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Why You Feel Invisible Even When Your Partner Is Right There · Toxic Girls Zone

0:03
Speaker 1: Welcome back, or if you're new here, hi, pull up
0:07
Speaker 1: a chair. We're gonna get into something today that I
0:09
Speaker 1: don't think anyone talks about enough, and I'm genuinely a
0:11
Speaker 1: little obsessed with this topic right now. Okay, so here's
0:15
Speaker 1: the warning first. Consider this a permission slip, but the
0:17
Speaker 1: uncomfortable kind, the kind that makes you question your whole personality, right?
0:21
Speaker 1: Not the warm, fuzzy kind you stick on the mirror,
0:23
Speaker 1: the kind that sits in your stomach for three days.
0:25
Speaker 1: This episode isn't for the woman who's still in the
0:27
Speaker 1: middle of chaos, still in the situationship, still waiting for
0:30
Speaker 1: a text back from someone who's definitely not gonna text back,
0:33
Speaker 1: This one is for the woman who did the work.
0:35
Speaker 1: The therapy, the journals, the hard conversations, the two years
0:38
Speaker 1: alone in a studio apartment figuring herself out. She got
0:41
Speaker 1: the calm partner, she got the stable life, and she
0:43
Speaker 1: is now quietly, privately, in the middle of the night,
0:46
Speaker 1: wondering why she still feels like a ghost in her
0:48
Speaker 1: own relationship. Yeah, I see you. You should be proud
0:52
Speaker 1: of yourself for getting here, genuinely. The work you did
0:54
Speaker 1: was real, and it mattered. And now I'm going to
0:57
Speaker 1: flip it on you, because the problem is in him.
0:59
Speaker 1: It isn't that he doesn't see you. It's that somewhere
1:02
Speaker 1: along the way, you forgot how to be seen without
1:04
Speaker 1: performing for it first. You're not invisible to him. You're
1:07
Speaker 1: invisible to the version of you that no longer needs
1:09
Speaker 1: to earn it. Okay, you're going to want to argue
1:11
Speaker 1: with that. I know. Sit with it anyway. And I'll
1:14
Speaker 1: say right now, you might want to put in some
1:16
Speaker 1: earbuds for this one. Because we're going somewhere real today, right?
1:18
Speaker 1: Now let me just say, my dog gets more unsolicited
1:23
Speaker 1: attention than I have allowed myself to receive in three
1:25
Speaker 1: years of living with my partner. He just exists. He
1:28
Speaker 1: walks into a room and someone scratches his ears. He
1:30
Speaker 1: contributes nothing. He stole a sock this morning, chewed the
1:33
Speaker 1: corner off, and stared at me like I was the problem.
1:35
Speaker 1: And somehow he is the most loved creature in our apartment,
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Speaker 1: without a single performance, without one impressive thing to show
1:41
Speaker 1: for himself. I watched him get a full ear scratch
1:44
Speaker 1: while I was standing right there having just reorganized the
1:46
Speaker 1: entire balcony situation, and something in me thought, how does
1:49
Speaker 1: he do that? Sound familiar? Yeah. Okay, let's get into it.
1:54
Speaker 1: So picture this. You're not in a bad relationship. He
1:56
Speaker 1: isn't cold. He isn't cruel. He isn't texting someone else.
1:59
Speaker 1: He makes dinner most nights. He checks in. He's right
2:02
Speaker 1: there physically, literally right there. And still you're lying next
2:05
Speaker 1: to him at 11 at night feeling like nobody in
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Speaker 1: the room. Like a ghost who rearranged the furniture and
2:09
Speaker 1: nobody noticed. And that feeling is real. I want you
2:12
Speaker 1: to hear that first. It is not made up. It
2:14
Speaker 1: is not dramatic. It makes complete sense. And now I'm
2:17
Speaker 1: going to flip it. Because you've been waiting for him
2:19
Speaker 1: to notice something specific. Something you haven't named out loud.
2:22
Speaker 1: Because naming it would mean admitting you need it. And
2:24
Speaker 1: the woman you've become does not admit she needs things.
2:27
Speaker 1: She just makes the need very visible and waits. Right?
2:32
Speaker 1: Picture the moment you went quiet at dinner when he
2:34
Speaker 1: didn't ask about your day. You told yourself you were fine.
2:37
Speaker 1: You went a little distant, a little cool, and you
2:39
Speaker 1: filed it away. You were not fine. You were keeping
2:41
Speaker 1: score in a journal inside your chest, adding up all
2:44
Speaker 1: the moments he didn't reach for the specific thing you
2:46
Speaker 1: were holding out. That's what I call the proof seeker.
2:48
Speaker 1: She doesn't ask. She waits. She performs. She watches for
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Speaker 1: the receipt. And three years of therapy later, she is
2:54
Speaker 1: still running the same transaction. It's just quieter now, more elegant,
2:58
Speaker 1: better dressed. Makes sense? Yeah. You spent 40 minutes rearranging
3:03
Speaker 1: the balcony plants before he got home. You moved the
3:05
Speaker 1: pothos to the left, brought the big one forward, stepped back,
3:08
Speaker 1: moved it again. You were not gardening. You were staging.
3:12
Speaker 1: He walked in, kissed your cheek, went straight to the
3:14
Speaker 1: kitchen and started chopping onions. You waited. He said, do
3:17
Speaker 1: you want the pasta or the rice tonight? You said,
3:19
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. Oh, babe, it mattered. You know it mattered.
3:23
Speaker 1: The plants didn't notice either, by the way. One of
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Speaker 1: them was already half dead, which honestly felt emotionally appropriate
3:28
Speaker 1: in the moment. Very on brand for the whole evening.
3:31
Speaker 1: So the real question isn't, why doesn't he see me?
3:34
Speaker 1: The real question is, why do I only feel real
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Speaker 1: when someone is watching? Right? Because here's what that question
3:39
Speaker 1: points at. You worked so hard to become the woman
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Speaker 1: who doesn't need much. The woman who's okay, who handles it,
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Speaker 1: who did the work. And now you're standing in the
3:46
Speaker 1: middle of your own earned security feeling completely invisible. And
3:50
Speaker 1: nobody warned you about this part. The self-help books didn't
3:52
Speaker 1: have a chapter for it. You did everything right and
3:55
Speaker 1: you still ended up here on the balcony next to
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Speaker 1: a struggling plant, wondering if you actually exist when nobody's looking.
4:00
Speaker 1: What are you actually asking for when you perform? Reassurance
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Speaker 1: that you're here? That you're worth the noticing? That all
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Speaker 1: the work you did means something? Yeah, those are the
4:09
Speaker 1: real questions. Makes sense. I have a whole shelf of
4:12
Speaker 1: self-help books and not one of them has a chapter
4:14
Speaker 1: called Congrats. Now what? Not one. There's chapters on healing
4:18
Speaker 1: anxious attachment, chapters on finding your worth, chapters on choosing yourself.
4:22
Speaker 1: Zero chapters on what happens when you've done all of that,
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Speaker 1: and you're still standing in your kitchen at midnight, waiting
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Speaker 1: for your partner to notice the mugs. I've read every
4:29
Speaker 1: single one of those books, and I still found myself
4:30
Speaker 1: at 32 reorganizing a closet at 11 at night, hoping
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Speaker 1: someone would say something. No chapter prepared me for that.
4:36
Speaker 1: We're going to get into why right after this, but
4:38
Speaker 1: first I need you to stay with the question for
4:40
Speaker 1: a second longer, because the answer is in there and
4:42
Speaker 1: you already know it. Okay, so picture this. It's a
4:45
Speaker 1: Tuesday after work. Your status meeting ran long. The one
4:48
Speaker 1: you hate, the one where everyone talks for 45 minutes
4:50
Speaker 1: about what they could have just said in an email.
4:52
Speaker 1: You're already running on fumes. You walk in and your
4:54
Speaker 1: partner's at the stove and you've done something that day
4:56
Speaker 1: that actually took something out of you. Maybe you got
4:58
Speaker 1: a meeting agenda change for the whole company. Maybe you
5:01
Speaker 1: fixed something nobody else wanted to touch. And you mentioned
5:03
Speaker 1: it in a way that is designed, specifically engineered to
5:06
Speaker 1: be noticed. He says, nice, babe. That's it. Nice, babe.
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Speaker 1: And something in you just collapses, right? You go quiet.
5:13
Speaker 1: You tell yourself he never celebrates you. You are furious
5:16
Speaker 1: and you don't even fully know why. Now zoom out.
5:19
Speaker 1: He had absolutely no idea that Nice Babe was supposed
5:21
Speaker 1: to be a standing ovation. You didn't tell him what
5:24
Speaker 1: that thing cost you. You didn't say, this was genuinely
5:27
Speaker 1: hard and I'm proud of myself and I want you
5:28
Speaker 1: to make a big deal of it for like two minutes.
5:31
Speaker 1: You handed him a performance and then held him responsible
5:33
Speaker 1: for the review score. And when he gave you a
5:35
Speaker 1: six out of 10, you decided it was proof. Proof
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Speaker 1: that you're invisible. Proof that he doesn't really see you.
5:40
Speaker 1: The proof seeker does this on a loop. She raises
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Speaker 1: the offer every single time and never explains the auction.
5:45
Speaker 1: Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so. So you go to
5:50
Speaker 1: the bathroom, you sit on the edge of the tub,
5:52
Speaker 1: four minutes, maybe five, and you are in there running
5:55
Speaker 1: the whole tape. Every recent moment, he didn't respond the
5:57
Speaker 1: way you needed. Every dinner where he asked pasta or
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Speaker 1: rice instead of how are you actually doing. And the
6:02
Speaker 1: plants on the balcony didn't notice either, by the way.
6:04
Speaker 1: Four minutes on the bathroom floor is a full emotional
6:06
Speaker 1: crisis in married people time. You know this. You've been
6:09
Speaker 1: in that bathroom. I'm going to tell you something embarrassing, okay?
6:13
Speaker 1: The first few months living together, I rearranged the kitchen.
6:16
Speaker 1: I reorganized every closet, including one at midnight, which, I
6:19
Speaker 1: want to be clear, is a choice I made voluntarily
6:21
Speaker 1: and then immediately resented. I kept almost killing the balcony
6:24
Speaker 1: plants and then dramatically rescuing them at the last second.
6:27
Speaker 1: And every single time I was waiting, just waiting for
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Speaker 1: my partner to walk in and say something. They noticed
6:32
Speaker 1: the closet once. They came in for water, looked around,
6:34
Speaker 1: and said, oh, you moved the mugs. I said, yeah.
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Speaker 1: What I wanted to say was, I did this at
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Speaker 1: 11 at night, and it took two hours. And I
6:41
Speaker 1: reorganized by color and then by size and then by
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Speaker 1: what I can only describe as emotional significance. And this
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Speaker 1: is a metaphor for my entire personality. I did not
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Speaker 1: say that. I went to bed furious about mugs. Okay?
6:54
Speaker 1: My partner is calm and kind. They leave sticky notes
6:56
Speaker 1: on the coffee maker. They fall asleep 10 minutes into
6:59
Speaker 1: every single movie and then deny it. They are paying attention,
7:02
Speaker 1: just not to the performance. They're paying attention to me.
7:05
Speaker 1: And I had no idea how to let that land
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Speaker 1: because I genuinely did not know I was performing. I
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Speaker 1: stood in that kitchen with the closet done and the
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Speaker 1: dog asleep on my feet, stealing an actual sock, and
7:13
Speaker 1: I waited. My partner came in, looked around, said looks
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Speaker 1: good in here, and I felt nothing. I expected a
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Speaker 1: standing ovation for alphabetizing mugs. The mugs didn't care. The
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Speaker 1: dog didn't care. He was busy with the sock. Makes sense, honestly.
7:26
Speaker 1: Here's the thing about becoming secure. Most of us didn't
7:29
Speaker 1: arrive there naturally. We earned it. Therapy, journals, hard conversations,
7:33
Speaker 1: showing up to sessions week after week, even when you
7:35
Speaker 1: wanted to cancel. A whole shelf of books. Pattern work.
7:39
Speaker 1: The kind of self-awareness that requires you to look at
7:40
Speaker 1: yourself from angles that are deeply uncomfortable. Earned security is
7:43
Speaker 1: real and it matters and it also leaves a mark.
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Speaker 1: The mark is this. You learned that love was something
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Speaker 1: you demonstrated your worthiness of before you got a habit. Right?
7:52
Speaker 1: Love was not a given. It was a receipt you
7:53
Speaker 1: got after showing the receipt. And here's where the nervous
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Speaker 1: system comes in because this part is important. Your body
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Speaker 1: learned something very specific. Invisible effort followed by recognition felt
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Speaker 1: like love. That loop, try hard, get noticed, feel loved,
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Speaker 1: that was the shape of it. So when you landed
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Speaker 1: in a calm relationship with no chaos, no hot and cold,
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Speaker 1: no dramatic recognition after dramatic effort, your nervous system didn't
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Speaker 1: read it as safe. It read it as nothing is happening.
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Speaker 1: And nothing is happening felt like absence, not peace. Absence.
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Speaker 1: Your nervous system is essentially a golden retriever who only
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Speaker 1: trusts you if you throw the ball first. If there's
8:28
Speaker 1: no ball, it just starts pacing. Okay? Earned security, and
8:32
Speaker 1: this is a real attachment concept worth knowing. means someone
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Speaker 1: who started with anxious or avoidant patterns and genuinely built
8:37
Speaker 1: a more secure style through self-awareness and relational repair. It's real.
8:41
Speaker 1: The work is real. But the old patterns don't just
8:44
Speaker 1: pack their bags and leave. They go quiet during the
8:46
Speaker 1: good times and then surface the moment there's stillness. And
8:49
Speaker 1: stillness is exactly what a calm relationship offers you. So
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Speaker 1: the proof seeker doesn't disappear. She just goes looking for
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Speaker 1: a new job. And she finds one. Right there in
8:57
Speaker 1: your very kind, very calm apartment. Right? Coming up, the
9:01
Speaker 1: question you've never let yourself ask. Who taught you that
9:04
Speaker 1: being loved quietly meant you weren't loved at all? Let's
9:08
Speaker 1: go back. Not to him. Back further. To the first
9:11
Speaker 1: time you learned to make yourself visible to someone who
9:13
Speaker 1: wasn't looking. Most proof seekers had a parent who was
9:16
Speaker 1: present in body and absent in attention. Not cruel. Not
9:19
Speaker 1: checked out. Just hard to reach. Warm when they surfaced.
9:23
Speaker 1: But you had to catch them first. Your dad was kind.
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Speaker 1: He worked long hours and he was warm when he surfaced.
9:28
Speaker 1: But he was hard to reach. And so you learned
9:30
Speaker 1: to catch him. You brought things to show him. accomplishments,
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Speaker 1: funny stories, something loud enough to break through. And when
9:36
Speaker 1: he noticed, even briefly, even halfway, it felt like everything.
9:40
Speaker 1: When he didn't, you just told yourself you'd do something
9:42
Speaker 1: bigger next time. Picture this. You're maybe 10. You did
9:46
Speaker 1: something at school, something you're genuinely proud of, and you
9:48
Speaker 1: come home to tell him. He's tired. He's half watching something.
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Speaker 1: He says, that's great, honey, and goes back to it.
9:54
Speaker 1: And you smile. You go to your room. You don't cry.
9:56
Speaker 1: You don't fall apart. You just decide quietly, next time
9:59
Speaker 1: I'll do something bigger that is not a child processing
10:02
Speaker 1: disappointment that is a child writing a visibility strategy and
10:05
Speaker 1: you've been running it ever since can we see this
10:09
Speaker 1: i found an old journal recently the handwriting of a
10:11
Speaker 1: 12 year old who had written an actual list about
10:13
Speaker 1: how to get dad to listen the list included being
10:15
Speaker 1: funnier being more interesting and not asking for too much
10:19
Speaker 1: I found it on the balcony sitting next to the
10:21
Speaker 1: half-dead plant that I had not yet rescued that week.
10:23
Speaker 1: And I read it and I did not recognize myself
10:25
Speaker 1: in it for about 30 seconds. And then I recognized
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Speaker 1: myself completely. 32 years old, full-grown adult, three years of therapy.
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Speaker 1: And I was still working off a list written by
10:33
Speaker 1: a 12-year-old in handwriting that leaned very dramatically to the right.
10:36
Speaker 1: A 12-year-old should not have a visibility strategy. That is
10:39
Speaker 1: genuinely a skill on a professional resume. That is not
10:42
Speaker 1: a childhood. Okay? So here is what lives under the proof-seeking.
10:46
Speaker 1: A belief so old it doesn't feel like a belief.
10:48
Speaker 1: It feels like a fact. The belief is, if someone
10:50
Speaker 1: loves me without me doing anything to earn it, it
10:52
Speaker 1: doesn't count. Love you work for feels real. Love that
10:55
Speaker 1: just shows up feels like a mistake. Like they got
10:57
Speaker 1: the wrong person. Like the universe is about to correct
10:59
Speaker 1: an error. This is grief work and identity work happening
11:02
Speaker 1: at the same time in the same place. And it
11:03
Speaker 1: is a lot. The woman who earned security had to
11:06
Speaker 1: become someone who didn't need too much. Who was okay.
11:08
Speaker 1: Who could handle it. That version of her kept her safe.
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Speaker 1: But that same version of her cannot be loved quietly
11:13
Speaker 1: without panicking. Right? The shadow underneath and shadow work is
11:18
Speaker 1: the idea that the parts of you built to protect
11:19
Speaker 1: you in childhood eventually start running the show in adulthood
11:22
Speaker 1: without asking permission. The shadow is that the proof seeker
11:24
Speaker 1: is terrified. She's terrified that love she didn't earn will
11:27
Speaker 1: evaporate the moment she stops performing. So she keeps going.
11:31
Speaker 1: She keeps arranging the plans, reorganizing things at midnight, mentioning
11:34
Speaker 1: the impressive thing at dinner. She's not doing this to
11:36
Speaker 1: be difficult or manipulative or dramatic. She's doing this because
11:39
Speaker 1: somewhere very deep in her being loved at rest feels
11:42
Speaker 1: like being loved by accident. The shadow isn't evil. It's
11:45
Speaker 1: just a very tired middle schooler who never got to
11:47
Speaker 1: go home and stop trying, you know? And here's what
11:51
Speaker 1: that proof-seeking actually costs. It costs the relationship its realness.
11:54
Speaker 1: When you're always performing, he is responding to the performance,
11:58
Speaker 1: not to you. So even when he says something genuinely loving,
12:01
Speaker 1: it doesn't land. It can't land. Because you handed him
12:04
Speaker 1: a version of you, not the actual version. And over time,
12:07
Speaker 1: that builds a very specific kind of loneliness. You're in
12:09
Speaker 1: the room. He's in the room. And somehow nobody's home.
12:12
Speaker 1: Does that sound familiar? Yeah, it's the loneliness that doesn't
12:15
Speaker 1: make sense to explain to anyone because from the outside,
12:18
Speaker 1: everything looks fine. It also costs you rest. The proof
12:22
Speaker 1: seeker is always on, always scanning, always calculating, always running
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Speaker 1: the next move. You have not stopped calculating since you
12:28
Speaker 1: were 12. The last year living together, I spent more
12:31
Speaker 1: mental energy on being noticed than on being actually present.
12:34
Speaker 1: And the cruel irony is that the moment my partner
12:35
Speaker 1: really fell for me, it wasn't a performance. It was
12:38
Speaker 1: that birthday dinner where I was accidentally slightly rude without
12:41
Speaker 1: meaning to be. Off script, unedited, just me. And they stayed.
12:45
Speaker 1: Turns out spontaneous is genuinely a vibe. The most attractive
12:48
Speaker 1: I've ever been was when I wasn't trying. I'm not
12:50
Speaker 1: okay about that. It's embarrassing and also extremely funny in hindsight.
12:54
Speaker 1: Here is the hard truth, and I'm going to say
12:56
Speaker 1: it in one line first. You can't be seen if
12:58
Speaker 1: you're always in costume, right? The proof seeker has never
13:02
Speaker 1: just stood in the room and let someone notice her
13:03
Speaker 1: without staging the lighting. You are so good at being
13:06
Speaker 1: the impressive version that you've forgotten there's a plain version underneath.
13:09
Speaker 1: And she deserves to be loved too. She's actually who
13:11
Speaker 1: he loves. But you won't let her show up because
13:13
Speaker 1: she has no credential, no arrangement, no achievement to hand over.
13:17
Speaker 1: She just has herself and you haven't decided yet if
13:19
Speaker 1: that's enough. You're not invisible to him. You're invisible to
13:23
Speaker 1: the version of you that no longer needs to earn it.
13:26
Speaker 1: That's the thesis. That's the whole thing. That version of
13:29
Speaker 1: you got lost somewhere in the healing. She got left
13:31
Speaker 1: behind while you were busy becoming the secure woman. And
13:33
Speaker 1: what you're grieving isn't his attention. It's the permission to
13:36
Speaker 1: just be here without doing anything to justify it. Say
13:38
Speaker 1: the hard truth plainly. You are exhausted and the exhaustion
13:41
Speaker 1: is self-made. You build the treadmill. You're the one who
13:43
Speaker 1: keeps it running. He didn't ask you to run it, right?
13:47
Speaker 1: You have a marketing job and a visibility problem and
13:49
Speaker 1: somehow all the marketing is entirely directed at your own apartment.
13:52
Speaker 1: That is genuinely something to sit with. Next, what the
13:55
Speaker 1: other side actually looks like and the three moves that
13:58
Speaker 1: get you there without losing yourself. Okay, so let's talk
14:01
Speaker 1: about what the other side actually looks like, right? Because
14:03
Speaker 1: I think you've been imagining it as this dramatic transformation
14:05
Speaker 1: where you wake up one morning and suddenly you're this
14:08
Speaker 1: fully expressed woman who needs nothing and asks for everything
14:11
Speaker 1: at the same time. And I want to be honest
14:12
Speaker 1: with you. It's going to look nothing like that. It's
14:14
Speaker 1: going to look boring at first, genuinely embarrassingly boring. It's
14:18
Speaker 1: going to look like a Sunday morning where you're just
14:19
Speaker 1: on the couch, no impressive project running, no closet to reorganize,
14:23
Speaker 1: no plants to dramatically rescue. And you feel this weird
14:26
Speaker 1: itch crawling up your skin and you don't even know
14:28
Speaker 1: why it's there. That itch is your nervous system going, okay,
14:31
Speaker 1: but what's the bit? What are we performing today? And
14:34
Speaker 1: the answer is nothing. Nothing is the practice, right? The
14:39
Speaker 1: other side is not a woman who never wants to
14:40
Speaker 1: be celebrated. She absolutely wants that. She's not a monk.
14:44
Speaker 1: She still wants her partner to notice when she's done
14:46
Speaker 1: something hard, but she can say it. She can open
14:49
Speaker 1: her mouth and say, I had a really hard day
14:51
Speaker 1: and I'd love it if you asked me about it.
14:52
Speaker 1: Instead of engineering a whole situation and then sitting on
14:55
Speaker 1: the edge of the bathtub for four minutes when the
14:57
Speaker 1: response is just nice, babe. Yeah. That's the move. And
15:00
Speaker 1: I know it sounds simple, and it is also one
15:02
Speaker 1: of the hardest sentences you'll ever say because it requires
15:04
Speaker 1: you to admit that you want something before you've proven
15:07
Speaker 1: you deserve it. For a proof seeker that's basically skydiving
15:10
Speaker 1: with no prior experience, makes sense? My partner leaves sticky
15:14
Speaker 1: notes on the coffee maker. I've mentioned this. Usually they
15:17
Speaker 1: say something sweet and low effort like enjoy your coffee, which, yeah, sure,
15:21
Speaker 1: I will. But a few weeks ago I came downstairs
15:23
Speaker 1: and the note said you looked really tired last night.
15:25
Speaker 1: Hope you slept well. And I stood there in my
15:27
Speaker 1: pajamas with the dog stealing my sock and I felt
15:30
Speaker 1: something shift. Right? Past me, the one who needed the
15:33
Speaker 1: standing ovation would have felt slightly insulted. Like, tired. That's
15:37
Speaker 1: what you noticed. Not the impressive thing I did or
15:39
Speaker 1: the way I handled that whole situation at work. Tired.
15:42
Speaker 1: But present me sat with it for a second and thought, oh,
15:45
Speaker 1: they see me. Not my performance. Me. And that's the
15:48
Speaker 1: whole thing right there on the coffee maker. Here's what
15:52
Speaker 1: grieving an old identity actually feels like in your body.
15:54
Speaker 1: It feels like loss even when nothing bad is happening.
15:57
Speaker 1: The proof seeker built her whole sense of self around
15:59
Speaker 1: being the woman who earns it. She's capable. She's visible
16:02
Speaker 1: through effort. She's worth watching because she keeps showing you why.
16:05
Speaker 1: Letting that go feels like disappearing. It feels like if
16:08
Speaker 1: I stop performing, will there even be anyone here? And
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Speaker 1: the answer is yes. The answer is that's actually the
16:13
Speaker 1: first time you'll really be here. But I won't pretend
16:16
Speaker 1: the in-between doesn't feel like a small death because it does.
16:18
Speaker 1: You're mourning a coping strategy that kept you safe for
16:20
Speaker 1: 20 years. You're allowed to grieve it. You just can't
16:23
Speaker 1: let the grief talk you into keeping the costume on. Okay?
16:27
Speaker 1: So your partner says, I'm proud of you, and there's
16:29
Speaker 1: been no achievement, no rearranged closet, no impressive work story,
16:33
Speaker 1: no agenda you single-handedly changed. Just you, sitting there, probably
16:37
Speaker 1: in the same socks the dog already tried to steal once.
16:39
Speaker 1: And you almost deflect. You almost say, oh, it's nothing,
16:42
Speaker 1: or launch into a story about how actually things have
16:44
Speaker 1: been hard, and here's why. Instead, you say, thank you.
16:47
Speaker 1: Just that. Thank you. Your partner doesn't even look up
16:49
Speaker 1: from the movie they're already eight minutes from falling asleep in.
16:52
Speaker 1: And it counts anyway. That's the thing you have to
16:54
Speaker 1: let yourself believe. It counts even without the production. Right?
16:59
Speaker 1: Now let's talk about three actual moves, because I'm not
17:01
Speaker 1: going to leave you with the vibe and no plan. First,
17:04
Speaker 1: name the performance before you make it. When you catch
17:06
Speaker 1: yourself about to do the impressive thing, before you rearrange
17:08
Speaker 1: the plans for the 14th time or screenshot the email, pause.
17:12
Speaker 1: Ask yourself, what do I actually want right now? If
17:14
Speaker 1: the answer is I want him to notice me, try
17:16
Speaker 1: saying that instead. Say, I need a moment from you.
17:19
Speaker 1: Just that. Your body is going to hate it. It's
17:21
Speaker 1: going to feel exposed and wrong and too simple. Do
17:23
Speaker 1: it anyway, because the performance is a translation, and translations
17:27
Speaker 1: always lose something. You want to skip the translation. Sound familiar?
17:31
Speaker 1: Move two, receive without upgrading. This one's sneaky because it
17:34
Speaker 1: looks like confidence when it isn't. He says something kind
17:37
Speaker 1: and you immediately one-up it with a funnier story or
17:39
Speaker 1: a self-deprecating joke or a bigger achievement. That's deflection dressed
17:43
Speaker 1: as personality. The practice is to just stay in the
17:45
Speaker 1: compliment for three seconds. Three seconds is the whole assignment.
17:48
Speaker 1: Let it land. Don't redecorate it. Don't earn it retroactively
17:51
Speaker 1: by immediately doing something impressive. Just say thank you and
17:54
Speaker 1: count to three inside your head and notice that you
17:56
Speaker 1: survived it. Okay? Move three, tell him one real thing
18:01
Speaker 1: each day. Not the curated thing, not the impressive version.
18:05
Speaker 1: Something true that you didn't edit before it left your mouth.
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Speaker 1: I felt lonely today. I missed you even though you
18:10
Speaker 1: were right there. I'm proud of myself for this one
18:12
Speaker 1: small thing that nobody else would understand. Say before you've
18:15
Speaker 1: dressed it up, before you've made it interesting or funny
18:17
Speaker 1: or palatable. Say the plain version. And yeah, it's going
18:20
Speaker 1: to feel naked. Earning love felt natural because you practiced
18:23
Speaker 1: it for 20 years. This is going to feel like
18:25
Speaker 1: showing up to a presentation with no slides. But the
18:27
Speaker 1: slides weren't the point. You were always the point, right?
18:30
Speaker 1: And tonight, try one. Just one unturated thing. Say it
18:33
Speaker 1: before you clean it up. That's the dare. Baby. The
18:37
Speaker 1: woman on the other side of this is not less ambitious.
18:40
Speaker 1: She's not quieter or smaller or less impressive. She is
18:43
Speaker 1: just free. She does the impressive things because she wants to,
18:46
Speaker 1: because they matter to her, not because she's running a
18:48
Speaker 1: tab and waiting for the settlement. She can sit on
18:50
Speaker 1: the balcony next to her barely surviving plants on a
18:52
Speaker 1: boring Wednesday evening and not be in the middle of
18:55
Speaker 1: a performance and feel like enough. She can let her
18:57
Speaker 1: partner love her on an ordinary night with nothing on
18:59
Speaker 1: the table except whatever they're watching that nobody's actually paying
19:01
Speaker 1: attention to. She doesn't need the receipt. She already knows
19:04
Speaker 1: the love is real. Right? And here's something important before
19:09
Speaker 1: we keep going. If the performing feels compulsive, like you
19:12
Speaker 1: genuinely cannot stop even when you want to, and the
19:15
Speaker 1: feelings of being invisible feel severe or keep pulling you
19:17
Speaker 1: back to really painful things from childhood, please take this
19:20
Speaker 1: to a therapist. This work is so much easier with support.
19:23
Speaker 1: I mean that. I did three years of weekly sessions
19:25
Speaker 1: and I still find new layers. There's no shame in
19:28
Speaker 1: needing the room and the time and someone to sit
19:30
Speaker 1: with you in it. The moves I gave you are
19:31
Speaker 1: real and they work better when you also have someone
19:33
Speaker 1: helping you figure out why the performing started in the
19:35
Speaker 1: first place. You've already done the homework in so many ways.
19:38
Speaker 1: This is just another piece of it. Make sense? The
19:42
Speaker 1: woman you need to become is actually not new. She's
19:44
Speaker 1: not a future version you haven't met yet. She's the
19:47
Speaker 1: version that existed before you learned you had to earn
19:49
Speaker 1: your way into being known. She's been there this whole time.
19:51
Speaker 1: She just got quieter every year you got better at performing.
19:54
Speaker 1: You have done the work, the therapy, the journals, the
19:56
Speaker 1: hard conversations with yourself at midnight in a reorganized kitchen.
19:59
Speaker 1: You've done so much of it. The last step isn't
20:02
Speaker 1: another method. It isn't a more sophisticated version of what
20:04
Speaker 1: you've already been doing. It's a permission slip. And I
20:07
Speaker 1: know I said that at the top, right? Consider this yours.
20:11
Speaker 1: Because you're not going to find it in the next
20:12
Speaker 1: book or the next reframe or the next impressive thing
20:14
Speaker 1: you do. It was always just yours to take. You're
20:18
Speaker 1: not invisible to him. You're invisible to the version of
20:21
Speaker 1: you that no longer needs to earn it. And that's
20:23
Speaker 1: the thesis. That's the whole thing. Go find her. She's
20:26
Speaker 1: probably on the balcony next to the plants she keeps
20:28
Speaker 1: almost killing. Just existing. Doing absolutely nothing to deserve the sunshine.
20:32
Speaker 1: And she's completely fine. You did the work. You got
20:34
Speaker 1: the calm life and the calm partner and the second
20:36
Speaker 1: floor apartment and the dog who steals your socks without
20:39
Speaker 1: performing a single trick to earn the right to do it.
20:41
Speaker 1: Let him show you something. Love offered without a performance
20:44
Speaker 1: isn't love by accident. It's love by choice. And you
20:47
Speaker 1: are allowed to receive it. When did you last let
20:49
Speaker 1: yourself be seen without doing anything to deserve it first?
20:52
Speaker 1: I want you to sit with that question. Send this
20:54
Speaker 1: to the friend who is still arranging her metaphorical plans.
20:57
Speaker 1: She needs to hear it too. Follow along so you
21:00
Speaker 1: don't miss what comes next. And take care of yourself.
21:02
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you soon. This show is made by
21:05
Speaker 1: Oble Media.