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some of the studies I was looking at shows that if you get married after 30 each additional year of age increases
00:00:05
your chance of Divorce by 5% I couldn't figure out why oh I think there are several reasons for this so
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first of all Lor goly renowned psychotherapist bestselling author coup's counselor who's helped thousands
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of people find or save their relationships people use the first date as I'm supposed to feel this one thing
00:00:25
or else forget it and people will come into therapy and say I didn't feel like butterflies so I'm not going to go out
00:00:30
with him again people said they wouldn't go on a second date with somebody because he ordered tap water he must be
00:00:36
really cheap there was one where somebody said oh he did this impression from Austin Powers Yeah Baby he just
00:00:42
nervous he was trying to make you laugh what about he asks to split the bill would that be an ick if he doesn't pay
00:00:49
that would be a huge ick for me really but it's really important to understand why which is interesting now your
00:00:56
partner has to be your best friend have the same interest he has to Rock My World in better someone who's really ambitious but also really family
00:01:03
oriented no one human could possibly do that if you look at what are the most important things that would predict
00:01:09
whether a relationship is going to last is really important are very important
00:01:15
and then emotional is really important what does that mean it means you went to therapy because of
00:01:22
heartbreak yes how do we navigate through that dark cloud one strategy that might be helpful
00:01:28
is it's absolutely crazy to me that so many of you have decided to watch our show um
00:01:35
and so many of you have decided to subscribe to our show we now have five million subscribers on YouTube which is a number that I just can't comprehend
00:01:42
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00:01:49
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00:01:55
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00:02:02
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00:02:08
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00:02:16
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00:02:28
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00:02:34
[Music]
00:02:40
episode Lori if you had to summarize what it is
00:02:46
you have done for people over the last couple of decades how would you summarize that I would say that I help
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people to learn what gets in their way from living the life that they want to live and what department of their life
00:03:00
do you tend to focus on all of them they're all so important but I think it's really about people's relationships
00:03:06
and I mean relationship to self what is going on with the way that I talk to myself the way that I make decisions and
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choices the way that I hold myself back relationships with friends with romantic
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partners with family members with um professional colleagues all of it and of
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all of those subcategories what are the categories within there that people come to you advice for most often through
00:03:32
your podcast through your articles through your therapy work well it's interesting because it's usually somebody coming in and saying I really
00:03:38
want something in my life to change and what they want to change is someone
00:03:44
else right and so I think what they're surprised to find is that yes there are
00:03:50
difficult people in their lives you know we like to say that before diagnosing someone with depression make sure they aren't surrounded by so um you
00:03:59
know there are really difficult people out there but the question is where's your agency what are the choices that
00:04:05
you're making um are you setting boundaries with these people are you
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adding to the tension between the two of you because you're kind of in a dance and you're doing some old pattern that
00:04:17
you're in with this person so I think it's really important to become self-aware and say what am I doing in
00:04:23
the world that gets me closer to the way that I want to live and what am I doing in the world that keeps me from getting
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there and since you got into this line of work and since your sort of Education in this area began what TR changes have you seen
00:04:37
in the types of questions and the types of issues that are being presented to you in a sort of clinical setting or
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online or through your DMs Etc I think most people are really seeking connection of some sort that they don't
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have in their lives and there's a sense of being alone whether it's I'm the only
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person who feels this way I'm so ashamed I don't know why I'm so anxious or I'm so depressed or it's a feeling of I feel
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like I'm I have all these sort of friends you know kind of peripherally or friends in the world if you look at
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their social media but they don't really have someone that they could call and say I really need to talk to you about
00:05:15
this who's this person you can confide in you know there are these studies that have been done where they they looked at
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you know several decades ago how many people said I have someone close that I
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can call and most people had at least some one usually a few people now most
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people have zero people they have said zero I have nobody that I can call and
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confide in in that deep way does that mean that there's a greater pressure Now put on our romantic Partners to meet
00:05:45
more of our needs yes absolutely and that's one of the things that I think you see in dating especially with
00:05:51
younger Generations because it used to be that your community was there to meet
00:05:57
all different kinds of needs so now it's you know people like to say well my partner is my best friend well but you
00:06:04
also have a best friend most people also have a best friend right so so what happened or maybe they don't anymore
00:06:10
because of what we've been talking about so the question is now your partner has to be your best friend where they are there to meet all of your emotional
00:06:16
needs whereas before you had you know I could talk to this friend about this and I had this friend that my partner
00:06:21
doesn't like this hobby but I get to go my partner doesn't like move these kinds of movies but I could go to these kinds of movies with this person or you know
00:06:29
whatever it is and now it's like we have to kind of have the same interests and we have to be able to talk about all the
00:06:34
same things and we have to you know he has to Rock My World in bed or she has to Rock My World in bed or they have to
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um read my mind right and so no one human could possibly do that there is no
00:06:47
human who can do that and so what happens is we think something's wrong with this relationship if I'm not
00:06:52
getting that from this person and what are the other sort of big picture items that are making it harder for us to be
00:06:58
satisfied romantically these days I think again the sort of expectations of
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what it means to be loved I think that when people really put everything into
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this other person they aren't getting the the kind of emotional nourishment that they would be getting from the
00:07:15
larger community so whether it's extended family that used to be around most people a lot of people don't even
00:07:20
live where their F where they grew up anymore so they're kind of putting down Roots somewhere else um they are kind of
00:07:28
you know they have to form like a whole new group of people there's something to be said for the people who knew you when
00:07:33
you were young there's something about that about really being known because I think in relationship people really want
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to know and be known I remember I had a couple come in and this was so striking
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to me where um she said to her husband you know what three words I really want
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to hear and he said I love you and she said no I understand you and that was so
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profound that how deep a yearning we all have to want to be understood and I
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think that that comes from you know you have history with people and you have shared experiences with people but we're
00:08:11
moving around so much nowadays that we don't have that history or those shared experiences and people didn't know us at
00:08:18
different times in our lives when you're truly known oh you went through this transformation or you went through this
00:08:24
difficult time or I remember that fun time we had when we were 16 years old
00:08:30
and so a lot of people just don't have those kind of deeper connections anymore what is it about being understood
00:08:38
that we want like what is it what is the fundamental there is it does it make us feel psychologically safer or what what
00:08:45
is it oh it makes us less lonely okay if you feel like you're the only one who
00:08:50
understands what's going on for you you're all alone and that's why it's so interesting you know having the dear
00:08:57
therapist podcast or having the column where where most people write in and think that they are alone and yet I have
00:09:02
thousands of people writing in the same exact thing so they're not alone but they think that they're alone they feel
00:09:09
no one understands or no one would understand and I see this more with men also than with women although both I get
00:09:17
that but it it's interesting because I think that with with men you know often they'll come into therapy men get into
00:09:23
therapy sort of one of two ways they either come in because they're in a couple and there's a problem in the relationship so they come into therapy
00:09:30
or they come in kind of secretively like you know no one knows I'm here and
00:09:37
they'll say I've never told anyone this before and the thing that they tell you
00:09:43
is something that women will talk about quite easily and it's not that men are less deep than women it's that women
00:09:50
feel more comfortable to over lunch with a friend say something like that and when women come in and they say I've
00:09:55
never told anyone this before they'll say except for my mother my sister sister my best friend so they've told a
00:10:02
few people maybe one person maybe two maybe three and so I think it's interesting because I think that um you
00:10:08
know men can be particularly lonely because they really don't have the place
00:10:13
to kind of connect in the way that women are more culturally acceptable to do so
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women sometimes have an expectation that their partner will open up in the same
00:10:26
way that their best friends will open up yeah and many men fall short of that expectation
00:10:32
I you know I think there's often a narrative that women want a man to kind of sit down and talk about his problems
00:10:38
and open up and listen and all those kinds of things that a woman might do with her best friends but men for some
00:10:44
reasons tend to struggle with that yeah well they they women want that and they
00:10:49
don't want that so women say they want that and they think that they truly mean it when they say they want that but in
00:10:55
coup's therapy I I'll see something like a woman will come in and and you know she'll say that exact thing to her
00:11:02
partner you know I really want you to open up I feel like we're not connecting I want you to be more vulnerable with me
00:11:08
I want you to tell me what's going on inside and if he does and let's say he
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starts crying tears up or really starts crying she inevitably will have this
00:11:20
reaction of I don't feel safe when he doesn't open up to me because I don't feel connected to him but I don't feel
00:11:26
safe when he's that vulnerable with me either because there's something just some cultural programming in her around
00:11:34
what it's like to be with a man who's crying or a man who is vulnerable and so I think that that's really problematic
00:11:40
and I think that makes it you know kind of harder for men to feel like well I
00:11:45
have a safe space to open up like it takes a lot for a man to really feel like oh this is something that I want to
00:11:52
share whereas I think women just feel a lot more free to do that with their Partners I saw a video yesterday that
00:11:58
I'm actually going to play to you cuz I saved it ahead of this conversation it caused a lot of discussion online on
00:12:04
Twitter okay so this is the video okay yeah I just want somebody who's so
00:12:09
obsessed with the Bible and so obsessed with Jesus and who understands and like
00:12:14
he said like who can teach us things yeah like I want my dude to speak in tongues and have tattoos I just want a
00:12:21
good man like a nice classic man I want somebody who will literally protect me
00:12:26
and beat someone's butt if they need to but also will sit there with compassion and just like a good hearted man that's
00:12:33
what a true man is there has to be that dichotomy it's the same thing with feminine women too there's always a
00:12:39
dichotomy there's a softness and a strength and for men being masculine is
00:12:44
being able to beat someone's butt you know maybe not physically but like being a protector and like doing what he needs
00:12:49
to do to protect his family but then also being soft enough to like be able to tend to his wife's feelings and like
00:12:56
to be a that's hilarious but that that's that's you know people would say well
00:13:02
I'm not like that but yet when you actually talk to people about when you
00:13:07
when they're dating and you're talking to them about what's going on and why they're not going out on another date with somebody or you know why they won't
00:13:13
even go on a first date with somebody um those are the kinds of things that's an exaggerated version of the kinds of
00:13:20
things that you will hear which is what kind of things like the they're they're not 6'4 they're not strong and soft at
00:13:27
the same time yeah yeah you know they have to be this and this these two you know they want someone who's you know I
00:13:32
want someone who's really really ambitious but also really family oriented I want someone right the these
00:13:38
kinds of things that are hard to find both of those in equal measure in the same person someone who's extremely
00:13:44
ambitious he probably going to spend a lot of time at work you know I want some you know someone so I'm 5'2 and it would
00:13:50
be you know someone like me saying you know and and he has to be over 6 feet really you know just all all of these
00:13:57
kinds of things I so in in my book marry him I I wrote a whole book about this because I was looking at how do we date
00:14:03
today and what are the expectations that we have and you know the the publisher
00:14:10
called it marry him the case for settling for Mr good enough it's not about settling at all it's actually about having higher standards not lower
00:14:16
standards but having higher standards about the things that actually matter so
00:14:22
I looked at all of the data and I talked to uh behavioral economists and sociologists and historians and I talked
00:14:29
to um you know people therapists who specialize in divorce who specialize in couples therapy and it was really
00:14:35
interesting to hear um to see like how expectations have changed over time and
00:14:40
then also to see what it is that actually matters to have a happy
00:14:47
fulfilling long lasting relationship and how when we're dating we're not even looking at those qualities and so for
00:14:54
example the character qualities if you look at what are the most important things that would predict whether a
00:15:00
relationship is going to last what qualities do you want in a partner flexibility is really important what
00:15:07
does that mean so flexibility meaning you're not a really rigid person people who are really rigid has to be this way
00:15:13
I need it this way um I expect this of you right you know on social media we might call that uh boundaries right now
00:15:21
and boundaries are really important don't get me wrong healthy boundaries are very important but rigidity is when
00:15:28
you say that well I'm just very boundaried but you're actually really rigid so we have to have flexibility we
00:15:34
have to have room for the person to also be them and that you are a separate person from the person that you're with
00:15:41
and often times it's hard for people to see that because they're so focused on what I need without thinking about what
00:15:47
does this relationship need and what does the other person need too emotional
00:15:53
generosity is really important that you give someone the benefit of the doubt that you're not bringing your your Old
00:16:00
Wounds into the relationship and projecting them onto your partner um so
00:16:05
I would call emotional maturity or emotional stability so many times people Overlook that when they're dating so
00:16:11
that looks like you know someone comes into therapy and they say I don't understand why you know I I I love him
00:16:18
so much and I don't understand why he didn't call when he said he would or I don't understand why he cancelled and I will say what do you
00:16:25
love exactly do is this how you want your life to go to always be on edge to
00:16:30
always wonder to be with someone who's unreliable who doesn't do what they say they were going to do what what part of
00:16:37
this do you love oh but he's so funny and attractive and you know um he's so
00:16:43
smart you like qualities about him but you don't like the way he is with you in
00:16:49
relationship and so people need to have higher standards about the character qualities things that are important to
00:16:55
them like loyalty reliability emotional stability um again emotional generosity
00:17:03
can they be supportive of you when things are going well for you on that point of expectations and how
00:17:09
expectations are evolving I found some stats I think some of them are very much inspired by your first book um marry him
00:17:15
one of them is that 80% of women want to date a man over 6 foot tall when only 15% of men are over six foot tall yes
00:17:22
that's that's in the book um I found some other studies uh an e-harmony study found that 40% of sing people have deal
00:17:29
breakers that are associated with physical appearance and 50% of singles expect their partner to be their best
00:17:34
friend soulmate and to fulfill all of their emotional needs that was a study done by match.com um and then the other ones
00:17:41
that I found quite interesting were you talk about in the book how this sort of generational shift in expectations and
00:17:48
where that's come from but in like my my granddad's generation or even my dad's
00:17:54
generation I would assume they wouldn't have had the same set of impossible expectations I would assume is that is
00:18:01
that what you found in your research I think everybody wants to feel that really deep connection with their
00:18:07
partner and so I think that the way that Society has improved is that we are not
00:18:13
just marrying for sort of practicality but we are also marrying because we genuinely enjoy being with this person
00:18:20
and want to go through life with this person but I think what we're losing a little bit is do our values align like
00:18:26
the Practical part matters so I think the pendulum swung in the other direction went from almost pretty much
00:18:32
all practical MH to now it's all like is this person my soulmate and do they move
00:18:38
me and I think you have to have both I'm really attracted to this person's
00:18:43
Essence and what I mean by Essence is you're you know most people will say this is I I I I don't know where the
00:18:50
study came from but I remember reading this study that most people will say that the person that they are that they
00:18:56
chose to spend their lives with is not the most attractive person they ever dated and I think that a lot of people
00:19:02
say well I wouldn't want my partner to think that but you're you're more attractive to your partner holistically
00:19:09
that's why they chose you that's why you chose them that's why you're together so it's not just about is this the person
00:19:15
who was the most you know the hottest person you've ever dated and so I think we really have to think about
00:19:20
holistically who do we want to be with and that's what kind of trips us up
00:19:25
because the Practical side matters do you have similar ideas about the kind
00:19:31
of life you want to live do you have similar ideas about um how if you want
00:19:36
to have kids or if you don't want to have kids and how many you might want to have where you want to live um what
00:19:43
kinds of What kinds of things you want to do in your lives um what matters to you who you are in the world um
00:19:49
political beliefs often people say well that doesn't matter as much um I think when you have very different views not
00:19:56
necessarily about like what politic iCal party you're with but more about how you see the world if you see the world very
00:20:03
very differently that can cause a lot of problems in the relationship later on not because you're fighting about the
00:20:08
world but because those differences will show up in the way you treat each other I I hear you're saying all of that and I
00:20:15
have to say I agree and I think everyone would really agree because it makes perfect sense but in reality I was
00:20:20
thinking about if I turn to some of my friends that are really struggling with dating right now and I said all of that
00:20:25
to them um I don't think any of it would work because they are so
00:20:32
hardwired to to be in search of this like perfect person you know when I when
00:20:38
I speak to some of my friends who are single and they're say they're over 35 they've really like never been in a relationship before this the things that
00:20:45
they say as reasons for why they're not giving this person a chance are so unbelievably Petty like I have one
00:20:51
friend and she knows who she is she's a very good friend of mine she's been a good friend of mine for more than a decade shout out to your friend yeah but
00:20:57
I was I was on her profile once and she told me that the reason she wasn't going to give this guy a chance on this dating
00:21:03
app was because in the back of the picture that he his display picture he
00:21:08
had boxes on top of his cupboard and she was like oh God he's he puts boxes on top of his cupboard like
00:21:15
she so that's why she didn't give him a chance so here's here's the thing what happens is people look at dating
00:21:20
profiles and going through the apps and I think you know men and women tend to do this a little bit differently men are
00:21:26
like am I attracted to this person Swip which also doesn't necessarily work out
00:21:31
for them like they're not really looking for who do I want to be with and women do the opposite they look at it at you
00:21:38
know they look at all the pictures they'll read everything that the person wrote as if do I want to marry this
00:21:43
person potentially or not as opposed to do I want to spend 45 minutes having coffee with this person that's really
00:21:50
different and also on a first date it's the same mentality where a lot of people think oh you know like people will come
00:21:57
in to therapy or even friends will say you know I went on this date I had a
00:22:03
good time it was fun I just I don't know I didn't feel chemistry I didn't feel
00:22:09
like butterflies I didn't I wasn't didn't feel that that what I feel like I should feel so I'm not going to go out
00:22:15
with him again and I'll say well why don't you just go spend you know another
00:22:21
hour with this person and get to know this person and see if something develops no no no no no right and so but
00:22:28
it's like you had a good time you did think they you know they said I did think he was attractive but I didn't
00:22:33
feel chemistry so it's interesting because there's a study in marry him where it was a longitudinal study and it
00:22:40
followed people from the time that they met their partner like that first date all the way through they checked in with
00:22:46
them every five years for I think 20 years and what happened was they found
00:22:52
that the people who were very happy together had kind of revisionist history
00:22:58
about what it was like on their first date so people who were really happily married said oh yeah I knew immediately
00:23:05
I felt immediate chemistry with this person I knew this person was the one but if you go back to what they reported at the time often they reported at the
00:23:12
time yeah nice person not sure okay so so but they've changed the
00:23:17
story they really truly believe that they felt something different but we have data saying no you didn't on the
00:23:23
other hand if people did not last if people are divorced that kind of thing
00:23:28
um they will say oh I was never attracted to the person or I knew there were red flags in the beginning but
00:23:34
that's not what they reported at the time at the time they reported wow this person's amazing so it's really
00:23:40
interesting that people use the first date as as like I'm supposed to feel
00:23:46
this one thing or else forget it when people who were very very happy together totally in love totally attracted to
00:23:52
each other often didn't feel those Sparks on the first one two three dates you know maybe they were even even
00:23:58
friends for a while but people don't give each other the chance to get to
00:24:03
know the other person or to let the other person get to know you and I think that because the apps give this illusion
00:24:10
of um so many people are juggling multiple people at a time so someone will'll go on a date with someone and
00:24:15
then they'll say yeah that was fine H not you know maybe it was like a seven
00:24:21
so n and then they they're like I have another date tomorrow or they just they're leaving the date and they're
00:24:26
walking to their car they're swiping on the apps already because they have the illusion there's so many people out
00:24:33
there but if you just keep juggling people you're never going to get to know anybody and to know if that person is
00:24:38
someone that you want to be with so what would you say to a Serial data then you would say to go on the second date even
00:24:44
if the person is a seven or is there CU I know so I know people that have gone go on hundreds of dates a year and I
00:24:49
think statistically they must have met someone that they would have been happy with by now yeah maybe it depends if
00:24:56
they're making good choices about who they go on dates with so some people will just go on dates to go on dates
00:25:01
other people if they're being really you know if if they're saying hey this person seems like someone I would want
00:25:06
to be with and that's who they choose to go on a first date with then yes but I would say the question you ask yourself
00:25:12
at the end of a first date is did I have a good time the answer is yes I would go
00:25:17
on a second date doesn't have to be I had a lifechanging transformative you know I was Cupid's
00:25:25
arrow shot me no it just did I have a good time with this person yeah go on a
00:25:30
second date see what happens the second time who has higher expectations typically men or women and who is most
00:25:36
likely or most willing to adjust their expectations um I think it really
00:25:43
depends on the person and I think that the expectations are higher in different areas I think for men um the
00:25:50
expectations are very high around physical appearance and and I think for the
00:25:56
younger generation especially because they're growing up on all of these thirst traps that are posted on social
00:26:02
media and they're seeing all of these girls just posting you know all of these really provocative pictures that have
00:26:09
been filtered that have been you know it took them 30 shots to get that one shot that they put up and so when they see
00:26:15
people in real life and what they really are like on a day-to-day basis they have these very unrealistic expectations and
00:26:23
I think that's different from in the past when you saw many more people in real life than you do now where you're
00:26:31
seeing more people online most of the time and I think for women the expectations are you know I think it's
00:26:38
confused with feminism so feminism is great I'm a feminist um but I think that
00:26:43
feminism is not this person has to meet all of these criteria that are not
00:26:49
really human and I go through them in the book you know the kinds of things that people say and I have all these surveys in the book about the kinds of
00:26:56
things people say they're looking for and they're not finding the right person and I talk about this study that Barry
00:27:03
Schwarz did he wrote the Paradox of choice and he looked at the difference between maximizers and
00:27:08
satisficers and this applies to dating as much as anything else but you know
00:27:13
the way it doesn't apply the way that you can look at it the way he did in his study was he said look if you go into a
00:27:19
store and you want to get some jam and they have 30 different varieties most
00:27:25
people just leave because they can't choose they're just they get they get
00:27:31
anxious they don't know what to pick it's not like more is better if you have two different choices it's easy you say
00:27:37
oh I like this one and you're really happy with it the people who did choose from the 30 they're less happy because
00:27:43
they they're trying to maximize and then when they taste it and they go home with it they think oh I wonder what that other one would have tasted like you
00:27:49
know because there was so many choices the person who picked from one of the two is very happy with their choice so
00:27:55
if you look at the kind of dating analogy it's like I I like to use in the book I talk about a sweater say you want
00:28:01
a sweater and you know exactly what you want it needs to be this material so it's not itchy this color looks good on
00:28:08
you this is the right size this is the right price this is the style you're looking for you go into a store and you
00:28:14
find it the satisficer will buy it be really happy that they found it and
00:28:20
really enjoy it for a very long time the maximizer will say oh I found this but
00:28:25
while I'm at the mall I might as well just put this one you know back on the on the shelf and I will go look at a few
00:28:31
other stores to see if I can find something that's maybe a little like the color is a little bit better or the the
00:28:38
price is maybe there's something on sale or maybe there's something that's a slightly different material and they
00:28:44
keep looking and then they find something that's maybe slightly better in their mind and they buy it they're
00:28:50
less happy with it because then it took them all this anxiety and energy to find
00:28:57
it and then they find it and they're always looking over their shoulder well maybe there's another one maybe there's a better one maybe there's a different
00:29:03
one and the next time they're walking and they pass a store window they think I should have gotten that one so
00:29:08
maximizers think that they're putting in all the research to find the thing that's going to make them happiest but
00:29:14
going through that process makes them unhappy not only by going through that process but when they get the thing that
00:29:20
they decide on so with dating we want to be satisficers which means we have very
00:29:26
high standard it's not like oh I'm satisfied that's enough it's like you're satisfied because your standards are
00:29:32
very high but you're not always looking over your shoulder to wonder what you're missing out on you're not always in this
00:29:38
state of fomo do you see a gender difference between satisficers and maximizers at all again it depends on
00:29:45
the person it really does I mean I think that when you when when you look at the surveys in marry him women do tend to be
00:29:52
maximizers more than men but I think that I think that men do have very high standards but I think that men are also
00:29:59
like after they get over the oh I need to be with a supermodel and then they come back down to earth and they say oh
00:30:05
I need to be with someone that I'm really attracted to which is a different thing they're much more holistic like
00:30:10
who do they ask the right questions who do I enjoy being with and I think for women it's there's so many different
00:30:16
things there you know in marryam I talk about the things that people said they wouldn't go on a second date with
00:30:21
somebody over and it was like he ordered tap water instead of sparkling water he
00:30:26
must be really cheap you know these assumptions that people make like when they came by and said which which kind
00:30:32
of water do you want and maybe he's just accommodating maybe he just said tap water's fine um or you know he wore this
00:30:39
he wore those kinds of uh shoes with that kind of belt he doesn't have any fashion
00:30:45
sense there was one where somebody said oh he did this impression from Austin Powers this movie he did this impression
00:30:51
and it was really embarrassing and I I I was so cringey it was like he was just nervous he was on a first date and he
00:30:57
was was trying to make you laugh why don't you go on a second date and if he does something cringey on the second date okay then you know but a lot of
00:31:03
times on a first date people are just really nervous so they did one thing but
00:31:08
the rest of the date was great go on another date with them do you think it's really that like in the case of the a
00:31:14
like the Austin Powers impression or whatever it was is that really the truth is it was it really that or is there
00:31:20
something else going on in their psychology where that they've got commitment issues or you know the cuz I
00:31:26
I just think surely it it can't be that yeah yeah I I think you're right I think when you
00:31:32
really get down to it you see that you know there are reasons that people will find something wrong with a partner if
00:31:38
they are avoidant of intimacy so you do see that but also I I write about in
00:31:44
maybe you should talk to someone one of the patients that I write about is this young woman uh who I call Charlotte in
00:31:50
the book and Charlotte is somebody who is in her 20s she's attractive and
00:31:56
professional successful and um you know like a lovely person but she keeps going after men who
00:32:05
replicate her childhood and she's not alone in that most of us if we haven't
00:32:10
really worked through whatever it was that that we didn't get growing up or that we got too much of or not enough of
00:32:17
what happens is we end up seeking out the familiar we end up our unconscious has our subconscious has
00:32:25
radar for people who are like the person that hurt us in childhood because it's
00:32:31
our experience of Love even if it wasn't a positive experience it's the only experience that we have had of love and
00:32:37
so the imprint that we have is oh that's love so what happened for Charlotte was she would meet somebody and he would
00:32:45
seem very different from her parents her mother was very depressed her father was very kind of either very present for her
00:32:53
or than abandoning her and um he also so drank too much and had alcohol issues so
00:33:00
she would find somebody she would think oh this person's so different from either of my parents then she'd get to
00:33:06
know him and realize oh wow he drinks a lot too didn't realize that um except
00:33:11
her subconscious did like she somehow had radar for that person or this person
00:33:17
yells a lot too or this person is really inconsistent with me they're either love bombing me or they're disappearing and I
00:33:24
never know where I stand with them that was her experience of her father so if once she really kind of processed
00:33:30
what happened with her family she started going out with different kinds of people meaning she started being attracted to different kinds of people
00:33:36
in that transition period She was like oh I'm going out with this person but I'm not he seems really good for me but
00:33:42
I'm not really attracted to him that was because she was still attracted to sort of the father and the mother the
00:33:48
different qualities the vicy mom and the and the unavailable mom and then the dad who was kind of inconsistent with his
00:33:55
availability and also his temper and his drinking so it's interesting to see that she would date people just like that
00:34:00
without realizing it at first that she was choosing them so I think that one thing that therapy can really do for people is to help you see why is it that
00:34:07
you're having trouble meeting someone why is it that you're having trouble once you're in relationship with someone if you get that far maintaining that
00:34:15
relationship or finding someone who's good for you if you sat down with someone who had repeatedly made the
00:34:21
choice to date and have one night stands with people that were clearly
00:34:27
going to hurt them or were clearly not going to call them back the next day but they had this pattern of continually going for people that were clearly
00:34:34
either not interested in them or saw them as like a one night stand Transaction what would your assumption
00:34:39
be about that individual's backstory you know I hate to make assumptions but I would say in
00:34:46
general what I would probably find would be that this person um is terrified of
00:34:53
intimacy this person doesn't feel that any body will love them they feel unlovable they feel like nobody would
00:35:01
would want to be in a relationship with them so it's you can't fire me I quit right so it's I'm not even going to put
00:35:08
myself in that position I know this is going to be a one night stand I don't have any expectations I'm empowered
00:35:15
right this is the story they tell themselves is I'm so empowered that I don't have to feel I don't have to get
00:35:21
attached look at me I I am above my feelings but the thing is they're really
00:35:27
terrified of their feelings they're terrified of being attached they're terrified of seeing whether somebody can
00:35:34
love them because they're worried that they're going to get what's confirmed uh by somebody else which
00:35:41
would be the confirmation would be oh look I tried I got attached this person and they didn't reciprocate it or we
00:35:47
dated for a month and then they broke up with me so see that proves that I am unlovable and that doesn't prove
00:35:54
anything it just proves that this person was not the right person for you where would you start with trying to help
00:35:59
somebody that was in that situation I would go straight to the the question of lovability I would go straight to the question of you know what would it be
00:36:06
like to feel your feelings and how terrifying is that for you to feel attached to someone how scary is that to
00:36:13
feel like they are the Arbiter of your worth and how can we switch that so when you go on a date it's not will they love
00:36:19
me but am I interested in them do I want to spend time with them so it's not
00:36:26
about am I going to be chosen but I get to be the Chooser what is that like
00:36:31
because that person has never been able to be the Chooser and yes sometimes you will choose someone who doesn't reciprocate that but you also get to
00:36:39
choose someone sometimes you will choose some uh you someone will choose you but you don't reciprocate that so you just
00:36:45
you know so it's not this person is not saying whoever you go out with they are not determining your worth that you know
00:36:52
what your worth is no matter what happens and I think you really have to work on the self worth part and where
00:36:58
the story came from because we all come into therapy with narratives about ourselves and there's stories that
00:37:03
someone told us about ourselves either verbally they told us like you're not good enough you're not this enough
00:37:09
you're not that enough or they told us with their actions like they they weren't nurturing to you they didn't
00:37:15
love you in the way that you you saw other kids being loved and so you took in this story of I must not be lovable
00:37:22
jumping back to something you said earlier because I was thinking about this the the dis the general disc amongst men and women these days you
00:37:28
used the word feminism earlier there's been a lot of changes in society's expectations and um views of
00:37:37
the role of a man and a woman in a relationship but more broadly in the
00:37:42
workplace in society and this has caused a lot of interesting dynamics that I
00:37:48
think might be having an impact on um people's expectations and their amount
00:37:54
of satisfaction in dates some of the St studies I was looking at ahead of your arrival today was one study that shows
00:38:00
that 71% of people say it's very important for a man to be able to support family financially to be a good
00:38:06
husband or partner but by comparison only 32% say it's very important for a woman to do the same thing and that's
00:38:12
Pew research survey um but also another study that said this is on Sage journals
00:38:19
that men showed less attraction towards women who outsmarted them and when you look at the changes in income and
00:38:27
intellect in 1980 women earned about 60% of what men did but by 2020 that had
00:38:33
risen to 83% and there's obviously still issues with uh gender pay gaps and and such but
00:38:40
what we're seeing here is the kind of macro trend is that women are more educated and have more money the
00:38:45
expectation that a man is going to be the provider in the household still persists and men don't want to date
00:38:53
again speaking generally According to some studies that show attraction references women that outsmart them
00:38:58
right so the the interesting thing is that when people say you know I want I
00:39:05
want to have flexibility meaning a lot of women will say this I want to have
00:39:10
they'll say I absolutely expect that I'm going to have a career but I also don't want to be the sole provider for the
00:39:18
family um and if they're really honest a lot of women will say I would like my husband to earn more than me at the same
00:39:25
time more women are getting college degrees more women are getting graduate degrees more women are getting ahead of
00:39:33
men in those areas and so women will also say and I want someone who's as educated as I am but there aren't as
00:39:40
many men just number-wise so if there are more women who are educated meaning
00:39:45
college graduate school than men but those women want men who have those
00:39:52
degrees they're not the there's low inventory of men who have that and so there's a there's sort of a problem with
00:39:58
that um and so what I really want to encourage people to do is when they're
00:40:03
dating and this is not about lowering your standards it's about saying to women there are lots of kinds of
00:40:09
intelligence so you yes you want to be with someone who is equally intelligent but that doesn't mean that
00:40:15
they have the same degrees that you have who do you want to talk to who do you have interesting conversations with is
00:40:21
this causing an issue for successful women that are that are over 30 I was reading an article I think it was on the Washington Post where um a lady was
00:40:29
interviewing another lady who had written a book called I think it's called like the gender gap or something and they concluded that much of the
00:40:36
reason why successful women above the age of 30 were struggling in dating is because of this issue that men don't
00:40:43
want to be with a woman that is like better than them and it's somewhat emasculating to a man and so I I've had
00:40:49
lots of private conversations with very successful women I know a lot of successful women that are very exceptional relationships but I've also
00:40:56
got got a small cohort of women that tell me that they're struggling in dating because they're too successful
00:41:02
and men don't like it and are emasculated is that true I think there's this narrative in our culture that women
00:41:09
are women who are successful are not finding men because they're focused too much on their career and I think that's
00:41:15
absolutely false I think that when you are out there in the work environment you are meeting men and that's where
00:41:22
you're and you're meeting other people you're meeting other women who maybe are married their husbands have friends
00:41:27
you're out there in the world and people are seeing you so I think and also you have meaning and purpose in your life
00:41:33
and you're doing something you enjoy and I think that that's very attractive I think that there are you know I think
00:41:39
that people are wanting someone who can not live their work which is different
00:41:46
from being successful and because you want a partner who's also available to you but I don't think that it's because women
00:41:52
are too focused on their careers that that's what's happening I think it's because of this Gap app that the women who are maybe achieving certain things
00:42:00
in the world are not finding men who are achieving at the same level and so they're not there just aren't enough men
00:42:06
for those women the numbers just don't work out and so then there's this
00:42:11
question of as a woman who is a very high achieving do you have to be with
00:42:17
somebody who is high achieving in the same way and that's a very hard cultural
00:42:22
shift for a lot of women to make and the other problem is that when high
00:42:28
achieving women want to be with high achieving men a lot of those High achieving men are not great partners and
00:42:35
that's the thing that so so they might be dating a lot of high achieving men and they maybe they are finding them but
00:42:40
then they find that this person doesn't have time for me or this person isn't really nurturing or this person is um
00:42:49
you know married to his job and I don't like that I think it's hard when you have two people who are extremely
00:42:56
focused on their professional lives and neither one of them has time for the
00:43:01
relationship so I'm not saying you know there are a lot of relationships where that works really well where both people are very focused on their careers but
00:43:07
they also understand each other in a way that helps them and then there are the relationships where you have two very
00:43:13
high achieving people and they both expect that the other person is going to be more involved in the relationship to
00:43:19
help them support their own career and they can't because they're supporting the their career so you can't you can't
00:43:25
do both yeah just with this stat in mind that 71% of people say it's very important for a man to be able to support a family
00:43:31
financially to be a good husband or partner if we get to the point a point which is kind of the the trajectory
00:43:37
we're on where women and men are earning the same women already have more sort of college degrees than men by about I
00:43:43
think it's roughly about 10% at the moment roughly we're going to find ourselves where yeah
00:43:49
expectations for what a man can offer are really really high but reality is
00:43:54
really low and then you that it feels like that the amount of women that are not finding what they want is going to
00:44:00
continue to increase and the amount of men that don't feel like they are good enough for a woman because they're not
00:44:07
smart enough they don't have enough money they can't contribute in the same way is also going to increase but then also with General working Dynamics we're
00:44:14
seeing that people are getting married later and later they're having less and less kids so are you at all concerned
00:44:20
about this trajectory yes very um because I think it leaves a lot of people who really want to partner and
00:44:26
and could really enjoy having a partner who maybe is different from what this cultural norm is they don't go after
00:44:33
that so A woman will say oh I'm not going to even go on a date with this guy because he's not successful enough um
00:44:40
you know we're too different and a man on the other hand might say I'm not going to even go on a date with her because she's so focused on her career
00:44:47
or you know or I'm not good enough for her so they they don't even get a chance to even see if they might be a good
00:44:54
match and and sometimes it's it's a great match because you don't necessarily want two people who are
00:44:59
exactly the same and I see this all the time with couples who come in for couples therapy where they thought that
00:45:06
what was so good about their relationship when they first got together was we're so the same and then
00:45:12
they find that wait a minute but there's no one here to be more of the nurturer
00:45:17
or there's no one here to spend more time with the household or there's no one here to do more of kind of
00:45:23
logistical things in the house because we're both doing exactly the same job I was say isn't that sort of central to
00:45:28
the equality narrative that you should share the responsibilities right so equality doesn't mean that you have
00:45:34
exactly the same responsibilities it means that you feel that there's not a power Dynamic so equality means one
00:45:41
person doesn't have more power than the other person but that doesn't mean that you know I do laundry 2.5 days of the
00:45:48
week or 3.5 days of the week and you do laundry 3.5 days of the week maybe someone only does their their
00:45:54
responsibility is the laundry that doesn't mean that there's a power Dynamic it means the other person maybe
00:45:59
they're always doing the dishes or whatever it is it doesn't have to be split up in this way so I think that
00:46:05
when people think about having an egalitarian marriage we're talking about that there's not a power differential
00:46:11
but you still get to choose like a woman might say and I'm being stereotypical here it might be the man but often it's
00:46:17
the woman who says you know what I want to do I want to switch to part-time with
00:46:23
my work so that doesn't mean she has less power in the marriage because he makes more now because he's working
00:46:28
full-time it means they've divided up things differently because that was their
00:46:33
choice that was that was something that was chosen it wasn't like you can't work it was I would like to do less do you
00:46:41
tend to see issues unique to relationships when a woman is earning more than a man yeah I do I still think
00:46:48
this is something that um is is very Primal for us around um you know what it
00:46:54
means I think that women women sometimes feel resentful that's why they want to be with someone it's funny because a
00:47:00
woman can be making a lot of money and she won't even go out with someone who makes the same amount she has to go out
00:47:05
with someone who makes more which is interesting because she won't necessarily say that I think it's hard to acknowledge the contradictions and I
00:47:13
think for men the same thing that a man will say you know I want a woman who has her own life I want somebody who is
00:47:18
doing something in the world that is important to her but I don't want her to make more money than me it's hard to say
00:47:24
that out loud this comes out in couple therapy where people start talking about wow there is this difference and maybe
00:47:29
it didn't even start out that way maybe it started out where he was making more and then things shifted and then she
00:47:34
started making more and it changed something in their Dynamic and so they start fighting a lot but they're not
00:47:40
fighting about that they're fighting about all different kinds of things and so it comes out in different behaviors and they come to coup's therapy saying
00:47:46
we're having we're fighting all the time or we're not having sex or here's what's happening and it turns out it was really
00:47:52
about this issue of who has power now but they didn't realize it was about that or they weren't willing to kind of
00:47:58
look at that do you think it's getting increasingly harder to know what the role of a man and a woman are cuz I think you know I've had so many
00:48:05
conversations on and off this podcast with people who are have sons or daughters it's often the ones that have
00:48:11
sons I'm thinking about a lady that I know and she says she's so confused by what to tell her son a man is these days
00:48:18
and you know when I think about suicidality and how how much of a a big killer it is especially in the UK I know
00:48:24
it's sort of Western Trend but I think it's the biggest killer of men under the age of 45 is themselves I'm thinking you
00:48:31
know there's often a narrative that that's because masculinity is changing they're
00:48:37
not being masculine enough and then there's another narrative that says no it's because they're not being feminine enough what's typically associated with
00:48:44
sort of feminine traits yeah well it's true that more men die by Suicide than
00:48:49
women do and some people say well that's because the method that men choose is we lethal but I also think think that
00:48:56
that's only part of the story because when men do come into therapy they they
00:49:01
truly truly feel that conflicted about exactly what you said that I don't know
00:49:09
how to be a man in today's world it used to be much more clear now I'm not saying that was a good thing that it used to be
00:49:15
much more clear because there were all kinds of power dynamics that that weren't so healthy for men and women but
00:49:20
I think now what men are saying is um you know I maybe don't want to be the
00:49:25
person solely responsible for you know like I would like my partner to also bring in some income but you know that
00:49:33
creates all kinds of problems or I want to be able to again open up to and and
00:49:38
talk to my partner in this way but I'm afraid that it makes her feel unsafe so
00:49:44
so what do we do what what does it mean and and I'm raised so I could say I'm raising a boy who is now 18 years old
00:49:50
and even things like you know does he still pay he always wants to pay on his a date and then some people don't like
00:49:58
that and he thinks well I'm just being I'm just being sort of shivil RIS or you
00:50:04
know but but there are all these ways in which you don't know sort of like what is expected of you so it's like if he
00:50:11
pays then some people take offense if he doesn't pay then some people take offense and he just doesn't know what to
00:50:17
do you know like how much of these things that I feel are being sort of the role of a man in a nice way like
00:50:24
protecting taking care of um will be offensive to some people because they see it as kind of a power Dynamic so
00:50:32
what is the role of of a man it's really unclear I mean that's the thing and I think that that it really needs to be
00:50:38
discussed and that's where I think there's hope is that when people can actually say hey I'd really like to pay
00:50:44
on this date and you know if she says well I don't feel comfortable with that I think a question is okay that's fine
00:50:50
you we can split it but I want to let's talk about why and to be able to talk about you know what are what does this
00:50:57
mean that I pay what does that mean to you um you know I think a lot of people would say oh well it means like you know
00:51:04
that that you expect something back from me you expect you know that that we're going to have sex or you expect you know
00:51:09
whatever these old ideas are yeah yeah um and and I think that we need to be having these conversations that's my
00:51:15
point is that it's not so important that we that we know what it means it's more important that we know what it means to the person that we are interested in
00:51:22
what does it mean to them it's going to mean something different to everybody so if we can't talk to this person that we're interested in about what it means
00:51:30
then we're just going to both people are going to be mired in confusion yeah I'm a bit of a old school romantic as they
00:51:37
say my my partner she has a great job she has her own money but I just
00:51:42
absolutely feel the need to open up every door for her pay for every bill for her I would absolutely not have it
00:51:47
any other way maybe that's cuz I'm insecure or something I don't know but I just I watch my dad do it for my mom and
00:51:55
it's like hard wide into my DNA that my role is to protect take care of do everything I
00:52:02
can to support and if she I yeah God I
00:52:08
I'd really struggle with her paying for me and she's got her own money she's she's got her own business her own job but have you talked about it or it just
00:52:14
worked out that way she never said she never said can I pay this once or can I yeah yeah yeah yeah she pays she pays
00:52:21
you know she's she it's like a bit of a competition she'll like sneak off to the bath anday and stuff but generally I I
00:52:28
think it's I've always wanted to do that on dates and I I think you know if you sat people down and ask them the
00:52:33
question you go on a first date with a guy and he asks to split the bill or he ask or you know he doesn't immediately
00:52:40
pay would that be an ick for you would that turn you off them that would be a
00:52:46
huge ick for me yes so even for you it would be yes yes if you went on a first date with a guy and he didn't pay yes
00:52:53
would you absolutely why it's hard to articulate because and this is what
00:52:58
people you know will say all women will say of all ages um I think for my age we
00:53:03
grew up with that was the expectation I think for younger Generations maybe it's not the expectation but I think a lot of
00:53:09
people still like it or want it um there's something there's something
00:53:14
about it that that says I really uh I really valued our time together I care
00:53:20
I'm interested it's a way of signaling interest but I think even if the person isn't interested and you're going to see
00:53:25
each other again it's just a nice gesture mhm but I don't have any any rational way of
00:53:32
explaining why and if and if I were to get rational about it I would talk
00:53:37
myself out of it yes I think that's a very honest answer and then the counter
00:53:42
sort of rebuttal to that means okay so if men are expected to pay then we're
00:53:48
going to need more money yes yes and it gets very expensive to date yeah it does I mean you know people
00:53:55
will say oh you can go on a hike it doesn't doesn't cost anything you can do a picnic you can um you know watch a
00:54:02
movie there are all kinds of things you can do but the reality is you it's kind
00:54:07
of like I remember that that old Chris Rock joke in the first three months of a relationship you're not you you're the ambassador of you so you know you want
00:54:14
to impress somebody you're you're trying to show interest in somebody um but I do think there's that that really Primal
00:54:22
need for safety that is gender based that we don't like to talk about or
00:54:28
acknowledge but that I think women really I think if if somebody doesn't pay on a first date if a guy doesn't pay
00:54:34
on a first date I think a lot of women don't feel safe that's what it comes down to it's a it's a tricky world and
00:54:41
it's getting increasingly trickier it feels you know it it feels like an insult almost that the person doesn't
00:54:47
pay not many people some people would but no one would really publicly say that though because it's like not socially acceptable to say you expect
00:54:54
but in private conversation of course everyone knows that if they went on a date with with a man so in a
00:54:59
heterosexual relationship and the man either asked to split the bill or to or suggested that you might
00:55:05
pay this person's not going to get a second date of course not no no unless
00:55:11
it was the woman who said um oh no let me split that with you but if it was his decision and he said oh let's let's
00:55:18
split this s put it in the middle no no I I I in therapies the young woman came
00:55:24
to me and she said she went out with this guy and they went to a cafe and
00:55:29
they got uh coffees and he uh asked her
00:55:35
to split it coffee and she said and she was having so much fun on the date until
00:55:41
the bill came and she was shocked and she thought okay well she made it it was
00:55:47
very personal to her first she thought I must he must really really have had a horrible time with me to have wanted to
00:55:55
not pay for my $5 coffee and then he asked her out again
00:56:00
and she said to me I don't understand this at all so he was interested in me and he didn't pay for my coffee and she
00:56:07
did not go out with him again so these are the kinds of signals that it it very much is emblematic of something who pays
00:56:15
on that first date do you agree with that decision that she made 100% And I mean I didn't say that as her
00:56:23
therapist it's really about understanding it for her but but I I do agree with that decision and I and I
00:56:29
think it's because there's something there's something like a half note off
00:56:35
about a person who doesn't even see that it's a $5 coffee and you're interested
00:56:42
in this person and she wasn't making any moves to pay she was just sitting there for a very long time and the the she
00:56:50
said the way she told the story was that the person came around and couple times and said are you you ready and the guy
00:56:56
said oh no we're not ready yet and then at a certain point he said to her oh do you want to put your credit card down
00:57:02
right to her and so she just said I could never go out with somebody like that even though they had a really good
00:57:07
time before that so if we Zoom back out then MH so is are you saying that that
00:57:12
is a Telltale sign of a broader character issue that this individual has because earlier you said that we really
00:57:18
should be focusing on like character traits is that a red flag of some kind of other character trait I think that
00:57:25
when things are hard in the beginning that's not a good sign so I think that when there's like a big disconnect in
00:57:32
the beginning that you should pay attention to that so a big disconnect is
00:57:37
not he you know the example I gave earlier of you know he said yes to the top water that's different from he
00:57:44
didn't pay for my coffee that's that's different the top water might be oh I don't know is is is he cheap I don't
00:57:51
know let's see let me get to know him better this is this is about generosity they're different things and
00:57:58
so you know I I feel like relationships I always say to people when they when they Overlook things in the beginning I
00:58:05
think there are two camps on this there's the people who think everything is a red flag that's not like the tap
00:58:10
water not a red flag but there are people who um don't pay enough attention
00:58:15
to the red flags in the beginning so they say yes this person they kind of disappeared for a couple days and I
00:58:22
didn't like that and you know but but or they they were they're late all the time or you know whatever it is that doesn't
00:58:29
necessarily mean it's a deal breaker but it's kind of a a flag that you want to discuss early on so what what happens is
00:58:37
if you don't discuss it is a person will say you know after they're now they're in a relationship and they've been dating for several months and and and
00:58:43
they're moving along and the person says I can't stand it when you're late every time and he says why is this a pro I've
00:58:50
always been late why is this a problem now right so if you bring it up early before the cement so you know I always
00:58:58
say relationships are like cement that there's room for things to move in the beginning before things kind of really
00:59:05
get hard and difficult to change but once the cetri it's much harder to change those habits or those
00:59:10
interactions or the dance that you're doing with the other person so if you don't like something in the beginning
00:59:16
you might want to bring it up to see how much wiggle room is there here can this
00:59:21
person be more aware of being on time because I don't like sitting there for half an hour every time we make plans
00:59:29
we're getting married a lot less and we're getting married um later later yes so there was a stat that I I found that
00:59:35
said for the first time ever people over the age of 30 have been haven't been
00:59:40
married in higher numbers than ever before so yeah marriage is getting later and later in people's lives but I also
00:59:46
found this really interesting graph which I printed out which shows that there seems to be an optimal time to get
00:59:53
married yes I was just going to mention that there's a window so I'll put it up on the screen for anyone that's looking
00:59:58
and I'll put it in the description below but it essentially shows that if you get married after 30 MH you're more likely
01:00:06
to get divorced than if you got married between 25 and 30 right so there's a sweet spot so if you get married too
01:00:12
young you're more likely to get divorced meaning if you get married sort of under 20 I think it's 22 or 23 um but if you
01:00:20
get married over I think it's 28 you have more likelihood of getting
01:00:25
divorced so the study which I have in front of me by The Institute for family studies says there is an Optimum age to
01:00:31
get married if you want to statistically avoid a chance of divorce and it seems to be around ages 25 to 30ish someone
01:00:39
who marries at 25 is over 50% less likely to get divorced than someone who Weds at age 20 before the age of 32 or
01:00:47
so each additional year of agent marriage reduces the odds of Divorce by
01:00:52
11% however after 32 years old um every year increases your chance of Divorce by
01:00:59
5% and I couldn't figure out why oh I think there are several reasons for this
01:01:04
so first of all I think it's sort of obvious about marrying to Young that you you don't necessarily have the skills
01:01:10
you aren't really um established in your own life and uh you don't necessarily
01:01:15
have the maturity to do what you need to do to be in that kind of relationship
01:01:21
for the long term you also don't really know who you are yet and so you might think that you want a certain kind of
01:01:26
life and you find out your partner wants something very different but once you get into your mid 20s and even sort of
01:01:34
later 20s it's an optimal time because you have a better sense of who you are
01:01:40
um you know more of what you want and you can grow together as a couple and I
01:01:47
think that's really important you're going to have more shared experiences you're going to know more of each other's families your parents are
01:01:53
probably still alive on each side um you're going to get to know each other's siblings if you have siblings you're
01:01:59
going to be more integrated into each other's lives as you get older first of
01:02:04
all you're more sort of set in your ways you're we talked about rigidity earlier you're more rigid um you have different
01:02:12
expectations I think when you're younger you're more flexible in terms of uh just
01:02:17
being more openminded we get less open-minded generally as we get older um
01:02:22
around relationship around the things that we expect and we also have a
01:02:28
history as we get older so we have more negative experiences of maybe heartbreak being
01:02:34
broken up with breaking up with people um relationships that didn't work out that then inform the way we behave in
01:02:41
our relationships and I like to say it's almost like we're we're punishing our current partner for a crime they didn't
01:02:47
commit so if you were in a relationship before where maybe you were cheated on or someone didn't treat you well then
01:02:54
you are less trusting of the partner that you're with or you're more on guard or more closed off because you're
01:03:00
worried you're not going to get treated well so it's almost like the the more dating experiences that you have some
01:03:06
people would think counterintuitively they would think um you know if I have more dating experience then I'm going to
01:03:12
be a better partner later on but often because those were not great dating experiences sure you might have learn
01:03:18
something in them but if you have too many of them it's good to maybe have a relationship or two before you get
01:03:24
married but to have five um it's harder right because you have all this baggage
01:03:30
that you're bringing in and the other person who's also your age has all this baggage that they're bringing in and
01:03:35
there might also be something it's kind of like if a fight breaks out in every bar you're going to maybe it's you that
01:03:41
maybe you are doing something in relationship and that is why it's not that you haven't been able to meet
01:03:47
someone it's that you've been pairing up with people in a way that is not really healthy so and you haven't spent the the
01:03:54
time to really figure it out so you're just going to keep repeating and repeating those not great relationships
01:03:59
even if you marry the person it might not last because something has not been working in those last five relationships
01:04:05
and you haven't figured that out yet in your Ted Talk you talk about part of getting to know yourself is getting to
01:04:12
unknow yourself why do we have to get to unknow ourselves well I think that so many
01:04:19
people think I'm going to come into therapy and I'm going to learn so much about myself and you do but part of
01:04:27
learning about yourself is learning what the faulty narratives are that you've been carrying around whether it's I'm
01:04:33
unlovable or I can't trust anyone or I'm no good at this or this thing is wrong
01:04:40
with me these again are stories that you picked up about yourself from a long
01:04:47
time ago and it might not even have been your parents it might have been at school maybe you were bullied in school
01:04:52
or maybe you were in an envir environment that maybe you had ADHD and you were told you weren't smart because
01:04:58
people didn't realize that you learned differently and you actually are quite intelligent so you have these stories so
01:05:04
it's to unknow people will come in and say well I'm not that I'm not really smart well you have to unknow that
01:05:09
because that might not be true let's find out so it's really you know it's interesting because I was a writer long
01:05:16
before I was a therapist and I still em a writer but I Ed so much of of writing and narrative in the therapy to kind of
01:05:24
help people edit their stories let's look at you know is the protagonist going in circles or is the protagonist
01:05:30
moving forward who are the supporting characters and and do the major characters need to be more minor
01:05:36
characters in your life and do some of the minor characters need to be more major characters and and what is going
01:05:42
to be the next chapter how do we look at where this story is going so a lot of this is unknowing stuff about the
01:05:49
character which is you you know if you come up with a character as a writer and you say well this person's not very
01:05:55
smart they're kind of weird and they're unlovable well you're going to write the story a certain way thinking the
01:06:01
character has those traits but if you say actually this person's quite smart and they're quite lovable and they're quite attractive well you're going to
01:06:07
write a different next chapter for them I've always on that point about sort of narratives we've written I've
01:06:14
always considered myself to be very productive maybe the more honest answer
01:06:20
is a bit of a workaholic to some degree I think that my work is fundamentally attached and associated
01:06:27
with my own self-esteem so I think when I'm working really really hard and I feel really
01:06:32
productive I think at some deep level I think I'm worth more or I'm like I fit
01:06:38
in and kind of it goes back to when I was younger and I felt like I didn't fit in it feels like I'm more valuable now
01:06:43
the problem you have as an adult when you're trying to achieve a different set of goals like have a a healthy relationship is this kind of gets in
01:06:50
your way and I I think I found that in myself that I still have this urge to be really successful and work really hard
01:06:56
because at some level it's making it's doing something for my image of myself but as I get older I kind of need to
01:07:01
figure out a way to drop that down a little bit or else I'm going to miss out on something that's going to make me happy which is relationships and a lot
01:07:08
of people that I speak to a lot of people that listen to this podcast are in a similar situation where they just
01:07:13
can't get off the train in terms of their work yeah yeah so we were talking about defense mechanisms and so one of
01:07:20
the defense mechanisms is where you take something that comes from an unhealthy
01:07:25
place and you put it into something that looks on the surface healthier so I
01:07:30
don't feel worthy or as worthy as I would like to so I'm going to succeed in this
01:07:36
incredible way so on the surface it looks great it looks like you're doing something really healthy but actually
01:07:42
you're not really working on that self-worth piece another example might be um somebody who has a lot of anger
01:07:48
and they take up um boxing right um or they become a surgeon because they cut
01:07:54
into people you see this a lot um where somebody takes their anger so they put it into something that looks healthy but
01:08:01
they're not really dealing with the underlying issue which is the anger you see that a lot that people that have anger issues sometimes take up roles
01:08:07
like surgeons sure yeah really yeah anything where you where you can do
01:08:13
again boxing it could be anything where you where you're putting it into a socially acceptable container as opposed
01:08:20
to dealing with the issue so there's nothing wrong with being a great surgeon there's nothing wrong with being
01:08:26
somebody who succeeds in work that they love but then what happens is when
01:08:32
you're not doing the thing that gets the societal approval then where does you
01:08:37
know what do you do with in one case your anger and the other case your selfworth and so I'm glad that you're looking at at the self-worth piece
01:08:44
because that's going to be important because you're not always going to get it from your work how do you improve
01:08:49
your selfworth what would you do with a patient like me I would you know I I think it's we we do this on the podcast
01:08:55
where we do something very practical where we have people make a list of the
01:09:00
things that other people would say so there's two columns there's one what
01:09:06
would other people say are your best qualities that have nothing to do with your work okay what do they appreciate most about you and then what do you
01:09:13
appreciate most about yourself that has nothing to do with work that you think other people don't see and when you when
01:09:18
you start to look at those they're very quiet at first you know people don't have a long list they're of like I don't
01:09:24
really know and and I'm looking for really tiny things like this person really appreciated that when they were
01:09:29
sick I called them this person really appreciates that I'm funny that I make
01:09:35
them laugh I appreciate that about myself you might say right you might say like I really appreciate about myself or
01:09:40
I appreciate that I can be calm under really stressful circumstances um I appreciate that I um
01:09:49
I notice my partner and I do nice things for my partner I appreci not my partner
01:09:54
appreciates that that'll be on one column but the other column is I appreciate that about myself so looking
01:10:00
at how can I pay more attention to some of these areas that I I don't pay enough
01:10:05
attention to because I can only see the real shiny thing out there which is how many people you know how many millions of people follow me or how many people
01:10:13
um you know download the podcast those kinds of things and is there a reason why Okay the reason why you separate
01:10:18
work from that is because you're trying to find your self-esteem in other places outside of the work right so it's both and it's not to say don't get don't
01:10:26
don't feel worthy because of what you do with your work that's a big part of what we do with our lives think of the number of hours that we spend in work we're
01:10:34
spending most of our days doing work so of course we want to get self-worth from that but we also want to know that we
01:10:41
have other areas in which we are worthy and that we don't pay enough attention we don't give ourselves enough credit
01:10:48
it's kind of like in a relationship there's a statistic about the bank of Goodwill so in a healthy relationship
01:10:55
there are we think of deposits of how many positive interactions do you have with your partner to how many negative
01:11:00
interactions do you have and so you want to have 20 positive interactions for
01:11:06
every one negative interaction in a
01:11:12
relationship and when things are not good you want to have you you know you you hope you can do five positive ones
01:11:18
to one negative one but that's that's a lot so it's it's really noticing these are these are small little deposits that
01:11:25
you make like I held I I took my partner's hand when we were walking down the street you know those are like small
01:11:31
positive interactions you're not counting them it's just a way of being but what happens is when your self-worth
01:11:37
is all in one bucket you don't notice you're not making enough deposits to yourself of into the self-worth bank so
01:11:44
it's it really is about noticing what are the deposits that I'm making so I'm making a lot of deposits in the in the work bucket but I'm not making a lot of
01:11:51
deposits in noticing that was really I really liked that I was really funny in at that dinner party that was really fun
01:11:58
um I was really kind to that stranger on the street that was really nice of me do
01:12:03
you think that some people are scared to go to therapy because they think if they are to heal from something whatever that
01:12:09
means it will rob them of something that they value I if I go to therapy and I work through my childhood trauma then
01:12:15
maybe I won't be as ambitious or successful or driven Etc I think the
01:12:21
fear is I will have to change I will have to change and I will have to do something different and I might not like
01:12:27
that and that's why people are like if I go to therapy and I take off my mask and
01:12:33
this person sees the truth of who I am and I see the truth of who I am I might need to do something difficult and I
01:12:40
might need to get rid of one of my defense mechanisms like I'm avoidant maybe right or I'm or I might not be
01:12:47
able to um you know to do things that maybe I get away with that are not very
01:12:53
healthy because they're easier in your book you you say something your new book maybe
01:13:00
you should talk to someone you say something that really surprised me which is that sometimes when someone changes
01:13:06
those around them will sabotage them and basically get in the way of that change
01:13:12
because it changes the dynamic that that relationship has with a person and I mean we see this generally when someone
01:13:17
becomes successful for example their friends from their Hometown might be a little bit resistant because they want to keep the Dynamics the way that they
01:13:24
are but the examples that you talk about in the book about like you know someone gets over their alcohol addiction and
01:13:29
then a friend might sabotage them by I know giving them alcohol or taking them to a bar yeah were really really
01:13:35
striking yeah that happened with Charlotte in the book when she realized that her drinking was a problem she was the young woman who's in her 20s and was
01:13:41
dating and she realized that she drinks too much and it's really affecting her life and her functioning and so she
01:13:48
decided that she was going to do something about that and then when her she was having a birthday party and her
01:13:55
friend said oh let's do it at this bar and she said no I'd rather do it at this other place because I don't want to be in that environment and her friends are
01:14:02
like you're no fun anymore and you don't come out with us anymore but the but the real issue is that she was holding up a
01:14:10
mirror without realizing it to her friends because they were saying oh maybe we aren't drinking in a healthy
01:14:17
way and they didn't want to look at that so if they could get her to go back to the old way we see this in couples a lot
01:14:23
when one person decides they're going to get healthy in a certain way like I'm going to start exercising and the person
01:14:28
starts exercising and the other person doesn't exercise at all and they're really unhealthy and that person says
01:14:33
why do you get up early and go to the gym you're no fun anymore you know you're obsessed with exercise when
01:14:40
they're not they're just going to the gym in a normal way and really they're feeling threatened they're like you know
01:14:45
this is changing the dynamic between us cuz we used to be both unfit and now my partner is looking really healthy and
01:14:50
hot and now it's really clear that I'm not really healthy and I don't look as good as I could look and maybe I'm going
01:14:57
to have to do this and they don't really want to they're resistant to doing that and the partner's not asking them to do
01:15:03
to go to the gym they're saying I'm going to the gym you do what you want but there's this implicit pressure of I
01:15:11
have to look at myself that's why people again don't come to therapy is because I'm going to have to look at myself and
01:15:17
maybe make some changes that are healthier and I'm not sure I'm ready to do that yet and I write in the book
01:15:23
about the stages of change because I think it's so important that people understand that New Year's resolutions
01:15:29
for example don't often work because people think I just decide this thing I have this goal I'm going to do it and I
01:15:35
either succeed or I fail and that's just not true there are these stages that people go through and it starts with
01:15:42
precontemplation where you don't even know you're thinking of making a change and that's usually like if your partner starts exercising you didn't realize
01:15:49
that maybe in the back of your mind that that was something you had been thinking about but weren't ready to deal with
01:15:54
contemplation is you know you're thinking about making a change but you're not ready to do it yet that's usually when people come to therapy
01:16:00
they're thinking about it but they don't really they're not really ready preparation is when you you start to get
01:16:06
ready you're preparing you're you're maybe getting a gym membership or you're um taking an anger management class or
01:16:13
whatever you're doing and then action is when you put the change and it might
01:16:19
also be like you're preparing to break up with someone who's not good for you so you're getting thinking about how am I going to do this what are the
01:16:25
logistics of this and then when you action is you actually do the thing you break up you go to the gym you change
01:16:32
jobs you apply for a job that you always wanted you go back to grad school you do the thing you wanted to do but then the
01:16:39
next stage is the most important stage which is maintenance and maintenance is it's not like you're on this upward
01:16:45
trajectory and and if you if you you go off the trajectory then you failed it's not like that maintenance is how does
01:16:52
this become more habitual in my life so let's use the breakup example um you broke up with this person you're having
01:16:58
a really bad day you're feeling really lonely you called them at midnight or you texted them at midnight because oh I
01:17:05
don't know you know like and so now you say oh I better get back in a relation I guess I'm back in a relationship with
01:17:11
them no no no no no you you slipped off it's okay then you say you know what I was feeling really lonely I didn't know
01:17:17
how to cope with it I'm going to go to therapy I'm going to have an extra session I'm going to call my friend I'm
01:17:22
going to watch a TV show that that that I like I'm going to read a book that I like it will feel different in the
01:17:27
morning next time that's what I'm going to do and so you you have to get used to you know we talked about the familiar
01:17:34
earlier about going toward familiar Partners making a change is really hard because we're changing something that was familiar to us it's like when I was
01:17:41
in therapy um my therapist said you know you remind me of this cartoon and it's
01:17:46
of a prisoner shaking the bars desperately trying to get out but on the right and the left it's open no no bars
01:17:54
so that's us where we think you know I would like to make a change but I'm
01:17:59
really afraid of going outs I'm more comfortable being in jail in this miserable situation than knowing that I
01:18:05
have freedom but I have to change I'm going to have to take responsibility for my life if I walk around those bars and
01:18:11
so I think with change it's really about how do I give myself
01:18:17
self-compassion when I have trouble making the change and help myself get
01:18:22
back on track and what kind of support do I need people think if I beat myself up if I self flatulate if I tell myself
01:18:28
I'm awful and I'm a failure I'm going to get back on track because that's going to help me no it's not going to help you in the short term it might help you a
01:18:34
little bit but what's really going to help you is to have self-compassion because that actually gives you more
01:18:39
accountability you're more able to say to yourself okay let me think about what I can do differently it's kind of like
01:18:46
if your kid comes home from school and says I did really badly I failed this test are you going to scream at them is
01:18:52
that going to help them do better on the next test or are you going to say let's sit down and figure this out what do you
01:18:58
think happened here and your kid might say I didn't really understand it and I didn't get help or your kid might really
01:19:04
be honest and say I didn't study enough so we can say okay well what can you do next time let's kind of think about can
01:19:11
you make a schedule can you do you need to study with a study partner what do you need to do that's what helps people
01:19:16
make long-term change is that the wise compassion that you spoke about versus the sort of idiot compassion which talk
01:19:23
about as well idiot compassion is what we tend to do with our friends so your friend says listen to what my partner my
01:19:32
cooworker my you know my sibling my parents did or said and we say yeah
01:19:37
they're wrong you're right how dare they because we're just validating their perspective and like we were talking
01:19:44
about in my TED Talk there are many different versions of a story all of which are true so you you're only
01:19:51
getting one Nar narrow perspective when you're hearing one one person's perspective that's why couples therapy
01:19:57
is so great because I can hear the same incident told by two different people who were there both of whom are telling
01:20:04
the absolute truth of their experience but they're leaving out the other person's experience and that's where
01:20:10
things get dangerous so in idiot compassion we don't consider what the other person's perspective might be when our friend is telling us something we
01:20:17
just back up our friends but they're not learning anything from that experience it's and and when you hear them over and
01:20:23
over you kind of get a sense that maybe they're doing something like an example would be um your friend keeps getting
01:20:31
broken up with and we can say yes these men are jerks they're terrible you
01:20:37
deserve better or we can say you know I think that sometimes you're a little bit too possessive early on in the
01:20:43
relationship and I think they start to feel overwhelmed and then they break up with you but if you could just hold your
01:20:49
anxiety a little bit more at the beginning of the relationship ship and not be so overwhelming to them that you
01:20:57
might develop something different the next time that would be wise compassion that's what they're going to hear in therapy so in therapy we hold up a
01:21:04
mirror to them and help them to see something about their role in the situation that maybe they haven't been
01:21:10
willing or able to see and so we think we're being a good friend by offering idiot compassion but we're not actually
01:21:15
helping our friends and that's where therapy I think can be really helpful when you s with a man and a woman in a
01:21:21
therapy session do you typically mind that the woman expresses more emotion
01:21:27
tears than the man sometimes yes often I also think that emotions can be used as
01:21:34
manipulation so an example is uh a pattern in a relationship might be that
01:21:40
he brings up something that he wants to talk about she cries because of what he
01:21:45
said and he said it nicely but it's something they need to deal with and she
01:21:51
cries and then he gets gets terrified by her crying he thinks oh my gosh I've hurt her and so then he shuts down and
01:21:59
so really her crying is a manipulation it's a I don't want to hear anything that I'm quote doing wrong and so I'm
01:22:07
going to shut that down by crying and being the victim and being hurt being a victim is actually a power position
01:22:13
because you are making it impossible for anyone to deal with whatever is going on
01:22:19
between the two of you because now you're the victim and now they look a horrible person if they're making you cry so I will call that out in therapy
01:22:26
and I will say you know what he's going to talk and we're going to do something
01:22:31
different where he's going to be able to say what he wants to say she might cry but if she cries I want you to please go
01:22:37
on she's going to be fine I'm going to be here with her and you don't have to
01:22:42
manage her feelings you're going to tell her about your feelings I will be here to help manage her
01:22:48
feelings interesting and you see that if you're not in therapy you'll see that pattern
01:22:53
where it's just you know someone will play the victim in the relationship and it could go either way it could be
01:22:59
anyone in the relationship but when someone plays the victim the other person actually becomes the victim they
01:23:04
become so helpless in the relationship the true victim is the person who has to interact with the person who plays the
01:23:11
victim dreams something I was quite surprised to find in your book but pleasantly surprised yes do our dreams
01:23:17
have meaning or are they just random I think both but I I think the dreams are really helpful and in the book I do give
01:23:24
examples of Dreams where dreams are often uh kind of a story that we tell
01:23:29
ourselves that we aren't giving ourselves permission to think about when we're awake so an example might be
01:23:37
somebody who has been who is worried that they have been doing something financially that is not legal um they
01:23:44
have a dream that they were speeding on the highway and they got caught well what is that dream really about it's
01:23:50
this I don't really want to think about this thing that I'm doing that's not quite above board and I know I shouldn't
01:23:56
be doing it but I'm not going to think about that um you know the dream that that I have in the book where so I come
01:24:04
into therapy because of a breakup and um and I have a dream that I ran into my
01:24:10
ex and uh and it's this very elaborate dream but the the point is that in my
01:24:16
first therapy session I had said to my therapist when I was talking about the breakup I said well half my life is over
01:24:22
and he really glommed on to that statement that that was really why I was in therapy what was this about for me it
01:24:28
wasn't so much about the breakup the breakup got me into therapy but this whole question of what am I doing with
01:24:33
my life and how am I living my life and this question of mortality was really what was on my mind and so in the dream
01:24:40
I think I see that he has a new girlfriend and I see that she's older than me and I feel very self-satisfied
01:24:46
by that in this Petty Way and then I look at myself in the mirror in the dream and I'm like this
01:24:54
80-year-old wrinkled person and I realiz oh this is really about this fear that I
01:25:00
have about getting older and that half my life is over and so dreams really do inform our biggest fears and our biggest
01:25:08
preoccupations that feel too scary to think about in our Waking
01:25:15
Life and if we pay attention to our dreams and what I mean by that is when you wake up and you remember your dream
01:25:21
if you write it down immediately but you write it in the present not we were here and this happened but I'm here and I see
01:25:29
so and so and so and so says to me if you write it in the present it will bring back more of the dream for you and
01:25:35
it will help you understand what connection it has to something that you really do need to be dealing with in
01:25:41
your life that you're probably not dealing with dreams can be a precursor to self-confession yes that's what I say
01:25:48
self-confession they can tell you things about yourself before you're willing to admit the them about yourself into
01:25:53
yourself yes and and and it's so liberating I think that there's something about the safety of a dream
01:26:00
sometimes your dreams are really scary but you wake up and you say okay now I can deal with it now that I've
01:26:07
acknowledged it to myself I can deal with it in the dream I just had to go with the flow of the dream but now I can
01:26:12
actually make choices about what I want to do in my Waking Life at the beginning
01:26:18
of each therapy session um you'll often ask your patients to describe their Liv 24 hours why is that useful to know what
01:26:26
someone's been doing for the last 24 hours I think most of us don't realize how we spend our time we have no idea if
01:26:33
you said to somebody you spend three hours a day scrolling on Instagram they would say no I
01:26:39
don't we don't realize and I think that at the end of the day most of us want to
01:26:44
live our lives with intention and what I mean by that is I think that knowing
01:26:50
that life has 100% more mortality rate that all of us has a limited time here
01:26:56
we're living on borrow time that's not to freak people out it's to make people say how are you actually spending this
01:27:02
borrowed time that you have here because one day you might look back and wonder
01:27:07
why and I always say that regret can lead us in one of two directions it can be a way of self- flatulating and living
01:27:16
in the past or it can be an engine for change and I really think regret is the
01:27:21
most power ful engine for change I regret that I lived my life this way so if we don't realize how we are living
01:27:27
Our Lives we don't have the engine for change in that chapter 24 you say the opposite of depression isn't happiness
01:27:34
but Vitality yeah that's Andrew Solomon that I'm quoting there um and I thought
01:27:39
that that really struck me when he said that in his own book and his own Ted talk because I think that people think
01:27:46
about well I'm either happy or I'm sad and and I think what we're there's
01:27:52
no you can't be happy all the time there's no such thing you would never know any other emotion if that's all you
01:27:58
were feeling so I think that that Vitality is what people are looking for
01:28:03
in life what is Vitality it's a sense of aliveness okay and this is why people have affairs by the way often when you
01:28:10
ask people why did you cheat when you love your partner I didn't feel Vitality
01:28:17
in my life I felt the sense of aliveness and awakeness when I was with this other
01:28:22
person and it was had not much to do with the other person and it really didn't have much to do with your partner
01:28:28
it had to do with you didn't feel Vitality in your own life and instead of
01:28:33
looking at yourself and saying what can I do to create Vitality in my life I blamed it on my marriage I blamed it on
01:28:40
my partner I said I was going to find it with this other person and what they find is yeah that works for a little
01:28:45
while but not very long does menopause play a role in this in terms of I heard
01:28:51
a a stat from um someone that was on the podcast previously where they said postmenopausal women but also women
01:28:56
going through menopause will often divorce their partner because they um have a lot of sort of
01:29:04
psychological doubts about themselves and they maybe they expectations I think someone said to me that their expectations go up so they end up
01:29:11
divorcing their partner because they're clear on what they want now but I was just wondering what role menopause will
01:29:16
play in someone's marriage and their expectations their view of themselves
01:29:22
chance of maybe getting a divorce and if you see anything in therapy associated with this I think what menopause does is
01:29:27
it goes back to this idea of I don't have forever here and if they weren't
01:29:33
happy with the marriage that they were in then I think people really wake up and they really say what do I want in my
01:29:39
life it's a it's a very there's a lot of psychological changes that come with
01:29:45
it's not just the hormonal changes but it's what does that represent that I am done with that chap of my life and I'm
01:29:53
now I'm I'm you know halfway through again half my life is over and what do I
01:29:59
want to do to more intentionally because often women have been serving others so
01:30:05
that's what they've been doing they've been taking care of other people's needs whether it's their Partners or their children or their parents um you know
01:30:11
they tend to be the caretakers and now they're saying wait a minute I only have this much time left and I really want to
01:30:20
find that Vitality in my life you went to therapy because of heartbreak yes I've been through heartbreak who has not
01:30:26
it's one of the it's one of the worst feelings in the world and it's it's really hard to give someone advice when they're going through heartbreak I had a
01:30:32
friend reach out to me recently and said listen I'm going through a heartbreak and I just don't know what who else to turn to it's this big Dark Cloud that
01:30:40
hangs over everything I do think and say that just won't go away what have you come to learn about heartbreak from your
01:30:45
own experience but also from your your patience how do we navigate through that dark cloud I think what people don't
01:30:52
understand about heartbreak is the grief and and so this is why I talk about it
01:30:57
so much and maybe you should talk to someone because it's not just that you lost the present with that person it's
01:31:03
that you lost the future that you had created in your mind so you're losing
01:31:08
the dailiness there's something really profound about the person you tell all
01:31:14
the minutia of your day the person you you know you know so much about each other and you know each other's habits
01:31:21
and works this again being understood being truly known that's such a delicious feeling being truly known and
01:31:28
so this person knows like what you what kind of pizza you like or or you know this quirky habit you have or what TV
01:31:34
shows you watch or that that thing that you do with your eyes when you're
01:31:39
excited they know all those little seemingly trivial details that are so
01:31:44
important about being known and they know your history and they know about your family and they know who your friends are and they you've had shared
01:31:51
experience es with this person so you have all that history together even by the way if it was only 6 months you have
01:31:57
a lot together or a year and so in that time you started to imagine oh and then this is going to
01:32:05
happen next year and then in five years this will happen or we're going to grow old together whatever you imagine will
01:32:10
happen and you've become attached to their friends and they attach to your friends and then you lose the dailiness
01:32:16
of being known you lose the bigger Circle that you had and you lose the companion ship you lose the physical
01:32:23
connection you lose all of that but you also lose this idea of what was to come
01:32:29
and so every day you're living in this future that is radically different from that day as it would have been if you
01:32:36
were in that relationship so it's very hard people think well how it's been this long how come you're not over this
01:32:41
person it's kind of like the same thing when um you know someone has a breakup instead of a divorce people think it's
01:32:48
not that big of a deal why why is it less of a big deal it's still loss and grief or um you know it's like when if
01:32:55
if someone loses a child everyone surrounds them there all these rituals for how do we help people through that
01:33:01
kind of loss someone has a miscarriage people are like well you could still get pregnant again at least you got pregnant
01:33:06
you know or the the things there's a chapter in the book called what not to say to a dying person because one of the patients that I work with in the book is
01:33:14
um is somebody who's a young person or 30s who is is newly married and then gets a cancer diagnosis and people say
01:33:20
the most well-meaning but ridiculous things to her and so I think the same
01:33:26
thing happens in heartbreak where people try to minimize it they try to cheer you up they they won't sit with you in your
01:33:34
loss and that's what you really need is someone to sit with you in your loss and
01:33:39
to acknowledge how profound the loss is and people don't do that they don't they either don't see how profound it is or
01:33:46
they do but they they feel like well we don't want the person to wallow in it or if I bring it up you know they're going
01:33:52
to be worse no what they need to be seen and actually that's going to make them better and it's going to make them heal
01:33:57
faster what impact did it have on you the way people reacted or the Heartbreak
01:34:03
the Heartbreak I think for me it was a big wakeup call again around this idea
01:34:08
of half my life is over and what do I want in my life and why was I willing to
01:34:16
overlook certain things in my relationship that were clearly there
01:34:22
but that I didn't want to see and how did you go about recovering is that the
01:34:29
right word moving forward how did you go about moving forward that's that's the whole
01:34:35
Narrative of the book um I went to therapy and it's really about what I
01:34:40
learned about myself in therapy that that helped me heal and helped me move
01:34:45
forward I was thinking about the uh the advice that I could give to my friend
01:34:51
and and how I could have been a better support act cuz my natural disposition is to try and fix and from what you've
01:34:57
said that's not necessarily the best approach to take it you know because my
01:35:02
my natural um inclination is to go tell them the future will be better share my
01:35:07
experience of my heartbreak and those are all good because as a therapist I
01:35:12
want to hold hope when somebody's really really dealing with a difficult situation whether it's a breakup or something else I want to hold hope that
01:35:19
they can't access they can't access any hope at that point so I'm going to hold the hope for them but I'm not going to
01:35:25
try to cheer them up I'm just going to be the container for that hope so that they know that someone else is holding
01:35:32
that hope so you did two things really well one was that you shared your experience so that this person knows
01:35:38
this happens this person isn't alone in this that because I think when you go through a heartbreak intellectually you
01:35:43
know other people have gone through it but you feel like yours is so much worse than anybody else's and so to know that
01:35:51
that you went through it too and here's what helped you and it also took time
01:35:57
and it sucked and all of those things and then I know that it will get better even if you can't see it right now to
01:36:04
let them know that peace I know it will get better for you even if you can't see it right now and the third but so those
01:36:11
are the two things that that went well the third thing though is to be able to sit in the grief with them to say tell
01:36:19
me about how things are different for you tell me what you miss tell me and people think oh that's just going to
01:36:25
stir up all the stuff they're just going to ruminate this isn't helpful you need to give them a place where they can feel
01:36:32
understood and you can say one strategy that might be helpful is you can give
01:36:37
yourself 30 minutes a day to go through all the things you miss everything that
01:36:43
sucks how horrible it is you get that 30 minutes so that the rest of the day they're not ruminating because every time they catch themselves thinking
01:36:50
about it they say wait a minute at 6:00 I get to do this non-stop for 30 minutes
01:36:55
and so if you can hold it you're you rewire your nervous system neurologically this actually happens
01:37:01
where that pathway gets interrupted if we can put a stop sign up between the
01:37:08
feeling and the behavior which is the rumination I feel sad oh now I'm going
01:37:13
to ruminate on this we put a stop sign up and say I get to go there later then later when we start having more of these
01:37:19
feelings we have a stop sign we're used to now now we're wired that way so we put more time between the thought and
01:37:26
the rumination as you know whoop are a sponsor of this podcast and I'm an investor in the company and last month I
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had the chance to sit down with Kristen Holmes she's the VP of performance at and I learned so much from our conversation about circadian rhythms and
01:37:39
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01:37:45
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01:38:28
heartbreak at the deepest human level is it about you know you talked about the
01:38:35
bigger picture the loss of the future Etc in the past is the fundamental reason we have heartbreak as a device
01:38:41
built inside of us because we are creatures that need connection and it's
01:38:47
a mechanism to make us stay connected and avoid becoming disconnected you
01:38:53
literally could not survive in early societies without being part of the
01:39:00
group you had to belong if you did not belong you couldn't survive you wouldn't get food you wouldn't get shelter you
01:39:06
wouldn't survive so belonging is just hardwired in us it's it's something that
01:39:12
keeps us alive and we actually do need it to stay alive um even now and what I
01:39:18
mean by that is you take for example when they did these stud and they looked at babies who were in orphanages and
01:39:24
they thought all they need is they need they need food they you know they need to get they need to be fed they need to
01:39:31
be nourished they need to have their diaper changed they need those things these babies didn't develop and many of
01:39:36
them died it's called failure to thrive because they weren't held they weren't held they needed love they literally
01:39:43
died from lack of Love they just they couldn't they couldn't survive no matter how much you could they just stopped
01:39:49
eating they failed failure to thrive they wouldn't meet their developmental Milestones this happens this happens in
01:39:55
really traumatic childhoods even um so you actually cannot live without love
01:40:00
you need some kind of love it doesn't have to be romantic love but you need love so we need that so our main goal in
01:40:08
life is to love and be Lov we may think it's about success and it's about appearance and all the things that we see on social media we may think that's
01:40:14
what life is about and everything that our culture sells us but ultimately what we need is we need love we need to love
01:40:21
and we need to be loved and so when that gets cut off we forget that we have other people who love us um we forget
01:40:28
everything else everything just feels extremely black or white it's like I I
01:40:34
was loved and then I wasn't loved and that's how it's going to feel for a little while it's scary it's scary because so
01:40:42
much of your work is centered on connection I like the fundamental level and we're living in a world that feels
01:40:47
like it's getting more and more disconnected than ever before um if you go back a couple of decades young people
01:40:53
used to see their friends once a week or twice a week about about 80% of PE
01:40:58
people did now it's getting down to about 30 40% which is really really crazy I did a talk on stage the other
01:41:05
day and and there was 5 600 people in the audience and the kid sat to my far bottom left here raised his hand and his
01:41:12
question in front of 600 people was essentially I'm lonely and how do I make friends he sat in a room with 700 people
01:41:19
that are his exact age and he's asking me in front of all of them which I I respect he's asking me
01:41:25
the question how do I make friends a lot of people ask that a lot of men come up to me and Whisper it to me it talks
01:41:31
they'll say it to me so they'll they'll make because we film a lot they'll come up really close to me and basically Express that they'll say it in my DMs
01:41:38
how do I make friends yeah I get that all the time to the podcast to the column that is one of the most frequent
01:41:45
questions is I'm lonely how do I make connections how do I make friends from younger people people especially but
01:41:51
older people too and I think that it's really frightening because when I watch my son who's
01:41:57
18 um people think look going back to your graph that they are quote seeing
01:42:05
their friends because they're sending pictures of themselves back and forth on Snapchat to their friends and they think
01:42:11
that that's socializing but it's so different we learned this during Co that there's such a difference between being
01:42:16
in a room with someone and um you know being mediated by a screen but they're
01:42:21
not even having conversations like you would if you were with your friend things happen you have shared experiences you're doing things together
01:42:29
conversation just more naturally flows um they're literally you know they're sending texts to each other that are
01:42:35
just emojis or you know a picture of this they're not really learning so it's
01:42:40
not just how do I meet friends but it's how do I be in friendship with someone and it's hard because a lot of people
01:42:47
aren't interested in doing that like if you said at that that age you know let's hang out sometimes people will but
01:42:55
really more people are just on their phones 247 and they think they're super
01:43:00
social but they're not it's like the difference between vulnerability online
01:43:07
and true vulnerability so a lot of people in fact I was just on Instagram and I saw somebody saying I'm going to
01:43:13
be so vulnerable I see this all the time I'm going to be so vulnerable with all of you and share this thing and all
01:43:19
their followers say you know that was so brave and and lots of Hard emojis and
01:43:24
all of that that's not vulnerability to put that out on a public platform true
01:43:31
vulnerability is what this kid was asking you which is when you are face
01:43:37
Toof face with someone if you're with your partner or a close friend or a family member and you want to share
01:43:42
something you need in the relationship or something that you feel shame about or something that is scary for you to
01:43:49
take the mask off and and and share with somebody that's true vulnerability because the stakes are high what is this
01:43:56
person going to think of me again going back to I need to be loved we all need to be loved what is this person going to
01:44:03
think of me how will they love me if they know the truth of who I am this thing that I'm about to share very
01:44:09
different from sharing it on Instagram or Tik Tok or whatever so I think that
01:44:14
it's really important that we as adults look at how much FaceTime do we have
01:44:20
FaceTime in person time do we have with people are we really prioritizing that and are we modeling that for the next
01:44:27
Generation what would you have said to him cuz what I ended up saying to him because it really took me off guard no one had asked me that obviously in front
01:44:33
of a huge group of people I said to him um what you've just
01:44:39
done do more of that and what I meant by that is he had been so vulnerable and open and I've come to learn that
01:44:45
vulnerability in and of itself is a magnet not a repellent that we think it is so I I said do more more of that but
01:44:51
I I thought maybe that's not the best possible answer I could have given him I love that answer that's a great answer I also might have said um turn to the I
01:44:58
want everybody in this room to turn to the person on your right and introduce
01:45:04
yourself to them and ask them about one thing that they want you to know about
01:45:09
them because that's how you're going to start making friends we don't do that anymore yeah but we can you see they're
01:45:15
simple things it's not like you know people say it feels so overwhelming how do I make friends and they think they're
01:45:20
going to have to learn all these tactics and techniques when really it's just about be curious ask someone about
01:45:28
themselves and the people who are receptive to that they might become your friends people who aren't I'm not really
01:45:35
interested in them doesn't really matter Lori we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a
01:45:41
question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for oh oh this is a fantastic question if
01:45:47
you had 60 days left on
01:45:53
Earth what would be the first and last thing that you'd
01:45:59
do hug my son no
01:46:04
question it's simple for me there are so many things that I would I would like to
01:46:09
do but I think that if you read maybe you should talk to someone you'll see that what I did was I made sure that I'm
01:46:15
already doing the things that I want to do now instead of putting them off for
01:46:21
later so there's nothing that that I would be doing in these 60 days that would be drastically different from what
01:46:27
I'm doing now and I think that that's where I'm trying to get people in therapy is to live the life that you
01:46:32
want to be living now so that you don't when you get these questions about if you only had 60 days left you're not
01:46:37
like I would do things entirely differently why what are you waiting for we shouldn't have to wait L thank you so
01:46:44
much thank you for writing a book there's this quote on the front of the book which I think perfectly encapsulates how many people people will
01:46:50
feel if they get this book which is rarely has a book challenged me to see myself in an entirely new light and was
01:46:58
at the same time laugh out loud funny and utterly absorbing it's a quote by
01:47:03
ktie coric on the front of the book and the remarkable thing about all of your work is that it's both so incredibly
01:47:09
accessible but it it's so clearly built on real world experiences that I think so many people can relate to and you
01:47:15
really tend to focus on the fundamentals of a problem not the things that just appear on the surface and an ability to
01:47:21
get to the fundamental of the problem I think um is a really magical thing to be able to do and I just wish there was you
01:47:28
know I would I wish you could be everyone's therapist but I think the book can be if you can't be because you
01:47:34
only have a certain amount of time in the day it's really really remarkable the mission that you're run and how many people you're serving by your column by
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your podcast by the books that you've written um and everything that you continue to do thank you so much my
01:47:45
pleasure thank you let's talk about Zoe who you may
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know because they're a sponsor of this podcast and I'm an investor in the company you guys know health is my number one priority Zoe's growth story
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has been absolutely incredible so far they're doing science at a scale that I've never seen before because of their
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members and recent breakthroughs in research they can now continue to offer the most scientifically Advanced gut
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health test on the market previously the test allowed them to analyze 30 bacteria
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types in your gut but now thanks to new science they've identified a 100 bacteria types this is a huge step
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forward and there's nothing else that's available even close to it on the market at all so to find out more and to get
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started on your Zoe Journey visit zoe.com stepen you can use my exclusive code
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ceo1 for 10% off don't tell anybody about that okay just for you [Music]
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guys [Music]
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ah