September 21, 2025 • 35 mins
If you’re struggling with the feeling of emptiness after a breakup or loss, is it really about them, or something deeper within you? I’ll share my own experiences with heartbreak and loneliness, and why understanding our emotional dependencies might just be the key to healing and building healthier relationships.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
These are my personal opinions. Always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and well-being.
(00:11):
One thing I notice as I get older is that my attention span is shorter. I blame that on the internet.
I blame it on so much coming at me at once. You could probably relate.
I used to take my phone with me everywhere I go.
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There's one place I go now that I've decided to take a book. I decided to start reading again.
It doesn't mean I couldn't read or didn't read before, but I actually replaced my bathroom material with a book because in
there with a phone, looking at reels, looking at all this other stuff, I realized it felt like it was rewiring my brain.
(01:02):
So I'm reading now and I'm really enjoying it.
I'm enjoying the fiction I used to read, the sci-fi and all that.
I think it's helping me ground again. I want my brain back.
I don't want it to be lost in all these different nodes of the internet and the universe.
(01:24):
I don't want to lose my place when I'm in a conversation or even doing this show.
So I started reading again and I think that has helped me ground. Why am I sharing this?
Because maybe somebody out there needs to hear it.
Maybe you're on your phone all the time and you need to hear it.
Or maybe somebody that you care about is 24-7 on their phone, laptop, tablet, and then listening to something and then always occupying their mind.
(01:54):
There is something to be said about de-occupying your mind, about clearing it.
And so as I've cleared it, as I've sat in nature without my phone, without distractions, and as I've sat inside with a book,
but then I'll put on a video while I'm cooking or washing the dishes, I found more balance.
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And I don't know if that's going to help you.
This isn't necessarily the topic of, no, it's not the topic of today's episode at all.
But I wanted to share that because I think a lot of us and people we know are glued to the tech. And don't get me wrong. I love the tech.
I could be with tech all day.
I am at a desk right now with three giant monitors and a mixer and a microphone.
(02:44):
And I am here enjoying all my tech, but I have to unplug sometimes.
Somebody in the Facebook group responded to one of my posts and said, I'm going on a cruise. That's a great way to unplug.
At least get away from your environment.
I think getting away from your environment is a great way to unplug.
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I love the memories I have of visiting small towns and going to new places with my wife.
And we just enjoy the time out.
It feels different when you're away from home.
So anyway, just wanted to share that. I'm really enjoying reading.
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I used to read all the time in my twenties and then I got out of it for a while.
I mean, once the internet came by, that's what we do.
We read on the internet, but then there's so many distractions and on and on and on.
So anyway, onto an entirely different topic, which is something I keep running into and I have run into a lot and I've experienced this myself.
(03:48):
It is the loneliness and the strong pull toward another person when they're not in your life.
So when you have a breakup, a divorce, and they don't want to talk to you anymore, they don't want to be with you anymore,
or somebody dies in your life and you have this feeling inside of you, this sadness and this sometimes obsessive pull or need to want them back. And it's obvious, right?
(04:20):
Like, Oh, they're out of my life now.
So of course I miss them and I want them back.
But what I keep seeing and again, what I've experienced during my life with several breakups is this strong craving, this
desire, this obsessive need to have that person, that specific person back in my life.
(04:45):
I must have that person in my life. That was my thought process.
And I believed if I didn't have them back, if they didn't come back, that I would never be happy again. And that has never been true. I have been happy again.
The first time, my first long-term relationship, when that ended, it took me two and a half, three years to be happy again.
(05:10):
But I was also dealing with depression.
I was depressed because I wasn't expressing myself.
I was holding a lot in and that built up.
I suppressed my emotions and I repressed my expression, what I wanted to say, what I wanted to do.
(05:30):
And when I started letting that out, letting it out of my system, sharing what was on my mind and sharing what I was angry
about, you know, I didn't even want to experience anger back then, but I started experiencing it.
I started expressing it, you know, allowing it to come up.
And that helped, all that stored energy inside of me.
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And so my first breakup, my first real long-term breakup, was that was when I experienced depression and I had to heal through that.
Then I met somebody else and I was still depressed and I had to get through that as well.
But I kind of healed as we were together, but I still had issues. I still had issues expressing myself.
(06:18):
And I definitely had issues being judgmental and critical.
And I had a lot of unhealed, unhealthy coping mechanisms. And so that relationship ended.
And when that ended, I was again so lonely and I had to have that person back in my life if I were ever to experience happiness again. Have you ever felt this way?
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I'm sure most people listening have felt this way before. Somebody leaves you or somebody dies.
I have to have that person back in my life. I'm not talking about children.
If you lose a child, that's an entirely different, very complex emotional process, emotional situation that can take a lifetime to heal.
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It doesn't mean you won't be happy again, but there's a part of you missing. And that can hurt.
And just like losing somebody in your life, a part of you goes away. That is a part of you.
The person who left, the person who died is a part of you. There they go.
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And now they're not in your life anymore. So what do you do? There's a missing part of you. This is my perspective. There's a missing part of you.
What made up the totality of your heart is now partial. This is a partially filled heart.
You might feel like 10% of yourself and the 90% has gone out the door or died. And that hurts.
(07:50):
And I bring this up because that 10% needs to be, it needs to be much bigger than 10%.
If somebody leaves you and you only have 10% left in your heart, it needs to be a lot bigger than that because there is going to be pain.
There is going to be challenge in your life and people are going to leave your life and people are going to die.
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I think about this as I go forward.
I'm 55 and as I get older, friends have died, family, I've had family die, but no one that has affected me so deeply yet.
I mean, death affects me just like death affects you.
But as I get older, I realize the people that I care about most, when they die, if I'm alive and they die, it's going to affect
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me so strongly and I'm going to experience this loss in my heart and in my life because my life includes them. My identity includes them.
This is what I see with romantic relationships.
We get so close to someone that they become a part of our identity.
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We identify ourselves as me, you, and us.
And so when they leave or die or whatever, when they're out of our lives, then we are missing a part of our identity.
And how do we identify with ourselves if a part of us is missing?
The way I go about it, because this has happened to me several times throughout my life, the person that I identified myself as was me and us.
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And she identified herself as me and us, I'm assuming.
That's, I think, typically what happens with most of us.
And so that's part of my identity that's leaving.
So throughout my life, that's happened several times.
And every time it has happened, it's been painful.
But each time it happens, it's not been as debilitating.
(09:59):
I'm not saying you should go through it too.
I'm not saying that you need to experience it a lot of times just to understand what's going on.
But what it has helped me do is reflect each time.
So as it happened, the first time I couldn't reflect at all. I was going through it. It was very raw.
The second time, that was the, actually the first time was a young relationship. I was a 20-year-old or something.
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And then the second time was the long-term.
And then the third time was my previous marriage. And then one in between there.
So like four breakups that I've had that have caused me to go through this experience.
And I see them all as learning experiences.
They were painful experiences at the time, but I learned from them by reflecting on each one each time.
(10:48):
And then after my marriage ended, I finally realized how strong of a need, how strong of a craving is not the right word, but that's what it felt like.
I craved to have them in my life. It was like an obsession. And how strong that was.
It was so strong to have them and in my life that without them, I didn't feel happy or I couldn't feel happy.
(11:17):
And so after that happened with my, you know, after my marriage ended, I realized how much of a dependency I had on someone else for my happiness. And that woke me up.
That told me that there's something I need to address inside of me. It wasn't just the loss. It wasn't just the heartbreak.
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It wasn't just a part of my heart.
A part of my life is gone.
There was something inside me that had such a strong desire, craving, dependency on another person being a source of happiness
and a source of energy and a source of wholeness for me.
Like I couldn't be whole without them.
(12:00):
And reflecting upon when my marriage ended and all those other times, but especially after my marriage, reflecting upon that
made me realize that that's the dysfunction I bring into relationships.
That strong desire, craving, or dependency on someone else to fulfill me, to quote, complete me. That was my dysfunction.
(12:26):
I required somebody else to feel fulfilled, to feel happy.
And what that meant was that I was bringing an unhappy self, a highly dependent self, a very fearful self into my relationships. And this realization changed me.
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I mean, completely, because after my divorce, I decided that I needed to get into another relationship really quick.
And I didn't notice it at the time. I just realized, okay, I'm divorced. Time to get into a relationship.
I mean, we were separated for like a year.
So I was already kind of single for a long time.
So my divorce finalized and the dating app, actually two of them, and I started looking, I started seeking.
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And I talked to a few people online and I didn't really find any matches and I had some interest.
And then one day I just said, what the hell am I doing? Why am I doing this?
Why am I seeking the next partner in my Why do I want that so badly?
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Why is it necessary to fill this void? And what is this void?
Why do I have this void in my life?
What if I didn't have a partner for years?
Will that void always be there and I'll just be unhappy for the rest of my life if I never got a partner again? That worried me.
There are a lot of people that are single. Maybe you're single. Maybe you're listening right now. Maybe you wish you were single.
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There are a lot of people out that have this void in their life.
And I understand if it's been a really long time, that if you've been okay and you feel whole, W-H-O-L-E, and you are okay
inside yourself, being with yourself, and it would be nice to have a partner to share your life with, that's a different kind of void.
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I'm talking about the void that comes immediately after a breakup or a death.
And I know there's a grieving period too.
So after the grieving period, when you finally get over the loss, because even the relationship ending is kind of the death
of a relationship, so there's a grieving that needs to take place.
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And so you finally get past that.
It can take a few months sometimes, maybe longer, but it shouldn't take too long because you need to get on with your life.
You need to move on, move forward.
But what happens when you can't move forward?
What happens when you are pining and thinking about that person all the time and wanting them back in your life all the time?
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It can be taxing on your system. It becomes an obsession. So I had that.
I had that obsession in my early 30s when my first long-term relationship ended.
And that obsession turned into depression because I didn't feel that I could be happy without another person in my life.
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And if we carry that into a relationship, which is where I'm going with this, it's a dysfunction that becomes a strain on
the relationship because there's a dependency that requires the other person to be in your life.
And if they aren't, then you might put a drain on the person.
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It becomes a strain on the relationship and you put a drain on the other person.
And then you also might tend to be controlling, even subtly, even passively, because you don't want them doing something that
might jeopardize this, I don't want to say stronghold that you have on the relationship, but this dependency, this dependency
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on the relationship so that you'll be happy.
And this is what some people tend to do.
They hold on to what the relationship is.
And if there's any sign that the other person might be doing something that threatens this structure of the relationship,
the way it is, like you start to depend on the structure of the relationship.
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If there's a threat that comes along, for example, two people in a relationship, one person says, I'm going to start going
to a book club once a week.
And the other person says, book club once a week, that means we won't have seven days together, we'll only have six.
And that can, it sounds like when I say it, it sounds like it comes from a place of fear. Like, what do you mean?
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You're going to do something on your own without me?
And that fear can put a strain on the person.
It doesn't mean you wouldn't have a talk about it.
Like, which night are you going to do that?
You know, we have kids or whatever. We're going to figure this out.
But hopefully there's a support system in place. Oh, that sounds great.
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You've wanted to do that for a long time. Yeah.
Let's make sure you can do that.
Like I remember my wife, she had two jobs for a while.
And I've been doing this since 2013, the overwhelmed brain and love and abuse, my other podcast.
And I do an online course and I have a workbook of all kinds of things that have turned what I do into a business so that I can make a living.
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And so when my wife had two jobs, I told her, I want to be able to make enough money so that you can quit one of your jobs.
I would love to make enough money to have her quit both of her jobs. At least that's what I wanted.
But if she could quit one, that would give her so much free time to be able to pursue what she wanted to pursue.
My goal was to make her happy.
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I really wanted her to feel fulfilled.
And one of those jobs was draining on her.
So I wanted to take out the drain.
When we take out the drain, I might as well throw this in here.
When we take out the drain on somebody that we care about, they might actually have more energy, not only for themselves, but for you as well.
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That's why I like talking about when you work somewhere and your boss is really stressed or frazzled or upset and angry and doesn't make your life any easier.
I think about how I can make their life easier.
If I were an employee, I would look at what my boss has to deal with and find a way to lessen their struggle, lessen their stress.
(19:00):
Because if they're less stressed, then my life will be less stressed, I hope.
Maybe not always with every boss, but that's how I like to see things.
And I've done this in the past.
I would see what my boss was dealing with, what stressed them out, what caused them pain, and I would try to lower or eliminate that pain.
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And it has worked out well for both of us.
They see me as somebody that they can rely on and that will help them out in a pinch.
And they also are now nicer to me.
I mean, it's a little selfish, but at the same time, it's a mutually beneficial arrangement.
So this is what I wanted to do.
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And I'm not doing this as a manipulation with my wife.
I'm doing it because I see my wife, or at least I saw my wife, was very frustrated with her other position.
And so I said, I want to make enough money so you don't have to do that anymore. And that's what happened.
I finally made enough so that she could quit one of her jobs and take the pressure off of her and allow her to pursue whatever she wanted.
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And my point with that is that was a good thing for both of us. I took strain off of her.
I helped to make her life better.
And instead of wanting things the way they were and keeping a strong grip on the way things were, like not letting her go
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to the book club once a week, which isn't our example.
And if I had done that and I said, no, things have to stay the same.
You have to keep your jobs and I have to keep mine and we have to save as much as possible.
If I had done that, then her frustration would have stayed, her stress would have stayed.
And I saw an opportunity to take that away and that improved both of our lives.
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And this relates to this strong fear or dependency or the desire, the craving, the obsessive thinking that I was talking about earlier.
When you bring that into a relationship, a fear, an insecurity that you might be without them, you actually change the energy
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of the relationship, the feeling that you both have.
Because if you're worried about something that they will or won't do because it's going to change the relationship dynamic
and you may have a fear of abandonment, a fear of rejection, a fear of being alone.
When you bring those insecurities into a relationship, it doesn't happen at first, but eventually causes a strain in the relationship
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because it comes out in the decisions that you make, in your behaviors and your ability to support the person doing whatever
they want to do as an autonomous equal partner, as an independent person in their own life.
So if they want to go to a book club twice a week, instead of saying, oh, how will that affect me?
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If you look at it as supporting the decisions that they make for themselves that make them happy, it will typically benefit the relationship as a whole.
And what we want to happen is that those fears, those dysfunctions, those fears of abandonment and fears of being alone to
start trickling into the relationship and pushing the person away because the decisions that we make, they'll feel has fear or even desperation behind those decisions.
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No, you can't go to the book club because, well, it's just, you're taking a time away from us.
If there's fear driving your thoughts and your decisions and even preventing other people from enjoying their life or doing
what they want to do in their life, what will typically end up happening is there'll be a disconnect in the relationship or it'll start to happen.
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You'll start to have this rift, this divide that grows in the relationship because much of your decision-making will be based
on a lower level fear of whatever you brought into the relationship.
And my whole point regarding this, and you may already know this, but I'm going to tell you anyway, my whole point regarding
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this is that when we bring those insecurities into the relationship, we might just be at 10% until we get somebody else in
our relationship that fills the 90% that's missing from our life.
And if we do that, we are not bringing necessarily a healthy whole version of ourselves.
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I think it's healthy to bring a 100% version of ourselves.
A lot of us don't do that, but it would be great if we could.
The healthiest version of ourselves, the best version that we've been working on for years, it would be great if we walked
into a happy to have them or not, but more fulfilled if we do.
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And what that looks like is if there's a problem down the road, if there's an incompatibility that comes up, or if there's
a situation that arises that you're no longer together anymore, then when you are grieving the end or what feels like the
death of the relationship, you aren't going right back to that 10% that you brought with you, if that makes sense.
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This is why it's so important to bring the best version of yourself into a relationship and don't try to bring in an unhealthy
version of yourself that tries to become whole or complete by someone else filling in all the void that's there.
I'm not saying you'll never feel void.
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And if you feel void, it's a problem.
I'm saying that if you rely and are dependent on someone else for your happiness and for your feelings of love and connection
in general, not as an addendum to your life, but as a replacement for what's not there, the relationship might suffer.
(25:14):
You might allow those insecurities or those insecurities might sneak up on their own.
And when they do, they cause that rift I'm talking about, because it's the little things, the daily little things that will
sneak in to conversations and decisions and you'll see them change when you have a fear come up.
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And if you're dealing with something like a fear of abandonment, a fear of rejection, a fear of being alone, and that is in
your life and you brought that into the relationship, every time that comes up in the smallest or biggest way, that insecurity
will lead to them not feeling safe or trusting around you.
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I mean, again, this is just a small buildup, but it is a daily thing that can compound and get worse over time.
The rift between you, the emotional connection will decrease over time because of one person's or both insecurities and fears
and whatever else they're dealing with that they haven't dealt with in their life personally.
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Like, I used to bring that into my relationship.
I used to bring in a fear of abandonment.
So, in order to feel whole, I would need somebody else in my life so that I wouldn't feel abandoned.
And if I didn't feel abandoned, then everything was great.
But any sign that abandonment might be a possibility, even if there was no sign of it at all, I would see what's not there.
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My fears would creep in and that would come out in my behaviors and little controlling gestures or little manipulative things that I would say.
And so, I didn't want her to abandon me, you know, in my past relationships.
But that caused, every single time, that caused them to feel less and less safe and less and less trusting with me and around me.
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And of course, when somebody doesn't feel safe or trusting around you, they may not tell you the whole truth.
They may start withholding truth from you because they know how you might react to it.
Because if you react negatively to truth, then it's going to be more difficult for them to share that truth.
Even benign ones that really aren't relationship enders, but they're just truths that you might not be able to handle because
(27:35):
of some insecurity or fear inside of you.
And so, my whole point with today's episode is, if you want to avoid the pain and that strong obsessive pull to have them
back in your life or be back in their life, you know, in a breakup or even if somebody dies, it's important to remember that
(27:56):
there might be something to work on it in yourself that you might be missing that isn't necessarily part of what happened in the relationship.
The relationship highlighted it, but it doesn't mean because they're gone, this is why the sole reason you're unhappy. Yes, you're going to be unhappy.
You're going to experience pain and suffering and it's going to hurt. I've been through it. I know it. I feel it. You've been through it.
(28:22):
I'm sure everyone listening has been through some sort of pain because of some loss in their life.
But as soon as I realized that my pain and my suffering and that pining and that longing to have them back in my life wasn't
all about them and was more about how I have not healed some of my dysfunctions, some of my insecurities inside myself, as
(28:46):
soon as I realized that, then my focus stopped being on another person to fulfill me and to make me complete, but on myself
and what I needed to work on.
And as I healed that in myself, I was able to finally not bring that old version of me into my final, hopefully, relationship
(29:09):
that I'm in today with my wife.
And she has not seen this fear of abandonment and fear of being alone and fear of rejection.
All of these things that I used to bring into all my relationships.
When I worked on that, when I worked on healing that in myself, that was when everything changed for me.
(29:29):
And so I wouldn't have learned that had I not had the breakups and the divorce, because it probably wouldn't have happened
enough for me to see the trend, the pattern, so that I can tell myself, Oh, every time that happens, I'm in this very dismal state.
I don't like being in that state. What's going on?
And I started reflecting on it and realized that most of it, most of the pain, most of the sadness, most of the desperation
(29:55):
to get them back, the obsessive thinking, had to do with my unhealed emotional wounds, typically from childhood.
You know, the neglect I felt from my mom not being there for me, even though she was there and she loved me and she took care
of us, but she wasn't there in ways that I needed when I was a child.
(30:16):
And my stepfather was an alcoholic, so he was always not present for us and very dangerous.
And my father lived in another town and I got to see him every now and then, but then he moved a thousand miles away and I never saw him.
And so I felt this neglect and this fear of being alone and abandoned throughout my childhood.
And I brought that into my adult relationships and I ruined them.
(30:40):
And I don't want you to do that.
I want you to work on that stuff.
I have episodes of fear of abandonment and fear of rejection and other dysfunctions and self-worth and self-esteem.
If you go to the overwhelmedbrain.com and use the search, you can just type the word rejection, type the word abandoned, and
you'll find some episodes that I've done that will help you heal that.
(31:03):
And if you're working on that, that might be helpful to you.
But I do believe that we need to work on ourselves so that when we face these devastating things that happen in our life,
as I get older, more people are to die.
Hopefully my wife never leaves me, but if she does, am I prepared internally? Am I prepared emotionally?
(31:23):
Probably not, but I'm going to work on that inside of me and make sure that I don't have fears and dysfunctions and insecurities
running my life and making all my decisions for me.
And just have trust that the people that I'm with want to be with me too, even when they want to take a day, take a week, take some time to themselves.
(31:49):
Because if I can support that in them, then I am supporting the path that they want to take for themselves.
If I try to make their path, my path, or tell them which path to take, it's not their path.
And then they will feel less like an autonomous, independent person that can make their own decisions.
(32:10):
And they won't feel like an equal adult in a relationship. They will feel stifled and oppressed.
And we don't want to do that to another person.
So this may be helpful to you, or maybe you need to play this for somebody else in your life. Maybe they need to hear it.
No matter what, it was good to connect with you today.
Thank you for listening to another episode of the overwhelmed brain.
(32:33):
I want to thank Stephen, Paige and Ashley and Brad and everyone that gives in the patron program.
They are the monthly supporters and anyone who donates very grateful for you. Thank you so much.
And thank you for helping me continue to make this show free for the next, how many years I'm going to do it.
My plan is to continue doing this until I can't, or I lose my voice, but maybe I'll find a way after that too. Thank you again.
(32:57):
If you value this show, like these patrons do, and you want to give back, head over to moretob.com.
And there are ways to do that over there.
And I have another podcast called love and abuse over at loveandabuse.com.
If you are trying to deal with a difficult relationship, you know, the controlling, manipulative, emotionally abusive relationships
that you just can't seem to figure out or be able to communicate with somebody who's being very, very challenging.
(33:23):
That might be the show for you. That's over at loveandabuse.com.
And I also have a program for emotionally abusive people who want to change and heal.
Or if you don't want to consider yourself emotionally abusive, at least take the test.
Go over to healedbeing.com and there's a test down at the bottom that will tell you if you are the difficult one in the relationship. Again, that's over at healedbeing.com.
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And with that, always keep your mind open because that's how you make the best decisions and be in your decisions and actions
so that you can create the life you want.
Always take steps to grow and evolve. You are powerful beyond measure.
And above all, and this is something I absolutely know to be true about you. You are amazing.
These are my personal opinions. Always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and well-being.
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One thing I notice as I get older is that my attention span is shorter. I blame that on the internet.
I blame it on so much coming at me at once. You could probably relate.
I used to take my phone with me everywhere I go.
(00:35):
There's one place I go now that I've decided to take a book. I decided to start reading again.
It doesn't mean I couldn't read or didn't read before, but I actually replaced my bathroom material with a book because in
there with a phone, looking at reels, looking at all this other stuff, I realized it felt like it was rewiring my brain.
(01:02):
So I'm reading now and I'm really enjoying it.
I'm enjoying the fiction I used to read, the sci-fi and all that.
I think it's helping me ground again. I want my brain back.
I don't want it to be lost in all these different nodes of the internet and the universe.
(01:24):
I don't want to lose my place when I'm in a conversation or even doing this show.
So I started reading again and I think that has helped me ground. Why am I sharing this?
Because maybe somebody out there needs to hear it.
Maybe you're on your phone all the time and you need to hear it.
Or maybe somebody that you care about is 24-7 on their phone, laptop, tablet, and then listening to something and then always occupying their mind.
(01:54):
There is something to be said about de-occupying your mind, about clearing it.
And so as I've cleared it, as I've sat in nature without my phone, without distractions, and as I've sat inside with a book,
but then I'll put on a video while I'm cooking or washing the dishes, I found more balance.
(02:18):
And I don't know if that's going to help you.
This isn't necessarily the topic of, no, it's not the topic of today's episode at all.
But I wanted to share that because I think a lot of us and people we know are glued to the tech. And don't get me wrong. I love the tech.
I could be with tech all day.
I am at a desk right now with three giant monitors and a mixer and a microphone.
(02:44):
And I am here enjoying all my tech, but I have to unplug sometimes.
Somebody in the Facebook group responded to one of my posts and said, I'm going on a cruise. That's a great way to unplug.
At least get away from your environment.
I think getting away from your environment is a great way to unplug.
(03:06):
I love the memories I have of visiting small towns and going to new places with my wife.
And we just enjoy the time out.
It feels different when you're away from home.
So anyway, just wanted to share that. I'm really enjoying reading.
(03:27):
I used to read all the time in my twenties and then I got out of it for a while.
I mean, once the internet came by, that's what we do.
We read on the internet, but then there's so many distractions and on and on and on.
So anyway, onto an entirely different topic, which is something I keep running into and I have run into a lot and I've experienced this myself.
(03:48):
It is the loneliness and the strong pull toward another person when they're not in your life.
So when you have a breakup, a divorce, and they don't want to talk to you anymore, they don't want to be with you anymore,
or somebody dies in your life and you have this feeling inside of you, this sadness and this sometimes obsessive pull or need to want them back. And it's obvious, right?
(04:20):
Like, Oh, they're out of my life now.
So of course I miss them and I want them back.
But what I keep seeing and again, what I've experienced during my life with several breakups is this strong craving, this
desire, this obsessive need to have that person, that specific person back in my life.
(04:45):
I must have that person in my life. That was my thought process.
And I believed if I didn't have them back, if they didn't come back, that I would never be happy again. And that has never been true. I have been happy again.
The first time, my first long-term relationship, when that ended, it took me two and a half, three years to be happy again.
(05:10):
But I was also dealing with depression.
I was depressed because I wasn't expressing myself.
I was holding a lot in and that built up.
I suppressed my emotions and I repressed my expression, what I wanted to say, what I wanted to do.
(05:30):
And when I started letting that out, letting it out of my system, sharing what was on my mind and sharing what I was angry
about, you know, I didn't even want to experience anger back then, but I started experiencing it.
I started expressing it, you know, allowing it to come up.
And that helped, all that stored energy inside of me.
(05:53):
And so my first breakup, my first real long-term breakup, was that was when I experienced depression and I had to heal through that.
Then I met somebody else and I was still depressed and I had to get through that as well.
But I kind of healed as we were together, but I still had issues. I still had issues expressing myself.
(06:18):
And I definitely had issues being judgmental and critical.
And I had a lot of unhealed, unhealthy coping mechanisms. And so that relationship ended.
And when that ended, I was again so lonely and I had to have that person back in my life if I were ever to experience happiness again. Have you ever felt this way?
(06:39):
I'm sure most people listening have felt this way before. Somebody leaves you or somebody dies.
I have to have that person back in my life. I'm not talking about children.
If you lose a child, that's an entirely different, very complex emotional process, emotional situation that can take a lifetime to heal.
(07:02):
It doesn't mean you won't be happy again, but there's a part of you missing. And that can hurt.
And just like losing somebody in your life, a part of you goes away. That is a part of you.
The person who left, the person who died is a part of you. There they go.
(07:23):
And now they're not in your life anymore. So what do you do? There's a missing part of you. This is my perspective. There's a missing part of you.
What made up the totality of your heart is now partial. This is a partially filled heart.
You might feel like 10% of yourself and the 90% has gone out the door or died. And that hurts.
(07:50):
And I bring this up because that 10% needs to be, it needs to be much bigger than 10%.
If somebody leaves you and you only have 10% left in your heart, it needs to be a lot bigger than that because there is going to be pain.
There is going to be challenge in your life and people are going to leave your life and people are going to die.
(08:15):
I think about this as I go forward.
I'm 55 and as I get older, friends have died, family, I've had family die, but no one that has affected me so deeply yet.
I mean, death affects me just like death affects you.
But as I get older, I realize the people that I care about most, when they die, if I'm alive and they die, it's going to affect
(08:43):
me so strongly and I'm going to experience this loss in my heart and in my life because my life includes them. My identity includes them.
This is what I see with romantic relationships.
We get so close to someone that they become a part of our identity.
(09:05):
We identify ourselves as me, you, and us.
And so when they leave or die or whatever, when they're out of our lives, then we are missing a part of our identity.
And how do we identify with ourselves if a part of us is missing?
The way I go about it, because this has happened to me several times throughout my life, the person that I identified myself as was me and us.
(09:35):
And she identified herself as me and us, I'm assuming.
That's, I think, typically what happens with most of us.
And so that's part of my identity that's leaving.
So throughout my life, that's happened several times.
And every time it has happened, it's been painful.
But each time it happens, it's not been as debilitating.
(09:59):
I'm not saying you should go through it too.
I'm not saying that you need to experience it a lot of times just to understand what's going on.
But what it has helped me do is reflect each time.
So as it happened, the first time I couldn't reflect at all. I was going through it. It was very raw.
The second time, that was the, actually the first time was a young relationship. I was a 20-year-old or something.
(10:24):
And then the second time was the long-term.
And then the third time was my previous marriage. And then one in between there.
So like four breakups that I've had that have caused me to go through this experience.
And I see them all as learning experiences.
They were painful experiences at the time, but I learned from them by reflecting on each one each time.
(10:48):
And then after my marriage ended, I finally realized how strong of a need, how strong of a craving is not the right word, but that's what it felt like.
I craved to have them in my life. It was like an obsession. And how strong that was.
It was so strong to have them and in my life that without them, I didn't feel happy or I couldn't feel happy.
(11:17):
And so after that happened with my, you know, after my marriage ended, I realized how much of a dependency I had on someone else for my happiness. And that woke me up.
That told me that there's something I need to address inside of me. It wasn't just the loss. It wasn't just the heartbreak.
(11:37):
It wasn't just a part of my heart.
A part of my life is gone.
There was something inside me that had such a strong desire, craving, dependency on another person being a source of happiness
and a source of energy and a source of wholeness for me.
Like I couldn't be whole without them.
(12:00):
And reflecting upon when my marriage ended and all those other times, but especially after my marriage, reflecting upon that
made me realize that that's the dysfunction I bring into relationships.
That strong desire, craving, or dependency on someone else to fulfill me, to quote, complete me. That was my dysfunction.
(12:26):
I required somebody else to feel fulfilled, to feel happy.
And what that meant was that I was bringing an unhappy self, a highly dependent self, a very fearful self into my relationships. And this realization changed me.
(12:51):
I mean, completely, because after my divorce, I decided that I needed to get into another relationship really quick.
And I didn't notice it at the time. I just realized, okay, I'm divorced. Time to get into a relationship.
I mean, we were separated for like a year.
So I was already kind of single for a long time.
So my divorce finalized and the dating app, actually two of them, and I started looking, I started seeking.
(13:21):
And I talked to a few people online and I didn't really find any matches and I had some interest.
And then one day I just said, what the hell am I doing? Why am I doing this?
Why am I seeking the next partner in my Why do I want that so badly?
(13:41):
Why is it necessary to fill this void? And what is this void?
Why do I have this void in my life?
What if I didn't have a partner for years?
Will that void always be there and I'll just be unhappy for the rest of my life if I never got a partner again? That worried me.
There are a lot of people that are single. Maybe you're single. Maybe you're listening right now. Maybe you wish you were single.
(14:05):
There are a lot of people out that have this void in their life.
And I understand if it's been a really long time, that if you've been okay and you feel whole, W-H-O-L-E, and you are okay
inside yourself, being with yourself, and it would be nice to have a partner to share your life with, that's a different kind of void.
(14:30):
I'm talking about the void that comes immediately after a breakup or a death.
And I know there's a grieving period too.
So after the grieving period, when you finally get over the loss, because even the relationship ending is kind of the death
of a relationship, so there's a grieving that needs to take place.
(14:54):
And so you finally get past that.
It can take a few months sometimes, maybe longer, but it shouldn't take too long because you need to get on with your life.
You need to move on, move forward.
But what happens when you can't move forward?
What happens when you are pining and thinking about that person all the time and wanting them back in your life all the time?
(15:20):
It can be taxing on your system. It becomes an obsession. So I had that.
I had that obsession in my early 30s when my first long-term relationship ended.
And that obsession turned into depression because I didn't feel that I could be happy without another person in my life.
(15:43):
And if we carry that into a relationship, which is where I'm going with this, it's a dysfunction that becomes a strain on
the relationship because there's a dependency that requires the other person to be in your life.
And if they aren't, then you might put a drain on the person.
(16:04):
It becomes a strain on the relationship and you put a drain on the other person.
And then you also might tend to be controlling, even subtly, even passively, because you don't want them doing something that
might jeopardize this, I don't want to say stronghold that you have on the relationship, but this dependency, this dependency
(16:26):
on the relationship so that you'll be happy.
And this is what some people tend to do.
They hold on to what the relationship is.
And if there's any sign that the other person might be doing something that threatens this structure of the relationship,
the way it is, like you start to depend on the structure of the relationship.
(16:49):
If there's a threat that comes along, for example, two people in a relationship, one person says, I'm going to start going
to a book club once a week.
And the other person says, book club once a week, that means we won't have seven days together, we'll only have six.
And that can, it sounds like when I say it, it sounds like it comes from a place of fear. Like, what do you mean?
(17:10):
You're going to do something on your own without me?
And that fear can put a strain on the person.
It doesn't mean you wouldn't have a talk about it.
Like, which night are you going to do that?
You know, we have kids or whatever. We're going to figure this out.
But hopefully there's a support system in place. Oh, that sounds great.
(17:31):
You've wanted to do that for a long time. Yeah.
Let's make sure you can do that.
Like I remember my wife, she had two jobs for a while.
And I've been doing this since 2013, the overwhelmed brain and love and abuse, my other podcast.
And I do an online course and I have a workbook of all kinds of things that have turned what I do into a business so that I can make a living.
(17:56):
And so when my wife had two jobs, I told her, I want to be able to make enough money so that you can quit one of your jobs.
I would love to make enough money to have her quit both of her jobs. At least that's what I wanted.
But if she could quit one, that would give her so much free time to be able to pursue what she wanted to pursue.
My goal was to make her happy.
(18:17):
I really wanted her to feel fulfilled.
And one of those jobs was draining on her.
So I wanted to take out the drain.
When we take out the drain, I might as well throw this in here.
When we take out the drain on somebody that we care about, they might actually have more energy, not only for themselves, but for you as well.
(18:38):
That's why I like talking about when you work somewhere and your boss is really stressed or frazzled or upset and angry and doesn't make your life any easier.
I think about how I can make their life easier.
If I were an employee, I would look at what my boss has to deal with and find a way to lessen their struggle, lessen their stress.
(19:00):
Because if they're less stressed, then my life will be less stressed, I hope.
Maybe not always with every boss, but that's how I like to see things.
And I've done this in the past.
I would see what my boss was dealing with, what stressed them out, what caused them pain, and I would try to lower or eliminate that pain.
(19:22):
And it has worked out well for both of us.
They see me as somebody that they can rely on and that will help them out in a pinch.
And they also are now nicer to me.
I mean, it's a little selfish, but at the same time, it's a mutually beneficial arrangement.
So this is what I wanted to do.
(19:44):
And I'm not doing this as a manipulation with my wife.
I'm doing it because I see my wife, or at least I saw my wife, was very frustrated with her other position.
And so I said, I want to make enough money so you don't have to do that anymore. And that's what happened.
I finally made enough so that she could quit one of her jobs and take the pressure off of her and allow her to pursue whatever she wanted.
(20:07):
And my point with that is that was a good thing for both of us. I took strain off of her.
I helped to make her life better.
And instead of wanting things the way they were and keeping a strong grip on the way things were, like not letting her go
(20:29):
to the book club once a week, which isn't our example.
And if I had done that and I said, no, things have to stay the same.
You have to keep your jobs and I have to keep mine and we have to save as much as possible.
If I had done that, then her frustration would have stayed, her stress would have stayed.
And I saw an opportunity to take that away and that improved both of our lives.
(20:53):
And this relates to this strong fear or dependency or the desire, the craving, the obsessive thinking that I was talking about earlier.
When you bring that into a relationship, a fear, an insecurity that you might be without them, you actually change the energy
(21:15):
of the relationship, the feeling that you both have.
Because if you're worried about something that they will or won't do because it's going to change the relationship dynamic
and you may have a fear of abandonment, a fear of rejection, a fear of being alone.
When you bring those insecurities into a relationship, it doesn't happen at first, but eventually causes a strain in the relationship
(21:40):
because it comes out in the decisions that you make, in your behaviors and your ability to support the person doing whatever
they want to do as an autonomous equal partner, as an independent person in their own life.
So if they want to go to a book club twice a week, instead of saying, oh, how will that affect me?
(22:05):
If you look at it as supporting the decisions that they make for themselves that make them happy, it will typically benefit the relationship as a whole.
And what we want to happen is that those fears, those dysfunctions, those fears of abandonment and fears of being alone to
start trickling into the relationship and pushing the person away because the decisions that we make, they'll feel has fear or even desperation behind those decisions.
(22:36):
No, you can't go to the book club because, well, it's just, you're taking a time away from us.
If there's fear driving your thoughts and your decisions and even preventing other people from enjoying their life or doing
what they want to do in their life, what will typically end up happening is there'll be a disconnect in the relationship or it'll start to happen.
(22:59):
You'll start to have this rift, this divide that grows in the relationship because much of your decision-making will be based
on a lower level fear of whatever you brought into the relationship.
And my whole point regarding this, and you may already know this, but I'm going to tell you anyway, my whole point regarding
(23:21):
this is that when we bring those insecurities into the relationship, we might just be at 10% until we get somebody else in
our relationship that fills the 90% that's missing from our life.
And if we do that, we are not bringing necessarily a healthy whole version of ourselves.
(23:44):
I think it's healthy to bring a 100% version of ourselves.
A lot of us don't do that, but it would be great if we could.
The healthiest version of ourselves, the best version that we've been working on for years, it would be great if we walked
into a happy to have them or not, but more fulfilled if we do.
(24:06):
And what that looks like is if there's a problem down the road, if there's an incompatibility that comes up, or if there's
a situation that arises that you're no longer together anymore, then when you are grieving the end or what feels like the
death of the relationship, you aren't going right back to that 10% that you brought with you, if that makes sense.
(24:32):
This is why it's so important to bring the best version of yourself into a relationship and don't try to bring in an unhealthy
version of yourself that tries to become whole or complete by someone else filling in all the void that's there.
I'm not saying you'll never feel void.
(24:53):
And if you feel void, it's a problem.
I'm saying that if you rely and are dependent on someone else for your happiness and for your feelings of love and connection
in general, not as an addendum to your life, but as a replacement for what's not there, the relationship might suffer.
(25:14):
You might allow those insecurities or those insecurities might sneak up on their own.
And when they do, they cause that rift I'm talking about, because it's the little things, the daily little things that will
sneak in to conversations and decisions and you'll see them change when you have a fear come up.
(25:37):
And if you're dealing with something like a fear of abandonment, a fear of rejection, a fear of being alone, and that is in
your life and you brought that into the relationship, every time that comes up in the smallest or biggest way, that insecurity
will lead to them not feeling safe or trusting around you.
(25:57):
I mean, again, this is just a small buildup, but it is a daily thing that can compound and get worse over time.
The rift between you, the emotional connection will decrease over time because of one person's or both insecurities and fears
and whatever else they're dealing with that they haven't dealt with in their life personally.
(26:21):
Like, I used to bring that into my relationship.
I used to bring in a fear of abandonment.
So, in order to feel whole, I would need somebody else in my life so that I wouldn't feel abandoned.
And if I didn't feel abandoned, then everything was great.
But any sign that abandonment might be a possibility, even if there was no sign of it at all, I would see what's not there.
(26:45):
My fears would creep in and that would come out in my behaviors and little controlling gestures or little manipulative things that I would say.
And so, I didn't want her to abandon me, you know, in my past relationships.
But that caused, every single time, that caused them to feel less and less safe and less and less trusting with me and around me.
(27:08):
And of course, when somebody doesn't feel safe or trusting around you, they may not tell you the whole truth.
They may start withholding truth from you because they know how you might react to it.
Because if you react negatively to truth, then it's going to be more difficult for them to share that truth.
Even benign ones that really aren't relationship enders, but they're just truths that you might not be able to handle because
(27:35):
of some insecurity or fear inside of you.
And so, my whole point with today's episode is, if you want to avoid the pain and that strong obsessive pull to have them
back in your life or be back in their life, you know, in a breakup or even if somebody dies, it's important to remember that
(27:56):
there might be something to work on it in yourself that you might be missing that isn't necessarily part of what happened in the relationship.
The relationship highlighted it, but it doesn't mean because they're gone, this is why the sole reason you're unhappy. Yes, you're going to be unhappy.
You're going to experience pain and suffering and it's going to hurt. I've been through it. I know it. I feel it. You've been through it.
(28:22):
I'm sure everyone listening has been through some sort of pain because of some loss in their life.
But as soon as I realized that my pain and my suffering and that pining and that longing to have them back in my life wasn't
all about them and was more about how I have not healed some of my dysfunctions, some of my insecurities inside myself, as
(28:46):
soon as I realized that, then my focus stopped being on another person to fulfill me and to make me complete, but on myself
and what I needed to work on.
And as I healed that in myself, I was able to finally not bring that old version of me into my final, hopefully, relationship
(29:09):
that I'm in today with my wife.
And she has not seen this fear of abandonment and fear of being alone and fear of rejection.
All of these things that I used to bring into all my relationships.
When I worked on that, when I worked on healing that in myself, that was when everything changed for me.
(29:29):
And so I wouldn't have learned that had I not had the breakups and the divorce, because it probably wouldn't have happened
enough for me to see the trend, the pattern, so that I can tell myself, Oh, every time that happens, I'm in this very dismal state.
I don't like being in that state. What's going on?
And I started reflecting on it and realized that most of it, most of the pain, most of the sadness, most of the desperation
(29:55):
to get them back, the obsessive thinking, had to do with my unhealed emotional wounds, typically from childhood.
You know, the neglect I felt from my mom not being there for me, even though she was there and she loved me and she took care
of us, but she wasn't there in ways that I needed when I was a child.
(30:16):
And my stepfather was an alcoholic, so he was always not present for us and very dangerous.
And my father lived in another town and I got to see him every now and then, but then he moved a thousand miles away and I never saw him.
And so I felt this neglect and this fear of being alone and abandoned throughout my childhood.
And I brought that into my adult relationships and I ruined them.
(30:40):
And I don't want you to do that.
I want you to work on that stuff.
I have episodes of fear of abandonment and fear of rejection and other dysfunctions and self-worth and self-esteem.
If you go to the overwhelmedbrain.com and use the search, you can just type the word rejection, type the word abandoned, and
you'll find some episodes that I've done that will help you heal that.
(31:03):
And if you're working on that, that might be helpful to you.
But I do believe that we need to work on ourselves so that when we face these devastating things that happen in our life,
as I get older, more people are to die.
Hopefully my wife never leaves me, but if she does, am I prepared internally? Am I prepared emotionally?
(31:23):
Probably not, but I'm going to work on that inside of me and make sure that I don't have fears and dysfunctions and insecurities
running my life and making all my decisions for me.
And just have trust that the people that I'm with want to be with me too, even when they want to take a day, take a week, take some time to themselves.
(31:49):
Because if I can support that in them, then I am supporting the path that they want to take for themselves.
If I try to make their path, my path, or tell them which path to take, it's not their path.
And then they will feel less like an autonomous, independent person that can make their own decisions.
(32:10):
And they won't feel like an equal adult in a relationship. They will feel stifled and oppressed.
And we don't want to do that to another person.
So this may be helpful to you, or maybe you need to play this for somebody else in your life. Maybe they need to hear it.
No matter what, it was good to connect with you today.
Thank you for listening to another episode of the overwhelmed brain.
(32:33):
I want to thank Stephen, Paige and Ashley and Brad and everyone that gives in the patron program.
They are the monthly supporters and anyone who donates very grateful for you. Thank you so much.
And thank you for helping me continue to make this show free for the next, how many years I'm going to do it.
My plan is to continue doing this until I can't, or I lose my voice, but maybe I'll find a way after that too. Thank you again.
(32:57):
If you value this show, like these patrons do, and you want to give back, head over to moretob.com.
And there are ways to do that over there.
And I have another podcast called love and abuse over at loveandabuse.com.
If you are trying to deal with a difficult relationship, you know, the controlling, manipulative, emotionally abusive relationships
that you just can't seem to figure out or be able to communicate with somebody who's being very, very challenging.
(33:23):
That might be the show for you. That's over at loveandabuse.com.
And I also have a program for emotionally abusive people who want to change and heal.
Or if you don't want to consider yourself emotionally abusive, at least take the test.
Go over to healedbeing.com and there's a test down at the bottom that will tell you if you are the difficult one in the relationship. Again, that's over at healedbeing.com.
(33:47):
And with that, always keep your mind open because that's how you make the best decisions and be in your decisions and actions
so that you can create the life you want.
Always take steps to grow and evolve. You are powerful beyond measure.
And above all, and this is something I absolutely know to be true about you. You are amazing.
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