February 26, 2026 • 55 mins
After toxic love, healthy love can feel surprisingly hard to recognise because you’ve likely learned to expect chaos, inconsistency, and emotional whiplash. In this episode, we unpack what toxic love actually looks like, how it shapes your beliefs about love in your 20s, and why calm, consistent connection can feel suspicious or even ‘boring’ when you’re used to intensity.
We explore:
• What toxic love is and how it intersects with abusive
• How this reshapes trust, pessimism, and your expectations of people
• The role of neurochemistry, addiction, and intermittent reinforcement in toxic bonds
• Self-sabotage and self-esteem
• The role of attachment patterns over time
• What healthy love and conflict actually feel like
• Practical ways to lean into safe love
If you’re conflicted between craving consistency or chaos, this episode is for you.
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The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the
Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through
the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and
what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back
(00:26):
to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is
so great to have you here. Back for another episode
as we of course break down the psychology of our twenties. Today,
we are talking about a pain I think a lot
of us carry around in our twenties, but really, at
any age, at any age, you can have this deep
sadness and frustration around how do I love again when
(00:49):
I've been hurt so badly in the past, how do
I love again when I have learned that love is
not something that I can trust, And just saying that,
there's so much hurt in those states. There's so much
pain and trauma in those statements, especially when the love
you've experienced in the past has been toxic. I think
this goes beyond heartbreak. It goes beyond somebody you know
(01:11):
you and somebody else just not working out. There is
this reprogramming that occurs when you experience toxic love. It
changes how you interpret every single detail, every single thing
somebody does. It changes how you respond to closeness or
even how safe you feel with somebody when they're kind
(01:32):
to you and when they do everything right and when
they are the one. It can just train your body to,
even after a relationship is over, associate love with panic
and love with hostility, so that when maybe one day
you meet somebody who is very calm and lovely, instead
of feeling bliss and instead of feeling safe, you just
(01:53):
feel suspicious and you just feel restless, like you're waiting.
You're waiting for the catch, You're waiting for something to
go horribly wrong. I've been there myself in my relationship
before I met Tom. You know, it really did something
to me. Sometimes it felt like love was just something
(02:16):
that could be manipulated and taken advantage of. That's what
that relationship left me feeling. And when I met Tom Tho,
those past experiences really caused me to be really suspicious,
very suspicious. So I kind of wanted to, i don't know,
reflect on my own experience in a way and bring
that to this episode on experiencing healthy love after toxic love.
(02:38):
What we're going to explore is what toxic love does
to your nervous system, what it does to your self esteem,
to your biological wiring, to your attachment patterns, and then
as well how we can slowly, practically relearn how to
(02:59):
feel safe and how to feel excited by the potential
of a relationship. So, without further ado, it's going to
be a big episode. Strap in, let's get into it.
So the first big question of the day, what does
toxic love actually look like? There is no Oxford Dictionary
(03:21):
definition for this. I'm sure you guys probably don't even
need me to describe it. You know what you felt it.
But it basically just represents a relational or a relationship
dynamic that is consistently and insidiously harmful to your well being.
It's not necessarily about one person being evil or about
(03:44):
the occasional argument. It is often about a pattern of
things like chronic invalidation, emotional inconsistency, jealousy, contempt, nastiness, betrayal
that makes you feel very small, and that there's just
a part of you that feels, even in those moments,
(04:06):
that this isn't how you're meant to be treated. In
toxic relationships, there will likely be repeated to cycles of
rupture without repair, or kind of emotional chaos that makes
you feel destabilized and very insecure. It's never resolved. You
just either stop thinking about it or you move on
(04:27):
to the next thing. It's very intense, it's very time consuming, emotional,
emotionally consuming, and it's very hard to leave. Not because
you're scared, although that can be a part of it,
but sometimes just because you're really actually hooked on the
highs and lows and kind of in a way you're
addicted or you're hooked to this like potential. It's the
(04:51):
hope that really kills you in these situations. It's the
hope that keeps you hanging around, Hope that it's going
to get better, hope that it's going to transform into
the thing you want it to be. You might be thinking, ah,
a lot of huh, A lot of that sounds like abuse,
just with a less intense name. And that's a really
valuable point. So let's quickly discuss the difference here, abusive
(05:13):
love or just straight up abuse. Cut the love part.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Just abuse.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
It's fundamentally about power and about control. It's again a
pattern where usually one person's autonomy gets eroded over time,
and the other person is the one who obviously does
that erosion, but they might toor your phone. They isolate
you from friends, they control your money, they make threats,
(05:41):
they coerce you into things, they intimidate you, they emotionally
punish you for any signs of independence. That's really what
abuse looks like. And toxic love and abusive or just
abuse can definitely overlap. But I think toxic loves it's
like sits a little bit below. Some relationships are toxic
(06:04):
but not abusive. It's just two people with poor boundaries,
two people with poor conflict skills, lots of insecurity, lots
of reactivity, people who hurt each other but aren't necessarily
engaging in a pattern of domination. And some relationships also
worth acknowledging, begin as toxic and then slide into abuse,
(06:29):
slide into fear and control and coercion. But I think
a lot of us live in that messy middle, relationships
that are just tumultuous, where there's just true people whose
needs and wants are different, and one person is really
putting themselves more in the middle, and one person is
really calling more of the shots not to dominate you.
(06:51):
Maybe to dominate you, but more so just because there's
a selfishness there and there's a lack of communication there,
and it's just messy and there's not a clear definition
of what exactly is going wrong, but you know that
something is. I think what's difficult is that we look
at those kinds of situations and because they're not abusive,
(07:14):
we don't want to sound dramatic or make too big
of a deal of them or the way that they've
impacted us. But they do still leave a mark, and
toxic love leaves psychological wounds pretty deep ones. It can
really significantly change how you see love, especially if it
is in your twenties. It's not something to kind of
(07:35):
be brushed aside. Your twenties are already very much dictated
by high change. They are a high learning stage of life.
People often think that childhood is our most malleable time.
It definitely is for some things, but your relationship blueprint
continues to develop into adulthood, and especially in your twenties,
(07:57):
it can be shifted. When a relationship, I don't know
how I can word this, but when it doesn't have
a stable center, when it doesn't have a stable core,
it can throw you off your mark and scramble what
you think love should be. Basically, I think when two
stories are being told about love at the same time
(08:17):
in the same relationship, one where you feel good and
the second story where you feel terrible, and they keep
switching and you keep thinking this is amazing and I
feel safe, and then I feel exhausted and I feel
dismissed and I feel like I'm not wanted and I
feel terrible. They come into conflict and they clash, and
(08:37):
your brain only wants one story to be true, so
it doesn't really know what a place, what's going on,
and it doesn't really know I guess how to adapt
your expectations of love Accordingly, there's just a lot going
on that kind of scrambles our blueprint. The biggest impact
of this is that it can lead us to normalized
dysfunction and almost emotionally just or emotionally rebrand a tumultuous
(09:04):
kind of relationship as exciting simply as a way to
endure it, meaning that eventually again, when we do encounter
this healthy, safe love and it doesn't contain those rapid
ups and downs, it can feel really boring because it
contradicts what we've come to expect sometimes, you know, after chaos,
(09:25):
And I've seen this in so many people's relationships that
I know stability feels really just dull, not because healthy
love is dull, but because you've learned to associate love
with intensity and with stimulation and excitement. These relationships include
so many highs and so many lows. And that pattern
(09:48):
is very similar to the pattern that most addictive substances
rely on to get you hooked. This pattern of stress, intensity,
and then euphoria and relief at consuming the substance or
experiencing the stimulus, and then it eventually plummets back. The
relief is gone. You're scrambling for a higher dose. This
(10:10):
is why toxic love and I think addictions sometimes go.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Hand in hand.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
There is a real neurochemical level to it. It's exhausting,
but it's also familiar, and more importantly, it can really
interrupt and harm the part of your brain that deals
with the interpretation of danger, that deals with fear, that
deals with regulating heightened emotions. There's a concept in polyvagal
(10:41):
theory called neuroception, which basically talks about how your body
is constantly or unconsciously in a state where it can
detect threats, So essentially, at any given time, there is
always a part of you that's going to be able
to sense danger. The thing is is that when people
feel safe, that reaction, those reactions are down regulated, so
(11:07):
they're not taking up all your mental, physical, cognitive resources.
Your body's able to stay mobilized, You're able to stay
in the present, You're able to feel safe. After trauma,
after something like a really intense relationship, especially one that
felt very harmful, neuroception can become just regulated, so you
(11:28):
perceive danger and you perceive this intensity as the new normal.
Even in safe situations, your body remains in that heightened
state of alertness and that becomes basically your new equlibrium.
Your new equilibrium is one whereby everything feels like at
(11:48):
any given moment it could turn terribly wrong. And the
research does show again, just to nail this point home again,
after experiencing relation or trauma, people struggle, because of neuroception
and because of many other processes, to read safety correctly,
and often they will confuse safety with something else. A
(12:10):
twenty twelve paper in the journal Neuropharmacology actually suggests that
people with PTSD, for example, struggle to downregulate or switch
off fear and anxiety responses, and so because this low
level of anxiety becomes the new normal, when safe situations
(12:31):
come along, sometimes those can actually feel the most scary
because they are so counter to what is familiar. Sometimes
the healthy, safe relationship can feel the most bizarre and
terrible and fearful because it's so different, it's so different
from what you expect. You don't have to have experienced
(12:52):
or have PTSD for this to be the case. My
point is just that, essentially, when your brain has learnt
that in the relationship, in the relational context, closeness is dangerous,
it becomes harder to feel safe even when you are safe,
because that doubt is your insurance, and the feeling of
(13:13):
safety is not normal and therefore feels unsafe, uncanny, and
so you interpret even the most harmless, wonderful situations as
things that are threats. Someone predictable comes along, someone who
doesn't play games, someone who is just really into you,
and you think this is a fantastic They give you
all the reassurance you need, they give you everything you need,
(13:36):
and then your nervous system cuts in, and because it's
so used to scanning embracing and suddenly there is nothing wrong.
That feeling of peace is unfamiliar, and that feeling of
peace can feel I know, I've said uncanny the most times,
but can be anxiety inducing in its own way. So
(14:01):
what that basically means is that after toxic love, you
are approaching healthy love and the potential for healthy love
with an entirely new perspective and with an entirely new
I don't want to say brain, but set of neurological
and psychological habits that mean you can't and you feel
(14:24):
like you cannot always trust your judgment of the person
in front of you, or your judgment of the situation
you're in. There's also the combined element here of perhaps
the chronic invalidation and the instability you most likely experienced
in your last relationship that has probably conditioned you to
(14:44):
distrust your own perceptions and experiences in these kind of
dating scenarios. There's this weird I guess hindsight bias that
occurs in these situations where we look at the past
knowing how it's turned out, and we wonder why our
past selves couldn't have foreseen this and didn't know, which
(15:06):
is ridiculous because they hadn't lived it yet. But this
hindsight bias causes us to begin to question whether our
judgment is broken, and therefore, as a result, it causes
us to mistrust anyone and everyone in a kind of
better safe than sorry, I guess kind of way. It's
honestly so twisted. It's so twisted that you have to
(15:29):
experience this and that this is kind of this is
what love feels like now, and I'm sorry, it's really
really sucky.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I remember my.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Boyfriend when we first started dating. I must have had
some I guess it must have been a work achievement.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
I can't remember.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
That's bad for me. But something really big had happened.
And he sent me this like big box of sunflowers
to my office. And this was when I had an
office with some of my friends, some of my best friends,
and they were all gosh, they were like, this guy
is amazing, this.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Guy is so great for you.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
And I was like looking at these flowers, and I
just couldn't help but think, like, what's this guy's angle,
Like what's this sick go up to you?
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Like what's he buttering me up for? Like? Look at
this love bombing going on here?
Speaker 1 (16:18):
It just I feel like I was at that stage
where I hadn't been with my ex for years, and
in that moment, I had such a wave of anger
towards him, like you're going to fuck this up as
well and you're not even here, Like you have created
these reactions and these patterns now in me, and am
I going to sabotage this incredible thing because of you,
(16:40):
like because of the past. And there was definitely this
distance between me and Tom in the early days, and
I'm so glad he could see that for what it was,
which was not disinterest but caution. And I know a
lot of people have a similar experience. This amazing person
is in front of you and you're like, what's the catch.
I guess what I'm saying is that after toxic love,
(17:02):
really what it is is that having hope feels irresponsible
because you had hope before and look where it got you.
And it's not a nice feeling being that pessimistic because
you probably want that pessimistic. Before this last person, you
probably really believed in love. And if you're going through
that now, I know it can be very hard.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
It can be.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Very hard to feel like either they're gaslighting you, or
you're gas slighting yourself. But I promise it does most
certainly get better. The other thing, and probably the final
thing I'll touch on here, The other thing toxic relationships
can do to you is that they literally change your
(17:45):
attachment style, even if you're an adult, even if you're
in your twenties or you're in your thirties or your forties.
I know a lot of us try to categorize ourselves
into three prescribed you're either anxious, you're avoidant, or you're secure.
And we box ourselves into these based on how we
(18:09):
learnt about relationships growing up, and we kind of assume
and we talk about our attachment style as though it's
completely fixed and unchangeable after childhood. It's formed in childhood.
It's impacted by childhood only. That's what the original theory
by Bolby and Ainsworth says. And then once you're eighteen,
(18:32):
you're locked in for life. If you're insecure, you're insecure
for life. If you're secure, you're secure for life. And
that's just the cards you're dealt. But your attachment style
isn't fixed. It's actually influenced by relationship experiences across your life,
across time and a toxic experience can shift your system radically,
(18:56):
almost overnight. You know. It's also really interesting. There's actually
I read this paper recently. There's research showing that attachment
security and your attachment style can actually fluctuate, not just
day to day, but depending on the person that you're with. Essentially,
(19:18):
your attachment style can be different just for one singular relationship.
Which sounds preposterous, but you could be secure in all
other relationships, in your friendships, in your previous relationships with
your parents, But with this one single person, this toxic love,
(19:38):
suddenly you have all these anxious traits, all these avoidant traits.
You are terrified just for them nobody else. One study
I cited actually in my book and I still cited
a lot, talks about how those early experiences of your
attachment style being shifted by one singular relationship can take
(20:00):
somebody who has had an overflowing amount of love in childhood,
who is deeply cared for, and just completely twist them
into someone who I don't know, acts like the survivor
of childhood trauma, especially if this was their first relationship
or their first significant relationship. Parents aren't the only one
(20:22):
and aren't the only blueprint for how we think love
should look. Young love Early love is also a milestone
and is also a core bonding and learning experience that can,
I guess, twist your interpretation of.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
The behaviors that are normal.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
In a relationship and what a relationship should make you
feel like.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Should it make you.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Feel safe and happy or should it make you feel
anxious and hostile. If you've noticed yourself becoming more anxious
and more hypervigilant after being in a relationship that was
chaotic or with somebody who was just like impossible to read,
it's likely that you know this is what's happening to you.
(21:08):
Your nervous system has been changed by that relationship. Your
attachment system has been changed by that relationship, and your
attachment system is doing what it has evolved to do.
It is trying to teach you how to best bond
with other people so that you don't get hurt. And
in this situation, you were hurt. That doesn't mean that
every situation is going to be like that, but this
(21:29):
is why your brain learns to prevent things from the
past happening again, and it makes generalizations. It makes you
believe that every other love you're going to encounter in
your life must look the same. But I think that
if our attachment style and our nervous system and all
these other bonding systems can change to become more alert
(21:51):
and more anxious and more avoidant, it's only right and
it only makes sense that they can also change in
the other direction, and that when the right person comes along,
or maybe not even the right person, just a really
kind person comes along, that can shift us into being
more secure and feeling safer as well. Relationships can also
(22:13):
increase a sense of security over time. There is so
much evidence out there that partners can actually co regulate
each other that healthy love, if we push through maybe
some of the feelings of boredom or feelings of fear
and anxiety over the past, healthy love can heal us
(22:34):
in a very unique way. And I know there's definitely
this like ongoing narrative that anything you don't heal before
a relationship will harm that relationship. But I also think
that I don't know. I just don't always believe that.
I think love is very healing, and sometimes the wounds
(22:55):
left by previous situations, Sometimes the wounds left by love
can be treated by nothing else, not to be like
poetic about it. But you know that is the thing
that we'll I don't want to say fast track you're healing,
but I think that it's something that can be very
beneficial if you've gotten to the state of pessimism and
(23:17):
hostility towards relationships. Not to say get back out there
and get back on the horse, but sometimes the thing
that you're avoiding doing the most, and the thing that
you fear the most, and the reason you fear relationships
the most, is the reason you should get back out there.
So as not to maintain this avoidance and so as
not to further indoctrinate this narrative in yourself that the
(23:40):
only kind of love I'm going to experience is the
unhealthy kind, and the only kind of people out there
are the kinds that will hurt me or will hurt others.
I'm telling you that is not the case. I'm telling
you there are brilliant people yet to be discovered by
you and many others. So what does that feel like?
What does healthy love feel like? And how can we
(24:03):
actually lean into that without like trying to fix ourselves
with a relationship, because that's definitely not what I'm saying.
How can we just get some exposure to healthy love
and know it when we see it. That's what we're
going to be exploring after this short break. Once you
(24:24):
understand what toxic love has trained in you, I think
the next question or reminder I guess, is what does
healthy love actually feel like? And how do we practice
recognizing it and staying in it long enough for our
body to believe it and to believe that we are safe.
I know you guys hopefully know a lot of this,
(24:47):
so not to sound I don't want to sound patronizing.
You don't want to sound patronizing or anything like that.
But just because we have to, let's do a mini
checklist of sorts around what.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Is healthy love?
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Like a checklist that you could sit in front of
somebody and be like, is that what we've got going
on for us here? First up, healthy love is not
built on guessing. If you ever ever have to guess,
does this person want to be with me? Does this
person see us going in the same direction? Why haven't
they labeled it? Why don't they like me back? Text
(25:22):
me back? Why won't they include me in their plans?
And you don't feel like you can clarify that's not
healthy love. You guys aren't in a relationship like you do,
not have the essential ingredient. Yes, people take their time
in relationships and people move at different speeds, but that
position should be communicated, and so should their reasons. It's
(25:46):
literally the most cliche thing you will see in every
marriage book, every relationship book. Communication is key. It's not
that they won't commit right now. It's not that they
don't know where you, guys, are going, it's that they're
willing to talk to you about it.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
There is no confusion.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
The other thing healthy love or the beginnings of healthy
love will often show you as well, is that this
communication we're talking about doesn't always have to end in
an argument or something that's emotionally twisted or uncomfortable. I
think that does actually become especially clear during these kinds
of early on what are we, what are we doing here?
(26:28):
What do you want from me? Kind of conversations. When
you have these conversations, I think a lot of the time,
toxic love may have conditioned you to expect this rupture,
this blow up, this dismissiveness, this silence lies icing you out.
You know, all these things that you've seen in the past.
You begin to expect it. So a lot of the time,
(26:49):
I think we go into these conversations with a new relationship,
in a new relationship with a lot of apprehension and
nerves and anxiety, and then when nothing happens, when it's
all calm and respectful, we're a bit like, huh, is
that what that's meant to feel like? Honestly, sometimes that
can feel like a trap, like, oh, we've sorted this
(27:10):
argument out, They've given me all the information I need
to know. Where's the rest of this? Where's the rest
of the drama? The thing about healthy love is that
sometimes when you are arguing and when you are communicating
and you're expecting the worst and the worst doesn't come,
it's weird. It doesn't give these emotions a place to
(27:31):
go because those emotions didn't belong in that space to
begin with. But in the aftermath, like you've come in
so hot and expecting something so terrible, sometimes it can
feel like you are unconsciously the one who is escalating
things and like suddenly you're the toxic one in the relationship,
if that makes sense, because I don't know, if there's
this whole stored up fear and anticipated anger that doesn't
(27:58):
have an outlet. That was my experience at least, like
I had to learn how to fight with my partner.
I felt like when I entered this relationship, I was
spreading patterns from my past relationship because that was my
operating manual. And it made me feel like, in the beginning,
at least, like am I the toxic one? Am I
now becoming the person who previously hurt me. Some people
(28:20):
call these survival behaviors. Some people call it emotional reactivity.
I think the best label for this is just predictive processing.
Your brain operates on a set of expectations determined by
prior experiences, and it's constantly trying to predict what's going
to happen, what's coming for me, what's this fight going
(28:41):
to end up like? And so it gets your body
already and all hyped up for that situation, that anticipated situation,
and then when it never comes, there's such a crash.
There's a lot to unlearn because you basically have to
stop predicting the worst case scenarios and the worst outcome,
and you have to remain open to a better scenario,
(29:03):
which can leave you feeling really vulnerable and really unprepared.
When you're walking into these conversations with Hope being like,
I really think I know, but what if I don't know?
And what if I should anticipate this worst case scenario.
But I think the beautiful thing about healthy love is
that you come into it maybe with fear, and then
you come down together, you emerge knowing each other more honestly.
(29:27):
And I really hope he doesn't mind me saying this,
but some of the moments I've just felt closest to
Tom have been in the days after a fight, because
I feel like he knows me better and I know
him better because everything was so raw, it was so honest.
I never felt that way with any of my exes.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Never.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
It was just panic, panic for days. And I remember
I used to mute their messages and then unmute them
and then mute them again, and I would turn my
phone off and I would like check it again and
just just in case the messaged me. And it was
this whole toxic pattern of like, I knew that getting
into a fight and bringing things up would mean that
(30:10):
we wouldn't talk for days, and it would always feel
like my fault. You know, this one particular X I'm
thinking about I remember he literally forgot it was my
grandfather's funeral, and that was my fault. I remember saying,
and I've said the story so it doesn't hurt anymore.
But I remember telling him I loved him, and he
told me he was going on a date with somebody else,
(30:31):
and we had this big argument, and that was my fault.
I remember, like, if he had an emotional outburst, if
he said something rude, that was still my fault. How
I don't know. I always justified it back then that
it was but healthy love. On the other hand, you know,
it's just it's just very easy, and it's very quiet,
and there isn't.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
This blame game.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Sometimes people describe it as feeling because of that, like
almost too calm, like something is missing, it's too and
that can bring up a lot of anxious questions about
settling and questions about compatibility, like shouldn't there be a spark,
shouldn't I feel electricity? Isn't the fighting a sign that
we like each other, that we're willing to push through together.
(31:15):
But I always used to question that, and I still
question that. You know, was it really a spark or
was it just anxiety masquerading as excitement. Was it really
a spark? Or like, is this just this feeling of
anticipation without resolution? Is this is this really a spark?
Or were just fighting all the time? This thing that
you think you're missing with this new person, I don't
(31:38):
think it's a connection, because there's obviously something that's keeping
you in this healthy relationship. I think what you're missing
when you feel this like boredom or like is this
person not the one? Because we're not arguing and there
it's not that passion. What you're missing is adrenaline. What
you're missing is hypervigilance. And I think the funny thing
about hypervigilance is that it can feel remarkable, like presence
(32:01):
and like you're really in tune with the other person.
Because that's what hypervigilance does. It keeps your nervous system
and your attentional systems on high alert, picking up on
everything that's not love. Though that's not love. That intensity
is not the only thing that can make a relationship survive.
(32:24):
Here are some things that it does need. Here's that
continuation of that list we were talking about, what does
healthy love feel like? Healthy love, amongst all those other
things we've said, is also not conditional. It is not
conditional on you being good or behaving in the right
way to receive attention, or they only treat you right
(32:45):
if you do what they want you to, or they
only treat you right or give you what you need if.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
You don't ask for too much.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
It is not conditional on some kind of behavior that
works best for them. It's also a situation where there
is a quality. One person doesn't have more of the power,
one person isn't the one calling the shots. And you
know that, you know that like each of you comes
in equal. There is not somebody in this situation who
(33:12):
could completely destroy the other person because they are completely unattached.
And there's not one person who is in the situation
who is willing to give everything and get nothing in return.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
It's equal.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
There is equal investment, there is equal time spent, there
is equal yeah, disrespect, And I also just think it's
meant to be fun. You know, healthy love isn't always easy.
It's not like you don't have these bumps. It's not
like you don't occasionally have doubts.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Even looking at.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Your parents, for example, if your parents are still together,
or your grandparents, or if you think of an example
of healthy love in your life, Like there are still
things that sometimes go wrong, but you are actually at
the end of the day enjoying yourself in that relationship
authentically and you feel like you can be here is
something a therapist friend of mine actually reminded me that
(34:05):
we have to be aware of though sometimes those things,
all those examples of healthy love I just gave, they
actually lose their appeal after toxic love. They don't feel
the same way. They don't have the same kind of drive.
We don't have the same drive towards them. Our I
don't want to say our desire systems, but like our
(34:27):
preferences after toxic love in many ways can change. And
that's you're definitely not responsible for how someone treated you,
especially when you were so ready to give them everything
and you were so invested in the relationship, Like, you're
definitely not responsible for that. But sometimes those experiences can
(34:48):
actually change what we find ourselves attracted to, just based
on on patterns and what feels known. Research, including a
recent paper published just last year, tells us that we
love what feels familiar, and so if what is familiar
is hot and cold behavior, if what is familiar is passionate,
(35:13):
all consuming chemistry, and not much else. If what is
familiar is major highs and major lows and the promise
of potential and the promise of the chase. Sometimes, guess what,
sometimes you can continuously feel drawn to that, even if
rationally you know better. It's just your brain being both
(35:39):
having adapted to this new kind of love and also
feeling compulsively drawn to it because of how comforting it
feels because it has the manuscript and it has the
manual for that healthy love. It doesn't have the manual
for that, or maybe it did before, but it's kind
of lost. It's that kind of feel outdated to you.
(36:01):
So the last thing, if the last thing you experienced
was this toxic situation, of course you're gonna feel drawn
to that because at least you know how it ends,
and at least you know how the storyline goes. I
will also say, and this is a hot take I have,
I honestly think that people who are very intelligent and
are high achievers are often more susceptible to that kind
(36:24):
of chase me hard to get type behavior because they
are used to feeling like if everyone else can have it,
it's not worth having and they're used to this feeling
of like, if something is really worth it, it will
make me chase it a little bit and it should
be a little bit out of reach to test me.
(36:45):
And so sometimes those relationships that feel very like based
on potential that ask you to work, they it feels
like they're just asking you to work a little bit harder,
and it feels like they're more desirable because you can't
get it easily. And it's like this weird I don't know,
capture or like achievement drive you have, Like why would
(37:05):
I want the easy thing when the hard thing? Surely
it's going to be more valuable because it's making me
work harder, like that effort is a sign of value.
This may be a hard truth to swallow, but as
much as you should be cognizant of other people's intentions
when you are encountering or dating again after toxic love,
you also have to question your own intentions as well.
(37:27):
Are you just replicating what you have experienced in the past,
Are you just self sabotaging here? Are you just giving
or are you not giving the right people a chance
because of past patterns and what you've learned from previous relationships.
You have to be aware of other people's behavior, definitely,
but you also have to be aware of.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
How you're maybe behaving.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
And I think a big part of that is just
giving yourself more time to date, slowly giving yourself time.
I'm to be honest, this person I'm falling for, do
they match the old blueprint or the new blueprint for
healthy love that I'm setting for myself? Are there behaviors
the kind that I really want in a partner or
(38:14):
just the kind that I'm used to after toxic love?
You know, there is this real urgency often this real
sense of like.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Pedal to the metal to like.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Lock down a relationship, or like as soon as you
meet somebody you really like to push for commitment. You know,
you feel like you want to fuse very quickly. You
feel like, you know, maybe you've been strung along in
the past, this previous relationship was really hard on you.
So anything that can give you a sense of reassurance
that this person isn't going to do that Constantly texting,
(38:47):
constantly sharing, becoming exclusive, immediately being really vulnerable, that can
create like this artificial connection and closeness so that you know,
unconsciously you know they won't walk away. That's a real
habit I see. Or you like find yourself kind of
playing games, or not even games, but like being very protective,
(39:09):
or like doing things that you know you shouldn't be
doing just because of anxious patterns. You have to be
aware of that, and you have to be able to
interrupt that before it becomes a more entrenched pattern of behavior.
Let's just try getting to know somebody across time and
very very slowly. Let's just take how you would normally
approach that relationship and dial it back a few paces
(39:33):
and a few kilometers just after toxic love. If you
meet the right person, if you meet a person who
you think is really great, appreciate and pursue the slow burn,
and treat it almost like you are gathering information or
that you are conducting kind of like a study in
(39:53):
those first couple of weeks or months.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
As well as dating, I think a.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Helpful way to safeguard yourself from this like zero to
one hundred love bond in the early stages of dating
is to actually just break up time between your dates
and to just not make them the center of your
whole world. If you've been conditioned into thinking that the
(40:22):
only worthwhile connection is an immediate one, and is those
intense bonds where like your mind is immediately sure they're
the right person and filled with hope, and you're excited
by them, and you spend all your time with them,
and it's just like this incredible passionate fire. Try your
(40:43):
hardest to space out the dates, try your hardest to
just really give yourself the time to reality check. Is
that really what's happening here? Or is it just the
passion of a new beginning. Leave at least a four
between dates, and during that week, especially in the early months,
(41:05):
continuously ask yourself. Do I feel more like myself around them?
Do I feel like I have to change anything about myself?
Do I feel grounded? Or do they make me feel anxious?
Do they make me feel very low? And is that
them or is that me projecting? Do I feel calm
(41:26):
or do I feel frantic? What is it about the
relationship that is making me feel either of those things?
But especially if you're feeling frantic, work to identify. And
this is something I definitely had to do. Am I
feeling frantic just because love is scary these days? Or
am I feeling frantic because of something in their behavior
that's creating that in me. And also, and this is
(41:48):
a big question to ask yourself, are you actually into them?
Are you actually curious about them? Or are you just
chasing assurance? Is it just because you like the attention?
Is it just because they like you back? Give yourself time,
(42:09):
time to actually sit on the answers and the truth
of the relationship. Then later, you know, if things move
into a more established thing, follow the six month rule.
This is really key if you are very much prone
to merging your life with somebody and with you know,
(42:32):
a love interest, for six months, just put off any
big decisions, any major decisions moving in, getting a pet,
making financial commitments, crafting your future around them, even traveling.
Give it six months. At the six months mark, then
you can make a decision around where this is going.
(42:52):
Slow everything down, give your self space and time to assess,
Give them time to prove themselves to you. I feel
like this strategy, even if it feels unnatural at first,
I also think that it's pretty marvelous because it lets
you savor the love story a little bit more. You know,
(43:12):
say this person is the one, Especially if you're in
your twenties, you know, you have the rest of your
life to be with them fifty to sixty plus years.
Maybe you know you have the rest of your life
for those big, bold moments, But those first six months,
three to six months where you're just curious about each
other and you have the skiddiness and you're excited about
(43:32):
each other, that doesn't last forever. I just think the
slower you go, everybody wins. The more you get to
draw out that really beautiful beginning feeling, the more you
get to really know somebody, the more you get to
ease your anxiety into this new situation, the more you
get to unlearned patterns. I've never heard anybody say I
(43:53):
regret going slow at the beginning of my relationship.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Nobody.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
I've heard a bunch of people say they regret moving
too fast. I've heard from a bunch of people who
say they regret rushing through the honeymoon stage. I haven't
heard anybody say I regret taking my time and really
knowing this person the way I would get to know
a friend, or the way I would get to know Yeah,
I think a friend is the best way to say this.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
The way I would get to know a friend.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
There's no rush if they're the right one, you have
plenty of time. Okay, we are going to take another
short break here, but when we return, let's talk through
some more ways to approach healthy love from a psychological perspective,
especially after toxic love, and especially in your twenties.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Stay with us.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
A huge habit I found myself picking up from past
relationships was making myself smaller so it would be easier
to fit into somebody else's life, rather than seeing if
they would and could fit into mind. And that is
something that you definitely need to unlearn. Toxic love often
(45:07):
teaches you that again, love is conditional, and it's conditional
on you being easy for the other person and you
following their guidebook or their guidelines. I think when you
encounter healthy love after that, you now have to work
on not shrinking, brag about yourself, ask for more, make
(45:29):
sure they know you expect to be a priority, and
make sure they know that you like yourself and you
are cool, and you are nice, and you are fun,
and you are somebody they would be lucky to know.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
You are a very big soul, You're a very big heart.
You're expecting big love.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
That is a very easy way to weed out people
who won't be able to meet those deeds. Yes, as
much as we want to be slow and conscientious, that
doesn't mean you don't get to express what you really need.
And it is a great way. It's a great litmus
test for who is not going to be able to
(46:07):
meet the mark and kind of meet the performance metrics
to love you and to be in your life. I
want you guys to remember this and even repeat it
as an affirmation to yourself. If they are the one,
they would want as much of me as they possibly
could get. And that doesn't just include the good stuff.
It includes the emotions. It includes the depth, boundaries, the vulnerability,
(46:31):
the hard things, maybe even like the disagreements, all of it.
You are deserving of a love that is so full
and complete it is like bursting at the seams. And
if they cringe at that, if they can't handle it,
if they don't have room. I just don't think your
lives are aligned. And it shouldn't be anything you read
(46:53):
anything more into. It's nothing more and nothing less than
this is just you're incompatible. You have to continue to
believe after talk love that big things are out there,
even if it feels helpless. This also includes, I guess
knowing the importance of being direct, which is really really hard.
But dating and the love game for me had the
(47:17):
most dramatic shift once I learned that just saying what
I needed because I trusted myself and because I wanted
more for myself was going to get me better outcomes.
And it genuinely changed my dating life and.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
My love life.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Do you know how I knew my boyfriend was the
one and last story about him, I promise It was
when we had maybe been dating for like a couple
of months, and he came over to my house and
we were drinking Apparol spritz is on my balcony and
we went to dinner, and at dinner, I was like, Okay,
(47:50):
I'm going to give it to you completely straight. And
I fully expected him to kind of be like, I'm out,
but I didn't really I kind of knew, right, I
was like, but I just had to say that. I was,
I'm gonna give it too straight. I'm looking for a
relationship and that doesn't mean you have to promise one
to me.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
Now.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
That doesn't mean that like we need to go all
in because we're taking it slow. But if that is
not your goal, just let me know now, And it
was like we'd had a lot of fun. We were
two months in. If I was going to go any further,
I just needed to be I wasn't going to like
I needed to be prepared and I needed to have
by Leeds met, and I remember his reaction was a
bit he was a bit shocked, but he was like,
(48:27):
all right, honestly, like I'm all in. That's we're on
the same page. And that was early days. So I
felt slightly uncomfortable, like coming to him with this demand,
being like, this is what I want. But I also
knew that directness would scare away anybody who wasn't the one,
because I'm a direct person, right, I'm somebody who really
us and likes what they want. So I wasn't going
(48:50):
to go through that whole terrible situation again of hoping
that he would maybe give it to me one day.
I know a lot of us think that like the
person we should end up with is would read our
minds and we should be in complete sync with them
and they should know exactly what's going on with us,
and there's this emotional link, but you know, the science
(49:11):
isn't there yet. I'm sorry to say they can't read
your mind. Sometimes they can't take the hint. You just
have to be very utilitarian and direct about it and
ask the answers you need, or ask the questions you
need the answer to, in order to move forward without
playing KOI and without playing games. I think my final
(49:32):
slightly controversial thing I will say when approaching healthy love
after toxic love is just to actually question your gut
instinct if it's telling you this person isn't the one,
and the only reason it believes that is because you
feel bored. Trust gut instincts that say I don't think
this person is a nice person. Trust gut instincts that
(49:55):
say I think this person is using me. But especially
after you've experienced toxic love, if there is a part
of you that's like, oh, this person's just like a
little bit too boring, or I'm settling, or like, ugh,
I don't know, I feel like I should be I
should be more like really into them, just pause, pause
for that intuition, and that intuition only. I just think
(50:16):
when you have become so used to again the major
psychological games and the major psychological and emotional highs and
lows of a toxic relationship. That feeling of calm can
be unsettling because not because I should say, not because
the relationship is wrong, but because your interpretation of what
(50:37):
it is and what is right for you has been
kind of messed with. Take a moment. If you are
feeling this right now and you're like, I can't tell
whether it's just because of past experiences or because I
am actually settling, Just write down what is actually wrong
with this relationship that is causing you to want to
leave it. What about this relationship isn't working or living
(51:01):
up to your expectations. And if the only answer you
can give is I just feel a little bit bored,
or this just feels a little bit like it feels
a little bit too easy, or I feel like I'm settling,
maybe just reassess and give it a little bit more time.
And I know there'll be people coming at me being like,
(51:21):
that's terrible advice, that's awful advice. I just feel like,
if there is nothing else wrong with this person, maybe
give them a second chance, if that's the only thing
you can think of. And yes, sometimes you'll do this
exercise and you'll realize, Okay, something is genuinely missing and
that's like actually an equally good outcome. Like I think,
(51:43):
whatever clarity this gives you, healthy love does still need chemistry,
and it does still need alignment. But if you have alignment,
and if you do enjoy them and it's just because
you're bored and they're otherwise a really nice person and
they're really incredible and they really make you feel great
about yourself and you're having a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Stick with it.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
Just stick with it and see how it goes. Worse
comes to worst, you stay, You end up being with
somebody for a little bit longer who treats you really
really well and allows you to move back into a
secure pattern and a secure way of seeing love. Worst
comes to worse, you know it doesn't work out, But
(52:27):
at least you have this example that there is somebody
out there who was really amazing and will treat you
well and we'll give you what you need, even if
it's not. Like, even if it's not, it doesn't end
up being the one. Just those examples of love, I
think are really really brilliant. So give the easy and
safe love a second chance. If your intuition is going
(52:51):
wild with it, maybe question how your intuition has been
shifted by emotional chaos. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
I hope it has been in a good, honestly introduction
into what toxic love may or may not do to
us and how it changes us. There was a lot
of rambling going on, and I'm sorry, so if you
have made it this far, I do very much appreciate it,
(53:14):
and I hope that whatever situation you are in, you're
doing all right, and that you are feeling more and
more optimistic by the day about there being wonderful love
out there for you. Maybe it's not the one just yet,
but I hope you're feeling more optimistic that there are
just good people who will love you well, and that
you do have a lot of options, and that you
(53:35):
are deserving of wonderful things. Even if this past situation
has made you think that everybody's out to get your
or like everybody's out to hurt you, or all love ends.
I promise that is that's not the case. Why would
we have somebody beautiful love stories. There's always hope out there,
and I don't think it's necessarily the thing that kills
us all the time. I think it's healthy to be
(53:56):
optimistic about the future of romance and about finding someone
who's incredible. So again, I hope you enjoyed this episode.
If you're listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, make sure
you give us a five star review. If you're in
the US or Canada, you can also watch on Netflix.
So if you like video podcasts and you want to
check this one out, go and watch it that. I
(54:19):
feel like it brings a whole new vibe. If you've
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go and judge my appearance, but no, just go and
check out the studio, check out the vibes. It's very nice, calm,
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(54:41):
tell me what you think about it. Make sure as
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for you to expand your information horizon and your knowledge Horizons.
(55:02):
Thank you, as always to our researcher Libby Colbert for
her help with this episode. She's incredible and she did
an amazing job researching a lot of that neurobiological and
neurochemical those neurochemical interactions we were talking about, so we
appreciate her greatly. But until next time, be safe, be kind,
be gentle with yourself. We will talk very very soon.
Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the
Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through
the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and
what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back
(00:26):
to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is
so great to have you here. Back for another episode
as we of course break down the psychology of our twenties. Today,
we are talking about a pain I think a lot
of us carry around in our twenties, but really, at
any age, at any age, you can have this deep
sadness and frustration around how do I love again when
(00:49):
I've been hurt so badly in the past, how do
I love again when I have learned that love is
not something that I can trust, And just saying that,
there's so much hurt in those states. There's so much
pain and trauma in those statements, especially when the love
you've experienced in the past has been toxic. I think
this goes beyond heartbreak. It goes beyond somebody you know
(01:11):
you and somebody else just not working out. There is
this reprogramming that occurs when you experience toxic love. It
changes how you interpret every single detail, every single thing
somebody does. It changes how you respond to closeness or
even how safe you feel with somebody when they're kind
(01:32):
to you and when they do everything right and when
they are the one. It can just train your body to,
even after a relationship is over, associate love with panic
and love with hostility, so that when maybe one day
you meet somebody who is very calm and lovely, instead
of feeling bliss and instead of feeling safe, you just
(01:53):
feel suspicious and you just feel restless, like you're waiting.
You're waiting for the catch, You're waiting for something to
go horribly wrong. I've been there myself in my relationship
before I met Tom. You know, it really did something
to me. Sometimes it felt like love was just something
(02:16):
that could be manipulated and taken advantage of. That's what
that relationship left me feeling. And when I met Tom Tho,
those past experiences really caused me to be really suspicious,
very suspicious. So I kind of wanted to, i don't know,
reflect on my own experience in a way and bring
that to this episode on experiencing healthy love after toxic love.
(02:38):
What we're going to explore is what toxic love does
to your nervous system, what it does to your self esteem,
to your biological wiring, to your attachment patterns, and then
as well how we can slowly, practically relearn how to
(02:59):
feel safe and how to feel excited by the potential
of a relationship. So, without further ado, it's going to
be a big episode. Strap in, let's get into it.
So the first big question of the day, what does
toxic love actually look like? There is no Oxford Dictionary
(03:21):
definition for this. I'm sure you guys probably don't even
need me to describe it. You know what you felt it.
But it basically just represents a relational or a relationship
dynamic that is consistently and insidiously harmful to your well being.
It's not necessarily about one person being evil or about
(03:44):
the occasional argument. It is often about a pattern of
things like chronic invalidation, emotional inconsistency, jealousy, contempt, nastiness, betrayal
that makes you feel very small, and that there's just
a part of you that feels, even in those moments,
(04:06):
that this isn't how you're meant to be treated. In
toxic relationships, there will likely be repeated to cycles of
rupture without repair, or kind of emotional chaos that makes
you feel destabilized and very insecure. It's never resolved. You
just either stop thinking about it or you move on
(04:27):
to the next thing. It's very intense, it's very time consuming, emotional,
emotionally consuming, and it's very hard to leave. Not because
you're scared, although that can be a part of it,
but sometimes just because you're really actually hooked on the
highs and lows and kind of in a way you're
addicted or you're hooked to this like potential. It's the
(04:51):
hope that really kills you in these situations. It's the
hope that keeps you hanging around, Hope that it's going
to get better, hope that it's going to transform into
the thing you want it to be. You might be thinking, ah,
a lot of huh, A lot of that sounds like abuse,
just with a less intense name. And that's a really
valuable point. So let's quickly discuss the difference here, abusive
(05:13):
love or just straight up abuse. Cut the love part.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Just abuse.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
It's fundamentally about power and about control. It's again a
pattern where usually one person's autonomy gets eroded over time,
and the other person is the one who obviously does
that erosion, but they might toor your phone. They isolate
you from friends, they control your money, they make threats,
(05:41):
they coerce you into things, they intimidate you, they emotionally
punish you for any signs of independence. That's really what
abuse looks like. And toxic love and abusive or just
abuse can definitely overlap. But I think toxic loves it's
like sits a little bit below. Some relationships are toxic
(06:04):
but not abusive. It's just two people with poor boundaries,
two people with poor conflict skills, lots of insecurity, lots
of reactivity, people who hurt each other but aren't necessarily
engaging in a pattern of domination. And some relationships also
worth acknowledging, begin as toxic and then slide into abuse,
(06:29):
slide into fear and control and coercion. But I think
a lot of us live in that messy middle, relationships
that are just tumultuous, where there's just true people whose
needs and wants are different, and one person is really
putting themselves more in the middle, and one person is
really calling more of the shots not to dominate you.
(06:51):
Maybe to dominate you, but more so just because there's
a selfishness there and there's a lack of communication there,
and it's just messy and there's not a clear definition
of what exactly is going wrong, but you know that
something is. I think what's difficult is that we look
at those kinds of situations and because they're not abusive,
(07:14):
we don't want to sound dramatic or make too big
of a deal of them or the way that they've
impacted us. But they do still leave a mark, and
toxic love leaves psychological wounds pretty deep ones. It can
really significantly change how you see love, especially if it
is in your twenties. It's not something to kind of
(07:35):
be brushed aside. Your twenties are already very much dictated
by high change. They are a high learning stage of life.
People often think that childhood is our most malleable time.
It definitely is for some things, but your relationship blueprint
continues to develop into adulthood, and especially in your twenties,
(07:57):
it can be shifted. When a relationship, I don't know
how I can word this, but when it doesn't have
a stable center, when it doesn't have a stable core,
it can throw you off your mark and scramble what
you think love should be. Basically, I think when two
stories are being told about love at the same time
(08:17):
in the same relationship, one where you feel good and
the second story where you feel terrible, and they keep
switching and you keep thinking this is amazing and I
feel safe, and then I feel exhausted and I feel
dismissed and I feel like I'm not wanted and I
feel terrible. They come into conflict and they clash, and
(08:37):
your brain only wants one story to be true, so
it doesn't really know what a place, what's going on,
and it doesn't really know I guess how to adapt
your expectations of love Accordingly, there's just a lot going
on that kind of scrambles our blueprint. The biggest impact
of this is that it can lead us to normalized
dysfunction and almost emotionally just or emotionally rebrand a tumultuous
(09:04):
kind of relationship as exciting simply as a way to
endure it, meaning that eventually again, when we do encounter
this healthy, safe love and it doesn't contain those rapid
ups and downs, it can feel really boring because it
contradicts what we've come to expect sometimes, you know, after chaos,
(09:25):
And I've seen this in so many people's relationships that
I know stability feels really just dull, not because healthy
love is dull, but because you've learned to associate love
with intensity and with stimulation and excitement. These relationships include
so many highs and so many lows. And that pattern
(09:48):
is very similar to the pattern that most addictive substances
rely on to get you hooked. This pattern of stress, intensity,
and then euphoria and relief at consuming the substance or
experiencing the stimulus, and then it eventually plummets back. The
relief is gone. You're scrambling for a higher dose. This
(10:10):
is why toxic love and I think addictions sometimes go.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Hand in hand.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
There is a real neurochemical level to it. It's exhausting,
but it's also familiar, and more importantly, it can really
interrupt and harm the part of your brain that deals
with the interpretation of danger, that deals with fear, that
deals with regulating heightened emotions. There's a concept in polyvagal
(10:41):
theory called neuroception, which basically talks about how your body
is constantly or unconsciously in a state where it can
detect threats, So essentially, at any given time, there is
always a part of you that's going to be able
to sense danger. The thing is is that when people
feel safe, that reaction, those reactions are down regulated, so
(11:07):
they're not taking up all your mental, physical, cognitive resources.
Your body's able to stay mobilized, You're able to stay
in the present, You're able to feel safe. After trauma,
after something like a really intense relationship, especially one that
felt very harmful, neuroception can become just regulated, so you
(11:28):
perceive danger and you perceive this intensity as the new normal.
Even in safe situations, your body remains in that heightened
state of alertness and that becomes basically your new equlibrium.
Your new equilibrium is one whereby everything feels like at
(11:48):
any given moment it could turn terribly wrong. And the
research does show again, just to nail this point home again,
after experiencing relation or trauma, people struggle, because of neuroception
and because of many other processes, to read safety correctly,
and often they will confuse safety with something else. A
(12:10):
twenty twelve paper in the journal Neuropharmacology actually suggests that
people with PTSD, for example, struggle to downregulate or switch
off fear and anxiety responses, and so because this low
level of anxiety becomes the new normal, when safe situations
(12:31):
come along, sometimes those can actually feel the most scary
because they are so counter to what is familiar. Sometimes
the healthy, safe relationship can feel the most bizarre and
terrible and fearful because it's so different, it's so different
from what you expect. You don't have to have experienced
(12:52):
or have PTSD for this to be the case. My
point is just that, essentially, when your brain has learnt
that in the relationship, in the relational context, closeness is dangerous,
it becomes harder to feel safe even when you are safe,
because that doubt is your insurance, and the feeling of
(13:13):
safety is not normal and therefore feels unsafe, uncanny, and
so you interpret even the most harmless, wonderful situations as
things that are threats. Someone predictable comes along, someone who
doesn't play games, someone who is just really into you,
and you think this is a fantastic They give you
all the reassurance you need, they give you everything you need,
(13:36):
and then your nervous system cuts in, and because it's
so used to scanning embracing and suddenly there is nothing wrong.
That feeling of peace is unfamiliar, and that feeling of
peace can feel I know, I've said uncanny the most times,
but can be anxiety inducing in its own way. So
(14:01):
what that basically means is that after toxic love, you
are approaching healthy love and the potential for healthy love
with an entirely new perspective and with an entirely new
I don't want to say brain, but set of neurological
and psychological habits that mean you can't and you feel
(14:24):
like you cannot always trust your judgment of the person
in front of you, or your judgment of the situation
you're in. There's also the combined element here of perhaps
the chronic invalidation and the instability you most likely experienced
in your last relationship that has probably conditioned you to
(14:44):
distrust your own perceptions and experiences in these kind of
dating scenarios. There's this weird I guess hindsight bias that
occurs in these situations where we look at the past
knowing how it's turned out, and we wonder why our
past selves couldn't have foreseen this and didn't know, which
(15:06):
is ridiculous because they hadn't lived it yet. But this
hindsight bias causes us to begin to question whether our
judgment is broken, and therefore, as a result, it causes
us to mistrust anyone and everyone in a kind of
better safe than sorry, I guess kind of way. It's
honestly so twisted. It's so twisted that you have to
(15:29):
experience this and that this is kind of this is
what love feels like now, and I'm sorry, it's really
really sucky.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I remember my.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Boyfriend when we first started dating. I must have had
some I guess it must have been a work achievement.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
I can't remember.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
That's bad for me. But something really big had happened.
And he sent me this like big box of sunflowers
to my office. And this was when I had an
office with some of my friends, some of my best friends,
and they were all gosh, they were like, this guy
is amazing, this.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Guy is so great for you.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
And I was like looking at these flowers, and I
just couldn't help but think, like, what's this guy's angle,
Like what's this sick go up to you?
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Like what's he buttering me up for? Like? Look at
this love bombing going on here?
Speaker 1 (16:18):
It just I feel like I was at that stage
where I hadn't been with my ex for years, and
in that moment, I had such a wave of anger
towards him, like you're going to fuck this up as
well and you're not even here, Like you have created
these reactions and these patterns now in me, and am
I going to sabotage this incredible thing because of you,
(16:40):
like because of the past. And there was definitely this
distance between me and Tom in the early days, and
I'm so glad he could see that for what it was,
which was not disinterest but caution. And I know a
lot of people have a similar experience. This amazing person
is in front of you and you're like, what's the catch.
I guess what I'm saying is that after toxic love,
(17:02):
really what it is is that having hope feels irresponsible
because you had hope before and look where it got you.
And it's not a nice feeling being that pessimistic because
you probably want that pessimistic. Before this last person, you
probably really believed in love. And if you're going through
that now, I know it can be very hard.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
It can be.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Very hard to feel like either they're gaslighting you, or
you're gas slighting yourself. But I promise it does most
certainly get better. The other thing, and probably the final
thing I'll touch on here, The other thing toxic relationships
can do to you is that they literally change your
(17:45):
attachment style, even if you're an adult, even if you're
in your twenties or you're in your thirties or your forties.
I know a lot of us try to categorize ourselves
into three prescribed you're either anxious, you're avoidant, or you're secure.
And we box ourselves into these based on how we
(18:09):
learnt about relationships growing up, and we kind of assume
and we talk about our attachment style as though it's
completely fixed and unchangeable after childhood. It's formed in childhood.
It's impacted by childhood only. That's what the original theory
by Bolby and Ainsworth says. And then once you're eighteen,
(18:32):
you're locked in for life. If you're insecure, you're insecure
for life. If you're secure, you're secure for life. And
that's just the cards you're dealt. But your attachment style
isn't fixed. It's actually influenced by relationship experiences across your life,
across time and a toxic experience can shift your system radically,
(18:56):
almost overnight. You know. It's also really interesting. There's actually
I read this paper recently. There's research showing that attachment
security and your attachment style can actually fluctuate, not just
day to day, but depending on the person that you're with. Essentially,
(19:18):
your attachment style can be different just for one singular relationship.
Which sounds preposterous, but you could be secure in all
other relationships, in your friendships, in your previous relationships with
your parents, But with this one single person, this toxic love,
(19:38):
suddenly you have all these anxious traits, all these avoidant traits.
You are terrified just for them nobody else. One study
I cited actually in my book and I still cited
a lot, talks about how those early experiences of your
attachment style being shifted by one singular relationship can take
(20:00):
somebody who has had an overflowing amount of love in childhood,
who is deeply cared for, and just completely twist them
into someone who I don't know, acts like the survivor
of childhood trauma, especially if this was their first relationship
or their first significant relationship. Parents aren't the only one
(20:22):
and aren't the only blueprint for how we think love
should look. Young love Early love is also a milestone
and is also a core bonding and learning experience that can,
I guess, twist your interpretation of.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
The behaviors that are normal.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
In a relationship and what a relationship should make you
feel like.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Should it make you.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Feel safe and happy or should it make you feel
anxious and hostile. If you've noticed yourself becoming more anxious
and more hypervigilant after being in a relationship that was
chaotic or with somebody who was just like impossible to read,
it's likely that you know this is what's happening to you.
(21:08):
Your nervous system has been changed by that relationship. Your
attachment system has been changed by that relationship, and your
attachment system is doing what it has evolved to do.
It is trying to teach you how to best bond
with other people so that you don't get hurt. And
in this situation, you were hurt. That doesn't mean that
every situation is going to be like that, but this
(21:29):
is why your brain learns to prevent things from the
past happening again, and it makes generalizations. It makes you
believe that every other love you're going to encounter in
your life must look the same. But I think that
if our attachment style and our nervous system and all
these other bonding systems can change to become more alert
(21:51):
and more anxious and more avoidant, it's only right and
it only makes sense that they can also change in
the other direction, and that when the right person comes along,
or maybe not even the right person, just a really
kind person comes along, that can shift us into being
more secure and feeling safer as well. Relationships can also
(22:13):
increase a sense of security over time. There is so
much evidence out there that partners can actually co regulate
each other that healthy love, if we push through maybe
some of the feelings of boredom or feelings of fear
and anxiety over the past, healthy love can heal us
(22:34):
in a very unique way. And I know there's definitely
this like ongoing narrative that anything you don't heal before
a relationship will harm that relationship. But I also think
that I don't know. I just don't always believe that.
I think love is very healing, and sometimes the wounds
(22:55):
left by previous situations, Sometimes the wounds left by love
can be treated by nothing else, not to be like
poetic about it. But you know that is the thing
that we'll I don't want to say fast track you're healing,
but I think that it's something that can be very
beneficial if you've gotten to the state of pessimism and
(23:17):
hostility towards relationships. Not to say get back out there
and get back on the horse, but sometimes the thing
that you're avoiding doing the most, and the thing that
you fear the most, and the reason you fear relationships
the most, is the reason you should get back out there.
So as not to maintain this avoidance and so as
not to further indoctrinate this narrative in yourself that the
(23:40):
only kind of love I'm going to experience is the
unhealthy kind, and the only kind of people out there
are the kinds that will hurt me or will hurt others.
I'm telling you that is not the case. I'm telling
you there are brilliant people yet to be discovered by
you and many others. So what does that feel like?
What does healthy love feel like? And how can we
(24:03):
actually lean into that without like trying to fix ourselves
with a relationship, because that's definitely not what I'm saying.
How can we just get some exposure to healthy love
and know it when we see it. That's what we're
going to be exploring after this short break. Once you
(24:24):
understand what toxic love has trained in you, I think
the next question or reminder I guess, is what does
healthy love actually feel like? And how do we practice
recognizing it and staying in it long enough for our
body to believe it and to believe that we are safe.
I know you guys hopefully know a lot of this,
(24:47):
so not to sound I don't want to sound patronizing.
You don't want to sound patronizing or anything like that.
But just because we have to, let's do a mini
checklist of sorts around what.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Is healthy love?
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Like a checklist that you could sit in front of
somebody and be like, is that what we've got going
on for us here? First up, healthy love is not
built on guessing. If you ever ever have to guess,
does this person want to be with me? Does this
person see us going in the same direction? Why haven't
they labeled it? Why don't they like me back? Text
(25:22):
me back? Why won't they include me in their plans?
And you don't feel like you can clarify that's not
healthy love. You guys aren't in a relationship like you do,
not have the essential ingredient. Yes, people take their time
in relationships and people move at different speeds, but that
position should be communicated, and so should their reasons. It's
(25:46):
literally the most cliche thing you will see in every
marriage book, every relationship book. Communication is key. It's not
that they won't commit right now. It's not that they
don't know where you, guys, are going, it's that they're
willing to talk to you about it.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
There is no confusion.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
The other thing healthy love or the beginnings of healthy
love will often show you as well, is that this
communication we're talking about doesn't always have to end in
an argument or something that's emotionally twisted or uncomfortable. I
think that does actually become especially clear during these kinds
of early on what are we, what are we doing here?
(26:28):
What do you want from me? Kind of conversations. When
you have these conversations, I think a lot of the time,
toxic love may have conditioned you to expect this rupture,
this blow up, this dismissiveness, this silence lies icing you out.
You know, all these things that you've seen in the past.
You begin to expect it. So a lot of the time,
(26:49):
I think we go into these conversations with a new relationship,
in a new relationship with a lot of apprehension and
nerves and anxiety, and then when nothing happens, when it's
all calm and respectful, we're a bit like, huh, is
that what that's meant to feel like? Honestly, sometimes that
can feel like a trap, like, oh, we've sorted this
(27:10):
argument out, They've given me all the information I need
to know. Where's the rest of this? Where's the rest
of the drama? The thing about healthy love is that
sometimes when you are arguing and when you are communicating
and you're expecting the worst and the worst doesn't come,
it's weird. It doesn't give these emotions a place to
(27:31):
go because those emotions didn't belong in that space to
begin with. But in the aftermath, like you've come in
so hot and expecting something so terrible, sometimes it can
feel like you are unconsciously the one who is escalating
things and like suddenly you're the toxic one in the relationship,
if that makes sense, because I don't know, if there's
this whole stored up fear and anticipated anger that doesn't
(27:58):
have an outlet. That was my experience at least, like
I had to learn how to fight with my partner.
I felt like when I entered this relationship, I was
spreading patterns from my past relationship because that was my
operating manual. And it made me feel like, in the beginning,
at least, like am I the toxic one? Am I
now becoming the person who previously hurt me. Some people
(28:20):
call these survival behaviors. Some people call it emotional reactivity.
I think the best label for this is just predictive processing.
Your brain operates on a set of expectations determined by
prior experiences, and it's constantly trying to predict what's going
to happen, what's coming for me, what's this fight going
(28:41):
to end up like? And so it gets your body
already and all hyped up for that situation, that anticipated situation,
and then when it never comes, there's such a crash.
There's a lot to unlearn because you basically have to
stop predicting the worst case scenarios and the worst outcome,
and you have to remain open to a better scenario,
(29:03):
which can leave you feeling really vulnerable and really unprepared.
When you're walking into these conversations with Hope being like,
I really think I know, but what if I don't know?
And what if I should anticipate this worst case scenario.
But I think the beautiful thing about healthy love is
that you come into it maybe with fear, and then
you come down together, you emerge knowing each other more honestly.
(29:27):
And I really hope he doesn't mind me saying this,
but some of the moments I've just felt closest to
Tom have been in the days after a fight, because
I feel like he knows me better and I know
him better because everything was so raw, it was so honest.
I never felt that way with any of my exes.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Never.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
It was just panic, panic for days. And I remember
I used to mute their messages and then unmute them
and then mute them again, and I would turn my
phone off and I would like check it again and
just just in case the messaged me. And it was
this whole toxic pattern of like, I knew that getting
into a fight and bringing things up would mean that
(30:10):
we wouldn't talk for days, and it would always feel
like my fault. You know, this one particular X I'm
thinking about I remember he literally forgot it was my
grandfather's funeral, and that was my fault. I remember saying,
and I've said the story so it doesn't hurt anymore.
But I remember telling him I loved him, and he
told me he was going on a date with somebody else,
(30:31):
and we had this big argument, and that was my fault.
I remember, like, if he had an emotional outburst, if
he said something rude, that was still my fault. How
I don't know. I always justified it back then that
it was but healthy love. On the other hand, you know,
it's just it's just very easy, and it's very quiet,
and there isn't.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
This blame game.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Sometimes people describe it as feeling because of that, like
almost too calm, like something is missing, it's too and
that can bring up a lot of anxious questions about
settling and questions about compatibility, like shouldn't there be a spark,
shouldn't I feel electricity? Isn't the fighting a sign that
we like each other, that we're willing to push through together.
(31:15):
But I always used to question that, and I still
question that. You know, was it really a spark or
was it just anxiety masquerading as excitement. Was it really
a spark? Or like, is this just this feeling of
anticipation without resolution? Is this is this really a spark?
Or were just fighting all the time? This thing that
you think you're missing with this new person, I don't
(31:38):
think it's a connection, because there's obviously something that's keeping
you in this healthy relationship. I think what you're missing
when you feel this like boredom or like is this
person not the one? Because we're not arguing and there
it's not that passion. What you're missing is adrenaline. What
you're missing is hypervigilance. And I think the funny thing
about hypervigilance is that it can feel remarkable, like presence
(32:01):
and like you're really in tune with the other person.
Because that's what hypervigilance does. It keeps your nervous system
and your attentional systems on high alert, picking up on
everything that's not love. Though that's not love. That intensity
is not the only thing that can make a relationship survive.
(32:24):
Here are some things that it does need. Here's that
continuation of that list we were talking about, what does
healthy love feel like? Healthy love, amongst all those other
things we've said, is also not conditional. It is not
conditional on you being good or behaving in the right
way to receive attention, or they only treat you right
(32:45):
if you do what they want you to, or they
only treat you right or give you what you need if.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
You don't ask for too much.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
It is not conditional on some kind of behavior that
works best for them. It's also a situation where there
is a quality. One person doesn't have more of the power,
one person isn't the one calling the shots. And you
know that, you know that like each of you comes
in equal. There is not somebody in this situation who
(33:12):
could completely destroy the other person because they are completely unattached.
And there's not one person who is in the situation
who is willing to give everything and get nothing in return.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
It's equal.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
There is equal investment, there is equal time spent, there
is equal yeah, disrespect, And I also just think it's
meant to be fun. You know, healthy love isn't always easy.
It's not like you don't have these bumps. It's not
like you don't occasionally have doubts.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Even looking at.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Your parents, for example, if your parents are still together,
or your grandparents, or if you think of an example
of healthy love in your life, Like there are still
things that sometimes go wrong, but you are actually at
the end of the day enjoying yourself in that relationship
authentically and you feel like you can be here is
something a therapist friend of mine actually reminded me that
(34:05):
we have to be aware of though sometimes those things,
all those examples of healthy love I just gave, they
actually lose their appeal after toxic love. They don't feel
the same way. They don't have the same kind of drive.
We don't have the same drive towards them. Our I
don't want to say our desire systems, but like our
(34:27):
preferences after toxic love in many ways can change. And
that's you're definitely not responsible for how someone treated you,
especially when you were so ready to give them everything
and you were so invested in the relationship, Like, you're
definitely not responsible for that. But sometimes those experiences can
(34:48):
actually change what we find ourselves attracted to, just based
on on patterns and what feels known. Research, including a
recent paper published just last year, tells us that we
love what feels familiar, and so if what is familiar
is hot and cold behavior, if what is familiar is passionate,
(35:13):
all consuming chemistry, and not much else. If what is
familiar is major highs and major lows and the promise
of potential and the promise of the chase. Sometimes, guess what,
sometimes you can continuously feel drawn to that, even if
rationally you know better. It's just your brain being both
(35:39):
having adapted to this new kind of love and also
feeling compulsively drawn to it because of how comforting it
feels because it has the manuscript and it has the
manual for that healthy love. It doesn't have the manual
for that, or maybe it did before, but it's kind
of lost. It's that kind of feel outdated to you.
(36:01):
So the last thing, if the last thing you experienced
was this toxic situation, of course you're gonna feel drawn
to that because at least you know how it ends,
and at least you know how the storyline goes. I
will also say, and this is a hot take I have,
I honestly think that people who are very intelligent and
are high achievers are often more susceptible to that kind
(36:24):
of chase me hard to get type behavior because they
are used to feeling like if everyone else can have it,
it's not worth having and they're used to this feeling
of like, if something is really worth it, it will
make me chase it a little bit and it should
be a little bit out of reach to test me.
(36:45):
And so sometimes those relationships that feel very like based
on potential that ask you to work, they it feels
like they're just asking you to work a little bit harder,
and it feels like they're more desirable because you can't
get it easily. And it's like this weird I don't know,
capture or like achievement drive you have, Like why would
(37:05):
I want the easy thing when the hard thing? Surely
it's going to be more valuable because it's making me
work harder, like that effort is a sign of value.
This may be a hard truth to swallow, but as
much as you should be cognizant of other people's intentions
when you are encountering or dating again after toxic love,
you also have to question your own intentions as well.
(37:27):
Are you just replicating what you have experienced in the past,
Are you just self sabotaging here? Are you just giving
or are you not giving the right people a chance
because of past patterns and what you've learned from previous relationships.
You have to be aware of other people's behavior, definitely,
but you also have to be aware of.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
How you're maybe behaving.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
And I think a big part of that is just
giving yourself more time to date, slowly giving yourself time.
I'm to be honest, this person I'm falling for, do
they match the old blueprint or the new blueprint for
healthy love that I'm setting for myself? Are there behaviors
the kind that I really want in a partner or
(38:14):
just the kind that I'm used to after toxic love?
You know, there is this real urgency often this real
sense of like.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Pedal to the metal to like.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Lock down a relationship, or like as soon as you
meet somebody you really like to push for commitment. You know,
you feel like you want to fuse very quickly. You
feel like, you know, maybe you've been strung along in
the past, this previous relationship was really hard on you.
So anything that can give you a sense of reassurance
that this person isn't going to do that Constantly texting,
(38:47):
constantly sharing, becoming exclusive, immediately being really vulnerable, that can
create like this artificial connection and closeness so that you know,
unconsciously you know they won't walk away. That's a real
habit I see. Or you like find yourself kind of
playing games, or not even games, but like being very protective,
(39:09):
or like doing things that you know you shouldn't be
doing just because of anxious patterns. You have to be
aware of that, and you have to be able to
interrupt that before it becomes a more entrenched pattern of behavior.
Let's just try getting to know somebody across time and
very very slowly. Let's just take how you would normally
approach that relationship and dial it back a few paces
(39:33):
and a few kilometers just after toxic love. If you
meet the right person, if you meet a person who
you think is really great, appreciate and pursue the slow burn,
and treat it almost like you are gathering information or
that you are conducting kind of like a study in
(39:53):
those first couple of weeks or months.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
As well as dating, I think a.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Helpful way to safeguard yourself from this like zero to
one hundred love bond in the early stages of dating
is to actually just break up time between your dates
and to just not make them the center of your
whole world. If you've been conditioned into thinking that the
(40:22):
only worthwhile connection is an immediate one, and is those
intense bonds where like your mind is immediately sure they're
the right person and filled with hope, and you're excited
by them, and you spend all your time with them,
and it's just like this incredible passionate fire. Try your
(40:43):
hardest to space out the dates, try your hardest to
just really give yourself the time to reality check. Is
that really what's happening here? Or is it just the
passion of a new beginning. Leave at least a four
between dates, and during that week, especially in the early months,
(41:05):
continuously ask yourself. Do I feel more like myself around them?
Do I feel like I have to change anything about myself?
Do I feel grounded? Or do they make me feel anxious?
Do they make me feel very low? And is that
them or is that me projecting? Do I feel calm
(41:26):
or do I feel frantic? What is it about the
relationship that is making me feel either of those things?
But especially if you're feeling frantic, work to identify. And
this is something I definitely had to do. Am I
feeling frantic just because love is scary these days? Or
am I feeling frantic because of something in their behavior
that's creating that in me. And also, and this is
(41:48):
a big question to ask yourself, are you actually into them?
Are you actually curious about them? Or are you just
chasing assurance? Is it just because you like the attention?
Is it just because they like you back? Give yourself time,
(42:09):
time to actually sit on the answers and the truth
of the relationship. Then later, you know, if things move
into a more established thing, follow the six month rule.
This is really key if you are very much prone
to merging your life with somebody and with you know,
(42:32):
a love interest, for six months, just put off any
big decisions, any major decisions moving in, getting a pet,
making financial commitments, crafting your future around them, even traveling.
Give it six months. At the six months mark, then
you can make a decision around where this is going.
(42:52):
Slow everything down, give your self space and time to assess,
Give them time to prove themselves to you. I feel
like this strategy, even if it feels unnatural at first,
I also think that it's pretty marvelous because it lets
you savor the love story a little bit more. You know,
(43:12):
say this person is the one, Especially if you're in
your twenties, you know, you have the rest of your
life to be with them fifty to sixty plus years.
Maybe you know you have the rest of your life
for those big, bold moments, But those first six months,
three to six months where you're just curious about each
other and you have the skiddiness and you're excited about
(43:32):
each other, that doesn't last forever. I just think the
slower you go, everybody wins. The more you get to
draw out that really beautiful beginning feeling, the more you
get to really know somebody, the more you get to
ease your anxiety into this new situation, the more you
get to unlearned patterns. I've never heard anybody say I
(43:53):
regret going slow at the beginning of my relationship.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Nobody.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
I've heard a bunch of people say they regret moving
too fast. I've heard from a bunch of people who
say they regret rushing through the honeymoon stage. I haven't
heard anybody say I regret taking my time and really
knowing this person the way I would get to know
a friend, or the way I would get to know Yeah,
I think a friend is the best way to say this.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
The way I would get to know a friend.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
There's no rush if they're the right one, you have
plenty of time. Okay, we are going to take another
short break here, but when we return, let's talk through
some more ways to approach healthy love from a psychological perspective,
especially after toxic love, and especially in your twenties.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Stay with us.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
A huge habit I found myself picking up from past
relationships was making myself smaller so it would be easier
to fit into somebody else's life, rather than seeing if
they would and could fit into mind. And that is
something that you definitely need to unlearn. Toxic love often
(45:07):
teaches you that again, love is conditional, and it's conditional
on you being easy for the other person and you
following their guidebook or their guidelines. I think when you
encounter healthy love after that, you now have to work
on not shrinking, brag about yourself, ask for more, make
(45:29):
sure they know you expect to be a priority, and
make sure they know that you like yourself and you
are cool, and you are nice, and you are fun,
and you are somebody they would be lucky to know.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
You are a very big soul, You're a very big heart.
You're expecting big love.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
That is a very easy way to weed out people
who won't be able to meet those deeds. Yes, as
much as we want to be slow and conscientious, that
doesn't mean you don't get to express what you really need.
And it is a great way. It's a great litmus
test for who is not going to be able to
(46:07):
meet the mark and kind of meet the performance metrics
to love you and to be in your life. I
want you guys to remember this and even repeat it
as an affirmation to yourself. If they are the one,
they would want as much of me as they possibly
could get. And that doesn't just include the good stuff.
It includes the emotions. It includes the depth, boundaries, the vulnerability,
(46:31):
the hard things, maybe even like the disagreements, all of it.
You are deserving of a love that is so full
and complete it is like bursting at the seams. And
if they cringe at that, if they can't handle it,
if they don't have room. I just don't think your
lives are aligned. And it shouldn't be anything you read
(46:53):
anything more into. It's nothing more and nothing less than
this is just you're incompatible. You have to continue to
believe after talk love that big things are out there,
even if it feels helpless. This also includes, I guess
knowing the importance of being direct, which is really really hard.
But dating and the love game for me had the
(47:17):
most dramatic shift once I learned that just saying what
I needed because I trusted myself and because I wanted
more for myself was going to get me better outcomes.
And it genuinely changed my dating life and.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
My love life.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Do you know how I knew my boyfriend was the
one and last story about him, I promise It was
when we had maybe been dating for like a couple
of months, and he came over to my house and
we were drinking Apparol spritz is on my balcony and
we went to dinner, and at dinner, I was like, Okay,
(47:50):
I'm going to give it to you completely straight. And
I fully expected him to kind of be like, I'm out,
but I didn't really I kind of knew, right, I
was like, but I just had to say that. I was,
I'm gonna give it too straight. I'm looking for a
relationship and that doesn't mean you have to promise one
to me.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
Now.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
That doesn't mean that like we need to go all
in because we're taking it slow. But if that is
not your goal, just let me know now, And it
was like we'd had a lot of fun. We were
two months in. If I was going to go any further,
I just needed to be I wasn't going to like
I needed to be prepared and I needed to have
by Leeds met, and I remember his reaction was a
bit he was a bit shocked, but he was like,
(48:27):
all right, honestly, like I'm all in. That's we're on
the same page. And that was early days. So I
felt slightly uncomfortable, like coming to him with this demand,
being like, this is what I want. But I also
knew that directness would scare away anybody who wasn't the one,
because I'm a direct person, right, I'm somebody who really
us and likes what they want. So I wasn't going
(48:50):
to go through that whole terrible situation again of hoping
that he would maybe give it to me one day.
I know a lot of us think that like the
person we should end up with is would read our
minds and we should be in complete sync with them
and they should know exactly what's going on with us,
and there's this emotional link, but you know, the science
(49:11):
isn't there yet. I'm sorry to say they can't read
your mind. Sometimes they can't take the hint. You just
have to be very utilitarian and direct about it and
ask the answers you need, or ask the questions you
need the answer to, in order to move forward without
playing KOI and without playing games. I think my final
(49:32):
slightly controversial thing I will say when approaching healthy love
after toxic love is just to actually question your gut
instinct if it's telling you this person isn't the one,
and the only reason it believes that is because you
feel bored. Trust gut instincts that say I don't think
this person is a nice person. Trust gut instincts that
(49:55):
say I think this person is using me. But especially
after you've experienced toxic love, if there is a part
of you that's like, oh, this person's just like a
little bit too boring, or I'm settling, or like, ugh,
I don't know, I feel like I should be I
should be more like really into them, just pause, pause
for that intuition, and that intuition only. I just think
(50:16):
when you have become so used to again the major
psychological games and the major psychological and emotional highs and
lows of a toxic relationship. That feeling of calm can
be unsettling because not because I should say, not because
the relationship is wrong, but because your interpretation of what
(50:37):
it is and what is right for you has been
kind of messed with. Take a moment. If you are
feeling this right now and you're like, I can't tell
whether it's just because of past experiences or because I
am actually settling, Just write down what is actually wrong
with this relationship that is causing you to want to
leave it. What about this relationship isn't working or living
(51:01):
up to your expectations. And if the only answer you
can give is I just feel a little bit bored,
or this just feels a little bit like it feels
a little bit too easy, or I feel like I'm settling,
maybe just reassess and give it a little bit more time.
And I know there'll be people coming at me being like,
(51:21):
that's terrible advice, that's awful advice. I just feel like,
if there is nothing else wrong with this person, maybe
give them a second chance, if that's the only thing
you can think of. And yes, sometimes you'll do this
exercise and you'll realize, Okay, something is genuinely missing and
that's like actually an equally good outcome. Like I think,
(51:43):
whatever clarity this gives you, healthy love does still need chemistry,
and it does still need alignment. But if you have alignment,
and if you do enjoy them and it's just because
you're bored and they're otherwise a really nice person and
they're really incredible and they really make you feel great
about yourself and you're having a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Stick with it.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
Just stick with it and see how it goes. Worse
comes to worst, you stay, You end up being with
somebody for a little bit longer who treats you really
really well and allows you to move back into a
secure pattern and a secure way of seeing love. Worst
comes to worse, you know it doesn't work out, But
(52:27):
at least you have this example that there is somebody
out there who was really amazing and will treat you
well and we'll give you what you need, even if
it's not. Like, even if it's not, it doesn't end
up being the one. Just those examples of love, I
think are really really brilliant. So give the easy and
safe love a second chance. If your intuition is going
(52:51):
wild with it, maybe question how your intuition has been
shifted by emotional chaos. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
I hope it has been in a good, honestly introduction
into what toxic love may or may not do to
us and how it changes us. There was a lot
of rambling going on, and I'm sorry, so if you
have made it this far, I do very much appreciate it,
(53:14):
and I hope that whatever situation you are in, you're
doing all right, and that you are feeling more and
more optimistic by the day about there being wonderful love
out there for you. Maybe it's not the one just yet,
but I hope you're feeling more optimistic that there are
just good people who will love you well, and that
you do have a lot of options, and that you
(53:35):
are deserving of wonderful things. Even if this past situation
has made you think that everybody's out to get your
or like everybody's out to hurt you, or all love ends.
I promise that is that's not the case. Why would
we have somebody beautiful love stories. There's always hope out there,
and I don't think it's necessarily the thing that kills
us all the time. I think it's healthy to be
(53:56):
optimistic about the future of romance and about finding someone
who's incredible. So again, I hope you enjoyed this episode.
If you're listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, make sure
you give us a five star review. If you're in
the US or Canada, you can also watch on Netflix.
So if you like video podcasts and you want to
check this one out, go and watch it that. I
(54:19):
feel like it brings a whole new vibe. If you've
ever wondered what I look like, and you've only ever
seen or heard my voice, there's a good opportunity for
you to go. And I don't know, it's kind of weird,
go and judge my appearance, but no, just go and
check out the studio, check out the vibes. It's very nice, calm,
peaceful set, a very nice, calm, peaceful video podcast. So yeah,
(54:41):
tell me what you think about it. Make sure as
well you're following us on Instagram. You can also get
transcripts of these episodes on our substack. If you are
subscribed over there, I would really recommend it. You get
cool articles in your inbox a couple times a week
for you to expand your information horizon and your knowledge Horizons.
(55:02):
Thank you, as always to our researcher Libby Colbert for
her help with this episode. She's incredible and she did
an amazing job researching a lot of that neurobiological and
neurochemical those neurochemical interactions we were talking about, so we
appreciate her greatly. But until next time, be safe, be kind,
be gentle with yourself. We will talk very very soon.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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