#893 - Jillian Turecki - 9 Harsh Truths About How Relationships Work

32:55So we wake up from that euphoria, and then we think, oh, this isn't fun. Like you're not, you know, and then all the expectations come, and you're like, well, you're not making me happy, and that depression that I had, you know, two days before I met you that magically went away when I met you, it's come back. There must be something wrong with you or this must not be love. And people are operating like this more than you think. I know exactly what you're talking about. There's this, it's so funny, listeners of the show, the OG, OG listeners from seven years ago when we first started it, well, no, a friend of mine, Johnny, who's been on the show quite a lot.

33:38And he once said this thing to me, and it's taken probably until now for me to actually realize that it was true. He said he saw a lot of his friends kind of going through the same cycle, which was between a 12 to 18 month relationship that had a good amount of commitment. And then they got to the end of that and things just didn't seem as exciting anymore. And there was some conflict. And then they assumed that that meant that it's because what we're not compatible and there's something wrong. And then they sort of kick the can down the road and then just restart the whole thing over and over again.

34:09And yeah, I think we really need to look at ourselves during the first six to 12 months of relationship, more like drug addicts than people able to make rational decisions. You know, you're a drug addict, but you also happen to be the dealer and the user. Yeah, exactly. That's actually well said. It's very true. And yeah, that's very true. Unless, unless you get into relationship and you're someone who realizes this, unless you read my book or unless you read other people's books, right? And you're like, I understand that what I'm actually looking for is not just this feeling, I'm looking for someone who will challenge me in the best possible ways.

34:54Not challenge me to the point where every single wound in my body is triggered because because of whatever is going on between the two of us. But they challenged me to actually step up. They challenged me to be a better person and we have the same values. And this is someone who I can build with. And immature love says, I am in love with my projected idealization of you. And the moment you show me that you're real, I'm gonna pull away. And mature love says, I see all of you. I see your nuance. I see your shortcomings. I see your brilliance. I see your quirks. I see your past. And I choose you.

35:42It's, um, people don't often talk about this, you know, there's a lot of criticism around giving up too easily. You're not sticking about whether it's an emerge or with family or just in a relationship that's maybe going to turn into one of those things. But very few people are saying or coaching people on how to bring yourself back down to worth during the first few months. It's like don't work harder. You almost need to sort of be less enamored with your partner as opposed to more enamored with your partner somehow. But one of the things I think a lot of people will feel is that deceleration as they move from the passionate to the companion attraction system or go from lust to love or get out of the honeymoon period or stop infatuation.

36:25Whatever terminology you want to use. How do you advise the people that you work with? Or how do you come to think about sort of managing that altitude change because you are going to feel it. Yes. It wouldn't work for you to be infatuated with your partner for the rest of time. You get nothing done. You get nothing. Well, you get nothing done and actually you get pretty bored because we just don't want to be in one state the entire time. It's very destabilizing to feel that way. It's not exactly happiness. Like we feel that euphoria in the beginning but in that euphoria also comes a lot of instability.

36:58And so that's where people get also very stressed out. And so you're right. How people cope with the transition from the honeymoon stage, the more comfortable stage of a relationship largely determines the longevity of that relationship. And so what do I tell people? Well, it's funny because I love that comfortable stage of the relationship. I mean, I wanted to, I don't want it to be too comfortable, but I like that. So it's, you know, so I just try to tell people, look, it's, uh, now you can focus on work as well. You get your life back. Yeah, you get your life back. And now, and now you can actually, now's when you can explore real emotional connection and intimacy.

37:46Now's where you can actually build trust and camaraderie. Now, and it doesn't mean you're always going to have to work to keep the passion alive, but now you can actually explore things that you can go deeper. You can go deeper. And you can explore what a true emotional connection is, what it means to build safety and trust and respect inside of a relationship. But what it means to have someone really be in your corner and not just because they're afraid to lose you, but because they truly, truly love and support you. And I think that's exciting. Yeah, I think. I had something else I want to say, but after you say it, but this is important.

38:38Just that. Yeah. people who want to who can see the spark or the excitement in that way that kind of like high euphoria state to reframe it as look at all of the things it now opens us up to do that we couldn't do previously. I think is a really lovely reframe. Yeah and it's very true and one thing that I will add is this? This is also what you're at great risk of is taking your partner for granted. And this is, you know, stop, don't stop pursuing your partner. Don't stop being curious about this person. Yeah, maybe you're not in that crazy stage, but you still, because you can go deeper and because actually love and trust can really grow, you still have to be very present and you still have to, you know, in the beginning, we're all the ambassadors of ourselves.

39:42We're like, let me just bring like, you know, let me put my best foot forward. What if you continued to want to or to try to put your best foot forward years in? What What would that look like? And what would that feel like? Number four, you have to love yourself. Self -love is actually all that it's cracked up to be. We need it to thrive in a relationship. So there's two camps of thought that's sort of percolating in the zikai. One is you don't have to love yourself to love anyone else. You don't have to love yourself to be loved by someone else. And all of that is true. You learn to love yourself while you're in relationship.

40:26Then there's another camp that says, you have to love yourself in order to love someone else or in order to be in a relationship, both are wrong and both are true in their own way.

40:39You don't have to completely love yourself in order. There are lots of people who don't love themselves who love plenty of people, and there are lots of people who don't love themselves who are loved by others. But you better believe that if you really struggle to see your value, that you allow and you tolerate crappy things in a relationship. You're in trouble because our relationships reflect how we feel about ourselves. So I think of self love as self acceptance. I see it as, look, you know, straddling that very delicate line between understanding that you have work to do and there are things that you can improve on and quite possibly absolutely need to improve on.

41:29And yet that doesn't diminish your value as a human being in any way. That doesn't diminish your worth. And self -acceptance is learning to sort of hold ourselves in high enough regard without even though there are things about ourselves that we may not like. Self -esteem is critical for a relationship. If it's too high, you have the narcissist. But in my world, what I see a lot more of is too low. And if it's too low, then you are pretending to be someone who you're not running away from a intimacy, tolerating abusive or borderline abusive behavior. So it is a very important conversation to be had.

42:18What, how much is it the job of the other person to help you build you up and build yourself a seam up? Is this not supposed to be a diad? Should it not be a case that we can go to them, flawed and broken as we are and they will help us to put the pieces back to you? It seems like there's a degree of reliance on the other person, but also you have to sought yourself out first, how do we balance that? Yeah, it's not an easy answer. I believe that the best relationships involve people who have a strong sense of self, but that doesn't mean that they don't have parts of them that are wounded, but we can't get into relationship and expect another flawed person to put all the pieces back together.

43:10But I do believe that we can get into a relationship with the expectation that we are going to hold each other's hands as and help each other out as we face our own demons and we face our own challenges. And so Look, there's a difference between someone needing to be built up by their partner all the time because they don't do anything because they're not doing that thing that they need to be doing to help themselves. Versus someone who's going through a really rough, just having a rocky month and needing their partner to kind of be like their greatest fan in that moment. So context matters and I know that that's not popular because so many people want the black and what our white answer and they want the like how to but there's nuance here, but know that no one can actually fill all your avoids.

44:14It feels like this is related to your fifth point. You need to speak up and tell the truth. If we hide what we see, feel or need, a relationship will spiral quickly. Yes. I've lied a lot in my relationships and what I mean by lied is I'm not... I don't think of myself as a liar. I don't like lie. I don't tell, I don't say something that isn't true. But I don't divulge the whole truth of, I haven't divulged the whole truth of what I was feeling in the past because number one, I didn't even know that it was okay to have those needs. I didn't know how to express those needs. Like I was so disconnected from that.

45:00So it wasn't like, oh, I'm gonna like not tell the truth on purpose. But every time people are strategizing to get someone to be interested in them, you know, the mass, the ambassador of ourselves, people don't tell the truth because they're having a hard time processing something or they're just so afraid if I say what I feel, she's going to be so hurt and she's going to leave me. Or he's not, or he's can become so defensive and not be able to have a conversation with me. So I'm gonna bottle it up and I'm just gonna be easy or I'm just gonna repress how I feel because who am I to have feelings?

45:52Who am I to have needs? So people aren't doing this consciously and they're not necessarily doing it on purpose. they're doing it because they don't know the alternative. How can people become more comfortable with speaking the truth? Well, one by recognizing that the alternative is worse. By not speaking the truth, you become resentful. By not speaking the truth, your relationship deteriorates. By not speaking the truth, you betray yourself. And by not speaking the truth in many ways, you portray your partner because then they don't know how to contribute to your happiness. They don't know how to contribute to the emotional bank account of your relationship.

46:37So there's a very big price to pay and not speaking the truth. And the way to do it is to be direct and truthful. And also, you know, sometimes you'll have to be very vulnerable. I'm not into the whole stoic thing, you know, it's not about being stoic. No one, you know, in a romantic relationship, stoic doesn't get you very far. Vulnerability gets you far. Why is that? Okay, so why does the sort of stiffer, stronger, self -sufficiency thing not get you far in a relationship? Well, not when it comes to difficult conversations. I mean, it has a place, you know, when you have to make a decision about something, Sometimes bringing that to a relationship can be very useful.

47:24But when it comes to difficult conversations about feelings and about needs, you have to be able to

47:41people bond when they open up their hearts to each other. And they open up their inner worlds to each other. If you're always hiding behind the mask of stoicism, then it's just a wall. It's just another self -protective measure. And it's like it's emotional and availability. It has its place in life. It has its place in pockets and a relationship. But that's not how people build trust with each other. They build trust when you are able to open up about something that's important to you and then it's received. It's received with care, it's received with interest, it's received with love. That's how you build trust with another person.

48:32Does it mean sometimes we're going to have to sort of move at the same speed as our partner that we can't say more to them than they're able to receive and if we try to do that and it is kind of unrequited or it's not very well absorbed, that's going to make us more scared about doing it next time. So we need to tolerate that and regulate how quickly and how much we do. So let me backtrack a little bit. We're training our partners all the time. All the time. Every time your partner opens up to you about something or just wants to share about their day and you're just like, you know, reading something and barely looking up, you're training your partner to not do that anymore.

49:22You're training your partner to now start to withhold their experience. So I think that if you're sharing something and someone is not able to receive it, again, that feeds into the conversation. You could say something like, it seems like, or it appears that this is difficult for you to hear right now. Is that true?

49:57And part of being a mature, high functioning adult in a relationship is being able to have that kind of conversation. And you might say, you know what? Yeah, I think that was really hard from here to receive. Maybe I just need a moment or maybe I need you to need to ask you some questions. When you're getting to know someone like in the beginning, you're sort of testing the waters and maybe opening up a little bit to see how they receive. You opening up and then maybe you see that they don't receive it that well and that you, and then you might be in the, you might be, it's not a guarantee, but you might be in the presence of someone who's a not actually that interested in you as you would let hope them to be or to or be they're not what what is so commonly and popularly referred to as emotionally unavailable.

50:57Now that doesn't mean that everyone is going to be as emotive. There's lots of men of a certain generation who are just not as emotive as women are. I think that their needs their There has, men have to learn how to become more emotive, but what's more important is that they become very good listeners. And I think we all have to figure out what we can and cannot tolerate in a relationship. But it's called a heart to heart for a reason. When two people have a heart to heart, they're opening up. They're inner worlds to each other and Typically what is associated to a heart with the heart to heart is after that heart to heart.

51:48There's closeness There's more love so it's important You've worked with a lot of women thousands of women. Yeah, and a lot of men actually What is it that But there's a lot of rumors around on the internet about what it is that women are really looking for and this is what they're publicly prepared to say, this is what's acceptable but really what they want is this behind the scenes. I would imagine somebody that works from a relationship coaching, counseling perspective has about of a transparent view into what it is that women are actually saying that they could have had in that relationship or what they're looking for in the next one or what The partner that they're just starting to date is or is not giving them and this is why it makes me feel good or bad What is it that you wish more men knew about what women want from relationships?

52:45Women want safety. This is very important men do not understand The role that safety plays in a woman's life We you know, walking down, we could be in the best neighborhood. In the world, we could be in a safe town, we could be in a city. If we're walking down the street and it's empty, our antenna is up. It doesn't even matter if it's broad daylight. That's something that a man that most men can't even begin to wrap their heads around. I'm going to go to an empty parking lot by myself. No way. I don't care if it's 12 o 'clock in the afternoon. If I don't see anyone around and I'm in that parking lot is empty, am I walking to my car alone?

53:41I might be running. And so this is the reality of women. And biologically, you know, women, it's like we have the babies. We want to make sure that the babies are protected. We want to make sure that we're in a relationship with someone who will protect us. This is partially biological. So, how does that translate into the modern world? Well, women want a partner who is... And we're talking about male partners, right? So, we want your presence. So this is going to sound very simple and maybe you've heard it before, but you fixing the problem is not what you think it is because a lot of men, there's a problem they want to fix it.

54:37Or you know, we're having, maybe we're having, we're overwhelmed and what most men do is they come to, they want to come to the rescue and say, I know how to make it so that you're less overwhelmed. You just have to do one, two, and three. You'll be less overwhelmed. And the funny thing is, he's right. A lot of the time he's right. But we know that already. What we need in that moment is someone just to listen or to give us a hug and to have presence with us. That's like, and then, And then we can maybe calm down and enter our more rational minds because women are perfectly capable of rationality.

55:27But at first, you know, we might be feeling like that intensity of emotion. And here's a thing about emotions that probably the number one thing that women complain about, if you will, their male partners, that they wish that they had more of, that many to know is. I wish my emotions didn't scare him off. If I had a dime, for every time I've heard those phrase in some way spoken to me and that I've thought it, I would have so many dimes. I would have enough dimes to feed the world kind of thing. That kind of thing. I wish that I could be in a bad mood and he wouldn't take it personally.

56:21I think, and I would, this is my experience, and I would love to hear your thoughts, Chris, is that a lot of men, when they get into relationships with their female partners, there's an unconscious need for their woman to be happy because they feel so responsible for our happiness. And I think that, you know, what I've been told by many men, personally and professionally, that what he's most drawn to is when we're relaxed and we're smiling and we're happy. But we can't, we women, we can't be happy all the time. And sometimes we get anxious and stressed and we have a very delicate hormonal system.

57:09And, you know, we just, we have a different mind. We have something called diffuse awareness that we're taking in. We feel responsible for everyone and everything and we're very, and we're not so, women have the capacity to go into the part of the brain that's very singular focus. But we also have this incredible curse slash gift to just juggle like 50 million things at once. And so we're not always gonna be happy be also because we're a human being. And a lot of women have said, he can't handle it. It's very reactive when I'm not happy.

57:54And so that's it. Those are the things. It's interesting. I'm not sure about the happiness thing, but I certainly know that peace is something that I think a lot of guys try to optimize for and that you're dealing with the whirlwind that can be a woman's emotions, disrupts the peace sometimes and learning how both people can regulate to kind of bring that back down to worth. Yes. It's very important. But a world that of emotions doesn't always have to be drama. You know, I've certainly worked with a lot of women to stop bringing drama. There's a lot of men who bring drama. But yes, optimizing But do they really want peace?

58:38I mean... Depends who you want. Depends what your nervous system set point is. I have some friends that like the chaos. I have some friends that use that as a proxy for excitement, for love, for where they feel the most engaged. It's something that's interesting. I'm firmly in camp peace, but that's not necessarily for everyone. That being said, Whitney Cummings told me this story, That story, which was really great. She was stress -checked, I guess, stress tested by a football player that she was dating, maybe a few years ago, I didn't know how long ago. And she'd been sort of yapping and yapping and yapping and sort of playing this, playing up.

59:20This kind of Hollywood, style thing, and there'd always be something, there was always something going on, there was always something fiery happening. And she turned to him and she said, But, well, like, you know, if you're dating me, it's because you want a challenge. You know, like, I'm the girl that you come to if you want a challenge, and he turned to her and he said, what sort of guy wants a challenge in his long -term relationship? And she was like, he's a guy that spends his days at the training ground and his evenings playing a difficult game. He has enough challenge already. He's delivering the maximum amount of challenge that he wants, coming home and finding that there is more challenge being put on you than this person needs that they're playing up some additional level of, you know, they're choosing to not do any of the regulation themselves.

1:00:07I think, um, you know, that's a problem. I don't, I don't believe that she, but she's saying that is, I don't believe that, you know, it's not, it's not necessarily true. In other words, that she had the choice that the, what, what, I mean, it's like, well, Well, if you say, if you say, well, putters, you know, that aside, if you're saying, well, the men who want me want to challenge, well, what does that actually really mean? Like to me, that, that saying, well, you're not willing to actually do the work to actually bring some harmony into this relationship. I'm not speaking about Whitney. I'm just saying in general, you know, that's a lovely excuse.

1:00:47I mean, we're all challenging. You know, we, one of them, you have to ask yourself, how am I difficult to live with? Because, you know, we're all difficult in some way to live with. And I think that having some level of awareness of how we are difficult to live with, and then, and being able to say to our partner, like, I love you for putting up with this part of me. Like, that's where it's at. One of the most beautiful things that you could say. Like to be able to see your own floor and then to appreciate the fact that this person has just wordlessly wordlessly decided that they are going to continue to swallow whatever it is that you do yeah To a lander botan quotes the first one being he says on every first date You should ask the other person in what ways are you mad?

1:01:37He says that one of the greatest delusions that single people have is that they're actually perhaps quite an easy person to live with Yeah, look, and some people are easier to live with than others. They just are. But we are, we are, we all come to the table with stuff. And I think that it's just a matter of when it comes to choosing a partner. You know, a lot of people don't, don't know how to differentiate between the tolerable and the intolerable. Because they didn't learn that, you know, they saw they're one or both of their parents tolerate a lot. And so one of the things, if you keep having, if one keeps having these sort of disappointing relationships, these very painful relationships, one of the things to explore is knowing where your limit is in terms of what you can tolerate.

1:02:31Because we should have a lot of flexibility and tolerate a lot in a relationship, but you need to know that chunk of whatever that you just won't tolerate. You know? You need to be your best self even after the honeymoon. Stress and fear can turn a secure relationship into a dysfunctional one. We have to make it a priority to show up as our highest selves as much as possible. Yeah. Well, this is what we were talking about a little bit before, which is that we put on, we are there best selves in the beginning and then we get comfortable. And then we have this unconscious belief that this person that loves us should love us no matter what.

1:03:21So even if I'm coming to the relationship consistently and I really want to emphasize consistently because we'll do this sometimes consistently stress, moody, irritable, cold, Why would you expect anyone to put up with that on a consistent basis?

1:03:46And relationships are what we make of them, and they need attention, and they need attention in the form of our mindfulness. us. And that means that we're not going to be perfect, but you can't do all these wonderful things in the beginning. And then stop doing them and expect your relationship to be a good relationship. It's really as simple as that. And this is what people do. This is what I've never met anyone who hasn't done this. Who hasn't. That's a law of familiarity. We get used to something and we start to take it for granted. We think, you know, we comfort is a wonderful thing in a relationship.

1:04:44Too much comfort often leads to the demise of a relationship. Get so comfortable that we think, you know, it's like how a lot of us can be around family, we can regress to our seven year old self and be a total shit and we know we're going to be loved anyway. People do that in their romantic relationships and they end it's a mistake. It's a mistake to do it anyway, but it's really a mistake in your romantic relationship. So we think, you know, we do forget and I've said this before, we forget that the person that we love is a gift and we think that they're a given. And that is just the law of familiarity.

1:05:22And it's because we become unconscious and mindless in our relationships. Our relationship really has, we think that you go into a cave, or you go into an ashram, or you do some sort of, you know, psychedelic trip that that's the spiritual work. No, the spiritual work is in a relationship. What's the stress and fear bit, turning a secure relationship into a dysfunctional one? I understand that familiarity breeds like laziness in a way, but how does stress and fear play a role there?

1:06:16When in the honeymoon stage of a relationship, there's this illusion that all our stress goes away because this person has come into our life and we feel that euphoria and we feel so excited and it's new.

1:06:37And then our stress comes back. And we might put on a really brave face or we treat our co -workers great. We smile at a stranger on the street.

1:07:01And then And we think I don't have to actually be really that nice to you. Law of familiarity.

1:07:16Very, very hard, sad and stressful things can happen in life. But more times than not, people are not reacting to something difficult. They are in a habit of just being reactive to everything. So their threshold for stress is really low. And maybe there is something stressful like money and children.

1:07:49People don't know how to manage their stress. And so they start to fight with each other. And they start to create negative stories about each other. Or they start to look at their partner and see everything that is wrong about them. When what's really going on is a turbulent mind. What's really going on is a turbulent nervous system. What's really going on is stress in that person's body. that is making it so that they are not seeing life and their partner clearly. This is what ends relationships is not knowing how to handle stress and not knowing and not identifying when stress is the problem versus the actual relationship.

1:08:46And I suppose because that person so close to us, I'm because we're familiar and because we hope, slash, you know, that they're not going, we can use them as an emotional crutch punching bag. Yes. And also because, you know, it's very common if a family is going through, let's say money problems, for that to tear mom and dad apart or mom and mom apart to tear the couple apart. It's not so it's the it's how they were reacting to life, which I've nothing but compassion for. One of the things that we just don't learn in school. It's how they were reacting to life that made it so that they were I mean, think about it when you're really stressed.

1:09:40You don't want to be touched. You don't want to be told what to do. You're not feeling sexual. You're not feeling central. You're not feeling open. You're not feeling loving. You become totally self -involved and emotionally unavailable. and you've got two people like that on a consistent basis, then this is what's going to happen. The relationship is going to suffer and it's because of how they're actually dealing with the birth of their first child. It's how they're dealing with the money problems. It's how they're dealing with certain things that and these things might be real problems that are highly systemic, but we think that once the stress gets better that the relationship will get better when the truth is how we, how we, it's how we respond or react to what's happening in life that will ultimately improve the relationship.

1:10:29And sometimes, you know, families and couples really need help to deal with very big things. But like I said, you'd be shocked to learn that often it's not something legitimately stressful, like you lost all your money, or you can't buy groceries, or your child is sick. You know, these are real things. I'm seeing it all the time in couples who are just like, stressed out about nothing.

1:11:07You cannot convince someone to love you as much as we try. Yeah, it's the law of the land. You cannot convince anyone to love you. You can't beg them to love you. You can try to jump through whatever hoops you want to get them to love you. You can try to change yourself. To get them to love you or to choose you. You can use your kids as pawns to get them to stay. I mean, you could try all you can, but it's impossible to convince someone to love you. The ruthless are the side of this. I know it's texting Conor Beaton about this. 90 minutes ago. Oh, love for you. We were just talking about this on the way in.

1:11:57It was basically talking about the same, but in reverse, that it's true. You can't convince anybody to love you, but you also can't convince yourself to love anybody either. And it said, if you can't get what you want, you can will yourself to get what you can get. But you can't will yourself to want what you can get. Like you don't get to make us up. And there's a lot of time, you know, I've spoken to friends that have been in relationships previously. Oh, dude, you know what it is? She's so amazing for me. She takes all of the boxes. I don't know what it is. I've tried and I've tried and I feel awful and guilty and I'm racked with fear and shame about it.

1:12:36And I'm probably going to move on to some check that is going to be none of the things that I think that I'm supposed to want, but I can't help the way that I feel. And I just don't feel the right way about this person. And we, we, relationships, the way that we feel about people and desire happens bottom up, not top down. And yeah, as much as we wish that it was a dictatorship, a lot of the time, unfortunately, it's a democracy. Yeah, it's very true. Although we have to use a little bit more of this head for sure when we're making these decisions. Yeah, it's very true. I mean, you just can't make yourself love someone.

1:13:15You can't make yourself feel those feelings. And you can't convince someone to choose you and people are doing it all the time in very subtle ways. They're trying to seduce. They're trying to convince. They're trying to change themselves. and there's so much grace in accepting, even if it shatters your heart, accepting this truth. And life becomes a lot easier when you adopt this law into your DNA, basically. No one is coming to save you. A relationship is meant to make us happier, not happy. Yeah. So, I think that people intellectually understand this, but people do get into relationships thinking that the relationship is going to be the thing that fulfills them and that the person is going to be the person who fulfills them.

1:14:26That there's this perfect person who's going to come in and rescue you. And again, even though we know logically that's not the case, we do in many ways have this fantasy that when this right person comes into our lives, everything's going to be better. Or when our partner is not able to, you know, it's just not making us feel all delightful and happy one day, that's somehow it's their responsibility to do that. Filment can only come from the inside. It really, and we get fulfillment and happiness from various sources and from doing various things. But there's no one who is coming, there's no night in shining armor, there's no, there's no one who's coming to save you.

1:15:23And look, we've seen so many movies. There's a movie that I reference in the book, because I think it is so perfect. And it's interesting because it's a guy expecting to be rescued, which I think goes against what's more commonly rethought about is like the woman, you know, in the dam's own distress. I don't know if you ever saw the movie 500 Days of Summer. No. It's a fantastic movie that really incredibly illustrates this point, which is he's a guy. He's got, he's totally depressed. He's got no purpose in life. He hates his job. He has a passion that he's not pursuing. So he's in this job, but he can't stand.

1:16:10And then this girl comes in and she's like, you know, beautiful and cute. And he's just like, from the moment he sees her, he's just like he's done, right? And so his whole, the whole movie is him trying to convince her to love him because she's just not that she's like, dates him and sleeps with him, but she's just, you can tell she's not all in. And on the surface, what it looks like is, oh, something's wrong with her. She's totally avoidant. You know, what's, what's wrong with her? you know, she's such a nice guy. And what's really going on is that she's not even a fully formed character. She's a metaphor for him needing to be rescued.

1:16:59Because then, and what she does is, is she mirrors back to him.

1:17:07Why? She doesn't choose him. Like, she never says it. But of course, the reason is is because he's desperate for his happiness in her and he's desperate to use her. He's the user. He is using her to escape his own misery and it's only after she breaks up with him that he is able to actually confront himself. And so it's a great movie to watch that illustrates the point that, you know, we do try to escape ourselves through relationships. That could be someone's pattern that's more than someone else's pattern. A relationship can't actually make you happy. No one can really make you happy. But the expectation, the healthy expectation is, this person is adding to my life.

1:18:09They're making my path a little better, but no one can walk the path but me. And I think that this is going to be the hardest truth in many ways, except for the last one for people to face because people are very resistant because they think, oh no, I don't expect that. No, I understand that. But then watch, look at your relationship history or look at your current relationship. How many times have you been resentful towards your current partner because they're not making you happy in that moment?

1:18:50The final one, which you say, and I, is kind of interesting. You know, we talked about relationships throughout this. some inner work who sort of nodded toward attachment stuff, previous patterns, breakups, expectations, even romance culture. And then for no reason, you decide to assault everybody's most raw wound. She is, we must make peace with our parents. Grief for parent, you never had. Be open to looking at them differently, have a conversation with them. Yeah. So making peace with your parent is making peace with is reframing and investigating the story that you've had about one or both of your parents that may be that may have a choke hold on you and release emancipating yourself from the prison of your own mind and of this story that you have about them.

1:19:44You could have a great relationship with your parents and peace with your parents might mean that you break up with your parents metaphorically is the leaders of your belief system. So they always wanted you to be a doctor, but in your heart you are an artist, but you've but and you've been living your life as a doctor miserable because that's what your parents wanted and you decide, you know what I love mom and dad, but I'm going to become an artist because the best way to really honor myself and my families to be happy. So that's making peace with your parents. I put a disclaimer in this chapter if there's been severe abuse, if there's been any sort of molesting, and no way put that expectation on you.

1:20:29I had an extremely troubling relationship with my father, and much of my life was about trying to find some resolve there, which I was able to mostly do before he died a year ago. And, you know, our adult relationships will very much reflect our relationships with our parents. And it's important to look at your parents and to explore the relationship. that you have with one of your, one or both of your parents, through the filter of your adult self rather than just the filter of your little boy or little girl self. And it will, it will absolutely change your life. So that was a very, I wrote that chapter as he was dying, he kind of died unexpectedly, but he died.

1:21:35I was writing that chapter and it was, I have a lot of case studies in there of all sorts of experiences with parents and, you know, yeah, you have to start to think of them differently. And, you know, I lost both my parents and I was close to my stepfather and I lost him too. And one thing that I learned about, and I was very close with my mom, but of course, There's certain things, you know, that mother -daughter relationships can be kind of complicated. And I learned something profound about relationships with parents after they died, which is that you kind of let go of some of the resentments that you had when they were a lot.

1:22:37and you build a little compassion. You could decide to never speak to your parent again. But you have to do that from a clear head, not from a place of reaction because I was estranged from my father for 13 years or something. And And it did not help me. What helped me was learning how to not be afraid of him and to investigate and to start to stand up for myself and to also start to examine the story that I've had about him for so many years. And that's what I try to explain in this chapter. What do you say to the people that still, they're worried that their parents are sort of coming toward the end of their lives?

1:23:43Maybe they've tried to approach conversations not too dissimilar to these previously, even the first couple of steps, and maybe they've not been received particularly well, and they've got this sort of balancing act in their mind where they go, can I even bring this into land over the next five years, 10 years. I don't know how ever long they've got left. I'm just opening a can of worms that is going to have their parting memory of their role as my parent being one of failure and dissatisfaction and I'm going to bring up all of this stuff and it's going to feel like an attack on them and this is how I'm going to the swan song to mine and my parents' relationship is maybe going to be me trying to do this selfish healing in a child bullshit.

1:24:31Can I not just put up with the peace and sort of leave it on the table? Yeah, I would say a third option, which is even better, let go of whatever story you have and start to accept them for who they are and grieve the parent that maybe you wish you had but didn't have and maybe ask them some questions about their life and their experience and start to relate to them differently. One of my friends, this Christmas recorded, I think he did it with, maybe he did it with both his mum and his dad but separately, he recorded a two hour podcast with each of his parents where he just said, tell me about your life.

1:25:13So what was growing up like, and he's recorded it in, not exactly publishable quality, but you know, it's more than good enough for him and he just wants to keep doing that and he's Set himself a task of doing that every year now that he wants to have this archive of him talking to his parents about Them and what it was like raising him and you know, he wants to have this sort of self Live self -knowledge library, I guess which I love that pretty cool. Yeah, very cool the most podcast Solution ever is to record a podcast with your parents to come up to heal your inner child. Yeah And it's, you know, the whole healing you're inner child thing.

1:25:50I mean, it's really about, yeah, well, again, you know, learning how to, it's hard, it's hard, you know, your parents as children, they're supposed to be our heroes, but then you grow up and you realize you're just a person, just like me. And maybe there can be some compassion there because of that. Well, if you know that if you have this sense, it's unfair. If not for the way that my parents raised me, I would have been dot, dot, dot, I would have been more balanced. I would have had secure attachment. I would have not had my fears. I would have not had all the rest of it. And you go, okay, well, just go back one generation.

1:26:41if you say that you're at the mercy of your parents, who are they at the mercy of? Yeah, absolutely. Well, no, that's different because I'm, you know, they supposed to look after me and it's like, yeah, I, you don't get to have it both ways. You don't have to have it both ways and I know, you know, this might come off as corny, but, you know, fuck it, it's really true, which is that what did you gain by not getting what it is that you needed? You know, life is very mysterious. I know people who have had great parents and great upbringing and got everything that they want and they ended up being drug addicts.

1:27:18How does that happen? And I know people who've had real abuse, like really messed up stuff and they are, they're very successful in their marriage. How does that happen? So life in many ways is a mystery and I certainly would not be sitting here today. had I had the father that I wish I had. I just wouldn't be. I am convinced. Because I never would have had the marriage that I had. I wouldn't have chosen that man and I wouldn't have had that relationship that led to so much heartbreak that led me to delve into this work that led me here. And I don't know if I ever would have, you know, I have a long history in teaching yoga and yoga practitioner over 25 years, I don't know that I would have been seeking out that in my life had I not had the pain that I endured in childhood, you know, I don't know.

1:28:17But I think that there is a resilience that comes with not getting what you deserve sometimes. It's an interesting double -edged sword. I think a lot of the time people think, well, I wouldn't have this success or this sort of the work ethic, the resilience, all of that stuff which has brought me all of these things that I really value in myself. I think an uncomfortable deeper question is to say, well, would I have needed that? Had I have not been exposed to the difficulties in the first place? You go right, okay, so I don't get to go back so I can't change it. So it's pointless. It's kind of a moot point in any case.

1:29:02So what you say is what are the things? How can I take this thing that was bad and turn it into something that has lots of light sides to it? Whether the light aside of the edges better than the dark one? And then if I can get rid of that, then I do get to have my cake and eat it too. I get to get all of the advantages of the additional resilience and the self -supporting nature and the fact that I've It had an impact and it's driven me to do things that I'm very proud of and so on and so forth. And I've let go of the trauma that sort of drove it in the first place. But if you don't do the second bit, if you don't do the going back into healing bit, what you're stuck with is this sort of double -edged sword.

1:29:42Yes, absolutely. And look, that's life. I mean, it truly is about making lemonade out of lemons. I mean, I hate to say it, but it is. I mean, that's what leads to a more fulfilling life is being able to take the things that have been hard and Create some sort of meaning out of it That's what it's all about Jillian Turekki ladies and gentlemen, Jillian. I really appreciate it. I think it's very much of the moment Touching on all of the things that everybody's interested in and stepping into the New Year as well as a lot of Winter relationships and spring relationships maybe beginning. It's it's very timely Why should people go?

1:30:22Don't keep up with everything you're doing and check out your work. Yeah, of course my book, it begins with you, which I believe will be his out. And you just need to know my name, Jillian Torekis. Find me on Instagram, all over social media, my podcast, Jillian on Love. And yeah, that's where people can find me. Okay, Jillian, I appreciate you. Thank you. I appreciate you. Thank you.