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9 Signs You're In Love With His Potential, Not Him · Toxic Girls Zone

0:03
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome back. Not the cozy kind of welcome, the
0:07
Speaker 1: kind where you sit down and something in you already
0:09
Speaker 1: knows this one is going to ask something of you.
0:12
Speaker 1: Here's what today is not. It is not the episode
0:14
Speaker 1: where I tell you he is terrible and you deserve
0:16
Speaker 1: better and go eat some pasta and cry. Today we
0:18
Speaker 1: are going underneath that. We are going to the part
0:21
Speaker 1: of you that keeps choosing almost, that keeps loving the
0:23
Speaker 1: gap between who he is and who he is about
0:25
Speaker 1: to become, and we are going to figure out why.
0:27
Speaker 1: I'm warning you right now, this is going to hit
0:29
Speaker 1: somewhere you did not expect. Not the place you think
0:31
Speaker 1: it will. Not the obvious place. The other one. The
0:35
Speaker 1: quieter one. And I'm asking you to stay anyway. Because
0:38
Speaker 1: the discomfort is not the problem. It's the signal. And
0:40
Speaker 1: you need to hear what it's pointing at. You came
0:43
Speaker 1: here to feel seen. I know that. You wanted a
0:46
Speaker 1: little validation. Maybe a cry. Maybe a knowing laugh. You
0:49
Speaker 1: wanted someone to say yes. You get it. It is complicated.
0:52
Speaker 1: And I will give you some of that. I promise.
0:54
Speaker 1: But babe, you also signed up for the whole thing.
0:56
Speaker 1: Which means strap in. Because we are about to go
0:58
Speaker 1: somewhere your journal has been circling for a while without landing. Okay. Okay.
1:04
Speaker 1: Let me start with you. Right now, today, in this relationship,
1:07
Speaker 1: or the one you just left, or the one you
1:08
Speaker 1: are texting someone about right now at this very moment,
1:11
Speaker 1: you are not choosing a terrible man. That is the
1:13
Speaker 1: thing that makes this so hard to see. He is
1:14
Speaker 1: not a villain. He is not unkind on purpose. He
1:17
Speaker 1: is not the obvious mistake that everyone can point to.
1:19
Speaker 1: He is almost there. He is so close. He is
1:21
Speaker 1: the guy who is really trying lately. And you can
1:23
Speaker 1: see the effort. And that is what keeps you in it.
1:25
Speaker 1: And I completely get that. I do. Because I have
1:27
Speaker 1: been exactly there. And it felt like loyalty. And it
1:29
Speaker 1: felt like love. And it took me a long time
1:31
Speaker 1: to understand what it actually was. Here's what you were doing, though.
1:35
Speaker 1: You were describing him to your friends in future tense,
1:37
Speaker 1: when he gets his act together, when things calm down
1:39
Speaker 1: at work, when he finally sees his own worth, when
1:42
Speaker 1: he is ready. The relationship exists in a timeline that
1:44
Speaker 1: keeps getting extended. You are not describing what you have.
1:48
Speaker 1: You are describing what you are waiting for. And the
1:50
Speaker 1: waiting has become so normal that you have stopped noticing
1:52
Speaker 1: it is what you are doing. You are not his
1:54
Speaker 1: girlfriend right now. You are his editor, his believer, his
1:57
Speaker 1: advanced team. And you are doing it because you love
1:59
Speaker 1: him and because it feels like the right thing to do.
2:02
Speaker 1: And I understand that. I do. And also, I need
2:04
Speaker 1: you to hear what I'm about to say. You are
2:07
Speaker 1: on the phone with your friend right now in this moment,
2:10
Speaker 1: and you are telling her he is really trying lately.
2:13
Speaker 1: You are saying he forgot your birthday, but he has
2:15
Speaker 1: been so stressed. You know how things have been at work,
2:17
Speaker 1: and you saw him make an effort last week, and
2:19
Speaker 1: that meant something. You have said some version of this
2:21
Speaker 1: for eight months, maybe more. And your friend is on
2:24
Speaker 1: the other end of that call, and she pauses before
2:26
Speaker 1: she answers. Just a breath. A second. But you feel it.
2:30
Speaker 1: That pause is doing a lot of work. It is
2:32
Speaker 1: holding everything she is not saying because she loves you
2:34
Speaker 1: and does not want to fight about it again. And
2:36
Speaker 1: somewhere in your body you feel the pause too. And
2:38
Speaker 1: you file it. And you keep talking. I know you.
2:41
Speaker 1: I was you. Now, I want to give you some
2:44
Speaker 1: language for what you have been feeling. Because language is
2:47
Speaker 1: the thing that makes the invisible visible. So we are
2:49
Speaker 1: going to go through nine signs that you are chasing
2:51
Speaker 1: potential without knowing it. Nine. Not to shame you. Shame
2:55
Speaker 1: is not useful here and we are not doing that.
2:57
Speaker 1: But one of these is going to land in your
2:58
Speaker 1: stomach differently than the others. One of them is going
3:01
Speaker 1: to make you go, oh, that is the one for
3:03
Speaker 1: you today. That is the one to sit with. Let's go.
3:07
Speaker 1: Sign number one. You describe the relationship to others in
3:10
Speaker 1: future tense. Not past tense, not even present tense. Future.
3:14
Speaker 1: When he gets his act together, when things settle down,
3:16
Speaker 1: when he finally deals with that thing he has been avoiding,
3:19
Speaker 1: the relationship lives in a permanent when, and the when
3:21
Speaker 1: keeps moving. You are 26 years old. It has been
3:24
Speaker 1: a year. And the when has relocated itself three separate
3:27
Speaker 1: times without anyone officially acknowledging the move. The relationship you
3:30
Speaker 1: are describing to people is not the relationship you are in.
3:33
Speaker 1: It is the one you are working toward. And there
3:35
Speaker 1: is a difference, a significant one, between believing in someone's
3:38
Speaker 1: capacity to grow and organizing your entire emotional life around
3:41
Speaker 1: a version of the relationship that does not exist yet.
3:44
Speaker 1: You are at brunch. The eggs are getting cold because
3:46
Speaker 1: you are deep in explaining him. And every sentence you
3:48
Speaker 1: say starts with when. When he figures out the job stuff.
3:52
Speaker 1: When he gets through this thing with his family. When
3:54
Speaker 1: he finally has some breathing room. Your friend, who loves you,
3:57
Speaker 1: who is trying, who does not want to be the
3:58
Speaker 1: bad guy, asks you one question. She says, what is
4:01
Speaker 1: good right now? And you pause. You take a long
4:04
Speaker 1: sip of your drink. You look down. You start a
4:07
Speaker 1: sentence and then redirect it to something that is also
4:09
Speaker 1: technically future adjacent. The pause before you answered was real information.
4:13
Speaker 1: It was not nothing. I was doing this in my
4:16
Speaker 1: early 20s. First serious relationship, the one that felt like
4:20
Speaker 1: a whole education. I had a journal. I wrote in
4:23
Speaker 1: it constantly. The way you do when you are young
4:25
Speaker 1: and everything is enormous and you're trying to make sense
4:27
Speaker 1: of feelings that don't have names yet. And I caught
4:29
Speaker 1: myself one afternoon reading back through weeks of entries and
4:32
Speaker 1: I realized I had written pages and pages about who
4:34
Speaker 1: he was going to be. The career he would have.
4:37
Speaker 1: The softness he was moving toward. The version of himself
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Speaker 1: he was becoming. Pages of him. And not one sentence
4:43
Speaker 1: of it was him yet. Every word was feature tense.
4:46
Speaker 1: And I remember sitting there thinking, huh, and then closing
4:49
Speaker 1: the journal and not thinking about it again for about
4:51
Speaker 1: four more years, which is how denial works. Here's what
4:55
Speaker 1: that was. There is a concept in shadow work called
4:57
Speaker 1: a shadow. Not shadow as in dark or scary, just
5:00
Speaker 1: shadow as in the unconscious layer underneath your choices. The
5:03
Speaker 1: place where the patterns you didn't consciously build are running
5:05
Speaker 1: the show. The shadow is the belief system you absorbed
5:08
Speaker 1: before you were old enough to question it. And what
5:10
Speaker 1: it means for you, for the potential chaser, is that
5:13
Speaker 1: somewhere underneath the logic of why you believe in him
5:15
Speaker 1: is a drive you did not choose and cannot see
5:17
Speaker 1: clearly because it is the water you are swimming in.
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Speaker 1: The shadow is not bad. It is not a flaw.
5:22
Speaker 1: It is just running without your permission. And it has
5:24
Speaker 1: been deciding things, including who feels like love, without checking
5:28
Speaker 1: with the rest of you first. We are going to
5:30
Speaker 1: come back to this. Right now, just know it is there.
5:34
Speaker 1: Sign number two. You feel more connected to him after
5:36
Speaker 1: a vulnerable conversation than you do in the normal Tuesday
5:39
Speaker 1: of the relationship. There was a night, a 2 a.m.,
5:42
Speaker 1: a long conversation in the dark where he really opened up,
5:44
Speaker 1: where something cracked and you saw inside it. And that
5:46
Speaker 1: night felt more like love than anything else between you.
5:49
Speaker 1: And then regular life resumed. The couch, the phone, the
5:52
Speaker 1: unremarkable Wednesday. And it feels flat in comparison. And so
5:55
Speaker 1: you are not actually chasing the relationship. You are chasing
5:58
Speaker 1: the spike, the breakthrough, the crack in the wall. The
6:01
Speaker 1: intimacy becomes a high point you are always trying to
6:03
Speaker 1: get back to rather than the ground you were standing on.
6:05
Speaker 1: And steady starts to feel like settling. And that is
6:07
Speaker 1: a problem. because steady is not settling. Steady is the
6:10
Speaker 1: actual thing. Steady is what you want if you zoom
6:12
Speaker 1: out far enough. Last Thursday, he really opened up. He
6:16
Speaker 1: said something real, something that cost him something, and you
6:18
Speaker 1: felt it, and it was good. It was genuinely good,
6:20
Speaker 1: and you have been riding that feeling for five days,
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Speaker 1: five days of warmth from one conversation. And regular him,
6:26
Speaker 1: the one who watched three hours of something without speaking
6:28
Speaker 1: and went to bed, that him felt like a letdown.
6:31
Speaker 1: You call yourself hoping for the next breakthrough, calculating what
6:33
Speaker 1: might bring it. Maybe if you brought up a certain topic,
6:36
Speaker 1: maybe if you asked a certain question at the right moment,
6:38
Speaker 1: You are already engineering the next emotional event because the
6:40
Speaker 1: baseline is not enough. And you know it, but you
6:42
Speaker 1: don't know what to do with that knowing yet. My loves,
6:46
Speaker 1: I say this with so much warmth. You are out
6:48
Speaker 1: here scheduling his emotional breakdowns like a Pilates class. Tuesday,
6:52
Speaker 1: the crying. Thursday, the revelation. Saturday, the hug that fixes it.
6:56
Speaker 1: I am not making fun of you. I am making
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Speaker 1: fun of the version of me who did the exact
6:59
Speaker 1: same thing. Who treated emotional unavailability like a puzzle where
7:03
Speaker 1: I just had not found the right piece yet. Who
7:05
Speaker 1: got addicted to the almost so gradually that I didn't notice.
7:08
Speaker 1: until they almost was the whole relationship. Sign number three,
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Speaker 1: you minimize what he actually does and amplify what he
7:14
Speaker 1: means to do. He didn't call when he said he would,
7:16
Speaker 1: but he thought about it. He forgot the reservation, but
7:18
Speaker 1: he had been thinking about you in general. He didn't apologize,
7:21
Speaker 1: but he sent you something at midnight that suggested he
7:23
Speaker 1: knew he had messed up. Intent is doing the work
7:26
Speaker 1: that action should be doing. You have built an entire
7:28
Speaker 1: translation system in your head where his intentions are currency
7:30
Speaker 1: and his actions are secondary. And you are grading his
7:33
Speaker 1: behavior on a curve so steep that no one else
7:35
Speaker 1: in your life would pass it. And you would not
7:37
Speaker 1: let anyone treat your best friend this way. And somewhere
7:39
Speaker 1: in you, you know that. He sent you a meme
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Speaker 1: at midnight. Not a text that said, I'm sorry for
7:44
Speaker 1: how I acted. Not a voice note. Not even a
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Speaker 1: plain message. A meme. And you picked it up and
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Speaker 1: showed your roommate and said, see, he's thinking of me.
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Speaker 1: He knows. And your roommate made a face that was
7:53
Speaker 1: trying very hard to be neutral. And you believed it.
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Speaker 1: Not entirely, not completely, but enough. Enough to feel better.
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Speaker 1: Enough to let another day pass without naming the actual thing.
8:02
Speaker 1: The midnight meme was not communication. But you needed it
8:04
Speaker 1: to be, so you made it be. I dated someone
8:07
Speaker 1: in my 20s during that long, anxious stretch that I
8:10
Speaker 1: am not proud of, but I am grateful for in
8:12
Speaker 1: the way you are grateful for things that knock something
8:14
Speaker 1: loose in you. This man never once made a plan.
8:17
Speaker 1: Not a dinner, not a weekend, not a single intentional
8:19
Speaker 1: gesture toward being in a relationship with me, as opposed
8:21
Speaker 1: to just near me. And I invented an entire interior
8:24
Speaker 1: life for him. A whole private self that was deliberate
8:27
Speaker 1: and careful and romantic and just very bad at showing it.
8:30
Speaker 1: I believed in that self the way you believe in
8:32
Speaker 1: a character in a book. And then one day I
8:33
Speaker 1: had a moment of clarity that felt like cold water
8:36
Speaker 1: and I realized I had been in a relationship with
8:37
Speaker 1: someone I had written. He had barely participated in his
8:40
Speaker 1: own fictional portrayal. He was not deliberate. He was not careful.
8:44
Speaker 1: He was just there and I was building everything else.
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Speaker 1: Sign number four. You feel responsible for his growth. You
8:50
Speaker 1: send him articles about attachment theory at 11 at night.
8:53
Speaker 1: You recommended his therapist or found one for him or
8:55
Speaker 1: researched the sliding scale cost and texted him the link.
8:58
Speaker 1: You have reframed his childhood trauma for him in quiet moments,
9:01
Speaker 1: helped him see his patterns, held the mirror up with
9:03
Speaker 1: such care and patience. And when he inches forward, you
9:06
Speaker 1: feel genuinely useful and good and important. And when he
9:09
Speaker 1: does not, you feel something that is uncomfortably close to failure.
9:12
Speaker 1: His becoming has become your project. Nobody signed a contract
9:15
Speaker 1: for this, but here you are. You have a folder
9:19
Speaker 1: on your phone. Screenshots. A podcast clip from three weeks
9:22
Speaker 1: ago that you thought would really land with him. A
9:25
Speaker 1: short article about emotional avoidance that felt like it was
9:27
Speaker 1: written specifically about his specific situation. A quote. A video.
9:32
Speaker 1: Maybe a book recommendation you typed out and then deleted
9:34
Speaker 1: and then typed again. He has read maybe two things
9:37
Speaker 1: you've sent. You know this. You keep the folder anyway.
9:39
Speaker 1: You keep adding to it. Because the folder is not
9:42
Speaker 1: really about him. The folder is about you maintaining the
9:44
Speaker 1: belief that you are making progress. The folder is about
9:47
Speaker 1: you maintaining the belief that you are making progress. The
9:50
Speaker 1: folder is about evidence that you are trying, that it
9:52
Speaker 1: is working, that your investment is doing something. In my
9:56
Speaker 1: chasing years, my loves, I found a man, a therapist.
9:58
Speaker 1: Found him. Researched it. Found one that did sliding scale
10:02
Speaker 1: because money was genuinely a factor for him. Texted him
10:05
Speaker 1: the link three separate times across three separate weeks. He
10:07
Speaker 1: went twice, then stopped. And I was more devastated than
10:10
Speaker 1: he was, more upset about him not continuing with his
10:13
Speaker 1: own mental health care than he was, and I sat
10:15
Speaker 1: in that apartment eating cereal being upset, and it did
10:17
Speaker 1: not occur to me until much later that I was
10:19
Speaker 1: grieving my own project, not his well-being. He was fine.
10:23
Speaker 1: He had decided therapy was not for him right now.
10:25
Speaker 1: I was the one in crisis. That is the thing
10:27
Speaker 1: I needed to understand about myself. Here is the thing
10:31
Speaker 1: underneath that. Part's work talks about the protector, which is
10:34
Speaker 1: a part of you that formed early, that learned how
10:36
Speaker 1: to keep you safe in whatever environment you were in,
10:38
Speaker 1: and it is still running the same strategy long after
10:40
Speaker 1: the environment has changed. For the potential chaser, Part of
10:43
Speaker 1: you learned that love is something you earn by being useful.
10:46
Speaker 1: By fixing. By being the person who sees what no
10:48
Speaker 1: one else sees and helps it come forward. And the
10:51
Speaker 1: protector in you found a man with gaps. Because a
10:53
Speaker 1: man with gaps needs you. And being needed feels like
10:55
Speaker 1: being safe. And being safe feels like being loved. This
10:58
Speaker 1: is not a character flaw. This is the protector doing
11:00
Speaker 1: its job with the only tools it was given. We
11:02
Speaker 1: are going to talk about how to give it new tools.
11:04
Speaker 1: But first I need you to hear one more sign.
11:07
Speaker 1: Sign number five. His bad behavior comes with an explanation
11:10
Speaker 1: you already know by heart. His dad was cold and
11:13
Speaker 1: never modeled warmth. His last relationship ended badly and it
11:16
Speaker 1: wrecked his ability to trust. He never learned how to
11:18
Speaker 1: communicate because no one ever showed him what that looked like.
11:21
Speaker 1: The backstory is real. I believe you. Most backstories are real.
11:25
Speaker 1: But here's what I need you to sit with. The
11:27
Speaker 1: backstory is not a behavior plan. You know more about
11:29
Speaker 1: why he is this way than you know about whether
11:31
Speaker 1: this actually works for you. You have become an expert
11:33
Speaker 1: in his psychology and a stranger to your own needs,
11:35
Speaker 1: and that ratio is worth examining. He snapped at you
11:39
Speaker 1: on Saturday, something small, something that did not need to
11:42
Speaker 1: land the way it did, but it landed. And by
11:44
Speaker 1: Sunday morning, before he said anything, before an apology arrived
11:47
Speaker 1: or was sought, you had already reconstructed his entire week.
11:50
Speaker 1: The meeting that went badly, the thing with his family
11:52
Speaker 1: that is ongoing, the sleep he has not been getting.
11:55
Speaker 1: You built the whole context. You absorb what happened. You
11:57
Speaker 1: did not mention it. You filed it under things that
11:59
Speaker 1: are explained by circumstances and you move forward. And he
12:02
Speaker 1: never even knew there was something to apologize for because
12:04
Speaker 1: you had already handled it internally. You are doing emotional
12:07
Speaker 1: labor that he does not even know is being done. Right.
12:10
Speaker 1: And here's what I'm not saying. I'm not saying you
12:12
Speaker 1: should never consider context. I'm not saying understanding someone's history
12:15
Speaker 1: is wrong. What I am asking is this. When is
12:17
Speaker 1: the last time you considered your context? When is the
12:19
Speaker 1: last time someone asked what your week was like and
12:20
Speaker 1: built the scaffold around your behavior? I had a conversation
12:23
Speaker 1: with my partner early in our relationship that I still
12:26
Speaker 1: think about. He asked me once why I always explain
12:28
Speaker 1: people's bad behavior before they even apologized. Not accusingly, just
12:31
Speaker 1: genuinely curious. And I opened my mouth to answer and
12:34
Speaker 1: nothing came out. I did not have an answer. I
12:37
Speaker 1: sat with the question for a week. It was not
12:39
Speaker 1: a comfortable week, but it was the week I started
12:41
Speaker 1: understanding something real about myself. And that is where we
12:44
Speaker 1: are heading after this. Five more signs. And the one
12:47
Speaker 1: underneath all of them that nobody actually says out loud.
12:50
Speaker 1: Stay with me. Sign six. And this one is the
12:54
Speaker 1: one that lives in the body before it lives in
12:56
Speaker 1: the mind. So pay attention. You feel more alive and
12:59
Speaker 1: almost than you do in having the uncertainty. Will he text?
13:03
Speaker 1: Will he actually show up this time? Is he starting
13:05
Speaker 1: to come around? Gives you this low background hum that
13:08
Speaker 1: your nervous system reads as meeting something. As aliveness. As love.
13:13
Speaker 1: And then a man comes along who is consistent and
13:15
Speaker 1: clear and responds when he says he will and means
13:17
Speaker 1: what he says and he feels muted to you. Flat.
13:20
Speaker 1: Like something got turned down. And you tell yourself you
13:22
Speaker 1: just do not feel the spark and you move on
13:24
Speaker 1: and you go back to the one who keeps you
13:26
Speaker 1: guessing and you call it passion. I need you to
13:28
Speaker 1: hear what is actually happening there. You are on the
13:31
Speaker 1: couch and it has been three days of near silence
13:33
Speaker 1: from him. Not a fight, not anything you can point to,
13:36
Speaker 1: just that particular kind of quiet that makes you check
13:38
Speaker 1: your phone without meaning to. And then at 11 at night,
13:41
Speaker 1: the text comes in. Something small, something almost nothing. And
13:44
Speaker 1: your whole body lit up like something switched on. You
13:47
Speaker 1: were already planning the week around that text before you
13:49
Speaker 1: had even replied. You felt it in your chest. And
13:52
Speaker 1: the next morning, a calm man, someone you had been
13:55
Speaker 1: on two dates with, someone who texted at a reasonable
13:57
Speaker 1: hour and met what he said, he messaged you something
13:59
Speaker 1: warm and real. You forgot to answer until Wednesday, not
14:03
Speaker 1: because you did not like him, Because your nervous system
14:05
Speaker 1: did not register him as interesting. It registered him as quiet.
14:09
Speaker 1: And quiet felt like nothing was happening. Here's the thing
14:12
Speaker 1: about that, and I want you to sit with it
14:14
Speaker 1: for a second. Your nervous system learned what love feels
14:16
Speaker 1: like in an environment that was not always steady. And
14:19
Speaker 1: it logged that uncertain, anxious, electric feeling as the real thing.
14:22
Speaker 1: That hum of will he, is he, maybe this time,
14:24
Speaker 1: that is familiar, that is what your body knows. And
14:27
Speaker 1: your body is a very confident liar. Familiar arousal, even
14:30
Speaker 1: the anxious kind, reads as attraction. The body cannot always
14:33
Speaker 1: tell the difference between I am excited and I am scared,
14:36
Speaker 1: between this is love and this is just the pattern
14:38
Speaker 1: I already know. Calm does not read as safe, it
14:40
Speaker 1: reads as boring. And the calm man loses every time,
14:44
Speaker 1: not because he is wrong for you, but because your
14:45
Speaker 1: internal compass has been calibrated to chaos. And I am
14:49
Speaker 1: not saying this to make you feel like something is
14:50
Speaker 1: broken in you. I am saying it because this specific thing,
14:53
Speaker 1: confusing the anxiety of the chase with the feeling of
14:55
Speaker 1: being in love, this is the nervous system mistake that
14:58
Speaker 1: costs years, not weeks, years. You can spend a decade
15:01
Speaker 1: chasing a feeling that is actually stressed with good lighting,
15:04
Speaker 1: and the whole time you will have a word for it,
15:06
Speaker 1: and the word will be chemistry. I had a therapist
15:08
Speaker 1: once who asked me to describe what being in love
15:10
Speaker 1: felt like physically. I listed off things like tension and
15:13
Speaker 1: anticipation and the feeling of waiting for something. She looked
15:16
Speaker 1: at me and very gently said, that is not love.
15:18
Speaker 1: That is the symptom of not knowing if you are safe.
15:21
Speaker 1: And I wanted to argue. I did not have the
15:22
Speaker 1: legs to stand on. Sign seven. Your friendships have quietly
15:27
Speaker 1: thinned out, and you have a story about why that
15:29
Speaker 1: is not a problem. Your friends are skeptical. Maybe they
15:34
Speaker 1: have said something directly. Maybe they have just gotten quieter
15:36
Speaker 1: on the topic. But you can feel the hesitation when
15:38
Speaker 1: his name comes up. And instead of getting curious about
15:40
Speaker 1: that hesitation, you've started spending energy managing it. You translate
15:44
Speaker 1: him to them. You give them the fuller picture. You
15:46
Speaker 1: explain what they are missing because they are only seeing
15:48
Speaker 1: the surface. You have become his interpreter and you are
15:51
Speaker 1: good at it. And you tell yourself you are just
15:52
Speaker 1: protecting something private. But three months in, six months in,
15:56
Speaker 1: you are slightly more alone than you were when you started.
15:58
Speaker 1: And you have decided your friends just do not understand
16:00
Speaker 1: what this is. Your best friend has gotten quieter. Not distant,
16:05
Speaker 1: not cold, just quieter on this specific topic. You have
16:07
Speaker 1: noticed it. You have attributed it to her not having
16:10
Speaker 1: the full picture or her own stuff coming up or
16:12
Speaker 1: her being protective in a way that is not quite
16:14
Speaker 1: accurate to the situation. You have not asked her directly
16:17
Speaker 1: what she actually thinks in months because somewhere underneath you
16:20
Speaker 1: already know and knowing would cost you the story. I
16:24
Speaker 1: want to tell you something that happened early in my
16:25
Speaker 1: current relationship because I almost made this exact mistake. A
16:29
Speaker 1: close friend of mine, someone whose instincts I trust, said
16:31
Speaker 1: to me one afternoon that I seemed like I was
16:33
Speaker 1: doing a lot of translating lately. She was not cruel
16:35
Speaker 1: about it. She was not dramatic. She just said it
16:37
Speaker 1: like an observation and then waited. And I defended for
16:40
Speaker 1: 20 minutes. I gave her the context, the backstory, the
16:43
Speaker 1: fuller picture, the part she was missing. I was thorough.
16:46
Speaker 1: I was articulate. She listened to all of it and
16:48
Speaker 1: then said, I hear you and did not say anything else.
16:51
Speaker 1: And I went home still a little annoyed. And about
16:53
Speaker 1: a week later, I realized she had been right. Not
16:55
Speaker 1: about everything, but about the translating. I was working very
16:58
Speaker 1: hard to make someone else see a version of things
16:59
Speaker 1: I was not even fully sure I believed. The friends
17:02
Speaker 1: who go quiet are not always wrong. Sometimes they are
17:05
Speaker 1: the only ones telling you the truth and the only
17:06
Speaker 1: way you will let them. And the isolation is not dramatic.
17:10
Speaker 1: That is the thing. You do not stop seeing your friends.
17:13
Speaker 1: You just stop bringing the real thing to them. You
17:16
Speaker 1: curate the update. You leave out the part that you
17:18
Speaker 1: know will make them pause. And slowly the friendships lose
17:20
Speaker 1: a layer because you cannot be fully known by people
17:22
Speaker 1: you are managing. You are not alone, you are just
17:25
Speaker 1: slightly behind a filter, and filters accumulate. Sign 8. You
17:30
Speaker 1: have a detailed mental image of the finished version of him.
17:33
Speaker 1: And babe, that is who you are actually in a
17:34
Speaker 1: relationship with. The vision is specific. It has his face
17:39
Speaker 1: and his voice and the cadence of him, but it
17:41
Speaker 1: is him after. After the work. After the thing with
17:44
Speaker 1: his family resolves. After he figures out what he wants
17:46
Speaker 1: professionally and it settles him. After he has the tools
17:49
Speaker 1: to communicate the way you know he could. The vision
17:51
Speaker 1: is warm and present and the kind of man you
17:53
Speaker 1: would brag about without editing first. And you feel genuine
17:55
Speaker 1: affection for that man. You had whole imaginary conversations with
17:59
Speaker 1: that man. The one making coffee in your kitchen keeps
18:01
Speaker 1: failing to be the vision. And you keep being vaguely
18:03
Speaker 1: disappointed and you keep telling yourself it is just a
18:05
Speaker 1: matter of timing. You catch yourself doing it sometimes. Just
18:09
Speaker 1: drifting into the version of him who has done the work.
18:11
Speaker 1: Maybe just had a frustrating exchange. Something that went sideways
18:14
Speaker 1: in the small flat way things do when someone is
18:16
Speaker 1: not quite in it with you. And instead of sitting
18:18
Speaker 1: in that frustration, you float into the other version. You
18:21
Speaker 1: feel warmth toward that version. You feel connected to that version.
18:23
Speaker 1: And then he walks in, the actual one, and there
18:26
Speaker 1: is a half second adjustment you have to make between
18:28
Speaker 1: the man in your head and the man in the room.
18:30
Speaker 1: You make it without thinking. You've gotten very good at it.
18:34
Speaker 1: You are in a relationship with a rough draft and
18:36
Speaker 1: genuinely confused about why he keeps not being the published edition.
18:40
Speaker 1: And I say that with love because I have been
18:42
Speaker 1: exactly there. I have been so committed to the finished
18:44
Speaker 1: version that I was barely registering the actual person. And
18:47
Speaker 1: the actual person was not a villain. He was just himself.
18:50
Speaker 1: Not the self I had written. His actual self. And
18:53
Speaker 1: I kept looking past him at the projection. It is exhausting.
18:57
Speaker 1: It is also its own kind of loneliness because the
18:59
Speaker 1: man in front of you cannot feel you seeing him
19:01
Speaker 1: if what you are actually looking at is someone he
19:03
Speaker 1: has not become. Sign nine is the one that is
19:06
Speaker 1: going to ask something of you. I need you to
19:08
Speaker 1: stay honest through it. When you imagine leaving, the grief
19:11
Speaker 1: that comes is not about him. It is about who
19:14
Speaker 1: he was going to be. I want you to sit
19:16
Speaker 1: with that for a second. Not the Wednesday evenings. Not
19:18
Speaker 1: the inside jokes. Not the specific person who does a
19:21
Speaker 1: specific thing that makes you laugh. But the future. The
19:24
Speaker 1: future you have been constructing. The one where you believed
19:26
Speaker 1: in someone and the investment paid off. That is what
19:29
Speaker 1: breaks your heart when you think about walking away. And
19:31
Speaker 1: that is also the thing that keeps you longer than
19:33
Speaker 1: makes sense. Because you are not just leaving him. You
19:36
Speaker 1: are abandoning something you built. Not a project. An authorship.
19:40
Speaker 1: A narrative you are the author of. The sunk cost
19:42
Speaker 1: is not time. It is creative labor. You have thought
19:46
Speaker 1: about ending it, not decided, not seriously, maybe, but the
19:50
Speaker 1: thought has visited, and when it arrives you notice what
19:52
Speaker 1: comes with it. It is not the specific sadness of
19:55
Speaker 1: missing him. It is this bigger, heavier feeling. The story
19:58
Speaker 1: you will not get to finish. The version of events
20:00
Speaker 1: where you stayed, and it turned into what you believed
20:02
Speaker 1: it could be, and that belief was validated, and you
20:04
Speaker 1: were right to see something others did not see. Leaving
20:07
Speaker 1: collapses that story. And collapsing the story feels like a
20:10
Speaker 1: loss of something larger than the relationship. I went back
20:13
Speaker 1: through my old journals once. Not proud of this, it
20:16
Speaker 1: was a vulnerable evening and I opened the wrong notebook.
20:18
Speaker 1: There was a page, one full page, where I had
20:20
Speaker 1: written out in detail who a past partner was going
20:22
Speaker 1: to be in two years. I had given him a
20:24
Speaker 1: career shift. I had given him a new relationship with
20:27
Speaker 1: his emotions. I had given him presence and softness and
20:30
Speaker 1: a specific kind of quiet confidence. It was a whole person,
20:33
Speaker 1: fully rendered. And when I flipped back through the surrounding
20:36
Speaker 1: entries looking for him... For the actual him that week,
20:39
Speaker 1: I found almost nothing. A few lines. What he said
20:42
Speaker 1: that annoyed me. A time he surprised me. But no
20:46
Speaker 1: real picture of who he was. I had a portrait
20:48
Speaker 1: of who he was becoming and barely a sketch of
20:50
Speaker 1: who he actually was. That was the clearest evidence I
20:52
Speaker 1: ever saw of what I was doing. I was not
20:54
Speaker 1: in a relationship with a person. I was in a
20:56
Speaker 1: relationship with a renovation. The one wound underneath all nine
21:01
Speaker 1: of them. Here we are. Love was conditional when you
21:05
Speaker 1: were learning what love was. not necessarily cruel, not necessarily
21:09
Speaker 1: dramatic or easy to name, just conditional. It came when
21:12
Speaker 1: you were useful, when you solved something or held something together,
21:15
Speaker 1: or managed something that needed managing, when you were the
21:17
Speaker 1: capable one, and you were a kid taking in information,
21:20
Speaker 1: learning the grammar of love from the first place it
21:22
Speaker 1: ever showed up. And the grammar you learned was, love
21:24
Speaker 1: has a function. Being needed is how you know you
21:27
Speaker 1: are wanted. And that grammar did not get erased when
21:29
Speaker 1: you grew up. It went underground. It became the shadow.
21:33
Speaker 1: The shadow work concept, and I want to be precise
21:35
Speaker 1: about what I mean here, is about the parts of
21:37
Speaker 1: yourself that are operating below what you can see. The
21:40
Speaker 1: unconscious pattern driving the choices that you cannot explain with
21:42
Speaker 1: logic alone. You can sit down and make a very
21:45
Speaker 1: reasonable argument for why you are in this relationship. You
21:48
Speaker 1: have evidence. You have moments. You have the version of
21:51
Speaker 1: him from the good conversations. But underneath the reasoning, there
21:54
Speaker 1: is something older deciding. And what it is deciding is,
21:57
Speaker 1: this is a place where I can earn it. This
22:00
Speaker 1: is a place where I know how to be. If
22:02
Speaker 1: he is already whole, I do not know where I go.
22:05
Speaker 1: If he does not need me to help him become something,
22:07
Speaker 1: am I still the kind of person who gets to
22:08
Speaker 1: be loved? The shadow here is the belief that being
22:12
Speaker 1: needed is the same as being loved. And it hides
22:14
Speaker 1: so well because it looks like devotion. It looks like loyalty.
22:18
Speaker 1: It looks like faith in someone. You can dress it
22:20
Speaker 1: in the most generous language and it sounds beautiful. I
22:23
Speaker 1: believe in him. I see who he could be. I
22:25
Speaker 1: am not going to give up on someone with this
22:26
Speaker 1: much potential. And all of that is real. And underneath
22:29
Speaker 1: it is a seven-year-old who learned that love arrived when
22:31
Speaker 1: she handled something. My story with this is not dramatic.
22:35
Speaker 1: I did not have a hard childhood in the ways
22:36
Speaker 1: that make it into a clear narrative. I had a
22:38
Speaker 1: parent who was not always fully present. Who became warmer
22:41
Speaker 1: when I managed something? When I got it right? When
22:44
Speaker 1: I held something together that needed holding? The warmth was real.
22:47
Speaker 1: The pride was real. But it was connected to function.
22:50
Speaker 1: And I learned the lesson without knowing I was learning it.
22:53
Speaker 1: Love is something you do enough to deserve. It is
22:55
Speaker 1: not something that just arrives because you are there. And
22:59
Speaker 1: then I grew up and I kept looking for the
23:01
Speaker 1: place where I could do enough. Where the gap was
23:03
Speaker 1: big enough for me to fill. A finished man, a
23:05
Speaker 1: man who had already done his work and was showing
23:07
Speaker 1: up whole and steady, did not give me a gap.
23:10
Speaker 1: And without the gap, I did not know how to
23:11
Speaker 1: locate myself in the relationship. I did not know what
23:13
Speaker 1: I was for. That is not his problem. That is
23:16
Speaker 1: the pattern. And the pattern is quiet. It is dressed
23:18
Speaker 1: in your best qualities, your empathy, your patience, your ability
23:22
Speaker 1: to see people clearly. It uses your strengths as cover.
23:25
Speaker 1: That is what makes it so hard to name. So
23:27
Speaker 1: here is the thing. The hard truth does not arrive
23:29
Speaker 1: with a drumroll. It just sits there waiting for you
23:32
Speaker 1: to stop explaining it away. You did not stumble into
23:35
Speaker 1: a man with potential. You chose him because of the gap.
23:39
Speaker 1: I want you to hear that clearly because there is
23:40
Speaker 1: a difference between falling into something by accident and gravitating
23:43
Speaker 1: towards something because it is the terrain your nervous system
23:45
Speaker 1: knows best. The gap is where you do your best work.
23:48
Speaker 1: It is where you feel necessary. It is where the
23:50
Speaker 1: love you learned as a kid finally makes sense to
23:52
Speaker 1: you because it has a job. A man who is finished,
23:54
Speaker 1: a man who has already done the hard internal work
23:56
Speaker 1: and is showing up steady and whole and not particularly
23:59
Speaker 1: in need of your editorial input, he does not give
24:01
Speaker 1: you the gap. And without the gap, you do not
24:03
Speaker 1: know what you are doing there. You start to feel
24:05
Speaker 1: vaguely unnecessary, maybe even a little bored, which you will
24:08
Speaker 1: then confuse with incompatibility because boredom is easier to name
24:11
Speaker 1: than fear. Sit with that for a second, because what
24:14
Speaker 1: I am saying is that the relationship you keep building
24:17
Speaker 1: is not really about him. It is about the process,
24:19
Speaker 1: the tending, the believing in. You are not in love
24:22
Speaker 1: with him. You are in love with what it feels
24:24
Speaker 1: like to be the woman who saw him before he
24:25
Speaker 1: saw himself. You are in love with the moment, the
24:28
Speaker 1: future moment, the one that has not happened yet, where
24:30
Speaker 1: it all pays off. And that moment keeps moving. Every
24:33
Speaker 1: time you get close, it relocates. Because if it arrived,
24:35
Speaker 1: the job would be done. And then what? That is
24:39
Speaker 1: the cost. Not the wasted time, though. Yes, time too.
24:43
Speaker 1: The real cost is that while you are building him,
24:45
Speaker 1: you are not being built with someone. You are not
24:47
Speaker 1: in a mutual thing. You are in a renovation project
24:49
Speaker 1: with emotional stakes and no contractor's license. The relationship that
24:53
Speaker 1: is actually available to you, the one where two people
24:55
Speaker 1: are both already showing up, and the growth is something
24:58
Speaker 1: that happens alongside each other instead of something you are
25:00
Speaker 1: producing in him. That relationship is hard to recognize when
25:02
Speaker 1: you have trained yourself to feel most alive inside the chase.
25:05
Speaker 1: You might even dismiss it as too easy, too flat,
25:08
Speaker 1: not enough friction to feel real. And that is the
25:10
Speaker 1: potential chaser doing what she does. She calls the absence
25:13
Speaker 1: of chaos, the absence of chemistry, and she moves on.
25:17
Speaker 1: I know, you are already defending him. You are thinking,
25:20
Speaker 1: but he really is growing. And maybe he is. I'm
25:23
Speaker 1: not saying he is not. What I'm asking is this.
25:26
Speaker 1: Is the relationship good right now, today, on a Wednesday
25:28
Speaker 1: with nothing special happening? Is it enough as it actually is?
25:31
Speaker 1: Because some people do grow and the relationship holds them
25:33
Speaker 1: both through it. That is real. That happens. The difference
25:37
Speaker 1: is that in that version, the relationship is already good
25:39
Speaker 1: and the growth is a shared thing, a bonus, not
25:42
Speaker 1: the structural support holding the whole thing up. The relationship
25:45
Speaker 1: does not depend on who he is becoming. It is
25:47
Speaker 1: already standing on who you both are. Here's the clearest
25:50
Speaker 1: version of the question I can give you. If he
25:52
Speaker 1: stays exactly like this, the exact man he is right now,
25:55
Speaker 1: not worse, not better, just this, for five more years,
25:58
Speaker 1: are you in? Not are you in if he works
26:00
Speaker 1: on it. Not are you in if things calm down.
26:03
Speaker 1: Not are you in if he finally sees his worth.
26:05
Speaker 1: If he stays exactly here, answer that honestly. It will
26:07
Speaker 1: take a minute. Let it. I went on a date
26:10
Speaker 1: once during my long single stretch, the years after the
26:13
Speaker 1: breakup that broke me, and this man was calm and
26:15
Speaker 1: employed and curious, and he asked good questions and he
26:17
Speaker 1: laughed at the right things. There was nothing to fix.
26:19
Speaker 1: No wound I could see underneath the surface that I
26:21
Speaker 1: could quietly tend to. No gap. I went home that
26:24
Speaker 1: night and I felt nothing. And I opened my phone
26:26
Speaker 1: looking for the one who was hard to reach and
26:28
Speaker 1: made me feel like I was always half a step
26:29
Speaker 1: behind because at least with him, I knew what to feel.
26:32
Speaker 1: I know now what that was. That was me choosing
26:35
Speaker 1: the familiar ache over the unfamiliar possibility of just being
26:37
Speaker 1: wanted without earning it. I am not proud of it,
26:40
Speaker 1: but I understand it completely. And understanding it is actually
26:43
Speaker 1: what changed it. So here are four moves. I'm not
26:46
Speaker 1: saying they are easy. I'm saying they are concrete. Move one.
26:51
Speaker 1: Write the actual current man. Not the vision. Not the highlights.
26:54
Speaker 1: The regular week. What does he do when you're having
26:56
Speaker 1: a hard day and he is tired too? What does
26:59
Speaker 1: he say when the conversation gets uncomfortable? How does he
27:01
Speaker 1: treat you when you are not your most lovable self?
27:04
Speaker 1: Write that list. Look at it without the backstory attached.
27:08
Speaker 1: Move two. Ask the five-year question. If he stays exactly
27:11
Speaker 1: this way for five more years, is this enough? Write
27:14
Speaker 1: the answer. Do not explain it. Do not context it.
27:17
Speaker 1: Just write what comes out first. Move three, tell someone
27:21
Speaker 1: the answer, not the group chat, a person. Your therapist,
27:25
Speaker 1: your most honest friend, someone who's going to hear it
27:28
Speaker 1: and not let you revise it in real time. Say
27:30
Speaker 1: it out loud. What happens in your body when you
27:32
Speaker 1: say it out loud matters. Move four, notice the next
27:36
Speaker 1: time you are more energized by what he could become
27:38
Speaker 1: than by what you two actually did together today. Do
27:41
Speaker 1: not try to fix that feeling. Just name it. The
27:43
Speaker 1: potential chaser in you is not a villain to defeat.
27:45
Speaker 1: She is a part of you that worked really hard
27:47
Speaker 1: for a really long time to keep you loved. Name her.
27:50
Speaker 1: Thank her. And then let the grown-up version of you
27:52
Speaker 1: take over the wheel. And naming her, naming the shadow,
27:56
Speaker 1: does not dissolve it overnight. But it stops it from
27:58
Speaker 1: running your life from the backseat without you knowing it
28:01
Speaker 1: is back there. The shadow only has the most power
28:03
Speaker 1: when it is invisible. Once you can see it, once
28:06
Speaker 1: you can say out loud that you reached for the almost,
28:08
Speaker 1: because the having makes you feel like you might disappear,
28:11
Speaker 1: it loses some of its hold. Not all of it. Some.
28:14
Speaker 1: and some is where it starts. So, my loves, let
28:18
Speaker 1: me land this somewhere real. You are not naive. You
28:21
Speaker 1: are not some cautionary tale. You are someone who learned
28:23
Speaker 1: to love through the gap, because the gap was where
28:25
Speaker 1: love lived when you were small. That is not a
28:28
Speaker 1: character flaw. That is an adaptation, a really smart one.
28:31
Speaker 1: It kept you connected to people when connection felt conditional,
28:34
Speaker 1: but adaptations age out. What worked when you were seven
28:37
Speaker 1: does not have to run your relationships at 32. The
28:39
Speaker 1: potential chaser is allowed to retire. She is allowed to
28:42
Speaker 1: put down the renovation tools and walk into a relationship
28:44
Speaker 1: that is already livable. She is allowed to want someone
28:47
Speaker 1: who is already showing up, not someone she is waiting
28:49
Speaker 1: to meet. If something in today hits somewhere you were
28:52
Speaker 1: not expecting, I want you to just stay with it.
28:55
Speaker 1: Do not rush to explain it or fix it or
28:57
Speaker 1: immediately apply it. Let it sit. If what came up
28:59
Speaker 1: feels heavy in a way that goes beyond today, please
29:02
Speaker 1: talk to a therapist. That is not a small thing
29:04
Speaker 1: to say. It is a real invitation. Because what we
29:06
Speaker 1: talked about today goes deep and you deserve real support
29:08
Speaker 1: for it, not just a podcast. And before you close
29:12
Speaker 1: this out, I want to leave you with a question
29:14
Speaker 1: I've been carrying through this whole episode because it is
29:16
Speaker 1: the one worth actually answering. Are you in love with
29:18
Speaker 1: him or are you in love with the version of
29:20
Speaker 1: him you are still waiting to meet? Think about that.
29:23
Speaker 1: If you have an answer, share it with someone who
29:24
Speaker 1: needs to hear it. And if you know someone who
29:27
Speaker 1: is out here translating her boyfriend to everyone she knows
29:29
Speaker 1: and defending the potential at every dinner table, send this
29:32
Speaker 1: one her way. She will either love you or be
29:34
Speaker 1: slightly annoyed and then love you later. Either way, you
29:37
Speaker 1: did the right thing. Follow along so you never miss
29:39
Speaker 1: one of these. i'll see you next time take care
29:42
Speaker 1: of yourself out there babe this show is made by
29:46
Speaker 1: obo media