Hello everybody.

I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology.

Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.

Welcome back to the podcast.

New listeners, old listeners, or wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here.

Back for another episode as we, of course break down the psychology of our twenties.

So the other day I did an episode on the five biggest regrets I have about my twenties so far, and one of those regrets that really stood out to a lot of you was this regret I have about focusing too much on dating in my early twenties.

I remember being nineteen in my college university dorm room downloading Tinder and being like, this better get me a boyfriend, Like I need a boyfriend.

I need to fit in.

I need to have this like relationship that like others can see and that's like going to feel amazing and this is going to make me feel really great about myself.

And I got the boyfriend.

It wasn't very satisfying.

I ended up back in this cycle of again and again and again chasing validation from men, chasing validation from romantic partners.

That was actually pretty unfulfilling and took away a lot of the time that I should have devoted to figuring myself out, to traveling, exploring, putting time and effort into friendships.

You know, there was especially this relationship that I've spoken about before, where you know, the very fact that I was in that relationship cost me a lot of friendships, and it's something that I still think about fairly often.

I still missed those friends so much, and I'm not even in that relationship anymore, and it's a huge regret of mine that romance often took precedence over not just all other kinds of love, but just everything in my life.

Nowadays, we're seeing this incredible and I would also say a personally really admirable trend of decentering men, decentering dating, taking your time to find the right person, honoring your single years, questioning what we sacrifice in a relationship as much as what we think we gain.

And I thought, what a great time to investigate this trend of centering romance, decentering men in our twenties, and doing so from a psychological perspective.

I want to talk about where this laser focus on love comes from in our twenties, why it might be holding us back in other areas of our lives, and how we can decend to dating and needing to find our person during this decade so that we can be a little bit selfish, so that we can really focus on ourselves, so that we can have all that time and energy and effort and attention we put into others just for us when I think we really need it the most.

So, without further ado, let's break down the psychology behind the centering romance in our twenties.

To start us off, I think we should first look at why we focus so much on love during this decade.

During these years, The first explanation, and the easiest explanation, is simply that love is really wonderful, Like it is great.

I'm not going to pretend that it's not.

You and I both know it is life changing if it is with the right person.

The thing is, though nobody told us how hard it would actually be to find the right person.

The storybook romances of our childhood, they are actually pretty few and far between.

But because our society is based around ideals of marriage, unions, couples, families, we often feel like, or at least I remember, feeling like the rest of my life would not start, could not start until I had firstly ticked off get a boyfriend on my list, get into a relationship.

Was this thing that I had to do before, you know, I could progress into the next phase of my life, before I could truly be an adult.

There is this huge societal pressure to find somebody so that you can you know, move in together, and then so that you can get married, get a mortgage, get a dog, have a kid.

And that is a process that we feel very pressured to begin it.

And actually what is quite a young age, like your early twenties were you're still like very very young, and yet in the back of your mind there is this constant fear of like the clock is ticking, all the good ones are taken, my standards are just going to get lower, the dating pool is going to get smaller.

I feel like we all know this script.

I always ask myself how much of this is really just about social approval and social recognition, and how much of this is actually purely about the other person and really caring for them and having real, true, deep, passionate feelings for another human.

We are very naturally sensitive to what is publicly celebrated.

Obviously, we instinctually as humans seek harmony and conformity, even if we think that we don't, and being in a relationship is a goal and is something that is very easy to recognize and applaud from the outside.

It's not that we are shallow, it's not that we are only doing this because other people expect it from us.

It's just that we are very much aware and influenced by society's expectations and the fact that romantic milestones monopolize our sense of progress, even when our values are more complex than that.

You may have noticed this, like you see a family member you haven't seen in a while.

Sometimes even you have conversations with your friends, and it's never you know, how excited are you for the future, or what's like the big thing that you're working on right now?

What are you excited about, what's your goal?

It's always so, do you have a boyfriend yet?

Do you have a girlfriend?

Are you dating anyone?

The conversation always comes back to that, and it creates a lot of anxiety, anxiety that influences our decision making.

You know, this is another thing that I think about a lot, and that I really wish my younger self had thought about a little bit more.

Do you really want a boyfriend?

Do you really want a girlfriend or do you just want the anxiety about being single to go away?

Do you actually want a relationship or would it just stop you worrying about what you may be missing out on.

Do you want a partner or do you want people to know that you have value because someone chows you?

This is all stemming from deep fears about whether we're worthy, whether we are loved, whether we are accepted, whether we have value.

This fear of this anxiety pushes us from a place of discernment, a place of rationality, intention, and value, into a place of urgency, a place of impulsivity, blindness, where we accelerate commitment not because the fit is strong, not because we are even necessarily compatible, but because the timeline that we are experiencing in our twenties feels very fragile and feels very uncertain.

What is the risk in this?

What is the risk in centering romance much and too strongly in our twenties.

The risk here is what we refer to as narrative foreclosure.

We have the partner, we found the person on the dating app, and now that we're in the relationship, and maybe we're a couple of years down the line, we genuinely believe it's too late to start over again.

It's too late to get back out there.

So you tolerate less and less and less and less, and an amazing relationship for this good relationship, for this relationship that at least ticks the box of being partnered.

And you know what should really, I really believe should scare us and scare you more than not finding somebody is actually finding the wrong person and confusing them with the right person.

A lot of the time, rushing into relationships or marriages very young is actually more likely to see you broken up or divorce laid down the line, because we are acting from a place again of urgency rather than discernment, which causes us to just choose wrong.

A twenty thirteen study published in the General Couple in Family Psychology actually found that sixty one percent of couples who recently got a divorce decided that getting married too young was one of the main factors their relationship didn't work out.

Simply being partnered when you're in your early twenties because you feel like you have to is not the same as being well matched, and is not the same as having somebody you genuinely trust and are compatible with.

And the risk is that you have this person and so you feel like a chapter in your life has closed, maybe earlier than it should have.

You've given this person some of the best years of your life, You've given them your youth, and then now you're thirty forty and you're like, why did I do that?

Why was I in such a rush?

I actually had so much time, and I cannot get those years back.

The biggest reason I think that we should be decentering romance in our twenties is because ultimately, this should be your selfish decade.

If you want to spend a month in Greece, do it.

If you want to move countries, do it.

If you want to change who you are every four months, do it.

Do you want to explore everything, try it all, taste it all, see it all, do it?

Like Having these goals and ambitions for yourself requires focus, and it requires time, and it requires you to be really honest and in touch with who you are and when you focus, when your focus is on romantic love and romantic love only, don't confuse me.

Your life is not about you anymore.

It is about this faceless, elusive someone who will come into your life and save the day.

If you are waiting to be chosen before your life really begins, you are going to contort yourself, change yourself, lose yourself trying to impress somebody who might not even make your life better than what it could have been without them.

So you lose your identity, you lose your priorities.

You also lose your time.

You know, centering romantic possibilities and centering dating is so time consuming it is it takes up valuable mental energy getting to know somebody, applying to all these messages on dating apps, constantly trying to organize dates and remember whether they ghosted you or not, like it's basically a full time job.

I remember when I was dating fairly intensely for a couple of years there.

If I had made a pie chart of what I spent time thinking about, and I was like pursuing my education, I had a really great job, I had hobbies still fifty percent of the time, I would be thinking about men, and I would be distracted by what they were thinking about me, and it was all I could talk about with my friends.

It was so time consuming, and that was time that I don't get back that I could have used for rest or learning a new skill, or making new friends, or being creative.

And I really do feel like it was in some ways wasted.

I think maybe on a deeper level, sometimes we do this.

We give up our time and we chase being chosen because we just want to feel like we belong and we want to feel like somebody sees us and loves us, and that is a way to avoid truly being with ourselves.

We get a fast hit of safety or self esteem in the text, in the plans, in the promises, of being with somebody in their potential, and I think we momentarily get a sense of relief that we might not be lonely forever, that maybe we're not that terrible.

Maybe we do have And what we're really engaging in here is emotional bypassing, we're using the attention of other people to dodge the inner work because it feels safer to do so.

Oftentimes we think you know, when I'm in a relationship, everything will change.

I'll have the validation i'll need.

I'll be happy because somebody else has confirmed for me that I have value.

And the thing is is that all that insecurity will still be there, and it will probably be made worse by the fact that perhaps you chose the first person who showed up at the front door, or you changed in order to be chosen.

And now listen, it's fun today.

You know I am in a long term relationship with an amazing guy.

I'm not saying like, turn into a nun until you're thirty, But there is a difference between dating being a part of your life and dating consuming your life and consuming your time, energy, identity, and sense of self worth.

So after this short break, what I want to do is explore a nuanced, balanced, healthy approach to romance in our twenties that doesn't eliminate love.

Doesn't eliminate romantic love, but just decenters it from being the main story we're trying to build for ourselves or tell ourselves stay with us.

In my humble opinion, I do truly believe that romance should not, at any stage in your life be the main focus of your world except for maybe like on your wedding day.

How I describe it is my relationship and the love I feel for my partner is not my whole world.

It is a separate universe for which I step into I get to enjoy, but I also step out of because you know, my world is my world, and me and my partner, our relationship does kind of exist separately from that.

The moment that I'm spending too much time in this other universe, or the moment that I feel like all my plans and all my behaviors need to be about him or are orientated towards him, This is like a really good sign to plant my feet firmly back into my own inner world and my own inner garden.

So if you want to descender love in your twenties, if you want to have the world and then have the universe on the side, here's what you're gonna do.

Number one.

Firstly, you need to ask yourself do I have love to share?

We need to make sure our own cup is filled up first.

Then you need to make sure you have enough in your cup to give to your loved ones.

Then you need to make sure you have enough in your cup to give to the things you care about, and if there is still something left over, then romantic love can be a priority.

This reflects something that we call self determination theory, and this theory basically maps the three needs that each of us should be fulfilling at any given time, the need for relatedness, competence, and autonomy.

We need relatedness through friendship and community.

We need competence through learning and creativity, and we need autonomy by being able to make our own decisions.

When we are fulfilling these three things, we can be discerning about love, and we can be discerning and make a conscious, balanced choice about what we are choosing to spend out time on.

If your cup is not overflowing, I don't think that romantic love is going to make it flow anymore.

And if your cup is not overflowing and you want it to be, I want to tell you how you can make that.

So, how can you give yourself?

I guess more, to give more, to give yourself, give others more, to give your life.

This is the thing you're going to do.

You are going to pick a mussogi challenge.

Now.

Musogi is a Japanese term that is basically like a Shinto ritual where people would take like a sacred pilgrimage to a waterfall was a way to challenge themselves and then they would like purify themselves under the water.

That's like the traditional version of a musogi in Japan.

A modern musogi refers to a significant, year defining challenge that we really want to commit to and do that requires a lot of focus and devotion on our behalf to this thing.

So basically, it's like a pact that you make with a dream.

You really have to just spend the year giving it your all.

A masogi could be writing a book, it could be starting a podcast, running a marathon, launching a company, completing a multi day hike, getting scuba certified, building something, and it's basically meant to require deep commitment and dedication you the same way you might deeply commit and dedicate yourself to a relationship.

So many of us live passively, or so many of us focus on dating because it feels like a worthy project.

But when you have a masogi, you are laser focused.

You have things to do.

You have this task, this goal that is deeply personal to you that you really care about that nothing can get in the way of this devotion to yourself, to a practice, to realizing a dream.

It means that you really only have space left in your life for the kind of love that finds you organically and that adds to your life.

All these other kinds of love that you may find on a dating app or that maybe fickle or may come from people who aren't fully committing, you have your masogi like.

You don't have time for those things.

So it allows you, in a way to be very discerning and to let only good love in because you've got this big love here, You've got this thing you're really dedicated to.

It's very similar advice to like getting a hobby right, It's just on a whole new level.

Here's the other thing.

I think having a devotional practice like a masogi, or having hobbies, having interests that you may have lost in a previous relationship or may have lost to your devotion to dating, it actually makes you a much more magnetic person anyways, Like what I have found time and time again, the less you focus on dating, the more people like suddenly appear in your life who are worthy of your love.

You can call it the law of detachment, you can call it whatever you want to.

But people who are committed to themselves and to doing cool stuff because they want to that is so hot.

People are deeply attracted to that.

And I have found, like in the times where I've been devoted to something outside of myself and I've been really committed to making something and making something well and doing something cool, like suddenly you look around and it's like, wait, why are there's sudden all these prospects for me?

Like why they are all these people?

It's because that mentorship that you were experiencing through that changes how people see you and changes how you relate to yourself and just changes your energy field.

Like I fully do believe it.

My next tip for decentering romance in your twenties is to have a dating detox.

I know I've spoken about this a few times on the podcast.

I really don't care.

It's just so worthwhile to do.

If you have noticed that dating is taking up a lot of space and energy, have a break.

I genuinely do believe that the same way you can get burnt out at your job, you can get dating burnout.

You can feel so deeply exhausted and disillusioned that dating is a chore to you rather than something that gives you energy.

You are in this position of like I just want to find somebody so I don't have to do this anymore.

I just want to finish this task at my job so I don't have to worry about it.

This isn't a job.

Dating isn't a job.

It is not something that your livelihood depends on.

You can just quit the rat race.

You can quit the dating rat race and just say I don't want to do this for a while.

This is where I think the biggest challenge comes about, because what you have to fight against is really your milestone anxiety and the part of you that might say you're never going to find anyone.

You know, you can't take a break now.

The clock is ticking, like if you don't find somebody soon, like it's all going to be over for you.

Like come on, keep going, you're going to struck.

You're going to strike gold soon.

And the thing is is like you're not running out of time.

Three months of dating isn't going to kill you, six months of not being on the apps isn't going to ruin your life.

In fact, they think it's probably going to improve your life.

So delete or pause the apps, stop maintaining ambiguous connections with random people.

Use that free time for sleep, for exercise, for self nourishment, for plans for work.

And yes, you might expect a few restless days while your habits are just but I think it settles after a while and you realize, like, I don't really need this anymore.

This actually wasn't a worthwhile part of my life, at least not the way that I was approaching it.

And when you do return, because of course you know you probably will, I think you'll be able to examine the relationship you have with these online connections, or with these apps, or with people in a much more constructive way.

After I did my dating detox, Like I feel like this is a very famous story on the podcast.

The first person I match with after I did my dating dtalks is now my boyfriend of three years.

But obviously I was still like, you know, swiping at the same time as when I had matched with him, and I came back from my dating detalks with solid rules, like I had rules for the people I match with.

I can't remember them exactly, but I think it was like twenty four hours to message after matching, six hours to reply one to two weeks to organize a date.

Otherwise, like I would seriously just unmatch these people.

Anybody who stopped replying after like a day, unmatched.

Anybody who wasn't going to plan a date, unmatched.

Anybody who just like never actually messaged me, unmatched, Like their profiles were digital cluttered to me.

It was taking up space in my mind to have them, like, to have them there, to have the unanswered message, to have the weeks long conversation just staring at me.

And when I put my foot down, I was like, how you begin is how you you know, how you commit to going on.

So if these people aren't giving me enough at the beginning, I don't have high expectations for them in the future.

Once I decided that, it was so relieving, It was so peaceful.

It was just like a nice, stoic mindset.

It was like, eh, it was just like wow, I can just flow through this rather than getting constantly stuck on these people who I thought I had a future with.

What you really have to remember is like your time is precious, your mindset is precious, Your environment, whether it is offline or online, is precious.

And none of like nobody who you have not met yet who you don't have a deep connection with yet is important enough for you to sacrifice that because you don't even know them.

You know yourself, you know that you deserve love.

You don't know if they deserve love yet, So give that love that you may eventually give to them to yourself until you can prove that they are next.

And maybe my favorite tip for decentering romance is to start dating your friends.

And no, I don't mean like actually dating your friends.

What I mean is like, start pouring all that time energy I love back into these plotonic relationships.

Apply the same effort you use for dating to your close bonds and close friendships.

Put recurring plans on the calendar, confirm them early in the week, choose venues, get dressed up, and actually follow through.

Make date nights for your friends.

I wish I did this more right now.

It's been a little bit chaotic for me with moving to a new country and all, but I used to host these like elaborate date nights for me and my friends, like a couple months ago.

Back in the day.

I would do them all the time, and it was like themed dinner parties and like movie nights with like theme snacks and life drawing nights and art nights and really fun like dinner dates.

And you know what, when I was single, those moments were like ninety nine percent of the time better than any date I ever went on.

And honestly, sometimes I would find myself like on a date with a man and being like, damn, I really wish like my best friend was here, Like I really wish my girlfriends were here.

Like genuinely giving these ties the same love and attention that you usually hold for romantic connections just creates such a beautiful opportunity for like deep love in a new form.

At the end of the day, you know you can find the love of your life tomorrow.

Maybe you will, but like, they will never be enough to sustain you if you don't have these other platonic connections at your back, if you don't have these other people who are going to show you love and you show them love in a really important and healthy way.

Okay, My fifth tip is to ask yourself the question if I knew I would find the love of my life in six months, Like we just spoke about, what would I do in the time I have from then to now?

What would I do before I met them, and I've spoken about this a few times, but I think this exercise works because it really asks you to do away with the concerns of being single and just pay attention to what you really want in your life when you aren't distracted by this idea of choosing or being chosen.

You know what is on your single bucket list?

What skills do you want to learn, What emotional wounds do you want to heal?

What trips do you want to take, What health goals do you have?

Financial targets, times spent with friends, times met with family, What unfinished goals would you like to achieve as a single person.

I need you to make a single bucket list of experiences and milestones that you think might be better as a as a single person, that you think would really contribute to your life, even when there's nobody else with you, and even when you don't have a partner.

I want you to at least have fifteen things on that list.

I know I feel like a drill sergeant, but I want results.

Fifteen things on your single bucket list, and now you've got those, I want you to choose two of them and plan to do something about it.

This week, and then after that methodically tick them off and every time you complete to add two more On the main point of this question, if I knew I would make the love of my life in six months, what would I do?

The main point is again it takes the worry off the table.

It's no longer a consideration, and so all your focus is just on your ambitions and your desires.

And you know what, if you do want a romantic relationship in the future, which of course most of us do, and that's not the problem here, but this exercise just encourages you to look at your life and genuinely think about the kind of person you would attract and you would want to be with based on how you are living your current life.

Are you modeling the love that you would want to receive back?

Are you modeling the kind of person that you would want to fall in love with?

That's really like a really deep question, like would you fall in love with you?

Because if the answer is known you wouldn't fall in love with yourself first, then like there's probably a lot of work you need to do because it shows that there is probably like a deficit there in self esteem, self knowledge, in goals, in inspiration that like another person is never going to do anything about They're never going to be able to fix it.

My final piece of advice, and this might not be everyone's cup of tea, but going on from what we were just talking about, I want you to do everything in your power during this period of your life to become utterly obsessed with yourself to the point of arrogance, to the point of vanity.

And I mean it.

I want you to become obsessed with yourself.

That is one of the only ways I see as being able to decenter romance or obsession from somebody else.

And listen, I'm not worried about any of you going too far at all.

I don't think you're going to end up being these like egotistical maniacs.

I think if you're listening to a self help podcast about decentering love, you've probably found yourself really lacking confidence in the past, or being overwhelmed by dating or feeling really struck by how dating heart is and struck by how terrible you feel.

So going heavy in the opposite direction with this self obsession project, I think it's going to be a good counterbalance to get you somewhere kind of back in the center, maybe even further to the right, of loving yourself and of genuinely thinking that you are amazing, Like I need you to tell yourself daily, I am a catch.

Somebody would be lucky to have me.

I am talented, I am so I am so smart, I am fantastic.

I need you to be like all in on celebrating yourself, all in on treating yourself like you are the best person on the planet, because that's how a partner should make you feel about yourself.

And so if somebody is turned off by you thinking great things about yourself, it's because they don't think highly enough of you, and they are intimidated by the fact that they can't get away with the bare minimum because you don't like yourself enough to not demand more.

Being a little bit self obsessed is the best barrier to entry for people who are never going to treat you right.

And it allows you not to decenter love altogether, but to center mediocre love because you know you already have a fantastic thing going with you and yourself, Like the relationship you have with yourself is amazing.

It's the best one you're ever gonna have.

So some average person cannot get between the love affair that you have with you, like they're not worthy of it, if they don't match, if not exceed, your self obsession and your level of love for yourself.

I really do feel decentering love is such an important decision and thing that we should all aim to do, whether you're in a relationship or not.

Like during your twenties, it really allows you to just ground yourself and like, what do I want from my life?

How much free time would I have?

How much energy and effort would I have if this wasn't a priority, And what could I do at that time?

You know, when your time and attention are distributed to things that you really care about, your whole aura, your whole way of being is just elevated and you just achieve, do see, believe, love more.

And I think that's a really play, a really great place to be in before you start looking for somebody else to add to that, you know, looking for someone else to maybe feel parts of you that you weren't able to feel yourself.

If nothing else just proved to yourself that you can just prove to yourself that yes, having somebody might be and is nice.

Worst comes to worst, you might not need it because you really do have like everything you have ever needed to make yourself happy.

And if you don't have everything you've ever needed to make yourself happy, your friends definitely do, and your hobbies definitely do, and your community definitely does, then you can go looking for it in romantic love.

So I hope that you have enjoyed this episode.

I hope you enjoyed the discussion.

Hopefully my passion came through on this.

I know it's ironic that, like, I've been with somebody who's amazing for like three years, and yet I'm still able to rant about this, mainly because I know that I would not be with him and I would not have found him if I hadn't gone through this or this whole process myself.

And it's not to say I do it so that you can find love.

I genuinely really was like so detached from the outcome when I decentered love in my twenties.

Earlier in my twenties that I really was happy with never finding anyone, and it's yeah, just kind of surprised me.

And my standards were high and they continue to be high, and it just meant that the love fit in perfectly with the life I'd already built and continue to build for myself.

So I want that for you guys as well.

And I do really feel like this is a pathway to maybe not find that, but to find just find peace, find peace and like the chaos of dating.

If you enjoyed this episode, again, remember that this episode was also on YouTube, So if you want to go and subscribe to our channel for future video episodes, please feel free to do so.

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It's December in like a week, I feel like in less than a week.

So we have our famous twelve Days of Guest episodes every December.

I just interview the coolest people that I've had the opportunity to meet this year, and I get to, you know, bring those conversations to you guys.

So if you want to be up to date with who we've got coming on the podcast, we have a plastic surgeon, we have somebody who runs a renaissance fair.

We have financial consultants, we have authors like all these cool people.

Make sure you're following us on Instagram and subscribe slash following wherever you are listening right now, but until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself, and we will talk very very soon.