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Hey, fellow travelers, I'm Laur Gottlieb.

I'm the author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, and I write the Dear Therapist's Advice column for The Atlantic.

And I'm Guy Winch.

I wrote Emotional First Aid, and I write the Dear Guy column for Ted And this is Dear Therapists.

This week we'll talk through a problem familiar to a lot of people, a breakup and a broken heart.

It makes me sad because I kind of keep thinking like, is there something that I could have done differently or better?

And they don't have the answer to the question.

It's just Oh, I just don't love you, and that's what hurts.

Listen in and maybe learn something about yourself and the process.

Before we begin, just a note about today's episode.

As of this taping, we're still in the midst of COVID nineteen and as a result, we are all taping from home, and because homes can be full of background noises and signs of life that you wouldn't get in a recording studio, you may notice some of that in this episode.

Before we worked all the kinks out.

Thanks for your understanding, and here we go with episode one of Dear Therapists.

We hope you enjoy it.

So guy, I saw this letter in our box this week and I wanted to bring it to you, specifically because of the ted talk that you did on how to fix a broken heart.

And this is a letter about heartbreak and here's how it goes, Dear Therapists.

I'm going through a breakup and having a hard time.

My boyfriend and I had been dating for nine months when I made the decision to break up with him after a month of him telling me he loved me but wasn't sure if it was in the right way.

It was so hurtful.

He couldn't explain why his feelings had changed your when he also didn't want to work on it, but he wanted to be friends.

The relationship wasn't perfect.

While we were dating.

He started using drugs recreationally and his drinking was becoming a problem for me.

I knew I had to end it after trying my best to talk about how I was feeling and having it fall on deaf ears.

I was confused because he said that I was perfect, yet he wasn't feeling it, but didn't have the courage to break up with me until I ended it with him.

We tried to keep in touch for a week or two after splitting up, but I couldn't maintain the facade, and it was giving me false hope that he'd realized what he'd lost and come back to me.

He didn't and hasn't.

Now I'm haunted by questions like why wasn't I enough for him?

What happened to make him love me differently or cause him to change?

I worry that he'll find someone else and treat her better and love her.

I'm worried I was the problem.

We need to arrange swapping our stuff once the lockdown has lifted, which is making me anxious.

I'm angry and sad and keep bursting into tears sporadically.

I'm just exhausted.

I haven't been able to sleep.

Do you have any advice for me?

Many?

Thanks?

Srina?

Okay, good?

First of all, good for her, really good for her for doing the breaking up.

That there are many people in that situation that just stay in this very painful position of being with someone who they can tell doesn't love them enough, but they stay hoping something will change, which it often doesn't usually doesn't.

So her healthy response of saying, look, if you're not feeling it, then let's not I think there's a really healthy response, and good for her for putting the plug.

Certainly she needed to.

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's one of those things where she thinks that something changed.

She says, he couldn't explain why what he's feeling changed or when, but he also didn't want to work on it, and he wanted to be friends.

And I think that that's what's so confusing for people is when you want when the person likes you enough to want to be friends with you, but they didn't want to be with you in the way they didn't feel, you know, that they were in love with you.

People feel like, well, why I did something to make this happen, as opposed to maybe it's just not the right match.

Well, what happens is that at first there's this level of infatuation.

Typically that happens, which is temporary.

That's infatuation is the heavy stuff that people get excited about at the beginning.

It can last, you know, a date, and it can last for a while.

But once the infatuation starts to fade and then there's a more realistic assessment of the relationship.

Then it either transitions into something that's deeper, you know, in terms of love and a deeper kind of romantic love and the passion is still there, or it just doesn't make that leap.

But this is not about her doing something that changed his feelings.

It's about something between the chemistry of those two didn't allow his feelings to make the leap.

But I think that it's important to not blame oneself, but to explore and be curious about what didn't work.

Has this happened to her before, what might have been happening here, Not because there's something wrong with her at all, just because maybe there was something.

I think there are two people, you know, in a relationship, and so he had his role in it and she had her role in it, And just to be aware of her own role in whatever might have happened.

And I think there's this other part of it that has nothing to do with him that's helpful for her to consider too, which is when you get into a new relationship, there's always so much hope that this is going to be it, This is going to be the one I will not be dating anymore.

You know, this is my person, and I think that when it doesn't work out, there's the loss of the actual person, but there's also the loss of the idea that you were done dating, and that is its own loss that is unrelated to the person that is no longer there.

And then there's a third loss, which is just the loss of what it's like to be in a relationship, which is the dailiness of it.

The person that you tell what happened today, the person you check in with every day, the person you're cooking dinner with, so all of that.

Then you have to go back to square one again.

The more number of times that you do this, the harder it is every time when you have to start over a square one.

I agree.

I think I so agree with what you said, because I think that that loss of the dream is often bigger than the loss of the person.

Yes, you're listening to dear Therapists from my Heart Radio.

We'll be back after a quick break.

This is Deo therapist.

Thanks for listening.

Well, let's talk to her and get some more information and then give her some.

Excited to find out some more.

Well.

Strina, welcome and thank you.

So much for sending us your letter.

I think it's something that so many people are doing with right now, and we would love to give you some guidance on this and also hear a little bit more about what's going on.

That would be wonderful.

Thank you for inviting me.

You are very very welcome.

And let me just say heartbreak is rough to begin with.

It's really rough during a shutdown, because that makes everything a little bit more difficult.

I think you said it was a nine month relationship.

I'm just curious about what you might have noticed or what things that registered may be problematic.

Well, we met at a party and he was sort of not sort of a mutual friend of ours, but she was quite into him and he didn't really feel the same way.

And he did kind of meet her on and she was an old friend of mine.

That was my first sort of thing of like, oh, I don't know if I want to get involved in this.

So I actually said in the first instance, like no, I'm not interested.

We left it for two weeks and then he called me just to say, look, I just wanted to make sure that you're okay, because that said friend had started sending me really horrible messages and to him as well, and he sort of apologized on her behalf and said to me that what he did was wrong and he shouldn't have done it, but he really wants to take me out on a date and blah blah.

So then we ended up going on a date and it kind of ignited very quickly, and I was a bit anxious about that, but it was also nice because I was engaged back in twenty sixteen, but that didn't work out.

The first red flag, I have to say, I don't know if that would count as one, but the first one was when he lives in London.

I live in outside of London, so the culture in London is a lot like I'm guessing New York City, where it's like going out and then drinking and having fun.

And I noticed that he was drinking a lot.

He was meant to come and meet me, and he didn't, and I just said, I'm done.

I'm not hanging around waiting for you.

I don't want to do this anymore because obviously you're choosing to going out as opposed to hanging out with me, which is what we plan to do.

But he was crying and hysteric and he was just like, oh, I've made a mistake.

This is a wake up hall.

You mean too much to me.

I don't want to lose you.

So we tried again.

And that's why I feel like I'm so angry, because if I had just stuck to my guns the first time, then I wouldn't be where I am now.

So that happened pretty early on, when you knew that there was something else that you weren't okay worth Yeah, tell me what made you overlook that?

What were the positive things about the relationship that made you think, oh, but it's okay, I want to see what happens here.

I think it was because I've never had a guy like cry about how sorry they were.

I've never had a guy actually express that sort of emotion.

I noticed that my past relationships, the guys that I was seeing or was dating, were quite emotionally unavailable, so they weren't ever very emotionally expressive.

So this guy was like really upset, and I was just thinking, wow, so maybe he must be really sorry, and I kind of well, and it's just going to sound awful, but I felt guilty because I felt like I knew better, and I felt like perhaps maybe This was his first major relationship.

The last relationship he was in he was sixteen.

They finished when he was twenty one.

He's now twenty seven, so this was his first adult I would say relationship.

So I thought, you know, I know better he didn't mean it.

He wants to try.

He's made that sort of apology, then surely I should try to and not just give up at the first hurdle.

So I think it was just sort of yeah, I don't know if that was what clearly wasn't the right thing to do, but.

Well, you know, you said, this was he's twenty seven and this was the first relationship for him since a long time.

How old are you and what were your relationships like before this?

So I'm twenty nine.

I'm going to be thirty on Sunday.

My first relationship was well, my engagement ended in twenty sixteen.

But I was with that guy for like five years and he said that he didn't love me anymore.

They just woke up to turn round, looked at me in the house that we were living in and just said, oh, I don't love you anymore.

And actually so I was like, oh, okay.

How did you grieve the loss of that relationship.

I didn't actually.

I actually got straight into like a rebound relationship with someone who was just as probably in as much of a mess as I was, and that went on for like a year, and I think I just jumped into something else, and I didn't have a very good family life, and I was just kind of didn't want to really deal with the fact that I had lost someone that was so important to me, so I didn't really grieve that relationship at all.

I think that when I managed to finally escape the rebound, I think a lot of that was grieving was done in between those sorts of things.

You know, Guy, I want to say.

I want to say this sort of to Guy and also to you Strina, that what I'm noticing, and I'll bet that guys thinking the same thing, is that you're improving in terms of the time that it takes you to realize that a relationship is not actually working for you and the time that it ends, even if you didn't end it right.

You're not spending as much time with someone who isn't right for you, or who isn't meeting your needs, or who isn't really appropriate in terms of where they are in their life for what their readiness is for the kind of relationship you want.

Well, I mean, I hope.

So I think the thing is is that I guess it makes me sad because I kind of keep thinking like, is there something that I could have done differently or better?

Because it kind of just feels like the go to sentence for both Joe who is my recent ex and Matt whose my ex fiance, was I just don't love you anymore.

And I just that's what makes me think.

Well, how why when?

And they don't have the answer to the question is just oh, I just don't love you, And that's what hurts because it's kind of like, well, then what I do?

And then and then it's just you can't answer that question.

Yeah, you know, I have a little bit of suspicion.

I'm not sure about this at all, mind you, but I have a little suspicion that it's more about what you don't do than what you do.

And why I say it might be related more to what you don't do.

It's possible that when you have a background that's a little tumultuous, it makes your tolerance for certain things higher than it should be because you came from somewhere where things were not about you as much as they probably should have been, and you had to put up with a lot of difficult behavior by other people.

You just learn to tolerate that.

It doesn't, you know, disturb you as much as it might disturb someone else who doesn't have that tolerance.

And so it's possible with some of these guys that you are overlooking things because yes, it's slightly a problem, but I can manage it.

When the problem with managing it is that it communicates to them that you're okay with it, when in essence you're not.

Yeah that sounds right, Yeah, that is right.

I even said that if I take you back, then I'm sort of enabling this behavior and saying that it's okay.

I can't do that.

But I guess I'm just a bit of a sucker, because he was like, oh no, no, I won't like this.

You know, this is a wake up who I've I've changed, and it's just kind of like downhill from there.

Here's something I want you to remember for next time, and that is that when he has this moment where he's crying and he's promising and it's all going to be great, it's okay to give the person a chance, but in this condition, you give them a chance, and then you have your eyes extraordinarily wide open for the first violation of whatever that promise was, and then you have to really call them on it and say it might be half an hour later, a day, a week, a month, but it's that first time where they're violating whatever the promise is that you can't overlook it, because if you do, then they just fall into the old behavior immediately and there goes the promise.

If you call them on it, they have a decision point to make of either okay, either they're back in or they're not.

But at least in that point.

You know, Yeah, you know, you had been asking about, you know, what did I do to make them fall out of love with me?

And so guy was talking about really paying attention to what is important to you, as opposed to wondering how can I be a chameleon and be the kind of person that they want me to be so that they'll love me.

Yeah, I think that's quite my main problem, because I find myself trying to mold myself into shapes for my partner that they the way that they want me to be like, for example, with like Joe, who wasn't happy with my life choices.

He was like, you shouldn't be doing this, you shouldn't be doing that, and it kind of just made me feel like, why can't you just accept me as I am?

And he just said, oh, because I'm trying to push you to be better because you're so bright and you're so intelligent and you can do this and you do that, but you're just you've just got you've got comfortable, and it just made me feel really bad about myself.

And I think that's that's really a good point that I have tried to like change who I am, to try and make my partners, I guess, like me more.

Well.

I think in this last relationship, it sounds like you were trained to be the cool girl, the lead back girl, the girl who's like, yeah, I'm cool with that, it's okay.

And the more that people try to say I'm going to be someone who I'm not to become the person that this other person wants, the less chance that relationship is going to work.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know.

I just I feel like I don't know what I don't know.

I don't know.

I kept saying this to him.

I was like, what did I do?

I don't understand, and he was like, I don't understand either.

It's like I do love you, but I don't know if it's in the right way.

And I just felt like I was banging my head against the wall.

And it's so hard to not feel like you're the one like you lose all your self esteem.

So you were handed your self esteem to him to be the holder of your self esteem.

Yeah, that's a very dangerous way to go about being in relationship with somebody.

Yeah, you talk a lot about what you thought he liked about you, and then suddenly he wasn't as invested.

What did you like about him?

I'm not hearing anything positive about him yet.

Yeah, I mean he was.

He made me laugh.

He was really funny, and we went out and experienced a lot of things together.

We always were doing things.

It's a complete polar opposite of my relationship with my ex, where we just sat and did nothing in the house.

So we were like always doing something.

It was always fun, there was always something happening.

There was always you know, we will always go, go, go, and I you know, I like that, and I.

Mean I hate to sound really superficial, but he was really good.

Looking at all.

So yeah, I think those were like the three things that I really liked about him.

You know what's interesting is that I think that sometimes you, and by you, I mean most people try and make a relationship work in the moment without thinking enough about whether it's sustainable long term.

And when you start thinking long term, you have to ask yourself whether you want to sign on for that forever with that person who will always know better than you what's best for you and always have an opinion about what you shouldn't shouldn't do.

I mean, and this is what I said to him.

I said, I've always supported you, yet you can't do the same thing for me.

I don't understand why that's the case.

So you said, you're about to turn thirty, You've gone through, you had a long engagement that didn't work out, and now here you are, and it sounds like you're worried about, you know, meeting somebody.

And then you had this idea of, oh, here it is, here's my answer, here's my solution in the form of Joe.

Yeah, and there he was and he materialized, and it all sounded so exciting and we're going to get married and we're so this is so fun and he's so different from my former fiance, and this is going to be great.

And that family where I had all that trouble being loved and learning to love, that's all going to be in the past and I don't have to carry that around with me anymore because now I'm going to be saved by this person.

And so you're grieving the loss of Joe, but I think he's the most insignificant part of the loss that you're experiencing right now, and I think you're so fixated on him and why he decided that this was not the relationship that he wanted, that you're not really grieving the parts that are going to be much more helpful for you to grieve so that you can find the relationship that you want when you're ready to do that.

And that's this idea that there's going to be some kind of reciprocity in a romantic relationship for you that I don't think you've really had, that you're going to have something different from what you had in your family that I don't think that you've really had.

That someone is going to save you from having to deal with the pain of your past, which no person, no matter how great they are, even if they do happen to be the right person, can save you from that.

They can't.

But instead of focusing so much on Joe and trying to get into his head for an answer that you will honestly never have, the better use of your time is to say, why is it so painful for me to be in relationship with people?

Why do I allow people to do things in relationship that are not okay with me?

Those are going to be really important questions for you to get curious about as you're grieving this loss, and it will also help you to not have so much sharpness around the pain of the future that just went away, because they think it will help you to get clarity around that it is not the future that you wanted.

Yeah, I think you're right there.

I mean, what's also quite interesting is that when you pointed out about the stuff with the family, am I tolerance for things that are unacceptable is quite high?

And I, obviously.

I don't know why that is, And that is really interesting that you put it that way, that I would like to look at that as opposed to why I'm trying to get into Joe's head and figure out why this thing didn't work.

I think that the only problem is that when I think about it, I don't know and the answer and the thing that just keeps coming back to me is just this massive feeling of pain and I don't even.

Know if I want to open that.

And I don't know whether that's just that I'm scared of being on my own because like everyone sort of has a family, and I've never really had one, like you've said, and we've been quite fractured.

I don't speak to my brother in personal reasons.

I don't speak to any of my cousins.

Really, I am quite isolated.

And I think that's probably why I cling onto romantic partners, because I keep thinking, oh, least I won't be on my own then, right.

But you want a partner and future in the future of family that do accept you for who you are, that do recognize or that you have to offer, that do value having you, And so it's super important that that is what you look for in another person, not just their presence or acceptance, but they're valuing you for who you are.

When I hear about Joe, who's a Pardier, and you describe yourself as I like to go to lectures and read books.

To me, you know, to me, it sounds like he does the math, looks forward and goes like, yeah, maybe that's not what I want to do in life.

So when you're looking for reasons, one of them is that you just don't sound like the best match to be honest with you, just in terms of what you want out of life, how you live your life.

Yeah, I mean, he went out, we don't have many interests, and I said, well, with all due respect, I've taken so much of an interest in the things that you like, and you have actually said to my fates that you find the stuff that I like boring.

That rate there is.

So it's almost like a lot of times when people say I don't know why this person broke up with me, it's not even that you have to intuit.

It is that they've actually told you why.

They may not have told you in the breakup conversation, which would be more ideal, but along the way in the relationship they've kind of sprinkled in reasons, and sometimes people choose not to hear those reasons.

I think what happens with you Strina, is that any guy that you're with, whether they want to be with you, becomes a referendum on how lovable you are.

Yes, yeah, that sounds about right.

And that's why you go to such great lengths to try to convince them that the relationship is viable.

And so I imagine that when he did say, you know, I don't think we're right for each other, you heard it as something is wrong with you, something is not something is not lovable about you, and you're trying to say, I'll do anything I can to be to become lovable.

And the thing is, Shrina, you are lovable, and you're also choosing people who are not right for you because it feels familiar to you, because that kind of love of not having that feeling of ease, not having that feeling of I don't have to walk on eggshells, and I trust this person's love and I truly love them too.

By the way, because I don't hear that you really loved either of these guys, your ex fiance or Joe.

So I think what you do is you replicate the kind of loving relationships that you had in your family, which were very problematic, and when you first meet these guys, you think, oh, this will be different, this time, it's going to be different, But really you have radar for people who will provide the same kind of environment for you that you had growing up.

And then again you feel like, oh here it is again.

See I'm not lovable.

Yeah that sounds pretty much sput on, to be honest, Yeah, I think you're right about the like feel's familiar.

I feel like I need to work for it and I need to prove that I'm worthy of being.

In a relationship.

I mean, he was constantly on his phone, and like we'd be talking and I'd be like, you're not even present, like you're not listening to me, and it was just like sort of fighting for his sort of attention.

And then when he'd do something so like he said to me, oh, I found a book that reminded me of use and he bought it for me, and I just burst into tears because I was like, oh my god, this is so lovely, is so amazing, thank you so much, thank you so much over a book because I felt like he knew that that's what would make me happy.

It is just he thought he saw something thought of me, and it was a book and I love.

To read because it was that unusual for him to do something so thoughtful apparently that it touched you so deeply.

It's almost it's almost like strena that you were so hungry for this kind of love growing up, and so as an adult, you'll take the crumb, and the crumb means everything.

The crumb.

You try to get the crumb to fill you up, the giving you the book that was a crumb that he gave you, and you it became an entire meal.

Yeah, yeah, what.

So, Laurie, do we have some advice?

Yeah?

What I'm thinking about is that endings matter a lot, and they kind of set the tone for how we move on.

They help us sometimes move on in a different way if we can have a better ending.

And so I'm thinking about how volatile your ending was, and there was a lot of anger.

Nobody really talked about anything, and I feel like, here's an opportunity for you to have a different ending with him where you give him some information about you that is not angry, that's very composed, but that's also very much your truth.

And I'm just thinking about what that might sound like.

You know, I think the easiest thing for him to hear, and the most truthful thing is that you were not the right match for one another.

But you might say to him that, you know, when you're reflecting on the relationship, you realize that you had a lot of fun together in some points, but in terms of the long term, you weren't well suited because you have different interests and probably different expectations about how you want to live your life.

And that it was you know, it was a good run for a while, and just something very simple in that way that emphasizes that you're okay with the ending, but have this nicely composed, calm, kind of reflective notion of fun.

For a while, I appreciated this about you, but ultimately you weren't well matched.

And what that does is it gives you back your voice.

It gives you back your sense of you had given you had handed him your self esteem and it never should have been gifted to him or lent to him in the first place.

That's something that you always need to hold for yourself.

You don't share your self esteem with somebody else.

That's yours and yours alone.

And yes, there's more to it than you know in terms of your feelings there's a lot of pain, but I don't know that that's really what you need to share with him.

You certainly did share it with him in your anger, but just by being able to say I wish you the best, and there's so much power in I wish you the best and not in you know, your tone is really important.

There there's no edge to it, and so I hope you're able to say your truth in that way about the mismatch and from a deep place of adulthood, which is where you need to move your It's almost like you're wearing clothing that doesn't fit anymore.

You're wearing all that childhood clothing as you go into each of these relationships.

And so if you can wish him from the adult place in yourself, and I really wish you well and leave it at that, and you will move on in a much stronger way than the way things have been left already.

Yeah.

No's that's exactly what I want to do.

And I think that you're both right there, and I'm glad that in a way that it did happen this way, because obviously, like you've said, I've learnt more about myself and what I will will and won't stand for.

In a relationship.

It's just obviously, well, it's always tough when things like this happen, and I think that like trying to do it in the way that you said, hopefully will bring.

It to a more sort of calm.

Ending right, And in wishing him well, you give yourself permission to wish yourself well.

Okay, that it gives you that kind of freedom and that kind of permission that I don't know that you let yourself have most of the time.

I think you're so concerned about what people are thinking about you, and I don't think that you are thinking enough about you.

And then I think, guy, do you have some other sort of longer term advice?

I do.

Here's what I'd like you to do longer term.

I'd like you to have a pact with yourself, and I'd like you to really write out.

I want you to think back on the relationships that you've had, and I want you to make a list of two kinds of items.

Number one, limits and things that you really are not okay with in a relationship.

I want you to enumerate the ways you know the limits that you have.

What are the things that you will not tolerate in a relationship.

And I want you to not just go with the big ticket items of you know, cheating or betrayal or you know, any kind of aggression.

I want you to think of the small things, like somebody putting you down.

And you'll be surprised that if that is very clear, if it's that a line that you will not have crossed the first time, you're like, okay, let's be very clear that can't happen again.

They might need one more reminder, but if it's very clear, you know so, I want you to make a list of those kinds of things, the things you will not tolerate.

And with Joe, they might have been things like talking on the phone while you're trying to have a conversation with him, not being reliable in terms of showing up when you made plans with ham, saying things like I have no interest in being curious about your interests.

But the second part of the list is the dues.

You know, that first part is the dance and then they're the duws.

How do you want to feel when you're with someone?

And I want you to think of what Laurie said about the crumbs, the crumbs that are so meaningful.

Make a list of those crumbs and ask for them.

Expect them to be much more of a meal.

In other words, this idea that somebody's thoughtful is Yes, it's touching and it's moving.

It just shouldn't be that rare because I'm sure those are the kinds of things that you're able to offer someone.

It's absolutely fair to want them in some kind of way for yourself.

So I want you to make a list of, you know, the things you would like in a relationship, the ways you would want to feel when you're with someone.

And then the idea here is that you keep that list with you and the next time you start dating someone.

This is going to sound like a lot, but I truly mean it.

I want you to read the list before every date, let's say, at least for a while, because it will remind you to be truer to yourself.

And so literally, before every date you read that list, you remind yourself, yep, this is what I'm looking for, and if it's not there, you can decide much earlier.

You know, Laurie said, you're getting better at leaving sooner.

Good.

Maybe it won't only be one date, two dates a month, maybe you give somebody a chance and they snap too, and you will be surprised, Urina, that when you do express these expectations and you do it nicely, you'll be surprised that when you're very clear that this is the standard, you'll be surprised how many men will rise to that standard.

In my head, I guess, the fact is I've had this sort of narrative of no one's gonna want to put up with the expectations that you think you deserve, where maybe it's I'm expecting too much, and that's where I've kind of now sort of gone the other way and been like, oh, I'm chill about everything.

So it's good to hear that you have to have expectations.

I guess, and the people who don't want to do those kinds of things, that's good.

That's good information to have.

So instead of being devastated by the fact that they don't want to do that, and then you take it personally and think that you're unlovable, that just means that I don't have to be in so much pain because I can eliminate that person.

Yeah.

Lastly, every time you have the thought either you're making the list working on the list, or when you're reading it, or when you're dating someone.

Every time you have the thought this might be too much to expect, I want you to ask yourself if those things are things you are willing to offer, and if they are, it's not too much to expect, and if they're not, they probably shouldn't be on the list.

Perfect, got it?

Yeah, that makes sense.

That would help me a lot, I think, because I think that I'm super hard on myself and I let everyone else around me, in my in my relationships, get away with my buff So that would help me make it a bit more balanced.

Definitely great.

So how do you feel about trying all this advice?

Good?

I feel really good.

I'm going to definitely do the list.

I'm feeling really emotional, so I think that I might have a bit of a cry, and but it'd be a cathartic cry, I think.

And then yeah, but it's just been I'm glad I kind of did this and I'm definitely going to put the advice to good use.

Yeah, So thank you guys.

Honestly, this has been This has been great for me and I can't pay you guys enough.

I'm really, really, really grateful.

To you, to you both, and we're grateful to you.

Thank you.

If you can try that this week to have that conversation with him, we would love to hear back from you.

If you can leave us a voice memo and let us know how that went.

Yeah, yeah, I will do that, and I will say that Ivoutinea pook them wonderful.

Take care.

Bye.

So Shrina was really lovely and I'm glad we got to help her see some things that maybe she wasn't able to see before.

What do you think is going to happen when she tries our advice?

I think she really had two people in her corner, and I don't think she's used to having people in her corner.

And I think that she's going to feel and proud enough to be able to do it in the right way and really get some closure out of it.

Yeah, I think she's going to maybe procrastinate on calling him, and that's going to be her biggest hurdle, is getting over her anxiety about making the call and not doubting herself and not going back into that place of I don't know if I can say this, but I also feel like she's very motivated and I think she's hearing that this isn't so much about Joe, but about something larger in her life and in her relational patterns, and I am really excited to hear how that conversation goes.

This is dear Therapist, and we'll be back after a short break.

I'm Guy Wench and.

I'm Laurie Gottlieb and this is dear therapist.

Well, let's listen to the voicemail.

Hi, Guy and Laurie, it's Trina.

After we spoke, I did feel better.

It made me realize that I have a lot of unresolved childhood trauma that I need to work through.

To the end, I am seeing a therapist weekly to kind of really work through those sort of feelings that I've had and why I act the way that I do and seem to be drawn to emotionally unavailable men.

So I think that that is definitely a positive something I could definitely take away from our chat.

I've also realized that sometimes what you want to do isn't healthy for you, so you need to make sure that you follow through with the healthy.

Thing to do.

So, for example, I go backwards and forwards about wanting to I have done.

I'm at a place now where actually I don't feel but before I was in a place where I wanted to get back.

Together with Joe.

But I realized now that my need was to stay mentally healthy, to stay emotionally healthy, and in order to do that, I need to distance myself from here and realize, Okay, what is the underlying issue here?

Why do I feel the need to put myself in that situation?

And that is another thing that I've learned that I find it really hard to sit with difficult emotions, and that's something that I want to work on.

So I'm trying to use this as a learning tool.

So I'm hopeful for the future and hopefully on the other side, I will have a relationship that I deserve and that is something that I've always wanted and have yet to receive.

So yeah, thank you so much.

In totally indebted to.

You both, and I really appreciate everything you did in that time we shared together.

So that was interesting on quite a few different levels for me, unexpected and really good in some ways.

She seemed to have learned so much about the work that she needs to do that she wasn't aware of before, and really separating out what is historical for her, What is something that went on in the past that is driving her behavior now and how much is really about Joe, who clearly was not compatible with her.

And you know, I found it interesting that she didn't actually follow the suggestion that we asked her to do, which was that conversation with Joe about their you know, really owning the fact that she sees that they were not compatible.

So she doesn't feel like the victim because I think she came to realize in our conversation that really this was not the right person for her as well, and to wish him well, right, that was part of the advice.

But what was interesting was I think as therapist, we see that sometimes we will suggest something to someone and they do something different that is equally useful.

For that she got the message that was much much more important, take a look at yourself, do some work so that you don't find yourself in this kind of situation again, and realize that you are very much deserving of better.

Because she's investing in herself now and that's what's coming across clearly, and that's what's so thrilling to hear.

Yeah, I love the way she put it, where she said, there's a difference between what I want in the moment and what I need for myself.

And even this small little tippit she threw in there, which I think is so so valuable of like, yes, and I know I need to be able to sit with difficult emotions.

Yes, you do, and good for you for remembering that.

So I'm really hopeful that she is going to be able to go forward in a much more positive way and make these changes.

Yeah.

I was smiling when I was listening to her voicemail because I think heartbreak is so universal and what we talked to her about applies to so many people.

And what I loved about Shrina was that she immediately said, you know what, this is really hard.

My instinct and what would feel better in the moment is to do this thing that's not healthy for me and to just continue my old patterns.

But I know I need to do something different in order to have a different outcome.

And I think we can all learn something from that example.

That brings us to the end of our show for this week.

Thank you so much for listening.

You can follow us both online.

I'm at Lorigottlieb dot com and you can follow me on Twitter at Lorigottlieb one or on Instagram at Lorigottlieb Underscore Author.

And I'm at guywinch dot com and on Instagram at Guywinch.

If you have a dilemma you'd like to discuss with us, big or small, email us at Lorimguy at iHeartMedia dot com.

Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis.

We're produced and edited by Mike Johns.

Special thanks to Samuel Benefield and to our podcast Fairygodmother Correct.

Next week we'll talk about the challenges of blending families together.

When young children are involved.

I'll think, oh, everything is going fine, maybe today is going to be a good day, And I certainly don't know what to say when she's like, I hate you, get away from me.

Dear Therapist is a production of iHeartRadio.