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I Wrote My Non Negotiables on a Trip... and Finally Believed Them · Toxic Girls Zone

0:03
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome back. I'm glad you're here today, genuinely, because
0:07
Speaker 1: this one is gonna be a little different and I
0:08
Speaker 1: think you're gonna feel it. Okay, so I have to
0:11
Speaker 1: tell you about my balcony plans before we get into anything,
0:13
Speaker 1: because it is relevant, I promise, even though it does
0:15
Speaker 1: not sound relevant. I went out this morning with my
0:17
Speaker 1: iced coffee, which is the only way I'm functional before 10,
0:20
Speaker 1: to water them, right? And two of them were just going,
0:23
Speaker 1: not struggling, not yellowing dramatically like they were at least trying, going, crispy,
0:28
Speaker 1: completely committed to being dead. And I stood there in
0:31
Speaker 1: my pajamas holding my coffee and I thought, These plants
0:34
Speaker 1: have watched me almost kill them, nurse them back, almost
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Speaker 1: kill them again, at least four times now, and they
0:38
Speaker 1: keep going. Which is either inspiring, or they genuinely don't
0:41
Speaker 1: have options. Either way, I related to them a little
0:44
Speaker 1: too much this morning, and that felt like a sign
0:45
Speaker 1: that today's topic was the right one. Make sense? So
0:50
Speaker 1: here's what today is. There's no outline, there's no framework,
0:53
Speaker 1: no numbered list of mistakes or five steps to a
0:55
Speaker 1: better whatever. Just a story. My story, specifically, with some
0:59
Speaker 1: things in it that I have a feeling, are also
1:00
Speaker 1: your story. But I do want to warn you first,
1:02
Speaker 1: and I mean this sincerely. This is the episode I
1:04
Speaker 1: needed years ago. I needed it at 23 and 26
1:07
Speaker 1: and 28, and I didn't have it. So I'm making
1:09
Speaker 1: it now and I'm giving it to you. And I
1:11
Speaker 1: want you to actually listen, not half listen while you're
1:13
Speaker 1: doing something else. The topic is non-negotiables, not the list
1:17
Speaker 1: you made after your last breakup, not the one that
1:19
Speaker 1: lives in a notes app you haven't opened since, the
1:21
Speaker 1: one you actually believe, the one you actually hold in
1:23
Speaker 1: front of another person. We're going to talk about what
1:26
Speaker 1: gets in the way of that, right? Yeah, let's get
1:28
Speaker 1: into it. I have written the non-negotiables list at least
1:31
Speaker 1: four times. Four separate occasions. Four separate journals. Once on
1:36
Speaker 1: a napkin after a very bad date at a wine bar.
1:38
Speaker 1: The list has never once stopped me from texting the
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Speaker 1: wrong person. Not once. I've come to accept that writing
1:43
Speaker 1: a list and believing a list are two activities that
1:45
Speaker 1: live in completely different zip codes. But I'm getting ahead
1:48
Speaker 1: of myself. Let me back up. I used to think
1:52
Speaker 1: I knew what I needed. I had the list. It
1:54
Speaker 1: was somewhere in a journal, filed between a gratitude page
1:57
Speaker 1: and a sketch of a bookshelf I wanted to build
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Speaker 1: one day and definitely never built. The list said things
2:01
Speaker 1: like emotionally available, consistent, kind to waitstaff. Classic. Exactly what
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Speaker 1: every woman who has been to therapy and read a
2:08
Speaker 1: few books writes on her list. And I then spent
2:10
Speaker 1: the better part of my 20s ignoring every single item
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Speaker 1: on it. Like, comprehensively ignoring it. Not even bending the
2:16
Speaker 1: rules a little. Fully pretending the list did not exist
2:18
Speaker 1: while dating men who were the list's complete opposite. The
2:21
Speaker 1: trip is what changed that. Not because I had some
2:23
Speaker 1: revelation on a mountain. Not because I met a stranger
2:26
Speaker 1: in a cafe who said something wise. Because I was
2:28
Speaker 1: alone and bored and forced to sit with myself for
2:31
Speaker 1: three full days, and it was deeply, profoundly uncomfortable. I
2:34
Speaker 1: want to tell you what happened, what I found, and
2:36
Speaker 1: what it finally showed me about why we erase our
2:39
Speaker 1: own non-negotiables before anyone else even gets a chance to
2:41
Speaker 1: respond to them. There was also a very bad continental
2:44
Speaker 1: breakfast involved, and it matters more than you think. I'm
2:46
Speaker 1: not joking. The orange plays a role, right? Notice something
2:51
Speaker 1: before we go further. Notice whether you feel curious right
2:53
Speaker 1: now or whether you feel a little defensive. Both are
2:56
Speaker 1: completely fine. But that feeling, the defensive one especially, is
2:59
Speaker 1: already information. If a part of you is going, I
3:02
Speaker 1: don't erase my needs. I'm pretty self-aware. I want you
3:04
Speaker 1: to hold that thought gently. I was also pretty self-aware.
3:06
Speaker 1: I had the therapy receipts to prove it and I
3:09
Speaker 1: was still doing it. So just notice. Okay. Picture this.
3:14
Speaker 1: It's the first year of living with my partner. We're
3:16
Speaker 1: almost 12 months in. The apartment is a whole new
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Speaker 1: level of togetherness I was genuinely not prepared for, and
3:21
Speaker 1: I say that as someone who was excited about it.
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Speaker 1: My partner cooks most nights, leaves sticky notes on the
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Speaker 1: coffee maker, falls asleep exactly 10 minutes into every single
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Speaker 1: movie without exception or apology. Calm. Stable. The kind of
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Speaker 1: stable I had never actually dated before, because I spent
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Speaker 1: my 20s chasing men who gave me just enough to
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Speaker 1: keep me guessing and nothing more. And I was doing
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Speaker 1: something during that first year that I did not have
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Speaker 1: a name for yet. I was slowly erasing the things
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Speaker 1: I needed. Not dramatically. Not in a way that looked
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Speaker 1: like a problem from the outside. Quietly. One small concession
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Speaker 1: at a time, over months, in the ordinary moments of
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Speaker 1: sharing a space with another person. I stopped saying I
3:54
Speaker 1: needed plans made in advance because my partner was more
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Speaker 1: spontaneous and I told myself I was being flexible and
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Speaker 1: growth-oriented and chill. I stopped saying I needed verbal check-ins
4:02
Speaker 1: when I felt disconnected because it felt needy and I
4:04
Speaker 1: worked very hard to not be needy. I stopped saying
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Speaker 1: I needed time alone to reset, even an hour, because
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Speaker 1: that seemed like a strange thing to need when you're
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Speaker 1: with someone you love. I called all of this being
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Speaker 1: low maintenance. I was getting compliments on it, honestly. And
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Speaker 1: what I was actually doing was being the eraser keeper.
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Speaker 1: The woman who holds the list of her own needs
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Speaker 1: and just keeps rubbing them out before anyone else even
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Speaker 1: sees them. Can we see this? Then a work thing
4:26
Speaker 1: came up. My company, Midsize, the one where I sit
4:29
Speaker 1: in a weekly status meeting every Tuesday that makes me
4:31
Speaker 1: want to dissolve slowly into the carpet, needed someone to
4:33
Speaker 1: go to a conference in another city. Nobody else could go.
4:36
Speaker 1: I volunteered, partly because professional obligation and partly, if I
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Speaker 1: am being honest, because I had not been alone in
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Speaker 1: a room with just myself in almost a year. and
4:44
Speaker 1: something in me was hungry for it. I packed badly,
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Speaker 1: forgot my good shampoo, brought three books and read half
4:50
Speaker 1: of one. The hotel was fine. The conference was fine.
4:54
Speaker 1: The conference was fine. The conference was fine. The continental
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Speaker 1: breakfast was genuinely catastrophic. We're talking powdered eggs, a sad
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Speaker 1: little basket of muffins that felt personal, and a single
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Speaker 1: orange that looked like it had already given up. And
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Speaker 1: on the second morning, sitting with my terrible coffee and
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Speaker 1: my half-eaten resigned orange, I opened my old journal, the
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Speaker 1: one from the studio apartment years. Two years single, just
5:14
Speaker 1: me in a smaller but equally persistent version of my
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Speaker 1: current anxiety, in a studio I loved and was also
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Speaker 1: sometimes desperately lonely in. And I found the list, my
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Speaker 1: non-negotiables list, right there, in my own handwriting, between a
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Speaker 1: grocery list and a note to call the dentist. Yeah,
5:29
Speaker 1: I thought so. My partner had left a sticky note
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Speaker 1: on the coffee maker that first year that said, dinner
5:34
Speaker 1: at 7, don't stress. And I remember reading it and
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Speaker 1: feeling something I couldn't name for a while, something between
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Speaker 1: grateful and ashamed. Like the kindness of it landed somewhere complicated.
5:44
Speaker 1: Like a part of me thought I don't deserve a
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Speaker 1: note this easy. Sound familiar? I read that note and
5:48
Speaker 1: something quiet in me went, you should not need more
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Speaker 1: than this. And I didn't stop to ask myself who
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Speaker 1: taught me that. I just put the note down and
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Speaker 1: made my coffee and kept going. That is the eraser
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Speaker 1: keeper in her natural habitat, by the way. She doesn't
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Speaker 1: announce herself. She just keeps going. The sticky note said
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Speaker 1: dinner at seven. Don't stress. I was already stressed. The
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Speaker 1: note did not help. I'm telling you this because I
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Speaker 1: want you to understand that the problem was never my partner.
6:10
Speaker 1: My partner was writing me reassuring notes about dinner. The
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Speaker 1: problem was inside me, and it had been there a
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Speaker 1: long time, and it was going to take a very
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Speaker 1: bad orange in another city for me to finally sit
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Speaker 1: still long enough to look at it. That's where we're
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Speaker 1: going next. What the journal actually said, why I couldn't
6:23
Speaker 1: say that list out loud to anyone I was dating,
6:25
Speaker 1: and the moment at that terrible breakfast table that broke
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Speaker 1: something open. Stay with me. So I'm sitting there, hotel
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Speaker 1: room breakfast area, fluorescent lighting doing nobody any favors, powdered
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Speaker 1: eggs congealing on a tray nobody asked for, and I've
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Speaker 1: got my journal open in front of me, the one
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Speaker 1: from the studio years. And I'm reading the list, my list,
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Speaker 1: in my own handwriting. And I want you to know
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Speaker 1: I was not prepared for what I felt. I thought
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Speaker 1: I'd feel proud. Like, oh, look how far you've come.
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Speaker 1: Very cute. Good job healing. I didn't feel that. I
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Speaker 1: felt embarrassed. The specific, hot, stomach-dropping embarrassment of recognizing yourself
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Speaker 1: doing the exact thing you swore you had worked through. Right? Like,
7:00
Speaker 1: not vaguely worked through. Three years of therapy worked through.
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Speaker 1: I have the books. I have a whole shelf of
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Speaker 1: them in the apartment. They look very smart and calming.
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Speaker 1: And they are all essentially about this exact thing. I
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Speaker 1: paid actual money for all of them. I read most
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Speaker 1: of them. And still, here I am, hotel, that orange,
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Speaker 1: fully the eraser keeper. Because the list was not subtle,
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Speaker 1: you know? It wasn't like I had written, nice man,
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Speaker 1: good vibes, has a couch. It was specific. It said,
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Speaker 1: and I'm reading this to you in my own handwriting
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Speaker 1: from years ago, I need someone who can tell me
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Speaker 1: when they're struggling, not just be quietly fine. I need plans,
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Speaker 1: even loose ones, because uncertainty makes my body go on
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Speaker 1: high alert. I need to know I can say I'm
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Speaker 1: unhappy without it becoming a crisis. And I need someone
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Speaker 1: who will still be there after I stop being agreeable.
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Speaker 1: I had written that last one and underlined it twice. Twice.
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Speaker 1: Past me was trying so hard to warn current me.
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Speaker 1: And current me had spent 11 months quietly ignoring her. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: That's the part that really got me. Here's the thing
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Speaker 1: about earned love, and I want to name this properly
7:57
Speaker 1: because it is the whole lens through which this story
7:59
Speaker 1: makes sense. When a child gets the message that being
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Speaker 1: needy or difficult risks losing closeness, she learns to edit herself.
8:05
Speaker 1: She doesn't stop having needs. She starts hiding them. She
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Speaker 1: gets very, very good at being easy. And then she
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Speaker 1: grows up and she carries that skill right into every
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Speaker 1: relationship she's ever in. And everyone compliments her on how
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Speaker 1: low maintenance she is. And she smiles and says thanks.
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Speaker 1: And inside her, there is a whole list that nobody
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Speaker 1: ever gets to see. The adult version of that child
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Speaker 1: is the eraser keeper. She knows her non-negotiables. She just
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Speaker 1: can't hold them in front of another person because part
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Speaker 1: of her is still five years old, managing the risk
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Speaker 1: of being too much for someone to stay. Sound familiar?
8:33
Speaker 1: Because I was not ready for how familiar it was
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Speaker 1: going to feel to me at that breakfast table. My
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Speaker 1: dad was kind. I want to be clear about that.
8:41
Speaker 1: He was genuinely kind. Not the complicated kind of kindness
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Speaker 1: that comes with conditions, just elsewhere. Hard to reach. Like
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Speaker 1: there was always a slight pane of glass between him
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Speaker 1: and whatever was happening in the room. You learned growing
8:54
Speaker 1: up with someone like that not to need too much.
8:56
Speaker 1: You learned to edit your needs down to the ones
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Speaker 1: that seemed reasonable. The ones small enough that they wouldn't
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Speaker 1: make anyone feel burdened wouldn't create the quiet withdrawal that
9:03
Speaker 1: felt worse than anything. You learned to be fine. And
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Speaker 1: I was so good at being fine. Honors level fine.
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Speaker 1: I had turned fine into an entire personality. Makes sense, right?
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Speaker 1: It does when you trace it back. It just took
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Speaker 1: me sitting in another city with no obligations and no
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Speaker 1: distractions and a genuinely offensive breakfast to finally trace it.
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Speaker 1: I'll tell you about a moment from my 20s that
9:23
Speaker 1: still makes me cringe a little, honestly. I was 24,
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Speaker 1: seeing someone who gave me just enough to keep me guessing,
9:28
Speaker 1: which in those years felt like chemistry. And he sent
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Speaker 1: me a text one night that said, you're a lot
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Speaker 1: to handle sometimes. I read that text 12 times. 12.
9:37
Speaker 1: And then I apologized. I want to be really clear
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Speaker 1: about what I had done to earn that text. I
9:41
Speaker 1: had asked him to text me back. That was it.
9:43
Speaker 1: I had asked for a response to a message I
9:45
Speaker 1: sent and he had made me feel like I was
9:47
Speaker 1: the problem for wanting communication. And instead of reading that
9:49
Speaker 1: as information about him, I took it as information about
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Speaker 1: me and immediately got smaller. I carried that apology in
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Speaker 1: my body for years. You know what that cost you
9:57
Speaker 1: over time, right? Yeah, I'm getting there. Because here's what
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Speaker 1: I was doing in my 20s and why it matters
10:03
Speaker 1: to the story. I was practicing, not consciously, but every
10:07
Speaker 1: time I erased a need, every time I made myself smaller,
10:09
Speaker 1: every time I apologized for wanting a text back or
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Speaker 1: a plan or a check-in, I was rehearsing. I was
10:14
Speaker 1: rehearsing how to be less inconvenient for the next person
10:16
Speaker 1: and And by the time I got to my partner,
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Speaker 1: who is genuinely calm and warm and makes dinner and
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Speaker 1: writes notes and has never once made me feel like
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Speaker 1: a burden, I had rehearsed being the eraser keeper so
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Speaker 1: thoroughly that I kept doing it even when there was
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Speaker 1: no reason to. Nobody was asking me to. I was
10:31
Speaker 1: the one holding the eraser. That is the part that
10:33
Speaker 1: broke something open at the table. Not that I had
10:35
Speaker 1: been treated badly. I had been treated well. I was
10:38
Speaker 1: the one still working from the old manual. Make sense?
10:42
Speaker 1: I missed a conference session that morning. It was titled
10:44
Speaker 1: something about leveraging synergies in a hybrid landscape. I have
10:47
Speaker 1: no regrets. I wrote in that journal for almost two hours.
10:50
Speaker 1: And what I did was I wrote down every need
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Speaker 1: I had, quietly buried in the past 11 months, and
10:54
Speaker 1: next to each one I wrote who told me it
10:56
Speaker 1: was too much. And every single time the answer was
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Speaker 1: the same. Me. I had told myself. Not my partner.
11:01
Speaker 1: Not any voice from outside. Somewhere between 17 and the
11:04
Speaker 1: morning of that terrible breakfast, I had taken over the
11:06
Speaker 1: job of making myself smaller so that nobody else had
11:08
Speaker 1: to bother. I had become the most efficient silencer of
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Speaker 1: my own needs I had ever encountered. Very talented. Deeply unhelpful.
11:15
Speaker 1: I will not be putting it on my resume. I
11:18
Speaker 1: went to a party a couple of years into therapy,
11:21
Speaker 1: the kind of party where you end up in a
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Speaker 1: corner talking to someone you just met for two hours.
11:25
Speaker 1: And I met a woman who was saying all the
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Speaker 1: things I used to say. She said, I just don't
11:28
Speaker 1: want to be difficult. And I heard myself from four
11:30
Speaker 1: years earlier, so clearly it was almost loud. She said
11:33
Speaker 1: it the way I used to say it, like being
11:35
Speaker 1: difficult was the worst thing she could possibly be. Like
11:37
Speaker 1: her own needs were an inconvenience she was apologizing for
11:40
Speaker 1: in advance. I wanted to hug her. I also wanted
11:43
Speaker 1: to tell her what I didn't know how to say then.
11:45
Speaker 1: The thing you're calling difficult is actually just you. Just
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Speaker 1: the full version of you. Can we see that? So
11:51
Speaker 1: that evening, I called my partner. Two days into the trip,
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Speaker 1: journal open, bad coffee going cold. My partner asked how
11:57
Speaker 1: the trip was, and I said, weird, I found my
11:59
Speaker 1: old journal. And my partner said, good weird or bad weird.
12:02
Speaker 1: I said, I think I've been making myself smaller, and
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Speaker 1: I don't think you asked me to. There was a pause.
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Speaker 1: My partner said, I know, I've been waiting for you
12:08
Speaker 1: to notice. Okay, first of all, very calm thing to say.
12:12
Speaker 1: Also slightly infuriating when you've been hoping it wasn't visible.
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Speaker 1: I said, you could have mentioned it. And my partner said,
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Speaker 1: would you have listened? And the honest answer is absolutely not.
12:20
Speaker 1: I would have said I'm fine and reorganized something. They
12:23
Speaker 1: were completely right. And I didn't love it. Right? Then
12:27
Speaker 1: I called my mom on Sunday, like always. She asked
12:29
Speaker 1: if I was okay. And I said, I was doing
12:30
Speaker 1: some thinking. And she asked about what? And I said
12:32
Speaker 1: about what I actually need. She went quiet for a moment.
12:35
Speaker 1: And then she said, I always wondered if you'd figure
12:37
Speaker 1: that one out. My mom was warm and moody in
12:39
Speaker 1: equal measure. And that sentence landed somewhere complicated because what
12:42
Speaker 1: I understood sitting with it later was that the eraser
12:44
Speaker 1: keeping was not my invention. It had been in the water.
12:47
Speaker 1: She had her version of it. Her mother probably had
12:50
Speaker 1: a version of it before that. It moves through families quietly,
12:53
Speaker 1: passed down not through words but through watching, through what
12:56
Speaker 1: we saw modeled, through what was praised and what was
12:58
Speaker 1: quietly discouraged. It's not that you don't know your non-negotiables.
13:01
Speaker 1: It's that you were taught they'd cost you love. That's
13:03
Speaker 1: the line. That is the whole thing. And look, my
13:07
Speaker 1: partner saying, I've been waiting for you to notice was
13:09
Speaker 1: a lot to sit with. Because part of me wanted
13:11
Speaker 1: credit for noticing. Like, hey, I noticed it only took
13:13
Speaker 1: a hotel and a destroyed breakfast, but I got there.
13:16
Speaker 1: And part of me felt the grief of how long
13:17
Speaker 1: the not noticing had been going on. 11 months of erasing.
13:21
Speaker 1: Before that, two years alone practicing how to be easier.
13:24
Speaker 1: Before that, years of chasing men who confirmed every belief
13:27
Speaker 1: I had about my needs being too much. And underneath
13:29
Speaker 1: all of it, a kid who loved her dad and
13:31
Speaker 1: learned to stop bothering him when he came home tired.
13:34
Speaker 1: The pattern goes all the way down. Yeah, it really does.
13:39
Speaker 1: So the decision I made at that table was quiet
13:41
Speaker 1: and unglamorous, which is how I knew it was real.
13:44
Speaker 1: I decided to say one thing I had been erasing
13:45
Speaker 1: when I got home. One real thing. Not a complaint,
13:48
Speaker 1: not a fight, not a whole list. A need. Specifically,
13:51
Speaker 1: I needed us to make a loose plan for the
13:53
Speaker 1: week on Sunday evenings because uncertainty made my nervous system
13:56
Speaker 1: treat every unplanned day like a small emergency. That is
13:59
Speaker 1: a completely reasonable need. I had been carrying it quietly
14:02
Speaker 1: for 11 months. I got home. My partner was cooking.
14:05
Speaker 1: The dog was stealing a sock from parts unknown with
14:07
Speaker 1: zero awareness of the emotional weight of the moment. The
14:09
Speaker 1: balcony plants were looking even worse than when I left.
14:12
Speaker 1: And I sat down and said the thing. I said,
14:14
Speaker 1: I need us to do a five-minute check-in on Sundays
14:16
Speaker 1: so I know what the week looks like, even roughly.
14:19
Speaker 1: It helps my brain. My partner looked up and said, okay.
14:22
Speaker 1: That's it, okay. No negotiation, no eye roll. No, is
14:25
Speaker 1: this really necessary? Okay. I had been erasing that for
14:28
Speaker 1: 11 months. For okay. The dog didn't even look up.
14:32
Speaker 1: Truly no respect for emotional climaxes in this apartment. I
14:36
Speaker 1: want you to sit with the cost of 11 months
14:37
Speaker 1: for a second because this is where it gets real.
14:39
Speaker 1: 11 months I carried that one need. Before that, two
14:42
Speaker 1: years in the studio telling myself I was healing when
14:44
Speaker 1: actually I was rehearsing how to be less inconvenient for
14:46
Speaker 1: the next person. Before that, three years of therapy in
14:49
Speaker 1: which I genuinely learned so much and still managed to
14:51
Speaker 1: drive the eraser keeper right into my next relationship with me.
14:54
Speaker 1: Before all of that, years of dating men who were unavailable,
14:57
Speaker 1: who gave me just enough, who made my needs feel
14:59
Speaker 1: like impositions, who I stayed with longer than I should
15:01
Speaker 1: have because the uncertainty felt like passion and the emotional
15:03
Speaker 1: distance felt familiar. The eraser keeper doesn't look like someone
15:06
Speaker 1: in pain. That's the thing. She looks like someone who
15:08
Speaker 1: is easy to love. She's accommodating and flexible and doesn't
15:11
Speaker 1: make a big deal out of things. She seems great.
15:14
Speaker 1: She's quietly disappearing. Right? And the ego death of that
15:17
Speaker 1: hotel morning was not that I had done something terrible.
15:20
Speaker 1: It was that I had been so certain I was
15:21
Speaker 1: past this. Certain enough to stop watching myself. I have
15:25
Speaker 1: an entire shelf of books about this exact pattern, and
15:27
Speaker 1: I apparently needed to fly to another city and eat
15:29
Speaker 1: a catastrophic orange to actually hear any of them. Very
15:32
Speaker 1: efficient use of resources. And that brings us to what
15:35
Speaker 1: comes next. What the inner child piece actually means here,
15:39
Speaker 1: not just as an idea but in your body, in
15:41
Speaker 1: the moment you're about to say the thing and the
15:43
Speaker 1: voice says, don't push it. What the eraser keeper costs
15:46
Speaker 1: you over the long run and what your real list
15:48
Speaker 1: might say if you finally let it be what it is.
15:50
Speaker 1: Stay with me. Okay, so here's the thing about the
15:53
Speaker 1: inner child piece. I know that phrase sounds like something
15:56
Speaker 1: on a throw pillow, right? It sounds soft and a
15:58
Speaker 1: little eye-roll worthy and I get it, I was skeptical too.
16:01
Speaker 1: But I want to be really specific here because the
16:03
Speaker 1: way it shows up in the eraser keeper is not dramatic.
16:06
Speaker 1: It's not a flashback. It's not a big childhood wound
16:08
Speaker 1: you can point to. It's quieter than that. It's a policy.
16:12
Speaker 1: When a child gets the message, even a gentle message,
16:15
Speaker 1: even an unspoken one, that being too needy or too
16:17
Speaker 1: difficult risks losing closeness, she learns to edit herself. She
16:21
Speaker 1: doesn't stop having needs. She starts hiding them. She gets
16:24
Speaker 1: very good at reading the room. She becomes, and I
16:27
Speaker 1: say this with full love, very easy to be around.
16:29
Speaker 1: And the adult version of her walks into a relationship
16:31
Speaker 1: with a whole list of what she actually needs. And
16:33
Speaker 1: then quietly, systematically, starts crossing things off before anyone even
16:37
Speaker 1: sees the list. That's the inner child piece. Not a wound.
16:40
Speaker 1: A policy. A really old policy she's been running on
16:43
Speaker 1: without checking whether it still applies. Sound familiar? My dad,
16:47
Speaker 1: like I said, was kind. Genuinely kind. He just wasn't
16:50
Speaker 1: always there. Even when he was in the room. You
16:52
Speaker 1: know that thing where someone is physically present and emotionally
16:55
Speaker 1: just elsewhere? Yeah. Yeah. You learn not to need too
16:58
Speaker 1: much from someone like that. You learn to make it easy.
17:01
Speaker 1: You learn that if you're good and uncomplicated and low effort,
17:03
Speaker 1: the closeness you do get stays. And then you grow
17:06
Speaker 1: up and you go to therapy and you read all
17:07
Speaker 1: the books and you think you've dismantled that policy, right?
17:10
Speaker 1: And then you move in with someone stable and calm
17:12
Speaker 1: and wonderful and you run the policy anyway. Because the
17:14
Speaker 1: policy doesn't live in your brain. It lives in your body.
17:17
Speaker 1: It lives in that tightness under your sternum. It lives
17:19
Speaker 1: in the half second before you open your mouth and
17:21
Speaker 1: then decide not to. So let me ask you something directly, okay?
17:26
Speaker 1: When you read your list, the real one, the one
17:28
Speaker 1: you wrote after a breakup when you were being honest
17:30
Speaker 1: with yourself, do you feel clear or do you feel guilty?
17:33
Speaker 1: Because if reading your own needs makes you feel like
17:35
Speaker 1: you're asking for too much, that feeling isn't about the list.
17:38
Speaker 1: That feeling is old. It was installed before you had
17:40
Speaker 1: the vocabulary to question it. It's not discernment. It's the
17:43
Speaker 1: policy running on autopilot. Right? Here's what the eraser keeper
17:48
Speaker 1: costs you over time. And I want to say this
17:49
Speaker 1: plainly because I spent years not hearing it. She costs
17:52
Speaker 1: you yourself. Not dramatically, not all at once. She cost
17:55
Speaker 1: you yourself one small concession at a time. One preference renamed,
17:59
Speaker 1: one need swallowed, one Sunday evening spent managing your own
18:02
Speaker 1: anxiety alone because you didn't want to seem like a lot.
18:04
Speaker 1: And the person across from you, the one you're trying
18:06
Speaker 1: so hard not to burden, they often feel it. They
18:09
Speaker 1: feel the distance even when they can't name it. My
18:11
Speaker 1: partner felt it. My partner said I was far away
18:13
Speaker 1: and never once asked me to be. I had made
18:15
Speaker 1: myself far away all on my own. Make sense? Because
18:18
Speaker 1: you can be physically present and emotionally behind glass, and
18:21
Speaker 1: the glass is made of all the things you decided
18:22
Speaker 1: not to say. And your real list, the one you
18:25
Speaker 1: haven't softened, hasn't been negotiated down to preferences yet. That
18:28
Speaker 1: list is not too much. I want to be really
18:30
Speaker 1: direct here. Your non-negotiables are not a test. They're not
18:33
Speaker 1: a trap. They're not you being difficult. They're the minimum
18:36
Speaker 1: conditions under which you can actually be yourself in a relationship.
18:39
Speaker 1: Without them, you're performing a version of yourself that's easier
18:41
Speaker 1: to love, and you're slowly disappearing inside that performance, and
18:44
Speaker 1: you're probably really tired. Yeah? Because performing is exhausting. Being
18:48
Speaker 1: easy is exhausting when easy isn't true. It's not that
18:52
Speaker 1: you don't know your non-negotiables. It's that you were taught
18:54
Speaker 1: they'd cost you love. That's the whole thing. That's what
18:57
Speaker 1: I found sitting at a hotel table with a bad
18:59
Speaker 1: orange in a journal. It wasn't that I hadn't done
19:01
Speaker 1: the work. It was that the work had taught me
19:03
Speaker 1: the language and the policy had never gotten the memo.
19:06
Speaker 1: Knowing the word for the pattern does not automatically dissolve
19:08
Speaker 1: the pattern. I wish it did. I've spent a lot
19:10
Speaker 1: of money on books that implied it might. It does not.
19:13
Speaker 1: You have to catch the policy in real time, in
19:15
Speaker 1: the moment when the tightness shows up and you're deciding
19:17
Speaker 1: whether to say the thing. Can we see this in
19:20
Speaker 1: practice for a second? You're about to say something you need.
19:23
Speaker 1: Your body knows it, that little alert under your sternum.
19:26
Speaker 1: And the inner voice goes, this isn't the right moment.
19:29
Speaker 1: He's tired. You don't want to be that woman. Other
19:31
Speaker 1: people have real problems. You're lucky. Don't push it. And
19:34
Speaker 1: you swallow it. And then you feel vaguely resentful, but
19:36
Speaker 1: you don't know exactly why. So you call it a
19:38
Speaker 1: bad day, right? That is the policy. That is the
19:41
Speaker 1: eraser keeper doing her job. She learned that job from
19:43
Speaker 1: someone and she's been doing it faithfully ever since. And
19:46
Speaker 1: she genuinely believes she's protecting you. She's not wrong that
19:49
Speaker 1: she learned it somewhere. she's wrong that it still applies
19:53
Speaker 1: if sitting with your own needs brings up fear or
19:55
Speaker 1: grief or something that feels like it's bigger than one
19:57
Speaker 1: journal entry can hold please take that to a therapist
20:01
Speaker 1: this is real work and it goes deep and you
20:02
Speaker 1: don't have to do it alone i didn't three years
20:05
Speaker 1: of a small room and a flickering lamp and someone
20:07
Speaker 1: who kept asking the question I kept trying to answer
20:10
Speaker 1: quickly so I could feel done with it. You're not
20:12
Speaker 1: going to rush past this one, but you can start.
20:14
Speaker 1: I called my non-negotiables preferences. For so long, they started
20:18
Speaker 1: to believe it. Very impressionable, non-negotiables. Genuinely the most agreeable
20:23
Speaker 1: things in the world until you realize what you've been
20:25
Speaker 1: doing to them. So here's what I'm doing differently now,
20:28
Speaker 1: and I want to be honest that it's small and
20:30
Speaker 1: not cinematic. A few weeks after the trip, my partner
20:33
Speaker 1: and I were on the balcony, the plants looking alive
20:35
Speaker 1: but just barely, hanging on with real determination. And my
20:38
Speaker 1: partner said, you seem less far away lately. I hadn't
20:41
Speaker 1: told my partner I'd been far away. They noticed anyway.
20:44
Speaker 1: The calm ones always do. And I didn't know what
20:46
Speaker 1: to do with that, which is a whole other episode,
20:48
Speaker 1: receiving good things, being seen and not deflecting, but I'm
20:51
Speaker 1: naming it here because it was real. That sentence landed
20:54
Speaker 1: somewhere new, not in my brain, in my chest. What
20:58
Speaker 1: I'm doing is saying the need when I feel the tightness,
21:01
Speaker 1: not when it's already become a fight or a distance
21:03
Speaker 1: I can't explain. I say it without the apology in
21:05
Speaker 1: front of it. No, I know this is a lot. No,
21:08
Speaker 1: you probably think I'm being ridiculous. Just the thing, my
21:11
Speaker 1: partner and I did the Sunday check-in for the first
21:13
Speaker 1: time two weekends ago. Five minutes, what the week looks like,
21:16
Speaker 1: nothing fancy. My partner said it at dinner on Saturday. Hey,
21:19
Speaker 1: what does your week look like? Want to do our thing?
21:22
Speaker 1: I nearly fell off the chair. Okay, I didn't nearly
21:24
Speaker 1: fall off the chair, but I did feel something embarrassingly
21:27
Speaker 1: large for a five-minute conversation about a calendar. That is
21:30
Speaker 1: what 11 months of a suppressed need feels like when
21:31
Speaker 1: it finally gets met. It feels enormous. It feels like
21:34
Speaker 1: way more than five minutes should be able to feel.
21:37
Speaker 1: Sound familiar? My partner said something a few weeks after
21:40
Speaker 1: the trip. We were on the balcony and I keep
21:42
Speaker 1: returning to it. You seem less far away lately. I'm
21:45
Speaker 1: learning how to take that as a compliment without immediately
21:47
Speaker 1: explaining it away. I'm working on that. The plants are
21:50
Speaker 1: working on surviving. We're all in a process over here.
21:54
Speaker 1: Do this, okay? This week, write one need you've been
21:57
Speaker 1: calling a preference. Not 10, not the whole list, just one.
22:01
Speaker 1: Write it as a non-negotiable instead. Then say it out
22:03
Speaker 1: loud without, I know this is a lot in front
22:06
Speaker 1: of it. Just the need, plain, the way you'd say
22:08
Speaker 1: it to someone you trusted completely. And notice what happens.
22:12
Speaker 1: Notice if the room explodes. I'm going to guess it doesn't.
22:16
Speaker 1: Your non-negotiables are not too much. Here's the blunt thing,
22:19
Speaker 1: the one I needed someone to say to me at 22,
22:21
Speaker 1: at 26, at 31, in a hotel, eating a terrible orange.
22:24
Speaker 1: You cannot hold your non-negotiables if you've never actually believed
22:27
Speaker 1: you're allowed to. Not in your head, your head already knows.
22:31
Speaker 1: In your body. In the moment when you're about to
22:33
Speaker 1: say the thing and the old voice says don't push it.
22:35
Speaker 1: That is where the work is. That is where the
22:37
Speaker 1: policy lives. And that is where you get to make
22:39
Speaker 1: a different choice. Right? What's one thing you've been calling
22:43
Speaker 1: a preference because naming it a non-negotiable felt like too
22:45
Speaker 1: much to ask? Just one. Write it down somewhere. Let
22:49
Speaker 1: it exist on the page without immediately negotiating with yourself
22:51
Speaker 1: about whether it's reasonable. You don't have to show it
22:53
Speaker 1: to anyone. Just let it be named. Because the naming matters.
22:57
Speaker 1: The naming is the opposite of the eraser. If you're
22:59
Speaker 1: currently arguing with yourself about whether your one thing even
23:01
Speaker 1: counts as a non-negotiable, congratulations. You are exactly who this
23:05
Speaker 1: episode was made for. And I say that with so
23:07
Speaker 1: much love because I was you. I am sometimes still you.
23:10
Speaker 1: And this episode was made for me too. Baby, I'm
23:14
Speaker 1: not going to tell you I have this fully figured out.
23:16
Speaker 1: I feel the pull to make myself easier still. I
23:18
Speaker 1: catch the voice before a hard conversation going, is this
23:21
Speaker 1: really necessary? Is this the hill? Is this the moment?
23:24
Speaker 1: The difference is I notice it now a breath earlier
23:26
Speaker 1: than I used to. I notice the tightness before I've
23:28
Speaker 1: already swallowed the need. Some days I say the thing.
23:31
Speaker 1: Some days I still don't. But I know what I'm
23:33
Speaker 1: doing now. I know her name. She's the eraser keeper
23:37
Speaker 1: and she learned what she learned in good faith. She
23:39
Speaker 1: was trying to protect me from losing love. She was
23:41
Speaker 1: doing her best with what she had and what she
23:43
Speaker 1: had was a child's understanding of what love required. I
23:46
Speaker 1: don't need to fight her. I need to show her,
23:49
Speaker 1: slowly and repeatedly, that the love worth having does not
23:51
Speaker 1: require her to keep working. That she can rest. That
23:54
Speaker 1: I've got this one. Make sense? You feel that tightness, right?
23:59
Speaker 1: Name it instead of calling it tired. You don't have
24:01
Speaker 1: to say the need out loud today. You don't have
24:04
Speaker 1: to do anything brave today. Just knowing the tightness is there.
24:07
Speaker 1: Just noticing what it's pointing at without immediately talking yourself
24:09
Speaker 1: out of it. That's a start. That is genuinely a start.
24:13
Speaker 1: The eraser keeper has been working overtime for years with
24:15
Speaker 1: absolutely zero days off. She's exhausted. Let her rest. You're
24:19
Speaker 1: allowed to want what you want. The trip taught me
24:22
Speaker 1: that knowing your non-negotiables is actually the easy part. The
24:25
Speaker 1: list is the easy part. Believing them in front of
24:28
Speaker 1: another person. Saying them without the apology in front. and
24:31
Speaker 1: then sitting with the disorienting reality that the answer might
24:33
Speaker 1: just be okay, that is the whole game. It's not
24:36
Speaker 1: that you don't know your non-negotiables. It's that you were
24:38
Speaker 1: taught they'd cost you love. They won't. Not with the
24:41
Speaker 1: right person. And if they do, that is also information.
24:44
Speaker 1: Good information. Expensive, uncomfortable, clarifying information. The balcony plants are
24:50
Speaker 1: still alive. Barely. Doing what they can with the light
24:53
Speaker 1: they've got. Genuinely an inspiration. We're all out here doing
24:57
Speaker 1: our best. Take care of yourself. I'll talk to you soon.
25:00
Speaker 1: This show is made by Ogle Media.