconsciously sounds like nothing.

What would consciously sound like consciously, I.

Would rewind and then do the same example and tell you what I would do right after I learned, because when I was 20, I was this other person, right? So unconsciously you do that. And unconsciously, what's happening is that you're being triggered because when you were a little girl and whatever in life, you have this trigger that you feel unseen. So then, therefore, if there's any moment in which your guy is not paying attention to you, you feel, I'm not worthy, I'm not enough, I'm not seen all of that, right? So then you react to that, and then you react explosively or cold shoulder, or you just any of these strategies in order to get the guy's attention. So then he finally, when he guesses what happened then, he now is trying to make peace and telling you how much he loves you, how much. But no matter how much he will say, I love you, I want you to be okay. I want you to be happy inside of you, because you have this story that you built already inside of you. He's not paying attention to me. He's ignoring me all the time. You're going to believe that story because that's, you know, that's. You're wired to believe that story because you haven't healed. Because this is the story that you grew up in. Healthy. You. You're in a party. You take care of yourself, right? You. Your guy is in this party. He's talking to all these people. Do you want to connect with your guy? Why do you have to wait for your guy to come to you and connect with you? Walk to where your guy is and connect with him yourself, and then there's no argument later. Then there's no feeling of, oh, no, he's ignoring me. Then there's no, like, situation in the car that is uncomfortable. No, you take care of you. And in the same case, it applies to anything that starts making you uncomfortable except abuse. Obviously, I'm putting that one on the side. Because if someone is yelling at you, you know, cursing at you, hitting you, or any kind of that, you know, I'm not going to make you responsible for that. But you can be responsible of yourself by walking away.

So you always have power that moment. You're at the party?

Yeah.

You say, I want to take care of me, and in this moment, that means I'm responsible for getting my needs met. Yeah, I should go over there and connect with him because that's what I want instead of expecting him to read my mind. Now, when you say all of that to yourself, but the instant thought is, but what if I do that and he rejects me? Or what if I.

That's in your imagination. Just go ahead and try it. If you prepare for your. If you prepare yourself for the worst, you're setting yourself for the worst. Be prepared to be in the moment and be surprised. That's the thing that expectations. When you have expectations, little ones, medium ones, big ones, you're not in the moment. And any of them, they're going to disappoint you. Like, the more expectations you have, the more disappointment you will experience. So if you're more in the present moment and you're able to take your man, asking who he is, and you take your space. There's a saying in Latin America that happens, and I hear it all the time with girlfriends. He didn't give me my place. He didn't give me my place. And I used to be this person. No, you take your place. He didn't introduce me to this person. Will you introduce yourself? What's the big deal? Hi. Yeah, I'm L's girlfriend, Martha, 9. Had to meet you. I'm Marta, L's girlfriend. How are you? And that's it. You don't take it personal. God knows what's going on in that guy's head. He's probably distracted. Maybe he saw someone else. You don't know. Let's give our partners the benefit of the doubt first, rather than building this story of I am not enough or I am not worthy.

When you're experiencing something like that, how do you balance that accountability that you take on, that ownership of yourself, your needs? How do you balance that with the. What people might call intuition, okay, Of I am sensing that this person's mind is elsewhere or that this person doesn't feel the same way about me as I do about them, that they're not as invested as me.

Me.

Because it's very hard. Because sometimes we don't know, right? Sometimes we don't know. Is this my anxiety talking or is this real? Is this an intuition that actually I should listen to? And I love what you're saying about, to me, nothing can go wrong from taking more accountability. Like only good things can come. Yeah, but you could do that. And still the Intuition, you have be correct that you start noticing a pattern of. Even when I am taking responsibility, you know, I still don't feel that this person is showing up.

Yeah.

In the way that I would like. At what point do you start listening to your intuition and what does that look like for you in the context of taking care of yourself, accountability for myself, ownership of myself. What does it look like to pay attention to that intuition at the right time and then act on it, but not do it prematurely when it falls into insecurity?

Right. This is a really good question. I think he has a lot to do with. In the keyword. You mentioned it in the question, which is pay attention. I think what happens is, especially at the beginning of the relationship, you're so. We are so wanting it to work. That happens a lot. Especially if you, if you haven't done the work that I just said and if you feel like you really want to find a person, you really want to find your partner, so you want it to work so badly that you don't really pay attention. You start dating people with the pink glasses on instead of the microscope. I'm not, I'm not going to say microscope because that'd be too judgy. But you really are not necessarily paying attention. And so that's when you shut down your intuition. When you, when you want to be so loved and liked you, your intuition, you're literally saying your intuition. Don't pay attention to all these things that you're saying to me. But in reality, it's yourself and your lack of self, self worth and self love that wants this person to be the most amazing person when they are showing you clearly. So for me, the words is. The word is actions. A man and you. Please just tell me. But they can tell you anything. They're just words. Actions are these words matching his actions. So if he can, if he tells you, oh, I love you so much, I want you to be the happiest person in the world. But when you're hanging out with your friends, this happened to me. He calls you and he gets angry because you're having fun with your friends. And I'm so angry because you're not. You're having fun without me. Do you really want me to be happy? Ah, these are just words. But your actions are not really there. So if, if you say to me, I want to introduce you to all my friends, I'm so excited, you know, to be in a relationship with you. Oh my God, blah, blah, blah. And we show up to that party and you Literally ignore me through the entire time. I'll take care of myself. How? This is not the guy for me. His actions are not matching his words. So I'll take my space. Either I have a blast at this party. Maybe I'll meet the right guy there. He doesn't know he's bringing me to the right party. Right. Or I. I'll just. I just leave, talk to my girlfriends and have a blast. Or go home and watch Netflix.

How would you have that conversation with a person if you were on. Maybe. Maybe you're on the fence. Maybe you're wondering. Like, it's not, you know, it's not quite. It's not quite a red light yet. Maybe it's an amber light, a yellow light.

Yeah.

But it's given you hesitation.

Yeah.

How would you consciously. What language would you use and have you learned to use that? You find is a really beautiful way to approach those conversations. That's not the unhealthy, explosive energy, but gives you the best shot at learning who this person is, possibly getting progress or improvement, but at the very least, revealing the situation.

I think at the beginning, it's just you really paying attention. It's very important. When I started dating Louis, I was everything I was experiencing with him. And it sounds cold, but it is not, because I was fully immersed in the experience, but everything was information. I already had made a list of who I am. I've become my own list of the people I wanted to attract. Right. Because sometimes we say, oh, we want to attract a person that is, you know, loving, but also. That is into self growth, but also that is generous, but also. And then you look at yourself and you're like, I'm not that person either, but yet I want to attract that person. So you get to do your own work. You become your own list of what you want to attract, and then just pay attention. I was. I was meeting other guys at the time. You know, I'm more traditional, so I do it in a little bit more traditional way. But I was meeting guys. I was not being intimate with them. I was not kissing them. I was just meeting them. And I remember I was so excited to meet them and to see who they were, because it was no longer my goal to change them or to soothe them or to be their life coach or to take them out of drugs or to any of the stories in the past. You know, now I got me. And now I'm approaching you, and you are this incredible human being. And if all of a sudden in our. In our date, you Say, you know, I love ketamine. Instead of judging you from my Catholic roots or whatever, you know, I go, oh, really? That's exciting. How often do you do it? Then I can go home and say, this is not the guy for me. Is this the guy for someone else that's, you know, loves that experience? I just. I just don't.

But that, you know, so much of that comes from being in a place in your life where you don't need the result. Right. Because when you need the result and you're starving and you're like, I don't know where my next meal is going to come from, then I think one of the reasons we get mad on dates is because someone hasn't lived up to an expectation that we want. And we're mad because we're disappointed and we're scared and we think another person. That's not right.

Yeah.

And so we either get mad at them and dismiss them, or we try to ignore and find a way to make them work because we need them to work. It's no different to business. If we go into a business meeting and someone presents a bad deal to us, then it doesn't make us angry. If we don't need it.

Right.

If we need it and someone gives us a bad deal, we're mad because we're like, I'm going to take this deal, but it's not a good deal.

But I'm still going to take it.

I'm still going to take it.

I want to take it. Yeah.

But I'm pissed. You know, that happens to people on dates. And I love. I love, love, love that energy of. I'm just excited to get to know, you know, someone. I don't need you to be anything because I don't need you.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's very hard, and it's hard to get to that place, but once you get to that place, then it just becomes easy and something shifts and you become more of a magnet because you're so happy living your life and you're not shut off. You're open to meet people. You know, you're not like, I'm so happy living my life. I've been living my life for three years now.

And.

Right. No, you're open to meeting people, but you have a very clear vision of the person that you most likely think is going to be a good match for you.

How did you. Because you came out of a difficult relationship and you were single.

Yeah.

And you were single at a point where you didn't anticipate being Single. And then you. You presumably were doing a lot of work on yourself around that time and building your value, getting in touch with that inner child, taking care of that person. And then you go on to meet the person you're with today. The. You know, even. Even when we have so many things going on in our life that we really love, Romantic love is something that most of us, if not all of us, deep down, we really want. Of course, when you meet someone and you know, you know that one day maybe you want a family, at the very least, you know, I want to have this kind of a love in my life.

Yes.

How do you remain. How did you remain relaxed and have that energy of excitement? Like, I can just get to know you, but I don't need you, because there will be people that say, I have lots of great things going on in my life still, because I really want to find love. When I find myself and someone is in front of me and they show potential, I immediately start to get overexcited, which is normal. So what did you. I'm curious. Do you have any thoughts about, practically speaking, what people can do to have that calmer energy in the moments where it feels like the stakes are very high, especially if they're on a timeline, biologically, and they want to have a family.

Absolutely. So, speaking from my experience, I was. I'm trying to remember If I was 35 or 36. I went through a divorce. And I remember I thought I had hit bottom. It was not until my next relationship with the person that was diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, that then I realized I really hit my poor bottom. But at that time, I thought this was it and all the lessons had to be learned.

Then you realized bottom had a trap door.

It made me go underneath, but, you know, like Mario, right? Like the little.

Exactly. Yeah.

Anyway, so I was so sad, and I did, you know, a workshop here and there, and then I felt like, oh, my God, what am I going to do? You know, I really want one of my core missions in life. I know. And this is a certainty. It's not just like, oh, I wish I had children, is I know I'm going to be a mom. That's something that excites me. And so then I was like, well, there's no husband anymore. I don't have any children. And I made the conscious decision of not having children in that relationship because I didn't feel I was safe. And so then I was like, what am I going to do now? And I think one of the Best decisions I could have ever made was to freeze my eggs. And I remember when I did it. And I remember it was a mix of sadness that turned into empowerment when I did it, because it was. I was single again. I felt late in life, I felt, oh, my God, starting all over again. With whom? Who? Where is my person? You start wondering all these things. Am I ever going to meet the person that's going to create this beautiful family with me? Am I ever going to meet my partner in life? I don't want a love story. I want a life story with somebody. So it was really sad. And then I was injecting myself because this is a whole process, by the way, it takes nine to 10 days. I really highly recommend it because although I remember being very sad doing this on my own and going, I can't believe I'm doing this on my own at the end of the process, I thought, wait, let's shift the paradigm here, because what's inside my heart, why am I really doing this? I'm really doing this because I am not looking for the father of my children. I want to find my life partner. And so I don't want this situation to be a ticking clock in my life, because then I'm going to settle for whoever, maybe. And I don't want that. I really want a love story for life. So instead of looking for, you know, the father of my children, that's out of the question. I say, I'll save my ex. So when the right partner comes, then we can say, we can experience our relationship and say, hey, do you want to be, you know, parents together? Yes, let's do it. And so you're coming because at the end of the day, kids are going to leave the house. And hopefully if you have a, you know, good foundation, good values, good vision within the relationship, if your relationship lasts a long time, your kids will go and you'll be left with your life partner. So if you're looking for a man in order for him to be the father of your children, you can find the father of your children. You know, you can. That's not that difficult. You can find the father of your children. But I personally wanted to find a life partner, so that's why I made that decision. And I didn't want the ticking clock to be an aspect that would make me feel nervous or would make me feel like I'm not acting as myself. I'm coming from a place of need or of lack as opposed to a place of being whole.

That's beautiful. And I Love how decoupling those two things.

Yes.

That brought you a different level of peace.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah. And then you never know. You know, there's different situations. Like what if you meet the partner of your life and he can't have children? Right. Well, there's other ways, I think. I think it's just like putting these a little bit more separated from each other, depending on what you want, obviously, and saying, what do you want? Me personally, I want a life partner.

I think also, you know, that what you were able to do is, I think of it in a way in terms of divorcing the blueprint that we came up with one day about how we. How life had to go in order for us to be happy and marrying reality.

Yes.

Like, what's my reality? My reality is that this is the age I am and these are the possibilities in front of me right now. They may change the whole. So much of life could change. Like you say, I could meet the love of my life and he can't have kids. Like anything can happen. So instead of having this idea in my mind of how life has to go, it's a kind of. To me, it's this expansive opening up of life to, oh my God, I can be happy so many different ways.

Yes.

And by doing what you did, it's just creating one more way. It's just creating myself options.

Absolutely. You give yourself options. And one thing I think that is for me, life is an adventure. And if I have all these expectations, then and they're not fulfilled, I'm going to be disappointed. And if I put all myself these expectations, then that means I want control over the result. And if there's something definitive to me is that life is not controllable. Yeah, it's completely not controllable. So if we can have the pleasure of being alive and enjoy the moment and not have that as. Because it is a concern. What's the concern of mine? Okay, so you have two options. What do you do? You continue to be concerned and you attract the person out of that place, or you take action, you do something, then that concern goes away and you continue living your life and you be prepared for whatever life is going to throw your way. Because sometimes if you plan also that way, like I said, sometimes that could happen. Oh, no. Now is he the one that he's not able. Okay, well, there's other ways because life is an adventure. Let's just take it.

Yeah.

And now we're coming from two people being whole together. Hopefully, if you choose your partner, you Know wisely then together are going, you know, you're going to. There's going to be challenges that are going to be coming your way. But also the adventure is part of, you know, how do you overcome those.

Challenges together and losing the story, Because I think the story is what makes us really unhappy. Like, I actually think a lot of people, if they met the love of their life and then it turned out he couldn't have kids, there would be a very different feeling. There may be disappointment, but there would be a very different feeling around that than if they never met the person and they didn't have kids because of that. One involves a lot of self blame.

Yes.

Another involves life. I met someone, they couldn't have kids.

That's what it is. That's what life is.

When it's when we think, when we find a way to make it about us and our fault and I did this to myself or I. That's when this. It's not even the situation that makes us that unhappy. It's all of the story tied to it and the self blame and the shame and the I'm not enough. So I think also recognizing that there's a different world where there's a world where you have kids with the love of your life and they get hit by a car the next day.

Oh my God. Hopefully not.

But yes, I know, but you know what I mean.

Yeah, I know what you mean.

That's another eventuality. And you would move forward in your life with that too. It's the stories around self blame and not being enough are the ones that make things not just disappointing. Like life is disappointing. There's so many disappointments in life. There's so many ways that life is gonna suck that you didn't want it to suck. But when you add to disappointment with self blame and all of the. That's when disappointment turns into a personal hell. Well, I'd love all of you to join me in thanking Marta.

Wow. For being here.

This was unbelievable. I can't wait to debrief with the team about this because I know everyone's gonna be raving. Is there something you've got going on right now that people should check out specifically or somewhere they should go?

Well, they can follow me on my Instagram. You know, it's Arta or all my social media. I have. If you speak Spanish, I have Infinitos podcast. It's amazing. I interview people from therapists to all these different people that it all has to do with self help. And I have a movie that I wrote speaking about this whole concept. It's a comedy. It's four women that decide to, you know, get lost in this book. Beautiful adventure of, you know, making a road trip. It's kind of like the hangover, but with women. But the underlying message inside of the whole film is you get to take care of yourself and your spouse, your partner, your boyfriend. No one is responsible for your happiness but yourself. And that is throughout the movie, obviously. In comedy. It's called Queens on the Run. It comes out on April 14th.

And where is it going to be?

Netflix.

Netflix.

Netflix. Netflix. Yeah.

So cool. So, so cool.

Thank you, Matthew. You're so amazing. You guys are so lucky to have him.

He's.

You're a jewel and you're a wonderful, wonderful person and I know him as a friend, obviously.

Thank you.

And, and by the way, a lot of my girlfriends are part of your community and they follow your advice and it works. So follow his advice. It's so true. It's so, so true.

That's so cool. I love it. Well, I can't wait to do your podcast, Infinitos.

Yes, me too.

It's going to be so exciting. Check out everything that Marta has going on and join me one last time in giving her a huge, huge, huge hand from wherever you are in the world. Thank you, Marta.

Thank you.

Bye, everyone.

Bye.

Bye. Did you like that conversation? Would you like to hear more of it? Well, Marta and I went for a full hour, more than the hour you're hearing here right now on the podcast Inside the Love Life Club members app. In that hour, Marta answered member questions just like these.

And I've come to realize that I was undervalidated as a little girl and as a child, teenager and kind of.

Hard to go back and rescue that.

Earlier version myself due to lost time. Do you have any ideas? What point of time do you decide that the incompatibility is too much to sustain? How do you move on from mistakes that you've made in the past because of, well, not knowing what you were doing during. During that time?

You can listen to Marta's answer to these questions at. And many more that went on for a full hour. By going to joinlovelife.com you can join the membership for a 14 day free trial. Even if you only come because you want to watch the full extended session with Marta, it's worth it just for that. But we also have master classes with me. Two hour deep dives into different subjects relating to dating and confidence and relationships. We have other experts and we have an entire section of the app where you can ask your question and it will answer it for you via my content. Join us by going to joinlovelife.com for a 14 day free trial. I'll see you over there. Thanks for listening.

Sa.