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Transcript

You're Writing His Half Of The Story (And It's Fiction) · Toxic Girls Zone

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Hey, welcome back. Pull up a chair or honestly, stay
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: in bed. That is where I do my best thinking anyway. Okay,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: so my partner and I were watching one of those
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: reality dating shows last week. You know, the kind dramatic music,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: people crying in confessionals, the whole thing. And there is
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: this scene, this one scene where two people are standing
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: at a fake altar and one of them reads this speech.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: And I am watching this speech and slowly realizing that
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: It has almost nothing to do with the actual person
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: standing across from them. It is a full portrait of
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: who they needed that person to be. It is beautiful
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: and heartbreaking and completely fictional. And my partner, 11 minutes in,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: is asleep on the couch beside me like a golden retriever,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: just out. I, however, am awake until one in the morning,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: phone in my hand, unable to stop watching. I kept thinking,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I know that person at the altar. I have been
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: that person at the altar. And I could not shake it.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: So here I am, Tuesday morning, dog already stealing a
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: sock off the floor, and I am still thinking about
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: that scene. That is how this episode started, right? One
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: moment on a couch that felt just a little too specific.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: So today we are talking about situationships, and more precisely,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: we are talking about what you are doing inside them
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: with your very powerful, very overworked imagination. And I will
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: say this up front, you are going to want to
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: argue with me today. What I am about to say
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: implicates your own mind as much as his behavior, and
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: that is uncomfortable. This one is for anyone who is
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: with someone, without someone, or stuck in that terrible blurry middle.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: And just so we are all on the same page, yes,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: this applies whether your person is a man, a woman,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: or anyone else.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: I said it once. I used my one allowance. We
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: are moving on.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's start here with you because you deserve
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: to be seen before I flip anything. The situationship you.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Are in is genuinely confusing. I want you to hear that.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: The signals are mixed, not because you are bad at
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: reading them, but because they actually are mixed. Some days
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: he is warm and present and you think, And then
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: he said something last Tuesday.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Maybe it was a look.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Maybe it was the way he texted first for three
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: days in a row. Maybe it was something small that felt,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: for a second, like a promise. And you replayed it.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: You replayed it in the shower, on your commute, while
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: pretending to work. You built a floor from that one moment, right?
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: A whole surface to stand on. Okay, here's the thing.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: The floor is yours.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: You built it. Because you are not reading him, babe.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: You are writing him. That is the pattern we are
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: talking about today. I call her the story writer.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: The story writer is the part of you that fills
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: every gap in his behavior with the most generous, the
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: most hopeful, the most beautifully constructed draft. He went quiet
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: for two days and she says he is overwhelmed, probably thinking,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Just needs time. He said something vague and she says
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: he means something specific and loving. He just does not
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: have the words yet. Kind motive, hidden feelings, just not
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: ready yet.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: She writes it all. She is prolific. She is talented.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: And here is the line I need you to sit
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: with today. You are not reading him clearly. You are
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: writing him beautifully. That is not a character flaw. That
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: is a coping move your brain runs to stay in
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: motion when the truth is unbearably still. Picture this, you,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: phone on the nightstand, 11 at night, reading his last
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: message for the sixth time.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: He said, sounds good.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: You have decoded that into, I miss you, and I
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: am thinking about us, and I am just scared to
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: say it out loud.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: He said, sounds good.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Two words, sounds good. And sounds good is doing so
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: much heavy lifting in your imagination right now. Like that
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: phrase is working overtime. That phrase has a full-time job, benefits,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: a pension plan. Sounds good is out here building a
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: future it was never designed to construct. And I say
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: that with love, I really do, because I have been
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: the woman reading Sounds Good at Midnight looking for a
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: love letter. So the real question, and I want to
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: slow down here because this is where it gets important,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: the real question is not, what does he mean? That
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: question keeps you busy and it keeps you inside the story.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: The real question is, what are you doing with the
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: not knowing? Because the not knowing is the actual situation, right?
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: The space between his texts, the weekend he disappears, the
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Monday he shows up warm, that space is real and.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: It is genuinely open.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: And the brain, your brain, my brain, every brain hates
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: open space. It is wired to fill it. And when
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: there is not enough information coming from the outside, the
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: brain reaches inward and it grabs your feelings, your hopes,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: your fears, and it places them gently onto him.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: And then it calls that reading. That is the machinery.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: When someone gives you very little, you do not sit
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: with the silence. You fill it fast and you fill
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: it with yourself. What you want him to feel, you
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: assign to him. What you fear he thinks, you quietly.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Edit out of the draft.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: And then you make decisions based on the story, not
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: based on what is actually in front of you. So
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: the question I want you to hold right now, and
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: I mean really hold it, if you removed every line
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: you wrote for him, what is left? What did he
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: actually say? What did he actually do?
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Just that.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Not the interpretation, not the subtext you built, just the
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: raw material. That question is either clarifying or terrifying, and honestly,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: it is probably both. Okay, let's get into the scenario,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: because I think when we make this specific, it hits differently.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Three months into something with no name. He texts in
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: the evenings usually, disappears on weekends mostly, shows up warm
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: on Monday like the weekend was nothing. And you have
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: learned to live between those coordinates, right?
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: You have built a whole internal rhythm around his irregular pattern.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: Walk the week with me.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Monday he texts first and he is warm and funny
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: and you think, he's getting closer, something shifted. Wednesday he
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: goes quiet and you explain it to yourself. He is
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: overwhelmed at work. You actually know nothing about his week,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: but that is the story and it is kind. Friday
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: rolls around, no plans materialize, nothing gets suggested, and you
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: decide he's scared, not uninterested. Scared is a better story
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: than uninterested. Scared means there is still something to unlock.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Uninterested means you are standing outside a door that is
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: just closed. You have a whole inner documentary running, my love.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: You have assigned him a backstory, a wound, a readiness arc.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: You have decided what he is healing from and how
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: close he is to healed. He has not done any
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: of that writing. He sent seven texts and a meme
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: about a dog. He sent a voice note where he
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: mostly talked about traffic. actual road traffic, the kind with cars.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: And from that material, you have constructed a relationship. The
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: scenario is not that he is a villain.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: He might be a.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Perfectly decent person who is unclear. But the story writer
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: showed up and she did unpaid narrative labor for two people.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: She wrote his half and her half and she called
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: it a connection.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: And look, I get it. She's doing it out of hope,
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: not malice. But the cost of.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: That labor is something we're going to talk about in
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: a minute.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: Picture this.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: You at a coffee shop telling your best friend, He
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: is just not great at expressing himself, but I can
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: see it. Your best friend, who has heard four versions
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: of this update, puts on her coffee. And she says,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: what exactly.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Can you see? And you say things.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: You say, the way he looked at me that one
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: time and the thing he said about wanting to travel
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: someday and how he remembered that I hate cilantro.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: And she says, did he say any of those things
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: to you directly? Pause. Longer pause. The kind of pause
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: that is its own answer. Yeah.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: And here is the actual archive, right? The total text
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: record is, hey, sounds good, haha, and that one voice
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: note about traffic. That is the text thread. That is
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: what exists in your phone. The relationship that exists in
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: your head is a multi-season drama with a full character
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: study and an emotional climax that has not happened yet.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: I am not saying this to be harsh. I am
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: saying it because I have been there and someone needed
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: to read me that list. I am the story writer,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: not was. Am, with vigilance, with ongoing effort, with therapy receipts.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: In my 20s, I dated a man for four months
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: who I had written into a whole character. Sensitive, almost ready,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: just needed the right person to make him feel safe enough.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: He never said any of that. What he said on
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: week one, I am not looking for anything serious. I
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: heard that as a wound, not a fact. I wrote
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: around it immediately, like a painter working around a smudge,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: pretending it is not there if you look at the
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: whole composition. The story I built was so detailed, so
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: internally consistent, that when it ended, I grieved a relationship
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: that had never technically existed.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: The grief was real. The relationship was mostly mine.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: And I remember sitting in my studio apartment a week
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: or two after the breakup that eventually broke me open
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: at 26, sitting on the floor, rereading four months of texts,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: looking for evidence, looking for proof that I had not
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: imagined everything, that something real had been there. The thread
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: was short, genuinely short. The story I remembered was long
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: and textured and full of almost moments and significant glances.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: The thread was like, what's up? Yeah, sounds fun. And
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: a gif.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: My best friend called that night and she said, You
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: loved a person you invented. That is a real loss.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: But it is not about him. I wanted to hang
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: up on her. Not because she was wrong. Because she
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: was so right and so fast about it that it
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: felt violent. I was not ready to hear it. But
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: I am telling you now because you might be a
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: little more ready than I was. So everything we are
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: talking about today, the whole reason this landed so hard
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: when I watched that altar scene at one in the morning,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: is going to come into sharper focus as we keep going.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Because next we have to talk about who taught you
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: to write these stories in the first place. And the
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: answer is probably in a room from a long time ago.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: And that room for me was my childhood kitchen.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: My dad worked long hours.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: He was kind, genuinely kind, but he was hard to
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: reach in the way that some people are just always
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: slightly behind glass. And as a kid, I got very
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: good at reading the small signals, the mood when he
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: walked in the door, the quality of his quiet, whether
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: the quiet was tired, quiet or tense quiet, or just
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: empty quiet. I learned to decode before I ever learned
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: to ask. Asking felt risky, too direct, like it might
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: disturb something fragile. Decoding felt safe, almost powerful, because if
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: I could figure out the weather before it hit, I
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: could prepare, I could adjust, I could make myself useful.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: That skill served me well at 10. It is wrecking
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: me at 32, right? And I want you to sit
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: with that for a second, because the story writer was
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: not born in this situationship.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: She was trained.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Trained in a house where reading between the lines was
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: not a quirk, it was survival strategy. Where love came
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: in signals you had to earn the right interpretation of.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Maybe for you it was not a father. Maybe it
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: was a mother whose mood you could read before she
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: walked fully into the room. Maybe it was a household
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: where the emotional information was always slightly coded and you
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: just got so good at cracking it.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: You got very good. You got too good.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: And now you are doing it to a man who
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: sent you a meme about a golden retriever and you
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: are decoding it for intimacy clues. I called my mom
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: from my first apartment after a confusing week with a guy.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Early 20s, fresh to the city, completely lost. She listened
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: the whole way through, which she is good at, and
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: then she said, well, maybe he's just being careful. He
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: probably really likes you.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: You can just tell. And she was being kind. She
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: genuinely was.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: But she was also doing exactly what our whole family does,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: filling the silence with the most loving possible interpretation, the
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: warmest draft of the story. And I heard it as permission.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: I heard it as keep going, keep writing. The story
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: you want is the true one. I did not question
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: that until I was sitting in a therapist's office years later.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: And she asked me where I learned to explain away
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: the gap between what someone said and what I needed
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: them to mean.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: I said I didn't know. She waited. The kitchen came
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: back to me.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: So here's that specific feeling in the body, the one
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: that tells me I am in the pattern. It is
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: a held breath, that particular tightness right in the chest,
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: the one you feel right before his name lights up
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: your phone.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: I know that breath.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: I felt it at the kitchen table waiting to know
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: if my dad's day was good or bad before he
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: told me, waiting to calibrate. That same breath, that same held, waiting,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: decoding posture, showed up in every situationship I ever let
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: run too long.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: The body was not giving me new information. It was
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: replaying an old one. Does that sound familiar? Yeah, I
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: thought it might.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, so now we go one layer deeper because underneath
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: the story writer, underneath the behavior of filling gaps and
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: writing motivations and building narrative arcs out of seven texts
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: and a meme, there is a belief, a shadow belief.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: And the shadow says this, love is something you figure out.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Love is something you earn by being perceptive enough to
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: understand someone who is not making it easy. The shadow says,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: if you have to ask plainly, you have already failed somehow.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Like the asking itself is proof that the connection is
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: not as deep as you thought it was. A woman
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: who asks plainly and waits for a plain answer does
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: not need the story writer. And the shadow says that
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: woman is too much, too forward, too naive about how
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: emotional unavailability actually works.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: That's not a standard. That's a wall.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: You built it yourself because somewhere along the way, someone
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: taught you that needing clear words was a form of weakness.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: And there is something else the shadow is carrying. If
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: I stop writing the story, if I actually sit in
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: the genuine silence and do not fill it, what if
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: nothing comes? What if the silence is the answer and
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: it is just silence? The disowned need, the one the
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: story writer is actually protecting you from, is the need
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: to be chosen clearly. To have someone say out loud,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: with no decoding required, I want this, I want you,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: here's what I mean. The story writer gives you that
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: need without any of the risk, because you wrote both parts.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: You get the intimacy, the almost relationship, the feeling of
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: being known and chosen, without ever having to stand in
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: front of a real person and ask and wait and
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: be possibly told no. That is the seduction of the pattern, babe.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: You never have to be told no because you already
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: wrote yes. And I want to name what projection actually
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: is here because it is the machinery running underneath all
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: of this. Projection is when you take your own feelings,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: your hopes, your fears, your longing, and you place them
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: onto another person and then treat that as information about
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: them rather than about you.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: That is it. That is the whole thing.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: In a confirmed relationship, there is enough real material to
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: bump up against. He does something, you react, you update
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: your understanding. But in a situationship, there is almost no
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: confirmed reality. There is so much open space and the
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: brain genuinely hates open space. So the story writer steps in.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: She is a protector part. She is not doing this
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: to hurt you or to make you look naive later.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: She is managing the terror of not knowing. She says,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: if I can decode what he means, I am safe.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: So she writes meanings. She writes motivations. She writes a
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: whole future with good light and a dog and inside jokes.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: She's trying to help. And here is the tragedy of it.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: The more convincingly she writes, the less actual information you
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: seek from the real person sitting across from the story.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: You stop asking because you already answered. You have a
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: very complete draft and he has said, sounds good twice
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: and liked a photo. There is also a self-worth thread
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: running through all of this, and I need you to
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: hear it. The story writer writes almost always cast him
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: as almost ready, just on the edge of being fully available,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: and you as the one who could tip him over.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: The key, the one person perceptive enough to understand what
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: he cannot say. You are always the key in the story.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: You are always the one who cracks the code and
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: gets the real version of him, and then suddenly the
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: whole thing opens up.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: That is not an accident.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: That is the story writer telling you something about what
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: you believe you have to do to be worth choosing.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: You cannot just be chosen. You have to earn it
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: through intelligence and patience and extremely generous interpretation. Think about
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: that for a second. Think about that.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: What does this cost?
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: The obvious one is time. Months in a story that
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: is not moving. Months where you are technically in something
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: and nothing is actually being built. But the second cost
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: is less obvious, and I think it is the bigger one.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: The story writer gets stronger with practice. The more you write,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: the more automatic the process becomes, and the less you
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: notice you are writing at all. It stops feeling like
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: an interpretation and starts feeling like knowledge. You stop saying,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: I think he means, and you start saying, I know
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: he is just scared. That is a costly upgrade. Because
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: now you are not just writing him, you are certain
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: about him.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: And certainty makes you stop checking. You're relating to your draft,
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: not to him. And this creates something genuinely strange in
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: the dynamic.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: He can sense that the version you are falling for
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: is not entirely him.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: He does not know how to name it.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: He just feels slightly offstage in his own story. And
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: the vagueness you read as fear of intimacy is sometimes
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: just his honest confusion about what exactly is happening. He
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: is in a story he did not write and does
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: not fully recognize himself in. And then there is the
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: future cost, the one nobody talks about. You arrive in
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: the next relationship, and the one after that was a
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: fully developed writing habit.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: It is a muscle now.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: And then you meet someone who is genuinely clear, who
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: says what he means without needing to be decoded, who
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: tells you how he feels in plain words on a
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: random Tuesday, and you get bored. Not because he is bad,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: but because there is nothing to decode, and the story
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: writer has no job, and she is very uncomfortable when
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: she has no job. So the clear, straightforward one starts
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: to feel flat, unchallenging. And the new, exciting, complicated one
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: who texts in the evening and disappears on weekends gets
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: three more months and the whole thing starts again.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? Yeah.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, so here's the hard truth. I am going to
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: say it in one line and I am going to
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: stay in it. The situationship is surviving on your labor.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: If you stopped writing, he would have almost nothing to
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: stand on.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: That is not a romance. That is you doing his
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: emotional work for free.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: And I want to say this directly, with love, because
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: I have been this person and I am not talking
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: down at you from somewhere clean and fixed. He might
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: actually like you. He might genuinely want this to become something.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: But none of that is visible yet because you have
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: covered every surface in your story. He has not had
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: to say anything real because you pre-answered every question he
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: should have been asked to sit with. You wrote the
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: why behind his behavior before he ever had to examine it.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: You gave him a backstory and a wound and a
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: readiness arc, and he walked into all of it without
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: doing a single day of that work.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: The clarity you are looking for is available to you
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: right now. Not from him. From you.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: You can ask the direct question and you can hear
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: the actual answer without editing it before it arrives. And
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: the terrifying version of this is that his actual answer
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: might be nothing much.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: A shrug. A non-answer that is itself an answer.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: And the even harder part is that some part of
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: you already knows that. Your gut has been filing reports
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: every single week and the story writer has been shredding
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: them the same day. Your inner voice goes, I just
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: need a little more time. One more week and then
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: I will know for sure. And you have said that
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: for seven weeks. The reports keep coming. The shredder keeps running.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: You are not reading him clearly. You are writing him beautifully.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: And the story, as beautiful as it is, is not
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: happening between two people.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: It is happening inside one.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: So what comes next is the part I am most
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: excited to get into because this is where it actually
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: gets hopeful. Next, what actually happens when you put the
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: pen down and whether what is left is a relationship
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: or just a room. Okay, so the pen is down.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: Now what?
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Here's what I want to tell you about the other side,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: because I think you've been picturing it as this kind
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: of lonely, quiet, empty place where nothing fills the space
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: he used to fill. And I get why you picture
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: it that way. The story writer is warm.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: She is company.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: She runs a whole internal narrative that is genuinely engaging. Honestly,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: more engaging than most things on television. And I say
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: that as someone who stayed up until one in the
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: morning watching strangers read wedding speeches to people they had
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: known for eight weeks. The story writer kept you from
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: sitting in silence. So when I say put the pen down,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: I understand that feels like losing something. You should be
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: proud of how hard you have been trying to make
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: this work. I just want to point out that you
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: have been trying hard enough for two people, and only
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: one of you is actually here. The woman on the
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: other side of this is not cold. She is not
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: someone who stopped caring or stopped being curious about other people.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: She is not guarded in that sealed-off way that looks
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: like strength but is actually just a different kind of fear.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: She is someone who asks plainly and then waits. She
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: waits for the actual answer, not the best possible version
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: of it. She's not aggressive about it. She's not handing
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: out ultimatums on week three. She's just someone who notices
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: when she is filling a gap and stops and asks
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: the question instead of writing the answer.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: That is the whole move. It sounds small. It is
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: not small at all.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Here's what surprised me about getting quieter with the writing.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: And I mean really quieter, not just telling myself I
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: was done writing while I drafted his emotional interior in
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: the shower. When I actually stopped, what I found was
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: not emptiness. What I found was information. Real, unedited, Sometimes inconvenient,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: sometimes genuinely lovely information about who someone actually was. My
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: partner leaves sticky notes on the coffee maker, specific ones,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: not grand ones. One last week said, do not forget
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: the dog has a vet thing. Thursday, it is the
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: one she hates. That is real data. That is not
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: me writing a character. That is someone showing me who
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: they are on a three by three square paper in
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: blue pen on a Tuesday. And I can do something
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: with that. I can actually feel something about that because
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: it came from outside me. On the other side, you
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: have a felt sense of who someone is. And that
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: is completely different from projection. Felt senses information arriving from
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: the outside in. It accumulates from what he actually says,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: what he actually does, what he does when things are
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: hard and there is nothing to perform. Projection is information
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: arriving from the inside out and landing on someone else.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: You feel the longing, you assign it to him. You
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: feel the readiness, you put it in his mouth. You
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: feel the hope, you write.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: It into his behavior.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: And the thing is, both can feel equally real in
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: your body, which is what makes this so genuine. So
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: here are three moves, three concrete things you can actually
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: do this week.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: Move one is the gap audit.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: When you notice you were thinking about what he probably
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: meant by something, write down what he actually.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Said word for word.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Then write down what you told yourself it meant, also
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: word for word. Put both on paper side by side.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: The distance between those two texts is where the story
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: writer lives.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: You do not have to judge her. Just see her.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: That distance is the data. Move two is the one
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: direct question. Not the whole, where is this going conversation
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: if you are not ready for that. Just one small,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: honest question in the direction of what you actually want
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: to know. Say it out loud to yourself first, alone
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: in a room. If it makes you feel a little
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: exposed and a little scared, If your chest does that
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: specific tightening thing, it.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Is probably the real one.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: That feeling means you have found the edge of the
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: story and the beginning of the actual conversation. His answer,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: whatever it is, even if it is vague, even if
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: it is a shorter answer than you hoped for, is
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: more useful than six more weeks of your own interpretation.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: You can do something with a real answer. You can
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: make a real decision. You can only run in circles.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: With a story.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Move three is the body check before you write. When
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: you are about to decode a text, when you are
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: about to spend 45 minutes figuring out what he meant
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: by sounds great versus sounds good.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Notice the physical state first.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Is there a held breath? Is there a tight chest?
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Is there that specific feeling of being about to solve something,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: like a little click of anticipation? That is the story
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: writer picking up the pen. That breath is the entrance
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: to the pattern, not the exit.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Pause right there. You do not have to do anything dramatic.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: Just pause.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Notice the state before you start writing. That noticing is
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: the whole move. Write down what you literally said beside
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: what you told yourself it meant.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: Read the gap.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: That is your work this week. And here is a
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: small dare while you are at it. Send the one
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: question you have been writing around for three weeks.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: Just that one. Tonight. Not the speech. Not the whole thing.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Just the one question. See what actually comes back.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Baby, here's what I need you to hear before I
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: let you go. The woman on the other side of
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: this is not a woman with no imagination. She's got
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: plenty of imagination. She's just turned it toward her own life.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: She builds things. She makes plans.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: She writes her own story and she lets him show
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: up in it with his actual material. Or she lets
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: him not show up at all and she keeps going
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: either way. She is not waiting to find out what
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: she is before she sees how he responds.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: She already knows.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: The version of her I am describing, she is sitting
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: in an ordinary moment, making coffee, the dog is somewhere
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: stealing something, and she is not running a background check
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: on someone's last text. She is just there, present, in
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: her own life. That is what I want for you.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: She also had to grieve something to get there. I
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: want to be honest about that. She had to grieve
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: the relationships that existed only in her head. And that
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: grief is real, my love. I want to say that clearly.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: I cried over a man for three months at 26.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: and at least half of what I was crying about
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: had never technically occurred. The relationship I lost was largely
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: one I wrote.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: But the grief was real. The longing was real. The
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: hope was real. It counts. Let it count.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: You do not have to be embarrassed about the story
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: you wrote. It came from somewhere true in you. A
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: real want for real love. Just let yourself grieve the draft,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: and then pick up the pen and put it somewhere else.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: I sat in my therapist's office. This was a few
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: years into therapy, and she asked me to describe a
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: man I had been circling for months. I described him
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: for about 10 minutes. his sensitivity, his hidden depth, the
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: way he was probably just guarded because of how he
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: grew up. My therapist listened to the whole thing. Then
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: she said that as a beautiful description. How many of
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: those things did he tell you versus how many did
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: you figure out? I said the word figured and then
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: I stopped.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: She waited. I said most of it. She goes right.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: And then she let the silence sit there and do
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: its work. I did not say anything for a while.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: And in that silence, I started to understand that I
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: had spent months in a relationship with my own skill
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: at reading people and called it a connection.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: It was not nothing. But it was not him. You
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: are not reading him clearly. You are writing him beautifully.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: And I will die on this hill because I have
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: lived on both sides of it and I know which
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: one actually leads somewhere. The question I want you to
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: sit with this week is this. If you stopped writing
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: his lines, what would he actually say? And could you
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: stay if the answer was nothing much?
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Write it down. Say it to your best friend.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Send this to someone who you know is in the
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: middle of a story right now because she needs to
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: hear this too. Come tell me what you found on
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: the other side of that question. I genuinely want to know.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: The story writer is not your enemy. She kept you
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: company when real connection felt too risky. She did her
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: job and she did it well. She just does not
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: live here anymore. Thank her for the drafts. Take the
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: pen back and go find out what he actually says.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: Talk soon. This show is made by Oboe Media.