August 31, 2025 • 45 mins
How do you know when your heart is ready to embrace love again after weathering the storm of a toxic relationship? What should you be prepared for at the start of a new relationship? I talk about that and the draining effects of toxic relationships in this episode.
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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.
(00:12):
Welcome to the show. I'm glad that you are here.
I'm going to talk about a couple of things today.
Somebody wrote to me and said they're listening to my Love and Abuse podcast, or they've been listening to it for a while,
and they finally broke up with the person who cheated on them multiple times, and they felt they were held to unhealthy and
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uneven standards and shamed for their past and lied to.
It was a constant cycle of highs and lows.
My partner said that he wanted to change, but he never seemed to be able to.
And then I would feel bad for him, and I would cling on.
I am finally at the point where I know a future will never work.
I have blocked him, but he found a way to reach out after a couple of years.
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He was talking about how miserable he is now, and his life has spiraled downhill, and how he hates himself and is in the darkest place of his life.
I was empathetic, but told him to please not contact me because it is too hard for my healing.
Do you have any advice for dealing with this?
I feel bad for him, and I don't want him to feel miserable, but talking to him breaks me. Thank you for everything. Thank you for sharing that.
(01:25):
I'm sorry you went through that, and I have probably a quick answer for you.
You are very empathetic like you said, and because of that, you will overextend and be overly compassionate to people that you see in misery.
The problem is, someone like this, someone in this state of mind and with these dysfunctions and stuff that he needs to heal,
(01:54):
some stuff that he is going through right now, he needs to heal.
I don't know if it's a fear of abandonment, a fear of being alone, a feeling unworthy, or whatever it is, but he needs to
heal those things in himself before he gets into a relationship with you or anyone else, so that when there is a breakup,
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it isn't all about, and this is going to sound terrible, it isn't all about me. Woe is me. I'm terrible. I'm miserable.
Ever since you broke up with me, ever since you blocked me, my life is going down a downward spiral. Feel bad for me.
I mean, this is taking advantage of your empathy and your compassion.
(02:36):
And people who take advantage of those who are empathetic and compassionate, well, they don't stop.
I mean, typically, they do not stop unless they heal what they're dealing with.
Old traumas, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and dysfunctions, like I talked about.
They need to heal those things in themselves.
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Maybe there's a lot of insecurity inside of him, and he feels that his power, his happiness comes from someone else, and that
he needs to leech off that person to drain them of their power and their happiness so that he can be happy. I don't know him.
I don't know what his story is.
(03:19):
I hear your story, and I hear your words, and I can put the pieces together.
But to me, this sounds like somebody who was highly dependent on you for their happiness.
And when somebody is highly dependent on you to make them happy, and they're not bringing their own happy, healthy self into
the relationship, but relying on you to fill those gaps, then you have a one-sided or unbalanced relationship, and that is
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extremely taxing and draining on the person who has to be the provider, the energy source for a person like that, which it
sounds very much like you have been.
And so you said that you blocked him, and he found a way to reach out, and so you might have to block him again because if
you are overly compassionate and overly empathetic, even though it doesn't sound like a bad thing to be, but it is when you
(04:15):
are doing those things with somebody who is such a taker, or very leachy, if I can use that word, very energetically draining
to you, because you can't be the source.
You can't be somebody who has such abundance in happiness and security and all the functionalism that a dysfunctional person
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requires for them to feel a sense of normalcy.
You aren't there to give them a sense of normalcy or complete them. You don't want to complete somebody.
You want to find a complete person, or at least complete enough, healthy enough, happy enough, that they bring the best version
of themselves into the relationship, so that as you do the same thing back, you create something special and bigger than yourselves.
(05:07):
What happens in a relationship like this, and I'll just give you a scenario, one person brings the best version of themselves
as best as they can be, and they're probably continuing to work on that all the time. We all are.
They bring that best version of themselves, and the other person doesn't bring that best version of themselves, and just brings
the version they've been living with and not really trying to heal what's going on in themselves.
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And when another person enters their life, they don't have to look at their own stuff, because now they have somebody to fill the gap.
You don't want to be the gap filler.
You don't want to be someone's crutch.
I mean, there are times when that happens, yes.
And there are relationships that work like that, yes.
(05:52):
There are exceptions to that rule, but in most cases, you want a balanced relationship that is more toward the positive than the negative.
So it's very difficult when you are mostly functional and you meet somebody who has dysfunctions, and I don't say that in
a negative way or a bad way, it's just that sometimes we have things to work on, sometimes we have things to heal.
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For example, I used to have a fear of abandonment, a fear of rejection.
I used to have a lack of confidence.
So those were dysfunctions in me, old wounds, old childhood wounds that I needed to work on.
And when I did, I could bring a better version of myself into the relationship. That wasn't always the case.
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I used to bring that version of myself into the relationship and hope that the other person or expect the other person to compensate for what lacked in me.
And so these insecurities that I had and these fears that I had, as long as they were able to compensate, then it felt balanced to me.
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But the problem with that is when the power source or the source of this energy isn't around or takes a break or even breaks
up or divorces or whatever, when they're gone, what's left?
If what's left is what they brought in, which wasn't enough to begin with the other person, then what you end up with is someone who talks like this, I'm miserable. I'm going down a spiral. I hate myself. I'm in the darkest place.
(07:32):
And it's not like we've all not felt this before.
We've all felt this, or most of us have felt this way before, especially after a breakup or a breakup.
But in this case, what this person is doing is instead of saying, I did all these things to you. I hurt you.
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I did these mistakes in the relationship. I'm so sorry.
I should never have done those things to you. You don't deserve it.
Instead of this person saying all those things, you know, this person's partner saying all these things to the person who
wrote, instead of focusing on the damage they caused or taking responsibility for what they did to the other person in the
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relationship, they say, poor me, I'm going through this.
It's a dark time of my life. I hate myself.
And yeah, it's probably all true, but he's so focused on himself.
You can pretty much tell that that's where he was to begin with.
And he needs to heal things in himself.
(08:37):
He needs to work on that in himself.
He needs to reflect on what's going on, maybe get some help so that he doesn't rely on others to compensate for what he needs to work on in himself.
And again, I'm not saying that you can't get into a relationship and start to heal these things. Sometimes you can.
Sometimes you do bring a quote dysfunctional or unhealed version of yourself or not as good as it could be version of yourself
(09:05):
into a relationship and you work on that stuff, but hopefully you don't pull what you're missing from the other person causing that drain.
And I have to be careful here because we do rely on other people.
We do rely on other people for certain things in our life or certain emotions.
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We have certain expectations, but we have to be careful not to develop such dependency that when that person isn't in our
life anymore, we have nothing to live for.
Which is what it sounds like this person's saying.
Sounds like she's saying that my ex has nothing to live for and they hate themselves.
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And then this person says it is too hard for my healing.
So this person's going through their own healing.
Their ex is reaching out saying, I'm miserable.
So now they are expected again to soothe the person in emotional deficit, the person that has those unhealed wounds that needs to work on himself.
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And that will take away from her own healing.
And so this is why she's trying to block him and she's asking for advice. How do I deal with this? I feel bad for him.
I don't want him to feel miserable, but talking to him breaks me. That's the key.
If you can't do it, you can't do it.
(10:28):
And this is where self honoring takes priority.
I need to honor myself because I can't take care of you. I can't nurture you. I can't soothe you.
I need to do those things for myself.
I need to put my energy, whatever's left back into myself and get to a point where I feel more abundant in myself so that
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if somebody else comes along or if you just happen to contact me again, I'll have enough energy to deal with it. I might feel bad for you.
I might feel nothing for you, whatever.
But if you come into my life or some other person that's draining me comes into my life, I will have enough energy to deal with it.
And so my only comment on what this person wrote, I guess I just made a lot of comments, but my only comment right now on
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what this person wrote is that you have to know that until he works on himself and heals himself or at least goes to somebody
to help him heal, what's going on inside of him, that he will always feel miserable.
So you have to know that even if you were to connect with him and soothe him or even get back together with him, his default
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behavior or his default emotional state will be, I feel miserable unless you do something.
Now I want you to imagine your life, your future.
This person will always feel miserable unless you make them happy. That's their state.
And I know people are saying, that's not true, Paul. That's not always true.
(12:11):
Maybe they're going through some hard times. Yeah, absolutely.
But if you believe what I'm saying, if you believe that he will always feel miserable unless you fulfill him and you make
him happy, then you know your role in that relationship.
And even if I'm wrong and he doesn't always feel miserable all the time and he's just going through a hard time, it could be true.
(12:37):
But because of the history of him reaching back out after she blocked him, and that means that he's not honoring her personal
boundaries, that means that he's trying to continue to drain her.
And I believe that she needs to continue blocking him because if she doesn't, he will play on her heartstrings and always
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be miserable so that he can get the soothing that he knows she's capable of.
And because she's so kind and caring and supportive, she will feel so bad that if he feels miserable, she's going to want
to make him feel better because that's the kind of person she is. And those are wonderful qualities.
But sometimes we don't want to overextend those qualities with people who continue to take advantage of them.
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And you've already said enough in this message about him cheating on you and holding you up to high standards and shaming you for your past.
That's enough for me to say, no question, just block him and move on.
And you might say, I did block him, but he found a way to reach me. Then block that channel too. But he knows my phone number. Then block him from calling you.
(13:50):
But he might call me from another phone. Then don't answer the phone. Let it go to voicemail.
I know I'm making it sound easy.
You just change your entire life for this one person.
It doesn't take long for someone to get the point.
I mean, it might for obsessive people, it might take longer, but eventually they have to give up because they've tried every Avenue.
(14:11):
Now, even if a person like that does show up, they show up at your work, they show up in places that, uh, it seems to be, uh, an impromptu meeting. Oh, what are you doing here? I don't know.
I didn't know you were going to be here. Stuff like that.
You have to be highly suspect of because that probably didn't normally happen in the past.
So I would be suspicious of that, but let's just say that he finds other ways to connect with you.
(14:36):
This is why, yes, you need to heal.
This is why, yes, you need time away from him enough time to, uh, build yourself back up, rebuild your energy, heal yourself
to the point where you can say, please leave me alone and walk away.
Please leave me alone, walk away, and then do your best not to connect emotionally because you might see those sad eyes and
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you might see that miserable look on his face and you know, he's suffering, or at least he's trying to show you that he's suffering.
And that's when your heartstrings are pulled, but you have to pretty much gray rocket, gray rock, not rocket, gray rock it.
You have to act like a dull gray rock who doesn't have emotions and is just making a logical choice, an analytical decision.
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And that's very difficult for kind, caring, empathetic people to do, but they have to, because what ends up happening is people
who take advantage of your emotions and your emotional state, look for the emotions to take advantage of.
And if you show them your emotional state, they will take advantage of that by doing what they know works.
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So if you look at him with these compassionate eyes and you feel bad and you can see that feeling in your face, he's going
to see that and say, oh good, she's being compassionate.
I'm going to pile it on some more.
And when I This is what emotional abuse is.
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Someone takes advantage of your emotional state and your emotions because when you show them, when you speak and your emotions
come out in your inflections, like, oh, I'm so sorry. Listen to my inflection.
You can tell the emotion I'm feeling.
And when they hear that, when they hear the emotions, when they see your face, when they see your body language, I'm talking
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about people who take advantage of your emotional state.
When those people see those things, they know how to respond and react to get more of that out of you to get what they want.
And so I'm not saying that this person isn't hurting.
I'm sure he is, but he knows that hurting in front of you will activate you and will turn on your compassion and turn on your
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guilt and turn on all different parts of your heart because you hate to see people suffer.
And the unfortunate part is some people will do that and take advantage of that.
And this is why I say he will always be miserable, not because he's a miserable person, but because when he sees you and he's
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not getting what he wants from you, he knows how to, and then he'll turn on that miserable feeling.
And if he truly feels miserable, it isn't you who's supposed to fix that or compensate. It's a professional.
It's his own reflections, his own meditations, his own healing journey, whatever he needs to do to heal that.
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And when he heals that, maybe he'll become a different person.
And when he becomes that different person, maybe all the things that you will be combined with more things that you like because
he's no longer carrying around the deficits and the insecurities and the dysfunctions, everything that he needs to work on.
Then he will be able to bring the best version of himself into the relationship.
(18:04):
Because sometimes what we need to do is block or disconnect from people in our life so that we don't inadvertently enable them to be who they are. Doesn't mean it's your fault.
It doesn't mean you're doing it on purpose and I'm not blaming you or anything like that.
I'm saying that sometimes we do that with people.
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Sometimes we show up in a way that allows them to continue showing up in the way they are that takes advantage of us.
And if we don't recognize how we're showing up in their life that allows them to take advantage of us, then we are inadvertently
or we can be inadvertently enabling them to take advantage of us.
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And we don't want to do that.
So we have to be careful how they respond to how we respond, how they react to how we react, how they show up when we show up in a certain way.
If I show my compassion, do their eyes get bigger like a puppy dog?
And now I feel more compassion because it's a lot different having compassion for someone who just experienced something or
(19:16):
someone who can't get over something, whatever, they're experiencing real fear or pain or whatever.
It's a lot different to experience compassion for somebody like that than to experience compassion for someone that you needed
to break up with to protect yourself from them.
And then they're sad that you're protecting themselves from them.
(19:39):
So there's my thoughts on what this person wrote.
Thank you so much for writing all that. I wish you the best. Good luck with this.
And my advice is just to continue trying to disconnect, trying to make sure that he can't reach you so that you can distance
yourself from him because we can't take responsibility for someone else's emotional state.
(20:00):
We can't take responsibility for someone else being miserable.
When I was broken up with several times in my life, I would sort of blame those people.
Like, why didn't they give me another chance?
Why couldn't we go to more couples therapy? Why couldn't we do this? Why couldn't we do that?
Instead of saying, hmm, I wonder what's going on inside of me.
(20:21):
Why people keep breaking up with me. I wonder if I'm the problem.
And I finally asked that question in my previous marriage.
As my previous marriage was coming to a close, I asked myself, what is going on?
Why do people keep breaking up with me? And now I'm getting a divorce.
I thought I was going to be married for the rest of my life. And I finally got it. I finally put the pieces together.
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I finally took responsibility for my role in all these breakups.
And I told myself, I am the common denominator.
And so people like that, people like who I was, we have to get to that point. And in enabling our bad behaviors.
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Again, I know that sounds like I'm blaming the other person, but that's not it at all.
We just have to be careful how we show up in their lives that has like a cause and effect.
Like if my compassion causes the other person to guilt me, there's a cause and effect there.
So we can control what happens next.
Sometimes when we show up differently, what happens when I don't show compassion, for example, someone might do the silent
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treatment to make their partner feel guilty or make their partner do what they want.
So they become silent and withdrawing love and connection and affection.
And the other person that it's happening to might become more loving and more connected, trying to pull out what's wrong with the person in the silent treatment.
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They might say, what can I do to help you?
And the person who has withdrawn love and connection, likes that attention and affection.
And that's how they drew that attention and affection out by withdrawing love and connection.
And so that can be an inadvertent enablement where the person going silent and withdrawing love and affection does so to gain
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more love and attention from the person they're trying to manipulate.
And just to be clear, there are two versions, or at least the ones I identify two versions of silent treatment.
One is processing time, like, Whoa, what just happened? I got to process this.
So I'm going to go silent for a while.
And the other kind is the emotionally abusive kind, which is I'm going to go silent and withdraw love and affection so that
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you feel blamed so that you feel bad so that you feel that you caused me to withdraw.
That's a different type of silent treatment.
So when I say silent treatment, I'm talking about the emotionally abusive kind, unless I identified otherwise. So that's what I mean.
Somebody can go silent in order to gain something from the other person.
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They are hurting essentially, because no one wants to feel unloved.
No one wants to feel like they're not important.
And when somebody is doing the silent treatment that I'm talking about, that's exactly what it can feel like.
(23:34):
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(23:57):
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(24:52):
So anyway, I want to thank that person again for writing.
And I'm going to read you another quick message here that somebody wrote to me and said, um, I had a thought about a topic
that you could cover in your podcast.
How do you know when you're ready to love again?
And she wrote some other stuff and I'm not going to read it all here, but her questions, it was based on, she was in a relationship
(25:14):
for about a decade and, or a little longer.
And, um, after the relationship, she had to do a lot of healing.
She got a divorce and they were together for a number of years.
And she said that she was slowly dying a toxic death. I mean, that's very intense. Who wants to go through that?
(25:34):
But after it ended, you know, she tried to date a little bit, but she has all these questions because she's not even sure if she's ready to love again.
So how do you know when you're ready to love again?
And then she asked a bunch of questions at the bottom that said, uh, how do I know I have dealt with the pain and baggage
enough to give this new relationship a chance or give myself a chance?
How do I know I'll be as open and trusting with this new person and not make him pay for the crimes from my past?
(26:01):
How do I learn to trust my judgment again?
I let my ex take advantage of me in the past.
I enabled him because I loved him and I believed in him.
How do I make sure I don't make that same mistake again?
How do I know if I am ready?
I want to thank that person for writing too. Thank you for sharing that.
Sorry for all the stuff that you went through.
(26:22):
Nobody wants to go through a slow toxic death. I'm sorry you went through that. So I'm going to answer you.
I'm going to tell you how I believe you know you're ready.
You don't and you probably won't until you get into one.
The first part of my answer, part A, you won't know you're ready until you get into one.
(26:45):
So I know that's like the cart before the horse or whatever.
Yeah, you won't know until you're in one so that you can understand how you respond and react.
And of course, when you're in one, then you feel like it's too late because now I'm in one. Now what?
What happens if I'm taking advantage again? What happens if they're hurting me? What happens this? What happens that?
(27:09):
So I approach this as you will probably never know if you are actually ready until you get into a relationship.
But once you get into a relationship, that's the point where you have to be ready.
It's not about getting into the relationship.
It's once you're in the relationship, you have to be ready. And this is part B.
(27:30):
This is part B and the second half of my answer.
A, you get into a relationship, but the relationship doesn't have to be really close, really fast.
It can be, hey, great to meet you. Let's go to dinner. Let's go to lunch.
Let's have some coffee, whatever it is. And you start slow.
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And then you have another date and you continue doing it slowly.
And you have many dates over many weeks and maybe many months.
And now some people may disagree, but I think it's important to slowly increment your feelings, your closeness, slowly increment
(28:14):
them very slowly with somebody in your guard tower watching at all times.
And what that means is as a part of you who's enjoying your time together with a person and another part of you waiting for
something to happen, watching out for you. This, I know it sounds terrible.
(28:36):
Does that mean I'm not going to enjoy my time together and I'm not going to be able to get close to somebody because I always have this skepticism or suspicion? No, it doesn't.
Because what happens, and this is my opinion, I'm not saying this is the advice of the century, but the way I see getting
into a relationship, especially if you've been the victim of any kind of abusive behavior or things were just way too difficult
(29:03):
or way more difficult than they should have been, then getting into your next relationship shouldn't be, oh, it's all on. I love it. This is my soulmate.
I'm going to give my guard tower the rest of the year off.
I'm going to tell them to go away. There's nothing to watch out for.
And when you do that, you're all in and all off, meaning you're all in on the relationship because everything seems so perfect,
(29:30):
which is really weird when it begins that way. That's something to be suspicious of.
In my opinion, if everything's so perfect in the beginning, uh, what, what's going on here?
Because not everything is supposed to be perfect. It's great when it is.
And it's great when it continues, but that's even more important to keep that guard in the tower, that mental tower in your
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head, continually watching what's going on, continually watching what's unfolding because what they're going to notice, you
may not notice while you're enjoying your time.
I know I'm telling you to split your personality, but that's not really the advice I'm giving.
I'm just saying, there's a part of you that enjoys things maybe up to 85%.
(30:14):
And then that 15% is that suspicious, skeptical person, sort of like a, uh, a healthy parent watching over you and being there for you just in case.
Now you don't have to keep that guard tower manned.
It doesn't have to stay that way, but at the beginning of the relationship and throughout the first six months, a year, I think it's healthy to be skeptical.
(30:41):
I think it's healthy not to be suspicious necessarily, but to keep an eye out because what's going to happen in almost every
relationship is something is going to go wrong. Something is going to be off.
And then there's going to be a question of, did I do something wrong? Did they do something wrong?
(31:03):
And this is where you're going to have a conversation with that person in your guard house, part of you, and you're going
to also have a conversation with the person in your life and you're going to find out where they are and how they're going
to either defend themselves or support you.
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They're either going to put you down or apologize.
They're going to do something or say something that's going to give you a sign of what's, what it's going to be like going forward.
So if there's a misunderstanding, then hopefully you can have a conversation on it and how that conversation goes, will you feel more empowered or disempowered?
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And I guess this might be part C of my answer.
I wasn't going to go there, but I'm, I'm here.
And so when you feel empowered after a conversation in this context, what I'm saying is that you feel better having had it.
You feel better knowing that you are understood, or at least they tried to understand. They listened. They made you feel heard.
(32:12):
And, um, they also shared, they expressed, they used I statements. You used I statements.
And there is, uh, both people taking responsibility for their role in what happened and any misunderstanding.
And when that happens, even if it was a blow up or an argument, when you can both walk away feeling like it was at least productive
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and not one person feels like they're getting their power taken away, that is so much healthier than having a blow up or an argument.
And one person feels completely defeated because both people should care about each other's happiness.
Both people should want the other person to feel good.
(32:56):
My wife and I argue, it's not all the time and it's much less frequent than it used to be.
But when we argue, it's a productive argument because by the end, at least when things have calmed down a bit, we both want
the other person to feel good again.
That is a huge red flag when that's not the case in any relationship.
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If after things have calmed down a bit, if one person doesn't want the other person to feel good and they want them to feel
defeated, then that person wants to take away their power.
When you're in a relationship with someone who wants you to feel powerless, that's a big red flag.
And this is why it's important that when you get into a relationship, you take things slowly and question things along the way.
(33:45):
Question if this is right, does it feel right?
Does this person just want to be right and make sure that I feel wrong?
Because after my wife and I have an argument, I don't want her to feel wrong.
I don't want her to feel bad.
I want her to feel good in herself, about herself and about us.
(34:06):
And so when we have any type of disagreement and it gets heated or any type of misunderstanding, we do seek to understand each other's point of view. And that is very helpful. Sometimes we're staunch on ours though.
Sometimes we can be very staunch on our own point of view.
But when it comes down to it, we care enough about each other to not want the other person to feel bad.
(34:30):
And we want them to feel powerless or feel like they can't do anything right.
Because when you love somebody, you support them being happy.
You support them feeling good about themselves.
And so when I look at getting into a relationship and how it develops, I look for that.
Is that person supporting you and feeling good about yourself, supporting your decisions that you make that you believe are right for you?
(34:59):
Or are they trying to take your power away and they want you to believe that they're right and you should listen to them?
Or they're trying to make you feel bad for something that you're not doing good enough.
These are the signs that you look for in a relationship.
And this is why it's important to heal yourself enough so that when you get into a relationship, you can look for these signs
(35:23):
and ask yourself, are they trying to take my power away?
Not that they would use those words or you would use those words, but do I feel defeated? Do they care if I'm happy? Do they care if I'm unhappy?
Do they care if I make decisions for myself or are they trying to stop me at every turn?
(35:46):
To get to that point where you do feel comfortable looking for those possible toxic components of a relationship, you do need
to get to a point where you can trust yourself.
And this is one of the questions in that person's email.
She said, how do I know if I can trust my own judgment?
I believe you have to get to a point before you get into a relationship that you can trust yourself to speak up when something
(36:15):
doesn't feel right, when something doesn't seem right.
That's where you have to get to because you may not know if you're ready for a relationship, but I know you are ready for
a relationship if something happens that doesn't feel right and you say something doesn't feel right.
This conversation is going in the wrong direction.
(36:36):
What you just said made me feel bad. Can we talk about it?
Let's talk about this because somebody who cares about you is going to say, I don't want you to feel bad. Yes, definitely. Let's talk about it.
Let's figure this out because I don't want you to feel bad at all. I love you. I care about you. So I definitely don't want that.
And then you'll have a conversation and that's all you need.
(36:58):
In my opinion, all you need is the ability to check in with yourself and figure out if it feels right or if it doesn't feel right.
Figure out if you just lost your power or you feel empowered coming out of a circumstance of conversation and argument.
And this is why you have somebody in your mental guard tower to watch over what's going on so that when you are enjoying all
(37:23):
the good times, when something is off, when something strange happens, and while you're falling in love slowly, taking things
slowly, finding out how they handle objections, how they handle your personal boundaries, how they handle your no and oh,
and how do they react after those things.
(37:48):
If you say no, do they get angry?
Because the person in your mental guard tower is going to say, this doesn't feel right. Let's talk about it.
Then you have a conversation about it.
So I like to catch these things early on.
In fact, I have an episode in Love and Abuse or at loveandabuse.com, my other podcast.
If you look for the title, Identifying the Signs of Toxic or Manipulative Behavior While Dating, that will be probably the
(38:17):
best resource I can give you that I can think of right now.
This will help you look for those signs.
This will help you prepare for expressing yourself when something doesn't feel right.
Because that's the most important or one of the most important things you can do when you're starting a relationship or starting
(38:38):
to date, is to be aware of what to look for.
When you are aware of what to look for, then you don't get into tricky situations to get out of.
And this is why I want people to fall in love slowly, because falling in love feels like a commitment.
And once you fall in love, you're more willing to be forgiving, and you're more willing to overlook things, and you're more
(39:01):
willing to give people the benefit of the doubt.
And when you do that, you're more likely to get in a tricky situation if that person isn't all they say they are, or all they appear to be.
A tricky situation could be, now I've committed and I feel like I'm stuck, so I'm going to try harder.
That's when we don't trust ourselves enough to speak up.
(39:24):
I think I'm going to add a Part D to this.
A Part D in how to know if you're ready for a relationship.
Meaning, if I bring this up, they may want to break up with me, or they may never want to see me again.
But I need to bring this up, because if I don't, and it continues to be a problem, I don't want to have to deal with it in
(39:47):
the relationship, so I should bring it up. And I think that's important.
When you can bring up things that actually feel like a risk to the relationship, then you will find out if the relationship is worth having.
Because someone who cares about you and cares about the relationship wants it to work.
And if you say, look, when you talk about that stuff, or when you bring that stuff up, it makes me feel bad.
(40:13):
And then they say something like, I don't care if you feel bad.
Or they say, well then don't do that and you won't feel bad.
I mean, if they say something uncaring, cold, or invalidating, that is not conducive to a loving, caring, balanced relationship.
And that brings it right back to when you are with somebody who cares about you and wants you to be happy and wants you to
(40:38):
have your power, they won't say or do things that hurt you in that way.
So my point is with Part D is that you should have the emotional strength to bring things up that might be risky.
And all I mean by that is you could either not bring it up, and it becomes a permanent issue in the relationship.
(41:03):
It creates tension or stress, or you can bring it up, which might risk the relationship ending.
But if it doesn't end, it will only strengthen it.
Because what you get through after you get through the hard stuff is more honesty, more transparency, more connection, and more love.
So to the person who wrote, how do you know you're ready?
(41:26):
I think in a nutshell, it's telling yourself, if it doesn't feel right, then I'm going to bring it up.
And if I bring it up, and it goes well, then I know that I can bring up some hard stuff.
And if I bring it up, and it doesn't go well, and they don't seem to have my best interest in mind, or at least they're not
interested in a balanced relationship where both people are happy, and both people feel love and connection, then I have to
(41:53):
be either strong enough or willing to walk away.
Which is how I believe you can assess if you're ready to get into another relationship.
So in a nutshell, if you're ready to walk away from something that isn't working, you are definitely ready for a relationship. Those are my thoughts. I hope they're helpful.
(42:16):
Thank you for writing in, and thank you for listening to another episode of the Overwhelmed Brain.
I want to thank the patrons this week.
Michelle and Wanda, thank you so much for your every month. I am so grateful to you.
And I received, wow, I just noticed this now.
Sandra, thank you so much for your donation. I am very grateful.
She said that, hi Paul, thank you as always. I'm still following your shows.
(42:40):
Apologies, this is my third recent attempt at donating, but I've had tech issues.
I think this one should get through. It did. Thank you, Sandra. I am so grateful. That is very generous. I appreciate you.
And anyone that donates to the show, thank you all.
And I am just honored and humbled.
If you value the show like these people do, and you want to give back, head over to moretob.com, and there are options to do that over there.
(43:07):
And if you're looking for a show on how to navigate the difficult relationship, listen to my other podcast called Love and Abuse over at loveandabuse.com.
And if you know you're the difficult one in the relationship and you want to change that about yourself, there's a comprehensive
program that I have created over at healedbeing.com. Go over there.
If you're trying to work on your own behaviors to make sure you don't lose a relationship or make sure you don't mess up the next one, that's over at healedbeing.com.
(43:35):
And with that, always keep your mind open because that's how you make the best decisions.
And be firm 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.
(00:12):
Welcome to the show. I'm glad that you are here.
I'm going to talk about a couple of things today.
Somebody wrote to me and said they're listening to my Love and Abuse podcast, or they've been listening to it for a while,
and they finally broke up with the person who cheated on them multiple times, and they felt they were held to unhealthy and
(00:33):
uneven standards and shamed for their past and lied to.
It was a constant cycle of highs and lows.
My partner said that he wanted to change, but he never seemed to be able to.
And then I would feel bad for him, and I would cling on.
I am finally at the point where I know a future will never work.
I have blocked him, but he found a way to reach out after a couple of years.
(00:57):
He was talking about how miserable he is now, and his life has spiraled downhill, and how he hates himself and is in the darkest place of his life.
I was empathetic, but told him to please not contact me because it is too hard for my healing.
Do you have any advice for dealing with this?
I feel bad for him, and I don't want him to feel miserable, but talking to him breaks me. Thank you for everything. Thank you for sharing that.
(01:25):
I'm sorry you went through that, and I have probably a quick answer for you.
You are very empathetic like you said, and because of that, you will overextend and be overly compassionate to people that you see in misery.
The problem is, someone like this, someone in this state of mind and with these dysfunctions and stuff that he needs to heal,
(01:54):
some stuff that he is going through right now, he needs to heal.
I don't know if it's a fear of abandonment, a fear of being alone, a feeling unworthy, or whatever it is, but he needs to
heal those things in himself before he gets into a relationship with you or anyone else, so that when there is a breakup,
(02:15):
it isn't all about, and this is going to sound terrible, it isn't all about me. Woe is me. I'm terrible. I'm miserable.
Ever since you broke up with me, ever since you blocked me, my life is going down a downward spiral. Feel bad for me.
I mean, this is taking advantage of your empathy and your compassion.
(02:36):
And people who take advantage of those who are empathetic and compassionate, well, they don't stop.
I mean, typically, they do not stop unless they heal what they're dealing with.
Old traumas, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and dysfunctions, like I talked about.
They need to heal those things in themselves.
(02:57):
Maybe there's a lot of insecurity inside of him, and he feels that his power, his happiness comes from someone else, and that
he needs to leech off that person to drain them of their power and their happiness so that he can be happy. I don't know him.
I don't know what his story is.
(03:19):
I hear your story, and I hear your words, and I can put the pieces together.
But to me, this sounds like somebody who was highly dependent on you for their happiness.
And when somebody is highly dependent on you to make them happy, and they're not bringing their own happy, healthy self into
the relationship, but relying on you to fill those gaps, then you have a one-sided or unbalanced relationship, and that is
(03:47):
extremely taxing and draining on the person who has to be the provider, the energy source for a person like that, which it
sounds very much like you have been.
And so you said that you blocked him, and he found a way to reach out, and so you might have to block him again because if
you are overly compassionate and overly empathetic, even though it doesn't sound like a bad thing to be, but it is when you
(04:15):
are doing those things with somebody who is such a taker, or very leachy, if I can use that word, very energetically draining
to you, because you can't be the source.
You can't be somebody who has such abundance in happiness and security and all the functionalism that a dysfunctional person
(04:39):
requires for them to feel a sense of normalcy.
You aren't there to give them a sense of normalcy or complete them. You don't want to complete somebody.
You want to find a complete person, or at least complete enough, healthy enough, happy enough, that they bring the best version
of themselves into the relationship, so that as you do the same thing back, you create something special and bigger than yourselves.
(05:07):
What happens in a relationship like this, and I'll just give you a scenario, one person brings the best version of themselves
as best as they can be, and they're probably continuing to work on that all the time. We all are.
They bring that best version of themselves, and the other person doesn't bring that best version of themselves, and just brings
the version they've been living with and not really trying to heal what's going on in themselves.
(05:31):
And when another person enters their life, they don't have to look at their own stuff, because now they have somebody to fill the gap.
You don't want to be the gap filler.
You don't want to be someone's crutch.
I mean, there are times when that happens, yes.
And there are relationships that work like that, yes.
(05:52):
There are exceptions to that rule, but in most cases, you want a balanced relationship that is more toward the positive than the negative.
So it's very difficult when you are mostly functional and you meet somebody who has dysfunctions, and I don't say that in
a negative way or a bad way, it's just that sometimes we have things to work on, sometimes we have things to heal.
(06:16):
For example, I used to have a fear of abandonment, a fear of rejection.
I used to have a lack of confidence.
So those were dysfunctions in me, old wounds, old childhood wounds that I needed to work on.
And when I did, I could bring a better version of myself into the relationship. That wasn't always the case.
(06:36):
I used to bring that version of myself into the relationship and hope that the other person or expect the other person to compensate for what lacked in me.
And so these insecurities that I had and these fears that I had, as long as they were able to compensate, then it felt balanced to me.
(06:58):
But the problem with that is when the power source or the source of this energy isn't around or takes a break or even breaks
up or divorces or whatever, when they're gone, what's left?
If what's left is what they brought in, which wasn't enough to begin with the other person, then what you end up with is someone who talks like this, I'm miserable. I'm going down a spiral. I hate myself. I'm in the darkest place.
(07:32):
And it's not like we've all not felt this before.
We've all felt this, or most of us have felt this way before, especially after a breakup or a breakup.
But in this case, what this person is doing is instead of saying, I did all these things to you. I hurt you.
(07:53):
I did these mistakes in the relationship. I'm so sorry.
I should never have done those things to you. You don't deserve it.
Instead of this person saying all those things, you know, this person's partner saying all these things to the person who
wrote, instead of focusing on the damage they caused or taking responsibility for what they did to the other person in the
(08:15):
relationship, they say, poor me, I'm going through this.
It's a dark time of my life. I hate myself.
And yeah, it's probably all true, but he's so focused on himself.
You can pretty much tell that that's where he was to begin with.
And he needs to heal things in himself.
(08:37):
He needs to work on that in himself.
He needs to reflect on what's going on, maybe get some help so that he doesn't rely on others to compensate for what he needs to work on in himself.
And again, I'm not saying that you can't get into a relationship and start to heal these things. Sometimes you can.
Sometimes you do bring a quote dysfunctional or unhealed version of yourself or not as good as it could be version of yourself
(09:05):
into a relationship and you work on that stuff, but hopefully you don't pull what you're missing from the other person causing that drain.
And I have to be careful here because we do rely on other people.
We do rely on other people for certain things in our life or certain emotions.
(09:26):
We have certain expectations, but we have to be careful not to develop such dependency that when that person isn't in our
life anymore, we have nothing to live for.
Which is what it sounds like this person's saying.
Sounds like she's saying that my ex has nothing to live for and they hate themselves.
(09:46):
And then this person says it is too hard for my healing.
So this person's going through their own healing.
Their ex is reaching out saying, I'm miserable.
So now they are expected again to soothe the person in emotional deficit, the person that has those unhealed wounds that needs to work on himself.
(10:06):
And that will take away from her own healing.
And so this is why she's trying to block him and she's asking for advice. How do I deal with this? I feel bad for him.
I don't want him to feel miserable, but talking to him breaks me. That's the key.
If you can't do it, you can't do it.
(10:28):
And this is where self honoring takes priority.
I need to honor myself because I can't take care of you. I can't nurture you. I can't soothe you.
I need to do those things for myself.
I need to put my energy, whatever's left back into myself and get to a point where I feel more abundant in myself so that
(10:54):
if somebody else comes along or if you just happen to contact me again, I'll have enough energy to deal with it. I might feel bad for you.
I might feel nothing for you, whatever.
But if you come into my life or some other person that's draining me comes into my life, I will have enough energy to deal with it.
And so my only comment on what this person wrote, I guess I just made a lot of comments, but my only comment right now on
(11:23):
what this person wrote is that you have to know that until he works on himself and heals himself or at least goes to somebody
to help him heal, what's going on inside of him, that he will always feel miserable.
So you have to know that even if you were to connect with him and soothe him or even get back together with him, his default
(11:50):
behavior or his default emotional state will be, I feel miserable unless you do something.
Now I want you to imagine your life, your future.
This person will always feel miserable unless you make them happy. That's their state.
And I know people are saying, that's not true, Paul. That's not always true.
(12:11):
Maybe they're going through some hard times. Yeah, absolutely.
But if you believe what I'm saying, if you believe that he will always feel miserable unless you fulfill him and you make
him happy, then you know your role in that relationship.
And even if I'm wrong and he doesn't always feel miserable all the time and he's just going through a hard time, it could be true.
(12:37):
But because of the history of him reaching back out after she blocked him, and that means that he's not honoring her personal
boundaries, that means that he's trying to continue to drain her.
And I believe that she needs to continue blocking him because if she doesn't, he will play on her heartstrings and always
(12:59):
be miserable so that he can get the soothing that he knows she's capable of.
And because she's so kind and caring and supportive, she will feel so bad that if he feels miserable, she's going to want
to make him feel better because that's the kind of person she is. And those are wonderful qualities.
But sometimes we don't want to overextend those qualities with people who continue to take advantage of them.
(13:27):
And you've already said enough in this message about him cheating on you and holding you up to high standards and shaming you for your past.
That's enough for me to say, no question, just block him and move on.
And you might say, I did block him, but he found a way to reach me. Then block that channel too. But he knows my phone number. Then block him from calling you.
(13:50):
But he might call me from another phone. Then don't answer the phone. Let it go to voicemail.
I know I'm making it sound easy.
You just change your entire life for this one person.
It doesn't take long for someone to get the point.
I mean, it might for obsessive people, it might take longer, but eventually they have to give up because they've tried every Avenue.
(14:11):
Now, even if a person like that does show up, they show up at your work, they show up in places that, uh, it seems to be, uh, an impromptu meeting. Oh, what are you doing here? I don't know.
I didn't know you were going to be here. Stuff like that.
You have to be highly suspect of because that probably didn't normally happen in the past.
So I would be suspicious of that, but let's just say that he finds other ways to connect with you.
(14:36):
This is why, yes, you need to heal.
This is why, yes, you need time away from him enough time to, uh, build yourself back up, rebuild your energy, heal yourself
to the point where you can say, please leave me alone and walk away.
Please leave me alone, walk away, and then do your best not to connect emotionally because you might see those sad eyes and
(14:59):
you might see that miserable look on his face and you know, he's suffering, or at least he's trying to show you that he's suffering.
And that's when your heartstrings are pulled, but you have to pretty much gray rocket, gray rock, not rocket, gray rock it.
You have to act like a dull gray rock who doesn't have emotions and is just making a logical choice, an analytical decision.
(15:24):
And that's very difficult for kind, caring, empathetic people to do, but they have to, because what ends up happening is people
who take advantage of your emotions and your emotional state, look for the emotions to take advantage of.
And if you show them your emotional state, they will take advantage of that by doing what they know works.
(15:47):
So if you look at him with these compassionate eyes and you feel bad and you can see that feeling in your face, he's going
to see that and say, oh good, she's being compassionate.
I'm going to pile it on some more.
And when I This is what emotional abuse is.
(16:08):
Someone takes advantage of your emotional state and your emotions because when you show them, when you speak and your emotions
come out in your inflections, like, oh, I'm so sorry. Listen to my inflection.
You can tell the emotion I'm feeling.
And when they hear that, when they hear the emotions, when they see your face, when they see your body language, I'm talking
(16:30):
about people who take advantage of your emotional state.
When those people see those things, they know how to respond and react to get more of that out of you to get what they want.
And so I'm not saying that this person isn't hurting.
I'm sure he is, but he knows that hurting in front of you will activate you and will turn on your compassion and turn on your
(16:58):
guilt and turn on all different parts of your heart because you hate to see people suffer.
And the unfortunate part is some people will do that and take advantage of that.
And this is why I say he will always be miserable, not because he's a miserable person, but because when he sees you and he's
(17:18):
not getting what he wants from you, he knows how to, and then he'll turn on that miserable feeling.
And if he truly feels miserable, it isn't you who's supposed to fix that or compensate. It's a professional.
It's his own reflections, his own meditations, his own healing journey, whatever he needs to do to heal that.
(17:43):
And when he heals that, maybe he'll become a different person.
And when he becomes that different person, maybe all the things that you will be combined with more things that you like because
he's no longer carrying around the deficits and the insecurities and the dysfunctions, everything that he needs to work on.
Then he will be able to bring the best version of himself into the relationship.
(18:04):
Because sometimes what we need to do is block or disconnect from people in our life so that we don't inadvertently enable them to be who they are. Doesn't mean it's your fault.
It doesn't mean you're doing it on purpose and I'm not blaming you or anything like that.
I'm saying that sometimes we do that with people.
(18:26):
Sometimes we show up in a way that allows them to continue showing up in the way they are that takes advantage of us.
And if we don't recognize how we're showing up in their life that allows them to take advantage of us, then we are inadvertently
or we can be inadvertently enabling them to take advantage of us.
(18:48):
And we don't want to do that.
So we have to be careful how they respond to how we respond, how they react to how we react, how they show up when we show up in a certain way.
If I show my compassion, do their eyes get bigger like a puppy dog?
And now I feel more compassion because it's a lot different having compassion for someone who just experienced something or
(19:16):
someone who can't get over something, whatever, they're experiencing real fear or pain or whatever.
It's a lot different to experience compassion for somebody like that than to experience compassion for someone that you needed
to break up with to protect yourself from them.
And then they're sad that you're protecting themselves from them.
(19:39):
So there's my thoughts on what this person wrote.
Thank you so much for writing all that. I wish you the best. Good luck with this.
And my advice is just to continue trying to disconnect, trying to make sure that he can't reach you so that you can distance
yourself from him because we can't take responsibility for someone else's emotional state.
(20:00):
We can't take responsibility for someone else being miserable.
When I was broken up with several times in my life, I would sort of blame those people.
Like, why didn't they give me another chance?
Why couldn't we go to more couples therapy? Why couldn't we do this? Why couldn't we do that?
Instead of saying, hmm, I wonder what's going on inside of me.
(20:21):
Why people keep breaking up with me. I wonder if I'm the problem.
And I finally asked that question in my previous marriage.
As my previous marriage was coming to a close, I asked myself, what is going on?
Why do people keep breaking up with me? And now I'm getting a divorce.
I thought I was going to be married for the rest of my life. And I finally got it. I finally put the pieces together.
(20:46):
I finally took responsibility for my role in all these breakups.
And I told myself, I am the common denominator.
And so people like that, people like who I was, we have to get to that point. And in enabling our bad behaviors.
(21:08):
Again, I know that sounds like I'm blaming the other person, but that's not it at all.
We just have to be careful how we show up in their lives that has like a cause and effect.
Like if my compassion causes the other person to guilt me, there's a cause and effect there.
So we can control what happens next.
Sometimes when we show up differently, what happens when I don't show compassion, for example, someone might do the silent
(21:35):
treatment to make their partner feel guilty or make their partner do what they want.
So they become silent and withdrawing love and connection and affection.
And the other person that it's happening to might become more loving and more connected, trying to pull out what's wrong with the person in the silent treatment.
(21:56):
They might say, what can I do to help you?
And the person who has withdrawn love and connection, likes that attention and affection.
And that's how they drew that attention and affection out by withdrawing love and connection.
And so that can be an inadvertent enablement where the person going silent and withdrawing love and affection does so to gain
(22:22):
more love and attention from the person they're trying to manipulate.
And just to be clear, there are two versions, or at least the ones I identify two versions of silent treatment.
One is processing time, like, Whoa, what just happened? I got to process this.
So I'm going to go silent for a while.
And the other kind is the emotionally abusive kind, which is I'm going to go silent and withdraw love and affection so that
(22:45):
you feel blamed so that you feel bad so that you feel that you caused me to withdraw.
That's a different type of silent treatment.
So when I say silent treatment, I'm talking about the emotionally abusive kind, unless I identified otherwise. So that's what I mean.
Somebody can go silent in order to gain something from the other person.
(23:09):
They are hurting essentially, because no one wants to feel unloved.
No one wants to feel like they're not important.
And when somebody is doing the silent treatment that I'm talking about, that's exactly what it can feel like.
(23:34):
You know, we're born into environments that can affect our decisions and how we see life and how we view both our past and our future.
Sometimes we need support to work through these challenges.
I remember coming out of a long-term relationship and feeling depressed and I couldn't get rid of it.
So I had to see someone and it totally changed my trajectory.
(23:57):
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(24:52):
So anyway, I want to thank that person again for writing.
And I'm going to read you another quick message here that somebody wrote to me and said, um, I had a thought about a topic
that you could cover in your podcast.
How do you know when you're ready to love again?
And she wrote some other stuff and I'm not going to read it all here, but her questions, it was based on, she was in a relationship
(25:14):
for about a decade and, or a little longer.
And, um, after the relationship, she had to do a lot of healing.
She got a divorce and they were together for a number of years.
And she said that she was slowly dying a toxic death. I mean, that's very intense. Who wants to go through that?
(25:34):
But after it ended, you know, she tried to date a little bit, but she has all these questions because she's not even sure if she's ready to love again.
So how do you know when you're ready to love again?
And then she asked a bunch of questions at the bottom that said, uh, how do I know I have dealt with the pain and baggage
enough to give this new relationship a chance or give myself a chance?
How do I know I'll be as open and trusting with this new person and not make him pay for the crimes from my past?
(26:01):
How do I learn to trust my judgment again?
I let my ex take advantage of me in the past.
I enabled him because I loved him and I believed in him.
How do I make sure I don't make that same mistake again?
How do I know if I am ready?
I want to thank that person for writing too. Thank you for sharing that.
Sorry for all the stuff that you went through.
(26:22):
Nobody wants to go through a slow toxic death. I'm sorry you went through that. So I'm going to answer you.
I'm going to tell you how I believe you know you're ready.
You don't and you probably won't until you get into one.
The first part of my answer, part A, you won't know you're ready until you get into one.
(26:45):
So I know that's like the cart before the horse or whatever.
Yeah, you won't know until you're in one so that you can understand how you respond and react.
And of course, when you're in one, then you feel like it's too late because now I'm in one. Now what?
What happens if I'm taking advantage again? What happens if they're hurting me? What happens this? What happens that?
(27:09):
So I approach this as you will probably never know if you are actually ready until you get into a relationship.
But once you get into a relationship, that's the point where you have to be ready.
It's not about getting into the relationship.
It's once you're in the relationship, you have to be ready. And this is part B.
(27:30):
This is part B and the second half of my answer.
A, you get into a relationship, but the relationship doesn't have to be really close, really fast.
It can be, hey, great to meet you. Let's go to dinner. Let's go to lunch.
Let's have some coffee, whatever it is. And you start slow.
(27:52):
And then you have another date and you continue doing it slowly.
And you have many dates over many weeks and maybe many months.
And now some people may disagree, but I think it's important to slowly increment your feelings, your closeness, slowly increment
(28:14):
them very slowly with somebody in your guard tower watching at all times.
And what that means is as a part of you who's enjoying your time together with a person and another part of you waiting for
something to happen, watching out for you. This, I know it sounds terrible.
(28:36):
Does that mean I'm not going to enjoy my time together and I'm not going to be able to get close to somebody because I always have this skepticism or suspicion? No, it doesn't.
Because what happens, and this is my opinion, I'm not saying this is the advice of the century, but the way I see getting
into a relationship, especially if you've been the victim of any kind of abusive behavior or things were just way too difficult
(29:03):
or way more difficult than they should have been, then getting into your next relationship shouldn't be, oh, it's all on. I love it. This is my soulmate.
I'm going to give my guard tower the rest of the year off.
I'm going to tell them to go away. There's nothing to watch out for.
And when you do that, you're all in and all off, meaning you're all in on the relationship because everything seems so perfect,
(29:30):
which is really weird when it begins that way. That's something to be suspicious of.
In my opinion, if everything's so perfect in the beginning, uh, what, what's going on here?
Because not everything is supposed to be perfect. It's great when it is.
And it's great when it continues, but that's even more important to keep that guard in the tower, that mental tower in your
(29:54):
head, continually watching what's going on, continually watching what's unfolding because what they're going to notice, you
may not notice while you're enjoying your time.
I know I'm telling you to split your personality, but that's not really the advice I'm giving.
I'm just saying, there's a part of you that enjoys things maybe up to 85%.
(30:14):
And then that 15% is that suspicious, skeptical person, sort of like a, uh, a healthy parent watching over you and being there for you just in case.
Now you don't have to keep that guard tower manned.
It doesn't have to stay that way, but at the beginning of the relationship and throughout the first six months, a year, I think it's healthy to be skeptical.
(30:41):
I think it's healthy not to be suspicious necessarily, but to keep an eye out because what's going to happen in almost every
relationship is something is going to go wrong. Something is going to be off.
And then there's going to be a question of, did I do something wrong? Did they do something wrong?
(31:03):
And this is where you're going to have a conversation with that person in your guard house, part of you, and you're going
to also have a conversation with the person in your life and you're going to find out where they are and how they're going
to either defend themselves or support you.
(31:23):
They're either going to put you down or apologize.
They're going to do something or say something that's going to give you a sign of what's, what it's going to be like going forward.
So if there's a misunderstanding, then hopefully you can have a conversation on it and how that conversation goes, will you feel more empowered or disempowered?
(31:47):
And I guess this might be part C of my answer.
I wasn't going to go there, but I'm, I'm here.
And so when you feel empowered after a conversation in this context, what I'm saying is that you feel better having had it.
You feel better knowing that you are understood, or at least they tried to understand. They listened. They made you feel heard.
(32:12):
And, um, they also shared, they expressed, they used I statements. You used I statements.
And there is, uh, both people taking responsibility for their role in what happened and any misunderstanding.
And when that happens, even if it was a blow up or an argument, when you can both walk away feeling like it was at least productive
(32:33):
and not one person feels like they're getting their power taken away, that is so much healthier than having a blow up or an argument.
And one person feels completely defeated because both people should care about each other's happiness.
Both people should want the other person to feel good.
(32:56):
My wife and I argue, it's not all the time and it's much less frequent than it used to be.
But when we argue, it's a productive argument because by the end, at least when things have calmed down a bit, we both want
the other person to feel good again.
That is a huge red flag when that's not the case in any relationship.
(33:20):
If after things have calmed down a bit, if one person doesn't want the other person to feel good and they want them to feel
defeated, then that person wants to take away their power.
When you're in a relationship with someone who wants you to feel powerless, that's a big red flag.
And this is why it's important that when you get into a relationship, you take things slowly and question things along the way.
(33:45):
Question if this is right, does it feel right?
Does this person just want to be right and make sure that I feel wrong?
Because after my wife and I have an argument, I don't want her to feel wrong.
I don't want her to feel bad.
I want her to feel good in herself, about herself and about us.
(34:06):
And so when we have any type of disagreement and it gets heated or any type of misunderstanding, we do seek to understand each other's point of view. And that is very helpful. Sometimes we're staunch on ours though.
Sometimes we can be very staunch on our own point of view.
But when it comes down to it, we care enough about each other to not want the other person to feel bad.
(34:30):
And we want them to feel powerless or feel like they can't do anything right.
Because when you love somebody, you support them being happy.
You support them feeling good about themselves.
And so when I look at getting into a relationship and how it develops, I look for that.
Is that person supporting you and feeling good about yourself, supporting your decisions that you make that you believe are right for you?
(34:59):
Or are they trying to take your power away and they want you to believe that they're right and you should listen to them?
Or they're trying to make you feel bad for something that you're not doing good enough.
These are the signs that you look for in a relationship.
And this is why it's important to heal yourself enough so that when you get into a relationship, you can look for these signs
(35:23):
and ask yourself, are they trying to take my power away?
Not that they would use those words or you would use those words, but do I feel defeated? Do they care if I'm happy? Do they care if I'm unhappy?
Do they care if I make decisions for myself or are they trying to stop me at every turn?
(35:46):
To get to that point where you do feel comfortable looking for those possible toxic components of a relationship, you do need
to get to a point where you can trust yourself.
And this is one of the questions in that person's email.
She said, how do I know if I can trust my own judgment?
I believe you have to get to a point before you get into a relationship that you can trust yourself to speak up when something
(36:15):
doesn't feel right, when something doesn't seem right.
That's where you have to get to because you may not know if you're ready for a relationship, but I know you are ready for
a relationship if something happens that doesn't feel right and you say something doesn't feel right.
This conversation is going in the wrong direction.
(36:36):
What you just said made me feel bad. Can we talk about it?
Let's talk about this because somebody who cares about you is going to say, I don't want you to feel bad. Yes, definitely. Let's talk about it.
Let's figure this out because I don't want you to feel bad at all. I love you. I care about you. So I definitely don't want that.
And then you'll have a conversation and that's all you need.
(36:58):
In my opinion, all you need is the ability to check in with yourself and figure out if it feels right or if it doesn't feel right.
Figure out if you just lost your power or you feel empowered coming out of a circumstance of conversation and argument.
And this is why you have somebody in your mental guard tower to watch over what's going on so that when you are enjoying all
(37:23):
the good times, when something is off, when something strange happens, and while you're falling in love slowly, taking things
slowly, finding out how they handle objections, how they handle your personal boundaries, how they handle your no and oh,
and how do they react after those things.
(37:48):
If you say no, do they get angry?
Because the person in your mental guard tower is going to say, this doesn't feel right. Let's talk about it.
Then you have a conversation about it.
So I like to catch these things early on.
In fact, I have an episode in Love and Abuse or at loveandabuse.com, my other podcast.
If you look for the title, Identifying the Signs of Toxic or Manipulative Behavior While Dating, that will be probably the
(38:17):
best resource I can give you that I can think of right now.
This will help you look for those signs.
This will help you prepare for expressing yourself when something doesn't feel right.
Because that's the most important or one of the most important things you can do when you're starting a relationship or starting
(38:38):
to date, is to be aware of what to look for.
When you are aware of what to look for, then you don't get into tricky situations to get out of.
And this is why I want people to fall in love slowly, because falling in love feels like a commitment.
And once you fall in love, you're more willing to be forgiving, and you're more willing to overlook things, and you're more
(39:01):
willing to give people the benefit of the doubt.
And when you do that, you're more likely to get in a tricky situation if that person isn't all they say they are, or all they appear to be.
A tricky situation could be, now I've committed and I feel like I'm stuck, so I'm going to try harder.
That's when we don't trust ourselves enough to speak up.
(39:24):
I think I'm going to add a Part D to this.
A Part D in how to know if you're ready for a relationship.
Meaning, if I bring this up, they may want to break up with me, or they may never want to see me again.
But I need to bring this up, because if I don't, and it continues to be a problem, I don't want to have to deal with it in
(39:47):
the relationship, so I should bring it up. And I think that's important.
When you can bring up things that actually feel like a risk to the relationship, then you will find out if the relationship is worth having.
Because someone who cares about you and cares about the relationship wants it to work.
And if you say, look, when you talk about that stuff, or when you bring that stuff up, it makes me feel bad.
(40:13):
And then they say something like, I don't care if you feel bad.
Or they say, well then don't do that and you won't feel bad.
I mean, if they say something uncaring, cold, or invalidating, that is not conducive to a loving, caring, balanced relationship.
And that brings it right back to when you are with somebody who cares about you and wants you to be happy and wants you to
(40:38):
have your power, they won't say or do things that hurt you in that way.
So my point is with Part D is that you should have the emotional strength to bring things up that might be risky.
And all I mean by that is you could either not bring it up, and it becomes a permanent issue in the relationship.
(41:03):
It creates tension or stress, or you can bring it up, which might risk the relationship ending.
But if it doesn't end, it will only strengthen it.
Because what you get through after you get through the hard stuff is more honesty, more transparency, more connection, and more love.
So to the person who wrote, how do you know you're ready?
(41:26):
I think in a nutshell, it's telling yourself, if it doesn't feel right, then I'm going to bring it up.
And if I bring it up, and it goes well, then I know that I can bring up some hard stuff.
And if I bring it up, and it doesn't go well, and they don't seem to have my best interest in mind, or at least they're not
interested in a balanced relationship where both people are happy, and both people feel love and connection, then I have to
(41:53):
be either strong enough or willing to walk away.
Which is how I believe you can assess if you're ready to get into another relationship.
So in a nutshell, if you're ready to walk away from something that isn't working, you are definitely ready for a relationship. Those are my thoughts. I hope they're helpful.
(42:16):
Thank you for writing in, and thank you for listening to another episode of the Overwhelmed Brain.
I want to thank the patrons this week.
Michelle and Wanda, thank you so much for your every month. I am so grateful to you.
And I received, wow, I just noticed this now.
Sandra, thank you so much for your donation. I am very grateful.
She said that, hi Paul, thank you as always. I'm still following your shows.
(42:40):
Apologies, this is my third recent attempt at donating, but I've had tech issues.
I think this one should get through. It did. Thank you, Sandra. I am so grateful. That is very generous. I appreciate you.
And anyone that donates to the show, thank you all.
And I am just honored and humbled.
If you value the show like these people do, and you want to give back, head over to moretob.com, and there are options to do that over there.
(43:07):
And if you're looking for a show on how to navigate the difficult relationship, listen to my other podcast called Love and Abuse over at loveandabuse.com.
And if you know you're the difficult one in the relationship and you want to change that about yourself, there's a comprehensive
program that I have created over at healedbeing.com. Go over there.
If you're trying to work on your own behaviors to make sure you don't lose a relationship or make sure you don't mess up the next one, that's over at healedbeing.com.
(43:35):
And with that, always keep your mind open because that's how you make the best decisions.
And be firm 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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