The Relationship & Love Advice You Need To Hear From The Experts

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2:22What is up? I'm Grace Beverley and welcome back to Working Hard, the podcast shared guidebook on how to improve your own life and achieve what you actually dreamed of doing because life's too short for boring podcasts and bad advice.

2:37What is up and welcome back to Working Hard. If you are listening to this episode it means two things. Number one, I am married. That's very fun but if you listened to last week's episode you will know that already. And number two, I am now officially on my honeymoon which means I will be horizontal and hopefully slightly tipsy and hopefully it's sunny. So I've recorded this episode because I figured before the wedding it made sense to go through the archives and pick out the best advice we've had from the amazing relationship experts that I have had on over the years from sexologists to relationship coaches to girls who have just been through some shit and shared it on the podcast.

3:12We are going into it all to hopefully create a guide for when you're feeling a little lost when it comes to love or you're just in need of some good old advice. Okay so we're starting with my episode from way back in the archives with the brilliant dating expert Anna Williamson. You'll know her from Celebs Go Dating and I'm sorry if the audio isn't great but I promise the advice is worth it. Anyway the first clip I wanted to include from Anna was her take on the biggest mistake we're usually making with matchmaking. What would you say the biggest kind of common mistake people make when um when trying to find a kind of match slash dating?

3:47Hmm. Okay. So my number one pet hate and common mistake is, my type is, hates it, hates it. And woe betide anyone on our next series of Celebs Go Dating that trots that out. The very moment you say my type is, you are limiting everything outside of that type. and usually that type has come from previous experience. Guess what? If it's previous experience, you're not in that relationship anymore. So what? Are you wanting to go back to your past and recreate your past? That's often where we need to do some work on going, but if you want what you've had, but you haven't got anymore, where are you heading?

4:37so for me the most common mistake and the biggest mistake and my bugbear is people that are very narrow-minded when it comes to their type but limiting yourself with with just saying i only want someone that is tall dark handsome blue eyes does this for a job has a great family you are completely limiting your possibilities and so how do we draw the line between attraction and what we're naturally attracted to and making sure that we're not kind of putting ourselves in this narrow-minded type box so what i'm talking about a lot really is as aesthetics people come up with what they like the look of okay but we all know that relationships are so much more than that i mean my god you know if my husband married me just based on my looks you know when he sees me massively hung over and sleep deprived i am not looking my best it's looking at the bigger picture and really a relationship and matchmaking is a huge part of it is based on values okay what is important to me?

5:35What do I stand for? If you were to strip me down, like with supervision, you know, laser eyes, what is important to me? What do I, you know, what, on my deathbed, if someone said, you know, what has been the most important part of your life? What have you cared about the most? That is where we elicit our top values. You know, mine is family, it's communication, it's honesty, it's creativity. These are really important things to me. And that is how we can look beyond the i like someone that's got black hair or someone that's blonde that's fine but there's so much more to that because all of that can be changed and probably will change attraction wanes after we get through that six month one year if you're lucky honeymoon phase you've got to know where you're going you've got to find that depth and that is where your values come in and if you match your values with someone else that is where you should be absolutely beelining for because that will create the foundation of your relationship.

6:33I also absolutely love her take on love languages. I personally love talking about love languages in a relationship with friends. I feel like it's so important understanding your love language and your partner's love language, no matter what type of relationship you have. I think it makes such a big difference to feeling seen and loved. Even if you have different love languages, being able to translate that for each other, I think is so important. Question number one. Go on. Is the love language stuff bullshit? um no i'm a huge fan of love languages i think it is the key to a successful relationship i really do i think if you can fathom out what your love language is and what your partner's love language is you have basically hit the jackpot it's a cheap code massive cheap it's helpful for because i think obviously the thing is is likelihood is even if you you're going to differ in some ways um probably you know different relationships are obviously different but what happens if you have love languages that are completely different i mean that's fine it's just learning how to tune into those um and our love languages can can move around the hierarchy a love language is by its definition is how do you receive love and how do you give love um you know for me my number one love language is acts of service um honestly all my husband has to do is load the dishwasher without asking and you know he he's on you know he's he's on for it um my husband it's quality time you know for him he really appreciates that quality time when i put the phone down you know and i'm actively into him um and the minute you tap into your partner's love language um good things happen That one is also such a great episode to listen back to if you want some hardcore relationship advice.

8:17Anna is so great. Next up, we've got a clip from my second episode with Roxy Nafusi. I asked her pretty outrightly whether you could manifest love, quite simply because I was skeptical about the concept. It's safe to say, though, she had a pretty clear and very actionable response, which I absolutely loved. Do you think you can manifest love? Yes, absolutely. I think it's the hardest thing for most people to manifest because we hold the most wounds around love and relationships. But yes, you absolutely can. So how do you do it? Step one, be clear in your vision. Know exactly what the kind of person that you want, what you want that relationship to feel like and who you want to be in that relationship.

8:58Step two is believe you are worthy of it. So remove fear and doubt. So that's about healing and processing your past and working with therapists, changing your language, using affirmations, meditation, whatever it is to help you heal those wounds. Step three is align your behavior. So go on dating apps. Allow your friends to set you up. You are not going to meet someone sitting at home. I say that to myself, not that I'm single, but if I was. Step four, overcome tests on the universe. This is about not settling. If you are engaging with people that don't treat you right, that don't give you respect, that aren't going to give you what you want, you are taking up energetic space and blocking somebody who is right for you from entering your life.

9:37So say no to them, let them go, close the door. Step five is embrace gratitude. Don't be thinking I'll be happy when I meet someone. Be grateful for your life now, for being in a position of empowerment and independence and enjoy that while still knowing what you want. I call it the manifesting sweet spot, knowing what you want whilst being entirely grateful for all that you already have. Step six, turn envy into inspiration. So make sure that when you're looking at other couples online, instead of being like, oh, I can't believe there was someone that I'm not, think, oh my God, what an amazing showcase of love.

10:12I can't wait to experience that for myself. And then step seven, trust in the universe. Do not allow yourself to become desperate. Desperation is a low vibe energy that will block you from receiving. Instead, sink into this trust and surrender that what you want is coming your way. That is my seven steps to manifesting. That clip has millions of views on TikTok and I can very much see why. I feel like Roxy is so good at presenting clear strategies for getting what you want without suggesting that you can just click your fingers and get your dream partner. It makes it so clear how much of your relationship comes down to inner work.

10:44Next up is for all my girlies who are in their dating era. Let me tell you from experience, dating is the biggest test for your boundaries and your self worth. My episode with Michelle Ellman was all about how to set boundaries and the best ways to date. And I loved this part where she gave advice on how to boost your self worth when you're actually trying to put yourself out there. Boundaries are one of those things that people think, especially in dating, oh, we're not serious enough for me to set my boundaries. boundaries are there with everyone and you should be setting it from the get-go so the first day they plan a date that's five minutes around from their house and two hours away from you hey no unfortunately that's not going to work for me let's find somewhere somewhere in the middle they text you two o 'clock in the morning from the get-go hey this is not an appropriate time to text I'll reply to you when I finish work tomorrow you actually setting those boundaries of what's convenient for you what works for you because why are you putting them as a priority in your schedule when again they're still a stranger and they haven't earned that right so how would you recommend someone sets boundaries when they're dating so it's saying those small things starting with where they choose the restaurant where how they reply um i remember with my boyfriend the second day we were texting he texted me at like 10 o 'clock in the morning i'm too busy during the work day to text and so i replied to him at six o 'clock and i was like hey i don't text during the work day but feel free to text me and i'll reply as soon as i'm off work and so i set that boundary now over time he earned his trust he earned my respect and he also earned just more more interest I guess and I did reply to him during working hours but that took a few months and if he turned up late or if um I found he was disrespecting my time I would communicate that I think it's that that difference between when you feel something you thinking oh if I stay quiet about this I will be more dateable and they'll like me more and actually realizing if you show them that in the beginning then you'll know sooner rather than later whether they are the right person for you.

12:39Michelle's episode is a real goldmine if you want a dating pep talk so I highly recommend it. I also loved what she had to say on why people settle in relationships. Do you think too many people are settling when it comes to dating in relationships? I think there are a lot lot of people who don't have their self-worth in place and they don't the reason why people settle is because they don't know there is a person out there who exists who will actually treat them the way they deserve and what usually is the reason why they stay in that relationship is because there's so much fear-mongering around being single as I said I was single for eight years and can you imagine the comments I got during those eight years like oh you're just too picky or you're looking too hard so you can never win you're either looking too hard or not looking hard enough right sure and I think actually being okay with being single is a really pivotal part of knowing you aren't settling in a relationship because otherwise you will settle for the first person who walks in the door because you don't like your own company and if the worst thing in the world is I end up forever alone then I end up forever with me and I like me so that's okay whereas if you think oh I'm going to be left with myself and I don't even like being alone and I have 50 best friends because I never want to even sit in my my apartment by myself then of course you're going to run to anyone as company but for you to actually have standards and criteria and for you to look at do you like them not just do they like you you have to know what you deserve and that ultimately comes down to knowing the difference between being lonely and alone and being in a relationship will not fix your loneliness there are people in a relationship who are lonely because they are not being understood by their partner who are who walk through the world as if they're a single anyway but just have their partner in their life because they feel they need that to match what society tells them they should be especially around age if you're a certain age and single or if you're a certain uh if or if you're single at for a certain length of time they've been told you're too single you've been alone for too long, all of those things.

14:50And actually, if you're happy in your life, that's all that should make.

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16:20We're moving on now to my episode with sex therapist Kate Moyle. Her points were so interesting on why sex-related tension in a relationship can be so shameful and what to actually do about it. I never heard about the two types of desire until this conversation. Yeah, I think there can be a lot of frustration. I would try and just get to the bottom of what's going on. So what often happens is for one partner, sex might be and physical intimacy might be like a real indicator of love in a relationship that's how they feel valued that's how they feel desired for them it is a really important kind of core part for other people it's less of a priority and then if you understand that from each other you can understand that okay so why maybe I'm the one that needs to kind of just think about that a bit more or the other partner can say do you know what I understand that you might see this differently to me so how can we make a bit more space and time to work on this and this is how we understand that desire works desire isn't always spontaneous if it'll turned on and excited out of nowhere like a kind of bolt of lightning and then we have sex for a lot of people it's responsive which means that it emerges in response to starting something physical or some kind of sexual stimulation so that can explain why lots of people say i wasn't really feeling in the mood for sex I was thinking actually I'd rather just go to sleep but then we were kissing and we were touching and I started to feel excited and then we started moving into sex.

17:44So some people are more likely to be generally turned on or have a high kind of libido throughout their, you know, day, week or whatever and some people will only have that libido activated if it's activated by something like touch or some sort of stimulation. Yeah and we see that people can have both types of desire. Right. But we see that particularly in long-term relationships because, you know, we're used to each other. Of course, yeah. It's not that we're not as explorative. We're not kind of getting to know each other in the same way. And that we often see that responsive desire becomes a more dominant way of experiencing desire.

18:20But then we can really take control of our sex lives when we know that. But most of us think that when we have, so we think that spontaneous desire is the only type of desire. So then as soon as we stop having that, I've lost all desire. I've got no desire anymore. Actually, responsive desire tends to be alive and well. It's just not the version that we've been taught and that we've seen. And do you think then that a couple can have like a healthier sex life by maybe signposting, you know, maybe a night a week they have sex or like a occasion that they have sex or like something that, you know, that kind of like sleep hygiene thing that's like your body knows if you're about to go to sleep, if you like turn on this music and turn down the lights or like whatever it might be.

19:06Would you advocate for that when it comes to sex? I think absolutely making the space for kind of physical and intimate time. As psychosexual therapists, we don't prescribe that people kind of schedule sex because it can create pressure. And then especially, bear in mind, you know, a lot of the time we're working with people who are struggling with sex. So kind of saying, right, on Tuesday night, you're going to go home and have sex just fills them with anxiety and fear. and that's not helpful but creating a dedicated space where I often say to couples put your phones away you know screen free evening or screen free time just to focus on each other whether it's talking eye contact touching all the things that are basic parts of human communication that start to release the kind of neurochemicals that make us feel close to each other that start to make you feel like you've got someone's undivided attention all the things that play a big part in sex and then using that to kiss touch talk be together just be close that is a platform from which we can start to see responsive desire yeah emerging that's so interesting we're going back over two years now to my episode with the amazing writer and broadcaster elizabeth day elizabeth went through a divorce in her late 20s and was so candid in this episode about how to know when a relationship just isn't working and the strategies that got her out the other side but i do think the older I've got as well, the more I realize that even when a relationship is over or a friendship is in a different phase, I can still think of that with love.

20:40Yeah. Because I totally agree with you. For me, a relationship is not a failure just because it ends. It is part of shaping our personal landscape in the same way that a volcano can shape a landscape and then remain dormant for many, many years, I can still think of those relationships with love. So when I say that I shut the door, it's almost like that enables me then to think of them with love. Because to enable something toxic to keep on going and to keep pleasing whatever energy that is, you're going to find it very difficult to think fondly of them. Letting it go actually is more loving sometimes.

21:18That's what I've realized relatively recently. Also, I still see my divorce as a failure, but I no longer see failure as a negative. Right. Okay, interesting. Yes. So obviously there are negative things that come about as a result of failure, but I'm incredibly grateful for it now. But there's no getting away from the fact that that marriage ended and failed. And when we were walking down the aisle, neither of us thought that that would be the case. Yeah. And not only that, it felt so shameful. And I don't know whether anyone listening to this who has been through a divorce or a public breakup can sort of relate to this, where I felt so ashamed that all of my loved ones had come to that wedding and had bought us gifts and had made an effort to interrupt their lives to celebrate that union.

22:04And it hadn't worked out and not for want of trying on my part. And to face up to that took me a really long time. It took me, I think, a year within the marriage itself. It was a very slow motion thing. And there were lots of conversations and lots of therapy again on my part. And actually, it was a very difficult thing to go through. And I look back now and I realize I was depressed. And my best friend, Emma, who is also a psychotherapist, which is an amazing combination. Very helpful. I'm looking for one of those if anyone wants to be my friend. You can't have her as a best friend, but you could have her as your therapist she's incredible and she describes it as the perspex screen time where she would sit down opposite me and feel like she couldn't get to me that she was knocking on a perspex screen there was a sort of avatar of me but I wasn't in touch I was numb I wasn't in touch with my own feelings and I now realize that that's a symptom of it was mild depression for me but I and luckily sort of therapy and Emma and my friends and family got me through that so there was no doubting that it felt like a failure.

23:13And after that divorce, I thought, okay, so I failed at this. What does that mean? And I looked at it and I realized that what it meant was I didn't know what was going to happen next because life had not gone according to my plan. And that can be very scary, but it can also be liberating because you think, well, what do I actually want to fill? You've suddenly given a blank slate. Exactly. Which I think it's really interesting. I think what feeds into this a lot, I think a lot about the, obviously the timeline put on women in terms of like settling down, getting married if you choose to, having children, like the traditional, not just societal pressures, but like kind of everything, you know, just like all different sides of the pressures that come into that.

23:58and looking at like the statistics of like how most actually like the majority of breakups happen around like late 20s where people are thinking actually no this is not going to be the person I'm going to be with and also the amount of people who stick with something because they think well yeah I'm gonna do it like yeah I guess it's gonna be now and I can imagine there are so many people even listening to this, who probably have that kind of mindset of thinking that because there's this kind of pressure, it has to be, you know, it has to be delivered within that time. And so what if it's the wrong person?

24:36Or so what if there's that kind of like feeling? Also probably who are, you know, as you say, already married and already kind of in that situation. And you almost think it's that like sunk cost fallacy where you think, well, I've invested time into this. All my friends and family have come to a day we've said we're completely in love we've bought you know like we've made a life together I guess we're in this now I can imagine it took you a long time to even recognize that actually that wasn't that didn't have to be it and you could move on from that but I can imagine that being terrifying it was terrifying I I was lucky and unlucky in a way so part of what contributed to the breakdown of that relationship was um fertility treatment and a difficult and challenging fertility journey, which during the course of one year, I did two rounds of IVF back to back, both unsuccessful.

25:26Then I became pregnant naturally, and I had a miscarriage at three months. And that was a lot to go through in a single year. And we can talk more about that because that's a huge part of why, particularly women who want to have biological children, why they feel there is a timeline. But what it did mean was that I didn't have children to consider. So if you are in a relationship and you do have children, I'm not even going to pretend that my experience is anything compared to yours because that's so difficult. And actually my now husband, he is divorced and has three kids. And I see how brilliantly he and his ex co-parent, but how difficult that is and how challenging it is and how you feel that you've let your children down at every single juncture.

26:10And so there's a lot more to consider if there are other people involved. And I absolutely a huge believer in working as much as possible in a committed relationship to try and sustain it. But if you've done all of that, and it's still not working, then I promise you, you are not a failure. You have worked and tried your hardest, and the relationship might fail, but you're not a failure. You're actually really, really strong for being able to acknowledge that. And there is always life on the other side of it. And I think the thing about plans, me, for me, failure, my definition of failure is when something doesn't go according to plan.

26:50You have to then question the plan. Where did you get it from? Who told you that you had to be a certain way? Because quite often, the people you're getting that advice from are not people that you should be taking advice from. It could be an inner critic. It could be a strict teacher. It could be an unloving parent. It could be society itself with all of its patriarchal nonsense. It could be that you've watched too many 1980s rom-coms, as I did, and that you have a very heteronormative conventional sense of what you think you should be like in your 20s and 30s. And I'm here to say that none of that, none of that needs to inform how you feel about yourself.

27:31That actually it's so much more valid and so much more crucial to take the time to know who you are and what you want for yourself right now rather than projecting five, ten years in the future. I love what she said about questioning where you got your plan from. I feel like so many of us had this idea of what our lives and relationships are going to look like that's formed from movies or social media or our own inner critic. And it's so important to remember that that is very rarely the case. And finally, we have a clip from my first episode with the amazing Sarah Ashcroft, who had just gone through a massive breakup at the time.

28:03This was our mutual pep talk on why being high maintenance isn't a bad thing. In fact, it's quite a misogynistic phrase that women get targeted with, which is definitely just designed so that women ask for less during their relationships. And I'm not for that. One thing you've spoken about, which I absolutely love, is the idea that we should all be high maintenance. Yes. Yeah, I'm a big like, this is a big thing for me because I think I just love being someone who can pay their way, right? I don't really want to ever feel like I'm relying on people. I've always been like that. But I think in this day and age, like liking nice things and like wanting to go for like lovely dinners and liking five star holidays and like that can be seen as like high maintenance.

28:47Right. But there's nothing wrong with it if you're paying for it yourself, you know. So I think that high maintenance back in the day was probably like slightly difficult to deal with. I don't view it like that. I just see high maintenance as just literally maintaining yourself. You know, being a self-maintained girly is what I just think is great. Yeah, and I also feel like the words high maintenance are often used to devalue someone. Yeah. Like, as in it's very much like, don't be high maintenance or you're too high maintenance. High maintenance is never, ever seen as a good thing. No. And that's such a, like to me, that feels like an encouragement to settle for less.

29:32Because I'm not saying that like everyone needs to want those things at all. Your high maintenance can just be being loved in the way that you need to be loved. It can be having communication and responsiveness in the way that you need. It can mean building the type of life together that you want to build. Like anything worth having is probably going to be high maintenance to a certain extent. like relationships are high maintenance so if anyone at any point is saying you're too high maintenance yeah essentially what they're saying like I love the saying like you're only as needy as your unmet needs like that is categorically correct yeah because you are only like needy high maintenance all of these things are used to essentially explain a deficit that someone else is created yeah that is just a mismatch in like how you should be yeah and I think that it's so funny that something like high maintenance is used as a criticism especially in like your case when you are quite clearly maintaining those standards yeah also would be able to outside of a relationship yeah and I think that's the thing I've maybe to me high maintenance is just having high standards right you know and wanting things to be a certain way and like as I say I think if you if you want to call someone high maintenance but they're maintaining it themselves that's just not okay that is it I hope that at least one piece of advice from these incredible guests really hit you I've left all the links to the full episodes in the show notes if you want to go back into the archives and have a listen thank you so much again for watching and listening if you enjoyed it leave us a lovely review it means the absolute world and makes such a difference to us

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