Latest / Toxic Girls Zone / Why You Keep Your Ex Close Even When You've Moved On

Transcript

Why You Keep Your Ex Close Even When You've Moved On · Toxic Girls Zone

0:03
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome back. Or welcome if you're new. Grab something
0:07
Speaker 1: to drink. Get comfortable. Because today's episode is one of
0:10
Speaker 1: those ones where I'm going to need you to actually
0:12
Speaker 1: stay with me. Okay, I'm going to start this one differently.
0:15
Speaker 1: I'm putting the warning first right at the top before
0:17
Speaker 1: we do anything else. This episode is the one you
0:19
Speaker 1: send to your friend. You know the one. She and
0:21
Speaker 1: her ex are totally just friends. Nothing weird. It's very mature.
0:24
Speaker 1: They're both adults. She's fine about it, truly. You send
0:26
Speaker 1: this to her. But also, if you're her and you're
0:29
Speaker 1: already feeling a little twitch in your chest right now,
0:31
Speaker 1: this is for you too. It's for anyone who has
0:33
Speaker 1: ever typed, we ended things but we stayed close with
0:35
Speaker 1: the kind of confidence that doesn't quite convince even the
0:38
Speaker 1: person typing it. Right? That particular sentence, delivered a little
0:41
Speaker 1: too smoothly, a little too rehearsed. The pattern we're going
0:44
Speaker 1: to talk about today is called the door holder. And
0:46
Speaker 1: I want to say this now because it matters. It
0:48
Speaker 1: looks generous from the outside. It looks like emotional intelligence.
0:52
Speaker 1: It looks like you've done the work. Here's the thing
0:55
Speaker 1: about the door holder, and this is going to be
0:56
Speaker 1: the whole episode, so settle in. The ex-friendship always gets
0:59
Speaker 1: described as mature and adult and healthy, right? Always. By
1:02
Speaker 1: the person who still checks his profile twice a day.
1:04
Speaker 1: I'm not making that up. I've been that person. I've
1:07
Speaker 1: used the word mature about a situation that was, upon reflection,
1:10
Speaker 1: a grief avoidance operation running in a very nice trench coat.
1:12
Speaker 1: We're going to get into all of it. The warning stands.
1:15
Speaker 1: This is the one you sent to your friend. And
1:16
Speaker 1: if you are your friend, we're in this together, okay?
1:19
Speaker 1: Let's go. So you loved him. You genuinely did. And
1:24
Speaker 1: when it ended, keeping a thread to him felt like
1:26
Speaker 1: the kindest, least dramatic thing you could do. You told
1:28
Speaker 1: people it was mutual and it was mostly. You said
1:31
Speaker 1: you outgrew each other and you did mostly. So staying
1:34
Speaker 1: friends felt like proof. Proof that you weren't bitter, not messy,
1:37
Speaker 1: not one of those women. It felt evolved. It felt
1:40
Speaker 1: like something you could be proud of, actually. Like, look
1:43
Speaker 1: at me handling this gracefully, moving forward without burning anything down.
1:46
Speaker 1: You should be proud of that impulse. The part of
1:49
Speaker 1: you that wanted to be kind in the ending is
1:50
Speaker 1: genuinely a good part of you. Right? I'm not going
1:52
Speaker 1: to take that away from you. But here's the flip.
1:55
Speaker 1: And it's coming. So brace. Picture this. You still text
1:58
Speaker 1: him when something funny happens. Not every time. Just sometimes.
2:02
Speaker 1: Like when the thing is exactly his kind of funny.
2:04
Speaker 1: You still know his general schedule. Not because you're tracking it.
2:07
Speaker 1: You just know it. The way you know a song
2:09
Speaker 1: you used to play every day. And then one afternoon
2:11
Speaker 1: he posts with someone new a photo. Just the two
2:13
Speaker 1: of them somewhere with a caption that tells you nothing
2:15
Speaker 1: and everything. And you have feelings about it. Real ones.
2:19
Speaker 1: Not huge dramatic feelings. Just quiet, specific, private feelings that
2:23
Speaker 1: you definitely do not post about. You're aware of them
2:26
Speaker 1: for maybe 20 minutes and then you put your phone
2:28
Speaker 1: face down and get yourself a glass of water and
2:29
Speaker 1: think about something else. Yeah, we're going to sit with
2:32
Speaker 1: that for a second. And here's what you do every
2:35
Speaker 1: time someone raises an eyebrow at the friendship. You have
2:38
Speaker 1: a line ready. We have history. It doesn't just disappear.
2:41
Speaker 1: And that is true. History does not disappear. I'm not
2:44
Speaker 1: arguing with you on that. But there's a difference between
2:46
Speaker 1: honoring history and camping in it, right? Those are two
2:49
Speaker 1: genuinely different things. One is a choice to acknowledge what
2:51
Speaker 1: was real. The other is a decision to keep a
2:53
Speaker 1: version of the relationship alive in a form that doesn't
2:56
Speaker 1: ask anything of either of you. History can live in
2:58
Speaker 1: you without live updates. History can be honored without story views. Okay,
3:03
Speaker 1: here's another picture. And this one I need you to
3:05
Speaker 1: sit with honestly. You save his name in your phone
3:07
Speaker 1: under something neutral. Nothing special, maybe even his actual name
3:10
Speaker 1: with no context. Very clean, very normal. But you're aware
3:13
Speaker 1: you made that choice. And sometimes you say his name
3:15
Speaker 1: in a sentence near your partner and you watch for
3:17
Speaker 1: a reaction. Just a small one, just a flicker. You
3:19
Speaker 1: follow the reaction away. You're not sure why you do this.
3:22
Speaker 1: It's not malicious. It's just something you do, almost automatically,
3:25
Speaker 1: like checking the weather before you've consciously decided to. You
3:27
Speaker 1: notice it and you don't examine it. Okay? That noticing
3:30
Speaker 1: without examining is the whole thing. That's the door. Right there.
3:35
Speaker 1: Here's the flip, and I promised it, so here it is.
3:37
Speaker 1: You're not a bad person for holding on. That's the
3:39
Speaker 1: first thing. You're a person who hasn't finished the grief,
3:42
Speaker 1: and the friendship is the way you're avoiding finishing it.
3:44
Speaker 1: It's not friendship you want. It's a way to never
3:46
Speaker 1: fully let go. That's the central thing I'm going to
3:48
Speaker 1: ask you to hold today. So let it land. It's
3:50
Speaker 1: not friendship you want. It's a way to never fully
3:52
Speaker 1: let go. And you've been out here building a whole
3:54
Speaker 1: friendship infrastructure around a man you claim to be completely over,
3:57
Speaker 1: which is honestly very efficient of you. Very organized, very
4:01
Speaker 1: on brand for someone who handles things. We're going to
4:03
Speaker 1: get into why handling it is exactly the problem. So
4:07
Speaker 1: the real question, right? The one underneath all of this,
4:09
Speaker 1: it's not whether exes can be friends. Some can genuinely
4:12
Speaker 1: after real time and real grief and real change, where
4:15
Speaker 1: both people have actually moved into different versions of themselves.
4:18
Speaker 1: Some ex-friendships are the real thing. I'm not here to
4:20
Speaker 1: tell you all of them are fake. The question is
4:22
Speaker 1: what job you've given this particular friendship. That's the only
4:25
Speaker 1: question that matters, right? Not can exes be friends in theory,
4:28
Speaker 1: but what is this specific friendship doing for you on
4:31
Speaker 1: a Tuesday afternoon when you feel a little uncertain about
4:33
Speaker 1: your life? Is the friendship making your current life bigger?
4:37
Speaker 1: Is he in it because he genuinely adds something? Because
4:40
Speaker 1: you'd choose him fresh if you met him at a
4:41
Speaker 1: party last month. Because the friendship exists on its own
4:44
Speaker 1: terms outside of your shared history? Or is he a
4:46
Speaker 1: room you go back to when the present feels a
4:48
Speaker 1: little loud or a little unfamiliar? Is he a place
4:51
Speaker 1: to stand when you're not quite sure where you belong
4:53
Speaker 1: in the story you're currently living? Those are different things, right?
4:57
Speaker 1: And most door holders can't answer the first version cleanly.
4:59
Speaker 1: There's always a hesitation. Well, it's complicated that does the
5:03
Speaker 1: emotional math in real time and comes back with an
5:05
Speaker 1: answer that even the person saying it isn't fully buying. Honestly,
5:09
Speaker 1: it is complicated is the official slogan of every ex-friendship
5:12
Speaker 1: that's doing emotional labor in disguise. It should be embroidered
5:16
Speaker 1: on something. I have said it myself. Approximately 700 times.
5:20
Speaker 1: In my 20s. About someone I was not, in fact, over.
5:24
Speaker 1: Which brings me to the scenario, because I want you
5:26
Speaker 1: to see exactly what this looks like when it's running
5:27
Speaker 1: at full speed. It's a Sunday afternoon. You're on your
5:31
Speaker 1: balcony with your iced coffee, scrolling, not looking for anything
5:34
Speaker 1: in particular, just existing, and he sends you a meme.
5:37
Speaker 1: Same kind he always sent. Same exact energy, same specific
5:40
Speaker 1: niche of funny that you two shared, and you laughed
5:42
Speaker 1: the same way you always laughed. Not a performed laugh,
5:44
Speaker 1: a real one. And for a second, the whole timeline collapses.
5:48
Speaker 1: It's not this Sunday, it's a composite of every Sunday
5:50
Speaker 1: that ever had a minute, and it feels completely normal,
5:52
Speaker 1: completely fine, nothing to see here. Make sense? You type
5:57
Speaker 1: back fast, faster than you texted your best friend this morning.
5:59
Speaker 1: You notice that you type fast, and you don't examine it. Later,
6:02
Speaker 1: your partner asks who you were texting, and you say,
6:04
Speaker 1: just my old friend, and your voice is perfectly even.
6:07
Speaker 1: Perfectly even. No hesitation. No guilt. Just smooth and easy
6:10
Speaker 1: and accurate, technically. And your partner nods and goes back
6:13
Speaker 1: to whatever they were doing. And you feel fine about it.
6:15
Speaker 1: And you are. Mostly. Right? That evening, you're half watching
6:20
Speaker 1: a show and your partner is asleep in 12 minutes
6:21
Speaker 1: flat because that's just who they are. Honestly, I say
6:23
Speaker 1: this with love. 12 minutes every single time and you
6:26
Speaker 1: pick your phone back up. Not to text the ex.
6:28
Speaker 1: Just to check. Just to look at his stories. Just
6:31
Speaker 1: to see what he's up to. Just because you're curious
6:33
Speaker 1: and curious is a completely neutral thing to be. And
6:35
Speaker 1: the dog has stolen one sock and is sitting on
6:37
Speaker 1: the couch looking extremely pleased with himself while you justify
6:40
Speaker 1: your digital behavior to absolutely no one out loud. Yeah,
6:43
Speaker 1: the dog is not judging you. The dog simply has
6:46
Speaker 1: the sock and is satisfied with his choices, which is
6:48
Speaker 1: more than can be said for the rest of the apartment.
6:51
Speaker 1: The curiosity isn't nothing though, right? That's the thing. The
6:54
Speaker 1: curiosity is information. It's telling you that his life still
6:57
Speaker 1: has a claim on your attention. Not a dramatic claim,
7:00
Speaker 1: not a consuming one, just a low hum of monitoring
7:02
Speaker 1: that you've normalized because it's been running for long enough.
7:05
Speaker 1: And when something has a claim on your attention, you're
7:07
Speaker 1: not in the friendship stage. You're in the surveillance stage
7:09
Speaker 1: and you've been calling it friendship because that makes it
7:11
Speaker 1: feel okay. That's the door holder at full operation. One
7:15
Speaker 1: hand on your present life, one hand on the door handle,
7:17
Speaker 1: not closing it all the way, not opening it, just holding,
7:20
Speaker 1: just making sure it doesn't click shut. The dog is
7:22
Speaker 1: doing better than you. The dog has a clear goal
7:24
Speaker 1: and he's committed to it. The dog is not hedging. Okay,
7:28
Speaker 1: so here's my confession and I'm going to need you
7:30
Speaker 1: to not judge me or actually judge me a little.
7:34
Speaker 1: I deserve it. Right? What was actually happening was that
7:54
Speaker 1: I had not told my body it was over. I
7:56
Speaker 1: still knew his coffee order. I still knew when he
7:57
Speaker 1: had a hard week at work. I monitored, I parsed
8:00
Speaker 1: his tone and texts. Like I was looking for something
8:02
Speaker 1: buried in there, some signal, some opening. I reported all
8:05
Speaker 1: of this to my best friend, every detail, every shift
8:07
Speaker 1: in punctuation, every slightly warmer reply. And at some point
8:11
Speaker 1: she started giving my ex updates, a three word reply
8:13
Speaker 1: and nothing else. Something like, wow. Okay. Noted. And that
8:16
Speaker 1: was her very pointed way of saying she was completely
8:18
Speaker 1: done analyzing him with me. And I was on my
8:20
Speaker 1: own with that particular hobby. Eventually, she said it out loud,
8:24
Speaker 1: not unkindly, but with zero softening, the way only a
8:28
Speaker 1: best friend who loves you enough to risk it can.
8:30
Speaker 1: She goes, you're not his friend. You're his backup option
8:33
Speaker 1: who doesn't know she's the backup option. I was furious
8:35
Speaker 1: for four days, four full days. I was composing rebuttals
8:39
Speaker 1: in my head while I was in the shower, while
8:41
Speaker 1: I was commuting, while I was pretending to work. Then
8:44
Speaker 1: I reread our texts, mine and the ex's, and she
8:46
Speaker 1: was right. I was performing friendship while running a grief
8:48
Speaker 1: avoidance operation, and I had been doing it for eight
8:51
Speaker 1: months with real commitment. Sound familiar? It took me three
8:55
Speaker 1: years of weekly therapy and a shelf of journals before
8:57
Speaker 1: I understood what I'd actually been doing. I'd kept him
9:00
Speaker 1: close because closing the door meant admitting the relationship wasn't
9:02
Speaker 1: coming back. Not possibly, not someday, not if circumstances changed.
9:07
Speaker 1: Not coming back. The friendship was a comma in a
9:09
Speaker 1: story I was not ready to put a period on.
9:11
Speaker 1: And commas are so much softer than periods. You can
9:14
Speaker 1: always add another sentence after a comma. A period is
9:16
Speaker 1: a whole other thing, right? It's final. And I wasn't
9:19
Speaker 1: ready for final. I also, humiliatingly, once rearranged my entire
9:24
Speaker 1: afternoon to be at a coffee shop he'd mentioned being near,
9:27
Speaker 1: rearranged my schedule, showed up, got an iced coffee I
9:30
Speaker 1: didn't want, and I had the absolute nerve to call
9:33
Speaker 1: that a coincidence when I bumped into him. A coincidence.
9:36
Speaker 1: I engineered. I'm not okay. That was me. That was
9:39
Speaker 1: the doorholder in her full era, fully operational, completely certain
9:42
Speaker 1: she was just being spontaneous. Now let's go one layer deeper,
9:46
Speaker 1: because the confession is the surface and I want you
9:48
Speaker 1: to see what's underneath it. right? There's a feeling in
9:51
Speaker 1: the body that I want you to find. It's a
9:53
Speaker 1: tightness just below the sternum, somewhere between your ribs, almost
9:55
Speaker 1: like a held breath you forgot you were holding. Find it.
9:58
Speaker 1: It shows up when you actually imagine going dark. Deleting
10:01
Speaker 1: the thread, letting the whole thing go quiet and stay quiet.
10:04
Speaker 1: Not the dramatic version, just the quiet one. The click.
10:08
Speaker 1: And that tightness, that's the real information. That's not love
10:10
Speaker 1: for him. That's fear of the open space that would
10:12
Speaker 1: exist without him in it. Make sense? Here's the concept
10:16
Speaker 1: I want to name, and I'm only going to name
10:18
Speaker 1: it once because I don't want to turn this into
10:19
Speaker 1: a lecture. It's called shadow work. The shadow is the
10:22
Speaker 1: part of yourself you haven't looked at directly. The part
10:24
Speaker 1: that's operating in the background, running the show, while you're
10:27
Speaker 1: up front giving the speech about mature endings. The doorholder's
10:30
Speaker 1: shadow is the fear that she's not enough to be
10:32
Speaker 1: chosen without strategy, without management, without keeping the evidence file warm.
10:36
Speaker 1: If she closes the door fully, she has to face
10:38
Speaker 1: the open question of whether the next love will also leave.
10:40
Speaker 1: And this time there'll be no archive to prove she
10:42
Speaker 1: was once wanted, right? That's the shadow underneath the very
10:45
Speaker 1: evolved ex-friendship. The shadow underneath the door holder isn't, I
10:50
Speaker 1: love him. It's, I don't fully trust that I'm lovable
10:53
Speaker 1: without evidence. The friendship is the evidence file. It says
10:56
Speaker 1: someone chose me and I can prove it because he
10:58
Speaker 1: still texts back. He still responds. He still laughs at
11:00
Speaker 1: the same things. And that file feels necessary when your
11:03
Speaker 1: nervous system isn't entirely sure the present is safe enough
11:05
Speaker 1: to rest in. You know that feeling where the current
11:07
Speaker 1: relationship is good, actually good, and somehow that makes you
11:10
Speaker 1: more nervous, not less? Yeah. Yeah. That's when the archive
11:13
Speaker 1: gets the most traffic. The door holder also has a
11:17
Speaker 1: shadow belief that grief makes her weak. She probably grew
11:19
Speaker 1: up watching people hold it together. Maybe in her house,
11:22
Speaker 1: being fine was what earned you love. Being capable was
11:25
Speaker 1: what earned you space. So she skipped the ugly part,
11:28
Speaker 1: the part where you're just sad and it's not elegant,
11:30
Speaker 1: and went straight to the enlightened ex-friendship, which looks so
11:33
Speaker 1: much better, honestly. But grief doesn't care about your timeline
11:36
Speaker 1: or your aesthetic. It just waits. It waits in the
11:38
Speaker 1: contact card, in the story view, in the three-word text
11:40
Speaker 1: you send when something funny happens. It's been there the
11:43
Speaker 1: whole time. It's very patient. The shadow also schedules its
11:46
Speaker 1: revelations for two in the morning, which is extremely inconvenient,
11:49
Speaker 1: and I will never forgive it for that. And here's
11:52
Speaker 1: something I want you to sit with, because I think
11:53
Speaker 1: this one hits different. The door holder is in her head, managing, strategizing, monitoring.
11:59
Speaker 1: She has left her body entirely. She's not feeling the grief.
12:02
Speaker 1: She's organizing it. She has a working theory about the
12:04
Speaker 1: ratio of warm texts to distant ones, and she'd deny
12:07
Speaker 1: the spreadsheet exists if you asked her about it. But
12:09
Speaker 1: the spreadsheet is color-coded, and she knows it. That's masculine
12:12
Speaker 1: energy in the not helpful version. Directive, controlling, managing the narrative.
12:16
Speaker 1: What she's avoiding is the feminine part, the part that's receptive, present,
12:20
Speaker 1: willing to feel the thing all the way through. Genuine
12:22
Speaker 1: closure requires one moment of complete willingness to feel the loss.
12:26
Speaker 1: Not drama, not a breakdown, just all the way through
12:29
Speaker 1: instead of halfway through and then redirect to his stories.
12:31
Speaker 1: Can we see this? Your mom calls every Sunday. Warm, circling,
12:36
Speaker 1: always gets there eventually, takes about 45 minutes. And one
12:39
Speaker 1: of her favorite topics when I was in my 20s
12:41
Speaker 1: chasing men who were never quite available was I just
12:44
Speaker 1: don't want you to get hurt again. Every single time
12:46
Speaker 1: I mentioned someone new, it was love. I know that.
12:49
Speaker 1: It was also a way of never fully closing the
12:50
Speaker 1: door on the possibility that the last hurt was still alive.
12:53
Speaker 1: She was holding it open for me because she thought
12:54
Speaker 1: that was protection. Okay? She modeled something without knowing it.
12:59
Speaker 1: The way she talked about people from her past, not
13:01
Speaker 1: exes necessarily, but old friendships that went sideways, old dynamics
13:05
Speaker 1: that had ended. She kept them warm in conversation, kept
13:08
Speaker 1: updating the story. Added new details every Sunday like she
13:11
Speaker 1: was maintaining a file. Never quite filed them as finished.
13:14
Speaker 1: I watched that growing up and I thought it was loyalty.
13:16
Speaker 1: I thought it was the kind thing, the warm woman thing.
13:19
Speaker 1: I was wrong. It was her own door holding, applied
13:21
Speaker 1: to relationships of all kinds. She taught me, without either
13:24
Speaker 1: of us knowing it, that a full goodbye is a
13:25
Speaker 1: kind of abandonment. And she was not an abandoner. So
13:29
Speaker 1: I learned not to be one either. Right? My sister,
13:32
Speaker 1: who says exactly what she thinks, always, in every room,
13:35
Speaker 1: looked me in the eye last month during engagement party
13:37
Speaker 1: planning and goes... You're very good at keeping tabs on
13:40
Speaker 1: people you claim to be done with. She wasn't talking
13:42
Speaker 1: about the ex. She was talking about a work situation,
13:45
Speaker 1: but I felt it land somewhere else, somewhere a few
13:47
Speaker 1: floors below where she aimed it. My sister has a
13:49
Speaker 1: gift for that. One sentence, three rooms deep. I say
13:53
Speaker 1: this with love because I learned this pattern from the
13:54
Speaker 1: same Sunday phone call she did. We're both still doing
13:57
Speaker 1: some version of it and we both know it and
13:59
Speaker 1: we just make eye contact sometimes and say nothing. That's
14:01
Speaker 1: the whole therapy session right there. So who taught you
14:04
Speaker 1: that love and goodbye can't coexist, right? Who modeled the
14:08
Speaker 1: idea that keeping a thread was the kind thing, the
14:10
Speaker 1: loyal thing, the good woman thing? Because it came from somewhere.
14:12
Speaker 1: A dad who was hard to reach and kind when
14:15
Speaker 1: he was present teaches you that closeness is rationed. So
14:18
Speaker 1: you ration your exits too. A mom who stayed warm
14:21
Speaker 1: toward everyone taught you that warmth is the price of
14:23
Speaker 1: your self-concept. That being the woman who handles things gracefully
14:26
Speaker 1: is what makes you good. And either way you learn
14:28
Speaker 1: that a full goodbye is abandonment. And you're not an abandoner.
14:31
Speaker 1: So you stay. And you call it friendship. And you
14:34
Speaker 1: are doing the most loving version of something that is
14:36
Speaker 1: actually costing you quite a lot. Now, here's the cost
14:40
Speaker 1: written plainly. And I'm going to need you to actually
14:42
Speaker 1: hear this part, right? Every month you spend holding this
14:45
Speaker 1: door as a month, your current relationship is missing a
14:47
Speaker 1: fully present partner. Every check, every story view, every fast
14:50
Speaker 1: reply to a meme is attention redirected from the person
14:52
Speaker 1: who cooked you dinner tonight, who left a note on
14:54
Speaker 1: the coffee maker this morning, who asked about your day
14:57
Speaker 1: and actually waited for the answer. That attention has a destination.
15:00
Speaker 1: It's either here or it's back there. And you've been
15:03
Speaker 1: splitting it so smoothly for so long that it almost
15:05
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like a split anymore. It just feels like
15:07
Speaker 1: your life. Make sense? Three years after the breakup that
15:10
Speaker 1: broke me, I did the math, approximately. Years of therapy,
15:13
Speaker 1: journals filled, a whole shelf of books about attachment and
15:16
Speaker 1: patterns and why we do what we do. I had
15:18
Speaker 1: done the work on that relationship in enormous detail. I
15:21
Speaker 1: knew every chapter. I could have written the annotated edition,
15:24
Speaker 1: but I had done almost none of the work on
15:25
Speaker 1: the grief of closing it because I had never closed it.
15:28
Speaker 1: And grief that doesn't have somewhere to go just becomes
15:30
Speaker 1: a low-grade hum. It becomes the reason you pick up
15:32
Speaker 1: your phone at 11 at night. It becomes the reason
15:34
Speaker 1: you type fast. It becomes the infrastructure, right? The door
15:39
Speaker 1: holder doesn't feel like she's being unfair. She feels like
15:41
Speaker 1: a mature, loving woman who handles endings gracefully. That's the
15:45
Speaker 1: story she's living inside. But her partner, the calm one
15:48
Speaker 1: cooking in the kitchen, falling asleep in 12 minutes, leaving
15:50
Speaker 1: notes without any expectation of a response. That person is
15:53
Speaker 1: in a relationship with someone who has a whole other
15:55
Speaker 1: room in the house. A room she visits quietly, alone,
15:58
Speaker 1: and has not shown them. Not because she's a bad person,
16:02
Speaker 1: because she hasn't decided to leave the room yet. And
16:04
Speaker 1: that's what it costs. It costs presence. It costs the
16:07
Speaker 1: softness of being fully here. It costs the intimacy of
16:09
Speaker 1: a relationship where there's no archive running in the background.
16:12
Speaker 1: It also costs you the ability to watch a show
16:14
Speaker 1: without reaching for your phone, but that might genuinely be
16:17
Speaker 1: a different issue. I'm not sure. Let's keep moving. The
16:20
Speaker 1: hard truth, and I'm going to say it once, plainly,
16:23
Speaker 1: without softening it, because it doesn't need softening. You are
16:26
Speaker 1: allowed to grieve someone and also be done. Those two
16:28
Speaker 1: things can be true at the same time. Grief is
16:31
Speaker 1: not a reason to maintain contact. It's a reason to
16:33
Speaker 1: feel something and then put the phone down. The friendship
16:36
Speaker 1: you're maintaining is not for him. He may not even
16:38
Speaker 1: know he's playing this role. He's just a person answering texts.
16:41
Speaker 1: He's living his life. You are the one running the operation,
16:44
Speaker 1: building the infrastructure, maintaining the evidence file. He is not
16:47
Speaker 1: a participant in what you're actually doing. Right? He's just
16:50
Speaker 1: texting back. And here's the part that's going to be uncomfortable,
16:54
Speaker 1: so stay with me. The people in your life know.
16:56
Speaker 1: Not everything, not the details, but they have a sense
16:58
Speaker 1: of it. Your partner has a sense of it. It's
17:00
Speaker 1: in the slightly even voice when you say, just my
17:02
Speaker 1: old friend. Your best friend stopped asking, and best friends
17:05
Speaker 1: don't stop asking unless they've already decided what they think.
17:08
Speaker 1: Your sister said the quiet part during a completely different
17:10
Speaker 1: conversation and aimed it somewhere else on purpose. They see
17:13
Speaker 1: the door. They're all waiting for you to choose whether
17:15
Speaker 1: to close it. Not pressuring you, not demanding, just quietly
17:18
Speaker 1: aware that it's there and that you're still holding it. Okay?
17:21
Speaker 1: Here's what I want you to hear. Closing the door
17:24
Speaker 1: is not betrayal of the history. It's not cruelty. It's
17:26
Speaker 1: not being dramatic or messy or one of those women.
17:29
Speaker 1: It's finally deciding that the story ended, and that you're
17:32
Speaker 1: allowed to begin the next one with your whole self
17:33
Speaker 1: in it. Not most of yourself. Not your best self
17:36
Speaker 1: with one eye on the door. Your whole self. It's
17:39
Speaker 1: not friendship you want, it's a way to never fully
17:41
Speaker 1: let go. And letting go is the most powerful, most
17:44
Speaker 1: honest thing you could do with all the energy you've
17:46
Speaker 1: been spending on this very organized, very mature, very exhausting
17:49
Speaker 1: holding pattern. You have been managing this ending with the
17:52
Speaker 1: same energy you bring to reorganizing your closet at midnight.
17:56
Speaker 1: Extremely thorough. Completely unnecessary at this hour. Okay, so next.
18:01
Speaker 1: The other side of the door. What it actually looks
18:04
Speaker 1: like when you close it and the moves that get
18:06
Speaker 1: you there, right? Picture a reality dating show. I watched
18:11
Speaker 1: it ironically, obviously, because I am a very serious person.
18:13
Speaker 1: There was a woman who had her ex in the
18:15
Speaker 1: gallery at her ceremony with someone new because they were
18:17
Speaker 1: still close. Very mature, very adult, very healthy. She was
18:21
Speaker 1: crying at the altar and everyone thought it was joy
18:23
Speaker 1: and I watched her scan the room for him before
18:24
Speaker 1: she looked at the man standing right in front of her.
18:26
Speaker 1: I said out loud to my partner, who was already
18:28
Speaker 1: seven minutes from asleep, she has not closed the door.
18:31
Speaker 1: My partner, barely conscious, said, hmm, the dog had the sock.
18:35
Speaker 1: The whole apartment knew, right? So let me tell you
18:38
Speaker 1: what the other side actually looks like, because I think
18:40
Speaker 1: we've been sold a confusing version of it. Our enclosure
18:43
Speaker 1: isn't a dramatic goodbye scene. It's not a letter you
18:45
Speaker 1: write and then definitely send. It's not a conversation you
18:48
Speaker 1: have to manage and execute correctly. It's a quiet internal
18:51
Speaker 1: decision to stop feeding the thread, to feel the loss
18:53
Speaker 1: without organizing it, to let the archive go cold and
18:56
Speaker 1: stay cold. That's it. That's the whole concept. You can
18:59
Speaker 1: do it without telling him. You can do it without
19:01
Speaker 1: an announcement. It's private. It's yours. Sound familiar? The idea
19:05
Speaker 1: that something huge can happen completely silently, just inside you?
19:09
Speaker 1: The woman on the other side felt the grief. Not
19:12
Speaker 1: performed it. Not speed ran through it so she could
19:14
Speaker 1: get to the enlightened ex-friendship stage. She actually felt it.
19:18
Speaker 1: She cried about it on a Wednesday morning in the shower.
19:20
Speaker 1: Not because she was sad today, but because she finally
19:22
Speaker 1: gave herself permission to be sad about that chapter fully.
19:25
Speaker 1: She let it be heavy. she let it be a loss.
19:28
Speaker 1: And then because grief has an end when you actually
19:30
Speaker 1: let it move, it moved, right? The woman on the
19:33
Speaker 1: other side texts back infrequently, warmly, and without surveillance, or
19:37
Speaker 1: doesn't text back at all. And here's the thing she
19:39
Speaker 1: doesn't do. She doesn't then think for four days about
19:42
Speaker 1: which choice makes her seem more evolved. She just lives.
19:45
Speaker 1: She texts her she doesn't, and then she puts the
19:47
Speaker 1: phone down and feeds her almost dead plants and sits
19:49
Speaker 1: on the back with her coffee and that's the whole
19:51
Speaker 1: entire thing she brings her full attention to the person
19:55
Speaker 1: currently making dinner in her kitchen because there is no
19:57
Speaker 1: other room in the house there's just this apartment this
20:00
Speaker 1: balcony this very bad dog with a sock he's extremely
20:02
Speaker 1: smug about and this relationship that she decided to be
20:05
Speaker 1: entirely inside of she knows she's lovable without the evidence
20:08
Speaker 1: file She was chosen again, and she didn't need the
20:11
Speaker 1: archive to make it happen. She can feel that now
20:13
Speaker 1: because she stops putting her attention between a past that's
20:15
Speaker 1: finished and a present that's actually quite good. Yeah, it's
20:19
Speaker 1: quite good, actually. The plants are also doing better, by
20:22
Speaker 1: the way, once she started paying attention to what's actually
20:25
Speaker 1: in front of her. Which is either very symbolic or
20:27
Speaker 1: very literal. Probably both. I'm not going to claim I
20:30
Speaker 1: planned that. My plants are fine now. The dog still
20:33
Speaker 1: has opinions about the socks. We're all in progress. Okay,
20:37
Speaker 1: three moves. Not a dramatic unfriend. Not a letter. Not
20:41
Speaker 1: a conversation you have to manage. Three quiet internal moves.
20:44
Speaker 1: And here's a short dare to you to actually do them. Right?
20:48
Speaker 1: Move one. Name the job. Get out a piece of
20:50
Speaker 1: paper or your notes app and write down what the
20:52
Speaker 1: ex-friendship is actually doing for you. Not what it means
20:54
Speaker 1: to you. Not the history. Not we were together for
20:56
Speaker 1: two years. What job is it doing? Is it providing
20:59
Speaker 1: proof you're lovable? Is it giving you a container for
21:01
Speaker 1: the grief you haven't finished? Is it an anchor you
21:03
Speaker 1: reach for when the present feels too calm or too
21:05
Speaker 1: new or too real? Write the job title down like
21:08
Speaker 1: it's a position description. Office of Emotional Outsourcing. Director of
21:12
Speaker 1: proof that I was once chosen. It will be uncomfortable.
21:14
Speaker 1: Write it anyway, yeah? Move two. Feel the tightness. The
21:19
Speaker 1: next time you imagine actually going dark, deleting the thread,
21:23
Speaker 1: letting the whole thing go quiet, notice what happens in
21:25
Speaker 1: your body. That feeling below the sternum. Stay with it
21:29
Speaker 1: for two minutes. Don't text. Don't check. Don't narrate it
21:32
Speaker 1: to your best friend. Just sit with it and say
21:34
Speaker 1: out loud, I am grieving and that is allowed. The
21:37
Speaker 1: grief doesn't need his company to be valid. It just
21:39
Speaker 1: needs acknowledgement. It's been waiting for acknowledgement for however many
21:42
Speaker 1: months or years you've been calling it something else. Make sense?
21:47
Speaker 1: Move three. Redirect the surveillance. Every single time you reach
21:50
Speaker 1: for his stories, before you open them, ask yourself what
21:53
Speaker 1: you're actually avoiding in your present moment. Write it down.
21:56
Speaker 1: One sentence. I checked because I felt blank. Finish it honestly.
22:00
Speaker 1: Do that enough times and a pattern will emerge that
22:02
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with him and everything to do
22:03
Speaker 1: with what's happening in your actual life. That's the real information.
22:06
Speaker 1: He's not the information. You are. The dare is this.
22:11
Speaker 1: This week, pick one day and do not check. Not forever.
22:14
Speaker 1: Not a whole new life. One day. Notice what happens
22:16
Speaker 1: in your body when you don't. Notice where the attention
22:19
Speaker 1: goes instead. Notice whether anything falls apart. It won't. I
22:22
Speaker 1: promise you it won't. And I say that as someone
22:24
Speaker 1: who once rearranged her schedule to be near a coffee
22:26
Speaker 1: shop and called it a coincidence. So I know exactly
22:28
Speaker 1: what this costs and I know exactly what you get
22:30
Speaker 1: back when you stop. Right? Here's the part no one
22:33
Speaker 1: really tells you. The door doesn't have to slam. It
22:36
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be a scene. It can be a
22:38
Speaker 1: quiet click. It can be the decision, made privately on
22:41
Speaker 1: a Tuesday, to stop feeding the thread and start feeding
22:43
Speaker 1: the room you're actually standing in. That's it. Just stop
22:46
Speaker 1: feeding one thing and start feeding the other. No speech required. Now,
22:51
Speaker 1: who do you become on the other side of this?
22:53
Speaker 1: Because I want to paint you a real picture, not
22:55
Speaker 1: a fantasy. She's not cold-hearted. She's not someone who excised
22:58
Speaker 1: her past like it was a threat. She didn't do
23:01
Speaker 1: a ritual or make a vow or announce her growth
23:03
Speaker 1: on her stories. She's just someone who stopped letting the
23:05
Speaker 1: past run a second shift. Right? She trusts herself to
23:09
Speaker 1: be lovable without evidence. She doesn't need the text from
23:12
Speaker 1: the ex to confirm that she was worth choosing. She
23:15
Speaker 1: already knows. It's quiet and it's boring and it's the
23:17
Speaker 1: most profound thing I can tell you. Because for those
23:19
Speaker 1: of us who learned early that love is earned and
23:21
Speaker 1: closeness is rationed, boring and quiet, and certain is genuinely revolutionary.
23:26
Speaker 1: You know? She cries about the old stuff sometimes. In
23:29
Speaker 1: the shower, on a drive, when a song comes on
23:31
Speaker 1: that she didn't see coming. And then she gets on
23:34
Speaker 1: with it. She doesn't build infrastructure around the crying. She
23:37
Speaker 1: doesn't text him because the song came on. She just
23:39
Speaker 1: feels it and it moves through and she goes back
23:41
Speaker 1: to the apartment and the dog and the person who
23:43
Speaker 1: left a note on the coffee maker that says something
23:45
Speaker 1: unremarkable and entirely wonderful. She's fully there. Not halfway there
23:50
Speaker 1: with one eye on the door. Fully. There. She had
23:54
Speaker 1: to stop performing maturity about the ending and actually have
23:56
Speaker 1: the ending. That was the whole move. The performance was
23:59
Speaker 1: elegant and it looked great from the outside. So evolved,
24:02
Speaker 1: so adult, so healthy. But the actual ending was quieter
24:05
Speaker 1: and uglier and required her to just sit in the
24:06
Speaker 1: loss without managing it. And she came through. She also
24:10
Speaker 1: probably watches the reality dating show without any commentary, which
24:13
Speaker 1: is a level of inner peace I personally have not
24:15
Speaker 1: yet reached. I am still saying things to my partner
24:17
Speaker 1: who is asleep. I'm working on it. Baby steps. So
24:22
Speaker 1: here's where we land. It's not friendship you want. It's
24:25
Speaker 1: a way to never fully let go. And you are
24:27
Speaker 1: allowed to want that. The want makes total sense. It
24:30
Speaker 1: makes sense in your nervous system. It makes sense given
24:32
Speaker 1: what you learned about love. It makes sense given how
24:34
Speaker 1: good he probably was in the chapters that were good.
24:36
Speaker 1: But now you know what you're actually holding. And knowing
24:39
Speaker 1: changes things. It changes what you do with the next text,
24:42
Speaker 1: the next story view, the next moment you reach for
24:44
Speaker 1: the phone when the present feels a little too quiet. Right?
24:48
Speaker 1: The grief is not going to ruin you. You survived
24:50
Speaker 1: the original thing. You got through the end of the relationship,
24:53
Speaker 1: the rearranging of your life, the Sunday mornings that felt
24:56
Speaker 1: like a different language. You survived all of that. You
24:59
Speaker 1: can survive the full ending of it. The click of
25:01
Speaker 1: the door is so much quieter than you think. You've
25:04
Speaker 1: been bracing for a crash and it's actually just a sound,
25:06
Speaker 1: a small clean sound, and then the room is very
25:08
Speaker 1: still and very yours. Are you keeping this friendship because
25:12
Speaker 1: you genuinely enjoy who he is now or because the
25:15
Speaker 1: goodbye still scares you? I want you to sit with
25:17
Speaker 1: that today, not in a spiral, not in a long analysis,
25:21
Speaker 1: just honestly for 30 seconds in your body. You already
25:24
Speaker 1: know the answer. You've known it for a while. If
25:28
Speaker 1: this is the episode that finally said what someone in
25:30
Speaker 1: your life needed to hear, send it to her. Not
25:33
Speaker 1: with a message, not with context. Just send it. She'll
25:35
Speaker 1: know it's for her. Or she'll know it's for you.
25:38
Speaker 1: Either way, it lands where it needs to. And if
25:40
Speaker 1: you're her, I hope you feel seen and not called out.
25:42
Speaker 1: Because I've been exactly here, managing a very organized, very
25:46
Speaker 1: exhausting holding pattern. And I got out of it. And
25:48
Speaker 1: the room on the other side is warm and genuinely
25:50
Speaker 1: a lot more spacious. Close the door. All the way.
25:53
Speaker 1: And see who you are when both hands are free.
25:55
Speaker 1: Take care of yourself. I'll talk to you soon. This
25:58
Speaker 1: show is made by Obu Media.