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What Actually Happens When You Stop Chasing The Almost · Toxic Girls Zone

0:03
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's a Tuesday, completely ordinary Tuesday. I've got
0:06
Speaker 1: an iced coffee that has fully given up on being cold.
0:09
Speaker 1: It's just sad brown water at this point. And my
0:11
Speaker 1: dog is under the couch doing something with a sock.
0:13
Speaker 1: Not her sock. She doesn't own socks. And I'm sitting
0:16
Speaker 1: here thinking about a text I got this morning from
0:18
Speaker 1: a friend. And she's telling me about this guy. And
0:20
Speaker 1: I know before she even finishes typing, I can feel it.
0:23
Speaker 1: He's almost there. He's almost interested. He's almost ready. He's
0:26
Speaker 1: just never quite, you know? So yeah, that's where we're
0:28
Speaker 1: starting today. And I'm going to warn you right now,
0:30
Speaker 1: this one is going to land somewhere you didn't see coming.
0:33
Speaker 1: Not the place you think. Not the place you've heard before.
0:36
Speaker 1: Here's what we're talking about. The almost addict. And before
0:39
Speaker 1: you go, oh, that's not me. I'm not dramatic. Just
0:41
Speaker 1: stay for a second. Because this isn't a flaw. It's
0:44
Speaker 1: not a character defect. It's actually a very logical strategy
0:47
Speaker 1: that worked for a really long time and then quietly
0:49
Speaker 1: stopped working. And now it's running your love life from
0:51
Speaker 1: a back room you didn't know existed. Right? The almost
0:54
Speaker 1: addict isn't the woman who makes bad choices. She's the
0:56
Speaker 1: woman who keeps choosing the same amount of distance in
0:58
Speaker 1: a slightly different person every single time. We're going to
1:01
Speaker 1: talk about why. We're going to talk about where it
1:03
Speaker 1: comes from. And we're going to talk about what it
1:05
Speaker 1: actually costs you, which is more than just the guy.
1:07
Speaker 1: And here's the thing I want you to hold on
1:10
Speaker 1: to from the jump, because we're coming back to it.
1:12
Speaker 1: You are not addicted to him. You are addicted to
1:14
Speaker 1: the almost. The him is interchangeable. The almost is the
1:18
Speaker 1: whole point. My dog, by the way, currently has 17
1:20
Speaker 1: socks under that couch and a boyfriend who almost texts back.
1:24
Speaker 1: She is genuinely thriving. I'm not sure either of us
1:27
Speaker 1: has it figured out. Okay. Let's talk about you for
1:30
Speaker 1: a second, and I want to start by saying something
1:32
Speaker 1: I mean. You are not dramatic. The almost man is genuinely,
1:35
Speaker 1: legitimately intoxicating. And if someone tells you the pull you
1:38
Speaker 1: feel isn't real, they haven't felt it. The way his
1:41
Speaker 1: attention works, it's not constant. It's variable. And that variability
1:45
Speaker 1: is doing something to your brain that is not imaginary.
1:48
Speaker 1: You check your phone. You watch his stories. You replay
1:51
Speaker 1: the last conversation looking for the part where you may
1:53
Speaker 1: have said something wrong. And then he replies, after two
1:55
Speaker 1: days of quiet, and it feels like winning something, like
1:58
Speaker 1: actually winning. That hit is real. Yeah, I'm not here
2:02
Speaker 1: to tell you it isn't. But here's the flip I
2:05
Speaker 1: need you to sit with. The feeling you're calling desire
2:07
Speaker 1: is mostly the feeling of waiting. Those are two different things.
2:10
Speaker 1: Desire is about wanting someone. Waiting is about managing uncertainty.
2:15
Speaker 1: And when you've been waiting long enough, when your whole
2:17
Speaker 1: nervous system is tuned to that frequency, the relief of
2:19
Speaker 1: contact feels so good that you call it chemistry. You
2:22
Speaker 1: call it connection. You call it proof that it's real, right?
2:26
Speaker 1: But what if the thing making your heart move isn't him?
2:28
Speaker 1: It's the signal finally arriving after the silence. That's a
2:31
Speaker 1: different thing entirely. Picture this. It's Saturday morning. You made coffee.
2:36
Speaker 1: You had a plan. Kind of loose, but something. And quietly,
2:39
Speaker 1: without making a decision out loud, you've rearranged the whole
2:41
Speaker 1: day around a maybe. He didn't say he's coming. He
2:44
Speaker 1: said maybe. And you're at your kitchen table, refreshing his
2:46
Speaker 1: stories every 20 minutes. Not because the stories matter, but
2:49
Speaker 1: because you're checking if he's alive, if he's out, if
2:51
Speaker 1: the silence has a reason. He posts something. Something nothing.
2:54
Speaker 1: A photo of food. Whatever. And you feel it. A
2:57
Speaker 1: small flood of relief, just from knowing he still exists.
3:00
Speaker 1: Your inner voice goes, see, he was just busy. And
3:03
Speaker 1: then he texts, sorry, been slammed. Can we do next week?
3:06
Speaker 1: And you go, yeah, totally. No worries. And mean it.
3:08
Speaker 1: Because next week is another almost to look forward to.
3:11
Speaker 1: Can we see this? Yeah, I know you can. He
3:15
Speaker 1: doesn't cancel because he's busy. He cancels because he's always
3:18
Speaker 1: a little out of reach. And that is the feature,
3:20
Speaker 1: not the bug. You chose someone whose distance is load-bearing.
3:23
Speaker 1: Take the distance away and the whole thing might not
3:25
Speaker 1: feel like the same thing anymore. Which is the question
3:27
Speaker 1: I actually want to ask you. Not what does he want?
3:30
Speaker 1: Not what does his maybe mean? What do you actually
3:32
Speaker 1: know about what you want versus what you know about
3:34
Speaker 1: what he might do next? Because I'll bet you could
3:36
Speaker 1: write a thesis on his behavior and you'd struggle to
3:38
Speaker 1: finish a paragraph about your own, right? That's not an accident.
3:42
Speaker 1: You are not addicted to him. You are addicted to
3:45
Speaker 1: the almost. And the almost is not chemistry. The almost
3:48
Speaker 1: is a feeling your nervous system knows how to run
3:50
Speaker 1: on because it has been running on it for a
3:51
Speaker 1: very long time. The him, the specific him, the one
3:55
Speaker 1: your friend texted about this morning, the one you're thinking
3:57
Speaker 1: about right now, he didn't create the almost. He just
4:00
Speaker 1: fit the shape of it. Make sense? Good. Because that's
4:03
Speaker 1: where we're going next. So here's what I want to
4:06
Speaker 1: dig into. The question underneath the question. Not why does
4:10
Speaker 1: he do this? Not why can't he just be clear?
4:12
Speaker 1: But what does the uncertainty actually give you that his
4:14
Speaker 1: full presence couldn't? Because I think if you sit with that,
4:16
Speaker 1: really sit with it, you'll find something that surprises you.
4:20
Speaker 1: The almost state keeps you in a very controlled kind
4:21
Speaker 1: of longing. You're always wanting. You're never quite having. And wanting,
4:25
Speaker 1: it turns out, is a place you know how to live.
4:28
Speaker 1: Having is trickier. Having means you actually have to be
4:30
Speaker 1: there with the whole person, the real one, not the
4:33
Speaker 1: one you've been constructing in your head between his texts.
4:36
Speaker 1: Think about that for a second. The chasing keeps you occupied.
4:39
Speaker 1: It fills the space with a project. And projects feel purposeful.
4:43
Speaker 1: You're not just sitting with yourself. You're solving something. You're
4:45
Speaker 1: reading signals. You're adjusting your behavior. You're figuring out the moves.
4:49
Speaker 1: You're very busy, right? But what would happen if he
4:52
Speaker 1: showed up? Fully. Tomorrow. No distance, no ambiguity, just completely
4:56
Speaker 1: there and completely interested. What do you do with yourself then?
5:00
Speaker 1: Because the project ends and you're just standing in a
5:02
Speaker 1: room with a person who can see you. Completely. And that,
5:05
Speaker 1: I think, is the thing we don't say out loud enough.
5:07
Speaker 1: The chase is also a hiding place from the risk
5:10
Speaker 1: of being truly seen by someone who is truly there.
5:12
Speaker 1: If he's never quite there, you never have to be
5:14
Speaker 1: fully there either. You get to stay in the almost together.
5:17
Speaker 1: And almost is so much safer than actually, you know?
5:20
Speaker 1: So when you're in it, chasing someone who won't quite arrive,
5:22
Speaker 1: a part of you is also not quite arriving. On purpose.
5:25
Speaker 1: That's not a flaw. That's protection. But protection from what?
5:28
Speaker 1: That's the question we'll get to. Stay with me. Let
5:32
Speaker 1: me paint you a picture. Two months in with someone
5:34
Speaker 1: who is exactly this. Interested enough to keep you in orbit.
5:38
Speaker 1: Scarce enough to keep you reaching. And the week looks
5:40
Speaker 1: like this. Monday, nothing. Tuesday, nothing. Wednesday, nothing. Thursday, a
5:44
Speaker 1: voice note. Just a voice note. Casual. Probably recorded in
5:47
Speaker 1: a car. And you play it twice in the bathroom
5:49
Speaker 1: at work. Twice. Because the first time you were just
5:51
Speaker 1: recovering from the surprise of it. Your inner voice goes...
5:54
Speaker 1: He just takes time to warm up. This is normal.
5:56
Speaker 1: You go back to your desk and you are finally
5:58
Speaker 1: actually present for the first time all week. He says
6:00
Speaker 1: in the voice note, hey, sorry, bit in my head.
6:03
Speaker 1: You free this weekend, maybe? Maybe. He said maybe. And
6:07
Speaker 1: you circled the whole weekend around that maybe. Friday rolls
6:09
Speaker 1: around and you're not thinking about your plants on the balcony.
6:12
Speaker 1: You're not thinking about your sister's thing she mentioned. You're
6:15
Speaker 1: not thinking about yourself really at all. You're thinking about him.
6:18
Speaker 1: Your whole interior landscape is just him. And here's the thing.
6:21
Speaker 1: You don't even notice that you vacated your own life.
6:24
Speaker 1: Because it feels like passion. It feels like wanting something
6:26
Speaker 1: so much it crowds everything else out. That's what desire
6:29
Speaker 1: is supposed to feel like, right? Intense, singular, a little consuming, right?
6:35
Speaker 1: Here's the internal logic you're running. He's just independent. This
6:38
Speaker 1: is what real desire feels like. If it were easy,
6:41
Speaker 1: it would mean less. And none of those things are
6:43
Speaker 1: obviously wrong, which is what makes this particular pattern so slippery.
6:47
Speaker 1: Because they're not lies. They're just not the whole truth.
6:49
Speaker 1: The whole truth is that the moment the validation arrives,
6:52
Speaker 1: Not even a big moment. Just a quick reply. A maybe.
6:54
Speaker 1: A voice note. Your shoulders drop. You exhale. A physical
6:58
Speaker 1: thing happens. And that physical relief, I want you to
7:00
Speaker 1: pay attention to it. Because relief means you were afraid.
7:03
Speaker 1: You don't feel relief when you get something you expected.
7:05
Speaker 1: You feel relief when something you feared didn't happen. So
7:07
Speaker 1: what were you afraid of? That he was gone. That
7:09
Speaker 1: the almost was over. That the silence meant the end. Yeah.
7:13
Speaker 1: There it is. And then the quiet come down. Two
7:17
Speaker 1: days later and the cycle is just restarting. And here's
7:19
Speaker 1: what I need you to know, babe. You have done
7:21
Speaker 1: this before. Different face, same amount of space between you
7:24
Speaker 1: and him. The almost addict doesn't fall for the same
7:26
Speaker 1: man over and over. She falls for the same architecture,
7:29
Speaker 1: the same specific amount of reach required, the same distance
7:32
Speaker 1: that has to be managed, the same relief that arrives
7:34
Speaker 1: just in time to keep her in it. That's not
7:36
Speaker 1: bad luck. That's a pattern. And patterns have origins. They
7:40
Speaker 1: start somewhere. They start in someone. My 20s are basically
7:44
Speaker 1: a decade of this. Not one almost man. A rotating cast.
7:48
Speaker 1: When I moved to the city at 22, I genuinely
7:50
Speaker 1: told myself I had high standards. I was selective. I
7:53
Speaker 1: knew what I wanted. What I actually wanted, though, if
7:56
Speaker 1: I'm being completely honest, was men who made me work
7:58
Speaker 1: for it. That was the real filter. Not intelligence, not kindness,
8:01
Speaker 1: not whether they made me laugh, whether there was enough
8:03
Speaker 1: distance to keep me reaching. I didn't know that yet.
8:06
Speaker 1: I just thought I had taste. And then the breakup
8:09
Speaker 1: at 26 happened. The one that actually broke me. And
8:12
Speaker 1: I want to tell you something specific about the aftermath,
8:14
Speaker 1: because this is the part that took me a long
8:16
Speaker 1: time to understand. For months after that ended, I was
8:18
Speaker 1: going back to his profile. Not because he was texting me.
8:21
Speaker 1: He wasn't. Not because he wanted me back. He didn't.
8:24
Speaker 1: I wasn't missing him, not really. I was missing the
8:26
Speaker 1: feeling of needing to know. The not knowing was the
8:28
Speaker 1: thing I couldn't put down. The question of what he
8:30
Speaker 1: was doing, what it meant, whether there was still a chance.
8:33
Speaker 1: The question was the drug, not him. Therapy named what
8:36
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I was not in love. I was in waiting.
8:39
Speaker 1: And when my therapist said that the first time, I
8:40
Speaker 1: almost laughed because it sounded too simple. But then I
8:43
Speaker 1: thought about my journal from that year, and I couldn't
8:45
Speaker 1: argue with her anymore. Every single entry was a mystery novel.
8:48
Speaker 1: He was the plot. I was the detective. Every page
8:51
Speaker 1: was about what he might mean, what his silence meant,
8:53
Speaker 1: what his one-word reply meant, what it meant that he
8:56
Speaker 1: watched my story but didn't respond. Not one entry about
8:58
Speaker 1: what I felt. Not one entry about what I wanted.
9:01
Speaker 1: Just evidence. Just clues. Just the almost. My best friend
9:06
Speaker 1: came over one afternoon, probably three weeks after the breakup.
9:09
Speaker 1: I was sitting on the floor of my studio apartment
9:11
Speaker 1: with the journal open in my lap. She sat down,
9:13
Speaker 1: picked it up, read two pages, and put it down.
9:16
Speaker 1: She didn't say anything dramatic. She just looked at me
9:18
Speaker 1: and said, you have not written a single thing about
9:21
Speaker 1: what you want. And I got so defensive. I said,
9:23
Speaker 1: I want him to explain himself. And she said, no,
9:26
Speaker 1: you want to keep guessing. I told her she didn't understand.
9:28
Speaker 1: She absolutely understood. That was the problem. Okay, so let's
9:32
Speaker 1: talk about why. Not the what, we know the what.
9:35
Speaker 1: The what is the almost the chase, the architecture of reach.
9:39
Speaker 1: The why is where the work actually lives. And I'm
9:41
Speaker 1: going to go somewhere personal here because I think it's
9:43
Speaker 1: the only way this lands. The shadow, and I'm using
9:46
Speaker 1: that word intentionally, the shadow is the part of you
9:48
Speaker 1: whose needs didn't get permission. The needs that weren't acceptable
9:51
Speaker 1: or weren't responded to or just never had a door
9:53
Speaker 1: open for them. So they went underground. They didn't disappear.
9:57
Speaker 1: They went sideways. The need to be pursued. to matter
10:00
Speaker 1: enough that someone came looking, to feel wanted, that's not
10:03
Speaker 1: a shameful need. That's a human need. But if it
10:06
Speaker 1: never got to be named out loud, it doesn't go away.
10:08
Speaker 1: It just starts working behind the scenes. For me, growing
10:12
Speaker 1: up with a dad who was kind but genuinely hard
10:14
Speaker 1: to reach, Love was something you waited for. You didn't
10:17
Speaker 1: ask for it. You watched for signs of it. You
10:19
Speaker 1: read the room. You got good at knowing when he
10:21
Speaker 1: was going to be present and you made yourself ready
10:23
Speaker 1: for those windows. You performed your best self in the
10:26
Speaker 1: opening because you didn't know how long it would last.
10:28
Speaker 1: And that was not a terrible childhood. My dad loved me.
10:31
Speaker 1: That's not the point. The point is what a child
10:33
Speaker 1: learns from the shape of love, not from the presence
10:35
Speaker 1: of it. And I learned that love was something that
10:37
Speaker 1: came to you in intervals. That the arrival of attention
10:40
Speaker 1: was the thing to live for. That the in-between was
10:42
Speaker 1: just a waiting room. Okay? Okay? So the almost man,
10:46
Speaker 1: he's not a villain. He's just the room that feels familiar.
10:49
Speaker 1: The nervous system learns what love feels like in childhood,
10:51
Speaker 1: and it codes that feeling as safe, as real, as correct.
10:54
Speaker 1: So when waiting and relief show up together later in
10:56
Speaker 1: your 20s and your phone checking and your story refreshing,
10:59
Speaker 1: your nervous system goes, oh, I know this. This is love.
11:02
Speaker 1: The chase isn't irrational. It is deeply, unfortunately, logical. The
11:05
Speaker 1: shadow is doing its job. It's trying to get an
11:07
Speaker 1: old need met in the only language it learned. And
11:10
Speaker 1: the almost addict isn't reckless. She isn't naive. She's loyal
11:13
Speaker 1: to an old blueprint. And loyalty is actually one of
11:16
Speaker 1: her best qualities being used in exactly the wrong place.
11:19
Speaker 1: Makes sense, right? I want to tell you a specific
11:22
Speaker 1: memory because I think it'll land differently than any framework
11:24
Speaker 1: I could give you. I was probably 12. My dad
11:26
Speaker 1: came home late. We'd already eaten. My mom had already
11:29
Speaker 1: put the leftovers away. He sat down at the table
11:31
Speaker 1: and I made him laugh with this whole story about
11:33
Speaker 1: something that happened at school. I don't even remember what
11:35
Speaker 1: it was, but I remember that for about four minutes,
11:38
Speaker 1: he was completely there, not tired, not somewhere else in
11:40
Speaker 1: his head, just there with me laughing at my story.
11:43
Speaker 1: and I can still feel how good that was. Four minutes,
11:46
Speaker 1: and my inner voice, the one I can hear now
11:47
Speaker 1: looking back, goes, four minutes of being completely seen was
11:50
Speaker 1: enough to run on for days. I did the same
11:52
Speaker 1: math with unavailable men at 23, at 24, at 25.
11:56
Speaker 1: A voice note on a Thursday, a quick reply after
11:58
Speaker 1: three days of silence. Four minutes of being seen, enough
12:02
Speaker 1: to reset the whole clock. His voice note arrived on
12:05
Speaker 1: a Thursday, just like I said. You play it twice
12:07
Speaker 1: in the bathroom at work, not because you didn't hear
12:09
Speaker 1: it the first time. Because you needed to feel it again.
12:11
Speaker 1: You go back to your desk and for the first
12:13
Speaker 1: time in four days, you're actually present. You're not half
12:15
Speaker 1: somewhere else. You're here. He says, hey, sorry. Been in
12:19
Speaker 1: my head. You free this weekend, maybe. That's it. That's
12:21
Speaker 1: the whole message. And it lit something up in you
12:23
Speaker 1: that had been dim for days. And I'm not saying
12:25
Speaker 1: that to shame you. I'm saying it because I know
12:28
Speaker 1: exactly what that feels like. And I also know that
12:30
Speaker 1: what lit up was not love. It was relief. And
12:33
Speaker 1: relief is not the same thing as wanting someone. Yeah.
12:36
Speaker 1: Let that sit for a second. Now I want to
12:39
Speaker 1: go one layer deeper because the origin story is important,
12:41
Speaker 1: but it's not the whole picture. The shadow underneath the shadow,
12:45
Speaker 1: the belief that's running this whole operation is this. I
12:48
Speaker 1: am only worth pursuing if I make it difficult to
12:49
Speaker 1: have me. If he has me easily, the proof of
12:52
Speaker 1: my value disappears. That's the core of it. The almost
12:55
Speaker 1: addict doesn't just like unavailable men. She needs the unavailability
12:58
Speaker 1: because that's where her sense of being wanted lives. If
13:00
Speaker 1: the distance collapses, so does the evidence. So does the
13:03
Speaker 1: feeling of being worth the effort, right? And you know
13:07
Speaker 1: what this costs in real time. She can't want a man, plainly.
13:10
Speaker 1: She has to arrange conditions where he wants her. She
13:12
Speaker 1: can't receive attention without suspicion, because if it's too easy,
13:15
Speaker 1: something must be wrong with him for wanting her. She
13:17
Speaker 1: can't fully enjoy a good moment, because a good moment
13:19
Speaker 1: is just the start of the distance returning. And then
13:21
Speaker 1: there's this. When he's right there, fully there, no game,
13:25
Speaker 1: no distance, no ambiguity, does it feel like love? Or
13:28
Speaker 1: does it feel slightly wrong? Slightly flat? Like the colors
13:31
Speaker 1: turn down a little? That flatness is not incompatibility. That
13:35
Speaker 1: flatness is her shadow telling her the chase is over,
13:37
Speaker 1: and it genuinely does not know what to do next.
13:39
Speaker 1: It has never been here before. It has no script
13:42
Speaker 1: for this. And this is where the protector part comes in.
13:46
Speaker 1: There's a part of all of us that keeps the
13:47
Speaker 1: painful feeling at bay by keeping us in motion. If
13:50
Speaker 1: you are busy wanting, if you are busy decoding and
13:52
Speaker 1: refreshing and waiting for the signal, you are not sitting
13:54
Speaker 1: with the fear that lives underneath all of that. The
13:56
Speaker 1: fear that says, what if someone is fully there and
13:58
Speaker 1: he still leaves? What if someone sees the whole thing
14:00
Speaker 1: and decides it's not enough? The almost man protects you
14:03
Speaker 1: from finding that out. Because he never fully arrives. You
14:06
Speaker 1: never fully have to be seen. The chase is the
14:08
Speaker 1: protector's work. It's running interference for a fear it's never named.
14:11
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? So let's talk about what
14:14
Speaker 1: this actually costs you. Because I don't want to stay
14:16
Speaker 1: in the abstract when the real stuff is so specific.
14:18
Speaker 1: The obvious cost, the almost man never fully arrives. You
14:21
Speaker 1: spend months in suspended longing that goes exactly nowhere. That's
14:24
Speaker 1: real time, real weeks, real good Saturdays. But the less
14:27
Speaker 1: obvious cost is this. You never find out who you
14:29
Speaker 1: are when you're not waiting. Your schedule, your mood, your
14:32
Speaker 1: sense of whether a week was good, all of it
14:34
Speaker 1: is organized around signals from someone who is half in.
14:37
Speaker 1: Your interior life becomes a supporting cast. And your friendships.
14:41
Speaker 1: My best friend, the one who read the journal, she
14:44
Speaker 1: went silent on me for a week once. On purpose.
14:47
Speaker 1: She stopped responding to my texts about him for seven days.
14:49
Speaker 1: I was genuinely baffled, a little hurt, and I still
14:52
Speaker 1: did not fully get the message. I thought something was
14:54
Speaker 1: wrong with her. Something was wrong with me. I was
14:57
Speaker 1: so deep in the pattern that a week of my
14:58
Speaker 1: best friend's silence registered as a minor irritation. compared to
15:01
Speaker 1: two days of his. That's the cost. Your ability to
15:04
Speaker 1: read what actually matters gets completely rerouted. You become an
15:07
Speaker 1: expert at reading him, and almost entirely out of practice
15:09
Speaker 1: reading yourself. So here's a real question. What did you
15:12
Speaker 1: want last week? Not what did he do. Not what
15:15
Speaker 1: did he say or not say. What did you want?
15:17
Speaker 1: Can you answer that without pausing for a long time? Yeah,
15:20
Speaker 1: that pauses information. Here's the hard truth, and I'm going
15:24
Speaker 1: to say this with love, because I mean it. The
15:27
Speaker 1: Almost Man is not a villain. He did not trick you.
15:30
Speaker 1: He did not run a con. You selected for his
15:32
Speaker 1: distance the same way you selected for his eyes. The
15:34
Speaker 1: part of you that needs a chase found someone who
15:36
Speaker 1: would give it to her. He's not the problem you
15:38
Speaker 1: need to solve. The pattern is the thing, and the
15:40
Speaker 1: pattern is yours. I know that's the last thing you
15:42
Speaker 1: want to hear, but it's also the only news that
15:44
Speaker 1: gives you any actual power. Because you can't change him.
15:47
Speaker 1: You couldn't have changed him. But this, this is yours.
15:50
Speaker 1: And what's yours you can work with? You are not
15:53
Speaker 1: addicted to him. You are addicted to the almost. And
15:56
Speaker 1: what would have to change is not him, it's you.
15:59
Speaker 1: You'd have to learn to stay in a room when
16:00
Speaker 1: nothing is at stake. When the signal is clear and
16:03
Speaker 1: constant and not exciting in the way you've been used
16:05
Speaker 1: to your whole life. And I'm not going to minimize that.
16:07
Speaker 1: That is not a small thing. That is a genuinely hard, disorienting,
16:11
Speaker 1: counterintuitive thing to learn. Real desire for a real person
16:15
Speaker 1: who is actually there might feel quieter than you expected.
16:18
Speaker 1: It might feel like the volume got turned down. And
16:20
Speaker 1: quiet is not a red flag. Quiet is just unfamiliar.
16:23
Speaker 1: Quiet is just new. My partner falls asleep 10 minutes
16:27
Speaker 1: in every movie. Every single one. Zero chase. Zero mystery.
16:31
Speaker 1: Leave sticky notes on the coffee maker. Things like, have
16:34
Speaker 1: a good one, and also I finished the oat milk, sorry.
16:37
Speaker 1: Devastatingly available. I cannot decode a sticky note that says,
16:40
Speaker 1: have a good one. There is nothing to decode. I
16:42
Speaker 1: stayed anyway. I stayed because somewhere in the middle of
16:45
Speaker 1: therapy and a journal, I started to understand that I
16:47
Speaker 1: wasn't looking for the next almost. I was learning to
16:50
Speaker 1: tolerate presence. And that took a while. But I stayed. Okay,
16:54
Speaker 1: so next up, what it actually looks like on the
16:56
Speaker 1: other side. And the three moves that start to shift this,
17:00
Speaker 1: not after you've done five more years of therapy, not
17:02
Speaker 1: after you feel ready, because you will never feel ready.
17:05
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about what actually starts to move
17:06
Speaker 1: this thing, and we're going to get specific about it.
17:10
Speaker 1: So here's what it actually looks like when it starts
17:12
Speaker 1: to shift. And I want to be honest with you,
17:14
Speaker 1: because I think people make this sound like a transformation.
17:16
Speaker 1: Like one day you wake up and you prefer calm.
17:19
Speaker 1: That is not what happened for me. What happened was
17:21
Speaker 1: slower and a lot less cinematic than that, right? It
17:25
Speaker 1: started with a birthday dinner. A friend of mine, early
17:27
Speaker 1: days with my partner, and I was accidentally kind of dismissive.
17:30
Speaker 1: One of those moments where you say something and immediately
17:32
Speaker 1: hear it land wrong. And I watched my partner's face
17:34
Speaker 1: and waited for the thing I knew how to handle.
17:36
Speaker 1: The cold shoulder, the quiet punishment, the day or two
17:38
Speaker 1: of distance that would let me know I had messed
17:40
Speaker 1: up and would need to fix it. None of that came.
17:42
Speaker 1: My partner just looked at me and said that landed
17:44
Speaker 1: a little harsh and then moved on. Completely moved on.
17:47
Speaker 1: Like it was a real thing that happened between two
17:49
Speaker 1: real people and not a crisis. And my first reaction,
17:51
Speaker 1: I want to be honest, was mild suspicion. If someone
17:54
Speaker 1: is this easy to be around, there must be a
17:56
Speaker 1: catch somewhere. You know? The catch never came. And that
18:00
Speaker 1: is the thing I didn't have a script for. Every
18:02
Speaker 1: previous relationship had given me a script. Wait, decode, earn, relief, repeat.
18:07
Speaker 1: My partner just didn't hand me the script. And at
18:09
Speaker 1: first that felt like something was missing. Like I kept
18:11
Speaker 1: reaching for a problem to solve and coming up empty.
18:14
Speaker 1: I want you to hear that because if you've been
18:16
Speaker 1: in the almost long enough, calm doesn't feel like safety
18:18
Speaker 1: at first. It feels like a room where you can't
18:20
Speaker 1: find the furniture in the dark. Makes sense? Here's the
18:24
Speaker 1: thing about what presence actually feels like once your nervous
18:26
Speaker 1: system starts to trust it. It's not a flood. It's
18:28
Speaker 1: not that physical drop of relief after three days of
18:30
Speaker 1: silence finally breaks. It's smaller than that. It's more like,
18:34
Speaker 1: I don't know, you're going to make coffee and someone
18:35
Speaker 1: already made it. That's the scale. Undramatic. Quiet. Actually yours.
18:39
Speaker 1: And I kept waiting for it to feel like more.
18:41
Speaker 1: Kept waiting for the ceiling to lift and the big
18:43
Speaker 1: feeling to arrive. And for a while, I thought that
18:45
Speaker 1: meant I wasn't that into my partner. I thought maybe
18:48
Speaker 1: I needed to keep looking. Yeah, that was the blueprint talking,
18:51
Speaker 1: not my actual gut. This is something I want to
18:54
Speaker 1: name directly because it's real and it trips people up.
18:57
Speaker 1: The almost man gives you excitement, and excitement is your
18:59
Speaker 1: nervous system on alert. Heart rate up, attention narrowed, every
19:02
Speaker 1: cell pointed at one question. What is he going to
19:05
Speaker 1: do next? And that alertness gets coded as passion, as chemistry,
19:08
Speaker 1: as proof that you're alive in a relationship. A present
19:11
Speaker 1: partner gives you something else entirely, and that something else
19:13
Speaker 1: is safety. And safety to a nervous system that has
19:16
Speaker 1: been calibrated to reach and wait reads as flat for
19:18
Speaker 1: a while. Reads as mild. Reads as maybe, I'm just
19:21
Speaker 1: not that attracted. I will die on this hill. That
19:24
Speaker 1: flatness is not incompatibility. It is your system not knowing
19:26
Speaker 1: what to do when there's no emergency. Right? What slowly happens,
19:32
Speaker 1: and I mean slowly, is that the baseline comes down.
19:34
Speaker 1: The constant background hum of where is he and what
19:36
Speaker 1: does it mean and should I text starts to go quiet.
19:39
Speaker 1: And when that noise leaves, you start to notice other things.
19:42
Speaker 1: What you actually want for dinner. what you're actually thinking
19:44
Speaker 1: about work, whether you even like the show you've been
19:47
Speaker 1: half-watching for three months, you start to have a life
19:49
Speaker 1: with room in it again. And that, babe, is not boring.
19:52
Speaker 1: That is just what space feels like when you're not
19:54
Speaker 1: filling every inch of it with someone else's, maybe. That's
19:56
Speaker 1: what I want for you. Okay, so the three moves.
20:00
Speaker 1: And I mean actual moves, not things to think about,
20:02
Speaker 1: things to do. First, notice the spike. When you feel it,
20:05
Speaker 1: that lift in your chest when silence finally breaks and
20:07
Speaker 1: the notification arrives. Stop before you act on it. Don't
20:10
Speaker 1: put the phone down. Just pause. Name it out loud
20:13
Speaker 1: if you can or in your head. Something like, my
20:15
Speaker 1: nervous system just got its signal. And then ask yourself
20:18
Speaker 1: one question. Is this desire or is this relief? Because
20:21
Speaker 1: those two things feel almost identical in your body and
20:23
Speaker 1: they are not the same thing. Desire is about wanting someone.
20:26
Speaker 1: Relief is about the anxiety finally stopping. You deserve to
20:29
Speaker 1: know which one you're actually feeling. Don't text yet. Just
20:32
Speaker 1: sit with the question for one minute. Second, find out
20:36
Speaker 1: who you are when no one is almost. One week.
20:39
Speaker 1: Not forever. One week. No checking his stories. No replaying
20:42
Speaker 1: the voice note. No reading back through the thread looking
20:44
Speaker 1: for clues. And in that week, write one thing you want.
20:47
Speaker 1: Not what you want him to do. Not what you
20:48
Speaker 1: wish he would say. What you want. For yourself. From
20:51
Speaker 1: your own life. It can be small. I want to
20:53
Speaker 1: sleep in on Saturday. I want to call my sister.
20:55
Speaker 1: I want to finish that thing I started six months
20:56
Speaker 1: ago and dropped. The point is to locate yourself. Because
20:59
Speaker 1: the almost addict loses herself in the interpretation. And you
21:02
Speaker 1: need to practice being findable. Okay? Third, practice receiving a
21:06
Speaker 1: clear signal without leaving the room. When someone is simply, plainly,
21:10
Speaker 1: undramatically interested in you, stay. Not forever. One beat longer
21:14
Speaker 1: than feels comfortable. One beat longer than your instinct to
21:17
Speaker 1: find a reason it can't work. A reason something's off.
21:19
Speaker 1: A reason you're not that into them after all. One beat.
21:22
Speaker 1: That's the whole move. And the question to write down
21:24
Speaker 1: somewhere you'll actually see it. When was the last time
21:26
Speaker 1: I wanted something for myself with the same focus I
21:28
Speaker 1: bring to wanting him to want me? Write that down.
21:31
Speaker 1: Really sit with it. And here's the do. The actual
21:34
Speaker 1: thing I want you to do before you close this out.
21:36
Speaker 1: Next time there's a silence and it finally breaks, pause
21:39
Speaker 1: before you text back. Just pause. And then open your
21:42
Speaker 1: notes and write one sentence, one, about what you want
21:44
Speaker 1: today that has nothing to do with him. It doesn't
21:47
Speaker 1: have to be big. It doesn't have to be profound.
21:49
Speaker 1: It just has to be yours. The woman on the
21:52
Speaker 1: other side of this, and she exists. I promise you
21:54
Speaker 1: she exists. She is not someone who has talked herself
21:56
Speaker 1: out of desire. She hasn't gone numb. She hasn't settled.
21:59
Speaker 1: She has desire that belongs to her. She knows what
22:01
Speaker 1: she wants and she moves toward it without needing to
22:03
Speaker 1: manufacture conditions where someone else is chasing her first. She
22:06
Speaker 1: can sit in a room with someone who is fully,
22:08
Speaker 1: actually undramatically there and not look for the back door.
22:11
Speaker 1: She is not fearless. She still gets nervous. She still
22:13
Speaker 1: has moments where quiet feels a little too quiet. But
22:16
Speaker 1: she stopped outsourcing her sense of worth to the gap
22:18
Speaker 1: between herself and a man. And she had to grieve
22:20
Speaker 1: something to get there. I want you to know that.
22:23
Speaker 1: She had to grieve the feeling of the chase, which was,
22:25
Speaker 1: for a long time, the only love she knew how
22:27
Speaker 1: to feel. That's real. Let it be real. So here's
22:30
Speaker 1: where I'll leave you. The almost is not love. It's
22:33
Speaker 1: a rehearsal for love that never opens night. It's been
22:35
Speaker 1: running in your head and your chest and your body
22:37
Speaker 1: for maybe years, and it has never once led you
22:40
Speaker 1: somewhere that felt like home. The almost addict is not broken.
22:43
Speaker 1: She's not weak. She's not bad at relationships. She's just
22:46
Speaker 1: loyal to the wrong evidence of her worth. Baby, your
22:49
Speaker 1: worth was never in the distance. It was never in
22:51
Speaker 1: the chase. It was never in whether he finally replied.
22:55
Speaker 1: You are not addicted to him. You are addicted to
22:58
Speaker 1: the almost. And when you're ready to find out what
23:00
Speaker 1: you actually want, when you're ready to ask the real question,
23:03
Speaker 1: if he showed up fully tomorrow, No distance, no ambiguity,
23:06
Speaker 1: no signal to decode. Would you still want him? That
23:09
Speaker 1: question is the beginning. Share your answer with someone who
23:12
Speaker 1: needs to hear it. If this landed somewhere real for you,
23:15
Speaker 1: send it to the friend who you know is doing
23:16
Speaker 1: this right now. The one you can see refreshing his stories.
23:19
Speaker 1: The one you love. The one who deserves to know. Okay?
23:22
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you soon. This show is made by
23:26
Speaker 1: Oba Media.