Latest / Reflect Reclaim & Liberate - with Sallyanne Hartnell / Solitude, Loneliness and Dating After Divorce - a conversation with Kerri Sackville

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Solitude, Loneliness and Dating After Divorce - a conversation with Kerri Sackville · Reflect Reclaim & Liberate - with Sallyanne Hartnell

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate, the podcast.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Finding the space for all of you in life and love.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Sally Ann Hartnell, and this podcast is for anyone wanting to reclaim and liberate themselves in their relationships and their life.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Wherever you are on your relationship journey, these conversations meet you right there.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: In soulful, deeply supportive DNMs with me and interviews with other gorgeous humans, moving you from where you are to where you most want to be.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: A life and love completely aligned with your deepest desires to have it all on your own terms.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: If you're seeking a relationship and a life that lights up all of you, you're in the right place.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'd also like to acknowledge that this podcast is recorded on the traditional lands of the Wuradri people and pay my respects to elders past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge them as the original storytellers of this land.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to another episode of Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: And today on the podcast, I'm joined by special guest, Kerry Sackville.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Kerry is an Australian writer, currently a regular columnist for Sunday Life magazine, City Morning Herald, and The Melbourne Age.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Kerry is the author of five books.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: And today we're going to talk about two of them, particularly The Secret Life of You, How a Bit of Alone Time Can Change Life, Relationships, and Maybe the World.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: And Out There, a Survival Guide for Dating and Midlife.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Carrie lives in Sydney, Australia, Sydney's eastern suburbs with her kids and a recalcitrant cat and enjoys lying very still on the couch.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: And just before we dive into my chat with Carrie, this is a reminder about my upcoming group program, Decide and Thrive.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: It is a tiny group program supporting you wherever you're at, whether you're asking the hard questions about your relationship or your marriage, moving through separation, navigating divorce.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: This program will support you to have the hard conversations, make the difficult decisions, move through the hard stuff with my support and the support of a like-minded tiny group of women to thrive afterwards, regardless of the decisions you make, whether you stay, whether you leave, whether you separate, whether you divorce, it will support you through that hard stuff and to thrive afterwards.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Link in the show notes with all the information or to book a free intro call or to chat through your coaching options with me.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to support you and welcome you into the group.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: The first round of the group kicks off April 24th.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: It will never be this price ever again.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: So if you want in, don't hesitate.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I miss out, but I would love to welcome you in.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get into the chat that I shared with Carrie Zagle.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: Hi Carrie, thanks for joining me.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the podcast.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: It is great to be here.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's such a thrill to have you.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so pleased because I think this conversation is going to be really juicy, powerful, and just what some of my clients and listeners most need to hear.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: I hope so.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Firstly, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and I guess the inspiration behind two of the books that I wanted to talk to you about?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Your book Out There and also The Secret Life of You.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, oh, I'm a writer.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: I actually have a background.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: I trained and initially worked as a social worker for a few years and then pivoted into HR in different areas.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then I started writing in my 30s.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't really find my career path till quite late.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't start writing in earnest, you know, trying to build a career till my early 40s.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I am a columnist for Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne Age.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: I've written a few books.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And in terms of these books that we're discussing today, so the first one out there, a survival guide for dating in midlife.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote that purely because I wished I had had access to a book like that.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was divorced in my 40s and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've never been on like a traditional date, let alone a blind date, let alone online dating, which is just a whole different beast in itself.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely blindfield.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh God.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: I honestly, it's not just a tagline for the book.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: I made every mistake that there was possible to make, chose all the wrong people, um, approach things the wrong way, in you know, very small um senses like, you know, committing too long dinner dates for a first date, which is a terrible idea.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And in large senses, like choosing the wrong people and thinking that I could change a commitment photo.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so it took me a long time to figure it all, figure it all out.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I wrote a book to help other people in midlife, particularly women, but a lot of men seem to have read the book and and enjoyed it.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think they find it interesting to see things from our perspective.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I wanted a book that would help women navigate the mindfield that is dating in midlife.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's it's not going to guarantee you a partner at the end, but it it hopefully will help you to uh approach um the that time of your life with um positivity and a degree of sanity, I think, and to stay sane.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so the other book, having read it, I can absolutely vouch for all of that.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, sure, it's not going to guarantee anybody finding their soulmate or the perfect date or the you know their next big thing, but it it really guides you through how to how to navigate that online dating world, yeah, keeping your sanity and your soul and heart intact and safe.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And watching out for red flags and and you know, very very practical um ideas about how to keep yourself emotionally and physically, of course, safe, um, how to spot people you should stay away from, and just how to protect yourself.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think you have to be really resilient to manage online dating.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Some people get really lucky and meet the love of their life on the first date, but most of us get bruised and battered along the way.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: So hopefully this book will alleviate some of that.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and yeah, so the other book um is The Secret Life of You, um, How a Bit of Alone Time Can Change Your Life, Relationships, and Maybe the World.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that literally came out of a period of great transformation for me, which started in 2020 in the COVID lockdowns.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I was at a very low ebb.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'd been divorced for a long time.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was single.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I had three kids locked down at home with me, two of whom were really unhappy.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: The little one seemed delighted to be doing online schooling and chatting to her friends all day, but the other two were really unhappy.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: I lost a lot of my regular work because the media took a great hit in COVID in the lockdowns.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I found myself just stuck on my phone, like distracting myself for hours, swiping and scrolling and clicking and getting further and further away from myself and feeling more and more unhappy.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized that something had to change and I had to stop running away from myself.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I stopped and I put down my phone and I decided to learn to just sit with myself and sit with my thoughts and be alone with my thoughts.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a really difficult process, but out of it came like in enormously enormous transformation.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a spiritual person, but it really was incredibly transformative and made me much more resilient, um, self-aware, emotionally um stable, um, and just opened up my life in a lot of different ways and changed my approach to relationships and to myself.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so I wanted, you know, when you when you discover something that's really helpful, you want to share it with other people.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so I wanted to spread the word because uh our society has got so far away from embracing alone time and it's to our detriment.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: There was a line in the in the book that just it literally, you know, I felt it in my chest when I read it.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it was we can avoid ourselves for our entire lives.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I wondered if you can expand on what you mean by that.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: So a couple of things.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: One is we can avoid getting to know ourselves.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: We can focus so much on other people that we forget to look inwards and work out who we are.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say that, I mean that it that sounds really kind of vague, you know, how do you find out who you are?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm talking about really specific things like discovering what your opinions are and what your tastes are.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so many of us as women, I think we go through our whole adult lives and often in our childhoods to deferring to other people.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, where are we going to eat tonight?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what do you want to eat?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, where do you want to go?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: What movie do you want to watch?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you read a book and say to your friends or your partner or whoever, you know, or look online, what did you think of the book?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so when I say, you know, constantly escaping ourselves, like never actually asking ourselves what we think, what we believe, what we want for our own lives as opposed to what other people want for us.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Or what other people are telling us, society's telling us we should want.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: A hundred percent, a hundred percent.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we should want, you know, uh the marriage and the kids and the home and and the certain type of career, or and you know, what what should be our priorities and so on.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so the other part of that is is that we can go through our whole lives without ever feeling our feelings.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is a really human thing, it's not just for women, but our society does not teach us how to manage and sit with painful emotions.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we have this weird idea that we're supposed to be happy all the time, and then if we're not, like that's really aberrant and wrong.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: And when we feel those fact painful feelings, what do we do?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like we distract ourselves.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I grew up, I was a teenager in the 80s, and we didn't have a lot of distractions then.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like we didn't have in your bedroom, you didn't have a phone, you didn't have a TV, um, you know, you didn't have you didn't have the internet.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so there weren't as many ways to distract yourself.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: But now, I mean, we look carry away, carry around our little, you know, computers with us all the time.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so the second that we feel a painful emotion, we don't sit with it, we don't feel it, we escape from it.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so we pick up our phones, or we go online, or we phone a friend, or we, you know, go out partying, or we have a drink or whatever.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we can go through our whole lives without ever sitting with our feelings.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's just a life of escaping ourselves.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I am calling, you know, my book is really a call to actually stop running and to sit with yourself and see what happens.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: I and I like that, just see what happens, just explore it.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Don't make it wrong, just sit with it, explore it, see where it takes you, see what happens.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: I also really liked how you spoke about the center of your life is you.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you've just touched on it in what you said, that for many, many of us, especially women and mothers, that this is just so far from their lived reality, from their truth.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I wondered if you can share some ideas that you have about how we actually can become better at being the center in our own lives, and particularly for women and mothers, how we do that guilt-free.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I don't think any of us can really take away the guilt that is put on us by our culture.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is a very particular, particular cultural norm that women have no right to have their own lives and to prioritize themselves.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's funny because when I was writing the book, you know, I interviewed a lot of people, and one of them um I interviewed about um the fact that she she had just started to take weekends away by herself and how um how that changed her as a person, as a mother.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I said, Does your husband do that?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: She was like, Yeah, of course.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Does he feel guilty about it?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Absolutely not.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: And men generally have no problems saying, right, I need me time.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I need to go and whatever it is, play my golf or my tennis or go for a drink with my mates or go on a week anyway.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: But we women feel such guilt.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that is that is something that has been put on us by our culture.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need to feel it.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but in terms of prioritizing ourselves, I mean, there's that old trope which is so true.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: We can't be of use to anybody if we're not okay in ourselves.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: We can't, if you want to focus on your kids, we can't be good parents if we are exhausted or burnt out, or we just don't have resources to give.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we need that alone time to recharge and to replenish ourselves.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and in a more selfish sense, and we need to be selfish because every single one of us has the right to live our lives fully.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we will all be alone sometimes.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got three kids, so I know parenting, that active parenting, comes to an end.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you never stop parenting.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've got, you know, my two old eldest kids are 22 and 24, and of course, I'm still parenting them and worrying about them and thinking about them.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: But my youngest is now 16, and she's pretty independent, and I am not needed in that sense of being hands-on every day as much as I was.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we will all have periods of time when we are by ourselves, when our kids grow up and leave home, when our partners either leave us or die, or are simply unable to give us the connection that we need in any given moment.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: We will all have times when we feel disconnected from other people because no one in the world is exactly like us.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so there'll be times when we feel lonely even in the company of others.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if we can't support ourselves, nurture ourselves, be a friend to ourselves, then we are going to feel very lonely at different times.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: So it's essential that we build in those kind of those periods of time where we get to know ourselves, where we learn how to comfort and support ourselves, so that when we have those periods of time, we have the capacity to manage it.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's why you see so many women fall apart after their kids leave home, because they've never learned to do that.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we need to have rich inner lives to nurture ourselves through those periods.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think as women, as mothers, it's really important that our kids see us claim that for ourselves.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it's male children, female children, whatever gender, it's gender neutral here.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, every child needs to see their mother claim that for themselves so that they know they get to claim that for themselves.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: And what I always think and say is that you want for yourself what you would want for your children.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you are doing something that you don't want for your child.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: So for example, people in toxic relationships, you know, the best way to kind of get them to see what is going on, and it certainly worked for me, is would you want your son or daughter or child to be in this kind of relationship?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: So would you want your child to be completely sacrificing themselves for another person?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, of course not.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got this analogy in the book, which which I again I talk about a lot, which is that imagine you're in a car and you're going on a very, very long car journey, and it's like, you know, the journey is a week, a month, a year, whatever.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you've got someone with you in the car who's accompanying you on your journey, and you spend the entire car trip looking outside and you're looking at all the wonderful scenery, and oh, that's that's great.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you you see so much, but you get to the end of this journey, whether it's a week, a month, a year, and you have never once talked to the person next to you in the car.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: What a waste, right?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: What a waste of an opportunity, what a waste of having this company.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: But you are the person in the car.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: We're the drivers, but we're also the passengers in our own lives.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if we don't spend time with ourselves, you know, if we don't value ourselves, then we are wasting this one opportunity that we have in this life to live fully.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we want to be valued by other people, we want to be seen by other people, but if we don't see and value ourselves, then then how is that?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how can we be expect to be seen or valued by other people?
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Including our children, you know.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: And our partner, anybody.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: If we are just in service to other people, we're not really a full human being.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, what can we, what can we have to offer those relationships?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: And how can we expect to have real connection if we're not connected to ourselves?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the whole idea of true connection, whether it's with your child, with your with your partner, with your friends, is to feel seen, right?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we want.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that person really sees me, they get me, they understand me, they hear me.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: But if we don't recognize ourselves, then we're not gonna recognize when somebody else recognizes us.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like if we don't have any sense of who we are, how are we gonna know that we're seen?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're just gonna where it all starts.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: We're just gonna be whatever that other person, that other relationship is mirroring back at us rather than who we really are.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: We it all starts here within within.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: There's a really interesting statistic that I've uh heard thrown around family loss faces, and that is that women on every on average stay seven years once they start to question a marriage or a long-term relationship.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I always think that's a such a lot of wasted time.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's a long time being unhappy and in a conflict.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in the secret life of you, you write how to decide whether you genuinely want a partner or just want to rid yourself of your singleness.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I really wanted to flip that and ask how someone can choose single, how someone chooses to leave a partnership, a relationship, or a marriage when there's so much external and societal pressure to stay.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we are rewarded or society is built for coupledom.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: How does it really difficult?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And and in fact, there is you know a penalty for leaving a relationship in that it does, but it is difficult being single in our in our culture.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: There are ways to make it easier.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I, for example, when I left, and one thing I'll say is just to validate what you're saying, you know, I was married for 17 years and not once was I asked why are you married.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: But when I was single, for I was single for eight and a half years before I met my partner, and I was asked almost daily, like certainly regularly, why are you single?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: As if there is something wrong with being single, as if single is some kind of aberrant state.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, at best, it's like you're standing on the single platform on the way, waiting for the train back to Coupletown.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: When being single is a perfectly valid way to live.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and again, it's just a cultural norm that says that you should be coupled up.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's gradually changing and it's changing in different cultures and societies.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the first thing is to try and recognize um that these are cultural norms and they're not the truth.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of cultural norms that aren't the truth, and cultural norms change all the time.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, back in the 50s, it was really aberrant for a woman to either, you know, work in particular fields, to have a same-sex relationship, to be a single parent, and now it's perfectly normal and acceptable.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: So cultural norms change.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you can actually recognize that this pressure to stay coupled, this pressure to be in a partnership is just something that our society tells us is normal and is changing and will change, you can start to separate it from how you actually feel.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And there is a truth that should be universally acknowledged, that it is far, far lonelier to be in the wrong relationship than it is to be alone.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: You, and I have lived experience of this, you feel far lonelier lying next to somebody from whom you feel really disconnected than you do lying in a bed by yourself.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um and once you recognize that, it becomes much easier to assess your situation.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there are very there are many reasons why people stay in in marriages.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: It can be really financially difficult to leave.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, some people, you know, I know lots of people who stay for the sake of the kids, which really only works in a low conflict marriage.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in a high conflict marriage, it is terrible, like it's far better for the kids to be out.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there's lots of reasons people stay.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: But when you're staying because of the fear of being alone, the first thing to do is to address that and to learn to be okay by yourself.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you really can start, even when you're in a difficult relationship, by spending time with yourself, um, by having therapy, obviously, um, by things like journaling, by building up your resources and resilience and learning to sit with the discomfort of being alone.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you can literally start by by not distracting yourself and spending time by yourself and practicing that.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: And once you can do that, once you can build up your resilience, just so that you know, oh, I can actually.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sit with myself for an hour.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: I am going to be able to sit with myself for a day, for a week, for a month, and get the strength to be able to combat that fear of singledom to decide whether you want to be in this relationship because you love this person or they add to your life, or it's just you want to be in this relationship because you're so terrified of the alternative.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think that leaving a relationship because you think there's a better relationship out there is a really bad idea.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think you leave a relationship because you realize you are better off alone than in an environment that is not serving you.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: I can't I couldn't agree more.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just, I just tended to forget that I was interviewing you and having a chat with you.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: I just listened to you.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Let me ask you another question.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Why do you think we actually avoid being alone?
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: God, I think I think there's a lot of reasons.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of them is as we've discussed, our culture doesn't value alone time.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, it actively discourages it.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: We have, I write it in the book, um, we have um a focus in our in our society on extroversion as being the ideal way to be.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the the more extroverted you are, the more outgoing you are, the more you're valued, which is really devalues the um the benefits that that introversion can bring to an individual and to society in general.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Introverts are certainly no worse than extroverts.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: And most of us are fall somewhere on the spectrum.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we should value our introverted side because it makes us thoughtful and and um considered and and creative.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, there's a great book uh called Quiet by Susan Kane, which is all about the the joys of introversion.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: So our society really focuses on on extroversion and rewards things like open plan offices and collaboration, and and that also takes away from um the benefits of having time alone with your thoughts to create and to and to innovate.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, our society is also really, really focused on relationships as like the locus of all happiness.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, this whole idea of all you need is love, which really um devalues all the ways that we can live fulfilled, um, creative, exciting lives on our own.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean not having relationships, but there's tremendous joy in um in creating, in um, in art, in travel, in music, in um hobbies, in meaningful work that have nothing to do with relationships.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so this whole focus on relationships um completely ignores all the ways in which we can be fulfilled in ourselves um away from other people.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: So there's that.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then of course, there's also social media, which is designed to be addictive, it's designed to draw us in, it's designed to have us focused on um content from other people instead of content from ourselves.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: So again, back in back in the 80s, if I was alone in my bedroom, what was I doing?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was either reading or I was writing in my diary, which I did.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: I loved, I loved journaling, I still do, or I was alone with my thoughts.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was daydreaming.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: There weren't any other alternatives.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: We had a phone in the kitchen, but the the cords certainly didn't extend to my bedroom, which was really upsetting for me when I went to talk to my friends, like, you know, you try and sit in the pantry.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I didn't get a clock radio till I was, I think, in my teens.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: There was nothing else to do.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: But these days, because we don't have to be alone with our thoughts, we rarely are, and we're sucked constantly into the lure of our devices, and which takes time away from our imaginations and our thoughts and our daydreams.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, social media plays a huge role in bringing us away from ourselves.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, because we, you know, it's so addictive.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if we have any kind of social media presence at all, um, you know, you get it's very easy to get hooked on the likes, the comments.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's very easy to get caught up.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: I still do occasionally.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't have Facebook on my phone anymore.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Instagram is hidden, it's only still there because when one of my kids sends me, you know, a Instagram meme or something, I can access it.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but every now and then I'll still get find myself, you know, looking up after half an hour of just like endless scrolling and you lose yourself and you lose time.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's not our faults, it's just so strong, this technology, it's so powerful.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so the third reason we we run away from ourselves, we don't spend time alone with our thoughts is because, again, as we talked about earlier, a lot of us are scared to look in there.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're not taught to sit with our painful feelings.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so we've when they come up as they come up for everybody at different times, we distract ourselves instead of saying, right, this is normal.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Pain is a part of life, I'm gonna sit with this.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't recognize that the only way through pain is just to to go through it.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: The more we distract ourselves, the more it's gonna come later and and bite us on the bum.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and if we were taught that, we would be far less scared of it.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Pain is just pain, it's it and it doesn't last.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's like a wave.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you sit with a painful emotion, it kind of ebbs and flows and it comes and goes, and eventually that the wave will pass and it'll be replaced by something else.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I talk with my clients about foil, feeling a feeling all the way through to the end.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Just allowing it to be and feeling it all the way through to the end.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: So much like the wave, you know, the wave will ebb or ebb flow, whichever.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it will retreat once you've felt it all the way through to the end.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: But if you cut it off, push it down, push it away, or distract yourself, it will come back and bite you.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Agree, agree.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, so it's it's a combination of those three factors.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's our society, um, it's social media, and it's our minds.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: And um, there is, you know, uh a lot to answer for in modern society and how it is impacting us.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Rather than speaking more about the solitude, I wanted to flip it a little bit again and say, okay, if we're spending time in solitude, and I know you say you speak about this in the book, how does spending time alone actually impact or expand or change our relationships?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's so important.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it's so funny because when I was writing the book, and I would say to people, I'm writing a book about the importance of alone time, and most people heard it as loneliness.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd say I'm writing a book about solitude, I'm writing a book about alone time, and they would say, How's the book on loneliness coming along?
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Which was fascinating because people associate solitude with loneliness.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, learning to be comfortable alone eases loneliness, and that in turn makes our relationships better.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it was the concept we were talking about earlier, when you are when you are experiencing loneliness, loneliness is the gap between the connection that you feel any given time and the connection that you desire.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're feeling lonely, you're craving connection, and you're then needing other people to feel that need for you.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're not necessarily discerning about the company you're keeping or whether that person is good for you or bad for you, whether that friendship or partnership or relationship is meeting your needs.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're just trying to escape a bad feeling.
• 29:50
  unknown: Yeah.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw that all the time on the dating scene, people who just wanted a partner, any partner because they didn't want to be alone anymore.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what happens is in the end, in the long term, you get more lonely because being with someone you're not properly connected with, where you don't feel that deep connection, makes you more lonely.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: But when we're able to connect with ourselves, when we're able to keep ourselves company, entertain ourselves, nurture ourselves, support ourselves, and I don't mean a lot like all the time.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying anyone should be alone 24-7.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: I just mean when we have that capacity, we become less lonely.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then we're able to be more discerning about our relationships.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're able to walk away from the relationships that don't serve us and choose the relationships that do.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, when I left my marriage, I was in a really bad state and I jumped into relationships with completely the wrong people because I wasn't able to be alone.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Once I was, and it took many, many years, and once I was able to sit with the discomfort of being alone and learn to feel comfortable in that, I then was able to honestly be happy and content single.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then when somebody came along who made being in a relationship better than being, you know, by myself, I was able to go into that and and and um you know, we enhance each other's lives rather than save each other's lives.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's really important.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you expand one another, you make life broader, richer, whatever by being together.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that you're filling a gap or exactly.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, the other thing is is as again we we were talking about before, is when you have a really good sense of yourself, when you can see yourself when you know who you are, you're then able to recognize when you feel seen by another person, um, which is which is so important.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: But also you're able to ride through those inevitable moments of disconnection that you will feel in any relationship.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, my partner and I are really compatible.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I love his company, we get along really well, but there's always going to be tiny moments in any relationship where, oh, he doesn't quite get what I'm saying, or or he might be tired, or he might be, you know, unwell, or he might just be with his own kids and he's not able to give me that connection that I desire in in that moment.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't panic and I don't feel, oh God, something's wrong, or oh, everything's terrible.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm able to give it to myself.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm able to ride it ride out through those periods.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't feel that frantic need or to be constantly, you know, perfectly connected with him because no one is ever going to be able to fill all of our needs.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we know that on an intellectual level, but when you're not able to be a friend to yourself, you need other people to do that for you all the time.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really scary when they can't.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: So building our capacity to be friends for to be a friend to ourselves, to meet our own needs.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I talk about soothing your own nervous system or you know, all of those things.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: Do those things for ourselves, we don't have to seek it exactly.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I like the way, you know, you said um, knowing yourself, you'll kind of know when someone else sees you for who you are.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: You also know and recognize those who don't see you for you.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that can be exactly, and you're able to walk away from them.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to be in relationships that don't serve us.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: Be they friendships or intimate partner relationships, sibling friends, sibling relationships, whatever.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: We touched on this book before, and you were talking about your own parenting, the fact that you, you know, older two are grown young adults, your youngest is pretty much independent.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm similar in that my kids are 21 and 19.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: But what about for someone?
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking here, single parents, a lot of a lot of my listeners are single parents, single mums with soul or a big chunk of responsibility, caring time for kids.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it can be really hard to, you know, get to go to the bathroom or have a shower in solitude, let alone any other time.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: What would you say to someone in that situation regarding creating carving out time for solitude?
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's so hard.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: I know what I would say, but I'm really No, it's so hard.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I I lived that.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, even when I was still married, I, you know, my ex-husband worked all the time and I well, you know, I had three kids, um, essentially by myself.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say I I'm certainly not uh saying you have to go and and you know go for a weekend away by yourself in order to live your truth properly, or even have you know a day or an afternoon carved out.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: That is just unrealistic for a lot of people.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: What I do suggest is that when, for example, you you've dropped the kids off at daycare or you've dropped the kids off somewhere and you're in the car, instead of turning on the radio, instead of making a phone call, just sit in the silence.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you do get a chance to have a shower by yourself, then again, don't turn on music.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: As much as I love podcasts, don't turn on a podcast in that moment.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: Try and just be alone in the silence.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the incidental moments.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when you're in your bedroom at the end of a long day with the kids, the kids are finally asleep, you're in your bedroom, try not to pick up your phone and spend that precious hour before sleep or however long you have just scrolling mindlessly through Instagram, right?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Try not to pick up your device.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand, I'm not, I'm not saying you need to do this all the time because there are times when we really do just want to lose ourselves for an hour in watching silly videos of cats or or people falling over or whatever.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: But try and use those incidental moments when the kids are, you know, watching TV and you're pottering around the house.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Again, like so many of us then want to listen to a news podcast or or get that phone call done or or you know, listen to music, anything just to drown out our thoughts.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: Just try and and um inhabit those little incidental moments.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: And they'll grow as the kids get older.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: You you you do eventually have more time.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: But in those crazy years of parenting, the little tiny moments that you get.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: The car is a good one.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when you when you are in the car by so if you're running errands or whatever, and you've even you've got 10 minutes either way, just turn the radio off and use that time to get lost in your thoughts.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: I often say to clients who are struggling in that space or people in my community, leave five minutes earlier if you're going to pick up the kids or you go into just leave five minutes earlier, get where you're going and just turn the power off and sit.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: Just be.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have time to meditate.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have time, just just don't do it, don't meditate, just do that.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: Five minutes, try and do it once every day.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: Five minutes.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: And most people are going, yeah, I can do that.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: Whether whether we actually consciously make the effort to do it or not is a whole other game.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: But you know.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you can also, I I've got all notifications on my phone muted except for um messages from my kids, my mum, and my partner.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: So all other messages are muted, nothing is that urgent.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I check my phone at intervals during the day.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I don't want those notifications going off all the time because if I am having a moment, then you know I'm just pulled out of that.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that's something else you can do is just audit your social media.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: You can take what you don't need off your phone.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: So all my all my WhatsApp chats, I mean so many WhatsApp chats, and they're all muted.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll just check them because otherwise it's coming through bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, and it's it's exhausting.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd never, I'd never have, you know, time alone.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it just pulls us out of being with ourselves or being in whatever moment we're in, whether that's solitude or a real connection with another human.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: All right, let's go on to we've spent our time alone after a breakup or a divorce, we've done all the work, we've healed and you know, learned to embrace our solitude and our singletom.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then ready to get out there, explore options.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, obviously, they need to read out there your book, of course.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but what would be your top three or four tips for someone who's thinking about dating again after a breakup or divorce?
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I think my first tip will be, and I figured this out way too late, is figure out what you are looking for, how you're looking to feel in a relationship rather than the qualities you are looking for in another person.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: I had this kind of weird checklist in my head when I started dating, which was okay, so I want someone with a postgraduate degree because I figured that that would make them kind of smart.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted someone who um had kids but of a particular age, and I wanted someone who um, you know, enjoyed doing this, enjoyed doing that, and and there were all these qualities in the person, like I want someone witty, and I wanted someone um who was a good conversationalist and and you know, had a good job, and and it was nothing about what I wanted to feel.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I would go out with these men, and a lot of them were were in you know quite big jobs, and and I think, oh, that's good, because that's what I want someone with with a job like that.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'd find that they were either arrogant or they didn't have time for me, or they were a narcissist, or they were emotionally unavailable, and it was just never ever meeting my emotional needs.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so then I figured, what do I want to feel when I'm with somebody else?
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I decided that what I wanted was to feel safe and secure and to never get tired of their company.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it didn't matter who the person was or what they did or how they looked or anything, you know, anything kind of tangible.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was just those two criteria.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: And in the end, I met my partner who whose company I never get tired of and who makes me feel really safe and secure.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I've never had both of those at once.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: I've had men who I found interesting but who made me feel really insecure, or men who made me feel secure but were really boring.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I found in the end.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I guess to summarize, work out what you that was what was right for me, but work out what you are looking to, or what you are wanting to feel, and then try and and when you meet men, see how that makes you how they make you feel as opposed to what their like what their height is.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, who cares about height, what their height height is or what their job is or or you know where they live.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's one.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: I call that sorry before you go on to I call that in my work defining the container and whether that's reconnecting with your current partner, so you're redefining the container that your relationship sits in.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: How does it look?
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but not the checklist of there needs to be this, this, this, and this, or the person needs to be this, this, and this.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: How do you want it to feel?
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly what you've described for.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: Point number.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so so something else I would say is keep your expectations reasonable.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you are not going out on a first, second, third date to find your soulmate.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: You are going out to hopefully have a good time, right?
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you can go out and have an enjoyable evening, coffee, whatever, um, then that to me is a win.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you make a friend out of it, brilliant.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you find someone who you want to spend more time with, amazing.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so try and just look at each connection, each meeting as an opportunity to go out and have a pleasant time.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if you do, great.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and if you don't, what have you lost?
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like you've lost half an hour, an hour.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say keep expectations reasonable, you know, write about this in the book as uh as well.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um as I said earlier, don't go out and organize to have a three-course meal on a first date.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like literally, you start with a coffee, maybe a quick drink, a walk.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: You have an exit strategy.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you say, right, let's meet at four o'clock.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to leave at five to pick up my daughter, or you know, I'll meet you for a drink at seven, but I'm meeting friends for dinner at eight.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: If it goes brilliantly, brilliantly, and you want to extend the date, fantastic.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: You say, Oh, look, I'll call my daughter, my, you know, fake daughter, and and my daughter who doesn't actually need me, um, and get somebody else to pick her up.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or you know, I'll tell my friends I'm gonna be late and you can extend it, or you can just say, great, let's make plans for another evening.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's really good to end on a good night, but always have an exit strategy.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um and um, what would what would a third be?
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: Don't spend hours, days, weeks chatting to someone online.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: Meet in person sooner rather than later.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: What I discovered very quickly is that you can have amazing text chemistry with someone that does not translate to real life.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we are having text conversations, uh, we can edit ourselves, we can plan, we can be showing our friends, you know, like the guy you're chatting to might be getting his daughter or his son to compose the messages.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: It happens.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um sometimes there are professional dating coaches who do that, or he might just be really good at text messages, but when you meet him in person, you guys just don't connect.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: So it can be a huge waste of time and emotional investment to spend weeks texting someone and get all excited only to meet them and it falls flat.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: So have brief texts and also some people will text you and text you, and they have no intention of meeting, either because they're not who they say they are or they're married, or they don't actually want to meet, they just want to have the online communication.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are serious about dating, you have a couple of texts and then meet.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: Say, right, let's meet.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if they're not up for it, then thank you.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: Lovely, lovely chatting.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, right, my coaching program is called Reclaim and Liberate for pretty obvious reasons, I think.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um many women, yeah, let's stick with women.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: Many women tend to lose themselves in relationships.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, in closing out our conversation, I really wanted to ask you about that because we've touched on it little bits and pieces through the conversation.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's absolute gold in both of the books that we're discussing today about really reclaiming yourself, either whether still in a relationship or after wake up.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, and I feel like more and more I'm hearing that women are kind of waking up and finding themselves in a life or a relationship.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Relationship and marriage that they didn't actively choose.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just going to throw that open to you.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: What are your thoughts?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, I agree.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, again, it's it's what we have discussed is that our culture has taught us that relationships are the center of all happiness.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it is really news to a lot of women that this is not necessarily true.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: And here's an interesting example.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: There, you know, there's um sort of a friend of mine online who is single and she posts endlessly about finding her partner and she'll get into a relationship.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: She's she's divorced with a child, get into a relationship, and then the relationship doesn't work.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: And she posts, you know, again, oh, I'm you know, back, I'm back to where I started and looking again for love.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw somebody write, what if like you don't need to search for love?
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: What if you can be happy as you are now?
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: And she's like, what do you mean?
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't understand.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: Of course I'm looking for love.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think just the act of questioning that is the place to start.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm certainly not proselytizing for being single.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you're someone who is happily in a relationship, like I'm now happily in a relationship.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but what I will say is that the years I spent single, there was enormous joy and fulfillment in that.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I made some really deep friendships with other women.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um and, you know, I spent more time than I would otherwise have spent just with my kids.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I wrote like three books during that time.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it was a real time of enormous creativity.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I traveled on my own.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: And being alone can expand your life in ways that you couldn't possibly in the confines of relationship.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't just mean you have to be single to do that.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you are in a relationship and you only ever do things with your partner, you are limiting yourself.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: So the number of times I will hear someone say, you know, I really want to see that film, but my husband isn't interested, or, you know, I've always wanted to go to Japan, but I can't find anyone to go with me.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: You can go by yourself.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's it's perfectly okay and in fact, wonderful to do things by yourself.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you are able to do that, if you can open yourself up to the possibility of doing things alone, you expand the possibilities for your life.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you are not constricted by what other people will permit you to do.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that too, it's important if it if it's something that you find challenging, you know, and here I'm speaking to the listener, not necessarily to you, Carrie, but if it's something that you find challenging, start small.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like go by yourself before you take yourself out for a three-course deep, or you know, seven-course deep dinner.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, watch a movie at home by yourself before you take yourself to the cinema or the theater or whatever it is.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: Go for a night by yourself before you go for a week or a month.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: Just start small, I think.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I wanted to, I didn't have someone to travel with.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to travel.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so the first time I did, I went to Hawaii for a writer's retreat.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I had that structure and I topped and tailed it with a couple of days by myself, and then I joined the group, and then I was by myself again.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: Later on, I went to New York and joined a tour for part of that time, which was just fantastic.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: So um I made it easy for myself and and comforting for myself.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had the support of the group, but then I could go away and do my own thing.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I'm someone I I have only really eaten dinner in a restaurant by myself when I've been traveling, but I regularly take myself out for breakfast or lunch by myself, which, you know, I I really enjoy.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I've definitely seen movies by myself.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: I one of my greatest experiences was when I was in New York and I took myself off to see Hamilton alone and you know, experiencing these things, and studies showed this is true.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like you actually uh memories imprint more when you are by yourself because when you are seeing a show with another person, you're constantly aware of them next to you.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: Are they having fun?
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: Are they, you know, rusting around?
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do they look bored?
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: What do they think of it?
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was just me and the show, and it was just such a vivid experience and imprinted so strongly.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so again, yeah, build up, build up slowly, but it really does expand your life.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you can start practicing in in really small ways.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, love it.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I love I love doing things by myself, whether in relationship or not.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: I love by myself.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I must say, your book made me realize that when I'm alone, particularly at home, I do stent to tend to still busy myself.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it was just a little nudge, a little reminder, uh, don't fill it with busy.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: Just because you're alone, you're not actually, yeah, you're not really tuned in.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: A reminder to drop out of the busyness and tune in.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: Final question is when I ask all of my podcast guests, would you share a song or a piece of music that you think would support anyone sort of new to that exploration of solitude or maybe navigating the craziness that is online?
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when I when I was um promoting my book and I put like a little reel about my book on social media, and the only song that seemed appropriate was Flowers by Miley Cyrus.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's just so spot on.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: I can buy myself flowers, I can hold my own hand, talk to my, what is it, talk to myself for hours, um, say things you won't un you won't understand.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: I can take myself dancing.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, I think I'm I'm all sponge the lyrics now, but it's all about just being a friend to yourself.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just fantastic.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it's that fits perfectly.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: So yes, thank you.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna close by our chat by reading the final paragraph of The Secret, which goes like this you are the protagonist in your life, you are the main character in your story, and when you can stand in that role and spend time with the person who is central to your existence, something pretty special happens.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: You stop worrying as much about what other people think, you stop needing as much from other people and the world, you start living according to your own values and beliefs, and you start prioritizing the one person who will walk beside you for the rest of your life.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: You.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Carrie, for our chat, but mostly thanks for the books.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um that paragraph, I guess I've got goosebumps reading it, and I had goosebumps when I read it the first time, and I think that it's really it just wraps everything up from our chat.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you very much.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: This has been lovely, thank you.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you enjoyed my chat with Carrie Sackville as much as I enjoyed having it.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: I will drop a link to Carrie's website in the show notes.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: As she mentions, she's not particularly active on social media, but you can track her down if you like.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: There will also be a link in the show notes for all the details about my upcoming group program, Decide and Thrive.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: We kick off April 24th, so if you want in, make sure you sign up well before April 24th.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: Making the decision to leave a relationship, a marriage, moving through separation, divorce can be really lonely and isolating, and it doesn't have to be.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: Decide and Thrive is designed to support you through that loneliness and upskill you with all that you need to know to make the hard decisions, have the hard conversations, move through the hard stuff, to thrive on the other side, including learning to sit with loneliness and in solitude, which are different.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: As I said, link in the show notes to sign up for Design Thrive or to book a free intro call with me if you want to explore options or have a bit of a chat about the programme.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: As always, thank you for being here.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: Bye for now.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Sally Ann Hartnell, Relationship Coach, and you've been listening to Reflect, Reclaim, and Liberate.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: You can follow me on Instagram at Reflect Coaching, and if you can think of anyone who would love this episode, please, please share it with them.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'd also be so grateful if you'd follow the podcast and review this episode so we can get it in the ears of a whole lot more humans just like you who are ready to reclaim and liberate themselves in life and love.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you'll join me next time for another episode of Reflect, Reclaim, and Liberate.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: Until then.